Yuval Noah Harari on 'The Bright Side of Nationalism', at the Central European University

good afternoon I'm Michael Ignatieff rector and president of Central European University I want to bid welcome to faculty staff students from our wonderful Cu community I want to say a warm welcome to distinguished diplomats from the diplomatic community I see below I want to welcome particularly warmly our colleagues and friends from academic and scientific institutions across Budapest I want to welcome members of the public who are always welcome at our events I want to welcome you've all her Ahri's team his husband his family all the people who've worked with us to make this wonderful event possible I want to thank a truly fabulous events team over there I want to thank King Gopal everybody in the events team at CU for making this possible here's what we want to do we want to have a lecture and then a question period the question period is a little difficult to do because of the size of this wonderful crowd it's fabulous we've got so many people but justice will not be done many hands will rise and few will be chosen all I can say is that this distance I can't say see you well enough to play favorites but what I will do is start at the back and work forward and I hope we will have time for good sharp questions let me remind you of something you know well which is that a question is a short interrogative statement followed emphasis on short followed by a question mark and there's one per customer that's how it works here okay now let me get down without further ado to introduce a person who barely needs introduction because he has become a global phenomenon with books that are known in this room sapiens a brief history of mankind homo Deus a brief history of tomorrow and the most late latest version 21 lessons for the 21st century books that have been translated in many languages including Hungarian this is a phenomenon in itself a success that I think speaks well of the hunger of the general public for a public intellectual who treats you with respect and exposes you to difficult ideas and puts a emphasis throughout on the crucial importance this is important for a university to understand human experience in deep time that is to understand how brief our our period on the planet is and how long the human experience has been on the planet and how crucial it is to understand the human experience on the planet through the whole recorded period of our human experience this seems to me an important addition to our understanding of what it is to be a human and I think it's one reason why you go no hurries work has had such an extraordinary impact around the world he was born in Haifa Israel in 1976 I want to emphasize in an academic setting in a university setting that he received his PhD from the University of Oxford in the master discipline of all namely history my discipline and he is currently and still a lecturer at the Department of History at one of the world's great universities the Hebrew University of Jerusalem I won't put words into you've all her Ahri's mouth he should speak for himself but I would just like to say this is a very busy man who could have accepted many invitations and the fact that he accepted an invitation to this university speaks for itself I want to welcome know her so hello everyone and thank you for welcoming welcomed me here I would have to talk to you today about nationalism in the 21st century and the Central European University in Budapest is a perfect place to talk about this subject since unfortunately this campus is now among the victims or might be among the victims of what seems to be a growing nationalist wave sweeping Europe I also have a personal connection to this part of the world two of my grandparents came from the austro-hungarian Empire and almost their entire family was murdered during the last nationalist tsunami that swept over this area seventy-five years ago but in this talk and assuming that my audience is likely to be already worried of nationalism I want to caution us not to go to the other extreme of viewing all forms of nationalism as inherently evil I want to focus today on the bright side of nationalism on its immense contribution to humanity and on its continuing importance in the 21st century so let's begin by surveying the history of nationalism beginning with deep time today's nation-states are certainly not an eternal part of human biology or human psychology they are a very very very recent development in human evolution true humans are social animals with group loyalty imprinted in our genes but for millions of years humans lived in small intimate communities and not in large nation-states homo erectus Neanderthals and even archaic Homo sapiens lived in bands which numbered at most a hundred or 200 individuals only about 70,000 years ago which is a very short time in evolutionary terms Homo sapiens learned to use culture as a basis for large-scale cooperation which is the key to our success as a species we control this planet and not the Neanderthals of the chimpanzees or the elephants because we are the only mammals that can cooperate in very large numbers and do so flexibly changing the way that we cooperate over time if you put 10,000 chimpanzees in a football stadium or in a market or in university what you'll get is complete cows if you put 10,000 Homo sapiens there then provided they share a culture you will get very orderly networks of cooperation but creating such mass networks of cooperation was a slow and gradual affair when small bands merged into the first sapiens tribes in East Africa about 70,000 years ago these tribes numbered just hundreds of people perhaps a few thousand people until the Agricultural Revolution of 10,000 years ago we don't know of any larger human groups now these ancient tribes that lived tens of thousands of years ago were very very different from other nations nationalists sometime imagined that nations of like tribes but they are not the ancient tribes had no system of administration taxation or welfare they didn't have standing armies or police most importantly the ancient tribes were relatively intimate communities of friends and relatives and not imagined communities of strangers a tribe of say 3000 people was divided into a number of bands that cooperated sporadically from time to time they would hunt together or celebrate a festival together or join forces to fight against a column a common enemy if you lived in such a tribe perhaps ten percent of the population were your immediate friends and relatives they were your sisters your cousin's your nephews your best bodies and even the other 90% were connected to you by very short chains of acquaintances one person was perhaps your cousin's best friend another person was the brother of your nephew's wife a third person was somebody you had a one-night stand with in a festival five years ago there are very few complete strangers in the tribe this stands in sharp contrast to a modern nation well more than 99% of the population is comprised of complete strangers for example my home country of Israel which today celebrates its national holiday it's Independence Day is a very small nation a small country it has just eight million citizens but still that's a lot I don't know even 1% of these 8 million people I don't know 80,000 people actually I don't even know 8,000 people 99.99 percent of the people who share my Israeli citizenship are complete strangers to me I may imagine them as my brothers and friends but this is just imagination I never met most Israelis and I am very unlikely to ever meet most Israelis at least in person maybe I passed them by in the train station but I never really met them they are not my cousin's best friend they are not my nephew's wife and they are not my ex one night stand' the same goes for the territory an ancient hunter-gatherer tribe rolled a territory of perhaps a few hundred square kilometers if you lived in such a tribe you knew intimately every spring every Rock every tree in contrast Israel has a territory of about 20,000 square kilometres Hungary has a territory of 93 thousand square kilometers Russia has 17 million square kilometers now most Russians have never visited most of Russia even small Israel is mostly unfamiliar territory to most Israelis if you drop me at a random place in the Negev desert or in the Galilee Mountains or even in suburban tel aviv i would have no idea where i am i don't know the territory of my nation so people often equate modern nationalism with ancient tribalism but this is a complete mistake the amazing thing about modern nations is that they found ways to make people care about strangers they never met and to care about places they never visited and this was mostly beyond the power of the ancient tribes this why in ancient times when tribes grew bigger and bigger eventually the percentage of strangers was too high and the tribe split Australia for example was colonized about 40 50 thousand years ago perhaps by one tribe perhaps by a fruit a few tribes but when