David Eagleman - Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlife (2009)

My one liner: These are extremely short stories, maximum 3 pages long, and hence very easy to read on the go. Hilarious, thought-provoking, moving, sad, and certainly not overtly religious. An experiment that went right.

 This is a book which makes us hold up a mirror at our own behaviour, our own existence, and our own values.  The method is ingenious.  By creating the trope
of the hypothetical afterlife, David Eagleman allows an observation of humanity from  outside the confines of the world we live in.  The tales, including some fables reminiscent of childhood readings of Aesop, are brief and colourful, some are morality stories, some motivational self-help guides, others just set off emotions of sadness or happiness.
 
Take for example our natural desire for familiarity. To be amongst people we know and care about, the communities we inhabit, the friends and colleagues we trust. In “Circle of Friends” you only gradually realise you are in an afterlife
after a certain period of time. Because initially everything looks like the world you lived in. You say goodbye to the wife and kids in the morning, leave for the office, where you spend the day working with your usual colleagues. But it does eventually dawn on you that you are in the afterlife. Why ? Because you come to realise that this world is populated only by people whom you’ve met before (whether friends, relations, colleagues, or fleeting acquaintances).  Although initially you like the attention you get from those around you, everybody is friendly, and you get to renew old acquaintances, you soon get depressed. 
Depressed because you come to notice an absence of crowds of unknown people, of new things to learn or explore. 
 
“You begin to complain about all the people you could be meeting.  But no one listens or sympathises with you, because this is precisely what you chose when you were alive.”
 
Or why do we seek recognition, fame, our name in lights, the need to be the best-known fish in our particular pond ? Might there be a downside ? Well yes, a big one in the afterlife posited by “Metamorphosis”. You see, there are three deaths. And you have to wait in the waiting-room until the third death.  Death One is when the body ceases to function.  Death Two is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third death is some point in the future which is the last time on earth that your name is spoken.  Until then you stay in the waiting room, which basically resembles an airport departure lounge.  
  
“The gray-haired man at the vending machine was lionized as a war hero, then demonized as a warlord, and finally canonized as a necessary firebrand between two moments in history.  He waits with aching heart for his statue to fall.”

 In “Incentive” the incentive to constantly self improve and fulfil your potential during your life is clear.  Because you will have to spend your entire afterlife in the company of many many alternative versions of “You”.  But only the ones who in alternative parallel lives achieved greater success, for example because they reflect good decisions you should have made rather than bad decisions you actually made.  Or because of an instance where you didn’t fully motivate yourself to achieve a task, but did do so in a parallel life.  You will constantly be reminded of what might have been, so be motivated now, and you will have fewer “Yous” above you in the afterlife hierarchy.

 That’s three stories given away, but there are 37 more.  Eagleman is undoubtedly multi-talented; his professional speciality is neuroscience. And to cap it all I note from his Wikipedia entry that Italy's Style magazine named Eagleman one of the "Brainiest, Brightest Idea Guys for 2012" and featured him on the cover. Yeah, one of them.

Here is the Wikipedia link to the book.

Simon Winchester: Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China (2008)

My one liner: How a foremost biochemist became a foremost sinologist, and single-handedly created the Western world’s understanding of China, long before it became fashionable.

 15 May 1948. “Science and Civilisation in China.  Preliminary plan of a
book by Joseph Needham, FRS.  It will be addressed, not to sinologists, nor to the general public, but to all educated people, whether themselves scientists or not, who are interested in the history of science, scientific thought, and technology, in relation to the general history of civilisation, and especially the comparative development of Asia and Europe”.

Needham, a fellow, and subsequently, Master of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, went on to write Science and Civilisation in China, which is widely considered the foremost work on scientific development in China.  He himself wrote 15 volumes over the next 4-5 decades of his life, and further volumes have continued to be published following his death in 1995. Simon Winchester's book traces the life story of Needham and the path by which his work came into being.  And through that journey we learn much ourselves about a civilisation that for long periods of history has been far more scientifically advanced than the West. Far more, arguably, than wading through the blogs, commentaries and predictions spewed out by some of today’s “China watchers”.
 
And just as importantly we learn something about this remarkable man, and the potential of what can be achieved by human endeavour, application, determination, and an openness to foreign ideas and cultures. Needham was after all a specialist in biochemistry. In 1939, before he was 40, he published a book on morphogenesis which was acclaimed by a Harvard reviewer as “destined to take its place as one of the most truly epoch-making books in biology since Charles Darwin.” 
 
A committed socialist throughout his life, Needham was selected by Britain’s academic community at the start of the Second World War to go to China and assist with a programme of reconstruction of China’s academic and scientific institutions, following the devastation wrought by war with Japan. And from there he didn’t look back. Already familiar with the Chinese written language through lessons from his friend / colleague / lover / concubine / and eventually in 1989, wife, Lu Gwei-djen, Needham embarked on a relentless pursuit of knowledge about China. 
 
The appendix of Winchester’s book lists “Chinese Inventions and Discoveries with Dates of First Mention”.  Here are a few: Algorithm for extraction of square roots and cube roots: 1 AD; Ball Bearings 2AD; Blood, distinction between arterial and venous: 2BC; Compass, magnetic for navigation: 1111AD; Grid technique, quantitative, used in cartography: 130 AD; Melodic composition 475 AD; Numerical equations of higher order, solution of 13C
AD; Pi, accurate estimation: 3AD; Printing, with woodblocks: 7C AD; Rocket arrow launchers: 1367 AD; Soybean, fermented: 200 BC; Watermills, geared: 3C AD.  As Needham said: “The mere fact of seeing them listed brings home to one the astonishing inventiveness of the Chinese people”.

