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    Cover of Tragedy and hope

    Tragedy and hope

    Carroll Quigley · 1966

    TRAGEDY AND HOPE shows the years 1895-1950 as a period of transition from the world dominated by Europe in the nineteenth century to the world of three blocs in the twentieth century. With clarity, perspective, and cumulative impact, Professor Quigley examines the nature of that transition through two world wars and a worldwide economic depression. As an interpretative historian, he tries to show each event in the full complexity of its historical context. The result is a unique work, notable in several ways. It gives a picture of the world in terms of the influence of different cultures and outlooks upon each other; it shows, more completely than in any similar work, the influence of science and technology on human life; and it explains, with unprecedented clarity, how the intricate financial and commercial patterns of the West prior to 1914 influenced the development of today's world.

    History
    Open LibraryAmazon
    Stats for nerds
    11recommend
    27mentions
    21people
    2009–2026years
    41% recommend59% neutral

    Mentions per year

    2009201120132015201720192021202320252026

    What Hacker News says

    1. dosman33Jul 2026
      AI is the industrial revolution finally arriving at the land of information and software development, full stop. Read Carroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope if you want to understand whats happening and see a roadmap of whats ahead. What happened during the agricultural revolution, industrial revolution, and financial revolution is already happening to software development. IR brings cheap material goods to everyone in your civilization, not just the elite. Before, only the king and his court could afford to have skilled tradesmen hand-crafting clocks and pocket watches. After the IR, now everyone has a cheap wrist watch available to them for pennies. It doesn't mean everyone has the best stuff, but it raises the quantity of whats practically available to everyone at the base level and it does this cheaply. The timex wrist watch works fine and is only $15. Not everyone has a Rolex, and there will always be a market for artisanally crafted items that predate the IR. A lot of people don't care how the Timex works, they just need to get back to work from lunch on time. There will always be a market for those that desire (and have the money) to have a wrist watch that works the way they want it to work. In the future, artisanally crafted code will matter to some people who understand code. Most people just need a program to do the thing. Humans will still be able to outperform AI when it comes to making clever, compact, and beautiful code. Go to any local pottery show if you want to see the future. Everyone already has IR manufactured cups, plates, and silverware at home. Yet people still go out and buy hand-crafted versions of these items because they have more character in various dimensions they care about. On the downside, everything will become slop. But it increases the slop available to everyone, while smaller numbers of those who care will still buy artisinally crafted code.

      But there's another downside too that Quigley talks about: the arrival of the railroad at your previously isolated village. Suddenly now you have food, medicine and people arriving at a far greater pace. Your towns demographic suddenly starts to shift as your townspeople start to live longer as knowledge can instantly penetrate from the outside world. People can leave much easier too which facilitates brain drain. The railroad brings the industrial revolution to your door. The countries that survived the best were the ones that created these revolutions and then exported them. If the railroad did not originate from your country then the railroad arrived at your doorstep quite literally before you were ready for it. I don't fully understand what this means for AI, but I'm certain this is part of the reason the US is trying to lead the charge. You absolutely do not want the railroad arriving at your doorstep: you want to be the one pushing the railroad out to your neighbors. The only guarantee is change whether you want it or not. If you want some control over that change then you had better be driving the change rather than just reacting to it.

      thread
    2. arminiusreturnsApr 2022
      I think anyone on this thread who hasn't already, needs to go read Antony Sutton's Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler.

      "PREFACE

      This is the third and final volume of a trilogy describing the role of the American corporate socialists, otherwise known as the Wall Street financial elite or the Eastern Liberal Establishment, in three significant twentieth-century historical events: the 1917 Lenin- Trotsky Revolution in Russia, the 1933 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States, and the 1933 seizure of power by Adolf Hitler in Germany. Each of these events introduced some variant of socialism into a major country — i.e., Bolshevik socialism in Russia, New Deal socialism in the United States, and National socialism in Germany. Contemporary academic histories, with perhaps the sole exception of Carroll Quigley's Tragedy And Hope, ignore this evidence. On the other hand, it is understandable that universities and research organizations, dependent on financial aid from foundations that are controlled by this same New York financial elite, would hardly want to support and to publish research on these aspects of international politics. The bravest of trustees is unlikely to bite the hand that feeds his organization. It is also eminently clear from the evidence in this trilogy that "public-spirited businessmen" do not journey to Washington as lobbyists and administrators in order to serve the United States. They are in Washington to serve their own profit-maximizing interests. Their purpose is not to further a competitive, free-market economy, but to manipulate a politicized regime, call it what you will, to their own advantage. It is business manipulation of Hitler's accession to power in March 1933 that is the topic of Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler.

