I’m pretty much always more busy than I would like to be with real life, but one of the goals I have set aside for myself is to be a better writer, and the best way I know to do that is to become a better reader. The current project I am working on is still going forward, but given my current lifestyle, I find it much easier to read than to sit down and hammer out pages of prose.
So instead, I am spending a good bit of my spare time, which is sporadic and unpredictable, enjoying some reading that I left when I graduated university (some time ago) with a History degree. Over the last six weeks or so I have been able to finish three books of interest to me, and this post will be my impressions of those three, and some other thoughts on them. Really, this entry is more for myself than anything else, but if you, the reader, are also interested in these subjects, that’s even better.
A Brief History Of The Future, Jacques Attali
I got wind of this ‘Futurist’ and ‘New World Order’ type book by listening to Infowars, where the book itself was referenced as a sort of instruction manual for Klaus Schwab, the Bilderberg Group and Bill Gates. I must say that as I finished this book, I can understand these people’s mindset and perspective a lot better. In addition, I can see how changes in the world which had surprised me in the past all fit into context into their plans.
Attali has a very impressive understanding of our history as a species, including more little-known, pre-Bronze Age time periods of which there is no written record, and he put these times into the context of our more recent history, and to me, both periods made more sense.
As the narrative progresses, he focuses more intensely on the nine chapters of capitalism, the centers of each era, and why those centers were the most important city/region of that time. He establishes a few rules for what these areas could be, and how the influential cities or regions were consistently moving westward, and eventually hopped across the Atlantic from Europe.
While there are definite limitations to this way of looking at things, and the ‘rules’ felt too ridged at times to fit into reality, Attali explained quite a lot. In particular, I feel that a real interest has been kindled in me for Renaissance Venice and 1600s Amsterdam, both of which were two of the nine respective centers of capitalism.
Attali is most certainly a Marxist in his approach, and that perspective shines through in several instances, although I do not believe he is as directly critical of capitalism as many other Marxist scholars typically are. Instead, Attali sees capitalism as an evolutionary process of humanity (hence, I suspect, the focus on our evolutionary history in the opening chapters) which will eventually overtake even Democracy itself.
Much of the future, and indeed the present (Atalli penned this book in 2006 and much of his broader predictions are coming true), involves capitalism gradually and yet relentlessly ebbing away the power of nation state governments by technological advances and surveillance technology. In so many cases, he sees all of humanity serving the market system, as opposed to the other way around. This begs the question of “why” things should be this way, but Attali seems entire uninterested in that dilemma.
The closing chapters of his book are filled with cryptic references that the layperson, which includes myself, will struggle to understand. However, as a long-time Infowars listener, a lot of his cryptic and garbled-sounding conclusions he comes to in the end, for example, of ‘universal intelligence overcoming humanity,’ and ‘the final sparks of human genius’ in the coming years, are indicative of the World Economic Forum and Bilderberg Group’s long-term plan of depopulation by use and employment of artificial intelligence.
Bottom line: If these people get their way, humanity will all be run by algorythms and artificial intelligence, which will eventually come to the conclusion that our species has run its course and is a threat to the planet itself, and will act accordingly. Attali is a compelling philosopher and a brilliant mind, but he has decided to employ those talents in the service of evil. This book is the ravings a sick man who gives the impression of a mad scientist. Unfortunately for us, he is a muse of some of the world’s most powerful people.
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