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Historian Yuval Noah Harari says we can choose what the world looks
like when the pandemic is over

Social Sharing

[106]The Current

Historian Yuval Noah Harari says we can choose what the world looks like when
the pandemic is over

Author and historian Yuval Noah Harari speaks with The Current's Matt
Galloway about how history will record the COVID-19 pandemic.

Social Sharing

'We'll be different, but it's not predetermined. It's up to us to decide,'
Harari says

CBC Radio · Posted: Apr 01, 2020 5:44 PM ET | Last Updated: April 1
Israeli author, historian and professor Yuval Noah Harari shared his
thoughts on how the COVID-19 pandemic may shape our future. (Kristoff
Van Accom/Belga/AFP/Getty Images)
(BUTTON)
comments
Listen20:55

[107]Read Story Transcript

Historian Yuval Noah Harari says important choices will be made during
this pandemic — and those choices will have huge implications for our
societies.

Harari is a professor at the University of Jerusalem and the author of
21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

Last month, Harari wrote a piece in [108]Financial Times about what the
world will look like after the pandemic.

Here is part of his conversation with [109]The Current's Matt Galloway.

You've written that people are basically guinea pigs in some sort of
social experiment that would have never been possible without this
pandemic. What do you mean by that?

We are now reluctantly, inevitably, conducting immense social
experiments on billions of people.

So it's things like moving entire universities online.

In my university, they have been discussing doing some courses online
for 20 years now, and they never did anything. And now, in one week,
they move the entire university online because they had to.

This is basically a huge experiment. Nobody knows what the outcome will
be.

Some things are working well. Other things are not working so well. But
whatever the results, when this is over, we probably won't go back to
where we were half a year ago. Things will change.

You look at the universal basic income idea. So it's been going around
for quite some time, but it wasn't implemented by any government — not
on a large scale anyway. And now you see the U.S. government, a
conservative Republican administration, basically adopting universal
basic income, at least for the duration of the crisis.
* [110]Send in the trolls: Canada braces for an online disinformation
assault on COVID-19

* [111]'Viruses don't carry passports': Why travel bans won't work to
stop spread of COVID-19

The results of this experiment will change the economic and social
system maybe for years to come. I think, therefore, we should be very
focused not just on the epidemic itself, but also on the political
situation, because in the next month or two, politicians are going to
make extremely important decisions allocating billions and billions of
dollars [and] changing the basic rules of the job market, of the
education system.

Whatever comes after that — like if you're elected prime minister in
2021 — it's like coming after the party is over and the only thing you
have left to do is to wash the dirty dishes.

The big decisions will be taken in the next one, two, three months and
they will shape the world for, maybe, a decade or many decades.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says grim new milestones are about to be
reached as the deadly pandemic pushes into almost every country. 2:56

This idea of a pandemic fast forwarding the historical process is
fascinating because, to your point, whether it's technology, whether
it's the universal basic income or how we think of work, those
decisions are being made and the rules are being rewritten as we go.

How do you think we will look coming out of this?

We'll be different, but it's not predetermined. It's up to us to
decide.

Again, we need to make decisions, but we shouldn't think that there is
just one right answer.

For instance, we need to decide between totalitarian surveillance and
citizen empowerment.

I hope we choose citizen empowerment, but I don't know.

Has history shown you that that's possible in crises past?

Certainly. You look at the two last big crises we faced of this kind —
we had the Ebola crisis in 2014 and we had the global financial crisis
of 2008.

In both these cases, the international community cooperated and
succeeded in preventing the worst outcome.

Ebola was contained and the worst fears will never materialize because
countries from all over the world sent help to the most affected
countries in West Africa.

And with the global financial crisis, even though it was very severe,
again, the worst outcomes were prevented because the major economies —
the leading countries — cooperated to formulate a global plan of
action.

We can do it again, but for this we need leadership and we'd need
global solidarity. And so far, we haven't seen enough of it.
* Analysis
COVID-19 isn't just testing governments, it's testing citizens

* [112]Canada keeps up push for UN Security Council seat during
COVID-19 crisis

You talked about the changes at your university and said that you think
that they'll stick. There are a lot of people who are trying to figure
out what teaching is going to look like from home. Those are changes
that aren't just going to exist within this window that we're in right
now?

It's impossible to tell in advance.

You know, universities suddenly discovered, "Hey, you can do that." And
then they can make decisions like, "OK, so now we can hire a faculty in
India and pay a tenth of what we pay Canadian academics and they can
teach online."

Or they can decide that overseas students can be accepted, but they
don't actually have to come to Toronto, Vancouver. They can stay where
they are and just take courses online.

Personally, I think these two decisions would be wrong decisions,
dangerous decisions. Certainly in terms of students, part of the
experience of going to university is the community.

When I went to Oxford, meeting the other students and going clubbing in
London was at least as important as going to the classes. And I don't
want to see it disappear, but it could happen.

We have to be aware that this crisis could change the face of
education, the job market, everything.
__________________________________________________________________

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Written by Justin Chandler. Produced by Howard Goldenthal.

More from this episode

* [113]Historian Yuval Noah Harari says we can choose what the world
looks like when the pandemic is over
* [114]Under The Influence host Terry O'Reilly on making a pandemic
PSA
* [115]Trumpets, window visits and virtual cards: How families are
connecting with loved ones in nursing homes
* [116]What would Jean-Luc Picard do about COVID-19? More than Trump
and Boris, says Patrick Stewart
* [117]Apr. 1, 2020 episode transcript
* [118]FULL EPISODE: The Current for April 1, 2020

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