Latest news with #Goliath'sCurse
The Spinoff
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending August 15
The top 10 sales lists recorded every week at Unity Books' stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 The Unlikely Doctor by Dr Timoti Te Moke (Allen & Unwin, $38) Dr Te Moke became a doctor at the age of 56. An extraordinary story that'll may just make you want to try harder. 2 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (Penguin, $24) A classic from 1947 is having a comeback in these dystopian times. 3 Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp (Penguin Random House, $40) Brace yourself for this blurb: 'A radical retelling of human history through collapse – from the dawn of our species to the urgent existential threats of the twentieth-first century and beyond – based on the latest research and a database of more than 440 societal lifespans over the last 5,000 years. Why do civilisations collapse? Is human progress possible? Are we approaching our endgame?' 4 Fulvia by Kaarina Parker (E C H O, $37) A highly recommended classical retelling (for fans of Madeline Miller, Pat Parker and Natalie Haynes). 5 Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins (Hay House, $38) What a TLDR version? Then see Josh Drummond's thoughtful article about self help right here on The Spinoff. 6 Passengers on the Hankyu Line by Hiro Arikawa (Doubleday UK, $38) Travelling cats! Cosy! 7 Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton (Canongate, $28) Glorious memoir for fans of H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald. 8 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) Gripping, chewy, atmospheric. Predicting it will be on next year's Ockhams lists for sure. 9 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (4th Estate, $35) Welcome back old friend! 10 Heart Lamp Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq (Scribe, $37) Shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize. 'In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq's years as a journalist and lawyer, in which she tirelessly championed women's rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression.' WELLINGTON 1 The Safe Keep by Yael van der Wouden (Penguin, $26) Stop what you're doing and go and buy this book like the good people of Wellington are doing. Gorgeous writing and also some hot sex. 2 A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin, $60) Potentially boosted by the doco out now via the NZ International Film Fest. 3 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Vintage, $26) Last year's slim Booker Prize winner is still winning! 4 Aotearoa Light by Peter Laurenson (Bateman Books, $70) A beautiful new book of photography with a timely angle: 'Concerned about the challenges our warming planet brings, photographer, tramper and occasional climber Peter Laurenson presents stunning images of Aotearoa New Zealand that convey the benefits of our wilderness; reminders of what we must protect and nourish if humanity is to thrive.' 5 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) 6 Carthage by Eve Macdonald (Ebury Publishing, $40) What, who and when was Carthage? This book will answer all those questions and more. 7 Mātauranga Māori by Hirini Moko Mead (HUIA, $45) An essential for all home libraries, schools and offices. 8 James by Percival Everett (Picador, $27) A brilliantly funny, powerful, superb retelling. 9 Amma by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38) Welcome back most popular novel of 2024 (according to Spinoff readers!). 10 Names by Florence Knapp (Phoenix, $38) This novel is everywhere right now. Here's a snippet of the blurb: 'Tomorrow – if morning comes, if the storm stops raging – Cora will register the name of her son. Or perhaps, and this is her real concern, she'll formalise who he will become. It is 1987 and in the aftermath of a great storm, Cora sets out with her nine-year-old daughter to register the birth of her son. Her husband has ordered her to follow a long-standing family tradition and call the child after him but when faced with the decision, Cora hesitates. Should her child share his name with generations of fearful men, or should he be given a chance to break the mould? Her choice in this moment will shape the course of their lives.' The Spinoff Books section is proudly brought to you by Unity Books and Creative New Zealand. Visit Unity Books online today.
