the Radical Disciple

This book, the last written by John Stott before he passed away in 2011, is a distillation of some of his key realised wisdoms. His life was one of relentless ministry, having a profound influence on global evangelical movements through his writing and speaking, and always noted by those who met him* as having cultivated a set of characteristics that made him arrestingly Christian. Here was a man who truly understood the gospel's power and what it should mean for the way we are as persons, and this book is an explanation of how some of those characteristics should work themselves out, from their roots in the Bible to practice in our lives.

   These characteristics are: non-conformity (we should eschew worldly socio-cultural pressures to be like other people), Christlikeness (we should instead create and realise a spiritual pressure to be like Jesus), maturity (being individually secure in our living faith so we can grow, plant and spread it better), creation care (concern for environmental justice should be a big part of Christian thinking and lifestyles), simplicity (we should reject consumerist drives for more and better and be content with lifestyles that look comparatively spartan, for our joy is in Christ; this is not puritanical but allows us to free up resources to better serve the poor and the lost), balance (there are many facets to a Christian identity and we should seek to emulate them all in a way that doesn't unhealthily prioritise or neglect some aspects), dependence (we should be fully trusting ourselves and the world to Christ's good will), and death (and how the gospel completely upends our perspective on it in our own lives, hopes and service).

   Stott's decades of wisdom and trust in God show through in his elucidation of each of these, as do a strong moral compass that I think is wholly complementary, if not indispensable, to the consistency of a Christian life such as espoused by these. His points about lifestyle particularly I find very powerful; they strike right to the heart of contemporary western materialism, which has deep footholds even in the church, and he makes excellent points in rooting out and rejecting it. I strongly admire his perspective on creation care as well; humanity's rampant abuse of the biosphere has left us teetering on the brink of various social and ecological catastrophes, and it is depressing that more Christians are being strongly outspoken about this - because if one believes that according to the Bible, humans were put on earth to work and keep it well - we are not doing that, and so creation care is a vital part of returning to a clearer vision of God's intent.

   As the title suggests, this is an outline of Christian lifestyle and character that cuts right to the bone, but it does so with the full weight of the Bible behind it, and in a consistently readable and humble tone, never smacking of superiority or moralism but of brotherly recommendations given in love. 'Radical' means rejecting huge swathes of status quo norms because of one's convictions; 'disciple' means a loyal follower learning from their leader; this combination of things a Christian should be, called to walk in the way of Jesus, a way that fundamentally challenged the expectations of his contemporary world and of ours too. A challenging but encouraging book that I would recommend anyone read to lay out some guidelines on your Christian life.

* The following mild anecdote from my church leader Tim Chester serves to show Stott's automatic inclusive humility. At an evangelical conference several decades ago, where Stott was the main speaker and Tim but a self-describedly nerdy young Christian excited to finally see in the flesh this legend of Christendom of whom he had read so many books and articles. While waiting for a friend outside the toilets, Tim was approached by an elderly gentleman who engaged him in conversation - a wholesome, encouraging, interesting conversation that was largely about Tim and his faith and his enjoyment of the conference - at no point did the gentleman make any claims about himself, until eventually apologetically looking at his watch, thanking Tim for the chat, and saying that he needed to head off as he was speaking shortly, at which point a starstruck and embarassed Tim realised that he'd been talking to John Stott.

The Way We Are

This book, one I picked up out of vague random interest from the bargain bin at a charity shop, was, I'm sorry to say, Margaret Visser, the least memorable reading experience I've had in years. It wasn't quite boring but it was by no means interesting either. It was like reading an enormous compilation of those inane little thinkpieces written by contributors to the Readers' Digest. It's the kind of book that retired accountants probably keep in the toilet for a colourful treat - albeit under the book of crossword puzzles, which they do prefer as at least then they get to engage their brain somewhat.

   I'm being harsh. (I think part of my not-entirely-warranted disparagement of this book stems from the absurd foreword, in which John Fraser coins the term 'visserism'*.) Margaret Visser's collection of sixty four(ish)-page mini-essays on a range of topics did actually make me say "hmm" in a passively interested way at least two dozen times, but then, it did also make me say "this book is so dull oh my goodness" in an amusedly stupefied way at least seven times. She claims to be an 'anthropologist of everyday life', taking relatively benign topics (of a some-horribly-vague yet some-horribly-specific width of variety) and dissecting them, historically, sociologically, psychologically, economically, through culture and tradition and observation and mostly just facts that she's read about something somewhere, to reveal something unusual or interesting about their origin and practice. Apart from she largely doesn't. To be fair to her it looks like a lot of thought and reading went into each one, but in the way that it goes into a year 8 assignment for which one is aiming for a B at best. There are no overarching themes, no profoundly interesting or insightful points (she comes tantalisingly close to making some, then leaves off to spew out another random nugget of thought or information on topic X), and although there are plenty, a great deal in fact, of moments where she strikes upon something in such a way or with such a fact as to mildly realign one's perspective on it, she does so with so little aplomb, and the topics are so random anyway, as to have little effect on the reader. I still quite enjoyed reading it, and will be keeping it for a future next-to-lavatory-bookcase. It amused me in much the same way that watching Qi occasionally amuses me, through sheer persistent banality.

   With basically nothing left to say about this book, I will proceed to list the topics of her short essays; after an introduction (on the general unnoticed interestingness of everyday objects, practices, or concepts, which she promises to explore), Margaret Visser discusses:

• air hostesses
• initiations
• offal
• sunbathing
• conspicuous competence
• Thanksgiving turkey
• Santa
• high heels
• baked beans
• lobster blushing
• Spoonerisms
• greetings
• beards
• avocados
• tipping
• vacations
• English spelling
• umbrellas
• street parades
• physical reactions to embarassment
• bells
• Valentines
• caviar
• professionals
• the left hand
• wedding cake
• showering
• crossword puzzles
• sitting down on things
• gloves
• fireplaces
• spitting
• wigs
• knitting
• the unpopularity of wine in America
• swimsuits
• menus
• wearing blue
• pumpkins
• Christmas trees
• stripes
• the Easter Bunny
• filler words
• vinegar
• mahogany
• jelly
• synaesthesia
• stockings
• Christmas pudding
• hearts
• fasting
• looking emotionless
• eating squirrels
• tap-dancing
• broad beans
• chewing gum
• forgetting people's names
• uses of the colour red
• Eskimo words for snow
• soup

* I jest not. "n. 1. a concise socio-anthropological insight arrived at by comparing current human behaviour with various alternative models... 2. an entertainment in which points are made by identifying and skewering absurdities. 3. any observation, esp. on contemporary manners, that provokes shocked laughter; a sly dig. 4. Archaic or literary. the doctrine that all scholarship, e.g., food chemistry, etymology, particle physics, etc., exists to prove that life is rich, funny, and meaningful." Like, making up a verb to describe the decidedly not unique activities of a writer is bad enough, but four!? I don't know. Having now finished the book I remember it quite fondly. I gained several partially-interesting vaguely-insightful tidbits from it, and didn't actually die of boredom, so maybe it's an alright book after all.

3-2-1: The Story of God, the World, and You

This book by Glen Scrivener is a fantastic introductory exposition of Christianity; my church runs a video series using the same material as a seeker event series every so often and I thought it was worth checking out. It was. On a personal note, I'm extremely glad I ended up reading it alongside this other book, as the bubbling refreshers of truth in this considerably offset the misguided downers of the other.

