# Shortform - 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari (Highlights)  ## Metadata **Review**:: [readwise.io](https://readwise.io/bookreview/7795130) **Source**:: #from/readwise #from/hypothesis **Zettel**:: #zettel/fleeting **Status**:: #x **Authors**:: [[Shortform]] **Full Title**:: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari **Category**:: #books #readwise/books **Category Icon**:: 📚 **Document Tags**:: #shortform **Highlighted**:: [[2021-02-17]] **Created**:: [[2023-12-02]] ## Highlights ### Part 1: Political, Economic, and Social Realities Are Changing #### Politics: The Fall of Liberalism - the massive technological innovations ... are making the liberal story irrelevant ^146934343 - Parallel revolutions in infotech and biotech are transforming societies by: ... Making technology too complex for most people to understand. ... Allowing humans to alter their own bodies. ^146934344 #### Economy: Technology Is Transforming the Labor Market - unemployment skyrockets among low-skilled workers. ^146934283 - Large-scale automation will likely cause a net loss in employment, creating a “useless class” of unskilled workers ^146934284 #### Society: Technology Threatens Human Liberty - technology threatens human liberty, as algorithms learn so much about people that they gain an immense power to influence and manipulate. ^146934286 - Your trust in the algorithm increases. ^146934287 - The algorithm learns more about your preferences ^146934288 which reinforces your trust in the algorithm. - People’s reliance on algorithms can easily snowball to big life decisions ^146934289 #### Society: Technology Could Worsen Inequality - If wealthy elites gain biological advantages over the poor—and the poor are pushed out of opportunities to work and gain wealth—it could create a vicious cycle that continually widens the gap between haves and have-nots. ^146934291 ### Part 2: Address Challenges With Global Solutions #### Method #1: Tackle Issues Through Communities #### Method #2: Embrace the Global Civilization - all of the basic and practical matters are largely in agreement. These include: ... Economic systems ... Medical practices ... Science ^146934345 #### Method #3: Reject Nationalist Solutions to Global Problems - nationalism can’t offer solutions to the three major challenges that people will face in the 21st century, ... The nuclear challenge ... The ecological challenge ... The technological challenge ^146934346 #### Method #4: Resist Seeking Answers in Religion - Religion plays a large role in modern identity problems ... but it serves to divide rather than to unite. ^146934347 #### religion, which inherently sets them apart from other religions. Method #5: Resolve Immigration Challenges ### Part 3: Keep Things in Perspective #### Terrorism and War Are Minor Threats - Terrorism is a strategy for those with little power and few resources to inflict major harm ^146934310 - Terrorists aggravate their enemy so that it overreacts, and that overreaction causes the destruction that the terrorists don’t have the strength to create. ^146934311 - In order to fight terrorism, governments must remember that terrorists have little power, and they must resist the urge to make a public show of their response. ^146934312 #### People Overestimate Their Culture’s Importance #### People Don’t Need God to Keep Social Order - Courage to admit ignorance because if you don’t acknowledge what you don’t know, you’ll never seek more information and find the truth. ^146934315 #favorite ### Part 4: Make Sense of the Modern World #### You Know Less Than You Think - In order to find truth, you must recognize what you know ^146934318 #### Institutions Tell People False Stories - everyone has a responsibility to question and investigate the information they consume, and to keep an eye out for biases they unknowingly hold. ^146934320 ### Part 5: Find Personal Meaning in the World #### The Education System Is Outdated - Without having a reasonable expectation for the future, it’s impossible to know how to prepare children for it. ^146934323 - now people face an information overload, and students need to learn to make sense of the vast amount of information they take in. ^146934324 - Modern students need fewer technical skills and more life skills ^146934325 #### People Seek the Meaning of Life in Stories - you assign meaning to your life and experiences ^146934327 #### Understand Your Mind Through Meditation