Human Cooperation: The Power of Shared Stories in Sapiens

Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens, on human cooperation

Short Answer
Human cooperation reaches millions of strangers because people share stories, symbols and abstract beliefs. Nations, money, companies and human rights do not exist as physical objects in nature. However, people collectively believe in them. These shared ideas allow strangers to coordinate their actions on a scale that other species cannot easily achieve.

Human beings often describe themselves as rational creatures who build societies through intelligence, technology and institutions. Yet one of the most important questions about human civilization concerns something less tangible: our ability to believe in things that we cannot physically touch.

Yuval Noah Harari explores this question in Chapter 2 of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. He argues that the Cognitive Revolution gave Homo sapiens a remarkable advantage: the ability to create and communicate imagined realities. This ability transformed human cooperation.

However, it also raises an uncomfortable question. If our societies depend on shared stories, how much of what we call reality rests on collective belief?

What Makes Human Cooperation Different from Animal Cooperation?

Chimpanzees form alliances, defend their territories and cooperate during conflicts. Their social relationships depend heavily on direct contact, familiarity and personal trust.

Humans can go much further. A person can cooperate with thousands of people whom they have never met. A citizen can obey a law written centuries ago, an employee can work for an international company, and a stranger can accept a banknote as payment.

These relationships do not require personal familiarity. Instead, people rely on shared systems of meaning.

Harari uses the example of Peugeot to illustrate this distinction. A company does not exist in the same way that a tree or a river exists. Its buildings, employees and vehicles have physical forms, but the company itself depends on a network of shared legal and social beliefs.

Consequently, human cooperation can form around an institution that has no independent physical existence.

Are Nations, Companies and Money Real?

This question requires a distinction between physical existence and social reality.

A banknote has physical properties. However, its economic value depends on collective acceptance. A national border may appear on a map, but geography alone cannot explain the political and legal meaning that people attach to it.

Similarly, a company can own property, sign contracts and employ thousands of people because legal systems recognize its existence.

These institutions produce real consequences. People earn salaries, pay taxes, lose property and even go to war because of systems built around shared beliefs.

Therefore, calling something an imagined reality does not mean that it has no consequences. On the contrary, collective belief can shape material conditions more powerfully than many physical objects.

Can Human Cooperation Change When Shared Stories Change?

Harari emphasizes that shared stories give humans an unusual capacity for cultural transformation.

Consider the French Revolution. In 1789, large sections of French society began to reject the traditional idea that kings ruled through divine authority. Instead, revolutionary ideas placed sovereignty in the people.

This transformation did not require a genetic change in the population. People changed their political beliefs and reorganized their institutions.

Moreover, this process can happen much faster than biological evolution. A society can replace one political system with another within a generation. In contrast, biological evolution generally requires much longer periods.

Nevertheless, changing a shared story does not automatically produce justice or equality. A new political narrative can liberate people, but it can also establish another hierarchy.

Does Collective Belief Make an Idea True?

This is perhaps the most important question that emerges from Harari’s argument.

People may collectively believe in a nation, a currency or a legal institution. Their belief gives these concepts practical power. However, collective acceptance does not make every claim morally legitimate or factually correct.

For example, a society may defend an unequal social system as natural or inevitable. Its members may accept that explanation for generations. Yet the longevity of a belief does not prove its validity.

In fact, history repeatedly shows that institutions can survive through habit, education and political power rather than through rational justification.

Thus, we should distinguish between the social power of an idea and its intellectual or ethical credibility.

Key Points

Humans cooperate on a large scale through shared stories and institutions.
Money, nations and companies depend on collective recognition.
Imagined realities can produce concrete political and economic consequences.
Shared beliefs can change more rapidly than biological characteristics.
Collective acceptance does not automatically make an idea true or just.

Conclusion: Who Controls the Stories Behind Human Cooperation?

Human civilization depends on more than physical resources and technological inventions. It also depends on stories that make human cooperation possible across millions of people.

However, these stories do not emerge in a political vacuum. Governments, institutions, corporations and social movements compete to shape collective beliefs.

For this reason, understanding society requires more than examining its laws and institutions. We must also ask who creates its dominant narratives, whose interests those narratives serve and who benefits when people accept them.

Harari’s account of the Cognitive Revolution offers a starting point for this investigation. It also leaves us with a difficult question: if shared beliefs can organize the world, who gets to decide which beliefs deserve our trust?

Source

Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Signal, 2014. Chapter 2, “The Tree of Knowledge”; sections “The Legend of Peugeot,” “Bypassing the Genome,” and “History and Biology.”