Yuval Noah Harari: 'Irresponsible politicians undermined public trust in science'

„Yuval Noah Harari: ‚Irresponsible politicians undermined public trust in science'“
„174.156 Aufrufe•28.03.2020“
„The important thing is to make people realize in
almost every field we have choices, it’s not predetermined.“
„Why not protect people against that too – with this
new surveillance system, so the tendency would be to prolong it indefinitely and in this way the corona virus epidemic
could be a watershed event in the history of surveillance, it’s the moment when mass systems of surveillance are established even in democracies that so far rejected them and also it’s the moment when surveillance goes really
under the skin. Governments are now not just interested in well we go and who we meet but even in what’s happening inside our bodies, our body temperature, our blood
pressure, our medical condition, so that’s really going a step further and what we need to realize is that it’s not true that the only way to stop an epidemic is through some totalitarian surveillance and control from above, we have a choice, we can go the way of totalitarian surveillance all we can go the way of empowering citizens giving them good scientific education, giving them reliable information and trusting them to do the right thing, if you think about washing hands with soap, so you can place a camera in every toilet and punish people who don’t wash their hands with soap or you can tell people educate people look there are viruses and germs they cause disease if you wash your hands with soap it kills or removes the viruses and you trust people to do the right thing.“
„This moment of crisis we need this kind of trust
„but what we’re also seeing is cooperation so where do you think this leaves the balance between populist
leaders and globalization?“
„Again we need now global cooperation more than ever
before to exchange information to make sure that we produce enough equipment globally to deal with this masks and testing kits and respiratory machines and so forth. We need a global effort to improve and increase the production and we need to distribute the equipment fairly … the rich countries will monopolize all the equipment, we need the equipment to go to the countries that it needs most, we can cooperate in many other ways, by, for instance, sending medical, help medical personnel from one country to another and of course we need
cooperation on the economic level to have a global economic plan, especially again for the poorer countries. Countries
like the US, Germany and Britain, they will somehow muddle through, but when this crisis hits Africa, South Asia, South
America, unless we have a global economic plan entire countries could collapse and what we are seeing now is that there is no such cooperation, again this is the price for the rise of xenophobic populism over the last few years when we
most need global cooperation you see that there is no global leadership United States which served as the global leader during the Ebola epidemic of 2014 and during the 2008 financial crisis it basically abdicated its job as global
leader, it’s very clear to the world that the u.s. is no longer leader of the world, it cares basically just about itself, it has no friends only interests and even if the u.s. suddenly has a revelation and decides to reassume global leadership role which is not happening yet but maybe in the future the level of trust in the current US administration is so low that nobody would follow it nobody would like to
follow a leader whose motto is: me first.“
„Again it’s a choice it’s not predetermined on the one hand
this kind of crisis could accelerate processes of democratic collapse and the rise of authoritarian strongmen people
panicking and economic crises they feel threatened biologically by an epidemic and the yearn for them strong leader that can protect them so it can go in that
direction or it can go eight exact opposite people realizing because of this crisis the importance of having a national solidarity over the last few years was really led to the crisis of democracy is that politicians in many countries again the u.s. is the best example have abandoned the idea of
national solidarity and intentionally divided society into hostile camps presenting themselves as the leaders of
one camp and presenting the other camp not as legitimate rivals but as dangerous traitors and this was their ticket to power and in a normal situation maybe you can run a country
even like the US with the support of just half the population but you can’t do it in a crisis like this, at present in the u.s. there is one camp that whatever the president says even if he says that the Sun rises in the West and set in the east they’ll believe it but then you have the other half that if he says one plus one equals two they are self-doubting it just because he said it and now he wants everybody to follow the same guidelines because to defeat this epidemic you can’t have just 50% of the population you need a hundred percent.“