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Summary
Summary
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * In Sapiens, he explored our past. In Homo Deus, he looked to our future . Now, one of the most innovative thinkers on the planet turns to the present to make sense of today's most pressing issues.
"Fascinating . . . a crucial global conversation about how to take on the problems of the twenty-first century."--Bill Gates, The New York Times Book Review
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FINANCIAL TIMES AND PAMELA PAUL, KQED
How do computers and robots change the meaning of being human? How do we deal with the epidemic of fake news? Are nations and religions still relevant? What should we teach our children?
Yuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today's most urgent issues as we move into the uncharted territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.
In twenty-one accessible chapters that are both provocative and profound, Harari builds on the ideas explored in his previous books, untangling political, technological, social, and existential issues and offering advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we now live in: How can we retain freedom of choice when Big Data is watching us? What will the future workforce look like, and how should we ready ourselves for it? How should we deal with the threat of terrorism? Why is liberal democracy in crisis?
Harari's unique ability to make sense of where we have come from and where we are going has captured the imaginations of millions of readers. Here he invites us to consider values, meaning, and personal engagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty. When we are deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power. Presenting complex contemporary challenges clearly and accessibly, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is essential reading.
"If there were such a thing as a required instruction manual for politicians and thought leaders, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century would deserve serious consideration. In this collection of provocative essays, Harari . . . tackles a daunting array of issues, endeavoring to answer a persistent question: 'What is happening in the world today, and what is the deep meaning of these events?'"-- BookPage (top pick)
Author Notes
Yuval Noah Harari received a PhD in history from the University of Oxford. He lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in world history. He has written several books including Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind which became a 2016 New York Times Bestsellers.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Magnificently combining historical, scientific, political, and philosophical perspectives, Harari (Sapiens and Homo Deus), a Hebrew University of Jerusalem history professor, explores 21 of what he considers to be today's "greatest challenges." Despite the title's reference to "lessons," his tone is not prescriptive but exploratory, seeking to provoke debate without offering definitive solutions. An early chapter is headlined with the lesson, "When You Grow Up, You Might Not Have a Job." Not only will many jobs be lost to machines, but, Harari speculates, humans might not even be necessary to fulfill the role of consumers: "Theoretically, you can have an economy in which a mining corporation produces and sells iron to a robotics corporation, and the robotics corporation produces and sells robots to the mining corporation." A chapter beginning with the lesson "Those Who Own the Data Own the Future" discusses how the improved human understanding of mind and brain, and the ability to manipulate both, raises the threat of control by those with access to one's data, making the regulation of data ownership perhaps "the most important political question of our era." Within this broad construct, Harari discusses many pressing issues, including problems associated with liberal democracy, nationalism, immigration, and religion. This well-informed and searching book is one to be savored and widely discussed. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Convinced that change constitutes the only constant, Harari, author of the award-winning Sapiens (2015), draws from his deep knowledge of the planet's history a wealth of reasons to doubt inherited ways of thinking. What, after all, could customary wisdom ever teach us about how to forge viable twenty-first-century identities in a world where computer algorithms are rendering human skills irrelevant, where political cynicism imperils liberal democracy, and where biotechnology is transforming brain and body? In articulating the 21 lessons he considers essential in facing such unprecedented challenges, Harari focuses on issues likely to frustrate those committed to traditional religious doctrines and conventional political ideologies. In the debates over how much control over their lives humans should cede to artificial intelligence and how many environmental regulations we should accept in devising our modes of transportation, for instance, Harari sees religious orthodoxy Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Islamic only obscuring the key issues. Similarly, Harari finds the usual precepts of democratic liberalism quite inadequate for negotiating the inevitable merger of biotech and infotech. Harari believes that his radical skepticism will clarify readers' vision as they contemplate rapidly mutating dilemmas. But the skepticism runs so deep undermining even stable conceptions of the freely choosing self that some readers may finally feel not enlightened but paralyzed. A sobering and tough-minded perspective on bewildering new vistas.--Bryce Christensen Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