Written in the style of a novel, Winchester's book puts us into Needham’s shoes as he travels to the  what were at the time some of the most remote parts of the planet, for example his Silk Road journey, in a truck which was a converted Chevrolet ambulance.  As he visits academic institutions, government offices and archeological sites he assembles a collection of original papers and documents detailing every facet of Chinese scientific and technological progress, and on returning to Cambridge after the War, proceeds to catalogue these, leading to the 1948 book plan.

There is of course his personal life, sympathetically and empathetically described.   His devoted wife Dorothy, who is accepting of the open nature of their marriage, is a friend and confidante of Gwei-djen. Needham’s political views, bordering on communism in an age of McCarthyism, and his sympathies with Mao’s regime, lead to frequent run-ins with the political and academic establishment.  

But we are left with the enduring notion that the pure pursuit of knowledge, and the desire to open that knowledge to society at large through painstaking effort, prevails in the end.  That a scientist trained in the supposedly physical precision of Western enquiry can be so open to the ancient scientific traditions as the genesis of his work, is a salutary lesson for all of us:

“Heaven has five elements, first Wood, second Fire, third Earth, fourth Metal, and fifth Water. Wood comes first in the cycle of the five elements and water comes last, earth being in the middle.  This is the order which heaven has made.  Wood produces fire, fire produces earth (ie. as ashes), earth produces
metal (ie. as ores), metal produces water (either because molten metal was
considered aqueous, or more probably because of the ritual practice of
collecting dew on metal mirrors exposed at night time), and water produces wood (for woody plants require water).  This is their ‘father and son’relation. Wood dwells on the left, metal on the right, fire in front and water behind, with earth in the centre. This too is the father and son order, each receiving the other in turn...As transmitters they are fathers, as receivers they are sons. There is an unvarying dependence of the sons on the fathers, and a direction from the fathers to the sons. Such is the Dao of heaven” From Chun Qiu Fan Lu, by  Dong Zhongshu 135 BC. Quoted by Needham in Vol II, 1956.

Here is the wikipedia link to the author.  There is no wikipedia entry for the book.

Steven Strange & Jack Zupko (Eds) – Stoicism: Traditions and Tranformations (2004)

My one liner: A collection of articles which traces the development of the Stoic school from its origins through to it contemporary application. The early articles are seriously heavy going, but there are some real gems in here for the lay reader who perseveres.

Since I come to most of my reading as a non-specialist, I feel comfortable suggesting this book to the lay reader, even though some of the articles (particularly the first few) will be 75% impenetrable (although those with some school level Latin or Greek may be able to get that down to 50%). Indeed it gave me comfort when I read the opening paragraphs of the introduction, which says that in compiling the book there was a possible “High Road” approach and a “Low Road” approach, the latter “would focus less on questions that interested ancient Stoics and more on broader tendencies and trends, looking at the way Stoic doctrines were employed in new settings and against different competitors.”  The editors have decided to take the low road. And therefore the reader can equally do likewise.

 To that end, if you need a primer on Stoic philosophy, start, as always, with the Wikipedia entry on Stoicism.  No shame there.  
  
How can these be translated into our contemporary lifestyles, if at all ? The final essay in the collection is by Lawrence E. Becker on Stoic Emotion”. Becker takes us through contemporary developments and attempts to demonstrate that ancient Stoic principles can be applied to our modern lifestyles, with a few “adjustments to the ancient doctrines”.  To take a concrete example, Becker tells us that “Neurophysiologists have identified at least four anatomically distinct structures in the “ancient” or subcortical portion of the human brain that generate affective senses –fear, rage, panic, and goal oriented desire”.  But if these are neurologically generated, how can one then apply a Stoic discipline to controlling these ? The answer is broadly that the neurological response is a “raw” one. The cognitive content that turns it into full-fledged emotion can still be controlled and tamed.  
 
Becker’s essay is interesting because it also forces us to answer some difficult questions about the “good” or value to society of emotions. The modern world seems to feed us with the view that expressing and feeling emotion is a good thing in its own right.  But this is potentially problematic, as human emotion is arguably good only insofar as humans are emotional creatures and expressing emotion allows us to communicate with other humans using emotional gestures. In other words the argument is“frustratingly circular”. Stoics, on the other hand place much less value on emotion, valuing instead the cognitive response which allows us to control our emotions so as to reduce our material attachments. In turn this also makes us think about the nature of attachment, in particular attachment to others.  A Stoic sage will love another person in a way that many would not recognise. In other words “she would not for example, become so attached to others that she literally cannot bear the prospect of losing them, any more than she would be attached to her own life in a way that made the prospect of her own death unbearable.  Nor would she wish others to love her in that way – to be desolate and helpless when she is gone, unable to bear the loss. What Stoics wish for others is what we wish for ourselves: good lives; virtuous lives; including the ability to cope with loss.”  

What this means in practice however is that a Stoic will not fit in many of the commonly prescribed behavioural norms, and will come across as aloof and detached and unemotional.

