Humans are kind

Next up in my reading series is HumanKind.  This book is about humans natural tendencies towards kindness and helpfulness, and how these tendencies can be overwritten or pushed aside by modern life.

By modern life I mean all life since the invention of agriculture.

Our examples of hunter gatherer societies are fairly small in number but they consistently paint a portrait of cooperation, lack of hierarchies, and group decision making.  This makes a lot of sense when you think about the way such groups would live.  When you move around following herds or harvesting by season there is little to own.  You don't stay on any particular patch of land, and owning it makes little sense.  You can't have more possessions than you can carry, so hoarding wealth is nearly impossible.  Having a standing military is an expense you cannot afford because they can't accomplish anything useful.  This is the sort of environment that humans are mostly adapted to.  The few thousand years since agriculture developed have changed a lot, but that isn't enough time for evolution to have a big effect.

Once you have agriculture the rules all change.  Land ownership becomes crucial.  Hoarding wealth is suddenly feasible.  Increases in food production allow for specialization and pave the way for standing militaries and their accompanying rigid hierarchies.  All of this leads to war and violence.  However, turning highly cooperative nomadic humans into bloodthirsty pillagers requires a lot of change in our outlook, and it turns out the key to that is making us believe that humans are naturally bad, and thus in need of constant control.  We also need to be convinced that other people are evil, and thus it is acceptable to murder them and take their stuff.

This is the key to being a dictator over a huge group of people.  In order to impose your rules you have to make people fear each other so they will surrender their liberties for safety.  There are many versions of this - religions telling people that other people are inherently wicked, for example.  However, there are modern day equivalents like most economics that holds dear the idea of humans as machines that try to maximize their personal power and position.

The book addresses a lot of the ways we try to convince each other of humankind's wickedness.  For example, the bystander effect, in which the death of Kitty Genovese is often cited.  The story that is often told is that Kitty was attacked in an alley, and 38 people witnessed the attack.  They did nothing, and the attacker returned repeatedly until finally Kitty died.  The true story is that the police interviewed 38 people, most of whom were asleep or heard yelling in an alley and thought it was just a drunk person.  Two of them called the police (who arrived too late to help) and one found Kitty and held her while she died.  It is a tragedy, and certainly shows that some individuals are wicked and violent, but it does not teach us that human bystanders are callous brutes.

Similarly the Stanford prison experiment and the famous experiment where volunteers administered shocks that they were meant to think were fatal are often used as examples of humans being basically bad.  The book talks about both cases, and shows how flawed the conclusions are.

Humans are marvellously adapted to cooperate and learn from one another.  These are the things that set us apart from all other species.  The great majority of us struggle to harm others at all.  However, we can be indoctrinated, tricked, and pushed into hatred and violence, and we often are.  We should not imagine that this is inevitable though, because it is not.  The last century shows us that we can get better.  We can reduce war, we can try to help others, and we can break down barriers.  

We aren't perfect, and never will be, but we are slowly fumbling our way towards something better.

HumanKind is an excellent book that will teach you about the ways that we are tricked into hatred, how hierarchies and possessions create conflict and division, and how people use this story of inherent wickedness of humankind to justify atrocities.  Being better is difficult, but this book provides clues as to how we can go about doing that.

Defeated by detail

The next book on my 'stuff people recommended' list is The Horse, The Wheel, and Language.  It is a book about archaeology / anthropology that looks at ancient peoples, particularly a group that lived in the steppes of Asia called Indo-Europeans.  

It is the first book that I failed to finish.

I didn't fail because the book was bad, or wrong, but rather because it is so chock fill of minute details that I just don't care about.  It sounds like it would be right up my alley - I am interested in historic trends and the idea of following the invention of the wheel or horseback riding and seeing how they influenced language migration sounds neat.

Unfortunately the book is just so dry and so full of proof for minor points that I couldn't get through it all.  I read halfway, and then stopped reading at all for weeks because I had no desire at all to finish.  Finally I concluded that I need to give up on my goal of reading all the books all the way through and simply write up what I have and ship it back to the library.

