Went into this book completely blind apart from the name of the writer which sounded sort of familiar.
I quite enjoyed the book’s first part, set in medieval Central Asia. I don’t think I would have been able to follow the court intrigue the visionary poet Omar Khayyam found himself in as well as I did if I hadn’t played Crusader Kings II as an emir or sheikh a couple of times. You might take that as a suggestion to play Crusader Kings II before reading Samarkand, if you wish. Actually, no: you should definitely take it as a suggestion to play Crusader Kings II, even if you never ever end up reading Samarkand!
Apart from the plot involving the various characters, I thought the progression within the specific time frame worked really well, and I found the story of the Assassin fort and its spiritual liberation through Khayyam’s ambiguous poetry deeply satisfying. It’s historical fiction done well, with just enough details to help create vivid mental images and just the right amount of vagueness and mystery thrown in to make for a pleasant, flowing read.
That said, I still haven’t checked whether there’s any semblance of truth in Samarkand’s portrayal of the story of the book’s central piece, Khayyam’s magnum opus, the Rubaiyyat, nor have I really checked whether the poet Khayyam actually existed or not, or to what extent the story Samarkand tells is a story purely invented by Maalouf. I suppose there must be some truth in it, as the millennium-old poems themselves, wherever they appear in the book, were quite a pleasure to read, and believe me, you would never catch me saying that I’m big on traditional poetry. In any case, after this experience, I have zero interest in finding out the “true” story of Khayyam and his timeless tome, whatever it might be; some illusions are best left unbroken.
Sadly, the second part of the book which is set in 19th and 20th century Iran and tells the story of how the original manuscript ended up sinking with the most famous shipwreck of all time, the Titanic, I frankly did not care for at all, and that’s the biggest part of the reason why I’m not giving Samarkand at least an extra star.
In my mind, David Wong practically is Cracked.com, and that’s where I first found out about his book John Dies at the End. Was it from the podcast? I don’t remember. Unsurprisingly, and not unwelcomingly (if that isn’t a word, it should be) it read just like his website: a pop and geek culture reference mishmash, teeming with intelligent factoids and random trivia sprinkled around the narrative, gruesome deaths, rich descriptions of unimaginable horrors and most importantly, lots of laughs: belly laughter, giggles, snorts, a mix of clever geek humour with an absurd twist—call me Douglas Adams— penis jokes… Yes, it is Cracked: The Funny Horror Novel.
I’m not giving it five stars because I’m sure I won’t remember too much of it down the road, i.e. it wasn’t memorable per se, or maybe it was too dense with quips and gags. Besides, there’s only so much exploding Lovecraftian monsters (“The ultimate evil in the universe that human minds cannot comprehend!”) you can fit in a few pages before it gets a bit too much, a bit too heavy, like drinking a bottleful of Soy Sauce, the drug of which a tiny consumption is the root cause of our heroes’ encounters with the other side.
Those characters weren’t that great, either, and that’s another reason why the book won’t stick with me. Then again I would never say that Douglas Adams’ strong point was his characters, but The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy wasn’t worse for it, or at least the weak characters added to its distinct style. Why shouldn’t it be the same with John Dies at the End then?
Since we’re back to John, I’ll admit I wouldn’t mind having a friend like him. Come to think of it, so does Wong, probably, and I’m not ruling out the possibility that he wrote this book just as a way to flesh out his cool imaginary friend/alter ego.
…scratch that, actually. I just checked, and John exists as much as Dave does, or at least the template for John in Wong’s head exists, but still. I mean, he himself, the writer, is the protagonist; do you think he’d be above doing something like that?
(some more Wikihopping later)
What?! Did you know that Cracked used to be a real magazine? Printed, sold and everything all the way back to the ’50s? I had no idea!
What would a holy book—a supposed hotline with God—read like if it was written today? Would it be enough to jump-start new religions the way the Bible or the Quran did in their time?
What would God have to say about marriage? Child rearing? Aliens? The nature of the individual soul and how each one is an instance of God, of creativity, of consciousness discovering itself and who it wants to be? How about sacrilege? Sin? Free Will? Life after death? Can God be insulted? What is the divine dichotomy (I love this concept)?
Instead of the typical, monotheistic concept God we’re used to who is worshiped as if He/She/It was a vengeful, entitled asshole, God here appears as the real deal, the creator full of compassion and love the Big Guy from the Bible is supposed to be, and it’s incredibly refreshing. Next to this Creator, I can’t believe what all kinds of mass religion crap is passed off as ultimate truth. There’s just no comparison. It’s staring at the sun on the one hand—impossible without looking away lest you go blind—and having one of the warm light LED lamps on the other.
In fact, I can easily see pieces of Conversations with God be used 200 years from now in the same way the Bible is quoted today, with the difference that the former draws from profound sources and delivers meaning and advice that can be useful to people living in the 21st century instead of the trite, hollow, more traditionalist than insightful Old Testament passages that so often make their appearances in American media and try to pass themselves off as spiritual—and which frankly annoy me to no end.
