The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism
Howard Bloom
Language: English
Pages: 607
ISBN: 1591027543
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Is global capitalism on its last legs? Is the era of American leadership over? Has the West begun a decline into a new Dark Age? Does American civilization deserve to survive? These are the unnerving questions raised by the Great Crash of 2009.
This book presents a radically new answer, insisting that global society has only begun to realize its full potential. Author Howard Bloom argues that there’s a hidden mandate beneath the surface of capitalism: "It’s struggling to whisper and rumble its message to you and me. That hidden imperative can lift us from economic crisis, can make us a leader in the next-generation economy, and can dramatically upgrade our ability to empower our fellow human beings." Bloom sees crisis as opportunity, opportunity for the whole human race.
In more than eighty short, fast chapters, insights appear suddenly, like the quick bursts of flashbulbs, taking the reader on a sweeping tour of human history, from the Stone Age to the present. Every chapter conveys a radically new way to see the astonishing mechanism we call "Western Civilization." Bloom marvels at how humans have turned toxic waste into food and fuel, trash into treasure, and garbage into gold. He shows how we've produced material miracles based on immaterial things—passion, persistence, and fantasy. He shows that what many regard as the end is just the beginning. The beginning of something you've never before imagined.
The author explains why the secret to capitalism’s next great leap does not lie in new financial tricks, but in tapping things right under our noses in radically new ways—that is, tapping our imagination, our desire to feel useful, our desire to help others, and our desire to be recognized for contributing to the welfare of humanity. The key to next-generation capitalism lies in a big-picture view that's utterly unlike anything you've previously perceived. A big-picture view that will startle you. A big-picture view with which you can ignite the world, get a new handle on your life, and help transform society.
This brilliant, inspirational work of daring ideas and breathtaking research offers more than hope. It offers unseen levels of understanding. Understanding that can literally redefine what it means to be a human being.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Life-Span Human Development (8th Edition)
My Desk is my Castle: Exploring Personalization Cultures
Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage
levers to ding a hammer on the strings of a full-sized harp hidden in a curvaceous wooden box. With this absurd invention, Cristofori the instrument maker and de' Medici the rich patron made playing the tunes in your head a breeze for millions (though not for clumsy folks like me). They created the piano.2 A century later, the piano infected the dreams of Mozart and Beethoven, moving the use of piano chords to whole new levels of lusciousness, passion, and intricacy. Not to mention giving birth
Like the product managers and publicists at CBS, the rock-crit establishment postured for its peers but loathed the lowly proles it served, the flock that gave it its paycheck. I did just the opposite. Emotion was at the core of what I did to create a new approach for Circus. But rigorous analysis played its part, too. This is where tuned empathy and saturated intuition meet. It's where emotion and reason combine in something far more potent than either on its own. It's knowing your
go. Over the next forty years the railway system would be transformed and expanded with stations that rivaled the Taj Mahal (Grand Central Station in New York City, Union Station in Washington, DC, and the Thirtieth Street Union Station in Philadelphia, among others) and with trains built to set new speed records.12 The Kondratiev wave would once again prove wrong. Railroad technology was not peaking. What would prove right? The cycle of exploration and digestion, the cycle of spread and
us utterly. Make something that you really want, and what you create may remake you. Make something that you really want, and it may remake others too. Three hundred thousand years ago we came up with another breakthrough—makeup—a clue to our deepest needs. Cosmetic goods infiltrate the imagination, and the bank accounts, of women across classes and regions, rich and poor, urban and rural…. [This is] a renewed imperialism, a colonialism by other means. [Through it] we understand the insidious
3,500 miles away. What for? To find new things, new novelties, new status symbols, new kinds of wine, a new metal—tin—new forms of cloth, and pottery with exotic new designs: all those little things we humans use to make our neighbors envy us. What a petty goal, you might well say, trying to one-up the folks next door. And I agree. Petty it is. But you should see what it's given us! One of the richest and fastest transcontinental data flows in the 3.85-billion-year history of life. New ideas,
