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Cargando... Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (edición 2021)por Niall Ferguson (Autor)
Información de la obraDoom: The Politics of Catastrophe por Niall Ferguson
   Ninguno Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.   ) Castinet | Dec 11, 2022 |  As a take-off of Keith Thomas' well-known volume Ferguson describes Science and the Rise of Magic. This is not a history of our perplexing postmodern plague, nor a general history of pandemics. This is a general history of catastrophe--of all kinds of disasters, from the geological to the geopolitical, from the biological to the technological. For how else are we to see our disaster--or any disaster--in a proper perspective? Chapter 1 Though life expectancy has usually improved in the modern era, death remains inevitable and is, in absolute terms, more common than ever. Yet we have become estranged from death. Ultimately, not only are we as individuals doomed, but so is the human race itself. All the world religions and a number of secular ideologies have sought to make this eschaton seem more imminent (as well as immanent) than it really is. What we have to fear is a big disaster, not doomsday. Of the big disasters in human history, the biggest have been pandemics and wars. Chapter 2 Catastrophe is innatelyly unpredictable because most disasters (from earthquakes to wars) are not normally distributed, but randomly or according to power laws. Cyclical theories of history cannot get around that. Disasters are more like tragedies: those who try to predict them are unlikely to be headed. In addition to predicting more disasters than actually happened, Cassandra‘s are up against a bewildering array of cognitive biases. In the end, faced with uncertainty, most people just decide to ignore the possibility that they as individuals will be victims of catastrophe. “The bells go ting-a-ling for you but not for me, a ditty sung by a British soldiers in World War I, is humanity’s signature tune. Chapter 3 Disasters are often foreseen (gray rhinos), yet even some predicted disasters can appear completely unexpected when they strike (black swans). A few have consequences beyond excess mortality that set them apart (dragon kings).. Disasters not either “natural” or “man-made.” Decisions to locate settlements near potential disaster zones—by a volcano, on a fault line, next to a river subject to severe flooding—are what make most natural disasters in some respects man-made. In terms of loss of life, more big disasters happen in Asia than elsewhere. The great American disaster has been, by Asian standards, not all that disastrous. Chapter 4 Networld The decisive determinant of the scale of a disaster is whether or not there is contagion. Social network structure is therefore as important as the innate properties of a pathogen or anything else (such as an idea) that can be virally spread. People worked out the efficacy of quarantines, social distancing, and other measures now referred to as “nonpharmaceutical interventions” long before they properly understood the true nature of the diseases they sought to counter, from smallpox to bubonic plague. The essence of such measures is ti modify network structures to make it less of a small world. Such modifications can be spontaneous behavioral adaptations, but they usually need to be hierarchically mandated. Chapter 5 The Science Delusion The 19 century was a time of major advances, especially in bacteriology. But we should not succumb to a Whig interpretation of medical history. Empire forced the pace of research into infectious diseases, but it also forced the pace of the globalization of the world economy, creating new opportunities for diseases, not all of which submitted to vaccination or therapy. The 1918 influenza was a grim revelation of the limits of science. Breakthroughs in our understanding of risks can be offset by increased network integration and fragility. Chapter 6 The psychology of political incompetence We tend to attribute too much of the responsibility for political disasters, as well as military ones, to incompetent leaders. It was a pleasing argument of the Indian economist Amartya Sen that famine were caused by unaccountable governments and avoidable market failures, not food shortages per se, and that democracy was the best cure for famine. That theory may well explain some of the worst famine in the century and a half from the 1840s to the 1990s. But should Sen’s law apply to famines? Why not to the most man of disasters,wars? It is a paradox that the transition from empires to more or less democratic nation-states was attended by so much death and destruction. Chapter 7 From the Boogie Woogie Flu to Ebola in Town In 1957, the rational response to a new and deadly strain of the flu seemed to be a combination of