With the publication in the United States of his best-selling Sapiens in 2015, the Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari arrived at the top rank of public intellectuals, a position he consolidated with Homo Deus (2017) and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018). Hararis key theme is the idea that human society has largely been driven by our speciess capacity to believe in what he calls fictions: those things whose power is derived from their existence in our collective imaginations, whether they be gods or nations; our belief in them allows us to cooperate on a societal scale. The broad sweep of Hararis writing, which encompasses the prehistoric past and a dark far-off future, has turned him into a bit of a walking inkblot test. The general misunderstandings of me, says Harari, 45, co-author of the recently published Sapiens: A Graphic History, Volume 2 (the latest in a series of graphic-novel adaptations of his work), are that Im the prophet of doom and then theres this opposite view that I think everything is wonderful. Both, of course, might be true. Once the books are out, the ideas are out of your hands, he says.
Some of the big ideas about humanity that youve helped popularize that fictions or social constructs have political power or that Homo sapiens might be moving toward technologically driven obsolescence have been around in various forms since way before you wrote about them. So what do you think it is about how you convey them thats been so compelling? One hypothesis is that Im coming from the discipline of history, and many of the recent attempts to create this kind of big synthesis were from biology and evolution or from economics and social sciences. In recent decades the humanities kind of gave up, and it became almost taboo to try to create grand narratives. But the humanities perspective is essential. Many of the philosophical questions that have bothered humanity for thousands of years are now becoming practical. Previously philosophy was a kind of luxury: You can indulge in it or not. Now you really need to answer crucial philosophical questions about what humanity is or the nature of the good in order to decide what to do with, for example, new biotechnologies. So maybe Ive reached people because Ive come from the perspective of history and philosophy and not biology or economics. Also, my most central idea is simple. Its the primacy of fictions, that to understand the world you need to take stories seriously. The story in which you believe shapes the society that you create.
When youre working in a mode that involves making broad conclusions about humanity, is it hard to determine whether those conclusions are banal? Well, I discovered this: The more banal they are, the more impressed people are.
Thats the trick? All these things about the fictional stories, this was one of the most basic things I learned in my first year doing a bachelors degree in history. I thought this was the most banal thing that everybody knows. It turned out that for lots of people, it was a big discovery: that you had these social constructs and intersubjective reality. I thought it was the most banal thing in the world.
Yuval Noah Harari at a lecture on artificial intelligence in Beijing in 2017. Visual China Group, via Getty Images
Does it make you cynical if what youd thought was the most banal thing in the world ends up being wildly popular? No. It just means that there is miscommunication between large parts of the scientific community and large parts of the public. The things that have been known and accepted by science or by scholars for many years, theyre still big news for the public. Its just the way things are.
One area where the scientific community has communicated clearly is the scale of the climate crisis, and the story that they and so many other people are telling about it is incredibly urgent. Why then do you think were still lacking in the global political will to address the problem in a way thats equal to the coming catastrophes? Its important to have human enemies in order to have a catchy story. With climate change, you dont. Our minds didnt evolve for this kind of story. When we evolved as hunter-gatherers, it was never the case that we could somehow change the climate in ways which were bad for us, so its not the kind of story that we were interested in. We were interested in the story that some people in the tribe are conspiring to kill me. So we have a narrative problem with climate change. But the good news is that its not too late or too difficult to overcome. According to the best reports Ive read, if we now start investing 2 percent of global annual G.D.P. in developing eco-friendly technologies and eco-friendly infrastructure, that should be enough to prevent catastrophic climate change. The beautiful thing about 2 percent is that even though its a lot of money, its completely feasible. If it was 20 percent then I would tell you forget about it, its too late. But 2 percent? The job of the average politician is to shift 2 percent of the budget from here to there. We know how to do it. We need to stay away from the apocalyptic thinking that its too late and the world is ending and move toward a more practical thing: 2 percent of the budget. Thats it.
