This article is not about nuclear accident. This article about stupidity of “smart” people.
Thank you, John Michael Greer! I don’t like Druids, but you pinpointed the problem.
Fun fact: the English version of Harari’s first best-selling book featured Putin as an example of a bad guy. When the question of translation into Russian arose, Harari instantly found a way out of the awkward situation by personally replacing Putin with Trump.
I like your Putin point. I am reminded of the TV show “Fawlty Towers”, which of course featured a bumbling Spanish waiter named Manuel. The show was sold to a number of European countries, including Spain, where it was quite popular. However, when they overdubbed it into Spanish, the local TV network turned the waiter into an Italian named Mario.
You’ll regret your preference when they come for your firstborn. Then you’ll recall fondly the voluntary self-sacrifice of the founder of “the religion of peace”, the act that created the civilization that you clearly take for granted.
Nature abhors a vacuum? Is the Abomination of Desolation we were brought up to dread when we mistook that word for a noun. Words are like trees, they procede us, but unlike objective trees may determine the landscape we inherit depending on what we see in them?
George K
14 days ago
The article is not bad, well written but I honestly have a hard time to take seriously a “chief Druid”. I’m automatically doubting every factual statement produced by a “Druid” . I don’t even have Druid friends.
I know what you mean but, like you, I enjoyed the article. He says much that is true.
Sadly, it took a major nuclear accident to generate conditions where virgin forest returned to Ukraine, complete with wolves and wild horses. I wonder if it will take a cataclysmic social event to unseat the Davos elite and allow small-scale human flourishing to return.
Go back a few years and I’d agree with you, but as per the article above, the sorts of people I’ve habitually treated as serious stand revealed in many cases to be complete clowns without even the most basic degree of competence or insight.
A Chief Druid really doesn’t look too bad next to them.
Dylan Blackhurst
14 days ago
One of the most enjoyable reads ever on Unherd.
I’m so tired of Harari, Gates, Schwaub and the rest of that set giving the world their ‘insights’ on how the world should be.
Walter Egon
14 days ago
I enjoyed that!
Christopher Boughton
14 days ago
A terrific essay. I can’t wait for Trump to be re-elected to see more pearl-clutching swoons from these incompetents. If the Democrats can’t stop Trump through the courts, a move widely regarded by Republicans as a blatant attempt to stop him running, then he will win. And if they do stop him through the courts then the pay back will be swift and bloody. Unfortunately, Europe’s elites don’t seem to understand that the latter event – civil war in America – means that they will be easy prey to Russia, China, Iran etc. Without an immediate, massive rearmament program Europe is doomed. Poland is showing the way, will the rest follow?
What a delusional take, Warren. Both the “mostly-peaceful” protests and the Jan 6th “sightseeing tour” took place under his chaotic 4 years. You support Trump on various grounds and might enjoy his brand of disruption, but I think it’s time to at least acknowledge he is an Agent of Chaos, not sensible or conservative change.
Not of what you would call sensible or conservative change, no. But there are many in the United States who have watched “sensible, conservative” change etch away their values, denigrate their beliefs, kill their jobs and spend their money without their consent, and they’re fed up. Their attitude has become, “Very well, it it takes chaos to get you to listen to us, then chaos it shall be.”
They are heard not “listened to ” and won’t be while their approach is to shout and break things, like some photo-negative of those they despise of the far Left.
I’m not saying the poor and common man are getting a fair shake, but tantrums or outbreaks of genuine rage that reach vandalistic and violent heights–from the Left or Right–won’t help anyone long term. This is pretty easy to see when one isn’t swept up in a mob mentality.
I’m not sure the evidence agrees with you. War is certainly never desirable, but in the killing of large numbers of people, irreconcilable issues are resolved when one side decides to give up because it’s not worth it anymore or one side is just destroyed entirely. Violence ended Nazi Germany. Violence started the French revolution. The United States was born in violence and resolved the issue of slavery through violence. Does anyone believe any of those issues would have been resolved when they were without the violence? No, violence of one kind or another has settled most disputes in history. Saying vandalism and violence won’t help anyone is naive. It will have consequences. It will help some and hurt others. It may hurt the people engaging in violence in the short term but destabilize the systems they’re rioting against in the long term, or it may drive people into the arms of tyrants who will protect them from mob violence. You may not believe in violence. I don’t either, but I’m not fool enough to think the violence won’t accomplish anything. It may or may not accomplish the stated goal, but it will almost certainly cause something to happen. If history is any indicator, whether the violence is justified and whether the rioters were freedom fighters or terrorists will probably depend on who wins.
I think you need to do a little more homework on the responsibility for all the chaos during the Trump and Biden Presidencies. An unbiased assessment would suggest AJ that it is you who are being delusional.
That’s just pure opinionated spin cloaked under a homemade “certified unbiased” stamp.
I admit that I’m biased against Trump, but I absolutely think that–love him or hate him–any sober or objective look will support the conclusion that Trump is an agent of chaos. Many of his supporters even admit that, and welcome it. .
If you ignore the media hysteria and the bombast of the man himself and look at what Trump actually did in office you might be surprised at just how ‘sensible’ and conservative his policies were – certainly compared to those of his predecessor. He certainly never did anything quite as brutally stupid as Libya or the appeasement of Iran, yet we’re supposed to view Obama as the grown-up in the room. Doesn’t make much sense really, does it?
Of course Trump was more conservative politically than Obama, though not Bush Jr., Bush Sr., or Reagan. But his temperament is unhinged and he has no evident motive beyond heightened fame and self interest that extends to his inner circle–if they remain total sycophants. He has no discernible moral anchor. He outright demonizes Democrats, such as he was until pretty recently, and publicly threatens his opponents with jail or other punishment. His rhetoric sows more division at home and abroad. He emboldens far right extremist groups and told one of them to “stand down and stand by”–which they took as an endorsement of menace on his behalf should he lose, as Trump intended them to take it. He helped to stoke the Capitol Riot and watched it unfold on his TV for hours. He would have been willing, at a minimum, to watch Mike Pence hang or get shot if it had kept him in the White House. He praises and buddies up to autocrats and aspires to be one himself. He does all of this heedlessly and often deliberately. He doesn’t care much about America–whose present-day society he seems to hate apart from his own level of societal prominence–or anyone outside his inner circle. I don’t think that’s a wild accusation on my part.
All of that matters in world leader, especially the so-called Leader of the Free world. My argument to political conservatives is not that his policies are less conservative than Obama, Biden, or any likely Democrat candidate, but that he is here to start fights and burn things. Many like that about Trump, but he doesn’t have sound judgment and some of his supporters will feel the burn too. Listen to what nearly all of the many people who’ve left his cabinet during his administration have to say about him. Listen to the actual conservatives who oppose him. You already have a Supreme Court supermajority, however ramrodded through by McConnell.
I don’t expect you to agree, but I ask you to listen to some among the diverse group of people united in opposition to Trump a bit more, and to behold the man with clearer eyes.
Don’t suppose we’ll reach much of a compromise on this one but I respect your overall good sense and the totality of your comments here. If you read this whole thing, my thanks and apologies.
*Obama inherited two wars and ended one of them. He made many mistakes but he was decidedly presidential and adult–by comparison to Trump at least.
I think where we differ is that I don’t subscribe to the ‘great man’ theory of history. The current conflict engulfing the US is entirely about class.
It was triggered when the Clinton Democrats abandoned their traditional commitment to the welfare of the blue collar class in favour of toadying to the globalists and war-mongers of Wall Street.
Obama carried on in that vein, failing to hold anyone accountable for the systematic fraud that caused the financial crisis, dropping more bombs than any of his predecessors, destroying Libyan civil society for no good reason at all, meddling in Ukraine, bullying British voters and doing little or nothing for the black voters in his own constituency.
I agree with some of that. Bad business in Libya, just like Iraq and elsewhere. I wish the US government would forever accept that you can’t win by removing a dictator that their own people won’t remove themselves. Even the German and Italian A x i s power architects were killed by suicide and fellow countrymen respectively.
Great statesman compared to Obama… haha! Opinions will differ but let’s let history decide that one. Get back to me in 20 years if we’re both still alive
What’s your favorite Trump speech: American Carnage, post-Charlottesville?
You sound quite Marx-adjacent when you reduce the current American troubles to class alone. It’s also about culture, religion, and race (to keep the list short).
One place we do agree is on the Great Man of History front. Still, national leaders tend to have an outsized impact–none more than American presidents these days–for better or worse.
Well, I’m not a Marxist because I’m not a proponent of violent revolution. But politics ultimately is entirely about class. The culture wars and race-based and religious repression are just the same tools that elites have always resorted to as deflections.
In times of shortage in Rome, for example, the patricians would employ members of the criminal class to go into the forum and the wine shops and foment tribal and religious conflict. In what way is that any different from the activities of George Soros, Kamala Harris, Joy Reid et al when they enlist criminals, many of whom are deliberately imported for the purpose, to attack small businesses – meanwhile demanding the defunding of the police and the removal of legal remedies against crime that disproportionately affects the working class?
Here’s a thought experiment. Pretend you have no idea who Obama, Biden and Trump are. Nor any knowledge of the media narratives surrounding them. Then compare the consequences of each presidency. That’s what matters.