   It's not a full-throttle attempt to provide an inarguable rational basis for Christianity, nor is it a vague doctrinal overview; Glen introduces it as if Christian beliefs were a house and this book the tour, organised into a superbly helpful framework of 3-2-1 (I'll explain what this is shortly), which he expounds with thorough biblical referencing, explanation of doctrinal, and sound philosophical reasoning. He writes with an easy charm, presenting enormous ideas without reducing their magnitude or complexity but making them generally comprehensible as he goes along, partly because of the brilliant simplicity of the 3-2-1 framework for explanation.

   After introducing the book, he gives us an overview of the life, claims, character, deeds, significance, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the central figure and absolute core of Christianity. Glen then leads us through: 3 - the three persons of the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, how they together exist as love and how this conception of God is resoundingly different to any other faith and gives us a sturdy and beautiful foundation for our understanding of big questions; 2 - the division in the world between fallen humanity and God's original perfection, and what this means for us, especially in light of Jesus's entry into and triumph over the brokenness of creation; 1 - our individual decisions to live for self (remaining subject to fallenness and death) or to accept Christ's substitution as what we actually need and to be united to God through him. I have not done justice at all to the devastatingly lucid power with which Glen works through Jesus, the Trinity, the fall, and union with Christ as a progressive cogent whole explanation for Christian beliefs. He consistently grounds his points well in scripture, arguing them compellingly (well, he did study philosophy) but not with cold intellect, a style well-matched by his warm and conversational tone. It's extremely easy to read and extremely enlightening as to the coherency and plausibility of Christian truth as a standalone worldview.

   Having laid out Christianity's blueprints for itself, he then turns to consider some of the main external objections to it. How can we validate its truth? Can we actually trust the bible? Why select this above all the other multitudes of religions and worldviews? What about the problem of suffering and evil? And if God is love then what's the deal with hell? And why has Christianity and the church had so much hypocrisy and evil in its past, for that matter? Particularly, regarding sex and sexuality - why is Christianity so weird about that? Finally, hasn't science pretty much undone faith anyway? Glen tackles these questions using the understanding of the universe from Christianity that he's built up using Jesus and 3-2-1, perhaps not giving a completely satisfactory explanation regarding each, but there are literally thousands of other books on apologetics to do that; here he examines the general gist of why these objections may not actually pose much of a threat to the actual truth of Christian belief. He does this with the same punchy calmness and poignant vivacity that permeates the rest of the book.

   As far as general-readership introductions to Christianity go, this is probably the best I have ever read; it's rare to find one that might actually be accessible to non-christians and therefore effective as the give-away kind of book, but this is. If you're not a christian, I recommend you acquire a copy as it will better acquaint you with the contents of a worldview which you are probably dismissing without properly understanding. And if you are a christian, then I urge you to read this, digest it as an easily-communicable philosophically-fresh means of presenting our shared truth, and then buy like thirty of them and give copies to every non-christian friend you have.

Praying Drunk

This book by Kyle Minor is probably the most tragic and beautiful work of fiction I've read since last summer. I can't actually remember where I heard of it, but it's been sat on my shelf since February waiting for me to plough through it, which is exactly what I did in the last four days. Buckle yourself in for a long post, as I have a lot to say about this book.

   It's by no means an easy read. Apparently it's partly autobiographical, but the disparate patches of story and question and conversation and sorrow that comprise the book work so powerfully as a whole collection that that almost doesn't matter; it's written so well that be it based-on-truth or not Kyle Minor leaves the reader emotionally wrecked and ponderously adrift, not in a cruel cheap way but in a deep, thoughtful, and ultimately sad way. He prefaces the book with a note reminding the reader that though the book is not a novel and is composed of shorter parts, he has put these into a particular order for a very good reason, and therefore one should read straight through rather than skipping around. The rationale behind this order is, at least on my interpretation, a rough meta-narrative tracing the trajectory of some of the stories' shared themes - which I'll discuss later. His fragments of story are revealed in a variety of mediums; some collections of letters, some memoirs, some dialogue, some Q & A with an anonymous despondent quasi-angelic figure, a fifty-page novella, and several more typical-style short stories. They all seem to take place on the same broad stage as well, sometimes touching on the same events or characters or memories, from different angles and in different tones, connected by loose-stitched threads that show either an incredibly deep commitment to leaving parts of pictures unshown or that they are in fact biographical. It matters little to me.
   So, to the contents themselves.

• First, an account of an uncle's suicide, with questions of its causality leading further backwards into abstraction, a deterministic account of the narrator's uncle's life in universal perspective, the initial blame for the ultimately tragic end of his uncle's life, and by implication all of human suffering, lies at the feet of the supposedly benevolent omnipotent God.
• Second, a young boy endures torture at the hands of his high school bully only by clinging to the words of an old Jewish joyous song; later as a grown man, in times of great upset, he finds this victimisation internalised and that he cannot leave it behind, not even able to look beyond it to the Christian faith which he has long since lost.
• Third, a mother leaves her husband and child, who slip into a depressed and depraved lifestyle full of bitterness and anger, leading to horrific fallout, which even within vaguely miraculous elements of the story go to demonstrate how ultimately in control of our lives and our meaningless suffering we as human beings aren't.
• Fourth, several conversations occur between a passive but inquisitive young agnostic man and the charismatic enigmatic Christian woman he is trying to understand and to woo, revealing in many interesting angles the nature of faith as a mysterious crutch.
• Fifth, seven short anecdotes from a missionary in Haiti about a gregarious but untrustworthy acquaintance of his called Sebastian, which display the impotence of knowledge-based faith in inspiring works of love, and the emotional turmoil that results in actively persisting with such contradictions realised in oneself.
• Sixth, a hypothetical reader and an ethereal entity exchange Q & A about the uses of fiction and narrative in making our sensations of life somewhat more tolerable.
• Seventh, at the funeral of a young man who killed himself, the preacher tries to explain God's plan's involvement of suffering using the analogy of making sweet biscuits out of bitter ingredients.
• Eighth, the narrator accounts the disorderly trawl through life of his older brother, through rock bands and sweaty desk jobs and grudges and addictions and bereavements, and asks: how do we keep it together, how do we as people cope with this madness, what do we cling to in the face of our world's sheer insubstantial unreliable shifting sands of cause and effect?
• Ninth, we glimpse the inchoate misery of our bodily existence, especially as we age, as a young man ponders dependence and dignity while attempting to correct his dying grandfather's false teeth.
• Tenth, in the longest short story, comprised of a series of letters (all from different people and in different voices), we see criss-crossing lines across America and over to the distant country of Haiti of loneliness and desperation and selfish appropriations of relationships; a missionary in Haiti falls in love with a student visiting on a volunteer trip, and secretly arranges to marry her, much to the disapproval of her family and his fellow mission team; we see the pastoral and social consequences of this decision bloom all manner of emotional mess in the lives of the poor and beset-upon Christians on each side of this wreck, only accelerating once a violent uprising bursts out in Haiti, and friends and family back in America have their concerns reoriented by other developments. I think ultimately what we see from the story is the deep-rooted need for human companionship of some form, and that in the mess of a world of selfish people, even selfish Christians, this takes many surprising forms, but that all of them are something like clutching at straw; we can never keep or protect properly those we love or those whose love we adopt, and even within faith in a loving powerful God, we let ourselves slip away also.
• Eleventh, another Q & A, our ethereal answerer tells us how truly empty and meaningless and dull heaven is, therefore how faith as a crutch for the empty and meaningless and dull misery of earthly life is likewise but clutching at straw.
• Twelth, the ill-fated attempt of a boy to overcome his bully, and reflections on the hereditary misfortune of violent tendencies, a further meaningless inheritance to human suffering.
• Thirteenth and finally, a countryside-dwelling artist ponders his family and all the tragedy and darkness that has unfolded throughout his life, and how all he can do to keep his soul from crumpling under its weight is to focus on the people present, the work at hand, the pleasures available, the acceptance of misery as part of the way the universe is and a stoic dedication to living with and through it.