To drive the point home, even though I did thoroughly enjoy CwG#3 in audiobook format unlike the first two which I read on my Kindle, I must say I would recommend reading the books instead of listening to them. If audiobooks are your thing then the audio is also great, especially the fact that God was voiced by a woman as well as a man taking turns in the conversations. Τhe actors were excellent to boot—I imagined the male God as a cross between Morgan Freeman (damn movies!), Dumbledore and an aged Eddard Stark (what a sense of imagination! /s) and the female one as President Roslin from Battlestar Galactica. However, not being able to highlight incredible insights that appeared every other “page”, it seemed, was a problem, and that alone would count as reason enough for me to actually get all three books in paperback—just to underline the hell out of them! Literally? Heheh.
Deciding whether to give this four stars, as I did for #2, or five, as I did for #1, took me all of about 80 seconds. “Feck it”, I decided. I’ve recommended this book already to pretty much everyone I’ve talked to about books with whom I share even a remote interest in spirituality or anything transcendental. At this point, that it’s just more of the same, which was my main issue with #2, isn’t a problem. While there’s little really new “content” here, only reiterations of the same basic teachings, don’t they say that repetition is the mother of knowledge?
In case this review didn’t manage to convey my enthusiasm and my belief that this book can only enrich your life in some way and that anyway you should definitely read Conversations with God, here are my respective ones for #1 and #2.
The Game, pickup artists, the art of seduction and all that is something that has fascinated me for a while. The pretension of it all, really. It’s so different from the WYSIWYG way I believe I usually project myself; foreign, yet with a certain unmistakable allure: imagine being able to seduce anyone! How can people live like this, moving from woman to woman without any emotional attachment? Do they feel omnipotent? How can they lie, or rather bullshit so exquisitely? Do they ever get impostor syndrome, or can only narcissists and megalomaniacs immune to impostor syndrome really excel at seducing? Who are these guys anyway? Don’t they ever stop, look at themselves and wonder what they’re trying to prove? Probably not, right?
Turns out the techniques work like clockwork, like Jedi mind tricks on stormtroopers, but even if you mingle with celebrities for a living, like Strauss did before sitting down to write his story, at some point you will either (or both): a) get tired of casual sex with bimbos without any lasting connection and seek something deeper; b) meet your seduction match who will drive you crazy because what she wants is the real you and trying to seduce her by the Playbook amazingly turns her off, and by the time you realize the fact you’ve almost lost her for good.
Still, listening to this book worked as a mood enhancer for me. I speculate it was the effect well-known to us self-improvement book readers of getting a high merely from visualising a change in your life by following the advice suggested instead of actually following it, which, it should be noted, often leads us readers never taking the steps necessary for change to take place, satisfied from the imagined high we’ve just had. Second-hand success stories almost work just as well, and this is essentially what you get here: “look at the self-proclaimed loser get all the chicks he’s never had! I could do the same, if I chose to!”
But would I ever choose to be that guy? I wonder: by not playing The Game because I believe it’s dehumanising and pathetic and that self-confirmation and self-worth come from within, not from forgetting how many women you’ve tricked into falling for you, am I really just displaying my “mediocrity” as a man, my “beta”-ness? That’s definitely what a player would say about me. But is it because I’m scared of pulling it off that I’m shunning seduction, or could it be that, since I don’t need conquests to feel desirable or indeed complete, I am already “ahead of The Game”, the very place pickup artists go all this process through to reach?
The words “you are what you love, not what loves you” came as an answer while I was typing the above, as they’d done once before while I was out running and listening to this book.
To be honest, close to half the enjoyment I got out of The Game I got from the narrator and the way he switched accents between Neil and bimbos, Mystery and Style, tones of voice etc. Here you can find a sample. Actually, not just a that: by looking for a sample I ended up with a link to the full thing (which might not even be with us for long, judging by Youtube’s policies) and realised by looking at the comments that what I listened to in the end wasn’t even the full version of the book! Come to think of it, I did just finish it in a couple of days…
I’m not a fan of zombies, not by a long shot. I enjoyed Dawn (and especially Shaun) of the Dead, Zombieland, 28 Days Later, I have dabbled with The Walking Dead and Left4Dead, but all of this has been collateral from friends bringing me along for the ride each time. As far as I can recall, I had never picked up a zombie story on my own before reading World War Z, and this I did because the “oral history” of the title caught my attention. I was also aware that the movie adaptation of the book was completely different and apparently mostly shite compared to the source material, so I got intrigued.
World War Z is written like the first chronicle compiled after the Zombie War’s been “won” (that’s not a spoiler, the existence of the book itself is proof of the survival of the human race). It’s supposedly the transcription of the writer’s sound recordings from his interviews with survivors from around the world and their stories of making it through, which as a narrative tool alone is quite brilliant. Most were military and soldier types, but there were others that presented a different side to the story: a blind hibakusha gardener, a Canadian teen, a French firefighter (I think it was) stuck in the Paris catacombs together with hundreds of thousands of people, the Chinese doctor who witnessed Patient Zero… even the stories of the soldiers were varied and told of how tactics everywhere in the world had to be completely re-imagined in order to repel an enemy that needs no supplies, never rests, grows in numbers while human forces dwindle, counts no injuries etc.
