21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st century is not comparable to Hararis previous landmark works of history and prognostication Sapiens and Homo Deus. Written with the purpose of focusing not on the future nor the past but on contemporary civilization, Harari tends to make sweeping assumptions and badly reasoned arguments when he is not flat out contradictory. Even worse, most of the content is the sort of generalizations seen in futurist websites and Facebook groups. Its not so much that its false as that its not new.

I will try to summarize some examples of why I think this book is a poor relative to Hararis previous works. Harari argues that elections might be infeasible in the future. Why? Because if elections were about reason then obviously we would appoint a committee of experts to choose our leaders. Since we dont, elections must be all about emotions which, as seen in 2016, are increasingly going to be controlled by AI. Therefore, per Harari, elections will become pass. He does not consider that, like guessing the number of coins in a jar, elections might be held because, when you combine millions of voters responses, individual biases in reasoning will balance each other out and you will arrive at the best answer.

Another example: AI will soon create works of art superior to humans. This is because Harari asserts that art is all about the emotions and so AI will be able to manipulate these emotions better than a human artist. However, when I, for one, read Aeschylus I dont experience much emotion but do enjoy the incredible craftsmanship and artistry of a creative genius. Many patrons of the arts I think would agree.

Lastly, the book concludes with Harari explaining that all meta-narrativesChristian, liberal, communist, Islamic, etc. have been proven wrong by modern science. Even the stories of personal identity we tell ourselveswhat we were like as children and how that made us into the adults we are todayare bogus because theres no human soul that would make different times in our life into a unity.

So, having dismissed all personal narratives, Harari then goes on to tell his own story about how Buddhist meditation led him from being a confused and stressed teenager into the confident author of Sapiens and Homo Deus. Doesnt Harari see that he cannot recommend mindfulness meditation as the correct response to personal suffering by telling a story if several pages earlier he said that personal narratives are illusory?

Harari is a talented writer and one can enjoy reading this book as an intelligent mans musings about the contemporary world picture. But it simply cannot be considered in the same light as his previous monumental achievements.

Yuval Noah Hararis name came up when a few years ago a friend urged me to read Hararis best-selling Sapiens, which I have put off, but since reading 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, a book that reads more like an essay collection, than a outright book (not a bad thing in this case), I do want to feast on all of Harraris books. I had to underline close to a hundred cogent insights throughout the book.
If anything unifies these essays–ranging from religion, morality, AI, terrorism, universal basic income, freedom, equality, meditation, nationalism, post-truth fascism, Trumpism, justice, secularism, and educationit is Hararis desire to use his expertise as a historian, and by turn, a futurist, to equip us with the tools, attitudes, and moral approaches to moving forward in the 21st Century, shedding unwanted baggage such as fundamentalism, nationalism, racism, and other isms.
In his Introduction, he brilliantly begins: In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power. . . . As a historian, I cannot give people food or clothesbut I can try to offer some clarity, thereby helping to level the global playing field.
He warns us that the liberal secular vision of humankind moving forward with the powers of reason has taken a huge hit with the nihilism of Trumpism.
Taken as a whole, Hararis book is intended to give us the tools to ward off nihilism, arrogance, and primitive isms and to become a fully realized modern human being. Highly recommended.

What a letdown!

Ok… I Loved Yuval Noah Harari’s books “Sapiens” and “Homo Deus” so when I saw he had a new one out, I jumped at it. Am not even halfway through but don’t think it’s even worthy of finishing. It is an exceedingly poorly thought out polemic. I dont mind having my opinions challenged but on any issue I had disagreement stark or nuance, I felt my position misrepresented. He assumes the mindset and beliefs of any group not in line with his often shallow and boringly common in a cartoonish and denigrating simplicity.

It’s like his agent said “Yuval baby, you’re on fire! We need another book stat to ride this wave!”

Yuval: “But I have nothing ready, I’m kinda sifting through ideas and…”

Agent: “Blah, blah, blah, listen they love you, you’re a star! Write anything! Don’t be shy! Now I’m gonna lock you in that room and you’re not getting out till you hand me 400 pages!”

Yuval: “But on what!?”

Agent: “I don’t care! Now get in there!”

Having covered the past in Sapiens and the future in Homo Deus, he must have shrugged his shoulders and thought “OK then, the present. But I’m kinda hungry so let’s get this over with…”

At which point he went into the room and just channeled the most pedestrian, uncurious shallow, black hat/white hat leftist stream of conciousness drivel imaginable. Expecting to be wowed I was shocked at how many times in the first few hours I was prompted to say out loud “False dichotomy”. Equally shocked that in the first half hour, Naseem Taleb’s (Of Black Swan fame) phrase IYI … Intellectual yet idiot, came to mind. It reminds me of a great 60’s bands crappy 3rd album that was trash because by then they had exhausted their best ideas and were deep into the “Behind the music” hard core drug addiction, alcoholism and infighting. I pictured even the lamest professor with a passing aquaintance with critical thinking taking a red correcting pen to the pages and running out of ink halfway through. Full of more straw men than a drunk sees when watching the video wall at Best Buy with 30 screens all showing The Wizard of Oz, and so much self contradiction one can only guess the agent bribed the editor to not bother reading it before rushing it to print.. sheesh.

