Category: Non fiction

  • The Sixth Extinction

    Elizabeth Kolbert

    A pandemic is probably the best time to read a book on mass extinctions. Or not, depending on taste. 

    But this is a book I thoroughly enjoyed, even though I am not really a big fan of nature – plants or animals or for that matter, some humans either! Some of it is because of the many, many things I learned, and some of it is the accessible narrative style of the author – it evoked the sense of curiosity that I had for science in general as a child, and I confess, infused that sense of romanticism in science that I haven’t seen in a long time. 

    It is scientifically interesting to see how concerned we are about the pandemic, when, earlier this century, a species of Chytrid fungi (a genus had to be created for it, and it is called Bd for short) systematically started killing of frogs across continents. Making many of them endangered species. Or the Geomyces destructans, that killed off bats to the tune of 6 million! 

    Until the end of the 18th century, the idea of extinction did not exist. It then moved to a “uniformist” view that each species struggled and vanished. Then the discovery of the asteroid impact happened. The current version accommodates both lines of thought- long periods of nothing happening and then one cataclysmic event. It involves oceans, rising and falling, tectonic shifts, global warming and cooling etc and yes, an asteroid too. On a related note, there is also a small parallel narrative on Darwin, The Origin of Species and how it weighed in on the extinction debate.

    The last 500 million years are divided into three eras, and a lot more periods. While there have been extinctions, in isolation and clusters, and mass extinctions occur every 26 -30 million years, the short list contains only the “big five”. The most famous one is the one that features the asteroid. That was the last one, which happened 66 million years ago, in the End Cretaceous period, leading to the extinction of 75% of species. The ones before were 201 million years ago -that led to the dominance of the dinosaurs, but killed 75% of species that existed then, 252 million years ago – the biggest one that knocked off 96% of all species, 375-360 million years ago – killing 70% of species, and 450-440 million years ago – 60-70% again. The sizes and descriptions of both the tiny organisms and the megafauna that lived, co-existed, and died is fascinating. 

    The name of the book, as you might have guessed, comes from the possibility of the sixth event that could be added to the big 5. From all the evidence so far, humans will most likely be the cause, but the twist is that we could be the victims too. In the context of the larger lifespan of earth, a short while ago, a species created a way to go beyond only the genetic code to store and distribute information. Language. They then found ways to communicate and collective think about and solve “problems”. And we’re here now. 

    The book gives a lot of food for thought, but more importantly, at least to me, invokes a sense of curiosity and awe. A lot thanks to science, and some because of the variety of places she visited to write this book. The moment she narrates, while on a tiny island at the edge of the Great Barrier reef under a starry sky – For a brief moment I felt I understood what it must have been like for an explorer like Cook to arrive at such a place, at the edge of the known world – sums up the effect of the book very well.

  • 12 Rules for Life

    Jordan B Peterson

    Though the book is categorised as “self help”, and has the kind of material that would qualify it for that label (if you’re so inclined), I read it more as a bunch of perspective on living and being. Or rather, Being, as the author prefers. And perspectives there are – the psychology professor and practitioner refers to the thoughts of everyone from Nietzsche, Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky to Milton and Jung. Not to mention theology – Tao, Buddha and especially the Bible play a part too. To the extent that even the Pareto principle gets connected to a Bible reference.

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  • Collapse

    Jared Diamond

    Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs & Steel ranks among my favourites. Insightful and full of perspectives. While that book was about how and why civilisations unfolded differently around the globe, this one is on why many of them collapsed. The author defines collapse as a”a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time.” He then uses a five point framework to analyse multiple examples, spanning time and geography. The five points are environmental changes, climate changes, hostile neighbours, decrease in trading partners, and finally, society’s response to the above. 

    The author starts with contemporary farms in Montana and then moves on to the Mayans in South America, the Easter Islands natives, the various Viking communities across continents, and the Native American Anasazi to apply the five point framework and understand the causes of their downfall, and sometimes survival. He then examines modern societies and their challenges – Rwanda, China, Australia, and the interesting case of neighbouring countries that went in opposite directions – The Dominican Republic and Haiti. Strangely, this is despite both countries having a history of dictators. 

    The last portion of the book delves into what caused societies to make disastrous decisions, and the impact of big businesses on the environment. The latter is not always a negative, and there are some excellent examples of large corporations realising that doing good can actually help the bottomline. There is also a very interesting section on the responsibility of individual consumers.

    While we still may not know exactly what happened, there is a fair amount of convincing logic in the author’s hypotheses on how and why civilisations collapsed. And it gets more interesting when we look at the problems we are facing now. On one hand, the scale of the problems are indeed much higher. But on the other, there have been technological advances that can aid us. How much of a counterbalance is one for the other? And as one of his students asks, what was the islander who cut down the last tree on Easter Island thinking as he was doing it? Are we too, frogs in boiling water? Do we have landscape amnesia which prevents us from seeing the changes around us? 

    The book is not easy though, and sometimes one wonders whether the depth of research shared in the book takes away from the narrative flow. However, if the subject is interesting to you, it’s a read that will enlighten.

