21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

Book Review 

By Hanan Ashraf, III BA English

 

As Indians, we have it in our blood to celebrate anything and everything big and fat. So when the mic in our college screamed out about an alien invader*, my generous heart began to plan and plot, weighing possibilities on how to make these days truly productive. I dreamt that finally my TBR pile would get moksha from the attic in my house and would be promoted to my coffee table.

Hence, I picked this book named 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari because why not? When would I get a time more apt in the 21st century to fully assimilate the entire scary scenario being portrayed in the book? I expected it to be the usual rant by those woke people who keep on filling pages in their books about how humans would be next after dinosaurs to be completely wiped out from the planet through an encounter with a comet, but oh boy! The author introduces us to a baggage of relatable problems which, if unchecked, could get malicious and wipe out the entire human race.

 

In this book, the author helps readers participate in some of the major conversations of our time and tries to stimulate further thinking. This book clearly reflects the author’s mastery in drawing logical connections between all the topics discussed by breaking them into sensible debates. Written in 2018, this masterpiece seems prophetic.

“In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power”.

The author begins by stating that, world until now is full of stories varying from the fascist story to the communist story and the liberal story. However, since the 2008 global crisis, people all over the world have become disillusioned with the liberal story. Walls and firewalls are back. Resistance to immigration and trade agreements are mounting. Ostensible democratic governments undermine the independence of the judiciary system, restrict the freedom of press and portray any opposition as treason. Who is to be blamed? The government or the public?

Blaming the regime comes easy but what about the people who just don’t want to give up their racial, national or gendered privileges. The author has concluded that liberalisation and globalisation are huge rackets that empower a tiny elite at the expense of the masses. He also proves that liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse and technological disruption.

Some of the major topics of discussion of our time are answered by Harari in the coming chapters: what would be the nature of jobs with the advent of AI? How are we going to combat the greater threats unleashed by the merger of infotech and biotech? Are we losing the game to AI because our ability to understand and explore human emotion (the ability that generated jobs despite the Industrial revolution and advent of machines) is no more our monopoly? The author introduces us to the novel fact that our choice of everything from food to mates results not from some mysterious free will but rather from billions of neurons calculating probabilities within a split second. Are we mere biochemical algorithms that could be easily cracked by it?

Yuval Noah Harari

During the time of the Coronavirus pandemic, one of the major challenges we faced was the shortage of medical healthcare workers and the threat of them being infected by the disease. Here comes the relevance of AI which could replace millions of individual humans with an integral network. If WHO identifies a new disease or a cure, it could easily update the AI doctors within split seconds. So what would be the nature of jobs in the post AI world? All these questions are cleverly answered by the author with great precision and by weighing the pros and cons of it. The brighter side is that, instead of humans trying to compete with AI, they could focus on servicing and leveraging AI.

The human beings who consider themselves as the masters of the world might receive a deathblow with Harari’s theory of a useless class. By 2050 a ‘useless’ class might emerge not merely because of an absolute lack of jobs or lack of relevant education, but also because of insufficient mental stamina to cope up with the highly volatile nature of the job market. Slowing the pace of change may give us time to create enough new jobs. 

The governments are trying to introduce various schemes for supporting their citizens. In India, the PM-Kisan scheme or the PMJDY scheme serve as examples. The author tries to give a clarity in this area by raising the question whether the government should implement Universal Basic Income or Universal Basic Services? He gives a clever answer that the real problem is in defining what ‘universal’ and ‘basic’ actually mean.

Harari yet again makes us think by posing a question that if biotechnology enables parents to upgrade their children, would this be considered as a basic human need or would we see humankind splitting into different biological castes, with rich superhumans enjoying abilities that far surpass those of poor Homo Sapiens? Consequently, the gap between the rich and the poor might become not merely bigger but actually unbridgeable, says the author. We have witnessed a similar situation in our state, but for a different reason when a girl allegedly committed suicide because she couldn’t attend her online classes due to the unavailability of internet. 

The author also says that, to really achieve its goal, universal basic support will have to be supplemented by some meaningful pursuits or hobbies because studies have proved that despite being poor and unemployed such men enjoy higher levels of life satisfaction. If we manage to combine a universal safety net with strong communities and meaningful pursuits, losing our jobs to the algorithms might actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise. It is not a coincidence that most of us have remained sane during the COVID-19 lockdown by indulging in such creative activities.