Irish Daily Mirror
11-08-2025
- Politics
- Irish Daily Mirror
Expert tips Irish expertise as civilisation's best bet to avoid collapse
Luke Kemp tends to avoid small talk. It makes him a bit nervous when it turns to the subject of, 'so what do you do?'. That's a hazard of the job when your life's work is studying the end of the world as we know it. Kemp works at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University in the UK. His daily routine is spent researching the end of days, and the risks that could cause today's highly interconnected society to break apart and collapse – taking with it everything we know and love. When this column previously spoke to him, he had just published a paper titled 'Climate Endgame' which studied the eerie similarities between the collapse of former civilisations and the pathway that our own is speeding along. His latest project is unlikely to improve his line in small talk. Luke Kemp from the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, at Cambridge University in the UK In a new book - 'Goliath's Curse' - he appears to have grown even less optimistic about the likelihood that humanity will choose to avoid doomsday. But he does give us one last hope. A throw of the dice with an idea that, as it happens, Ireland has shown itself to be a world leader at. But first the bad news. Having spent seven years studying 400 societies from the past 5,000 years, the Australian-born academic found ringing indicators of collapse all around us. The biggest one? Inequality. It has gone hand in hand with the downfall of all civilised societies in history. In our case it is being supercharged by what Kemp calls a 'dark triad' of characteristics among our ruling elite: narcissism, psychopathy and manipulation. "The three most powerful men in the world are a walking version of the dark triad: Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a cold psychopath, and Xi Jinping came to rule [China] by being a master Machiavellian manipulator," he outlined in a recent interview with the Guardian. "Our corporations and, increasingly, our algorithms, also resemble these kinds of people. They're basically amplifying the worst of us." Three other 'tells' in the ruins of previous civilisations have been arms races, landgrabs and ecological disasters. "As elites extract more wealth from the people and the land, they make societies more fragile, leading to infighting, corruption, immiseration of the masses, less healthy people, overexpansion, environmental degradation and poor decision making by a small oligarchy. The hollowed-out shell of a society is eventually cracked asunder by shocks such as disease, war or climate change." All sounding familiar yet? The biggest problem in today's world is that any collapse will be on global scale with no region spared such is our interconnectedness. Reliance on technology also means there is no fallback Plan B. Kemp uses the term 'Goliaths' to describe the rise of past societies such as the Roman empire or Chinese dynasties, and refers to our current globalised capitalism system as the 'Global Goliath'. About now you might be asking, so what about that last hope you mentioned? Perhaps surprisingly to some it's not a techno fix. The hope lies in an idea. Something called democracy – although not the kind we are used to, one that has been bought and paid for by billionaires and oligarchs. Kemp identifies citizens' assemblies and juries of the people as perhaps the only hope to save the world as we know it. It so happens that we in Ireland have been recognised as a world leader in the field. The citizens' assemblies that repealed the 8th amendment, legalised gay marriage and still form the framework of Ireland's climate action plan are held up around the world as the standard in this exercise of 'deliberative democracy'. Supporters react outside Dublin Castle following the announcement of the result of the same-sex marriage referendum in Dublin on May 23, 2015. (Image: AFP) Kemp explains: "If you'd had a citizens' jury sitting over the [fossil fuel companies] when they discovered how much damage and death their products would cause, do you think they would have said: 'Yes, go ahead'?" But of course Goliath is not going to be felled too easily... "It's always been easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Goliaths. That's because these are stories that have been hammered into us over the space of 5,000 years," the researcher says. "But even if you don't have hope, it doesn't really matter. It's about doing the right thing, fighting for democracy and for people to not be exploited. And even if we fail, at the very least, we didn't contribute to the problem." Maybe that's the conversation we need to be having over the dinner table. A good way to begin is to read this important book from a writer who spends his life in the ruins of other people's civilisations. Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp is published by Viking Penguin. Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news from the Irish Mirror direct to your inbox: Sign up here
The Herald Scotland
07-08-2025
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Us vs them: why the rich are destroying our world
