This isn't a particularly long novel, and I would have finished it by now if I had been more excited by it. Thematically it is similar to The Road: it is another road trip in desperate times, but with a different set of circumstances and characters. As in The Road, the language and atmosphere have an archaic, almost biblical quality, suggesting that humans are brutal, inscrutable creatures struggling to survive in an inhospitable world which may or may not be watched over by a God whose intentions, if any, remain unclear. McCarthy's linguistic abilities strangely remind me of Proust, because the strength of both is in the use of language more than in observation. Proust chose to document the lives of the Parisian bourgeoisie of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and McCarthy chose, in his later works, to document the lives of soldiers, cowboys, Indians and Mexicans of the Old, Early and recent West. In my view, neither author is particularly good at capturing the essence of his subjects, and their skill resides in the expert depictions of the surfaces that interest them. While Proust luxuriates in describing the material circumstances of the social climbers within his milieu, and his linguistic excesses mirror the material excesses of their daily lives, McCarthy's terse descriptions labor to capture the material conditions of crude, simple people who are attempting to survive in brutal environments.
A reader of fiction is probably better off maintaining a higher level of credulity than I am able to sustain at this stage in my life. I think much of the following that certain authors generate can be ascribed to the social environments of their readers. If an author "speaks to you," he or she is probably speaking to you and your friends. Proust, I think, speaks to multiple generations of critically deficient aesthetes. McCarthy, I think, speaks to laconic male Americans who like the outdoors and read the Bible while they were growing up. When I become sufficiently bored with an author, my mind wanders, and their motivation for writing the book becomes my primary interest. In McCarthy's case, we have a person with exceptional abilities, but, because he is introverted and somewhat misogynistic, he can't write a standard bestseller; he hasn't lived a normal life with a family and he spends most of his time alone. He has found a subject matter that requires little social knowledge and can be presented as something exotic to a narrow group of avid readers. You can probably rule out blacks and women, because he uses the word "nigger" unsparingly, and the women in his fiction tend to die off quickly without expressing themselves. In The Road, the principal female character dies by suicide before the story begins. In Blood Meridian, one of the first women to appear is an old squaw who is shot in the head and scalped by a white man without ever uttering a word. To me, McCarthy is somewhat justified in employing such techniques, because they were probably a necessary part of his development as a writer. Similarly, though I am not enthusiastic about his penchant for gratuitous violence, it may have been the only way that he was able to express his linguistic talent. As it is, in the current literary environment his success is limited by his masculine emphasis, his indifference to female sentiments and his general political incorrectness regarding Native Americans and other minorities. He seems to have a low opinion of mankind in general, which cancels out some of the political incorrectness, but he still loses points for not being upbeat about women and minorities.
The only other Cormac McCarthy work I know is No Country for Old Men. I saw the film, didn't particularly like it, and won't read the book. Thematically it seems similar to the books discussed, with the added twist of a drug deal. Though the Coen brothers tend to ham up their films, I think McCarthy's works are ill-suited to film in general, because the medium doesn't capture McCarthy's strongest skill, language. For the same reason, I felt that the film version of The Road was a failure. In my view, well-written novels shouldn't have film adaptations, because the results are always unsatisfactory, in the sense that film doesn't capture literature and only results in a perverse visual representation of it.
I am going to plug away at Blood Meridian and make a final comment when I finish it.
Saturday, May 27, 2017
Monday, May 22, 2017
Diary
I'm still not reading much but will continue on Blood Meridian and comment on it later. I seem to be experiencing a slight malaise whose origin I am attempting to identify. This isn't anything like depression and manifests itself as a temporary slowdown that shifts me away from my customary focus. First, there is spring, which diverts my attention to outdoor maintenance and growing plants. Second, there is William, who has come to be somewhat demanding. Third, there is the reading of fiction, which, in a predictable, cyclical fashion, gradually pushes me to a saturation point. And fourth there is what you might call Trump dysphoria: the feeling that something is terribly wrong in your environment that needs to be addressed.
The spring part is the most familiar and the least disruptive. As I've written, I enjoy the increased isolation that accompanies winter and regret its loss when warm weather arrives. Winter is a time of year when I can happily be preoccupied with my thoughts with the least amount of distraction. On the other hand, there is something to be said for seasonal changes, because they force you to make adaptations in the absence of which you might begin to stagnate. Philosophically, I think there are advantages to involuntary external forces that discourage the development of static outlooks. I am accustomed to moving to a different location every few years and experiencing seasonal shocks, two circumstances that require reorientation and stave off presumptuous over-confidence. Psychologically I would feel that something were wrong if I lived in a static environment, and I prefer occasional jolts over which I have little control. The seasonal changes in Vermont are far more dramatic than in, say, San Diego, and though they can be distracting, they have a beneficial therapeutic effect.
William, as I said earlier, is hardly an adorable, cuddly house pet. Although he is affectionate at times, doesn't mind being picked up and purrs a lot, he still seems like a wild animal, and sometimes I think he's not that different from a pet fox. We've discouraged him from sharpening his claws on furniture by providing two scratching posts, but he prefers the furniture because it gets our attention when he wants to go out or be fed. We've tried, with limited success, to retrain him by activating alarms when he scratches the furniture. I use a loud megaphone which has a setting that sounds like a police siren. So far these have had only a slight effect. He has nocturnal habits and usually stays out all night and sleeps inside during the day, but he is very active when he's awake and goes in and out often. It is 3:00 A.M. and I just let him in for a snack. He has become less of a problem with respect to catching prey, partly because I have made it more difficult for him to catch birds and partly because the rodents have evacuated the vicinity of the house. We have a new neighbor with a cat, and he spends much of his time defending his territory. Since I am loyal and feel responsible once a bond is established, William remains a significant distraction, because I had become accustomed to limitless free time.
When I go through bouts of reading fiction I have a tendency to get overdosed, impatient and progressively more critical. My recurring thought is that fiction is an artifice, and that its authors play shell games in which every shell is empty: the pretense is that there is some hidden reward, but the reward never materializes. For example, Cormac McCarthy produces some beautiful sentences:
They moved on and the stars jostled and arced across the firmament and died beyond the inkblack mountains. They came to know the nightskies well. Western eyes that read more geometric constructions than those given by the ancients. Tethered to the polestar they rode the Dipper round while Orion rose in the southwest like a great electric kite.
Yes, Orion looks like a kite, but it doesn't rise in the southwest – it rises in the east and sets in the west like everything else. There is a point where I become impatient with even the best evocative language, because there are always plainer and more accurate ways to say the same thing. It has become a regular pattern for me to get a sense that a novelist is employing various forms of subterfuge in order to insinuate arcane knowledge that is nowhere to be found in their book. In my view, any writer, whether writing fiction or nonfiction, has an obligation to write with as much clarity as he or she is capable. I'd rather not pick on Cormac McCarthy, because he's truly a good writer, but this criticism certainly applies to Mathias Énard in Compass. After finishing Blood Meridian I may have to take a long hiatus before returning to fiction.
And finally there is Trump. I remember 2004, when George W. Bush was reelected: I was flabbergasted and hoped that it was a fluke that was unlikely to recur. With Trump we have a disastrously incompetent president who makes Bush look comparatively good. In the Sunday New York Times there was an article on Trump accompanied by an image of him as a giant trampling the White House and breaking the Washington Monument like Godzilla. Although I'd rather not think about things like this, I can't escape the feeling that something is seriously wrong, and the fact that this problem isn't being addressed as a national and international crisis brings into question the viability of the entire American political process.
By the time I've finished McCarthy and started on nonfiction I should be in a better mood.
The spring part is the most familiar and the least disruptive. As I've written, I enjoy the increased isolation that accompanies winter and regret its loss when warm weather arrives. Winter is a time of year when I can happily be preoccupied with my thoughts with the least amount of distraction. On the other hand, there is something to be said for seasonal changes, because they force you to make adaptations in the absence of which you might begin to stagnate. Philosophically, I think there are advantages to involuntary external forces that discourage the development of static outlooks. I am accustomed to moving to a different location every few years and experiencing seasonal shocks, two circumstances that require reorientation and stave off presumptuous over-confidence. Psychologically I would feel that something were wrong if I lived in a static environment, and I prefer occasional jolts over which I have little control. The seasonal changes in Vermont are far more dramatic than in, say, San Diego, and though they can be distracting, they have a beneficial therapeutic effect.
William, as I said earlier, is hardly an adorable, cuddly house pet. Although he is affectionate at times, doesn't mind being picked up and purrs a lot, he still seems like a wild animal, and sometimes I think he's not that different from a pet fox. We've discouraged him from sharpening his claws on furniture by providing two scratching posts, but he prefers the furniture because it gets our attention when he wants to go out or be fed. We've tried, with limited success, to retrain him by activating alarms when he scratches the furniture. I use a loud megaphone which has a setting that sounds like a police siren. So far these have had only a slight effect. He has nocturnal habits and usually stays out all night and sleeps inside during the day, but he is very active when he's awake and goes in and out often. It is 3:00 A.M. and I just let him in for a snack. He has become less of a problem with respect to catching prey, partly because I have made it more difficult for him to catch birds and partly because the rodents have evacuated the vicinity of the house. We have a new neighbor with a cat, and he spends much of his time defending his territory. Since I am loyal and feel responsible once a bond is established, William remains a significant distraction, because I had become accustomed to limitless free time.
When I go through bouts of reading fiction I have a tendency to get overdosed, impatient and progressively more critical. My recurring thought is that fiction is an artifice, and that its authors play shell games in which every shell is empty: the pretense is that there is some hidden reward, but the reward never materializes. For example, Cormac McCarthy produces some beautiful sentences:
They moved on and the stars jostled and arced across the firmament and died beyond the inkblack mountains. They came to know the nightskies well. Western eyes that read more geometric constructions than those given by the ancients. Tethered to the polestar they rode the Dipper round while Orion rose in the southwest like a great electric kite.
Yes, Orion looks like a kite, but it doesn't rise in the southwest – it rises in the east and sets in the west like everything else. There is a point where I become impatient with even the best evocative language, because there are always plainer and more accurate ways to say the same thing. It has become a regular pattern for me to get a sense that a novelist is employing various forms of subterfuge in order to insinuate arcane knowledge that is nowhere to be found in their book. In my view, any writer, whether writing fiction or nonfiction, has an obligation to write with as much clarity as he or she is capable. I'd rather not pick on Cormac McCarthy, because he's truly a good writer, but this criticism certainly applies to Mathias Énard in Compass. After finishing Blood Meridian I may have to take a long hiatus before returning to fiction.
And finally there is Trump. I remember 2004, when George W. Bush was reelected: I was flabbergasted and hoped that it was a fluke that was unlikely to recur. With Trump we have a disastrously incompetent president who makes Bush look comparatively good. In the Sunday New York Times there was an article on Trump accompanied by an image of him as a giant trampling the White House and breaking the Washington Monument like Godzilla. Although I'd rather not think about things like this, I can't escape the feeling that something is seriously wrong, and the fact that this problem isn't being addressed as a national and international crisis brings into question the viability of the entire American political process.
By the time I've finished McCarthy and started on nonfiction I should be in a better mood.
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
Blood Meridian I
I've read a little of this novel by Cormac McCarthy and am not sure when I'll finish it, since I haven't been reading much lately. Within the American literary world, McCarthy is a unique figure, because he rose to prominence almost completely outside the literary grid: he didn't graduate from college, doesn't teach or do readings and hardly ever gives interviews. For that matter, he isn't interested in the literary fiction of others and doesn't read it. He is now 83 and was not well-known as a writer until he was about 60. I had never heard of him before The Road, which was published in 2006. His path to success is far from the norm today, though it was fairly common fifty or more years ago. In his case he has developed a voice unlike that of any other, and his writing style stands out markedly. He has been dogged and uncompromising in how he goes about writing, and such a procedure has differentiated him from the pack considerably. The Road and Blood Meridian are of the highest caliber in American fiction.
The story has a historical basis and describes the activities of a violent group in the American southwest during the mid-nineteenth century. McCarthy is known for his depictions of violence, but much of his skill resides in his use of language. He attempts to replicate vernacular from actual historical periods and takes a minimalist approach to punctuation, producing fictionalized environments that seem strikingly real while also unfamiliar and strange. His formative years were spent in Tennessee, and apparently he was influenced by William Faulkner, though I think he is a better writer. His emphasis on violence may be off-putting to many readers, but to me he is a renegade who successfully rebels against the prettified version of reality that appears in most fiction. The worldview that emerges in his novels veers towards deep ontological pessimism, which I consider an improvement over the shallow, boredom-inducing depression that crops up in standard bourgeois fiction.
McCarthy's comparative indifference to immediate career advancement and his interest in non-literary subjects have provided him with materials that enrich his works. He likes spending time with scientists and has an office at the Santa Fe Institute. The apocalyptic world described in The Road probably has a basis in the study of nuclear winter, and even if McCarthy lacks the scientific background to understand all of the details, his friends, such as Murray Gell-Mann, can certainly help him out. McCarthy wrote the cover story for the latest edition of Nautilus, and I see that he has interests similar to mine. The article is about the nature of the unconscious, and how it operates independently from language. For most literary people, the world begins and ends with language – even though thoughts and ideas can originate and exist independently from it. I was gratified to see someone besides me say that humans are similar to chipmunks. McCarthy points out that chipmunks have a rudimentary language that they use to describe specific kinds of predators – ground-based or aerial – when one is approaching.
While McCarthy doesn't tend to produce characters who exhibit a high level of sophistication, which is something that I look for in most writers, I am willing to put up with him because he writes so well and his dark vision is hard to find elsewhere – even when it reflects aspects of reality that we ought not ignore. I'll have more to say on this book later.
The story has a historical basis and describes the activities of a violent group in the American southwest during the mid-nineteenth century. McCarthy is known for his depictions of violence, but much of his skill resides in his use of language. He attempts to replicate vernacular from actual historical periods and takes a minimalist approach to punctuation, producing fictionalized environments that seem strikingly real while also unfamiliar and strange. His formative years were spent in Tennessee, and apparently he was influenced by William Faulkner, though I think he is a better writer. His emphasis on violence may be off-putting to many readers, but to me he is a renegade who successfully rebels against the prettified version of reality that appears in most fiction. The worldview that emerges in his novels veers towards deep ontological pessimism, which I consider an improvement over the shallow, boredom-inducing depression that crops up in standard bourgeois fiction.
McCarthy's comparative indifference to immediate career advancement and his interest in non-literary subjects have provided him with materials that enrich his works. He likes spending time with scientists and has an office at the Santa Fe Institute. The apocalyptic world described in The Road probably has a basis in the study of nuclear winter, and even if McCarthy lacks the scientific background to understand all of the details, his friends, such as Murray Gell-Mann, can certainly help him out. McCarthy wrote the cover story for the latest edition of Nautilus, and I see that he has interests similar to mine. The article is about the nature of the unconscious, and how it operates independently from language. For most literary people, the world begins and ends with language – even though thoughts and ideas can originate and exist independently from it. I was gratified to see someone besides me say that humans are similar to chipmunks. McCarthy points out that chipmunks have a rudimentary language that they use to describe specific kinds of predators – ground-based or aerial – when one is approaching.
While McCarthy doesn't tend to produce characters who exhibit a high level of sophistication, which is something that I look for in most writers, I am willing to put up with him because he writes so well and his dark vision is hard to find elsewhere – even when it reflects aspects of reality that we ought not ignore. I'll have more to say on this book later.
Friday, May 12, 2017
Diary
Milosz's writing style is engaging, but his subject matter is frequently of little interest to me, so I don't have much to say about the book. To Begin Where I Am is a collection of essays which tend to focus on religion and poetry, two subjects that don't excite me much. While my sensibilities are similar to Milosz's, he seems too genteel and reticent at times, and I get the feeling that I am reading someone who lived centuries rather than decades ago. It also doesn't help that his frame of reference seems to be Poland, a country well beyond my personal experience. I had hoped that more of the book would be about his life in America, and though he does mention it, the context is usually professional and academic.
