This was a fun and interesting read but I think I've read too many books like this so it didn't overly impress me. You'll get a nice rPop Chaos Theory
This was a fun and interesting read but I think I've read too many books like this so it didn't overly impress me. You'll get a nice review about Chaos Theory about how our lives, evolution, politics and many other things are dictated by both convergent and contingent events. There's a nice discussion about risk vs uncertainty. This is kind of an armchair book with some fun anecdotes and speculations and there is no new ground explored here. Don't expect too much out of this book if it's in your wheelhouse already. ...more
I don't have much to say here. This is a good book and I've read many like it. Schulz does a god job entertaining the reader about the uncomfortable lI don't have much to say here. This is a good book and I've read many like it. Schulz does a god job entertaining the reader about the uncomfortable land of being wrong where few like to dwell but through which all pass. I loved how she talked about that the feeling about being wrong is the exact feeling of being right because when you're wrong, you think you're being right. The human mind and ego has a tremendous aversion to being wrong and we rewrite and create all sorts of revisions in our mind to make us less wrong when looking back at mistakes. There's some great discussions about theory of mind and how seeking error is actually desirable and is what makes science and humor possible. It's a fun read. ...more
When you dig down to the details about something like World War II, you at first feel like you’re going on a historical adventure whHow was this real?
When you dig down to the details about something like World War II, you at first feel like you’re going on a historical adventure where you’ll learn about all the world shattering events that have shaped the way our world is. But when you come to the end of reading a book about WWII like in Inferno you just slump in amazed depression as your brain tries to grasp that the war really happened to actual people and that it wasn’t just some disimpassioned events that happened long before you were born. WWII happened relatively recently, it consumed the globe and saw around 60 million people killed while many people were tortured, raped, exploited and forgotten. The war consumed the world like nothing before or since and it’s probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to humankind on a global scale.
What caused WWII? From a mechanistic standpoint, the inciting event was Hitler invading Poland and breaking the Warsaw Pact with Russia. That finally got France and Britain to declare war as was their duty in an agreement with Poland. But what was the root cause of WWII or in other words, what seeds were sown that lead to the global conflict? Again, the answer is Hitler but a more complete answer is Nazi ideology which included ultra-nationalization of the Third Reich, Aryan race supremacy and imperial rivalry and resentment that had lasted since the end of WWI. If I had to boil it down, it’s the nazification of Germany and Hitler’s ambition to dominate Eastern Europe that caused WWII to happen. Hitler was the catalyst and Italian and Japanese fascism and imperialism added gas to the fire that made the conflict global.
There were two main theaters of WWII: the European and Pacific. The European conflict was mostly dominated by two authoritarian regimes who brutally fought and killed millions of people on either side: Germany and Russia. After Russia seized as much of Poland as it could, it then went and invaded Finland while Germany captured France. And then Russia took over the Baltics. Italy got involved and wanted to take over the Mediterranean, Yugoslavia, Greece, Libya, Egypt and Malta and made several efforts there that Hitler had to clean up. Japan wanted Manchuria, China and large swathes of Pacific Asia. Franco wanted Hitler to succeed but didn’t get involved because of the ravages of his own recent civil war. Franco refused German troops inside his border which kept Gibraltar neutral which turned out to be a key strategy to the Allies when they later invaded Italy and fought Germany there.
Then Germany's earnest invasion into Russia with Operation Barbarossa was the largest invasion in history in terms of manpower and casualties. Despite suffering heavy losses, Russia managed to repeal Germany, both with millions dead. The two countries fought the most during this war and also perpetuated war crimes on other countries and people in their quest for territory. Japan invaded China and Manchura and fought with the English over Burma and Malaysia. After their enormous blunder of attacking Pearl Harbor, the Japanese fought the Americans all over the Pacific and suffered many losses including in Midway and Guadalcanal battle. The US final involvement in recapturing France and invading Italy and Germany probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome and defeat of Germany. Stalin was the one who triumphed over Hitler. However, the American’s ability to defeat Japan in the Pacific theater after carpet bombing the island and finally dropping two nuclear weapons for the first time finally subdued that belligerent empire.
WWII is a story of Hitler’s utterly insane ambitions and delusions. His cult of personality and weaponization of nationalism allowed him to harness the power of his country. And then he somehow thought he’d be able to just conquer everything, stretching his forces and trying to force cultural change on the people he occupied. His and Japan’s ambitions were doomed before they ever began. The utter pointlessness and stupidity along with ethnic cleansing of the Jews is just too overwhelming to even comprehend. It’s hard to imagine that these events occurred but they really did and the world lives in its aftermath where America was able to mold the world in its economic and anti-communist vision which then forged the next global conflict. Russia may have defeated Hitler, but the US won the war. ...more
This is a funny book with a very cursory review of how the political process works with some experiences shared about activism and getting involved inThis is a funny book with a very cursory review of how the political process works with some experiences shared about activism and getting involved in politics. I learned nothing new but I had fun with this. This is a great book for a young adult. ...more
As a person who leans left and decries the destructive nature of patriarchy, this was an eye opening book. Let’s jusIt’s not wrong to try to help men.
As a person who leans left and decries the destructive nature of patriarchy, this was an eye opening book. Let’s just get things out of the way: this author in no way denies that sexism, patriarchy, misogyny and the gender pay gap between men and women are not real. In fact, everything he says in this book supports the fact that patriarchy is a system in control that has subjugated women. This book is about how men have also been victims of patriarchy and this book fits perfectly on the book shelf right next to anything that someone like Bell Hooks has written. It’s terrible that it has to be said, but advocating for men in the face of very real statistical disadvantages is not the same thing as not advocating for women. It is not a zero sum situation. We can, and should, advocate for both men and women.