   Each component is immaculately written, with the pace and poise of Minor's prose flowing perfectly to suit the tone and point of each part, and with the varying voices of his narrators having their own life and weight. I've heard him described in some reviews as a 'writer's writer', given his inventive playfulness and abundant reflections on the purposes of his writings even within them themselves. In terms of telling a collection of stories well, and provoking a poignant series of thoughtful responses therein, I don't think Minor could have done better. Anyone who enjoys top-notch fiction, especially sad stuff, the weighty kind that every few pages makes you stop short and breathe in blinking back stunned eyewaters at the sheer distressing honesty of his words; read this book.

   However, in a much more personal (and yet much more objective) sense I found the book problematic and upsetting. Minor's characters are largely Christian, and of course, looming throughout the themes and tones and currents of his stories is God; though this god that he writes of is not good. He writes of a powerless, distant, uncaring, unknowable, even cruel god; the humans populating his stories struggle with and lose their faith in myriad sadnesses of circumstance and confusion precisely because this is the kind of god they believe in. I think this is indicative of the damage nominal faith can do; these people largely don't have living personal relationships with God, they are simply brought up into a conservative unquestioned set of doctrinal truths that have never endured trial or test, and so when these difficulties do arise, the grounding of what they think to be true dissolves, plunging them via their suffering into further misery and darkness. It's pretty bleak. The meta-narrative that I mentioned I thought spanned across his collection is one of an individual, who has grown up amid Christianity, seeking meaning and truth and goodness in a broken world. As you'll see by reading back through the descriptions of each piece, we start off by clinging to faith in hope of some abstract redemption, amid brutality and suffering, and unsettled by a vague awareness that God must know what's going on - why is he allowing this? This insecurity and mistrust and feeling of betrayal and absence is built up in leaps and spurts across the following stories, with layers of cynicism and loss further separating the narrator from the god they thought they could trust, before we reach the end, and question whether even if that god is really there and everything I believed about them were true, would it make a difference to me now? And the answer given is a plaintive "not really", leaving us with nothing to do but grin and bear it by ignoring the disjoints, like the artist in the closing story.

   This is, I think, sadly the reality of faith for many nominal christians, especially in America (which is where Praying Drunk's complaints and qualms occur), and it breaks my heart to think that many people may have had internal trajectories in their relationship with God similar to the ones expressed so accurately here. A proper understanding of God's character and the doctrine of the Fall would together remedy so much of these characters' inner turmoil, and could save the faith of many real persons whose lives bear resemblance to the stories. I'm lucky to have grown up in a church environment that is much more open to dealing with the hypocrisy and failure of Christians than in trying to deny or forget them, and also one with a far firmer grasp of the theology underpinning how we can stand in trusting God amid the wreck of this world. But worldwide, certain Christian socio-cultural tendencies will emerge, and so I do recognise with an uncomfortable familiarity a great deal of the internal ruins that seem particularly to plague those living in the Bible Belt, the more conservative types who can't quite reconcile their love-filled faith of fear and judgment against a broken world of human wrong and unanswered questions.

   Fortunately, I ended up reading this book alongside 3-2-1 (an excellent theologically and philosophically sound overview of Christianity), so was reminded persistently while I read onwards that the darkness and hopelessness of Minor's stories is not fully true to the God I know. Christian readers, I'd recommend doing something similar as an antidote to the pervasive persuasive negativity of the short stories. It reminded me of Gilead, the last fiction book I read narrated by a Christian, albeit one with much better-grounded reflective passages and thus a more substantial and encouraging output of its worldview and conclusions.

   Anyway, I've expended all my main points, if I were to start going into the smaller ones then this post may well be my first to exceed 2000 words. Ridiculous. I put so much time into writing these things, only to have no idea if there's a readership at all, but if there is, I hope you enjoy my ramblings, and I hope you enjoy Kyle Minor's stories - because there's no way you'll have read a post this long about a book that you're not planning on reading.

The Book With No Pictures

This is a book for children by B. J. Novak (yep, Ryan (and also one of the writers and producers) from The Office, he's an incredibly skilled comedy writer I'll have you know). I visited home today and my mum showed me it, saying that it had recently made a member of its target audience (i.e. a child) become so overtaken with laughter that it proved an utterly ineffectual bedtime read, as they couldn't sleep for a while due to laughing. This sounded funny, and I've heard of B. J. Novak's prowess as a writer (obviously, from his part in one of the best comedy shows of all time, and his collection of short stories that I read about a quarter of in a bookshop in France last summer but I didn't have any money and eventually the owner realised I was just reading it without paying and told me to leave).

   So, this book; it's designed for parents to read to young children so as to entertain them, and of course, most of those kind of books have pictures. This one doesn't. Of course that doesn't make it any less interesting or fun to have read to you though, as the 'rules' of reading books to kids dictate that grown-ups have to read out aloud whatever it says on the pages. As such, Novak exploits the situation to the full, throwing the grown-up reader into fits of inexorable ridicule for the entertainment of the child, who of course will delight far more in seeing their parental figures descend helplessly into silliness at the hands of a book than they ever would from just having pictures in that book. How?
   By being playful and inventive with the words he puts onto the page. Who says a book needs to be a story? Can't it just be conversational, not even necessarily about something, just a string of statements that together lead one on a roughly-enjoyable verbal romp? Well, yes, because that's exactly what this book is. Novak's book forces the grown-up to declare exceedingly silly things, try to pronounce and vocalise bizarre onomatopoeic noises, to wonder aloud why they are doing so, and to exasperatedly decry the sheer silliness of the book for making them do all these things. It completely disempowers the reader for the benefit of the read-to, and it does so in a disarmingly simple and charming and fun way. I had fits of giggles just trying to read it aloud to myself, never mind to a child, though I might have to try that at some point, because that's what it's for.

   This book is fantastic, a wondrous feat of creative cheek that might just (and I hope I does so) spark something in the lives of the children being read it, showing them the fluidity of language and the fun one can have with having control of it; this is a book that might give little kids that first push into a deeper understanding of semantic and pragmatic language use, making them grow up to be better readers, better speakers, better thinkers. Maybe that's an overly-complicated side-effect, and the main point is just to turn the typical bedtime reading ritual into something a bit more unpredictable and amusing, but that's definitely something that may well come of this book, and for it and for the book itself I applaud B. J. Novak wholeheartedly.

   If you need a new book to read to a child aged three to seven (ish? I dunno, child development isn't perfectly consistent), then I can't recommend this one enough.

