The Brzezinski books are definitely worth reading.
I would question the suggestion you make here that these books form one story.
Doesn’t there appear to be a rift between the suggestions of parastitic, occult banker control on the one hand, and political ideology on the other?
I side with Brzezinski, in looking at it from an interest in preservation of global order. There is one superpower, and it must remain this way, otherwise the world becomes unpredictable. If ‘they’ would let ‘us’ control the world - that is, ‘set it free’, then, so Brzezisnki is convinced, the cause of our ancestors will be lost, and the mainland of the Earth, Eurasia, will simply fall prey to another total war.
Not a bad analysis per se.
That being said, there is no doubt a lot of nasty stuff against us going on besides.
I simply wonder where these lines intersect.
Political propaganda is the play, and all the world is a stage. I’ve realized if you truly understand how money works then you cannot help but come to that conclusion. It’s a farce. All of it. Money and politics link up perfectly, my friend.
I’m not denying that money and political power are in many instances virtually the same, we can agree on that. But what’s missing in the puzzle here is the link between Zbigniews political philosophy, because you can call it that, and the malicious will to power of private societies.
In my eyes there’s no direct link, which leads me to believe the only link is money. Zbigniew & Obama need the bankers, but they do not share an agenda.
I’m half-way through War and Peace. It’s a better novel on it’s own terms than anything else I’ve encountered. It says more about revered mediocrity elsewhere, but that doesn’t detract from the efficiency of ideas, intent, and creativity in the book. It’s good. My problem is that I readily understand intellectual ideas and therefore am bored by works that rely on them. More my thing is style and rhythm and emotional exploration, because I have the emotional capacity of a five year old, and they fascinate me. I am also reading The Woman Who Waited by Andrei Makine for the second time. Which is more my thing.
I like Tolstoy myself. In both War and Peace and in Anna Karenina, I see him as a novelist of the aristocratic social order and the difficulty for the individual stuck in that order looking for a way out. AK shows that there was no way out for a woman, but for a man suffering the aristocratic malaise there was the pull of the land with its peasant mystique: for Pierre Bezukhov in W&P and for Levin in AK. This does seem like a bit of romantic fantasy coming from the aristocratic point of view, and even Tolstoy himself had it in spades. The question then is, is it really possible for someone from the landowning class to really understand life from the position of a peasant, or just to imagine it in some sort of idyllic way since being an owner of “souls” (as serfs were euphemistically called) puts one in a difficult position where everything is handed to you. If you don’t really have to work for a living and find yourself stuck in a rut of dissolution and gambling, life on the other side of the whip might look pretty good, particularly if you have a sore conscience and a need for some sort of moral cleansing. It’s just that the peasants might not see it quite the same way. This is in essence the quintessential Tolstoy book.
Archilochus said “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” According to Isaiah Berlin, Tolstoy was a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog. War and Peace was Tolstoy’s foxy masterpiece.
An excerpt:
"…My footnote was on Thuscydides, the most thoughtful of the ancient Greek historians. Writing in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, Thuscydides adopted the humanist position that gods do not interview in human affairs. He believed that purely human currents in history would bring about most of the results that traditional thinkers expected from the gods: If a tyrant rises too far and too fast, or if he exercises his power with too much arrogance, other people will fear him and hate him, and they – not the gods – will unite to bring him down. But if the gods never punish human beings, why bother with reverence?
I used to think that it was only fear of the gods that made the ancient Greeks reverent. Thucydides does not seem to fear the gods, but he fears human arrogance, and therefore he cares a great deal about reverence, which he trears as a cardinal virtue. Some scholars argue, in spite of appearances, that he does believe the gods punish human beings when they violate reverence. But then why doesn’t he say so. That was the puzzle I took on in my footnote.
Deadhouse Gates - Steven Erikson
The second gigantic novel in the ten-part fantasy series Malazan Book of the Fallen. I can really, seriously recommend it to anyone who enjoys complex storylines and well thought-out fantasy. His works are simply superb, rivalling Tolkien’s for their breadth and detail.
Infinity and the Mind: The Science and Philosophy of the Infinite - Rudy Rucker
An excursion into mathematical infinity, the mind’s structure as a computer, and how such a computer is limited in the way it can understand the physical and mathematical universe. Very interesting and compelling, especially for the more mathematically inclined amongst you.
Irrationality - N.S. Sutherland
A good, hard look at, and analysis of, humans and their decisions (both individually and collectively); concluding in a scarily large number of cases that said decisions are made irrationally (scary because one then notices most of these traits in oneself!).
Recently finished:
The Emperor’s New Mind - Sir Roger Penrose
Roger takes you on a fascinating journey, from computing and algorithms to fractals and infinity; from quantum weirdness to his own wacky (but extraordinary) ideas of what makes our mind and consciousness tick, and what will always distinguish them from any designed robot/computer. Read with a pinch of salt, but don’t be put off by the occasional mathematics and formal logic - just hop on to the next chapter!
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
I don’t think this needs much explanation.
Soon to start reading:
I intend to get into Bertrand Russell’s Principia Mathematica at some point in the next year. I also want to re-attempt Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. (The latter was one I read when I was much younger, and clearly didn’t fully comprehend its actual message - farm animals talking to each other was enough to keep me interested!)
These are not books that you have to attempt. They either take you in completely or they don’t. As for me, from the first page I was wholly absorbed and captivated.
My earlier attempts at To Kill a Mockingbird and Nineteen Eighty-Four were thwarted by me being distracted from them by such things as extensive revision for exams, and later spending lots of time in the park with mates in the fine weather earlier this British summer. I lost track of the story-lines, but that doesn’t imply I wasn’t enjoying them. I want to try them again, hopefully with more free time to spare for them.
You should be able to read To Kill A Mockingbird in one sitting. I think it took me somewhere between five and seven hours, but I’m not sure. All I know for sure is that I didn’t sleep that night and I was wrecked for work the next day. 1984 takes a bit more time, or at least, I took more time with it. Happy reading