Europeans got there in the 18th century they didn't encounter a single Australian nation or a handful of Australian nations they encountered hundreds of different and sometimes hostile tribes because they split overtime so one important lesson to remember is that nations aren't tribes and nationalism isn't tribalism some nationalists because they want to make nationalism seem very ancient and very natural they insist on blurring the difference between nations and tribes but this is a mistake and even even if we accept the equation of nations with tribes it doesn't make nationalism an eternal and natural part of human biology because it's knotted earlier even tribes are at most about 70 thousand years old whereas humans are more than 2 million years old so try even tribalism not to mention nationalism is a late comer in human evolution some nationalists go on to claim that the national sentiment is as ancient and natural as the mother-child bond it's very common to speak about the nation as a mother like in the phrase Mother Russia but this is even more far-fetched this is fantasy the bond with entities like Mother Russia is perhaps let's be very generous seventy thousand years old in contrast the mother-child bond in mammals is at least 70 million years old it long predates the emergence of the first humans so to summarize what we've seen so far for millions of years humans lived in small bands numbering dozens of people then for tens of thousands of years humans lived in tribes numbering thousands of people at most only after that we color evolution and after the invention of writing and money about five thousand years ago do we begin to see the emergence of large kingdoms and empires and nations transforming different tribes into a single nation was never simple not in ancient times and not today because the main problem is not it earlier is that whereas ancient tribes were intimate communities of people who actually know one another nations are communities of strangers now we need to be careful to distinguish strangers from foreigners a foreigner is somebody who speaks a different language looks different from me has a different culture from me in contrast a stranger may speak my language may look like me may share my culture but he or she is still a stranger because I never met them and I don't know them personally large nations appeared when developments like agriculture like writing like better communication enabled the same culture to be shared by many strangers by millions of strangers this sometimes happened violently and sometimes voluntarily but in any case it was not enough for millions of strangers to share a culture in order to create a nation since nobody can have intimate relations with millions of people in order to transform a culture into a nation it was always necessary to somehow make people bond with strangers care about strangers and this is the great project of nationalism to make humans bond with strangers now this great project involves two tasks one task easy the other task very very difficult the easy part of nationalism is to make people prefer people like me over foreigners that's easy because humans have been doing that for millions of years xenophobia is to a large extent unfortunately in our DNA if I encounter two people who may have never met before I don't know them personally so there are both strangers in this sense but one person looks like me and speaks my language and shares my culture whereas the other looks different and speaks a foreign language then I will almost always prefer the stranger who looks like me over the foreigner that's the easy part of nationalism but the hull a much more important part of nationalism nationalism is not about hating foreigners because nationalism has a second and far more important and far more difficult component and that component is to sometimes prefer strangers over my friends and relatives for example suppose I am a government official maybe in the interior ministry and there is a job opening and I am interviewing people to feel that you I decide who gets the job I need to decide between two applicants one applicant is a brilliant woman whom I have never met before the other applicant is a rather mediocre person but she happens to be my cousin now what should I do difficult question millions of years of evolution are screaming inside my brain don't be stupid give the job to your cousin that's obvious but nationalism tells me no no no no no you should give the job to the brilliant stranger because a good Patriot places national interests ahead of family connections and the nation needs the best civil servants given the job to your cousin would be corruption and a betrayal of the nation another example suppose two children are sick one child is an unknown stranger living in a distant town I've never visited in my life the other child is my own daughter now I earn about say 2,000 euros a month and in emergencies I can spend maybe 1,000 euros on health care on medical services again what should I do evolution tells me well that's a no-brainer it's obvious take the 1,000 euro and spend them on your daughter take her to the best private clinic and give her the best treatment available but nationalism says no a good patriot of course takes care of his or her family but all citizens are part of your family so spend only 500 euros on your own daughter and pay the other 500 euros in taxes which the government will use to finance public health care services to less fortunate children on in distant part of the country now again evolution will tell me no way cheat the government evade somehow paying all your taxes and nationalism will reply and say that again this is corruption or in extreme cases this could be even treason over thousands of years nationalism as well as other ideologies and religion has managed to somehow to some extent weaken our natural tendencies towards nepotism and tax evasion and convinced us that at least in some cases we should put the interest of strangers who are from our nation before the interests of friends and family nationalism does made us care about strangers and this has been one of the most positive developments in human history it's a dangerous mistake to imagine that without nationalism we would all be living in some kind of liberal paradise much more likely we would be living in tribal chaos in which nobody cares about anyone except his or her immediate friends and family and in which it is impossible to build large-scale systems of health care education and security even democracy can rarely function without at least some level of nationalism what people often don't understand about democratic elections is that democratic elections are a system to resolve disagreements between people who already agree on the basics people who really care about one another and share some core values despite their disagreements elections work well only in situations when I think that my political rivals are wrong and perhaps even stupid but I don't hate them and they don't hate me when people hate one another and when society is divided into hostile tribes then democracy is untenable because in such a situation people feel that all means are legitimate to win the election because if we lose our tribe is in danger whoever wins the election takes care only of their own tribe and whoever loses the election is unwilling to accept the verdict because what do I care about people who don't care about me when a state lacks strong national feelings it can function as a dictatorship all right or it might descend into civil war but it will find it increasingly difficult to function as a democracy this is situation today in countries like Congo or Afghanistan or South Sudan it is no coincidence that democracies first evolved in countries like Britain and Denmark which already prior to that had a fairly strong national sentiment even today democracies find it hard to survive without the help of nationalism contrary to a common opinion there is a strong and positive connection between nationalism and democracy and contrary to another common opinion the crisis that many democracies today find themselves in is the result less of an upsurge of nationalism it's actually the result of the weakening of national ties when nationalism is too strong it usually manifests itself like the the syndrome on the surface it's very obvious when nationalism is strong what you see is a lot of vicious conflicts between nations as happened in Europe a century ago but today there are few such conflicts between nations for example in Europe most conflicts are within nations which indicates that nationalism of the right kind of nationalism is actually quite weak there is no lack of xenophobia in the world hating strangers hating foreigners that's it for sure but nationalism is not about hating foreigners nationalism is about loving your compatriots and currently there is a global shortage of such love and there is a shortage of such love also in Europe in countries like Iraq and Syria and Yemen internal hatreds and weak national