Dune

This book by Frank Herbert is arguably one of the greatest works of science-fiction (or any genre) of the 20th century, a status which I wholeheartedly vouch it deserves. Unfortunately, this great book, as with so many other books that I embark upon, suffered the profound neglect of my poor reading habits; I've literally been reading it for about eight years, and usually unless a book is particularly gripping or I feel compelled (in this case by a promise)* to finish it then I would've given up after around a year. So I'd been struggling lumpily across a chapter or two in sporadic bursts since the age of thirteen, but then a couple of months ago realised that I had actually no idea what had really happened in the novel so far, and thus my whole reading of it was effectively pointless even if I got to the end. This was disheartening. So, I read the Wikipedia plot summary to give myself a refresher, which actually turned out to be more of a prefresher, as I simply hadn't grasped the events or themes or currents of the plot at all in my years of attending to Frank Herbert's masterful pages. No surprise really - the Dune universe is one of immense complexity and depth and realistic world-creation,** and my pubescent self all those years ago didn't approach the saga with quite enough literary reverence of preparation to enter a whole new universe. As such, I found it boring, which is perhaps why I took so long to read it, but my newly-held grasp of the scope and complexity and brilliance of the work since I as a twenty-one-year-old read the Wikipedia summary of it has enabled me to dive back in and stand amazed at simply how incredible of a novel it actually is. Someday, I promise to myself, I will acquire the other books in the saga (some of which were completed by Frank's son and close friend after his death, but the wealth of information he left behind as a backdrop for the universe means that they are canonically consistent), and read them all more properly.
   Anyway.
   The sheer epic scale of the book's events and plot currents, the sheer scope of its themes and drivers, the sheer complexity of its characters who are completely embedded in this already highly alien universe with all the nuance of our own; it is an impossible book to summarise, both in terms of what happens in it and what it's about. If you are at all interested in thought-provoking, exciting, rich storytelling and incredible works of imagination, this novel will be a delicious treat for you if you read the appendices and glossary and step carefully and google things that you don't get; it's that kind of book, you might need a helping pointer every now and then but these are provided easily enough, and the payoff in terms of the whole novel is unquestionably worth the effort. It is living proof (as so many books are) that sci-fi/fantasy is not just the realm of poor writers with vivid nerdy imaginations; a stereotype unfairly perpetuated by drama snobs. This is superb literature, superb science-fiction, a masterful work that towers far above most comparable novels and completely redefined the genre forever (see *).
   But I should probably try to say something about its content.
   The House Atreides is gaining power and influence, irking the Emperor, but he cannot risk outright conflict with a house, so he plays on the age-old feud between Atreides and their nemesis House Harkonnen. Duke Leto of Atreides is therefore suspicious when the Emperor 'gifts' his House rulership of the desert planet Arrakis, which has long been under Harkonnen rule. Arrakis is the only planet in the known universe where the drug-like fuel-like substance melange, a.k.a. 'spice', can be found: spice is a psychoactive drug that extends the lifespan of its users by centuries, enhances mental and physical capabilities, and allows psychic extension that enable humans to navigate space-time folds, thus being a crucial component in interstellar travel, upon which the far-flung human Imperium is dependent. Spice, basically, is really important and expensive, and can only be found on Arrakis, because giant desert worms that live in the sand excrete it. Fremen, the natives of Arrakis, have a close cultural and historical and religious connection to the worms and the production of spice, but also suffer from living on a desert world where water is incredibly scarce; ancient prophecies among them foretell the coming of a Lisan al-Gaib, a messianic figure who will lead them to take control of the planet's ecology for their good while not destroying the desert worms or the spice-production capacity. These ideas have been planted among them by the meddling Bene Gesserit cult, who shape breeding programs and inter-generational schemes to suit ultimate ends of peace and balance; there is also an ancient prophecy that from among the (exclusively female) members of this cult will arise the Kwisatz Haderach, a male with immense psychic and physical powers. Also among the Bene Gesserit is the Lady Jessica, concubine to Duke Leto of House Atreides, mother of his son and heir, Paul.
   The complexity of the world Frank Herbert has constructed is such that I cannot fully explain the plot without giving this deep explication of its backstory and conditions, but nonetheless; the main events of the novel revolve around the schemes and feuds between Houses Atreides and Harkonnen once the former arrive on Arrakis, an ensuing war in which Paul and Jessica escape to join the Fremen, and Paul's rise to power following his having realised that he is (or can become) both the Lisan al-Gaib and the Kwisatz Haderach - he becomes a revered leader called Muad'Dib, and rides the giant sandworms into battle, leading a jihad that ultimately clashes with the Emperor himself and throws into question the distribution of power across the whole universe, what with the indispensability of spice to its continuity.
   Did that make sense? Probably not. Read the novel.
   In the depth of its concepts and complexity of its systems, Dune provokes a great deal of thought about some enormous themes too.*** The nature of leadership and following someone, loyalty, trust and necessity; how power and religion and economics all intermingle helpfully or unhelpfully depending on the situations and drives of whichever people group you're siding with; the unstoppable nature of these forces, and the challenge to nature that thus arises - do we perceive natural ecosystems as immutable, or do we seek to co-opt or change them to suit the driving engines of the normative struts of human civilisation? What does it mean to share experience, physically, psychically, historically, environmentally; to be part of a people in space and time? What is the place of an individual in the midst of these warring forces?
   These and other questions are thrown up time and time again throughout the course of this immaculate novel.
   I've said enough.


* As a thirteen-year old I was as pathetically fully a self-described nerd as ever there was. Some American friends from church had visitors over from Ohio, and one of them was also a sci-fi fan, so naturally he pitied the bespectacled jumper-wearing kid and spoke to him (me) about our shared passion. We promised each other that we would seek out and read a copy of the book that we each said was currently our favourite; so in pain of honour to this American stranger who I have never seen since, I bought a copy of Dune and have finally, after eight years of reading, finished it, and I feel greatly indebted to him for recommending that I do, not that he'll ever know. Incidentally, the book that he promised he would read upon my recommendation was His Last Command, the ninth book in the Gaunt's Ghosts series by Dan Abnett, a superbly-written hugely-entertaining war series set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe (which, as it happens, derives a huge amount of influence in its paradigmatic sci-fi grounding from Dune, as so Star Wars and Star Trek), which I still love. I do not know whether my American acquaintance ever actually read it though.

** Easily on a par with George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire universe, or J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth; there is literally an encyclopedia dedicated to the wider world created for the epic saga of which Dune is the first instalment. Like, there's even several appendices at the back of the novel explaining the ecological systems and religious traditions and beliefs of the planet Arrakis, the methods and motives of the Bene Gesserit cult, a brief overview of the Imperial Houses and nobility, and then a thirty-page glossary explaining terms and concepts invented for the world. These additions are crucial to fully understanding what's going on in the novel, so deeply entrenched into high-creation is the story - but it never feels needlessly fantastical, because the story and characters are not transplanted into this world (as if from ours) but are part of it, shaped by it.

*** Apparently much of Frank Herbert's inspiration for the themes and concepts was derived from his experiences using psilocybin mushrooms (hey, it was the 1960's), which apparently (not gonna link the source cos it didn't look overly legit, so I'll just leave it at apparently) were also the direct inspiration for the effects of using melange. Something about how the 1960's birthed so much brilliant science-fiction amid so much psychedelic drug use is really interesting. The two are quite definitely linked - I mean, just ask Frank. Wait, wrong link. Frank.

