Hiroshima by John Hersey

     This was a short but very impactful book about the events of August 6, 1945, when American forces dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Hersey went to Hiroshima and interviewed survivors one year later about the dropping of the bomb and the days and weeks that followed, and this book was originally published in the New Yorker Magazine in August, 1946. It took over the entire issue, with all cartoons removed, with only a short preface stating that, "The NEW YORKER this week devotes its entire editorial space to an article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb, and what happened to the people of that city. It does so in the conviction that few of us have yet comprehended the all but incredible destructive power of this weapon, and that everyone might well take time to consider the terrible implications of its use." I think I read portions of this as a freshman in college, but I'm pretty sure this was the first time I read the piece in full.

    The book is most interesting in the beginning, I thought, because of the intense confusion and horror that came in the immediate hours after the explosion, which have a disproportionate number of pages dedicated to them. What's amazing is that no one in Hiroshima could actually hear the bomb. It seems that the sound was only audible much further away, and Hersey recounts that a fisherman twenty miles away described the sound as louder than bombings just five miles away. The uniqueness of the dropping of the bomb is what stands out so much more than anything else. Even though the firebombings of Tokyo killed more people, the atomic bomb was just so completely demoralizing. First, it seemed to come out of nowhere. Despite the fact that air raid alarms went off, most people didn't take much action since they were going off every day when American surveillance teams flew over the city. One survivor even saw that there was just one plane and continued going about his day, not knowing that plane was the Enola Gay. Second, the bomb's obliteration was beyond anything imaginable. Out of 245,000 people in Hiroshima, 100,000 were dead in the initial explosion, and at least 10,000 went to the city's Red Cross hospital on the first day, where there were only 600 beds. Of 150 doctors in Hiroshima, 65 were dead in seconds and most of the rest were wounded. Of 1,780 nurses, 1,654 were dead or too badly hurt to work, and at the Red Cross hospital, they had only six of thirty doctors and ten out of two hundred nurses.

    And then there is so much personal horror. One survivor describes trying to help a dying woman up, but when he grabs her arm, her skin slides off like a glove. The same man helps bring people too weak to move to higher ground when flooding begins, but finds the next day that they've all been washed away. The pain of living through this event must have been horrible. And then many people got radiation sickness and lost hair and grew blisters for weeks and months after. Atomic weapons are so clearly an abomination, and this book has to be one of the best arguments for their containment. Most Japanese people it seems are portrayed as not really blaming America for using the bombs, but I am not sure I believe it. Really, it seems like the problem is letting a conflict escalate into total war in which people believe it becomes necessary to annihilate civilians because the line between civilian and combatant has been blurred beyond recognition. That distinction is very important, and crossing that line leads to enormous evil.

Miscellaneous Fact:

• After the explosion, some of the survivors found pumpkins roasted on the vine and potatoes baked underground.

Encounters With the Archdruid by John McPhee

 Part One. A Mountain.

    The first part of the book is written about a hiking trip with David Brower and Charles Park, a geologist and mineral engineer. The dialogue between the two serves as a fascinating debate about the merits of environmentalism and the very definition of it. The two men butt heads throughout the hike up to Image Lake, a glacial pool in the Cascades. There are so many great moments of dialogue captured between the two:

    Park said, "A hole in the ground will not materially hurt this scenery."

    Brower stood up. "None of the experts on scenic resources will agree with you," he said. "This is one of the few remaining great wildernesses in the lower forty-eight. Copper is not a transcendent value here."

    "Without copper, we'd be in a pretty sorry situation."

    "If that deposit didn't exist, we'd get by without it."

    "I would prefer the mountain as it is, but the copper is there."

    "If we're down to where we have to take copper from places this beautiful, we're down pretty far."

    "Minerals are where you find them. The quantities are finite. It's criminal to waste minerals when the standard of living of your people depends on them. A mine cannot move. It is fixed by nature. So it has to take precedence over any other use. If there were a copper deposit in Yellowstone Park, I'd recommend mining it. Proper use of minerals is essential. You have to go get them where they are. Our standard of living is based on this."

    "For a fifty-year cycle, yes. But for the long term, no. We have to drop our standard or living, so that people a thousand years from now can have any standard of living at all."

    A breeze coming off the nearby acres of snow felt cool but not chilling in the sunshine, and rumpled the white hair of the two men.

    "I am not for penalizing people today for the sake of future generations," Park said.

    "I really am," said Brower. "That's where we differ." 

Their conversation goes on, but I think that portion really gets at the central debate between two extremes. Surely there is some synthesis of the two points of view that is a good compromise and a way forward, because I think both men are too extreme in their views. What both men agree on, unfortunately, is that population is the problem. It seems insane how common this view was in the 1960s and 70s. But they're hypocrites! McPhee writes:

    "Families with more than two children should be taxed," Bower said.
    "I agree with that, too. Everything is hopeless without population control."
    "How many children do you have?"
    "Three. How many do you have?"
    "Four," Brower confessed."
    They both turned to me.
    "For," I said.
    The medical students [who they were hiking with] looked on with interest.
    "Seven billion people are going to be on the earth in the year 2000," Park said.

