Book Review: 21 Lesson for 21 century written by Yuval Noah Harari

Book Review

21 Lesson for 21 century written by Yuval Noah Harari

Uttam Madane

I liked the book ‘21 Lessons for the 21^st Century’ very much. The author ‘Yuval Noah Harari’ is a Ph.D. holder from the Oxford University. Currently, he is working as a lecturer at the Department of history, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His study focus is on world history, medieval history and military history. The ‘Homo Sapience’ and ‘Homo Deus’ books written by Harari have become international hit.

21 Lessons for the 21^st Century book is divided in five parts such as challenge of technology, Political challenge, Hope and disappointment, the truth and the Flexibility, each part of this book talk about the particular phenomenon which society are experiencing positively as well as negatively.

In the first part technological challenges, he discussed about the Disillusionment, Employment, Liberty and Equality. Humankind keeps focus on the stories rather than social fact that is why the many ideological stories of the 20^th century were so powerful in nature. Another important thing pointed out the ‘Artificial intelligence’ and how people will become the superhuman. It will be impacting on the employment and controlled by the technology. Artificial intelligence might create the new job but it will in few numbers and most of the jobs replace with the automation. He also discusses about the how technology is collecting data regarding human beings and how it will be used by superhuman to control people. If they do not have big data of people with them, there will be no values to property, money even political power also.

In second part political challenges, he discussed about the Community, Civilization, Nationalism, Religion and Immigration. Due to technology, how human being is going far away from each other and there is no healthy dialog between the people who is very close. He has given example for it that it is very hard to wife to talk to his cousin in Switzerland but it is harder to talk to his husband over breakfast because he constantly looks at his Smartphone instead of at him.  People are facing three threats that are the technology, nuclear and ecological. Most of the countries accepting the global economy, global science, international laws but still most of the countries stuck with the national politics which is the problem. Even, Harari has discussed about the role of traditional religion in the world. The main three things has been discussed about the immigration is very practical that are, the host country is ready to allow immigrants in their country, in returns, the immigrants must accept the traditional norms, values of the host country, if the immigrant assimilate to a sufficient degree over time they can become equal and full members of the host country.

In third part Hope and Disappointment, Harari discussed about the Terrorism, War, Humility, God, Ignorance. Terrorist kill few people but whole country affright due to it. If we see the statistic of killed people by the terrorist is about 50 people in EU, 10 people in the USA, 7 people in China and about 25,000 people globally. Instead of this, globally 3.5 million kill people by diabetes and 7 million people by air pollution globally but we are not that much serious about the it. Now days, in term of war, information technology and biotechnology are most important than the heavy industries.

In the fourth part truth, he discussed about the Ignorance, justice, fake news, science fiction  etc. he pointed out point that Individual humans know embarrassingly little about the world and as history progressed we came to know less and less. We rely on the expertise of others for almost all our needs. People believe on science fiction, Harari describe that very few few people read the latest articles in the field of machine learning or genetic engineering, but instead movies such as the Matrix and Her and TV series such as Westworld and Black Mirror shape how people understand technology and its social and economic impacts.

In fifth part flexibility, he talks about the education, social media, Buddha and the Universe and Meditation. He talks about the information which are now easily available for all due to globalize perspective, now need to teach students that learning how to learn, resilience, curiosity, critical thinking, problem solving and effective collaboration. He discussed three things of universe which has taught by Buddha that everything is constantly changing, nothing has any enduring essence and nothing is completely satisfied and finally he says that Meditation is not an escape from reality. It is getting in touch with reality.