The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror

by George Soros

After reflecting on his support of a losing Democrat for president, George Soros steps back to revisit his views on why George Bush's policies around the world fall short in the arenas most important to democracy, human rights and open society. As a survivor of the Holocaust and a life-long proponent of free expression, Soros understands the meaning of freedom. And yet his differences with George Bush, another proponent of freedom, are profound. In this powerful essay Soros spells out his views and how they differ from the president's. He reflects on why the Democrats may have lost the high ground on these values issues and how they might reclaim it. As he has in his recent books, On Globalization and The Bubble of American Supremacy , Soros uses facts, anecdotes, personal experience and philosophy to illuminate a major topic in a way that both enlightens and inspires.

Genres: Politics, Finance, Nonfiction, Economics, Philosophy, History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published May 30, 2006

About the author

George Soros is a Hungarian-American financier, businessman and notable philanthropist focused on supporting liberal ideals and causes. He became known as "the Man Who Broke the Bank of England" after he made a reported $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crises. Soros correctly speculated that the British government would have to devalue the pound sterling.

Soros is Chairman of Soros Fund Management, LLC.
As one of history’s most successful financiers, his views on investing and economic issues are widely followed.

Reviews

[Louis Lapides · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was shocking to read how George Soros has no compunction about using his billions to create political global change. He's a leftist version of Donald Trump in many ways on how he views the power his money has given him. I respect him for having passion for his causes and putting his money where his mouth is. However, I have serious issues with how much power one human being can have by using his money. In 2004 Soros spent millions to make sure George Bush was not re-elected. There should be laws against this kind of financial megalomania.

The book was helpful in giving me insight into the thinking of George Soros. His thought processes are unnecessarily cumbersome to understand. Not impressed.

[Zach Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had never heard of George Soros until I read an editorial he sent in to the Wall Street Journal. The editorial piqued my interest and so I looked him up and discovered this book.

The Age of Fallibility is very well written and presents very complicated theories in an easy to grasp from. Soros writes with the mentality of someone that really wants to get his point across: He tells you what he is going to talk about, talks about it, and then tells you what he just talked about. This has the affect of seeming a bit repetitive, but at the same time, you realize that the ideas are actually sinking in.

The first half of the book is dedicated to Soros' theory of reflexivity. Basically, reality isn't a fixed thing that we work around, it is constantly changing because of our actions and our thoughts. The idea of an open society is one that accepts that we will never reach a "perfect" solution to anything and so we must always work together to improve what we are doing, understanding that each improvement we make will require additional improvements.

The second half of the book is geared towards asking what is currently wrong with America, what is wrong with the world, and what we can do to fix it. Soros gives an in depth look into all three topics and makes some very good points.

To say that George Soros is anti-American is just silly. He merely points out the ways in which Americans can improve in our domestic and foreign policies. This is part of the open society model. There is always room for improvement. Pointing out that something can be improved is not the same as being against it.

The book got over my head a bit towards the end. I don't know enough about Russia to follow a lot of the points made there. Overall, this is a great book for someone who is interested in what is currently happening in this country and the world and would like to know more.

[Sue Nami · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sadly being highly successful financially does not mean such a person can write a good book! But it is a good way to gain some understanding of what makes such a man tick!

What really caught me by surprise appears on page 137. With so much money on hand, why not meddle with the world and get involved in regulatory overreach. Here is what he says....

"The prevailing world order is based on the sovereignty of states and states are entitled to resist outside intervention." My foundations do not hesitate to get involved with the internal affairs of other countries -- after all, democracy is an internal affair -- but they do it as citizens of the country concerned. The network consists of local foundations whose board and staff are preponderantly local citizens and they take responsibility for the actions of the foundations."

WELL NOW..... those of us who know recent history are aware that the US government has been meddling with the sovereignty of other nations for several generations, e.g.., Panama and the Panama canal! But this time it happens to be one powerful US citizen manipulating the levers of multiple US based environmental organizations with foreign branches and all based on a false premise......

The most severe example is the myriad of US based environmental and associated social agencies who are ripping Canadian government sovereignty apart by the seams both at the federal and provincial levels and using Canadian aboriginal groups as a proxy for this dangerously misguided effort...... What a dangerous gain this man is playing.... but what does he have to lose?

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling advocacy of the open society

Most of the meat of this decidedly philosophic opus by one of the world's most successful financial wizards concerns the differences between the closed and open societies that govern us. The closed society is characterized by traditional modes of thought while the open society is characterized by critical thought. Traditional thinking is unchanging. The past is like the present which is like the future. We think the way our fathers thought and their fathers before them. Knowledge is based on authority. In the open society change is constant. Knowledge is based on the scientific method which yields facts that are always subject to change. In the closed society knowledge is certain and absolute. In the open society knowledge is never certain and always subject to new discoveries.