Is shifting 2 percent of global G.D.P. a sufficiently compelling story? The thing about 2 percent of G.D.P., its not very impressive, but thats the whole point. Its hopeful. Its not like we have to completely change the entire economy and go live in caves. We just need to shift 2 percent. Thats all. So I think its a powerful message. And there are other stories: If you look at movements like Greta Thunbergs and the whole youth movement, what the young people are telling the world is that you are sacrificing us on the altar of your greed and irresponsibility. Its no longer something hazy like CO2 in the atmosphere. Its a human drama of the old sacrificing the young. Thats powerful.
Harari being interviewed by Mark Zuckerberg in 2019. From Meta
I know you get asked a version of this question a lot, but what do you make of the fact that your work is so popular in Silicon Valley? As youve pointed out, these are people whose work has very dangerous implications. Your popularity in that circle cant be just a coincidence. There are many things to say. One reason I think that its popular in these circles is that even though I criticize some of their practices and present some of these practices as a major danger to humanity, I also point out that maybe this is the most important thing that now happens on the planet. So even if you criticize them but also emphasize the importance of what they do, it is still flattering to them to think that the future of humanity is to some extent in their hands. To be somewhat generous to these figures, I definitely dont think that they are evil. Some of what they did was good. I met my husband online on one of the first gay dating apps in Israel, and Im grateful for this because as a gay man in a small, provincial Israeli town, how do you meet guys? What I would say about Silicon Valley is that they dont understand the enormous impact that they are having. They set out hoping to change the world with a deep understanding of technology and not as deep an understanding of history and human society and psychology. But, finally, I know as a historian that texts can gain a life of their own. The people who wrote the New Testament, if they could see what the Inquisition and the crusaders did with the idea of turning the other cheek and the meek will inherit the earth, I think they would be rolling in their graves. But thats history. What can you do?
Is there an idea that youre still sort of germinating that you think is maybe too radical for your audience? Ill give two examples, a big one and a small one. When I wrote Homo Deus, my main interest was in what comes after humanism and after liberalism. I thought that liberalism and humanism were the best stories that humanity has ever managed to come up with. We now have to go beyond that because of the technological revolutions of the 21st century, which call into question the most basic ideas and assumptions of humanism and liberalism. But over the last five years, Ive retreated from that frontier because of the political developments in much of the world. Ive instead found myself starting to fight these rear-guard actions to convince people about humanism and liberalism when what I really want to do is to see what comes after.
What comes after? Im not sure. I havent managed to go much beyond what was in Homo Deus. I explored the way in which the information revolution disintegrates the human individual, which is the foundation of humanism and liberalism. As far as I could see, the new foundation becomes the flow of data information in the world to the degree that even the understanding of what is an organism, what is a human being its no longer that a human being is this magical self, which is autonomous and has free will and makes decisions about the world. No, a human being like all other organisms is just an information-processing system that is in continuous flow. It has no fixed assets. What are the implications in political terms? In social terms? Im not sure. This is what I would be keen to explore.
What was the small example? The small frontier: Im reading this book about new theories about transgender and nonbinary people and so forth. The previous book Id read was about early Christianity. It struck me how similar these things are. So much of the debate about gender now, in a weird way its like these early Christians debating the nature of Christ and the trinity. Basically they were asking, was Christ a nonbinary person? Is Christ divine or human or both divine-human or neither divine and human? It resonates with many of the debates that we have now about the nature of humans and the person. Can we be both? Can we be only one? And if you dont think like me, then youre a heretic. I mean, the champions of the early Christians were the martyrs and the ascetic monks you have this guy Simon standing on a pillar for years. They were exploring the limits of the human body with what was available to them. Now you have, with the gender issue, more questions of what can we do with the body; we can change it like this and like that. There are huge differences between these things but neurons in my brain started having this conversation about early Christianity and current gender debates.
