The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror by George Soros
2006, PublicAffairs (New York)
Miki Rosco recently recalled, in a critical commentary on news media for the Italian magazine Ulisse, that the motto of an Italian political weekly was "The facts separate from opinion" – as though such a thing could exist. Nevertheless, Rosco argues that less obsession with scoops and instant analysis, coupled with more attention to completeness and reliability, could more closely approach the truth and lead to a better-informed public.
George Soros, in his new book, The Age of Fallibility, posits that in the social and political spheres, where "our thinking forms part of the reality we think about," the "reflexivity" between cognition and participation renders factual certainty unattainable. Like Rosco, however, Soros believes that recognizing its inherent fallibility can lead human society ever closer to an ultimate truth. "If perfect understanding is beyond our reach," he says, "the room for improvement is infinite."
His observation that the Enlightenment led to the fallacy that science and reason could explain everything calls to mind the "scientific" racism that grew from 18th century advances in genetics and anatomy. The emerging social and biological sciences transformed earlier European views of Africans as part of the great chain of being – where a life-size statue of a black saint could stand guard over a German church and a black king was one of three wise men – to a justification of slavery in the face of a growing abolitionist movement.
That use of pseudo-science to perpetuate what was once an economic endeavor not tied to ethnicity – the word "slave," after all, derives from Slav, at a time when Slavic peoples were prominent among captured human chattel – is still not widely recognized. But the persistence of the myth of inherent black inferiority, after slavery itself was a historical artifact, is an irony that Soros would probably appreciate.
His penchant for abstract thinking may seem a curious attribute for a hedge fund manager, but he regards it as central to his financial success and to his not-for-profit activities. And it is difficult to argue with the results from his application of reflexivity principles to the financial markets.
Interviewed by Amanda Congdon for the video weblog Rocketboom.com, Soros said he could be described as a "philosophical, financial and philanthropic speculator." He is a survivor of the Nazi occupation of his native Hungary, who opposed subsequent communist rule; a graduate of the London School of Economics, where he was inspired by the philosophy of Karl Popper, who wrote about the quest for "open society;" a fund manager who made a fortune by discounting generally prevailing views; and the founder of a network of foundations that spends some $400 million annually to promote open societies and the infrastructure that underpins them, including human rights, equal access to health services and independent media.
In eight preceding books, he writes about issues that have defined his career, such as interpreting financial markets, the inequities of globalization, the fallacy of market fundamentalism and opening the Soviet system. In this latest volume he combines his experiences to advance an argument that the United States – his adopted country – has departed dangerously from progress towards global cooperation to pursue an ill-conceived "war on terror."
While terrorism must be confronted aggressively, Soros says, launching a war against such an amorphous enemy is counter-productive, substantially increasing the number of innocent victims that all wars produce and creating more terrorists than are destroyed. In an indictment of an American administration he sees as so certain of its course that it is willing to jettison the elements of American democracy that have fostered an open society – including judicial and legislative oversight – Soros edges close to despair.
He told the New York Times' Deborah Solomon that he is not sorry that he spent over U.S. $27 million in a failed attempt to prevent the re-election of the president in 2004, because "I did what I could." In the wake of that experience, though, he has done some new thinking about transforming what he sees as a profoundly flawed world order. He wrote the book, he says, to clarify his own analysis of alternatives, and he ends it with a plea for "a fundamental re-thinking of America's role in the world."
In a conversation with the New Yorker's Philip Gourevitch for a show that aired Monday on WNYC New York, Soros said that the expansion of presidential power has endangered the institutions of American democracy, such as the balance of power provided by an independent judiciary and legislature. "If we don't watch out," he warned, "we are going to lose those institutions."
In his philanthropic activities – which began in 1979 with contributions to allow black South African students to attend university – and in what he identifies as future priorities, Soros's work has implications for Africa. From the beginning, his Open Society Institute, whose work initially focused on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, has combined his own leverage with governments and policymakers with support for local foundations guided by nationals of the countries and regions where they work. His foundations' initiatives have included the "Publish What You Pay" campaign to bring transparency to transactions in resource-extracting industries, which have pumped out great wealth but left only poverty and environmental destruction in places like Nigeria's oil-cursed Niger Delta.
Among his advantages in seeking to make the world better, he recently told Scott Simon of National Public Radio in the United States, are that he is inclined to think boldly, and he is not risk averse. He intends, he says in the book, to tackle two areas in which he has not worked before: the global energy crisis, including climate change, and nuclear proliferation. While both are broadly relevant to everyone, global warming has particularly immediate consequences for Africa.
African scientists have been joining colleagues from around the world in calling for emergency action to limit the effects of greenhouse gases that are predicted to fall soonest on Africa, with effects already being experienced. Reduced rainfall, famines, the spread of pests and disease and the loss of biodiversity are already evident, and scientists agree that climate change is a major contributing factor.
If the trend can be reversed, it may be in no small part due to increasing media coverage that has helped fuel a growing civil society movement. StopGlobalWarming.org, for example, has gathered a virtual community in the United States as disparate as environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defenses Council and Friends of the Earth, religious organizations such as Hillel and the National Council of Churches, sports teams such as the Philadelphia Eagles and the St. Louis Rams, the Weather Channel, the William Morris Agency, the IndyCar Series and the rapidly growing youth website MySpace.com. The website devotes considerable attention to the implications of climate change for Africa.
And across Africa, growing public awareness has spawned an explosion of grassroots environmental organizations, such as a Liberian movement to curb illegal cutting and export of timber – a position strongly supported by the country's new president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. The group's activities are being prominently covered by local newspapers and radio, which, in turn, enlarges public involvement.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
While Soros's philanthropy has strongly supported the strengthening of independent media as watchdogs of democracy, his book devotes little attention to the potential role of media in promoting the re-thinking of the U.S. global role. He attributes the reluctance to challenge the precepts of the war on terror to a preference for "feel good" thinking that resists bad news, but he doesn't speculate about how a compliant media may have fostered that attitude. Perhaps a future work will address that issue more fully.
Meanwhile, with threats to democracy and progress from both sides – anarchy and failed states on the one hand and dogmatism and despotism on the other, Soros sees open societies as occupying "a precious middle ground," endangered by extremes of all kinds. "The Age of Fallibility," a product of his 75th year, is an appeal he hopes will fall on receptive ears, as increasing numbers of Americans become concerned about a future that more and more people define as frightening and unpredictable.
LINKS
The Age of Fallibility (web site)
Soros on Rocketboom.com (interview)