Out of the Saltshaker and into the World

This book, an almost-mythically-good classic on evangelism from Becky Manley-Pippert, was quite excellent. It's one of those books that western middle-class Christians born after 1990 grow up wondering apprehensively when they're going to read.* As such, I've owned a copy for several years and can't remember where from (probably indefinitely borrowed from my dad, as many of my good books on Christianity are) and since the end of 2012 have been steadily chewing through a chapter every other month or so. I have terrible reading habits; for the last five years or so I've rarely had fewer than ten books on the go at once, and I don't pace them equally, so some I finish quickly while others take me literally years. This book was much slower going that I'd have expected given how readable and actually-quite-short it is, but last week I decided to finish it in a final focussed spurt and now I have. Ta-da.
   Anyway, my excruciatingly-dull reading habits aside, this book is an absolute corker. It's about how we should be doing evangelism, but it's not a textbook or guidebook or even methodological primer - it's a deep, wide, reasonable, and well-aimed application of the gospel to ourselves as evangelists. Becky isn't trying to teach us a new model of reaching the unbelievers with maximal efficacy, simply encouraging us in truths we should already know and sensitivities we should already be trying to develop so as to communicate clearly, kindly, and to God's glory. As the book's title recalls, we are the 'salt of the earth'; and this book is an extended series of reminders about ways in which we may become less salty.
   She starts by reminding us of who Jesus is to us, the beautiful intersection of his humanity with his Godhood, and our identity in him defining us to live in a radical relationship with him that can't help but share itself. Our knowing this should spur us to holiness and love and obedience, characteristics of our Christianity that differentiate us from the rest of the world that doesn't know God, and practicing our constancy of being aware of Christ's presence and centrality in our lives helps us grow in these ways. She also reminds us our the implicit need for the gospel in a human life, and that evangelism should be habitual, urgent even, for those who believe it if they truly love the people they are wanting to reach. In the second half of the book she takes a slightly more method-oriented approach, having grounded our reasons for being evangelists in the more theologically-dense first half. Primarily, this doesn't follow a rigorous methodological outline or step-by-step but is essentially based in properly engaging with people. That means being able and willing to have proper involved conversations with them, respecting their views and lifestyles fully enough to see them on their terms so that our arguments and discussions aren't insensitive ballistic missiles but well-discerned polite wrestles. Only if we are standing firm in God's word will our revelation of his truth through the Spirit be honest, and only if we as communicators understand opposing worldviews and perspectives rightly can we recommend accurately the gospel's superiority. She discusses stages in the process of evangelism: 'cultivating the soil' by discerning someone's relevant attitudes, 'planting the seed' by openly discussing Christianity, and 'reaping the harvest' by appealing to seekers (of course, also by appealing in trust to God's power over us and the Spirit's work in seekers' hearts and minds) to decide what they think about Jesus. In such culturally complex times, with many people still caught between modernism and post-modernism, there won't of course be one reliable method to reveal God's truth to people. Faith is an act of the will, but people's conducts vary in their composure between rationality, emotivity, convenience, and a variety of other things that may affect which way their will leans in the end. Becky cites as methods firstly apologetics,** whereby we should be able to argue philosophical and historical reasonable explanations for the case of Christian truth; secondly, alongside this intellectual approach is the experience-grounded mode of story-telling, whereby by recounting our testimonies or narratives from the Bible we can show how Christian truth works itself out in real lives. Also, and importantly, she adds, we must trust in the omnipotent ongoing work of the Holy Spirit; all the mission that we do as individuals is done by it through us anyway, and it also works abundantly and often without our knowing in the lives of those who need God's truth. Ultimately, bringing people to God is God's work, and though we as Christians have a part in it, we only do so as part of his prerogative and plan, so we should be evangelical but also faithful and prayerful. Finally, she discusses the nature of the church as an inclusive gospel-centred missional community; when individual Christian grace-redeemed sinners come together in joy and hope and love to celebrate their salvation, to pray and to worship and to share each others' lives and to further share the gospel that freed them with non-believers; this is powerful witness and testament to God's goodness and glory, and as a vehicle for supporting and enhancing evangelism, is absolutely crucial.
   I felt very challenged and encouraged by this book. Becky's writing is lively and readable but never overly ambitious in what she's arguing; all her points are distillations of gospel truth and common sense put together in ways that make clear our evangelical nature. She peppers the chapters with stories of real conversations she's had over her decades of experience leading people to Christ, so we get glimpses into the actual applications of this God-centred people-sensitive approach to evangelism; how she serves, speaks, responds, prays, loves, sometimes makes mistakes, and mostly trusts God to be at work. It's inspired me into a stronger-than-usual perseverance of intentionality in trying to talk to my friends about the gospel, and praying for God to bring them to him; as fallible as Christians are (as I am) we do need reminders and spurts to refocus our evangelical efforts and our walks with God, though the two go hand-in-hand, and the further one walks with their heavenly Father, the easier it gets for them to keep walking in trust without veering off the path.
   I thank God for Becky and this brilliant book, which in its 27 years of publication must have challenged and encouraged many thousands of Christians to reach out further and harder; God has probably used this book to (directly and indirectly) save thousands more - and I pray that he will continue to do so. If you're a Christian, read this book, and also make the decision now to step out in faith in Jesus and act like the salt you are.


* You know, like John Stott's The Cross of Christ or C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity or Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion (for rebuttals only) or even the Apocrypha (if they're clear-minded and like a challenge).

** Her views on it, taken within the context of the whole book, were pretty similar to those of another book I read recently - though that shouldn't be surprising, as there is a huge amount of convergence between most well-reasoned biblically-led Christian thought.

Taking Ourselves Seriously & Getting It Right

This book, a compilation of Harry Frankfurt's 2004 Tanner Lectures,* was one of my selected secondary readings for an excruciatingly difficult philosophy mini-dissertation which I completed last week (sorry - yes, this post, other than book-specific details and links, is a copy-paste of the last post about Christine Korsgaard's similar book). It was the most intellectually strenuous thing I've ever worked on, but was also really interesting, so despite having handed in the final draft last Wednesday, I've still got my student library card until June 13th so am making the most of it by reading through the texts more thoroughly - it's an important topic and I want to actually understand it somewhat! The book contains two lectures by Frankfurt himself, then critical replies by Christine Korsgaard, Michael Bratman and Meir Dan-Cohen. I only skimmed these reply bits because the bulk of the original idea material is found in the main section and to be honest I've read far too much academic philosophy in the last two months to plough through an extra 51 pages of stuff that didn't fascinate me.

   Anyway, sorry, what's it about? To explain it to someone already familiar with moral philosophy and practical reason would be superfluous as the lectures are quite short and available free online (see link at bottom); to explain it to someone not already quite closely familiar with these topics would be an endeavour far beyond the capacity of time I want to spend on this post. But I'll try, and if it sounds interesting, give it a read below.

   He explores the nature of human agency and practical reasoning, which he argues are dependent on the volitional necessities of reason (as in our faculty of rationally deliberating between ends to decide on courses of action and then working out how to take means to our ends) and love (as in our capacity to care about ends in themselves in the first place, so that we have something as an object capable of propelling us to need to reason practically at all). By 'volitional necessity' I mean aspects of a person's function, as directed by their will, that are completely essential in being able to function in a way recognisable as a person: without the capacities for 'loving' anything we would be unable to adopt anything as ends, which would reduce us to merely being shunted around by whatever instantaneous exogenous desires and impulses assailed us; and without the capacity for rationality we would be unable to weight up and decisively pursue any of the ends that we claim to have, making us inefficacious. The overall model we're left with is considerably more haphazard and than most of the good-sounding ones in theories of practical reason, but this is because Frankfurt has pushed it to include the reality of love as something indispensable to human functioning; and this means that on the whole it comes across as making a great deal of sense.

