📖 22% done with Suicide of the West by Jonah Goldberg

📖 Read 16-22% Chapter 4 “The Birth of Capitalism: A Glorious Accident” of Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy by Jonah Goldberg (Crown Forum, April 2018, ISBN: 978-1101904930)

Here Goldberg goes into the complexity of potential causes of capitalism. His discussion of The Miracle and what it represents gains a lot more flavor and nuance than the one word construct it’s had up until now in the text.

He discusses Common law as an emergent property of a society. Again here I note some vocabulary stemming from the “Complexity” science movement of the past several decades as well as that of David Christian et al in the Big History conversation. (Speaking of which, I’ve noted he’s got a new book out on the topic.)

I will take some issue with what looks like a logical problem toward the end of the chapter here:

Therefore the demise of our civilization is only inevitable if the people saying and arguing the right things stop talking.

I do take his broader point, but what, praytell, are the right things, particularly when you’ve just made the argument that you’re not exactly sure what complex system caused it all? We really need to know exactly what caused it to be able to fight to maintain the correct parts of the Goldilocks conditions.

In general, I find myself agreeing with the broadest points here and find the arguments and ideas quite intriguing.