 Another interesting article in the book deals with contemporary approaches to foreign aid from developed to developing countries (Martha Nussbaum: Duties of Justice, Duties of Material Aid – Cicero’s Problematic Legacy). Its central tenet is that developed countries do not make enough financial transfers to developing countries in the form of direct aid to fight poverty, so-called Material Aid”. Nussbaum traces this allegedly moral deficiency back to a chain of political thought that goes right back to Cicero (who arguably was in a good position to comment as he wrote the work, De Officiis, whilst on the run to escape assassination from Antony and the other triumvirs in 44BC).  Cicero set out some very clear ideas of justice. His duties of justice had two parts, firstly not doing any harm to anyone unless provoked by a wrongful act, and secondly “using common things as common, private possessions as one’s own.”  So passionate was Cicero about the importance of private property that his idea of justice extended to the appropriate way to behave towards the citizens of a country conquered by war. He felt that there should be a strong commitment to institution-building, and that judicial and property-upholding institutions should transcend national boundaries.  Which sounds much like the programmes of “conditionality” (restructuring, supply-side reform,  privatisation) attached to today’s IMF and World Bank lending facilities. But where Cicero then deals a blow to Material Aid of the direct action type is that he sets out a clear hierarchy of whom justice demands that we should help.    He sets out explicit categories that justify some giving as follows: “the bond of nation and language; of the same state; of one’s relatives; various degrees of familial propinquity; and finally, one’s own home.” And just as explicitly he excludes other nations, on the basis that this is a potentially infinite cohort of recipients [infinita multido].  Now, whether you agree or not with (a) the proposition that Material Aid  is desirable in its own right and (b) that there is currently not enough wealth transfer from rich to poor, it is surely interesting and useful to understand that many of the current arrangement for trans-national relationships have their roots in ideas of justice formed 2000 years ago.
 
The book contains much else of interest, too extensive to enumerate, and still keep the review readable.  Epictetus was a Stoic who extolled the virtues of Socrates as defining everything mankind should know about a philosophical methodology for living one’s life. One of the more difficult essays describes the Socratic discourse in Epictetus’ work. Other essays lead us through the development of Stoic thought over time, from the Middle Ages, to Descartes, to Spinoza. Take what you find useful from these, and discard the rest.
 
Sten Ebbesen in his essay Where were the Stoics in the Late Middle Ages ? says: 
 
“Stoicism is not a sport for gentlemen; it requires far too much intellectual work. Most of Western history consists of gentlemen’s centuries.  But there were the couple of centuries, the fourth and the third BC, in which the ancient philosophical schools were created, and there were the three centuries from AD1100 to 1400, when medieval scholasticism flourished – centuries that produced a considerable number of tough men ready to chew their way through the tedious logical stuff that disgusts a gentleman and to make all the nice distinctions that a gentlemen can never understand but only ridicule, distinctions necessary to work out a coherent, and perhaps even consistent picture of the world.”

 If that is indeed the prize on offer, then perhaps we as gentlemen should consider whether we might want to invest a little more time and effort to look into this abit more.

There is no Wikipedia entry for this book. 

Here is the link to Google Books entry.

Michael Dibdin: Vendetta (1990)

My one liner: Classic Murder Mystery, Italian Giallo style. The Aurelio Zen series of murder-mysteries was serialised by the BBC last year.Vendetta is a fun read. Takes place in Sardegna.

 The late Michael Dibdin created the Aurelio Zen detective stories in the 1980s and 1990s.  Zen, the Rome-based crime-solver is the epitome of the under-paid, under-resourced, over-worked middle-aged Italian crime solver battling against the departmental bureaucratic stupor of the Criminalpol.  And of course, his mother lives with him.
 
Vendetta is the second in the series and most of the action takes place in the beautiful, enigmatic, hostile countryside of Sardegna. Italophiles will enjoy.

 For members of the international elite to establish a retreat in Sardegna, “..the
only requirement was money, and lots of it.  As founder and owner of a construction company... there was no question that Oscar Burolo satisfied that requirement.  But instead of meekly buying his way into the Costa [Smeralda] like everyone else, he did something unheard-of, something so bizarre and outlandish that some people claimed afterwards that they always thought it was ill-omened from the start.  For his Sardinian retreat, Oscar chose an abandoned farmhouse half-way down the island’s almost uninhabited eastern coast, and not even on the sea, for God’s sake, but several kilometres inland !”
 
The fortress he constructs there is impenetrable, yet one evening he is brutally murdered, together with his wife and dinner party guests. “It had taken less than twenty seconds to turn the room into an abattoir. Fifteen seconds later, the caretaker would appear, having run from the two room service flat where he and his wife were watching a variety show on television.” No, the butler didn’t do it, but many other people had enough of grudge against Burolo, to exact such a vendetta.

 As ever in Italy, political considerations are never far way. In this case onorevole (MP) and fixer Favelloni was also at the dinner party but had managed to leave with his wife prior to the killings. The investigating magistrate and the weight of public opinion thinks that he did it, albeit that the evidence is weak and circumstantial. Favelloni’s political allies put the requisite pressure on Zen’s superiors to have him sent to Sardegna to gather the requisite evidence to show that Favelloni is innocent.  Who actually did it is not of particular concern, though in true Italian style it would be nice if someone else could be framed to add weight to the acquittal.

There are some nice little touches in the book.  I don't know if the author meant it, but a particularly cute one is the irate Zen explaining to the obstructive clerk in the department archives that surname is spelt Zen, not Zeno.  Surely the clerk has appreciated that he has swapped the word symbolising Mahayana Buddhism for the name of the founder of the philosophy of Stoicism !

 Back in the story,  also lurking in the  background is communist agitator-turned gangster Vasco Spadola, just released from jail, having been put away twenty years ago by Zen.  And he has his own vendetta to execute.

We follow Zen’s adventure into Sargedna’s hostile terrain (the people of this
island are not known for sharing their dark internal secrets) where slowly and
surely, by both luck and design, he exceeds his remit and closes in on what actually happened.

Here is wikipedia link to the book.

