Yuval Noah Harari: Everything Collapses

He grew up in a secular Jewish family of eastern European origin in the Haifa area and there are a few things he recognises about himself that have informed his world view, or at least his desire to question other people’s view of the world. The first is being gay.

“You don’t take the accepted view for granted just because everybody believes it. It really affects the way that I view everything. Nothing should be taken for granted even if everybody believes it. It forces you to look at society a bit from the side.”

Another influence was the collapse of the Berlin Wall when he was a teenager in 1989.

“It means I don’t take capitalism and neo-liberalism for granted. I teach all these 20-year-old students and they were born into a capitalist world. It’s the only system. There’s no alternative and nobody can even imagine that there could be. But I remember the time when these things were really hotly contested. And also the way that you can live in a certain type of world and be sure that this will go on for ages and ages and suddenly everything collapses.” ...

Yuval Noah Harari, The Observer.

If only...