Yuval Noah Harari and Rutger Bregman

The fast-moving social and cultural transformations of recent decades and the crisis of some of the great ideas that have defined the modern world mean that, today, we lack the tools for explaining and coping with the present. The climate emergency has posed an unprecedented global challenge while the technological changes that humanity is experiencing on a large scale are disrupting social and economic structures and making us think, once again, about who we are as a species. In this situation, when we are far from having put an end to violence and inequalities on the planet, thinking about the future has surely become the challenge that requires maximum audacity.

Two of today’s most widely recognised intellectuals, Yuval Noah Harari and Rutger Bregman, coincide in signalling the need to recover the idea of the future. The historian Yuval Noah Harari is the author of some of the last decade’s most read essays, among them Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, 2011 (in Catalan, Sàpiens: Una breu història de la humanitat, Edicions 62/Debate, 2014). Also a historian, Rutger Bregman, who became internationally recognised with his book Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There, 2014 (in Catalan, Utopia per a realistes, Empúries/Salamandra, 2017), presents a positive view of the human condition. In this session, they speak with the journalist and writer Llucia Ramis.

Yuval Noah Harari participates by videoconference.