Writing – Page 52 – a sibilant intake of breath

Fiction, non-fiction, and memory

I have a new theory about why I do so much better with non-fiction than with fiction. It has to do with the way I read and the relationship between reading and kinds of memory. There has probably been no point in the last decade in which I was reading only one book at a time. At present, I am reading thirteen. It is routine for me to leave a partially completed book for weeks or months, while engaging with something more immediately interesting or urgent.

With non-fiction, every sentence and chapter you read gets integrated into your general schema of knowledge on the topic in question. You can read one chapter on cryptography or ice core sampling or the life of Voltaire and it will henceforth be stored along with related thoughts and memories in a general databank of knowledge. Admittedly, the databank is full of rats that chew their way through ideas long left uncontemplated. The point is that there is a single and relatively well ordered web of knowledge in one’s general library.

Fiction, by contrast, demands the recollection of a lot of specific facts in an organized way. You need to remember the world of that book or story: a world potentially very distinct from the ‘general world’ about which non-fiction knowledge is collected. Remembering characters, world characteristics, relationships, and plot points all calls upon us to treat a fictional universe with a similar kind of importance to the real universe. While this is simple enough when reading a single book at a time, it does not fit very well into a reading pattern based on reading many books in parallel, sometimes abandoning any particular one of them for months at a time.

Love and Hydrogen

The twenty-two stories in Jim Shepard’s Love and Hydrogen cover a lot of ground: from gay love aboard the Hindenburg to Dutch soccer to a first-person narrative written by the Creature from the Black Lagoon. While a common style and repeated themes connect the collection, a great deal of effort is demonstrated in creating a rich scenario for each. I appreciated the degree to which each story felt like an initiation into a new area of knowledge, while also feeling united by a kind of unfathomable emotional edge – intentionally vague and melancholic.

Shepard clearly likes disasters, dysfunctional families, aviation, and monster-style early science fiction. The prevalence of the latter theme makes the book feel older than it is: as though it was written in the age of drive-in movies rather than as a response to it, about five decades later. The whole collection has strong overtones of post-war America, though with violence as a near-constant theme.

The sports stories elicited much the same reaction in me as the sports themselves: soccer interesting, football brutal, and baseball hokey with an American twang. Among the aviation stories, the one describing the experience of German trainee pilots with the infamous Messerschmitt Me 163 “Komet” was perhaps the most compelling. I can see why the vehicle appealed to Shepard; as the first rocket-powered manned fighter, with corrosive fuel and no landing gear, it was an incredibly perilous thing to fly. That particular story resonated nicely with the recently completed Why the Allies Won, both touching upon the theme of Germany pushing technology forward, but often doing so in ways that were not tactically or strategically useful.

Shepard has a talent for simple yet powerful statements. In a story about the first bathysphere, the narrator notes calmly that he “passed the point below which only dead men had sunk.” In a story written from the perspective of John Entwistle, the bass player in The Who, the narrator remarks that: “Rage in the service of self-pity was what we’d always been about. It was what rock had always been about.” Similar elegant tidbits are sprinkled through the volume – counterpointing descriptive passages that sometimes come off as an evocative but elusive tangle of words. I found myself getting particularly lost in some of the dysfunctional family narratives – most of my mind warning that “this isn’t something we want to wander into.”

Having the daring to write the supposed thoughts of contemporary figures is an impressive if somewhat off-putting characteristic. “John Ashcroft: More Important Things than Me” is probably the most elusive story in the collection. It is written as a collection of aphorisms, focusing on Ashcroft’s personal convictions and life experiences. I don’t know to what extent it faithfully reproduces the life or views of the controversial figure, but – as a story – it remains quite opaque in its motivations. In a sense, it is a humanizing text, seemingly contributing to a more balanced understanding of the public figure. At the same time, it leaves the reader suspicious: both the supposed author (Ashcroft himself) and the actual author are presumably trying to forward a political agenda or perpetuate some sort of satire or criticism. As it stands, it remains unclear what either message is meant to be.

Overall, the collection is the kind of literary work where you are constantly thinking “I will understand this better the second time around.” Given the quality of the stories, it is plausible that this will be one of the few books that actually earns a second reading.

Emily’s first review online

Emily has finished her first book for our reading project and posted an interesting and comprehensive review on her blog.

My review of Love and Hydrogen will appear as tomorrow’s 7:00am EST post.

On the possibility of leading an ethical life

In response to a recent post, somebody asked: “Is it possible to live ethically in our society?”

The question is a surprisingly difficult one. One way to begin picking away at it is to present a common form of the argument that we cannot:

Premise 1: Society, as it exists, is unsustainable (here is an excellent and concise definition of the term)

Premise 2: By participating in society, we perpetuate that unsustainability

Premise 3: Unsustainable behaviour will eventually destroy the planet’s capacity to support humans and other species

Premise 3: It is wrong to destroy the planet’s ability to support future humans

Premise 4: It is wrong to destroy the planet’s ability to support non-human species

Conclusion: It is wrong to participate in society.

