I had come back to the hotel after visiting a village of Ticuna Indians along the Colombian Amazon, The hotel is certainly one of the more pleasant places to stay in Leticia, the Colombian town bordering, Tabatinga in Brasil and Santa Rosa in Peru.
A pleasant place.
A guest I had met, I only remember him very vaguely, was he an East Indian working at an university in the UK ? but he said, I am leaving this book for you. It was SAPIENS by Yuval Noah Harari.
Yuval is an Israeli, a historian but a person who studies the change in Homo Sapiens and their rapid evolution and the breakneck speed of the technological advances. I have heard his name mentioned on several occasions in the past but the time had come to make a true acquaintance of his work.
I was bowled over as if a West Indian fast bowler was coming at me! I was intrigued, fascinated, scared and my own neurons were opening at a rapid pace.
At every chance I got, I talked about Yuval and my friends in far away countries began reading him in their own languages. A fringe benefit of getting to know Yuval was an introduction to Vipassana meditation as taught by SN GOENKA who introduced Yuval to Vipassana meditation and he meditates I think two hours per day and while SN GOENKA is no more , Yuval goes once a year to India for one month isolation at a Vipassana centre. I was also told that Yuval does not carry a cellphone.
Imagine my surprise when my sisters husband came into the office we share and said, did you watch 60 minutes yesterday, i gently reminded that I do not watch TV , he said you missed something, there was this historian who was more than brilliant. I said, Brother, I know who you are talking about, it must be Yuval Noah Harari. Yuval is certainly the most admired public intellectual of our time, each of his books have sold more than 10 million copies. I recommend all the books.
Here is the link to YOUTUBE video of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper interviewing Yuval.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIVTf-C6oQo
( i will upload the video when I can compress it)
It is easy to listen to him and learn from him. He is all over the place, giving talks and participating in discussions, i saw a video of him being taken to the Favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro and offering to finding solutions to the situation there.
I am proud to have read his works and follow his thoughts. He makes you think and realize the reality of what is happening to reality of what you think is happening. Too much emphasis on monetary objects makes you blind to what will happen in the very near future.. not to your grandchildren.. but to you in the next few years. Be part of the understanding of this evolution so you can participate it in a contributory fashion rather than become a victim of it.
Good Luck
Dedicated to someone I know in Brasil, we don't have much time left.
As if to remind me that Yuval is punctual about his predictions, the professional society I belong to (The Endocrine Society) sent this missive among the hundreds (most of them useful)
Synthetic Organelles Let Researchers Control Cell Behavior
A technique that reversibly bundles tagged cargo into artificial membraneless compartments gives scientists the ability to switch cell processes on and off.
Like a drone operator, someone sitting in Washington DC or Beijing can turn on or off cellular functions of your bodies, in the not too distant future.
