45 pages • 1 hour read

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

“A Small Coin in a Big Empty Jar”

To Harari, the fear of terrorism is overblown. Actors who use terrorism do so because they cannot inflict material damage on their enemy. Thus, weak parties typically adopt this strategy. Despite the small number of people killed by terrorists, especially when compared to car accidents and other wars, terrorist acts instill fear in the public. They also often cause governments to overreact, largely because these acts call into question the legitimacy of the government. A public sphere free of political violence is the basis of a modern state’s legitimacy. Terrorist attacks are political violence; hence, they undermine the state’s legitimacy.

Harari uses the phrase “a small coin in a big empty jar” (168) to illustrate how these “sporadic acts of political violence that kill a dozen people are seen as a deadly threat to the legitimacy and even survival of the state” (168). The image of terrorism as a small coin also helps readers to see Harari’s point that governments, media, and individuals should decrease hysteria around terrorism, especially by putting these acts into perspective. Terrorism should not be at the top of the global agenda when there are other global challenges that have the potential to radically alter our species and create a vast underclass of unempowered individuals.

Stone Knife

In Chapter 18, Harari argues that the “very old story: the victory of mind over matter” is false. Humans assume that the mind imagined a stone knife, the hand then created this knife, and humans used the knife to kill a mammoth. To Harari, however, the mind does not have this kind of free will. It does not shape “historical actions and biological realities” (254). Instead, the stone knife symbolizes the mind, manipulated for millions of years by both history and biology. This symbol illustrates how humans are already stuck in a matrix: that of their own mind and body.

“Underclass of Useless Homo sapiens”

To motivate people to join the debate about the future of humankind, Harari repeatedly illustrates the impacts that unregulated merging of biotechnology and artificial intelligence will have on ordinary people. For example, he argues that every industry will be threatened by future automation because machine learning and robotics will continue to improve. In previous waves of automation, lower-skill workers easily switched industries with minimal retraining. Now, however, computers are replacing these jobs. New human jobs will require high levels of expertise and skills and will therefore not solve the problems of unemployment among lower-skill workers.

However, even these high-skill jobs are not safe from automation because algorithms are learning to understand human emotion and replicate so-called human traits, such as creativity. To describe this vast mass of unemployed humans, Harari uses the phrase “underclass of useless Homo sapiens” (75). The use of the word “useless” evokes an emotional response from the reader, who might not have thought about how automation could impact their future employment prospects. Humans take great pride in their economic worth. When people believe they are losing their economic worth and becoming increasingly irrelevant, they become disillusioned with the world around them. Readers realize that no matter their skill level, they and their family might not have jobs in the near future.

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Harari also compares this “underclass of useless Homo sapiens” to a “small class of superhumans” (75). The phrasing here is also intentional because it shows that Homo sapiens might no longer be a single species. Access to these superhuman qualities, however, will be open only to the already superrich, which is around 1% of the global population. Thus, most people will not only lose their economic worth but also their political and social worth. Through these phrases, Harari hopes readers wake up to the current technological predicaments that will radically alter humankind.