Circumventing catastrophes: ‘We will never know unless we try: again and again, and ever harder’

In the last paragraph of his 100-page book, ‘Does the richness of the few benefit us all?’, the highly distinguished sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) wrote:

‘It seems that one needs catastrophes to happen in order to recognise and admit (retrospectively alas, only retrospectively...) their coming. A chilling thought if ever there was one. Can we ever refute it? We will never know unless we try: again and again, and ever harder.’

The following is a synopsis of the book published in 2013: ‘It is commonly assumed that the best way to help the poor out of their misery is to allow the rich to get richer, that if the rich pay less taxes then all the rest of us will be better off, and that in the final analysis the richness of the few benefits us all. And yet these commonly held beliefs are flatly contradicted by our daily experience, an abundance of research findings and, indeed, logic. Such bizarre discrepancy between hard facts and popular opinions makes one pause and ask: why are these opinions so widespread and resistant to accumulated and fast-growing evidence to the contrary?

‘This short book is by one of the world’s leading social thinkers is an attempt to answer this question. Bauman lists and scrutinises the tacit assumptions and unreflected-upon convictions upon which such opinions are grounded, finding them one by one to be false, deceitful and misleading.’

Purchase here (Amazon, undated)