From Tel Aviv, the established author of “Sapiens” spoke about why he now wrote a book for children. But also about human stupidity, about how stories that were postulated as eternal truths are used, about the error of nationalism and even about the ancient roots of “alternative” families like yours.
[Yuval Noah Harari's books can be purchased, in digital format, at Bajalibros, by clicking here.]
The truth is, it makes you a little nervous to sit down and talk to Yuval Noah Harari. As you see it, this 46-year-old Israeli historian is one of the world's great best-sellers. Millions of books sold. But more than that: it was recommended by Barack Obama, the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and the owner of Microsoft, Bill Gates. He is invited to speak at forums with presidents and world leaders. They consult him about the future of humanity. And now he is there, on the other side of the screen, sitting very seriously, waiting for the first question from Infobae. Yes, it makes you a little nervous.
What did that book say that crossed borders? Well, it told the story of humanity. Sapiens, from animals to gods, is the full title. And that's what it's about: how those weak, slow bugs that we humans are, end up dominating nature and - he says it with many examples - exterminating other animals and also - the most terrifying thing - other types of humans that lived with us, homo sapiens. He even says that, although current humans are sapiens, many of us still have a grandfather, a Neanderthal grandmother.
A bit of chance made Harari such a widely read author. He had specialized in medieval and military history. Around 2008 he was teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and had to teach an Introduction to World History course for undergraduate students. Nobody wanted to grab him and well, he accepted. In research he discovered the cruel path of homo sapiens. So he stopped eating meat. and he wrote Sapiens.
On the way, he thought of a hypothesis: Harari maintains that what gave strength to this species was its ability to collaborate in large groups. And why were we able to do it? Harari He says that “the secret was surely the appearance of fiction. A large number of strangers can successfully cooperate if you believe in common myths”. Myths are a God who tells you what is right or what is wrong, that this painted bill is worth a kilo of oranges or that two people who live thousands of kilometers away, but within certain limits have more in common than another person who lives much closer but on the other side of an imaginary line. “Two Catholics who do not know each other can, however, participate together in a crusade or contribute funds to build a hospital, because they both believe that God took on human flesh and agreed to be crucified to redeem our sins.”, put in Sapiens.
Then came more books –Homo Deus: brief history of tomorrow y 21 lessons for the XNUMXst century-, conferences everywhere and, recently, the illustrated version of Sapiens. This month it also came out Unstoppable. Diary of how we conquered the Earth, A species of Sapiens for children that can be read with passion and that an adult can enjoy from cover to cover. That's a bit why he is now sitting here in Tel Aviv, but in front of Zoom. Because he wants to talk about the new book. This book where he tells the kids that their nightmares have to do with the fear of being eaten by a lion during the night and that if they are dying to eat sweets that responds to an ancient need to survive: “Our ancestors did not have supermarkets or refrigerators. When they felt hungry, they went to forests and rivers in search of something to eat. And they couldn't find an ice cream tree or a river of soft drinks! The only sweet thing there was was the ripe fruit and honey. When they found them, the smartest thing was to eat as much as they could and as quickly as possible.".
We are going to talk about the book in which Harari says that Stone Age gatherers ate better and more varied than the farmers who followed, who worked less and got sick less, because many of the diseases came from contact with animals. Where he recognizes that we know little about the remote past, but we do know something: homo sapiens “They wiped out most of the large animals in the world”. They managed to disperse across the planet. They did not develop fins, they made rafts. “The journey made by the first people to arrive in Australia is one of the most important milestones in history. Even more than Columbus's trip to America, or that of Neil Armstrong and his friends to the Moon. The moment humans first set foot on an Australian beach, they became the most dangerous animal in the world: they owned planet Earth. From that moment on, they began to completely transform the world.".
You want to talk about those things Yuval Noah Harari.
