Books and literature – Page 41 – a sibilant intake of breath

Letters

After long delay, I dispatched my response to Alison’s letter today. Indirectly, doing so was a reminder of the sheer number of important, interesting people who are out there to keep in touch with. There are even many fellow Oxford students who I see much less than I would like. Thankfully, there have also been reminders of late that even those with whom I lack contact for extended periods do not become entirely alienated from me as a result. At different times, Kate, Viktoria P, and Sarah W have all been reminders of this. To know that is comforting to someone off-continent from family and the bulk of friends.

I also finished re-reading Dune today. I read it for the first time during the first Bowron Lakes expedition, many years ago, with Alison Benjamin and my friend Chevar. Back then, I remember finding it very long and difficult, though enjoyable. It’s certainly a book with extensive verisimilitude. Herbert does an impressive job of constructing a whole universe for it to take place within: complete with politics, history, and religion. Like all the best science fiction, the themes of Dune speak to enduring human concerns and possibilities.

Discretionary reading

Early this afternoon, I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. While it was not at all what I expected, it was quite a fascinating book. Narrator-based novels have the potential to be the most interesting kind of character stories, and Mark Haddon delivers on that possibility with this unusual yet compelling book.

I enjoyed the mathematical, scientific, and factual asides. I don’t know how accurate a representation the book makes of Asperger’s Syndrome, but it struck me as credible and interesting during the course of reading it. The narrator is certainly an extremely sympathetic character.

I am glad I bought the book, because I will be able to lend it to other people. If Anna hasn’t read it yet, I will lend it to her when we meet next week. I need to learn her last name, so people won’t think I am referring to Anna Heimbichner from the program when I mention her.

Tonight, I am going to The Turf with a number of Edwina’s friends, to see her off before her departure. Later, Alex has arranged a dinner party with Byrony, Emily and her boyfriend, and some friends of his from Aberystwyth.

Well endowed with fiction

With the completion of the exam, I find that my way of thinking about things quite unrelated to it has changed rather a lot. A kind of generalized urgency that had been prevalent before has softened a bit, leaving me more willing to take things as they come. I used my book token from one of the brain scan experiments to buy two books this afternoon: Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I hope to get a good start on both over the weekend, as well as finishing my re-reading of Dune and The Skeptical Environmentalist. Reading fiction is one of the best things about times not yet endangered by papers and exams; of course, I’ve not been known to cease completely even during such times.

Our respite from schoolwork is not destined to be long-lived. Lectures resume on Monday and on Tuesday, we have our first core seminar discussion for the history from 1950 to present segment. I am told it’s on nuclear deterrence: an especially appropriate topic given the ongoing kerfuffle about Iran.

PS. Those who have not yet seen it should check out my brother Mica’s White Rabbit video. You can leave comments about it on his blog.

Science fiction and positivist social science

While thumbing through a copy of Frank Herbert‘s Dune that I bought for a Pound at a used book shop, I realized the extent to which the highest ideals of strongly positivist social science can be found in science fiction. Because of the complexity of his notion of politics – and the interconnections between politics and other phenomenon, like religion – Herbert’s perspective extends somewhat beyond social science as often envisioned. Much closer to the ideal is some of the work of Isaac Asimov, which I will come to in a moment.

Dune itself can be read if an interesting (if fictional) study of politics. The Bene Gesserit notion of politics as fundamentally bound up in the structural relationships between different entities would not be hugely out of place in an American international relations faculty. The connections drawn up in Dune between transport, resources, and power are also relevant to contemporary politics. Of course, at times Dune is quite a self-aware allegory for the situation in the Middle East. I was entertained to find a discussion of coercion and consent as dual means for maintaining power in the novel. With a bit of terminology changed, it could be in a textbook on Machiavelli and Gramsci.

A better example of positivism embraced in science fiction is the concept of psychohistory: as described in Isaac Asimov‘s Foundation novels. Basically, psychohistory is envisioned as a science that can accurately predict the development of human society in the long term, and for large numbers of people. While it can’t make specific predictions about precise moments in time, it can predict massive systemic reorganizations over the course of anywhere between decades and millennia. It’s a strong endorsement of the idea that history is guided by comprehensible forces.

One interesting twist is that even with the benefit of psychohistory, the arch-positivists in the Foundation novels must still be actively involved in shaping the development of the system they examine. Also, for the predictive power to be maintained, people must not be aware of the fact that psychohistory is being applied. To say much more would spoil a number of key surprises in an iconic science fiction series, but the connections between science fiction and social science – within the historical context that spawned both – might reveal some important things about the kind of project some people understand themselves as being engaged in, as regards the world around them.