And has it been a disaster? Not at all to the extent the subjects of this book expected. I would say that theory is totally discredited and that Brower, Park, and McPhee may have never really believed it since they had all those kids. Now I would not say they're hypocrites if they just wanted to be taxed more, but it seems like they believe that more people is such a disaster, yet they go off trail, having the negative effect on the wilderness that they accuse others of creating just by existing. To end this discussion of Part one, here's another point in the narrative that shows their two perspectives by what each man takes from the Suiattle River:

Reaching upstream, Brower dipped himself a cupful of water. "Wilderness is worth it, if for no other reason than it is the last place on earth where you can get good water," he said. No one else said anything. We were too tired. We stared into the stream, or looked across the deep Suiattle Valley at the virgin forests on the lower slopes and the snow and ice on the upper slopes of Glacier Peak. Park's attention became fixed on the pebbles at the bottom of the stream, and after a moment he leaned forward and reached into the water, wetting his sleeve. He removed from the water a blue-and-green stone about the size of a garden pea. He set it on the palm of one hand and passed it before us. "We have been looking all day for copper," he said. "Here it is."

    The beauty of the mountain across the valley was cool and absolute, but the beauty of the stone in Park's hand was warm and subjective. It affected us all. Human appetites, desires, ambitions, greeds, and profound aesthetic and acquisitional instincts were concentrated between the stone and our eyes. Park reached again into the stream and said, "Here's another one. The blue is chrysocolla--copper silicate. The rest is malachite--green copper carbonate."

    I thought it was funny that McPhee mentioned Brower as having "an extraordinary affection for trains." He writes of Brower's point of view that, "A railroad over the Sierra is all right. It was there. An interstate highway is an assault on the terrain." I think McPhee writes this to point out some irony or a contradiction, but in retrospect it looks prescient. This book was written before modern knowledge of climate change, and I'd say that in 2023, the Brower of 1971 was write that a railroad is certainly better than an interstate highway from an environmental standpoint.

Part Two. An Island.

    I took a lot fewer notes in this section since I already had a lot from part one, but this was a really interesting part about the developer of Hilton Head, South Carolina, who is much more idealistic in the community he is creating. But this portion really feels like it highlights the hypocrisy of both Brower and the developer, Fraser. Brower, on one hand, talks about how he likes the look of the shrimp boats off shore, and how at one point he remarks that, "There should be more masts against the sky." So in that way, Brower reveals that he's not quite such a zealot, but not because he's a moderate, but because he's a hypocrite. What Brower really likes is an aesthetic or an idea, not actually preserving nature. It's very "foreshadowing" of NIMBY behavior I think. Not sure if foreshadowing is the right word. Fraser, on the other hand, makes a lot of noise about protecting the environment of Hilton Head Island, but it's clear that what he cares about is the bottom line. When Brower remarks to Fraser that the automobile should be "ruled out" from use on the island, Fraser claims to agree, and yet, Hilton Head is filled with personal automobiles today.

Part Three. A River.

    The climax of the book comes in the final part, in which Brower confronts Floyd Dominy, his archnemesis, on a river rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. McPhee arranges for the three of them (along with other tourists) to share a multi-day trip together from Lake Powell, created by Dominy's Glen Canyon Dam, through the Grand Canyon.

    The lack of any mention of climate change, since this book was written in 1971, stands out a lot. Before climate change, the environmental movement was so different and so much less serious. Brower is an avowed degrowther, and climate activists hate dams more than anything else even though they provide clean power. There are some legitimate interests, like stopping pollution and preventing the extinction of endangered species. But those seem dwarfed, at least in Brower's mind, by an obsession over aesthetics, and a way nature is "supposed" to look. I can appreciate that some things are more beautiful than others, but at one point, Brower proposes building a special cutoff dam to protect Rainbow Bridge, a natural arch, from being reduced in size by flooding a creek beneath it. What are we doing here? Brower is willing to cause more ecological destruction just to get a better view. 

    Once again, I love McPhee's writing. One excellent passage uses the river as a metaphor for the relationship between Browe and Dominy:

Mile 130. The water is smooth here, and will be smooth for three hundred yards, and then we are going through another rapid. The temperature is a little over ninety, and the air is so dry that the rapid will feel good. Dominy and Browe are drinking beer. They have settled into a kind of routine: once a day they tear each other in half and the rest of the time they are pals.

    Dominy is wearing a blue yachting cap with gold braid, and above its visor in gold letters are the words "LAKE POWELL."

There was another great point at the very end of the book, as Brower and Dominy have their final argument, that stood out to me. McPhee puts these words into their mouths as they discuss the possibility of building Hualapai Dam (never built), which would have flooded much of the Grand Canyon:

    "There's another view, and I have it, and I suppose I'll die with it, Floyd. Lake Powell is a drag strip for power boats. It's for people who won't do things the easy way. The magic of Glen Canyon is dead. It has been vulgarized. Putting water in the Cathedral in the Desert was like urinating in the crypt of St. Peter's. I hope it never happens here."

