21 Lessons from the 21st Century.pptx

1. 21 Lessons from the 21st
Century
Yuval Noah Harari

2. An Introduction of Author
 Yuval Noah Harari is a historian,
philosopher, and the bestselling
author of Homo Sapiens, Homo Deus
and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.
 Prof. Harari originally specialized in
world history, medieval history and
military history.
 His insights on history, politics,
technology or biology is
magnificently clear and well
articulated.
 Harari connect ideas to paint the
larger picture, “smashing together
unexpected ideas into dazzling
observations.”

3. About Book: Who Should Read “21 Lessons for
the 21st Century”? And Why?
 ‘In a world deluged by irrelevant
information, clarity is power.’
 ‘Censorship works not by blocking the
flow of information, but rather by
flooding people with disinformation and
distractions.’
 Why is liberal democracy in crisis? Is a
new world war coming?
 What can we do about the epidemic of
fake news?
 Which civilization dominates the world –
the West, China, Islam?
 Should Europe keep its doors open to
immigrants?
 Can nationalism solve the problems of
inequality and climate change?
 What should we do about terrorism?
 Billions of us can hardly afford the luxury
of investigating these questions, because
we have more pressing things to do: we
have to go to work, take care of the kids, or
look after our elderly parents.

4. About Book: Who Should Read “21
Lessons for the 21st Century”? And Why?
 Unfortunately, history makes no concessions. If the future of humanity is decided in your
absence, because you are too busy feeding and clothing your kids – you and they will not
be exempt from the consequences. This is very unfair; but who said history was fair?
 A book doesn’t give people food or clothes – but it can offer some clarity, thereby helping
to level the global playing field. If this book empowers even a handful of people to join
the debate about the future of our species, it has done its job.
 Harari confronts today’s 21 big questions throughout the book’s 21 chapters that will
confront humankind with the hardest trials it has yet encountered.

5. Book divided into sections
Disillusionment 2. Work. 3. Liberty. 4.
Equality. 5. Community. 6. Civilization. 7.
Nationalism. 8. Religion. 9. Immigration.
10. Terrorism. 11. War. 12. Humanity. 13.
God. 14. Secularism. 15.Ignorance.
16.Justice. 17. Post-Truth. 18. Science
Fiction. 19. Education. 20.Meaning.
21.Meditation

6. The Technological Challenge:
Humankind is losing faith in the liberal story that
dominated global politics in recent decades, exactly
when the merger of biotech and InfoTech confronts
us with the biggest challenges humankind has ever
encountered.

7. Disillusionment: The End of History Has Been
Postponed. (Need to construct better stories)
 Yuval Noah Harari starts the book by
talking about the disillusionment visible
in modern society. Driving factors for
this disillusionment is information
overload.
 Our brains do not easily process facts,
numbers and equations.
 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.
 There is a need to construct a viable
identity for yourself and give meaning to life by
creating an updated story for the world.
 What new story should have is: First, it needs
to give you have some role to play. Second, a
good story need not extend to infinity, it must it
must extend beyond your horizons.

8. Disillusionment: (It is much harder to struggle
against irrelevance than against exploitation)
 This disillusionment is occurring at
a time when problems are global in
nature and will require global
solutions.
 What Disillusionment at global
level persists: Problem such as
Financial crisis, ecological collapse
and technological disruption,
Terrorism are undermining liberal
story
 Humans are better at inventing tools
than knowing how to use them
wisely
 Globalization, block chain, genetic
engineering, artificial intelligence,
machine learning are all catchwords that
are being repeatedly parroted around the
world excitedly without critically
thinking about its consequences
 Before exploring potential solutions to
humanity’s predicaments we need a better
grasp of the challenge these technology
poses

9. What we all want in life and how the
liberal promise has provided us?
 Fundamentally we all want the
same thing :
 We want meaning,
 good health,
 love (from self and others),
 sense of accomplishment,
 money,
 power
 The decentralized approach to
decision making that is
characteristic of liberalism—in both
politics and Economics has
provided all these meanings to
humans
 Liberalism reconciled the
proletariat with the bourgeoisie,
the faithful with atheists, natives
with immigrants, and Europeans
with Asians by promising everybody
a larger slice of the pie.

