Customer Reviews

The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Mr. Bloom may have a modern-day classic in this book. He has managed to perform a work of consilence on the history of man (life, really) and provide insight in the how's, what's, where's, and why's of capitalism and how we treat customers and each other. I must admit as a newcomer to Bloom's work, the first 130 pages left me wondering, "where is he going?" Bloom provides an extraordinary grasp of machinations and implications of capitalism, warts and all---he leaves no stone unturned in his critical assessments and his heart-felt endorsements. He provides not only reasons for hope, but proven tools and methods to get things done. The intellectual honesty and power of his thesis cannot be ignored. Strongest recommendation!

As other reviewers have written, Howard Bloom's "The Genius of the Beast" is unorganized and haphazardly written. It is also full of errors, stretched analogies and made up word jumbles (secular genesis machine?!?). Frankly, it reads as a conclusion in search for any data point that might support it when squinted at just the right way.

As far as errors are concerned, the book has a complete misunderstanding of biology which Bloom claims helps to explain the cycle of boom/bust in a human economy. I'm a biologist, so these errors jump out at me, and I shudder to think about the number of errors in the rest of the book that I didn't pick up because they related to other fields of expertise. For example, Bloom goes on for an entire chapter about the Dictyostelium slime mold, yet continuously calls it a bacterium (which it is not, and is like writing about dogs and calling them snails). He also has no idea about the biological role of microtubules inside the cell, yet uses their inherent dynamic instability (but a small bit of their cellular function) to try and explain worldwide economies. These and his honeybee and evolution analogies show that he has no understanding about these topics besides what he managed to glean from reading one or two magazine articles about them (including references in the back to primary literature doesn't mean he read or understood them). And if he did understand them, then letting these errors into his prose suggests he doesn't care about accuracy but only in furthering his thesis (SPOILER: which is that capitalism is good. No idea how this makes it a radical re-vision of the topic).

Besides several instances where sentences and a half (literally) are repeated one after the other - hello copy/paste and proofreading editor - the writing is also atrocious. Does the book really need paragraphs with 6 questions in a row? Can he discuss a topic without anthropomorphizing inanimate objects[1]? Will a chapter ever end where it doesn't promote a straw man that is magically answered in the next chapter?

This is a common paragraph from the book:

"Could it have been a pattern built into our biology? A pattern that's 3.85 billion years old? Or older? A pattern we can even see at work in the early cosmos? Could the cycle of boom and crash be propelled by the pendulum of repurposing? Could it be a manifestation of a search-and-create strategy? The fission-fusion strategy? ...5 more random questions... Could it really be that you and I are part of a search engine of a universe probing her possibilities? Could boom and bust really be turns in the wheel of an evolutionary search engine, a secular genesis machine?"

As you can see, Bloom has a habit of making up word jumbles, like "secular genesis machine". This phrase is introduced early in the book to theoretically provide some sort of focus. He applies it to gazillion items in the book, most of which make no sense because those concepts by definition have no specific endgame, though he claims they do. Non-biological evolution (and more importantly selection) of systems and technologies seem to be a topic of particular interest to him, and the book is literally chapter after chapter of descriptions of boom and busts in world economies, caused by new technologies/discoveries (eg New World, railroad), even when he then says, 'not really, that 18xx bust wasn't caused by peak train happening". He then uses 'secular genesis machine' as literally some deux ex machina that magically makes everything work because the 'machine' is somehow searching for 'something' and so it must act like this.

In conclusion, the book could have been over 100 pages (>20%) shorter if some editor had trimmed the constant repetition and made Bloom focus a little more. It is replete with errors in at least one field (biology), both in the actual workings of items in that field (microtubules, Dicty, evolution) and how some biological theories can be re-imaged as applying to human endeavors. This probably applies to other fields discussed as well. The subtitle, "A Radical Re-vision of Capitalism" is unnecessarily grandiose, since in the end he just says capitalism isn't as bad as its opponents say. The book is not worth it.

[1] They hate it when you do that.

I admit I bought this thinking it had been written by Harold Bloom, the Harvard literary don. So I was surprised when I began reading Genius of the Beast and came up against this writer's hyperbolic style, a style which would be familiar to any advertising copywriter.

Bloom is described somewhere in the multiple blurbs all over this book as a marketing genius, and that's what I'll happily take him as. As a revolutionary thinker? His argument boils down to "Technology will save us", nothing I haven't read anywhere before.

What is exceptional about the book is the way Bloom hypes his ideas. He's broadly read, and seems to enjoy synthesizing ideas from a variety of specializations and making them his own.

The book is conceived in a series of 'mini' chapters, each of which present one idea simply, and then, in a snowball effect, Bloom rolls them all together.