21 LESSONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, by Yuval Noah Harari. (Spiegel & Grau, $28.) This sweeping survey of the modern world by an ambitious and stimulating thinker offers a framework for confronting the fears raised by such major issues as nationalism, immigration, education and religion. PRESIDIO, by Randy Kennedy. (Touchstone, $26.) Vintage Texas noir, this first novel follows the flight to the Mexican border of a car thief turned accidental kidnapper. BOOM TOWN: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-Class Metropolis, by Sam Anderson. (Crown, $28.) A vivid, slightly surreal history of "the great minor city of America," starting 500 million years ago and continuing up through Timothy McVeigh, Kevin Durant and the Flaming Lips. FASHION CLIMBING: A Memoir With Photographs, by Bill Cunningham. (Penguin Press, $27.) Discovered after his death, these autobiobraphical essays chart the beloved New York Times photographer's early career as a milliner, fashion reporter and discerning observer of high society. SMALL SMALL FRY, by Lisa Brennan-Jobs. (Grove, $26.) BrenFUY nan-Jobs's memoir of an unstable childhood at the mercy of her depressed, volatile and chronically impoverished mother, on the one hand, and her famous, wealthy and emotionally abusive father, on the other, is a luminous, if deeply disturbing, work of art. CHERRY, by Nico Walker. (Knopf, $26.95.) The incarcerated novelist's debut is a singular portrait of the opioid epidemic and the United States' failure to provide adequate support to veterans. It's full of slapstick comedy, despite gut-clenching depictions of dope sickness, the futility of war and PTSD. OPEN ME, by Lisa Locascio. (Grove, $25.) This debut novel by a lovely, imagistic writer is a subversion of the study-abroad narrative: Instead of being transformed by the external world in Denmark, the narrator dives inward, spending her days discovering the possibilities of her own pleasure. TERRARIUM: New and Selected Stories, by Valerie Trueblood. (Counterpoint, $26.) Urgent, unnerving and tightly packed short fiction that covers enough ground for a library of novels. BUT NOT THE ARMADILLO, written and illustrated by Sandra Boynton. (Simon & Schuster, $5.99; ages 0 to 4.) Boynton's new board book, a follow-up to "But Not the Hippopotamus," stars another creature who'd rather not join in. Some folks just prefer to go their own way - toddlers will understand. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Guardian Review
Governments and corporations will soon know you better than you know yourself. Belief in the idea of free will has become dangerous Should scholars serve the truth, even at the cost of social harmony? Should you expose a fiction even if that fiction sustains the social order? In writing my latest book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, I had to struggle with this dilemma with regard to liberalism. On the one hand, I believe that the liberal story is flawed, that it does not tell the truth about humanity, and that in order to survive and flourish in the 21st century we need to go beyond it. On the other hand, at present the liberal story is still fundamental to the functioning of the global order. Whats more, liberalism is now attacked by religious and nationalist fanatics who believe in nostalgic fantasies that are far more dangerous and harmful. So should I speak my mind openly, risking that my words could be taken out of context and used by demagogues and autocrats to further attack the liberal order? Or should I censor myself? It is a mark of illiberal regimes that they make free speech more difficult even outside their borders. Due to the spread of such regimes, it is becoming increasingly dangerous to think critically about the future of our species. I eventually chose free discussion over self-censorship, thanks to my belief both in the strength of liberal democracy and in the necessity to revamp it. Liberalisms great advantage over other ideologies is that it is flexible and undogmatic. It can sustain criticism better than any other social order. Indeed, it is the only social order that allows people to question even its own foundations. Liberalism has already survived three big crises the first world war, the fascist challenge in the 1930s, and the communist challenge in the 1950s-70s. If you think liberalism is in trouble now, just remember how much worse things were in 1918, 1938 or 1968. The main challenge liberalism faces today comes not from fascism or communism but from the laboratories In 1968, liberal democracies seemed to be an endangered species, and even within their own borders they were rocked by riots, assassinations, terrorist attacks and fierce ideological battles. If you