February 11, 2024 • 14 mins
"Just as jellyfish, and woodpeckers, and ostriches have no rights, Homo sapiens have no rights also."—Yuval Noah Harari (2014) Once again, out of the blue, I'm putting out a short podcast. (This time it really is quite short.) It has to do with a TEDx talk by a certain Dr Yuval Noah Harari—a well-known professor of history and "public intellectual" (who is mates with Star Fleet Commander Klaus Schwab, I believe)—which he gave almost ten years ago, but which has recently "gone viral" and drawn comment from everyone and their cat (and their dog and their rabbit). Quite understandably though, because in that talk Dr Harari said some rather controversial things—things like: "Just as jellyfish, and woodpeckers, and ostriches have no rights, Homo sapiens have no rights also." Which—again, understandably—has niggled people somewhat. So, given that I was also niggled somewhat, I thought I'd niggle back. Somewhat. And share my nigglings. Anyway, that's what it's about. A niggle. [For show notes please visit https://themindrenewed.com]
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:19):
Hello everybody, Julian Charles here ofthe mind Renewded dot Com, coming to
you as usual from the depths ofthe Lancashire countryside here in the UK,
and welcome to episode three hundred andseven, in which I'm still basically saying
hello like I was last time,so hello like last time, and in
which I'm sharing a few ponderings upona lecture that I've been directed to several
(00:41):
times recently by a various social medialinks called Bananas in Heaven by a man
named Yuvil Noah Harari, who I'msure you're familiar with, which lecture has
very slightly niggled me. So Ithought I would very slightly niggle back,
hence the time niggling Heavenly Bananas andwrites in spleens. The rest of that
(01:04):
will become clear in a minute.But as I say, I'm essentially keeping
in touch because the interviews and roundtables that I've got planned for this year
so far just haven't yet fallen intoplace. As you will appreciate, it
can be really quite difficult to getguests pinned down to particular dates and particular
times that just happen to be convenientto me. And my podcast schedule here
(01:26):
at TMR. You know, guestscan be a bit like proverbial buses.
You know, they don't come alongand then three come along at the same
time. So here I am atthe podcasting bus stop, so to speak.
And while I'm waiting, I'll havea chat with those of you who
happened to be waiting in the busqueue with me. So you've all Noah
Harari and his talk Bananas in Heaven. Now, as I say, I've
(01:49):
been directed to this talk several timesin the last couple of weeks. Even
though it dates back almost ten yearsto October twenty fourteen, I guess it
must have touched a nerve with people. It's been shared around quite a lot
recently. What people have been sayingis that, in this particular talk,
a ted X talk, doctor Harariclaims that human rights don't exist. Yes,
(02:10):
you heard that right, human rightsdon't exist. So after this popping
up quite so much in my variousfeeds, I thought I'd better go and
check this out and see if it'strue. And lo and behold, it
is true. He does, indeedsay that human rights, along with things
like heaven and God and countries andmoney don't really exist, or, as
(02:34):
he puts it, they're not areality. Now, to be fair,
he does say that human rights kindof exist as part of fictional stories that
we tell ourselves, so they kindof exist. This is my example,
by the way, not his.They kind of exist, like say,
Ebenezer Scrooge kind of exists inside CharlesDickens's Christmas Carol. But of course no
(02:59):
one's been able to walk up tomister Scrooge in reality and tell him what
a nasty old skinflint he is,because he doesn't really exist. He only
kind of exists inside a fictional story. And so it is, maintains Dr
Harari. With human rights along withheaven, God, countries, and money,
they're not really real. They're justquote a fictional story that we've invented
(03:23):
and spread around. Now, Iwouldn't normally be niggled by any of this,
because loads of people say things likethis, especially if they're trying to
show how intellectually hair shirts they arein a Nietzschean kind of way, as
opposed to old fashioned people like me, who are still holding on to the
softly padded crutches of antiquated things likeGod and Heaven and human rights. I
(03:46):
let me say in passing that thingslike money and countries, I've got no
problem there. But I think he'sright about those. Actually, I think
they are products of human storytelling,powerful, useful. I wouldn't be without
them. Like doctor Harari himself says, everybody believes in money, it's the