My one liner: An easy, if sometimes disturbing, often hilarious read

“May you live in interesting times” is a well-known Chinese curse.

Well, the apocalypse stories take that to the logical extreme, as there would
be very little that would be uninteresting about a post-apocalyptic world. 
This is a lovely little collection of (very) short stories that take human
beings out of their comfort zone into situations which they cannot have
experienced before. 

Some explore human existence in the context of a broken society.  In
“Trust”, R.C. Lewis explores the instinct for survival that leads to herd
behaviour, which can have disastrous (yet morally justified consequences).

On the other hand, “The Last Day of Fall” by Matt Sinclair is a mini Lord of
the Flies.  A community that initially comes together in the face of
apocalyptic disaster.  But there are some rotten apples in the basket…

Then hilariously, a short play / TB script “Disconnect” by Mindy McGinnis,
which joins God and the staff in heaven two seconds post-apocalypse.  God
has inadvertently triggered Judgment Day by setting up his iPhone calendar
wrongly. With queues of millions forming at the gates of heaven, God gives up,
flops on the couch and starts playing with his old Gameboy, leaving his son, and  a host of well-known angels to sort out the mess.

And the memorable grand finale by Judy Croome, “The Last Sacrifice”. 
Apocalypse in an ancient era.  A (Mayan??) king and demi-god performs
increasingly desperate sacrifices to appease the gods.

But to no avail.

The Slideshow Review for this book is here.

There is no Wikipedia link for this book.  The Google Books link is here.

(The image above is licensed by shakespearesmonkey under a Creative Commons License. The image below is licensed by Lea LSF under a Creative Commons License.)

My one liner: A thorough and informative historical analysis of the whole supply chain, from production to transport to processing to marketing to distribution. From a seasoned investigative journalist.

“Except for those few stones that have been destroyed, every diamond that has been found and cut into a jewel still exists today and is literally in the public's hands. Some hundred million women wear diamonds, while millions of others keep them in safe-deposit boxes or strongboxes as family heirlooms. It is conservatively estimated that the public holds more than 500 million carats of gem diamonds, which is more than fifty times the number of gem diamonds produced by the diamond cartel in any given year. Since the quantity of diamonds needed for engagement rings and other jewellery each year is satisfied by the production from the world's mines, this half-billion-carat supply of diamonds must be prevented from ever being put on the market.”
 
Edward Jay Epstein is an investigative journalist who has studied the history of
commercially-produced diamonds, and presents in this book a collection of his research, which he has been publishing in newspapers and journals since the 1980s.  Indeed you can read the early chapters on Mr Epstein’s website here.
 
Likewise therefore, some of the supporting data and anecdotes are old, but the more recent chapters bring the reader right up to the state of play as of 2011. The central thesis of Epstein’s analysis is that diamond dealers, or wholesalers, charge extraordinary markups to retail buyers of diamonds.  This markup, known as the “keystone”, can be between 100% and 200%. Hence, when you go back to a dealer to try and sell back a diamond, he may well have a slightly embarrassed look on his face, and will probably decline to quote a price, so as to preserve your dignity.

To give an example (my analysis, not from the book).

Anyone who has been involved in trading any item or asset or commodity will be familiar with this concept: the 13k is the dealer’s “bid-offer”, or “spread”, between what he is prepared to buy the asset for (bid) and his offer price to sell it (offer).  In the diamond market these spreads are, apparently, extremely wide.

So, take the following chart, which I pulled from a website called wealthymatters here (by the way, it’s a nice little blog written by a lady based in India). The price shown is the Average One Carat D Loupe Clean wholesale diamond prices in Antwerp. Current “price” $25,000.

What it doesn’t tell you is that if indeed that 65% bid-offer spread is correct then the price you would receive to sell your diamond would be $8,750, a level seen during the 1970s.  Now, I’m sure the reality is not that bad, and that sophisticated investors with market knowledge can make money as an investment, but its certainly food for thought.
 
Epstein takes us nicely through the modern history of diamonds going back to 1870, to show how the market has been controlled.  Until the late 19th century diamonds were found mostly in a few river beds in India, and in the jungles of Brazil. In 1870 however, a huge deposit was found in South Africa, near to the Orange River.  In order to protect their investment the British financiers of those mines had to prevent a glut hitting the market.  
 
Thus was created, in 1888, De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd, incorporated in South Africa.  Epstein traces the history of De Beers through the decades.  
  
How it gained control of the whole supply chain, from production to transport to processing to marketing to distribution.

How networks were established in Europe (particularly the UK, Portugal, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland) and Israel.
 
Epstein provides us with vivid description of what he calls the “Diamond
Invention”:
 
“The diamond invention is far more than a monopoly for fixing diamond prices; it is a mechanism for converting tiny crystals of carbon into universally recognised tokens of wealth, power and romance. To achieve this goal De Beers had to control demand as well as supply.  Both men and women had to be made to perceive diamonds not as marketable precious stones, but as an inseparable part of courtship and marital life.”
 
As the American market grew to become the largest consumer market for diamonds, it was inevitably a New York-based advertising agency, N.W. Ayer, which helped De Beers create this illusion.  A huge marketing campaign was orchestrated in the post-war era to make diamonds be perceived as the only acceptable way for a man to court – and win – a woman’s affections.  Movie stars, celebrities, magazine editors, and even the British Royal Family were co-opted into the campaign. 
 
A campaign which still runs to this day.
 
From N.W. Ayer at the end of the 1950s:

“Since 1939, an entirely new generation of young people has grown to marriageable age.  To this new generation a diamond ring is considered a necessity to engagements by virtually everyone.”
 