One of my favourite accounts was of a Chinese nuclear submarine that went rogue to increase chances of escaping contamination and discovered a makeshift marine utopia somewhere in the Pacific comprised of seafaring survivors from all over the world. Another one was of a Hollywood director that created films together with the US Military and had huge zombie-destroying lasers in them, weapons which in actual combat were very inefficient but the zombie-annihilating spectacle they delivered was perfect for boosting the morale of the surviving West Coast. These films went to significantly decrease the number of people dying of Asymptomatic Demise Syndrome (had to Google that), i.e. people dying in their sleep because of apparent lack of will to wake up again the next morning. Propaganda in the name of… life?
Another account still described how some people had never been bit, had never contracted the virus, nothing was medically wrong with them, but they would still turn into zombies—at least they acted as zombies—all due to pure psychological breakdown. Survivors would tell the difference between live and dead zombies from looking at their eyes: “reanimated” corpses who had succumbed to “African Rabies” never blinked again, permanently exposing their eyes to the elements, which would slowly turn them dull and murky.
World War Z is full of such little well-thought details that I appreciate in sci-fi/alt-history stories that make it an engaging and believable read. My disbelief was suspended, even for as an absurd thing as zombies. I mean, how could such a thing as an organism that is dead, yet isn’t, doesn’t decay in water, needs no food, has no circulation, makes no apparent use of its five senses to “hunt” yet only dies when its brain is destr… ah, what a pedant, that’s precisely where the horror’s at!
Some books I only review because of the sort of benign OCD I’ve developed that compels me to write something about every book I read; withothers I can’t stop myself from going all-out, even if I didn’t enjoy reading them enough to award them 5 stars to begin with. With psychology and typology (personality type) books, the latter is almost always the case. Perhaps to a fault, I might add, for the wall of text lying beneath is arguably not the optimal way of transmitting this, let’s face it, difficult information. Still, I’m a reader rather than a video watcher… but I’m not the only one. ♪
As a review this probably won’t work, but that said: what if I finally accept that it’s not me writing a review here, but taking the opportunity to process, share and, in typical Hallographic style, lovingly re-transmit the fascinating information, empathy and communication skills this book filled my mind and attention with, at least for a time?
Some books might not be for everyone or even five-star worthy as far as reading pleasure is concerned, but they do contain valuable ideas absolutely worth spreading, writing and talking about.
Watch me embracing the fact that this is not going to be a review.
…
I read Please Understand Me II on my Android on .pdf. It is David Keirsey’s definitive 1998 update to his original 1984 Please Understand Me. He himself was (he died in 2013) the personality psychologist who created the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (link to the test as it appears in the book, it’s worth the manual effort to complete) and the Four Temperaments typing system. It shares its name with Hippocrates’ and Galen’s original four temperaments theory, which has for millennia sorted people’s personalities into choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic and sanguine.
This archetype has survived to this day in its original form and has thus proved rather durable, along with various other ancient and medieval derivatives, albeit few people consider them as valid typological systems anymore (I’m of two minds about being a Nymph, according to Paracelsus). From Wikipedia’s article on the Keirsey Temperament Sorter:
Keirsey’s Artisan, Guardian, Idealist and Rational types have come a long way indeed since the time Hippocrates classified people by their over-secretion or lack of certain human bodily fluids: the system was developed upon many decades of research, observation, counseling and comparing the behaviour of his clients. It is not the only typology system to have been built on observation and the scientific method, but it differs from others in the fine points.
To be exact, whereas the Enneagram on the one hand—to name my favourite such system—separates people into nine categories based on their preconceived deficiencies of character, sources of insecurity and ambitions, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator on the other, probably the most well-known and used such system around the world, sorts people into sixteen categories by the order of preference of their eight types of Jungian cognitive functions, it is a person’s outward behaviour that goes to determine their Keirsey temperament.
Because Keirsey worked with Myers and Briggs and his system of typology is understandably an extension or “expansion” to theirs, his four types are basically the sixteen MBTI types divided by four. He noticed similar behavioural patterns between certain types and identified the connectors as the common letters in the types’ names, e.g. the INFP and the ENFJ are both intuitive and feeling types, which makes them both Idealists, while Guardians are SJs, meaning ESTJs, ISFJs and so on.
If you’re at all familiar with Jungian cognitive functions, you might know that the four core cognitive functions (thinking, feeling, intuiting and sensing), farther multiplied by two by being either extraverted or introverted in nature, are fundamentally separated into the perceptive ones, the ones we use to take in information about the external world (sensing/intuiting) and the judging ones, the ones we use to make decisions (thinking/feeling). The two letters comprising the name of the Keirsey temperament denote the combination of an individual’s preference in both perception and judgment.
Thus, for instance, NFs primarily take in information from the external world by using their iNtuition, and they mainly take decisions using their Feelings. NTs, respectively, also take in information about the world using their iNtuition. However, they do not primarily use their feelings to make decisions as the NFs do, but rather use their Thinking function.
It would follow that the four Keirsey types should be NF, NT, SF and ST, and indeed, before Keirsey came along, Myers and Briggs used to separate the sixteen types as so. Nevertheless, Keirsey did come along and observed that SPs and SJs bore far more behavioural similarities to each other than STs and SPs did. He incorporated his findings to his four temperaments theory and thus drew the blueprint for what I believe to be the MBTI 2.0.
