Indian Journal of Educational Technology
Vol. 2 (1), January 2020

128

Book Review

21 Lessons for the 21st Century
By Yuval Noah Harari, 2018, Jonathan Cape,

Penguin Random House, London
ISBN (hardback) 978187330672, ISBN (paperback) 

9781787330870
Radhika Menon

Assistant Professor, Department of Education-Elementary Education,
Mata Sundri College, University of Delhi,

E-mail: radhikamenon@ms.du.ac.in

The rapid changes in technology have 
changed polity, society and the way 
people interact with each other at a 
pace that has confounded even thinkers
of our time. A niggling question exists
whether society is on the path to
further human progress or is it hurtling 
towards destruction? Twenty years 
into the 21st century, social scientists 
to technologists, climate scientists to 
politicians, educationists to activists 
are debating on the shape that is being 
acquired by this century. Specialists are 
finding specialization inadequate for 
comprehending the breadth of
changes, even when their tools of 
analysis become even more important 
in an increasingly complex world. The 
turn to the new millennium has added 
the question: will human beings survive 
as a species after having contributed 
to the extinction of several fellow life 
forms on earth?

The murkiness of the problems has 
added to the anxiety of our times. 
However, quick-fix solutions, barrage of 
suggestions and abundance of
technology driven information have 
also created a noise that has made it 
even more difficult to make sense of 
the world.  Yuval Noah Harari pithily 

announces in the first line of his book, 
21 Lessons for 21st century (pix), the 
primary challenge of our times: ‘In a 
world deluged by irrelevant
information, clarity is power’. He 
acknowledges that most people in the
world do not have the luxury of
thinking on where humanity is headed 
even when they have to bear its
consequences.  And thus assumes the 
role of a teacher by deploying his skills 
as a historian and philosopher to
explain the swift turns of this century. 

The book itself is an outcome of
Harari’s talks, articles and lectures that 
have sought to clarify the human past 
and its future, thoroughly elaborated 
in his two previous works: the Sapiens 
and the Homo Deus. The first book 
Sapiens gave a spectacular view of the 
human past, right from the beginning 
6 billion years ago to its becoming the 
only species left in the human genus 
about 10,000 years ago; and the
revolutions that transformed it as well 
as the violent, sometimes accidental 
turns in history and culture. This
compelling book was followed by 
Homo Deus, an extrapolation of human 
future based on current developments 
in technology. It presents a future 



Indian Journal of Educational Technology
Vol. 2 (1), January 2020

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world where human beings have
conquered nature and cyborgs are 
common and artificial intelligence 
replicate and reproduce itself. He 
also presents the chilling possibility 
of human beings becoming incapable 
of predicting a future for itself, with 
loss of consciousness, imagination 
and other markers of human mind as 
inorganic life begins to dominate it. The 
current book, 21 lessons attempts to fill 
the gap that has been left between the 
human past and extrapolated future, 
to meditate on the contemporary and 
present. 

As in the previous work, 21 Lessons 
also adopts a large canvas and
addresses a world audience. The 
exemplars are international,
geographies vast, societies referred to 
diverse and research taken up from 
a variety of disciplines. According to 
Harari, if human existence was
transformed by cognitive, agricultural, 
scientific revolution in the past, the 
current times are witnessing a
technological revolution where human 
limitations of the body is getting
conquered, human experience is 
getting digitised and artificial
intelligence is getting better. He pitches 
for a thorough critique of the
contemporary and puts under the 
scanner both the challenges and the 
thrilling possibilities offered by the 
combination of info-tech and bio-tech. 
Like many people writing on the
subject of technology and society, 
Harari warns against ignorance that
underlies most digital consumption 
and the threats it pose. 

