* In his superb book Sapiens, Yuval Harari argues that our capacity to create elaborate fictions accounts for our propensity to cooperate with each other well beyond the groups in which we originally evolved. In Harari’s words, “If you tried to bunch together thousands of chimpanzees into Tiananmen Square, Wall Street, the Vatican or the headquarters of the United Nations, the result would be pandemonium. By contrast, Sapiens regularly gather by the thousands in such places. Together, they create orderly patterns—such as trade networks, mass celebrations, and political institutions—that they could never have created in isolation. The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families, and groups. This glue has made us the masters of creation.”