Actually, maybe not an MBTI 2.0, because by itself the MBTI is still quite usable. In case however one wishes to combine different systems of typology in order to make more complete or nuanced profiles for people— combining the Enneagram with the MBTI so as to have an overview of both a person’s ambitions, fears and behavioural patterns, for example—i.e. for the purpose of synergy, the Keirsey Type Sorter works far better than the MBTI and in any case it can be a very effective, hard and fast way of identifying a person’s type; you can usually tell fairly easily and intuitively which temperament a person is, whereas with the MBTI and its sixteen whole different types it can be difficult and in any case requires a lot of experience.
The benefits of typing people themselves and why one would want to do it I’ll leave for another time, but I’m sure you can fill in the gaps depending on your own needs for better communication.
What I still haven’t got into at all is how this whole Keirsey thing works.
As mentioned earlier, Keirsey’s theory is only indirectly focused on cognitive functions. Rather, he speculated that, on one hand, people’s behaviour can be separated into two categories according to their use of language and expression: either specific/concrete or generalising/abstract. This often translates into “detail-oriented/pragmatic/moving from the specific towards the whole” and “big-picture/theoretical/moving from the whole towards the specific”, respectively.
This screenshot might help with developing the concept of abstract vs. concrete speech in your mind (pardon the peculiar white balance; I was reading in bed at that moment and had Twilight activated):
People who are cooperative pay more attention to other people’s opinions and are more concerned with doing the right thing. People who are pragmatic (utilitarian) pay more attention to their own thoughts or feelings and are more concerned with doing what works. There is no comparable idea of Myers or Jung that corresponds to this dichotomy, so this is a significant difference between Keirsey’s work and that of Myers and Jung.
The pragmatic temperaments are Rationals (pragmatic and abstract) and Artisans (pragmatic and concrete). The cooperative temperaments are Idealists (cooperative and abstract), and Guardians (cooperative and concrete). Neither Myers nor Jung included the concept of temperament in their work. Jung’s psychological functions are hard to relate to Keirsey’s concepts.
In Please Understand Me II, Keirsey goes through not only the fundamentals of his theory and the characteristics of each type, he also has separate sections and detailed overviews for each subtype (the following is for INFPs/Healers);
breakdowns of each type’s strong and weak skills:
further breakdown for best-suited job in “diplomacy”-oriented fields, the NFs’ specialty (which include teaching, counseling, championing, “healing”, doing reconciliatory, cross-disciplinary work, e.g. between science and metaphysics, to name a pertinent example that fascinates me personally, etc):
A little clarification is in order here: NFs are natural diplomats and horrible tacticians — that could be why I love the big map in Total War games, enjoy Diplomacy (the game) and Dixit, tend to royally suck at the tactical battles in Total War and am absolute garbage in StarCraft II. SPs, on the other hand, are the complete opposite, and you can tell how SPs are poor at diplomacy, since they’re usually the types who most refuse to seek common ground or look at things from a different perspective, but are very good at looking at things practically due to their concrete/utilitarian duality. Conversely, NTs are great strategists and poor logisticians, while SJs are the opposite.
The following analysis goes on to portray common interests for each type (notice how Idealists “will be drawn to the humanities and might dabble in the arts and crafts but rarely stick with that sort of thing long enough to become more than enthusiastic amateurs“—professional artists are, more often than not, Artisans, due to their sensory, present-oriented nature):
or the way in which the different types have completely different orientations connected to time, the past, present and future, and which of these they favor. Note that Rationals understand time as intervals: “for them, time exists not as a continuous line, but as an interval, a segment confined to and defined as an event. Only events possess time, all else is timeless.”
What distinguishes Please Understand Me II as an actually usable book is that, on top of everything else, it has detailed, separate sections on temperaments and parenting, leading people and romantic relationships. The latter I found particularly interesting: Keirsey writes that one of the major reasons many romantic relationships tend to fail is that partners make Pygmalion projects of one another, that is, we consciously or subconsciously try to make partners into mirror images of ourselves. If we first understand, then accept our partner’s temperament, Keirsey suggests, the relationship could only benefit from it and remain stable.
Furthermore, compatibility between temperaments vary: apparently Idealists and Rationals are natural fits, because we can understand each other’s abstract way of communication and perception intuitively—deep conversations, big ideas, little appreciation for small-talk, that sort of thing. However, due to both types being rarer than concrete Guardians and Artisans (for reasons unknown, concrete communicators are roughly double in numbers than abstract communicators—we’re precious little flowers, we abstracts), those types usually have a hard time finding well-suited mates.
I, for one, have been told that if some of my male Rational friends were female I’d fall for them hard, so there’s that…
Moving on, the chapter on temperament and parenting I found interesting as well, i.e. how parents value different things in raising their children depending on their own temperaments. For example, an Artisan parent will want their child to possess many different useful skills and will try one way or another to transmit them to it (long hours at language schools and martial arts classes?); a Guardian parent will value security and stability above all else (urging their child to settle), whereas a Rational parent will try to inspire in their child a sense independence from other people and external influence.