pursuing natural herd immunity and selective vaccination. There were no lockdowns and no school closures, despite the fact that the Asian flu in 1957 was about as dangerous as Covid/19 in 2020. The success of Eisenhower’s response reflected not only the nimbleness of the federal government of those days but also the Cold War context of much -improved international cooperation on issues of public health. Yet the success of the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s were deceptive. HIV/AIDS revealed the weaknesses of both national and international agencies. So, in their different ways, did SARS, MERS, and Ebola. Chapter 8 The Fractal Geometry of Disaster Accidents will happen, from the titanic to Challenger to Chernobyl. Small disasters are like microcosms of big ones, but because they are less complex, we can understand them more easily. The common feature of all disasters, weather sinking ships or exploding nuclear reactors, is the combination of operator error and managerial error. Often the point of failure in a disaster is not at the top (the “blunt end”) blunt or at the point of contact (the “sharp end”) but within middle-management—a favorite theme of the physicist Richard Feynman and an insight with general applicability. Chapter 9 The plagues Like so many past pandemics, cove 19 originated in China. But the varied impact of the disease on the rest of the world’s countries confounded expectations. Far from being well prepared for a pandemic, the United States and the United Kingdom faired badly. It was countries such as Taiwan and South Korea that had learned the right lessons from SARS and MERS. It was tempting to blame Anglo-American travails on the incompetence of populous leaders. However, something more profound had gone wrong. The public health bureaucracy in each case had failed. And the role of the Internet platforms in disseminating fake news about COVID-19 led to poor and sometimes downright harmful adaptations in public behavior. Chapter 10 The economic consequences of the plague The shift from complacency to panic in mid-March 2020 lead to economically crushing lockdowns in many countries. Were they the right solution to the problem posed by COVID-19? The answer is probably note, but that did not make it smart for the United States to attempt a return to normality that summer ( the dumb reopening) without adequate testing and tracing. The predictable result was a second, smaller wave and a “tortoise-shaped” recovery. Less predictable was the near-revolutionary political eruption over the issue of racism, which bore striking resemblances to mass movements precipitated by previous pandemics. Chapter 11 The Three-Body Problem The COVID-19 crisis is widely regarded as dooming the United States to decline relative to China. This is probably wrong. The empires of our time—the United States, China, and the European Union—all made a mess of a pandemic in their different ways. But it is hard to see why the countries that handled it well would be eager to join Xi Jinping’s imperial Panopticon. In a number of respects, the crisis has shown the persistence of American power: in financial terms, in the race for a vaccine, and in the technological competition. Rumors of American doom are once again exaggerated. Perhaps because of this exaggeration, the risk of not just cold but hot water is rising. Conclusion Future Shocks We have no way of knowing what the next disaster will be. Our modest goal should be to make our societies and political systems more resilient—and ideally anti-fragile—than they currently are. That requires a better understanding of networks structure in a bureaucratic dysfunction than we currently possess. Those who would acquiesce in a new totalitarianism of ubiquitous surveillance in the name of public policy have failed to appreciate that some of the worst disasters described in this book were caused by totalitarian regimes. gmicksmith | Sep 4, 2022 | I did like some sections. I was entertained by his discussion of dystopian fiction's similarities and dissimilarities with today. I thought the most insightful chapter book dealt with "Cold War II", which the author says China initiated years ago to tarnish the reputation and position of the USA. Very interesting, but hardly a disaster, or "doom". There is no doubt that the author is very knowledgeable and can assimilate vast amount of information. I've enjoyed some of his other books. In this case, however, I got the impression he was capitalizing on the COVID pandemic. And his discussion of COVID was my least favourite part of the book. Much of the information is already outdated; it was simply to soon to have a perspective of the pandemic. (  ) LynnB | May 3, 2022 |  ) tuckerresearch | Jan 14, 2022 | Interesting stories about various disasters including Challenger, The Titanic, Hindenburg, The Spanish Flu, a variety of plagues, earthquakes etc. This is a book that is intended to be read slowly. There are a lot of details, data and theories in every paragraph. The sheer panorama of the book is amazing. The research applied to the writing is very extensive. ( ) writemoves | Oct 26, 2021 |
