When asked what was wrong with the world, G.K. Chesterton replied, simply, “I am.” His answer was impressive in its concision. Chesterton, of course, was alluding to the idea of original sin, to an essential warping of one’s own being, which one needs to confess and confront. The idea is religious in its roots, but accessible beyond those parameters: some agnostic wit once said that original sin was “the only empirically verifiable aspect of Christianity.” Yet, in his new book, Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari manages to completely avoid the implications of Chesterton’s response and dismisses most religions, which blame the world’s problems on the innate dispositions of human beings. According to Harari, what is wrong with the world is actually “a network problem.”
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