For thirty years now, and almost everywhere in the West, we’ve been living through the largest upward transfer of wealth in modern history. The process has to be disrupted, even if it takes an uncouth politician with bad manners.
“But politics ultimately is entirely about class”. Of course that is very untrue in the absolute framing you use. That is a reductive Mater Narrative every bit as limiting as the Great Man Theory of History, and almost as constricting as Predestination.
Trump supporters are a coalition of the wealthy and left-behind. Suburban men supported him. So did rural whites, male and female.
You pretend to be operating in some purely objective theatre where you can compare the total impact of each presidency in real time, from across the Atlantic, with a view in no way vitiated by your class-only-and-always lens!
I’m watching and living through each presidency and I have my own fairly-well-informed opinion. It is not baseless, knee-jerk folly.
Trump is worse than uncouth. He has no moral center and sub-minimal impulse control. He is vicious and vengeful. Furthermore, he is a self-serving member of the financial elite and a new money oligarch who will do nothing but exacerbate inequality, as he did with his biggest ever tax cut for the corporations and the ultra-wealthy. * I am also an opponent of violent revolution, except in the most extreme circumstances that prove the near-absolute rule. Funny for an American to say? Well I was born in Canada, British sovereign on a lot of the money.
I’m watching and living through each presidency and I have my own fairly-well-informed opinion.
Hmmm, I think you confuse politics with celebrity culture. What matters in politics is not personalities or rhetoric, but outcomes.
On that basis, whilst everything you say about Trump is probably true, he was still the better candidate in 2016 and 2020. Do you really think, for example that the war in Syria that Hillary would surely have dragged us into just as she and her neo-con cronies dragged us into Libya and Iraq, would have resulted in a better outcome than the cynical but effective policy that Trump pursued in the Middle East?
The world has suffered enough from the easy assumptions of moral superiority that wealthy Americans are prone to. We need a Machiavelli in the White House, not another crusader.
No one needs a Machiavelli anywhere, except perhaps in a big library. You don’t consider the chaos, heightened division, and cultural dumbing-down that occurs under Trump (in office or ruling Republicans and acolytes from his remote toilet throne) to be part of his outcomes or upshot. I think you are sorely mistaken there. He starts fires and trashes people, oft with a kind of flippant or wanton calculation. From afar you prescribe one of the ugliest Americans who ever became famous as the antidote–or let’s say experimental vaccine–for our ills.
You lean on a very selective notion of “just results baby” but indulge in counterfactual and self-certain speculation when convenient. Anyway, most of this exchange will amount to a sharp disagreement, with some points scored on both sides, if not for me among most other subscribers here, all of whom may have left the page some time since. Our differences needn’t be chalked up to moral failing or smug moral superior-mindedness of the classic American kind (not unknown in England though, I wouldn’t say; I think we stole much of it from the John Bull). As long as you don’t, under the cloak of some hardnosed realism, dispense with morality and ethics altogether.
The problem with letting the purported ends justify the means is that the means often become the ends once they start roaring and tearing through everything. A cynical, meanspirited, life-and-death spectator sport.
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts.
Not only a stage, but also a proving ground and killing field, as I’m quite sure the Bard knew. Thanks for the lengthy and lively exchange.
You never answered my points about the damage done by your establishment politicians, simply jumping straight back on your orange man bad hobby horse every time.
You clearly haven’t read Machiavelli since you simply re-hash the common misconceptions – but nevermind, perhaps one day you’ll stumble across Christopher Lasch or Michael Lind. We must live in hope that, one day, ruling class Americans acquire a little self awareness.
You demonstrate plenty of arrogance but little self awareness.
I admit I’m no student of old Niccolo but I have read some Machiavelli, perhaps one third of The Prince about 30 years ago–that was plenty. I know it’s short but still too long and too nasty of spirit for me. I don’t admire self-aware machinations and sociopathy.
Or why don’t you explain the worthwhile subtleties of his heartsick worldview?
It’s better to be loved and feared, depending on the person you’re attempting to engage with; no generalized either/or is needed (love is the statistical champion).
What is there to answer in your sweeping yet selective claims concerning the damage done by recent presidents? Those are just opinion-suffused assertions, not facts. Or course there is damage, and unequal blame, but all you’ve really done is slung mud pointed in one general direction: The Left. Presidents bear a partial, complex burden of responsibility for what occurs under their leadership or lack thereof.
No one can accurately, let alone incontrovertibly pinpoint the Total Net Effect of a presidency, especially while it is ongoing or recently concluded. Not even you.
It appears to me that you simply want to scold and instruct me, the Little American you think you understand so well from your side of the Atlantic. You’re not looking to have a good faith exchange, nor find any point of agreement or mutual understanding across superficial or real difference. Let alone learn anything, for thou art the Teacher.
Bye bye dude.
Those are just opinion-suffused assertions, not facts
Iraq, Libya, the financial crash, Ukraine, open borders … these are not facts?? Give me strength. the Little American you think you understand
I’d be the first to admit I don’t understand you – or at least your adamant refusal to even recognise, let alone accept responsibility for, the damage you do in the world.
That I do? Personally? Are you on the hook for every global action taken by UK government, let alone the darker pages in the Book of British Empire?
By the way I’m not wealthy nor in any position of major authority apart from the residual overall advantage that comes with being a well-spoken white guy.
Get a grip. Seek help from someone whose sincere input you can respect, because your rhetoric and smug, humor-starved certitude are both way over the top now.
I can see you have answers for just about everything, mostly simplistic ones. And a series of fake questions for which you’ll accept only one possible answer: yours.
What a hectoring, tedious person you are these days. With next-to-zero evident self-awareness. *Of course this has been an exchange, as supported by the expressions “contentious exchange” and “exchanged insults”.
You just don’t really do civility or good-faith exchanges–let alone real discussion–with anyone who doesn’t drive in your ideological lane. Do you? And your lane has only narrowed.
Trump certainly is an Agent of Chaos. A substantial portion of his voters know it. They’re voting for chaos, because it might break the system they’ve come to hate. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating. Populism is a reactionary movement. It is defined not by what it is for, but by what it’s against. It’s defined not by its own goals, but by opposing and frustrating the goals of others, notably the davos men this author highlights. It’s barely coherent by design. Sometimes, when one buys a property, the house is in such an awful state that it’s better to just knock it down and start over. The fact that the avatar of American populism is a barely competent clown hardly matters. One needs a lot of knowledge and skill to build a house, but almost anybody can knock it down. It’s always been easier to destroy than to create. In the end, all one needs is a wrecking ball, and Trump is basically the people’s wrecking ball.
I’m in primary agreement, though I recollect that we differ as to whether it makes sense, with some reluctance and misgivings even, to vote for the Wrecking Ball.
America may well be a decrepit house in the figurative sense but I don’t think it makes good sense to actually burn or tear it down. As far as we’ve fallen I still think we have much of genuine value to lose. Nor do I consider it the likelier outcome that America will be improved post-demolition.
We need constructive re-modeling of the sort that can only occur with more patience & forgiveness joined to neighborly & brotherly love. I know that’s a Hallmark card kind of message and I don’t live up to it myself–especially the patience part. But I don’t think we can ever quite escape its persistent urgency, not even in the bloody (or glorious) aftermath of some Purge or Conflagration.
Oh you’re completely right. I just don’t have any faith in the people who currently have power to even comprehend such a thing, let alone implement it effectively in the face of hard opposition from most of the world’s money and power, and a lot of people are just as fed up as I am but lack my sense of moral restraint and emotional detachment, hence the danger such people pose.
I don’t love Trump and wouldn’t vote for him. He’s a terrible human being and just as incompetent as the people he opposes for different reasons. Still, I’m cynical enough to consider it somewhat fortunate we ended up with Trump. As the old saying goes, it could be worse. As history has shown, when people lose faith in their governments and their ruling class, it could be a lot worse.
That makes overall sense to me although I am not ready to welcome upheaval for upheaval’s sake. Plus, I am not emotionally detached overall, but run hot and cold, with both an angry/mean and kind/generous side; trying to become kinder though I’m not reliably “nice” at my core, and wouldn’t want to be.
Whatever our temperamental and assorted other differences, I’m glad we share some version of never-Trumpism.
Wouldn’t call myself never Trump, simply because I consider most of the people who use such terms no better than Trump himself. Trump is bad, but he wouldn’t have been able to come to power if it weren’t for the already ridiculous amount of anti-establishment sentiment that had already built up within the population from decades of being ignored in favor of economic numbers and globalist nonsense. Trump is the wrong answer to America’s problems. He simply isn’t competent or skilled enough to even scratch the surface. The never Trumpers though, establishment types like Romney and Cheney are the problem. I don’t consider them better than Trump. I blame their incompetence and failures for inflicting Trump upon us all. I won’t give them credit for opposing Trump and saying he’s a buffoon, when they were the ones that gave the buffoon a stage as a way to manipulate voters and are now crying foul that it backfired spectacularly. Trump is, among other things, a living monument to their failure, their spectacular incompetence, and their utter disconnection from the will of their voters. AFAIC, may history join their names together forevermore. It would be entirely appropriate.
