A Book Recommendation

The Spanish/Christian mythology enforced militarily in Aztec country

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by historian Yuval Noah Harari will be good reading for anyone who longs to appreciate world events through the insights available from our history. Harari not only considers who and what we homo sapiens are today, but why we are what we are, do what we do. If reading Harari can’t be a complete picture of the development of nations, cultures, empires (it is, after all, brief), it can at least teach us that we routinely neglect masses of accumulated knowledge when trying to assess current trends and events.

For instance, I suspect that most of us are puzzled about why the USA would replace a mild, decent, respectful president with an anarchistic, aggressive, belligerent commander in chief. Harari shines a light on the consequences historically of similar phenomena when he discusses leadership in conflict—through the lens of history:

The ability to maintain peace at home, acquire allies abroad, and understand what goes through the minds of other people (particularly your enemies) is usually the key to victory. Hence an aggressive brute is often the worst choice to run a war. Much better is a cooperative person who knows how to appease, how to manipulate and how to see things from different perspectives. This is the stuff empire builders are made of. The militarily incompetent Augustus succeeded in establishing a stable imperial regime, achieving something that eluded both Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, who were much better generals. Both his admiring contemporaries and modern historians often attribute this feat to his virtue of clementia—mildness and clemency (p.157).

Although Harari is writing here about competencies leading to military success, the parallels to Trump’s economic warfare, his “make America great again” rhetoric echo both Caesar and previous presidents’ confusion about what constitutes greatness, and how greatness is arrived at. Exercising American “greatness” in the Middle East has cost many lives with no apparent, lasting benefit to anyone; the “shock and awe” of the 2003 invasion of Iraq predictably turned into more of a “bust and whimper.” (Further echoes of Vietnam and Korea; muscle can’t guarantee greatness, nor even success.)

The maxim that says we repeat and repeat our mistakes when we neglect our history comes easily to mind. Confusing the generation of fear with the cultivation of respect was Caesar’s mistake, was Alexander’s mistake, was Hitler’s mistake, was Stalin’s mistake, was Mussolini’s mistake, and is quite probably Trump’s big mistake. In a globalizing world, isolation and belligerence constitute a path to decline. We need only look to Putin and Kim Jong-un to recognize the futility of aggressive, fear-mongering leadership in a world dependent on cooperation in so much, including travel, communication, money exchange and trade. In a rapidly globalizing world—economically, socially, culturally—it becomes easier and easier to starve nations and peoples who choose defiant isolationism.

There’s much more in Harari, even though he’s titled it “a brief history.” His take on the differing mythologies that are able to bind enormously-large nations and confederacies together is especially revealing. A mass of people can’t become a stable, lasting culture or nation unless citizens share a basic mythology, whether that be democracy, religion, capitalism, socialism, multi-culturalism, etc. Even a corporation with thousands of workers is dependent on a mythology of purpose and rewards in order to be stable; loyalty to the common myth makes cooperation among large numbers of people possible.

Historically—according to Harari—imperialism has been a boon to our successful evolution as homo sapien species in that it absorbed any number of competing tribes into a more cooperative whole and facilitated the spread of science and peaceful governance. At the same time, imperialism’s forceful absorption of cultures and languages into a common, imposed mythology has cost millions of lives and extinguished cultural and linguistic variety. In this sense our nation, Canada, is a real-time study in the working of imperialism in that, for instance, Cree, Ojibwa, Inuit peoples who have been forcibly absorbed into the Western mythology . . . almost universally speak English now, as do Ukrainian, German, Chinese, Arab, etc. immigrants.

In short, Harari can add valuable insights into ourselves, who we are as 21^st Century homo sapiens, and why we are what we are. I recommend it. Thanks to Eric and Joan for recommending it to me.

There will come soft rains . . .

Memorial to Homo Sapiens? - Puerto Vallarta Malecon

There’s no denying: climate change and forecasts of dire effects for the planet and living things on it are front and centre in Canada’s public discourse these days. As with every prophetic pronouncement of impending doom, there are those who tear out their hair as they trumpet worst-case scenarios, and there are those who seek to maintain their happy place through denial. Between them are the quiet majority for whom the screaming, divisive rhetoric of the doom-sayers and denialists just adds another worry to an already-worrisome life, like a newly-erupting boil on the behind when your arthritis is acting up . . . again.

As far as I can tell, we’re pretty much agreed that flooding and wildfires are increasing noticeably and that that’s really, really bad for people who live in the most vulnerable parts of the country. What we haven’t determined to anyone’s satisfaction is whether or not the human ingenuity and innovation that contributed to the phenomenon of climate change can be redirected to slow it down enough to make a difference. Neither have we taken seriously the “What will we do about it?” question or put another way, “However will we pay for steps to protect vulnerable life on the planet in the future?”

Right now, we’re being urged to pick sides with positions that are nonsensical; a few zingers come to mind:

1. “A small but escalating carbon tax is the most effective and cost-efficient way to reduce corporate and individual use of fossil fuels.” This is nonsense on two levels: by the time we reach the point of effectiveness of such a tax the matter will have become moot. (Some projections have said that the signs of human extinction will be obvious already in a decade or two.) Much more than a carbon tax must be enacted if Canada is to make a reasonable, proportional contribution to the greenhouse gas solution.
2. “Canada’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions world-wide is so minuscule that the imposition of a carbon tax is laughable.” This is nonsense on two levels: given that climate change’s effects will be global, any and every effort including the smallest contributes to the solution. Furthermore, Canada needs to model innovative options in order to have influence on laggard nations as the problem’s effects escalate.
3. “Climate fluctuations are normal on planet earth; there have been ice ages and ice-melting ages and the current global warming is just one of these fluctuations.” Global warming ended the last ice age around 12,000 B.C. The estimated world population in 10,000 B.C. was 4 million, so there was plenty of room on the planet for migrating to survivable climes. With a population exceeding 7 billion (or 7,000 million+), a similar option just doesn’t exist.
4. “Humanity has always been able to adjust to change and as it becomes necessary, we will adjust to global warming when we have to.” Historically, it’s been the wealthy and the powerful that have had the means to adjust to major catastrophe. Trump’s “We’ll build a wall,” Hadrian’s Wall, the Great Wall of China, the nuclear-arms race etc., are and were preparations for ensuring that the already-privileged would survive and prosper, even if that meant allowing (or requiring) the less-fortunate masses to starve in the dark.
5. “It’s all in God’s hands; God will save us.” That the God of Israel did not save his people from the holocaust or Haiti from the 2010 earthquake or millions of people from ongoing warfare globally etc. should teach us that whatever God’s activities in creation might be, rescuing people from their preventable follies—even from unpreventable natural disaster or human savagery—is not one of them.

The most troubling thought in all this comes from our abysmal record of denial and division where common judgment and joint action are called for. Every effort to unite us is countered by a political tribalism that effectively kills forward motion. Perhaps this trait is woven into our DNA so that we have no choice but to be competitive, even when cooperation is mandatory for our very survival.

The most pessimistic among us have concluded that the train has already left the station, or more aptly, that the canoe has already gone over the waterfall. Surely that doesn’t get us any closer to what’s to be done. For the optimistic rest-of-us, crossing our fingers and waiting to see what develops just won’t be enough, I’m afraid. 

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone. - Sara Teasdale