yuval harari 21 lessons for the 21st century

Wax, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, found herself subject to a ferocious campaign calling for her firing after she dared to suggest in an op-ed that middle class values of hard work, two parent families, etc., actually worked better for society than the alternatives. The storms surrounding Amy Wax and Mark Regnerus, among others, indicate how difficult it can be to express dissent from a politically, not scientifically, generated consensus in academia. The intellectual culture of the Third Reich was built on the works of men with doctorates. Really? Given the way in which academic guilds operate, peer-review and a prestigious publisher’s imprimatur are no guarantee of truth any more than winning an Oscar is a sign of true artistic merit. But then he launches into a paean to scientific literature and peer-reviewed journals. Some of this is sound-if you want reliable information, pay for it. But then he offers advice on how to avoid (or at least become better at discerning) fake news. ‘Fake news’ is not necessarily bad news seems to be his message, with good based upon false beliefs not necessarily being a false good. It has also generated much evil, for example Christianity’s fomenting of anti-Jewish violence for much of its history. Harari himself seems to have no personal investment in traditional religion but he acknowledges that it has produced many good things: “Adam and Eve never existed, but Chartres Cathedral is still beautiful” (p.

He makes the important observation that fake news is not really news: myths have inspired human beings for generations, often to good effect. Take, for example, his chapter on fake news. And, as is ironically typical in such books, Harari is inevitably much better at analyzing present conditions than at predicting future realities. To the long list of prophets we can now add Yuval Harari, whose 21 Lessons for the 21 st Century offers a wide-ranging, entertaining, and at times deeply dystopian view of the future. The latter is the preserve of lunatics, con artists, and those who think far too much of their own wisdom.” It is a good answer, irrefutable even-and yet its veracity has proved no discouragement to generations of self-proclaimed seers, from the fairground fortune-teller to our current generation of ‘tech visionaries.’ Most teachers are familiar with the kind of student question which begins “What do think will happen if/when….?” History teachers like myself have the perfect answer: “I am paid to explain the past, not to predict the future.

Yuval harari 21 lessons for the 21st century