Peugeot Symbol Analysis

Harari uses the example of the Peugeot car brand to symbolize the concept of an imagined order. According to Harari, humans are unique in the animal world because we can imagine and believe things that aren’t true or grounded in the physical world—this is what he calls an imagined order. The car brand Peugeot, for example, exists, but it’s not tied to any specific part of the physical world. Even if all the Peugeot cars in the world burned and completely disintegrated, the brand Peugeot would still exist. In other word, the Peugeot brand is more like an idea than a physical thing (the actual cars).

Harari says ideas like this are fictional entities. Despite the fact that it’s just an idea, the Peugeot brand shapes many people’s lives: consumers buy Peugeot cars, and employees work together in Peugeot factories. In a sense, all of these people cooperate by rallying around the brand. Throughout Sapiens, Harari wants to show that ideas like car brands, concepts like money, or belief in gods are all extremely powerful. They encourage people to trust strangers who also believe in those ideas, which makes people cooperate in vast numbers, enabling human societies to flourish. People also tend to treat fictional entities—like the Peugeot car brand, mythical heroes, or even stories that declare that some people are superior to others—as if they’re true. But Harari reminds the reader that these fictional entities, or imagined orders, are always invented, meaning they can be changed.