 Much of Doom is devoted to putting Covid-19 in context – to comparisons with other plagues, with other catastrophes such as economic collapses and famines, and with other responses at other times. This is an investigation into the nature of contagion whether it is by bacilli or bad ideas, the importance of networks to their spread, and how good governance, or the lack of it, predicates the final death toll. Ferguson rejects the ideas that history is driven by all-powerful individual leaders or that it is in any way cyclic, and considers any attempt to divide disasters into the natural and man-made as misleading – “all disasters are at some level man-made political disasters, even if they originate with new pathogens”. He examines Indian economist Amartya Sen’s claim that the more a government is accountable to an electorate the smaller the likelihood of famine. “An interesting question, however, is why Sen’s theory does not apply to all forms of disaster. If famines can be successfully avoided, or at least mitigated, when governments are more accountable, why is the same not true of earthquakes, floods, wildfires, or pandemics?” Despite the apparent correlation between populist leaders and high numbers of Covid-19-related deaths, he denies that complete responsibility for disasters can be laid exclusively at the feet even of absolute dictators. “The power of such individuals is a function of the complex network of economic, social, and political relations over which they preside,” he argues, thus giving Chinese President Xi Jinping a portion of the blame, but not the whole meal. --- Although Doom’s references to everything from ancient Greek dramatists through Machiavelli’s uncle (given an experimental plague remedy made from rue and honey in 1479) to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 are entertaining, the book could benefit from a little paring down. But overall Doom is an informative, amusing and thought-provoking read that puts the current pandemic in context, and is full of steadying good sense for these often hysterical times. Nella lingua inglese Doom vuol dire sventura e rovina ma anche, ed è significativo, destino. Ma Doom è anche il nome del capostipite dei video giochi contemporanei: un eroe in lotta contro gli zombie. Nessun titolo fu quindi più azzeccato per il nuovo, splendido, libro di Niall Ferguson, il cui sottotitolo è ancora più evocativo: la politica della catastrofe (Doom. The politics of Catastrophe, Penguin). Come tutti i lavori precedenti di Ferguson, è prima di tutto un libro di storia, che però cela una riflessione sul presente e anche sul futuro. La storia è quella delle catastrofi cosiddette naturali e soprattutto delle epidemie: per Ferguson la storia è sempre storia contemporanea, cioè nasce dagli stimoli del presente, in questo caso della pandemia prodotta da Covid. Attraverso una comparazione delle numerose epidemie, fin dall'antichità, Ferguson ci mostra che esse non sono mai calamità naturali, che l'uomo ha sempre avuto un ruolo nella loro esplosione e che, in ogni caso, nel modo di gestirle, esse hanno determinato il destino, appunto, di una civiltà. E si comprende uno dei fili rossi del libro: l'attuale nostra civiltà ha affrontato il Covid nel più sbagliato dei modi, trasformando quella che era una epidemia non più feroce di altre, anche recenti, come l'asiatica del 1957-58, in un flagello che ha distrutto basi considerate solide e che rischia di accelerare il declino dell'Occidente, uno dei temi chiave della riflessione di Ferguson anche negli altri lavori. Come scrive lo storico anglo americano, se una epidemia colpisce una società che è già in declino, questa malattia ne renderà più rapida la decadenze. Se invece la civiltà è forte, in crescita, anche la malattia più devastante non ne arresterà il progresso, anzi lo affretterà, come accaduto diverse volte nella storia. E non servono tanti paragoni con il lontano passato; le pagine in cui Ferguson mostra come l'Occidente affrontò l'asiatica una sessantina di anni fa, raffrontata con l'oggi, sono impietose; per l'oggi. Allora non vi fu alcun lockdown, nessuna chiusura, nessuna brutale aggressione al capitale di ricchezze e al capitale sociale. Allora la civiltà era più solida, da un punto di vista morale: meno individualistica e più comunitaria, aveva meno paura della morte e sapeva che il rischio zero non esiste. Nessuno alla fine degli anni Cinquanta avrebbe accettato di farsi chiudere in casa, e nessun potere pubblico avrebbe osato, almeno nell'Occidente liberale e democratico, spingersi a una