    "Look, Dav. I don't live in a God-damned apartment. I didn't grow up in a God-damned city. Don't give me the crap that you're the only man that understands these things. I'm a greater conservationist than you are, by far. I do things. I make things available to man. Unregulated, the Colorado River wouldn't be worth a good God damn to anybody. You conservationists are phony outdoorsmen. I'm sick and tired of a democracy that's run by a noisy minority. I'm fed up clear to my God-damned gullet. I had the guts to come out and fight you bastards."

Miscellaneous Facts:

• I learned what glacial flour is- a finely ground rock that comes out of the ice from glaciers that is a light brown dust that sometimes leaves a green sheen on water.
• Brower was a major leader in the Sierra Club and was known for introducing coffee table books that were a major force of environmentalism in the second half of the 20th century.
• The Colorado River used to be known as Old Red because it was full of red mud, but today it is far clearer due to silt being trapped behind the Glen Canyon Dam.
• At the time the book was written (1971), the author, Brower, and Dominy float 35 feet above Gregory Arch, which was covered by flooding when the Glen Canyon Dam was built. But today, it rises significantly above the water again as levels are now far lower.

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow

     The Dawn of Everything is very deeply thought-provoking. I have previously read Debt and not thought much of it and then I couldn't even get through Bullshit Jobs, but this is the David Graeber book that has really hooked me. My dad and grandpa both read it and talked about it and my grandpa bought it for me, but they honestly undersold it. The Dawn of Everything is just a fantastic book of cultural anthropology that draws conclusions about the state and anarchy that force you to really think. I feel like this is the kind of book that will keep people arguing for years and years because of how absolutely different the perspective is that Graeber and Wengrow write from. It took me a while to figure out what the book is really about. There are several themes that seem disconnected: an argument that the agricultural "revolution" was actually a slower and less dramatic process, emphasis on different groups observing different ways of life and consciously rejecting them, and a diversity of ways to live. But especially after having just read Karl Popper the message of the Davids in this book is clear: the state is a creation of the aristocracy and it is predatory. This is going a lot further than Popper, who sees use for the state and a battle between those who favor democracy and those who favor elitism for control of the state. The authors of Dawn, in contrast, argue that over the last 12,000 years of human history, there have been countless ways for people to organize themselves, but that we have gotten stuck in a form of government that is overly centralized, overly controlled by elites, and overly unequal. My notes on the book are more sporadic than usual, but I've got some takeaways.

    In chapter five, titled, "Many Seasons Ago: Why Canadian foragers kept slaves and their Canadian neighbors didn't; or, the problem with 'modes of production,'" the authors do an amazing analysis of why societies adopt slavery. They point out that the economic use of slavery is that "a slave-raider is stealing the years of caring labour another society invested to create a work-capable human being." That is why the "archetypal slaves are war captives." Raising slaves is a lot of work, especially in a time when many people didn't live to adulthood. That makes American slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries so unusual. However, it makes sense then that banning the slave trade in 1807 could have had a role in causing the end of slavery by making it economical had the cotton gin not been invented. On modes of production, the authors point out that slave societies seemingly produce nothing while their slaves do everything for them. But really they should be thought of as just another extreme form of a hierarchical society. The society uses its extreme inequality to produce a class of warriors, priests, and nobility, all of whom can afford not to do the primary work of raising crops or other survival needs because they have slaves to do it for them. But the authors point out that the primary purpose of slaves is not even to raise crops, but to first provide for domestic care needs, something that inequalities create again today in maids and nannies. I think this raises questions, however, about what the pros and cons of hierarchical and equalitarian societies are. If we accept that inequality is necessary to produce non-agricultural workers, does that apply today to our doctors, journalists, scientists, and other jobs? Are we saying that inequality creates progress? Because that doesn't feel right. If it is, then we need to strike a balance between progress and the distribution of the fruits of progress.

    The discussion of inequality reminded me a lot of Popper's criticism of Plato in the first volume of The Open Society and Its Enemies. In Dawn, the authors focus on schismogenesis, the idea that societies and cultures form and self-differentiate by looking at their neighbors and deciding they don't like what they see. So there is a natural formation of equal and unequal societies side-by-side. Popper did lots of analysis of how Plato looked with envy on the highly unequal Spartan society compared to his own Athens. In both books, there is a lot of talk of the people living in equalitarian societies looking at the aristocratic barbarians on their borders and feeling an inferiority complex. They weren't wrong. Eventually, those barbarian kings would take over the whole world, instituting feudalism everywhere before bourgeoise capitalists rose up to replace them hundreds or thousands of years later. But even today, in modern American society, we idolize fantasies of aristocratic barbarians in our culture. We love people who are lawless, seen in our Westerns and Viking films, and we even more love the lawless who have a birthright whether of the aristocratic form in Game of Thrones or the genetic superiority of our superheroes, who act outside the law as well. It seems like we are at the end of an age of autocrats that would have begun around the time of the first kingdoms and empires in the middle east some 3,000 years ago and come to their end from the year 1776/89 to today. But are we in the last breaths of the age of autocracy in which political power went to autocrats, or just a brief respite from its continued existence? I guess we won't know for another 1,000 years. What this book says is certain is that people were much more free before agriculture and that they were actively rejecting it because of the debts it would create and the inequality that would follow when one farmer had surplus and others did not, or when on farmer held the good land and other did not. 

