It’s still a long, long road…
The contents and the structure are not very clear as of yet; the working title is only a first attempt at it; and the cover, obviously, is just a quick thought. But this should be the main idea: a collection of ideas on status mundi and whatever major aspects of it I consider to be broken.
Most of what’s wrong today with the world hasn’t always been this way. America wasn’t a huge penitentiary state, Europe wasn’t a huge and impotent bureaucracy, patents didn’t seem to hinder innovation, the Daylight Saving Time was not in use, people weren’t charged with “incitement to racial hatred” for a joke on Twitter, there were no special tax on sugary drinks and no ban on Styrofoam, a trial didn’t take 20 years to reach a verdict, taking photos of the Louvre and using them in print wasn’t infringing the intellectual rights of that damned Chinese architect who added that ugly pyramid, the jobs were not all in China, people had a real life and no smartphones, and movies were anything unlike The Game of Thrones. At some point, even LSD was legal, and people believed in something–anything, including Che Guevara or Mao, but not ISIS.
How to make sense of all this hodgepodge? Was life really better than now at any single point in the past? Or was it just hope that people had, especially after World War II and prior to the oil shock of 1973–74? This retro-obsession can ruin anyone’s objectivity, and I know I am prone to nostalgia.
I also know I need to have a serious attempt at finding a structured way of putting my vision of the world in the structure of a book. I can only hope it’ll be more reasonable in content than Gaddafi’s Green Book or than Mao’s Little Red Book–for one, I won’t necessarily suggest solutions to all the wrongs of this world. My main enemy is going to be this political correctness and the narrowing vision that make people stop thinking and failing to notice the real nature of emperor’s new clothes. We’re not a civilized world, and we must acknowledge that…
In the meantime, I’m open to suggestions with regards to the title, a possible layout for the cover, and even the chapters. Are you interested in reading about how left and right are meaningless in today’s politics, about how the economists aren’t of any help, about the impossibility of a true democracy, about how fair elections also seem impossible, or you prefer a more eclectic collection of trivia? Do you want to read about the true nature of terrorism, about why Trump and Marine Le Pen are necessary, about why VAT is stupid and ADHD a wrong label? Or esthetic judgments are more important? So far I had three rough structures for the contents, none of which is satisfying enough.
As far as I’m concerned, I’d gladly read about the “why” (why do you think the modern world, as a whole – tough nut to describe – is fucked, comapared to the past ones) besides the “where” (where are people better off vs their past counterparts and where they aren’t). I assume you’re referring to the world of people, not the planet per se, because the planet (as a living ecosystem) really is screwed.
There are two WHYs, and mine is not yours. I was thinking of showing HOW we’re screwed as a society in so many ways, and I was fearing I can’t answer as to WHY we have chosen to be so stupid. You’re asking WHY I think that the so many signs of irrational, even absurd decisions we took and choices we made should lead to the conclusion that we’re screwed. Aren’t we? Do I still need to prove it? Isn’t it obvious that our society is like a nuclear power plant that’s full of cracks, yet it has no choice than to keep functioning, despite being continuously patched with band-aid instead of taking the proper technical measures?
We could start by focusing on the meaning of “screwed”. If we’re talking about technological progress, I guess this is an undisputed fact, but it means little without being backed my moral progress, and this is the area mankind is severely lacking, now as well as 10 000 years ago. We could be, after all, just a bunch of resourceful, barbarous apes.
Lasă tu coperta, concentrează-te pe poveste, pe conținut.
O sugestie ar fi să imiți schema lui Toffler.
Tu ai ceva de spus despre prezent și proiecții de viitor.
Prezentul este… cum e.
În trecutul apropiat… era … cam așa.
Dacă continuăm… ajungem la…
Keep it simple Beranger, nu the pierde în divagații.
Nu e revista Pif, cu multe benzi. E doar cartea ta, cu o singură bandă desenată.
Vreau să citesc viziunea lui Beranger, nu TOATE VIZIUNILE lui.
Toffler e un pic… între timp, chiar mort.
Vrei să mă vezi lider planetar? Te asigur că îmi iau pastilele, chiar dacă ele conțin doar vitaminele C și B12.
Nu pot avea aroganța de a spune „AȘA AR FI BINE, FACEȚI CUM ZIC EU”, pot doar spune „AȘA E RĂU, ȘI IATĂ DE CE”. Nu ne putem întoarce în trecut, oricât de paseist aș fi eu (sau Marine le Pen, paseist-poujadistă), dar dacă vom continua inerțial pe calea pe care suntem….