It is possible that Milosz adopted an attitude, which seems plausible given his background, in which he refrained from biting the hand that fed him. Certainly he was a survivor, and whether it was a deliberate strategy or not, stylistically he comes across as restrained and polite where others, myself included, would be blunter. Nevertheless, he does manage to say what he thinks is important, but perhaps a little less forcefully than I would prefer.
The essay that interested me the most, "Against Incomprehensible Poetry," was written while he was editing A Book of Luminous Things, my favorite book of poems, and concludes as follows:
Average people feel and think a great deal, but they cannot study philosophy, which would not offer them much comfort in any case. In truth, serious problems reach us by means of creative works, which on the surface appear to have only artistry as their aim, even though they are freighted with questions that everyone poses to himself. And it is here, perhaps, that in the wall surrounding poetry for the elect a gate opens up, leading to poetry for all. I will be satisfied if my attempt at defending poetry against narrowing and desiccation will be recognized as one of many attempts that can be made.
Passages like this mean a lot to me, because they express the importance of art beyond its role as a subject for study or as a source of entertainment or prestige. His conception of art remains obscure in American culture.
Milosz also comments on a few poets with whom I'm familiar. He seems to like Robinson Jeffers, whom I also like, though he isn't a favorite. I concur with him that Robert Frost was not "the greatest American poet of the twentieth century." Frost, he says, is "cold." However, I did not feel that Milosz was nearly as expansive as he might have been as a cultural critic, and therefore found the book a little disappointing. In his life he had twice escaped repressive communist regimes, so perhaps it makes sense that by the time he arrived in the U.S. he was as a matter of course not about to rock the boat.
* * *
The Trump presidency has been so much in the news recently that I should say something about that. One positive aspect of it has been the defeat of Marine Le Pen in France: French voters probably feared the prospect of a Trump-like president there. It remains to be seen whether Macron will be a competent leader. In the U.S., it looks as if Trump's administration may implode. The evidence increasingly points to Russian connections and attempted cover-ups. The most plausible explanation is that Trump's business empire depends on hidden Russian financial backing, and that, with or without Trump's direct knowledge, Russia planted several Russian sympathizers high up within his administration. While fellow Republicans have been trying to use Trump to advance their political agendas, his credibility will eventually become so damaged that they will no longer be able to support him without heavy political costs.
In my mind, the absurdity of this situation also applies to Russia. Putin has been playing a dated Cold War game because that is all he knows. The fact is that, since the eighteenth century, world power has been a function of economic dominance. Because Russia's economic prospects are marginal, Putin's disruptive KGB tactics in a sense make him seem as out of touch with reality as Trump. You can give Putin some credit for undermining the U.S. political system, but this will surely have no long-term effect on world history. If anything, the short-term result will be that American politicians in high office will be more closely scrutinized for foreign influences. The disastrous Trump administration may also set back the Republican Party several years, allowing the Democratic Party to make significant gains, which seems to be the opposite of Putin's intention. In any case, I am looking forward to the exit of Trump, whose skills seem limited to unscrupulous self-enrichment, reality TV performances and golf.
It is possible that Milosz adopted an attitude, which seems plausible given his background, in which he refrained from biting the hand that fed him. Certainly he was a survivor, and whether it was a deliberate strategy or not, stylistically he comes across as restrained and polite where others, myself included, would be blunter. Nevertheless, he does manage to say what he thinks is important, but perhaps a little less forcefully than I would prefer.
The essay that interested me the most, "Against Incomprehensible Poetry," was written while he was editing A Book of Luminous Things, my favorite book of poems, and concludes as follows:
Average people feel and think a great deal, but they cannot study philosophy, which would not offer them much comfort in any case. In truth, serious problems reach us by means of creative works, which on the surface appear to have only artistry as their aim, even though they are freighted with questions that everyone poses to himself. And it is here, perhaps, that in the wall surrounding poetry for the elect a gate opens up, leading to poetry for all. I will be satisfied if my attempt at defending poetry against narrowing and desiccation will be recognized as one of many attempts that can be made.
Passages like this mean a lot to me, because they express the importance of art beyond its role as a subject for study or as a source of entertainment or prestige. His conception of art remains obscure in American culture.
Milosz also comments on a few poets with whom I'm familiar. He seems to like Robinson Jeffers, whom I also like, though he isn't a favorite. I concur with him that Robert Frost was not "the greatest American poet of the twentieth century." Frost, he says, is "cold." However, I did not feel that Milosz was nearly as expansive as he might have been as a cultural critic, and therefore found the book a little disappointing. In his life he had twice escaped repressive communist regimes, so perhaps it makes sense that by the time he arrived in the U.S. he was as a matter of course not about to rock the boat.
* * *
The Trump presidency has been so much in the news recently that I should say something about that. One positive aspect of it has been the defeat of Marine Le Pen in France: French voters probably feared the prospect of a Trump-like president there. It remains to be seen whether Macron will be a competent leader. In the U.S., it looks as if Trump's administration may implode. The evidence increasingly points to Russian connections and attempted cover-ups. The most plausible explanation is that Trump's business empire depends on hidden Russian financial backing, and that, with or without Trump's direct knowledge, Russia planted several Russian sympathizers high up within his administration. While fellow Republicans have been trying to use Trump to advance their political agendas, his credibility will eventually become so damaged that they will no longer be able to support him without heavy political costs.
In my mind, the absurdity of this situation also applies to Russia. Putin has been playing a dated Cold War game because that is all he knows. The fact is that, since the eighteenth century, world power has been a function of economic dominance. Because Russia's economic prospects are marginal, Putin's disruptive KGB tactics in a sense make him seem as out of touch with reality as Trump. You can give Putin some credit for undermining the U.S. political system, but this will surely have no long-term effect on world history. If anything, the short-term result will be that American politicians in high office will be more closely scrutinized for foreign influences. The disastrous Trump administration may also set back the Republican Party several years, allowing the Democratic Party to make significant gains, which seems to be the opposite of Putin's intention. In any case, I am looking forward to the exit of Trump, whose skills seem limited to unscrupulous self-enrichment, reality TV performances and golf.
Monday, May 8, 2017
Diary
I've been reading To Begin Where I Am: Selected Essays, by Czeslaw Milosz, and am not sure at this point how much I'll write about it. Some of it repeats from his memoir, Native Realm, which I commented on earlier. At the moment I am finding memoirs slightly oppressive, because they draw you back to a distant past which is only partially remembered, and much is irretrievable. When I try to remember my own past in detail, I soon find it frustrating that I can't remember, say, the name of an elementary school teacher. Straining to recall something that I haven't thought about for fifty years can induce in me a state similar to claustrophobia. Our brains didn't evolve to become huge repositories of information, and an unexpected dysfunction may emerge when one obsesses about one's past. It may be safer and more productive to weave a simple narrative about it and leave it at that.
In Milosz's case, his life had been severely disrupted, and he was aware enough to lament what he knew had been lost. With his poetic sensibility, he reminds me of Dylan Thomas in A Child's Christmas in Wales, though with a more adult, less playful emphasis. Unlike Dylan Thomas, he experienced a life that was spent mostly in exile, and although Paris may not have seemed too far from home, the U.S. certainly did. I respect Milosz because he struggles with meaning and looks at his life more seriously than most writers, even ones with similar backgrounds. Take, for example, Vladimir Nabokov, whose privileged life in Russia was ruined by the Russian Revolution. I was not impressed by Lolita when I read it long ago, because I thought it took a needlessly cynical position on the U.S. and was psychologically shallow. If it hadn't been a novel about pedophilia written by an author with a Russian-sounding name and good academic credentials, I don't think it would have become popular. The impression I have of Nabokov is that he resented having to work for a living, despised Americans, surrounded himself with sycophants and was too self-important to be a good observer. I may be wrong, but I'm unwilling to read any more of his books to find out. Another memoirist, Barack Obama, wrote Dreams of My Father and received critical acclaim. He too experienced disruptions in his life, but they were on a minor scale. He is neither as skilled nor as insightful a writer as Milosz and most likely wrote the memoir in order to embellish his image prior to his entry into politics. I probably won't read his post-presidential books.
There are several essays in Milosz's book that I haven't read yet, and I may or may not comment on them individually.
In Milosz's case, his life had been severely disrupted, and he was aware enough to lament what he knew had been lost. With his poetic sensibility, he reminds me of Dylan Thomas in A Child's Christmas in Wales, though with a more adult, less playful emphasis. Unlike Dylan Thomas, he experienced a life that was spent mostly in exile, and although Paris may not have seemed too far from home, the U.S. certainly did. I respect Milosz because he struggles with meaning and looks at his life more seriously than most writers, even ones with similar backgrounds. Take, for example, Vladimir Nabokov, whose privileged life in Russia was ruined by the Russian Revolution. I was not impressed by Lolita when I read it long ago, because I thought it took a needlessly cynical position on the U.S. and was psychologically shallow. If it hadn't been a novel about pedophilia written by an author with a Russian-sounding name and good academic credentials, I don't think it would have become popular. The impression I have of Nabokov is that he resented having to work for a living, despised Americans, surrounded himself with sycophants and was too self-important to be a good observer. I may be wrong, but I'm unwilling to read any more of his books to find out. Another memoirist, Barack Obama, wrote Dreams of My Father and received critical acclaim. He too experienced disruptions in his life, but they were on a minor scale. He is neither as skilled nor as insightful a writer as Milosz and most likely wrote the memoir in order to embellish his image prior to his entry into politics. I probably won't read his post-presidential books.
There are several essays in Milosz's book that I haven't read yet, and I may or may not comment on them individually.
Tuesday, May 2, 2017
Diary
One phenomenon that occurs with me and seems to be less common in others is the periodic complete loss of interest in an activity that I had previously found interesting. This first occurred when I was an undergraduate student majoring in philosophy. I somehow managed to define myself as someone to whom philosophy was important, even when I didn't like most of the classes I took. I didn't realize then as I do now that academic philosophy for the most part is not inherently interesting, and that the people who taught it, at least at my college, tended to be slightly incompetent or stuck in a particular kind of rut. The same phenomenon occurred in other subjects that I studied, and by the time I was a senior it became difficult for me to find any courses that I wanted to take. Looking back, there was only one class that I took in four years as an undergraduate which I enjoyed thoroughly, and that had nothing to do with philosophy. This may seem like bad judgment, depression or some other psychiatric disorder, but I don't think that it is. The fact is that the more familiar I become with a subject, the more likely I am to think that it isn't particularly fascinating, and that the people who are fascinated by it are deluding themselves.
That same pattern has occurred with respect to some of the books I've discussed on this blog. I may start out liking a particular writer, and then, once I reach a saturation level, I begin to think that the writer isn't as good as I had thought initially. In extreme cases I may even come to believe that a writer is a fraud. Since starting this blog, I have partially solved this kind of problem by alternating between literary works and scientific works. You can't go completely wrong with scientific works, because they are usually informative. If something is wrong with a scientific book, it may be a poor writing style or a less-than-satisfactory exposition on the subject, but you still come away learning something from it, and the author generally has no pretenses about his or her literary skills. My problem with fiction is that it frequently fails to deliver in a manner that I find acceptable. Over time, this puts me in a quandary, and I begin to wonder whether I should even have been interested in fiction in the first place.
There is a flow of popular scientific or nonfiction books that makes it easier to find something to read that won't end up annoying me. That has been a saving grace for me, because if all I ever wrote about was fiction, I probably would have given up writing by now. Compass was one of those books that periodically prompt be to rethink why I am reading it in the first place. At the moment I am inclined to put a hold on my quest for good new fiction and concentrate temporarily on authors whom I know are good. I've ordered a book of essays by Czeslaw Milosz and the novel Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy, because I'm confident that I will like both.
With respect to fiction, part of my malaise seems to come from not identifying with my own generation, the baby boomers. They and their literary successors have produced what I think of as substandard literature right up to the present. If you want to look for parallels in fields outside fiction, the U.S. presidents come to mind. The four baby boomer presidents, Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump, seem frivolous compared to Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower. If you contrast photographs of Roosevelt with those of, say, Obama, there is no question that Roosevelt quite literally felt the weight of the world on his shoulders, whereas Obama was merely posing for a photograph in which it appeared that the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Roosevelt died in office protecting the world from Nazi Germany, and Obama left office looking forward to lucrative book deals and high speech fees. The difference is that Roosevelt wanted to make an important contribution to mankind, whereas Obama made a lifestyle choice in order to gain high social prestige and an affluent lifestyle. If Obama often seemed as if he were missing in action, that's because he was. His legacy, like those of Clinton and Bush, already looks shaky. Trump's was dead on arrival.
My thesis is that affluence has in this instance increased mediocrity, because there is nothing serious at stake, and seriousness itself becomes devalued when a society experiences no grave threat. A lack of gravitas came to pervade all aspects of American life, from politics to the arts. Writers such as Milosz and McCarthy represent alternatives because they were informed by World War II. In Milosz's case, he spent his early life facing it directly. McCarthy, though not old enough to have done that, is more akin to Ernest Hemingway, a war writer. In their writings, the specter of darkness never disappears entirely.
* * *
I continue to adapt to the arrival of spring. The grass is tall enough now that I had better cut it soon. I have planned to move my large telescope onto the rear deck for the summer and to protect it with a new weather-resistant cover. I purchased a wheelchair ramp in order to simplify moving it onto the deck. The deck is the only place on the property with good views to the south, where all of the planets and many deep sky objects are located. The smaller telescope currently on the deck has only about a quarter the aperture and captures far less detail.
That same pattern has occurred with respect to some of the books I've discussed on this blog. I may start out liking a particular writer, and then, once I reach a saturation level, I begin to think that the writer isn't as good as I had thought initially. In extreme cases I may even come to believe that a writer is a fraud. Since starting this blog, I have partially solved this kind of problem by alternating between literary works and scientific works. You can't go completely wrong with scientific works, because they are usually informative. If something is wrong with a scientific book, it may be a poor writing style or a less-than-satisfactory exposition on the subject, but you still come away learning something from it, and the author generally has no pretenses about his or her literary skills. My problem with fiction is that it frequently fails to deliver in a manner that I find acceptable. Over time, this puts me in a quandary, and I begin to wonder whether I should even have been interested in fiction in the first place.
There is a flow of popular scientific or nonfiction books that makes it easier to find something to read that won't end up annoying me. That has been a saving grace for me, because if all I ever wrote about was fiction, I probably would have given up writing by now. Compass was one of those books that periodically prompt be to rethink why I am reading it in the first place. At the moment I am inclined to put a hold on my quest for good new fiction and concentrate temporarily on authors whom I know are good. I've ordered a book of essays by Czeslaw Milosz and the novel Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy, because I'm confident that I will like both.
With respect to fiction, part of my malaise seems to come from not identifying with my own generation, the baby boomers. They and their literary successors have produced what I think of as substandard literature right up to the present. If you want to look for parallels in fields outside fiction, the U.S. presidents come to mind. The four baby boomer presidents, Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump, seem frivolous compared to Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower. If you contrast photographs of Roosevelt with those of, say, Obama, there is no question that Roosevelt quite literally felt the weight of the world on his shoulders, whereas Obama was merely posing for a photograph in which it appeared that the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Roosevelt died in office protecting the world from Nazi Germany, and Obama left office looking forward to lucrative book deals and high speech fees. The difference is that Roosevelt wanted to make an important contribution to mankind, whereas Obama made a lifestyle choice in order to gain high social prestige and an affluent lifestyle. If Obama often seemed as if he were missing in action, that's because he was. His legacy, like those of Clinton and Bush, already looks shaky. Trump's was dead on arrival.