    In chapters 6 and 7, titled, "Gardens of Adonis: The revolution that never happened: hoe Neolithic peoples avoided agriculture" and "The Ecology of Freedom: How farming first hopped, stumbled and bluffed its way around the world," the authors argue that there was no agricultural revolution. Instead, they argue that many people developed light forms of agriculture that let nature do the work, like scattering seeds on a floodbank of a river, so they wouldn't have to irrigate. One example they use is wheat. When wild wheat ripens, its connection between the spikelet (carrying the seed that we use in bread) and the stem breaks, dropping the seeds on the ground. In domesticated wheat, the plant has evolved to require a human to remove the spikelet. The authors argue that this shows that the domestication of wheat came not from use for bread, which would have required separating the seeds at the time of ripeness, but for use as straw, which would have meant taking the entire stalk before the seed would drop, eliminating the need for dropping. Their argument is extended to politics, as they deny the scholarly consensus that the agricultural revolution was the impetus to state development, writing that no society "followed a linear trajectory from food production to state formation."

    Graeber and Wengrow identify three principles that form the possible bases of social power: control of violence, control of information, and individual charisma. They illustrate the bases by the example of Kim Kardashian, walking around the streets with valuable jewelry. She is able to keep her jewelry safe from theft, most obviously, because the state threatens violence and incarceration against those who would steal from her. If not the state, she may have her own bodyguards who could harm those who try to steal from her. But what if there was no ability to harm others? What if we were all invulnerable to the injuries that others could do to us? Then she would need to control information, and lock her diamonds up in a safe that only she knew the code to. And if we lived in a world where we could all read each other's minds? Then she would need to convince everyone (since we would all know the code to her safe) that she is the rightful possessor of the diamonds and that we should just let her have them. I noticed these three principles of power contrast with Max Weber's power through law, tradition, and charisma (although they both share charisma). I want to explore that more and read Weber next. The three sources of social power above contrast with the three "primordial freedoms," which Wengow and Graeber identify as the freedom to move, the freedom to disobey, and the freedom to create and transform social relationships. 

    By the end of the book, I feel very aware of what Graeber and Wengrow criticize, but unconvinced by what they propose. I understand that they believe the agricultural revolution was not so much of a revolution, and that states didn't have to form in the way they did, but I am skeptical that Native American societies provide a model for what could have been. The authors point out that the western states could only expand their notion of statehood by force, but if other forms of government could not withstand that attack, isn't that a valid criticism of that form of government? While the use of force is illegitimate in the context of colonialization, that only diminishes the moral value of the traditional state, but doesn't show that another form of organization is superior. If your form of self-government cannot provide security, you lose that government, and so it is inferior. But that said, the "indigenous critique" is interesting. The authors contend throughout the book that indigenous criticism had a major effect on Western philosophy and self-reflection, as indigenous people pointed out flaws in the European way of life. But however thought-provoking, I'm not sure the effect they describe is real, and I would like to see it confirmed by other writers. But let me end by saying that above all else this book made me think, and its perspective was a fantastic jumping point for reflection.

Miscellaneous Facts: 

• Since the existence of Homo Sapiens 300,000 years ago, there have only been two opportunities in which temperatures were warm enough to develop agriculture: the Eemian interglacial, some 130,000 years ago (didn't happen) and then the beginning of the Holocene, some 13-12,000 years ago, in which people did indeed develop agriculture.
• Something that I'm thinking about is how important it is that agriculture developed after the ice age in which humans crossed the Bering Strait. So those humans that went to the Americas missed out, which would have big consequences later.
• My notes on it aren't good, so I'll just say that chapter 9, "Hiding in Plain Sight: The indigenous origins of social housing and democracy in the Americas" has the most interesting stuff about Teotihuacan and is worth a read by anyone.
• One reason that Inca rulers were motivated to expand their empires was that they only inherited the old ruler's army, and not his court, lands, or retainers.
• "Free" derives from a Germanic term meaning "friend," reflective of the fact that to be a slave is to be unfree, and to have no ability to form independent social relationships.