sentiments have led to the complete disintegration of the state and to murderous civil wars in countries like United States weakening national sentiments have led to growing rifts within society and to a winner-takes-all mentality the hatred within American society today has reached such a level that many Americans hate their fellow citizens far more than they hate or fear the Chinese or the Russians or the Mexicans many leaders today who present themselves as nationalists are in fact the exact opposite instead of strengthening national unity they intentionally widen the rifts within society by using inflammatory language and divisive politics and by depicting anybody who opposes them not as a legitimate rival but rather as a dangerous traitor this is true of the President of the United States it's true in my country in Israel and it's true in many other countries today around the world when these kinds of leaders see a wound in the national body they don't put a healing medicine on it rather they take their finger and start poking inside the wound to try deliberately to enlarge it and reopen it so we see that nationalism is important but it's also fragile realizing both the importance and the fragility of nationalism is very relevant to many debates today especially perhaps the raging debate about immigration here in Hungary and Europe and many other parts of the world as well realizing that nationalism is important but fragile questions some of the arguments on both sides of this debate on the one hand people who oppose immigration often imagined the nation as some kind of eternal entity that existed from time immemorial and that should not be allowed to be polluted by foreigners or foreign influences but this is pure fantasy all nations existing today are relatively recent creations they will know whom variants of Austrians or Italians or Israelis 5000 years ago most present-day European nations are perhaps a thousand years old and some are much much younger all of them have been created by uniting people who previously were belonging to hostile and different tribes and ethnic groups modern Germans for example were created from the merger of Saxons and Prussians and Swabians and Bavarians who not long ago wasted very little of Omaha one another during the Thirty Years War in this in 17th century Protestant Prussians and Catholic Bavarians treated each other with murderous hostility even worse than what you see today say between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq Otto von Bismarck the great unifier of Germany allegedly remarked after reading darvin's on the Origin of Species that the Bavarian is the missing link between the Austrian and the human and of course by human he meant portion moreover though modern nation is the product of internal unification alone no matter in which country you live you would be living a very very pool life if you limited yourself only to the products and inventions and ideas of your own nation thus would you like to eat all your life only Hungarian food never tasting these foreign dishes like sushi or curry and what is Hungarian food anyway paprika for example is certainly not Hungarian our part in sin Stefan and Jana Sunni Adi never ever spiced their food with paprika because paprika originated in Mexico it was the Indians in Mexico who domesticated it and was brought to Europe only by this bag by the Spaniards only the 16th century and became a central part of Hungarian cuisine just two three hundred years ago so should patriotic Hungarians stop using paprika because this is a foreign intrusion into the authentic Hungarian cuisine similarly should Hungarians stop playing football just because it was invented by the English should they stop reading all foreign literature from Tolstoy to Harry Potter and read only pure Hungarian text if they do that they will have to give up the Bible also so it was written by these Middle Eastern people and brought here by immigrants from the Middle East for that's really ridiculous on the other hand the importance and fragility of nationalism also raises questions about the wisdom of trying to absorb too many immigrants too quickly people who favor immigration often discount the very real problems that mass immigration poses to the national unity of countries or else they discount the dangers of undermining the national sentiment thus they often fail to appreciate the deep historical connection between nationalism and democracy and the fact that in the absence of nationalism democracy is constantly in danger of descending into tribalism so perhaps the most important thing to say about the immigration debate in Europe is that both sides have legitimate views those who favor immigration are wrong to depict their rivals as immoral racists while those who oppose immigration are wrong to depict all the rivals as irrational traitors this is not a battle between good and evil it is an argument between two legitimate views that can and should be decided through the normal democratic procedures it would be wrong I think of any government to force mass immigration on an unwilling population immigration is a long-term process a difficult process and to succeed you need the support of the local population on the other hand it would be a clue equally wrong to destroy the democratic system in order to allegedly protect the purity of the country from immigrants it is very alarming that in several European countries and also in other places around the world autocratic leaders are inflaming excessive fears of immigration in order to undermine the foundations of democracy now I've spent quite a long time on the bright side of nationalism but of course it would be wrong to completely ignore the dark side when nationalism goes to extreme it can certainly lead to war and to genocide and it can foster dictatorial and even fascist tendencies and perhaps it would be good to explain in a few words what fascism is and how it is different from nationalism because too many people confuse the two and think that any nationalist is a fascist or any sign of nationalism is a sign of fascism so in brief nationalism what nationalism tells me is that my nation is unique and I have special obligations towards my nation in contrast fascism tells me that my nation is supreme and that I have exclusive obligations towards it according to fascism my nation is the only important thing in the world and I shouldn't care about anyone or anything except mine if I need to sacrifice my family for the nation I should sacrifice my family if I need to kill millions of people for the nation I should kill millions of people if I need to betray truth and betray beauty for the nation I should have no hesitancy about doing that to for example how does a fascist evaluate art how does a fascist decide whether a movie is a good movie it's very simple there is just one yardstick if the movie serves the interest of the nation it's a good movie if the movie doesn't serve the interest of the nation it's a bad movie similarly how does the fascists decide what to teach kids in history lessons in school again there is only one yardstick not a truth but the interests of the nation you should teach kids whatever serves the interest of the nation no matter what the truth is the horrors of the Second World War and the holocaust remind us of the terrible consequences of this way of thinking but today fascism and other extreme forms of nationalism are even more dangerous than what they were in the 1930s because today they might lead not just to war in genocide but might also prevent humanity from dealing with three existential threats that can only be solved through global cooperation these threats are nuclear war climate change and technological disruption these three threats threaten the survival and prosperity of all the nations and they cannot be dealt with by any single nation by itself they cannot be dealt with just by waving flags and building walls on the border you cannot build a wall against nuclear winter you cannot build a wall against worming and no nation can regulate artificial intelligence and bioengineering by itself because no government controls all the scientists and engineers in the world consider for example conducting genetic engineering experiments on humans every country will say we don't want to conduct such experiments we are the good guys but we cannot trust our rivals not to do it so we must do it before them we cannot allow ourselves to remain behind similarly consider developing autonomous weapon systems killer robots again every country will say this is a very dangerous technology and it should be regulated carefully but we don't trust our rivals to regulate it so we must develop it first if we allow such an AI arms race or a genetic arms race to develop it doesn't matter who wins the arms race the loser will be humanity and the only thing that can prevent such destructive arms races is not building walls between countries but rather building trust between countries which is not impossible if today the Germans promised the French