Niall Ferguson: The Politics of Catastrophe

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Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

3 жыл бұрын

Disasters are inherently inevitable in life. We cannot predict the next earthquake, wildfire, financial crisis, war or pandemic, but we can predict how to handle each situation better. Unexpected calamities have happened all throughout human history, yet even in the 21st century we are ill-prepared to recover from them. In the new book Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, popular historian Niall Ferguson explores the reasoning behind this phenomena and offers solutions on how to handle unforeseen circumstances of mass misfortune.
Ferguson has spent his academic career lecturing on the international, financial, and economic history of British and American imperialism. In his new book, Ferguson uses centuries of knowledge to understand the complex pathologies at work that make societies fail in the face of disaster. He offers the lesson he says the West urgently needs to learn if we want to handle the next crisis better and avoid the ultimate doom of irreversible decline.
Join us as Niall Ferguson offers an explanation of disaster response and strategies to make us better at handling the next catastrophe we will inevitably face.
NOTES
The Commonwealth Club thanks the Ken & Jackie Broad Family Fund for its partnership.
Ferguson photo by Zoe Law.
SPEAKERS
Niall Ferguson
Milbank Family Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; Author, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe; Twitter @nfergus
In Conversation with Maya Jasanoff
Coolidge Professor of History, Harvard University
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Пікірлер: 46

@Khorinis139andLennox-dd2yc 7 ай бұрын

Thanks for spreading knowledge.

@mpetry912 3 жыл бұрын

what a great discuss !!!

@tedwood4246 Жыл бұрын

great presentation

@J-SH06 3 жыл бұрын

The book is good. Fun to read

@keithwhittygmail 3 жыл бұрын

We are the cogs that make the world turn and we have the power UNITED. Don't be scared be brave people.

@alburj1 2 жыл бұрын

Churchill completely owned the Bengal Famine. No matter how much and how often Niall says he didn't. He is happy to give credit to Churchill for all he did during the war, but no discredit for what he got wrong. Unacceptable. But nice takeaways in this too.

@kdshak4904 2 жыл бұрын

Hi, Please see my detailed post above. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks. 🙏🙏🙏

@lolasabina3817 3 жыл бұрын

Yes I would like to get the book, but I'm evicted so um, back to the hotel at $2000 a month. And that's the roach motel price 😩

@tezausbra8 2 жыл бұрын

Ferguson: "Nouriel Roubini predicts a disaster every year until one happens then every year after"

@advocate1563 2 жыл бұрын

Always the case. If you had accurate insight you'd be a player not a pundit.

@advocate1563 2 жыл бұрын

I think the RACI model could be helpful in reviewing history. Churchill (hypothetically, I'm no historian) may not be responsible for the bengal famine but he might be accountable depending on chaons of command.

@alexspareonetoo8755 2 жыл бұрын

A good example of science fiction illustrating these ideas is the movie Mimic.

@TheWhitehiker 2 жыл бұрын

Maya cant break Niall's anti-Marxism; it makes too much sense. Marx was of course dead wrong about most of his observations and predictions.

@kdshak4904 2 жыл бұрын

It wasn’t the first time Bengal suffered a famine when Churchill was the PM of GB. Famines in Bengal were cyclical and regular occurrences, long before the East India company showed up in the region. One must understand that the whole South Asia is dependent on monsoon rains cycles for its agriculture. These cycles though regular most of the time do change every few decades resulting in droughts. Bengal happens to be at the tail end of monsoon fed rivers that supply rice cultivation. Rice crop needs huge pools of water in the first few weeks of cultivation. Lack of water and low river flow means disaster for rice crop resulting in recurring famines. If we understand the region, we’ll realize that British helped in the long run to end hunger in India by improving infrastructure like roads, rail, canal-irrigation, a modern functioning bureaucracy and provincial system of governance. All of these systems worked in conjunction with post WW2 green revolution (emanating from the USA) to address the food insecurity in the region to a large extent. And cyclical famines that used to occur every few decades, have finally disappeared. However Marxist writers love to pick one moment in a long history of disasters and pin it on Churchill. And that works well with educate elite who walk around wearing rose colored glasses yet criminally political about the facts. Peace 🙏🙏🙏

@nathanngumi8467 2 жыл бұрын

Word. Very penetrating insights from both scholars!

@moditekke9842 2 жыл бұрын

Munoz, hello from the DA’s office 😂

@kingcrazymani4133 2 жыл бұрын

One of the three most important dates in Boston Area history is September 7, 2000. I would wager that not one officially local official Harvard history professor knows why. Nor what the implications have been and still are. Some day, many will be laughing.

@kdshak4904 2 жыл бұрын

Hmmm. 😀 What happened? My google search doesn’t comes up with funny event on that day. PS. Obviously not from Boston area. 🙏🙏

@kingcrazymani4133 2 жыл бұрын

@@kdshak4904 Cancel culture wins again. And ignorant goonies who ignore photos and videos from key moments always are in control of the 83LSD concepts of facts. One advantage I have is in hearing Arthur Schlesinger himself in 2006 deny observable reality at the Prudential Center, as we were both looking at it through the skylights. No problems here with “Google is always right”. And “the Boston Herald” is the arbiter of all Harvard truth. You win. Me giant loser. Don’t believe me? Ask the person in your mirror.

@ronalddeveau6755 3 жыл бұрын

Would you comment on 9- 11 as a insane disaster or not and why?😎

@Adrian-hq5jk 3 жыл бұрын

Wow. Profound thoughts. I didn't know there were any disasters before 2020. Well, now we know. Incidentally, I'm also surprised that Ferguson, who I am sure is vaguely intelligent and knowlegable, believes that Scott Atlas, a fellow employee of the Hoover Institute, was a credible authority on epidemiology and virology, and also that Trump was an OK guy for handling the pandemic, despite 'having his hands tied behind his back' by state governors. This is surprising from someone who complains about the degeneracy of the West.

@fju2112 3 жыл бұрын

So what is the problem, exactly?

@delft72 2 жыл бұрын

Catastrophism or the idea that the world changes quickly would support a christian view of creation. Why does the theory of evolution gain wide acceptance when spread over billions of years? Or does time and the rate of change look slow when viewed in the past but accelerated when we look forward?

@kdshak4904 2 жыл бұрын

Christian or in general religious view (as most religions have similar stories of creation) is a cartoonish view of disasters. Christianity copied these stories from Judaism and Jewish people copied these stories from the previous civilizations/religions. These stories typically put a “bearded man in the skies” who smites the sinful humans. We now know that such stories were not true. Peace. 🙏🙏🙏🙏

@insightfool 2 жыл бұрын

This all sort of felt fairly captain obvious to me. Only got about 1/3 of the way through.

@advocate1563 2 жыл бұрын

Likewise. A more interesting debate would be the changing response to catastrophe and an inability to accept risk, our vulnerability, mortality and often our impotence. This shift has happened in 1 - 2 generations which is nothing in the human adventure. Why and what does it mean for future history? Does man write himself out of history because of this psychological shift and is this a bigger threat than dramatically sperm counts, robotics, climate change, etc, etc. Short on implications.