Good thing history shows us that all debates within Christianity were settled amicably. The thing is, at the time these tiny Christian sects having these debates were insignificant! But afterward it turned out that these doctrinal debates and who won and who lost had an enormous impact on the development of human history. And this is a more serious thought: I think that the reason that there is so much political heat around debates about transgender people and nonbinary people and so forth is because people maybe subconsciously feel that debates of the future will be about what we can do with the human body and the human brain. How can we re-engineer them? How can we change them? The first practical place that we come across these questions is gender. You can say people are bigots and are always sensitive when you talk about sex or gender, but I think that subconsciously people realize this is the first debate about transhumanism. Its about what we can do with technology to change the human body and brain and mind. This is why we see these heated debates.
What might it say about you and the stories you find most appealing that debates about gender, which could easily be interpreted as being about one group of humans wanting to be treated as equal to any another in the here and now, are ones that you interpret as being fundamentally about anxiety over future transhumanism? Thats the point! Transhumanism is about what it is to be human. I mean, there are different types of transhumanism, but one interpretation is that transhumanism is fulfilling the true potential of the human. Which depends of course on what you understand a human to be. This is the question that we want to pursue, and its not a question with easy answers.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.
Opening illustration: Source photograph by Emily Berl for The New York Times
David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and the columnist for Talk. Recently he interviewed Alice Waters about being uncompromising and Neil deGrasse Tyson about how science might once again reign supreme.
Read the original here:
Yuval Noah Harari Believes This Simple Story Can Save the Planet - The New York Times
- Lucid Dreaming & Dreamwork / Sinister Technology & the Paranormal - Coast To Coast AM - January 29th, 2024 [January 29th, 2024]
- AI Up Mi Duck: An Interactive Fiction Game Exploring ... - LeftLion - November 13th, 2023 [November 13th, 2023]
- Double bill: Vis Motrix & Atlas da Boca at Tipperary Dance ... - The Journal of Music - October 10th, 2023 [October 10th, 2023]
- Can Elon Musk make the human spirit immortal with a robot? - CNE.news - October 10th, 2023 [October 10th, 2023]
- Artists revved up by Creative Engine grants - Geelong Times - Geelong Times - October 10th, 2023 [October 10th, 2023]
- How to face the climate crisis with Spinoza and self-knowledge - Aeon - August 24th, 2023 [August 24th, 2023]
- To be human is to be animal | Eric T. Olsen - IAI - August 20th, 2023 [August 20th, 2023]
- Transhumanism, AI, Singularity - How far is too far? - Fallbrook / Bonsall Villlage News - May 10th, 2023 [May 10th, 2023]
- How 'cyborg feminism' confuses technology with women's progress - Washington Examiner - May 10th, 2023 [May 10th, 2023]
- Reconnecting With Beans To Take The Power Back Over Our Food ... - ARC2020 - May 10th, 2023 [May 10th, 2023]
- The Great Nonsense of The Great Reset - LewRockwell - January 27th, 2023 [January 27th, 2023]
- The US Government and Its Military Have Declared War on ... - LewRockwell - January 27th, 2023 [January 27th, 2023]
- Tech for Me, but Not for Thee: Psalm 8 Meets Transhumanism - January 27th, 2023 [January 27th, 2023]
- What is transhumanism? Can humans and technology meld together? - January 25th, 2023 [January 25th, 2023]
- Transhumanist politics - Wikipedia - January 25th, 2023 [January 25th, 2023]
- Should We Fear the Future? The Philosophy of Transhumanism - TheCollector - January 25th, 2023 [January 25th, 2023]
