Reddit Reddit reviews Crowds and Power

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Crowds and Power
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3 Reddit comments about Crowds and Power:

u/soreq · 2 pointsr/IRstudies
  1. Book: Kissinger: The Idealist, 1923-1968. By Niall Ferguson. Penguin Press
    Review: https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21669596-americas-greatest-modern-diplomat-was-also-one-its-great-thinkers-ideas-man
    Reason: Get to know him better, especially early years. The demanding intellect needed to find solutions to problems of extreme complexity. Make your own mind up. See review.

  2. Essay: "Moralism and Realism in Political Theory" by Bernard Williams, Princeton University Press, 2006
    Reason: Bernard Williams was a brilliant philosopher concerned with ethics. The essay gives his classic touch and analysis into the difference between realism (facts) and the moralism in political theory - which may be a basis for the counterpoint you are looking for.

  3. Essay: "Donald Trump’s New World Order" by Niall Ferguson, written November 2016. Refers to Kissinger's latest book 'World Order' https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/11/21/donald-trumps-new-world-order/
    Reason: It gets to your interest in how to make sense of what is going on today

  4. Book: "A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order" by Richard Hass.
    Reason: A student of Kissinger if you like, but as a realist, sees and tries to explain how 'winter is coming.'

  5. Book: "Crowds and Power" by Elias Canetti
    https://www.amazon.com/Crowds-Power-Elias-Canetti/dp/0374518203
    Reason: Masterpiece. Good riposte to David Hume's question "Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers." He also said that 'force is on the side of the governed.' That would be the real counterpoint to a world Kissinger was working with but did not create.

  6. These books about power I think are key because more than relationships between governments or nation states - is the problem of concentrated power - and it being left into the hands of people with little more than a certain sinister confidence and little real care for other human beings. Bona fide public servants are extremely rare.

  7. What in IR literature is referred to as a 'monopoly on violence' that is the legitimate use of force by government per Hobbes, I would say these days is fast becoming a 'monopoly on anarchy.'

  8. As for your aim in understanding relationships between countries, I would worry more about Mark Zuckerberg, who is practically the Cardinal Richelieu of the Internet. Dangerous. Richelieu said 'deception is the knowledge of kings' while Zuckerberg calls his users in very 21st century language 'dumb f****'. A policy for his billion people plus kingdom that is carved in stone to this day.

  9. The closest counter point to Kissinger's 'Diplomacy' today literally may be someone like Ron Paul and his books and ideas. The closest practitioner of both statecraft and of real moral decision-making maybe Angela Merkel. Keep digging and hopefully some of these musings prove helpful.

  10. Finally, there is a new theatre of war: where it remains to be seen if and how diplomacy is even possible. Cyber warfare. That remains perhaps the growing and future defining pivot on which will rest the relationships between countries. And it really does seem like no one is running the show. That's why Kissinger was right, not to put on rose tinted glasses, in his philosophy (from his first thesis to his last book), but to understand and develop concepts such as deals and restraint and straight forward brokerage. Who do highly militarized, economically dysfunctional, tweetocratic and exceptional-ist Westphalian sovereign nation states answer to? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchers? At an international level, there is anarchy, and all there is left is Diplomacy with the only thing that matters in the end but yet still sells for so little: integrity.


u/kidthebilly · 2 pointsr/booksuggestions

[Crowds and Power] (http://www.amazon.com/Crowds-Power-Elias-Canetti/dp/0374518203/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331983691&sr=1-1) by Elias Canetti is very fascinating. I find it easy to read as well.

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/atheism

because a religion is a group of people, there is only one thing a group of people want: to become a bigger group. read this book and everything which happens in the world becomes a little clearer

this goes for any group by the way atheists, not just religious ones