I feel called out after reading this and rightly so. The author presents fairly irrefutable and easily referenced facts about a specific sex disparity: men are becoming less educated. Women have now clearly pulled ahead of men in almost all stages of education and as degree earners. No, this doesn’t mean we still need more gains in STEM for women and there are still big disparities there, but the facts are that the attempts at dismantling patriarchy and getting women into the workforce and school have made enormous gains over the last 50 years. Again, it needs to be stressed, women are still hugely disadvantaged when it comes to the gender pay gap and there are enormous disparities that disfavor women at the high earner bracket. But what are we talking about here: normal men. Average men. And what are average men experiencing now? Economic and job loss because of large shifts that have happened as patriarchy has slowly become dismantled over the last 50 years. Black men, in particular, are extremely disadvantaged.
So why do I feel called out? Because the American Left largely ignores the problem of economic and job less that average men have clearly experienced. For the Left it’s not politically correct or expedient to talk about how half the population has a terrible time graduating from school and experiencing wage stagnation. And the Left ignores it to the peril. Because what is the Right doing? Capitalizing on the economic woes and perceived power loss that men are experiencing. Right wing politicians have exploited men’s real grievances and they’re doing all the wrong things with it. Right wing politicians, rather than wanting to use social democratic policy to help men (like job and education grants to get men into health, administration and education jobs where they are really lacking) they decry “wokeism” and imply or directly say we need to return back to the golden years of patriarchy and toxic masculinity. So the Left ignores the problem, disenfranchising an enormous voting block while the Right exploits and manipulates them. News alert: Trump has had the widest gender gap poll ever in 2016 at 24%. Men are super, super into neo fascism and authoritarian politics now and a big part of it is because the Left ignores their very real problems that ironically could be solved using the very same social democratic policies that have helped women. And guess what? We’re all suffering for it. Men are the greatest perpetrators of crimes, murder, rape and also suffer the most from diseases and deaths of despair. I don’t believe these disparities are necessarily natural but a consequence of a desperate population of people.
Now, this author could be called sexist. He makes the claims and one of them is that there are indeed factual biological differences between men and women. But he’s careful with how he talks about this. He correctly evokes the idea of overlapping distribution curves. He says, on average and due to clearly defined divergent hormonal and brain development differences that on average men and women tend to be a little different. But he quickly concedes that the distributions between the sexes cluster differently but that the two distributions completely overlap or are superimposed. Meaning for example, many men tend to be risk takers because of slower brain development, have high sex drives because of hormonal evolutionary biology, not really care about being a parent, care less about meaningful relationships and many women tend to exhibit these traits less so on average but there are exceptions all over the place. Can anyone really deny this? So, the author may be making sexist claims but actual biology is also kind of sexist. Additionally, the author believes that it is both natural biology, social constructs and cultural attitudes that create the advent of toxic masculinity and all the terrible outcomes previously discussed associated with men.
The author’s solutions are social democratic policies. Men should have 6 months of federally mandated paid parental leave. As well as women. Education programs should be funded to help men graduate from school and college. Men should be encouraged and helped by the state specifically to get them into nursing, healthcare, social work, education and administration. The author also believes that all boys should start school one year later because their brain development is slower than girls which is a biological fact. This, of course, is controversial which is recognized by the author. Can you imagine how many men would support social democratic policies that specifically address the exact ways in which they are currently disadvantaged? It would turn politics on its head overnight. Maybe men would stop supporting fascist politicians, too, which would kind of help everyone out including liberal democracy at large. You never know…...more
Welcome weary traveler who has come across my review for My Further Disillusionment with Russia. Like you,Emma Goldman: the pinnacle critical thinker.
Welcome weary traveler who has come across my review for My Further Disillusionment with Russia. Like you, I have read plenty of communist sympathetic texts as well as western society critiques. Like you, I enjoy the Marxist critiques of capitalism and generally endorse social democratic policy. Like you, I’m horrified by the history of the Soviet communist regime. Like you, my mind has been utterly blown away when I’m gaslighted by modern day communists when I criticize Soviet Russia and have been belittled into believing that I’m simply an indoctrinated western propagandist. Well, my friend, this book is for you.
Is there anyone more apt to critique and provide an unbiased opinion of Soviet Russia and the Bolshevik revolution than a lefty leftist anarchist who was imprisoned and then deported from the US for being too radical left who visited Russia in 1921? In this book, there is no “western revisionist history”. Anarchist Emma Goldman simply gives her unadulterated opinion of the Bolshevik movement and what does she find?
It was bad. Very bad.
Goldman was hoping for an anarchist promised land when she came to Russia but she only found state-inflicted famines, political prisoners, rationing of food, tiered salary from the state, arrest and writers with dissenting opinions, state capitalism and an overall oppressive authoritarian regime. Hmm, sounds like everything else I’ve read about the USSR that is allegedly just western propaganda. All the bolshevik revolution did was a scene-change from the Romanovs sitting on a throne to Lenin sitting on that throne. Lenin was a politician, contorting his rhetoric and actions to stay in power just like any other politician before and after. The bolshevik’s bastardized the concept of revolution.
Goldman’s observations in the Afterword are simply brilliant. She is a fiercely intelligent thinker (she was also kind of a terrorist who plotted the assassination of Henry Clay Frick, so she’s no paragon of virtue). Goldman argues that the peasant class revolution that happened in Russia actually subverted Marxist ideas. Marx argued that a society needed a sufficient degree of industrialization to then move to a socialist revolution. Goldman states that the largely agrarian people of Russia didn’t even know about Marx theory and went ahead and started a revolution anyway, totally upending that theory. It was then the bolsheviks and the Lenin cadre that co-opted the movement and rebranded their own authoritarianism.
