Aristotle

Title: Aristotle – Understanding the World’s Greatest Philosopher
Author: John Sellars
Publisher: Pelican Books, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9780241615638
Pages: 128

Aristotle was undoubtedly the greatest philosopher of the Western world whose immense clout guided quests for knowledge in Europe for several centuries. He was the last word on points of contention among scholars. Even in the modern world, he has an assured place in the pantheon of philosophers. Though many people will be put off by the term 'philosophy', it means only a rational study of the fundamentals of a given thing. Some part of philosophical enquiry every human should do because it is the only route to a happy life in the fullest sense. It's an extension of our natural human curiosity. One who wonders at the beauty and complexity of the natural world through a TV documentary is also participating in the same activity that Aristotle and his companions did. This short book is ideal for novices like me getting aware of the complexities of philosophical thought. It provides nothing in detail, and acts only as a primer. The author himself admits that this book does not cover anything in depth but gives only a taste, an opportunity, to get a flavour of who Aristotle was, what he thought and his vast impact. John Sellars is an academic, being a lecturer in philosophy at Royal Holloway University in London. He is the author of many books which are translated into over a dozen languages. This book claims that Aristotle's ideas and concepts are the basis of our natural ways of thinking in science, philosophy or logic.

Aristotle was the disciple of Plato, who himself was a disciple of Socrates. Aristotle has derived many ideas from Platonic thought and Sellars introduces the salient points of Plato's ideas in a highly simplified way, but even this treatise may appear cumbersome in some places. Plato put forward his theory of ideal forms. The objects we encounter in the changing physical world are but copies of more perfect, unchanging ideal forms. Aristotle was a strident critic of his teacher Plato while also remaining deeply influenced by him. Aristotle's 'physics' is the study of the natural world. In it, he tackles the most fundamental questions connected to the study of nature – like causation, divisibility and infinity. It includes some wild guesses like spontaneous generation of some species in the flora and fauna of the world. However, it should be taken as no more than an educated guess until truth is uncovered through further observation. Sellars notes with regret that there are some influential modern books which depict Aristotle in a very bad light as to appear like a champion of superstition and conservatism. They imply that Aristotle loathed experiments of any kind and fully immersed only in mental exercises. I remember reviewing a book claiming that Aristotle believed that women had more teeth in their mouth than men, yet he did not care to verify this hypothesis even though he had married twice! This is untrue and it is clear that Aristotle studied lifeforms extensively while he was in Lesbos Island and dissected them for analysis.

The author introduces the books in the traditional sequence of Aristotle's logical works one by one and very briefly. The logical arguments and conclusions that are derived from them are examined. So are the peculiar way of some arguments initiated by the great philosopher. Opening a claim like 'for the sake of argument' and pursue wherever it goes is a method put forth by Aristotle. To argue for and against a particular view in order to test it is another tool in his arsenal. Aristotle classified data related to animals and in his logical works set out formal rules for further analysis on this data. This is clearly a part of the modern 'scientific method'. To have done either of these would have been a major achievement, to have done both is truly awe-inspiring. He believed that the role of human beings is the activity of the soul in accordance with reason, or rational thinking, to understand the world around us.

Even though Aristotle's reputation transcends time and reaches out to us still, some of his ideas are stunningly outdated and some are politically incorrect to express in today's society. Whatever may be one's intellectual merit, everybody is a prisoner of the zeitgeist and perhaps unknowingly it restricts the range of one's thought. Likewise, Aristotle justified slavery or at least didn't find any qualms in keeping slaves himself. He claimed that some people can legitimately be described as 'natural slaves' and that women are naturally ruled by men. The author then holds his nose and supports this assertion by alluding the term 'natural slave' as someone who is mentally impaired and in need of someone else's help, yet concedes that Aristotle seems to assume that it is perfectly normal for most households to include slaves. Regarding women, he does a tight-rope walk by claiming that 'by nature' might mean 'for the most part' or 'usually what happens'. Aristotle was also biased towards the ideal of the 'city state' as a political unit to live under. If a man is focussed entirely on subsistence, he is closer to an animal. A rich human life which requires contemplation mandates a reflective intellectual pursuit. A city-state provides the infrastructure to make it happen. Even though Aristotle was Alexander the Great's tutor, there is no real evidence of any influence between them. Aristotle makes no mention of Alexander in his works and there is no trace of any of Aristotle's ideas shaping Alexander's subsequent behaviour.

This book really has a large scope in picturizing Aristotle's contribution to the society he lived in. His writings on the art forms such as drama or play still find relevance in today's art even though cinema has fully appropriated what was originally meant for the exclusive use of plays. The book contains an analysis of Athenian drama and its components. Aristotle thought about why people enjoyed tragic plays. We can enjoy, he says, a pleasurable release when we experience extreme emotions such as pity and fear. He calls this a moment of purification in which any excess of these emotions get cleared, restoring us to a state of balance. We enjoy them because we know in our mind that even though we may be sharing the emotions of the characters, at the end of the play we can go back to the comfort of our homes. A work of art can prompt us to experience difficult emotions in a relatively safe and artificial setting helping us to process the real emotions that befall us in our own lives. The idea of philosophy is anointed with a touch of elitism as conceived by great masters such as Aristotle. Leisure was one of the things required for anyone to do philosophy. You should not be overburdened with distracting practical responsibilities and to have basic necessities of life provided for. It is absolutely not intended for menial labourers whose wages would not allow them to skip work for any meaningful length of time. Lyceum was a community of scholars in this sense, of individuals wealthy enough not to have to work all day.

As noted earlier, this book is an excellent primer for stepping into the world of philosophy and highly recommended for novices who are serious about the job. Ordinary readers may better leave it aside.

Rating: 4 Star

1984

Title: 1984
Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Maple Press, 2016 (First published 1949)
ISBN: 9788190782692
Pages: 312

The Soviet Union went into World War II as an ally of Nazi Germany. When Hitler turned towards Poland and France on the western front, Stalin annexed a good chunk of eastern Europe. Unexpectedly, Hitler turned against Stalin in 1941 and invaded Russia, who then joined the Allies in fighting Germany. Stalin emerged victorious and righteous at the end of the war with an immense political clout. With the rise of a worldwide Leftist movement gaining momentum, it seemed as if communism would take over the whole world. The absence of personal freedom and civil liberties in the Soviet Union had attracted the scorn of non-partisan intellectuals in the West. This book is essentially a political satire that gives a dire warning against totalitarianism. This was originally published in 1949. The plot envisages a nation named Oceania which geographically includes all regions coming under the definition of the West, such as the USA, UK and Western Europe. The story unfolds in London. An authoritarian political regime controlled by a cadre-party and headed by a figure named 'Big Brother' runs the administration where the citizens' rights and privileges hardly rises above the level of animals. George Orwell is the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair who was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic. He was born in Motihari, Bihar, where his father was an opium agent. 

