On 9 January 2001, Robert Kaplan (author of The Coming Anarchy and The World in 2010: A Return to Ancient Times) gave a talk about global social and political issues. Some quotes:

• "Democracy tends to work best when it's implemented last." (i.e., after you've got a functioning State and have solved the primary issues of building a Middle Class, spreading literacy, establishing ethnic harmony, etc.)
• "Probably the most significant philosopher for the next ten years is Thomas Hobbes."
  
• In the Middle East "... very little has happened in the last 50 years. We like to think that a lot has happened, because we're alive and we think a lot of ourselves."
• "Many of these countries are ruled by the same one-man Thugocracies which ruled them 40 years ago."
• "The Industrial Revolution was about bigness ... new technology is about smallness." (i.e., early industrialization led to the growth of strong States; developments in miniaturization are empowering non-State actors such as terrorists)
• "Corporations will be the foot soldiers of Westernization."
• "The United Nations will evolve into a supernational global relief agency. (i.e., it will have no power, except in areas where there is no infrastructure, or where the US or other nations give the UN power.)
• "The UN is a false dawn of globalization .... All change comes from the bottom. The UN is part of the old era."
• "Tragedy is always avoided by cultivating a sense of it." (i.e., when people forget that things can go wrong, then things will go wrong)

TopicSociety - 2001-08-18

(correlates: LiberalArts, SmallInfinity, Hobbes and Geometry, ...)