Three decades of centrist uniparty globalist policy got us to the untenable position we find ourselves in. Despite rising anger and political opposition from both right and left, these people still have nothing to offer but more of the same. I’m not going to delude myself into believing Donald Trump is some sort of political genius who will save us from decades worth of bad policy and shortsighted pursuit of profit, but I can’t honestly say I hate the idea of Trump any more than I hate the idea of more globalist technocrat nonsense. It’s like choosing whether to be stabbed or shot. One may as well flip a coin.
Part of me enjoys watching Trump because the ruling class deserves him. They have earned the mockery of the people. They have earned the scorn. They deserve to be remembered by history as fools who were so incompetent, so misguided, they were beaten not by a military genius like Napoleon nor a charismatic charmer like Hitler, but by a buffoonish an orange haired cartoon character. They probably deserve a good deal worse and they probably won’t get it. History is rarely guided by karma. AFAIC, the ruling class has earned the scorn, the ridicule, and the fear they are now experiencing. While it’s not quite justice, it is balance, and nature loves balance, as do I. I’m no fool. I know it will come with a lot of collateral damage. I know that any social upheaval falls hardest on the poorest. I know that, but I can’t do much about that either way. I can, however, enjoy watching the powers that be running around like a bunch of headless chickens while the world they’ve so carefully built comes falling down around them and chuckling because I saw it coming and they didn’t. Since I can’t do a darned thing about it, I’ll take whatever enjoyment I can while I can. I’m definitely not a nice person.
I thought you might object to the term–even after declaring you’d NEVER vote for him–I don’t embrace it myself. Thought I’d drop it anyway to check the water. I don’t think Trump is pure evil or whatever, but I have strongly disliked him since the 1980s. I view him with some hatred too, plus something like contempt mixed with pity. Down with wrecking ball politics!
Though I’m not above it altogether, I don’t share your apparent level of schadenfreude or readiness to treat human woes like a spectator sport. It seems your detachment can pivot into vengefulness too.
I wonder if your are overselling your own detachment. But I appreciate your impossible-to-pinpoint perspectives, which don’t seem hardened into place for the most part.
Despite my sometimes angry bite I’m more of an achingly sincere, ever-so-tender person at heart. And rude or mean some of the time too (hope no one’s noticed).
If you’ll permit me to ask: What sort of real-world politicians or people do you like or admire?
Ukraine? Israel/Palestine? Do you think Putin, Haniyeh, Khamenei were not rubbing their hands with delight on the day this corrupt and feeble-minded hack was inaugurated – and more so after the shameful debacle of Kabul.
So now every conflict that start during the term of a given president is “kicked off” or inspired by the man in the Oval Office? That makes no sense.
Covid and the bad response to it by both Trump and Biden certainly further de-stabilized the national and global order.
I agree that the war in Afghanistan ended in a shameful debacle. It would have been more shameful to stay there much longer.
I think Biden is and has always been mediocre, but he is a decent man and has mostly good and bright people around him. Trump is unbalanced and corrupt to the core, and courts the advice and company of wingnuts and ambitious charlatans.
I can see there’s not much use in us trying to discuss anything Trump or Biden (or Obama) related. I don’t love Biden as a candidate and think he’s now too old to be at his middling best, but I don’t think he dangerous, morally vacant, or mentally unstable–Trump is.
Perhaps we can have a substantive, good faith exchange about other topics in the future. On this we’re just bickering and exchanging blows.
Have a good weekend.
Hell no. Whatever his flaws, I see him as good hearted, a practicing Christian of the better kind.
Trump can’t win a Who’s Less Corrupt contest with a bookmaker, pawnbroker , or some mafiosos, much less the mildly shady Biden.
laurence scaduto
14 days ago
Wonderful! UnHerd has assembled a great troupe of excellent writers; as stylistically entertaining as they are intellectually fascinating. Greer’s are always worth reading twice.
I love the Ascension Island story, which is totally new to me. It reminds me of my garden; I plant whatever I can get my hands on and then see what happens. It’s working out wonderfully. I don’t even know what half of the plants are called.
Right-Wing Hippie
14 days ago
In the future, everyone will be a radioactive mutant wolf for fifteen minutes.
The druids of the Celts were trained at Anglesey. J Caesar invaded Anglesey and killed all the druids. As the druids left no written records where does modern day druid knowledge come from?
In the midst of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, a handful of British intellectuals turned their backs on the social and cultural trends of their time and set out to reinvent the spirituality of the ancient Druids. The movement that rose out of this effort played a central role in struggles for cultural identity in most of the Celtic nations of Europe, provided inspiration to such world-class creative talents as William Blake and Frank Lloyd Wright, and inspired an innovative tradition of Western nature spirituality that remains active to this day.
To some extent it’s a romanticizing dress-up game or LARP similar to calling yourself a Gnostic or Wiccan or Warlock. Greer has a little something more inside the hood though; don’t think he confines himself to extant remnants of druidical lore.
J Caesar didn’t get much further north than the Thames in his second, and more extensive, 54BC invasion. It was Gaius Suetonius Paulinus who got to Anglesey, in 60AD after Claudius’ invasion of 43, and knocked the Druids about, although he couldn’t have killed them all; before Paulinus could do a more comprehensive job he had to turn round and hotfoot it back south to sort out Boudicca.
No idea. But pretty much every religion relied, or so I believe (tell me if I’m wrong as I ain’t no expert, and obviously not modern ones such as Jedi stuff), has relied on oral storytelling about the founder/prophet until such time as someone (often supposedly by hearing direct from God in some mysterious way) wrote down what it was all about. Maybe Druidism was passed down orally?
Archibald Tennyson
14 days ago
Not bad for a pagan idolater. But we can put those differences aside and stick it to the Davos set together.
George Venning
14 days ago
Harari, it is increasingly clear, is the Francis Fukuyama of our times.
But, I suspect Fukuyama is a great deal smarter than his ridiculous book: he was certainly wily enough to write an epilogue which falsified his own hypothesis and he always had the grace to appear at least a little embarrassed by the number of idiots honking on about TEoH.
Harari on the other hand, seems to me to be a smart guy made stupid by his own success.
Then again, putting myself in his shoes for a moment, if I were a polymathic academic oddball and I somehow caught the kind of success he did off my first two books, it probably wouldn’t improve my self-awareness either.
George – I’ll stick up for Fukuyama, if I may. ‘The End of History’ simply observed that Western liberal democracy had outcompeted all other forms of governance in delivering prosperity. What it’s morphed into over the last twenty years is a different question, but none of the alternatives – past or present – seem to be terribly attractive. The subtitle of the book, though, is ‘The Last Man’. It’s often overlooked and rarely discussed, but this aspect of the book is far from optimistic; my recall of the book is that Fukuyama suggested, in the absence of an existential enemy, the West would eat itself. And here we are.
I agree – he’s gotten a bad rap based on overly-simplistic readings of his first book. I recently read his two volume set: “The Origins of Political Order, and “Political Order and Political Decay” and found them both fascinating. He addresses reactions to his first book in the introduction to one of them, admits a couple of his predictions were premature or wrong (which I credit him for) but also that most of them are not – at least, not at this point.
I agree with both you and Lewis. Fukuyama is, I think much smarter than the main thrust of his book,
However, he did more than arguing that liberal democracy had outcompeted all other forms of governance. He argued that this was so obviously true that it would ultimately be impossible to overturn it and thus lead to the end of “history” in the sense of the clash between competing systems. It is obvious that the book makes this claim from the title. I think it disingenuous to deny that.
Be that as it may, I think that FF himself saw this as a provocative intellectual proposition with which to prompt debate, rather than a revealed truth. We can see this from his inclusion of an epilogue which explored just one of many potential counter-arguments to his own proposal. How much more clearly could he state that, “I have been invited to turn a deliberately provocative article into a more lucrative full length book – but be aware that this isn’t what I actually believe.”
FWIW, I don’t think that the thesis of The Last Man is especially perceptive. He seems to be saying that his vision of the End of History would require a largely quiescent citizen and that, whilst this citizen may make up the bulk of the population, there will always be those whose quest for mythos prompts them to overturn the settled order. From inside the liberal western order, that probably is what the resurgence of “history” in e.g. Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine looks like: too much Mythos. This challenge to western liberalism is fundamentally external.
To my eye, recent history looks much more like the rotting away of liberal democracy itself from the inside – the capture of Government by corporate interests, the hobbling of meaningful dissent (left and right) over-zealous foreign policy under the guise of spreading democracy (but only on a for-profit basis). Financialisation, too big to fail, the intractable conflict between the western financial model and environmental constraints, etc, etc. Western democracy is not solving these problems because it has been corrupted.
These challenges are internal to the west and Fukuyama did not foresee them at all.
Mina Veronica Tasca
14 days ago
I have just realised that Tarkovsky’s Stalker was not only a prophecy about Chernobyl but the film’s surreal images are a reality now.
This was such an enjoyable and interesting read. Thank you!
Penny Rose
14 days ago
Thoroughly enjoyable. What a wonderful informative insightful essay. Thank you.
Xaven Taner
14 days ago
I like the Chernobyl wolves analogy. As in Chernobyl, in order to clear the ground for the coming time of the wolf we must force the catastrophe. We will roam the ruins like the first men of a new born race.