The Open Society and Its Enemies Volume II: The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath by Karl Popper

    In the second volume of The Open Society, Karl Popper focuses his criticism on Hegel and Marx. Whereas Popper is nicer to Marx, he is just as hateful towards Hegel as he was towards Plato in Volume I. Early on, he writes regarding Hegel, "I do not even think he was talented. He is an indigestible writer. As even his most ardent apologists must admit, his style is 'unquestionably scandalous.' And as far as the content of his writing is concerned, he is supreme only in his outstanding lack of originality. There is nothing in Hegel's writing that has not been said better before him." Wow! Karl Popper must have been a character. Also like his criticism of Plato, Popper starts out by going after Hegel as an individual. Like he identified and criticized Plato's bias as a member of the Athenian aristocracy, Popper criticizes Hegel for his patronage by Prussia's King Frederick William III. Hegel is a historicist who believes that the ideal government is one in which a prince has absolute authority, and Hegel referred to more democratic countries, like England, as being backward. This is of course ironic since within a couple of decades of Hegel's death, the UK was the strongest empire on Earth even though it was the most democratic in Europe in many ways. Popper doesn't go easy on him for that.

    Some of the interesting passages in the book deal with the origins of totalitarianism, which Popper traces to Marxism, arguing that in spite of being a reaction to the left and a right-wing movement, Fascism "grew partly out of the spiritual and political breakdown of Marxism." I suppose this may be paralleled in Mussolini's life, as he was a disillusioned socialist, and Hitler's NSDAP, which began as a socialist party that became a fascist party. Popper writes that "modern totalitarianism is only an episode within the perennial revolt against freedom and reason," made possible by the failures of social democracy and other "democratic version[s] of Marxism." When social democracy failed to take a stand against the First World War, it lost all credibility, as it could not solve economic depression or defend itself against fascist aggression. If your ideological system can't provide prosperity or security, then what good is it? 

    Popper identifies Hegel as the progenitor of all the major ideas that make up totalitarian movements. They include (1) nationalism, (2) the state's need to assert its existence in war, (3) the state's exemption from any moral obligations, (4) the ethical idea of total or collective war, (5) the creative role of the Great Man of deep knowledge and passion, and (6) the ideal of the heroic life as opposed to the shallow mediocrity of the petty bourgeois. There are really interesting points made in these chapters in citing Aurel Kolnai, who writes that "the nationalist attitude... does not imply a desire for perpetual or frequent warfare. It sees in a war a good rather than an evil, even if it be a dangerous good, like an exceedingly heady wine that is best reserved for rare occasions of high festivity." In discussing the nation and race, Kolnai also wrote, "the principle of Race is meant to embody and express the utter negation or human freedom, the denial of equal rights, a challenge in the face of mankind." And racialism "tends to oppose Liberty by Fate, individual consciousness by the compelling urge of the Blood beyond control and argument." And further developing the problem with heroism, Popper clarifies that heroism should be based on the cause of the hero, such as exploration, research in diseases, and medical advances. But the Heroic Man in the fascist form attacks the idea of civil life as shallow and materialistic because it is secure, the fascist Heroic Man values how, not for what one fights. It is an idealization of violence itself with no room for the cause.

    There is also some very interesting discussion of the significance of Marx's writing. Popper respects Marx more than Hegel and Plato and credits him with at least some good ideas. One is the analytical method Marx pioneers to understand social development. He compares Marx to John Stuart Mill, who believed the study of society was reducible to psychology and that the laws of historical development would be explicable by human nature. Marx disagreed, and argued that historical development was best explained by sociological laws- legal and economic relationships. This is what Popper says is Marx's greatest achievement. Popper says that many "Vulgar Marxists" as he calls them misunderstand Marx and think that Marx theorized about cabals of big business or imperialists. But in fact, Marx wasn't theorizing about the culpability of conspirators, but rather was interested in the social forces that created the class relationships themselves. The stage of history is set by the social system binding it, so we are all puppets, is Popper's interpretation of Marx. Popper is much more critical of Marx when it comes to Marx's view that politics are impotent and cannot effect the change that is needed.

    In this book, Popper puts forth the fundamental difference between left and right-wing politics as either having the point of view that the history of humanity is class struggle or national struggle. Liberals see the world in conflict of classes, conservatives see the world in conflict of nations. There is a similar identification in the book of rationalists and irrationalists that I see playing out today. Rationalists believe in the scientific method, which is really the common sense value. But on the internet I see lots of "return to tradition" types who are well described by Popper, as being those who think "our rationalism much too commonplace for his taste, and who looks out for the latest esoteric intellectual fashion, which he discovers in the admiration of medieval mysticism, is not, one fears, doing his duty by his fellow men. He may think himself and his subtle taste superior to our 'scientific age,' to an 'age of industrialization' which carries its brainless division of labor and its 'mechanization' and 'materialization' even into the field of human thought. But he shows only that he is incapable of appreciating the moral forces inherent in modern science." Those moral forces are the fact that scientific theories can be tested by their own practical consequences, imposing discipline on the search for truth. Whereas the scientist is responsible for what he says and can be distinguished from false prophets, the mystic is intellectually irresponsible, escaping into dreams and "oracular philosophy."