Orwell portrays the authoritarian society in the hypothetical republic of Oceania as something modelled on the erstwhile Soviet Union. Like the larger than life-size pictures of Stalin in the Soviet Union, Big Brother's portraits were everywhere, watching over the people. He is depicted with a heavy, black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Continuously living under the punishing gaze of the authorities, all looked older than their age in Oceania and one has the impression that 'there was dust in the creases of their faces'. Children eavesdropped on their parents and denounced them to the police who then elevated these little monsters as child heroes. Nothing was one's own, except for the few cubic centimetres inside the skull. That was why the most stringent mechanism was put in place to regulate what was going on there, in the form of the Thought Police. The Ministry of Truth ensured that people who were purged are wiped clean in all records. It created fictitious people to uphold some points of the party's dogma and to serve as a model for others. There were no friendships in the real sense between people, but everyone was comrades with each other. This is a direct adaptation from communist jargon. It was that there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than the others. Slogans that run counter to common sense were promoted by the party to spread among the people. Some such slogans were: 'War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength'; 'Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past'. 

Orwell has imagined a comprehensive surveillance mechanism for the citizens of Oceania that fully utilized the technological know-how of the 1940s. We may shudder at the thought of what an authoritarian government of the future would not be capable of, considering the mind-boggling advances in AI. In Oceania, every house was fitted with a telescreen that received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound above the level of a low whisper would be picked up and relayed to the police. No privacy was allowed. The punishment for keeping a diary was death or 25 years in a forced-labour camp. People suppressed their feelings and emotions, just to keep on living. To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone was doing, was an instinctive reaction. A new category of offense was introduced in the form of 'thought-crime'. Even thinking about practises that run counter to what the party advocated was a crime. A thought or an attitude could not be concealed forever and sooner or later, the thought-police would get them. The heresy of heresies was common sense. The party bluntly told its cadres to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears.

Orwell brilliantly picturizes the novel ways in which all intellectual exercises not conforming to the party line could be bridled effectively. Shortening of the vocabulary of the language was a clever idea. There was only one word for a concept, which eliminated synonyms and finer nuances. For example, the word 'good' was in the dictionary. Its antonym 'bad' was removed from it. Instead, it was expressed as 'ungood'. Comparative terms like 'better' and 'best' were changed to 'plusgood' and 'doubleplusgood' respectively. This was intended to narrow the range of thought so as to make 'thought-crime' impossible to commit. Marriage was permitted only between party members, but was only for begetting children for the service of the party. Sexual intercourse was looked upon as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema. A party committee has to approve marriage between party members. Permission is refused if physical attraction was suspected. 85 per cent of the populace belonged to 'proles', which is a shortened form of proletariat. They were the slaves over whose efforts the edifice of the party was constructed. Proles had some freedom to act as they wished and the hero of the novel secretly wished that the regime would one day be usurped through rebellion by the proles. A party member had no spare time in principle. When they were not working, he or she should be taking part in some kind of communal recreations. A taste for solitude which is a suggestion of individuality was frowned upon. The proles were lured by a government-run lottery which was regularly conducted and offered enormous prizes. Only small sums were actually paid out, the larger ones assigned to imaginary persons. It was the principal reason for a lot of people remaining alive. Literature was commanded to serve the interests of the party. Novels were written by machines according to the general directives issued by the Planning committee. Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces. Music was generated by a machine called versificator. All recipes for an AI-ruled world are pictured by Orwell in this book.

The story turns around Winston Smith, an employee in the Ministry of Truth, whose real job is to falsify records as per the needs of the party. His rebellious nature makes him stifled to live according to the dictates of the party. He secretly starts a diary and records his observations. He falls in love with a fellow employee Julia against the code of conduct. Both of them join the clandestine resistance movement which was in fact secretly run by the party itself to identify detractors. He was tortured by his mentor and finally betrays Julia who had betrayed him similarly under torture. After a brainwashing experience during the interrogation, he submits to the will of the Big Brother. The only hope for civilized society was the proles, who remained loyal to each other than to the party or country, and hence were looked down upon. They stayed human and did not become hardened inside. Orwell analyses the nature of absolute power in this book. It is not a means; it is an end. It is not merely an ability to control human bodies, but their minds too. How they do it is nicely described. The rationale for the privileged minority in the party top brass to keep the masses in poverty even though the technology can make every one of them wealthier is rather odd and brutal. Wealth brings in leisure and security which may turn the poor into thinking for themselves and who might conclude that the privileged has no function to perform. Indulging in continuous warfare with other states destroys the surplus produce and keeps everybody on scarcity of essential goods. Small privileges to some groups means a lot in such cases. The book claims that the philosophies that run in the three super states are barely distinguishable. Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure. The super states cannot conquer each other, they remain in conflict and thereby prop each other up to keep the people in poverty.

1984 is not, as is usually believed, a scathing criticism of the communist system alone. It raised its voice against all kinds of authoritarian tendencies to intrude into the life of the people. It has some cadences tuned to what is called McCarthyism in the US. This book is a poignant reminder to the dangers inherent in hoisting a single party or group with unbridled powers onto the throne. This has added resonance to our technologically advanced societies. In the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. That is not so today with the ubiquity of mobile phones and its enhanced powers to eavesdrop and voyeurism. Doomed are the people who are fated to live under a regime that is keen on utilizing the surveillance potential of sophisticated technology. The conclusive chapter of the book on Newspeak — the language developed by the party for popular use — is informative but pointless.

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star 

Musaliar King

Title: Musaliar King – Decolonial Historiography of Malabar’s Resistance
Author: Abbas Panakkal
Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2024 (First)
ISBN: 9789356409125
Pages: 280

The 1921 Malabar riots is a blood-stained chapter in Kerala history where a genuine agitation for independence from Britain unexpectedly changed track and hijacked by jihadi elements to kill, convert and rape Hindus en masse. A lot has been told about the episode and nothing more is intended as introduction to this book's review. Suffice it to say that hard-line Islamists still try to whitewash this Hindu genocide under the garb of 'freedom struggle', 'resistance to colonialism' and 'secular struggle' (citing the few Muslims who took sides with the British and were killed by the rioters). This book is one among them. This is especially alarming as the author is an academic faculty in an institution of higher learning in the UK. This book is a plain rebuttal of known facts in favour of a jihadi agenda to rewrite history according to them. It's no wonder that recently, the UAE significantly restricted government-funded scholarships for its citizens to study at UK universities, driven by concerns over Islamic radicalization and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on campuses. This book is about Ali Musaliar of Tirurangadi (1862–1922) who was a religious scholar and leader of the Khilafat movement who fought against the British and was arrested and hanged. He is said to have declared an Islamic state under his kingship when the countryside lay in his hands for a few days when the British power was temporarily stopped in its tracks. Abbas Panakkal is a historian affiliated with the School of History at the University of St. Andrews in the UK. Simultaneously, he holds a position on the advisory board at the Religious Life and Belief Centre at the University of Surrey. The author aims to provide a 'decolonial narrative' that represents the struggles of Malabar.

This book claims to rely on collective memory and oral narratives of those who witnessed the struggle, quite possibly that of the fighters themselves. How objective such a hotchpotch can get is anybody's guess. It's a totally one-sided perspective as it ejects colonial documentation and history as 'contrived', 'manipulative' and 'conferring legitimacy on British efforts'. In a stroke of breath-taking disingenuity, Panakkal discounts all of the British narrative and concludes that not even a word in them can be trusted! Not content with that, he then proceeds to denigrate the memoirs penned by Indians as well which do not agree with his narrative. He accuses them of adopting a linguistic style reminiscent of the colonial administration. This is because some of them use the term 'Moplah fanatics' which irritates the author. What else would you use to denote a crowd intent on achieving martyrdom by fighting for their religion, especially since the position of Hindus in 1921 Ernad-Valluvanad areas was akin to that of Yazidis in Iraq in the 2010s against the Islamic State terrorists? In the same vein, C. Gopalan Nair's memoir is accused of supporting the British line. K. Madhavan Nair's version is alleged to be fabricated by adding 'layers of intrigue'. M. Gangadhara Menon's narrative is 'ensconced within the colonial narrative'. What he finds agreeable are the accounts made by jihadi elements and Leftist Historians.

