21 Lessons for the 21st Century

by Yuval Noah Harari

The merger of infotech and biotech might soon push billions of humans out of the job market and undermine both liberty and equality. Big Data algorithms might create digital dictatorships in which all power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite while most people suffer not from exploitation but from something far worse—irrelevance.

If you don’t know what to do with the power to engineer life, market forces will not wait a thousand years for you to come up with an answer. The invisible hand of the market will force upon you its own blind reply. Unless you are happy to entrust the future of life to the mercy of quarterly revenue reports, you need a clear idea what life is all about.

The fascist story explained history as a struggle among different nations, and envisioned a world dominated by one human group that violently subdues all others. The communist story explained history as a struggle among different classes, and envisioned a world in which all groups are united by a centralized social system that ensures equality even at the price of freedom. The liberal story explained history as a struggle between liberty and tyranny, and envisioned a world in which all humans cooperate freely and peacefully, with minimum central control even at the price of some inequality.

Yet the current crisis of liberalism is different from the crises of the 1930s and the 1960s. The three major movements that fought one another in the twentieth century all had a coherent vision for the entire human species—be it global domination, revolution, or liberation. Today, in contrast, the people who reject the liberal story don’t offer any coherent alternative, and actually take pride in that. Donald Trump’s main message is that it’s not America’s job to formulate and promote any global vision whatsoever. Similarly, the British Brexiteers barely have a plan for the future of the Disunited Kingdom—the future of Europe and of the world is far beyond their horizon. Most people who voted for Trump and Brexit didn’t reject the liberal package in its entirety—they lost faith mainly in its globalizing part. They still believe in democracy, free markets, human rights, and social responsibility, but they think these fine ideas can stop at the border. Indeed, they believe that in order to preserve liberty and prosperity in Yorkshire or Kentucky, it is best to build a wall on the border and adopt illiberal policies toward foreigners.

When you live under such an oligarchy, there is always some crisis or other that takes priority over boring stuff like healthcare and pollution. If the nation is facing external invasion or diabolical subversion, who has time to worry about overcrowded hospitals and polluted rivers? By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.

It is difficult to understand current developments partly because liberalism was never a single thing. Liberalism cherishes liberty, but liberty has different meanings in different contexts. Thus, for one person liberalism implies free elections and democratization. Another person thinks that liberalism means trade agreements and globalization. A third associates liberalism with gay marriage and abortion. Liberalism offers diverse recommendations for behavior in the economic, political, and personal fields, and on both the national and international level.

Vaunted “human intuition” is in reality “pattern recognition.”

Jobs that require specialization in a narrow range of routinized activities will be automated. But it will be much more difficult to replace humans with machines in less routine jobs that demand the simultaneous use of a wide range of skills and involve dealing with unforeseen scenarios.

as people live longer and have fewer children, care of the elderly will probably be one of the fastest-growing sectors in the human labor market.

If so, the job market of 2050 might well be characterized by human-AI cooperation rather than competition. In fields

The liberal story cherishes human liberty as its number one value. It argues that all authority ultimately stems from the free will of individual humans, as expressed in their feelings, desires, and choices. In politics, liberalism believes that the voter knows best. It therefore upholds democratic elections. In economics, liberalism maintains that the customer is always right. It therefore hails free-market principles. In personal matters, liberalism encourages people to listen to themselves, be true to themselves, and follow their hearts—as long as they do not infringe on the liberties of others. This personal freedom is enshrined in human rights.

This reliance on the heart might prove to be the Achilles’ heel of liberal democracy. For once somebody (whether in Beijing or in San Francisco) gains the technological ability to hack and manipulate the human heart, democratic politics will mutate into an emotional puppet show.

Every day I absorb countless data bits through emails, tweets, and articles, process the data, and transmit back new bits through more emails, tweets, and articles. I don’t really know where I fit into the great scheme of things, or how my bits of data connect with the bits produced by billions of other humans and computers. I don’t have time to find out, because I am too busy answering all these emails.

The real problem with robots is not their own artificial intelligence but rather the natural stupidity and cruelty of their human masters.

