I recently wrote a lengthy analysis of lesser-known side to George Soros that I believe people who are serious about geopolitical topics should pay closer attention to if they wish to avoid falling prey to some very dangerous ideological traps being set in our path as we transition into a new world economic system.
You see, George Soros considers himself quite the philosopher and believes that through the tutelage of Karl Popper at the London School of Economics in the 1950s, he developed certain fundamental principles of economics. His economic theories are encapsulated in his General Theory of Reflexivity and is essentially a logical extension of Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics onto human self-organization.
To describe this briefly:
In quantum mechanics, the act of observing a photon or electron changes that which is observed (since the photon striking the “observed object” and reflecting back to the eye of the observer affects that which is being observed). This phenomenon finds a parallel in the world of economics, where the act of thinking (and acting upon thoughts) changes both the economic systems itself as well as the thoughts and identities of those people operating within the “objective” system in question. While the founders of the field of quantum like Max Planck or Einstein saw no need to reject the belief in truth, reason or reality, the Copenhagen school felt that the “uncertainty principle” and “wave-particle duality” proved that there was no causality, no basic reality and that everything is just random and uncertain in its essence.
This is essentially the kernel of Soros’ “theory of reflexivity”.
In 2008, Soros teamed up with a group of upper level management oligarchs in order to put these theories into action in a three-phase plan led by his Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).
In its first phase, INET aimed to prove that the neoliberal economic paradigm is wrong because it presumes the existence of rational actors and truthful ideas. Soros states both presumptions are not only wrong but are the very reasons why periodic economic crises occur.
Phase two promised to cultivate a global field of alternative theories that will offer solutions to the obsolete paradigm but which adhere to Soros’ key assumptions of 1) the non-existence of truthfulness, 2) the absolute enslavement of reason to irrational passions, and 3) the need for economists to strive for certainty and equilibrium.
While these assumptions may appear contradictory, as I explained in my previous paper, this contradiction only exists as long as you don’t think that Soros is not a liar.
The Young Scholars Initiative
Soros and his INET co-controllers like Lord Adair Turner and Rob Johnson believe that phase one is in the bag and that we are now in phase two which will be driven by INET programs like the Young Scholars Initiative.
This initiative features thousands of talented young economists under the influence of INET who are radicalized to take on the mission of reforming the world economic order under the mentorship of an enlightened old guard of hedge fund managers and technocrats. Youth who are processed through the INET program are fed with dreams of overthrowing the soul-less, collapsing neoliberal order with a new system based upon creativity, freedom and empathy. The attraction for intelligent young people is obvious.
The sad fact is that the definition of “creativity” which these kids are taught to cherish is not really creativity at all but rather just irrationalism with one set of standards for the masses and another set of inflexible standards for the social engineers and technocrats managing the world order from the top.
The Dismal Science
This dual standard is nothing new. Historically this has been the foundation of oligarchical systems of political economy for centuries and was exemplified by the “dismal science” of Malthus, Bentham and Mill of the 19th century. Just as today, 18-19th century British imperial political scientists pretended to support innovation, creativity and growth on the surface, while the intent of their models were always designed to keep their victims locked under the iron-fisted (invisible hand?) influence of a master class.
This elite always aimed to:
1) keep nations divided among themselves at all costs. The geopolitical expression of this aim were systems of zero-sum game thinking defined by the Hobbesian idea of “might makes right”.
2) keep the peasants under-developed and ignorant as possible. No questioning the invisible structures of the world system and certainly no creative discoveries that would change the rules of the game.
3) keep nations de-industrialized under cash-cropping procedures. No full spectrum economies allowed.
4) keep every slave’s mind focused only on avoiding pain and pursuing pleasures in the ephemeral “present” thinking never of the past or future in any meaningful way. The only creative acts permissible in this system must be governed by the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain and nothing more. In this worldview, morality is a useful social construct to regulate the plebs which the “enlightened elite” need not be encumbered with.
5) Justify it all by a devout belief in “equilibrium” as the absolute “good” and disequilibrium is the absolute “evil”. All means taken to advance the ends of equilibrium are ok.
These were the real reasons underlying the British Empire’s systematic destruction of Indian textile industries, their promotion of Chinese opium addiction and the promotion of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations as a “scientific” justification for keeping nations de-industrialized, unregulated and agrarian.
This philosophy was at the heart of Britain’s support of the slave power during the Civil War in the same way that it drove Britain’s partition of India after WWII into warring Muslim vs Hindu vs Sikh conflicts as well as their partitioning of the Middle East under Sykes-Pikot.
This philosophy is behind the controlled disintegration of the western nation state system today and it is what the late Maurice Strong (1929-2015) was referring to when he rhetorically asked in a 1991 interview:
“What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group’s conclusion is ‘no’. The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
If you have not guessed, Maurice Strong was a major force in recent history and leading architect of the the current Green New Deal agenda being promoted by the World Economic Forum, Soros’ INET and the City of London’s Mark Carney as a “Great Reset” of the world system.
Going a bit deeper
Since these misanthropic ideas are immensely influential, I think it is worth taking a few moments to shed light on their structure with a bit more effort than we might otherwise be accustomed.
Let’s do this by getting into the disturbed mind of a technocratically-minded billionaire obsessed with imposing structures of “equilibrium and stability” upon a world of chaos, irrationality and disorder. I think it would useful to start with a series of questions.
Question 1: What type of system do these technocrats believe they are controlling? Do they believe that the system is changing or not changing?
Answer: Soros says constantly that the system is changing. So let’s believe him for now.
Question 2: If it is changing, then is it changing for the better, or for the worse or randomly? Although your freedom may feel constrained by these three options, I promise you that these are the only choices you have.
Answer: Well if reason is assumed to be intrinsically enslaved to irrational passions (following the assumptions of Soros’ beloved Hume), then the discoveries required to keep humanity’s system of diminishing finite resources from running down and leading to collapses is impossible. The closed system will always thus consume more energy than it creates and just like the gasoline in a car engine, it will always tend towards a heat death.
Now, we have walked into another big idea that oligarchs are committed to: Entropy (aka: The 2nd Law of thermodynamics).
The Origins of an Entropic Idea
Wikipedia states that: “In a thermodynamic system, pressure, density, and temperature tend to become uniform over time because the equilibrium state has higher probability (more possible combinations of microstates) than any other state.”
Entropy exists as a statistical process in all CLOSED systems, and the term arose from the study of heat powered machines in the early 19th century led by Sadi Carnot. Carnot observed that a machine will always use more heat for work than it generates over time leading to a predictable winding down of its potential for action. A few years later, this idea was applied to gas theories.
To give a concrete example: Let us say you heat up a can of spray paint until it explodes.
In the first moments, there will be a LOW Entropy as the heated molecules bounce around hitting each other a lot. Lots of potential for change and singularities. With every passing moment after the can explodes, those molecules will tend to collide less and less as the heat distribution decreases, activity decreases and the molecules of the system “tend to become uniform over time” under increasingly higher and higher states of entropy. So far, everything is pretty straight forward and benign. The problems come in when entropy is universalized.
British Empiricist and general misanthrope Sir Arthur Eddington…