   I've literally read so many chapters and articles about practical reason and moral psychology recently. It was quite refreshing to sit down and go directly through one book on the topic, especially one that as far as I can see is pretty much right on all points as this one. I feel like I'm actually learning helpful applicable things about what goodness and persons are from philosophy, which does happen sometimes. As I said, this was my last ever essay, so I'm no longer a student of the subject, which is a shame, but my interest will live on - I'll be one of those weird postgrads who takes books from someone else's course out of the library for personal interest reading. But yeh, Harry Frankfurt is a top philosopher, and if my hashed attempt to explain what this book is about hasn't completely put you off, particularly if you're already interested in theories of why people do what they do and how we could rationalise it in a good coherent way, check out these fantastic lectures from the pdf link below.

* The lectures themselves, effectively comprising the entirety of the book, are available for free online here:

http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/f/frankfurt_2005.pdf

The Sources of Normativity

This book, a compilation of Christine Korsgaard's 1996 Tanner Lectures,* was one of my selected core readings for an excruciatingly difficult philosophy mini-dissertation which I completed last week. It was the most intellectually strenuous thing I've ever worked on, but was also really interesting, so despite having handed in the final draft last Wednesday, I've still got my student library card until June 13th so am making the most of it by reading through the texts more thoroughly - it's an important topic and I want to actually understand it somewhat! The book contains four lectures by Korsgaard herself, then critical replies by G.A. Cohen, Raymond Geuss, Thomas Nagel, and Bernard Williams, and finally a reply to these replies from Korsgaard again. I only skimmed these reply bits because the bulk of the original idea material is found in the main section and to be honest I've read far too much academic philosophy in the last two months to plough through an extra 92 pages of stuff that didn't fascinate me.

   Anyway, sorry, what's it about? To explain it to someone already familiar with moral philosophy and practical reason would be superfluous as the lectures are quite short and available free online (see link at bottom); to explain it to someone not already quite closely familiar with these topics would be an endeavour far beyond the capacity of time I want to spend on this post. But I'll try, and if it sounds interesting, give it a read below.

   Normativity is that realm of reality comprised of oughts, shoulds, goods, rights, and so on; conceptual, social, ethical, psychological and philosophical structures that lend purpose and direction to our lives as rational will-directed beings. We're more than mere biological animals following instincts, we have the capability to step back in reflection from our activities and assess our desires, reasons that apply to actions that we could take in given circumstances, and so on, and we assert our self-constituted identity by committing our will to endorsing any of these given reasons for action and acting accordingly. But where do these 'reasons' come from? Korsgaard presents the four main cases that have emerged most plausibly throughout the history of moral philosophy: voluntarism (we are obligated by a legislator whose authority in relationship to us can prompt us to follow their commands), realism (we are obligated by the embeddedness-in-reality of values that give us reasons to act in particular ways), reflective endorsement (we are obligated to act by ourselves when we rationally assess external conditions' relation to our own mental activity to see what we consider would be good for us to do), and Kantian rational autonomy - which she argues emerges as a synthesis of the true aspects of the other three. Her arguments for this are extensive, deep, and compelling. Once having established her slightly-modified interpretation of Kant's model, she discusses how we may consider this to apply and function with our perception of values, our intrinsic value of human and animal life, our rational faculties, and our constitution of ourselves as agents with integrity in our identities based on our conduct - all very interesting and too complex for me to summarise.

   I've literally read so many chapters and articles about practical reason and moral psychology recently. It was quite refreshing to sit down and go directly through one book on the topic, especially one that as far as I can see is pretty much right on all points as this one. I feel like I'm actually learning helpful applicable things about what goodness and persons are from philosophy, which does happen sometimes. As I said, this was my last ever essay, so I'm no longer a student of the subject, which is a shame, but my interest will live on - I'll be one of those weird postgrads who takes books from someone else's course out of the library for personal interest reading. But yeh, Christine Korsgaard is a top philosopher, and if my hashed attempt to explain what this book is about hasn't completely put you off, particularly if you're already interested in theories of why people do what they do and how we could rationalise it in a good coherent way, check out these fantastic lectures from the pdf link below.

* The lectures themselves, effectively comprising the entirety of the book, are available for free online here:

http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/k/korsgaard94.pdf

the Green Party manifesto

Okay, so this isn't technically a book, but it's long enough and interesting enough and important enough that I'm going to do a post about it anyway. The full document, outlining and explaining the Green Party's policies for the UK's general election of earlier this month, is freely available here as an 84-page pdf file. As an avid supporter of the party, I'd accrued a strong familiarity with their policymaking intentions, and I already had a substantial overlap between the visions and values underpinning them and the relevant aspects of my worldview. Of all the prominent parties in the UK the Greens alone are presenting concrete steps toward a complete philosophical overhaul of our broken system, showing the roads we might take to an alternative future for the way we construct our society and economy. I know it's a bit late to persuade anyone to vote for them now, since the predictable bunch of established interests held and even expanded their powerful grip on our unfortunate society. But today I'm having the weekend off uni work (following a horrific exam on Friday) and was feeling glum about the state of current events so I reread the manifesto in its entirety to remind me of some of the things I believe can and should be done, and the reasons why. I'm not going to list them or even overview them here. There's a link to the full manifesto above, go give it a read if you, like me, are disillusioned with the 'main parties'.
   Political engagement is an act of freedom, an act of collective hope and progressive change. Environmental and international global peace is achievable, sustainable economic prosperity for all is achievable, social liberty that empowers and includes everyone is achievable. But we need to start voting for it, and we also need to push for the way we vote to change (check out the Electoral Reform Society, who do some great prominent campaigns to this end), and most importantly we need to realise that democracy is more than just voting. To be an active citizen is to be an activist; organise, educate, mobilise, protest, be involved in problem-solving and reproaching our leaders, we must as a society learn how to create and maintain stable communities, to challenge oppression of all kinds, to run markets and institutions in ways that benefit the most people rather than a few and without ruining the planet, we must be willing to learn new ways of thinking about and doing things and ready to implement them. And yes, this model of being an active citizen sounds like a lot of work, because unfortunately it is. Society is thoroughly messed up and since democracy is (ostensibly) the best form of government it falls to all of us together to try and get it back on track. But this transition is doable. Many are held back by selfishness, laziness, short-sightedness, or most commonly, the pressures of their own place in this broken world, from properly engaging with the struggle for justice. You probably won't agree with everything in the Green Party manifesto (even I don't) but you may agree with enough of their analysis of the wrongs of the world and the need to right them, and to do this, we need the widespread and active support and engagement of people, and giving that to humanity is far more important than giving your vote to any particular party.*


* Although the Green Party's policy aims make it the most consistent with the general struggle for justice, and so as an activist I do still urge you to support them.

What?

Is this book by Mark Kurlansky one of the most genuinely thought-provoking things I've ever read? Does its author, in his desperate emphasis on the primacy of questioning things, literally phrase every sentence in the entire book (including contents, acknowledgements, and all) as a question? While this may seem to be the sort of thing that would become quickly irritating, is his writing style not so eloquent and cheery and the persistence of his running circles around the reader's mind with new and better questions, beckoning them, as they easily can, to follow him onwards, not sufficient to in fact maintain the brilliance of the book? Is the overall effect dramatically horizon-widening, refreshing, exciting?