It turns out that I like broad strokes of learning when I am looking at something quite unfamiliar.  I suspect I am like most people in this regard.  If I am well versed in a topic I enjoy intricate detail, but for something I know little about I can't get that interested in a scholarly treatise that gets bogged down in minute tidbits.  I just don't care about the origin of a particular consonant in the Proto Indo European language.  

The book seems well researched.  I don't fault its academic credentials, though honestly I don't know that I would be able to tell if it was absolutely full of it.  That might be the issue, really.  If every single word in the book was a lie I don't think I would be able to definitely argue against it, and that means I am reading way above my pay grade.

If you enjoy detailed linguistic explanations and exhaustive examination of archeological evidence, this book may be for you.  

For me though, it was just a bit too much.  I don't have the knowledge required to get a lot out of it... and I suspect that 99.9% of humanity is in the same situation.

My next couple of books are much more approachable, written for mass audiences, and I am sure I will be able to finish them.  For now though I will consider myself defeated by detail.

The true war

I finished Pursuit of Power:  Europe 1815-1914.  This book was the first that I started reading in my Stuff People Recommended project, but it took me a long time to finish both because of length and density.  If you intend on reading it I suggest investing in steel toe boots - if you drop the book you will need them.

This book is the story of Europe from the Napoleonic Wars to WW1.  It covers a vast range of topics from political intrigue to wars and lines of control through to labour disputes, technology, and economics.  Pursuit of Power is incredibly well researched and the author clearly knows his stuff.  You will come out the other side with a dizzying array of facts, should you make it through.

The trick is making it through.  The book is not light reading.  Every mention of a person includes their birth and death date.  There are endless lists of things and odd tangents with highly specific details that don't fit well into a narrative.

Speaking of which, the book doesn't have a narrative.  That isn't necessarily a criticism or a form of praise, just a fact.  You do see trends of course as you go through all the data, but the author isn't trying to push a particular viewpoint or tell a story.  He is presenting well researched facts, that is all.  If you want an arc, or characters about which you know something, you will not find it here.  If what you want is a wild flurry of interesting tidbits of knowledge though, you will find exactly what you are looking for.

I did come away from reading this book with a few insights that I think are worth sharing.  First off it is clear from reading it that our current way of discussing and viewing history as a story of nation states battling one another is deeply flawed.  For example, many of the rebellions in Europe in this period ended when the rebels ousted their monarch and then another country invaded, destroyed the rebels, put a new monarch in place, and left.  The key battle wasn't country vs. country, but aristocrats vs. peasants.  The aristocrats in Germany wouldn't abide a rebellion in a nearby country because those uppity peasants can't be allowed to get ideas!  It was common to see other countries simply install a random noble as king in a newly minted country and then walk away, all to keep the lower classes under control.

The peasants were often tricked into thinking that the real war was them vs. some other country, when in fact they should have been seeing it as a war of all peasant vs. all the upper classes.  The writings of Marx make a lot more sense to me now that I see this more clearly.

I also acquired a new appreciation for the effects of economics and business on societies with much more primitive science.  Reading about how railways affected the price of wheat and thus dramatically changed farmers lives in nations far away was fascinating.  A railway in France that allows a French farmer to sell crops at a much lower cost because of lower shipping prices can destroy the life of a Russian peasant when their crops now aren't worth selling.

Additionally I have come around to a new way of thinking about why democracies with substantial freedom and rights for individuals have become so successful. The liberties of a modern democracy improve the efficiency of a country dramatically over a oppressive dictatorship.  I think the reason we see so many countries moving in that direction over time is simply because a country run like that gets rich.  We aren't living in a more democratic, free world because that is righteous... we are living that way because societies like that *win* on the battlefield of money.

Reading Pursuit of Power will teach you many things.  It will take a lot of time and it will sometimes feel like a slog, but you will come out the other end with a great deal of insight, and more than a few interesting facts you can spit out at parties.  