Reading this book was an exercise in confirmation bias for me and it honestly felt very good. I won’t let another modern day communist lead me to believe that the Soviets were “building communism” and how wonderful they were because they gave free education and healthcare to people. I got news for you: other modern “western” societies have done that except without the overt authoritarianism and overt civil rights violations. I’m sick and tired of the Soviet apologetics. It’s unfathomable insulting to the victims of that terrible, terrible, regime....more
I just reread 1984 and wanted a deeper look into George Orwell as a person so I read Homage to Catalonia with great interest and this book didn’t disaI just reread 1984 and wanted a deeper look into George Orwell as a person so I read Homage to Catalonia with great interest and this book didn’t disappoint. We get his first hand account of his time fighting with the anarchist militia, the POUM, and against the fascist Franco trying to usurp the Republican Spanish government. This is readable and highly pertinent to what was going on in Spain at the time. Orwell and his wife spent their time in Barcelona where they experienced a whiff of anarchist society: no class distinction, no tipping, no money ect. Of course this only lasted a few months as the communist party who had major influence there didn’t like workers controlling anything very much.
Orwell spent a lot of time being very bored and very uncomfortable waiting around for action. He threw some grenades and fired some shots at the fascists in the south but he didn't see much action for quite a while. We get much of his observations about the Spaniards and the ridiculous political divisions among the Republicans. Orwell was there to fight fascism—that’s all he really cared about. The huge alphabet soup of all the different leftist parties was an enormous distraction and the infighting was tremendously counterproductive. Orwell didn’t care what party he belonged to, he just happened to be fighting with the POUM anarchist military militia and was aloof and disgusted by the political divisions. The man hated Franco and Hitler and wanted to stop them but there was an enormous sense of futility and inevitability in his account. He, quite prescient, knew that some form of fascism would take over in Spain, either from the communists who controlled much of the Republicans or from Franco but he figured Franco was by far the worse option. I love his sentimentality he has toward the Spanish people and believes that a milder form of fascism would come than in Germany simply because of the sensibilities of the Spanish.
The really aggravating thing in these pages are the inaccurate reporting, lies and party propaganda that happened around the Spanish Civil War. It’s amazing to hear what he says newspapers are saying as opposed to his first hand account. He was in Barcelona when the leftist infighting began and the communist party attempted to purge and criminalize the anarchist POUM and cast the party as fascist spies or trotskyists. None of it was true but the purge happened nonetheless. The truth was, the communist party didn’t want workers and anarchism happening as much as Franco didn’t and so they wiped them from the political landscape. The communist party and the soviets were clearly as authoritarian and totalitarian as any other form of fascism. That fact is apparent in this memoir as well as in Orwell’s 1984. One cannot help to think the over propaganda and believing lies likely informed his work in 1984.
Orwell did see action, was shot in the neck and lost the use of his hand and voice for a bit. He was lucky and recovered and it’s so amazing hearing everything he’s been through. You will get to know Orwell and his wonderful wife in this book and come to understand the humanity and decency behind simply wanting the best thing for the most people. This memoir will remind you that politics is garbage and that it doesn’t change. Everything in this book and what happened in Spain is relevant today. ...more
Many American Christians worship their own whiteness.
I've read several books like this but my attention was drawn to it from the biblical scholar Dan Many American Christians worship their own whiteness.
I've read several books like this but my attention was drawn to it from the biblical scholar Dan McClellan on social media. This book examines American christianity and concludes that about 2/3 of white christians actually worship whiteness, called the Religion of Whiteness (ROW). As a Christian myself, I found a lot of their conclusions pretty self evident already. It's pretty clear that many christian churches, many evangelicals, insulate defend and protect whiteness as a fundamental, yet mostly covert practice. They authors didn't exactly lay out a lot of rigorous data here but their studies were interesting. For example, the made control questions interviewing many Christians and then were able to hone in on specific Christians that cherry-pick the Bible to clearly protect concepts of white nationalism.
I thought their discussion and personal accounts of "betrayal trauma" by black christians was very good. These stories laid out how many black christians experienced betrayal by their white brothers and sisters in their congregations especially during the time of George Floyd protests and were either silenced or pushed out of their congregations. The authors delineate two types of ROWers: the white veilers and the white mighters. The white veil are those that are not overt about their racism, rather they pretend that racism is not a white problem and like to act like America is some sort of post racial utopia and if you talk about race you're just a whiner. And then their are the white might people who overtly talk about white supremacy and talk about how white people are actually the victims ect, ect. There are white christian that don't practice ROW, according to the authors, but they are a clear minority.
Nonviolent resistance works better than violent resistance.
This is a book written with a specific goal: to convince the reader that non-violent resistNonviolent resistance works better than violent resistance.
This is a book written with a specific goal: to convince the reader that non-violent resistance is superior to violent resistance. The authors delicately and succinctly lay out their argument in a scholarly way while providing their methodology. They looked at both violent and non-violent resistance movements all over the world from 1900 to 2006 and found clear statistical evidence that non-violent resistance is more successful at regime change than violent resistance.
One of the main advantages and characteristics of a non-violent movement is a low barrier for mass public participation. Violent resistance almost always relies on a smaller group of people, fragile networks, and unreliable external assistance. The low barrier of non-violent resistance opens the doors for a larger cohort of the public across racial, class and ideological lines that provides the impetus for the movement and insidiously chips away at the power and influence of the regime who is in control. It is way, way easier for a regime to crack down on a violent group who uses terrorism and/or guerrilla warfare in their resistance. The regime is provided with the social and political justification and ammunition to apply force and violence to destroy the violent opposition groups. Non-violent resistance is more like trying to nail Jello to the wall because it is more broadly spread among the populace and instills self-reflection in the regime members and often ultimate defection and collapse of the regime.