It was not easy, however, to get to this meeting. Harari He has a team that is in charge of moving his books, his ideas and his interviews. The one in charge of everything is her husband, Itzik Yahav, and to begin with any interview request, she receives an automatic, very polite email in response that says… no. That “Yuval receives hundreds of emails every week” and that “most of the proposals we receive are impossible to respond to.” Well, We finally communicated in July and agreed on the note for October. The day arrived.
What do we talk about with a man who is telling us the history of humanity, who is vegan, who does at least an hour of meditation every morning and keeps warning that climate change can destroy us or that Intelligence Artificial can create a new type of humans… and surely it will?
“Humans are now so powerful that the fate of all other animals depends on us. The only reason lions, dolphins and eagles still exist is because we let them.. "If humans wanted to get rid of lions, dolphins and eagles around the world, they could make that a reality in a matter of a year.", he tells them now Harari to the boys. And he warns them: “This is a lot of power, and it can be used well or badly. To be a human, you must understand the power you have and what you can do with it.".
Before the end I'm going to ask you If climate change and boys go togetherIf anything they will do it better and Harari He's almost going to get angry. It's not about throwing the burden on them, you have to take charge, she's going to tell me (in other words). But let's start with the boys, let's start there.
– Why is a book a good way to get closer to kids?
-It is very important for children to know about history because it is their identity, to understand who they are. At school they teach you the history of your country, of your people, which is important. But to understand who you are, you have to understand the history of humanity. You start with things like, I don't know, games. In Argentina football is important but football does not come from Argentina, comes from England. We like chocolate, but chocolate does not come from Argentina or Israel. It was discovered by the Olmecs, in what is now Mexico. Do you want your chocolate to be sweet? You need sugar, sugar comes from New Guinea. You have to understand the history of the world! And if we go deeper, into our emotions, our feelings, the connection between children and parents was not invented by any human group, we have to go back millions of years. We share it with other animals. Similarly, if you wake up in the middle of the night, worried that there is a monster under your bed, that is a memory from millions of years ago, when we lived in the savannahs and lions could come and eat you if you didn't wake up. But if you woke up and escaped you could survive. So, to understand your life today, from games to the deepest emotions, you need to understand the development of all humanity.
“If you wake up in the middle of the night, worried because there is a monster under your bed, that is a memory from millions of years ago, when we lived in the savannahs and lions could come to eat you.”
– In all these years didn't we learn that there are no animals around us anymore? Do we still have that memory?
-It is written not on paper, it is written in our genes. Many people are afraid of spiders. When I was little, I was very afraid of them. It's strange... spiders practically don't kill anyone. Instead, Cars kill more than a million people every year. But we are not afraid of cars. Because it takes a long time to develop that kind of internal fear. One hundred years is not enough to develop that fear of cars. But spiders... hundreds of thousands of years ago, in the savanna, there were very dangerous spiders. And we are still afraid of them.
-In Buenos Aires we like to think that our fears are something that Sigmund Freud can explain...
-And it can... to a certain extent. Psychology is not just about what happened to you when you were a child or what happened to you yesterday. Psychology examines the deep structure of the human mind which, again, goes back hundreds of thousands of years.
-You say that one does not study History to remember the past but to free oneself from it. Why should we free ourselves from the past?
-Because the past still controls how we think, how we behave, through stories that people invented centuries ago or tens of thousands of years ago. We don't have to get rid of all of them, but we have to understand which are just stories invented by people, not the laws of nature or absolute truth. So some stories are good and it's good to preserve them, but many of the stories that people made up in the past - and still shape our behavior - are harmful.
- For example?
-For example, in many places in the world people think that women are inferior to men, that girls are inferior to boys. So in many places, until recently, women couldn't go to school. Not just in Afghanistan, in most of the world. And when you ask them why they tell you: “that's how God made people.” Or “it's biology, biologically women are inferior to men.” Of course, this is nonsense. That is a story that some priest, rabbi, or political leader invented centuries ago or thousands of years ago. It is not the law of nature, it is not THE truth. If you understand that this is just a story made up by people in the past, then you can move forward and push it aside. But for that you have to understand how that story was created. How it became so powerful that millions of people believed it.
