45 pages • 1 hour read
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
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BetaPart 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5: “Resilience”
Chapter 19 Summary: “Education: Change Is the Only Constant”
Compared to the past, today we have no idea what the world will look like in the coming decades and centuries. Merging biotechnology and artificial engineering might result in accelerating changes to human society and the human body. Thus, the information children learn today will be irrelevant by 2050. Contemporary education focuses on “cramming knowledge into kids’ brains” (264). Until recently, this education model made sense because information was scarce. However, information, often misleading, now constantly bombards humans. Children, instead, need to learn how to make sense of this information, tell fact from fiction, and know about to combine the information to gain a better understanding of the world.
Besides information, contemporary education also focuses too much on providing students with technical skills. Yet these skills might be irrelevant in the coming decades. Pedagogical experts, instead, suggest that students learn four general-purpose life skills: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. These skills will enable people to reinvent themselves again and again, and thereby possibly keep up with the everchanging future society. However, humans, especially adults, do not cope well with change and the unknown. Harari argues that humans will need to learn to embrace the unknown while maintaining emotional balance and mental flexibility. The only way humans can achieve this is by understanding themselves better.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Meaning: Life Is Not a Story”
People expect a story that “explains what reality is all about and what my particular role is in the cosmic drama” (273) when they ask about the meaning of life. One of the most popular stories, seen in the Hindu epic the Bhagavad Gita and Disney’s The Lion King, is that humans are all part of the circle of life. Each of us has a unique function and living a good life means we fulfill this function. Other ideologies and religions, such as nationalism, believe in a linear cosmic story, where there is “a definitive beginning, a not-too-long middle, and a once-and-for-all ending” (276). Through ritual, humans believe these stories are real. This principle spans both ancient and modern society. For example, a flag and anthem transform the abstract story of a nation into something concrete.
Humans understand that their stories are incomplete and full of contradictions. As a result, it is rare that people put all their faith in a single story. Rather, “they keep a portfolio of several stories and several identities, switching from one to the other as the need arises” (296). Nobody is just a Buddhist, American, or socialist. The one exception is fascism, which insists that people only believe in the nationalist story and should have no other identity besides their national identity. This creed led to horrible consequences, as demonstrated by the Holocaust and WWII.
Human belief in multiple stories rattled many religions. Because of this, doubt became the cardinal sin and faith the cardinal virtue. The rise of modern culture, however, has turned the tables on this notion. People increasingly view faith as mental slavery, but see doubt as the precondition for true freedom. Humans can now sample from this supermarket of ideas. Yet, this has not helped people better understand themselves. To Harari, “the first thing you need to know about yourself is that you are not a story” (306). Yet, because our personal identities and social systems are built on these stories, it is extremely difficult for humans to know the difference between fiction and reality. Harari argues that the place to start is by “observing suffering and exploring what it is” (313). Meditation might be one helpful practice.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Meditation: Just Observe”
Science currently lacks efficient tools for directly observing the mind. People confuse the mind and the brain, but they are very different. The brain is a network of biochemicals, neurons, and synapses, whereas the mind is a flow of subjective experiences (e.g., love, pain, pleasure, etc.). There is the assumption that the brain created the mind, but Harari notes there is no scientific evidence to support this assumption. Harari suggests that meditation techniques, which train people to systematically observe their own minds, might help modern scientists better understanding the human mind. While scientists will observe meditators in their lab, very few practice meditation themselves. To Harari, humans only have a few more years or decades to understand our minds. Algorithms are getting closer to manipulating our minds. In the near future, algorithms “will decide for us who we are and what we should know about ourselves” (323).
Meditation has been deeply influential on Harari’s own life. In fact, he sees it as a valuable scientific tool in his personal quest to better understand the human mind. One of the most important things he realized when he first started meditating echoes what philosophers have been saying for millennia: “the deepest source of my suffering is in the patterns of my own mind” (318). The mind generates suffering when the individual wants something and it does not come to fruition. Suffering is a mental reaction created by the mind, rather than an object condition in the physical world. This understanding is an important step towards an individual no longer creating more suffering.
Part 5 Analysis
The closing chapters of the book explore how humans might find clarity in an “age of bewilderment” (xvii). To start, Harari argues that the “production-line theory of education” (270) must change. Most schools today focus on cramming students with information. This pedagogical model made sense in past decades and centuries because information was scarce. Today, however, information inundates humans, much of which is misleading or false. Thus, children need to learn how to “make sense of this information,” (265), tell the difference between fact and fiction, and how to use this information to construct a better synthesis of the world. This pedagogical model is the ideal of Western liberal education; however, it has mostly been unfulfilled. Harari asserts that humanity’s time has run out and “if this generation lacks a comprehensive view of the cosmos, the future of life will be decided at random” (266).
Harari’s solution is for children to not rely on adults because most of them do not understand the world around them. Relying on technology is also a risky gamble. While technology is overall useful, if humans allow it to gain too much power over their lives then it can enslave them. Harari argues that we are already living in the age of “hacking humans” (272). The merging of biotechnology and artificial intelligence, however, will make this hacking far worse. As technology better understands human emotions, feelings, and desires, we might find ourselves increasingly serving it, rather than the opposite. To Harari, the only viable solution for humanity is to get to know ourselves, or our “operating system” (272), far better than we currently do.
Harari recognizes that understanding one’s self is not easy. Most humans want to believe that their life has purpose, which is why we turn to stories. Stories, including national, religious, and liberal stories, provide humans with an identity and make them feel as if their life has meaning. Based on scientific evidence, however, none of these stories are true. The universe itself is not a story. Despite this, millions of people around the world believe in these fictions, largely because personal identities and entire social systems are built on them. Thus, it becomes unthinkable to doubt these stories because it will result in personal and institutional calamity.
Up to this point in the book, it seems that humans might not ever truly know themselves. However, Harari suggests that the first step is to recognize that humans are not a story. The only creed that denies both cosmic dramas and drama within human beings is Buddhism. According to Harari, “The Buddha taught that the three basic realities of the universe are that everything is constantly changing, nothing has any enduring essence, and nothing is completely satisfying” (307-08). When people fail to appreciate these realities, they face suffering. As a result, the place to start in trying to understand one’s self is by trying to understand suffering, because this is the most real thing in the world. Harari argues that one way to do this is through meditation. Self-observation is hard because so much of what we believe in is fiction. Meditation helps with this because the practice enables an individual to uncover the basic patterns of their mind through systematic observation of their body sensations and mental reactions. Harari ends the book with a warning: Humans only have a few more decades to “investigate who we really are” (323) before algorithms tell us who we are.
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By Yuval Noah Harari
