You need to constantly remind yourself what is the most important thing that is happening in the world - what is the most important thing that is happening in history. The discipline to have this focus is something I gained from meditation.
Interpretation
Focus on what truly matters in history and life, as this discipline can improve your perspective.
This quote by Yuval Noah Harari emphasizes the importance of maintaining a clear focus on significant historical events and broader truths that shape our world. Harari suggests that this discipline, which he developed through meditation, is essential for understanding our place in history and recognizing the factors that truly matter in life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth and focus.
We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers. And if you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find that it is based on some fiction like the nation, like money, like human rights.
I titled the book 'Homo Deus' because we really are becoming gods in the most literal sense possible. We are acquiring abilities that have always been thought to be divine abilities - in particular, the ability to create life. And we can do with that whatever we want.
The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.
Techno-humanism aims to amplify the power of humans, creating cyborgs and connecting humans to computers, but it still sees human interests and desires as the highest authority in the universe.
The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be, 'What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?'
Take Google Maps or Waze. On the one hand, they amplify human ability - you are able to reach your destination faster and more easily. But at the same time, you are shifting the authority to the algorithm and losing your ability to find your own way.
Doing good to others is not a duty. It is a joy, for it increases your own health and happiness.
Deep in the soul, below pain, below all the distraction of life, is a silence vast and grand - an infinite ocean of calm, which nothing can disturb; Nature's own exceeding peace, which "passes understanding". That which we seek with passionate longing, here and there, upward and outward; we find at last within ourselves.
At times it is folly to hasten at other times, to delay. The wise do everything in its proper time.
The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.
The hardest part of writing is not to get the ideas but to remember, why it is important to get them.
No alibi will save you from accepting the responsibility.
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