For the past week I’ve been trying to read Yuval Noah Harari, because this guy seems to be everywhere - bookstores, Internet, even street banners advertising his visit to Bucharest. I didn’t make much progress as I found a lot of things in his writing quite irritating. Most of all, his very Western point of view and the fact that his books are tailored for a Western audience. Nothing wrong with that you might say. The problem is both books I’ve been skipping through - ‘Sapiens’ and ‘Homo Deus’- pretend to discuss the fate of the whole human species. OK, we all share a common ancestry, but the present? His views of where we are, as a species, draw heavily upon the situation in the Western hemisphere. There’s this pervasive smugness - oh, we’re doing just great, we’ve conquered famine, we got rid of wars, the health system is great. Very Western and very mainstream.
I cannot help but feel that many in Africa or Asia would strongly disagree with the notion we’ve eliminated famine - many people my age surely remember Ethiopia and the dreadful images of children starving to death. (Not to mention present day Yemen.)
For someone pretending to write a history of humankind, I find it totally childish to be proud we haven’t had a major war in the last few decades. The 21st century Western reader will nod in proud agreement - so true, we’re no longer warring among ourselves, but that would be ignoring Vietnam, the whole mess in the Middle East or the genocide in Rwanda, which was only 20 years ago. At this point, we cannot imagine a worldwide conflict, but then I doubt it that in the year 1900 many were able to foresee the two world wars that were soon to follow.
In terms of population, Europe and the North American continent number around 1.1 billion people, out of a total world population of 7.2 billion. The Western population is hugely outnumbered which makes it impossible to accept Harari’s views as relevant for the whole of mankind.
Geographically, my own little country doesn’t even count as part of the Western hemisphere, yet even here we spend our time pondering over the latest political moves in DC, discussing feminist issues and gender ideology. We read American authors and watch Netflix. Yet, this is only a small part of the issues confronting mankind. The #metoo movement has little traction in Japan and there are no snowflakes in China.
The trouble is we’re trying to judge the world at large by very narrow Western standards, mostly imposed by the US, which in itself is a dying empire. As Harari rightfully points out, at the height of the Egyptian civilization, ordinary people would have had trouble imagining a world with no pharaoh. Impossible, they’d say. Just as today we cannot imagine a world not ruled by Washington. Yet, the day will come when the course of history would be dictated by Beijing, let’s say. Or aliens from another galaxy.
There are some interesting and valid points in Harari’s books, yet they fail their intended audience by reinforcing the alpha-monkey complex. We’re great, we’re on top of the world. Complacency is one of the last stages of an empire in decline. If we want to preserve some of our Western civilization a wake-up call would be far more beneficial.
After all, one of the most passionate debates in the modern Western world concerns the merits of unisex toilets. We're ready to argue about a lot of ridiculous issues till we’re blue in the face and, yet, for the other 6 billion people not in the West these issues don’t even exist.
For the time being, I’ve put Harari on hold as I discovered a post-apocalyptic novel by a Russian author. Quite accidentally, because Russian authors rarely get advertised in our world. I don’t know if the book’s any good, but I’d just like to see things from another perspective.