No need to force it, it will happen on it’s own and nature will take care of business , of the human invasive and overpopulated monkey species.
Ardath Blauvelt
14 days ago
Oh my. This made my day, my week, my year. Maybe, my decade! The rebirth of reality, followed by logic and honest science would be such a relief. There’s way too many Icaruses flying around. Global warming, or whatever the climate shift is, needs to melt some wax, quick!!
D. Gooch
14 days ago
“There are living things that grow on the outside of spacecraft in orbit.”
What’s this now?
This essay touches on the core argument of Matt Ridley’s The Evolution of Everything. Humans naturally see intelligent design in the apparent organization of the world we inhabit. Society learned from Darwin to reject Creationism, but then simply transferred this creationist mindset onto secular organizations. People in power continue to believe in the idea of a directional progress that must be intelligently designed, by them, from the top down.
I read Ridley’s “Evolution of Everything” and Harari’s “Sapiens – a Brief History of Human Kind” within a couple months of each other. The contrasts are quite illuminating. Harari has a strange, compelling disingenuous way of presenting information that nags at you afterward that something’s not quite right about it, something’s been left out. Ridley – I’ll read anything Matt Ridley writes. I first ran across him with “The Red Queen” which I’ve read twice. I learn all kinds of things from Ridley that have that property of holding up elsewhere.
Francis Twyman
14 days ago
I can no longer listen to Gates, such an elite bore to listen too, at least Harari was interesting to read, even if he is one of the gang
Alex Lekas
14 days ago
no matter what the problem is, the only solution these organisations can recognise is going further in the same direction they’ve been pushing all along.
This describes the nature of activism, which is essentially the WEF’s business model. The activist never has a solution to whatever problem is being addressed; that would be self-defeating. Activism is incentivized to perpetuate issues, or the appearance of issues, not resolve them.
The author’s climate example is a case in point. Of course, these people are undaunted by the failure of their ideas. Because the ideas are secondary to the cause. As long as they continue to gin up fear and generate support for insisting that climate is an existential threat, they will propose unworkable policies until the end of time.
AJ Mac
14 days ago
The Druid abides!
I’m impressed with this dude’s, er–Mr. Greer’s informed insights and freewheeling analysis. Still, I see no evidence, abstract or concrete, that Trump could help to reduce net national or global stupidity in any way. The next self-declared swamp-drainer could indeed be worse–or better.
The point is we’ll keep getting better or worse versions of Trump, Le Pen, Wilders, and all the others until the davos men stop trying to micromanage the human race. The author’s basic point that human society, like nature itself, is too complicated to be managed and run efficiently from an office building in Brussels or Washington, stands. The elites have become so isolated in their ivory towers that they’re making objectively stupid decisions, and they’ve made the obvious stupidity of an obvious buffoon like Trump seem acceptable simply by comparison and a lack of alternative. The US was in a state already in 2016 where basically anybody who was willing to confront the elites directly, name names, and break down the guardrails that the so-called ‘international rules based order’ had laid down could have probably won either nomination. Trump did, Sanders very nearly did. The elites not only failed to stop the populist movement, they failed to understand it at a basic level. Everything they’ve done since Trump got elected has told me they have no idea what they’re doing and are no better than a bunch of trained monkeys or a poorly trained AI. They’re not competent and they’ll eventually be defeated by someone who is competent or more likely someone marginally less incompetent than they are, which is pretty much where we are with Trump.
Much as I dislike him (spoiler alert) I admit he energetic, charismatic, and unpredictably clever even at age 77. But I don’t think he’s competent to run an ethical business, let alone lead a nation.
There’s no such thing as constructive populism? (I’m genuinely interested in a pretty full answer, because I think you’ll have a good one).
What about a non-partisan, non-anger-fueled reform movement?
James Hartley
14 days ago
That was a cracking read. Thank you.
Jeff Cunningham
14 days ago
Another Adam Smith enthusiast, clearly.
What a great article. Thank you.
Richard Huw Morris
14 days ago
‘The stickiest of wet dreams’ oh my oh my if only I could use language the way this guy does. Epic.
David Harris
14 days ago
“The one remedy they have to offer is global coordination by vast bureaucratic structures that erase the lines between government, corporate, and non-profit sectors. The mere fact that it hasn’t worked yet does nothing to slow them down.”
aka Communism…
John Riordan
14 days ago
“That doesn’t mean that human beings can’t co-create a relatively stable, successful, thriving order in the world. It just means that this project is best pursued on a local level, relying on personal experience, folk wisdom, and close attention to local conditions. That’s exactly what the managerial aristocracy can’t provide — and why world domination keeps slipping through their fingers.”
I’m going to add my own item to the list in question: free markets. What Greer lists here are the characteristics of bottom-up change driven by cooperation between people at a personal level, within the basic social and legal parameters required for free markets to work.
Based on what else I’ve read from Greer previously, I’m guessing he might resist this, seeing markets as part of the capitalist, elitist system he expertly criticises here. But actually that’s corporatism, not capitalism, and in any case what I’m defending here is the free market dimension of capitalism, not necessarily the institutions of finance, governance and political economics typically associated with it.
One other thing that is worth observing here is that communications technology – ie the web – has redefined the meaning of the word “local” in ways that are useful to the ambition Greer describes – we can still trade with people in China, for instance, in ways that retain the important elements of personal trust and meeting of demand that used only to be possible with those physically local to us. So Greer’s ambition to destroy globalism doesn’t necessarily mean we need to lose the benefits of globalisation as a price doing so. Geography no longer separates producers and consumers of specialised products, so the danger that localisation of production and consumption might lead to a collapse in prosperity can be eliminated this way.
Laurence Levin
14 days ago
Fredrich Hayek figured all this out years ago in explaining why, among other top down strategies, Communism will fail for sure. I think Hayek is unpopular today is because his message, that global control is impossible, is anathema to the elites who desire to control the world.
Stephen Feldman
13 days ago
Growth concrete style is all the plodding Trumps and Bidens understand.
Nanda Kishor das
13 days ago
“Crackpot anthropolatry”! LOL
Mark epperson
13 days ago
Fabulous! I have had hundreds of conversations with folks, some well-meaning, some not on this very subject. The great majority were boomers and early Xer’s who believe EVERYTHING can be measured, dissected, ordered, and appropriate algorithms can solve EVERYTHING. I have always been a proponent of the Chaos theory.
Of course, algorithms work very well in several areas but then they don’t. The author references Mr.Harari going south over the rejection of his theories reminds me of Hillary Clinton’s reaction when ALL of the polls, pundits, elites,bureaucrats, media fawns, and financiers all assured her and us that she was going to be elected. She didn’t behave very well and didn’t have the class or moral courage to admit defeat.
These folks won’t either and they will want to take their revenge, just like her and the Democratic Party with all of their “elites”. That will be the next war.
Brendan O'Leary
13 days ago
The managerial class want to do everything for us, except leave us alone.
Madas A. Hatter
13 days ago
Wow! Ka-pow! Suddenly I’m not as half as scared of Trump as I was. (Sorry for Ukraine, although who knows what Trump will actually do when he’s elected, which, thanks to Biden’s massive ego, he will be.)
While his thesis is both appealing and convincing, at least one of his reasons is off-target. “…human intelligence is not some kind of nature-transcending superpower; it is simply the set of cognitive processes our ancestors evolved as they sought to find food and mates and avoid predators” Not true. Actually our intelligence evolved as system to understand phenomena and exchange information. That this ultimately served the purpose of mating, eating and avoiding predation does not mean that this was all that we used our intelligence for and if we had we would still be foraging for a living. To say, for example, that we only sought to understand and predict weather to enhance our chances of eating would be a gross oversimplification – things like comfort came into it as well.
He is not wrong, but he does paint with too broad a brush. And I do wonder what local, folk-wise solutions will prevent the Thwaites ice shelf falling off Antarctica and rapidly raising sea level by a few metres. The flaw in his thinking is that the causes of disaster in any given locality are likely to originate half a globe away in an untroubled region.
“….which, thanks to Biden’s massive ego, he will be.”
Yes, you have to admit one thing about Trump – he is almost completely devoid of ego.
McLovin
13 days ago
Very illuminating and enjoyable. But weren’t global institutions created as a response to catastrophic wars in the 20th century?
Nathan Ngumi
8 days ago
Very insightful and thought-provoking.
“This inability to grasp the rejection of global order is quite a recent phenomenon, especially considering that the entire project of an international order planned and managed behind the scenes by an economic and political elite only dates back a little more than a century.” – Well, it depends on how far back you choose to look for evidence of delusional global order pretensions. Alexander the Great’s Brotherhood of Man, Julius Caesar’s Pax Romana, various European Empires, etc.
Yuval Harari and his Davos bosses will be in for a rude shock as the chaos in the world grows and no one pines for an AI-powered global government to save them from their troubles by creating a nanny state that pampers them.
Thor Albro
3 days ago
Very fine commentary, worthy of Hayek (“The Fatal Conceit”).
This article is not about nuclear accident. This article about stupidity of “smart” people.
Thank you, John Michael Greer! I don’t like Druids, but you pinpointed the problem.