    In a key portion of the book, Popper discusses the paradox of freedom, which is that when freedom is unlimited, it defeats itself. Unlimited freedom means that a strong man is free to bully and rob a weak man, who then becomes unfree. The purpose of the protectionist state is to restrict the freedom of the strong to bully the weak. But Popper points out that this should go beyond restricting physical aggression. Economic aggression can be even more harmful if left unchecked. Economic power may render the majority of people slaves beholden to the rich, and there can only be a political remedy to restrict that power. We must give up the principle of non-intervention in the economic system and demand that capitalism give way to economic intervention by the state, which is exactly what began in the 19th century. People saw what unrestrained economic power could do to unsafe work conditions, child labor, and slavery, and they said no more. Moreover, we pass laws insuring workers against disability, and we can continue to pass laws solving the economic problem with politics. Because of this capacity, Popper criticizes Marx for underestimating the danger of the political power of the state, which can be used for bad or for good, whereas Marx focuses too much on the economic power. In this way, writes Popper, "The way to its understanding is blocked to the followers of Plato, Hegel, and Marx. They will never see that the old question 'Who shall be the rulers?" must be superseded by the more real one 'How can we tame them?'"

    Further developing his ideas on economic power, Popper argues that the modern economic system worldwide (as of 1945) is one of economic interventionism, adopted in all countries regardless of whether they are nominally capitalist or communist or in between. The reality, he argues, is that by the end of WWII, no country can survive without economic intervention. This means that the system that Marx initially criticized doesn't exist anymore because it completely changed. Popper points out that many of Marx's recommendations, such as a progressive income tax, increasing state ownership of industry, free public education, and the abolition of child labor have been implemented and are largely uncontroversial today. Other points Marx made like the abolition of inheritance, have been accomplished by most states in part through taxation. It is only his most radical aims, such as abolition of all property in land and seizure of assets from emigrants and rebels, which have not been implemented. So we are no longer living in the capitalist system of Marx's day, and, in fact, we are all living in something more or less like the world Marx supported according to Popper. Even if the modern world isn't completely "Marxist," it is just as close to Marxism as it is to unrestrained capitalism.

    I think Popper is most interesting when he is discussing how to preserve democracy against forces of totalitarianism or fascism or other ideologies that are anti-democratic. Popper gives seven good principles that democratic leadership must support for the state to survive. He writes that democracies can only work if the main parties believe that (1) democracy is not rule of the majority but a system in which elections can peacefully transfer power, (2) anything without peaceable transfer of power is tyranny, (3) the democracy's constitution should only exclude change that would endanger the state's economic character, (4) full protection of the law should extend to minorities, but not to those that violate the law or incite others to overthrow democracy, (5) institutions should be created to safeguard democracy with the assumption that there may always be latent anti-democratic tendencies among the rulers and the ruled, (6) if democracy is destroyed, all rights should be destroyed so that no one may benefit from the destruction of democracy, and (7) the entire society should advance understanding of the principles of democracy so as to preserve it. I think number four is the most interesting since it deals with the conflict between democracy and freedom of speech. Our conception of freedom of speech in the USA today protects the vast majority of freedom of speech and deals mainly in time/place/manner restrictions so as to permit the most speech. So we don't ban Nazi slogans or racist speech like Germany does. Popper would say that we should ban that speech so far as it is an incitement to overthrow democracy. I think this makes sense as a formulation so that it includes only speech meant to actively overthrow democracy, not mere idle comments against democracy, but I'm not sure how it avoids the problem of euphemisms. I think it would be very difficult to deal with statements like "woke," when racists just mean to say "black people." And I also think it doesn't necessarily solve the problem of racist speech, which I think is anti-democracy in a multi-racial country. 

    In his final statement on historicism, Popper says historicists substitute the seemingly factual but irrational question of "Which way are we going?/What is the part that history has destined us to play?" for the rational question of "What are we going to choose as our most urgent problems, how did they arise, and along what roads may we proceed to solve them?" Because Popper believes history has no meaning, he wants to focus on the impact of the human role, whereas historicists see humanity as being taken through time by sociological forces beyond our control. Only at the end does Popper say what he means by "history," creating similar confusion to laypeople like Fukuyama in discussing the "end of history." Popper clarifies that by history, he means the traditional history of political power, elevated as the history of the world by which there were the Babylonians, then the Persians, then the Greeks, and so on. This is the history beloved by nationalists because it is a history of nations and peoples in conflict. It gains primacy because power affects us all, because we are inclined to worship power, and because the powerful are those that write history. And it is "theistic." The history of power politics give historians and theologians a way to say that Gods will is reflected in who rises and falls by the mandate of heaven. But for Popper this is blasphemy. If the history of power politics is a play, then it was "written not by God, but, under the supervision of generals and dictators, by the professors of history." So by the traditional and historicist view, we are on a path destined by God to go in some direction. But Popper assigns us all agency and says that God would not create dictators and evil.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• I also discovered while I was reading this volume that Popper's writings on the paradox of tolerance, which was the inspiration for me reading this book, was actually in an endnote in Volume I that I missed. Oops. This is all he had to say on the matter:

Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

•  Popper says that Marx improved upon Hegel and Kant by identifying reality with the material world and appearance with the world of thoughts and ideas- in contrast to Plato. 
• Popper writes a good principle for what a public education system should be: do no harm, and therefore "give the young what they urgently need, in order to become independent of us, and to be able to choose for themselves."