An alternative explanation is that, after spending so much time trying to force as much IR as possible into my head, I can’t see things any other way. When an eight year old boy is given a hammer, he suddenly discovers that everything needs pounding.

Taxes, exams, and changing seasons

From the way Oxford looks already, you can tell that it is going to be gorgeous in the summer. That is especially true for those of us who arrived in September and October; we’ve never been exposed to the verdant face of Oxford. I confess that it is something of a surprise to actually see leaves on a tree here.

The overall feeling created by long, bright days is quite at odds with the knowledge that there is a whole other term left. Eight more seminars, another batch of papers, and of course the research design essay. Having a room increasingly full of boxes combines with the sunshine to make me feel as though summer is very nearly here. Far better, for the moment, to focus on the short and medium term.

Running into Emily at the Codrington was enjoyable – a reminder of when we were there reading about the middle east and the interwar period the first time around. To study that time period and region in the same college and library where T.E. Lawrence wrote his two books and innumerable letters has a certain excellence of authenticity to it. Moving on: I am off to study international relations theory in the SSL.

This evening, I even managed to roll over my financial spreadsheets into the new fiscal year. Because it’s all done using formulas I’ve made myself, it’s no small task to shift so much information around. Updating and connecting four databases, listing information on seven accounts in two currencies and countries, along with two credit cards, is tricky. Doing all that under conditions where you document every transaction over the entire year, down to the penny, is really laborious. All the same, I prefer a system that I designed and hence understand to the incomprehensible datasets produced by programs like Quicken. Tax audits do not scare me. I even have all of the receipts more or less sorted.

The Skeptical Environmentalist

I am presently reading Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist: a book that has created a huge amount of controversy since it was released, because it questions the empirical basis for the idea that the global environment is undergoing severe degradation. There are two major kinds of arguments in the book, each of which is somewhat problematic to deal with:

The empirical argument that, for instance, forest cover is increasing in Canada, while the Worldwatch Institute says that it is decreasing, and that the rate of contraction in places like Brazil is far lower than it is generally listed as being. These kinds of arguments are difficult to access because they turn on the level of credibility we assign to experts. While we could theoretically go look at the numbers themselves, we don’t know enough about the numbers to know which are important, which are credible, and why.
The social and political argument about the character of what Lomborg calls ‘the litany’ of environmental decline: here, he is talking about the tendency to exaggerate, to accept bad figures more easily than good ones, and to manipulate data in ways that serve political ends. As in the first case, much of what he says is probably correct. The difficulty is in assessing the overall importance of competing claims, as well as the overall legitimacy of different claimants.

I shall write more about it as I progress through the book. I will be especially interested to see what he has to say about fisheries. Organizations like the Sea Around Us Project at UBC seem to employ the kind of rigorous statistical methods Lomborg espouses, and the picture they paint of the state of world fisheries is hardly a rosy one.

Final post from Malta

Happy Birthday Lauren Priest

We had our final Maltese walk today, along the many small bays of the southeast coast closest to Libya. The major path we followed was atop a long wall of white limestone cliffs. One got the impression that some excellent diving might be done along that coast. Partly because today is a national holiday, there were also a lot of locals swimming or just sitting in the sun in the bays. Along the ridge were hundreds more birds in tiny cages, being used by men in hides to lure in their fellows for entrapment and sale.

In addition to about 350 photos taken with my digital camera, I’ve nearly finished four rolls of film. In all probability, I will be able to have a few of the digital shots online tomorrow night, with more to follow on Sunday. The film has a longer journey to make, but will ultimately be online as well. I’ve been trading URLs with some of the other relatively avid photographers in our group.

Malta, in the end, was quite a pleasant place to visit. The appeal was athletic, aesthetic, and intellectual. This is definitely an appropriate time to make the trip over, given how blisteringly hot I expect it will be here in a few months. For those of the ‘long pants, a hat, and SPF 45 sunscreen’ school of solar appreciation, now is the time to take in the views without being overly exposed to the cancer ball in the sky.

The end of poverty

As Kerrie pointed out in a comment, it is unlikely that Jeffrey Sachs’ objective of ending extreme poverty by 2025 will be achieved. If his figures are correct, that is a fairly substantial indictment of the entire rich world. While I haven’t quite finished his book, his central claim is the much of the world is caught in a ‘poverty trap’ wherein it is too poor to begin the process of development. For about eighty billion dollars a year, sustained for a decade, that vicious cycle could be broken for all those inhabitants of the planet who presently live in extreme poverty. That’s about 10% of the GDP of Canada – a nation that is neither highly populous nor highly powerful. According to Sachs, if the OECD nations actually committed the 0.7% of GDP (seven cents on every ten dollars) that they have repeatedly promised for development assistance, the gap between what the developing nations can pay and the sums required would be filled.