  • The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

    Erving Goffman

    I picked the book up thanks to a post on “backstage” based on it – the stage is where we present ourselves to the world, and backstage is where we allow our true selves to just be. The context was how “social media” was shrinking the backstage area because we are always on show.

    I wondered how a 250-page book could be written on the subject of “presentation of self”, but realised the depths as soon as I had read a few pages of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. How we behave in the presence of others is indeed a fascinating subject. Goffman uses the metaphor of a theatrical performance to explore the nuances and interplay that occur in practically every interaction we have. A dramaturgical analysis. This interaction need not even be with another specific person but just with the world at large. For instance, he uses an example of how we present ourselves when stepping out on to a beach – our facial expression, the book we carry (or not), whether we go for a swim (or not). Just as an actor uses techniques to present a character, we give performances in everyday life to guide others’ impression of us. The expressions we “give” and the impressions we “give off”. Many stages (contexts), many props (subjects we talk about, clothes we wear, attitudes, beliefs etc) for many audiences. I realised that some are so ingrained that I have to really “step outside” to catch it. 

    It gets even more interesting when we consider that others are also doing the same thing. This leads to intriguing dynamics. It not only means we have to sometimes co-opt them, but that we also play a role in their performance. Teamwork, which involves many rules – in performances within and without- that we must conform to, if we want to stay a part of the team. Familiarity, solidarity and a working consensus on individual roles and interplay all lead to the creation of the team’s “mythology”. The audience is also a part of the performance and without their tacit agreement, the show would fall apart. There is also a “definition of situation” that all constituents must agree on. This not only plays out in social gatherings, but in society at large, which expects its performers to play a role. 

    “Impression management” is a very useful takeaway from The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Reality and perception not necessarily being the same. Not that we aren’t doing it already, but the nuances, and perspectives on the tool-kits we should make for ourselves. The “expressive control” for instance, the lack of which might give away a the believability of a performance. While The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life has been written more than half a century ago and social interactions have changed a lot since then, including the explosion of non face-to-face forms like the internet, there is a lot it offers in terms of perspective, lessons and actionable insights. It is not an easy read, and I have had to re-read paragraphs and pages a few times, but it is definitely worth the effort.

    The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

  • Dark Money

    Jane Mayer

    Across the world, the gap between the 1% and the remaining continues to widen, and the US is arguably the best example of this. How is society at large allowing this to happen, why aren’t politicians doing something about it? After all, elected representatives of common folks are supposed to work for their welfare, how is that structure failing? 

    In Dark Money, Jane Mayer provides an insightful and well researched analysis of how libertarian industrialists like the Koch brothers are systematically undermining the effectiveness of the US electoral system by flooding it with what they have in abundance – money! Hundreds of millions of dollars spent to impose their worldview on how government should be run. The “simple” worldview being that government oversight of business is an encroachment of freedom! In this world, social welfare and labour protection are unnecessary expenditure, while taxes on wealth should be minimal. Not that I am a theist, but Godless America! 

    The narrative starts in the late 40s, during the formative years of the Koch brothers. Influenced by LeFevre’s “government is a disease masquerading as its own cure”, Charles Koch’s political evolution began early, and with help from like-minded and wealthy others, it led to a well oiled machinery that operated outside the world facing political establishment, and yet has now managed to practically take over the Republican Party. 

    From the 70s, when the rich got a sense that they were being over-regulated, they had started a privately financed war to ensure their philosophy won. A big a-ha moment was the result of an understanding of how to use their riches to preserve their elite status, beyond the obvious means. This was the weaponisation of philanthropy, and the book provides the background on some prominent players like Richard Mellon Scaife, Joh M. Olin and the Bradley Brothers. The steady formation of the Kochtopus machinery is a fascinating read, and one has to admire the strategic brilliance that is at work here. 

    It’s not just ensuring the preferred candidates win, or even that only preferred candidates would stand for election. It goes well beyond, and starts at the grassroots. Using the anonymity of charitable organisations, they went systematically to the bottom of the value chain and thereby started funding online high school education, academia, think tanks, influencing public policy, lawmaking (including the judiciary via seminars and junkets), creating and stoking political activism – Tea Party agitations for instance, spreading alt truth like “climate change is a myth” by spending millions on media and micro-targeting, changing regulation on candidate funding and thus creating the phenomenon of superPACs, and finally even pushing out moderate Republicans, and in the words of one Republican, “supplanting the party”. Using money, coercion, and every means possible.
    Essentially they created institutions and networks that would manufactur ideas that follow their philosophy, converted that into action points through think tanks and academia, and got them executed through activist groups, lawmakers and politicians. A system that feeds itself and creates a world in its own image. 

    The irony of it all? Donald Trump. Firstly, though the machinery was successful in making Obama a lame duck president in his second term, ensuring the Republicans controlled the Congress, and thereby laying the base, he was not their choice of President. In fact, he tweeted in contempt about those Republican candidates who went to the Kochs for assistance. Secondly, he used their exact methods to win the election. However, it isn’t called a system for no reason – it controls the people surrounding him, and is thus, pretty much in charge.

    The book is superb in terms of research and pacing of the narrative, with details and context setting that make it a fantastic, absorbing read. It’s not just American politics, I think this will be the narrative of politics and society in many places. A must read, in our own selfish interest!