And after the Second  World War new markets would open up, particularly Germany, Japan and Brazil.  Epstein leads us through the new productive players in the market: Australia (brought into the fold through the creation of the Rio Tinto Corporation), and the Soviet Union (with whom a cartel deal was done).  
 
We learn that the “blood diamonds” are, apparently, a construct to prevent the supply of “uncertified” diamonds from civil war-ridden countries like Angola and Sierra Leone.  The UN Security Council, no less, has pronounced on the illegality, thus institutionalising the absence from the mainstream markets of these “blood diamonds”.
 
Finally, the US Anti-Trust action which culminated in the break up of the De Beers cartel in 2001, and the eventual exit of the Oppenheimer family (the owners of De Beers since 1927) from the group a few years later.
 
All in all a fascinating read, and enough to give humble men-folk some pause for thought next time we traipse in to acquire the sparkling “diamond invention”.  
  
That said, try telling the story to the object of your affections, and see what she
says…

There is no Wikipedia link to the book.  However, as stated much of the content appears here. 

My one liner:  The Breath of Night by Michael Arditti digs deep into the Philippines, its culture, people, and politics, to give us a thorough examination of the conscience and appetite of the Church to help the poor and disenfranchised through armed struggle.  A morality tale that sits in the grey area between good and evil.

This is the third in an occasional series, Lessons from Fiction. The Breath of Night is a new book by English author Michael Arditti.  It has been promoted, sorry, reviewed, extensively in the mainstream media already, such as the Spectator, the Independent, the Scotsman, the Telegraph, the Guardian, and even the Daily Mail Online.  With such revered Thought-Leadership behind it, I was curious to see what all the fuss was about.  

Arditti raises important questions about the role of the Church and whether it should be more overtly political. In this article I would like to explore that suggestion. My conclusion is that economic intervention is more effective than political intervention and I have put some numbers around one of the examples in the novel to illustrate the point.

If you have travelled extensively in developing countries (is it ok to use that expression any more ? I still like “Third World”, but that’s definitely off limits now), you will feel the smells, the sounds, the taste, the moisture, the “vibe” of Philippines, even if you haven’t been there, because it is just like all those other countries you have visited.

“The pavement was almost as tricky to negotiate as the road.  Ahead of them a man, wearing nothing but shorts, soaped himself nonchalantly as if he were in his own bathroom.  To his left, three men played cards on an oil drum surrounded by a jeering an gesticulating crowd; to his right three women sat stirring brightly coloured stews an bubbling pots of rice while their children frolicked at their feet, perilously close to the wobbly stoves. All around them were stalls selling food, drink, scarves, T-shirts, sunglasses, lighters and pirated DVDs.”

Scratch below the veneer of the (faux-)colonial hotels and malls catering to the whims of the newly-minted Global Traveller, and you find an incredibly complex society.

Or, I should say, “societal structure”.  An anthropological order that existed long before the colonial masters arrived and departed and continues to survive long after the arrival of “independence” and “democracy”.

“Nothing in this country is the way it looks.  You think that because the Filippinos have Spanish names and speak English that you understand them. Big mistake !”.

In Arditti’s model, there are essentially five main actors and somehow, like spheres rotating around a central gravitational force, they seem to maintain an equilibrium with respect to each other: the Elite Landowners, the Masses (workers in the cities and workers on the land, if they can get work), the Government, the Church, and the “communist” Freedom Fighters.

Revolutions and overthrows of the incumbent government come and goAquino
for Marcos, in the period covered by the book), but not much really changes:

“The most notorious Marcos ministers have been removed, but by and large the faces in both the Senate and the House of Representatives remain identical.  The army has been granted immunity for all its crimes during the State of Emergency”

Basically the Elite Landowners, control everything, and maintain their power
structures through the tacit or not-so-tacit government of the day. 

The personification of the landowner is the haciendo, the proprietor of the hacienda farm estate, acquired originally by the conquistadores.  The haciendo plays a benevolent role in society, because he provides work for tenants on his farm:

“Don Florante is reputed to be one of the more enlightened landlords. He takes a paternal interest in his tenants, advancing them money for seeds and tools, selling them cheap rice during droughts, and standing as godfather to their children (which, here, involves far more than remembering them at Christmas and birthdays).” 

And the tenants themselves recognise, accept and even embrace their own role:

“The farmers have a sense of indebtedness that goes way beyond  indenture.  They feel an almost mystical bond to the haciendos”

 Which is unfortunate, because economically, not surprisingly they are stuck:

“The share tenant is vulnerable to the proportion of his harvest due to the landlord, and the leasehold tenant to a fixed rent that takes no account of the all too frequent crop failures.”

I was fascinated by this statement, and since this article about lessons from fiction I would like to alight from the train here and just look into this a little it more: we will return to the Church and the Freedom Fighters later. 

Let’s analyse the above tenancy arrangements by putting some numbers on them.  These are unresearched assumptions, but they should give us a flavour of what’s going on.  I would be very happy to hear from readers who would like to challenge the assumptions or to provide better data to feed into the models.

Imagine a household which is a tenant on the hacienda, and which is a family of 5.  They harvest the land and for say four months of the year it produces an income.  Based on the Philippines’ 2011 GDP per head of $2,400 I have assumed 3 productive members of the household, so a total of $7,200 produced by the household during the year.   Assume that the household’s monthly expenses are $2 per person per day and 30 days per month.  Thus the monthly expense is $2*5*30 = 300, or $3,600 per year.