Where this often goes wrong is that parents not only make Pygmalion projects our of their partners, they do so for their children as well, and so typically fail to take their child’s own temperament into account when it comes to its upbringing and relevant important decisions. This can and will alienate the child and make it feel unloved or that it has to constantly prove itself, among a slew of other avoidable psychological complications and complexes.
Interestingly, as far as we can observe and Keirsey claimed, temperament is not hereditary: it is determined at birth, does not follow parental patterns and is permanent for life. It is sort of arbitrary, selected at random at “character creation”, you could say. I find that little fact absolutely fascinating: that a big part of who we are is “predetermined”, despite the term being taboo in contemporary psychology and behavioural science.
What a parent can do to make sure that their child will thrive and not develop insecurities and low self-esteem because it feels as if it cannot fulfill its parents expectations, is identify their child’s temperament early on—it’s usually quite obvious from the 3rd or 4th year—and move with the temperament’s forces, not away from them or even against them: encourage their child to be itself, not what the parent would like it to be.
I can easily imagine a Rational parent, for example, being hard on their Artisan child for not being logical or even clever enough, or an Idealist parent trying to make their Guardian child more “alternative”, when the child just won’t stray from the mainstream. What the parents could be failing to see is that their children might have green fingers or a well-developed sense of honour and duty, respectively. Oh, the woes of an Idealist parent when their Guardian child wants to uphold the law for a living!
I’ve gone on long enough already. I will conclude this little here review/essay/introduction to Keirsey by saying that if psychology, communication and human relationships interest you at all, Please Understand Me II and Keirsey’s work in general is a must-read. Together with the Enneagram, typology can be a very powerful tool for understanding people, living and working better with them and, as important as ever, understanding and identifying one’s own worth and learning to go with, not against, one’s own temperament—one’s own nature.
PS: At some point while going through this book, I realised that my room-mates and colleagues in Sofia City Library and I were all different temperaments. An Idealist, a Rational, a Guardian and an Artisan all under the same roof! My memories of Zanda, Vicente and Maria and living together with them for nine months have been useful for imagining each temperament’s traits more concretely. Thanks guys!
This is a review for the whole series, not just Pluto #1.
I read it on my smartphone. What a time to be alive!
There’s this I’ve noticed with manga, anime and how I take them in: very often, such series as Pluto, or Neon Genesis Evangelion while we’re at it, they start off strong and interesting, they throw you in well-crafted worlds with characters I want to know more about. The art is captivating and undoubtedly masterful. By the end, however, the plot’s typically so messed up I find it difficult to keep caring. And that’s precisely what happened with me and Pluto. Should I give up on “serious” manga?
That said, I concede that Pluto portrays a society where artificial intelligence has penetrated human society quite convincingly. A killer robot that’s left its (his?) past life behind and just wants to play the piano? Now that’s something I want to read more about.
Also, what’s with Urasawa and Germany? Monster also took place there and it seemed kind of arbitrary that it had to.
Another good read I went through in audiobook format. The nature of the book made me feel as if was actually following a series of superb university lectures on our species as a whole instead of reading a book on the topic, which, incidentally and as the title states, is precisely the ambitiously broad, sweeping topic of Sapiens.
Mr. Harari’s choronicle of humanity is marked by the pivotal moments in human history, what we understand today to be its big turning points: the cognitive revolution, when our ancestors seemingly started to communicate about ideas and common myths and create art; the agricultural revolution, which brought private property in the picture, kickstarted civilization (life in the city) and effectively”caged in” our forefathers (more on that later on); the scientific revolution, which shifted our belief system to the result-oriented materialism of the scientific method, and the industrial revolution which has recently resulted in the fundamental shifts we are going through right now, the kind of changes that have made it possible for me to write this review and you to read it.
Fairly standard issue up to this point, right? What you’ll really find in Sapiens, though, is no ordinary retelling of our myths of history; the fact that one of the book’s central themes is that the agricultural revolution was actually “history’s biggest fraud” should give you an idea of what we’re dealing with here.
It’s a neat thought that “we did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.” There was, Harari says, “a Faustian bargain between humans and grains” in which our species “cast off its intimate symbiosis with nature and sprinted towards greed and alienation”. It was a bad bargain: “the agricultural revolution was history’s biggest fraud”. More often than not it brought a worse diet, longer hours of work, greater risk of starvation, crowded living conditions, greatly increased susceptibility to disease, new forms of insecurity and uglier forms of hierarchy. Harari thinks we may have been better off in the stone age, and he has powerful things to say about the wickedness of factory farming, concluding with one of his many superlatives: “modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history”.
There are plenty of interesting ideas to write about off of Sapiens. You may read the rest of The Guardian’s review for the gist, because I feel there’s just too many of them to mention here. But there are three in particular that I found exceptionally intriguing:
1) What seemingly sets humans apart from our faunal brethren and sistren is our ability to create fictions and myths–anything from religion to ideology to stories–and group around them, team up around them, live for them, die for them.