most successful story of all. ButGod, heaven, human rights. Are
they really in the same category asmoney and countries. I don't think so,
(04:12):
but that's the story he's telling now. As I say, I wouldn't
be niggled by any of this wereit not for the fact that doctor Harari
is widely touted as a superstar publicintellectual and that is closely associated with the
World Economic Forum, which, aswe know thanks to the revelations of its
founder and Stafleet's commander Klaus Schwab,sees itself as the global hub of stakeholder
(04:35):
capitalism, through which self styled elitesare condescending to steer the world into a
brand new, sparkling super science etrekkie technotopia in the most diverse, equitable,
inclusive and sustainable manner. Of course, some say that doctor Harari is
indeed Klaus Schwab's right hand man orhis chief advisor. No I idea about
(05:00):
that. I haven't seen any goodevidence to support that claim. I suppose
I haven't looked that far. Maybeyou know something about that. If you
do, please let me know.But what I do know is that doctor
Harari has given two high profile speechesat Davos twenty eighteen and twenty twenty,
both I note after twenty fourteen whenhe said that human rights are not a
(05:20):
reality, and that, as hiswebsite boasts, he has the ears of
many heads of state and big techCEOs. So, continuing with my niggle,
it's not so much that he thinksthat human rights aren't really real,
or at least that's what he thoughtin twenty fourteen. Maybe he's changed his
mind. I don't know. Butthe fact that the World Economic Forum has
(05:42):
chosen such a person twice to givehigh profile speeches. Now, I'm not
saying they shouldn't. They can askwho they like. It's totally up to
them, but I do wonder whatthat might say about them. After all,
I wouldn't want to be ushered intoa brand new, sparkling super sciencey
treki technotopy by people who don't thinkthat human rights are really real, would
(06:03):
you. I'm not saying that's whatthey do think, but you know,
it makes one wonder and impressions areimpressions. Anyway, Let's look at why
DODR. Harari thinks that about humanrights. Now Here. I'd love to
include an audio clip or two,because that would make for a more interesting
podcast. And I quite like editingin audio clips, It's quite fun.
(06:24):
But unfortunately TED Conferences, under whichBanner TEDx talks are organized, doesn't like
people sharing clips, so I won'tdo that. I'll just have to give
an idea of what he said andmake my comments. Now, if you
want to hear the whole talk,by the way, which only about fifteen
minutes, details will be in theshow notes, of course. So what
does doctor Harari say in this twentyfourteen talk. Well, he says that
(06:49):
there are various fields in which wehuman beings tell stories, fictional stories,
such as the legal field and thepolitical field and the echo hightfield, and
that an example of a fiction inthe legal field would be human rights.
And he illustrates this by saying thatwhen we cut open a human being and
(07:12):
we look inside, we find thatperson's blood, and we find their heart
and their lungs and their kidneys,but we don't find any rights, no
rights at all, because quote rightsare not a biological reality. Now,
okay, I get it. DoctorHarari was trying to be gently amusing there
(07:32):
and succeeding to some extent. Ithought it was funny. I mean,
I think he needed to work alittle bit on that, you know,
because hardly anybody else thought it wasfunny. But I thought it was funny
anyway, gently amusing, gently amusing. So let me be gently amusing back.
If I ever had the chance tospeak to doctor Harari, which well
maybe I will. You must listento this podcast. Surely he's a cultured
(07:54):
man, I might ask him,yu'vell you don't mind me calling you u'vil?
Do you very good? I seeyou are very keen on science.
You talk a lot about it.So let me ask you. When you
assert that human rights are not tobe found in the blood or next to
the heart or lungs or kidneys whenwe open up the human body, have
you ever looked or can you citeany peer reviewed literature by scientists who have
(08:18):
ever performed such an experiment? OrGod forbid. Can you cite any preprint
paper to that effect. I mean, have you or any scientist you know
of ever opened a human spleen tosee if there's a human right in there
somewhere? You say there isn't.But until you look, you don't really
know, do you. But ofcourse, as I say, he was
joking, what he's really saying Ithink is that unless something is a material
(08:43):
thing, then it's not really real. We know a mountain is really real
because we can quote see it,we can quote touch it, we can
quote smell it. Can you smella mountain? Yeah? I guess so.