happened to be amid the riots in Washington on the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated, or in Paris in May 1968, or at the Democratic partys convention in Chicago in August 1968, you might well have thought that the end was near. While Washington, Paris and Chicago were descending into chaos, Moscow and Leningrad were tranquil, and the Soviet system seemed destined to endure for ever. Yet 20 years later it was the Soviet system that collapsed. The clashes of the 1960s strengthened liberal democracy, while the stifling climate in the Soviet bloc presaged its demise. So we hope liberalism can reinvent itself yet again. But the main challenge it faces today comes not from fascism or communism, and not even from the demagogues and autocrats that are spreading everywhere like frogs after the rains. This time the main challenge emerges from the laboratories. Liberalism is founded on the belief in human liberty. Unlike rats and monkeys, human beings are supposed to have free will. This is what makes human feelings and human choices the ultimate moral and political authority in the world. Liberalism tells us that the voter knows best, that the customer is always right, and that we should think for ourselves and follow our hearts. ¶ Unfortunately, free will isnt a scientific reality. It is a myth inherited from Christian theology. Theologians developed the idea of free will to explain why God is right to punish sinners for their bad choices and reward saints for their good choices. If our choices arent made freely, why should God punish or reward us for them? According to the theologians, it is reasonable for God to do so, because our choices reflect the free will of our eternal souls, which are independent of all physical and biological constraints. This myth has little to do with what science now teaches us about Homo sapiens and other animals. Humans certainly have a will but it isnt free. You cannot decide what desires you have. You dont decide to be introvert or extrovert, easy-going or anxious, gay or straight. Humans make choices but they are never independent choices. Every choice depends on a lot of biological, social and personal conditions that you cannot determine for yourself. I can choose what to eat, whom to marry and whom to vote for, but these choices are determined in part by my genes, my biochemistry, my gender, my family background, my national culture, etc and I didnt choose which genes or family to have. This is not abstract theory. You can witness this easily. Just observe the next thought that pops up in your mind. Where did it come from? Did you freely choose to think it? Obviously not. If you carefully observe your own mind, you come to realise that you have little control of whats going on there, and you are not choosing freely what to think, what to feel, and what to want. Though free will was always a myth, in previous centuries it was a helpful one. It emboldened people who had to fight against the Inquisition, the divine right of kings, the KGB and the KKK. The myth also carried few costs. In 1776 or 1945 there was relatively little harm in believing that your feelings and choices were the product of some free will rather than the result of biochemistry and neurology. But now the belief in free will suddenly becomes dangerous. If governments and corporations succeed in hacking the human animal, the easiest people to manipulate will be those who believe in free will. In order to successfully hack humans, you need two things: a good understanding of biology, and a lot of computing power. The Inquisition and the KGB lacked this knowledge and power. But soon, corporations and governments might have both, and once they can hack you, they can not only predict your choices, but also reengineer your feelings. To do so, corporations and governments will not need to know you perfectly. That is impossible. They will just have to know you a little better than you know yourself. And that is not impossible, because most people dont know themselves very well. If you believe in the traditional liberal story, you will be tempted simply to dismiss this challenge. No, it will never happen. Nobody will ever manage to hack the human spirit, because there is something there that goes far beyond genes, neurons and algorithms. Nobody could successfully predict and manipulate my choices, because my choices reflect my free will. Unfortunately, dismissing the challenge wont make it go away. It will just make you more vulnerable to it. It starts with simple things. As you surf the internet, a headline catches your eye: Immigrant gang rapes local women. You click on it. At exactly the same moment, your neighbour is surfing the internet too, and a different headline catches her eye: Trump prepares nuclear strike on Iran. She clicks on it. Both headlines are fake news stories, generated perhaps by Russian trolls, or by a website keen on increasing traffic to boost its ad revenues. Both you and your neighbour feel that you clicked on these headlines out of your free will. But in fact you have been hacked. If governments succeed in hacking the human animal, the easiest people to manipulate will be those who believe in free will Propaganda and manipulation are nothing new, of course. But whereas in the