The book is very subdued in recollecting the violent incidents of the rebellion maybe because they are too stark to gloss over. Obfuscation begins the moment he sets the objectives of the riots. He claims that the instigators laid down their lives for the cause of their land. This itself is not factually correct. The agitation's casus belli was the dethronement of the Turkish sultan who was also the Islamic caliph. Hence the agitators laid down their lives to reinstall the deposed Ottoman sultan on his throne. On the British side, Panakkal practically exonerates the provincial and central governments and casts blame on Collector Thomas and district police chief Hitchcock who are said to be behind the provocation of the events. The author uses his 'decolonial analysis' to reach this conclusion which means that official narrative is negated as fabricated and lists out the opposite as true without any evidence, or even supporting fact. For example, one Vadakke Veettil Mammad, manager of Nilambur Kovilakam, was dismissed from service and his house raided on accusation of theft of a gun and Rs. 130. Author argues that this is not true and that the landlord — who was one of the richest landed magnates in the entire country — owed him thrice the claimed sum (p. 31). The preparations of the government in assembling men and material to counter a possible riot is portrayed as a pre-planned effort to cause mayhem. The District Magistrate (Thomas)'s expedition to Tirurangadi to apprehend Ali Musaliar and his associates is claimed to have marked a watershed moment that set in motion a comprehensive military intervention (p. 39). Thomas' report is alleged to have characterized 'common utilitarian knives employed for mundane purposes' as weapons of war made in a hurry. He also claims that the police fired without warning on unarmed peaceful protesters and killed 40 of them. Again, this appears as a falsehood as the crowd had attacked and killed two British officers. The author concludes his charges with the declaration that Thomas and Hitchcock exceeded their authority and used lethal force resulting in numerous fatalities. This was an active attempt to incite unrest which was a ploy to validate their earlier warning report (p. 50). This is representative of the tone of the book.

When the author opens up a little, his ultra-religious outlook exposes itself. Before any confrontations in which government troops were likely to be killed, the rioters exhorted the Muslim soldiers to leave the field for their own safety (p. 52). Even though the author denies it, Ali Musaliar is said to have assumed kingship of the 'liberated' areas when the forces temporarily retreated. But when they regrouped and hit back with full force, Musaliar meekly surrendered. Loot and pillage are justified in this book. Rioters looted homes which the author characterizes as 'seizing funds from landlords'. Participation of Hindu Congress leaders in the early part of the agitation is arrayed as certifying to the secular nature of the struggle. The sad truth is that as the jihadis took over and started rampaging, the others backed out of the endeavour. In Malabar, the military and the police responded with a harsh and punitive stance, resorting to violent measures resulting in fatalities. Conversely, within the provincial headquarters, a more conciliatory strategy was employed, avoiding confrontations that led to human casualties. The author accuses the British of not respecting the 'human rights' of the rioters. He does not pause to examine whether the assailants respected the human rights of those they captured. Also, judgments of tribunals are claimed to be 'dictatorial and lacking humanitarian considerations'.

A striking contrast is seen in the valiant spirit of the rank and file and the leaders. Ali Musaliar and Variamkunnath Kunjahmed Haji's abject surrender to the British was humiliating for his supporters as many of them had fought till death. If Musaliar and Haji had desired to save their own skin, they were painfully mistaken. Musaliar was tried and hanged in Coimbatore Prison while Haji was summarily shot! Panakkal presents a fantastic tale that a miracle had happened inside the prison. He claims that Musaliar prayed fervently to avoid gallows and passed away in deep prayer on the morning of his day of execution (p. 85). Despite this, the authorities hanged his dead body. This is the story told to the author by the Musaliar's grandson and this yarn is admitted at face value! This is the level of research in the book. Panakkal quotes from the diary of a poet in Vengara as evidence of Muslim women's empowerment and independence in 1921. They are said to have dabbled in business and wealth management. However, this is such an obviously fraudulent take on reality that readers won't be misled. A French magazine 'Sciences et Voyages' had published a photo of Ali Musaliar and two of his accomplices on the centenary of the rebellion. One of them was claimed to be Variamkunnath Haji by a section of social media, even though their names were not divulged by the magazine. This book completely debunks this claim. It also contains several false claims on religious harmony in statements such as 'many non-Muslims participated in a shared jihad' (p. 126), even though he admits that Khilafat was a 'pan-Islamist' political campaign (p. 126). Listing two prominent Muslims opposing Tipu, he concludes that support for Mysore stemmed from shared political objective, rather than religious affiliations.

Panakkal does not appear to be much comfortable with the Khilafat Movement itself, which he claims to have no resonance with Malabari Muslims. Instead, it was introduced in Malabar through the efforts of Gandhi who in turn was influenced by North Indian Muslims. However, in another part of the book, we read about Muslims in Malabar donating money directly to the Ottoman sultan for his war effort (p. 45). So it cannot be said that Malabar was not in thrall to the Ottomans. Besides, the book describes about Sayyid Fazal Pookoya Thangal ending up in the court of Istanbul after his transportation for life from Malabar. The author argues that the Khilafat issue became a tool for the British to instigate the non-Muslim's aversion to Muslims (p. 144). He does not explain why the non-Muslims should harbour an aversion to them. The British had instituted harsh legislations like the Mappila Outrages Act 1859 and the Malabar War Knives Act 1854 to quell sectarian violence to good measure. In spite of this, there was a channel of support among them to the colonial power. A military contingent called the 77th Moplah Rifles was part of the British army till its disbandment in 1907.

There is a section on resistance to colonial aggression played out by the Mappilas right from the arrival of the Portuguese. It recounts some noted Mappila outbreaks in the nineteenth century, but is insistent that only landlords and their supporters were killed and economic reasons are attributed to the atrocities. But the fact was that all of the killed landlords were Hindus. No Muslim landlord was killed anywhere by his Hindu tenants. Besides, the author denigrates the victims by accusing them to have 'a penchant for intoxication', 'domineering and abusive nature', 'usury' and 'land encroachment upon religious institutions' as if to create the impression that they deserved to get killed! British newspapers are castigated for spreading propaganda that the rioters coveted the 'virtue of eliminating idolators and thereby securing a distinct reward in afterlife'. Thanks to the burgeoning works of ex-Muslims in social media, we now know that this is not propaganda at all and the jihadis were only trying to live up to the tenets of their religion. Rape of women, forced conversions and desecration of temples are not colonial resistance. The Moplah Outrages Act 1854 levied substantial collective fines, seized the assets of those found culpable and deportation for life. These were harsh but very effective and the bulldozer tactics we read about in North India are emulating the spirit of these prescriptions. The assassination of Connolly, district collector, finds mention in the book. Connolly was an efficient administrator but fell foul of the Mappilas with his handling of violence with an iron hand. He orchestrated the banishment of Pookoya Thangal. Connolly was killed on an evening in his bungalow's portico when he was relaxing with his wife. He was hacked to pieces in front of her eyes. As a political assassination, this is not extraordinary, but the author romanticizes the incident stressing on the 'bravery' of the murderers describing about the settings of the scene as if it was a candle-lit dinner. It reminded me of the eulogization in jihadi Palestinian media of the terrorists who shot dead 11 Israeli athletes during 1972 Munich Olympics.

