21 Lessons for the 21st Century

by Yuval Noah Harari

Zuckerberg explained that the sociopolitical upheavals of our time—from rampant drug addiction to murderous totalitarian regimes—result to a large extent from the disintegration of human communities. He lamented the fact that “for decades, membership in all kinds of groups has declined as much as one-quarter. That’s a lot of people who now need to find a sense of purpose and support somewhere else.”2 He promised that Facebook would lead the charge to rebuild these communities and that his engineers would pick up the burden discarded by parish priests. “We’re going to start rolling out some tools,” he said, to “make it easier to build communities.”