2) Imperialism is a nasty word with virtually zero positive connotations today. However, If you look at human culture around the world, from language to cooking to music to politics to art, empires and imperial activity have been responsible for most of what we recognize as the common and not so common heritage we treasure so. How come I’m writing in English right now and you get to understand my thoughts expressed on this screen? Alexander the Great spread what’s deemed today as enlightened Greek culture in what was then the known barbarian world–by conquering, butchering and intermingling loads of different peoples, of course. Same for the Romans, British etc.
3) It follows from the above that if there is a single one-way trend in human history is that we’re moving one step at a time from separate communities to larger, more complex organisations to a single, planetary consciousness, and it’s not just the invention of global telecommunications that’s led us here.
Consider, for example, as Mr. Harari invites us to, that in most cases what we recognise as individual, uniquely national dishes and cuisines is what’s left of global empires of the past: Italy had no tomatoes, no pomodori, before the 16th century; chili isn’t at all native to India, and so on.
Sapiens is full of such insights that in my opinion more than deliver what is promised on the cover: a brief history of humankind. I can safely put it next to Christopher Lloyd’s What On Earth Happened or Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything and add it to my core list of mind-expanding, impossibly broad works of non-fiction, and I wish I could mention everything I agree on with Mr. Harari in this review and his input I think is very significant.
The reason I’m giving Sapiens just four stars is that I find the book did not place too much emphasis on the way humanity is being detrimental to the health of its environment and planetary ecological balance (ancient sapiens killing off megafauna everywhere on the world nonwithstanding) and how this fact can and will mess everything up for us. Harari seems to envision as rather more possible a future where people as a species will become obsolete by emerging artificial intelligence or enhanced homo sapiens 2.0 godlike biotech creations that would be even more alien and incomprehensible to us than what we, the sapiens of today, would look like to people of the ancient world.
If any of this comes to pass, the greatest revolution yet is still ahead of us. But honestly, what’s most probably heading our way is somewhere between the technological dysutopia (no sp) imagined by the author and the ecocidal nightmare we’ve been moving into for a while. What’s interesting is that we’re going into this with an unprecedented feeling of unity: a global consciousness, as can be shown by the mere existence of Sapiens as a book, is reaching species. rather than national, racial or whatever, levels. Provided we stay alive for the show, it will all be incredibly exciting, not just impossibly depressing.
Wait a second: we’re already living it, aren’t we?
Το Φαράγγι είναι ένα βιβλίο το οποίο πραγματεύεται τις οικογενειακές σχέσεις και τα ανείπωτα μυστικά 7 αδερφιών ηλικίας από 50κάτι μέχρι 70φεύγα τα οποία είχαν υποσχεθεί ότι κάποια στιγμή όλοι μαζί θα βρίσκονταν για να περπατήσουν ένα φαράγγι στην γεννέτειρα τους Κρήτη σαν ένα τελετουργικό σμιξίματος.
Για το κάθε αδέρφι αυτή η συνάντηση σημαίνει διαφορετικά πράγματα. Ο καθένας και η καθεμιά φέρνει άλλα κρυφά με τα οποία η ζωή τους έχει σημαδέψει και ποτέ δεν μοιράστηκαν. Κάποιοι θα βρουν την ευκαιρία να ξαλαφρώσουν από όσα ποτέ τους δεν είπαν στην οικογένεια τους, άλλοι…
Ας μην το τραβάω. Δεν μπορώ να πω ότι απόλασα αυτό το βιβλίο. Το βαρέθηκα πριν τη μέση. Ένιωθα σε κάθε σελίδα ότι πολύ απλά δεν είχε γραφτεί για τα δικά μου μάτια και τα δικά μου βιώματα. Ήταν μια εξιστόρηση του πώς «η γενιά του Πολυτεχνείου», ή «της Μεταπολίτευσης», όπως την αποκαλεί η «νεολαία», έχει καταλήξει σήμερα· τα βάσανα των ζωών αυτής της συγκεκριμένης ομάδα ανθρώπων που πλέον βλέπουν τις ζωές τους στα χρόνια της κρίσης να κατρακυλάνε στη μιζέρια κι εκείνες των παιδιών τους να μην έχουν καν από κάπου να κατρακυλήσουν.
Ως μοναχοπάιδι, με πολύ μικρο σόι, μια λιγότερο μοιρολατρική ή θλιψεοφετιχιστική οπτική γωνία από αυτή της συγγραφέος -γιατί κι αυτή για τη γενιά της έγραψε- και όντας το λιγότερο καμιά 5άρα χρόνια μικρότερος από τα παιδιά των πρωταγωνιστών του βιβλίου, τα βιωματικά στοιχεία που θα αναγνώριζαν οι 60άρηδες για τους οποίους είναι αυτό το βιβλίο πολύ απλά δεν με άγγιξαν. Δηλαδή, ήταν ενδιαφέρον, αλλά μόνο για την ιστορία, για να μπορώ να ρίξω μια ματιά στις ζωές αυτών των Ελλήνων οι οποίοι με πολλούς τρόπους, ψυχολογικά και πρακτικά, κουβαλάνε το πρόσφατο παρελθόν και αντιπροσωπεύουν το παρόν της γηραιάζουσας χώρας μας.
