Transcript excerpt from RCP:
Israeli professor at the Department of History of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Yuval Noah Harari speaks with TED about the new political divide around the world: nationalism vs. globalism.
Via
TED: “How do we make sense of today's political divisions? In a wide-ranging
conversation full of insight, historian Yuval Harari places our current turmoil
in a broader context, against the ongoing disruption of our technology,
climate, media – even our notion of what humanity is for. This is the first of
a series of TED Dialogues, seeking a thoughtful response to escalating
political divisiveness. Make time (just over an hour) for this fascinating
discussion between Harari and TED curator Chris Anderson.”
“I
think the basic thing that happened is we have lost our story. Humans think in
stories and we try to make sense of the world by telling stories,” the
historian said. “And for the last few decades we had a very simple and very
attractive story about what was happening in the world. And the story said that
the economy is being globalized, politics is being liberalized, and the
combination of the two will create paradise on earth. And we just need to keep
globalizing the economy and liberalizing the political system, and everything
will be wonderful.”
“2016
is when a very large segment of the Western world stopped believing in this
story,” he said. “For good or bad reason it doesn’t matter, people stopped
believing the story, and when you don'’ have a story it is hard to understand
what is happening.”
“The
old 20th century political model of left vs. right is now basically irrelevant
and the real divide today is between global and national, global or local. All
over the world this is not the main struggle.”