It is worth stating the violent resistance can and has succeeded in regime change but they most certainly succeed at much lower rates than non-violent movements, the authors provide ample evidence of this. Additionally, once a violent movement succeeds, they are way more likely to have much harsher civil rights abuses and oppressive instruments in place that are just as bad as the outgoing regime or even worse. Many examples of this abound.
The authors provide numerous case studies including the fall of the Sha in the Iranian revolution in the 1970s, the fall of Marcos in the Philippines, the Palestinian Intifadas and others. What many of these examples have in common is mass non-cooperation with the state, boycotts, strikes and protests.The authors are very careful with how they present these examples. They fully recognize that just because a nonviolent movement helped displace an authoritarian regime, it doesn’t mean the good times roll. This is especially true in the post-Sha theocratic rule in Iran and the de facto apartheid occuring in Israel after the well organized and transiently effective Intifadas. But here is what the authors argue quite effectively in my opinion with robust evidence: nonviolent campaigns are not only more likely to succeed in regime change but they more often have a liberal democracy afterwards and less likely to relapse into civil war. Violent coups more likely have rebranded authoritarian rule and more often have subsequent civil wars.
Many argue that non-violent resistance and violent resistance have a symbiotic relationship and that any success of a non-violent resistance is also owed to violence, but the authors did not find this to be true. Most of the evidence is that violent resistance actually has the opposite effect: the non-violent movements get lumped into the violent movement and together they are treated with justified violence from the regime.
I'm deeply troubled right now in 2024 about the extremism happening on both sides of the political spectrum. I lean left and so the threat from right wing extremism is very clear to me. There is a clear global neo fascist movement that is taking over the political world. That is unassailable. However, it would be very unwise to assume that there is not a loud minority of leftists that also seeks change and believe that violence is not only the only means of achieving change but is in fact virtuous.The marxist vanguard revolution ideology is very troubling to me and is a tactic that I condemn. We have abundant historical evidence that violent vanguardism has resulted in rebranded authoritarianism and human rights violations perhaps to the same degree as right wing fascist neoliberal and neocolonialism. Violent extremism, regardless of its ideology, is immoral, unethical, ineffective and should be widely condemned. ...more
Imagine a woman is kidnapped from her husband by a nomadic tribe, forced into that tribe and then impregnated. The womeThe man that changed the world.
Imagine a woman is kidnapped from her husband by a nomadic tribe, forced into that tribe and then impregnated. The women, and her five children are then rejected by her own captors and have no home and dwells by a river to fend for themselves which is likely a death sentence. Imagine one of those children a few decades later unites millions of his own people under one banner, conquers a land mass from China, to Hungary and to Baghdad and institutes the largest empire that has ever existed in history besides the British Empire. That is Genghis Khan. It’s not that he led a revolution of the aristocracy (like the American or French revolution). He was literally some poor bastard kid that lived by a river. It’s the most incredible real-life origin story I think I’ve ever known.
Before reading this book, my impression of the Mongols was the following: violent, horde, rapist, conqueror ect. After the 1600s there was enormous “mongoloid” scapegoating by the Soviets, racists, pseudoscientists, phrenologists doctors and all sort of intelligentsia which was fabricated to create the right narrative to bring asiatic people more easily under western colonial rule. My skewed perspective of the Mongols before reading this book was directly affected by that anti-asian racist image that was carefully cultivated long before I was born.
And that’s what makes this book so incredible. All that racist crap goes out the window when you discover what an incredible person Genhis Khan was and how amazing his empire was. Of course, no conqueror is actually “good” from a traditional moral perspective. All the world conquerors throughout history were murderers, rapists and power hungry bad people. Khan is not really an exception: he literally murdered his step brother as a young man and did lots of other bad stuff to people. But here’s what sets Genghis Khan apart: not only is his origin story incredible but he very clearly united and liberated his own people while actually creating a relatively egalitarian empire with religious tolerance that sought to integrate other cultures and not abolish them. That is next level stuff. Can you say the same about any recent Western conquerors or colonialism? Of course not. When you compare Genghis Khan to other empires, he is clearly much more relatively peaceful.
Genghis Khan took a bunch of tribes that were constantly at war who performed routine kidnapping of women, united them and outlawed the vengeful practices that were destroying his people. He totally destroyed the aristocracy and gained total control and made himself beholden to his own laws. He initially controlled an area about the size of western Europse and about 1 million people. He got rid of the inherited lineage and privilege and opened leadership up to anyone and regardless of their backgrounds. He created a culture of absolute religious tolerance full of Christians, Muslims, Daoists, Buddhists and whoever else. He created taxes but also made exceptions for the poor and professionals. He created the decimal system for his troops and made one of the most dynamic and powerful armies in the world that used scare tactics and surprise rather than traditional siege or wars of attrition. The success of his war tactics spread like a virus and completely upended warfare. His son continued much of the same tradition but ruled from a capital city rather than from horseback. He created paper money along with all the monetary policy that goes along with it. He created a universal alphabet for his enormous bureaucracy to communicate over large distances and many cultures. Particularly in China, the Mongols instituted lots of what would be considered social democratic policy including education for all. They developed tons of science and astronomy as well as census taking. They were extremely pragmatic way more than they were idealistic, adopting mathematical and engineering solutions from all the cultures they conquered and then integrated into the empire. The Mongol empire very much influenced Western culture and has a lasting impact today..
