Inglorious blaze

constantine.michael

"Everyone now has the chance to choose the part which he will play in the film of a hundred years hence," Goebbels told his staff at the propaganda Ministry on April 17 [1945], inspired by the Third Reich's last cinematic feat, Kolberg, and epic depiction of that town's last-ditch defence during the Napoleonic Wars. "I can assure you that it will be a fine and elevating picture...Hold out now, so that...the audience does not hoot and whistle when appear on the screen." Thus was the Third Reich to go down: in an inglorious blaze.

Niall Ferguson, The War of the World

Historian vs Futurist

"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future"

Attributed to Yogi Berra, Samuel Goldwyn and Neils Bohr

The past is all we can talk about - predictions are just extrapolations, but it's the future we'll all be living in.

Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz, a futurist, had a debate the other week at the Long Now Foundation. MP3 here. Schwartz came off the worse, if only because it's so much easier for a futurist to get it wrong (it's almost guaranteed) than for a historian. There's one past, but many futures.

The one line summary is that Ferguson is a pessimist and Schwartz an optimist. I veer between the two, happy today but aware that it could all go very wrong, very soon. Consequently I see myself as a good boy scout, although in practice I tend to be ill-prepared.

Without pessimism there's less incentive to work for a decent future. All the optimists I know - something will turn up - are getting picked off by reality, one by one. Meanwhile, the pessimists are grinding themselves down...

Consider climate change - is the good work being done by those who think it’s not a problem or by those who think it is? Or is no good work being done? Be pessimistic about the future but work towards a better one, which also seems to be behind Ferguson’s liberalism [or conservatism, for American readers].

More Niall Ferguson on MP3

06, 07 Niall Ferguson on MP3

Nassim Taleb says that Niall Ferguson is 'a good lunch', which I take to mean they get piss drunk and talk shit, but I'm probably wrong. What I do know is that he talks well, and is worth listening to.

Side note. I don't have much tolerance for listening to or reading things that I agree with. It's nice to be stroked, but it gets boring fast. I don't need someone else to go on at length about my ideas or confirm my prejudices - I do a good enough job of that myself. So take this endorsement of Ferguson as something that I'm not entirely comfortable with, and hence all the more delighted with. I first heard about him when he came out as pro-British Empire and knee-jerk ignored him, being a good Chomskyite and all. So, yes, he's broadly in favor of 'liberal empires' and tends to ignore the wishes of the colonized, but he has lots of challenging ideas, and challenges are good. Plenty of contra-Ferguson articles are available at Wikipedia. So, here are four recent [2006-07] MP3s that all deal with the lessons of the past for the future we are facing.

Interview on NPR about The War of the World, or why the 20th century was so bloody. The same topic in a good talk and Q&A at Vanderbilt University.

Trialogue on reassessing neoconservatism, with Francis Fukuyama, who goes by the name of Frank here.

Another interview about America and empire.

Similar topic, After Hyperpower - The United States and the Next War of the World, November 28, 2007