Feathered scaly critters

The next book in my 'stuff people recommended' series is The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs.  Unlike many other books in this series it did not cause me to rethink my opinions on humanity or consider becoming a full on communist.  The book was a fun, straightforward description of what we know about dinosaurs at this point, starting when the dinosaurs first emerged and moving through time until their extinction.  

The author mixed in some anecdotes about fossil hunting and archaeologists throughout, providing some amusing moments.  Certainly when I think about scientists studying dinosaurs now I imagine careful dig sites with lots of regulations and structure, but back in the day competing scientists hired mercenaries and troublemakers to fight and rob each other trying to collect bones - quite the contrast.

Much of what I learned about dinosaurs as a kid was wrong.  It is neat to take a body of knowledge that I hadn't questioned and find out how many things have changed.  Movies like Jurassic Park are now quite dated because they don't show many of the dinosaurs having feathers - though these aren't feathers like modern birds have, but rather something halfway between a feather and a thick hair.  Also our understanding of how fast dinosaurs can move, what they eat, and how they behave has changed over time.

Mixed in with dinosaur facts are descriptions of environmental changes during the dinosaur period, covering things like climate change, plate tectonics, and other factors.

This is a good book for any age.  I imagine kids would get a kick out of the random stories, but they would also get a solid education about dinosaurs in particular and general scientific topics of many kinds.  I think most adults would enjoy learning about dinosaurs anew to update their knowledge, and the book is extremely accessible to anyone without any background required.

If you want a quick to read, well written book that gives a broad overview of many scientific topics with a focus on dinosaurs, this is a great book to pick up.  

Somehow we lived

Are you looking for a book to make you feel much worse about the nature of humanity?  Desperately in need of depressing news?  Are you hunting for a sense of doom and despair?  

I have just the book for you!

The Doomsday Machine is the latest in my 'stuff people recommended' series of readings.  It is a book written by a nuclear war planner turned anti nuclear activist detailing the history of nuclear weapons in the US.  It goes into detail about just how out of dangerous the cold war was, how out of control the nuclear weapons were, and how constantly we were exposed to civilization ending nuclear war.

It is depressing to hear just how aggressive and reckless people were.  The US military was so worried about not being able to annihilate their enemies that they gave permission to fire nuclear weapons to a huge range of people and refused to create systems to prevent individual pilots and soliders from using nuclear weapons on their own initiative.  When systems were put in place to prevent armageddon individuals carefully circumvented them.

For example, there was a system where there were 2 safes with codes to fire nukes.  There were always supposed to be 2 people on duty, each of which knew the combination to one safe.  Both safes were required to fire, so in theory this meant that a single rogue person couldn't end humanity.  In practice the soldiers all just shared their combinations with one another so if one of them was away for some reason the other could easily fire the nukes and end us all.

This isn't stupidity.  There are stupid people in the military, just like anywhere, but that isn't what happened here.

If I were to prioritize four situations in nuclear standoffs, I would list them as 

Everyone lives

Enemies die

We die

Everyone dies.

The soldiers clearly prioritized them as

Enemies die

Everyone lives

Everyone dies

We die.

Their overriding concern was not the continuation of humanity, but rather the destruction of their enemies.  They were desperately concerned not for life, but for saving face.  Better that America being a pile of ash and all humans die than anyone else feel like they had pulled one over on America.

They knew what they were doing, they just thought that macho posturing and patriotic bullshit was more important than all human life.

This, more than anything, is the story of nuclear weapons.  It is a bunch of assholes who wanted to push people around who were willing to kill us all to maintain their deathgrip on power.  It is despicable, and yet not at all surprising.

Normally I agree with the statement that it is foolish to ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence, but that isn't the case here.  It is all malice, all the way.

By the end of the book I was stunned at the colossal evil at the heart of the US military.  This, coming from someone who was already convinced that the US military is one of the most evil things around.  I spend days wondering how it is that I am still alive, and thinking constantly that I am surely not going to live to see my 50th birthday, much less die at a ripe old age.