      ANTONY C. SUTTON"

      thread
    3. raintreesJan 2022
      If interested, for more data including names and dates, try Carroll Quigley's Anglo-American Establishment or his Tragedy and Hope. For a shorter version, try Joe Plummer's Tragedy and Hope 101.

      If true, not all is as it appears. But then, in the day and age of propaganda, when is it?

      thread
    4. GeorgeTirebiterJan 2022
      https://tragedyandhope.com/ The text is available for download.

      "Tragedy and Hope" is the most important History / Political book of the 20th Century.

      If you want to know how the world Really Works, this is your guidebook.

      thread
    5. sjwalterOct 2021
      I think if you read World Economic Forum's writings and know a little history (Tragedy & Hope by Quigley is a good place to start), the coming chaos which will possibly impact the mere 1%ers--with highly-paid doctors and lawyers getting possibly mistakenly mixed into the targets of rage--is all part of the plan.

      WEF & Klaus Schwab's Great Reset intend to weaken the USA, because it is too independent and a bulwark against the unified world government, controlled by wealthy banking families & the true elite, they desire--they even state they desire.

      If this sounds all too conspiratorial to you, please, read Quigley. He was a member of Team Elite, and while his history only goes to the ~60s, his book is credible enough to be taught in poly sci courses all across the world, and it details how a small group of international, rootless bankers have made strides over time to increase their control.

      If you want to know what their agenda is, you can actually witness it being wrought in realtime. The overarching theme is that important concerns (specifically: economic issues) are to become within the control of this cretinous cabal. There is no room for national sovereignty in this. Social concerns are not just left to the individual nations, they are highlighted ad nauseum and hyped to the extreme, such that all the democratic nations in the world subsume themselves with vicious, divisive national arguments about relatively immaterial social concerns. Their medias endlessly stoke all manner of social problems--racial disparity, the rights of sexual minorities, the problems of religion--ensuring that nobody ever has a vote that can be cast for or against any particular economic choice or other, but rather, just a jumbled mass of nations all internally squabbling about relatively minor and divisive concerns.

      I mean, it's a strategy as old as time. And it's playing out right here in the USA. Election 2020 was about what? Racism! (The USA meanwhile is one of the least racist places on earth.) What else was it about? LGBTQ rights! Conspiracy theories! What else was it about? COVID!

      None of the debate was about the rise of China. About reshoring jobs and stifling the rise of a threatening and vile superpower. None of it was about actually cementing some kind of economic win for the 90%.

      thread
    6. arca_voragoSep 2017
      The ones that cut through the stale version taught in schools.

      Mostly Carroll Quigley's works like Tragedy and Hope, Anglo-American Establishment, or The Evolution of Civilizations.

      Another I consider at the level of Quigley is Anthony Sutton.

      There are quite a few less academically accurate books that are good eye openers anyway like Howard Zinn's A Peoples History of the United States. As a combat vet a couple that speak to the issue of war are God's War: A New History of the Crusades by Christopher Tyerman and The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History by Philip Bobbitt (some really good stuff about the future of nation-states in a post nuclear world.)

      Those are just a few key ones off the top of my head. Personally, what I find one of the best ways is to find a more narrow interest and find books written by or about the key players at the top. I often find that tidbits across various sources add up to very interesting insights.

      Also, a must in my opinion for an American is the Norman Dodd interview about his investigations on the Reece Committee and how history was targeted as being needed to be controlled.

      thread

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