Mountains, trees, river these arematerial, objective things. I can't
say I've smelled a cork, thoughnot knowingly anyway, have you. I've
(09:07):
certainly never smelled any minds, noteven his. I mean, much as
I disagree with him, I thinkhe's got one. And the prospect of
smelling the number seven that makes mefeel a bit billious. To be honest,
I know numbers might not be reallyreal, but then again they might.
Anybody know what they smell like.If you do, let me know.
My point is that whether doctor Hararilikes it or not, And as
(09:31):
he well knows there are people inthis world. I think the vast majority
of people actually who do, infact believe, and I would say,
perceive that human rights are really realbased on natural rights that are an objective
reality, and that they're being reallyreal is of critical importance, even though
(09:52):
we can't see them, touch them, or smell them, or hear them,
or taste them for that matter.Now, I think I know what
he'd say, forgive me if I'mwrong, Euvil, if you happen to
be listening, which you may well, because you're a cultured man. I
think he'd say, Aha, butshow me, show me how those rights
are grounded. Unless you can showme how those rights are grounded in hard
(10:15):
reality. Unless you can do that, it's just not rational to believe in
them. There's anything other than storiesthat we tell ourselves and spread around.
And I would say, doesn't matter, evil. I don't think I need
to show how natural rights are groundedin order for it to be rational for
me to believe in them as reallyreal, as universal, as binding.
(10:35):
I don't think I need to showthat. I mean, some people,
famous, people even more famous thanyou, I think, have said that
things like that. You know littlethings like unalienable rights are self evident,
self evident, irrespective of whether wecan show her they're grounded or not.
And there are quite a few thingslike that that are self evident. It's
(10:58):
self evident to me at least thatthere are other minds, that when I
look around me and I see otherpeople and I talk to them and they
kindly talk back to me, I'mencountering minds other than my own, and
not robots. Can't prove it,though. It's self evident again to me
at least, that the universe wasn'tcreated twenty five minutes ago by a wicked
(11:18):
demiurge with all the appearance of agecan't prove it. It's self evident again
to be at least, that whenI survey the world around me, I
don't see the product of my godlikesolipsistic imagination. Can't prove it, though,
loads of things that are self evidentto me that it's more rational for
me to continue to believe than todisbelieve, even though I can't prove them
(11:43):
or show how they're grounded. Nowas it happens, I think that natural
rights are grounded in the mind andcharacter of God, whose fundamental disposition is
loving kindness. And while we're atit, that's why I think people perceive
rights normally. We're made that way, We're made to perceive them, and
(12:03):
I find that intellectually satisfying as well. Now I know you don't uvel because
you don't believe in God. Yousaid so publicly, would you be?
That's up to you. That's upto you. But it is a pity
because then you wouldn't be moved towrite things like quote, as far as
we can tell, from a purelyscientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no
(12:24):
meaning as you do. So I'mtold anyway, in your book Sapiens,
why from a purely scientific viewpoint,why would you say that? Isn't that
a bit like trying to look ata beautiful vista through a pair of binoculars
with one eye closed, then complainingthat it all looks a bit flat?
(12:45):
Reminds me of trying to find humanrights in spleens. And belief in God
might have saved you from saying,as you do in this talk that our
ancestors seventy thousand years ago were quoteinsignificant animals because they didn't have much impact
on the world. Because I meaneven unsophisticated ancient people who never boldly gone
anywhere, were made to be God'simage bearers. At least that's what I
(13:07):
believe, each one loved by God. But then I guess God is just
one more of those intractable thingies thatyou can't squeeze into a test tube or
scan with a tricorder. So,along with human rights, he must be
just one more fictional story amongst othersthat we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel
better. But then again, somestories are true, aren't they. Viul
(13:28):
isn't your story true? Surely yourstory's true, isn't it Otherwise, why
are you telling it? Or maybenot? Maybe you need to rethink your
story. Maybe you need to stoplooking in spleens. Maybe you need to
use the binoculars with both lenses andreally see the vista for what it is.
