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3.61 AVERAGE
3.61 AVERAGE
Such an interesting perspective on the state of our current political order - identity as a precursor of rising populism. Fukuyama’s underpinning of his argument is outstanding, including both historical and philosophical grounds on which he construes his argument.
All in all, a book which seeks to explain how we go to where we are now, and which provides a potential balance where national identity can be considered as something positive, something that will unite us into a greater common identity.
All in all, a book which seeks to explain how we go to where we are now, and which provides a potential balance where national identity can be considered as something positive, something that will unite us into a greater common identity.
I had to read this for my Intro to Democracy class and I wasn't sure how I would feel, but I was pleasantly surprised! I usually don't rate nonfiction, but I really liked this one!
Interesting but flawed in some parts, for example:
- views come from a very privileged, narrow point of view,
- strong assimilation as a resolution isn't attractive to me,
- constant "he or she" usage instead of just simple "they" got grating.
- views come from a very privileged, narrow point of view,
- strong assimilation as a resolution isn't attractive to me,
- constant "he or she" usage instead of just simple "they" got grating.
I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley. I found it to be a thought-provoking, accessible, and timely book on political philosophy. I think it's deserving of 4.5 stars, so I rounded up. Fukuyama examines the history of how Western democracies ended up with the problem of identity politics and offers ideas for positive change. I liked that the book ended on a hopeful note considering the current state of politics.
Identities are the most important public issues in the 21st century. Many international conflicts are rooted in those irrational and illusional false concepts such as race, gender, nation, religion, city, sexuality. This book correctly mentioned the background of those "attributes", but failed to pointed the finger onto those evil actors who are exploiting the humanities by hijacking those concepts such as religious bigots, cult zealots, gender extremists, anti-abortion terrorists, sexuality chauvinists, nationalism dogmatists. There is a limit on the academic of so-called "Social Sciences". When we say this is a subject of social science, we are subconsciously saying that these knowledge all quarantined to rigid experiments and falsifiability tests. We can do better than this. Why Professor Harari is such a new star is that he is technically the first "Scientific Historian" who grounded his work on solid scientific background. We are encountering a huge academic shift in the realm of social science. In the 21st century, a lot more fields previously under the umbrella of social sciences have been lining up towards a field in science, such as Anthropology, Psychology, etc. Without the law of evolution, everything that have happened within our civilization is meaningless.
This is a decent book. For example, I enjoyed how he traced the philosophical concept of identity, both for individuals and collectively, from Socrates to today. I didn't really learn a great deal, although that is not terribly surprising as this is a topic about which I have read pretty relentlessly. However, he presented the information in a well organized fashion, which helped me organize my own stance on this topic. The topic of identity is currently fraught with political passion and he does a good job, in my mind, of remaining objective and avoiding polemics. In my opinion, he doesn't have any deeply interesting insights but he present well what I would call the current academy standard model. I personally agree with most of what Fukuyama concludes. That is, it is necessary and important to recognize the inequities suffered by self identified groups and, at the same time, it is necessary and important to maintain a common national culture and language. Too much disruption of national culture and language leads to a host of problems related to the breakdown of national identity. I "read" the Audible version.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5 stars -- Fukuyama is always solid; maybe, not groundbreaking, but solid. In this book, he is brave as well. Fukuyama asserts that countries around the world are having to deal with neoconservative groups that have more power than ever, and it is the far left (and somewhat, the media) that has created them, by fracturing society into smaller and smaller groups that demand to be identified at their newly defined, granular level. This has left mainstream society scrambling for an identity of its own that somehow got lost in the shuffle, leading to more small groups seeking their own identity, etc. He is brave in both his diagnosis and his proposals to fix the situation. In a nutshell, he recommends national (not native) identity with a common, single language taught in schools along with a standard national history. He suggests less emphasis on glorifying and marketing all of our differences, and concentrating more on our commonalty. Sure, it sounds like boring, semi-traditional, conservative advice; but Fukuyama does not come across as a conservative, nor does his advice seem traditional once you see the details. In fact, he seems to be a free thinker with no agenda other than solving a seemingly intractable problem in our world today. I love reading people who I can't tell if they are conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, religious or atheist. It usually means they are just smart.
Fukuyama's book interprets the recent political upheaval we've seen around the globe from a top-down, macro-level point of view. "Thumos", which roughly translates as the need for respect and validity, has been absent in many of the population centers where we are seeing increasing polarization, nationalism, and extremist fervor.
I think his illustration of the problem is compelling and mostly convincing. It is, like all such arguments, incomplete, but precision is not its intent, nor where it can impart value. It's an engaging mental exercise that helps us conceive of trends. It can help inform bottom-up decision making, but I think it would be a grave mistake to take an argument like this and allow it to *drive* decision making. That's a very poor strategy for solving pernicious and deeply entrenched problems.
It would have been much better if Fukuyama had illustrated his theory for us and left it at that. Instead, he concludes his narrative by proposing a bunch of half-baked solutions. They're castles in the air that completely discard the very complex set of incentives that guide nation building, statesmanship, and constituencies.
The argument goes something like: identity only serves to fracture a sense of unity with one's state and fellow citizens. If we could all just untether ourselves from our localized identities and their consequential politics, and instead rally around ideas of equality, dignity, etc, wouldn't we all be better off?
C'mon, man.
The other obvious counterpoint is that, in many contexts, such an outlook fails to appreciate or solve for the antagonism states often have with minority populations. It may be easy to suggest in a book that BLM activists should discard their "identity politics" in order to help build a state that "respects their dignity", but this infantile suggestion doesn't approximate anything actionable or credible.
Anyway, that conclusion left a sour taste in my mouth, and made it hard to appreciate what was up until then a well reasoned analysis.
I think his illustration of the problem is compelling and mostly convincing. It is, like all such arguments, incomplete, but precision is not its intent, nor where it can impart value. It's an engaging mental exercise that helps us conceive of trends. It can help inform bottom-up decision making, but I think it would be a grave mistake to take an argument like this and allow it to *drive* decision making. That's a very poor strategy for solving pernicious and deeply entrenched problems.
It would have been much better if Fukuyama had illustrated his theory for us and left it at that. Instead, he concludes his narrative by proposing a bunch of half-baked solutions. They're castles in the air that completely discard the very complex set of incentives that guide nation building, statesmanship, and constituencies.
The argument goes something like: identity only serves to fracture a sense of unity with one's state and fellow citizens. If we could all just untether ourselves from our localized identities and their consequential politics, and instead rally around ideas of equality, dignity, etc, wouldn't we all be better off?
C'mon, man.
The other obvious counterpoint is that, in many contexts, such an outlook fails to appreciate or solve for the antagonism states often have with minority populations. It may be easy to suggest in a book that BLM activists should discard their "identity politics" in order to help build a state that "respects their dignity", but this infantile suggestion doesn't approximate anything actionable or credible.
Anyway, that conclusion left a sour taste in my mouth, and made it hard to appreciate what was up until then a well reasoned analysis.