The book is written in a clumsy style with heavy academic jargon. After a few pages, you feel like being in a swamp with no other way than going forward wading through the muck. The book assumes that the readers are well familiar with the causes of the conflict. It does not explain what was the spark that ignited the Khilafat agitation but claims that it was a struggle against colonialism while in fact it was only a failed effort to resuscitate the Ottoman colonialism. The book is divided into two parts, the first being the visit of Gandhi to Malabar, the setting up of Khilafat committees and the events associated with it. The second deals with resistance to the Portuguese and British from 1498 to 1900s. The research methodology lacks academic rigour and one wonders how such a loosely organized piece of mostly unverified information passed through peer review. Acts of resistance and British atrocities were collected from the author's 'field study' which seems to be a euphemism for collecting hearsay and embellished legends. Panakkal collects reports on Mappila riots from newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, but provincial and nationalist newspapers in India are omitted entirely, probably because it does not suit or support his narrative. A passage in the book refers to the Governor of Madras as ‘Lord Wellington’ (p. 107) instead of Willingdon. These are two distinct statesmen separated by a century between their lifetimes and even a silly schoolboy is not expected to falter under confusion on their names. The book quotes Left historians such as Romila Thapar and K. N. Panikker to buttress his argument that Muslim invaders such as the Mughals or Tipu Sultan were interested only in material gain. It also includes several historical falsehoods and half-truths such as the British persuaded the Raja of Cochin to renounce allegiance to Tipu (p. 161). The fact is that Tipu extracted this offer of allegiance from the raja under extreme coercion.

This book is totally unappealing for an interesting read, serves only jihadi propaganda and fails to provide a fresh outlook on the riot and hence not recommended.

Rating: 1 Star
 

One Summer: America 1927

Title: One Summer: America 1927
Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Doubleday, 2013 (First)
ISBN: 9780385608282
Pages: 557

This book is a glorified journal entry for the excruciatingly hot summer in the year 1927 which the United States endured. In the five months starting from May to September of that year, the country witnessed some landmark progress in aviation, radio broadcasting and financial prosperity. In addition to this, developments in sports — which means only baseball and boxing in the American context — and sensational news like murders and political assassinations are included. The book summarizes the major events of that summer in a well-researched narrative made richer by a humorous perspective. Looking back a century later, a yawning gulf separates today from that past age. Things we take for granted even in a third world country didn't exist then. Antibiotics still lay a decade in the future. So we read about the President of the USA's 16-year old son developing an infection while playing tennis on the White House grounds. The injury became septic and the boy died a week later. In his autobiography, Calvin Coolidge reflected heartbreakingly that 'when he went, the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him'. Still, there was something romantic about the era as it didn't like practical concerns to get in the way of its musings. Since many of his other books are reviewed here already, Bill Bryson does not need an introduction. Suffice it to say that he is one of my favourite authors.

The 1920s obviously lacked the most common forms of personal entertainment which we now take for granted. There was no mobile phone, no internet, no radio and no TV. That's why people really did gather in enormous numbers for almost any event. The 1920s was the peak decade for reading in American life. Each year, publishers produced 110 million books in more than 10,000 separate titles. The industry was so discreet that it boasted it never published a word that made a maiden blush. Soon, the industry was to be submerged in the flood tide of radio and it soon changed track to accommodate readers' demand for more explicit coverage. Radio picked up very rapidly, reaching every American home. Radio advertising took a large bite off newspaper and magazine ads. Nearly 250 newspapers went under in a decade because of the revenue crunch. Charles Lindbergh's maiden trans-Atlantic flight to Paris was the most famous event in 1927. When he returned triumphantly to the US, it was the day that radio came of age. His arrival was broadcast coast to coast. The ability to sit in one's own living room and listen to a live event in some distant place was as miraculous as teleportation. In spite of all these achievements, crime rate was high. The culprits were not caught in a majority of cases. Where arrests were made, the conviction rate was less than 20 percent.

Bryson observes that the US was staggeringly well-off. American homes shone with sleek appliances and consumer durables that would not become standard in other countries for a generation or more. This was greatly facilitated by the instalment scheme which made its debut along with the consumer revolution. Borrowing became an essential part of life with the invention of the instalment scheme. In the 1920s, America became a high-rise nation. As buildings grew taller, the number of workers pouring into the city centres grew and grew. Unimaginable to us now, but Prohibition was in full force in the US from 1920 to 1933 which mercilessly banned all alcoholic drinks in the country. It shut down the fifth largest industry, turning thousands into bootleggers. In 1927 alone, 11,700 people died from drinking de-natured spirit. The movement started by Wayne Wheeler grew so popular that politicians quickly learned either to support them or to give up any hope of being re-elected. In the 1920s, the share prices kept rising with little correspondence between the prices and the values of the companies they supported. The stock market eventually crashed in 1929, triggering the great depression that traumatized capitalism for a few years.

The central thread in this book is Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight and the widespread acclaim it received from an adoring public on both sides of the ocean. Even though the French saw the Americans usually with a low esteem, for a few weeks after Lindbergh's landing, the tide turned on French soil and Americans commanded immense respect. He was feted on a grand scale back home which the introvert Lindbergh found difficult to enjoy and he had an impossible time in that summer. He then embarked on a great aviation tour of America on the same plane on which he flew across the ocean. The tour was very gruelling with 69 overnight stops and 13 'touch' stops. From the moment he left his room in the morning, he was touched and jostled and bothered. Chicken bones and napkins from his dinner plate were fought over in kitchens. Cheques he wrote were rarely encashed; recipients preferred to frame them instead. He had no private life anymore. If he went into a men's room, people followed. Flying between cities was the most restful part of the tour. Bryson pinpoints the real significance of Lindbergh's flight in this book. His tour of America made the country ready for air travel which was unbelievable a year ago. Americans in the 1920s had grown up in a world in which most of the important things happened in Europe. Now suddenly America was dominant in every field such as popular culture, finance and banking, military might, invention and technology.

This book exposes a quirk in American foreign policy. From a different perspective, this can be argued as the basic feature of it as well. The US wanted to send 100 million USD to Austria as food aid after World War I. It was technically an enemy country and American law prevented helping enemies even after war ended. A convenient way around the hurdle was thought up. 45 million USD each was sent to Britain, France and Italy and they obligingly lent the money to Austria on the understanding that it be used to buy American food. This helped American farmers to dispose of surplus food at attractive valuations. But when Austria defaulted on repayment, the US insisted and forced the three intermediaries to pay back. They protested in vain but the US had its way. Transportation was the single sector that grew by leaps and bounds in the period under consideration. But it came with its own set of problems. The railway system was bewilderingly fragmented. One could buy a ticket on any of the 20,000 scheduled services from any of 1085 operating terminals, tracks and ticketing systems. Luxury services in the trains offered a barber, ladies' hairdresser and even a stenographer for taking dictation. The automobile became ubiquitous. Henry Ford revolutionized American car industry by then, but he was an anti-Semite. He accused the Jews of manipulating stock markets, working for the overthrow of Christianity, using Hollywood as a propaganda tool for Jewish interests, promoting jazz music and encouraging the wearing of short skirts. He was greatly admired in Nazi Germany and was the only American mentioned favourably in Mein Kampf. It was said that Hitler kept a framed photo of Ford on his wall. Ford accepted one of Nazi Germany's highest civilian honours — the Grand Cross of the German Eagle.