past they worked like carpet bombing, now they are becoming precision-guided munitions. When Hitler gave a speech on the radio, he aimed at the lowest common denominator, because he couldnt tailor his message to the unique weaknesses of individual brains. Now it has become possible to do exactly that. An algorithm can tell that you already have a bias against immigrants, while your neighbour already dislikes Trump, which is why you see one headline while your neighbour sees an altogether different one. In recent years some of the smartest people in the world have worked on hacking the human brain in order to make you click on ads and sell you stuff. Now these methods are being used to sell you politicians and ideologies, too. And this is just the beginning. At present, the hackers rely on analysing signals and actions in the outside world: the products you buy, the places you visit, the words you search for online. Yet within a few years biometric sensors could give hackers direct access to your inner world, and they could observe whats going on inside your heart. Not the metaphorical heart beloved by liberal fantasies, but rather the muscular pump that regulates your blood pressure and much of your brain activity. The hackers could then correlate your heart rate with your credit card data, and your blood pressure with your search history. What would the Inquisition and the KGB have done with biometric bracelets that constantly monitor your moods and affections? Stay tuned. Liberalism has developed an impressive arsenal of arguments and institutions to defend individual freedoms against external attacks from oppressive governments and bigoted religions, but it is unprepared for a situation when individual freedom is subverted from within, and when the very concepts of individual and freedom no longer make much sense. In order to survive and prosper in the 21st century, we need to leave behind the naive view of humans as free individuals a view inherited from Christian theology as much as from the modern Enlightenment and come to terms with what humans really are: hackable animals. We need to know ourselves better. Of course, this is hardly new advice. From ancient times, sages and saints repeatedly advised people to know thyself. Yet in the days of Socrates, the Buddha and Confucius, you didnt have real competition. If you neglected to know yourself, you were still a black box to the rest of humanity. In contrast, you now have competition. As you read these lines, governments and corporations are striving to hack you. If they get to know you better than you know yourself, they can then sell you anything they want be it a product or a politician. It is particularly important to get to know your weaknesses. They are the main tools of those who try to hack you. Computers are hacked through pre-existing faulty code lines. Humans are hacked through pre-existing fears, hatreds, biases and cravings. Hackers cannot create fear or hatred out of nothing. But when they discover what people already fear and hate it is easy to push the relevant emotional buttons and provoke even greater fury. If people cannot get to know themselves by their own efforts, perhaps the same technology the hackers use can be turned around and serve to protect us. Just as your computer has an antivirus program that screens for malware, maybe we need an antivirus for the brain. Your AI sidekick will learn by experience that you have a particular weakness whether for funny cat videos or for infuriating Trump stories and would block them on your behalf. But all this is really just a side issue. If humans are hackable animals, and if our choices and opinions dont reflect our free will, what should the point of politics be? For 300 years, liberal ideals inspired a political project that aimed to give as many individuals as possible the ability to pursue their dreams and fulfil their desires. We are now closer than ever to realising this aim but we are also closer than ever to realising that this has all been based on an illusion. The very same technologies that we have invented to help individuals pursue their dreams also make it possible to re-engineer those dreams. So how can I trust any of my dreams? From one perspective, this discovery gives humans an entirely new kind of freedom. Previously, we identified very strongly with our desires, and sought the freedom to realise them. Whenever any thought appeared in the mind, we rushed to do its bidding. We spent our days running around like crazy, carried by a furious rollercoaster of thoughts, feelings and desires, which we mistakenly believed represented our free will. What happens if we stop identifying with this rollercoaster? What happens when we carefully observe the next thought that pops up in our mind and ask: Where did that come from? For starters, realising that our thoughts and desires dont reflect our free will can help us become less obsessive about them. If I see myself as an entirely free agent, choosing my desires in complete independence from the world, it creates a barrier between me and all other entities. I dont really need any of those other entities I am independent. It simultaneously bestows enormous importance on my every whim after all, I chose this particular desire out of all