Fun fact: the English version of Harari’s first best-selling book featured Putin as an example of a bad guy. When the question of translation into Russian arose, Harari instantly found a way out of the awkward situation by personally replacing Putin with Trump.
I like your Putin point. I am reminded of the TV show “Fawlty Towers”, which of course featured a bumbling Spanish waiter named Manuel. The show was sold to a number of European countries, including Spain, where it was quite popular. However, when they overdubbed it into Spanish, the local TV network turned the waiter into an Italian named Mario.
What’s wrong with Druids??!
I’d prefer them to adherents of the religion of peace.
Or the noncy priests of the Vatican
You’ll regret your preference when they come for your firstborn. Then you’ll recall fondly the voluntary self-sacrifice of the founder of “the religion of peace”, the act that created the civilization that you clearly take for granted.
Are you sure we are talking about the same “religion of peace”?
Certainly we are. The kingdom of heaven is spread upon the earth, but men do not see it.
You don’t like Druids?! Why not?
Nature abhors a vacuum? Is the Abomination of Desolation we were brought up to dread when we mistook that word for a noun. Words are like trees, they procede us, but unlike objective trees may determine the landscape we inherit depending on what we see in them?
The article is not bad, well written but I honestly have a hard time to take seriously a “chief Druid”. I’m automatically doubting every factual statement produced by a “Druid” . I don’t even have Druid friends.
There are only two good druids: C-3PO and R2-D2.
Those aren’t the druids you’re looking for
The first half of his articles are always excellent. Its always a great documentary that turns into the Twilight Zone.
LOL so true, I always start checking who wrote the article when he gets to conclusions
I know what you mean but, like you, I enjoyed the article. He says much that is true.
Sadly, it took a major nuclear accident to generate conditions where virgin forest returned to Ukraine, complete with wolves and wild horses. I wonder if it will take a cataclysmic social event to unseat the Davos elite and allow small-scale human flourishing to return.
Sad but I’m afraid we’re at the end of the road
You have a problem with religious leaders?
The article stands on its own merits. I can’t take Liam Gallagher seriously, but I like his music.
Go back a few years and I’d agree with you, but as per the article above, the sorts of people I’ve habitually treated as serious stand revealed in many cases to be complete clowns without even the most basic degree of competence or insight.
A Chief Druid really doesn’t look too bad next to them.
One of the most enjoyable reads ever on Unherd.
I’m so tired of Harari, Gates, Schwaub and the rest of that set giving the world their ‘insights’ on how the world should be.
I enjoyed that!
A terrific essay. I can’t wait for Trump to be re-elected to see more pearl-clutching swoons from these incompetents. If the Democrats can’t stop Trump through the courts, a move widely regarded by Republicans as a blatant attempt to stop him running, then he will win. And if they do stop him through the courts then the pay back will be swift and bloody. Unfortunately, Europe’s elites don’t seem to understand that the latter event – civil war in America – means that they will be easy prey to Russia, China, Iran etc. Without an immediate, massive rearmament program Europe is doomed. Poland is showing the way, will the rest follow?
Failing elites or Trump chaos, what a choice, doesn’t auger well
But today’s chaos only began after Trump left office and the current sock puppet and his former boss’s cadre took over again.
What a delusional take, Warren. Both the “mostly-peaceful” protests and the Jan 6th “sightseeing tour” took place under his chaotic 4 years. You support Trump on various grounds and might enjoy his brand of disruption, but I think it’s time to at least acknowledge he is an Agent of Chaos, not sensible or conservative change.
Not of what you would call sensible or conservative change, no. But there are many in the United States who have watched “sensible, conservative” change etch away their values, denigrate their beliefs, kill their jobs and spend their money without their consent, and they’re fed up. Their attitude has become, “Very well, it it takes chaos to get you to listen to us, then chaos it shall be.”
They are heard not “listened to ” and won’t be while their approach is to shout and break things, like some photo-negative of those they despise of the far Left.
I’m not saying the poor and common man are getting a fair shake, but tantrums or outbreaks of genuine rage that reach vandalistic and violent heights–from the Left or Right–won’t help anyone long term. This is pretty easy to see when one isn’t swept up in a mob mentality.
I’m not sure the evidence agrees with you. War is certainly never desirable, but in the killing of large numbers of people, irreconcilable issues are resolved when one side decides to give up because it’s not worth it anymore or one side is just destroyed entirely. Violence ended Nazi Germany. Violence started the French revolution. The United States was born in violence and resolved the issue of slavery through violence. Does anyone believe any of those issues would have been resolved when they were without the violence? No, violence of one kind or another has settled most disputes in history. Saying vandalism and violence won’t help anyone is naive. It will have consequences. It will help some and hurt others. It may hurt the people engaging in violence in the short term but destabilize the systems they’re rioting against in the long term, or it may drive people into the arms of tyrants who will protect them from mob violence. You may not believe in violence. I don’t either, but I’m not fool enough to think the violence won’t accomplish anything. It may or may not accomplish the stated goal, but it will almost certainly cause something to happen. If history is any indicator, whether the violence is justified and whether the rioters were freedom fighters or terrorists will probably depend on who wins.
I think you need to do a little more homework on the responsibility for all the chaos during the Trump and Biden Presidencies. An unbiased assessment would suggest AJ that it is you who are being delusional.
That’s just pure opinionated spin cloaked under a homemade “certified unbiased” stamp.
I admit that I’m biased against Trump, but I absolutely think that–love him or hate him–any sober or objective look will support the conclusion that Trump is an agent of chaos. Many of his supporters even admit that, and welcome it. .
Chaos begets tranformation
In can. In and of itself it’s likelier to lead to more sorrow, anger, and bloodshed, with no rainbow or pot of gold on the other side.
If you ignore the media hysteria and the bombast of the man himself and look at what Trump actually did in office you might be surprised at just how ‘sensible’ and conservative his policies were – certainly compared to those of his predecessor. He certainly never did anything quite as brutally stupid as Libya or the appeasement of Iran, yet we’re supposed to view Obama as the grown-up in the room. Doesn’t make much sense really, does it?
Of course Trump was more conservative politically than Obama, though not Bush Jr., Bush Sr., or Reagan. But his temperament is unhinged and he has no evident motive beyond heightened fame and self interest that extends to his inner circle–if they remain total sycophants. He has no discernible moral anchor. He outright demonizes Democrats, such as he was until pretty recently, and publicly threatens his opponents with jail or other punishment. His rhetoric sows more division at home and abroad. He emboldens far right extremist groups and told one of them to “stand down and stand by”–which they took as an endorsement of menace on his behalf should he lose, as Trump intended them to take it. He helped to stoke the Capitol Riot and watched it unfold on his TV for hours. He would have been willing, at a minimum, to watch Mike Pence hang or get shot if it had kept him in the White House. He praises and buddies up to autocrats and aspires to be one himself. He does all of this heedlessly and often deliberately. He doesn’t care much about America–whose present-day society he seems to hate apart from his own level of societal prominence–or anyone outside his inner circle. I don’t think that’s a wild accusation on my part.
All of that matters in world leader, especially the so-called Leader of the Free world. My argument to political conservatives is not that his policies are less conservative than Obama, Biden, or any likely Democrat candidate, but that he is here to start fights and burn things. Many like that about Trump, but he doesn’t have sound judgment and some of his supporters will feel the burn too. Listen to what nearly all of the many people who’ve left his cabinet during his administration have to say about him. Listen to the actual conservatives who oppose him. You already have a Supreme Court supermajority, however ramrodded through by McConnell.
I don’t expect you to agree, but I ask you to listen to some among the diverse group of people united in opposition to Trump a bit more, and to behold the man with clearer eyes.
Don’t suppose we’ll reach much of a compromise on this one but I respect your overall good sense and the totality of your comments here. If you read this whole thing, my thanks and apologies.
*Obama inherited two wars and ended one of them. He made many mistakes but he was decidedly presidential and adult–by comparison to Trump at least.
I think where we differ is that I don’t subscribe to the ‘great man’ theory of history. The current conflict engulfing the US is entirely about class.
It was triggered when the Clinton Democrats abandoned their traditional commitment to the welfare of the blue collar class in favour of toadying to the globalists and war-mongers of Wall Street.
Obama carried on in that vein, failing to hold anyone accountable for the systematic fraud that caused the financial crisis, dropping more bombs than any of his predecessors, destroying Libyan civil society for no good reason at all, meddling in Ukraine, bullying British voters and doing little or nothing for the black voters in his own constituency.
Trump is a great statesman by comparison.
And as for the Clinton woman, well …
I agree with some of that. Bad business in Libya, just like Iraq and elsewhere. I wish the US government would forever accept that you can’t win by removing a dictator that their own people won’t remove themselves. Even the German and Italian A x i s power architects were killed by suicide and fellow countrymen respectively.
Great statesman compared to Obama… haha! Opinions will differ but let’s let history decide that one. Get back to me in 20 years if we’re both still alive
What’s your favorite Trump speech: American Carnage, post-Charlottesville?
You sound quite Marx-adjacent when you reduce the current American troubles to class alone. It’s also about culture, religion, and race (to keep the list short).
One place we do agree is on the Great Man of History front. Still, national leaders tend to have an outsized impact–none more than American presidents these days–for better or worse.
