- Derbyshire, John.
We Are Doomed.
New York: Crown Forum, 2009.
ISBN 978-0-307-40958-4.
-
In this book, genial curmudgeon
John Derbyshire,
whose
previous two books were popular treatments of the
Riemann hypothesis and the
history of algebra, argues that
an authentically conservative outlook on life requires
a relentlessly realistic pessimism about human
nature, human institutions, and the human prospect.
Such a pessimistic viewpoint immunises one from the
kind of happy face optimism which breeds enthusiasm
for breathtaking ideas and grand, ambitious schemes,
which all of history testifies are doomed to
failure and tragedy.
Adopting a pessimistic attitude is, Derbyshire says,
not an effort to turn into a sourpuss (although see
the photograph of the author on the
dust jacket), but simply the consequence of removing
the rose coloured glasses and looking at the world as
it really is. To grind down the reader's optimism into
a finely-figured speculum of gloom, a sequence of
chapters surveys the Hellbound landscape of what passes
for the modern world: “diversity”, politics,
popular culture, education, economics, and third-rail
topics such as achievement gaps between races and
the assimilation of immigrants. The discussion is
mostly centred on the United States, but in chapter 11,
we take a
tour d'horizon and find
that things are, on the whole, as bad or worse everywhere
else.
In the conclusion the author, who is just a few years my senior,
voices a thought which has been rattling around my own brain for some
time: that those of our generation living in the West may be seen, in
retrospect, as having had the good fortune to live in a golden age. We just
missed the convulsive mass warfare of the 20th century (although not,
of course, frequent brushfire conflicts in which you can be killed
just as dead, terrorism, or the threat of nuclear annihilation during
the Cold War), lived through the greatest and most broadly-based
expansion of economic prosperity in human history, accompanied by more
progress in science, technology, and medicine than in all of the human
experience prior to our generation. Further, we're probably going to
hand
in our dinner pails
before the
economic apocalypse
made inevitable by the pyramid of paper money and bogus debt we
created, mass human migrations, demographic collapse, and the ultimate
eclipse of the tattered remnants of human liberty by the malignant
state. Will people decades and centuries hence look back at the
Boomer generation as the one that reaped all the benefits for themselves
and passed on the bills and the adverse consequences to their
descendants? That's the way to bet.
So what is to be done? How do we turn the ship around before
we hit the iceberg?
Don't look for any such chirpy suggestions here: it's all
in the title—we are doomed! My own view
is that we're in a race between a
technological singularity
and a new
dark age
of poverty, ignorance, subjugation to the state, and pervasive
violence. Sharing the author's proclivity for pessimism, you can
probably guess which I judge more probable. If you concur, you
might want to read
this book,
which will appear in this chronicle in due time.
The book includes neither bibliography nor index. The lack
of the former is particularly regrettable as a multitude
of sources are cited in the text, many available online. It would
be wonderful if the author posted a bibliography of clickable
links (to online articles or purchase links for books cited)
on his
Web site,
where there is a
Web log
of comments from readers and the author's responses.
October 2009 