10. Disillusionment: The End of History Has
Been Postponed
 While the 20th Century was all about three stories, the 21st century introduces new
types of stories that include humans, super humans and artificial intelligence
 Today’s political system is built during industrial era to manage oil engineers
and machines, not software, internet AI nor block chain let alone their
explosive potential
 If liberalism, nationalism or Islam, or some novel creed wishes to shape the world of
the year 2050, it will need not only to make sense of artificial intelligence, Big Data
algorithms, and bioengineering but also to incorporate them into a new and meaningful
narrative.
 Two lessons learned from this chapter: The development of biotech and in-
fotech will require fresh narratives.
 You should utilize stories in your business endeavors. You should also ensure these
stories are simple.

11. Work: When You Grow Up, You Might Not
Have a Job
 Humans have two types of abilities–physical and cognitive and machines are replacing them fast.
 In the past, machines competed with humans mainly in manual skills. Now they are
beginning to compete with us in cognitive skills. And we don’t know of any third kind of
skill—beyond the manual and the cognitive—in which humans will always have an edge.
 Harari says that the better we understand the biochemical mechanisms that underpin human
emotions, desires and choices the better computers can get at analyzing human behavior, predicting
human decisions and replacing human professions such as bankers and lawyers
 Harari uses the example of self-driving vehicles, recommendation of books and videos to us based
on our previous tastes.
 His main point is that up to recently, we used computers and robots to automatize some mechanical
processes. And that was not bad at all. However, we’re at a stage when automating cognitive
processes is not anymore just a possibility, but also an inevitable part of the future.

12. Work: When You Grow Up, You Might Not
Have a Job
 Modern neuroscience has all but confirmed what we’ve feared for quite some
time – namely, that even our brains maybe just machines. Exceptionally
complex, but machines nevertheless.
 And if that is the case, not much time will pass before we build a God-Brain, a
supercomputer which will know much more than us.
 In that world, human intuition will have no value whatsoever, and all
important decisions will be made by AI.
 The lesson to learn from all this is that the future is not bright. We should
rethink about the role of AI in our future lives.

13. Liberty: Big Data Is Watching You
 Liberty is the main pillar of democracy, however it is constantly undermined by
AI and big data collection
 Harari believes elections are not about ‘what we think but what we feel.’
 Harari argues that big data and AI have the potential to run the world in the
future. If we can make decisions on education, work and society based on data,
there is no need for democratic elections. We already rely on big data for
personal finance, big business and war. So, it seems likely that political decisions
are the next step.
 Democracy has championed over authoritarianism in the late-20th century,
however the changes that artificial intelligence will inflict on data processing
could lead to digital dictatorships

14. Liberty: Big Data Is Watching You
 On big data algorithms, once we begin to count on AI to decide what to
study, where to work, and who to marry, democratic elections and free
markets will make little sense.

15. Equality: Those who own the data own the
future.
 Harari puts it simply; truth today is defined by the top results of the Google search
 Data is far more accessible than our current examples of resources. Land, machines
and other resources make it easy for people to acquire wealth unavailable to others
 But data is everywhere and can move at the speed of light. You can make as many
copies as you want.
 Data is clearly more important than ever. If humans do not figure out how to
regulate the ownership of data, we could see our global society become more
unequal than ever before with the rise of a small superhuman class that controls all
of the wealth, beauty, intellect and truth.
 Harari hopes to show the urgency and magnitude of these global problems at hand

16. THE POLITICAL CHALLENGE
 The merger of InfoTech and biotech threatens the core modern values of
liberty and equality. Any solution to the technological challenge has to
invoke global cooperation. But nationalism, religion, and culture divide
humankind into hostile camps and make it very difficult to cooperate on a
global level.
 Our greatest opportunities are now global — like spreading
prosperity and freedom, promoting peace and understanding,
lifting people out of poverty, and accelerating science.
 Our greatest challenges also need global responses — like ending
terrorism, fighting climate change, and preventing pandemics.
Progress now requires humanity coming together not just as cities
or nations, but also as a global community.