Yet ironically in the open society (the European Union, the United States, et al.) pure reason does not rule, partly because the pure product of the rational mind is unobtainable because of what might be seen as Russell's paradox acting in the human world. Bertrand Russell discovered (after Godel) that self-referencing systems lead eventually to paradox. What Soros is arguing is that because our perception of the world is self-referential to some extent--that is, how we think about the world colors our perception of the world--we can never see the world "as it really is," and so our view is fallible. In fact, in most aspects of life, especially in the social, economic and political spheres, our perception actually changes reality, and so reality is a "moving target" and as such can never be captured. He calls this "reflexivity." He also dubs it the "human uncertainty principle" since our perception of the world, as our perception of quantum events, alters what is being perceived.

Soros goes on to argue that all cultures are built upon what he calls "fertile fallacies." The cultural ideas are false but they are successful (for a while) because of a positive feedback system, similar to the boom and bust phenomenon in financial markets. People believe that tulips have great intrinsic value, ergo, tulips have great intrinsic value and become worth more than gold. For a while. Eventually "reality" kicks in and the bust comes. So it is with cultures. Nazi Germany boomed magnificently (compared to the immediate aftermath of WWI), but soon went bust because it was built on fallacies. Ditto the Soviet Union.

All this Soros explains carefully and at some length. Then comes the important point: open societies can better avoid the boom and bust syndrome because unlike closed societies they are not built on some fallacious idea of eternal truth. Instead, like science they are always open to falsification and change, whereas close societies resist falsification and change.

In all of this I think Soros is making a brilliant argument. As he himself says, the argument is not original with him--he acknowledges a deep debt to Karl Popper the philosopher of science who wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies and was a mentor to Soros. But what I think Soros is doing here that is original is presenting the argument in a compelling political and social context.

There is so much of a non-philosophic nature that I would like to quote from this book. Soros's observations on politics and the current world order are insightful and penetrating. He is one of the deep thinkers of our time and a man who expresses himself fearlessly. Because of his great material success in the world and the activist stance he has taken internationally, he is a man that many people listen to, even those who find his views disagreeable. Here are a few of his thoughts:

"The idea of death is not the same as the fact of death. The idea of death is the denial of consciousness, and the fact of death is not the denial of life but its natural conclusion." (p. 42)

"I set up an Open Society Fund and defined its objectives as follows: to open up closed societies; to make open societies more viable; and to promote a critical mode of thinking." (p. 53)

In Chapter 3 Soros asks the question, "What's Wrong with America?" and comes to the conclusion that it is a failure of leadership which is the result of "a failure of followership," which is a general way of saying that the Bush administration has greatly failed the American people, but also that the electorate has failed because it has elected people like Bush. But in the next chapter, "The Feel-Good Society," he really nails it. Quite simply the American people have become gluttons of consumption who can barely get off their couches, who do about as much critical thinking as cows chewing their cuds. (His expression is less graphic.) He sees the Bush administration's "war on terror" response to 9/11 as "phantasmagoric" (p. 102) in that Bush has us fighting against an abstraction instead of going after the people responsible for 9/11. Soros writes, "Since the war on terror is counterproductive, it is liable to generate more terrorists or insurgents than it can liquidate. As a result, we are facing a permanent state of war and the end of the United States as an open society." (p. 106) (cf., Orwell)

On Afghanistan: "...we formed alliances with warlords, and it is their authority that we helped to establish; in this way, we consolidated an economic and political system based on the illegal cultivation of narcotics." (p. 149) On Iraq, "Iran is the major beneficiary of the invasion, which removed its enemy Saddam Hussein from power, tied up American forces in a task that they are ill-prepared to perform, and tightened the supply of oil" [making Iranian oil more valuable]. (p. 112)

Soros also addresses the problems of energy supply and global warming, which of course are interrelated. He touches on the nuclear threat which he sees as now more menacing than during the Cold War.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[Joseph Busa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book long ago and didn't remember much about it. Other than maybe I thought George Soros was a very successful person in the field of finance with serious aspirations of creating a legacy for himself as a modern-day philosopher.

Having read it again I came away with the sense that Mr. Soros hints at wanting to change the leaning of the American media and describing how his numerous NGOs operate in the world. He seems to want a world where freewill and dissent are to be encouraged whilst being content to deny it to those that would argue against him. It makes me wonder if, at the age of 87, he isn't losing control of his Open Society Foundation, to others with less well-intentioned objectives.

