Michel Houellebecq, the "pop star of the single generation" and the l'enfant terrible of contemporary French letters, is the best guide to the mental landscape of the post-modern.
The landscape is troubled. Houellebecq's post-structural world is nihilistic, cruel and obnoxious. Technological change and globalization have devastated many of the old belief systems but offered little instead. All Houellebecq's characters are detached and alienated from the everyday hubbub of work and consumption. Alas, Houellebecq's world is an absurd sad place where humans struggle to find meaning for their lives.
Books reviewed:
Whatever (1994) /Paperback / 155 pages
Atomised (1998) / Paperback / 379 pages
Lanzarote (2000) / Paperback / 92 pages
Platform (2002) / Paperback / 320 pages
Possibilities of an Island (2005) / Paperback / 423 pages
Fareed Zakaria: The Future of Freedom - Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad
Paperback: 295 pages
Publisher: W.W.Norton 2004
Fareed Zakaria's brilliant book is by his own words a "call for self-control, for a restoration of balance between democracy and liberty". Zakaria maps the future of freedom by researching the past. He disginguishes between constitutional liberalism and democracy and his conclusions are rather surprising:
"Liberty led to democracy and not the other way around." p. 31
Our democratic age is witnessing the advance of what Zakaria describes as illiberal democracy.Examples, dictator-like leaders who pay lipservice to elections but rule like tyrants are abound: Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Zimbabwe's Mugabe, Putin's Russia and lots more. Zakaria also takes issue with the democratization and commercialization of politics, economics and culture in the US and visions a troubled future for her...
Erudite Zakaria is one of my favorite journalist-academics. His writing is fluent and entertaining. His eye for a catchy phrase and for new ways to organize our thinking on traditionally accepted "wisdoms" is invaluable. Zakaria, a (neo-)classical realist in academics, teaches us to see the world in the complex colors it is painted. Above all, Zakaria is honest.
"The execution of Socrates was democratic but not liberal." p. 32
"Although the creators of blogs think of themselves as radical democrats, they are in fact a new Tocquevillean elite." p. 254
Second Opinion: Robert Kagan / Powell's Books
¶ 8/07/2008 09:47:00 ip.
Thérese Delpech: Savage Century - Back to Barbarism
Hardcover: 210 pages
Publisher: Carnegie Endowment for Peace 2007
Thérese Delpech has written a convincing book on 21st century strategic landscape. Her brilliant historical narrative of the savage 20th century originates from the year 1905. Here one can find the starting point for the century of unconscious - as manifested in the works of Freud and Einstein. Delpech warns us that the crimes against humanity, that make up most of the horrible history of the past century, by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and totalitarian China have not been properly analyzed and judged. The political pathologies that were resolved in historic tragedy, are still very much alive in the collective lies about history. Finnish political history is no exception. Delpech warns us that if these problems are not acknowledged and solved, the advancement of human freedom that Europe and the world has enjoyed since 1989 will cease and that we will be pushed back to barbarism.
"Historians know, however, that major wars, using all the weapons available in the various arsenals, are a permanent possibility, as long as there are states and balances of power, and that world government is a utopia, attractive but absurd. The Third World War - an alternative to the Cold War - never happeneed. But who can assert that it never will happen?" p. 24-25
According to Delpech, Europe should not and can not afford to retire from history. Her message is a dire warning to the West:
"In strategy as in politics, European thought is primarily reactive. Europe has nothing to say... While European s sleep, others become aware of the power of ideas. But the ideas that are spreading most widely are very much contrary to European values... Europe is at once too much toward the past to be a major actore in the twenty-first century and too cut off from that past t ofind its inspiration there." p. 44-45
"In the struggle, Europe ought not to forget that the strength of America is its own, whereas its weakness is shared by the West as a whole." p. 166
Second Opinion: Jeremy Black / Journal of Military History
¶ 8/03/2008 05:11:00 ip.