trust us we aren't building killer robots in some secret laboratory under the Alps the French are likely to trust the Germans despite the terrible history of these two countries we need to build this kind of trust globally for the survival of humanity we need to reach a point when Americans and Chinese can trust one another like the French and the Germans similarly we need to build a global safety net to protect all humans against the coming economic shocks that the AI revolution will unleash automation will create immense new wealth in high-tech hubs like Silicon in eastern China while at the same time the worst effects will be felt in developing countries whose economies depend on cheap manual labor there will be many more jobs for software engineers in San Francisco in Shanghai but there will be few jobs for factory workers and truck drivers in Mexico and in Bangladesh unless we find solutions on a global level to the disruptions caused by AI entire countries could collapse and the resulting cows and violence and waves of immigration will destabilize the entire world so in order to survive and flourish in the 21st century humankind needs better global cooperation and nationalism need not prove an impossible barrier for such cooperation I know that some politicians like the u.s. president argue that there is an inherent contradiction between nationalism and globalism and that we should reject globalism and choose nationalism but this is a mistake not because you need to choose globalism but rather because there is no contradiction between nationalism and globalism for nationalism isn't about hating foreigners nationalism is about loving your compatriots and taking care of your compatriots and in the 21st century the only way to guarantee the safety and prosperity of your compatriots is by cooperating with foreigners so good nationalists should now be globalists globalism doesn't mean abandoning all national loyalties and traditions and it certainly doesn't mean opening the border to unlimited immigration I know that there is a conspiracy theory going around the the lists want to abolish all restrictions on immigration and flood Europe with tens of millions of foreigners but this is complete nonsense I happen to know quite a few globalists and none of them bonds that global is in fact means to far more modest and far more reasonable things first globalism means a commitment to some global rules these rules don't deny the uniqueness of each nation and the loyalty people should order a nation rather the global rules just regulate the relations between nations and a good model to think about it is the world football Cup the World Cup is a competition between nations and people often show fierce loyalty to their national team but at the same time the World Cup is also an amazing display of global harmony France cannot play football against Croatia unless the French and the Croatians first agree on the same rules for the game a thousand years ago it would have been absolutely impossible to bring French and Croatians and Japanese Argentinians to play games together in Russia even if you could somehow get them there they could never agree on the rules but today we can do it and that's globalism in action if you like the world football Cup then you are a globalist the second principle of globalism is that sometimes it is necessary to prefer global interests over national interests not always but sometimes for example again in the world football Cup all national teams agree not to use forbidden drugs to enhance the performance of their athletes even if you can't win the the cup by dragging your football players you shouldn't do it because if you do it other nations other teams will soon copy your example and the world football Cup will become a competition between biochemists and the sport will be ruined as in football so also in economics we should balance global and national interests even in a globalized world the vast majority of the taxes you pay will still go to provide health care and education to people in your nation but sometimes nations will agree to slow down their economic growth and the technological development in order to prevent catastrophic climate change and to prevent the spread of dangerous technologies now it's true that in the past humans never managed to create effective global cooperation but humans can learn new tricks nations to where once a very new trick when five thousand years ago some tribes united to form the first nations there are probably a lot of conservative people who said this is impossible undesirable and unnatural to create a nation we want to stay in tribes on the long way from small hunter-gatherer bands to global cooperation nationalism is much much closer to the global Pole in the beginning and for millions of years we humans could cooperate effectively only with perhaps 80 friends and relatives thanks to nationalism now people can cooperate with 80 million or even 800 million strangers the distance left until we can cooperate with eight billion strangers is comparatively small now this isn't a call for the establishment of a global government which is a dangerous and realistic vision rather I think our goal should be global harmony without uniformity like an orchestra in which every instrument is different but they all play in harmony if all instruments are the same there is uniformity it's lifeless if each instrument is doing its own thing in complete disregard of the others what you get is terrible noise we need to find a balanced middle path so to conclude my main message one of the main messages is that we don't need to choose between nationalism and globalism because there is no contradiction between them without self-confident nations humankind is more likely to split into warring tribes than to establish global cooperation on the other hand without global cooperation no nation can deal with the challenges of the 21st century what does all this mean in practice it means that we need to give more weight to global problems and global interests within the existing framework of nation-states when the next elections come along and politicians are imploring you to vote for them you need to ask these politicians for questions if you're elected what actions will you take to lessen the risks of nuclear war what actions will you take to lessen the risks of climate change what actions will you take to regulate disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence and bioengineering and finally how do you see the world of 2050 what is your worst-case scenario and what is your vision for the best-case scenario if some politicians don't understand these questions or if they constantly talk about the past without being able formulate a meaningful vision for the future don't vote for these politicians thank you [Applause] thank you I want to forego the temptation to spend the next half an hour talking back and forth that would be wrong so what I want to do is start taking questions from the back and work forward we have to engage in the behavior that you've all has praised which is we're not chimpanzees in a room work Homo sapiens and so we can coordinate and make sacrifices for mutual benefit the sacrifice I'm asking of you is keep it short so I want to go to the the back here I see a question there let's take first question one question per customer keep it short yeah thank you or rigid from University of Graz Austria I want to ask you this question which you have actually tackled in different articles I read in economists about the idea of post fact Society you may be saying whatever with great arguments with lots of facts but in the end I will always find after five or six clicks something in the internet that is based on completely fabricated information but I will believe that I don't care what you say because I will always look for and will find that reinforced my belief system so how can we break this deadlock and as I can see what you are trying to reclaim nationalism and do that thank you that's not a new problem it was always a problem fake news and all that is not you if you lived in smells in some small medieval village there is no facebook there is no Twitter there is no all these technological gadgets and still the place is full of fake news somebody comes along and tells you well you know this old woman who lives by the forest I just saw her flying on a broomstick and within an hour you would have and more of people with pitchforks and whatever ready to burn the poor move the poor woman so fake news and believing these things is not a new problem it changes its format and the new technologies we have today also make it easier to spread the truth and not only to spread fake news I think proud of still we have of course to struggle against it part of the responsibility is our own to know our own weaknesses and not to fall prey to those who try to exploit our weaknesses and part of the solution is the responsibility of the high tech giants and in some cases the government's to protect people against these kinds of exploitation