Sunday, March 27, 2011

Authors@Google: Parag Khanna

Parag Khanna spoke to the Google staff in Mountain View, California on January 20, 2011 about his latest book, How to Run The World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance. I wonder about his optimism. I would like to believe that if the kinds of people he wants to gather together would work in the best interests of societies, and not of themselves, but I am skeptical. On the other hand, governments aren't going to do it, so if we are going to change things, there needs to be a cooperation between the wealthy elite and the average person.

About the book:
"Adventurer-scholar Parag Khanna's How to Run the World (Random House) is a bold account of our current global chaos and a road-map for creating a truly resilient and stable world. Khanna's new book describes how we have entered a new Middle Ages, with Asian empires, Western militaries, Middle Eastern sheikhdoms, magnetic city-states, wealthy multinational corporations, elite clans, religious zealots, tribal hordes, and potent media seething in an ever more unpredictable and dangerous storm. But just as that initial "dark age" gave way to the Renaissance, Khanna believes that our time can become a great and enlightened age as well.

Khanna reveals how a new "mega-diplomacy" consisting of coalitions among motivated technocrats, influential executives, super-philanthropists, cause-mopolitan activists, and everyday churchgoers can assemble the talent, pool the money, and deploy the resources to make the global economy fairer, rebuild failed states, combat terrorism, promote good governance, deliver the basics of food, water, healthcare and education to those in need, and prevent environmental collapse. Super-philanthropists like Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, and George Soros, celebrities like Bono and Angelina Jolie, companies from Royal Dutch Shell to Western Union, and NGOs like Oxfam and Avaaz are all leading practitioners of mega-diplomacy."




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