We all know that the rise of digital dictatorship is a big shark to deal with. The author predicts that soon the authority might shift from humans to algorithms. For, once somebody gains the technological ability to hack and manipulate the human heart, democratic politics will mutate into an emotional puppet show, as we have seen in the Cambridge Analytica scandal which revealed that data entrusted to Facebook was harvested by third parties and used to manipulate elections across the world. The recent Sprinkler case if true also serves as another example.

 

Currently, the computers could understand our body more than we do and they could even diagnose diseases from the cellular level. Harari says that “people will enjoy the best healthcare in history but for the same reason they will probably be sick all time”. Have you guys noticed that currently due to the lockdown the hospitals are almost empty with patients close to zero with much lesser cases leading to death? So is the entire hospital business a scam creating unnecessary fear in the mind of people, or is it due to the decreased pollution level and negligible interaction with society and healthy lifestyle?

As George Orwell envisioned in 1984, the television will watch us while we are watching it. We are gradually losing our ability to make decisions for ourselves. We no longer search for information, instead we Google it and the ‘truth’ is defined by the top results of the Google search. The author’s findings in this area should be seriously taken into account because the real problem with robots is exactly the opposite of what we think it is. Harari says that we should fear them because they will probably always obey their masters and will never rebel, no matter how heartless and crazy the orders are. 

 

Another thought put forward by the author is individual discrimination. What happens when algorithms are used to conduct interviews or to look into your application for bank loans? There is something specific about you that the algorithm dislikes. You don’t know what it is and, even if you knew, you can’t organise with other people to protest because there are no other people suffering from the exact same prejudice. Instead of collective discrimination, in the 21st century, we might face a growing problem of individual discrimination. If we are not careful we will end up with downgraded humans misusing upgraded computers to wreak havoc on themselves and on the world.

Any solution to the technological challenges has to involve global cooperation. But nationalism, religion and culture divide humankind into hostile camps and make it very difficult to cooperate on a global level.

As human beings, in order to flourish, we still need to ground ourselves in intimate communities and this is the best time that serves as an example because the lockdown has forced us to break all communal ties that has in turn made us greatly frustrated and alienated. Thankfully, the revolution in the field of online streaming and other digital platforms has helped us to stay connected in such difficult times.

But has the advent of social media really changed the picture for the betterment of human beings? People live ever more lonely lives on an ever more connected planet. In most cases, online comes at the expense of offline and people are encouraged to understand what happens to them in terms of how others see it through the number of likes and comments they receive and in the process they barely notice what they themselves feel. So can we solve the problem by finding a middle path? The author points out that, when the tech giants aim at reducing the chasm between offline and online, they end up making biometric sensors and direct brain-computer interfaces where electronic machines literally get under our skins and we may come to miss the good old days when online was separated from offline. 

Is nationalism overrated? Do the world leaders save the world by fanning our nationalistic sentiments or is it a form of escapism from the great global problems we face? The author tries to remind us that a common enemy is the best catalyst for forging a common identity and humankind right now has at least 3 such enemies; nuclear war, climate change and technological disruption.

As long as the world remains divided into rival nations, it will be very hard to simultaneously overcome all the 3 challenges and we don’t have the luxury to evade these as trivial matters like what is done by most of our world leaders.The author strategically lays a plan before us and says, “We now have a global ecology, a global economy and a global science but we are still stuck with national politics but we should develop a strategy where within countries and cities global problems and interests should be given larger priority”.

The immigrant crisis and the resultant dilemma is explained in this book by exploring various new aspects of the crisis like how the traditional racism is waning and ‘culturists’ have taken hold of the world. It also explains how terrorism is overrated in terms of the actual damage it causes and how it is blown out of proportion by the governments and media to divert public attention from actual problems and bring fear in the minds of people. The actual damage it causes is much lesser than that caused by lifestyle diseases and car accidents.

What is the difference between war and terrorism? What is a knowledge illusion? What should be the nature of an ideal education system in a world where change is the only constant? In this world where information is right under our fingertip, clarity is king. In order to gain wisdom amidst the garbage out there one should have “a well-formed mind instead of a well-filled mind”. This book acts as the right antidote to the knowledge illusion and helps in the formation of unique perspectives regarding the changes happening around us in the 21st century.

 

*The author is talking about the announcement regarding the suspension of classes in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Regrettably, no aliens have contacted the college yet. 

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