My thesis is that affluence has in this instance increased mediocrity, because there is nothing serious at stake, and seriousness itself becomes devalued when a society experiences no grave threat. A lack of gravitas came to pervade all aspects of American life, from politics to the arts. Writers such as Milosz and McCarthy represent alternatives because they were informed by World War II. In Milosz's case, he spent his early life facing it directly. McCarthy, though not old enough to have done that, is more akin to Ernest Hemingway, a war writer. In their writings, the specter of darkness never disappears entirely.
* * *
I continue to adapt to the arrival of spring. The grass is tall enough now that I had better cut it soon. I have planned to move my large telescope onto the rear deck for the summer and to protect it with a new weather-resistant cover. I purchased a wheelchair ramp in order to simplify moving it onto the deck. The deck is the only place on the property with good views to the south, where all of the planets and many deep sky objects are located. The smaller telescope currently on the deck has only about a quarter the aperture and captures far less detail.
Saturday, April 29, 2017
Compass III
I made an effort to finish the book carefully but in the end became sick of it and raced through the remainder quickly. The title apparently refers to a compass owned by Beethoven which was set to point east rather than north (Franz received a replica as a gift), and there is also mention of the compasses attached to prayer rugs in order to orient them towards Mecca. The entire book is supposed to represent Franz Ritter's reveries during a long, sleep-interrupted night, as if One Thousand and One Nights were written by Proust while lying in bed.
Following my last post, the anecdotes continued, and Franz and Sarah met occasionally. A dream sequence ran for a few pages. Later on, Flaubert came up briefly, with mention of his relationship with Louise Colet. Sarah was away most of the time pursuing research in the Far East and was engaged in a successful academic career. Her relationship with Franz developed slightly and became physical, but their commitment to each other remained circumscribed.
According to a few reviewers, there is supposed to be some sort of East-West hypothesis buried in this mess, and I don't see the point of trying to extract it. You can hardly read a page without one or two new names popping up, and, since Énard's ability to distill ideas is pathetic, I think the book is best suited to fuzzy thinkers and masochists. Énard's style emphasizes incidentals and minutiae more than theory or the integration of ideas. Most of his anecdotes amount to fragments, and if they had been expanded to make them collectively intelligible, the book would have been several thousand pages long. In later pages, World War I is described more explicitly than other historical periods, but I find Énard bereft of critical thinking, and a serious reader would be a fool to invest much time in this book. What we have is a novel that is considered timely and topical, because of the rift between European and Islamic cultures, and aesthetically sophisticated, because of Énard's academic exposure to Near-Eastern and Western music and literature. I don't think that Énard's riff on the cultures adds much to the topic – he's not much of an anthropologist – and his aesthetic observations, though memorable on occasion, are of greater interest to academic specialists than to novel readers. In other times a book such as this would simply be ignored, and with good reason.
The fact that Compass has just been shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize only confirms to me my belief that such awards must be viewed with caution. After this experience, I don't think that I'll be reading Énard again. Although European prizes may produce better results in fiction than American prizes, human nature in Europe is no different from human nature in North America and is still error-prone.
Following my last post, the anecdotes continued, and Franz and Sarah met occasionally. A dream sequence ran for a few pages. Later on, Flaubert came up briefly, with mention of his relationship with Louise Colet. Sarah was away most of the time pursuing research in the Far East and was engaged in a successful academic career. Her relationship with Franz developed slightly and became physical, but their commitment to each other remained circumscribed.
According to a few reviewers, there is supposed to be some sort of East-West hypothesis buried in this mess, and I don't see the point of trying to extract it. You can hardly read a page without one or two new names popping up, and, since Énard's ability to distill ideas is pathetic, I think the book is best suited to fuzzy thinkers and masochists. Énard's style emphasizes incidentals and minutiae more than theory or the integration of ideas. Most of his anecdotes amount to fragments, and if they had been expanded to make them collectively intelligible, the book would have been several thousand pages long. In later pages, World War I is described more explicitly than other historical periods, but I find Énard bereft of critical thinking, and a serious reader would be a fool to invest much time in this book. What we have is a novel that is considered timely and topical, because of the rift between European and Islamic cultures, and aesthetically sophisticated, because of Énard's academic exposure to Near-Eastern and Western music and literature. I don't think that Énard's riff on the cultures adds much to the topic – he's not much of an anthropologist – and his aesthetic observations, though memorable on occasion, are of greater interest to academic specialists than to novel readers. In other times a book such as this would simply be ignored, and with good reason.
The fact that Compass has just been shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize only confirms to me my belief that such awards must be viewed with caution. After this experience, I don't think that I'll be reading Énard again. Although European prizes may produce better results in fiction than American prizes, human nature in Europe is no different from human nature in North America and is still error-prone.
Monday, April 24, 2017
Compass II
I'm almost halfway through the book and, since I'm becoming tired of it, may just zip through the rest. Although Énard writes well, this is merely a series of anecdotes of variable interest to me. Most of them are about European travelers or would-be travelers to the Orient, beginning in the 1800's. I read with some interest the ones about Liszt, Talleyrand, Beethoven, Balzac and Stendhal, since I was already interested in them, but many are about persons of dubious historical significance and read to me like window dressing. Besides being a good writer, Énard is quite learned in these topics, or he at least has researched them fairly well. I am a little surprised, however, that he hasn't even mentioned Flaubert so far.
For a serious reader, this kind of writing wears thin quickly. Énard displays no deep interest in history, and his emphasis is on the follies of his colorful historical figures, who are often rich or aristocratic adventurers. Frisson is generated by Franz and Sarah's excitement over obscure topics, which, to a mature reader, seem like the reveries of over-educated, naïve graduate students. Franz and Sarah bring to mind the frivolity that has come to characterize scholarship in the humanities. Ironically, though I had thought that this might be a politically correct exposition on the value and sophistication of Middle Eastern culture, it looks more like a slightly condescending imperialist presentation of the Middle East as a playground for fatuous Europeans. Lacking Franz and Sarah's enthusiasm for these subjects, the two seem to me like misguided people who have chosen careers in an esoteric branch of tourism. To be sure, they do seem to possess an understanding of the cultures into which they have plunged, but they still seem dilettantish and psychologically detached from the immediate world.
To make matters worse, there is no real plot to the novel. Franz is a scholarly mama's boy who lusts after Sarah from the moment they meet. In the present, Franz is middle-aged and becoming ill. The story is told in a series of flashbacks occurring during conferences or while doing fieldwork. At this point in the book they have gone as far as to sleep side-by-side outdoors, and the only remaining question is whether they will actually have sex at some point in the future. However, they don't really have what I would consider to be a developing relationship. They simply do things together that they both enjoy, and Franz knows little about Sarah's background. Officially their relationship is nothing more than a chaste friendship.
If I had wanted to engross myself in Orientalism, I could have found much better books than this. Returning to my sociological perspective, Énard looks to me like a genuine academic who decided to capitalize on his writing skill by writing a bestseller. This book seems to fit a literary niche that might be described as A.S. Byatt meets J.K. Rowling meets Lawrence of Arabia. Most reviewers would probably find the book erudite enough to pass for literature while also offering excitement sufficient to insert words such as "romp" into their reviews. It makes the grade as "literary" while also offering a bare-boned human interest story. Since it is bereft of ideas and the main characters are immature, I am not finding it interesting: the target audience would be more entertained than I've been so far. To be fair, I'll finish the book to see whether my judgment is premature.
For a serious reader, this kind of writing wears thin quickly. Énard displays no deep interest in history, and his emphasis is on the follies of his colorful historical figures, who are often rich or aristocratic adventurers. Frisson is generated by Franz and Sarah's excitement over obscure topics, which, to a mature reader, seem like the reveries of over-educated, naïve graduate students. Franz and Sarah bring to mind the frivolity that has come to characterize scholarship in the humanities. Ironically, though I had thought that this might be a politically correct exposition on the value and sophistication of Middle Eastern culture, it looks more like a slightly condescending imperialist presentation of the Middle East as a playground for fatuous Europeans. Lacking Franz and Sarah's enthusiasm for these subjects, the two seem to me like misguided people who have chosen careers in an esoteric branch of tourism. To be sure, they do seem to possess an understanding of the cultures into which they have plunged, but they still seem dilettantish and psychologically detached from the immediate world.
To make matters worse, there is no real plot to the novel. Franz is a scholarly mama's boy who lusts after Sarah from the moment they meet. In the present, Franz is middle-aged and becoming ill. The story is told in a series of flashbacks occurring during conferences or while doing fieldwork. At this point in the book they have gone as far as to sleep side-by-side outdoors, and the only remaining question is whether they will actually have sex at some point in the future. However, they don't really have what I would consider to be a developing relationship. They simply do things together that they both enjoy, and Franz knows little about Sarah's background. Officially their relationship is nothing more than a chaste friendship.
If I had wanted to engross myself in Orientalism, I could have found much better books than this. Returning to my sociological perspective, Énard looks to me like a genuine academic who decided to capitalize on his writing skill by writing a bestseller. This book seems to fit a literary niche that might be described as A.S. Byatt meets J.K. Rowling meets Lawrence of Arabia. Most reviewers would probably find the book erudite enough to pass for literature while also offering excitement sufficient to insert words such as "romp" into their reviews. It makes the grade as "literary" while also offering a bare-boned human interest story. Since it is bereft of ideas and the main characters are immature, I am not finding it interesting: the target audience would be more entertained than I've been so far. To be fair, I'll finish the book to see whether my judgment is premature.
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Compass I
I've barely started to read this novel by Mathias Énard because of the change of season and associated distractions, but thought I'd start writing about it anyway since I haven't written anything for a week. I chose it partly because it is a Prix Goncourt winner, and I have had better luck with those than with other prize winners. There are many problems connected with award-winning books or award-winning anything, but if you're as picky as I am you have to start somewhere. As a resident of the U.S., French awards still seem a little exotic to me, and, given France's literary history, the award standards are probably slightly higher, though the actual picks are also affected by local trends that may be just as arbitrary as local trends anywhere. While I don't have an enormous sample base, I have come to expect American literary picks to be the worst, Nobels in literature only slightly better, the British awards next, and the French the best. Literary awards are affected by the sense of responsibility of the awarders, which varies from country to country, and since I am most familiar with the U.S. I am automatically well-attuned to the latest groupthink or themes in political correctness that usually have a major impact on which books are selected here. If literary judges everywhere express biases according to their local standards, and those standards are similar to the standards in other countries, you can still get a sense of which book might win in your country by knowing the exact details of the environment in which the award is made. It's similar to politics, where you can see that Donald Trump isn't qualified for the job and doesn't even have a set of coherent ideas, but the trend was in his favor, because there were enough others who didn't view him the same way that you did. Literary awards are subject to similar sociological patterns, which means that they don't necessarily correlate with an objective measure of aesthetic merit, if there is such a thing. I have enough firsthand knowledge of the U.S. to know that it is not the best place to look for good writing.
Compass probably fits a current French award paradigm, because it explores music, literature and folklore spanning the geographical region from Western Europe to Persia. The narrator, Franz Ritter, is a musicologist who lives in Vienna, and his friend, Sarah, is a scholar who specializes in Persian and Arabic literature. In the same way that there is a pressure for American literary awards to go to minorities or women, in France there may be a pressure for literary awards to go to writers who demonstrate a sensitivity to Arabic or Persian culture. These pressures are not necessarily bad things, but they have a tendency to limit the scope of literature by ignoring works that don't fit a particular mold.
As I said, I've barely started reading this, so I don't have much to say at the moment. There seems to be a tension regarding Franz's unrequited love for Sarah. They are both brainy academics who are passionate about their subjects. Énard is a talented writer with respect to descriptions and esoteric knowledge, but it's too soon to say whether or not I'll find him too academic and pedantic after a few hundred pages. For the time being I am enjoying reading about intelligent, well-adjusted adults who are capable of having decent relationships with others. From reading Houellebecq, Krasznahorkai and many other modern literary writers, you would never know that there are people out there who don't lead dysfunctional, isolated or unhappy lives. I have long thought that the most challenging and interesting fiction would be about well-adjusted, educated, intelligent adults who think clearly on a variety of topics, are not conformists and have insights to offer. Believe it or not, I have yet to find a recent novel that fits that description. Contrary to Tolstoy's famous dictum, all happy families are not the same: it's just easier to write about unhappy ones.
Although it may not be the case, Énard could be pandering to or benefiting from the popularity of Islamic subjects in French literary circles. Even without its Islamic refugees, the French have been fascinated with Orientalism since the nineteenth century. Houellebecq probably was quite conscious of this when he wrote Submission. To compare the two, Énard is far more scholarly and knowledgeable than Houellebecq, who probably could have picked up his information on Islam and Huysmans from Wikipedia articles. Énard is probably a better writer in the technical sense, in which linguistic skill is emphasized, but may prove to be a weaker writer than Houellebecq when it comes to producing effects. For the moment I am enjoying his characters more than any of Houellebecq's, but I am aware that even the best academic writers tend to produce works that eventually lead nowhere. The book may be worth reading for Énard's expertise on Arabic and Persian culture, but, as I've said before, I don't believe it is incumbent upon me to learn about other cultures. Also, to the extent that religion is emphasized, I am so sick of hearing about it that I can hardly stand it anymore if I am expected to take it seriously. Whether it's Islam or Christianity, we are well past the time when educated adults ought to have moved on to other models for their worldviews.
Compass probably fits a current French award paradigm, because it explores music, literature and folklore spanning the geographical region from Western Europe to Persia. The narrator, Franz Ritter, is a musicologist who lives in Vienna, and his friend, Sarah, is a scholar who specializes in Persian and Arabic literature. In the same way that there is a pressure for American literary awards to go to minorities or women, in France there may be a pressure for literary awards to go to writers who demonstrate a sensitivity to Arabic or Persian culture. These pressures are not necessarily bad things, but they have a tendency to limit the scope of literature by ignoring works that don't fit a particular mold.
As I said, I've barely started reading this, so I don't have much to say at the moment. There seems to be a tension regarding Franz's unrequited love for Sarah. They are both brainy academics who are passionate about their subjects. Énard is a talented writer with respect to descriptions and esoteric knowledge, but it's too soon to say whether or not I'll find him too academic and pedantic after a few hundred pages. For the time being I am enjoying reading about intelligent, well-adjusted adults who are capable of having decent relationships with others. From reading Houellebecq, Krasznahorkai and many other modern literary writers, you would never know that there are people out there who don't lead dysfunctional, isolated or unhappy lives. I have long thought that the most challenging and interesting fiction would be about well-adjusted, educated, intelligent adults who think clearly on a variety of topics, are not conformists and have insights to offer. Believe it or not, I have yet to find a recent novel that fits that description. Contrary to Tolstoy's famous dictum, all happy families are not the same: it's just easier to write about unhappy ones.
Although it may not be the case, Énard could be pandering to or benefiting from the popularity of Islamic subjects in French literary circles. Even without its Islamic refugees, the French have been fascinated with Orientalism since the nineteenth century. Houellebecq probably was quite conscious of this when he wrote Submission. To compare the two, Énard is far more scholarly and knowledgeable than Houellebecq, who probably could have picked up his information on Islam and Huysmans from Wikipedia articles. Énard is probably a better writer in the technical sense, in which linguistic skill is emphasized, but may prove to be a weaker writer than Houellebecq when it comes to producing effects. For the moment I am enjoying his characters more than any of Houellebecq's, but I am aware that even the best academic writers tend to produce works that eventually lead nowhere. The book may be worth reading for Énard's expertise on Arabic and Persian culture, but, as I've said before, I don't believe it is incumbent upon me to learn about other cultures. Also, to the extent that religion is emphasized, I am so sick of hearing about it that I can hardly stand it anymore if I am expected to take it seriously. Whether it's Islam or Christianity, we are well past the time when educated adults ought to have moved on to other models for their worldviews.