Even though the US always boasted of personal liberty and an enlightened society, racial discrimination of the coloured people was universal to the point of being institutionalized. When a play in New York showed black and white children playing together as if that were normal, the district attorney for Manhattan sent the police to stop it. This was in the year 1927. Even in the face of severe restrictions, there was a movement of blacks out of the south in the Great Migration. Between 1920 and 1930, 1.3 million southern blacks moved north in the hopes of finding better paying jobs and more personal liberty. Before that period, only 10 percent of blacks lived outside the south. After this era, almost half did. On the other side of the spectrum, the 1920s was also the age of loathing. Bigotry was casual, reflexive and universal. Ku Klux Klan had a resurgence which loathed blacks and Catholics. It had five million members. Eugenics had a large following. In 1927, the US Supreme Court ruled that a woman of low intelligence be sterilized in order to prevent the continuation of her 'imbecile' line. About 60,000 people were sterilized against their will. About 30 states had sterilizing laws and some of them still have those rules in their statute books. 

Baseball is an American game and nowhere outside the US has it any following worth the name. Considering this in mind, readers find the prominent coverage the game gets in the book somewhat tiring and irritating. The biography and playing tenure of George Herman Ruth is a punishment for non-American audience who has no idea of the intricacies of baseball's rules. Similar is the case with boxing. Bryson exhibits fine control of the narrative in a book handling such a large array of diverse topics. The ideas are shuffled regularly but brilliantly made to appear coherent and conforming to the overall plan of the narrative. For example, the chapter on June month links prohibition, World War I, antagonism to German people and a murder victim, all of them referenced in the previous month's chapter as well. The conclusion of the book is admiringly simple, yet evokes a tinge of loss and longing when he condenses the narrative to this line: 'Whatever else it was, it was one hell of a summer.'

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Shoemaker and His Daughter

Title: The Shoemaker and His Daughter – One Ordinary Family’s Remarkable Journey from Stalin’s Soviet Union to Putin’s Russia
Author: Conor O’Clery
Publisher: Doubleday Ireland, 2018 (First)
ISBN: 9781781620434
Pages: 357

The socialist empire in the Soviet Union threatened capitalism in the post-World War II period when even the US apprehended that the communists might take over most of the globe. But the concern was a bit premature. Margaret Thatcher once famously said, "the problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people's money". It did exactly that in the Soviet Union. Decades of mismanagement and ridiculous economic logic shattered the economy whose coup de grace came in the form of the oil price slump in the early 1980s. Three general secretaries died in quick succession in 3 years and a reformer named Mikhail Gorbachev took the chair. His structural changes got out of hand and ended up in the collapse and dismemberment of the Soviet Union in 1991. It took hardly 6 years to dismantle the communist regimes in eastern Europe. This book follows the life story of a master shoe-designer-cum-maker who weathered the storms of living in a strictly controlled society and still flourished. His daughter studied hard and earned high academic credentials. Incidentally, she is the author's wife and he tells the story of his in-laws in this book which is actually a mirror to the scourge of communism in the Soviet Union and proves that the communist system was founded on lies and monstrous crimes. Conor O'Clery is an Irish journalist and writer. He worked for the Irish Times for 30 years and represented them in many countries including the Soviet Union where he met his wife. He has authored many books.

Stanislav Suvorov was a shoemaker who led a prosperous life in Grozny, Chechnya by making bespoke shoes which were highly prized. He was sent to prison for a charge that was a crime only in a communist polity. The prison term had a devastating effect on the family’s prestige. It migrated to Krasnoyarsk, Siberia to start a new life where too Stanislav led a good life. His wife Marietta hailed from Nagorno-Karabakh which was beset with ethnic tensions between Armenians — to which our family belonged — and neighbouring Azeris. His daughter Zhanna studied diligently and conformed to the norms of a socialist society. She joined the communist party’s youth wing and eventually joined the party itself. She represented a district in the legislative body of Krasnoyarsk. But she still harboured resentment about how her father suffered at the hands of communist officialdom. She married a friend, but gradually drifted apart from him. During her absence from home for her PhD program at Moscow, her husband gets killed in a drunken brawl over an illicit relationship. She meets O’Clery in Moscow as a Russian tutor and the relationship grew. O’Clery was a divorcee with five children but they marry and he adopts her daughter. This occurred during the critical time of USSR’s disintegration. The author and Zhanna relocated to other countries following his transfers to various places and they used to visit her parents occasionally. On the rich tapestry of the family’s story, the author carefully crafts the history of the Soviet Union and how the system affected the life of the family in unexpected ways.

Readers wonder at how inefficient the Soviet system was managed according to the politico-economic theories of communism. With private enterprise curtailed, shops relied on deliveries from central warehouses that were far distant. Provisions were snapped up as soon as they appeared, so it was advantageous to be at the head of the queue or be friendly enough with the manager to buy goods at the back door. A party membership usually helped in such situations. Usually, articles were rare and queues very long that people joined a queue and only later asked what it was for! Scarcity moulded the Soviet people in grotesque ways. The Ukrainian peasant soldiers who invaded Romania which was capitalist in 1944 are reported to have wept when they saw the pretty houses, the fattened cattle and the well-stocked barns. They wept for a way of life and a prosperity that could’ve been theirs if not for communism. The party crushed religion, but even with its suppression, it was rare for an Armenian child who has not been secretly christened, even in communist households. A form of consumer apartheid prevailed. Special shops called Beryozka which stocked food unavailable elsewhere which was open only to holders of hard foreign currency. There were shops reserved for party functionaries that were not accessible to common people. Strict obedience to authority was drilled into the people. People witnessing a state-sponsored unjust act did so in silence, avoiding eye contact with other people. In Stalin’s Russia, no one spoke to strangers about matters that did not concern them.

Communism shunned any kind of enterprise — however small — coming from the people who were meant only to toil hard as per the commands of authority figures. It was essential that they should not think for themselves, or more practicably, not have time to think. As a result, private enterprise was not only discouraged, but penalized too. After seven decades of this madness, party bosses wondered why their economy was in shambles. Even the modest shoe and boot business of Stanislav (the author's father-in-law) was forced to run low-key because it thwarted the state's aspiration to own and control all the means of production. He restricted services to only the customers he knew. He was detained one day for selling his used car at a higher rate than the approved one which amounted to speculation that was a punishable offence. Article 154 of the criminal code made punishable any act such as 'buying up and reselling of goods or any other articles for the purpose of making a profit'. Punishments were very harsh. Stanislav was arrested and sentenced to seven years in jail. His new car was confiscated and re-assigned to a party functionary. The judiciary was subject to directives from the Kremlin on penal policy. Judges served 5-year terms and their continued careers depended on the party's assessment of their conformity.