One of the issues is that the success of the Mongol empire depended on continued conquest. They advanced through Kiev, Poland, Georgia, Turkey, Hungary, Egypt and Bahgadad and spread all through China as Genhis’ heirs descended into monarchical aristocracy which ultimately led to the eventual demise of the empire as well as collapse of their economy and bad inflation. There was tons of political infighting and inheritance disputes. There was a steady decline over four centuries. The later vilification of Genghis Khan by European colonists has become part of anti-Mogul and anti-asian propaganda that you still see today....more
Children should not have smartphones and social media until they are 16.
As a parent of a young child, I read this book with interest and horror. This Children should not have smartphones and social media until they are 16.
As a parent of a young child, I read this book with interest and horror. This book is about the tragic great rewiring that was inflicted on Gen Z between 2010 and 2015 that completely upended them from a normal childhood and caused a generational mental health crisis. The author does a good job of explaining himself with good research and makes a compelling case against a phone-based childhood and praises the virtues of a play-based childhood. I think this book was very good and important but I didn’t agree with everything and think some of his reasoning is actually fallacious when it comes to “helicopter” parenting, which I’ll get into.
Depression, self harm and anxiety are undoubtedly higher in Gen Z and have a sharp rise in boys and girls in 2010 and thereafter. One could speculate that these children grew up after the 9/11 era and after the 2008 financial crisis but, as the author argues, every generation has socio-economic upheaval but doesn't typically result in dramatic drop in mental health. The most likely, and obvious, explanation is that their childhood became steeped in toxic self comparisons on social media (affecting girls more) and video game and pornography addiction (affecting boys more.) Social media is a strategic, asynchronous, disembodied interaction with the aims of fostering and protecting an individual's self brand. Social media platforms are the most efficient conformity machines ever invented where a user can literally gauge approval by numerical likes and views. This is really bad for everyone and basically inhumane to expose a child’s brain to this type of thinking. When a child starts doing this around the age of 10, they chase the dopamine hit of views and likes and sink the enormous opportunity of real-life social interactions and development that prepare them for adulthood. Social media doesn’t just correlate with poor mental health, it is causative. I think the author demonstrates this beyond doubt.
Children have “defend mode” and “discovery mode”, both useful but the former gets engaged more with a phone based childhood. Free and unsupervised play foster the discovery mode where children learn how to navigate not only the three dimensional space but relationships and their own feelings. A phone based childhood constantly puts a child in defend mode which spills over to real life and chronic anxiety. Social media inflicts sleep deprivation and social deprivation along with attention fragmentation and addiction. Again, these things are awful on an already socialized adult, imagine the cost on a child’s mind that has many years to go before adult brain development.
According to the author, there are real gender differences between boys and girls which are almost certainly sociogenic (culturally created) and these differences account for the disparate impact of a phone based childhood on boys and girls. Girls strive for communion and relationship building where boys strive for self autonomy and actualization. These culturally programmed desires I believe are functionally very real. Girl aggression is relational which explains why social media impacts them more than for boys. Take all the self comparison to airbrush models on magazine covers from the 70s and now put that on hyperdrive, socialize it over a screen, adding cyber bullying and dopamine addiction, and you will have a very sad, lonely and anxious girl. For boys, video games can fragment their socialization and silo it off into asynchronous relationships that then addict and hamper their growth. The easy access to pornography, while impacting both boys and girls, seems to hit boys harder who consume it at very early ages.
Here’s where I have a problem with this book: the author creates a false dilemma between a play-based childhood and phone-based childhood. These two things are not mutually exclusive and the author likes to partition them off like they are the only two options. As a parent who is very involved with my child’s life, I take umbrage with the term “helicopter parent” which the author uses. This well intentioned author asserts many times in this book that during the 1980s, parents become overprotective and stopped letting their kids have autonomy. My first response is what!?. This overt generalization is overtly speculative and laughably simplistic. In my opinion, having more parental presence, particularly when it comes to safety, is not hampering children’s socialization and growth. I’m not joking here: the author thinks kids should be able to play in junkyards and with fire, unsupervised. Without presenting much evidence, he talks about the statistic improbability of your child being really harmed or kidnapped. Okay, but what about the stakes? They are enormous. I think it's a parents responsibility to protect them from catastrophe, regardless of how unlikely because the stakes are absolutely enormous. The author creates a false dichotomy that you either must let your children roam the streets unsupervised or put a phone in front of their faces. Of course, this is not true. There is an entire spectrum of parenting, one which could involve letting children roam under freeway overpasses while also sticking a phone in front of their noses for 6 hours a day. I found his take on this bizarre and his assertions that parent’s are hampering their children’s development with over supervision mostly unsupported. “Helicopter parenting” has become a term used by parents who don’t actively engage with their children. Anyway, I digress.
The solutions the author offers are very good: no social media or smart phones before age 16 and phone free schools. He also laments the loss of spirituality and suggests we need to engage more in shared sacredness, self transcendence (the literal opposite of social media), be slow to anger and quick to forgive (never happens on social media) and to find awe in nature. Overall, I think this was a very good book that everyone should read....more
I should probably stop reading so much Adam Hochschild because it’s generally a bad idea to get so much of yoThe terrible war before the terrible war.
I should probably stop reading so much Adam Hochschild because it’s generally a bad idea to get so much of your history from one brain but I must say every book I read by him blows me away and that was no exception reading about the Spanish Civil War in Spain in Our Hearts. Hochschild has an absolute gift with engaging the reader with human stories while also giving an accurate and fairly balanced accounting of historical events.