The 21 lessons are organised under 
five sections: the technological

challenge (consisting of four chapters;
disillusionment, work, liberty and 
equality), the political challenge (five 
chapters; community, civilization, 
nationalism, religion and immigration), 
despair and hope (five chapters;
terrorism, war, humility, God and
secularism), truth (four chapters;
ignorance, justice, post-truth and
Science fiction) and resilience (three 
chapters; education, meaning and 
meditation). The section on
technological challenge presents the 
current upheavals caused by disruptive 
technology and its fraught relationship
with liberalism. In the chapter on ‘work’
there is an elaboration of these
tensions. Take this puzzle: Liberalism 
thrives with economic growth, but that 
in turn depends on better and better 
artificial intelligence. What does jobless 
growth then mean? What happens to
the people made irrelevant? Could 
technology be ethical in open markets, 
and are humans ethical enough for 
technology form interesting
deliberation.  Nothing is final however 
the urgency is communicated on
thinking about post work scenarios to 
give human life new meanings.  

There are long deliberations on future 
of liberal values, in a world where data 
bases are controlled by corporations 
and governments.  Accordingly,
frightening scenarios of digital
dictatorships and irrelevant humans 
may be a near possibility and liberty, 
equality and human rights may not 
mean the same in a cyborg world. 
There is also the unsettling indication 
that familiar social political
frameworks of human cooperation 
such as nation, religion, culture and 



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restricted civilizational views may not 
offer enough answers to the menace 
of the problems of the 21st century.  
Global ecological disaster may not stop 
at national boundaries, digital
communities may demand far more 
from the human brain than its
evolutionary equipment. Yet, there is 
no space for smugness in the writing: 
technology is neither a panacea for all 
ills, nor is a Luddite slamming down of 
artificial intelligence demanded. The 
examples are riveting and the reader is 
persuaded to recognize the
monumental changes taking place and 
the sheer ignorance through which 
most people walk into its
consequences. 

The human predicaments of
contemporary times are also deeply 
personal and significantly political. 
Achievements, ethics and personal
values are seen by most people from 
own cultural reference point, which 
has often led to significant animosity 
towards other groups and destructive 
wars. Harari tears into ‘self-important 
narratives’ (p 181)  in the chapter on 
‘Humility’, by placing claims within 
thousands of years of world history 
and animal studies to point  ethics 
as an evolutionary development and 
ridiculousness of contending claims 
of superiority  by one community over 
another. 

In a bewildering world is there anything 
that could anchor people to reality?
Harari refers to humility as a key
requirement in order to wade through 
ignorance, secular ideals and a few 
thumb rules for seeking out truth in an 
era of post truth. One of the important 
discussions in the book is on the future 

of education. As technological
disruption increases, it is pointed out
that there is as yet no scaleable model
for preparing people for the
disruptions that awaits them and their 
mental systems.  Most learning from 
today may become irrelevant and the 
skills for thriving in 2050 and beyond, 
is unpredictable as bodies, brains and
minds get engineered. The stress of 
fluidity and responding to change 
requires mental stamina and this could 
be the life resource of the future. He 
opines that education also will have to 
eventually prepare humans to decide if 
they will retain control over themselves 
or if they surrender themselves to acts
of algorithms. In this light, Harari 
opines that the grand narratives may 
have to come back to the classroom, if 
students have to make sense of
mountains of information that are at 
their disposal. He leaves us with his 
own experiences of seeing through 
fiction, and his personal experience of 
corporal reality. 

Harari has emerged as a popular 
thought provoking public intellectual 
of the current times. For a historian 
who demonstrated an absolute
command on the narrative with Sapiens,
he wanders in the current book as 
themes overlap and present defies 
structure. It may even be asked, are big 
challenges of global ecological crisis, 
social-political upheavals even possible 
to be addressed with experiencing the 
bodily reality of breath. Or is it another 
fiction. There could even be quibbles 
with his style of arguments. At times it 
may even sound preposterous to some 
to find examples of Disney’s Lion King 
sharing space with national and human 



Indian Journal of Educational Technology
Vol. 2 (1), January 2020

131

histories-seen in the chapter on
‘Meaning’. But, the message is clear:
Sapiens are going through a century 
that will require them to constantly 
reinvent themselves as bewildering 
changes envelop them in all possible 
ways. Nothing is pre-destined and 

there could still be a liberal hope from 
society, even as liberalism faces the 
biggest challenge since its emergence 
as a political system. The book is a 
tribute for a level global playing field in 
a technologically disruptive world.