We are researching and developing human abilities mainly according to the immediate needs of the economic and political system, rather than according to our own long-term needs as conscious beings. My boss wants me to answer emails as quickly as possible, but he has little interest in my ability to taste and appreciate the food I am eating. Consequently, I check my emails even during meals, which means I lose the ability to pay attention to my own sensations. The economic system pressures me to expand and diversify my investment portfolio, but it gives me zero incentive to expand and diversify my compassion. So I strive to understand the mysteries of the stock exchange while making far less effort to understand the deep causes of suffering.

So far, many of these giants seem to have adopted the business model of “attention merchants.”2 They capture our attention by providing us with free information, services, and entertainment, and they then resell our attention to advertisers. Yet the data giants probably aim far higher than any previous attention merchant. Their true business isn’t to sell advertisements at all. Rather, by capturing our attention they manage to accumulate immense amounts of data about us, which is worth more than any advertising revenue. We aren’t their customers—we are their product.

Yet it is precisely their genius for interpretation that puts religious leaders at a disadvantage when they compete against scientists. Scientists too know how to cut corners and twist the evidence, but in the end, the mark of science is the willingness to admit failure and try a different tack. That’s why scientists gradually learn how to grow better crops and make better medicines, whereas priests and gurus learn only how to make better excuses.

Traditional racism is waning, but the world is now full of “culturists.” Traditional racism was firmly grounded in biological theories. In the 1890s or 1930s it was widely believed in countries such as Britain, Australia, and the United States that some heritable biological trait made Africans and Chinese people innately less intelligent, less enterprising, and less moral than Europeans. The problem was in their blood. Such views enjoyed political respectability as well as widespread scientific backing. Today, in contrast, while many individuals still make such racist assertions, they have lost all of their scientific backing and most of their political respectability—unless they are rephrased in cultural terms. Saying that black people tend to commit crimes because they have substandard genes is out; saying that they tend to commit crimes because they come from dysfunctional subcultures is very much in.

Yet in the twenty-first century only puny profits can be made that way. Today the main economic assets consist of technical and institutional knowledge rather than wheat fields, gold mines, or even oil fields, and you just cannot conquer knowledge through war.

None of the religions or nations of today existed when humans colonized the world, domesticated plants and animals, built the first cities, or invented writing and money. Morality, art, spirituality, and creativity are universal human abilities embedded in our DNA. Their genesis was in Stone Age Africa. It is therefore crass egotism to ascribe to them a more recent place and time, be it China in the age of the Yellow Emperor, Greece in the age of Plato, or Arabia in the age of Muhammad.

Beloved-of-the-Gods, the king who regards everyone with affection, honors both ascetics and the householders of all religions…and values that there should be growth in the essentials of all religions. Growth in essentials can be done in different ways, but all of them have as their root restraint in speech, that is, not praising one’s own religion, or condemning the religion of others without good cause….Whoever praises his own religion, due to excessive devotion, and condemns others with the thought “Let me glorify my own religion,” only harms his own religion. Therefore contact between religions is good. One should listen to and respect the doctrines professed by others. Beloved-of-the-Gods, the king who regards everyone with affection, desires that all should be well learned in the good doctrines of other religions.

That depends on which God you have in mind: the cosmic mystery, or the worldly lawgiver?

Morality doesn’t mean “following divine commands.” It means “reducing suffering.” Therefore in order to act morally, you don’t need to believe in any myth or story. You just need to develop a deep appreciation of suffering. If you really understand how an action causes unnecessary suffering to yourself or to others, you will naturally abstain from it. People nevertheless murder, rape, and steal because they have only a superficial appreciation of the misery this causes. They are fixated on satisfying their immediate lust or greed, without concern for the impact on others—or even for the long-term impact on themselves. Even inquisitors who deliberately inflict as much pain as possible on their victim usually use various desensitizing and dehumanizing techniques in order to distance themselves from what they are doing.2

This ethical code—which is in fact accepted by millions of Muslims, Christians, and Hindus as well as by atheists—enshrines the values of truth, compassion, equality, freedom, courage, and responsibility. It forms the foundation of modern scientific and democratic institutions.

secularists do not sanctify any group, person, or book as if it and it alone has sole custody of the truth. Instead, secular people sanctify the truth wherever it may reveal itself—in ancient fossilized bones, in images of far-off galaxies, in tables of statistical data, or in the writings of various human traditions. This commitment to the truth underlies modern science, which has enabled humankind to crack the atom, decipher the genome, track the evolution of life, and understand the history of humanity itself.

