This is a book review about ’21 Lessons for the 21st Century’ by Yuval Noah Harari.
Humans are hard-wired to worry. For instance: I am worried about global ascension into anarchy, fungal infections, and finding spiders in my shoes. If I were a medieval peasant, I would probably be worried about the 40% survival rate of the bubonic plague. Even though we don’t need to lose sleep over the bubonic plague in 2023, modern life presents other causes for concern: Climate change, deglobalization, terrorism, and dependence on A.I.
In Yuval Noah Harari’s book, ‘21 Lessons for the 21st Century’, he discusses formulae for confronting these concerns. The trick to worrying less, he suggests, is to worry more about the things that matter. As the third installment in his trilogy of NYT Bestselling books, ‘21 Lessons’ is all about the present. It should be mentioned that this book was originally published in Hebrew, and I read the English translation. Given his past controversy concerning omissions of unkind words towards countries in books translated to their native language, how political he gets may vary. Be warned.
With the message separated into 21 chapters titled ‘Equality’, ‘Science Fiction’, ‘Religion’, and so forth, Harari presents you with facts about the modern world that contribute to analyses. There are several lessons scattered throughout. One of them is the importance of meditation. Harari states that:
“If you cannot afford to waste time, you will never find the truth.”
Another is the differentiation between what you know vs. what you think you know. Do you actually understand something or do you just know how to Google it? Other than that, you won’t find prescriptions in this book. Harari seems more interested in discussing the parameters and providing a history professor’s perspective.
Are his facts accurate? Yes. However, he strategically uses straw man fallacies to get his point across, which seems out of place against the backdrop of logical continuity. Harari argues that Facebook is perpetuating political polarization by allowing users to cocoon themselves . Could Facebook alone solve this? No. But that’s not surprising, Facebook isn’t the only problem. Governments, society and the private sector all have a role to play (I need him to tell me what I should think about this).
Similarly, I don’t know what to make of his prediction that in the future “data will eclipse both land and machinery as the most important asset”. Doesn’t it already? Having data as an asset is having land and machinery. Besides, knowing how to use information is more valuable than having it. Perhaps he actually meant that data is far from accessible for the average person today. With the projected population in 2023 being 8.05B people plus the tension between Putin and NATO, etc etc, land is still the easiest way to access control over the population.
Dr. Mr. H’s discussion about data privacy intrigues me. He notes that more information is being gathered about all of us than ever before. What kind of information? Who is gathering it? How are they using it? In the last 2 months I have watched Home Alone 9 times. Do the information gatherers care about that? Or are they only concerned with my genetic predisposition to diseases? If my information is protected differently by different sources, is there a unified solution to protecting privacy?
I liked the fact that this book left me with more questions than I had at the beginning. Harari ends with “What will give our lives meaning in the coming years if science can actually solve our problems?”. All of these questions might strike you as a book 4 setup. This isn’t the MCU though. He doesn’t know the answer, no one does. He has just set up a conversation about some of the problems that we face today.