(13:50):
God, Heaven, and human rights. They're all real. They're all
really real. You just need touse both eyes to see them. You
(14:11):
have been listening to me Julian CharlesOff theminds renews dot com podcast, music
by the brilliant Anthony Rayjakoff. Attributionnon commercial share like four point zero International
and I very much look forward tospeaking to you again in the near future.
Hello everybody, Julian Charles here ofthe mind Renewded dot Com, coming to
you as usual from the depths ofthe Lancashire countryside here in the UK,
and welcome to episode three hundred andseven, in which I'm still basically saying
hello like I was last time,so hello like last time, and in
which I'm sharing a few ponderings upona lecture that I've been directed to several
(00:41):
times recently by a various social medialinks called Bananas in Heaven by a man
named Yuvil Noah Harari, who I'msure you're familiar with, which lecture has
very slightly niggled me. So Ithought I would very slightly niggle back,
hence the time niggling Heavenly Bananas andwrites in spleens. The rest of that
(01:04):
will become clear in a minute.But as I say, I'm essentially keeping
in touch because the interviews and roundtables that I've got planned for this year
so far just haven't yet fallen intoplace. As you will appreciate, it
can be really quite difficult to getguests pinned down to particular dates and particular
times that just happen to be convenientto me. And my podcast schedule here
(01:26):
at TMR. You know, guestscan be a bit like proverbial buses.
You know, they don't come alongand then three come along at the same
time. So here I am atthe podcasting bus stop, so to speak.
And while I'm waiting, I'll havea chat with those of you who
happened to be waiting in the busqueue with me. So you've all Noah
Harari and his talk Bananas in Heaven. Now, as I say, I've
(01:49):
been directed to this talk several timesin the last couple of weeks. Even
though it dates back almost ten yearsto October twenty fourteen, I guess it
must have touched a nerve with people. It's been shared around quite a lot
recently. What people have been sayingis that, in this particular talk,
a ted X talk, doctor Harariclaims that human rights don't exist. Yes,
(02:10):
you heard that right, human rightsdon't exist. So after this popping
up quite so much in my variousfeeds, I thought I'd better go and
check this out and see if it'strue. And lo and behold, it
is true. He does, indeedsay that human rights, along with things
like heaven and God and countries andmoney don't really exist, or, as
(02:34):
he puts it, they're not areality. Now, to be fair,
he does say that human rights kindof exist as part of fictional stories that
we tell ourselves, so they kindof exist. This is my example,
by the way, not his.They kind of exist, like say,
Ebenezer Scrooge kind of exists inside CharlesDickens's Christmas Carol. But of course no
(02:59):
one's been able to walk up tomister Scrooge in reality and tell him what
a nasty old skinflint he is,because he doesn't really exist. He only
kind of exists inside a fictional story. And so it is, maintains Dr
Harari. With human rights along withheaven, God, countries, and money,
they're not really real. They're justquote a fictional story that we've invented
(03:23):
and spread around. Now, Iwouldn't normally be niggled by any of this,
because loads of people say things likethis, especially if they're trying to
show how intellectually hair shirts they arein a Nietzschean kind of way, as
opposed to old fashioned people like me, who are still holding on to the
softly padded crutches of antiquated things likeGod and Heaven and human rights. I
(03:46):
let me say in passing that thingslike money and countries, I've got no
problem there. But I think he'sright about those. Actually, I think
they are products of human storytelling,powerful, useful. I wouldn't be without
them. Like doctor Harari himself says, everybody believes in money, it's the
most successful story of all. ButGod, heaven, human rights. Are
they really in the same category asmoney and countries. I don't think so,
(04:12):
but that's the story he's telling now. As I say, I wouldn't
be niggled by any of this wereit not for the fact that doctor Harari
is widely touted as a superstar publicintellectual and that is closely associated with the
World Economic Forum, which, aswe know thanks to the revelations of its
founder and Stafleet's commander Klaus Schwab,sees itself as the global hub of stakeholder
(04:35):