- Situation Update, Nov 1, 2022 - The transhumanism demonic AI takeover ... - December 26th, 2022 [December 26th, 2022]
- Dr. Tau Braun and the Health Ranger talk transhumanism, AI infiltration ... - December 18th, 2022 [December 18th, 2022]
- Ancient Wisdom in Medicine / AI & Transhumanism | Coast to Coast AM - December 18th, 2022 [December 18th, 2022]
- Fact check: False claim Biden's executive order limits human rights - November 25th, 2022 [November 25th, 2022]
- Transfection to Transhumanism - Part 1 - rumble.com - November 25th, 2022 [November 25th, 2022]
- After Being Canceled, She Pivoted to Journalism - Daily Signal - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]
- Steve Bannon throws support behind Alex Jones: "They're trying to break you as a man and they're trying to break your incredible... - August 10th, 2022 [August 10th, 2022]
- Elon Musk and a warning of dystopian future of AI: What is digital and biological computing? - DailyO - August 10th, 2022 [August 10th, 2022]
- The Myth of the Modern Self | Carl R. Trueman - First Things - July 21st, 2022 [July 21st, 2022]
- Transhumanism: Evil Force Behind the NWO :: By Jonathan Brentner - July 13th, 2022 [July 13th, 2022]
- The Myth of Bodily Autonomy | Gene Veith - Patheos - July 13th, 2022 [July 13th, 2022]
- Barbara Marx Hubbard: Godmother of Transhumanism and Synthetic Spirituality - July 4th, 2022 [July 4th, 2022]
- Simulacra in the Growing Armory of Thanatos - CounterPunch - July 4th, 2022 [July 4th, 2022]
- Transhumanism: The Evil Force Behind the New World Order Jonathan ... - June 11th, 2022 [June 11th, 2022]
- Future Humans: Four Ways We May, or May Not, Evolve - June 11th, 2022 [June 11th, 2022]
- Crimes of the Future Explained: Transhumanism, Surgery as Sex, and Humanity's Frightening Evolution - Signal Horizon - June 11th, 2022 [June 11th, 2022]
- A Turning Point in History Stand with Us - The Desert Review - May 31st, 2022 [May 31st, 2022]
- Sex-bots and foil hats: reconfiguring what it means to be human - Sydney Morning Herald - May 20th, 2022 [May 20th, 2022]
- Global Artificial Intelligence in Big Data Analytics and IoT Markets, 2022-2027: Focus on Data Capture, Information and Decision Support Services -... - May 20th, 2022 [May 20th, 2022]
- What is transhumanism and how does it affect you? | World ... - April 29th, 2022 [April 29th, 2022]
- The Impossibility of Christian Transhumanism | Evolution News - April 29th, 2022 [April 29th, 2022]
- TV adaptation of The Wild airs brochure on March 16th - Vaughan Today - April 29th, 2022 [April 29th, 2022]
- The Impossibility of Christian Transhumanism | Wesley J. Smith - First Things - March 26th, 2022 [March 26th, 2022]
- Transhumanism: The Plot to Control Your Life! Jonathan ... - February 9th, 2022 [February 9th, 2022]
- What is Technocracy and why does it matter? Hint ... - February 9th, 2022 [February 9th, 2022]
- Transitions Film Festival 2022 Using The Power Of Film For Positive Future Change - scenestr - February 9th, 2022 [February 9th, 2022]
- Cyberpunk Noir Sports Fiction, Anyone? - The Crozet Gazette - February 5th, 2022 [February 5th, 2022]
- Replicas: on Rai 2 first tv the sci-fi with Keanu Reeves - D1SoftballNews.com - February 3rd, 2022 [February 3rd, 2022]
- Transhumanism: The Most Dangerous Idea? - Reason.com - January 21st, 2022 [January 21st, 2022]
- Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century ... - January 21st, 2022 [January 21st, 2022]
- Canadian Government Openly Embraces Transhumanism | Truth11.com - January 21st, 2022 [January 21st, 2022]
- Global Transhumanism Markets Report 2021 - Transformational Growth in Biological, Health, and Wellness Augmentation will Enable the Rise of Human 2.0... - December 15th, 2021 [December 15th, 2021]
- The best video games of 2021, and what to buy - Sydney Morning Herald - December 15th, 2021 [December 15th, 2021]