I lived in Spain for two years as a young man and yet during my time there, I knew little and understood even less about the Spanish Civil War and its consequences. Franco was always spoken of with hushed and hurried words. It was as if the 30 plus year rule of a fascist dictator over the country never happened. This book will tell you the story of sympathetic Americans who, on their own accord, went to Spain to fight a fascist movement and the tragedy that happened while the Western world chose who would be the victor by their inaction. This war was fought between the leftist Spanish Republicans and the Nationalist who were controlled by Francisco Franco. The Republicans were a Leftist coalition of communists, socialists, separatists and straight up anarchists. But this war was not only a right wing fascist attempt at a coup but also an anarchist revolution, much different from the Bolsheviks. During this Civil War, an anarchist revolution of probably the most historical significance occurred in Barcelona, Valencia and Catalonia. There were regions during this time that literally abolished money and implemented worker owned production. The Republicans also were joined by Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell who fought for their cause. Orwell was even shot in the neck and almost died. Much of their work, including Orwell’s 1984, was influenced by their time in Spain. To quote Orwell:
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism."
But the cards were stacked against the Republicans. The other fascists during this time, Mussolini and Hitler, supported Franco. Hitler saw Spain as a fertile war experimenting for when he would take over eastern Europe and wage a war against France and the UK. Right from the get go, Franco was well supplied with arms and supplies from Italy and Russia. The only state supporter of the Republicans was Stalin who only gave them a bunch of old, crappy guns. Aside from the Russians, the Republicans were joined by a bunch of international brigades, around 35,000 people, that joined because they sincerely believed in their leftist cause and loathed fascism. There were war crimes and atrocities on both sides. The Republicans cannibalized themselves with tons of infighting amongst the communist party and anarchists (classic Leftists). Things got bad with the leftist factions in Barcelona in May 1937 when they fought one another, in a civil war within a civil war, after the Communist Party and its Catalan branch tried to take over an anarchist-controlled exchange.
The Republicans had tons of gold left over from selling stuff during WWI but… they had no one to buy from except Russia. So where was the US during this? Chilling. FDR and the US had an embargo on selling arms to any regime at war or something like that. So the US officially sat things out, putting up their feet to see how the whole fascist coup would pan out. But you know who was involved? Texaco. That’s correct, Texaco gave all the gasoline to Franco that he needed on credit. Oh, also, Franco’s army had around 12,000 trucks from GM and Ford. So officially, the US wasn’t involved, but unofficially the US-own corporations absolutely ensured Franco’s victory. So not only did the US NOT pursue a proxy war against Hitler and Mussolini, the US decided knowingly to de facto SUPPORT these fascist movements. One cannot help but speculate about if the US had actually aided the Republicans over Franco. What would the impact have been for WWII? Perhaps Hitler wouldn't have felt so emboldened after Franco’s victory and also having practiced his own war games over the innocent civilians of Spain. Of course I’m speculating but it’s reasonable to assume that allowing fascist regimes to run roughshod over the Spanish population certainly didn’t DETER them from further ambitions.
This was an astounding read. Whether you’re familiar with the Spanish Civil War or not, this will impact you tremendously....more
This is my third Hochschild read and I must say, this guy is absolutely amazing. He has a way of drawing into the hisThe War to Start All Stupid Wars.
This is my third Hochschild read and I must say, this guy is absolutely amazing. He has a way of drawing into the historical narrative in a way I find engaging, balanced and disimpassioned. To End All Wars is about World War 1 and it is from the perspective of Britain and contains a host of players there, and around the world. If you’re looking for a book that explains the political conditions before the war as well as the causes and utter stupidity of the war, then this is your book.
In this telling, we start with a lot of the drop of the British Empire leading up to WWI, as far back as the 1880s. This backdrop is important because it sets the stage for the cavalry and artillery war that would play out on the European western front, but also many of the same leaders were involved with the British empire during this time. This book starts out with the South Africa Boer War when a bunch of gold was discovered there and the British empire was like nuh-uh that’s ours now. The Boers were descendants of Dutch, German and French settlers and they actually wanted to keep control of the gold mines there and so they had war and the British won but not of course without Alfred Milner erecting a couple of concentration camps where around 30,000 women and children died. The fact that it was two nations of white people fighting for South African resources and that the actual darker skin natives of the land had no say whatsoever is so laughably obvious it's barely worth repeating here.
But this was all preamble with key figures such as Milner but also Field Marshals John French and Douglas Haig who would be instrumental in the dumbest and one of the most deadly wars of all time. But, here we also get an introduction to tons of British leftist dissent and activism. Charlotte Despard (John French’s sister!) who was an anglo-Irish suffragist, Emeline Pankhurst and her daughters Sylvia and Christabel (also women activists) along with Bertrand Russel and Roger Casement. You see this book is also a huge tale about the anti-war and militant Leftist activism that was alive and well during this time.
So Milner, Haig and French all returned home after their South African slaughter among tons of speculation that there would be Europe war with Germany. WWI didn’t just spring from zeus’ head after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. No. Many people believed it was already inevitable. And why? Freaking imperialism rivalry. You see, WWI was nothing more than Germany and Austria-Hungary empire being envious of the pillaging of their rivals and they had enough of that and so went to war. That’s kind of it. Ferdinand assassination was most definitely the spark that lit the already well laid dynamite. Germany and Austria-Hungary were allies. As soon as a Serb extremist killed Ferdinand, Wilhelm was like “sweet, we have our excuse. Go forth my Ottoman brethren, invade Serbia”, which they did when they fired the first shot of WWI in Belgrad.