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
Diary
I came across the news that Robert Silvers, the editor of the New York Review of Books, has died at the age of 87. It took me a while to generate a reaction, because, as an editor, he placed himself at a distance from the reader, and whatever he thought or represented seems opaque. We know that he was the main force behind the publication, but we don't know exactly what he believed or considered important. In the end it seems as if he was a guy who liked editing and making a name for himself in erudite circles, and perhaps nothing more. The NYRB doesn't stand for much of anything other than general liberalism, and if its authors collectively represent any ideas, Silvers made sure that they were nuanced to death. When they were explicit, they were just as likely to be wrong as right. In two areas that interest me, he was on the wrong side of history, perhaps because underneath the surface lurked a creaky traditionalism that made him leery of evolutionary biology: maybe he was a closet conservative theologian of the humanist tradition. He favored writers such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin over Edward O. Wilson and Christopher Hitchens and promoted Garry Wills and Marilynne Robinson, who, from what I know, embrace obsolete or sentimental religious ideas that, to my way of thinking, do not belong in an intellectual journal. Tony Judt's comment about American intellectuals having no public impact also comes to mind; since no one pays attention to them, they are free to romp and play in the imaginary world of their choosing. On the pecuniary end, George Soros, whose writing style and qualifications as an intellectual were surely not sufficient to warrant his inclusion, got as much space as he liked, presumably because he had billions of dollars.
My negative thesis on intellectuals came to a head recently when I realized that Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were more poseurs than serious thinkers. Perhaps they and Robert Silvers were playing a game that they enjoyed more than actually figuring out anything important. By coincidence, I recently attended a surprisingly excellent student production of Tom Stoppard's play, Arcadia, which is partly about the stupidity and vanity of ambitious academics, and there may be parallels. Perhaps Silvers, Sartre and de Beauvoir simply sought fame, like Bernard Nightingale. Not many are immune to the allure of stature in the circle of their choice. When one looks closely at the petty ambitions of intellectuals, they come to resemble more pedestrian ambitions that lack the pretension of loftiness.
Although it's not yet green outside, the goldfinches are turning yellow again, and spring seems to have arrived. I've taken off my snow tires. For a change of pace, I am going to read the novel Compass, by Mathias Énard, next.
My negative thesis on intellectuals came to a head recently when I realized that Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were more poseurs than serious thinkers. Perhaps they and Robert Silvers were playing a game that they enjoyed more than actually figuring out anything important. By coincidence, I recently attended a surprisingly excellent student production of Tom Stoppard's play, Arcadia, which is partly about the stupidity and vanity of ambitious academics, and there may be parallels. Perhaps Silvers, Sartre and de Beauvoir simply sought fame, like Bernard Nightingale. Not many are immune to the allure of stature in the circle of their choice. When one looks closely at the petty ambitions of intellectuals, they come to resemble more pedestrian ambitions that lack the pretension of loftiness.
Although it's not yet green outside, the goldfinches are turning yellow again, and spring seems to have arrived. I've taken off my snow tires. For a change of pace, I am going to read the novel Compass, by Mathias Énard, next.
Monday, April 10, 2017
Thinking Machines: The Quest for Artificial Intelligence and Where It's Taking Us Next II
In subsequent chapters, Dormehl describes new applications of AI, interviews various researchers and discusses issues that may come up in the future. One of the recent developments has been the arrival of helping software such as Siri from Apple, which acts as a personal assistant. There are several areas in which specific applications of AI have produced human-level results or better. Neural networks have been specifically designed to win at Jeopardy!, conduct drug research, drive cars and design equipment for NASA. We are currently surrounded by data mining on an enormous scale, and it seems as if companies such as Google and Facebook will soon understand people and their needs far better than we understand ourselves.
The most unsatisfactory chapter covers the effects that AI will have on employment. Although it is obvious that it will soon be able perform most tasks better than humans, Dormehl paints a rather naïve scenario in which people are employed either by producing code or by working as artisans and selling their wares on the Internet. Like many young, tech-savvy writers, he glosses over the basic economic problems that are being caused by new technology, particularly with the fact that AI is driving down costs in most industries and many traditional careers are disappearing. If you take the optimistic position, it is possible to envision a utopian future in which AI makes life better for everyone and standards of living generally improve, but Dormehl says nothing about how this major transition would occur and seems blind to the actual political and economic environment in which everyone lives. We are evolving toward a "gig" economy in which few have permanent employment or job benefits, and without significant structural changes most people are en route to lower incomes and little or no job security, which would destabilize society.
For my needs, Dormehl seems to do a fairly good job at distinguishing the types of AI that exist or will exist. First, there is the old number-crunching version that works with brute force through all of the possibilities, such as the early IBM Deep Blue, which defeated Garry Kasparov in chess. Then there is the neural network type that roughly simulates the human brain and processes large amounts of data to arrive at solutions. The former is logical and mainly involves a human-made program processing more data than a person could. The latter finds solutions statistically, without a step-by-step process, and though it can come up with excellent solutions to specific problems, it may be impossible to understand the internal logic of the outcome, which detracts from confidence in its reliability. The next step in AI will be artificial general intelligence, or AGI, in which AI will be able to perform over a wide range of tasks like a human, rather than in the task-specific manner that AI works now. The hypothetical singularity will occur when AGI surpasses human capabilities.
Then there is discussion of extreme futurists such as Ken Hayworth, who says "I absolutely believe that mind uploading is possible and I think it's something we should actively be working toward." Some futurists are obsessed with digitizing themselves and becoming immortal. This doesn't interest me at all: I'd rather die.
The most interesting chapter for me is the one on creativity in AI. It is already starting to occur and brings into question the nature of creativity itself. We are in the early stages of AI producing what is considered original, which had been the exclusive domain of humans. AI can already write rudimentary fiction, paint artistically and design new products. The capabilities of AI in these and other fields are sure to devalue what has been thought of as talent among humans. This is another area in which Dormehl seems oblivious to the effects of advances in AI. It is easy to imagine a future in which the supposed strokes of genius that have occurred throughout history are considered lucky stumbles by feeble brains. In the process of providing deeper insights into the world and new ways of expressing our humanity, AI will deflate a class of accomplishments that we have been using to assign social status among ourselves, because the importance of talent will be diminished once it becomes commonplace.
Dormehl also briefly covers the risks of AI and the moral and legal questions that are surfacing around it. However, the book is primarily a broad survey of the field and doesn't go to any great depth on the issues at hand. Nevertheless, I found it informative and useful for my rudimentary purposes.
The most unsatisfactory chapter covers the effects that AI will have on employment. Although it is obvious that it will soon be able perform most tasks better than humans, Dormehl paints a rather naïve scenario in which people are employed either by producing code or by working as artisans and selling their wares on the Internet. Like many young, tech-savvy writers, he glosses over the basic economic problems that are being caused by new technology, particularly with the fact that AI is driving down costs in most industries and many traditional careers are disappearing. If you take the optimistic position, it is possible to envision a utopian future in which AI makes life better for everyone and standards of living generally improve, but Dormehl says nothing about how this major transition would occur and seems blind to the actual political and economic environment in which everyone lives. We are evolving toward a "gig" economy in which few have permanent employment or job benefits, and without significant structural changes most people are en route to lower incomes and little or no job security, which would destabilize society.
For my needs, Dormehl seems to do a fairly good job at distinguishing the types of AI that exist or will exist. First, there is the old number-crunching version that works with brute force through all of the possibilities, such as the early IBM Deep Blue, which defeated Garry Kasparov in chess. Then there is the neural network type that roughly simulates the human brain and processes large amounts of data to arrive at solutions. The former is logical and mainly involves a human-made program processing more data than a person could. The latter finds solutions statistically, without a step-by-step process, and though it can come up with excellent solutions to specific problems, it may be impossible to understand the internal logic of the outcome, which detracts from confidence in its reliability. The next step in AI will be artificial general intelligence, or AGI, in which AI will be able to perform over a wide range of tasks like a human, rather than in the task-specific manner that AI works now. The hypothetical singularity will occur when AGI surpasses human capabilities.
Then there is discussion of extreme futurists such as Ken Hayworth, who says "I absolutely believe that mind uploading is possible and I think it's something we should actively be working toward." Some futurists are obsessed with digitizing themselves and becoming immortal. This doesn't interest me at all: I'd rather die.
The most interesting chapter for me is the one on creativity in AI. It is already starting to occur and brings into question the nature of creativity itself. We are in the early stages of AI producing what is considered original, which had been the exclusive domain of humans. AI can already write rudimentary fiction, paint artistically and design new products. The capabilities of AI in these and other fields are sure to devalue what has been thought of as talent among humans. This is another area in which Dormehl seems oblivious to the effects of advances in AI. It is easy to imagine a future in which the supposed strokes of genius that have occurred throughout history are considered lucky stumbles by feeble brains. In the process of providing deeper insights into the world and new ways of expressing our humanity, AI will deflate a class of accomplishments that we have been using to assign social status among ourselves, because the importance of talent will be diminished once it becomes commonplace.
Dormehl also briefly covers the risks of AI and the moral and legal questions that are surfacing around it. However, the book is primarily a broad survey of the field and doesn't go to any great depth on the issues at hand. Nevertheless, I found it informative and useful for my rudimentary purposes.
Thursday, April 6, 2017
Thinking Machines: The Quest for Artificial Intelligence and Where It's Taking Us Next I
I am now reading this short book by Luke Dormehl to get a better handle on AI. With all the fuss I've made about the subject, I thought I ought to inform myself on it a little better. This is a readable, journalistic history of AI from its earliest days up to the present, with some speculation about the future at the end. As far as I've read, it has covered the early years of computational logic under Marvin Minsky and others, which proved to be far less fruitful than people had hoped. Now I am moving into neural networks and deep learning, which have transformed the field into its current state. It shouldn't take me long to finish the rest of the book, and I will probably have more to say about the later chapters.
My interest in AI is not at all technical and has more to do with the sociological and philosophical changes that it is precipitating. There are still skeptics around, but I think we are well on the way to superintelligence, and there is already a certain pressure to reevaluate our collective self-conceptions and modes of living. If you have a materialistic view of the world, there is no magic ingredient to human beings that can't be replicated and magnified or reworked into a more effective form. But even without superintelligence, radical changes are occurring, because businesses are requiring fewer and fewer employees with the new technologies available. Developed countries are going to have to rethink their public policies whether they like it or not, because unemployment is slowly becoming the norm. Those who point to formulas of the past, such as boosting economic growth to increase household incomes, are toying with concepts that are nearly obsolete and have no chance of solving the social problems to come. In particular, the American model of working hard and getting ahead financially is increasingly untenable for the majority of workers, because their skills simply are not needed. It seems to me that as the demand for human labor declines, sinecures, basic income, or perhaps even the elimination of currency will replace the current model. At the policy level, little is being done in preparation now, because the political system is reactive to the immediate perceptions of voters who have no idea what is in store for them.
Another aspect of AI, which, fortunately, is being examined at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, is that it may result in unexpected disasters unless it is controlled properly. Even if the intentions of AI developers are good, AI may go awry or it may fall into the wrong hands. At this point I am less worried about it going awry than about it falling into the wrong hands. The wrong hands could be those of anyone from amoral technocrats to egomaniacs to religious fundamentalists, the latter including both Islamic terrorists and Christians. This technology is becoming powerful, and power has inevitably been abused throughout history.
Perhaps it is the philosophical aspects of AI that interest me the most. As I've said, we're not as smart as we think we are, but we've never had to deal with anything that clearly exceeds our intellectual capabilities. I expect there to be a series of shocks and rude awakenings that may change how we think about ourselves and our relationship to the universe. One of the reasons why I like the work of E.O. Wilson is that he was the first scientist to suggest that humans are eusocial creatures, like ants. This is simply an extension of Darwinism that, to me, provides the best framework for understanding our moral tendencies. AI researchers are currently a little stumped by the problem of making AI people-friendly, and that seems natural, because AI did not come into existence through a biological, evolutionary process in which morality became a key ingredient of survival. In fact, AI has no survival, reproductive or moral imperatives at all unless we build them into it. What we are about to find out is that most, if not all, of the "values" that we hold dear are mere evolutionary accidents that steered our behavior in a direction that allowed our species to survive up to the present. AI will not inherently possess any superstitions and will not be able to understand ours the way we do. I am wondering whether we will be able to understand the thinking processes of autonomous AI, because ultimately it will be self-teaching and will use methods that it develops on its own. I also think that there will be limitations to interfacing humans with AI, because our little brains have limited capacities. Eventually, assuming no disasters occur, AI will become the new God, but without the religious mumbo jumbo. My preference would be for it to become the keeper of our habitat, and I have no desire to expand the capabilities of my brain or to become immortal. That, in effect, would be death, because I would no longer be who I am now.
My interest in AI is not at all technical and has more to do with the sociological and philosophical changes that it is precipitating. There are still skeptics around, but I think we are well on the way to superintelligence, and there is already a certain pressure to reevaluate our collective self-conceptions and modes of living. If you have a materialistic view of the world, there is no magic ingredient to human beings that can't be replicated and magnified or reworked into a more effective form. But even without superintelligence, radical changes are occurring, because businesses are requiring fewer and fewer employees with the new technologies available. Developed countries are going to have to rethink their public policies whether they like it or not, because unemployment is slowly becoming the norm. Those who point to formulas of the past, such as boosting economic growth to increase household incomes, are toying with concepts that are nearly obsolete and have no chance of solving the social problems to come. In particular, the American model of working hard and getting ahead financially is increasingly untenable for the majority of workers, because their skills simply are not needed. It seems to me that as the demand for human labor declines, sinecures, basic income, or perhaps even the elimination of currency will replace the current model. At the policy level, little is being done in preparation now, because the political system is reactive to the immediate perceptions of voters who have no idea what is in store for them.
Another aspect of AI, which, fortunately, is being examined at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, is that it may result in unexpected disasters unless it is controlled properly. Even if the intentions of AI developers are good, AI may go awry or it may fall into the wrong hands. At this point I am less worried about it going awry than about it falling into the wrong hands. The wrong hands could be those of anyone from amoral technocrats to egomaniacs to religious fundamentalists, the latter including both Islamic terrorists and Christians. This technology is becoming powerful, and power has inevitably been abused throughout history.
Perhaps it is the philosophical aspects of AI that interest me the most. As I've said, we're not as smart as we think we are, but we've never had to deal with anything that clearly exceeds our intellectual capabilities. I expect there to be a series of shocks and rude awakenings that may change how we think about ourselves and our relationship to the universe. One of the reasons why I like the work of E.O. Wilson is that he was the first scientist to suggest that humans are eusocial creatures, like ants. This is simply an extension of Darwinism that, to me, provides the best framework for understanding our moral tendencies. AI researchers are currently a little stumped by the problem of making AI people-friendly, and that seems natural, because AI did not come into existence through a biological, evolutionary process in which morality became a key ingredient of survival. In fact, AI has no survival, reproductive or moral imperatives at all unless we build them into it. What we are about to find out is that most, if not all, of the "values" that we hold dear are mere evolutionary accidents that steered our behavior in a direction that allowed our species to survive up to the present. AI will not inherently possess any superstitions and will not be able to understand ours the way we do. I am wondering whether we will be able to understand the thinking processes of autonomous AI, because ultimately it will be self-teaching and will use methods that it develops on its own. I also think that there will be limitations to interfacing humans with AI, because our little brains have limited capacities. Eventually, assuming no disasters occur, AI will become the new God, but without the religious mumbo jumbo. My preference would be for it to become the keeper of our habitat, and I have no desire to expand the capabilities of my brain or to become immortal. That, in effect, would be death, because I would no longer be who I am now.
