"Survivre Aux Crises"

 Jacques Attali's "Survivre Aux Crises" presents a view of the 21st century as seen from a person who became the right-hand man of former French President Mitterrand at the age of 38, and contended with heavyweights such as Thatcher from the UK and Kohl from West Germany.

This book has a number of columns written separately from the main text, and they are arguably more enjoyable. Try reading them as summaries of the main text.

 From issues such as the economic climate, technological advancements, and terrorism, the book says that 1913 and 2013 bear striking resemblances to each other, and that with the current situation, it would not be unusual even for World War 3 to begin. This is shocking coming from Attali, because he accurately predicted the 2008 financial crisis.

In March 2013, both the Church of Rome and China elected new heads, and both have very similar laws regarding the election of their leaders. Indeed, both are closed systems facing the same problems. The difference is that the church's system has been around for 1800 years, whereas China's system has only been around for a few decades.

 In order to foresee future prospects for a country, the book says that one should not concentrate on GDP, but instead look at the 3 indicators of "Demographics, food, music". Looking at a country's demographics, savoring that country's food (=culture/lifestyle), and listening to that country's music (=innovation/beauty) will easily allow one to do so. Such a bizarre opinion is very much like Attali.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the US military-industrial complex lost its enemy, and so arbitrarily conceived of China as an enemy. In order to do so, it needed to put forward a pretext of protecting Japan, thus it had to cause a mutual opposition between China and Japan. This is America's basic strategy, and it plans to continue putting China and Japan at odds with each other in the future. --- This is also an opinion typical of the Frenchman, but I find it hard to agree.

 He also leaves behind these words ---- The total number of humans that have ever existed is 100 billion. With the growth of media, the number of people that a single individual may be able meet has risen to 1000, but this number will rapidly increase. "The number of connections between fellow people living in this age has exceed that of all the previous ages in history combined."

How will mankind make use of that power? I hope to take on that question and attempt to think of an answer.