   What kinds of questions does he ask? Does he ask roughly twenty of them? Am I about to list them?
   How to begin?
   How many?
   How?
   Why?
   What?
   So?
   Nu?
   Where?
   When?
   Isn't it?
   Thralls?
   Huh?
   Is this unlucky?
   Brooklyn?
   Who?
   What did Freud want?
   Should I?
   Do I dare?
   Where are you going?
   What do we hate about children?
   Can it not be argued that he in fact asks many more questions than these, and these are simply the chapter titles restraining the swells and eddies of his thought from spilling out into pure chaotic askiness? (Is that a word? Does it matter? I'm allowed to make them up sometimes, aren't I?) Are these boundaries helpful in steering our way through certain concepts such as the self, existence, and other people's input on our life? Together do they flow, with almost imperceptible seams, as a single winding thread teaching us the value and application of human inquiry?

   Throughout the exercise how does he guide us? How does he draw heavily in places on the great thinkers such as Plato, Confucius, Jesus, René Descartes, Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emily Dickinson, and many others, who in their contributions to philosophy or art or religion were not only answer-givers but primarily and perhaps more importantly question-askers? Are the profound expositions of mystery that these thinkers left behind not answers to the fundamental questions but the mere process of asking the right questions? By this do we find the mystery and let it lead us where our thoughts may? In asking these sorts of questions are we prompted to become better with our own mental reality in seeking joy, with our own human sociality in engaging empathetically, with our own ethical propensity in striving for peace? If more people asked these sorts of questions would everyone be better?

   Does the book open and close with, in German and English respectively, a gorgeous portion of prose from the poet Rilke about the value of asking things? Are we not left with a deep sense of this value by the book itself? Does it enlighten us about the need to be philosophical, the essentiality of inquisitiveness in what it means to be human and to communicate or create? Did I mention that every chapter is also prefaced by a thought-provoking-in-itself little illustration? Would you appreciate those?
   Did I, having bought this book a while ago considering it to be a mere fanciful amusement, then when opening and beginning it last night, suddenly flood with respect for Mark Kurlansky and his daringness to ask so many questions and his comfort and being so good at doing so? Is it strange that though I was meant to be going to sleep and planned on only reading a short while, I got so sucked into the book while reading it aloud that I finished it there and then in one delightful sitting? Why would that be strange if it is such a potent little book?

   Is it true that he actually finishes this book with a simple statement to conclude (do I mean conclude? or do I just mean park where they have come to rest and allow the reader to continue asking if they will?) the roving streams of questions? What is the value in his doing so? Is it because, simply pragmatically, if we are to not only be excellent thinkers, but also adequate doers from time to time, we not only need the innate habit of asking but also to take the occasional answer as good enough for now?

   Should you also read this book to see what I'm on about?

   Yes.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, said the sloth

This book by Eric Carle (of Very Hungry Caterpillar fame) is, yes, a children's book. I have no idea why it is on my university bookshelf, but there we go, it was, and I bemusedly gave it a read over breakfast. It's peak essay season and it's been a while since I read anything on paper other than academic philosophy or economics, so this was a very welcome change.

   The book follows a sloth's perpetual struggle to be recognised by his fellow animals as legitimately purposeful given how slowly (naturally) he does things. Slowly, he crawls along a branch, eats a leaf, falls asleep, and wakes up again. He hangs upside-down all day and night, even in the rain. A howler monkey asks him why he's so slow; a caiman why so quiet, an anteater why so boring. Finally a jaguar asks him why he is so lazy and our eponymous hero snaps. The sloth slowly thinks about a response, and then proceeds to explain (using an impressively extensive list of synonyms for 'slow') that his tranquil modes of conduct are not indicative of laziness, but of a calmer approach to life; he enjoys taking his time to think about things and do them thoroughly and carefully at an unhurried pace, so that he can better appreciate them. Quite a positive mellow message, which I found at considerable odds with my mindset as I read it - today I've finished bashing out the last 4000 words of my final economics essay, and so the whole day has been quite an unslothlike rush of effort.

   The illustrations are great; textured patches and splashes of colour making up a wide cast of rainforest animals (there's a double-page spread at the back of every animal that features), which include such exotic highlights as the tapir, armadillo, and hoatzin. Also, there's a short foreword by legendary zoologist Jane Goodall about her love for sloths. While this bit was not quite as child-readable (she goes into some depth explaining certain aspects of sloth behaviour), I as a nature-fan still found it very enjoyable and enlightening. Did you know that sloths only poo and wee once a week? And they can swim!
   Anyway. As a twenty-one year old scatterbrained eccentric I am in no real position to properly recommend children's books, but I rather liked reading this one, and as a child I was always a fan of animals and pictures, and this book has them both in delightful spades, tied together with a message for us all to slow down.

Justice, Gender and the Family

This book, a classic feminist polemic from philosopher Susan Moller Okin, was, I'll admit, not read by free choice but is the core text for an essay I've been bashing out over the last several days. As such, as is generally the case when I'm writing posts about books I've already written loads about, I'll be brief. It's a good book though.*
   Okin's aim throughout the book is effectively applying feminist critiques to theories of political justice, to show their insufficiency in properly accounting for an equitable society once we realise that women are in the picture. She opens with a compelling argument that the family, the smallest unit within which sociological power relations form and function, is not beyond the scope of political theories of justice. Then turning to prominent theories of justice to see how well they can adapt to this, she all but guts the tradition-based and shared-value-based systems of communitarianism on the grounds that they allow for existing patriarchal dominance to retain its power; libertarianism fares even worse, with its core concepts of self-ownership and property rights implying a ridiculous dystopia of matriarchal slavery were reproduction as an activity to be brought within the considerations of its radical individualism. Communitarianism and libertarianism then, to be plausible as theories of social justice, must undergo enormous adaptation to explain where women fit in.
   More plausible though is liberalism, specifically John Rawls's model. Rawlsian justice entails placing people behind a 'veil of ignorance', such that they do not know what societal characteristics they will have - any class, race, ability, opinion, or similar endowment that would affect how well they'll cope with whatever benefits or responsibilities an average role in society, is unknown to them, and as such, their deliberations about how best to structure the society they're about to enter will be unanimously in favour of ensuring fair equality of opportunity for everyone, especially those with the least advantage. (I know it's complex, it's philosophy, sorry - check out the link above for a better academic explanation.) Unfortunately for women, Rawls neglected to mention sex as one of these characteristics that would be left unknown! Okin argues that with the small step of adding that to the pile of morally-contingent factors behind the 'veil of ignorance', the deciders of justice would radically widen the scope of their notions of how best to allocate certain gender-associative responsibilities and benefits, such as the division of labour between income-earnings of [men's] work, and unpaid homekeeping and childcare roles [women's] work. Family structures would be reshaped completely, making space in both public work and domestic work for men and women to take up equal parts in each, breaking down the dichotomy between the spheres, and fundamentally challenging the oppressive dominative norms of the patriarchy whereby assumptions made about people based on their biological sex determine their liberties. Effectively, to achieve social justice we would abolish gender.
   She follows this argument with a statistical and sociological overview of some of the real sources and outcomes of female vulnerability within existing marital structures - if you're not convinced that gender norms as they currently stand are bad for women, check out this chapter and maybe also this other book - and a final chapter proposing some steps that could be taken policy-wise to establishing a future society free of the constraints of gender.
   Okin's call for the complete removal of a normative institution older than human history is then very much in touch with the feminist-tumblr zeitgeist. That said though, contemporary feminists (largely bloggers rather than philosophers)** tend to take up arms to this cause on the grounds of individual identity formation, whereas she took a much sturdier, more objective route. She has laid out a dazzlingly-argued case about how we can best achieve socioeconomic justice, considering the allocations of independence, responsibility, prestige, and security in how we balance family and work. In terms of how well it makes its point, it's probably one of the best, most coherent, most potent books I've ever read. Susan Moller Okin has completely convinced me that gender shouldn't be a thing - and that's not to say I didn't wrestle with it, because I tried. If you have any interest in issues of sex and gender, or more widely of sociopolitical justice, this book should definitely be on your list.