So then Germany was like “sweet, we’ll just walk through neutral Belgium and go take France.” Which they did. Which then forced Britain's hand. And thus started the four year hellscape of trench warfare and using the underclass as artillery fodder in the dumbest and most banal war I think I’ve ever read about. The people running the show were stupid. What I mean is, they were thinking in terms of traditional gentleman’s war when suddenly there was advanced artillery that just mowed down the poor men forced to march out into it. This just became a barbed wire trench war very, very quickly which then degenerated into chlorine and mustard gas warfare along with flamethrowers and zeppelin bombing of civilians on both sides. An idiotic turf war of egos between British Field Marshals Haig and French got thousands and thousands of men pointlessly mowed down by gunfire. The war then sparked ethnic factions elsewhere in not only Serbia but in Turkey where something like 1 million Armenians were genocided.
The conscientious objection in Britain at this time was enormous. Tons of socialist and anarchist counter sentiments with the Pankhursts and Despand as well as Bertrand Russel and many others. Opposite them you have Kipling who was nothing more or less than a loquacious war and imperial propagandist. Tons of protestors and writers were imprisoned, including Bertrand Russel. Same thing was happening in the US with Debs and others. The Christmas Truce really freaked out the British and German leaders because if soldiers just decided to not fight, then that was that. It’s kind of what happened in Russia at this same time when Lenin and his Bolsheviks (at the encouragement of the Kaiser) seized power at the Kremlin. Of course during the first Bolshevik provisional government election, the party suspected they weren’t getting enough votes so they shut down the elections for about seventy years.
Honestly the only good thing that happened during this time is Britain finally decided women should probably vote or the militant movements would do something similar to the Bolsheviks. Of course only women with property who were only 30 years old could vote, but hey I guess when everything is terrible, this looked like a decent gain.
I walk away from this amazing book quite depressed. The whole thing was such a dumpster fire disaster that it’s hard to not lose faith in humans. Anyway, if you would like to continue the self-flagellation in learning this part of history, read his other WWI book with American perspective. And spoiler alert: the Americans were just as bad. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show......more
I’m a fan of Tim Marshall. He has a cutting, dry wit about the world and seems to be quite knowledgeable about the currA slice of current geopolitics.
I’m a fan of Tim Marshall. He has a cutting, dry wit about the world and seems to be quite knowledgeable about the current stage of geopolitics. This book focuses on Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, The Sahel region of Africa, Ethiopia, the UK, Spain and a few others. Very notably absent are the US, China, all of Asia, India and Russia. You can’t have a complete discussion about world politics without discussing the US and China. Although they are very much mentioned tangentially.
At any rate, this is a good book to familiarize yourself with a nice summary of the history of each country. Australia seems to be torn between its dependency on energy from other countries, trading with China but also dealing with its hostility while also needing the protection of the US. I really enjoyed the discussion about Ethiopia. I had no idea it is one of the few countries to be not technically colonized and has been growing with such an enormous host of people to govern within its borders. I loved the discussion and history of Spain in particular. This overall was not a bad book but shouldn’t be your only geopolitical read. ...more
Decent book about how to connect with someone and understand what kind of conversation you're having with people. Is it a problem solving conversationDecent book about how to connect with someone and understand what kind of conversation you're having with people. Is it a problem solving conversation? Or is simply about emotional connection, venting or talking about identities? These are difficult things to tease out if you're not aware of the tells in a conversation and you can walk away talking with someone with complete and utter befuddlement. Don't problem solve when someone only wants to be heard. Listening isn't just closing your mouth and looking at someone, it's much more active. You can easily and unwittingly attack someone's identity simply by making casual talk with them. This was a nice and brief read that everyone should check out. Another similar book I enjoyed was How to Know a Person by David Brooks. ...more
What did the world think of the new regime that had legally taken hold of the Weimar Republic in the 1930s? Were they rounVacationing in Nazi Germany.
What did the world think of the new regime that had legally taken hold of the Weimar Republic in the 1930s? Were they roundly condemned for their antisemitism or ultranationalism? What would YOU have thought of this regime change that occurred in one of the world’s most prestigious scientific and cultural centers? This book opens up the letters, correspondence and journal entries of visitors to the Third Reich during the intervening time between the formal fall of the Weimar Republic and World War II and I will tell you this: people weren’t too bent out of shape over the Nazis.
Despite the fallout of WWI, Germany was still highly revered and a choice vacationing spot for Europeans and Americans. The Nazi uprising was not seen as a terrifying totalitarian state, to most people it was either a curious oddity or signs of a new age in Germany. What’s a little harmless antisemitism when the streets are clean, the girls are pretty and the towns are lovely? This was the prevailing sentiment to Nazi Germany during this time. Either that, or ardent foreign supporters of the aims of the Nazis. The Olympic games were held in Nazi Germany where the party strived to hide the uglier side of their antisemitism and presented an organized and polite people to the world. Hitler and the Nazi party, in fact, seeked the approval of England and America and were constantly courting their people through carefully cultivated tourism. WEB Du Bois visited Nazi Germany in 1936 and actually expressed words of admiration for what the Nazi party had done with the economy, himself unable to distinguish national socialism from communism. However, Du Bois could clearly see the horrific treatment of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany.
People during this time were very confused about what the Nazi party even stood for. The Nazis were ardently anti-communist and anti-bolshevik yet they used national socialism as a means to collectivize national wealth and resources. How was national socialism different from the red communism to which the Nazis were so vehemently opposed? People were confused then just as they are confused today. And that’s why this is such an important book to read today. Sure the Nazis used a form of state socialism to protect and favor the ethnic in-group, this gives ample ammunition to call the “National Socialists” a left wing movement. However, when you look at the underlying ideology of the Nazi party, it was very clearly extreme conservatism: anti-homosexual, anti-intellectual, book burnings, white supremacy, bismarckian, racial segregation, anti-urban and anti-Marxist. It was a rainbow coalition of the rural and racially discontent who scapegoated the Jews, the communists, the Marxists and Leftists and stoked the very real grievances of the Treaty of Versailles and massive poverty, unemployment, inflation and hunger of the German people. The Nazi party was a contortionist party, molding its rhetoric to fit its audience to gain power. People are confused then about what the Nazi party stood for, then and now. This book helps to see the reality: it's complicated....more
I was looking to learn a little more about the fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. I'm motivated because ethAmazing first hand account of the Kosovo War.