-And for what.
-And for what. It was invented as a way of control, of gaining power for a certain human group. Understanding how this story was created weakens it. The most powerful thing about History is that if we understand how these stories were created, we can weaken them, free ourselves from them and this is the reason why History is considered a dangerous discipline.
-In the book, the person who discovers how to conserve fire is a woman, or the collector is a woman. Here we see an intention to tell history with women... Why did you decide to do it this way?
-Many times, when we do not know how something happened 50.000 years ago, we assume that men did it. There are many examples, such as art in caves. In France in Lascaux, in Argentina in the cave of the hands, in Indonesia. We don't know who painted these amazing works of art. In many books it is written in masculine. It is assumed, without any evidence, that a man did it. Of course this is just a bias. If we had concrete evidence that this was done by a particular man, ok. But most of the time we don't have it. Of course I don't know if men or women did it.. So sometimes, in these cases, I give credit to a man, and sometimes a woman, for balancing.
-In an interview you said that it was about helping people think universally, being universalist. However, it seems that we are going in the opposite direction and national divisions are strengthening.
-My point is that there is no contradiction between being patriotic and cooperating with people from other places and having a universal vision of history and many of the current problems. There are politicians who tell you that you have to choose between your homeland or global cooperation. But you don't have to choose, you can do both: nationalism is not about hating foreigners but about loving your compatriots and caring for them. There are many cases in which to take good care of the people of your country you have to cooperate with those of other places.
“There are politicians who tell you that you have to choose between your homeland or global cooperation. But you don't have to choose, you can do both."
– What cases?
-In the pandemic, the virus was the enemy of humanity and the only way to effectively end the pandemic was if many countries cooperated. This is not against nationalism; in fact, it is in favor. Or the climate change: It is obviously not a problem that a country can solve on its own. We need global cooperation. Part of the message of the book is that all of us, no matter where we come from, share a history, certain characteristics, certain interests, simply because we are human beings. All nations that exist in the world today were created in the last few thousand years.
-It seems that countries generate more passion...
-The oldest nations in the world, Egypt or China, can say that they are 5000 years old. It seems like a lot, but compared to the time humans have been on Earth, it is very little. There have been humans on Earth for more than two million years. So 5.000 years is very little and, of course, most countries are not that old, they are just a couple of centuries old.
-A few days ago, in Madrid, Hungarian President Viktor Orban called for an end to “the global ideology.” And to close the doors more to immigrants. How do you see this?
-It's stupid. If you oppose things that come from outside... are you opposed to Christianity? Christianity was not created in Hungary, it was created in the Middle East! The Bible, which Mr. Orban likes so much… was not written in Hungary, was not written in Budapest, was not written in Hungarian. It was written in Hebrew and Greek, mostly by Jews living in the Middle East... Does Mr. Orban want to get rid of the Bible? Similarly, we had the pandemic, people used vaccines, does Mr Orban think that Hungarians should only use vaccines invented by Hungarian scientists and manufactured in Hungary? It's ridiculous. The idea that a country can cut itself off from the rest of humanity... If we had to live only with what was invented in our countries, our lives would be very, very poor and almost impossible. This doesn't just happen in Hungary of course. Let's think what life would be like if we only had to eat the food that was discovered in our country... just read the books that were written in our country... it would be horrible.
– How does this look from Israel?
-What I said for Hungary applies to Israel. The idea that you can ignore the rest of humanity or live your life as an island doesn't work. No country in the world lives in isolation and we are increasingly facing more global problems, which affect all countries and which can only be solved with global cooperation. We talk about the pandemic, about climate change, but we can talk about the growth of dangerous technologies such as artificial intelligence or bioengineering.
– In what sense?