possible desires in the universe. Once we give so much importance to our desires, we naturally try to control and shape the whole world according to them. We wage wars, cut down forests and unbalance the entire ecosystem in pursuit of our whims. But if we understood that our desires are not the outcome of free choice, we would hopefully be less preoccupied with them, and would also feel more connected to the rest of the world. If we understood that our desires are not the outcome of free choice, we would hopefully be less preoccupied with them People sometimes imagine that if we renounce our belief in free will, we will become completely apathetic, and just curl up in some corner and starve to death. In fact, renouncing this illusion can have two opposite effects: first, it can create a far stronger link with the rest of the world, and make you more attentive to your environment and to the needs and wishes of others. It is like when you have a conversation with someone. If you focus on what you want to say, you hardly really listen. You just wait for the opportunity to give the other person a piece of your mind. But when you put your own thoughts aside, you can suddenly hear other people. Second, renouncing the myth of free will can kindle a profound curiosity. If you strongly identify with the thoughts and desires that emerge in your mind, you dont need to make much effort to get to know yourself. You think you already know exactly who you are. But once you realise Hi, this isnt me. This is just some changing biochemical phenomenon! then you also realise you have no idea who or what you actually are. This can be the beginning of the most exciting journey of discovery any human can undertake. ¶ There is nothing new about doubting free will or about exploring the true nature of humanity. We humans have had this discussion a thousand times before. But we never had the technology before. And the technology changes everything. Ancient problems of philosophy are now becoming practical problems of engineering and politics. And while philosophers are very patient people they can argue about something inconclusively for 3,000 years engineers are far less patient. Politicians are the least patient of all. How does liberal democracy function in an era when governments and corporations can hack humans? Whats left of the beliefs that the voter knows best and the customer is always right? How do you live when you realise that you are a hackable animal, that your heart might be a government agent, that your amygdala might be working for Putin, and that the next thought that emerges in your mind might well be the result of some algorithm that knows you better than you know yourself? These are the most interesting questions humanity now faces. Unfortunately, these are not the questions most humans ask. Instead of exploring what awaits us beyond the illusion of free will, people all over the world are now retreating to find shelter with even older illusions. Instead of confronting the challenge of AI and bioengineering, many are turning to religious and nationalist fantasies that are even less in touch with the scientific realities of our time than liberalism. Instead of fresh political models, whats on offer are repackaged leftovers from the 20th century or even the middle ages. When you try to engage with these nostalgic fantasies, you find yourself debating such thingsas the veracity of the Bible and the sanctity of the nation (especially if you happen, like me, to live in a place like Israel). As a scholar, this is a disappointment. Arguing about the Bible was hot stuff in the age of Voltaire, and debating the merits of nationalism was cutting-edge philosophy a century ago but in 2018 it seems a terrible waste of time. AI and bioengineering are about to change the course of evolution itself, and we have just a few decades to figure out what to do with them. I dont know where the answers will come from, but they are definitely not coming from a collection of stories written thousands of years ago. So what to do? We need to fight on two fronts simultaneously. We should defend liberal democracy, not only because it has proved to be a more benign form of government than any of its alternatives, but also because it places the fewest limitations on debating the future of humanity. At the same time, we need to question the traditional assumptions of liberalism, and develop a new political project that is better in line with the scientific realities and technological powers of the 21st century. Greek mythology tells that Zeus and Poseidon, two of the greatest gods, competed for the hand of the goddess Thetis. But when they heard the prophecy that Thetis would bear a son more powerful than his father, both withdrew in alarm. Since gods plan on sticking around for ever, they dont want a more powerful offspring to compete with them. So Thetis married a mortal, King Peleus, and gave birth to Achilles. Mortals do like their children to outshine them. This myth might teach us something important. Autocrats who plan to rule in perpetuity dont like to encourage the birth of ideas that might displace them. But liberal democracies inspire the creation of new visions, even at the price of questioning their own foundations - Yuval Noah Harari.
