Future Gazing with Harari

Yuval Noah Harari (2018), 21 lessons for the 21^st century,  

Jonathan Cape, pp. 352

Yuval Noah Harari is an Oxford-educated historian to watch out for! Through his three books Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 lessons for the 21^st century, Harari makes sense of what this century is all about, with historical and contemporary evidence on the biggest forces sweeping our times. The merging of biotech with infotech, the global dimensions of our personal lives and inequality resulting from institutional complicity are the scenarios he examines the most through his work. He speaks of our times as one in which ‘the old stories have collapsed and new stories have not taken over’ and his attempt is to bring light to this liminal space.

The limits of the liberal story

At the heart of his argument is the perceived limit of the liberal story that dominated the political and economic ideologies of the twentieth century. As we shift authority from humans to algorithms, we are shifting the battle from one against exploitation to that against irrelevance. In this battle, ideas about ‘free will’ and freedom go for a toss and the common enemy becomes flawlessly rational and empirical evidence more compelling. An example is the nature of discrimination that we have historically fought (group prejudice that is based on social attitudes against minority groups which is malleable) to one that we might fight against algorithms (personal prejudice based on empirical evidence of incompetence that is not easily mutable). How is the protection and rights of the majority of us to be conceived in this unfolding age? And who is to lead us in thoughts and value models in the age of flux? Harari ominously warns that historically corporations were never ideal vehicles to launch social and political revolutions because of their focus on wealth maximization. The pre-eminence of corporate solutions to human problems has to be evaluated afresh and the resurgence of public-funded institutions such as universities is the need of the hour.  

The secular ideal

The resurrection of extreme ideologies such as the rise of the religious right and the extreme left is to be seen in this context. The path that Harari pursues is re-examining our commitment to what he refers to as the ‘secular ideal’. He charts out the tenets of this ideal based on commitment to truth based on evidence, compassion based on appreciation of suffering, equality based on suspicion of a priori hierarchies, freedom to think, investigate and experiment and courage to fight biases and oppression. This might seem like an idealist’s dream, but the author warns us with a grounded pragmatism that human history is not one long story blessed with a continuous evolving meaning. It is made up of disparate strands of episodes each with its own illuminating inferences. To think through our times is the first step of appropriating agency.

A superb companion to the new year!