what what is new today in the world is that we have these giant machines built in two places basically in California and in eastern China which encompass billions of people and which abuse the attention of people on a massive scale never seen before basically hacking human beings hacking Homo sapiens this animal learning its internal weaknesses and then exploiting these weaknesses to hijack your attention and abuse it unfortunately the easiest way to hijack people's attention to grab people people's attention is by pressing the hate button the fear button that always grabs your attention and unfortunately this is the way we are built and we need to have good understanding collectively and individually of our weaknesses as human beings and again do these two things on the individual level get to know yourself and beware of your weaknesses becoming weapons in the hands of these external forces and on the level of society we need to make sure that technology is not downgrading humans and you the weaknesses against them but just the opposite to build technological tools that protect humans against the weaknesses and even upgrade humans can I just follow up on that question you're a university teacher yeah every every year you do a semester teaching at Hebrew University in Jerusalem can universities be part of the solution or how or have we become part of the problem relating to that question now I think mostly we are still part of the solution and at least within universities you have usually a much more reasoned and deep debate about these issues unfortunately the influence of the universities or the general public is very limited so you know you have a class here of say 20 people and you discuss physics or astronomy or whatever and then you have I just heard this statistic during the last year the YouTube algorithm has recommended a couple of billion times I don't remember the exact number it but it was in the billions a couple of billion times Flat Earth YouTube videos it recommended it's not people who went online to YouTube and searched Flat Earth theory or is the world flat or no people watching all kinds of things and you know you finish watching the YouTube and immediately there pops up some suggestions what to watch next so YouTube recommended billions of time to people to watch Flat Earth theory and what do you do when you teach a class in physics or astronomy 220 doctorate students against that they will go afterwards to work for Google and will program the algorithms that recommend Flat Earth theory I hope not okay boy how do we do this there's there's one up at the back there I'm trying to come down forward yeah up there and then we're gonna come down prepare a question in the middle row and then we're coming we're coming this way yeah thank you hello my name is Ryan I'm a student here at the Central European University I just want to say I appreciate you being here I appreciate your optimism about the future of nationalism and I appreciate the long stretch of 70,000 years you've given nationalism in its existence but maybe we can probably agree that over the course of 70,000 years nationalism has taken many different forms mhm there's argument I really like from Charles Tilly who says that modern nation-state and modern nationalism formed in the last five to six hundred years around the fifth sixteenth century and that form of nationalism comes from the introduction of militaria we can't have mercenaries anymore we need our people to love one another enough that they're willing to go kill other people and there's a lot of arguments that this is still the current form that nationalism takes that's certainly the current form that nationalism in our favorite populist radical right leaders can often take so while I appreciate your optimism I don't know if I can see that changing do you see that changing through just being able to ask my politicians for questions and participating in the democratic process what's going to have to change to see the new form of nationalism well first I want to emphasize that it's again it's not just armies and military it's also things like health care system and like a welfare system and you know it's a tricky subject because you do see that people are willing to pay taxes for a health care system when it benefits mostly people like them but they become increasingly unwilling to pay these taxes and to support this system if it benefits people who don't look like us if it benefits others but at least we need to look at the half full glass that at least they are willing to make sacrifices for complete strangers that they don't really know and that they never met and we would not have these systems of health care and welfare and education without the contribution of national sentiments and what we need to do is expand that not go into the kind of mindset that nationalism is is evil inherently and we need to completely eliminate it but we need to find ways to expand the the circle of human empathy now I don't know if we can I I would say I'm cautiously optimistic but not very much so I come from Israel I know how ugly nationalism can be so I've no illusion and my in my background before I talked about Neanderthals and cyborgs my main speciality was medieval military history so a military story and still at heart and I know how terrible humans can be to one another and what terrible things the love of some people can cause you to do to other people but we did manage to make some progress I think in the last few decades in the last few generations and it would be more constructive to try and embrace the good sides of nationalism then to have this blanket rejection that any sign of patriotism or love of country or love of your compatriots we immediately all fascism is coming now we need to beware of these simplistic binary choices and to have a more complex view of the world that we can reject fascism while still embracing the more benign parts or more benign manifestations of nationalism okay in the middle down three Mauro's yeah I am Raziel opinion student from the Department of History here at CU a quick and accurate my question is a what's their role in this relation that you're making me to nationalism a globalism of concept that you talk about in your works that is Empire that is also a very heated topic nowadays yeah it's I mean in the Empire everybody if they want it or not but they were agreeing in a lot of rules and a lot of things and they were sharing mm-hmm what's the role in this kind of things especially nowadays when you have like imperialistic nostalgia people asking for reparations for empires and all these kind of things a couple of questions there I'll just try to address the main one that today it is simply impossible whether you like it or not empires good bad it's it's it's off the table because with the kind of weapons that we have today empire building like we saw in the Middle Ages or in ancient times is suicide for humankind so in most empires there are maybe if you exceptional but most empires were established in a very violent and terrible way they did have some good legacies I mean if you try to expunge imperial legacies from the world today you are left with almost nothing just to give one example most people today talk and dream in imperial languages like English which is we are using it now to communicate most people speak the language that was forced at the point of a sword or a bayonet on their ancestors centuries of thousands of years ago and it would be impossible and probably counterproductive to try and resurrect the ancient languages that were spoken in every tiny place before the rise and spread of empires but having said that again the twenty-five century imperialism of the old kind is a recipe for the suicide of humankind because of the enormous destructive powers of the weapons we now have question their sort of thing yeah how much less confidence do you have in Mark Zuckerburg after your recently published interview with him oh that depends on how much confidence I had to begin with on the one hand I should say that on a personal level I found him a very very nice and a very well-meaning person so you know some people you know they have these fantasies that the people in Silicon Valley there are something like Attila the Hun or something bent on global conquest and my impression from him and from the other way that that's not our problem the bigger problem is probably naivety and not evil that people in Silicon Valley most of them are engineers and mathematicians and without insulting them too much their view of human nature and human history tend to be very simplistic and naive this idea that they had in the 1990s and early 2000s at all we just need to connect people together and there will be peace and harmony in freedom it doesn't work like that in history and they are now waking up to this realization I think they're at the point when they say to themselves we've built these immense machines and they are doing things with didn't envision with all these fake news and extremist groups and whatever