What happens under the first version described above, where the landlord takes a percentage of output ?  Let’s assume the landlord takes 45%. Why have I chosen this number ? Well, without doing detailed research I have made the following assumption.  It just so happens that at 45% the household is just about able to make some savings at the end of the year, amounting to $360.  The landlord is the one with all the information: if he sets the percentage too low he is not maximising his profit; if he sets it too high, the tenant has no incentive to work hard.  The tenant works the land in the Hope that he will put aside a meagre amount every year, and one day his family will be able to afford an education, or a life in the city.  The landlord is the one dispensing the Hope.

 And indeed it seems to work.  Look at Chart 1.  Lo and behold every year the household’s wealth increases, up to a respectable $4,320 after Year 12. 

But that’s not the whole story.  What happens if the crop fails ? Again, this is somewhat unresearched, but let’s assume one total crop failure during the 12-year period.  And let’s assume that there is a 75% probability of this happening, ie one total failure in a 12-year period (I did dig around a bit for some agricultural data, and I believe that’s not an unreasonable assumption).  And let’s say that this failure occurs in year 7.

What happens to our tenant household ? Well, on the one hand their savings will be wiped out, and the household will be put into debt.  Let’s assume that they can borrow the money, but will need to pay an interest rate of 50% pa (a reasonable assumption, I think).  Look what happens to their finances in Chart 2.  Ouch.  By the end of Year 12 our household is over $6,000 in debt.

So to re-iterate, although our model family has the Hope of steadily increasing its savings, in fact under our assumptions it has a 75% chance of ending up $6,000 in debt at the end of 12 years !

Is it any better for the tenant to adopt the second model, and pay a fixed rent ?  Suppose the landlord charges a fixed rent of $250 per month, regardless of output.  In this case, the wealth accumulation is even better, there is more Hope for the tenant.  Chart 3 shows that the family accumulates $7,200 at the end of Year 12:

How lovely.

But look what happens (Chart 4) when there a crop failure.  The rent still has to be paid, so an even bigger liability is incurred when the Year 7 income disappears.  And the debt spiral at 50% pa interest rates take the household to a whopping $15,000 in debt by Year 12, although you would imagine they will have been evicted into destitution long before that.

Some Hope indeed that is being dispensed by the haciendos.  More like the Hope that people have when they walk into a casino, when in fact the odds of coming out with any money are so overwhelmingly against them.

 In the novel Arditti examines in depth the role of the Church within a society such as this.  Julian Tremayne, a Catholic priest of mid-ranking English aristocratic blood, leaves his home country in the 1970s and sets out for the Philippines to take up a posting there as parish priest.  Over time, his pastoral duties bring him into contact with exactly the type of people described in the example above.  Initially he plays the role that is expected from him, preaching to the congregation according to local custom, and providing food, shelter, medicine and money for those in extreme need.  In this role he is very much part of the Church Establishment, which above all wants to maintain cordial relations with all factions in Philippine society.

However, over time, Julian develops a closer relationship with the country’s
Freedom Fighters, the New People’s Army or NPA, who are engaged in violent and revolutionary struggle against regime of the day (first Marcos, then
Aquino).  At first it is logistical support that Julian provides (e.g. transport and shelter).  But he struggles increasingly with his conscience and feels that the Church as an institution should engage actively in the freedom struggle:

“Poverty and oppression endanger the soul [of the rich] along with the body [of the poor]. A woman whose children are starving may break the seventh commandment, just as a man driven mad by tyranny and injustice may break the fifth. So as a priest, I’m obliged to concern myself with the here and now as much as the hereafter; indeed, the two are inexplicably linked.  If a priest is to stand in the person of Christ, he can’t avoid being political.”

Hence he becomes more actively involved with the NPA (it is ambiguous as to whether he actually engages in any acts of violence or terror) and is eventually murdered in 1989.

The novel’s other protagonist is Phillip Seward, a young and out-of-work Art Historian, who has an emotional connection (you need to read the book to know why) with Isabel, the niece of Julian Tremayne, and her husband Hugh (who happens to also own a trading company that has extensive commercial interests in the Philippines).  Isabel was particularly close to her uncle Julian.

Isabel manages to persuade Hugh to bankroll an assignment for Phillip to the Philippines to report on an investigation that is underway there into whether Julian satisfied the requirements for being declared a saint.  Progress on the investigation has been painfully slow and Isabel feels that Phillip would be able to provide an objective view as to what is going on, and maybe to speed it up a little.

The story flips between Phillip’s 21st century induction to the country, as he uncovers Julian’s story, and the Julian’s letters, which tell his own story 30 years earlier.

Arditti wants us to question the role of the Church, and whether it should proactively align itself with revolutionary causes.  Is the Church by definition a political institution that must fight to prevent poverty as well as treating its symptoms ? Certainly in previous centuries, both the Protestant and Catholic Churches have been more explicitly combative.

The author himself seems not sure of the answer:

 “I think that’s what Julian objected to.  He didn’t want a world that was split into masters and servants.  No, he and his friends wanted revolution.  They were terrorists, even if they had no guns – and believe me, there are many who swear that they did.  Suppose they had succeeded, what then ? They get rid of Marcos and end up with Mao or Pol Pot. Do you think the people would have been happier with that ?”

Amongst all this ambivalence about political intervention, may I suggest an alternative route for institutions with the means, such as the Church. That is, that rather than pick political fights which may lead to worse outcomes and more destruction, such institutions can provide real economic assistance.  

Let’s go back to the example that we analysed above.  The astute reader will have noticed what the real problem is (actually, there are two – answers on a postcard, please).  The real problem is the interest rate that the household pays when it goes into debt.  