There are a number of possible responses to this argument:

1) Questioning the fact of unsustainability

The first is based purely on physical facts and projections about future physical facts. It is what might be called the Malthus–Lomborg axis, using the names of the most famous pessimist and optimist respectively. If you successfully disprove the claim that present society is unsustainable, you don’t need to worry about the other premises or the conclusion. The next possible approach is to say “Society isn’t monolithic, some bits are sustainable and some are not. As long as I am only supporting the sustainable bits, I am being ethical.” Beyond this, another approach is to say: “Society isn’t sustainable yet, but it will naturally become so in the future.” This is a version of the environmental Kuznets curve and it is an argument that has some possibility of being true.

2) Restricting the scope of who matters

One possibility that you will rarely hear argued is that we have no duty whatsoever to either (a) future generations or (b) people other than ourselves. If we can treat group (a) or both groups in any way we desire, the fact that society is unsustainable doesn’t matter. That said, you will not find many people arguing this position, probably because it offends virtually any general theory of ethics.

Many people reject the idea that it is wrong to harm non-human living things, except where such harm eventually causes harm to people.

3) Stressing the limitations of individuals

Another possible set of rebuttals are based around the scope of individual agency. A person can say: “The whole structure of society is unsustainable. I cannot change that. As a consequence, I am not responsible for the destruction induced by society.” This claim has a strong form – ‘I cannot change the whole world, so I have no duty to improve it at all’ – and a weak form – ‘I have a duty to improve the world, but don’t expect much from me.’ Another way of phrasing this is as a ‘no acceptable alternatives’ argument: “What am I supposed to do? Live naked in the woods, eating grubs and tree bark?”

4) Utilitarian arguments

Two more arguments are based around a kind of ethical calculation. The first says: “It is tolerable to do immoral things in some circumstances, provided the total sum of my actions is beneficial for humanity.” In this case, as long as a person has a net positive sum of morality, they can legitimately engage in limited forms of immorality. A somewhat different formulation is based on an idea of rationed wrongness: “Nobody can be expected to be perfectly good. As such, we each have a kind of ‘allowance’ for unethical behaviour. As long as we are spending within our allowance, we are ok.” The big difference here is that the ‘allowance’ is automatically disbursed as a recognition of human frailty, not earned through good deeds.

5) Competing duties

Yet another set of rebuttals is based on competing moral claims. A person can say: “I have a duty to care for my family, even if doing so involves participating in an unsustainable society.” This is a tricky one. It is also one that strikes close to why the kind of ethics being discussed here are so hard to achieve. In general, the unsustainable things we do provide relatively immediate benefits that are specific to us and the people who we know personally; the costs they impose are distant, diffuse, and largely born by people we will never know.

Tentative conclusions

What can we conclude about this? To begin with, it seems fair to say that most people are unaware of some significant ways in which actions they consider personal (driving a car, eating a sort of food, etc) impact others in a harmful way. It is also fair to say that no individual can possibly anticipate or understand the complete set of all outcomes arising from their behaviours. In addition to this, we must recognize the way in which contemporary economic structures can create huge distances between cause and effect. Just as a London banker’s cocaine-fuelled evening has affects in the coca growing regions of the Andes, much of what we consume as individuals affects other people at enormous distances.

Collectively, these realities imply a certain ‘duty of awareness.’ It is not ethically tenable to live in wilful ignorance about the consequences of our actions. Whether based on one of the forms of rebuttal above or something different, we need to have some kind of justification for our actions that measures up to what we consider their total set of effects to be. Estimating our impact and developing a justification almost certainly does not satisfy all our moral requirements, but it is probably a necessary step in any series of actions intended to do so.

The question of how we evaluate the relative plausibility of every person’s excuse is the really difficult one.

Passionate Minds

I started Passionate Minds: The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment, Featuring the Scientist Émilie du Châtelet, the Poet Voltaire, Sword Fights, Book Burnings, Assorted Kings, Seditious Verse, and the Birth of the Modern World with high hopes. It promised science, literature, and history in an accessible package. That promise is only partially realized. While the book does reveal some of the most remarkable (and the most flawed) characteristics of both Voltaire and du Châtelet, it sometimes makes claims that stretch the evidence provided. Often, the book simply asserts things rather than seeking to prove them.

Bodanis’ central thesis – that Émilie du Châtelet has been given insufficient historical attention – is fairly robust. Clearly, hers was an extraordinary life: born into nobility, but driven towards science and the sometimes hapless literary life of Voltaire instead of occupying a more traditional position in the Court. At times, the book demonstrates startling contrasts between the way of life at the time and the present. This is especially true of the marriages: purely political and economic unions in which years of habitation with a prominent lover were apparently not too exceptional. When a court rival attacks Voltaire through a lawsuit, her husband comes to his defence – despite how Voltaire has been living with his wife for years and they are a highly prominent couple.