-We have to regulate these technologies, but no country can do it alone. Now there is talk of the production of autonomous weapons, robots that kill. If you try to regulate this technology only in your country, it doesn't work. Because other countries are going to continue using it and soon you will too, you don't want to be left behind. The only way to regulate these technologies is with global agreements. Many extreme nationalists in Hungary or here in Israel oppose global cooperation because they think it is a kind of betrayal, that If you cooperate with other countries then you are a traitor to your own. This is simply ridiculous, it is a conceptual error. I know very few people who are completely in favor of abolishing nation-states and having a global government, I think it's a terrible idea, it wouldn't work.
- Why?
-Because people have different traditions, interests. At least for now it is impossible for a global government to adequately address and represent all of these different interests. What would be the mechanism to choose it? Would it simply be based on the number of people per country? Then China would have many votes and Israel very few... You do not have the foundations for a democracy if people do not first share certain fundamental values, interests... and we are very far from that happening at a global level.
-Last year Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, who won the International Booker Prize for a novel, had to give up translating the verses of the American poet Amanda Gorman because Amanda is African American and a woman and Marieke has white skin and a non-binary gender. So if she translated it, it was “cultural appropriation.” Doesn't that go against the idea of cooperation?
-It is dangerous... all cultures are appropriate, all cultures are based on heritage from other countries. You do have to be careful when people make fun of other cultures. But if no one can talk about the culture or experiences of others, we will soon reach a point where You can't talk about anything except yourself.. No one is ever in another's shoes, no one fully understands another's experience. Actors could not act as anyone else, those who write novels could only write autobiographies. This would be a disaster for human culture, part of the beauty of art, of movies, of books, is that they allow you, to a certain extent, to understand other people's experience. If you think that no one can understand your experience but yourself, this not only narrows what you can say, but actually makes it subtle, because If no one can understand another person's experience, why talk? You can tell me how you feel, I won't understand you. All human communication is based on the idea that we can, to some extent, understand other people's experiences, ideas.
“If I want to be married to my husband it is because I am in favor of the family ideal”
-You talk about your husband. Someone might think... husband and wife in a book for boys! Is the narrative of families changing?
-It should be very clear that this is not against family values. Now there is that whole thing about the most liberal people being against the family. It's not true. They are FOR the family. If I want to be married to my husband it is because I am in favor of the family ideal.. I just think we have to recognize that throughout history there was more diversity in the family structure than some people insist on considering the only one possible for human beings. Some people consider a family to be a man, a woman, and their biological children. But today there are many many children who grow up in different families. Maybe with a single mother. Adopted kids. Your mother got divorced, she has a new husband and you have your biological father... in a way you have three father figures. And there are two women or two men. If you go back in history you see that this diversity is quite common. In the Bible you have the patriarchs, like James, who had four wives. Today a man, two wives, two concubines and his children... today would not be considered a traditional family. But in the Bible it was common.
– And what happened?
-We should separate two discussions. One is the discussion about family values. And I think that there is a broad consensus here that families are very important units for any human being and I know very few people, even among the most radical, who are against the family. What they want is simply the recognition that there are many types of families. Because otherwise having a family and having it recognized is a privilege for a part of society. And a lot of people have families that don't recognize each other, which is very emotionally damaging. And they also stop having legal protection and certain benefits. It has to be clear that there is nothing here against the family or against its values, we just need a more inclusive approach, which recognizes the different types of family to which people can belong.
Yuval Noah Harari He answers long, precisely, moving his hands. The answer does not always go directly to the question. Sometimes he looks to the side and up, as if searching in the air for what he wants to say from what I ask him. This is what happens with the next question.
-Today you can and want to write about your husband in a book for children. In terms of women or homosexuals, are we living in the best time in history?
-For most humans the answer is yes. There are many problems… climate change, the deterioration of the international situation, the growth of wars… But when you look at the basic statistics about human life then yes, it's the best time, certainly since the Agricultural Revolution. We live longer, we suffer less hunger and disease. A hundred years ago, in most societies, between a quarter and a third of babies did not become adults, dying before the age of 20 from hunger, disease, a combination of both, or violence.
-That changed.