The Doomsday Machine is good.  Well written, informative, and important.  We all need to understand why this insane situation occurred, and advocate for changing it.  Reading it, however, will not be a fun thing to do, and you will despair at what we have wrought.  In addition, you will never wonder about the Fermi Paradox again.  There aren't any aliens visiting us because they all eventually nuked themselves into oblivion.

A call to communism

If you want to read a book that will turn you communist, then How To Be A Victorian is a good place to start.  I am continuing my 'stuff people recommended' book readings, and while this book does not intend to suggest any political affiliation I couldn't help but be filled with despair at the portrayal of life in Victorian England.

The starvation of children is what got to me.  Reading about the 10 course meals the aristocrats were eating while the poor starved to death filled me with rage.  I can hardly imagine the distress I would feel if I were to look at my child, skinny with hunger and misery, and then have to tell her that there is no food today, and maybe not tomorrow.  The rich are throwing away food from every meal, but she just has to suffer, and maybe die.

Even if she got enough to eat in calories, she would probably be eating nothing but bread and would end up with rickets and scurvy because we couldn't even afford vegetables.

The idea of making a careful economic decision to send my 6 year old kid to work for 16 hours a day in the pitch dark of the mines because that way maybe I can afford enough food for her is just beyond my experience.  How could I look at her and then look at an aristocrat of the same age and realize that the aristocrat is 10 cm taller because they get enough to eat without grabbing a pitchfork and joining a revolution?

I am not normally a violent person, or one inclined to armed revolt.  But in that situation, I am pretty sure the rich people had better make sure they have tight security, because I am coming for them.  Communism strikes me, from the perspective of a 21st century Canadian, as impractical.  As a Victorian though, I can see myself getting pretty excited about sharing the wealth.

The book itself is set up in a neat way - it starts out with getting up, washing, dressing, breakfast, and then proceeds through working life and entertainment, while finishing up with sex.  The sections varied a lot in interest for me, as I found the endless lists of specific garments boring but the descriptions of sexual mores and medicine were compelling.  There isn't a plot so you can easily jump around to whatever stuff grabs your attention though, which is good.

The author clearly did a tremendous amount of research and the book is authoritatively written.  Sometimes it is a little dry, so you want to go in with an interest in history because there aren't any thrills otherwise.

People do, from time to time, wax poetic about the good old days and how things are terrible now.  Those people need to read some more history books, because the more I read the more certain I become that there has never been as good a time to be alive as right here, right now.  

We have problems, yes.   But the olden times *sucked*.

Periodic Tales

In my continuing series about all the books people recommended to me I finished reading Periodic Tales.  This book is far less controversial than the last one I wrote about, and is a meandering tale winding its way through history.  It has the periodic table of the elements as its theme, so the author devotes each chapter to an element or group of elements and talks about their discovery, uses, and notable events.

The book is a good read for anyone whether or not you have any scientific training.  All the science in the book is pitched at a broad audience and is easily accessible.  The great majority of it is just a series of short history lessons which are generally interesting and amusing.  The author does a great job of blending humour and learning to make the stories fun as well as educational.  It isn't a long read so you can't expect to get a complete education on any one topic but if you want a series of history highlights with a focus on discovery then you will be happy with the book.

You will find pieces about gold rushes, aluminum (or aluminium, depending on where you live) utensils that were the height of fancy living for Napoleon III, and chlorine's use as a weapon in WWI.  The variety is huge.

One thing that stood out to me though was the way the author talked about gold, silver, and iron.  He spoke about them as though gold and iron were obviously male associated and silver obviously female.  Those associations exist in several cultures, but the idea that this is inevitable or inherent to the elements is quite absurd.  From a western historical perspective his point is supported, but he talks about it as if this is an inherent property of the elements themselves instead of a historical accident and that is wrong.

The reason this stood out to me is that gender essentialism is a real issue in society and it irritates me to see it.  It wasn't a huge part of the book, but I do like to point out these things when I see them.  It was a negative mark on an otherwise enjoyable read.

I recommend this book.  A few 'Silver is obviously a female element' comments aside, it was quick, informative, and fun.