21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Yuval Noah Harari

Harari’s became a household name with Sapiens, a book that stipulated that an important aspect of humanity is our ability to believe in fiction. Not necessarily fiction in the literary sense, but fiction in the social construction sense (IE, I gave you one euro for 6 eggs, and that is a fair trade). This was something already well within my philosophy from back in my Terrance Deacon The Symbolic Species days, and while I could have written Sapiens off as old hat, I appreciated it for the flow of the argument, and the way Harari gave us a nice tour humanity throughout the ages. I can’t say to what it extent I would call the notion proven (really, either Harari’s or Deacon’s), but it had a lot in it that clicked with me, and just generally made sense. It seemed like it made sense to a lot of people, as Harari’s popularity seemed to explode thereafter. More on that later.

Hararai then went on to write a book called Homo Deus, which I haven’t gotten around to yet. I somehow doubt having read this one will spoil it.

There is, in a respect, a tonal shift from Sapiens to 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. While Sapiens saw a lot of positivity, 21 seems to have lost it. With a title like Homo Deus, I rather expect the middle book to be positive too. That doesn’t mean this book is pessimistic, but this book poses problems. As the title suggest, the book is about 21 different things that we should figure out if we are to solve the problems of this century. And while Sapiens at the end of the day was just kind of a nice, simple, recounting of much I though was already obvious, 21 Lessons brings to our attention 21 things that, if we are paying attention, we should all already know about. Harari is a nice storyteller. But nothing here is revolutionary.

I mentioned the popularity of Harari after the release of his first book. I also mentioned the positivity of his books, over all. I find it interesting that this has come back to bite Harari in the behind. He has recently come to share the title of ‘this century’s Pangloss¹

Yea, about that….

Recently this article kept on turning up on my radar.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/07/the-dangerous-populist-science-of-yuval-noah-harari

It’s not wrong as far as articles go. It makes a lot of accurate and good points. It also nitpicks, and I wouldn’t mind so much, but the Italian philosopher who tweeted the article once wrote a book that was reviewed (and raked over the coals) by a then not-yet-cancelled John Searle. The philosopher seemed to think Searle was nitpicking with that review. So I guess it is one standard for you, and another standard for PinkerHate or HarariHate.

The long and short of it is that if you need to get someone caught up on regarding what is going on in the world, then Harari may be a good avenue. It’s not a good read for the avid-readers who make up the few people who will read this blog post, but hey, maybe you got a dumbshit cousin or something who wants to ‘read more’ as a new year’s resolution.

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1 Here is a cute anecdote: Chris Hedges missed this reference and called Stephen Pinker ‘Candide’. I thought it was funny, partially because I like the book, and partially because it represents an eye opening experience with ‘imposter syndrome’.