Friday, March 31, 2017
Diary
Perhaps I should say something about the student protest at Middlebury College, since it has been in the national news recently. In case you didn't hear about it, on March 2 the conservative writer, Charles Murray, who had been invited to speak by a group of students, had his appearance disrupted by protesters, and his party was accosted by students while leaving the campus. The female Middlebury professor who was to have questioned him during the discussion had her hair pulled and was hospitalized, and students jumped on the car.
I probably don't share many of Murray's ideas, though there may be some agreement between them and those of the genetic determinists with whom I sympathize. Primarily I think that this was a deplorable violation of free speech, like the one mentioned earlier involving Smith College students and Wendy Kaminer. In this instance the physical violence got somewhat more attention. It shows that political correctness can induce people to dismiss ideas without even knowing what they are, which was apparent from comments made by protesters and sympathetic faculty members. Fortunately, the college formally came out against the protesters.
There isn't really much of interest here, but it shows how narrow-minded students can be and perhaps echoes the ideas of Sherry Turkle, who has noted how young gadget-users live in an alternate reality in which they are unable to engage in traditional communication. However, this sort of protest is also reminiscent of protests of the 1960's, in which students engaged in a form of groupthink without always truly understanding the issues. From my point of view, it is an example of the bubble atmosphere that can develop on college campuses – especially at small liberal arts colleges – and mainly demonstrates that privileged upper-middle-class students think that they know more than they actually do. In this instance they wasted a lot of people's time, including their own, made a big fuss, and no one in Middlebury, including them, is any the wiser about Charles Murray's views or whether the protest was justified. To me, this episode is about the sociology of educational institutions in the U.S., many of which function more as status-granters than as places of learning. Apparently, as part of the educational package, the students get to pretend that they are college radicals. I doubt that this experience will enhance their intellectual discernment as adults.
In other news, I have been spending time on ancestry research and just received my DNA results. Ancestry.com had caused some confusion for me by saying that my sister had no British genes, even though our father was British and his ancestors lived there for hundreds of years and had English surnames. This prompted me to take the same test to see whether I would get the same results. I did, and found that the confusion comes from the way Ancestry.com defines ethnicity. Apparently, in order to be British, your ancestors have to have lived there thousands of years ago. Since that doesn't include the Anglo-Saxons or Normans, there aren't many British people in Britain, especially in Southern England. Our English genes fall into an amorphous group that includes Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, which in turn overlaps with a Mediterranean group that includes Italy and Greece. We also have West Asian genes from our Armenian ancestors. I found this information less useful than the large online database they've assembled, which has made it easy to find many of my English ancestors.
I've lined up a couple more books to read and will start commenting on one of them soon.
I probably don't share many of Murray's ideas, though there may be some agreement between them and those of the genetic determinists with whom I sympathize. Primarily I think that this was a deplorable violation of free speech, like the one mentioned earlier involving Smith College students and Wendy Kaminer. In this instance the physical violence got somewhat more attention. It shows that political correctness can induce people to dismiss ideas without even knowing what they are, which was apparent from comments made by protesters and sympathetic faculty members. Fortunately, the college formally came out against the protesters.
There isn't really much of interest here, but it shows how narrow-minded students can be and perhaps echoes the ideas of Sherry Turkle, who has noted how young gadget-users live in an alternate reality in which they are unable to engage in traditional communication. However, this sort of protest is also reminiscent of protests of the 1960's, in which students engaged in a form of groupthink without always truly understanding the issues. From my point of view, it is an example of the bubble atmosphere that can develop on college campuses – especially at small liberal arts colleges – and mainly demonstrates that privileged upper-middle-class students think that they know more than they actually do. In this instance they wasted a lot of people's time, including their own, made a big fuss, and no one in Middlebury, including them, is any the wiser about Charles Murray's views or whether the protest was justified. To me, this episode is about the sociology of educational institutions in the U.S., many of which function more as status-granters than as places of learning. Apparently, as part of the educational package, the students get to pretend that they are college radicals. I doubt that this experience will enhance their intellectual discernment as adults.
In other news, I have been spending time on ancestry research and just received my DNA results. Ancestry.com had caused some confusion for me by saying that my sister had no British genes, even though our father was British and his ancestors lived there for hundreds of years and had English surnames. This prompted me to take the same test to see whether I would get the same results. I did, and found that the confusion comes from the way Ancestry.com defines ethnicity. Apparently, in order to be British, your ancestors have to have lived there thousands of years ago. Since that doesn't include the Anglo-Saxons or Normans, there aren't many British people in Britain, especially in Southern England. Our English genes fall into an amorphous group that includes Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, which in turn overlaps with a Mediterranean group that includes Italy and Greece. We also have West Asian genes from our Armenian ancestors. I found this information less useful than the large online database they've assembled, which has made it easy to find many of my English ancestors.
I've lined up a couple more books to read and will start commenting on one of them soon.
Monday, March 27, 2017
Collapse VI
The last section of the book, "Practical Lessons" covers a mishmash of ideas. Chapter 14 lists some of the psychological failings of the people in the collapsed societies discussed earlier, including failure to anticipate, failure to perceive, rational bad behavior (of a subset of the population) and disastrous values. This chapter had a lot of potential, but I found it disappointing, because it stuck to the obvious. Chapter 15 describes in detail how some businesses have been able to behave like responsible citizens, though that usually occurs only when actual events have shown that the cost of irresponsible exploitation of resources outweighs the cost of additional safety measures and precautions, for instance, when a large oil spill occurs. In the case of hardrock mining, there is usually so little profit in the business to begin with that it is cheaper for businesses to lobby for lax regulations than it is to operate in an environmentally responsible fashion, in which case they would simply lose money. Diamond emphasizes how consumers play a role in this, because, even though they may not understand the economics of the oil or mining industries, they are more cognizant of oil because they buy it at the retail level, whereas the end use of most mining products remains a mystery to them. They are willing to pay for oil because they are aware of how they use it, whereas mining products often become invisible components of consumer products. Responsible stewardship of the environment comes at a cost, and ultimately it is consumers who decide by buying or not buying certain products; they usually aren't willing to pay any premium for consumer products, because, according to Diamond, they don't often understand the environmental costs. Where hardrock mining is concerned, the costs of environmental responsibility are considerably higher than those of most other natural resources. Diamond also notes that self-regulation within some industries, such as forest products, has been comparatively successful.
The final chapter, 16, includes a somewhat redundant list of what Diamond thinks are the twelve most serious trouble spots related to sustaining the environment. Here are the first sentences or so that he has written for each item on the list:
1. At an accelerating rate, we are destroying the natural habitats or else converting them to human-made habitats, such as cities and villages, farmlands and pastures, roads and golf courses.
2. Wild foods, especially fish and to a lesser extent shellfish, contribute a large fraction of the protein consumed by humans.... [T]he great majority of valuable fisheries either have collapsed or are in steep decline.
3. A significant fraction of wild species, populations, and genetic diversity has already been lost, and at present rates a large fraction of what remains will be lost within the next half-century.
4. Soils and farmland used for growing crops are being carried away by water and wind erosion at rates between 10 and 40 times the rates of soil formation, and between 500 and 10,000 times soil erosion rates on forested land.
5. The world's major energy sources, especially for industrial societies, are fossil fuels: oil, natural gas, and coal. While there has been much discussion about how many big oil and gas fields remain to be discovered, and while coal reserves are believed to be large, the prevalent view is that known and likely reserves of readily accessible oil and gas will last for a few more decades.
6. Most of the world's freshwater in rivers and lakes is already being utilized for irrigation, domestic and industrial water, and in situ uses such as boat transportation corridors, fisheries, and recreation.
7. It might at first seem that the supply of sunlight is infinite, so one might reason that the Earth's capacity to grow crops and wild plants is also infinite. Within the last 20 years, it has been appreciated that this is not the case....
8. The chemical industry and many other industries manufacture or release into the air, soil, oceans, lakes and rivers many toxic chemicals....
9. The term "alien species" refers to species that we transfer, intentionally or inadvertently, from a place where they are native to a place where they are not native. Some alien species are obviously valuable to us as crops, domestic animals, and landscaping. But others devastate populations of native species with which they come into contact....
10. Human activities produce gases that escape into the atmosphere, where they either damage the protective ozone layer (as do formerly widespread refrigerator coolants) or else act as greenhouse gases that absorb sunlight and thereby lead to global warming.
11. The world's human population is growing. More people require more food, space, water, energy and other resources.
12. What really counts is not the number of people alone, but their impact on the environment.... [O]ur numbers pose problems insofar as we consume resources and generate wastes.... But low-impact people are becoming high-impact people....
Following this list, Diamond refutes, effectively I think, some of the common criticisms that have been brought against the arguments that he makes. He then attempts to finish on a positive note by mentioning that some societies of the past, such as the success stories described in the book, were able to overcome similar problems when they confronted them, and that we may be able to as well.
Because of its scope and completeness, this is by far the best book I've read on environmental issues. In books by E.O. Wilson, such as The Diversity of Life and Half-Earth, the perspective is that of a naturalist more than that of one specifically concerned with the future of mankind. Similarly, in The Sixth Extinction Elizabeth Kolbert looks at the environmental consequences of human activities without paying as much attention to the specific causes. Al Gore's popular documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which came out the year following Collapse, covers only one aspect of the twelve mentioned by Diamond. Global warming is an important issue, but in itself is probably survivable, and though the film played an important role in raising environmental awareness, compared to Collapse it barely scratches the surface. Diamond makes it clear that if we don't deal effectively with the issues that he raises we may all die, as did those in some of his historical examples.
Although it seems that somewhere in Collapse one is likely to find at least a passing comment on every issue relevant to human survival vis-à-vis environmental damage, Diamond, disappointingly to me, does not present specific strategies for solving the problems, and he more or less leaves it up to mankind to solve them on their own. For example, he recognizes that corporations may or may not behave responsibly but are driven primarily by financial motives, and that the public can pressure them in the right direction, but he also notes that some of the environmental issues are not understood by the public: how could corporate malfeasance be corrected in those instances? As I have argued in previous posts, many of the problems that we are currently facing are the result of the combination of economic competition under capitalism with inferior governance under existing democratic political models. It would be difficult to deal with environmental problems at that level, but, since that is where the problems actually originate, it may be the appropriate place to look.
I think that economic competition tends to cause a vicious cycle from which it becomes increasingly difficult to escape. For example, for someone like me, who prefers a rural environment with a low population density and doesn't care about money, how can I realistically expect to live that way in the current world? If you live in an unspoiled environment with its natural resources more or less intact, in order to retain those resources you need defense measures of one kind or another. Under current global conditions, in the absence of a suitable defense, sooner or later corporations, other nations or perhaps refugees would arrive on the scene and alter the environment for the worse. In other words, in order to protect my sustainable environment, I would need an economic base large enough to support an army or some other deterrent, which contradicts the very idea of the society that I envision. Similarly, economically weak countries may be forced by external economic pressures to modernize their economies, if only for their own protection. Even developed countries with declining populations face pressure to increase their fertility rates in order to ensure that they have sufficient workers to keep their economies strong in the future. Capitalism in the absence of an effective world government forces regions of the world into defensive postures, with economic forces driving events in a way that roughly mimics warfare.
The other problematic component underlying environmental risk, incompetent governance, has hardly diminished since Diamond wrote the book. The collapse in Syria is flooding Europe with refugees, conditions in South Sudan have deteriorated and ISIL is at large. These kinds of situations are predictable within Diamond's framework, because political instability is often associated with environmental destruction. However, one may also question how well the developed nations are dealing with increasing environmental pressures. It may be a little too early to assess the populist movements in Europe and the U.S., but at first glance they may be related to the sustainability of economic growth, which is at least partly related to environmental health. The high standard of living in the developed world comes at a high environmental cost, and the lower end of the income spectrum has been experiencing a reduced standard of living in recent years. Although a collapse does not seem imminent in the developed world, some of the early patterns of political instability may be falling into place. Recently, the two most striking examples have been the victories of Brexit and Donald Trump, which, to me, are clear indications of the inherent incompetence of democratic electorates. Both votes were for isolationism and protection from foreigners and demonstrate a poor understanding of global economics.
The election of Donald Trump is a good example of the incompetence of a democratic electorate. From his few weeks in office it has become apparent that, not only does he not understand any of the serious issues facing the U.S., including those raised by Diamond, but he isn't even interested in them and is unlikely to do anything about them. This encourages me to withdraw into my futuristic mode of thinking, in which complex issues such as those raised in Collapse become the province of AI or AI-assisted humans rather than the poor decision-making process of the voting public or the incompetent people whom they elect.
Diamond is correct that all of the problems brought up in his book can be solved, but he isn't exactly creating a new paradigm. I am a much stronger proponent of population control than he is, but that may be because I am not affected by the pressures of political correctness. Looking into the future, I wonder whether there is any advantage to a world population of seven billion people, in which the majority lead imperiled lives, compared to a world population of one billion or fewer people, in which all lead unimperiled lives. There are painless ways to make that transition without producing inequality or diminishing the richness of human experience. This obvious option is not receiving any public discussion.
The final chapter, 16, includes a somewhat redundant list of what Diamond thinks are the twelve most serious trouble spots related to sustaining the environment. Here are the first sentences or so that he has written for each item on the list:
1. At an accelerating rate, we are destroying the natural habitats or else converting them to human-made habitats, such as cities and villages, farmlands and pastures, roads and golf courses.
2. Wild foods, especially fish and to a lesser extent shellfish, contribute a large fraction of the protein consumed by humans.... [T]he great majority of valuable fisheries either have collapsed or are in steep decline.
3. A significant fraction of wild species, populations, and genetic diversity has already been lost, and at present rates a large fraction of what remains will be lost within the next half-century.
4. Soils and farmland used for growing crops are being carried away by water and wind erosion at rates between 10 and 40 times the rates of soil formation, and between 500 and 10,000 times soil erosion rates on forested land.
5. The world's major energy sources, especially for industrial societies, are fossil fuels: oil, natural gas, and coal. While there has been much discussion about how many big oil and gas fields remain to be discovered, and while coal reserves are believed to be large, the prevalent view is that known and likely reserves of readily accessible oil and gas will last for a few more decades.
6. Most of the world's freshwater in rivers and lakes is already being utilized for irrigation, domestic and industrial water, and in situ uses such as boat transportation corridors, fisheries, and recreation.
7. It might at first seem that the supply of sunlight is infinite, so one might reason that the Earth's capacity to grow crops and wild plants is also infinite. Within the last 20 years, it has been appreciated that this is not the case....
8. The chemical industry and many other industries manufacture or release into the air, soil, oceans, lakes and rivers many toxic chemicals....
9. The term "alien species" refers to species that we transfer, intentionally or inadvertently, from a place where they are native to a place where they are not native. Some alien species are obviously valuable to us as crops, domestic animals, and landscaping. But others devastate populations of native species with which they come into contact....
10. Human activities produce gases that escape into the atmosphere, where they either damage the protective ozone layer (as do formerly widespread refrigerator coolants) or else act as greenhouse gases that absorb sunlight and thereby lead to global warming.
11. The world's human population is growing. More people require more food, space, water, energy and other resources.
12. What really counts is not the number of people alone, but their impact on the environment.... [O]ur numbers pose problems insofar as we consume resources and generate wastes.... But low-impact people are becoming high-impact people....
Following this list, Diamond refutes, effectively I think, some of the common criticisms that have been brought against the arguments that he makes. He then attempts to finish on a positive note by mentioning that some societies of the past, such as the success stories described in the book, were able to overcome similar problems when they confronted them, and that we may be able to as well.
Because of its scope and completeness, this is by far the best book I've read on environmental issues. In books by E.O. Wilson, such as The Diversity of Life and Half-Earth, the perspective is that of a naturalist more than that of one specifically concerned with the future of mankind. Similarly, in The Sixth Extinction Elizabeth Kolbert looks at the environmental consequences of human activities without paying as much attention to the specific causes. Al Gore's popular documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which came out the year following Collapse, covers only one aspect of the twelve mentioned by Diamond. Global warming is an important issue, but in itself is probably survivable, and though the film played an important role in raising environmental awareness, compared to Collapse it barely scratches the surface. Diamond makes it clear that if we don't deal effectively with the issues that he raises we may all die, as did those in some of his historical examples.
