I learned of Monnet through an obituary when he died in 1979. The obituary said that he kept a picture on his desk of Thor Hyderdahl’s raft, the Kon Tiki.
The Kon Tiki had a sail and a rudder, but the key thing was a sea anchor that drifted well below the surface water and caught on to the east-to-west Humbolt current. Thus, no matter what was going on with the wind and the waves on the surface, the Kon Tiki was always being tugged slowly west by the Humbolt current.
And this—according to the obituary—was Monnet’s philosophy: pay attention to the deeper currents of history, and do not get caught up in the daily chop. He kept that photo on his desk to remind himself.
One of the things you mention remind me of something Milton Friedman said:
“Only a crisis—actual or preceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”
Glad to see that people are still reading Monnet.
I learned of Monnet through an obituary when he died in 1979. The obituary said that he kept a picture on his desk of Thor Hyderdahl’s raft, the Kon Tiki.
The Kon Tiki had a sail and a rudder, but the key thing was a sea anchor that drifted well below the surface water and caught on to the east-to-west Humbolt current. Thus, no matter what was going on with the wind and the waves on the surface, the Kon Tiki was always being tugged slowly west by the Humbolt current.
And this—according to the obituary—was Monnet’s philosophy: pay attention to the deeper currents of history, and do not get caught up in the daily chop. He kept that photo on his desk to remind himself.
One of the things you mention remind me of something Milton Friedman said:
“Only a crisis—actual or preceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”