Personally, I found his insanely over-amped style (which is reflected in the tone of some of the other reviews here) to be counter-productive. Like the language of brilliant advertising, it's there to gloss over something.

However, on the positive side, Bloom is clearly a positive and ambitious thinker, not to be dismissed.

As a fan of Bloom's previous book "Global Brain," I was looking forward to delving into "The Genius of the Beast" (The Beast) and writing a 5-star review. But, sadly, after reading the book, there is no 5-star review from this reader. I found The Beast disappointing on all counts. I found the writing sloppy and the organization and flow of the chapters disjointed. One moment I am reading about the dynamics of bee hives and ants and the next moment I am reading about Bloom's personal adventures in the music business. My sense is that the author was having fun, a blast perhaps, trying to weave all this disjointed information together in a coherent fashion to support his main argument, but I found his excursions were a distraction. My primary problem with the book, however, is that there is nothing radical about the author's re-vision of capitalism. Bloom, through his research and experience, has discovered that capitalism is superior to other economic systems. Whoa! What a discovery! I hate to be sarcastic here, but I just don't get it. Anybody that has seriously studied economics and the science of complexity could tell you that capitalism is superior to socialism, communism, and all the other isms as an engine of economic progress. Perhaps Bloom's political leanings and background have prevented him from seeing what it obvious to any serious student of economics and complexity. I don't know the man so I cannot say. Those who are familiar with George Gilder's "Wealth and Poverty," Michael Rothschild's "Bionomics, " M. Mitchell Waldrop's "Complexity," and have studied the economics of Joseph Schumpeter (whom Bloom oddly fails to mention and discuss) and are familiar with the research coming out of the Santa Fe Institute, will not gain any new insights into the workings of capitalism from reading The Beast. As such, I cannot recommend the book. That said, if you are a socialist or communist and have a jaundiced view of capitalism, and you are unfamiliar with Gilder, Rothschild, Waldrop, Schumpeter, and the Santa Fe Institute, perhaps you will enjoy The Beast and learn something new. Perhaps your view of capitalism will change and you will look at the world differently. But for me, I came away disappointed. I suspect others like me who are serious about economics and complexity will also be disappointed. Rather than giving The Beast a 5-star review, as I surely thought I would, based on his previous work, I am giving it 2 stars: 1 star for the effort put into researching and writing the book, and another star for discovering the genius of capitalism. As for Bloom being called "the Einstein, Darwin, Newton, and Freud of the 21st century" and "the next Stephen Hawking," well that's flattering and all, but I don't see it. It does seem as though he has a terrific skill set for the music business and Lord knows that business is in dire need of genius.

This book is full of genius new concepts and visions to bump our species up, while stunningly easy to digest. I can't believe how fun this is to read. I feel smarter, more human, and like a sudden expert in economics. Howard Bloom uses nature, history, and science to turn a revolutionary new lens into the most amazing, transformational world where I found myself re-visioning capitalism. This is the first time in a long time that I've made peace with the concept of capitalism, which I called "evil" before being introduced to this new re-visioning.

One of the effects of the book is this: Where I was depressed and cynical about capitalism, I find myself feeling more optimistic. With the new lens provided, I went from a limited, news-based mindset into a realm where I can see capitalism clearly from a microscope and the Hubble at the same time. It is causing a revolution in my brain and soul. While this book reads well for a student, average adult, and the intellectual, I can only hope that those in leadership positions get a hold of this book. It's life changing, and holds the possibility of saving the dignity and hope of an entire generation across the world.

I bought this book, along with another book, How Markets Fail, and have to say that I was looking forward to Bloom's book being released, I kept checking the inventory to see if Bloom's book was out. But I was disappointed. Bloom's book really lacked a major thing which I think we can call:reality. Reading, How Markets Fail, really balanced this out, but Bloom seems to think that if people realize that crash and booms are part of our biology, than they'll be all better, yeah right! I think we need to realize that Bloom wrote his book to really speak to the marketing crowd, those who have accepted the conventional wisdom-and Bloom is conventional wisdom-I urge the reader, if they want to understand what happens and why it happens to read John Cassidy's How Markets Fail.

I am not a fan of capitalism in its current application. Since I loved "The Global Brain", I wanted to read this book anyway.

I didn't take the book as being about economics so much as the human spirit. We all want to be creative, innovative and we humans love to move forward. We enjoy healthy competition. That is the spirit in which I read it and several things were clarified that I hadn't been able to process through or reconcile.

One of the key points in my opinion was the idea of self-image based on accomplishment/achievement rather than the rather lukewarm standard of current US culture. We've allowed ourselves to become intellectually and spiritually lazy people who believe "self-esteem" (a concept I find exceedingly annoying) is based on the mere fact that we exist. We have become a culture of mediocrity.