Well, I’m not a Marxist because I’m not a proponent of violent revolution. But politics ultimately is entirely about class. The culture wars and race-based and religious repression are just the same tools that elites have always resorted to as deflections.
In times of shortage in Rome, for example, the patricians would employ members of the criminal class to go into the forum and the wine shops and foment tribal and religious conflict. In what way is that any different from the activities of George Soros, Kamala Harris, Joy Reid et al when they enlist criminals, many of whom are deliberately imported for the purpose, to attack small businesses – meanwhile demanding the defunding of the police and the removal of legal remedies against crime that disproportionately affects the working class?
Here’s a thought experiment. Pretend you have no idea who Obama, Biden and Trump are. Nor any knowledge of the media narratives surrounding them. Then compare the consequences of each presidency. That’s what matters.
For thirty years now, and almost everywhere in the West, we’ve been living through the largest upward transfer of wealth in modern history. The process has to be disrupted, even if it takes an uncouth politician with bad manners.
“But politics ultimately is entirely about class”. Of course that is very untrue in the absolute framing you use. That is a reductive Mater Narrative every bit as limiting as the Great Man Theory of History, and almost as constricting as Predestination.
Trump supporters are a coalition of the wealthy and left-behind. Suburban men supported him. So did rural whites, male and female.
You pretend to be operating in some purely objective theatre where you can compare the total impact of each presidency in real time, from across the Atlantic, with a view in no way vitiated by your class-only-and-always lens!
I’m watching and living through each presidency and I have my own fairly-well-informed opinion. It is not baseless, knee-jerk folly.
Trump is worse than uncouth. He has no moral center and sub-minimal impulse control. He is vicious and vengeful. Furthermore, he is a self-serving member of the financial elite and a new money oligarch who will do nothing but exacerbate inequality, as he did with his biggest ever tax cut for the corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
* I am also an opponent of violent revolution, except in the most extreme circumstances that prove the near-absolute rule. Funny for an American to say? Well I was born in Canada, British sovereign on a lot of the money.
I’m watching and living through each presidency and I have my own fairly-well-informed opinion.
Hmmm, I think you confuse politics with celebrity culture. What matters in politics is not personalities or rhetoric, but outcomes.
On that basis, whilst everything you say about Trump is probably true, he was still the better candidate in 2016 and 2020. Do you really think, for example that the war in Syria that Hillary would surely have dragged us into just as she and her neo-con cronies dragged us into Libya and Iraq, would have resulted in a better outcome than the cynical but effective policy that Trump pursued in the Middle East?
The world has suffered enough from the easy assumptions of moral superiority that wealthy Americans are prone to. We need a Machiavelli in the White House, not another crusader.
No one needs a Machiavelli anywhere, except perhaps in a big library. You don’t consider the chaos, heightened division, and cultural dumbing-down that occurs under Trump (in office or ruling Republicans and acolytes from his remote toilet throne) to be part of his outcomes or upshot. I think you are sorely mistaken there. He starts fires and trashes people, oft with a kind of flippant or wanton calculation. From afar you prescribe one of the ugliest Americans who ever became famous as the antidote–or let’s say experimental vaccine–for our ills.
You lean on a very selective notion of “just results baby” but indulge in counterfactual and self-certain speculation when convenient. Anyway, most of this exchange will amount to a sharp disagreement, with some points scored on both sides, if not for me among most other subscribers here, all of whom may have left the page some time since. Our differences needn’t be chalked up to moral failing or smug moral superior-mindedness of the classic American kind (not unknown in England though, I wouldn’t say; I think we stole much of it from the John Bull). As long as you don’t, under the cloak of some hardnosed realism, dispense with morality and ethics altogether.
The problem with letting the purported ends justify the means is that the means often become the ends once they start roaring and tearing through everything. A cynical, meanspirited, life-and-death spectator sport.
Not only a stage, but also a proving ground and killing field, as I’m quite sure the Bard knew. Thanks for the lengthy and lively exchange.
It wasn’t really an exchange though, was it?
You never answered my points about the damage done by your establishment politicians, simply jumping straight back on your orange man bad hobby horse every time.
You clearly haven’t read Machiavelli since you simply re-hash the common misconceptions – but nevermind, perhaps one day you’ll stumble across Christopher Lasch or Michael Lind. We must live in hope that, one day, ruling class Americans acquire a little self awareness.
You demonstrate plenty of arrogance but little self awareness.
I admit I’m no student of old Niccolo but I have read some Machiavelli, perhaps one third of The Prince about 30 years ago–that was plenty. I know it’s short but still too long and too nasty of spirit for me. I don’t admire self-aware machinations and sociopathy.
Or why don’t you explain the worthwhile subtleties of his heartsick worldview?
It’s better to be loved and feared, depending on the person you’re attempting to engage with; no generalized either/or is needed (love is the statistical champion).
What is there to answer in your sweeping yet selective claims concerning the damage done by recent presidents? Those are just opinion-suffused assertions, not facts. Or course there is damage, and unequal blame, but all you’ve really done is slung mud pointed in one general direction: The Left. Presidents bear a partial, complex burden of responsibility for what occurs under their leadership or lack thereof.
No one can accurately, let alone incontrovertibly pinpoint the Total Net Effect of a presidency, especially while it is ongoing or recently concluded. Not even you.
It appears to me that you simply want to scold and instruct me, the Little American you think you understand so well from your side of the Atlantic. You’re not looking to have a good faith exchange, nor find any point of agreement or mutual understanding across superficial or real difference. Let alone learn anything, for thou art the Teacher.
Bye bye dude.
Those are just opinion-suffused assertions, not facts
Iraq, Libya, the financial crash, Ukraine, open borders … these are not facts?? Give me strength.
the Little American you think you understand
I’d be the first to admit I don’t understand you – or at least your adamant refusal to even recognise, let alone accept responsibility for, the damage you do in the world.
That I do? Personally? Are you on the hook for every global action taken by UK government, let alone the darker pages in the Book of British Empire?
By the way I’m not wealthy nor in any position of major authority apart from the residual overall advantage that comes with being a well-spoken white guy.
Get a grip. Seek help from someone whose sincere input you can respect, because your rhetoric and smug, humor-starved certitude are both way over the top now.
I can see you have answers for just about everything, mostly simplistic ones. And a series of fake questions for which you’ll accept only one possible answer: yours.
What a hectoring, tedious person you are these days. With next-to-zero evident self-awareness.
*Of course this has been an exchange, as supported by the expressions “contentious exchange” and “exchanged insults”.
You just don’t really do civility or good-faith exchanges–let alone real discussion–with anyone who doesn’t drive in your ideological lane. Do you? And your lane has only narrowed.
Trump certainly is an Agent of Chaos. A substantial portion of his voters know it. They’re voting for chaos, because it might break the system they’ve come to hate. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating. Populism is a reactionary movement. It is defined not by what it is for, but by what it’s against. It’s defined not by its own goals, but by opposing and frustrating the goals of others, notably the davos men this author highlights. It’s barely coherent by design. Sometimes, when one buys a property, the house is in such an awful state that it’s better to just knock it down and start over. The fact that the avatar of American populism is a barely competent clown hardly matters. One needs a lot of knowledge and skill to build a house, but almost anybody can knock it down. It’s always been easier to destroy than to create. In the end, all one needs is a wrecking ball, and Trump is basically the people’s wrecking ball.
I’m in primary agreement, though I recollect that we differ as to whether it makes sense, with some reluctance and misgivings even, to vote for the Wrecking Ball.
America may well be a decrepit house in the figurative sense but I don’t think it makes good sense to actually burn or tear it down. As far as we’ve fallen I still think we have much of genuine value to lose. Nor do I consider it the likelier outcome that America will be improved post-demolition.
We need constructive re-modeling of the sort that can only occur with more patience & forgiveness joined to neighborly & brotherly love. I know that’s a Hallmark card kind of message and I don’t live up to it myself–especially the patience part. But I don’t think we can ever quite escape its persistent urgency, not even in the bloody (or glorious) aftermath of some Purge or Conflagration.
Oh you’re completely right. I just don’t have any faith in the people who currently have power to even comprehend such a thing, let alone implement it effectively in the face of hard opposition from most of the world’s money and power, and a lot of people are just as fed up as I am but lack my sense of moral restraint and emotional detachment, hence the danger such people pose.
I don’t love Trump and wouldn’t vote for him. He’s a terrible human being and just as incompetent as the people he opposes for different reasons. Still, I’m cynical enough to consider it somewhat fortunate we ended up with Trump. As the old saying goes, it could be worse. As history has shown, when people lose faith in their governments and their ruling class, it could be a lot worse.
That makes overall sense to me although I am not ready to welcome upheaval for upheaval’s sake. Plus, I am not emotionally detached overall, but run hot and cold, with both an angry/mean and kind/generous side; trying to become kinder though I’m not reliably “nice” at my core, and wouldn’t want to be.
Whatever our temperamental and assorted other differences, I’m glad we share some version of never-Trumpism.