A somewhat topical issue on which the Church of England has recently expressed a view as well.  Now, look what happens if the tenant can have access to cheaper credit, say at an 8%pa interest rate.  Chart 5 applies this to the first example (tenant paying a proportion of output), but I assure it works for the second type as well. 

 Et voilà ! A steady recovery back to prosperity.

This is the idea behind micro-finance, and there is no reason why the Church (or indeed any other religious institution) could not deploy its considerable balance sheet to become a serious micro-finance lender, not just in developing countries, but also in more developed markets.
 
Now that really would be putting its money where its mouth is.
 
There is no Wikipedia entry for this book.  The Google Books link to the book is here.

Emile Zola – L’Assommoir (The Drinking Den) 1877, Translation by Robin Buss (Penguin Classics) (2004)

My one liner: Zola’s classic and probably most famous.  Evocative 19th
century Paris. Trials and tribulations of Gervaise the laundry girl, who finds success and happiness through hard work. Then loses it all through drink, and through events  beyond her control.

“Her dream was to live amongst decent people, because if you kept bad company, according to her, it would hit you like a blow from a mallet, break your head and flatten a poor woman in no time”
 
Gervaise is a laundry-woman who knows what is like to be poor, abused, and abandoned by a lover to bring up two children. Miraculously, given that this is 19th century Paris, she manages to turn it around.  With the support of a caring and supportive new husband M. Coupeau the roofer, the generosity of a neighbour-lender M. Goujet and his mother, and by dint of sheer grit and determination, she becomes the proud proprietor of a successful laundry business.  Surely, knowing where she came from, she will not let the idyll slip away. Yet, by end, “no one even knew what exactly she died of. There was talk of cold and warmth, but the fact was that she died of poverty, or the filth and weariness of her own life.”
 
Of course in reality it is more complicated than that.  A classic illustration of self-fulfilling prophecy in both directions.  Success breeds success, of course.  On the way up.  But on the way down you have no shortage of detractors who wish your downfall. Chief amongst these are M and Mme Lorilleux, Coupeau’s sister and brother in law.  Opposed to the marriage in the first place, jealous in the extreme when Gervaise shows signs of success, they are the first to spread gossip rumour and innuendo as soon as they spot chinks in the armour.  

An unfortunate roofing accident for M. Coupeau has incapacitated him, temporarily, we all want to believe, as he is a hard-working and honest man. 
But he is not emotionally equipped to recover from setback, and soon the comforts of his incapacitation, the medical care funded out of Gervaise’s  savings, and the success of her business make him delay his return to work.  As do the increasingly frequent visits  to the drinking den.  When he increasingly keeps the company of men such as “Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst)” you know where fate is taking him.
 
New dependants arrive in the Coupeau household.  A baby daughter.  Mme Coupeau, the mother (foisted by the Lorilleux). And unbelievably, M. Lantier, the former lover.  All supported by Gervaise.  If this were a play, at every act of generosity the audience would be willing Gervaise not to take it on.  But she does, and runs up more debt from her benefactors the Goujets.  

And she has a further opportunity to avoid the impending train crash. M. Goujet, physically strong and emotionally stable, works at the forge, a classic hero.  Gervaise frequently stops by and cannot helped but be entranced by his masculinity. A close friendship develops.  We hope he will be the deus-ex-machina that will prevent the unfolding tragedy.  On several occasions, and even as she is descending into disaster, he entreaties her to elope with him, confident that he can care for her and her children. 

In the end though there is to be no happy ending. There are many factors at play here, some voluntary, others of weak-will, aided and abetted by a cruel and gossiping society. But Zola had a single-minded agenda in this book, and he was determined to execute it:
 
“I set out to show the fatal collapse of working family in the poisonous environment of our city slums.  With drunkenness and laziness come the loosening of family ties, the filth of promiscuity and the gradual abandonment of decent feelings; then, in the end, shame and death. Quite simply, this is morality in action.”

 It was ever thus.
 
[A word on the translation – clear, and captures the essence. Easy for the lay reader, and hence an important contribution to opening out this important work to a wide  readership.]

Here is the wikipedia link for the book.

Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake (2003)

My one liner: Man Booker Prize Shortlist. Sci-fi and survival in a post apocalyptic world. But the apocalypse came from a somewhat unexpected source.
 
Where does our increasingly commoditised world take us, dominated as it is by large corporate entities ? Does the corporate effectively become the state, selecting its “employees” from childhood based on their predicted future capacity to add scientific know-how to the corporation ? As all “knowledge” is now captured, recorded and available on the internet, does regular society become increasingly dumbed-down, with those who opt-in fed on a diet of inane entertainment and leisure, and genetically modified food, while living in faceless corporate compounds ? 
 
It is hard to escape the conclusion that Margaret Atwood thinks so, and it is a vision she returns to in the sequel to this novel, The Year of the Flood (2009), whilst also echoing the society of the Handmaid’s Tale which she wrote in 1985.  Humans are valued only for the corporate value that they generate, and
there is a clear material hierarchy between corporates themselves.  The vision echoes a Marxian view of a society which is in the immediate pre-revolutionary stage, as capital dominates absolutely and labour, indeed 99% of humanity, is commoditised.  And  as in Marx, such a society is inherently unstable, and carries the seeds of its  own inevitable destruction.  In this case the destruction is  apocalyptic.