Even if Sachs’ most ambitious proposals are beyond what is politically possible, the idea of a poverty trap is potentially an incredibly important one. If it can be shown that countries can be lifted out of extreme poverty through what amounts to a one time grant, the prospect for eliminating extreme poverty is very real. That conjecture is certainly one that could be evaluated at a smaller scale than the laudable worldwide plan that Sachs proposes.

In any case, it is an inspiring book and one that people interested in world development should take the time to read – even if they happen to be on vacation.

On Valletta and Jeffrey Sachs

Happy Birthday Robert Wood

My mother and I visited the fortified port of Valletta today. Aside from walking about in the centre of town, the group also took a boat cruise along the edge of the harbour, which divides into narrow sections like the fingers of two hands. Like Tallinn, Valletta has been subjected to a great many attacks and invasions, from different directions and in different periods. The ongoing strategic importance of a useful pair of islands in the middle of the Mediterranean is thereby demonstrated.

The city itself reminds me a great deal of the quieter parts of Rome. The streets are narrow and flanked by multi-story buildings with shuttered windows. Wild cats are numerous and fearless: sunning themselves and adding to the menace posed to Maltese birds by the many shooting clubs you can hear off in the countryside. The main cathedral is quite an unusual building, with a floor plan markedly different from that of any Christian church I can recall seeing, as well as a profusion of patterned wall sections composed of deep grooves cut in stone.

Today involved much less walking than the first day – a shortfall that it seems will be remedied tomorrow as we walk to and around the old capital of Rabat. I hope that the many photos I took over the course of the boat ride and wandering in Valletta will turn out well.

While I have been in Malta, I have been reading Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty. While it’s not the most well written book – his excess of exclamation marks is especially annoying – it is nonetheless one that strikes me as extremely important. The idea that we could eliminate the kind of extreme poverty that cuts people off from any chance of improving their lot and that of their children by 2025 is a profoundly inspiring and exciting one. It’s the kind of idea you really wish could take hold within the corridors of power and the hearts and minds of people in the developed world. It’s the kind of project that is enormously more important than any one life, or even the entire history of any one country. The imperative is to act as a collective in a way that humanity has never managed: to conjure the mechanisms by which bold ideas and conceptions of justice can be converted into reality out in the world. To be shown fairly convincingly that we have the power to end untold misery around the globe creates a real obligation to make good on that potential. It’s an effort that I hope to become a part of.

Nervous, trundling day

On the basis of a highly scientific and statistically valid one-night, one-person study, I wake up feeling much more rested when I sleep with earplugs. I also dream about getting attacked by a huge scruffy black house cat in the woods beside Capilano River.

I spent several hours today in the Oxford Country Library, near Nuffield, reading Hunter Thompson’s The Rum Diary. As you would expect, it’s a fairly ugly book. The kind of thing that stays funny when it’s in the realm of absurd abstraction, yet is always still tinged with the certainly of loss and failure. It’s nice, at least, to just pick up a book and read it, without major pause. You would need to be superhuman to do it with an environmental politics book, but for a 400 page pseudo-autobiographical novel, the pattern fits. Reading Thompson is like taking insurance against the possibility that you’re a hub in the machine that he seems to understand and mostly exist outside of. The danger is that you might see your loneliness reflected in his own.

All told, it’s not the greatest book, and it certainly doesn’t add a lustre to your day. At the same time, Thompson wrote it when he was my age and there is a sense in which you can see the future laid out in it: his future, in particular. You see that in what may be the most notable phrase:

It was the tension between these two poles – a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other – that kept me going.

Your classic “narrator arrives in a place, things go wrong, he leaves” story, it reminds me of a lot of contemporary fiction. It’s the anti-journey story, where there is no clear end and even the process of travel collapses upon itself.

Spending time in the public library reminded me of one of the great truths of travel. Almost everything about your experience in a city is determined by how many doors you can open, or have opened for you. If all you can muster is the automatic doors at the entrances of libraries and shopping malls, you’re in a pretty bad way. The idea was reinforced as I took a quick walk around the long pool in Nuffield – perhaps my favourite quad in Oxford – and contemplated with appreciation the benefits of position and connection.

Oxford is peppered today with people in green, with top hats and Leprechaun boots. Were it not for my very early morning rise tomorrow, and the importance of being awake and aware subsequently, I might make a foray to see how this de-Christianized celebration of a saint takes place here. I was nervous, at first, to see people walking around with this kind of regalia – images of football related violence and painted fans flickering in my imagination – but when I saw that it was mostly people under fifteen or over thirty-five, my mind was largely put at ease.