Not content with nipping private initiative in the bud, communism sought to wipe out individuality as well, encouraging conformity to a goal set from on high. All kinds of creative literature wilted as a result. Central planning did not allow for individual architectural expression whose spin off was the almost identical cities and towns across the country. All residential blocks looked the same. Each city had its statue of Lenin and streets named after Lenin and Marx. The shops were all the same, carrying numbers rather than names. Dissimulation was the norm when portraying 'achievements' of the Soviet system to outsiders and quite ironically, to its own citizens as well. In speeches cataloguing the milestones, the word 'and' was never put before the last item so as to give the impression that the list can go on and on. Legislature was a total mockery of that democratic function. The role of deputies in legislative forums was to endorse the decisions of the hierarchy. As a rule, discussion was minimal and endorsements unanimous. Every time a vote was required, a voice called out, "those for" and all hands went up; 'Those against', no reaction; 'Those abstaining', no reaction; 'Motion passed' and the exercise ended. Foreign travel was a state-controlled privilege and only certain categories of citizens with proven party loyalty were allowed. The state didn't even allow people to talk to international contacts and telephone calls could be made only through an operator. Direct international dialling was introduced in Moscow for the Olympics in 1980 for the convenience of foreign athletes, but was discontinued immediately afterwards. The academia was constantly reminded of their place in the socialist system. Even in the 1980s, students and faculty of academic institutions were forced to help with the harvesting on state farms. They would toil on distant stretches of muddy fields with no facilities and primitive sleeping arrangements.

The interval in which communism crumbled was miraculously short as to be unbelievable. The fleeting nature of its collapse was telling on the flimsy foundations and the rot to the core. Brezhnev managed a consumer spending boom due to the high price of oil which brought in hard currency. Gorbachev introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reconstruction). He granted Soviet writers unprecedented freedom because he wanted the Intelligentsia on his side to discomfit the hard-line conservatives who were obstructing his reforms. Reassessment of historical figures, past events and revelations became ever more frank. This openness was genuinely believed to be capable of reforming the party and the existing system. Even in 1989, the party believed that perestroika was designed to fully use the potential of socialism and that only with a renewed and revitalized party in the vanguard can the Soviet Union move to a renewal of socialism and a bright future. Unfortunately for the party, Gorbachev was unlucky. It was his misfortune that oil prices had fallen but consumer expectation couldn't be lowered. He allowed constituent republics to get in touch with foreign partners and thereby unknowingly pushed them on the road to independence. With Khrushchev's thaw and Brezhnev's consumer society, people became less afraid to speak openly than the previous generation which had a memory of Stalin's arbitrary and cruel punishments for even a hint of dissidence.

O'Clery makes an analysis of the Soviet system's transformation to a market economy for which it suffered enormously. As Solshenitsyn said, 'whatever the communists told about their socialist system was false, but unfortunately, whatever they told about the capitalist system turned out to be true'. Hyper-inflation which followed the fall of the Soviet Union wiped out entire life's savings, turning millions of Russians into paupers. It was a humiliation for the generation that defeated Hitler to learn that war widows were getting Red Cross parcels from Germany. Russia entered the modern consumer era in the 1990s, with everything available in the stores, but it became a dangerous place with increased crime, financial chaos and no respite for the poor while a few powerful Russians syphoned off national wealth and the former captains of communism transformed themselves into oligarchs of capitalism. The book also provides an overview of the Russian society. Family ties were intense and close, which almost feels like India, in the importance it accorded to the extended family. Fathers were typically not appreciative of their daughters' boyfriends and we read about Zhanna's father breaking the finger bone of one when he gives the poor lad a 'firm' handshake after he caught them kissing! Parents offered financial help to their children to buy homes and donated furniture. Whatever the Soviet society lacked in some material comforts, they compensated for it in intangible things. Zhanna was accustomed to the discipline and respect shown to teachers in Soviet schools and she was taken aback to find her American pupils taking chewing gum in class and putting their feet up on the desks.

The book shares chilling details of how Islamic fundamentalism took hold in Chechnya once the central hold weakened that eventually made the non-Muslims flee from the province. It's true that Russia established itself there by resorting to brutal policies and stubborn suppression, but it does not justify the Chechen attempt to establish an exclusive religious state. When the author and wife visited Grozny in 1991, the Russians were living in fear that 'if incited, hitherto peaceful Muslim neighbours might turn against them overnight' (p. 279). Street graffiti threatening Russians came up quickly which warned them with dire messages such as 'RUSSIANS DON'T LEAVE — WE WANT SLAVES' and 'DON'T BUY THE APARTMENT FROM MISHA (meaning any Russian) — HE WILL BE GONE SOON ANYWAY'. This looks exactly similar to what the Kashmiri Pandits underwent in Kashmir at around the same time. The script was the same and universal with slight, local variations. Non-Russians were not exempt as seen in another slogan: 'RUSSIANS BACK TO RYZAN, ARMENIANS TO YEREVAN'. This exposed the true colour of the Chechen pogrom that it was not against Russians alone, but against all Christians. The book is structured in an engaging way where two stories unfold at the same time — that of the Suvorov family and that of Soviet Union itself. The writing style produces an intimacy to the characters among the readers. Family photographs are interspersed throughout the narrative. The story is presented in a charming present tense that appear contemporaneous to readers and attracts tremendous interest.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

She Has Her Mother’s Laugh

Title: She Has Her Mother’s Laugh – The Powers, Perversions and Potential of Heredity
Author: Carl Zimmer
Publisher: Picador, 2018 (First)
ISBN: 9781509818549
Pages: 656

Heredity is a powerful tool with which life sustains and propagates itself on earth. Even though its effects were clear to every society, the methods by which it is transferred across generations came to light only in the twentieth century. With the discovery of genes and unwinding the mysteries of DNA, mankind basked in the tremendous potential the knowledge offered to enhance the wellbeing of people – and, by corollary, causing unforeseen consequences if the technology was not responsibly handled. Genes are the blessing and the curse that our ancestors bestowed on us. However, science identified many other factors that are equally crucial to the development of humans as genes. This book covers all these channels in excellent detail and provides a comprehensive view of genetic research. The single most important idea it gives off is that inheritance is a broad concept which propagates through DNA (what is usually called nature), environment (nurture), epigenetic (transfer of some acquired traits) and by teaching the young (culture). Even though these are quite diverse, a little consideration would show that the benefits it conveys to a living being are broadly of the same nature. Carl Zimmer is an American popular science writer, blogger, columnist, and journalist who specializes in the topics of evolution, parasites and heredity. He has authored many books.

The book provides a good overview of the study of heredity beginning from Charles V, the Habsburg emperor, to plant and animal breeding in subsequent centuries. Generations of interbreeding in the royal line resulted in specific genetic features such as a deformed jaw (later called the Habsburg Jaw) among the princes. Their overall health was very fragile too. Things got moving when Darwin appeared on the scene. ‘Origin of Species’ was one of the most influential books ever written. Darwin could not explain the biology behind why individuals varied and how traits are copied to the next generation. He believed that a trait acquired in life could be passed down to future generations. We read about Gregor Mendel and the birth of the concept of genes. Hugo de Vries discovered in the year Darwin died that every cell contained invisible particles that are responsible for passing traits from one generation to the next. He called them pangenes which was later shortened to genes.