Kirkus Review
A highly instructive exploration of "current affairs andthe immediate future of human societies."Having produced an international bestseller about human origins (Sapiens, 2015, etc.) and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny (Homo Deus, 2017), Harari (History/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today's myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. As the author emphasizes, "humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths." Three grand stories once predicted the future. World War II eliminated the fascist story but stimulated communism for a few decades until its collapse. The liberal storythink democracy, free markets, and globalismreigned supreme for a decade until the 20th-century nastiesdictators, populists, and nationalistscame back in style. They promote jingoism over international cooperation, vilify the opposition, demonize immigrants and rival nations, and then win elections. "A bit like the Soviet elites in the 1980s," writes Harari, "liberals don't understand how history deviates from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality." The author certainly understands, and in 21 painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly "post-truth" world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari's narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history.Harari delivers yet another tour de force. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Harari's (Sapiens; Homo Deus) latest work doesn't have the same historical narrative flow as his earlier books. Instead, the author identifies various complex issues challenging the world today and unpacks them with foresight and clarity. Artificial intelligence as well as information and biological technologies are just a few of the unremitting forces warping society into a new shape. We need sober and clear analysis of these forces or risk being pulled in frightening directions. The narration is masterfully handled by Derek Perkins, whose voice adds to the overall quality. This work has more personal touches than Harari's previous titles and is the better for it. The analysis of world-altering trends is uneven, particularly his revolutionary views on personhood, which undermines the very rationality he champions as a countervailing dynamism to confront our civilization's challenges. That said, the book is loads of fun. VERDICT If you cherish the life of ideas you owe yourself some time with this audiobook. ["Readers of Harari's previous works will find this volume uniquely engaging in its application of those larger contours of history and future to contemporary society. Highly recommended for general readers and academics alike": LJ 9/1/18 review of the Spiegel & Grau hc.]-Denis Frias, Mississauga Lib. Syst., Ont. © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
1 Disillusionment The End of History Has Been Postponed Humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths. But during the twentieth century the global elites in New York, London, Berlin, and Moscow formulated three grand stories that claimed to explain the whole past and to predict the future of the entire world: the fascist story, the communist story, and the liberal story. The Second World War knocked out the fascist story, and from the late 1940s to the late 1980s the world became a battleground between just two stories: communism and liberalism. Then the communist story collapsed, and the liberal story remained the dominant guide to the human past and the indispensable manual for the future of the world--or so it seemed to the global elite. The liberal story celebrates the value and power of liberty. It says that for thousands of years humankind lived under oppressive regimes that allowed people few political rights, economic opportunities, or personal liberties, and which heavily restricted the movements of individuals, ideas, and goods. But people fought for their freedom, and step by step, liberty gained ground. Democratic regimes took the place of brutal dictatorships. Free enterprise overcame economic restrictions. People learned to think for themselves and follow their hearts instead of blindly obeying bigoted priests and hidebound traditions. Open roads, wide bridges, and bustling airports replaced walls, moats, and barbed-wire fences. The liberal story acknowledges that not all is well in the world and that there are still many hurdles to overcome. Much of our planet is dominated by tyrants, and even in the most liberal countries many citizens suffer from poverty, violence, and oppression. But at least we know what we need to do in order to overcome these problems: give people more liberty. We need to protect human rights, grant everybody the vote, establish free markets, and let individuals, ideas, and goods move throughout the world as easily as possible. According to this liberal panacea--accepted, in slight variations, by George W. Bush and Barack Obama alike--if we just continue to liberalize and globalize our political and economic systems, we will produce peace and prosperity for all.1 Countries that join this unstoppable march of progress will be rewarded with peace and prosperity sooner. Countries that try to resist the inevitable will suffer the consequences until they too see the light, open their borders, and liberalize their societies, their politics, and their markets. It may take time, but eventually even North Korea, Iraq, and El Salvador will look like Denmark or Iowa. In the 1990s and 2000s this story became a global mantra. Many governments