The other chief commitment of secular people is to compassion. Secular ethics relies not on obeying the edicts of this or that god, but rather on a deep appreciation of suffering. For example, secular people abstain from murder not because some ancient book forbids it but because killing inflicts immense suffering on sentient beings. There is something deeply troubling and dangerous about people who avoid killing just because “God says so.” Such people are motivated by obedience rather than compassion, and what will they do if they come to believe that their god commands them to kill heretics, witches, adulterers, or foreigners?

takes a lot of courage to fight biases and oppressive regimes, but it takes even greater courage to admit ignorance and venture into the unknown. Secular education teaches us that if we don’t know something, we shouldn’t be afraid of acknowledging our ignorance and looking for new evidence. Even if we think we know something, we shouldn’t be afraid of doubting our opinions and checking ourselves again.

In fact, modern history has demonstrated that a society of courageous people willing to admit ignorance and raise difficult questions is usually not just more prosperous but also more peaceful than societies in which everyone must unquestioningly accept a single answer.

Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.

Rather, secular education teaches children to distinguish truth from belief, to develop compassion for all suffering beings, to appreciate the wisdom and experiences of all the earth’s denizens, to think freely without fearing the unknown, and to take responsibility for their actions and for the world as a whole.

Of course, not all dogmas are equally harmful. Just as some religious beliefs have benefited humanity, so also have some secular dogmas. This is particularly true of the doctrine of human rights. The only place rights exist is in the stories humans invent and tell one another. These stories were enshrined as self-evident dogma during the struggle against religious bigotry and autocratic governments. Though it isn’t true that humans have a natural right to life or liberty, belief in this story curbed the power of authoritarian regimes, protected minorities from harm, and safeguarded billions from the worst consequences of poverty and violence. It thereby contributed to the happiness and welfare of humanity probably more than any other doctrine in history.

But if you believe in a quest for truth by fallible humans, admitting blunders is part of the game.

In the last few centuries, liberal thought developed immense trust in the rational individual. It depicted individual humans as independent rational agents and has made these mythical creatures the basis of modern society. Democracy is founded on the idea that the voter knows best, free-market capitalism believes that the customer is always right, and liberal education teaches students to think for themselves. It is a mistake, however, to put so much trust in the rational individual.

First, if you want reliable information, pay good money for it. If you get your news for free, you might well be the product. At present, the dominant model in the news market is “exciting news that costs you nothing—in exchange for your attention.” You pay nothing for the news, and get a low-quality product. Even worse, you yourself unwittingly become the product. Your attention is first captured by sensational headlines, and then sold to advertisers or politicians.

far better model for the news market would be “high-quality news that costs you money but does not abuse your attention.” In today’s world, information and attention are critical assets. It is crazy to give up your attention for free, and to get in exchange only low-quality information. If you are willing to pay for high-quality food, clothes, and cars—why aren’t you willing to pay for high-quality information?

Indeed, many movies about artificial intelligence are so divorced from scientific reality that one suspects they are just allegories of completely different concerns. For example, the 2015 movie Ex Machina seems to be about an AI expert who falls in love with a female robot only to be duped and manipulated by her. But in reality, this is not a movie about the human fear of intelligent robots. It is a movie about the male fear of intelligent women, and in particular the fear that female liberation might lead to female domination.

Humankind is facing unprecedented revolutions, all our old stories are crumbling, and no new story has so far emerged to replace them. How can we prepare ourselves and our children for a world of such unprecedented transformations and radical uncertainties?

