Redux on the Club of Rome [Edited]

Some folks out there were, a wee bit, curious about the quote I posted from the Club of Rome’s Alexander King &co., and wanted to know more about the book I cited it from, and about Club itself.

So here you go. As for the book, the quotation came from “The First Global Revolution” – a book which seems out of print but is obtainable at some used bookstores and at Amazon.com. It is a report of the Club of Rome, self-issued in the very early 90’s, and aimed at policy-makers, and upper-level managerial class elites.

As for the group itself, the best way to describe them follows.

The Club of Rome: Role and Origins.

The Club of Rome is a leading, indeed among the top, think tank and NGO, and has self-described itself as an “invisible college”. Formed and dominated by leading figures, The Club of Rome includes members from the media, civil servants, policy makers and technocrats, private wealthy businessmen and industry heads, economists, politicians, and a smattering of European Aristocrats and Royalty thrown in.

Founded by wealthy Italian businessman Aurelio Peccei, the Club operates as a confidential and open forum of discussion and thought between members and individuals within the Western World’s technocratic managerial and policy making directorate classes.  Members meet in private capacity, not in the capacity of their public offices or roles, to discuss what they perceive to be the most important issues of the time. Club members are all highly significant individuals, both in their levels of private and public influence, and in their involvement in the governance of the modern West.

Club Aims:

The Club’s founders aims and outlooks are described as globalist and international.

Among the chief concerns articulated by The Club are population growth and the limitation of population growth through local and international policy. They see Population Control as linked to many other ominous trends. Tied into this is a concern for paths of Global Development – the vectors by which global social and economic development takes place – and their long-term sustainability, as well as the impact of population and social change upon such development.

Some critics of the Club fear that the Club’s concern with population control could, aptly, lead to what can only be termed “depopulation”, and that such concerns  really simply reflect a deeper concern with the Eugenical control of society’s breeding, and the Eugenical regimentation of classes, races, and populations, seen as problematic or unfit. That said, the Club would certainly word things differently and claim these are unfair interpretations of their aims and goals.

Club members’ desire to meet and discuss such issues, to make future projections on current trends, develop models, and from this issue policy recommendations to governance circles of the world’s nations, is grounded, they write, in a realization that the pace of ordinary democratic government procedures are generally slow and in their eyes ineffectual (when it comes to looking at problems they perceive as significant). Public figures meeting together in private capacity could discuss such issues free from the glare of public scrutiny. In a few ways, the group resembles a less Anglo-American dominated Chatham House/RIIA, or Council of Foreign Relations.

The group’s reports are highly interesting reading to anyone who is interested in international affairs, or in knowing what influences thoughts and concerns dominate the brightest of their nations’ policy makers in private. Books such as The First Global Revolution are highly influential in certain circles and classes, and it would be a naive, and foolish, error for the reader to underestimate the degree to which their recommendations and questions, as a group or as articulated by constituent members, are.

Interested in knowing more, are you?

Good, useful books articulating The Club of Rome’s worldview are: “Limits to Growth” and “Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future” (a 20 year update of the former). Both works aimed to challenge conventional ideas on population growth and sustainability, both were highly influential (selling millions of copies), and both have been harshly criticized as irresponsible and biased, by some very established scientists and economists (and not just tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists).

Critics have challenged the weak foundations of the data used in the books conclusions. One weak point were the computer models used, they were very primitive and early ones used were amongst the very first attempts ever to do this sort of global wide-scale statistical population modeling on a computer.

Given rudimentary methods of data collection in the late 60s, the primitiveness of the algorithms used, the understanding of current economists and computer programmers who worked together developing these models, and the sheer physical capacities of the computers in use themselves, the results – critics point out – were rather tendentious and apt to confirm the modelers’ own assumptions. Even by today’s standards when far more sophisticated models are in use, on far more sophisticated computers (Your digital wrist-watch has more processing capacity than many of the computers the Club of Rome were initially using, at MIT) One can assume naïveté or one can assume malice of will, naïveté is probably a safer assumption.

As in all things, data and numbers may impress us without scientific training but they are useless without a proper context, and even still. This is a weakness of some who articulate HBD as a body of ideas (but not Evolutionary Psychology as a formal discipline) in that statistical cause and correlation are easily mistaken, without an in depth knowledge of the assumptions and data underlying an author’s quantitative model, it is possible to re-construe a value-neutral body of statistical information on population, on breeding, on crime, on consumption and production, in many competing ways. “so like, as in all things – let the buyer totally beware”

“The First Global Revolution:A Report by the Council of The Club of Rome”, is another useful source articulating the Club’s assumptions arguments and beliefs, and the source of the previous quote in which A. King &co. basically admitted to latching on to the idea of Climate Change and other similar matters as a leitmotiv underlying their attempts to unify humanity. Really, you can’t get more blatant than this, for anyone with half a brain cell to rub.

I recommend as secondary reading, Mesarovic and Pestel’s “Mankind at the Turning Point: The Second Report to the Club of Rome” as well as “Reshaping the international order: A report to the Club of Rome” and Dror’s “The Capacity to Govern: A Report to the Club of Rome”

Some of their other reports are very difficult to get a hold of, and quite expensive. Used bookstores in college towns are always a good bet. Attractive and witty road companions, with gas money in their pocket, are more than welcome to hitch with me on my next used bookstore road-trip.

One interesting aspect to the Club’s publications is that the vast majority of people who talk or write about them never bother to actually read them. This is a pity, both for the Club’s critics and supporters. Like I find many of their recommendations to be rather sound, but I really disagree with some of the assumptions underlying these conclusions. And frankly, I have a sneaking suspicion that some of what I object to in them isn’t sincere naivete but rather consistent with assumptions about human nature, class, and race that I find obnoxious, assumptions cloaked behind a veneer of respectability.

That said, much of what the Club has produced for public consumption actually is pretty thought provoking, readers should neither object to it blindly nor simply gobble it up because they are “experts”, rather read, weigh, ask questions, and look at both sides of the issues they discuss. There may be recommendations of the Club’s that are of great value as Western societies experience ever increasing social, moral, and economic dislocations. In other words.

“Ignoring this shit will not help you in the long term, understanding what they are saying, the strengths of their opinions, and the weaknesses of their opinions, may better help you figure thing out that are far more important to your personal understanding than last night’s episode of NCIS, your hangover, or the really cute One night stand from last week who oddly enough won’t call you or take your calls.”

Then again, look at it this way, a failure to understand that paragraph and make it relevant in our own lives could, perversely, actually substantiate the subtext that I believe lies underneath some of the Club’s beliefs and opinions, ones I find veiledly obnoxious and snobby. In this case, we really can’t blame the boys meeting in Rome.

And neither can you.
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