When it was established that traits could be transferred to another generation, racism suggested the possibility that the white race was at the pinnacle of human evolution. Even among the whites, the Nordic stock was deemed to be superior. Whites suffering from genetic diseases ranked further lower in the hierarchy with blacks and coloured people going down to the bottom rung. A new branch of study called eugenics thought of ways to cleanse and thereby better the human stock. By the dawn of the twentieth century in the US, eugenicists wanted to improve the human stock by selective breeding and preventing people with genetic disabilities from having children. Across the ocean in Germany, it was copied by Nazis into a devilish strategy. It first targeted people with disorders (usually poor intellectual capacity) to be sterilized. Hitler established a set of racial hygiene laws. In the first year after establishing hereditary health courts, Germany sterilized 64,000 people and by 1944, the tally went up to 400,000 including the mentally ill, the deaf, gypsies and Jews. In 1939, Nazis started killing off people with hereditary disabilities. It is estimated that they eliminated 200,000 lives. In the US, the craze for eugenics sailed in the inverse ratio as its progress in Germany. American objectors of eugenics repudiated it as bad science and bad policy. The Eugenics Record Office was shut down in 1939. Eugenics is down for the moment, but it may spring back to life if a powerful backer comes to its rescue. How many of you did think of Donald Trump while reading these lines?

Zimmer gets into the question of whether a characteristic is heritable in the true sense of the term, that is, whether an organism will definitely suffer the consequences if a specific gene is present or missing in its genome. The gist of the discussion is that the linkage is too complicated to decide beyond doubt. Colour of eyes is a heritable trait. Citing the example of a genetic disease called PKU, the author argues that it showed a way to attack the idea that our intelligence is fixed by the genes. This is an unfortunate example for the argument however. The brains of these people get stunted and they end up with very low intelligence like a toddler. This is because the gene prevents the dissociation of the amino acid phenylalanine obtained from food which eventually reaches the brain and damages the nerve cells. If no treatment is made, it will lead to devastating intellectual disability. But if the infant is given a diet low in that chemical, the symptoms disappear. What this example proves is that genes are extremely important but in some cases, some alleviating measures can be found. This does not support the author’s logic that genes are not that critical. Then he takes up the case of height as a heritable trait. Here, the dependence on genes is as high as 86 per cent, but it is strongly linked to nutrition also. After each generation, the world is getting taller, not just in the developed countries. South Korean women grew eight inches taller in average height in a century, while Iranian men got taller by six and a half inches. The book then concludes that intelligence depends on several physical factors and genes that no direct relationship can be drawn. Studies held in Scotland suggest that lower intelligence test scores raised people’s risk of death. It’s possible that people who score higher may be better able to understand information their doctors give them. Genes still account for only a small percentage of the variation in people’s test scores. As with height, it has not been able to definitely prove which genes cause the effect to occur.

Race or racial purity is a concept which is associated with the genome of people constituting a society. Zimmer makes an extraordinary effort to conclude that race is not supported by DNA. He observes that the concept of race is not a feature of the natural world beyond our social experience. But this looks uncannily similar to the wokeish canard that gender is a social construct rather than biological. Hence, take it with a pinch of salt! Up until the middle ages, writers never used the word in the present meaning. Racial laws were common in the US as recently as half a century ago. The Racial Integrity Act passed in 1924 barred interracial marriages. It defined the white people as those whose blood is entirely white (of course, not in colour) having no known, demonstrable or ascertainable admixture of the blood of another race. This law would stand till 1967 when a couple’s wedding was annulled on its basis. They appealed to the Supreme Court which struck down the law. The author argues that if races were biologically significant, most of the genetic diversity should exist between races rather than between individuals of the same race. In the 1950s, Richard Lewontin made a study of a wide range of human populations which found that genetic differences between races was only 6.3 per cent, whereas the diversity within populations was 85.4 per cent. Even with this data, it somehow feels that something important and which can tip the scales has not been told. Since the subject is contentious, it is understandable that authors would prefer to bet on the side of the politically correct option. There is a brief analysis on contagious cancer, which was a scientific secret hiding in plain sight for two centuries. Eight cases were identified so far and they would not be the last. In the case of humans, the documented cases show a single leap (from one person to another and not more). It may be that our immune systems are so strong that cancers never get the chance to evolve into parasites that can leap from host to host.

The birth of a living being is something which is looked at with awe and wonder even by committed rationalists. This book furnishes a good discussion on how cell division takes place when a foetus is developed, clearly articulating the intricacies of the process and the pure amazement at one cell replicating to hundreds of types of totally different cells in different parts of the body. There is a startling narrative on human chimeras where the genome and proteins contain traces of another person, usually a twin, whose genetic particles get mixed up in utero. If two embryos of the same sex are involved, it’s much easier for them to go unnoticed. In the other cases, the blood of the person may carry cells of a different blood type. A case is listed where a person possessed male and female sexual organs. In the case of animals, an example is described where it carried the genetic imprint of two fathers. Obviously, this possibility is not examined for human cases. We also read about unusual instances of a mother’s DNA not matching her children. This happens when the mother was a tetragametic chimera (where one embryo develops into a person combining that of a should-have-been-twin). It is now known that foetuses can pass cells to mothers and vice versa, whose effects can last for several years after birth. Women who had given birth to boys carried cells with Y chromosomes. This book pushes the envelope of genetic research to the end of the 2010s. It looks like a whiff of Lamarckism is returning to science under the lofty title of ‘transgenerational epigenetic inheritance’.

The author unveils a chapter in the life of the famous writer Pearl S. Buck who is the author of the masterpiece The Good Earth. It was one of the four books with which I started my reading career. In fact, I’m not sure how many times I have read this superb novel. It was news to me that Buck started writing fiction just to save enough money to settle her mentally stunted daughter in a good institution. The child was suffering from PKU. There is a good discussion on gene therapies on somatic and germ lines such as CRISPR and mitochondrial, fully exposing the ethical and scientific concerns associated with them. The apprehension that this may lead to a new kind of eugenics is also very strong. In vitro gametogenesis offers the dizzying possibility of transforming on ordinary skin cell into a sperm or egg from which a baby can take shape. The author displays an unnecessary wokeish bias in the last chapter in accusing the whites of inheriting wealth way more than the blacks and suggests that this may be legally stopped. In a second case, he suggests that instead of using for disease eradication, CRISPR should be employed for saving endangered species, but he does not consider who would fund such research. This is also a wrong appreciation of the priorities.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Nexus

Title: Nexus – A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
Author: Yuval Noah Harari
Publisher: Fern Press, 2024 (First)
ISBN: 9781911717096
Pages: 492

‘Sapiens’ was a best seller by Yuval Noah Harari that showcased some very pertinent ideas on the evolution of human societies from an anthropological perspective. The take-home message from the book was that the immense success of human societies was not caused by the exceptional intelligence of individuals, but due to the cooperative effort by a multitude of individuals. For a group of people to cooperate as part of an organisation, some methods are essential to bring them together and that title examined them in good detail. This book is an extension of the idea which evaluates the information networks which bind humans together. Mankind gains enormous power by building large networks of cooperation, but the way these networks are built predisposes us to use that power unwisely. Our problem then is a network problem. Humanity possesses many powers which they can’t effectively control. The tendency to create powerful things with unintended consequences started not with the invention of machines or AI, but with the invention of religion. Prophets and theologians have summoned powerful spirits that ended up with flooding the world with blood instead of love and joy. With this stark reminder delivered beforehand, the book inspects information networks from the stone age to artificial intelligence (AI). The goal of the book is to provide a more accurate historical perspective on the AI revolution, because AI is the first ever technology that is capable of making decisions and generating ideas by itself. My earlier reviews of Sapiens and Homo Deus (also by Harari) can be accessed by clicking on the book titles.