2022 Year in Review

    This year, I hit 50 books, a number much higher than all my other years except for 2019, when I went absolutely insane. I don't plan on reading so much again next year, or at least not so many books. I want to integrate some more magazine and academic articles into my routine more, which I don't think I would write full blog posts about. Reflecting on the year, I read mostly history, economics and political books, which I enjoyed the most, although there was also a pretty good helping of sex/relationship/psychological books as well as science books. I also read five fantasy novels by Brandon Sanderson. The ones rated the highest below were evaluated by me just now as I wrote this post, so don't hold me to it. The same goes for my favorite posts that I made. Some are better written than others just like the books I read and it's all subjective, plus I could change my mind. But anyway, below is the information about my year in reading.

    As an aside before the data and other info, I would say the major theme of the books I read this year is power and law. This quote from Otto von Bismarck seemed like a great summation of the evil that all educated people and all normal people need to fight: "Germany is not looking to Prussia's liberalism, but to its power; Bavaria, Wurttemburg, Baden may indulge liberalism, and yet no one will assign them Prussia's role... it is not by speeches and majority resolutions that the great questions of our time are decided - that was the big mistake of 1848 and 1849 - but by iron and blood." I feel like the inescapable theme I read about in Karl Popper, Francis Fukuyama, the various China books I read, and even Brandon Sanderson is that there is one fundamental divide that rises above all others in politics. There are those who believe in rule of law and those who believe in rule by law or rule by force. There is a class of elites at all times in history, who, to preserve their entrenched power, will stop at nothing, especially not the law, to preserve it. They violate norms and laws if they cannot change the laws, and democracy is their greatest enemy since it would offer rights to the weak. The idea that "the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must" is the most toxic idea in our history, and it is through the use of class, race, gender, sex, sexual orientation, and religion that entrenched elites bind allies from the weaker groups to themselves. I read it in books on Imperial Japan and Second Reich Germany as well as Communist China. Members of the common people are promised pittances in exchange for their loyalty, forming patron-client relationships as a form of government rather than government based on principles or any moral basis. It is much harder to form that moral government since everyone is vulnerable to being tempted away from justice and the law by elites. Anyway, that theme came up constantly in my readings this year and I just needed to type that out.

Books and pages (according to Goodreads) read per month
January: 4 books; 1,331 pages
February: 2 books; 1,416 pages
March: 1 book; 1,230 pages
April: 1 book; 366 pages
May: 9 books; 4,790 pages
June: 5 books; 2,433 pages
July: 7 books, 2,656 pages (the only month where I read more female authors than males: 4-3)
August: 6 books, 2,755 pages
September: 4 books, 1,565 pages
October: 2 books, 640 pages
November: 2 books, 856 pages 
December: 7 books, 2,864 pages

Here is a graph I made of my reading:

Gender Breakdown

35 Male Authors 

14 Female Authors

Best Books of the Year

Fifth:The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 by William Dalrymple. This was basically a historical novel! I would recommend this book to anyone I know because I felt like it was a perfect combination of being a completely accessible, non-fiction account of an event that so few people I know are aware of. It was absolutely illuminating.

Fourth: The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage by Jonathan Cohn. This book was just an amazing analysis of the legislative process and maintained a really empathetic tone about the real problem there to solve- fixing the American healthcare system. This book gave me the great quote from Harris Wofford: “Americans have a right to a lawyer when they are charged with a crime, so why don’t they have a right to a doctor when they are sick?”

Third: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler. This was just a very cool history of the world told through its languages. Ostler introduces interesting linguistic changes and explains how they came about. It was excellent for learning about how hieroglyphics really worked and how "Italy" and "veal" come from the same Greek word.

Second: The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order by Rush Doshi. This book blew me away with its density and completeness. Rush Doshi does such good analysis of Chinese foreign policy that I couldn't stop thinking about this book as I read it, and it felt measured, which was good compared to some other books on China.

First: The Control of Nature by John McPhee. Three incredible parts about the Mississippi River, volcanoes in Hawaii and Iceland, and landslides in Los Angeles. Each one explores the theme of man's failure to control nature and our attempts to do so in a temporary way. McPhee is probably the best writer that I read all year. He elevates the art of non-fiction and it made learning about nature such a pleasure.

Honorable Mentions

Annals of the Former World by John McPhee. I didn't want to put two McPhee books in my top five, but this one would be in there otherwise. It's really five books, all of which are amazing lessons on American geology taught by different geologists through McPhee's prose. I found it relaxing to read about time on a geological scale.

Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy by Adam Tooze. I hope there will be a sequel to this. Shutdown is an economic history of Coronavirus that explains in detail so much of the news I missed because so much happened so quickly. If you liked Crashed or want to just learn about how the Federal Reserve and world governments respond to a crisis, read this book.

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt. An amazing history of Europe that is a fantastic survey-type book for an undergraduate-level reader. Most people can pick this up and learn a ton.

The Open Society and Its Enemies Volume One: The Spell of Plato by Karl Popper. This defense of liberalism and openness was excellent. It was a little verbose, but very stirring, and I've never read someone viciously attack an ancient Greek philosopher over 2,000 years after his death before.

The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe by Joseph Stiglitz. This is a book in which Stiglitz makes an argument from the left against the Euro, saying that the Eurozone may either unite further or disband, but that the current system is untenable. I found it very convincing.

Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. Reisner's book had a similar feeling to McPhee except he talked about rivers and lakes, more ephemeral than tectonic plates. But the dams built by the Bureau of Reclamation are not so ephemeral, and will be here long after all of us are gone. 

The Stormlight Archive and the Mitborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. Since these are two series that I finished this year, I just need to mention that both were fantastic and that I plan on reading much more Brandon Sanderson in 2023. Sanderson is a master of world-building and his fantasy worlds are just incredible, especially in how much they just make sense to me and don't require me to suspend too much disbelief.

What It Takes: The Way to the White House by Richard Cramer. Who cares today about the 1988 presidential primaries? I didn't. But this (long) book was an absolutely amazing and detailed look at most of the major candidates (minus Jesse Jackson unfortunately), giving the reader biographies of each and following them on the campaign trail.

The Chinese Invasion Threat: Taiwan's Defense and American Strategy in Asia by Ian Easton. If you want to know the details of how China will invade Taiwan, this is it. The book blew me away in its detail, and I came away convinced Ian Easton is an incredibly intelligent expert in the defense of Taiwan. Fascinating book on military details.

My Best-Written Reflections of the Year:

    I'm ranking these reflections based on either how extensive my reflection was, how clear it was in its understanding of the book, or just that I think other people should read it. I'll say up front that The Long Game, The Last Mughal, Postwar, and Shutdown could all have made this list since I think I wrote great reflections for those that are worth reading, but I'm excluding them since I already put those books on the list above. But those reflections are pretty good I think. Here are the top reflections from this year in my opinion:

Third: Red Flags by George Magnus. This is a great book that details four major threats China faces in the coming decades, which I detail in my post.

Second: Mussolini by R.J.B. Bosworth. It's Mussolini's life. I go over it in detail and it took me a while to write. 

First: The Thirty Years War: A European Tragedy by Peter Wilson. Oh man this was a pain to write. I have no idea what possessed me to write my longest reflection ever, but I did. I summarized the entire Thirty Years War and it was rough. The book was very hard to read, so I would recommend reading my reflection instead (which is probably not that interesting to anyone, I just need to make this number one for my own sake since it took me so long to write).

Honorable Mentions

The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge. I think I lost interest in this reflection by the end, but I put out a lot of good info on the Crusades.

Zoned in the USA by Sonia Hirt. This was a really cool book, and I wrote down a lot on her comparative portions in how different countries administer land uses.

Japan at War in the Pacific: The Rise and Fall of The Japanese Empire in Asia 1868-1945 by Jonathan Clements. What a dense book! In a good way. This was just a really short and detailed look at Japan over the short period of time in which it came to dominate its region after being more or less an isolated backwater into the mid 1800s. I go into a lot of that detail in my reflection.

Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871-1918 by Katja Hoyer. This book was really similar to the book on Japan, covering the same period of time in which Germany grew strong and then aggressive. Similarly, I wrote a pretty detailed reflection.

Carthage Must be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles. This was a great book covering Carthage from its foundation through the Punic Wars with Rome and its defeat. 

Botwana - A Modern Economic History: An African Diamond in the Rough by Ellen Hillbom and Jutta Bolt. This book read like more of an academic article, so I think my reflection is a nice summation for anyone who doesn't want to get into all that. But if you want to know why Botswana is richer per capita than all its neighbors, this book tells you why.

    Hopefully this post serves as a useful guide to some of the best books I read this year. I ended up including a lot more than I planned to by using the honorable mentions, but I almost never finish a book I don't like. So that means that every book you see get a reflection (with very few exceptions) was a good book. Below, I'll include some historical data from other years before I ever thought to do a "year in review" post.

2018: 18,122 pages over 33 books, averaging about 549 pages per book.

2019: 55,502 pages over 116 books, averaging about 478 pages per book.

2020: 13,415 pages over 32 books, averaging about 419 pages per book.

2021: 14,144 pages over 27 books, averaging about 524 pages per book.

2022: 22,902 pages over 50 books, averaging about 458 pages per book.