Αλλά και σε αυτό, στο ιστορικο-κοινωνικολογικό του κομμάτι -το ίδιο που μου κεντρίζει το ενδιαφέρον όταν χαζεύω παλιές ελληνικές ταινίες για τους γνώριμους αγνώριστους δρόμους, τα κουρέματα, τους ιδιωματισμούς, και απλά αδιαφορόντας για την πλοκή- ούτε υπό αυτό το πρισμά με άγγιξε η γραφή της κας. Καρυστιάνη. Ούτε τα επτά αδέρφια δεν μπορούσα να τα ξεχωρίσω, πόσο μάλλον παιδιά, ξαδέρφια και λοιπή οικογένεια, ούτε το γλαφυρό, προφορικό της στυλ μου έκανε κλικ. Ένιωθα σαν όλοι να μιλάνε με την φωνή της συγγραφέως, ίσως επειδή στο βιβλίο δεν υπήρχαν εισαγωγικά για τους διαλόγους α λα Σαραμάγκου, αλλά σίγουρα επειδή όλοι οι χαρακτήρες μου έδιναν την αίσθηση ότι ήταν πολλαπλές προσωπικότητες του ίδιου ατόμου.
Η ειρωνία είναι ότι αυτό το βιβλίο ήταν δώρο από τον πατέρα μου. Όταν τον ρώτησα γιατί μου το πήρε, η απάντηση του ήταν ότι του το πρότειναν. Όμως το ότι ο πατέρας μου δεν ξέρει τα γούστα μου στα βιβλία θα μπορούσε να είναι κι αυτό κομμάτι μιας αντίστοιχης εξιστόρησης κάποιας οικογένειας με προβλήματα επικοινωνίας σε κάποιο εναλλακτικό εξιλαστήριο Φαράγγι. Άλλωστε, με τον πατέρα μου ανέκαθεν πηγαίναμε πεζοπορίες μαζί.
Η ιστορια του εικοστού αιώνα χαρακτηρίζεται από την πάλη ενάντια σε απολυταρχικά συστήματα κρατικής δύναμης. Δίχως άλλο, ο εικοστός πρώτος αιώνας θα χαρακτηριστεί από την πάλη για τον περιορισμό της υπερβολικής δυναμης των εταιρειών. Σημερα, η μεγαλη πρόκληση στις χώρες όλου του κόσμου είναι να βρουν την ισορροπία ανάμεσα στην αποτελεσματικοτητα και τον αμοραλισμο της αγοράς. Τα τελευταία είκοσι χρόνια οι Ηνωμενες Πολιτειες κινήθηκαν μονόπλευρα, αποδυναμωνοντας τους κανονισμους που προστατευουν τους εργαζόμενους, τους καταναλωτές και το περιβάλλον. Οικονομικα συστήματα που υπόσχονται ελευθερία, οδηγησαν τελικά στη στέρηση της, καθώς οι στενές επιταγές της αγοράς παίρνουν προτεραιότητα έναντι πιο σημαντικών δημοκρατικών αξιών.
Η σημερινή βιομηχανία φαστ φουντ αποτελεί την κορωνίδα αυτών των ευρύτερων κοινωνικών και οικονομικών τάσεων. Η χαμηλή τιμή ενός χάμπουργκερ σε φαστ φουντ, δεν αντικατοπτριζει -όπως θα έπρεπε- το πραγματικό του κόστος. Για να αποκομίσουν τα τεραστια κέρδη τους οι αλυσίδες φαστ φουντ, υπέστη απώλειες -και όχι βέβαια εθελοντικά- η υπόλοιπη κοινωνία. Το ετήσιο κόστος της παχυσαρκιας και μόνο, ειναι σημερα διπλάσιο απο τα συνολικά έσοδα του συνόλου της βιομηχανίας φαστ φουντ. Το περιβαλλοντικο κίνημα υποχρέωσε εταιρείες να περιορίσουν τη ρύπανση που προκαλούν, και μια παρόμοια εκστρατεία πρέπει να αναγκάσει τις αλυσίδες φαστ φουντ να αναλαβουν τις ευθύνες για τις επιχειρηματικες πρακτικές τους και να ελαχιστοποιησουν τις επιβλαβείς επιδράσεις τους.
Ταδε γράφτηκαν το 2001, 15 χρόνια πριν, στον επιλογο του Fast Food Nation, ενα βιβλίο-προπομπο για το κάθε μέρα μεγαλύτερο κίνημα κατά των McDonald’s και με λιγα λογια ο,τι αυτα πρεσβεύουν.
Πράγματι, το βιβλιο τελικα δεν ειναι μονο μια τεκμηριωμένη έρευνα σχετικά με το τι περιέχει το φαγητό των Μακντοναλντς, αλλα και για ολα τα άπλυτα της βιομηχανία του fast food: τις διεφθαρμενες σχέσεις με τα κράτη· τις φριχτες, αλλα σε απόλυτη αρμονία με το κλίμα της εποχης, εργασιακές σχέσεις· την πληρη έλλειψη σεβασμού σε τοπικές κοινότητες, οικονομίες και κουλτούρες· τις τεχνικές που χρησιμοποιεί και εχει χρησιμοποιησει για να κατακτήσει τις καρδιές δισεκατομμυριων ανθρώπων, δινοντας έμφαση στα παιδια -οπως διολου τυχαία, οπως δειχνει το βιβλιο, και η Disney- με προϊόντα που πολυ απλά αφαιρούν απο την ποιοτητα ζωής τους· την περιφρόνηση νομων και κανονισμων που υπάρχουν για να προστατεύουν την ευημερία των ασθενέστερων — και μιας και μιλάμε για ασθενεστερους, την συστηματική, εγκληματική εκμεταλλευση ζωής, ζώων και γης.
