The Retreat of Western Liberalism

“This book offers a pessimistic view on the future of liberal democracy, and interprets its recent spread not as an unstoppable or monotonic trend of history, but as a fragile system, open to an attack from both within (e.g., election of Donald Trump), and outside (e.g., Russia, China). The West is not a natural outcome of a linear progress of history and it might not represent mankind’s enlightenment on morality and virtue. As the book puts it, “We are on a menacing trajectory brought about by ignorance of what it took to build the West, arrogance towards society’s economic losers, and complacency about our system’s durability”. Overall, this book is a great way to become more depressed about humanity’s future. The topics are interesting but I’ve come to dislike the author’s writing stye. Perhaps this is because my mathematical training begs for a very clearly stated sequences of statements that are supported by arguments at each stage. Instead, I found Luce’s writing to be sprawling, overly abstract, unfocused and even rambling. As if each section started as a 2am entry into a “random thoughts” bed-side journal, and was later put through a best-effort conversion into a book by an editor. The book is quite short, and hence worth a read if you're interested in the topics, or if you are too optimistic about the future. 4/5”

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