from Brazil to India adopted liberal recipes in an attempt to join the inexorable march of history. Those failing to do so seemed like fossils from a bygone era. In 1997 U.S. president Bill Clinton confidently rebuked the Chinese government, stating that its refusal to liberalize Chinese politics put it "on the wrong side of history."2 However, since the global financial crisis of 2008 people all over the world have become increasingly disillusioned with the liberal story. Walls and firewalls are back in vogue. Resistance to immigration and to trade agreements is mounting. Ostensibly democratic governments undermine the independence of the judiciary system, restrict the freedom of the press, and portray any opposition as treason. Strongmen in countries such as Turkey and Russia experiment with new types of illiberal democracies and outright dictatorships. Today, few would confidently declare that the Chinese Communist Party is on the wrong side of history. The year 2016--marked by the Brexit vote in Britain and the rise of Donald Trump in the United States--signified the moment when this tidal wave of disillusionment reached the core liberal states of Western Europe and North America. Whereas a few years ago Americans and Europeans were still trying to liberalize Iraq and Libya at gunpoint, many people in Kentucky and Yorkshire now have come to see the liberal vision as either undesirable or unattainable. Some discovered a liking for the old hierarchical world, and they just don't want to give up their racial, national, or gendered privileges. Others have concluded (rightly or wrongly) that liberalization and globalization are a huge racket empowering a tiny elite at the expense of the masses. In 1938 humans were offered three global stories to choose from, in 1968 just two, and in 1998 a single story seemed to prevail. In 2018 we are down to zero. No wonder that the liberal elites, who dominated much of the world in recent decades, are in a state of shock and disorientation. To have one story is the most reassuring situation of all. Everything is perfectly clear. To be suddenly left without any story is terrifying. Nothing makes any sense. A bit like the Soviet elite in the 1980s, liberals don't understand how history deviated from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality. Disorientation causes them to think in apocalyptic terms, as if the failure of history to come to its envisioned happy ending can only mean that it is hurtling toward Armageddon. Unable to conduct a reality check, the mind latches onto catastrophic scenarios. Like a person imagining that a bad headache signifies a terminal brain tumor, many liberals fear that Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump portend the end of human civilization. From Killing Mosquitoes to Killing Thoughts Our sense of disorientation and impending doom is exacerbated by the accelerating pace of technological disruption. The liberal political system was shaped during the industrial era to manage a world of steam engines, oil refineries, and television sets. It has difficulty dealing with the ongoing revolutions in information technology and biotechnology. Both politicians and voters are barely able to comprehend the new technologies, let alone regulate their explosive potential. Since the 1990s the internet has changed the world probably more than any other factor, yet the internet revolution was directed by engineers more than by political parties. Did you ever vote about the internet? The democratic system is still struggling to understand what hit it, and it is unequipped to deal with the next shocks, such as the rise of AI and the blockchain revolution. Already today, computers have made the financial system so complicated that few humans can understand it. As AI improves, we might soon reach a point when no human can make sense of finance anymore. What will that do to the political process? Can you imagine a government that waits humbly for an algorithm to approve its budget or its new tax reform? Meanwhile, peer-to-peer blockchain networks and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin might completely revamp the monetary system, making radical tax reforms inevitable. For example, it might become impossible or irrelevant to calculate and tax incomes in dollars, because most transactions will not involve a clear-cut exchange of national currency, or any currency at all. Governments might therefore need to invent entirely new taxes--perhaps a tax on information (which will be both the most important asset in the economy and the only thing exchanged in numerous transactions). Will the political system manage to deal with the crisis before it runs out of money? Even more important, the twin revolutions in infotech and biotech could restructure not just economies and societies but our very bodies and minds. In the past, we humans learned to control the world outside us, but we had very little control over the world inside us. We knew how to build a dam and stop a river from flowing, but we did not know how to stop the body from aging. We knew how to design an irrigation system, but we had no idea how to design a brain. If a mosquito buzzed in our ear and disturbed our sleep, we knew how to kill the mosquito, but if a thought buzzed in our mind and kept us awake at night, most of us did not know how to kill the thought. The revolutions in biotech and infotech will give us control of the world inside us and will enable us to engineer and manufacture life. We will learn how to design brains, extend lives, and kill thoughts at our discretion. Nobody knows what the consequences will be. Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely. It is easier to manipulate a river by building a dam than it is to predict all the complex consequences this will have for the wider ecological system. Similarly, it will be easier to redirect the flow of our minds than to divine what that will do to our personal psychology or to our social systems. In the past, we gained the power to manipulate the world around us and reshape the entire planet, but because we didn't understand the complexity of the global ecology, the changes we made inadvertently disrupted the entire ecological system, and now we face an ecological collapse. In the coming century biotech and infotech will give us the power to manipulate the world inside us and reshape ourselves, but because we don't understand the complexity of our own minds, the changes we will make might upset our mental system to such an extent that it too might break down. The revolutions in biotech and infotech are currently being started by engineers, entrepreneurs, and scientists who are hardly aware of the political implications of their decisions, and who certainly don't represent anyone. Can parliaments and political parties take matters into their own hands? At present it does not seem so. Technological disruption is not even a leading item on the political agenda. During the 2016 U.S. presidential race, the main reference to disruptive technology concerned Hillary Clinton's email debacle, and despite all the talk about job loss, neither candidate addressed the potential impact of automation.3 Donald Trump warned voters that the Mexicans and Chinese would take their jobs, and that they should therefore build a wall on the Mexican border.4 He never warned voters that algorithms would take their jobs, nor did he suggest building a firewall on the border with California. This might be one of the reasons (though not the only one) voters even in the heartlands of the liberal West are losing faith in the liberal story and in the democratic process. Ordinary people may not understand artificial intelligence and biotechnology, but they can sense that the future is passing them by. In 1938 the condition of the common person in the USSR, Germany, or the United States may have been grim, but he was constantly told that he was the most important thing in the world, and that he was the future (provided, of course, that he was an "ordinary person" rather than a Jew or an African). He looked at the propaganda posters--which typically depicted coal miners, steelworkers, and housewives in heroic poses--and saw himself there: "I am in that poster! I am the hero of the future!"5 In 2018 the common person feels increasingly irrelevant. Lots of mysterious words are bandied around excitedly in TED Talks, government think tanks, and high-tech conferences--globalization, blockchain, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning--and common people may well suspect that none of these words are about them. The liberal story was the story of ordinary people. How can it remain relevant to a world of cyborgs and networked algorithms? In the twentieth century, the masses revolted against exploitation and sought to translate their vital role in the economy into political power. Now the masses fear irrelevance, and they are frantic to use their remaining political power before it is too late. Brexit and the rise of Trump might therefore demonstrate a trajectory opposite to that of traditional socialist revolutions. The Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were made by people who were vital to the economy but who lacked political power; in 2016, Trump and Brexit were supported by many people who still enjoyed political power but who feared that they were losing their economic worth. Perhaps in the twenty-first century populist revolts will be staged not against an economic elite that exploits people but against an economic elite that does not need them anymore.6 This may well be a losing battle. It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation. Excerpted from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
Introduction | p. xiii |
Part I The Technological Challenge | |
1 Disillusionment: The End of History Has Been Postponed | p. 3 |
2 Work: When You Grow Up, You Might Not Have a Job | p. 19 |
3 Liberty: Big Data Is Watching You | p. 44 |
4 Equality: Those Who Own the Data Own the Future | p. 73 |
Part II The Political Challenge | |
5 Community: Humans Have Bodies | p. 85 |
6 Civilization: There Is Just One Civilization in the World | p. 93 |
7 Nationalism: Global Problems Need Global Answers | p. 110 |
8 Religion: God Now Serves the Nation | p. 127 |
9 Immigration: Some Cultures Might Be Better than Others | p. 140 |
Part III Despair And Hope | |
10 Terrorism: Don't Panic | p. 161 |
11 War: Never Underestimate Human Stupidity | p. 173 |
12 Humility: You Are Not the Center of the World | p. 184 |
13 God: Don't Take the Name of God in Vain | p. 200 |
14 Secularism: Acknowledge Your Shadow | p. 207 |
Part IV Truth | |
15 Ignorance: You Know Less than You Think | p. 221 |
16 Justice: Our Sense ofJustice Might Be Out of Date | p. 228 |
17 Post-Truth: Some Fake News Lasts Forever | p. 236 |
18 Science Fiction: The Future Is Not What You See in the Movies | p. 250 |
Part V Resilience | |
19 Education: Change Is the Only Constant | p. 263 |
20 Meaning: Life Is Not a Story | p. 273 |
21 Meditation: Just Observe | p. 314 |
Acknowledgments | p. 325 |
Notes | p. 329 |
Index | p. 357 |