-Today throughout the world, even if you look at the poorest countries in the world, the average for the world is less than 5 percent. Less than 5 percent of children die before reaching adulthood. And if you look at developed countries it is less than 1 percent. It is an impressive advance. For most of history, a very important danger to women's lives was dying in childbirth. It was very common. In the last century, the number of women who die in childbirth has decreased radically. It is still significant, but with modern medicine women can expect to give birth without losing their lives. We have to be aware of the achievements of our civilization to protect it. Because all this can disappear very quickly. If we refuse to maintain the institutions of our societies and the international system, we could quickly fall into a worse situation than we have ever seen in history.
– What do we have to pay attention to?
-First, to the fact that we depend on others. The entire world today is a single political, economic and ecological system. And let's get to the topic of corporations. You see Russia invade Ukraine… this not only threatens people in Ukraine but everywhere. Because? First by the rule that you cannot invade another. If this norm is broken then you will see more Putins, more wars, all over the world. And this is going to increase Defense budgets. Instead of dedicating the money to health care, it will go to the military. It is a threat to everyone's lives. Also, the economic shock. Prices of fuel and food are rising everywhere. And the ecological issue: if countries fight, cannot trust each other and spend money on military matters, then they cannot take care of the climate change.
-And that is serious.
-We see the devastating effects of climate change. Like the floods in Pakistan last month… there will be more and more of this. What happened in Pakistan is not because of anything Pakistanis did. It's not your fault. They are not responsible for climate change, but they are paying the price. If we do not maintain the international system we will see more wars, more economic crises, more ecological problems, which can quickly make ours become the worst time in history. It was the best, we are on the peak of a high mountain and we can fall very quickly.
– Can the boys do better?
-I hope so. The main message of the book for boys is that we have enormous power, that the world as it is is not the result of the laws of nature or a predetermined plan, but that people made the world as it is and people can change it. If there is something that you think is unfair or that you don't like, you can change it. We humans have a lot of power, more than any other animal, but, unfortunately, we don't always use it wisely.
- For example?
-If we think about climate change, many people today are desperate, as if it were too late. It's nonsense: we created this problem and we can solve it. Not only do we have the necessary scientific knowledge, we have the economic resources to solve climate change. If we invest two percent of the global budget each year in the right technology it will be enough to prevent a catastrophe. Two percent of humanity's entire budget is a lot of money, but it is only two percent. So the first step is to realize that we are very powerful, we just have to make smart decisions.
-Insist with that...
-Because one of the laws of History is that We should never underestimate human stupidity. We humans often make very stupid decisions about how to use our enormous power. But it is not a destiny, it is not inevitable. We can also make good decisions. Not just the kids, I hope, but the adults.
And now when he gets a little angry, calm as it is, and it challenges me a little. Without doing it, but he understands:
-I see a danger: adults often abdicate their responsibilities and say: “well, the kids are going to solve it. When they grow up they are going to fix all the problems that we haven't solved. That's serious. Being an adult is being responsible: don't throw responsibilities on the kids. When they are 40, 50 years old it will be their business, but now, that they are 10 years old, what they have to do is read books, play soccer, go to school, make friends. That is your task. Ours is to give them security and resources by preventing wars, solving climate change, reducing social inequality. That is our task. We shouldn't throw it at the kids and say: “well, they'll figure it out one day.”
Who is Yuval Noah Harari
♦ He was born in Kyriat Ata, Israel, in 1976.
♦ He is a historian and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
♦ He is a specialist in medieval and military history.
♦ At the age of 26 he completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford in England with a comparative study between medieval warriors and XNUMXth century warriors
♦ She lives with her husband in Karmei Yosef, a town in central Israel.
♦ Barack Obama said that Sapiens, the book that launched Harari, is “a history in bursts of the human race.” And that “it talks about some fundamental things that have allowed us to build this extraordinary civilization, which we take for granted.”
♦ Among his works are Sapiens: From animals to gods, Homo Deus: Brief history of tomorrow, 21 lessons for the XNUMXth centuryI e Unstoppable.
Source: INFOBAE