21 Lessons for the 21st Century

 A book review of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari.

Yuval Harari is a History professor and has written two other books - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus; A Brief History of Tomorrow. He has also released a cowritten children’s book series calledUnstoppable Us.

You can see from the book titles he is a big picture guy, moving past the history of man to write on what our future could be, would be, and should be like. His books have been best sellers. And along the way he has become one of the best known and most interviewed public intellectuals in the world.  I am not surprised. 21 Lessons is a great read. He makes sure we are educated and entertained but unlike Bill Bryson there is no wry humour. Instead, for me anyway, the value of his writing is that it not only gives a clearer picture of what is driving some of the radical changes in our current world but also links that big picture with an individual’s day to day life.

As a personal example, although hardly that personal since this is true for anyone with a computer and the internet, when this book was released in 2018 no one in my everyday world could use AI to write a review like this or a personal resume. Now I can. This just happened. Nobody asked whether, just because we can, that means we should. And only now as the genie is out of the bottle and the science has been monetised are we suddenly going, “Hang on, we should think where this could go.”

21 Lessons looks at twenty-one challenges for mankind, divided into different categories including Technological, Political, Truth and Resilience. Harari is trying to make sure we are understanding in every way, that for the future rushing towards us, our old concepts of dealing with our existence like liberalism, religion, nationalism, employment, free will and self may not be up to the task. In fact not only are they not up to the task but because of our own complacencies and lack of big picture thinking we may not be up to it. And yet the future and the new human is coming. Get ready, read the book.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Yuval Noah Harari

Penguin Random Press

352 PP