Although it seems that somewhere in Collapse one is likely to find at least a passing comment on every issue relevant to human survival vis-à-vis environmental damage, Diamond, disappointingly to me, does not present specific strategies for solving the problems, and he more or less leaves it up to mankind to solve them on their own. For example, he recognizes that corporations may or may not behave responsibly but are driven primarily by financial motives, and that the public can pressure them in the right direction, but he also notes that some of the environmental issues are not understood by the public: how could corporate malfeasance be corrected in those instances? As I have argued in previous posts, many of the problems that we are currently facing are the result of the combination of economic competition under capitalism with inferior governance under existing democratic political models. It would be difficult to deal with environmental problems at that level, but, since that is where the problems actually originate, it may be the appropriate place to look.
I think that economic competition tends to cause a vicious cycle from which it becomes increasingly difficult to escape. For example, for someone like me, who prefers a rural environment with a low population density and doesn't care about money, how can I realistically expect to live that way in the current world? If you live in an unspoiled environment with its natural resources more or less intact, in order to retain those resources you need defense measures of one kind or another. Under current global conditions, in the absence of a suitable defense, sooner or later corporations, other nations or perhaps refugees would arrive on the scene and alter the environment for the worse. In other words, in order to protect my sustainable environment, I would need an economic base large enough to support an army or some other deterrent, which contradicts the very idea of the society that I envision. Similarly, economically weak countries may be forced by external economic pressures to modernize their economies, if only for their own protection. Even developed countries with declining populations face pressure to increase their fertility rates in order to ensure that they have sufficient workers to keep their economies strong in the future. Capitalism in the absence of an effective world government forces regions of the world into defensive postures, with economic forces driving events in a way that roughly mimics warfare.
The other problematic component underlying environmental risk, incompetent governance, has hardly diminished since Diamond wrote the book. The collapse in Syria is flooding Europe with refugees, conditions in South Sudan have deteriorated and ISIL is at large. These kinds of situations are predictable within Diamond's framework, because political instability is often associated with environmental destruction. However, one may also question how well the developed nations are dealing with increasing environmental pressures. It may be a little too early to assess the populist movements in Europe and the U.S., but at first glance they may be related to the sustainability of economic growth, which is at least partly related to environmental health. The high standard of living in the developed world comes at a high environmental cost, and the lower end of the income spectrum has been experiencing a reduced standard of living in recent years. Although a collapse does not seem imminent in the developed world, some of the early patterns of political instability may be falling into place. Recently, the two most striking examples have been the victories of Brexit and Donald Trump, which, to me, are clear indications of the inherent incompetence of democratic electorates. Both votes were for isolationism and protection from foreigners and demonstrate a poor understanding of global economics.
The election of Donald Trump is a good example of the incompetence of a democratic electorate. From his few weeks in office it has become apparent that, not only does he not understand any of the serious issues facing the U.S., including those raised by Diamond, but he isn't even interested in them and is unlikely to do anything about them. This encourages me to withdraw into my futuristic mode of thinking, in which complex issues such as those raised in Collapse become the province of AI or AI-assisted humans rather than the poor decision-making process of the voting public or the incompetent people whom they elect.
Diamond is correct that all of the problems brought up in his book can be solved, but he isn't exactly creating a new paradigm. I am a much stronger proponent of population control than he is, but that may be because I am not affected by the pressures of political correctness. Looking into the future, I wonder whether there is any advantage to a world population of seven billion people, in which the majority lead imperiled lives, compared to a world population of one billion or fewer people, in which all lead unimperiled lives. There are painless ways to make that transition without producing inequality or diminishing the richness of human experience. This obvious option is not receiving any public discussion.
Thursday, March 23, 2017
Collapse V
After Rwanda, Diamond provides a lucid short history of the island of Hispaniola, which now comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic. When Columbus arrived in 1492 it was inhabited by about 500,000 Arawak Indians. The Spaniards wanted the gold there and enslaved them to mine it for them. By 1519, with poor living conditions and smallpox, the Arawak population had been reduced to about 3,000. This is the kind of disgusting fact that was completely omitted from history books when I was growing up. At that point the Spaniards began to import slaves from Africa, and they also developed sugar plantations, which were lucrative for some time. By the end of the sixteenth century Spanish influence in the region was in decline, and French pirates, traders and adventurers formed a separate settlement on the western part of the island. In 1795, Spain ceded its portion of the island to France, but France withdrew from the island in 1804, at the time of the Louisiana Purchase. Initially Haiti was the major power on the island, but the former slaves, who killed or forced out the white plantation owners, became small farmers and gradually damaged their land. Spanish settlers continued to move to the eastern part of the island, which once again became a Spanish colony. Thereafter, Haiti had primarily a Creole-speaking black population and the Dominican Republic had a Spanish-speaking white population with a more European outlook.
The Dominican Republic had some natural advantages with respect to sustainability. Positioned on the eastern end of the island, which has mountains in the center and weather systems moving from the east, it gets more rain than Haiti and has rivers suitable for hydroelectric power. Although both countries have been led by brutal, corrupt dictators for decades, the dictators in the Dominican Republic were able to enrich themselves even more by establishing a variety of industries from which to pocket money. They eventually figured out that deforestation was not in their interest, and the Dominican Republic is now far more wooded than Haiti.
Both countries are extremely poor compared to developed countries, but Haiti significantly more so. At the time this book was published in 2005, Diamond thought the outlook was especially bleak for Haiti, and that was before the earthquake of 2010.
As if I wanted more information, the next chapter covers China, which is familiar to me because it is in the news all of the time. Obviously there are pollution and sustainability issues there, with its large population and high rate of economic growth. I didn't think Diamond had much new to tell me here, but the problems associated with China are so large in scale and complexity that I don't see how anyone could sum them up properly in one chapter.
The final chapter before the long-awaited conclusions covers Australia, and I found it somewhat more interesting. According to Diamond, Australia is ill-suited for a large population because its land is infertile, and not much will grow there. Apparently Australia's lack of volcanic activity or glaciation has left its soil unusually infertile and unproductive compared to agricultural regions elsewhere in the world. Furthermore, breezes from the Indian Ocean have deposited salt on the surface for millennia, making it even more unsuitable for crops. The poor soil has been made worse by improper watering techniques, which have drawn up more salt from beneath the surface. The inappropriate promotion of the grazing of domesticated animals and the introduction of rabbits have made farming difficult in some regions, and irregular droughts make some regions undesirable for sustained agricultural use. The infertile soil also makes fishing in rivers and coastal waters comparatively unproductive, since water is dependent on land nutrients for the support of aquatic organisms. Australia also faces economic challenges because of its distance from other developed markets, and it has until recently maintained a handicapping identity with Britain and Ireland at the exclusion of much closer markets in Asia. From a pollution standpoint, mining is the dominant force.
I have been spending a lot of time on this book because I find it important. Hopefully I haven't bored you to death by describing it as I go. There are still over a hundred pages left, in which Diamond will argue his conclusions. I expect to read that shortly and then wrap up my comments in a few days on my next post.
The Dominican Republic had some natural advantages with respect to sustainability. Positioned on the eastern end of the island, which has mountains in the center and weather systems moving from the east, it gets more rain than Haiti and has rivers suitable for hydroelectric power. Although both countries have been led by brutal, corrupt dictators for decades, the dictators in the Dominican Republic were able to enrich themselves even more by establishing a variety of industries from which to pocket money. They eventually figured out that deforestation was not in their interest, and the Dominican Republic is now far more wooded than Haiti.
Both countries are extremely poor compared to developed countries, but Haiti significantly more so. At the time this book was published in 2005, Diamond thought the outlook was especially bleak for Haiti, and that was before the earthquake of 2010.
As if I wanted more information, the next chapter covers China, which is familiar to me because it is in the news all of the time. Obviously there are pollution and sustainability issues there, with its large population and high rate of economic growth. I didn't think Diamond had much new to tell me here, but the problems associated with China are so large in scale and complexity that I don't see how anyone could sum them up properly in one chapter.
The final chapter before the long-awaited conclusions covers Australia, and I found it somewhat more interesting. According to Diamond, Australia is ill-suited for a large population because its land is infertile, and not much will grow there. Apparently Australia's lack of volcanic activity or glaciation has left its soil unusually infertile and unproductive compared to agricultural regions elsewhere in the world. Furthermore, breezes from the Indian Ocean have deposited salt on the surface for millennia, making it even more unsuitable for crops. The poor soil has been made worse by improper watering techniques, which have drawn up more salt from beneath the surface. The inappropriate promotion of the grazing of domesticated animals and the introduction of rabbits have made farming difficult in some regions, and irregular droughts make some regions undesirable for sustained agricultural use. The infertile soil also makes fishing in rivers and coastal waters comparatively unproductive, since water is dependent on land nutrients for the support of aquatic organisms. Australia also faces economic challenges because of its distance from other developed markets, and it has until recently maintained a handicapping identity with Britain and Ireland at the exclusion of much closer markets in Asia. From a pollution standpoint, mining is the dominant force.
I have been spending a lot of time on this book because I find it important. Hopefully I haven't bored you to death by describing it as I go. There are still over a hundred pages left, in which Diamond will argue his conclusions. I expect to read that shortly and then wrap up my comments in a few days on my next post.
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Collapse IV
I'm taking my time on Collapse because it is rich in detail and I would like to acquire a good understanding of it. If you will recall, one of the main reasons why I have this blog is that it allows me to ruminate over subjects for as long as I wish, without the distractions and annoyances that one routinely encounters on the Internet.
After Greenland, Diamond switches to some success stories. In the New Guinea highlands people have been living sustainably ever since they first arrived – about 46,000 years ago. The interior is close to the equator, and at the higher elevation rain and soil provide a suitable environment for crop growth. The natives have been practicing plant domestication for about 7000 years. Diamond stresses the local nature of their decision-making, and how, through trial and error, they found plants suitable for cultivation, soil enrichment methods and locally appropriate irrigation techniques. They need wood for multiple purposes and long ago recognized the problems associated with deforestation. To prevent it they identified a species of casuarina tree that they cultivate in groves to meet their needs. Diamond seems to like the fact that decisions are made at the individual level, based on common sense and experience, and that in this instance the natives are so finely attuned to their environment that they can manage it better than agriculturally trained Westerners. The knowledge they've accumulated over thousands of years is passed from one generation to the next. However, recent developments such as public health measures, new crops and declines in war and infanticide are currently causing unsustainable population growth.
Another success story is the small South Pacific island of Tikopia. The natural conditions for sustainability are somewhat better than those of Easter Island, and the natives have independently developed techniques to keep it so. Like the New Guinea highlanders, they cultivate the land responsibly. Because they have lived through many cycles of food shortage, they are keenly aware of the importance of population control:
Tikopia parents feel that it is wrong for them to continue to give birth to children of their own once their eldest son has reached marriageable age, or to have more children than a number variously given as four children, or one boy and a girl, or one boy and one or two girls.
Of traditional Tikopia's seven methods of population regulation, the simplest was contraception by coitus interruptus. Another method was abortion, induced by pressing the belly, or placing hot stones on the belly, of a pregnant woman near term. Alternatively, infanticide was carried out by burying alive, smothering, or turning a newborn infant on its face. Younger sons of families poor in land remained celibate, and many among the resulting surplus of marriageable women also remained celibate rather than enter into polygamous marriages. (Celibacy on Tikopia means not having children, and does not preclude having sex by coitus interruptus and then resorting to abortion or infanticide if necessary.) Still another method was suicide, of which there were seven known cases by hanging (six men and one woman) and 12 (all of them women) by swimming out to sea between 1929 and 1952. Much commoner than such explicit suicide was "virtual suicide" by setting out on dangerous overseas voyages, which claimed the lives of 81 men and three women between 1929 and 1952.
The seventh method consisted of one clan killing or driving off the island another clan during a major food shortage. After the arrival of Europeans, the population began to grow above historical levels, and instead of these population control methods, Tikopia's chiefs now simply limit the number of residents to 1115, which was sustainable in the past. The option to live somewhere else may have replaced the traditional methods of population control.
The remainder of the positive chapter focuses on Japan, which identified its deforestation problem in the seventeenth century. From that time onward the shogun strictly regulated forestry practices in a top-down, authoritarian system, which has worked up to the present. Other countries, such as France and Germany, have followed suit and similarly manage their forests at the federal level.
The next section of the book discusses modern calamities. The first chapter covers the Rwandan genocide of 1994 in some detail. Rwanda is in a region well-suited to growing agricultural crops, but is hampered by a low rate of food production and a high rate of population growth. Diamond goes to great pains to avoid coming across as a Malthusian reductionist who sees the situation deterministically, but that seems to me to be the primary dynamic. To be sure, ethnic tensions and political opportunism were significant factors, but they may have been less significant if the population had been well-fed to begin with. Because of overcrowding, civil life had been contentious for several years, with farms too small to support families and few job opportunities off the farms. Judging from who killed whom, the Hutu-Tutsi enmity was only part of the picture. Hutus killed not just Tutsis, but other Hutus and Pygmies. Moreover, the Hutus and Tutsis had lived together and intermarried. From reading this chapter, it seems to me that the Rwandan genocide might more accurately be called a spontaneous, violent population reduction caused by political opportunism in conjunction with oppressive survival conditions related to malnourishment and overpopulation. Unfortunately, the genocide did not permanently solve the population problem, since no systemic change was made, and the population is still booming.
After Greenland, Diamond switches to some success stories. In the New Guinea highlands people have been living sustainably ever since they first arrived – about 46,000 years ago. The interior is close to the equator, and at the higher elevation rain and soil provide a suitable environment for crop growth. The natives have been practicing plant domestication for about 7000 years. Diamond stresses the local nature of their decision-making, and how, through trial and error, they found plants suitable for cultivation, soil enrichment methods and locally appropriate irrigation techniques. They need wood for multiple purposes and long ago recognized the problems associated with deforestation. To prevent it they identified a species of casuarina tree that they cultivate in groves to meet their needs. Diamond seems to like the fact that decisions are made at the individual level, based on common sense and experience, and that in this instance the natives are so finely attuned to their environment that they can manage it better than agriculturally trained Westerners. The knowledge they've accumulated over thousands of years is passed from one generation to the next. However, recent developments such as public health measures, new crops and declines in war and infanticide are currently causing unsustainable population growth.
Another success story is the small South Pacific island of Tikopia. The natural conditions for sustainability are somewhat better than those of Easter Island, and the natives have independently developed techniques to keep it so. Like the New Guinea highlanders, they cultivate the land responsibly. Because they have lived through many cycles of food shortage, they are keenly aware of the importance of population control:
Tikopia parents feel that it is wrong for them to continue to give birth to children of their own once their eldest son has reached marriageable age, or to have more children than a number variously given as four children, or one boy and a girl, or one boy and one or two girls.
Of traditional Tikopia's seven methods of population regulation, the simplest was contraception by coitus interruptus. Another method was abortion, induced by pressing the belly, or placing hot stones on the belly, of a pregnant woman near term. Alternatively, infanticide was carried out by burying alive, smothering, or turning a newborn infant on its face. Younger sons of families poor in land remained celibate, and many among the resulting surplus of marriageable women also remained celibate rather than enter into polygamous marriages. (Celibacy on Tikopia means not having children, and does not preclude having sex by coitus interruptus and then resorting to abortion or infanticide if necessary.) Still another method was suicide, of which there were seven known cases by hanging (six men and one woman) and 12 (all of them women) by swimming out to sea between 1929 and 1952. Much commoner than such explicit suicide was "virtual suicide" by setting out on dangerous overseas voyages, which claimed the lives of 81 men and three women between 1929 and 1952.