decisione del genere. Cosi ecco che la storia di Ferguson diventa una sferzante auto da fé delle élite occidentali attuali, soprattutto quelle politiche e della loro incompetenza. Si badi bene, Ferguson non parla di incompetenza tecnica ma, quasi di nuovo crocianamente, proprio di incompetenza politica. Sono cinque i punti della incompetenza delle élite politiche occidentali, crollate di fronte al Covid: «1. Incapacità di imparare dalla storia 2. Incapacità di visione 3. Tendenza a ragionare sul brevissimo periodo 4. Sottovalutazione dei pericoli 5. Attesa di una certezza che non verrà mai». Concretamente, secondo Ferguson , tutti i governi occidentali hanno atteso a intervenire, pensando che la pandemia si sarebbe limitata alla Cina, poi agli altri Paesi ma non al proprio. Intervenuti troppo tardi, lo hanno poi fatto male, a quel punto con la politica del lockdown e delle segregazione, sfruttando e alimentando le paure di una società disgregata, il cui unico valore è la mera «nuda vita», per dirla con Giorgio Agamben. C'è poi un altro fattore: essendo in declino, le nostre società sono più statalizzate rispetto a quelle precedenti. Lo Stato amministrativo vi ha preso talmente il sopravvento, persino negli Usa, figuriamoci in Europa, che i politici non hanno potuto fare altro che sottostare agli ordini di una tecno-burocrazia (che noi chiamiamo sanitocrazia) composta da scienziati, tecnici, funzionari pubblici, imprenditori assistiti dalle commesse statali. Ora che il danno è fatto, cosa accadrà? E qui Ferguson, da storico, si avventura in alcune previsioni. La prima è che la pandemia accelererà la seconda guerra fredda, quella tra Stati Uniti e Cina: anzi, il Covid è già stato un episodio di questa guerra, fin dal modo in cui il virus è uscito, forse anche dai laboratori, di Wuhan. La seconda è che vi saranno prossime catastrofi, che le classi politiche non riusciranno a prevedere e che affronteranno con lo stesso grado di incompetenza delle attuali, se non maggiore. La terza è che, già disgregate e deboli prima del Covid, le società occidentali vi escono ancora più periclitanti, come mostra il livello di polarizzazione e di scontro che le tormenta, superiore persino a quelli precedenti. La citazione ottimistica finale, dal Journal of the Plague Year di Daniel Defoe «dopotutto, io sono ancora vivo» cela a fatica le conclusioni del più pessimistico, cioè del più realista, dei libri di Ferguson. PremiosListas de sobresalientes
Una historia de las catástrofes deslumbrante, original y repleta de ideas para el futuro que pone en perspectiva el ya conocido como annus horribilis. Los desastres son difíciles de prever, pero en la actualidad deberíamos estar mejor preparados contra las catástrofes que los romanos cuando el Vesubio entró en erupción o que los italianos cuando golpeó la Peste Negra en la Edad Media. Al fin y al cabo, nosotros contamos con la ciencia. Sin embargo, tal y como ha quedado demostrado con la crisis del coronavirus, la respuesta de la mayoría de países desarrollados ante un nuevo patógeno ha sido más bien torpe. ¿Cómo es posible? Niall Ferguson sostiene, entre muchas otras cosas, que estaban en juego patologías previas arraigadas ya visibles en nuestras respuestas a otros desastres del pasado. Desde diversas disciplinas, incluidas la economía y la ciencia de redes, Desastre ofrece no solo una historia, sino también una teoría general de los desastres, y expone cómo nuestros complejos y atrofiados sistemas de gobernanza son incapaces de afrontar las crisis. Como muestra Ferguson, los gobiernos deben aprender a ser menos burocráticos y más resilientes si quieren evitar un declive irreversible. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION A compelling and original history of catastrophes, full of ideas for the future, that puts into perspective the year already known as annus horribilis. Disaster is hard to prevent, but nowadays we should be better prepared for catastrophes than the Romans were when the Vesuvius erupted or than the Italians when the black plague hit in the Middle Ages. After all, we have science. However, just as it has been proven with the coronavirus crisis, most developed countries response to a new pathogen is clumsy at best. How is this possible? Niall Ferguson argues, among many other things, that previous pathologies, rooted and visible in our response to past disasters, were at stake. From several fields, including economics and social network science, Doom offers not just history, but a comprehensive theory of disaster, exhibiting how our complex and atrophied governance systems are uncapable of facing crisis. As Ferguson shows, governments should learn to be less bureaucratic and more resilient if they wish to avoid an irreversible decline. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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