In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world. In truth, this has been the ideal of Western liberal education for centuries, but up till now even many Western schools have been rather slack in fulfilling it. Teachers allowed themselves to focus on imparting data while encouraging students “to think for themselves.” Due to their fear of authoritarianism, liberal schools have had a particular horror of grand narratives. They’ve assumed that as long as we give students lots of data and a modicum of freedom, the students will create their own picture of the world,

Technology can help you a lot, but if technology gains too much power over your life, you might become a hostage to its agenda. Thousands of years ago humans invented agriculture, but this technology enriched just a tiny elite while enslaving the majority of humans. Most people found themselves working from sunrise till sunset plucking weeds, carrying water buckets, and harvesting corn under a blazing sun. It could happen to you too.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.1

All stories are incomplete. Yet in order to construct a viable identity for myself and give meaning to my life, I don’t really need a complete story devoid of blind spots and internal contradictions. To give meaning to my life, a story needs to satisfy just two conditions. First, it must give me some role to play. A New Guinean tribesman is unlikely to believe in Zionism or in Serbian nationalism, because these stories don’t care at all about New Guinea and its people. Like movie stars, humans like only those scripts that reserve an important role for them. Second, whereas a good story need not extend to infinity, it must extend beyond my horizons. The story must provide me with an identity and give meaning to my life by embedding me within something bigger than myself. But there is always a danger that I might start wondering what gives meaning to that “something bigger.”

Most stories are held together by the weight of their roof rather than by the strength of their foundations.

Once personal identities and entire social systems are built on top of a story, it becomes unthinkable to doubt it, not because of the evidence supporting it, but because its collapse will trigger a personal and social cataclysm. In history, the roof is sometimes more important than the foundations.

This is of course a logical fallacy. If you suffer because of your belief in God or in the nation, that does not prove that your beliefs are true. Maybe you are just paying the price of your gullibility. However, most people don’t like to admit that they are fools. Consequently, the more they sacrifice for a particular belief, the stronger their faith becomes. This is the mysterious alchemy of sacrifice. In order to bring us under his power, the sacrificing priest need not give us anything at all—not rain, or money, or victory in war. Rather, he needs to take away something. Once he convinces us to make some painful sacrifice, we are trapped.

The problem with evil is that in real life it is not necessarily ugly. It can look very beautiful. Christianity knew this better than Hollywood, which is why traditional Christian art tended to depict Satan as a gorgeous hunk. That is why it is so difficult to resist Satan’s temptations. That is also why it is difficult to deal with fascism. When you look in the fascist mirror, what you see there isn’t ugly at all. When Germans looked in the fascist mirror in the 1930s, they saw Germany as the most beautiful thing in the world. If today Russians look in the fascist mirror, they will see Russia as the most beautiful thing in the world. And if Israelis look in the fascist mirror, they will see Israel as the most beautiful thing in the world. They will then want to lose themselves inside that beautiful collective.

Throughout history almost all humans believed in several stories at the same time and were never absolutely convinced of the truth of any one of them. This uncertainty rattled most religions, which therefore considered faith to be a cardinal virtue and doubt to be among the worst sins possible—as if there were something intrinsically good about believing things without evidence. With the rise of modern culture, however, the tables were turned. Faith began to look increasingly like mental slavery, while doubt came to be seen as a precondition for freedom.

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. You can explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy, of your body, or of your mind, but you will never encounter something that does not change, that has an eternal essence, and that completely satisfies you.

The most important thing I realized was that the deepest source of my suffering is in the patterns of my own mind. When I want something and it doesn’t happen, my mind reacts by generating suffering. Suffering is not an objective condition in the outside world. It is a mental reaction generated by my own mind. Learning this is the first step toward ceasing to generate more suffering.

These stories were intended to unite large numbers of people, accumulate power, and preserve social harmony.

In the twenty-first century the price we pay for ignorance about ourselves will increase dramatically, because governments and corporations are now gaining unprecedented abilities to hack and manipulate human choice. And the easiest people to manipulate are those who believe in free will—because they refuse to acknowledge that they can be manipulated.