Review: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is a sweeping and thought-provoking book by Harari - an Israeli historian and philosopher who has become a sort of a global celebrity.

Harari covers the whole range of the global challenges that we as a humankind stand against - the possible prevalence of the AI and giving up on personal privacy, the illusionary threat of terrorism (if you think in numbers) and the real threat of war, the challenges with religious and nationalist dogmas, our outdated education system, the problem with so-called fake news and more.

Harari writes in broad strokes. He is highly intelligent, skilfully uses history to back up his arguments - and there is a very healthy dose of wit in the book. There is a lot of interesting arguments in the book - for example:

• If we trust AI too much, it can eventually put many people out of jobs - and out of necessity for the society;
• Do we want utter convenience in life - or do we cherish our personal freedoms (including our freedom to think for ourselves) more? How much freedoms are we OK to give up to get just another level of convenience?
• Online social networks never substitute the real, geographically related communities
• Religions come and go. The need to have a religion as something that makes people obey some desired behaviours stays.
• All religions, nations, communities are based on some stories. People like to think in stories - we have always done so. But stories are always simplifications. Life itself - and solutions to our problems are never that simple.

There is really no specific focus in the book. 21 chapters are loosely related to each other - it can rather be read as the collection of the essays of one bright and consequent global thinker.

It is interesting that Harari did not mention global pandemic as one of the threats to the humankind when the book was published back in 2018 :)