Yuval Noah Harari likes to spin a yarn about an obscure African ape that took over the world by telling stories. The ape in his tale is Homo sapiens. But the story-telling rise from obscurity could just as well apply to him.
Ten years ago, Harari was an obscure history professor at a university in Israel. Today he is the world鈥檚 most famous public intellectual and science writer: with a fan base that includes , Barack Obama and Kazuo Ishiguro. His books Sapiens and Homo Deus have sold millions worldwide, and he is courted by the likes of Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel.
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Now as he returns with a third book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, it鈥檚 time to take a close look at the one-man publishing juggernaut.
Harari was born in Israel in 1976. He was sent to a special school for gifted children, which he describes as one of the worst experiences of his life. He grew into a troubled, restless teenager, seeking, and failing to find, answers to life鈥檚 big questions. At 24 his life changed when he took up a Vipassan膩, a form of Buddhist meditation. He now meditates for two hours a day, which he says gives him the focus and clarity to write his books.
Sapiens began to take shape while he was a lecturer in the history department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. One of his teaching duties was an introductory course on world history, which he took on because none of his senior colleagues wanted to. Maybe they regret that now.
Loved and loathed
The course grew into a 17-lecture series, spanning the past 70,000 years. In 2011, Harari turned it into a that became a surprise bestseller in Israel. Three years later, it was translated into English.
The book was loved by general readers and the elite Davos set, but was loathed by many scientists. One of them, Christopher Hallpike, an anthropologist at McMaster University in Canada, was scathing. He wrote that 鈥渟cience鈥� is not exactly Harari鈥檚 strong point鈥� Whenever his facts are broadly correct they are not new, and whenever he tries to strike out on his own he often gets things wrong, sometimes seriously.鈥�
Such criticism might have been driven by professional rivalry 鈥� after all, an obscure history professor had gate-crashed the party and made himself the centre of attention. Harari has acknowledged that the book contains errors but contends that they do not negate the main thrust of the argument. I tend to agree.
Sapiens is an extraordinary book because of the way Harari retells the story of the rise of humans from obscurity to global dominance. The basic narrative is the familiar events of the past 70,000 years, but his unfamiliar angle is that what made this possible was not intelligence or technology but fiction.
As he sees it, we conquered the globe through cooperation on a massive scale, sustained by shared myths such as gods and nations. These 鈥渋magined realities鈥� gave people a common cause 鈥� something that, Harari claims neither Neanderthals nor chimps could muster. Even today our success, he says, is founded on the power of collective fictions such as money or human rights.
A few years later, Harari鈥檚 second book, Homo Deus, picked up where Sapiens left off: contemplating our long-term future as biotechnology and information technology converge to give us godlike powers. At the time, 快猫短视频 praised the book鈥檚 鈥減edagogic and encyclopaedic brilliance鈥�.
Age of bewilderment
Homo Deus tackled our future, and Sapiens our past; in 21 Lessons, Harari squares up to the new 鈥渁ge of bewilderment鈥� facing us daily. He has plenty to deal with: rapid technological change, the crisis of liberal democracy, resurgent nationalism, fake news, terrorism.
It starts promisingly enough, with a Sapiens-like analysis of what has gone wrong. Harari argues that we have stopped believing in the old fictions (especially liberal democracy), and that no replacements have yet emerged. This makes for a period of disorientation not unlike that fomented by the industrial revolution, from which, ultimately, emerged the competing ideologies of liberal democracy, communism and fascism.
Unfortunately, it is mostly downhill from there. The book鈥檚 contrived, clunky structure is a major obstacle. Much of the material has been published elsewhere, and, despite valiant efforts to impose an overarching narrative, it doesn鈥檛 hang together. The idea of 21 chapters may be a nice hook for the marketing department but it turns out to be a stifling conceit.
In a bid for order, the chapters are grouped in five sections: the Technological Challenge, the Political Challenge, Despair and Hope, Truth, and Resilience. The latter three might well describe Harari鈥檚 state of mind as he struggled to cobble the components together into a functioning whole.
There are some moments of surprise and clarity, but far too few.听 When he writes about the challenges of technology, Harari often descends into hand-waving speculation reminiscent of rejected plot lines from the dystopian TV show Black Mirror.
Wide-eyed futurism
One of his recurring themes is 鈥渉acking the human brain鈥�, by which he means the way corporations and governments will use biometric sensors and AI to monitor, analyse and ultimately manipulate us. Eventually we will accept AI running our lives, at which point 鈥渨e might perceive the entire universe as a flow of data, see organisms as little more than biochemical algorithms, and believe humanity鈥檚 cosmic vocation is to create an all-encompassing data-processing system 鈥� and then merge into it鈥�.
Alas, this is no more than standard-issue transhumanism/singularitarianism thinking, which is neither original nor considered plausible by today鈥檚 AI researchers.
As Harari strays further from diagnosis towards self-help, the ideas get thinner and the hand-waving more frantic. Take Chapter 17, on post-truth, where his remedy is painfully na茂ve; laypeople should read peer-reviewed scientific papers and scientists should engage the public through art and fiction. Call me a cynic, but this is not going to happen.
The longest and most excruciating chapter is on 鈥渕eaning鈥�. Again, it starts reasonably, with Harari returning to the theme of unifying stories, in this case the ones we tell ourselves to give our meaningless lives purpose. This is the subject of a large and interesting body of scientific literature, which Harari ignores. Instead, he wanders off into shapeless, bad-tempered rant worthy of his moody teenage self.
Herein lies the impossible contradiction of this book. Harari is probably right that we live in an age of bewilderment, and that we鈥檝e no idea where the world is headed. But he is happy to pontificate at length, often with little substantiation or substance. Too often the results are na茂ve or banal. To quote Hamlet, one of his go-to cultural references, he ends up hoist with his own petard.
And I think he knows it. In a recent interview with The Guardian, he acknowledged the danger of people looking to him as a prophet. 鈥淚 am familiar with the human tendency to want there to be somebody with all the answers,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd I鈥檓 definitely not that person.鈥�
But anyone reading this book could be forgiven for thinking that he thinks he is. If you鈥檝e read Sapiens or Homo Deus and are looking for another intellectual feast, this probably won鈥檛 satisfy. If you haven鈥檛, forget this book and read Sapiens. That is the real Noah Yuval Harari.
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by Noah Yuval Harari (Vintage)听 听听听