The rich get rich, and the poor get poorer, as the old song from the Great Depression goes. Approximately 3000 billionaires worldwide collectively increased their wealth by $6.5trillion since 2015, bringing their total worth to 14.6% of global GDP. McDonald's work should be read alongside another new book, Goliath's Curse by Dr Luke Kemp from Cambridge University. The 'Goliath' in Kemp's study of civilisational collapse is the elite - the rich who have ruled over us since the Bronze Age. Read More: His thesis is that societies collapse due to the annexing of wealth by a tiny elite who he calls 'walking versions of the Dark Triad'. The Dark Triad is a psychological term for the worst of humanity's characteristics: narcissism, machiavellianism and psychopathy. Taken together these books warn: things fall apart when the rich get too rich, and we're living through a moment when the rich have definitely got too rich. That disparity in wealth - the figure which marks America as unequal as Caesar's Rome - has a technical term: the Gini Coefficient. Not much separates Britain and America on this measure. Among the list of 37 OECD countries, Britain is 30th; America 32nd. Costa Rica comes last. The wider a society's Gini coefficient, the greater the levels of unhappiness and anger; the higher the risk of crime. A picture begins to emerge when you put these disparate facts together: of western societies strip-mined by the few to the point of destruction, of billions of working people cannibalised by a rapacious elite whose unobtainable lifestyles are built overwhelmingly on inherited wealth. We're living through a new 'Gilded Age': the period at the end of the 19th century marked by grotesque material excess, political corruption, and endemic poverty. It didn't end well. Ask the Tsar of Russia and his family. The Russian Revolution stands as the greatest, most violent, attempt to slough off the previous Gilded Age. Obscene wealth inequality leads to obscene results. However, reactions around the world at the beginning of the last century to intolerable wealth disparities played their part in the collapse of European monarchies, the first global war and the rise of new political parties like Labour in Britain. If this is a new Gilded Age, then while the world's billionaires live in gold, the rest of us live in rust. There's a cartoon from around 1900 called 'From the Depths', drawn as a warning to the rich to rein in their greed. It shows a glittering ballroom filled with dancers in gowns and tailcoats. The dance floor is held up on the backs of the hungry and ragged poor. One desperate man has punched through the floor, his clenched fist rising up. An aristocrat looks down fearfully at this breech into his candlelit world. The very same mood is growing in the west. A poster has just gone up outside a London hospital. It says 'Know Your Parasites'. First on the list is ticks. The advice reads 'remove with tweezer'. Then there's worms. The advice reads 'remove with medication'. Next come billionaires. The advice reads 'remove with wealth tax'. It shows the faces of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Jeff Bezos (Image: PA) The old Gilded Age had its rail and steel barons, the new Gilded Age has its tech barons. One of the most stomach-churning sights of this year was Bezos's Venice wedding. He rented a city to display his riches, while we pressed our noses against the windows of his palace. Meanwhile, the world burned. Meanwhile, here in Britain, eight-in-ten dentists report treating cases of DIY dentistry. The NHS spends £50billion on the effects of deprivation and child poverty. One senior NHS employee recently told the Guardian that Britain is experiencing 'medieval' levels of untreated illness in our poorest communities, including folk attending A&E 'with cancerous lumps bursting through their skin'. Scottish charities tell of mums dropping three dress sizes as they're going hungry to feed their kids. Outside any city centre office you'll see sports cars one moment, and homeless people the next. Far from fellow citizens reduced to lives of begging, there's the likes of Dame Debbie Crosbie, Nationwide chief executive and darling of the Labour government, with a £7million annual pay package. Never forget the bankers. That's where the poison lies. They crashed our economy, and instead of being jailed, our governments across the west bailed them out with our money. Bankers rolled in gold, while our lives and countries were shredded by austerity. The number - and size - of super-yachts being built increases yearly, from 1024 in 2022 to 1203 in 2023. There's a smart slogan doing the rounds these days: Your enemies don't come in small boats, but private jets. In the feudal past, the rich assaulted and raped the poor. Today, our news is filled with the crimes of multi-millionaire sex offenders like Donald Trump's friend Jeffrey Epstein. What makes today so different, though, to times long gone when the poor rose up to defend themselves is that the rich have managed to divide us as never before. Most media - dominated by the billionaire class - manufactures culture wars pitting ordinary citizens against each other. Better to have us at our own throats, than at theirs. If we cleared the smoke from our eyes, we'd realise we can change what's happening before it's too late. For change must come. This can't continue. And far better for peaceable than violent change. I began with a statistic of sheer despair: the matched inequality of America and slaving-owning Rome. Here's another statistic. It comes from Oxfam. The wealth of the world's richest increased by $34trillion since 2015. If we took that money - not their entire wealth, just the interest on their wealth over ten years - we'd end global poverty 22 times over. There is hope. You just have to want it. Neil Mackay is the Herald's Writer-at-Large. He's a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics
Scoop
03-08-2025
- Science
- Scoop
Denying Human Nature