Wouldn’t call myself never Trump, simply because I consider most of the people who use such terms no better than Trump himself. Trump is bad, but he wouldn’t have been able to come to power if it weren’t for the already ridiculous amount of anti-establishment sentiment that had already built up within the population from decades of being ignored in favor of economic numbers and globalist nonsense. Trump is the wrong answer to America’s problems. He simply isn’t competent or skilled enough to even scratch the surface. The never Trumpers though, establishment types like Romney and Cheney are the problem. I don’t consider them better than Trump. I blame their incompetence and failures for inflicting Trump upon us all. I won’t give them credit for opposing Trump and saying he’s a buffoon, when they were the ones that gave the buffoon a stage as a way to manipulate voters and are now crying foul that it backfired spectacularly. Trump is, among other things, a living monument to their failure, their spectacular incompetence, and their utter disconnection from the will of their voters. AFAIC, may history join their names together forevermore. It would be entirely appropriate.
Three decades of centrist uniparty globalist policy got us to the untenable position we find ourselves in. Despite rising anger and political opposition from both right and left, these people still have nothing to offer but more of the same. I’m not going to delude myself into believing Donald Trump is some sort of political genius who will save us from decades worth of bad policy and shortsighted pursuit of profit, but I can’t honestly say I hate the idea of Trump any more than I hate the idea of more globalist technocrat nonsense. It’s like choosing whether to be stabbed or shot. One may as well flip a coin.
Part of me enjoys watching Trump because the ruling class deserves him. They have earned the mockery of the people. They have earned the scorn. They deserve to be remembered by history as fools who were so incompetent, so misguided, they were beaten not by a military genius like Napoleon nor a charismatic charmer like Hitler, but by a buffoonish an orange haired cartoon character. They probably deserve a good deal worse and they probably won’t get it. History is rarely guided by karma. AFAIC, the ruling class has earned the scorn, the ridicule, and the fear they are now experiencing. While it’s not quite justice, it is balance, and nature loves balance, as do I. I’m no fool. I know it will come with a lot of collateral damage. I know that any social upheaval falls hardest on the poorest. I know that, but I can’t do much about that either way. I can, however, enjoy watching the powers that be running around like a bunch of headless chickens while the world they’ve so carefully built comes falling down around them and chuckling because I saw it coming and they didn’t. Since I can’t do a darned thing about it, I’ll take whatever enjoyment I can while I can. I’m definitely not a nice person.
I thought you might object to the term–even after declaring you’d NEVER vote for him–I don’t embrace it myself. Thought I’d drop it anyway to check the water. I don’t think Trump is pure evil or whatever, but I have strongly disliked him since the 1980s. I view him with some hatred too, plus something like contempt mixed with pity. Down with wrecking ball politics!
Though I’m not above it altogether, I don’t share your apparent level of schadenfreude or readiness to treat human woes like a spectator sport. It seems your detachment can pivot into vengefulness too.
I wonder if your are overselling your own detachment. But I appreciate your impossible-to-pinpoint perspectives, which don’t seem hardened into place for the most part.
Despite my sometimes angry bite I’m more of an achingly sincere, ever-so-tender person at heart. And rude or mean some of the time too (hope no one’s noticed).
If you’ll permit me to ask: What sort of real-world politicians or people do you like or admire?
So true and one thing you can say about the ‘Orange Man’ he never kicked off any wars while he was in office.
Nor has Biden “kicked off” any. He ended one though, however clumsily.
Ukraine? Israel/Palestine? Do you think Putin, Haniyeh, Khamenei were not rubbing their hands with delight on the day this corrupt and feeble-minded hack was inaugurated – and more so after the shameful debacle of Kabul.
So now every conflict that start during the term of a given president is “kicked off” or inspired by the man in the Oval Office? That makes no sense.
Covid and the bad response to it by both Trump and Biden certainly further de-stabilized the national and global order.
I agree that the war in Afghanistan ended in a shameful debacle. It would have been more shameful to stay there much longer.
I think Biden is and has always been mediocre, but he is a decent man and has mostly good and bright people around him. Trump is unbalanced and corrupt to the core, and courts the advice and company of wingnuts and ambitious charlatans.
I can see there’s not much use in us trying to discuss anything Trump or Biden (or Obama) related. I don’t love Biden as a candidate and think he’s now too old to be at his middling best, but I don’t think he dangerous, morally vacant, or mentally unstable–Trump is.
Perhaps we can have a substantive, good faith exchange about other topics in the future. On this we’re just bickering and exchanging blows.
Have a good weekend.
The evidence that Biden has been on the take for a long time is pretty overwhelming, but you don’t think he’s ‘morally vacant’?
Hell no. Whatever his flaws, I see him as good hearted, a practicing Christian of the better kind.
Trump can’t win a Who’s Less Corrupt contest with a bookmaker, pawnbroker , or some mafiosos, much less the mildly shady Biden.
Wonderful! UnHerd has assembled a great troupe of excellent writers; as stylistically entertaining as they are intellectually fascinating. Greer’s are always worth reading twice.
I love the Ascension Island story, which is totally new to me. It reminds me of my garden; I plant whatever I can get my hands on and then see what happens. It’s working out wonderfully. I don’t even know what half of the plants are called.
In the future, everyone will be a radioactive mutant wolf for fifteen minutes.
Haha! QED. Green-thumbed.
Disruption is the way to go.
The druids of the Celts were trained at Anglesey. J Caesar invaded Anglesey and killed all the druids. As the druids left no written records where does modern day druid knowledge come from?
According to the blurb of one of the present author’s books:
To some extent it’s a romanticizing dress-up game or LARP similar to calling yourself a Gnostic or Wiccan or Warlock. Greer has a little something more inside the hood though; don’t think he confines himself to extant remnants of druidical lore.
J Caesar didn’t get much further north than the Thames in his second, and more extensive, 54BC invasion. It was Gaius Suetonius Paulinus who got to Anglesey, in 60AD after Claudius’ invasion of 43, and knocked the Druids about, although he couldn’t have killed them all; before Paulinus could do a more comprehensive job he had to turn round and hotfoot it back south to sort out Boudicca.
So who was left after GSP did his work ? As there were no written records, what knowledge remained ?
No idea. But pretty much every religion relied, or so I believe (tell me if I’m wrong as I ain’t no expert, and obviously not modern ones such as Jedi stuff), has relied on oral storytelling about the founder/prophet until such time as someone (often supposedly by hearing direct from God in some mysterious way) wrote down what it was all about. Maybe Druidism was passed down orally?
Not bad for a pagan idolater. But we can put those differences aside and stick it to the Davos set together.
Harari, it is increasingly clear, is the Francis Fukuyama of our times.
But, I suspect Fukuyama is a great deal smarter than his ridiculous book: he was certainly wily enough to write an epilogue which falsified his own hypothesis and he always had the grace to appear at least a little embarrassed by the number of idiots honking on about TEoH.
Harari on the other hand, seems to me to be a smart guy made stupid by his own success.
Then again, putting myself in his shoes for a moment, if I were a polymathic academic oddball and I somehow caught the kind of success he did off my first two books, it probably wouldn’t improve my self-awareness either.
George – I’ll stick up for Fukuyama, if I may. ‘The End of History’ simply observed that Western liberal democracy had outcompeted all other forms of governance in delivering prosperity. What it’s morphed into over the last twenty years is a different question, but none of the alternatives – past or present – seem to be terribly attractive. The subtitle of the book, though, is ‘The Last Man’. It’s often overlooked and rarely discussed, but this aspect of the book is far from optimistic; my recall of the book is that Fukuyama suggested, in the absence of an existential enemy, the West would eat itself. And here we are.
I agree – he’s gotten a bad rap based on overly-simplistic readings of his first book. I recently read his two volume set: “The Origins of Political Order, and “Political Order and Political Decay” and found them both fascinating. He addresses reactions to his first book in the introduction to one of them, admits a couple of his predictions were premature or wrong (which I credit him for) but also that most of them are not – at least, not at this point.
I agree with both you and Lewis. Fukuyama is, I think much smarter than the main thrust of his book,
However, he did more than arguing that liberal democracy had outcompeted all other forms of governance. He argued that this was so obviously true that it would ultimately be impossible to overturn it and thus lead to the end of “history” in the sense of the clash between competing systems. It is obvious that the book makes this claim from the title. I think it disingenuous to deny that.
Be that as it may, I think that FF himself saw this as a provocative intellectual proposition with which to prompt debate, rather than a revealed truth. We can see this from his inclusion of an epilogue which explored just one of many potential counter-arguments to his own proposal. How much more clearly could he state that, “I have been invited to turn a deliberately provocative article into a more lucrative full length book – but be aware that this isn’t what I actually believe.”
FWIW, I don’t think that the thesis of The Last Man is especially perceptive. He seems to be saying that his vision of the End of History would require a largely quiescent citizen and that, whilst this citizen may make up the bulk of the population, there will always be those whose quest for mythos prompts them to overturn the settled order. From inside the liberal western order, that probably is what the resurgence of “history” in e.g. Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine looks like: too much Mythos. This challenge to western liberalism is fundamentally external.
To my eye, recent history looks much more like the rotting away of liberal democracy itself from the inside – the capture of Government by corporate interests, the hobbling of meaningful dissent (left and right) over-zealous foreign policy under the guise of spreading democracy (but only on a for-profit basis). Financialisation, too big to fail, the intractable conflict between the western financial model and environmental constraints, etc, etc. Western democracy is not solving these problems because it has been corrupted.
