MAIN IDEA:

This is a book on European history after the end of WWII. It covers the Cold War with its division into West and East, traced via a narrative about people’s lives on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It also covers the dissolution of the East, sometimes with its peaceful divisions, such as in Czechoslovakia, and, at other times, with violent divisions, such as Yugoslavia. It also covers the process of European Unification into a quasi-federal state of the EU and the later disappointment that resulted in Brexit. It ends with the current state of affairs when the Semi-democratic West has to face invasion by invitation by the fundamentalist Islamic population from failed states frozen in medieval intellectual milieu, seeking to destroy Western civilization and substitute it with an Islamic caliphate and the invasion from outside by revanchist Russia seeking to restore the great Russian empire and make it the dominant force in Europe. A little bit further is lurking another revanchist power – China that is seeking to restore the proper order of the world, which in the minds of Chinese leaders is the absolute dominance of China with everybody else happily accepting the roles of vassals. The author, being a moderate leftist, seems to be unhappy with these developments, but he is also quite scared by the growing resistance to the destruction of the West that comes mainly from the right. The author ends with the description of his encounter with a representative of such right in Normandy and how he managed to bring it to this semi-happy conclusion:” Finally, after long resistance, he yields, raising his last glass with a half-reluctant, half-cheerful shrug. ‘L’Europe!’”

MY TAKE ON IT:

This book is a good illustration of how we all live now in
“Interesting Time.”  I believe that we
are now in the process of restructuring society, brought about by technological
developments that, for all practical purposes, eliminate barriers between
countries, cultures, and individuals. These barriers limited the exchange of
goods, services, cultural artifacts, and ideas. Still, they provided security
to all these entities, from reliable, clearly defined territory and homogeneity
of the population for countries to privacy and secure place within society for
individuals. This will all be gone within 50 to 100 years, and a unified
society will be created covering all humans worldwide. The question is whether
it will be a top-down hierarchical society with a rigid elite controlling
everything and everybody via AI technology or it will be a flexible network in
which individuals are in possession of sufficient resources to conduct their
lives any way they want it combined with the cultural and organizational environment
in which any attempt to establish dominance and control over other people’s
lives would be immediately suppressed either by soft methods like cultural
pressure or by violent methods. I believe that in the long run, the second
outcome is much more probable for two reasons. The first one is that it is much
more appropriate for human nature as it formed over the previous 200,000 years
when humans were hunter-gatherers and maintained their societies in such mode.
The second one is that any hierarchy with a rigid elite at the top inevitably
causes individuals to fight each other for power and control, causing all the
entertaining staff of history with its kings, barons, general secretaries,
presidents, and CEOs. In addition to entertainment, it also creates misery for
all, including members of the elite, making the system unstable overall. We
certainly could move directly to the global equivalent of the hunter-gatherer
community of generally happy people right away using emerging technology, but I
doubt that this would happen. Humanity possesses an uncanny ability to do everything
right, but only after it tries everything else, so I expect lots of misery to
occur during this trying.