Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

military globalization: War spreads ideas, technologies, and people far more quickly than commerce does... People care far more about their enemies than about their trade partners. For every American film about Taiwan, there are probably fifty about Vietnam.

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

For all the national pride people feel when their delegation wins a gold medal and their flag is raised, there is far greater reason to feel pride that humankind is capable of organizing such an event.

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Humans control the world because they can cooperate better than any other animal, and they can cooperate so well because they believe in fictions.

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Branding often involves retelling the same fictional story again and again, until people become convinced it is the truth.

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

the power of human cooperation depends on a delicate balance between truth and fiction.

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Escaping the narrow definition of self might well become a necessary survival skill in the twenty-first century.

Yuval Harari

For years I lived under the impression that I was the master of my life, and the CEO of my own personal brand. But a few hours of meditation were enough to show me that I hardly had any control of myself. I was not the CEO – I was barely the gatekeeper.

Yuval Harari

Doubts about the existence of free will and individuals are nothing new, of course. More than 2,000 years ago thinkers in India, China and Greece argued that ‘the individual self is an illusion’. Yet such doubts don’t really change history much unless they have a practical impact on economics, politics and day-to-day life. Humans are masters of cognitive dissonance, and we allow ourselves to believe one thing in the laboratory and an altogether different thing in the courthouse or in parliament.

Yuval Harari

Humans certainly have a will – but it isn’t free. You cannot decide what desires you have... Every choice depends on a lot of biological, social and personal conditions that you cannot determine for yourself. I can choose what to eat, whom to marry and whom to vote for, but these choices are determined in part by my genes, my biochemistry, my gender, my family background, my national culture, etc – and I didn’t choose which genes or family to have.

Yuval Harari

In ethics, the humanist motto is 'if it feels good, do it'. In politics, humanism instructs us that 'the voter knows best'. In aesthetics, humanism says that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'... What, then, will happen once we realize that customers and voters never make free choices, and once we have the technology to calculate, design or outsmart their feelings?

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

guided by the principle of protecting humans rather than jobs... we need to develop new social and economic models as soon as possible... Many jobs are uninspiring drudgery and are not worth saving. Nobody's life's dream is to be a cashier.

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

the Anna Karenina principle: successful states are all alike, but every failed state fails in its own way

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

the dollar bill is universally venerated across all political and religious divides. though it has no intrinsic value, trust in the dollar is so firm that it is shared even by Islamic fundamentalists, Mexican drug lords, and North Korean tyrants.

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

almost everybody believes in a slightly different variation on the same capitalist theme, and we are all cogs within a single global production line... the same economic theories, the same corporations and banks, and the same currents of capital.

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

just like other great works of fiction, such as Don Quixote, War and Peace, and the Harry Potter books... much of the Bible may be fictional, but it can still bring joy to billions and can still encourage humans to be compassionate, courageous, and creative... billions of people have believed in these stories for thousands of years. Some fake news lasts forever.

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

The mind is not the subject that freely shapes historical actions and biological realities; the mnd is an object this is being shaped by history and biology... the mind is never free of manipulation.

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Romantic comedies are to love as porn is to sex and Rambo is to war. And if you think you can press some delete button and wipe out all trace of Hollywood from your subconscious and your limbic system, you are deluding yourself.

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Homo sapiens is a storytelling animal that thinks in stories rather than in numbers or graphs, and believes that the universe itself wo;rks like a story, replete with heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions, climaxes and happy endings... we want a story that will explain what reality is all about and what my particular role is in the cosmic drama.

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Gandhi's reading of the Vedas caused him to envision independent India as a collection of self-sufficient agrarian communities, each spinning its own khadi cloth, exporting little and importing even less... Yet this Arcadian vision was simply incompatible with the realities of modern economics, and for that reason not much has remained of it save for Gandhi's radiant image on billion of rupee notes.

Yuval Harari21 Lessons for the 21st Century

There is just no such thing as 'Christian economics,' 'Muslim economics,' or 'Hindu economics.' ... When you compare the economic policies of Shiite Iran, Sunni Saudi Arabia, Jewish Israel, Hindu India, and Christian America, you just don't see that much of a difference.