Yuval Noah Harari: evaluation

Transcript context

…That it’s about stories which is like a connection between humans and together kind of evolving these stories that maximize hap or minimize suffering in the world. Yeah. This is why I also, I think I admire what you are doing, that you’re going to talk with some of the most difficult characters around in the world today, and with this basic belief that by talking maybe we can move them an inch, which is a lot when it comes to people with so much power. I think one of the biggest success stories in modern history, I would say, is feminism. Because feminism believed in the power of stories, not so much in the power of violence, of armed conflict. By many measures, feminism has been maybe the most successful social movement of the 20th century and maybe of the modern age. The systems of oppression, which were in place throughout the world for thousands of years, and they seem to be just natural, eternal. You had all these religious movements, all these political revolutions. And one thing remained constant, and this is the patriarchal system and the oppression of women. And then feminism came along. And you had leaders like Lenin, like Mao saying that if you want to make a big social change, you must use violence. Power comes from the barrel of the gun, of a gun. If you want to make an omelet, you need to break eggs, and all these things. And the feminist said, no, we won’t use the power of the gun. We will make an omelet without breaking any eggs. And they made a much better omelet than Lenin or Mao, or any of these violent revolutionaries. I don’t think that they, [inaudible 01:39:04]- … Revolutionaries. I don’t think that they … They certainly didn’t start any wars or build any gulags. I don’t think they even murdered a single politician. I don’t think there was any political assassination anywhere by feminists. There was a lot of violence against them, both verbal but also physical, and they didn’t reply by waging violence, and they succeeded in changing this deep structure of oppression in a way which benefited not just women, but also men. So this gives me hope that, it’s not easy, in many cases we fail, but it is possible sometimes in history to make a very, very big change, positive change mainly by talking and demonstrating and changing the story in people’s minds and not by using violence. It’s fascinating that feminism and communism and all these things happened in the 20th century. So many interesting things happen in the 20th century. So many movements, so many ideas, nuclear weapons, all of it. Computers. It just seems like a lot of stuff really quickly percolated and it’s accelerating.…

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