He is a naturalized Englishman who is very proud of his new American citizenship. He decided to structure his book around the five elements: Earth, Fire, Wood, Metal and Air. He does it masterfully.
The culmination is the internet with it’s worldwide usefulness but Winchester goes awry at the very end. He believes people unite as part of their plans to unite. He believes good roads for example are built for the purpose of uniting people when the truth is far simpler. Roads are built because people buy cars and want to use them.
Winchester writes about the internet, begun by the American military to connect their computers together to have the same data available on each military computer. He then goes into how the Internet united people by design. Not true. He speculates that if California is to feel at one, to be at one with Maine and other places the Internet is obliged to a future lying well beyond America. This is magical thinking. Neither Maine nor California can feel anything. Only individuals can do that and so far no one is trying to unite the world.
Winchester seeks “Planetary Unity” despite all contrary evidence. But his next book will possibly go back to the founding of America based on the one thing he left out of the entire book about the men who United the States. America was founded on Liberty and is so far ahead of the rest of the planet that it is inconceivable the others will ever catch up.
But if what Winchester failed to notice or report, the commitment of America to the protection of each individual and their Liberty which is the sum of all their freedoms doesn’t occur to him his book will be interesting but insufficient. He needs more intellectual effort to finally leave the culture of his birth and to become an American. We wish him good luck.
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