this my impression is dead they still say to themselves that these are just small glitches and abuses of the system there are some bad actors out there that abuse an inherently good system and we just need a few patches to correct that and they are still not coming to terms with the possibility that there might be some much deeper structural problems with the machines that they have built that they do things like systematically abuse the attention of billions of people and then not because of some bad actor in Moscow or somewhere that that that utilizes the system it's the hard core algorithm and structures of the system that are abusing the attention of billions of people because they are built on very flimsy very shallow philosophical and historical ideas what is the system meant to optimize so they say okay let's optimize time spent on our system and they defend it by saying well the customer is always right people have free will if people really choose to spend all these hours on their Facebook cards or YouTube or whatever people are free they choose what they want and and this is no longer the case the system is so sophisticated that it can hack the human brain and find the weaknesses in the human brain like fear like hatred and utilize it against the human so we need to acknowledge these deep structural problems and make sure that technology doesn't downgrade us and users are weaknesses against us but rather it protects us from our weaknesses and upgrades us then we can have some more gender diversity in there yeah question okay great challenge I see one hand there but I want to make yes let's go yes is that will respond immediately to the gender diversity claim come forward no don't oh is there it's up here yes can I go yeah Thank You Agnes token see you graduate and international action observer so a little bit like to talk about or rather ask you about disruptive technologies and the role of AI and first of all I would like to thank you very much for talking about empathy in your lectures and the importance of empathy and especially scientist role in spreading the message of how important is that for humans and for the Homo sapiens and unfortunately not many humans are practicing empathy or no worries there or kin or willing to learn that and so I was very disturbed about that rightly so until I learned just in a couple of days ago that actually artificial intelligence is learning empathy there you know all existing AI on the planet now is learning empathy so my question is do you see that this kind of learning of AI and their kind of involvement in upgrading humans can eventually lead to protecting the planet from humans and humans from humans by upgrading us thank you yes I mean I don't think that AI is developing empathy itself because it has no mind and no consciousness in all feelings but it can learn how to recognize empathy and it can be trained to encourage empathy in others like the most basic thing it can tell you when you not being empathic maybe not today but in a few years it would be possible in a particular situation for an AI to allow to you that you are now being like very nasty or that you are now lacking in empathy and this is potentially one way in which the technology can help us upgrade humans instead of downgrading them again the technology you know you can use a knife to kill somebody and you can use a knife to cut salad and you can use a knife if you're a doctor to operate on somebody and save his his or her life so the knife doesn't care it's the same with AI if you you can use these tremendously powerful tools to say destroy democratic societies but you can also spread hatred but you can use the same tool to help people develop their empathy in more and more sophisticated ways and I hope that this will be the direction that the engineers and the scientists not only in Silicon Valley but also in Europe and China and other places this will be the direction they take I want to get this gender thing right my questions with Robin oh there's one right there right in the middle yeah hi I'm a student here in environmental science and something I've been struggling to reconcile is that the entire history of Homo sapiens has been one of destruction whether that's setting foot on what is today Australia and extinguishing the megafauna quite quickly or all other human species so how do you think nationalism can help with that when really is the sort of idea that we should be looking at that we're on this one planet as Homo Sapien stuck here together so how do you think the positive sites of nationalism can help with you know these two different perspectives well what is the record in treating other humans is patched I mean there are some good examples and bad examples when it comes to other animals in the environment it's very clear we are ecological serial killers and we don't care about anyone in anything except ourselves and for thousands tens of thousands of years we have been systematically destroying more and more habitats and species and we know which a point when finally we wake up because we are endangering our own survival and unfortunately we are very egoistic as a species it's only when our own survival is at stake that we finally realize hey maybe we should change our behavior now in principle nationalism can be a great help here one of the curious things to see is that especially in the u.s. I I'm less familiar with situation in Europe but it's I find it extremely strange that the nationalist right is also the least environmentally concerned I mean at least in the 19th century like traditional nationalism always celebrated the forests and rivers and wildlife of the country and conservatives should be about conservation oh so how did it happen that the Conservatives are exactly the ones who air pollute the rivers cut down the forests for the weaker and it's these progressive types from the cities who never set foot in a forest that they they are the ones who care about the forests and the animals there so I think it's a quirk of history and that there is a very good case to be made that nationalists should be at the forefront of defending the national homeland the problem is that for them for many of them it's also the case in Israel that you find all these people they talk about the nation and the homeland and the fatherland and whatever and it's all images in their mind the actual homeland the actual hills and forests and rivers and animals they don't care about them at all they are captive in some fantasy in their minds and they don't see and don't care about the reality and I hope that again we can turn that around and make even these fierce nationalists care more about the actual reality of the territory of the nation and not just about the abstract idea of the nation and its territory now let's see what we do next sorry what okay that was good that was good that's good we've got I'm going to come and there's a question there the gentleman with the beard yeah no oh sorry it's because of more word yes thank you and then we'll keep moving forward hi thank you for the lecture and the 304 books my question is since now we are living in an interconnected world what would be the next step after nationalism and nation-states and are we seeing some signs of this next steps which will come after nation-states so the next step I try to address it in in the talk that ideally it should be closer global cooperation with that which doesn't mean the abolition of nation-states nation-states will still be there as a very basic and important framework but they will be able to cooperate far better on issues ranging from economic inequality to climate change and I don't think that I think it's very dangerous to think in terms of let's establish a global government or a global Empire or something like that it's at least for the foreseeable future it's unworkable and it's really unnecessary the ideal as I said should be harmony without uniformity so a lot of diverse nations and groups which are nevertheless able to live in relative harmony and to cooperate around common interests question in the middle here I want to make sure that this gender representation gets a little better here so like is your your next okay a question here yeah hi I'm mark from the American School in Budapest I just want you to talk a little more about how do you in today's world build trust between nations oh yes you talked about trust and I'm just I'm not mm-hmm I think the key issue is to realize the interdependence and the common dangers that all nations face and there is nothing like a common danger or a sort of common enemy if you like in order to build trust between different people between different countries so something like climate change it's an extra great threat to humanity but there is this silver lining that hopefully realizing that ecologically there is no such thing as independent countries we all depend on one another ecologically we can declare independence how many times you want to mean today is Independence Day for Israel I think we also need to help to