I suppose I should spend tonight getting a start on the new Economist, making sure I have a clean shirt, and checking that I can remember how to tie a tie.

Socially accomplished day

Happy Birthday Astrid

Good things in the mail

This morning, I was delighted to find a package from Meghan Mathieson in my pidge. Along with a letter, she sent me a vegetarian cookbook published by the British Columbia Ministry of Health and a package of that fieriest of snacks: Kasugai Roasted Hot Green Peas. Covered in a layer of dry Wasabi, they can have an exceptional amount of kick to them. They are just the kind of food that is ubiquitous in Vancouver, but quite unheard of here. Many thanks.

The cookbook, called The Vegetarian Edge is liberally sprinkled with exclamation marks and the kind of statements over-excited camp counsellors might make. For instance, it exclaims: “All right! You’ve decided to go vegetarian” before suggesting how to “Get to THE MAX each day!” It promises to be quite useful, though I have my doubts about whether I could consume the recommended 200-300g of tofu a day. I will provide extra protein in lentil form.

Good things in the evening

Spending some time with Nora, Kelly, and Bryn today was both enjoyable and appropriate, seeing as how I have less than a month left of living in the main site at Wadham. The aspect of the move that I regret most is that it risks further detaching me from social life in the college. Hopefully, that will not prove to be the case.

Social happenings later in the day also went very well. Spending three and a half hours talking with Roz tonight was really excellent. It was the kind of conversation in which you could feel the seeds of a great many future conversations – especially in the areas that I know relatively little about. It’s interesting to see how many of the same ideas come up in IR and literary theory, respectively, and how similar perspectives are associated with completely different people. All in all, it was the kind of conversation that strongly reinforces your sense that you were right in thinking a person interesting, as well as worth knowing better.

I hope I have the chance to see her again before she goes to Italy and I go to Malta.

It looks like I will be going to Cambridge for a Wadham exchange dinner on April 4th: the day my mother will be leaving the UK.
Seems that image posting is still broken. Sorry.
Private, to Meghan: I’m sorry we spent so many days eating spicy curry on potatoes…

Chapter 246: In which Milan demonstrates philosophical ineptitude

In the middle of the afternoon, I made a concerted effort to read the Heidegger paper that Tristan sent me a few weeks ago: The Question Concerning Technology. It was meant to be a contribution to my ‘discretionary reading on environmental politics related matter’ effort. I know it will annoy him to say that I found it mostly incomprehensible – in both approach and diction – but that is assuredly the fact of the matter. Heidegger goes on and on about Greek and the nature of silver chalices. While I am sure the example would be brilliantly illustrative if I had any idea of what he was talking about, it serves no purpose for me. It’s akin, I think, to someone who knows nothing about computers sitting down with a dense text on scripting and the UNIX command prompt.

Just as arcane knowledge of computers alienates you from everyone who does not have it – by stripping you of the ability to communicate as richly as you could if you were alike in ignorance – such knowledge leads to tremendous frustration whenever you deal with someone who has it in the opposite quantity. The computer geek is as frustrating and incomprehensible to the neophyte as the neophyte is to the geek. The knowledge that is a source of pride for the geek is often marked off as unnecessary to the neophyte, for whom it only serves an instrumental purpose: a purpose that can be achieved indirectly, by enlisting the aid of the geek. What enlisting the aid of philosophers means, exactly, I don’t know, but I consider much of philosophy to be marked off in the space of “information for others to deal with.”

This is not necessarily an embracing of ignorance, but perhaps more properly a response to the impossible vastness of knowledge and the sheer variety of dialects in which that knowledge is stored and discussed. It’s paradoxical, but ultimately obvious, that increased understanding of something can actually strip you of the ability to explain it or deal with people who don’t understand it. Attending lectures of someone who has colossal knowledge of a truly obscure field is among the best possible demonstrations of how knowledge is a cage.

Of course, when were talking about the physical sciences, there can be an external referent for expertise. I may not be able to understand what an engineer means when they talk about stress factors or the properties of metals, but I can see whether the bridge stays up or crashes down. Likewise, physicists and chemists can make predictions and develop technologies that demonstrate that their knowledge is – in some sense – correct. What comparable contribution can philosophers or, for that matter, international relations scholars make?

So much of what we do is like the nuances of a traditional Japanese tea ceremony: only those with considerable specific knowledge could ever know whether what was being performed was correct or merely a close approximation. No observer not steeped in the tradition could tell and, in a broad sense, the tradition itself is completely arbitrary. If we had all argued our way to some other equilibrium, it would serve exactly the same role as this one.