capitalism, through which self styled elitesare condescending to steer the world into a
brand new, sparkling super science etrekkie technotopia in the most diverse, equitable,
inclusive and sustainable manner. Of course, some say that doctor Harari is
indeed Klaus Schwab's right hand man orhis chief advisor. No I idea about
(05:00):
that. I haven't seen any goodevidence to support that claim. I suppose
I haven't looked that far. Maybeyou know something about that. If you
do, please let me know.But what I do know is that doctor
Harari has given two high profile speechesat Davos twenty eighteen and twenty twenty,
both I note after twenty fourteen whenhe said that human rights are not a
(05:20):
reality, and that, as hiswebsite boasts, he has the ears of
many heads of state and big techCEOs. So, continuing with my niggle,
it's not so much that he thinksthat human rights aren't really real,
or at least that's what he thoughtin twenty fourteen. Maybe he's changed his
mind. I don't know. Butthe fact that the World Economic Forum has
(05:42):
chosen such a person twice to givehigh profile speeches. Now, I'm not
saying they shouldn't. They can askwho they like. It's totally up to
them, but I do wonder whatthat might say about them. After all,
I wouldn't want to be ushered intoa brand new, sparkling super sciencey
treki technotopy by people who don't thinkthat human rights are really real, would
(06:03):
you. I'm not saying that's whatthey do think, but you know,
it makes one wonder and impressions areimpressions. Anyway, Let's look at why
DODR. Harari thinks that about humanrights. Now Here. I'd love to
include an audio clip or two,because that would make for a more interesting
podcast. And I quite like editingin audio clips, It's quite fun.
(06:24):
But unfortunately TED Conferences, under whichBanner TEDx talks are organized, doesn't like
people sharing clips, so I won'tdo that. I'll just have to give
an idea of what he said andmake my comments. Now, if you
want to hear the whole talk,by the way, which only about fifteen
minutes, details will be in theshow notes, of course. So what
does doctor Harari say in this twentyfourteen talk. Well, he says that
(06:49):
there are various fields in which wehuman beings tell stories, fictional stories,
such as the legal field and thepolitical field and the echo hightfield, and
that an example of a fiction inthe legal field would be human rights.
And he illustrates this by saying thatwhen we cut open a human being and
(07:12):
we look inside, we find thatperson's blood, and we find their heart
and their lungs and their kidneys,but we don't find any rights, no
rights at all, because quote rightsare not a biological reality. Now,
okay, I get it. DoctorHarari was trying to be gently amusing there
(07:32):
and succeeding to some extent. Ithought it was funny. I mean,
I think he needed to work alittle bit on that, you know,
because hardly anybody else thought it wasfunny. But I thought it was funny
anyway, gently amusing, gently amusing. So let me be gently amusing back.
If I ever had the chance tospeak to doctor Harari, which well
maybe I will. You must listento this podcast. Surely he's a cultured
(07:54):
man, I might ask him,yu'vell you don't mind me calling you u'vil?
Do you very good? I seeyou are very keen on science.
You talk a lot about it.So let me ask you. When you
assert that human rights are not tobe found in the blood or next to
the heart or lungs or kidneys whenwe open up the human body, have
you ever looked or can you citeany peer reviewed literature by scientists who have
(08:18):
ever performed such an experiment? OrGod forbid. Can you cite any preprint
paper to that effect. I mean, have you or any scientist you know
of ever opened a human spleen tosee if there's a human right in there
somewhere? You say there isn't.But until you look, you don't really
know, do you. But ofcourse, as I say, he was
joking, what he's really saying Ithink is that unless something is a material
(08:43):
thing, then it's not really real. We know a mountain is really real
because we can quote see it,we can quote touch it, we can
quote smell it. Can you smella mountain? Yeah? I guess so.
Mountains, trees, river these arematerial, objective things. I can't
say I've smelled a cork, thoughnot knowingly anyway, have you. I've
(09:07):
certainly never smelled any minds, noteven his. I mean, much as
I disagree with him, I thinkhe's got one. And the prospect of
smelling the number seven that makes mefeel a bit billious. To be honest,
I know numbers might not be reallyreal, but then again they might.