set an interdependence Day in addition to Independence Day to realize that at least in some fields and in climate is maybe the most obvious you aren't independent whether you like it or not you're interdependent you can have the best ecological policies in the world and you will still could suffer tremendously from the bad policies of governments on the other side of the planet so raising awareness of these common problems I think is the best one of the best ways to foster greater trust another way is to talk through difficult history if the point you made earlier between France and Germany the trust that has been built between those countries has been the work of 80 years of leadership high school exchanges historians debating the constant going over the occur seed ground of their mutual hatred until people reached across the chasm of it's a lot of hard work but you use this example of France and Germany I thought it was also just now marking the anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe and just to remember where Europe was 75 years ago and where it is today it's it's really amazing question here thank you hi my name is vera ranky I'm from Australia of the many many many tribes I first saw first of all hot Samia on your national holiday and on the Independence Day as well I think it's a brilliant idea brilliant idea it's not nationally oh we heard it from some in the name of the Korean professor who whoever invented it brilliant and let me I want to be a little cheeky you suggested that question one of the questions for politicians which I totally I I appreciate it very much particularly some Australian elections currently coming up what how do you see as a historian not as a politician 2050 mmm well to try and make a very long story short it can be paradise and can be hell and everything in between depending on depending on the choices that we make today and in the coming few decades we could live in the most unequal societies that ever existed with immense economic and even biological gaps between the rich and the poor if we don't divide the enormous benefits of AI and biotechnology even-handedly between different classes and different countries we could live in the most totalitarian regimes that ever existed that George always done 84 and Hitler and Stalin would be nothing compared to what the combination of AI and biotechnology can create just think about say everybody needs to wear a biometric bracelet 20 four hours a day that monitors not only where you go and who you mint but how you feel like you you see a picture of kim jonghwan on the wall and the biometric bracelet picks up the signs of anger like increased Hublot pressure and activity in the amygdala and you're in trouble and that's and and and that's a completely realistic scenario we there is now the technology to do that and on the other hand the exactly the same technologies if the enormous benefits are divided more equally and if AI is used in biotechnology not to create these extreme totalitarian regimes but to say provide the best healthcare in history for billions of people who today receive almost no health care with the same devices the same biometric bracelets connected to some AI can recognize the first signs not of anger towards the deal leader but the first signs of Alzheimer's or the first sign of cancer when it's still very easy and cheap to treat it then we can create the best health care system in history so there is a very wide range of options and it depends on the decisions that we are taking now and will take in the next decade or two and to make the right choices we first of all need to focus on these questions as long-term historian that looks at the long term path the long term future my main concern about things like the today that the European elections so everybody's talking about brexit everybody is talking about immigration my main concern is forget what you think about brexit and about immigration this is not these are not the main problems of humankind one way or the other whichever way perhaps it will go humankind will survive and even immigration is not an existential threat not to Europe no to humankind not to Hungary but these things climate change a I bath nology they are an existential threat to the survival of humanity either the physical survival of humanity or to the survival of the value of humanity and we don't have a lot of time it's just 10 20 30 years so we need to focus all our attention on that now a question here thank you very much my name is Steven Geiger I happened to be an American Israeli Hungarian all three not all at the same time this has been a very erudite expression of your of your belief and I think you totally on the target just so happens I have a book with me called be a mensch if we teach all our children to be mentions to be good human beings in all the countries of the world whether it's in Hungary or in Israel or in the Gaza Strip or in Spain or everywhere or in Florida where Trump lives or in felt search where our bond lives just to teach people to be good human beings then I think all these problems would be solved in some way or another thank you yes I agree I would just say it's difficult we've got just time for a question in the front row gets our gender balance a bit back to right here last question useful because I'm melody from the gender studies department you gave a very beautiful rhetoric distinction between unique and supreme and special and exclusive thank you and application and that's a very thin line that politicians use and abuse and I'm wondering what is the solution for this because it's a storytelling technique yeah it's a way of getting people amped up and doing what the people in power desire them to do so what is there for us to do how do we counteract these this very thin line between this rhetoric yeah I think the main message the main trick is not to fall into the trap of binary thinking nationalism is good nationalism is bad but to make to have a more complicated and realistic view of of reality of human history so if somebody like Auburn or like Netanyahu or like Putin waives all that the nationalist Flags not to fall into the traps of just going to the opposite extreme and saying so nationalism is all bad and it's all fascism and if somebody hangs the flag of the country in his in his house then he's a fascist or she is a fascist because that really plays into their hands but to take a deep breath and remind yourself remind other people remind the audience we don't need to think in these crude binary terms nationalism isn't bad or good it has good manifestations bad manifestations and we need to be clearer about about these issues and the distinction I try to make between thinking my nation is unique and thinking my nation is supreme is just one way of approaching it and of reassuring people that just because they love their country or they love their compatriots it doesn't make them fascists and if you say that they will immediately turn against you but at the same time to remind them that there is a difference between loving your country and countrymen in hating foreigners there is a difference between thinking that my country is unique and falling into this extreme thinking that my country is supreme that all the achievements of humankind they are just because of people from my nation and that the only thing that is important is the interests of my nation and I know how to exploit it's difficult to thread this line but I think it's very important because this is the binary game is exactly the game that these extreme politicians are trying to impose on on society like you have to make a choice you're with us or against us let me draw this extraordinary evening to a concludes this by making a couple of announcements this is in a series of lectures called reasons for hope and this series will continue on the 15th of may that is next week with a formidable British based political theorist called Chantal moof will write who give a talk about the politics and the dynamics of affect a public lecture again on May 15th in this house and then on May 29th certainly one of the greatest living philosophers professor Charles Taylor a Canadian is going to give a public lecture on May 29th called how democracies degenerate and what to do about it after this event there will be a reception for all of you up in matter 13 in the owl you're most welcome it just remains for me to thank you Val Harare for lots of things for I watch an audience as lectures talk I could tell acute intense attention pin-drop attention which is an enormous testament to your skill as a public educator I think the other thing I'd say you introduced us all to a way of thinking that takes us back to deep time you introduced us to a way of making important distinctions between fascism and nationalism and you reminded us most of all which is a feature of your work that doesn't get the attention it should a constant emphasis on values on prudence moderation reason careful thought and this time love of country thank you [Applause] you [Applause]