17. Community: Humans Have Bodies
 Yuval starts this chapter by recalling a time when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg lamented
about the breakdown of human communities, following a political tremor caused by the 2016
US election.
 Using AI to strengthen our social fabric and bring the world closer is a more ambitious goal
than using AI to drive cars or diagnose cancer
 A community may begin as an online gathering, but in order to truly flourish it will have to
put down roots in the offline world too.
 Supportive communities, safe community, informed community, civically-engaged
community, inclusive community
 Technology addiction is significantly impacting human connection and community. The
internet has helped people who live far away to keep in touch. For example, the author
explains he can easily speak to his cousin in Switzerland. Without technology, he could easily
lose connection with this relative.
 That said, technology has negatively impacted our more immediate connections and
communities.
 The author explains that technology has made it harder for him to talk to his husband over
breakfast as they are constantly looking at their smartphones.

18. Community: Humans Have Bodies
 Pundits often blame such feelings of alienation on the decline of religious and national
bonds, but losing touch with your body is probably more important. Humans lived for
millions of years without religions and without nations; they can probably live happily
without them in the twenty-first century too. Yet they cannot live happily if they are
disconnected from their bodies. If you don’t feel at home in your body, you will never feel
at home in the world.
 Unfortunately, intimate relations probably are a zero-sum game. Beyond a certain point,
the time and energy you spend on getting to know your online friends from Iran or Nigeria
will come at the expense of your ability to know your next-door neighbors.

19. Civilization: There Is Just One Civilization in
the World
 10,000 years ago, humankind was divided into countless isolated tribes where we knew no
more than a few dozen people.
 With each passing millennium, these tribes fused to larger and larger groups creating fewer
and fewer distinct civilizations. In recent generations, the few remaining civilizations have
been blending into a single global civilization.
 People care far more about their enemies than about the trade partners, says Harari.
 For every American film about Taiwan there are probably about 50 about Vietnam.
 The people we fight most often are our family members due to increased competition

20. Nationalism: Global Problems Need
Global Answers
 There is a difference between patriotism and nationalism.
 The issue with nationalism is that these narrow beliefs bleed into their other worldviews which
makes solutions for global problems reprehensible.
 Harari uses the example of climate change, Nuclear and Techonological problem as an
unprecedented existential crisis.
 This mismatch prevents the political system from effectively countering main problems.
 We need a new global identity because national institutions are incapable of handling a set of
unprecedented global predicaments. We now have a global ecology, a global economy, and a
global science–but we are still stuck with only national politics.
 To globalize politics means that political dynamics within countries and even cities should give
far more weight to global problems and interests.

21. Religion: God Now Serves the Nation
 So far, modern ideologies, scientific experts, and national governments have failed to create a
viable vision for the future of humanity.
 Can such a vision be drawn from the deep wells of human religious traditions?
 To understand the role of traditional religions in the world of the twenty-first century, we need
to distinguish between three types of problems:
 Technical problems: For example, how should farmers in arid countries deal with severe
droughts caused by global warming?
 Policy problems: For example, what measures should government adopt to prevent global
warming in the first place?
 Identity problems: For example, should I even care about the problems of farmers on the other
side of the world, or should I care only about problems of people from my own tribe and
country?
 The victory of science has been so complete that our very idea of religion has changed. We no
longer associate religion with farming and medicine.

22. Religion: God Now Serves the Nation
 As we shall see in the following pages, traditional relations are largely irrelevant to technical and
policy problems. In contrast, they are extremely relevant to identity problems–but in most cases
they constitute a major part of the problem rather than a potential solution.
 Human power depends on mass cooperation, and mass cooperation depends on manufacturing mass
identities–and all mass identities are based on fictional stories, not on scientific facts or even on
economic necessities.
 Religions, rites, and rituals will remain important as long as the power of humankind rests on mass
cooperation and as long as mass cooperation rests on belief in shared fictions.
 Religion remains powerful because it gives people identities. It distinguishes between ‘us’ and ‘them’
and determines whether we should care about ‘them’ or not. It makes people feel unique through
rites, rituals and ceremonies. Even today, many governments rely on religion to forge a unique
national identity.
 Though many traditional religions espouse universal values and claim cosmic validity, at present they
are used mainly as the handmaid of modern nationalism, whether in North Korea, Russia, Iran, or
Israel.