Anybody know what they smell like.If you do, let me know.
My point is that whether doctor Hararilikes it or not, And as
(09:31):
he well knows there are people inthis world. I think the vast majority
of people actually who do, infact believe, and I would say,
perceive that human rights are really realbased on natural rights that are an objective
reality, and that they're being reallyreal is of critical importance, even though
(09:52):
we can't see them, touch them, or smell them, or hear them,
or taste them for that matter.Now, I think I know what
he'd say, forgive me if I'mwrong, Euvil, if you happen to
be listening, which you may well, because you're a cultured man. I
think he'd say, Aha, butshow me, show me how those rights
are grounded. Unless you can showme how those rights are grounded in hard
(10:15):
reality. Unless you can do that, it's just not rational to believe in
them. There's anything other than storiesthat we tell ourselves and spread around.
And I would say, doesn't matter, evil. I don't think I need
to show how natural rights are groundedin order for it to be rational for
me to believe in them as reallyreal, as universal, as binding.
(10:35):
I don't think I need to showthat. I mean, some people,
famous, people even more famous thanyou, I think, have said that
things like that. You know littlethings like unalienable rights are self evident,
self evident, irrespective of whether wecan show her they're grounded or not.
And there are quite a few thingslike that that are self evident. It's
(10:58):
self evident to me at least thatthere are other minds, that when I
look around me and I see otherpeople and I talk to them and they
kindly talk back to me, I'mencountering minds other than my own, and
not robots. Can't prove it,though. It's self evident again to me
at least, that the universe wasn'tcreated twenty five minutes ago by a wicked
(11:18):
demiurge with all the appearance of agecan't prove it. It's self evident again
to be at least, that whenI survey the world around me, I
don't see the product of my godlikesolipsistic imagination. Can't prove it, though,
loads of things that are self evidentto me that it's more rational for
me to continue to believe than todisbelieve, even though I can't prove them
(11:43):
or show how they're grounded. Nowas it happens, I think that natural
rights are grounded in the mind andcharacter of God, whose fundamental disposition is
loving kindness. And while we're atit, that's why I think people perceive
rights normally. We're made that way, We're made to perceive them, and
(12:03):
I find that intellectually satisfying as well. Now I know you don't uvel because
you don't believe in God. Yousaid so publicly, would you be?
That's up to you. That's upto you. But it is a pity
because then you wouldn't be moved towrite things like quote, as far as
we can tell, from a purelyscientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no
(12:24):
meaning as you do. So I'mtold anyway, in your book Sapiens,
why from a purely scientific viewpoint,why would you say that? Isn't that
a bit like trying to look ata beautiful vista through a pair of binoculars
with one eye closed, then complainingthat it all looks a bit flat?
(12:45):
Reminds me of trying to find humanrights in spleens. And belief in God
might have saved you from saying,as you do in this talk that our
ancestors seventy thousand years ago were quoteinsignificant animals because they didn't have much impact
on the world. Because I meaneven unsophisticated ancient people who never boldly gone
anywhere, were made to be God'simage bearers. At least that's what I
(13:07):
believe, each one loved by God. But then I guess God is just
one more of those intractable thingies thatyou can't squeeze into a test tube or
scan with a tricorder. So,along with human rights, he must be
just one more fictional story amongst othersthat we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel
better. But then again, somestories are true, aren't they. Viul
(13:28):
isn't your story true? Surely yourstory's true, isn't it Otherwise, why
are you telling it? Or maybenot? Maybe you need to rethink your
story. Maybe you need to stoplooking in spleens. Maybe you need to
use the binoculars with both lenses andreally see the vista for what it is.
(13:50):
God, Heaven, and human rights. They're all real. They're all
really real. You just need touse both eyes to see them. You
(14:11):
have been listening to me Julian CharlesOff theminds renews dot com podcast, music
by the brilliant Anthony Rayjakoff. Attributionnon commercial share like four point zero International
and I very much look forward tospeaking to you again in the near future.
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