HUMILITY by Yuval Noah Harari

 

Humility

Yuval Noah Harari

Humility: a lack of false pride

You are not the Centre of the World

It’s natural for people to think they’re at the center of everything, believing their culture holds the key to humanity’s story. For example, many Greeks claim that history began with Homer, Sophocles, and Plato, and that the most important ideas came from Athens, Sparta, Alexandria, or Constantinople.

But then, Chinese nationalists counter with their own narrative, saying history truly started with the Yellow Emperor and the Xia and Shang dynasties. They argue that any achievements by Westerners, Muslims, or Indians are just imitations of Chinese originals.

Meanwhile, Hindu nativists (philosophers) argue that even ancient Chinese contributions are latecomers. They claim sages from the Indian subcontinent invented airplanes and nuclear bombs long before Confucius, Plato, or even the Wright brothers. According to them, Maharishi Bhardwaj created rockets and aeroplanes, Vishwamitra both invented and used missiles, Acharya Kanad laid the foundation of atomic theory, and the Mahabharata accurately describes nuclear weapons.

Muslims, on the other hand, often dismiss everything that came before Prophet Muhammad as insignificant. They see all history after the Quran’s revelation as centered on the Muslim ummah (community). However, Turkish, Iranian, and Egyptian nationalists argue that even before Muhammad, their civilizations led humanity, and after the Quran’s revelation, it was their people who upheld Islam’s purity and spread its influence.

The same kind of thinking exists in the West. British, French, German, American, Russian, and Japanese people often claim their nation’s achievements saved humanity from barbarism and ignorance. Some civilizations even tied their beliefs to the universe’s functioning. For instance, the Aztecs (A member of the Nahuatl people who established an empire in Mexico that was overthrown by Cortes in 1519) believed their yearly sacrifices were necessary for the sun to rise and the universe to hold together.

But none of these grand claims hold up. They stem from ignorance of history and, often, a touch of racism. When humans began settling the world, domesticating plants and animals, building cities, and inventing writing and money, none of today’s religions or nations even existed. Morality, creativity, and spirituality are not tied to any one culture—they’re deeply rooted in human DNA and emerged in Stone Age Africa. It’s arrogant to assign their origin to any recent time or place, whether China during the Yellow Emperor’s time, Greece during Plato’s, or Arabia in Muhammad’s era.

Yuval Noah Harari claims that he finds all this to be arrogance because his own people, the Jews, are guilty of it too. Many Jews believe they’re the most important contributors to humanity. If any people mention any invention or achievement, they’ll find a way to claim it as Jewish. And they believe it wholeheartedly.

Once, the essayist attended a yoga class in Israel where the instructor claimed, with complete sincerity, that Abraham invented yoga. He explained that the yoga poses are based on the shapes of Hebrew letters—trikonasana (triangle pose) resembles the letter aleph, and tuladandasana (balancing stick pose) mimics daled. According to this theory, Abraham taught these poses to a concubine’s (mistress/kept woman) son, who traveled east and taught them to the Indians. The instructor even cited a Bible verse as proof: “And to the sons of his concubines Abraham gave gifts, and while he was still living he sent them away… eastward to the east country” (Genesis 25:6). The “gifts,” he argued, were yoga!

While this idea is obviously fringe (borderline), mainstream Judaism has its own grandiose (magnificent) beliefs. Orthodox Jews hold that the universe exists solely for Jewish rabbis (Jewish scholar or teacher) to study holy scriptures. If they were to stop debating the Talmud, the entire cosmos—China, India, Australia, and even distant galaxies—would vanish. This isn’t just a fringe belief; it’s a central tenet (a principal or belief) of Orthodox Judaism. Questioning it is seen as foolish.

Secular Jews might not fully agree, but even they often see Jewish people as the central heroes of history and the ultimate source of morality, spirituality, and learning.

What Jews lack in numbers or real global influence, they more than make up for in chutzpah (audacity). Since it’s more polite to critique your own people than others, the essayist use Judaism as an example of how absurd such self-centered stories are. But every group inflates its own importance. The essayist leaves it to us, the reader, to challenge the inflated egos of our own culture.

THEME:

Theme: The Illusion of Cultural Superiority and the Universal Human Story

The central theme of Harari’s essay is the universality of human experience contrasted with the pervasive illusion of cultural or national superiority. Harari critiques the tendency of civilizations, religions, and nations to position themselves as the focal point of human history, arguing that such beliefs are rooted in ignorance, self-importance, and often racism.

Through examples from Greek, Chinese, Indian, Muslim, Jewish, and Western cultures, Harari illustrates how each group claims unparalleled significance in shaping the world. These narratives, however, ignore the shared origins of human morality, creativity, and spirituality, which trace back to our common ancestry in Stone Age Africa.

The essay highlights humility as a vital perspective, reminding us that no single group or nation is the sole driver of humanity’s progress. Instead, human achievements—whether in art, science, or ethics—are a collective inheritance, shaped by countless cultures and individuals across millennia.

This theme encourages readers to reject narrow, self-serving narratives and adopt a broader, more inclusive view of history, one that acknowledges the interconnectedness of all human civilizations. By puncturing the myths of cultural superiority, Harari calls for a humility that fosters mutual respect and a deeper appreciation of our shared humanity.