- Gene-editing, Moderna, and transhumanism | Christina Lin ... - November 19th, 2021 [November 19th, 2021]
- Authoritarianism and the Cybernetic Episteme, or the Progressive Disappearance of Everything on Earth - Journal #122 November 2021 - E-Flux - November 9th, 2021 [November 9th, 2021]
- Faith in -196C: pioneers of resurrection a photo essay - The Guardian - November 1st, 2021 [November 1st, 2021]
- WISekeys Founder and CEO Carlos Moreira was Interviewed by Steve Bannon on Warroom.org About The transHuman Code Bestseller Book and the Need to... - November 1st, 2021 [November 1st, 2021]
- Six books to read this winter - Maclean's - November 1st, 2021 [November 1st, 2021]
- Transhumanism - reddit - October 21st, 2021 [October 21st, 2021]
- COVID19, The Great Reset, and Transhumanism Thuletide - October 21st, 2021 [October 21st, 2021]
- Dr. Carrie Madej Covid Shots, DNA and Transhumanism ... - October 21st, 2021 [October 21st, 2021]
- Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov - Wikipedia - October 21st, 2021 [October 21st, 2021]
- No, the Moderna and Pfizer RNA vaccines for COVID-19 will ... - October 21st, 2021 [October 21st, 2021]
- Transhumanists Gather In Spain To Plan Global Transformation - The Federalist - October 15th, 2021 [October 15th, 2021]
- Neurotechnology: The brain wired for healthcare - ITWeb - September 16th, 2021 [September 16th, 2021]
- The afterlife is having a moment. 'Beyond' will help Christians and nonbelievers alike discuss what lies beyond the grave. - America Magazine - September 14th, 2021 [September 14th, 2021]
- more and more humans are born with an extra artery in the arm CVBJ - Central Valley Business Journal - August 30th, 2021 [August 30th, 2021]
- "My concern is that companies are anticipating the metaverse" - Release - Tech News Inc - August 16th, 2021 [August 16th, 2021]
- Crypto leaders are obsessed with life extension. Here's why Cointelegraph Magazine - Cointelegraph - August 14th, 2021 [August 14th, 2021]
- 'Glitchpunk' Available On Steam Early Access - Trailer - WorthPlaying.com - August 11th, 2021 [August 11th, 2021]
- Technologies that change human nature must be treated with caution - Illinoisnewstoday.com - June 30th, 2021 [June 30th, 2021]
- Technology changing human nature must be treated with caution - Independent Australia - June 30th, 2021 [June 30th, 2021]
- Microdosing, And The Gentrification Of Psychedelic Culture. A Conversation With Sociologist Dimitrios Liokaftos - Forbes - June 30th, 2021 [June 30th, 2021]
- JG and the Robots Unveil AI-Driven Audiovisual for "Im Thomas Dolby" - EDM.com - June 30th, 2021 [June 30th, 2021]
- Neil Mackay's Big Read: The dawn of transhumanism - conversations with Dr David Eagleman, the scientist creating a world of real superhumans in his... - June 28th, 2021 [June 28th, 2021]
- A brief history of transhumanism, which imagines a future of perfection, immortality - Firstpost - May 20th, 2021 [May 20th, 2021]
- Into the Darkness Latest Trailer is All About the Double Barrel Shotgun - VRFocus - May 20th, 2021 [May 20th, 2021]
- Disinformation in a time of Covid-19: Weekly Trends in South Africa - Daily Maverick - May 20th, 2021 [May 20th, 2021]
- Elon Musk's Neuralink Has the Tech to Create Super Exotic Dinosaurs - Science Times - April 11th, 2021 [April 11th, 2021]
- Dr. Carrie Madej: COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are transhumanism ... - March 20th, 2021 [March 20th, 2021]
- Agenda 21 How Would You Like to be Forced into a Human ... - March 20th, 2021 [March 20th, 2021]
- In single-player, Disintegration feels like the real Halo 2 to me - Eurogamer.net - March 16th, 2021 [March 16th, 2021]
- Law professor's book examines legal actions impacting future generations | University of Hawaii System News - UH System Current News - February 25th, 2021 [February 25th, 2021]
- Entrepreneur Samuel Cardillo and the Story of Geospatial Intelligence Firm Shadowbreak Intl - Benzinga - February 25th, 2021 [February 25th, 2021]