The seventh method consisted of one clan killing or driving off the island another clan during a major food shortage. After the arrival of Europeans, the population began to grow above historical levels, and instead of these population control methods, Tikopia's chiefs now simply limit the number of residents to 1115, which was sustainable in the past. The option to live somewhere else may have replaced the traditional methods of population control.
The remainder of the positive chapter focuses on Japan, which identified its deforestation problem in the seventeenth century. From that time onward the shogun strictly regulated forestry practices in a top-down, authoritarian system, which has worked up to the present. Other countries, such as France and Germany, have followed suit and similarly manage their forests at the federal level.
The next section of the book discusses modern calamities. The first chapter covers the Rwandan genocide of 1994 in some detail. Rwanda is in a region well-suited to growing agricultural crops, but is hampered by a low rate of food production and a high rate of population growth. Diamond goes to great pains to avoid coming across as a Malthusian reductionist who sees the situation deterministically, but that seems to me to be the primary dynamic. To be sure, ethnic tensions and political opportunism were significant factors, but they may have been less significant if the population had been well-fed to begin with. Because of overcrowding, civil life had been contentious for several years, with farms too small to support families and few job opportunities off the farms. Judging from who killed whom, the Hutu-Tutsi enmity was only part of the picture. Hutus killed not just Tutsis, but other Hutus and Pygmies. Moreover, the Hutus and Tutsis had lived together and intermarried. From reading this chapter, it seems to me that the Rwandan genocide might more accurately be called a spontaneous, violent population reduction caused by political opportunism in conjunction with oppressive survival conditions related to malnourishment and overpopulation. Unfortunately, the genocide did not permanently solve the population problem, since no systemic change was made, and the population is still booming.
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Collapse III
The next few chapters of the book cover the Anasazi in the American Southwest, the Mayans in Mexico and Central America and the Viking settlements in the North Atlantic. In the case of the Anasazi, the collapse had multiple causes according to Diamond. Those included environmental destruction, climate change, breakdowns in internal trade and political dysfunction. The Mayan collapse was much larger than any of the others considered so far in the book and affected at least five million people. Diamond identifies five strands to this collapse: Malthusian overpopulation and food shortages, deforestation and erosion, fighting, climate change and political failure to solve the other four problems, which he thinks were solvable.
Far more space is devoted to the Vikings, in part because they had several settlements and different outcomes in each settlement. The Viking expansion began in about 800 A.D. with a succession of raids on countries near Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Eventually, the easy pickings ended when the victims took stronger measures to defend themselves, and the Vikings thereafter established permanent residence in several locations, including Russia, Normandy, England, Ireland and the Faeroe, Shetland and Orkney Islands. Over time they were absorbed by the local populations and lost all of their connections with their homelands.
The Norwegian ventures far out into the Atlantic became progressively less successful. On Iceland they interbred with the Celtic inhabitants and attempted to replicate farm life in Norway. The island is volcanic and the soil is more sensitive than that of Norway. Soon they had deforested it, and the volcanic soil was eroded away by the grazing of cattle and sheep. In this case the settlers were able to survive by turning to fishing for sustenance, and they increasingly relied on trade with Norway to support their economy, which has remained healthy up to the present.
Conditions in Greenland were far less favorable. Its climate is colder and more variable than that of Iceland or Norway, and raising cattle and sheep there is a significant challenge, since that damages what little agricultural land there is. Often a cold or foggy summer meant that there would not be enough hay to feed the cows during the winter. Apparently their cows were tiny – only four feet tall. They also faced the mini-ice-age which struck Europe during medieval times and were further isolated when the bubonic plague killed half of the population in Norway. Although life there would have been difficult for anyone, Diamond faults the Norse for inflexibly adhering to familiar European practices which didn't fit their immediate circumstances. For reasons which aren't clear, they didn't consume much fish, which was one of the most abundant food sources in the region. They preferred beef and venison, which became delicacies. By that time the Vikings had converted to Christianity, which caused the Greenlanders to allocate their scarce resources inappropriately. They built a cathedral, and their priests and upper class lived luxuriously. Furthermore, they failed to learn from the Inuit, whom they ran into in the latter part of their stay in Greenland. The Inuit were far more skilled than they were at hunting some of the local species and could survive without wooden buildings and metal weapons or tools. Their kayaks were engineering marvels which gave them access to a wide hunting range. They could have helped the Norse hunt different prey or obtain walrus tusks, which were extremely valuable in Europe before elephant tusks became available. However, the Norse paid little attention to the Inuit and seemed to think that they were animals: they killed one to see how much it would bleed. In some sense they were successful in that they managed to survive there for 450 years, but in the end they all starved to death.
The Norse in Greenland made westward trips to North America and attempted to start a settlement in Newfoundland. However, as was the case with the Inuit, they had little interest in the Native Americans and created a hostile environment by killing them on contact. Thus, although they returned occasionally to obtain wood, their North American settlements were abandoned because they became unsafe for habitation. Diamond points out that it was not until 1492, with the arrival of Columbus, that Europeans began to trade with Native Americans and take advantage of them in the pursuit of their own goals.
I am enjoying Diamond's methodology and the vast resources that he has available, of which he is discussing only a small part. This is a daunting topic that covers several unfamiliar cultures over hundreds of years each. Although it is a long book, I am hoping that the lessons he draws at the end will make the effort worthwhile. So far I am finding little with which to disagree in his theories. My only complaint is that he does not consider the idea that the Inuit may, besides their particular skills, have a selective advantage living in the Arctic region because of the physical characteristics of their bodies, which may have made them better adapted to cold climates than the Norwegians. Apparently such thoughts are still considered to be racist nonsense on college campuses.
Far more space is devoted to the Vikings, in part because they had several settlements and different outcomes in each settlement. The Viking expansion began in about 800 A.D. with a succession of raids on countries near Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Eventually, the easy pickings ended when the victims took stronger measures to defend themselves, and the Vikings thereafter established permanent residence in several locations, including Russia, Normandy, England, Ireland and the Faeroe, Shetland and Orkney Islands. Over time they were absorbed by the local populations and lost all of their connections with their homelands.
The Norwegian ventures far out into the Atlantic became progressively less successful. On Iceland they interbred with the Celtic inhabitants and attempted to replicate farm life in Norway. The island is volcanic and the soil is more sensitive than that of Norway. Soon they had deforested it, and the volcanic soil was eroded away by the grazing of cattle and sheep. In this case the settlers were able to survive by turning to fishing for sustenance, and they increasingly relied on trade with Norway to support their economy, which has remained healthy up to the present.
Conditions in Greenland were far less favorable. Its climate is colder and more variable than that of Iceland or Norway, and raising cattle and sheep there is a significant challenge, since that damages what little agricultural land there is. Often a cold or foggy summer meant that there would not be enough hay to feed the cows during the winter. Apparently their cows were tiny – only four feet tall. They also faced the mini-ice-age which struck Europe during medieval times and were further isolated when the bubonic plague killed half of the population in Norway. Although life there would have been difficult for anyone, Diamond faults the Norse for inflexibly adhering to familiar European practices which didn't fit their immediate circumstances. For reasons which aren't clear, they didn't consume much fish, which was one of the most abundant food sources in the region. They preferred beef and venison, which became delicacies. By that time the Vikings had converted to Christianity, which caused the Greenlanders to allocate their scarce resources inappropriately. They built a cathedral, and their priests and upper class lived luxuriously. Furthermore, they failed to learn from the Inuit, whom they ran into in the latter part of their stay in Greenland. The Inuit were far more skilled than they were at hunting some of the local species and could survive without wooden buildings and metal weapons or tools. Their kayaks were engineering marvels which gave them access to a wide hunting range. They could have helped the Norse hunt different prey or obtain walrus tusks, which were extremely valuable in Europe before elephant tusks became available. However, the Norse paid little attention to the Inuit and seemed to think that they were animals: they killed one to see how much it would bleed. In some sense they were successful in that they managed to survive there for 450 years, but in the end they all starved to death.
The Norse in Greenland made westward trips to North America and attempted to start a settlement in Newfoundland. However, as was the case with the Inuit, they had little interest in the Native Americans and created a hostile environment by killing them on contact. Thus, although they returned occasionally to obtain wood, their North American settlements were abandoned because they became unsafe for habitation. Diamond points out that it was not until 1492, with the arrival of Columbus, that Europeans began to trade with Native Americans and take advantage of them in the pursuit of their own goals.
I am enjoying Diamond's methodology and the vast resources that he has available, of which he is discussing only a small part. This is a daunting topic that covers several unfamiliar cultures over hundreds of years each. Although it is a long book, I am hoping that the lessons he draws at the end will make the effort worthwhile. So far I am finding little with which to disagree in his theories. My only complaint is that he does not consider the idea that the Inuit may, besides their particular skills, have a selective advantage living in the Arctic region because of the physical characteristics of their bodies, which may have made them better adapted to cold climates than the Norwegians. Apparently such thoughts are still considered to be racist nonsense on college campuses.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Collapse II
Although I'm not exactly speeding through this book, I am finding it interesting and informative. The next chapters cover four islands in eastern Polynesia. I was particularly interested in Easter Island, because I read Kon-Tiki, by Thor Heyerdahl, many years ago. With its unusual statues, Easter Island has long been the subject of fanciful speculation. Now, after years of painstaking archaeological and anthropological research, a much more accurate picture of the island's history has emerged, and this is a testament to the value of the plodding work of scientists.
It appears that Polynesians first arrived at Easter Island in about 900 A.D. They were skilled at island-hopping, and ordinarily they would travel between islands after they had settled on a new one. However, in this case, because of the island's remote location, they had little or no contact with outsiders until 1722, when Europeans discovered it. At that time the population was estimated to have been about 2,000. Research indicates that there had been wide fluctuations in the population over time. Once there may have been 15,000 inhabitants. After several bouts of introduced smallpox and the kidnapping of islanders by Peruvian slave-traders, the population was reduced to 111 in 1872.
Within the scheme of this book, Easter Island is of special interest, because it provides an example of a culturally homogeneous group with ample natural resources, a suitable climate and no external threats which nevertheless failed. If the Polynesians who landed there had maintained an appropriate order they could have flourished indefinitely without the interference of outsiders. The island's physical features and climate were not as favorable as those of some other Polynesian islands but still produced a hospitable environment. The social order seems to have been based on ancestor worship, with the island divided into a pie in which each slice represented a clan associated with particular ancestors. The ancestors were worshiped in the form of the large statues that the islanders produced. These statues consumed a considerable portion of their labor and resources and contributed to the eventual deforestation of the island. As conditions worsened, apparently they built larger and larger statues and bases, which probably accelerated the collapse. In the end, there wasn't much left to eat, and they resorted to cannibalism and rats for meat. The evidence indicates that the forest was once thick with large trees, and that those trees were at least in part cut down for use in moving the statues from the quarry where they were carved to their final positions.
Diamond isn't doing much theorizing in these sections of the book and is postponing that until later chapters. However, he hints that the large statues conferred social status not unlike the trophy homes in the Bitterroot Valley and among his wealthy neighbors in Los Angeles. With my limited knowledge, I am inclined to think that the Easter Islanders' lack of contact with the outside world may have had an effect similar to that of a person who is socially isolated for a long period of time and begins to adopt ideas of questionable merit or becomes delusional due to the absence of critical feedback. Although at one time the islanders may have constituted a cohesive group, the need for individuals to differentiate themselves probably contributed to unnecessary rivalry between and within clans that ultimately led to social disintegration. Also, this may be an example of human nature in which, under certain circumstances, people tend to double down on bad ideas or false statements when challenged. Thus, when the statues didn't seem to be working their magic, the islanders built bigger ones, and when Donald Trump is publicly accused of lying, he simply tells a bigger lie. My inference here is that humans are not well-suited to an Eden-like existence, and sooner or later conditions tend to worsen even in the absence of harmful external pressures. Diamond suggests that Easter Island may be an early example of the kind of dystopian future that we may have to look forward to and will probably elaborate on that later in the book.
It appears that Polynesians first arrived at Easter Island in about 900 A.D. They were skilled at island-hopping, and ordinarily they would travel between islands after they had settled on a new one. However, in this case, because of the island's remote location, they had little or no contact with outsiders until 1722, when Europeans discovered it. At that time the population was estimated to have been about 2,000. Research indicates that there had been wide fluctuations in the population over time. Once there may have been 15,000 inhabitants. After several bouts of introduced smallpox and the kidnapping of islanders by Peruvian slave-traders, the population was reduced to 111 in 1872.
Within the scheme of this book, Easter Island is of special interest, because it provides an example of a culturally homogeneous group with ample natural resources, a suitable climate and no external threats which nevertheless failed. If the Polynesians who landed there had maintained an appropriate order they could have flourished indefinitely without the interference of outsiders. The island's physical features and climate were not as favorable as those of some other Polynesian islands but still produced a hospitable environment. The social order seems to have been based on ancestor worship, with the island divided into a pie in which each slice represented a clan associated with particular ancestors. The ancestors were worshiped in the form of the large statues that the islanders produced. These statues consumed a considerable portion of their labor and resources and contributed to the eventual deforestation of the island. As conditions worsened, apparently they built larger and larger statues and bases, which probably accelerated the collapse. In the end, there wasn't much left to eat, and they resorted to cannibalism and rats for meat. The evidence indicates that the forest was once thick with large trees, and that those trees were at least in part cut down for use in moving the statues from the quarry where they were carved to their final positions.
Diamond isn't doing much theorizing in these sections of the book and is postponing that until later chapters. However, he hints that the large statues conferred social status not unlike the trophy homes in the Bitterroot Valley and among his wealthy neighbors in Los Angeles. With my limited knowledge, I am inclined to think that the Easter Islanders' lack of contact with the outside world may have had an effect similar to that of a person who is socially isolated for a long period of time and begins to adopt ideas of questionable merit or becomes delusional due to the absence of critical feedback. Although at one time the islanders may have constituted a cohesive group, the need for individuals to differentiate themselves probably contributed to unnecessary rivalry between and within clans that ultimately led to social disintegration. Also, this may be an example of human nature in which, under certain circumstances, people tend to double down on bad ideas or false statements when challenged. Thus, when the statues didn't seem to be working their magic, the islanders built bigger ones, and when Donald Trump is publicly accused of lying, he simply tells a bigger lie. My inference here is that humans are not well-suited to an Eden-like existence, and sooner or later conditions tend to worsen even in the absence of harmful external pressures. Diamond suggests that Easter Island may be an early example of the kind of dystopian future that we may have to look forward to and will probably elaborate on that later in the book.
Thursday, March 2, 2017
Collapse I
I've finally started to read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond, and will comment on it as I go. Diamond is a clear and methodical writer, and I am finding his perspective appealing and somewhat similar to my own. In this book he examines in detail the life histories of societies that developed and eventually collapsed for one reason or another. There is an unusual open-mindedness about it because he doesn't hesitate to compare contemporary, well-understood cultures with ancient cultures about which little is known.
The first culture discussed in detail is located in the Bitterroot Valley of southwestern Montana. Diamond knows the most about this one, because he has been vacationing there since the 1950's and has lifelong friends who live there permanently. It is not exactly a collapsed society, but it has undergone changes over the years and now bears little resemblance to what it once was. Diamond's knowledge of various fields comes in handy for a book like this, because such knowledge is necessary for a full understanding of what has transpired. He knows history, geography, geology, mining, forestry, agriculture, climate change, environmental reclamation, sociology and economics fairly well, and this gives the book a broader perspective than most writers would be able to pull off. Furthermore, he knows and loves the people there and can understand their points of view even when he disagrees with them. Instead of the gratuitous insertion of local color that most science writers resort to, he fills several pages with his friends' descriptions of their lives in their own words. This way, Diamond's narrative has a very human quality, which is fine with me, though at heart I identify more closely with the style of E.O. Wilson, who clearly maintains a biological perspective even when writing about humans. Where Diamond might emphasize the struggle of settlers in a harsh environment, Wilson might be more inclined to portray the settlers as an invasive species, which is probably a more appropriate method if you view the environment as an ecosystem.
