Briefs

Review: Counterparts edited by Danielle McLaughlin

Well I never thought I’d say lawyers did anything useful but this little anthology of writing by Irish lawyers astounded me. Mostly short stories, a smattering of poetry intersperses the book and generally goes right over my head as poetry invariably does.

The stories are well written and reveal their authors as very humanistic people, not a quality I noticed in twenty years of dealing with corporate lawyers. The book pairs texts with a brief extract from a true court case (many of them recognisable from the newspaper) and finishes with a short note by the author on why he or she paired that case with his text, perhaps influence or resonance with the theme.

All of life is there: middle-class murderers, old-peoples homes, euthanasia, state torture. Hat’s off to Danielle McLaughlin for a great idea, well executed. The title is good too but I prefer mine!

Darkest Africa

Review: Exterminate All the Brutes by Sven Lindqvist

What a great read! I was well prepared for this book. I’ve read Conrad‘s Heart of Darkness, H.G.Wells’ War of the Worlds and Adam Hochschild‘s King Leopold’s Ghost. Sometimes I knew what I was reading, sometimes the deeper message eluded me.

Translated from the Swedish, Lindqvist writes a sort of journal of a trip in Saharan Africa where he reflects as he goes on the very dark history of European conquest there. The underlying theme is that the Holocaust is perceived as a Nazi invention but that its pedigree is perfectly European.  (Watching the news this evening on the white supremacist terrorist assault in New Zealand, and the journalist’s remark that it was the worst ever in the country, I couldn’t help smiling wryly at her innocence (or disingenuousness?) when I recalled that wholesale slaughter of the Maori people by British colonists in the 19th century which far exceeded this event). He describes how Germany was late to the field and how early German writers criticised their neighbours’ conquests while later ones then tried to modify the tone as Germany joined the race for territory.

The title is taken from Heart of Darkness.  If you haven’t read it, recall Apocalypse Now which was Francis Ford Coppola’s loose transfer of the book from the African Congo to Vietnam. Conrad was showing his disgust and his book pales in comparison to what was actually perpetrated by the British, the French and the Belgians. I hadn’t realised that Wells‘ War of the Worlds was another commentary on colonialism, the martians representing invaders with a technology unimaginably superior to ours. Lindqvist points out that the only defence the African’s had was malaria (just as the martians succumbed to bacteria).

The eugenics movement and the influence of Darwin is a disturbing theme.

The message of the book is not that we should open our eyes but that we know exactly what they (we!) did and we need to fix it.

Apart from being a very moving commentary, this book is written by a very fine writer who I could describe as almost poetic.

Cold War Aftermath

Review: The Despot’s Accomplice by Brian Klaus

From Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, the author cross-crosses the planet discussing democracy and the West’s generally well-intentioned, often ham-fisted attempts to promote it. Indeed he’s not at all afraid to point out where economic pragmatism causes the West to support regimes (e.g. Saudi Arabia) totally at odds with democracy.

The examples are diverse and very contemporary (published 2016) and extremely readable, which was a relief when dipping into a subject I don’t usually address.

The book offers 10 recipes for improving the promotion of democracy ranging from a few easy ones to some (e.g. golden parachutes for retiring despots) that are morally difficult to stomach but exceedingly well defended. The author is clearly both a moral philosopher and a pragmatist.

The anecdote about Burkino Faso (recipe 10) alone is worth the book.

I learned so much. I anticipate that members of the Asynchronists will fight for their turn to read this :-).

The Socratic Method

Review: The Grasshopper by Bernard Suits

Over the years I’ve encountered the Socratic Method in quite a number of texts. A case is made and defended using dialogues. I would say the dialogues are often corny but amusing and very effective at drawing out ideas and answering objections to them.

I like the method. I’ve met dialogues in books on mathematical logic (1), programming in Scheme (2), philosophy (3), and science (4) to name a few.

Right now, two of my current reads are in dialogue form. The second one probably won’t make it to this blog as the going is heavy, but the Grasshopper is surprisingly good fun and might please some of you as an example of the genre.

Apparently, Wittgenstein claimed that games as a category cannot be defined as they have nothing in common so the author decided to show that indeed they can. He proposes a surprisingly simple definition

playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles

and proceeds to defend it against an array of objections, usually posed in the form of silly, funny parables involving a mad cast (see image). Further, he argues convincingly that games are the only worthwhile occupation!

The introduction justly describes this as laugh-out-loud philosophy.

I enjoyed it as a very original and intelligent kind of book requiring no specialist knowledge.

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(1) Gödel, Escher, Bach (again!)

(2) The Little Schemer by Friedman

(3) Two New Sciences by Galileo

(4) Great Dialogues by Plato (naturally)

50 Shades of Enlightenment

Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts
The Dream of Enlightenment by Anthony Gottlieb
Two Fine Men by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

We often imagine we live at the most exciting time in history where change is constant and succeeding generations have entirely different life experiences. In previous centuries, change was slow. However, that’s not what my reading of the last several months tells me. I’ve become obsessed with the Enlightenment, an amazing time when the modern world was invented, where human rights mounted on the stage and science replaced religion. I’ve been reading it as philosophy, as history, as biography and even as adventure novel.

Gottlieb’s book is a decent roundup of the enlightenment thinkers, indispensable for me as I knew so little about them.  Pérez-Reverte’s novel describes two gentlemen travelling from Madrid to Paris in 1780 to buy all 28 volumes of Diderot’s proscribed Encylopédie and the efforts of the establishment, whose social and cultural hegemony was threatened by new ideas, to thwart them.

However the most daunting (800 pages) but immensely satisfying of the three books is Roberts’ amazing biography. Where I expected to be affronted by wild ambition, cruelty and arrogance, I encountered Enlightenment Man.  Yes, he was a military genius, but that’s of little interest to me. He was that thing, a benevolent dictator, which probably cuts little ice among 21st century liberals.  The thing is: he lasted long enough (16 years) to establish the ideals of the French Revolution which had been subverted in the Reign of Terror so that even after the restitution of the monarchy, they couldn’t be undone. This book makes it clear it was the genius of Napoleon and his ability to be interested in the minutiae of his world that allowed him create a legacy that endured. The most amazing discovery for me was his charisma and generosity. I liked him, most of the time.

So when we plan our Christmas lunch and do that “who from history would you invite?” thing, I want Napoleon there.

Go West Young Man

 

We sometimes claim our reading matter is western-centric. It was mentioned last week when we talked about The Silk Roads. I’ve just finished reading The Modern Mind by Peter Watson and this rather shocking comment is taken from the concluding chapter.

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

David Deutsch is a Professor of Physics at Oxford University, expert on Quantum Computation and proponent of the theory of the multiverse but his interests – and this book – go far outside the realm of physics and even science.

 

Why I Like it: Some books challenge your outlook – this one challenged mine more than most and in a very uplifting way.  Yes it’s a science book but also much more.  History, Philosophy, Ecology and Political Science.  Is man “A chemical scum on an average planet of a typical star on the fringes of a galaxy?” (Hawkins) – Deutsch argues convincingly that conscious beings are cosmically hugely significant.

It’s a very wide ranging book  –  some parts I’ve read with delight several time – others I’ve skimmed or not read at all.  Most of it is very accessible to the general reader – some a bit more difficult. Really interesting stuff on ecology, environmentalists, democracy, the scientific method, evolution, physics (of course), art

Above all,  this is a hugely positive book.  In fact he argues very convincingly that not only have we reason to take an optimistic approach to life but we have a duty to do so.

Really not your average science book