Felt like seeing the curtain pulled back on the Wizard of Oz.

Hararis first two books, Sapiens, and Homo Deus have been critically acclaimed, and one wonders what else can he come up with. This question is normally asked of fiction writers, but Hararis first two books have been so tremendously popular to the extent that they were likened to best-selling novels. This, his third book, does not disappoint.

It is a book of 21 essays on different subjects beginning with Disillusionment, Work, Liberty, and Equality under Part I, entitled, The Technological Challenge. The book has a total of five Parts. The other four are: The Political Challenge, Despair and Hope, Truth, and Resilience.

Hararis thoughts spring from the basic, but important question, What can we say about the meaning of life today? In order to put the age-old question into the context of today, Harari examines the scientific and cultural changes that have transformed human societies across the world. One major change wrought by technology is the phenomenon in which we get increasingly distanced from our own bodies, and are being absorbed into smartphones and computers.

Harari shows how benign patriotism can so easily be transformed into ultra-nationalism; form the belief that My nation is unique (every nation is) to My nation is supreme. Once we get to that, war and strife is, frighteningly, just a step away. He devotes a chapter each to immigration and terrorism because these are the two bogeymen of the world not just the Western world. Harari fears that when New York or London eventually sinks below the Atlantic Ocean, people will be blaming Bush, Blair and Obama for focussing on the wrong front.

Given the undertones of religious conflicts and differences in the wars that an American-led West had inflicted on various parts of the world, Harari had much to say in his chapters on God and Secularism. He tries to show how irrational belief in a personal God is. Science cannot explain the Big Bang, they exclaim, so that must be Gods doingAfter giving the name of God to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorces. Not to mention abortion, eating pork, and drinking beer. What does it mean Not to use the name of God in vain? Harari suggests that it should mean that we should never use the name of God to justify our political interests, our economic ambitions or our personal hatred. He exposes the problems of dogmatism, and warns against the illusion that the falsity in ones creed or ideology will never be allowed to happen. if you believe in an absolute truth revealed in a transcendent power, he writes, you cannot allow yourself to admit any error for that would nullify your whole story. But if you believe in a quest for truth by fallible humans, admitting blunders is an inherent part of the game.

Hararis conclusion is a treat to read and has much to commend in the way he reconciles religious beliefs and rational thinking. Humans love story-telling, he writes, and the answers to the question, what is the meaning of life? lie in the stories but we do not have just one story each. And this is crucial. We not just a Muslim, or an Italian, or a capitalist. We do not have just one identity as a human. And we have many stories. We must not shut them out for the sake of one favourite.

Unlike Sapiens (about the past) and Homo Deus (the future), 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a series of commentaries, thoughts and meditations on the present. Some of the main themes are ones which readers of the earlier books will be familiar with for example, how what separates man from our ape cousins is our ability to believe in and live by stories. We are able to believe in things (religion, democracy, money) which have no objective reality or independent existence, or be part of communities (nations, corporations, online) of people we dont know. A historian, polymath, atheist and cynic, Harari is capable of insights of dazzling simplicity yet which are backed by deep reading and thought. Here are just a few, taken out of context but I promise its worth following up the context:

The revolutions in biotech and infotech are made by engineers, entrepreneurs and scientists who are hardly aware of the political implications of their decisions

Donald Trump warned voters that the Mexicans and Chinese will take their jobs, and that they should therefore build a wall on the Mexican border. He never warned voters that algorithms will take their jobs, nor did he suggest building a firewall on the border with California.

Humans have two abilities physical and cognitive. The former have been partly supplemented by machines. Artificial Intelligence is challenging the latter. Communism has no answer to automation, as the masses lose their economic value and become irrelevant.

Artificial Intelligence and human stupidity if we concentrate too much on AI and not enough on human consciousness, AI will end up merely empowering the stupidity of humans.

Globalisation has resulted in growing inequality the richest 100 own more than poorest 4 billion and might in time lead to speciation. [People and species are opposite – species split, whereas people coalesce into larger groups, though mergers change.] Challenges are now supra-national there are no national solutions to global warming. Nations have no answer to technological disruption. The nationalist wave [which he attributes in some measure to nostalgia] cannot turn the clock back to 1939 or 1914. Europe is a good example of supra-national solutions [he thinks Brexit is a bad idea]. Early humans faced problems which local tribes couldnt handle (for example, Nile floods). Nowadays problems are supra-national.

Most stories are held together by the weight of their roof rather than by the strength of their foundations. Consider the Christian story. It has the flimsiest of foundations. Yet enormous global institutions have been built on top of that story, and their weight presses down with such overwhelming force that they keep the story in place.

This is another intellectual tour de force from Harari, though as other reviewers have said its essential to have read the other two books first.

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