The region was settled by farmers and ranchers, but the dry climate and cool temperatures were not optimal for those purposes. Improper farming practices could damage the soil by raising its salt content, and it was a hard life for the early settlers. Forest products were also at a disadvantage, because trees grow more slowly there than in other areas. Earlier practices of cutting down all of the large trees made forest management more difficult, since the tall trees are the only ones that can withstand fires. In the past, fires would consume the underbrush and the tall trees would survive, but now a fire can destroy an entire forest. Mining, particularly copper mining, was the major local industry, but has died off due to competition from other parts of the world. Waste residues from mines have been partially cleaned up, but in some cases the pollution from a mine costs so much to remove that there may have been no economic advantage to opening the mine in the first place if you include the cleanup costs. Besides this pollution, the availability of clean water has been hampered by global warming, which is rapidly melting the glaciers to the north.
With the mines gone, most lumber coming from Canada and farming and ranching practically dead in the region, the locals are generally poor. Because farm work is so hard, not many of the children born there stick around, and many farms are being sold. Diamond has one friend who operates a large, modern dairy, but it remains to be seen whether it will be financially viable in the future. The main change in the local economy has been the influx of wealthy, conservative Californians who build trophy homes there and stick around for a few weeks a year. Some of them live in a large, gated community and hardly interact with the locals at all. They avoid paying Montana taxes by living there less than half the year. This has put further pressure on farmers by driving up land prices, and they are increasingly working in the tourist industry. The main asset of the region is now its physical beauty, which attracts tourists.
The local culture has taken a complex turn. The natives tend to be anti-government rural conservatives who despise the federal government even though they are net recipients of federal benefits. They don't want to pay for anything, including forest management, environmental cleanup and failing dams. They have nothing in common with the Californian conservatives except enjoyment of the outdoors and tax avoidance. The public schools are so underfunded that none of the Californians send their children to school in Montana.
The book so far has been of much interest to me, because the events described in Montana have a lot in common with historical events in Vermont, where I currently live. Vermont was first a source of masts for British ships before the American Revolution and was later settled by farmers. Most of the forests were cut down, and farming did not prove to be viable for the majority. Many of the farmers left the state, and some of them probably ended up in Montana. There wasn't much mining here, but there were large marble and granite industries, which have mostly died off. A major difference would be the existence of textile mills here during the nineteenth century, but those are long gone now. Like the Bitterroot Valley, Vermont's economy depends heavily on tourism. In this case many of the tourists live in nearby states and the ones who decide to move here are not necessarily wealthy. There are a few trophy houses, but many of the outsiders who move here, Bernie Sanders for example, become highly engaged with the state and its government, unlike most of the Californians in Montana. Vermont's proximity to Montreal and Boston makes it less physically isolated than the Bitterroot Valley, and even though both have become tourist destinations, Vermont's tourist industry is probably more sustainable, because it doesn't depend on a few rich people flying in in private jets.
The first culture discussed in detail is located in the Bitterroot Valley of southwestern Montana. Diamond knows the most about this one, because he has been vacationing there since the 1950's and has lifelong friends who live there permanently. It is not exactly a collapsed society, but it has undergone changes over the years and now bears little resemblance to what it once was. Diamond's knowledge of various fields comes in handy for a book like this, because such knowledge is necessary for a full understanding of what has transpired. He knows history, geography, geology, mining, forestry, agriculture, climate change, environmental reclamation, sociology and economics fairly well, and this gives the book a broader perspective than most writers would be able to pull off. Furthermore, he knows and loves the people there and can understand their points of view even when he disagrees with them. Instead of the gratuitous insertion of local color that most science writers resort to, he fills several pages with his friends' descriptions of their lives in their own words. This way, Diamond's narrative has a very human quality, which is fine with me, though at heart I identify more closely with the style of E.O. Wilson, who clearly maintains a biological perspective even when writing about humans. Where Diamond might emphasize the struggle of settlers in a harsh environment, Wilson might be more inclined to portray the settlers as an invasive species, which is probably a more appropriate method if you view the environment as an ecosystem.
The region was settled by farmers and ranchers, but the dry climate and cool temperatures were not optimal for those purposes. Improper farming practices could damage the soil by raising its salt content, and it was a hard life for the early settlers. Forest products were also at a disadvantage, because trees grow more slowly there than in other areas. Earlier practices of cutting down all of the large trees made forest management more difficult, since the tall trees are the only ones that can withstand fires. In the past, fires would consume the underbrush and the tall trees would survive, but now a fire can destroy an entire forest. Mining, particularly copper mining, was the major local industry, but has died off due to competition from other parts of the world. Waste residues from mines have been partially cleaned up, but in some cases the pollution from a mine costs so much to remove that there may have been no economic advantage to opening the mine in the first place if you include the cleanup costs. Besides this pollution, the availability of clean water has been hampered by global warming, which is rapidly melting the glaciers to the north.
With the mines gone, most lumber coming from Canada and farming and ranching practically dead in the region, the locals are generally poor. Because farm work is so hard, not many of the children born there stick around, and many farms are being sold. Diamond has one friend who operates a large, modern dairy, but it remains to be seen whether it will be financially viable in the future. The main change in the local economy has been the influx of wealthy, conservative Californians who build trophy homes there and stick around for a few weeks a year. Some of them live in a large, gated community and hardly interact with the locals at all. They avoid paying Montana taxes by living there less than half the year. This has put further pressure on farmers by driving up land prices, and they are increasingly working in the tourist industry. The main asset of the region is now its physical beauty, which attracts tourists.
The local culture has taken a complex turn. The natives tend to be anti-government rural conservatives who despise the federal government even though they are net recipients of federal benefits. They don't want to pay for anything, including forest management, environmental cleanup and failing dams. They have nothing in common with the Californian conservatives except enjoyment of the outdoors and tax avoidance. The public schools are so underfunded that none of the Californians send their children to school in Montana.
The book so far has been of much interest to me, because the events described in Montana have a lot in common with historical events in Vermont, where I currently live. Vermont was first a source of masts for British ships before the American Revolution and was later settled by farmers. Most of the forests were cut down, and farming did not prove to be viable for the majority. Many of the farmers left the state, and some of them probably ended up in Montana. There wasn't much mining here, but there were large marble and granite industries, which have mostly died off. A major difference would be the existence of textile mills here during the nineteenth century, but those are long gone now. Like the Bitterroot Valley, Vermont's economy depends heavily on tourism. In this case many of the tourists live in nearby states and the ones who decide to move here are not necessarily wealthy. There are a few trophy houses, but many of the outsiders who move here, Bernie Sanders for example, become highly engaged with the state and its government, unlike most of the Californians in Montana. Vermont's proximity to Montreal and Boston makes it less physically isolated than the Bitterroot Valley, and even though both have become tourist destinations, Vermont's tourist industry is probably more sustainable, because it doesn't depend on a few rich people flying in in private jets.
Friday, February 24, 2017
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk seems like one of the best ideas I've heard in years. It is a fairly new organization and is based in Cambridge, UK. Recent articles in Wired profile its members and the specific risks that they study. For me, the Centre kills two birds with one stone: it attempts both to understand the universe and to identify the most serious risks facing mankind. What is unusual is that it studies actual threats that are often ignored by governments and profit-based organizations. One of the greatest weaknesses of capitalism is its emphasis on short time periods. Capitalists usually start by thinking that they can make money through their ideas and hard work, and that if all goes well they, their families and their descendants may benefit financially. Entrepreneurs don't typically give much thought to whether their company will be around in a hundred years or what its lasting impact might be. Capitalism encourages short-term thinking related to making money, which may explain why businessmen are often dismissive of the arts and sciences. Particularly in the U.S., it is common for them to focus on their work and to oversimplify other aspects of the world by assuming, for example, that God will take care of everything else. In extreme cases they may even believe that God favors business, with the implication that government should not interfere with it. Their thinking may be that God intended the U.S. to be the world's model for free enterprise. If you start from a theological point of view like this, the problems associated with climate change aren't necessarily ones for human resolution, since God's will is being followed, and he is the final arbiter on that question. It is therefore important to have independent researchers study existential risk, because the people who inhabit the main channels of power in the world are wedded to economic prosperity and may be indifferent to it or have conflicts of interest.
I enjoy reading through the list of risks. When I mention AI, I usually refer to it as a potential solution to problems, but it may also lead to catastrophic outcomes. There are a few conventional risks that are already well-publicized, such as pandemics, nuclear war, climate change, a collision with an asteroid and food shortages. Then there are obscure ones understood by few, such as the accidental annihilation of the universe during a particle accelerator experiment. I was particularly reassured by CSER's interest in tyrannical leaders. After Donald Trump was elected president, they met to discuss whether this constituted an existential threat. Many organizations are having a hard time coming to terms with the Trump presidency, and although the news has been filled with concerns about him since the election, conventional organizations are not well-positioned to make objective, public statements about him now that he is in power. Everyone has been pressured to treat Trump respectfully because he was elected in a democratic process, and many organizations are reluctant to publicly question his suitability or competence as a political leader.
Though it is hard to say how successful CSER will be, it is better than nothing for the risks that aren't generally studied. Their academic environment has both advantages and disadvantages. If the funding isn't predominantly from special interests, it may stand a better chance of producing useful, objective work than is the case with many other public or private research organizations. However, its affiliation with stodgy, careerist academics could entail some of the pitfalls that are common in academia. For example, given my opinion of academic philosophy, I think it unlikely that philosophers as a group will be helpful in this field.
I enjoy reading through the list of risks. When I mention AI, I usually refer to it as a potential solution to problems, but it may also lead to catastrophic outcomes. There are a few conventional risks that are already well-publicized, such as pandemics, nuclear war, climate change, a collision with an asteroid and food shortages. Then there are obscure ones understood by few, such as the accidental annihilation of the universe during a particle accelerator experiment. I was particularly reassured by CSER's interest in tyrannical leaders. After Donald Trump was elected president, they met to discuss whether this constituted an existential threat. Many organizations are having a hard time coming to terms with the Trump presidency, and although the news has been filled with concerns about him since the election, conventional organizations are not well-positioned to make objective, public statements about him now that he is in power. Everyone has been pressured to treat Trump respectfully because he was elected in a democratic process, and many organizations are reluctant to publicly question his suitability or competence as a political leader.
Though it is hard to say how successful CSER will be, it is better than nothing for the risks that aren't generally studied. Their academic environment has both advantages and disadvantages. If the funding isn't predominantly from special interests, it may stand a better chance of producing useful, objective work than is the case with many other public or private research organizations. However, its affiliation with stodgy, careerist academics could entail some of the pitfalls that are common in academia. For example, given my opinion of academic philosophy, I think it unlikely that philosophers as a group will be helpful in this field.
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Diary
I've been reading the current print edition of Nautilus, which contains an article by Michael Lewis titled "Bias in the ER." The medical doctor, Don Redelmeier, became interested in the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman on cognitive distortions and found that doctors are subject to the same errors as others and frequently misdiagnose patients. This was reassuring to me since I have avoided doctors for most of my life and hope to do so in the future. I also know people who have self-diagnosed and self-treated conditions that doctors were unable to identify. Apparently it is not uncommon for medical doctors to make extremely poor decisions.
For obvious reasons, I have been thinking recently about the competence of politicians. In the current literature about Trump, there are theories regarding the causes of his recent behavior that range from narcissistic personality disorder to early dementia to syphilis, but you don't necessarily need to find an exotic explanation in his case. I think that he is behaving much as he always has and has probably been incompetent outside a very narrow range of situations for most of his life. As far as I can tell, he was never particularly bright but was able to compensate for this by cultivating a veneer of success and by aggressively confronting his adversaries. He is a perfect of example of an alpha male who succeeds by intimidation where more competent people often fail. You might even say in this instance that Trump was elected by his fellow stupid alpha males who also think that they know more than they actually do.
The sad thing is that, because of general human incompetence, there is no alternative hero on the horizon who might rescue us from Trump. Think for a moment about Barack Obama. He was more cerebral than Trump and carefully mulled over his decisions, but that was not enough to make him an effective or memorable president. He inadvertently alienated the voters who prefer Trump's style, and while doing so he was unable to propose or implement ideas that might have set the country on a sustainable path to prosperity and equality. Obama's problem was that he looked, acted and thought like a neoliberal college professor, and his worldview was in some respects just as biased and limited as Trump's. The job of president is difficult, and it is probably too difficult for anyone to execute well at this stage in our civilization.
Besides the above reading, I watched a depressing but sobering French film called "The Measure of a Man," starring Vincent Lindon. It depicts a middle-aged married man who has a handicapped son and is struggling to find a job. His financial counselor advises him to take out a life insurance policy as a solution to his unemployment – he may die but at least his family would be provided for. He ends up as a store detective and hates it. The film clearly shows that the way the store is managed dehumanizes everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, both customers and employees, and is a better indictment of capitalism than one is likely to find in any American film. There has been a popular undercurrent in France that is sympathetic with communist rule, but nothing of that nature exists on any scale in the U.S. Ironically – and accurately – this film depicts the outcome of capitalism as similar to the dreaded communist outcome that Americans have been taught to fear through indoctrination since the 1950's. American politicians in both major parties are so far behind the curve that all they can do is mindlessly repeat how capitalism and liberty are the solution to all of the world's problems. Clearly they are not. Conceptually, Trump isn't entirely different from Obama or Hillary Clinton.
For obvious reasons, I have been thinking recently about the competence of politicians. In the current literature about Trump, there are theories regarding the causes of his recent behavior that range from narcissistic personality disorder to early dementia to syphilis, but you don't necessarily need to find an exotic explanation in his case. I think that he is behaving much as he always has and has probably been incompetent outside a very narrow range of situations for most of his life. As far as I can tell, he was never particularly bright but was able to compensate for this by cultivating a veneer of success and by aggressively confronting his adversaries. He is a perfect of example of an alpha male who succeeds by intimidation where more competent people often fail. You might even say in this instance that Trump was elected by his fellow stupid alpha males who also think that they know more than they actually do.
The sad thing is that, because of general human incompetence, there is no alternative hero on the horizon who might rescue us from Trump. Think for a moment about Barack Obama. He was more cerebral than Trump and carefully mulled over his decisions, but that was not enough to make him an effective or memorable president. He inadvertently alienated the voters who prefer Trump's style, and while doing so he was unable to propose or implement ideas that might have set the country on a sustainable path to prosperity and equality. Obama's problem was that he looked, acted and thought like a neoliberal college professor, and his worldview was in some respects just as biased and limited as Trump's. The job of president is difficult, and it is probably too difficult for anyone to execute well at this stage in our civilization.
Besides the above reading, I watched a depressing but sobering French film called "The Measure of a Man," starring Vincent Lindon. It depicts a middle-aged married man who has a handicapped son and is struggling to find a job. His financial counselor advises him to take out a life insurance policy as a solution to his unemployment – he may die but at least his family would be provided for. He ends up as a store detective and hates it. The film clearly shows that the way the store is managed dehumanizes everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, both customers and employees, and is a better indictment of capitalism than one is likely to find in any American film. There has been a popular undercurrent in France that is sympathetic with communist rule, but nothing of that nature exists on any scale in the U.S. Ironically – and accurately – this film depicts the outcome of capitalism as similar to the dreaded communist outcome that Americans have been taught to fear through indoctrination since the 1950's. American politicians in both major parties are so far behind the curve that all they can do is mindlessly repeat how capitalism and liberty are the solution to all of the world's problems. Clearly they are not. Conceptually, Trump isn't entirely different from Obama or Hillary Clinton.
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