 We see the world through the eyes of Jimmy, an apocalypse survivor, whose post-apocalypse name is “Snowman”.  He is also a figurehead leader of tribe he has named the Children of Crake.  The Children of Crake is a naive and unsophisticated group of survivors of (as yet) unknown provenance who look to him for their material and spiritual guidance, and whom he in turn manipulates, by getting them to provide him with basic foodstuffs and materials. Snowman lives mostly in a tree, because the landscape is populated with wild and dangerous genetically modified animals – for example Woolvogs, a deadly cross between wolves and dogs, and Pigoons, balloon shaped humanoid sentient pigs bred to host human transplant parts – all roaming free after humanity was pretty much wiped out.

 The story flips back and forth between pre and post “final destruction”, as we learn more about Snowman’s (aka Jimmy’s) previous existence. His mother who left home (and hence the corporate compound) because she refused to assimilate herself into the  commoditised world.  She was thus a revolutionary and a security risk, and eventually killed by the corporate security service, the CorpsSeCorps. His “corporate citizen”father’s new wife, the compliant Ramona. Jimmy’s relationship with Crake, his childhood friend, far more intellectually gifted than Jimmy, and eventually landing a place to study genetic research at the Watson Crick Institute, whilst Jimmy goes and studies humanities at the Martha Graham Academy.  Inevitably Crake’s ability takes him to a secretive and lucrative role in the field of genomics.  And finally there is the woman Oryx.  Loved by both Jimmy and Crake.  Lover of both Jimmy and Crake.  The tie that binds them and the force that splits them.  And the subject of Snowman’s woeful reminiscences.

Snowman eventually ventures out of the tree, driven by the need to find food. And as his scavenging treck unfolds, we slowly learn the devastating truth about how and  by whom the destruction of society was actually caused.  Compelling, to use the reviewer’s cliché. 

We get the feeling that Atwood is a pessimist about the capacity of a society dominated by the pursuit of self-interested profit to reach a long-term equilibrium that is both stable and morally good. And given the current debates around extreme income inequalities in our current financial-crisis ridden world, there is much food for thought here as to where that world is heading.  Surely though, history has taught us that there are in-built circuit
breaks that prevent society from lurching into extreme states of self-destruction ?

Here is the wikipedia link to the book

Paul Auster: Sunset Park (2010)

My one liner: Paul Auster is my favourite American author.  As with much of his work, appeals to NYC-lovers.  An abandoned house in Sunset Park, Brooklyn provides Miles Heller the setting to work through his tormented past.  A vignette of financial-crisis-ridden America.
 
Miles Heller, 28, has run away from a sad past, and finds himself washed up in a dead-end job in the middle of recession-plagued Florida.

“The work is called trashing out, and he belongs to a four-man crew employed by the Dunbar Realty Corporation, which subcontracts its “home preservation” services to the local banks that now own the properties in question.  The sprawling flatlands of south Florida are filled with these orphaned structures, and because it is in the interests of the banks to resell them as quickly as possible, the vacated houses must be cleaned, repaired, and made ready to be shown to prospective buyers.”

A roadside teenage bust-up that led to the death of his step-brother, eventually made him quit his degree and his New York home seven years ago, and he has not spoken to his father or step-mother since. His mother, an actress, left home when he was young, and although throughout the story he maintains some contact with her, it is a relationship of exceptionally low quality. 
 
In Florida he “adopts” teenage lover Pilar Sanchez, a girl from a working class and somewhat unsettled Latino family, and encourages her to fulfil her academic potential and apply to Ivy League schools.  You feel that he is using her to fill a missing piece of his own life.  Then the bombshell. A blackmail threat by Pilar’s big sister to Miles. Forcing Miles to go on the run again.  

Heller and his father are both baseball fanatics, and the book is peppered with baseball stats which to the non-afficionado can be a little bewildering. But there is a point that Auster wants to make.  Baseball player Herb Score’s obituary appears in the paper – his career was cut short in 1957 by an on-field injury, and the obituary says that his whole life was plagued by one unfortunate incident after another.  Contrast another player “Lucky Lohrke” who, still alive, has survived the most unbelievable accidents both during and after the war.  Auster is telling us that life is as much fate as it is will.

Nathan Bing is the ever-present character who is the connector of the plot. Miles’ childhood friend, still living in NYC, proprietor of the bric-a-brac store “Hospital for Broken Things ”, and provider to Miles of regular updates about his father and step-mother.  

“He is the warrior of outrage, the champion of discontent, the militant debunker of contemporary life who dreams of forging a new reality from the ruins of a failed world.  Unlike most contrarians of his ilk, he does not believe in political action.”. 

Forced by economic reality to look for a new apartment he comes across an abandoned house in Sunset Park, and persuades Ellen the real estate agent who shows it to him to squat with him there.  All they need to do is find
two more “tenants”.  And given Miles’ need to leave Florida, the timing is perfect for Miles to join the squat. He will be back for Pilar when the time is right, he assures her.
 
The story takes us to Brooklyn, the inhabitants of the house in Sunset Park, and their inter-relationships, including the inevitable amorous liaisons.  And of course it takes Miles geographically closer to his father, who is having his own marital issues and other personal and professional setbacks.    Will he be able to reconcile with his father ? Will he confess to what happened on that fateful night of the death of his step-brother ? Will he be able to find happiness with Pilar ? Even if you do believe that life is mostly fate, does that really give you a licence to opt out entirely ?

Auster’s characters are always real.  Even the peripheral ones have substance, which means that the digressions into their lives are also worth making, even when this does not directly move the plot forward.  A short and easy read book, but you feel like you have covered alot of ground by the end, and you have a
better insight into contemporary America.

The wikipedia link to the book is here.