Yuval Noah Harari: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah. So I mean, that changes the nature of writing. Ultimately, I think it goes back- Ultimately, I think it goes back… Much of my writing is suspicious of itself. I write stories about the danger of stories. I write about intelligence, but highlighting the dangers of intelligence. In terms of power, human power comes from intelligence and from stories. But I think that the deepest and best qualities of humans are not intelligence and not storytelling and not power. Again, with all our power, with all our cooperation, with our intelligence, we are on the verge of destroying ourselves and destroying much of the ecosystem. Our best qualities are not there. Our best qualities are non-verbal. Again, they come from things like compassion, from introspection. And introspection, from my experience, is not verbal. If you try to understand yourself with words, you will never succeed. There is a place where you need the words, but the deepest insights, they don’t come from words. And you can’t write about it. Again, it goes back to Wittgenstein, to Buddha, to so many of these sages before, that these are the things we are silent about. But eventually you have to project it. As a writer, you have to do the silent introspection, but projected onto a page.…

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