[Hannes Andreas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read. I based part of my dissertation on this thing.

[Brian Katz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book. I wanted to read some of the Left’s thinking about globalism, open society, and other issues of their worldview. It’s important to better understand their perspective, to put their policy goals into the proper context.

I understand his goals and why open society is important. Thankfully, Soros is not an advocate of a global government. Though he has expertly exploited the global economy. He is looking for more cooperation and coordination of global leaders in order to better harmonize each individual states behaviors in the context of global issues such as, climate change, energy, terrorism, closed / repressive societies, etc.. for good of humanity. These are all worthy goals.

Oddly enough, with his life experiences and in facing repressive regimes as a child, and in working through his foundations to open up closed societies, the authors approach to getting global cooperation appears to ignore that many actors just don’t care, nor will they bend to the wishes of the global society, as many are tyrants, dictators, and just bad people. In several of his suggestions about how to proceed, the proposed negotiation process with bad actors appears too soft, as he is not an advocate of force. When in fact, finding a weak spot and exploiting it in negotiations can often produce results, without conflict. Again, all worthy goals, just not enough substance about how to make things happen.

As if world leaders will just wake up one day and cast off their collective experiences in order to tackle global problems for the good of humanity.

[Rajiv Chopra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do like this book, but I don't think that it is a fantastic book.

The abstract concepts at the start of the book are interesting and, I think, are valid. Also, I do like the manner in which George Soros links his thought to his personal work. I do get the impression that he does walk the talk. He is willing to admit his own fallibility, and this is something I like.

Yet, I don't quite understand how the book is all about the consequences of the war on terror. His ideas around the 'feel good' and 'open' societies are good, and and can be books in themselves. India, for instance, is not really an open society anymore.

However, some more thoughts around the war on terror would have been welcome.

[Gemini · Rating 1 out of 5]

So I basically read the first chapter of this book & it was painstakingly difficult to get through. Maybe I was expecting something else or it's just the writing or something, whatever it is I don't like it. So why bother continuing? People gotta do what works for them & this book does not do it for me.

[Darlington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Soros seems like a pretty decent fellow, but I struggled through this 5head book. Most of his surmises seem pretty correct on the Iraq war, but man, was that ever boring!

[Salamander]

Soros genuinely believes he's doing good, bless him.
Suggested other reading: The Open Society by Karl Popper

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/683159.html[return][return]Soros is here attempting to provide the American liberal tradition with a stronger intellectual base. He is disarmingly frank about why he does it:[return][return]"To sum it up, I believe I combine three qualifications. First, I have developed a conceptual framework that has given me a certain understanding of history, and, in particular, what I call far-from-equilibrium situations; second, I have a set of firm ethical and political beliefs; and third, I have made a lot of money."[return][return]When you're in that position, you can write whatever you like, and it is therefore with some bemusement that the casual reader expecting a book on contemporary US politics will find that the first seventy pages actually address the nature of reality and its relationship to human thought, in order to better contextualise Soros' ideal of an open society. I'm not especially well placed to rate this in terms of academic content of originality; I never studied philosophy or politics, though I have been a practitioner of the latter, and I did scrape a little below the surface of the philosophy of science back in my historian days. However it seems sound enough, particularly his linkage with and development of the notions of Karl Popper. It is certainly an awful lot more convincing, as an analysis of human history, than Hari Seldon.[return][return]In the introduction he gleefully quotes Branko Crvenkovski as describing him as a "stateless statesman", but in fact he reveals a very strong sense of U.S. citizenship and even patriotism. His exploration of the question of "What's Wrong with America?" is that of a grieving insider. He worries that America is so busy trying to feel good that it has lost any thirst for knowing the truth. He thinks that America has difficulties dealing with death (and his own shorter time horizon, since he is now seventy-five, is a recurrent theme in the book). He is appalled at the way America's reputation in the world, and its ability to persuade others to its cause, have been destroyed by its own policy on the "war on terror" (a concept which he dissects forensically).[return][return]"There is a confusion in President Bush's mind about what democracy means. When he says that democracy will prevail, he really means that America will prevail. But a democratic government needs to gain the backing of the electorate and that is not necessarily the same as the backing of the United States. The contradiction became evident in the recent elections in Egypt, and even more in Palestine."[return][return]He swipes also at globalisation and fundamentalist belief in the free market, and devotes a brief but intensely argued section to the question of energy and preventing global warming (a cause to which he says he was converted by Al Gore), but criticises the anti-globalisation Left's attacks on the WTO and various summits on the grounds that these are the wrong target: "The international institutions largely reflect the policies of the member states; it is the member states that have to be held responsible."[return][return]So, rather a thought-provoking little book; much less shrill, much more reflective, more prescriptive, and in many ways much sadder than what I've read of, say, Noam Chomsky. I think anyone who is seriously interested in fixing what's wrong with the US should try and get hold of it.