Channel: Yuval Noah Harari

Views: 198,086

Keywords: Yuval Harari, Yuval Noah Harari, nationalism, budapest, hungary, central european university, the future, 21 lessons, 21 lessons for the 21st century, lecture, students, liberalism, social science

Id: 2jz7hsqsObU

Length: 90min 11sec (5411 seconds)

Published: Sun May 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Thread_water]

Nationalism actually has a lot in common with religion (without the nonsense you're made to believe). It brings people together, but also splits people apart, it can be beneficial, but also can be terrible.

I think it's fair to say that some nationalism is good. It makes you care more for your fellow country men, makes you feel like you're a part of something, makes you more engaged with politics, and more than anything it gives a country some unity. So that people can get behind government decisions as a whole.

But then it's also fair to say that nationalism can go to far, which I think was demonstrated in the most horrible way ever in the world wars.

Personally I think a healthy balance is a good thing. Here in Ireland nationalism is strong, the streets are nearly empty if Ireland gets anywhere in soccer, and same with Rugby these days. We have a good balance, and I'm glad of it rather than the splits I see in the US and UK right now, where there seems to be two sides against each other.

[u/AntonioMachado]

if nationalism has a bright side because it "is responsible for the largest in-groups in human history and the wealth and stability that accompanies that" then I'm pretty sure internationalism has even a brighter side from that pov ;)

btw, the concept of nation as imagined community was coined by Benedict Anderson, an internationalist who would make a great guest on Sam's podcast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_community

[u/[deleted]]

Nationalism as a word in the American sense must be a celebration of American's multicultural, pluralistic democracy, but Nationalism in the traditional European sense is tribal in the worst traditions of the Far-Right -- dominating the historical use of the word -- which makes the word Nationalism an odd and suspicious term to use in the American sense. That's not the spirit of what we have struggled from, not who we are ... and I don't think we can redefine the word so instantaneously, it conjures images of the mid-20th century in a gratuitous, smarmy, in your face virtue signaling way. I love America. I served honorably. But I can't identify as an American Nationalist -- just doesn't ring right. Proud American might be better but that sounds apologetic ... I'm an American (the pride is assumed without saying).

[u/[deleted]]

Most of my fellow Americans are just dumb as fucking dog shit. I reject nationalism on this basis

[u/Haffrung]

The nation state is currently the largest polity we have to draft and enforce laws, and delivery public goods and services. It's important that the people who draft these laws and delivery and receive these public services feel some common affinity for one another. Nationalism plays a vital role in fostering a sense of common identity between a software developer in a city of millions and a hairdresser he'll never meet living in a small town 1,000 km away. Without that common identity, the one would be less willing to dedicate some of her earnings to the health care or pension of the other.

Empathy isn't infinitely expandable for malleable. Even if the uglier aspects of nationalism sometimes harm our collective well-being, we can't discard the idea until we develop some other way of encouraging support for the common weal.

[u/BatemaninAccounting]

Nationalism much like feudalism is inherently dumb due to what it is objectifying. We shouldn't have lords and ladies and we shouldn't have nation states. We are one human race and especially now that we are a star-hopping* species we should view ourselves as such.

*The theoretical mechanics for getting humans to alpha centauri are there, but it won't happen until there's a pressing need to do so.

[u/IamCayal]

Nationalism does make us care for strangers. This has been one of the most positive developments in human history.

It is a dangerous mistake to imagine that without nationalism we would be all be living in a liberal paradise, much more likely we would be living in tribal chaos in which nobody cares for anyone except his or her immediate friends and family.

Even democracy can rarely function without at least some level of nationalism.

If society is divided into hostile tribes then democracy is untenable. Because in such a situation people feel that all means are legitime to win the election because if we lose our tribe is in danger. Whoever wins the election takes care only of their own tribe and whoever loses the election is unwilling to accept the verdict.