21 Lessons for the 21st Century – by Yuval Noah Harari

21 Lessons is an exploration of what it means to be human in an age of bewilderment.

We created myths to unite our species.

We tamed nature to give us power.

We are now redesigning life to fulfill our wildest dreams.

But do we know ourselves any more? Or will our inventions make us irrelevant?

How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war, ecological cataclysms and technological disruptions? What can we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? What should we teach our children? This book explores all of these vital questions and more.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century Summary

21 Lessons is an exploration of what it means to be human in an age of bewilderment How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war, ecological cataclysms and technological disruptions? What can we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? What should we teach our children? This book explores all of these vital questions and more.

Our Unifying Story

  Humans think in stories rather than facts, numbers or equations. The simpler the story the better. During the 20th Century, the global elites in New York, London, Berlin and Moscow formulated 3 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. From the 1940s to the 1980s the world was a battleground between communism and liberalism. Next, the communist story collapsed. The liberal story has remained dominant guide to the human past and the indispensable manual for the future of the world. The liberal story celebrates the value and the power of liberty.

  However, since 2008 people all over the world become increasingly disillusioned with the liberal story. People have concluded rightly or wrongly, liberalisation and globalisation are a huge racket empowering a tiny elite at the expense of the masses. In 1938, humans were offered 3 global stories to choose, in 1968 it was two, in 2018, we are down to 0. Having one story is the most reassuring situation of all, everything is perfectly clear. To be suddenly left without any story is terrifying, nothing makes sense.

     Liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face – ecological collapse and technological disruption. Liberalism traditionally relied on economic growth to magically solve difficult social and political conflicts. With a constantly growing pie, people could believe the story. However, economic growth will not save the global ecosystem – just the opposite, it is the cause of the ecological crisis. And economic growth will not solve technological disruption – it is predicated on the invention of more and more disruptive technologies.

    The Ecological Challenge

 Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and have survived numerous ice ages and warm spells. Agriculture has only been around for 10,000 years, known as the Holocene period. Any deviation from Holocene standards will present human societies with enormous challenges they’ve never encountered before. It will be like conducting an open-ended experiment on billions of human guinea pigs. There is scientific consensus that greenhouse gases such as CO2 are causing the earth’s climate to change at a frightening rate. Nobody knows exactly how much can go out without irreversible cataclysm.

    The Technological Challenge

  The combination of infotech and biotech opens the door to a plethora of doomsday scenarios, ranging from digital dictatorships to creations of the global useless class. Where are the nationalists answers? As in the case of climate change, the nationalist state is the wrong framework to address it. If the US government forbids genetically engineered human embryos, this doesn’t prevent the Chinese from doing so, and if the resulting benefits give the Chinese an economic or military advantage, the USA will be tempted to break it’s own ban. If a single country decides to pursue a high risk, high gain technological path, other countries will be forced to do the same. It will be a race to the bottom. Human beings need some kind of global identity to stop this. If human beings are to flourish, we have little choice but to complement local loyalties with substantial obligations to a global community. A person can and should be loyal simultaneously to her family, neighbourhood, her profession and her nation – why not add human kind and planet Earth to that list?

    Terrorism 

  Terrorists are masters of mind control. They kill very few people. But nevertheless manage to terrify billions and shake huge political structures such as the EU or the USA. Since Sep11 2001, every year terrorists have killed about 50 people in the EU, about 10 people in the USA, about 7 people in China and up to 25,000 people globally – mostly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria. In contrast, each year traffic accidents kill 80,000 Europeans, 40,000 Americans, 270,000 Chinese and 1.25 million people all together. Diabetes and high sugar kills about 7 million people. So why do we fear terrorism, more than sugar, and why do governments lose elections because of sporadic terror attacks but not because of chronic air pollution.

  How is it, that terrorists achieve so much?  Terrorists resemble a fly that tries to destroy a China Shop. The fly is so weak that it can’t move a single tea cup. So how does it destroy the China Shop? It finds a bull, gets in it’s ear and starts buzzing, then the bull goes wild with fear and anger and destroys the China shop. This is what happened after 9/11 as Islamic Fundamentalists incited the American bull to destroy the Middle Eastern China Shop. Now they flourish in the wreckage.

  By killing a handful of people they cause millions to fear for their lives. Governments react to the theatre by showing security, and orchestrating immense displays of force, such as the persecution of entire population or the invasion of Countries. 

   Resilience

  How do you live in an age of bewilderment, when the old stories have collapsed, and no new story has yet emerged to replace them? Homo sapiens is a storytelling animal, and believes that the universe itself works like a story, replete with heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions, climaxes and happy endings. When we look for the meaning of life, we want a story that will explain what reality is all about, and what is my particular role in the cosmic drama.

  In order to construct a viable identity for yourself and give meaning to life, the story doesn’t need to be devoid of blind spots and contradictions. It needs to satisfy only two conditions to give your life meaning. First, it needs to give you some role to play. Like movie stars, humans like only those scrips that reserve an important role for them. Second, a good story need not extend to infinity, it must extend beyond your horizons.