[Mike S · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so impressive that I have to start my review by stating that I do not currently have the skills I would need to do this book justice.

If you like the political writings of Chomsky and Vidal you'll almost assuredly like this book.

If you liked Orwell's 1984 you will almost assuredly like this book. I would even say that anyone who liked 1984 would find this a modern sequel that is entirely adequate to the task.

In this book we get a very clear and honest look at the current state of the US through the eyes of a man I have a huge amount of respect for. Soros started out as a philosopher, moved on to make his fortune, and since then has used that money to become an inspired and truly impressive philanthropist.

I haven't read about many wealthy people that didn't leave me with some degree of disappointment, whether I thought they were so full of themselves as to become caricatures, arrogant, cold, so self-indulgent that they became functionally less intelligent - usually something less than human. But reading Soros I actually have more hope for humanity. That someone could be so wealthy and still have the integrity and humanity he shows again and again, there really is hope for the future.

In the book Soros discusses his philosophy on thinking and reality, what an open society is and why the US is having trouble being one, the current Bush policies, the war on drugs, the war on terror, how Bush could possibly have gotten re-elected, how key professions have become businesses, how academia has lost its identity and is becoming and end in itself, affirmative action... and at the end of the book Soros shows inspired thinking about how he would approach some of the largest problems facing our planet. What a change after hearing Bush "speak" and watching his disastrous policies make everything they touch worse. (Is there an opposite to the Midas Touch?)

The book is overflowing with such clarity and intelligence that I can't imagine anyone honestly interested in what's going wrong with America would not be fascinated with it.

If you like the political writings of Chomsky or Vidal, Berman's "Twilight of the American Culture", Stiglitz's "Globalization and its Discontents", or are in any way troubled by the disconnect between what Bush says and what he accomplishes... READ THIS BOOK!

[Maxi Bona · Rating 3 out of 5]

George Soros devided his book into two parts. In first part which has 2 chapters he tried to explain his conceptual framework. Mr. Soros expalin more deeply about many issues which already familiar in philosophy about mind, reality and as his concern, open society. Mr. Soros concept on these subject influence stronly by his professor Karl Popper. According to Mr. Soros, reality is something that independent from our mind. It means that reality is exist around us and waiting for us to understand it. Understanding reality means we create a model or picture in our mind which is correspond with it. On Open society, he said, an open society is an unperfect society which keep itself open to improvement.

In the second part of his book, Mr Sorros tried to elaborate his concept and he stresses much thing that not rational on our era especially on the way USA mistreat other country. We an say how USA arogant to others. And the bad thing is most countries follow and support US. It is the worst threat for our world and cultures. Soros laso tell us about how he uses his money.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting overview of the current world situation as seen by someone with a lot of world-stage experience. The problems we face are truly daunting, and the combination of political instability, environmental crisis, and energy needs may lead to a perfect storm of global chaos. Soros gives a scathing indictment of the Bush administration's "go it alone" foreign policy, which resulted in stunted or negative progress on all these issues. We can only solve these problems with global cooperation.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

one has to go into the hearts of darkness to realize the darkness..a book which diverge everyone's attention on the American moral ground is constructed and should be led by our government officials which are total bullshit..he is the crook of the century collaborating and affiliating with Rothschild legacy and empire..he who controls the bank controls the countries..to be fooled by the "abnormly" or "normalcy" of what one sees.

[Phred · Rating 5 out of 5]

very interesting philosophically. his analysis of the problems facing the us and the european union, and the rest of the world are insightful and well considered. i agree about his conclusion of americans- we have become a "feel-good society" and are out of touch with reality. nice to see someone disappointed with the status quo who actually has ideas for promoting some change for the better.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soros has been piloried by bombastic conservative and timid Americans alike. It challenges the hegemonic attitudes that have prevailed for most of the century. The argument is reasoned and reasonable.

[Lama · Rating 2 out of 5]

George Soros should not write in English.

[Carrie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not actually finish this book. I do not believe in finishing a book merely because it's been started and this book did not deserve to be finished.

[Andrew]

This guy is crazy!

[Tudor Călin Rațiu]

We understand a situation and act; and when we act, we may create both the positive and the negative answers to our understanding. That is George Soros’ reflexivity.