These challenges are internal to the west and Fukuyama did not foresee them at all.
I have just realised that Tarkovsky’s Stalker was not only a prophecy about Chernobyl but the film’s surreal images are a reality now.
This was such an enjoyable and interesting read. Thank you!
Thoroughly enjoyable. What a wonderful informative insightful essay. Thank you.
I like the Chernobyl wolves analogy. As in Chernobyl, in order to clear the ground for the coming time of the wolf we must force the catastrophe. We will roam the ruins like the first men of a new born race.
No need to force it, it will happen on it’s own and nature will take care of business , of the human invasive and overpopulated monkey species.
Oh my. This made my day, my week, my year. Maybe, my decade! The rebirth of reality, followed by logic and honest science would be such a relief. There’s way too many Icaruses flying around. Global warming, or whatever the climate shift is, needs to melt some wax, quick!!
“There are living things that grow on the outside of spacecraft in orbit.”
What’s this now?
See Scientists Discover Exposed Bacteria Can Survive in Space for Years | Science| Smithsonian Magazine.
Agreed, “survival” is not the same as “growth”, but I guess a little bit of exaggeration for effect. Still pretty amazing.
This essay touches on the core argument of Matt Ridley’s The Evolution of Everything. Humans naturally see intelligent design in the apparent organization of the world we inhabit. Society learned from Darwin to reject Creationism, but then simply transferred this creationist mindset onto secular organizations. People in power continue to believe in the idea of a directional progress that must be intelligently designed, by them, from the top down.
I read Ridley’s “Evolution of Everything” and Harari’s “Sapiens – a Brief History of Human Kind” within a couple months of each other. The contrasts are quite illuminating. Harari has a strange, compelling disingenuous way of presenting information that nags at you afterward that something’s not quite right about it, something’s been left out. Ridley – I’ll read anything Matt Ridley writes. I first ran across him with “The Red Queen” which I’ve read twice. I learn all kinds of things from Ridley that have that property of holding up elsewhere.
I can no longer listen to Gates, such an elite bore to listen too, at least Harari was interesting to read, even if he is one of the gang
no matter what the problem is, the only solution these organisations can recognise is going further in the same direction they’ve been pushing all along.
This describes the nature of activism, which is essentially the WEF’s business model. The activist never has a solution to whatever problem is being addressed; that would be self-defeating. Activism is incentivized to perpetuate issues, or the appearance of issues, not resolve them.
The author’s climate example is a case in point. Of course, these people are undaunted by the failure of their ideas. Because the ideas are secondary to the cause. As long as they continue to gin up fear and generate support for insisting that climate is an existential threat, they will propose unworkable policies until the end of time.
The Druid abides!
I’m impressed with this dude’s, er–Mr. Greer’s informed insights and freewheeling analysis. Still, I see no evidence, abstract or concrete, that Trump could help to reduce net national or global stupidity in any way. The next self-declared swamp-drainer could indeed be worse–or better.
The point is we’ll keep getting better or worse versions of Trump, Le Pen, Wilders, and all the others until the davos men stop trying to micromanage the human race. The author’s basic point that human society, like nature itself, is too complicated to be managed and run efficiently from an office building in Brussels or Washington, stands. The elites have become so isolated in their ivory towers that they’re making objectively stupid decisions, and they’ve made the obvious stupidity of an obvious buffoon like Trump seem acceptable simply by comparison and a lack of alternative. The US was in a state already in 2016 where basically anybody who was willing to confront the elites directly, name names, and break down the guardrails that the so-called ‘international rules based order’ had laid down could have probably won either nomination. Trump did, Sanders very nearly did. The elites not only failed to stop the populist movement, they failed to understand it at a basic level. Everything they’ve done since Trump got elected has told me they have no idea what they’re doing and are no better than a bunch of trained monkeys or a poorly trained AI. They’re not competent and they’ll eventually be defeated by someone who is competent or more likely someone marginally less incompetent than they are, which is pretty much where we are with Trump.
Much as I dislike him (spoiler alert) I admit he energetic, charismatic, and unpredictably clever even at age 77. But I don’t think he’s competent to run an ethical business, let alone lead a nation.
There’s no such thing as constructive populism? (I’m genuinely interested in a pretty full answer, because I think you’ll have a good one).
What about a non-partisan, non-anger-fueled reform movement?
That was a cracking read. Thank you.
Another Adam Smith enthusiast, clearly.
What a great article. Thank you.
‘The stickiest of wet dreams’ oh my oh my if only I could use language the way this guy does. Epic.
“The one remedy they have to offer is global coordination by vast bureaucratic structures that erase the lines between government, corporate, and non-profit sectors. The mere fact that it hasn’t worked yet does nothing to slow them down.”
aka Communism…
“That doesn’t mean that human beings can’t co-create a relatively stable, successful, thriving order in the world. It just means that this project is best pursued on a local level, relying on personal experience, folk wisdom, and close attention to local conditions. That’s exactly what the managerial aristocracy can’t provide — and why world domination keeps slipping through their fingers.”
I’m going to add my own item to the list in question: free markets. What Greer lists here are the characteristics of bottom-up change driven by cooperation between people at a personal level, within the basic social and legal parameters required for free markets to work.
Based on what else I’ve read from Greer previously, I’m guessing he might resist this, seeing markets as part of the capitalist, elitist system he expertly criticises here. But actually that’s corporatism, not capitalism, and in any case what I’m defending here is the free market dimension of capitalism, not necessarily the institutions of finance, governance and political economics typically associated with it.
One other thing that is worth observing here is that communications technology – ie the web – has redefined the meaning of the word “local” in ways that are useful to the ambition Greer describes – we can still trade with people in China, for instance, in ways that retain the important elements of personal trust and meeting of demand that used only to be possible with those physically local to us. So Greer’s ambition to destroy globalism doesn’t necessarily mean we need to lose the benefits of globalisation as a price doing so. Geography no longer separates producers and consumers of specialised products, so the danger that localisation of production and consumption might lead to a collapse in prosperity can be eliminated this way.
Fredrich Hayek figured all this out years ago in explaining why, among other top down strategies, Communism will fail for sure. I think Hayek is unpopular today is because his message, that global control is impossible, is anathema to the elites who desire to control the world.
Growth concrete style is all the plodding Trumps and Bidens understand.
“Crackpot anthropolatry”! LOL
Fabulous! I have had hundreds of conversations with folks, some well-meaning, some not on this very subject. The great majority were boomers and early Xer’s who believe EVERYTHING can be measured, dissected, ordered, and appropriate algorithms can solve EVERYTHING. I have always been a proponent of the Chaos theory.
Of course, algorithms work very well in several areas but then they don’t. The author references Mr.Harari going south over the rejection of his theories reminds me of Hillary Clinton’s reaction when ALL of the polls, pundits, elites,bureaucrats, media fawns, and financiers all assured her and us that she was going to be elected. She didn’t behave very well and didn’t have the class or moral courage to admit defeat.
These folks won’t either and they will want to take their revenge, just like her and the Democratic Party with all of their “elites”. That will be the next war.
The managerial class want to do everything for us, except leave us alone.
Wow! Ka-pow! Suddenly I’m not as half as scared of Trump as I was. (Sorry for Ukraine, although who knows what Trump will actually do when he’s elected, which, thanks to Biden’s massive ego, he will be.)
While his thesis is both appealing and convincing, at least one of his reasons is off-target. “…human intelligence is not some kind of nature-transcending superpower; it is simply the set of cognitive processes our ancestors evolved as they sought to find food and mates and avoid predators” Not true. Actually our intelligence evolved as system to understand phenomena and exchange information. That this ultimately served the purpose of mating, eating and avoiding predation does not mean that this was all that we used our intelligence for and if we had we would still be foraging for a living. To say, for example, that we only sought to understand and predict weather to enhance our chances of eating would be a gross oversimplification – things like comfort came into it as well.
He is not wrong, but he does paint with too broad a brush. And I do wonder what local, folk-wise solutions will prevent the Thwaites ice shelf falling off Antarctica and rapidly raising sea level by a few metres. The flaw in his thinking is that the causes of disaster in any given locality are likely to originate half a globe away in an untroubled region.
“….which, thanks to Biden’s massive ego, he will be.”
Yes, you have to admit one thing about Trump – he is almost completely devoid of ego.
Very illuminating and enjoyable. But weren’t global institutions created as a response to catastrophic wars in the 20th century?
Very insightful and thought-provoking.
“This inability to grasp the rejection of global order is quite a recent phenomenon, especially considering that the entire project of an international order planned and managed behind the scenes by an economic and political elite only dates back a little more than a century.” – Well, it depends on how far back you choose to look for evidence of delusional global order pretensions. Alexander the Great’s Brotherhood of Man, Julius Caesar’s Pax Romana, various European Empires, etc.
Yuval Harari and his Davos bosses will be in for a rude shock as the chaos in the world grows and no one pines for an AI-powered global government to save them from their troubles by creating a nanny state that pampers them.
Very fine commentary, worthy of Hayek (“The Fatal Conceit”).