Skip to main content

21 lessons for the 21st century

I read the third international bestseller from an Israeli historian called Yuval Harari.

A modern day thinker, this man has unpacked a lot in his writings over the past few years.  All his writings revolve around trying to answer some of history's most complex puzzles.  Who are we?  What is our purpose?  What comes next?

In this latest installment he takes us on a journey way into the past to the point of creation and brings us crashing into the modern day earth and then paints a scary picture of what is to come.  Or at least a possible future.

While it is hard to completely digest the entirety of this man's writings here are a few takeaways I can enumerate -

1.  Humans are really bad with large numbers.  Each of us to varying degrees has a switch that fails at computing 'scale'.  We can think of ourselves and our surroundings over a period of time but it is far too limited when appreciating our role as a species over extended periods.  Millenia, Eons etc.  That is part of the problem of humankind.

2.  Humans are storytellers.  As a social animal we like to hear stories and use it to placate and pander to others. 

3.  Religion is the biggest story ever told.  Religion has been used to keep people contained in order to avoid (perceived) chaos.

4.  We seriously do not know what the future holds.  Chances are like any other organic life form before us we are destined to vanish.  How soon depends on what we do with ourselves, today.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...

Peru, South America - Week well spent

Growing up in India the only Peru I knew of was a tropical fruit (Guava for those whose lingua is English).   Not until high school did I discover that it was also a country in the South American continent. So it was this early April week that we decided to hit up Peru - the land of the once glorious Inca people that lived 500 years ago.  Today Peru is the third largest country on that continent with a diverse geography that stretches from the drier Pacific coast plains to the high mountains of the Andes and the Amazon river valley to its east. Our trip was primarily a pilgrimage of sorts to visit the last remaining, lost (now found and documented), large scale, mostly undamaged, city of the Inca nobility, called Machu Picchu (MP).  The Inca were great architects and builders.  MP is a UNESCO world heritage site affording it high visibility to the tourism trade and therefore crowded year round.  Our timing was not quite high season allowing us...

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...