Harari delves deep into the definition of information to get the discussion going. The naïve view among people is that information is an attempt to create reality. He argues that reality may not be the basis of people associating together. There’s something called inter-subjective reality which is true only for the people believing in the same story or myth. In this light, information actually creates realities by tying together disparate things, like people or empires, into a network or nexus. In short, the role of information is to connect people together to create order in a network rather than representing truth or reality. As we look at the history of information over the ages, we see a constant rise in connectivity without a concomitant rise in truthfulness or wisdom. To reinforce the point, Harari presents an example on the nature of reality taken from an episode in the creation of Israel which runs counter to the truth perceived by a Palestinian. Considering his Jewish background and Palestinian backers usually having a short fuse, this attempt is rather bold.

The author focusses his attention to provide an interesting and informative view of the information technologies that made human societies stick together. The ‘story’ is the first information technology mankind developed to connect people. It was assumed wrongly that people connect to the person (hero or heroine) of the story, but in fact they connect to the story told about that person. For uniting people, fiction offered many advantages over truth because it could be made really simple and understood by everybody while the latter was often complicated. Plato, in his Republic, imagined that the constitution of his utopian state would be based on ‘noble lie’. While stories circulated in societies, it was realized that poems and myths could be easily remembered by people but other factors were also needed to run a society such as tax records or payable amounts that required a unique non-organic information technology to function. This led to the origin of the written document. Retrieval of the document at the right time was a problem that was solved by the creation of bureaucracy. This led to the development of more powerful information networks. The written book became part of the network in first millennium BCE. After eons in which gods spoke to men via shamans, priests, prophets, oracles and other human messengers, god began to speak through the information technology of the infallible book. Inevitably, the holy book spawned numerous interpretations which eventually turned out to be far more consequential than the book itself. Problems of interpretation tilted the balance of power between the holy book and the institution called church in favour of the latter. Here, the term church is used in a universal sense and not restricted to the Christian variety. The power to interpret the sacred teachings made these institutions omnipotent. The Catholic church interpreted Jesus’ gentle words in a way that allowed it to become the richest landowner in Europe, to launch violent crusades and to establish murderous inquisitions (p.89).

When we come to the modern age, we see mass communication technologies that helped democracy become technically feasible. Newspapers and printing caused consolidation of public opinion that is a precondition of democracy. Hence the new information technology of the late modern era gave rise to both large scale democracy and large scale totalitarianism. We generally tend to be unaware of the potency of the latter. Stalinism (which is the author’s euphemism for communism; for some unknown reason he does not want to call a spade a spade) came close to world domination after World War II and it would be naïve to think that its disregard for truth doomed it to failure or that its ultimate collapse guarantees that such a system can never again rise. The advent of the computer age was again a game changer. The main split in twenty-first century politics might not be between democracies and totalitarian regimes; instead the participants might be human beings and non-human agents such as AI. For thousands of years, prophets, poets and politicians used language to manipulate and reshape society. Now computers are learning how to do it. As computers amass power, new information networks will emerge, but for at least some time, most of the old information chains will remain. Harari suggests ‘alien intelligence’ as the expansion of AI. The book looks at the ways in which an authoritarian system can bend the social media to serve its need of subservience of the people to it such as China’s social credit system. Apart from money, there was traditionally a non-monetary system that was variously known as honour, reputation or status. The new social credit system ascribes to award precise values even for social gestures such as smiles or visiting parents! For example, you might get ten points for picking up litter from the street or lose fifteen points for disturbing neighbours with loud music. This may wipe off privacy and turn life into a ‘never-ending job interview’. This will also pave the way for a totalitarian control system.

The latter half of the narrative is a laboriously long and uninspiring sermon on the likely pitfalls of AI technology when it spreads to the entire world and begins to handle all aspects of human life. The possibility of such systems taking over the world and turning humanity into its slaves is not seriously considered. Instead, the very real chance of AI acquiring the prejudices of human societies such as racism or misogyny is dissected threadbare. In view of this threat, the author recommends to build human institutions that will be able to check not just familiar human weaknesses but also radically alien errors. The scope of AI systems is also evaluated in the book. Some of mankind’s intellectual tasks can easily be automated such as playing chess or providing medical diagnosis, but manual tasks such as dishwashing or nursing are not so easily amenable to AI. People who want a job in 2050 should perhaps invest in their motor and social skills, as much as in their intellect. Data colonialism is a threat Harari flags prominently. American AI systems engage in mass surveillance of Pakistan’s mobile phone network and then uses a machine-learned algorithm to identify suspected terrorists (p.236). This would lead to the pioneer nations or corporations in AI to the ability to control data using their advantages to achieve domination over other nations or corporates. Mastery of AI and data give these empires the power to control people’s lives beyond their national borders. Raw data will be harvested throughout the world and will flow to the imperial hub. There the cutting edge technology will be developed, producing unbeatable algorithms. These will then be exported back to data colonies but neither the profits nor the power is distributed back. Overall coverage of the topic leads readers to the impression that the author is unduly pessimistic.

As noted above, the long lecture on democracy and dictatorship is rudimentary and plain to the point of being redundant. Democratic societies need not be lectured to on the requirement of democracy while totalitarian societies will not be allowed to listen to the author’s tiresome tongue-lashing. The author appreciates the present Indian government under Narendra Modi for its clean up mission. He casts his glance on the Clean India Mission (Swachh Bharat) and the $10 billion spent to build 100 million latrines and remarks that ‘sewage isn’t the stuff of epic poems, but it’s a test of a well-functioning state’ (p.56). The book exhibits scathing and sometimes out-of-place criticism of Vladimir Putin with comments such as ‘Anticipating present-day strongmen like Putin, Augustus [Caesar] didn’t crown himself king, and pretended that Rome was still a republic’ (p.140). While loquacious on Russia, Harari is uncannily tight-lipped on China or its pathetic credentials on democracy and human rights, seeming reluctant to utter anything that would antagonize the Chinese Communist party. Left liberalism seeps through every page, paragraph and word in the book that makes it so drab, unlike Harari’s earlier works. He laments about government censors cutting out free speech, but wants social media platforms to employ more censors – human or AI-based – to block out rightist speech which he conveniently classifies as hate speech. It’s a peculiarity of this genre of scholars to demand total freedom to say anything for themselves while wishing to drown out any opinion dissenting with them. It’s a liberal principle that gender preferences be left to the individual to handle. There is no need for homosexuals to shout their sexual preferences from the rooftops. Being a gay himself, the author has no right to force the readers to irrelevantly go through the problems they face in modern societies and to ‘wonder’ at how he met ‘his husband’ in an LGBTQ social media platform in 2002. Being non-compliant to society’s norms don’t make you entitled to utter something which is best left unsaid. The latter half of the book on AI is mere gaslighting of the readers under the guise of examining potential problems of the new technology.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star