Noam Chomsky - prophecies of the future

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Noam Chomsky - prophecies of the future
Noam Chomsky - prophecies of the future
Anonim

Noam Chomsky is not a fortune-teller, not a seer and not a psychic, he is a major linguist, philosopher and theorist. However, he made some serious predictions. There is no contradiction in this. Based on an analysis of new discoveries, modern technologies and projects that specialists in various fields are working on, Chomsky predicted the likely scenarios for the development of mankind.

Noam Chomsky: A Universal Grammar

Chomsky is a huge figure in the scientific world. The New York Times Book Review once wrote: "In terms of the energy, scope, originality and influence of his ideas, Noam Chomsky is perhaps the most important intellectual living today." Indeed, he is called the modern Einstein and the most cited scientist in the world after Plato and Freud.

He was born in 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. All his life he lives in the United States (except for the short period that he and his wife Carol spent in an Israeli kibbutz and, disappointed, returned back). His parents fled the Russian Empire during the Black Hundred pogroms. Father, William Chomsky, is a respectable scholar who studied Hebrew languages and instilled in his son an interest in linguistics. In 1945, Noam entered the local university, where he studied linguistics, mathematics and philosophy.

American sledgehammer

Chomsky is known for his harsh criticism of the foreign policy of the US government. He wrote many exposing articles and gave a huge number of equally incriminating interviews, in which he did not leave a stone unturned on the actions of the United States in the foreign policy arena. In his opinion, the United States has always been a society of colonialists.

Even without forming as a state, they cut out all the Indians at the root, turned Cuba into their fiefdom, subjugated Hawaii against the will of the local residents. After World War II, they continued to expand and took control of the Western Hemisphere. And in recent decades, they began to move further around the world. Even 15 years ago, the Middle and Near East lived quietly. But as soon as the Americans turned their eyes there, riots broke out there.

Chomsky predicted the war many years before the US declared war in Iraq. He warned of its dire consequences, namely: the emergence of ISIS (a terrorist organization banned in Russia), the destruction of statehood in many Middle Eastern countries, conflicts between Shiites and Sunnis. The scientist blamed his own government for the invasion of Iraq and the color revolutions. “The American-British invasion entailed grave consequences that led to the destruction of Iraq,” the philosopher emphasized. Because of wars and revolutions, hundreds of thousands of people fled, but the refugees were accepted not by the United States and Great Britain, but by poor neighboring countries.

The United States, according to Chomsky, recklessly hit with a sledgehammer, releasing the genie from the bottle: the conflict has engulfed the entire region and is only flaring up. The closest ally of the United States in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, which preaches a radical version of Islam, Wahhabism, considers itself a missionary state. Relying on huge reserves of oil, she spreads her ideas around the world, using schools, opening mosques, training priests. It won't end well, Chomsky warns. It is enough that ISIS has already grown up on this basis. In the near future, the most violent and radical groups will come to power in Saudi Arabia, as well as in the countries where it is spreading its influence. Compared to them, ISIS will seem like childish babble.

Voice in the wilderness

Chomsky looks to the future without optimism: in his opinion, humanity is rapidly rushing towards the abyss. And all because "we have one party - the party of business and entrepreneurship." And this applies not only to the US political system. Large transnational corporations, establishing order in the world, are only interested in profit - and nothing else. The life of people and the ecology of entire regions do not bother them.

In particular, according to the scientist, major world powers had a hand in destabilizing the political situation in Sudan, as a result of which a civil war began in the country that lasted 22 years and ended only in 2005. During this time, the previously fertile agricultural land of Sudan turned into a desert: people left their homes and fled to other countries. Such situations arise regularly. And very often, the scientist claims, his compatriots are directly or indirectly guilty of this.

You don't have to go far for examples. The 2015 Paris Conference on Global Warming failed to reach agreement on joint action by countries on climate change. Chomsky called the main culprit of this the US Republicans, who blocked the signing of the agreement. The scientist sounded all the bells: “This is what I want to tell you. We will not all die, but the chances for a decent life will be lost …

We have an organization called the Republican Party that is committed to accelerating global warming. The scientist warns: an ecological catastrophe will happen already in this century, if not to resist global warming. The ocean level will rise, many islands, states and individual cities will be under water. In 2100, 100 million people will have to relocate. But in the coming decades, humanity will face serious problems. Despite this, in 2017, US President Donald Trump announced that his country was completely withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.

It's a question of time

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chomsky, unlike many other scientists, did not ring all the bells and did not make loud statements that humanity was on the verge of biological warfare. In his opinion, the world will cope with this disease. From Chomsky's point of view, the real fear is something completely different: “The coronavirus pandemic is quite serious, but it should be noted that we are facing two huge threats, which are much worse than anything that happened in the history of mankind. One is the growing threat of nuclear war, and the other is, of course, the growing threat of global warming. The 91-year-old scientist is convinced that nuclear war is much closer than it seems.

It can be untied by mistake, and this is the most likely scenario. The war has already stood on the doorstep many times, but so far humanity has been incredibly lucky. However, sooner or later the luck will end: it's just a matter of time. In making this claim, Chomsky recalls an incident during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Then the United States decided to play on the nerves of the USSR and imitated the launch of missiles at the enemy's military targets. An automated missile attack response system launched in the Soviet Union in 1983 detected a missile launch.

By sheer coincidence, the Soviet military did not retaliate with a blow to the intended blow. Chomsky is convinced that it was only by a miracle that a nuclear conflict was avoided during the incident in the skies of Syria, when the Turks shot down a Russian plane. But no one is immune from the terrible development of events in the future.

Ability to speak

In 1957, Chomsky published a work called Syntactic Structures. The fundamental proposition about the innate nature of the ability to speak had the effect of a bomb. According to the linguist, children are born with a certain set of grammatical rules. In other words, a mathematically precise system is built into the child's brain - a kind of "chip" due to which language acquisition takes place. And the influence of the surrounding world has absolutely nothing to do with it. The language is independent of it.

Throughout his career, Chomsky's scientific views changed several times, but the main message remained unchanged: the ability to language is innate, not acquired. Not all experts agree with this idea, recent studies speak rather against than for it, but this does not detract from Chomsky's contribution to the development of science.

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