Achievement and accomplishment can look a lot of different ways and this book didn't present it as elitist. I didn't sense power-over or harsh judgment. It doesn't celebrate only major accomplishments by extraordinary people. We achieve and accomplish in many different ways. The worst thing we can do is stifle that. It is at the core of who we are.

Another thought I took away was about corporate environments and why so many of us find them difficult and stressful. Corporate culture encourages structure and conformity. They are purely "power-over" environments that allow a small group of people to "lord it over" the rest. It's feudal. Fitting in is considered more important than creativity and innovation. Corporate leaders would do well to look among "the ranks" for new and creative approaches to leadership and production. At the core is respect for each other as intelligent, creative human beings.

Two quotes: (paraphrased)

"The truth at all costs, even if the cost is your life."

"Look at things right beneath your nose as though seeing them for the first time."

This book made me feel optimistic and hopeful. We can get beyond our current social structures based on power-over and hierarchy to make way for a new paradigm that encourages everyone to express his or her creativity. The country and our culture will be better off for it.

I received this book in pre-publication form so as to offer a blurb for the jacket. Below is my take on this book.

This book will simultaneously tease your brain, arouse your emotions, and motivate you as it probes deeply into the soul of man, society, and capitalism as the engine of Western civilization. The author gifts us with a counter-culture manifesto that resurrects the goodness of capitalism while also connecting to the roots of humanity, of the human soul as a microcosm of the soul of society.

Be patient, the first third of this book will amuse, enlighten, & provoke, at which point it will grab you by the throat and shake your fundamental perceptions of life. The author is compelling in both a scientific sense, weaving psychology, biology, economics, and sociology together; and in an artistic sense, delivering theater of the mind, new visions, poetic turns of phrase page after page, and a massive amount of purpose-laden provocative minutia, all of which culminates in blinding flashes of insight that explain the mind-expanding role of circuses, the failure of religion, and the natural cycles of fission and fusion, splintering apart and coming together.

"The future of the human race is hidden in our fantasies." For me this book was science fiction in reverse, the lucid explanation of how good is bad, bad is good, and above all, the raw fact that every advance of civilization has been an advance of connectivity. The author joins William Greider and John Bogle as one of the moral wise men mentoring capitalism back toward its social purpose: doing well by doing good--satisfying individual natural emotional needs to re-engineer society over and over again.

This book was so important I did a "table" with my notes and then sorted them, here is what I used to create the above "Beyond 6 Stars" review (as I grade it at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog).

TABLE OF NOTES FOR AMAZON REVIEW

10 Needs: Control, Status, Attention, Belonging, Identity, Love, Meaning, Structure, Uplift, Novelty

Blurb: Exercises your brain while probing your soul

Blurb: A story about the goodness of power of mass behavior driven by mass perceptions

Blurb: Broad historical overview, simplified but focused, interesting, and surprising

Blurb: INSIGHT: each advance of civilization is a connectivity leap ahead, from letters of credit to ships to trains to cell phones

Blurb: Packed with titillating minutia, e.g. Illinois had 27 times zones in 1870s

Blurb: Revisionist history that resurrects the goodness of capitalism while also connecting to the roots of humanity, of the human soul as a microcosm of the soul of society

Blurb: Will simultaneously tease your brain, arouse your emotions, and motivate you

Blurb: Counter-culture manifesto

Blurb: An exposition on the inherent value of integrity, fairness, and diversity

Blurb: Be patient, this book will amuse, enlighten, & provoke for the first third, at which point it will grab you by the throat and shake your fundamental perceptions of life

Blurb: Science Fiction in reverse--explains how we got here, how much more we can do

Book Art: Would be good to have illustrations throughout

Book Notes: 695 notes spanning a wide diversity of literatures and historical timeframes

Book Title: Mixed metaphors, change last bit to Restoring the Soul of Humanity

Capitalism: Corporations only use 10% of their available brainpower (ignore labor's brains)

Capitalism: Superficiality is good because it feeds diversity and exploration

Capitalism: Only Western Civilization truly tolerated protest movements

Capitalism: Capitalism embraces diversity of beliefs and unlike religion, does lift the poor

Capitalism: This book restores the honor of capitalism by reconnecting purpose with profit

Capitalism: Capitalism as savior, liberator, and empowerer of the less blessed

Capitalism: Redefines capitalism as stored fantasy, courage, persistence, even ego

Capitalism: Capitalism is about caring for your flock.

Capitalism: Capitalism is about build and save.

