Yuval Noah Harari is one of the great thinkers of our time. He combines his sharp and clear observations, in new and meaningful ways and by doing that, often times, comes to enlightening conclusions. How did he get there? How did he learn to see things, not the way people around him see them, so he is able to come to new and better conclusions? He talks about this in the above video-clip. Being gay and growing up in a society that thought gay = wrong gave him a strong incentive to develop an alternative view. He knew better, because he had more and better information on being gay than most people. Because he is gay himself.
Teaching Korsakow I meet a lot of people with a strong talent to see things differently. Years ago, when I was teaching at German Literature Institute in Leipzig, I became aware that many of the people, with the strongest talent to formulate alternative views, were in fact different from the majority, in a way that was not really accepted by the majority and a high percentage of these skilled people were gay. Being different in the right environment and with the right thinking-tools at hand, can be helpful to unlock potential to become an independent thinker.
And I especially like what Yuval Noah Harari says in the beginning:
You have to learn to not believe the story!