Scholarship with respect to human history is edifying, but scholarship that arrogantly draws lessons from the past regarding the future of humanity is stultifying. A new book by Dr. Luke Kemp, 'Goliath's Curse,' which covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years and took seven years to write, exemplifies this axiom. Philosophical assumptions go unexamined, and superficial beliefs about human nature are stated as givens. The present and future are viewed through an outdated, conventional and irrelevant worldview. And the remedy proposed is progressive boilerplate, unworkable in a global society. On one hand, Kemp correctly points out that 'collapses in the past were at a regional level and often beneficial for most people, but collapse today would be global and disastrous for all.' 'Today, we don't have regional empires so much as we have one single, interconnected global Goliath. All our societies act within one single global economic system – capitalism,' he rightly states. On the other hand, after citing human history's ad nauseum pattern of power, violence, domination and collapse, Kemp pronounces: ' The key thing is this is not about all of humanity creating these threats. It is not about human nature. It is about small groups who bring out the worst in us, competing for profit and power and covering all the risks up.' To Kemp's broad but pond-deep analysis, the source of our trajectory towards global collapse is 'the large, psychopathic groups which produce global catastrophic risk.' That is extraordinarily shallow thinking, utterly lacking philosophical examination. In the parlance of the day, it begs many questions: How have small groups had the ability to repeat the widespread and persistent pattern of power and domination, if not from a deeper psychological source in Homo sapiens generally? And is only some small minority of humanity prone, as Kemp suggests, to 'narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism?' How are they somehow able to continually 'amplify the worst of [and in] us?' With all due respect to Kemp's scholarship, the roots of our culminating human crisis lie within all of us, in the human mind and consciousness per se. The inadequacy of Kemp's diagnosis is attested to by the insufficiency of his prescription. 'First and foremost, you need to create genuine democratic societies to level all the forms of power that lead to Goliaths,' he says. 'That means running societies through citizen assemblies and juries, aided by digital technologies to enable direct democracy at large scales.' Even if people in every nation were to embrace such a one-dimensional solution, who would impose it? The intractable problem of power remains unaddressed, whitewashed by a halcyon notion of the goodness and justice inherent in 'the people.' Additionally, the crisis is global, and democracies are local. To seriously suggest that 'citizen assemblies and juries' will suddenly spring up in every country in the world is a fantasy. And even if this dream could be realized, how much time would it take to produce basically just and equal societies, and how much time do we have to change course before ecological and civilizational collapse occurs? And if collapse is inevitable, to pour the foundation to change course afterward? Kemp's answer to such questions is to derisively deflect them with a false analogy: 'Today, people find it easier to imagine that we can build intelligence on silicon than we can do democracy at scale, or that we can escape arms races. It's complete bullshit. Of course we can do democracy at scale. We're a naturally social, altruistic, democratic species and we all have an anti-dominance intuition. This is what we're built for.' Now that's the complete bullshit. Maintaining such a juvenile view of human nature, the best Kemp can counsel on the individual level do is 'don't be a dick.' And even then he comes off sounding like one. Kemp concludes, 'Even if you don't have hope, it doesn't really matter. This is about defiance. It's about doing the right thing, fighting for democracy and for people to not be exploited. And even if we fail, at the very least, we didn't contribute to the problem.' In truth, this mentality contributes to the human crisis, because it denies its depth within us, externalizes its source in elites, insists that 'fighting' is a virtue, and promotes the empty hope of global democracy when the crisis isn't essentially political at all. Not surprisingly, Kemp remains pessimistic about our prospects of avoiding collapse and 'self-termination.' 'We're dealing with a 5,000-year process that is going to be incredibly difficult to reverse, as we have increasing levels of inequality and elite capture of our politics.' There you have it -- the problem isn't us good people, or the masses of asses behind Trump, or scholarly elites, or human nature, or humankind as whole from whom power-addicted elites incessantly emerge. Rather, the problem is 'a very small number of secretive, highly wealthy, powerful groups, like the military-industrial complex, big tech and the fossil fuel industry.' This is a philosophy of denial and distancing, another version of the 'us vs. them' mentality that underlies conflict, war and inequality. It is the counsel of despair. The only thing worse than a pricky pessimist is an odious optimist. In reality, we're not just dealing with a 5000-year process, or even a 50,000 year-process, but a 500,000-year process. However, the very act of fathoming and facing the depth of the mistake of man overshadowing the latent promise of the human being enlarges the mind and heart, and catalyzes our transmutation as individuals and a species. Though I grapple with despair, one can live one's life by non-accumulatively learning and transforming with passion and joy. That's not such a high bar, and it's immeasurably better than 'don't be a dick.' Note: Link – ''Self-termination' is most likely: the history and future of societal collapse': Martin LeFevre - Meditations Scoop Contributor Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher. His sui generis 'Meditations' explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity. lefevremartin77@gmail
