In ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’, Harari argues that on an individual level, nothing separates man from animal. When compared one against one, we find no differentiating characteristics by which we might reliably say ‘That’s a human’ versus ‘That’s a chimp’. However, he does point to two collective behaviours, or sets of behaviours, by which we might find this distinction between man and animal to be magnified.
The first is the complexity of our language. Most animals communicate in some way; whalesong, the twittering of birds, the neighing of horses. Animals are capable of vocally alerting others to potential danger; this is not specific to humankind. However, our ability not just to huff, grunt, or squeal in the general direction of an approaching predator, but to articulate ‘50km downstream, heading towards us, there’s a mountain lion’ is where we find separation. Our language is complex enough to describe the world in a detail inaccessible to other animals, and what we have done as a result of that ability to narrate the world around us — the infrastructure of modern society — is a testament to how distinguishing of an ability this is between man and animal.
The second collective behaviour that Harari articulates to distinguish us from animals is our shared belief in myth. We are the only species that ‘allows’ (if the power relationship can be thought of in that way) myth to have such power over us — we readily accept the freedoms allowed to us by Google, Amazon, and the United States of America. We don’t find these things in the world. We find trees, plants, and sand. And to every other species, because those are the primary points of interaction, they are taken to be the most fundamentally existent properties; from the sand, trees, and plants, perhaps we could derive myths and legends, making up stories of divinity which might hide in the foliage. Nevertheless, the rooted point of contact with reality would be the physical objects. Humans are not like this. We have devoted so much faith to the myths we create — of countries, of corporations — that we hold them to be truer than our physical touch-points. We have reached a level of subscription to these myths that we allow the non-existent Amazon, Google, or US to prescribe exactly what we can and cannot do with the existent trees, plants, and sand.
This is by no means a call to arms for conspiracy theorists, nor is it an attempt to advocate for some kind of anarchical destruction of corporate America.
Rather, I aim to point out simply that we pledge a level of belief in these myths unseen in the animal kingdom. This is another way in which we are different from animals.
I bring these traits up because both behaviours relate to our experience of consuming literature. Literature has, since the very first stories of Gilgamesh from Mesopotamia 4000 years ago, been about the human experience.
Gilgamesh tells the story of a king, attempting to escape into a sort of heaven, before being forced to reckon with his own mortality. We have always written in a distinctly human way, about distinctly human affairs, to make sense of our distinctly human experience. The periods of literature reflect our societal movements. The rising and falling technical trends of writing track our rising and falling progressions and regressions in the way we interact with one another. The process of writing and reading literature is about being human.
Literature does not just exist upon, but celebrates the complexity of our language. We make rhetorical flourishes, clever narrative structures, and sly subversions of grammatical rules to add to our stories. The complexity of our language is not just the method by which we tell stories, but also an integral – and aesthetic – part of how we tell stories.
Literature also takes advantage of, and advances, our shared belief in myth. To accept the non-reality of fiction is to believe, if consciously so, in myth for a while. To suspend the physical roots of connection to the world for a time, and ‘buy-in’ to a narrative as though it were real. Great literature forces us to socialise with its characters. To build relationships, to grieve losses, to celebrate the joys of characters as if they were our own, or the joys of our loved ones. It is not just fantasy stories of elves and dragons which engage our propensity to believe in myth. The non-reality of any fiction, even the most bleakly realistic portrayals of daily life, provokes our myth-making brain into the second of Harari’s distinctly human character traits; belief.
So literature has always been characteristic of humanity. Literature
is our pursuit; it is humanity fictionalised. We see our greatest achievements, most embarrassing failures, and most devastating losses reflected in the literature we create and consume. But more than ever, literature suffers from exclusion — men don’t read. Men shouldn’t read. We have effeminised literature, and most men — manly men, shout-at-the-referee-on-tv-even-though-they-can’t-hear-you men (perhaps an unfair stereotype) — wouldn’t be caught dead with a book, contraband as it has become.
I believe this is the case for two reasons. For one, the subtlety and, in a sense, ‘dainty-ness’ of literature sits at odds with the brashness and indecorum that masculinity has begun to be characterised by. Why sit cross-legged with a book when you could throw a beer in somebody’s face? Why bother learning the intricacies of the perspectives of others when you could shout louder than them, plug your ears, call them an idiot and believe them to be wrong at all costs? Not all men are like this, and I don’t mean to bemoan the present state of masculinity without offering a solution. But it is an increasing proportion of men. It’s more than it was 20 years ago, when it was more than it was 20 years before then, and so on.
The second reason for the feminisation of literature is that it is an inert activity. The predatory, biological instinct of men is to act. To hunt, to seek, to chase and move and generally, do things. Sitting still, reading words challenges this. There is no evolutionary benefit to consuming literature.
Further still, the accumulation of knowledge, without having to actively procure the resources in any way (beyond purchasing the book) reflects more so the primitive ‘female role’, gathering and operating quantities of resources without having to hunt them down in any way. Reading literature is closer to preparing the cave dinner than it is riding the back of a sabre-toothed tiger, throwing spears at gazelles (perhaps not historically accurate), and this is why men don’t read.
If literature is to once again be humanity, and not just a subset, we have to shake off our primitive pasts. Only by getting over our caveman delusions of hunters and gatherers (and the binary distinction between the two) can we once again hope to have the sentiments of literature represent the entire species. And we should, because literature is one of the most distinctly human ways we express ourselves. Were we to lose that, we might end up not so different from animals after all.
Leave a comment