* I feel also like its smell deserves a mention. If you're the kind of person who appreciates a good-smelling book then you'd have loved the pervasive woody waft of this particular copy. Perhaps because it's been sat unopened for up to twenty-six years (nah, someone must have taken it out at some point, even though there are seventeen other copies of it) - if you're really keen, and also happen to be fortunate enough to be a student at Sheffield Uni, you can go find and sniff it in the IC. Though I realise following a blogger's advice of seeking out a book for the sole purpose of smelling it may be weird, so while you're there take it out and read it.

** In case this comes across the wrong way, let me clarify - yes, of course I intend to be disparaging towards tumblr-culture. Like most internet subcultures, it annoys me. That doesn't in the slightest detract from how much I approvingly support the resurgence of interest in and importance of feminism to public discussion though.

23 Things they don't tell you about Capitalism

This book, by Cambridge professor of economics Ha-Joon Chang, is just excellent. I acquired it during a spate of book-buying during the early days of my economics A-level, when the subject was still academically (rather than just generally) exciting to me. Then - what, four years ago now, yikes - I breezed through it quite carelessly, but having read his more recent book (which was brilliant) and heard him speak at a Manchester conference for student societies campaigning for reform of economics education last month (which was also brilliant), I decided to give it a proper attempt. Also, my own branch of the student campaign for reform of economics education is hosting a talk by him (this Wednesday, actually), so I finished it considerably quicker than I usually do non-fiction books.

   It's a fantastic book. High depth of research, socially and pragmatically grounded, well-argued and critically thought, taking a pluralistic interdisciplinary approach to economic issues; he handles the subject as it should be handled.* He also writes extremely readably and accessibly, amusingly even (he does pepper his paragraphs with brief anecdotes or pop culture references, not to an annoying or distracting extent, but they are sometimes clumsy, but on the whole he writes with clarity, wit, and a vivacious charm), digesting fairly hefty socioeconomic issues into laypersons' terms without dumbing them down or misrepresenting their complexity. Like his other book (see *), it's great for those who are interested in economics but feel alienated by its impenetrable elitism and jargon - though while his other book is an introduction/manual, this (as its title may suggest) is out-and-out mythbusting. Ha-Joon, in a deft ten-pages or so each, outlines the surprisingly straightforward cases for 23 things about our current system of freemarket capitalism which if were widely known would radically alter political and corporate activity. They are:

1. There is no such thing as a free market
2. Companies should not be run in the interests of their owners
3. Most people in rich countries are paid more than they should be
4. The washing machine has changed the world more than the internet has
5. Assume the worst about people and you get the worst
6. Greater macroeconomic stability has not made the world economy more stable
7. Freemarket policies rarely make poor countries rich
8. Capital has a nationality
9. We do not live in a post-industrial age
10. The US does not have the highest living standard in the world
11. Africa is not destined for underdevelopment
12. Governments can pick winners
13. Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer
14. US managers are over-priced
15. People in poor countries are more entrepreneurial than people in rich countries
16. We are not smart enough to leave things to the market
17. More education in itself is not going to make a country richer
18. What is good for General Motors is not necessarily good for the United States
19. Despite the fall of communism, we are still living in planned economies
20. Equality of opportunity may not be fair
21. Big government makes people more open to change
22. Financial markets need to become less, not more, efficient
23. Good economic policy does not require good economists

   Sound interesting? Oh of course.

   Sound like the exact opposite of what most mainstream pro-establishment-remora-fish economists tend to say on these matters? Why, yes.

   Sound plausible, having weighed up evidence, theory, and arguments from economics, politics, sociology, psychology, history, ethics, and the various other fields one must draw from and think in to make proper judgements about these issues? Yes. All of them do.

   The 23rd thing is an excellent critique of current vested interests in economic policy-making and education. The reason he can make such cogent points in direct contrast to the myths he busts is because 'economics' as a discipline has lost its way, has become enslaved as an apologist for the status quo, enforcing its dogma by mathematics and abstract diagrams, ignoring any inconvenient misalignment of theory and reality. He does economics properly by recognising its limitations and uses, and complementing it with other tools of thought to tell better truths about economic issues. Though politically controversial topics, these are not opinions he's voicing; these are calmly-assessed analyses and presentations of facts, more often than not weighted with ethical implications. It'd be a great book to give to someone with right-wing socioeconomic views (assuming they were open-minded enough to properly engage true stuff) as a challenge. These assertions that sound like leftist spoutings are actually just statements about economic reality. It reminds me of the simple brilliance of evidence-based policymaking, which I discussed in my post about The Spirit Level.

   Anyone with but a newswatcher's understanding of the economy has, most probably, been deceived about how quite a lot of it works. There's a two-fold effect to this misinformation; established elites propagate myths about the world economy that aid their positions of wealth and power, and mainstream academic economics (doubtless aided by funding from the aforementioned top-class citizens) has become narrowed and corrupt in the way it approaches any issue, leading to often radically ineffectual and often arguably unethical conclusions about them. Because of this, not even economists are much help.** Ha-Joon makes an excellent case for our need to take a critical stand toward the conventional wisdom of pseudo-economists, as in the dismal science if we are better informed and better able to understand the issues we have a much clearer means of making ethically right sociopolitical choices.
   If you think you understand economic issues because you've seen a Robert Peston documentary or two, read this book. If you don't even have a layperson's understanding of economics, I still recommend you read it, but would advise first checking out his other book (see *) as a helpful clear-headed overview of the subject and how to think in it.

   

* For more on proper approaches to economics, especially public understanding of it, check out my post about his other book, Economics: the User's Guide. There are also relevant resources from the international network of campaigners, Rethinking Economics.

** Our lecturer for a module called The International Economy asked the class (third-year economics students, mind you) earlier this year who could explain, even superficially, how the financial crisis happened. Less than a fifth raised their hand. Have we learned nothing?

   Imagine if psychology were dominated by a single school of thought (fortunately, it isn't). Then, imagine tens of millions of people around the world go insane in ways that no mainstream psychologist can properly rationalise given their existing theories of the human mind. Would those theories and models continue to have as much worth? Demonstrably not, as they failed to predict and even fail to satisfactorily explain an enormous series of catastrophic psychological events. Handfuls of heterodox psychologists, though disreputed in academic circles for espousing 'implausible' or 'outdated' theories about mental activity, had (weirdly enough) predicted the 'Insanity Crisis' decades earlier, and using their alternative schools of thought and models are able to form a variety of coherent, overlapping explanations for what caused it and how it might be prevented from reoccurring. However, seven years after the Insanity Crisis, psychology students are taught the exact same mainstream models, policymakers are informed using those exact same mainstream theories, and psychologists all over the world despair that their noble and important science has become the object of so much public distrust and disillusionment.
   Economics's reaction to the 2008 crash was, cheesy thought experiment aside, pretty much this absurd.