Yuval Noah Harari: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Do you believe in the power of conversation between leaders to sit down as human beings and agree? First of all, what home means because we humans draw lines? That’s true. I believe in the power of conversation. The big question to ask is where? Where do conversations, real conversations take place? And this is tricky. One of the interesting things to ask about any conflict, about any political system is where do the real conversations take place? And very often, they don’t play take place in the places you think that they are. But think about American politics. When the country was founded in the late 18th century, people understood holding conversation between leaders is very important for the functioning of democracy. We’ll create a place for that, that’s called Congress. This is where leaders are supposed to meet and talk about the main issues of the day. Maybe there was a time sometime in the past when this actually happened, when you had two factions holding different ideas about foreign policy or economic policy and they met in Congress, and somebody would come and give a speech and the people all on the other side would say, “Hey, that’s interesting. I haven’t thought about it. Yes, maybe we can agree on that.” This is no longer happening in Congress. Nobody, I don’t think there is any speech in Congress that causes anybody on the other side to change their opinion about anything. So this is no longer a place where real conversations take place. The big question about American democracy is, is there a place where real conversations which actually change people’s minds still take place? If not, then this democracy is dying also. Democracy without conversation cannot exist for long. And it’s the same question you should ask also about dictatorial regimes, like you think about Russia or China. So China has the Great Hall of the People. Well, the representatives, the supposed representative of the people meet every now and then, but no real conversation takes place there. A key question to ask about the Chinese system is, behind closed doors, let’s say in a poly bureau meeting, do people have a real conversation? If Xi Jinping says one thing and some other big shot thinks differently, will they have the courage, the ability, the backbone to say, with all due respect, they think differently and there is a real conversation, or not? I don’t know the answer, but this is a key question. This is the difference between an authoritarian regime, it can still have different voices within it. But at a certain point, you have a personality count. Nobody dares say anything against the leader. And when it comes again to Ukraine and Russia, I don’t think that if you get, if you somehow manage to get Putin and Zelensky to the same room, when everybody knows that they are there and they, they’ll, they’ll have a moment of empathy, of human connection and they have… No, I don’t think it can happen like that. I do hope that there are other spaces where somebody like Putin can still have a real human conversation. I don’t know if this is the case. I hope so. Well, there’s several interesting dynamics and you spoke to some of them. So one is internally with advisors, you have to have hope that there’s people that would disagree that would have a lively debate internally. Then there’s also the thing you mentioned, which is direct communication between Putin and Zelensky in private, picking up a phone, a rotary phone, old school. I still believe in the power of that. But while that’s exceptionally difficult in the current state of affairs, what’s also possible to have is a mediator like the United States or some other leader.…

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