I was looking to learn a little more about the fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. I'm motivated because ethnic factionalization was a very large factor in the breakup of Yugoslavia and it's a very pertinent threat today in 2024. So while browsing some books I found by Tim Marshall and this book was fantastic for so many reasons.
Marshall has incredible dry wit which paradoxically made this first hand narration of the Kosovo War hilarious at times. He is a very engaging storyteller and he gives a very human and realistic of not only the war in Kosovo but the breakup of Yugoslavia. Marshall shares his time in Kosovo with the KLA and the Serbs vying for control of the region. Marshall was very much there during the war and camped with many civilians, soldiers and reporters. You will get a his on the ground experience as the West had enough of Serbia President Dictator Milosevic and finally bombed Serbia via the UN. Marshall was there during the bombings and him pairing the mundane life of going to a restaurant while bombs are dropped on Belgrad was truly bizarre, surreal and also weirdly hilarious.
Marshall then covers the end of Milosevic with a coup from the civilians and how his regime just kind of gave up and did nothing while the parliament, the prior seat of Yugoslavia, was breached and seized.
I find this truly stunning history and very telling about the fracturing that can happen a nation when fascist, nationalistic and racist populists get a bullhorn. This book was overall phenomenal. ...more
This is an academic look of a political scientist reviewing the civil wars of Syria, Yugoslavia, Myanmar, PhEthnic factionalization causes civil wars.
This is an academic look of a political scientist reviewing the civil wars of Syria, Yugoslavia, Myanmar, Philippines, Rwanda and other conflicts in Ireland, South Africa and other countries. The author reviews the factors that cause civil war and then applies them to what is going on in the United States. I found this to be a balanced, measured approach to a very sensitive and volatile topic.
Despite what you may think, it is not wealth concentration, poverty and political polarization that causes civil war. Many people have lived for centuries or decades under extreme poverty and oppression without a civil war breaking out. You can have stability and mass inequity, I mean look at large swathes of human history and you find these conditions. Here are the conditions for civil war: when a nation is moving between autocracy and a representative/parliamentary democracy—a political state called anocracy. And here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter which way you’re going—either toward autocracy or toward democracy—the power shifts create the conditions. An anocracy is a semi-democratic government that has been loosely defined as part of a democracy but has a non dynamic regime in place that mixes features from both democracies and autocracies. Many modern governments are anocracies including the United States. So, the anocratic state sets the stage and the spark that leads to civil war is ethnic factionalization. That’s it, those are the ingredients. And then when you take the ingredients of an autocracy and ethnic factionalization an bake it in an oven of social media, very bad things can happen.
When the dominant ethnic group that has enjoyed long term rights and privileges termed the “Sons of Soil” feel their power threatened, this leads to ethnic factionalization. Once racial resentment rises with demographic shifts either from changing fertility rates or immigration, an “ethnic entrepreneur” (basically a nativist populist) can come along with all their dog whistles and dehumanization of the underclass and this will unite the dominant racial group that fears their cultural and economic power loosening. It is when the dominant group becomes disillusioned with the government and feels the trajectory of their power slipping when they factionalize. When this happens, the moderate bulk of the populace then falls into the black hole of extremism and they start supporting populist and nativist leaders. Of course, when actually oppressed groups feel their own influence and power slipping with failed protests and no government concessions, extremism and violence can flow from that as well as in Syria.
Modern day civil wars are not fought like traditional civil wars. Central governments are way too powerful for militias and paramilitary groups to fight on a battlefield. As seen in Myanmar and many other countries, social media is used to normalize the rhetoric and radicalize prior moderates and then decentralized paramilitary groups execute guerrilla tactics and terrorism. Disinformation is promulgated to obscure who is responsible for the violence and the intent is to weaken trust in the current government and force the populace to pick a side, thus spreading the factionalization to everyone. Needless to say, the United States has many red flags.
But civil wars are not inevitable. As with SouthAfrica, when leaders try to reconcile rather than seek vengeance or power, the populace can follow. Re-growing trust in the current government is key and this can be accomplished with robust social democratic policies that uplift people across race and class lines. The grievances of the factions must be remedied (without concession to the actual people executing violence). Increasing state services and social programs help prevent moderate people from being radicalized. Streamlining immigration and stopping illegal immigration is another great way to stop the flames of ethnic factionalization. On top of that, social media needs better regulation. The bullhorn of hateful, racist, populist demagogues needs to be highly censored. Yes, censored. Obviously that brings up other problems but social media companies are private companies that can and should make decisions of who to censor and who to not. This has nothing to do with the first amendment which doesn’t provide private protection for free speech.
The dance between progressivism, conservatism and the threat of authoritarianism.
I've read at least a dozen of these post-mortem Trump critiques and tThe dance between progressivism, conservatism and the threat of authoritarianism.
I've read at least a dozen of these post-mortem Trump critiques and this one is definitely very good. Not only does Richardson go over the ins and outs of the rise and threats of Trumpism but she gives a welcomed and succinct review of American history and its conflicts between progressivism and conservatism. This is not a vital read unless you haven't read a book like this....more
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