23. Immigration: Some Cultures Might Be
Better than Others
 To clarify matters, Harari defines immigration as a deal with three basic conditions or
terms.
 1 — The host country allows to immigrants in.
2 — In return, the immigrants must embrace at least the norms and values of the host
country even if that means giving up some of their traditional norms and values.
3 — If they assimilate to a sufficient degree over time they become equal and full
members of the host country. They become us.
 Precisely European countries cherish liberal values such as tolerance, you can not
allow too many intolerant people in. While the tolerant society can manage more
liberal minorities, if the number of such extremes exceeds a certain threshold, the
whole nature of society changes.

24. Immigration: Some Cultures Might Be
Better than Others
 Harari believes that a large proportion of people who dislike immigration are not racists. They
are actually culturists. Most people who are anti-immigration are so because they want to
maintain their nation’s current culture.
 There isn’t really any difference among humans biologically, but there are socio-cultural
barriers that divide people.
 To better understand anti-immigration people, we must accept that they might be culturists
rather than racists.
 Some cultural values are entirely different and might need scrutiny so that the entire system
may not disrupt.
 Europe and immigrants need to find the middle ground on which they can accommodate
without harming their entire system and where cultural assimilation will be possible.

25. Despair and Hope: Though the challenges
are unprecedented, and though the
disagreements are intense, humankind can
rise to the occasion if we keep our fears
under control and be a bit more humble
about our views.

26. Terrorism: Don’t Panic
 Terrorists have killed very few people but can terrify billions due to
political responses. The author points out that each year since 9/11, only 50
people are killed in the EU, 10 in the US and 7 in China. Globally, 25
thousand people die of. Diabetes and high sugar levels kill up to 3.5
million people annually while air pollution kills about seven million
people. terrorism Despite this difference, terrorism produces considerably
more fear and gains far more attention.
 Terrorists are masters of mind control. The overreaction to terrorism poses
a far greater threat to our security than terrorist themselves. Making
premature, emotion-driven decisions and ultimately, the wrong move, one
that you are ready to capitalize on.
 Terrorism is like the fly that tries to destroy a china shop.

27. Terrorism: Don’t Panic
 Harari says that a successful counter terrorism struggle should be conducted
on three fronts
1. Government should focus on clandestine actions against the terror networks.
2. The media should keep things in perspective and avoid hysteria theatre. As it
stands, the media obsessively report terror attacks because reports on terrorism
sell newspapers much better than reports of diabetes or pollution.
3. The imagination of each and every one of us. Terrorist hold our imagination
captive and use it against us. It is the responsibility of every citizen to liberate
his or her imagination from the terrorists and to remind ourselves of the true
dimensions of this threat.

28. War: Never Underestimate Human
Stupidity
 It remains impossible to wage successful wars in the twenty-first century, that would not
give us an absolute guarantee of peace. We should never underestimate human stupidity.
 Both on the personal and on the collective level, humans are prone to engage in self-
destructive activities.
 Human stupidity is one of the most important forces in history, yet we often tend to
discount it. … The problem is that the world is far more complicated than a chessboard,
and human rationality is not up to the task of really understanding it. For that reason
even rational leaders frequently end up doing very stupid things.
 One potential remedy for human stupidity is a dose of humility. … How can we make
nations, religions, and cultures a bit more realistic and modest about their true place in
the world?

29. Humility: You Are Not the Center of the
World
 All claims that morality stem from religious doctrines are false.
 They combine a willful ignorance of history. None of the religions or nations of today
existed when humans colonized the world, domesticated plants and animals, built
the first cities, or invented writing and money. Morality, art, spirituality, and
creativity are universal human abilities embedded in our DNA. Their genesis was in
Stone Age Africa. It is therefore wrong to ascribe to them a more recent place and
time, be it China in the age of the Yellow Emperor, Greece in the age of Plato, or
Arabia in the age of Muhammad.
 The highlight of this chapter is that humans naturally show humility long before any
religion.
 Apes have evolved the tendency to help the poor and needy. They evolved these
behaviors millions of years before the Bible instructed ancient Israelites to do the
same. So, there is no need to rely on a religious text or any other teachings to
convince society they need to show humility. Society will naturally show humility
without religion.