In the end, the book would have been better if it had focused less on intrigue and more on what significant scientific contributions du Châtelet actually made. Saying that “[m]ore technical aspects of her work played a great role in energizing the French school of theoretical physics, associated with Lagrande and Laplace” isn’t a very convincing way of showing historical importance. Likewise, the assertion that “[t]he use of the square of the speed of light, c², in Einstein’s most famous equation, E=mc² is directly traceable to her work” is never adequately argued.

The book does an excellent job of describing how atrocious the medicine of the time was, contributing to du Châtelet’s own relatively early death in childbirth. It also relates some fascinating historical episodes in an engaging way: for instance, the rigged lottery through which Voltaire made his fortune.

A book about du Châtelet written by someone with more of a focus on studying and explaining science would be a better tribute to the woman than this interesting yet flawed volume.

Major climate change issues

After many years of writing on whatever came to mind, I am now trying to be more systematic in some areas. In particular, I am trying to come up with a comprehensive collection of blog posts covering all important aspects of climate change. This serves a number of purposes: it helps me to synthesize information, it should be informative to others, and it should foster discussion that helps increase the sophistication of positions and arguments. The posts are organized here:

The index page isn’t the most gorgeous looking thing on the web, but it is resilient and can be updated easily. Do people see this as a useful undertaking? What would make it more helpful or worthwhile? This initiative was mentioned before, but received little attention.

Here is the code for the link above:

_{<a href="http://www.sindark.com/wiki/index.php?title=Major_climate_change_issues"><img src="http://www.sindark.com/photo/CCmedium.png" alt="Climate change posts" /></a>}

Feel free to link it on other sites, if desired.

How trustworthy is Wikipedia?

Every page on Wikipedia has an accompanying ‘Talk’ page, where people discuss the main article and propose changes to it. Having a look at some of the talk pages is informative because it really shows off the lack of expertise among the people who are working on these articles. Much as I enjoy and admire Wikipedia as an effort, seeing things like the discussion on ‘tar sands’ makes me wonder how trustworthy the site is as a source of information. Often, the arguments on talk pages seem to be superficial and unsupported by evidence or strong argumentation.

As with everything else, we need to try to retain healthy skepticism about new information without becoming dogmatic about what we already believe. That is a tough thing to accomplish – especially given the scope and complexity of issues affecting us all.

Reloaded with non-fiction

I have officially abandoned my earlier initiative to finish all my pending books before purchasing more. Mostly, that is because I finished all the non-fiction on my list and all of the fiction I have read recently has been depressing. While much of the non-fiction can also be dispiriting, it feels less like emotional self-flagellation to read it.

My new crop of non-fiction:

Bodanis, David. Passionate Minds. 2006
Collier, Paul. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. 2007
Easterly, William. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. 2006.
Overy, Richard. Why the Allies Won. 1995.

The Easterly book was endorsed by Emily Paddon during one of our pre-seminar conversations in Oxford. It is also one of those books that I have heard mentioned in conversation often enough to feel concerned about not having read. The Collier book is clearly on a related theme. I saw Paul Collier speak many times at Oxford and always found him candid and informative. Richard Overy’s book was one of the best I read in the course of two history seminars at Oxford; I look forward to having the chance to take my time in reading it, rather than having it as one of several urgent items in an essay’s source list. Finally, I got the Bodanis book because I have heard it well recommended and know little about Voltaire and even less about Emilie du Chatelet.

I will certainly finish the fiction eventually, but I will do so interspersed with meatier stuff.

Gladwell on criminal profiling

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, has an interesting article in the most recent New Yorker debunking police profiling of violent offenders. He basically argues that their methods are unsound, but that this is concealed by the same kind of cheap psychological tricks used by telephone psychics. In particular, the article discusses a set of tactics described by Ian Rowland: a magician and the author of a book on cold reading.

The tactics included focus on calculated vagueness, exploitation of known or highly probable information, and mechanisms for reducing the chances of being decisively proved wrong. The last of those is particularly crucial, as it can allow you to retain your reputation despite the inevitability of making some incorrect guesses.

Be advised that the article has graphic content.

Index of climate posts

For the last while, my aim on this blog has been both to entertain readers and to provide some discussion of all important aspects of the climate change problem. To facilitate the latter aim, I have established an index of posts on major climate change issues. Registered users of my blog can help to update it. Alternatively, people can use comments here to suggest sections that should be added or other changes.

The index currently contains all posts since I arrived in Ottawa. I should soon expand it to cover the entire span for which this blog has existed.