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August 04, 2005
Hegemony or Survival
I started playing with Azureus again to download Gentoo, and was Googling for torrents for one reason or another. A link to ChomskyTorrents.org v.2 was on the first page, so I clicked through. Somebody had registered the audiobook version of Hegemony or Survival. Noam Chomsky gives us another hilarious, iconoclastic, well researched examination of the art of hegemony, also reiterating some potentially dire and likely consequences of the game.
According to Amazon.com, lots of people are buying Hegemony or Survival. But a whole lot more are buying Thomas Friedman's latest book about how you'd better get your butt in gear to compete in a global economy, one that will eventually bring prosperity everywhere at least for the winners. Even more are buying Harry Potter VI about "earth-shattering revelations that will have your head in your hands as you hope the words will rearrange themselves into a different story."
According to me, it's hard to listen to a book, especially one written by Chomsky. You can put Hegemony or Survival on the MP3 player and have it going in the car, but it's almost dangerous to follow along. I find myself fighting to keep up with the arguments and stay fully alert to road conditions. I can barely do stuff around the house and listen to an audiobook at the same time.
But I find most encouraging one of the citations Chomsky offers in the introductory chapter of his book:
The history of life on earth, [Ernst Mayr] wrote, refutes the claim that, "it is better to be smart than to be stupid," at least judging by biological success.
If that's really true, some of us have nothing to worry about.
Posted by Mark at August 4, 2005 07:09 PM