Πολύ απλά, τα McDonald’s είναι το τέλειο παράδειγμα της πολυεθνικής που κυριολεκτικά πατάει επι πτωματων και εκμεταλλευεται τον κοσμο για να κάνει αυτο που βασικα φτιάχτηκε να κανει, δηλαδη να παράγει οσο το δυνατον περισσοτερο κέρδος χωρις κανεναν οργανικο, νομικο ή ηθικό περιορισμο· το άκρον αωτον της «ελεύθερης αγοράς», η επιτομή του αρρωστημενου καπιταλισμού που ψυχρά καταναλώνει τα πάντα για να κανει τους πάντες καταναλωτές, υπέρτατος εκφραστής ενός οικοδομηματος που η ιδια του η πολιτισμικη επιρροη, η αναγνωρισιμοτητα του, του επιτρεπει να μην τηρει ουτε τα οποια προσχηματα. Να ειναι -επιτρεπω στον εαυτο μου την εκφραση- αντιθετο απο οτιδήποτε ειναι καλο στον ανθρωπινο και μη κοσμο.
Λοιπόν, το βιβλίο δεν ειναι απλα για τη διατροφή. Και ο λογος που του βάζω 3 αστεράκια ειναι γιατι διάβασα την ελληνική έκδοση, που έχει υπότιτλο «φακελος: διατροφή», και η Διοπτρα οταν το εξέδωσε το κατετασσε στα βιβλία διατροφής και υγείας.
Ναι μεν εχει κεφάλαια σχετικα με την προελευση του κρέατος, την απιστευτα φρικτή ύπαρξη ζώων και ανθρώπων στα σφαγεία, την ιστορια της τηγανητης πατάτας, το πώς πίσω απο καθε γεύση στην βιομηχανία τροφίμων και κατω απο την μυτη μας κρύβεται η βιομηχανία αρωματικών υλών γεματη με χημικους ιδιους Γκρενουιγ απο Το Άρωμα -πολύ ενδιαφερον κεφάλαιο σχετικα με το τι αποτελεί «φυσικό άρωμα» και οχι μόνο… Ομως βασικα με αυτο το πλασαρισμα στο κοινο που ειναι πολυ συνειδητοποιημενο για θεματα υγειας πιστευω στοχευθηκαν οι λαθος αναγνωστες.
Επισης, η μεταφραση στα ελληνικα ηταν μετρια στην καλύτερη. Τρανταχτο παραδειγμα: σιχαθηκα να βλεπω το McDonald’s γραμμένο «Μακντοναλντ’ς». Μα να πεις οτι αναφεροταν στο βιβλιο μονο μια φορα…! Τετοιες συχνες αγαρμπιες σε αποδοση, εκφραση και συντακτικο μου εβδαζαν λιγο το ματι. Τουλαχιστον το διασκεδαζω να βρισκω τετοια λαθη και να τα περιεργαζομαι στο μυαλο μου, οπως και το να βρισκω μεταφρασεις πραγματικα διαμαντια. Να τα λεμε αυτα, γιατι καθε αλλο παρα αυτονοητα ειναι.
Αυτο το αρθρο ειναι του Schlosser γραμμενο 10 χρονια μετα την εκδοση του βιβλιου που τον εκανε διασημο και σε νεες εκδοσεις του βιβλιου στα αγγλικα ειναι ο επιλογος. Τα πραγματα αλλαζουν ωρε κοσμε. Το οτι εσεις που διαβαζετε αυτες τις αραδες τωρα κατα πασα πιθανοτητα δεν πολυπατε τα Μακ και δεν τα θεωρειτε αυτοματα προοδο και ευημερια οπως γινοταν πριν 20 χρονια, ειναι ενα πολυ σημαντικο σημαδι.
Ο αυτοκρατορας ειναι γυμνος, ο Σιντιους ρομπα ξεκουμπωτη. Δεν χρειαζεται να επαναστατησουμε: ο αυτοκρατορας μπορει να συνεχισει να απολαμβανει τα δικα του αορατα ρουχα παρεα με αυτους που γουσταρουν αυτοκρατοριες. Εμεις οι υπολοιποι απλα μπορουμε να παμε σπιτια μας και να φτιαξουμε ενα φαΐ της προκοπης και ο,τι περισσεψει να κανουμε ενα τεραστιο πικνικ/auberge español/potluck. Πώς λεγεται αυτο στα ελληνικα;;
Αυτο το κειμενακι το εγραψα στην οθονη αφης του κινητου μου, εξου και τα οποια λαθη, τυπογραφικα ή ελλειψεις τονων κτλ. Το παλευα μια βδομαδα ηδη, φτανει!
Samarkand by Amin Maalouf
