In his 2000 publication, Bowling Alone, sociologist Robert Putnam argues that the social forums that once brought Americans together as Americans have collapsed, and as a society, we spend much of our time feeling disconnected from each other. Boy! You could’ve fooled me. Home, work, community, family, friends: it all snares a person in a net of daily responsibilities, obligations and commitments. Cut off from each other? Yes, please! It would be a treat from time to time to put some daylight between ourselves and the rest of the world.

Unlike Putnam, Yuval Noah Harari, author of the recently published 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, believes temporary separation from our surroundings can remediate a prevailing sense in developed nations that our species is spinning out of control. We know a staggering amount about the human species, Harari claims, but ironically, as individuals, we don’t know ourselves very well.

Harari devotes the final chapter of his book to the value of meditation as a solution to our ignorance. At first, I was stunned by this apparently casual conclusion to a book of such heft. But then I thought about the bliss of utter silence and absolute stillness that comes with moments of withdrawal from the world, and I saw Harari’s point. In those moments, who we are, how our species got here, where our world is headed — all that is unimportant. All that matters, just for those moments, is that you breathe in and breathe out, that you draw oxygen from the outside to feed your body on the inside. Just for those moments, you are only a set of lungs in a mammalian body. That’s it. Nothing more. Beyond you, the world is firing on all cylinders, and you’ll be going along for the ride whether you like it or not. But according to Harari, the one thing in your control is the 21st lesson that teaches you exactly what you are as you speed through space.

Will this awareness solve income inequality? Will it benefit the disenfranchised? Will it bring about world peace? It’s doubtful. But we can be certain that, so far, knowing everything about our species hasn’t resolved these crises. Maybe we are approaching these missions from the wrong end. Maybe we should begin by knowing ourselves first. Maybe running around claiming to understand all about our species when we don’t know what we really are is a fool’s errand. Harari’s remedy is a low-impact experiment. Breathe in, breathe out. What are you? Enjoy the silence and stillness in your classroom.