Cities: Cities were the first mega-demonstration of civilized teamwork

Cycle of History: Economic depression can lead to strengthening of central authority

Cycle of History: Natural cycle of centralization then decentralization then centralization again

Cycle of History: Boom and bust is a biological imperative, individual knaves are part of the cycle

Cycle of History: Fusion (come together) versus Fission (split apart) is the natural cycle

Entertainment: Mood-shift salvation

Feelings: Feelings are the means by which we can energize the balance of our brain

Feelings: Trust your emotions and feelings

Glibness: NINJA Loans, Civil War, and who invented peanut butter, commoditization a side effect rather than a goal (see Lionel Tiger, The Manufacture Of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System

Group IQ: Tea & tea time, coffee & coffee shops, turbo-charged Group IQ

Nature: Two billion years ago bacteria produced oxygen and over-turned the Earth

Nature: Global warming, all that we rail against, is an opportunity for novelty

Nature Human: Core concept: HUGS--must reconnect to one another, end of anomie

Nature Human: Emotions are how we are driven to explore, return, and "gas up" the collective

Nature Social: Crowd madness--loss of ethics--is a social symptom, forgiving of individual rogues

Other Books I recommend:
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
Communitas
Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits
Radical Man: The Process of Psycho-Social Development.
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Philosophy and the Social Problem: The Annotated Edition

Science Rule 1: Truth at any price

Science Rule 2: Look at what is in front of you as you never have before--in new ways

Symbols: Symbols are abstractions that free mind from instinct and open new pathways

Uniqueness: More stuff in this book that I did not know or had not thought of than any I remember

War: War funds mass idiocy and waste at the same time that it funds innovation on edge

Writer's Art: Fascinating juxtaposition throughout of human biology and the body social

Writer's Art: A way to see anew, poetic turns of phrase page after page

Writer's Art: "Socrates was an walking cuisinart of imported knowledge."

Writer's Art: The future of the human race is hidden in our fantasies.

I was the victim of this self described PR wizard and his talent completely informs this product. The title is great and he managed to persuade lots of big names to blurb the book cover but the content does not deliver. While the first 2/3 makes for interesting reading his conclusion is completely underwhelming. Know your customer, have passion, be honest. Wow, mindboggling concepts indeed. As a businessman in a very competitive field I could have written the last couple of chapters anytime if I thought anyone would be interested in reading such simplistic drivel. And the endless self congratulatory anecdotes get really old and repetitive. We get it; you are the greatest PR guy ever. As an economist with a compelling explanation for our current situation not so much.

I can't tell you precisely why I picked up "Genius of the Beast." A moment of curiosity, a desire to plunge into some Big Ideas, and a bit of selfish overspending before Christmas, I guess. I confess, I'm only eight chapters in and I'm struggling mightily not to cringe at the writing style and the...gosh this will sound nasty but... the narcissism this fellow Bloom displays in much of his prose.

First chapter, he promises to completely reinvent my thinking - he will change the way I see the universe. This book will be mind altering, life altering... it will cook my breakfast and wash my windows. It is the equivalent of the Second Coming, etc.. My eyes were rolling right away, but I took a deep breath and plunged further.

Subsequent chapters are all using the word "upgrade" to describe rather complicated processes of societal betterment. He doesn't seem to have a great deal of vocabulary outside of the world of retail experience. Now, I'm all for sharing your opinion - and using the words that come most naturally to a writer. But he's claiming, loudly and without a hint of irony, that he's offering us something VERY NEW and revolutionary. I see a lot of warmed-over "ad man" speak. I know a guy who talks like this, and he's generally regarded by his peers as being full of it. Lots of "revisioning" and "genesis machine" claptrap. It's embarrassing. Well to me anyway... I slapped down something like 25 bucks on this and I'm feeling tremendously silly at the moment.

"Upgrade" is not a word you want to use twice and three times in one paragraph to describe a very complex process. Bloom is confusing the use of clever language (or not so clever in this case) with the possession of a clever idea. It feels a bit like I've wandered into a lecture hall, having paid my ticket for admission, only to find a man who presents others' theories and analysis as his own, and keeps energetically asserting that he's going to blow your mind with the newness of all of this. And I don't think the man is intentionally using others' theories (see reviewer, above, who references the economics heavyweights). Bloom appears blissfully ignorant of his re-using and "re-envisioning" theories that have been fleshed out and better argued by others. He doesn't know what he doesn't know, in other words.

I'm not an economist, nor do I read very widely on the subject. But I'm a well informed reader, generally. This book feels like a sort of Infomercial for "you can have it now" economic and societal insight... for the low, low price of $24.95!

There are some enjoyable summaries of history. He doesn't claim to have invented that, thankfully. But I'm having trouble getting past his lack of modesty. I hear he's an expert in the music business. That's nice. I imagine he's quite expert at that. What, or who, gave Harold Bloom the mantle of Expert on Human Factors in Economic Cycles?

And where in god's name was his editor? (Or were they too afraid of the guy's ego to correct him?).

Sigh... $24.95. I should know better than to get curious with hard covers.