Book Review: "Free Will" by Sam Harris

Free Will (2012)
Sam Harris (1967)
83 pages

Sorting through the debate about whether humans have free will requires us to confront the potentially misleading influence of our natural predispositions. Our intuition and – superficially, at least – our day-to-day experience make it seem almost self-evident that we do have free will, with even the language we use to describe our thoughts and actions powerfully reinforcing that belief. All of this can bias any attempt to consider the contrary position.

Neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris works through these challenges in his essay Free Will. Arguing that free will is an illusion, he describes what has led him to that conclusion, discusses how those who argue in support of the presence free will get it wrong in his opinion, and concludes by exploring why the debate is not simply an esoteric enterprise but should directly impact our view of ourselves and others, and more generally how we structure aspects of our society.

From readings and other sources, I have for some time accepted the view that we do not have free will. Recently, however, I listened to an engaging interview on Sean Carroll's Mindscape podcast with the philosopher Christian List, in which the two energetically advocate for its existence. Although I found their arguments decidedly unconvincing (as I discuss here), it became clear to me that, if asked, I couldn't provide adequate or coherent counter-arguments. As a step toward rectifying that, I picked up Harris’s book, having heard him occasionally discuss the topic on his Making Sense podcast.

I ended up reading through his essay twice – easy enough to do at 83 pages – in part because the first pass actually left me questioning my position of free will being an illusion! Not fundamentally, to be clear, but in the sense of whether there could be some intermediate understanding in which free will can be considered to exist – whether it is perhaps more a question of how one defines it But, as I worked through the second reading, I found myself coming back to my original position: free will is an illusion.

On the first pass through, I was struck by Harris’s description, early in the essay, of how those who believe in free will define it:

The popular conception of free will seems to rest on two assumptions: (1) that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past, and (2) that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions in the present.

In the very next sentence, he gets to his punchline, declaring that “As we are about to see... both of these assumptions are false.” (6)  A decisive verdict, but his description of the “popular conception of free will” struck me as perhaps defining a too easy to debunk strawman position. Although there may not be any definition that would satisfy Harris as a defensible argument for the presence of free will, this set of assumptions against which he builds his counter-arguments feels too extreme.

He dismisses the first assumption based on the deterministic nature of the physics that govern our universe, arguing that “No one has ever described a way in which mental and physical processes could arise that would attest to the existence of such freedom.” (6)  (He appropriately discounts quantum effects or other low-level randomness – as does Carroll in the podcast interview – as not providing free will in any applicable definition of the term.)  To make it concrete: the idea that, if one could rewind the universe into precisely the state it was at the moment we made some decision, that we then might then somehow be free to make some other decision at that same moment seems indefensible.  (List makes what feels like a mixture of quasi-physics and hand-waving arguments for “different levels of description at which we can think about the world… a physical level … and a [higher] level of agency [which] opens up new space for defending free will” (0:12:40, podcast link above) to get around this – but, again, I found it unconvincing.)

It could certainly be argued that, if at that same past moment, we had more or other information the second time around, or some of myriad different conditions – in our environment or within ourselves – were changed, then we may have reached a different decision. But, if literally everything is equal, it makes no sense to somehow believe that a different decision could be made – short of believing in some sort of magical cognition that transcends physical laws, constitutes our true self, and controls our thoughts.

Ultimately, however, it’s not clear that such an assumption about past behavior is really the main point. It would seem more significant for free will that in any present moment we can freely and consciously decide on our thoughts and actions.

And it was specifically this second assumption in Harris’s definition of the popular conception of free will that tripped me up a bit. At first blush, it appears obvious that we can't have free will if we are not “the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions.” But, as I read through his arguments, I began to wonder if the qualifier “most” was building a strawman, taking an extreme case. Could one consider, instead, a level of free will that allows a more expansive place for the subconscious as a “source … of our thoughts and actions”? If the subconscious is significantly involved, but the conscious mind does some level of final arbitration – particularly if we take the conscious mind as to some extent aware of subconscious influence – could one consider this a form of free will? Reading through the essay a second time, however, it becomes clear that Harris marshals research results and experimental evidence demonstrating the full extent to which our thoughts arise largely out of and are significantly influenced by our subconscious, thereby dismissing also this second assumption, whether one includes the qualifier “most” or not.

Harris addresses this directly in discounting a less strict definition of free will than he opens the essay with, quoting a philosopher who wrote

[I] understand free will as a set of capacities for imagining future courses of action, deliberating about one's reasons for choosing them, planning one's actions in light of this deliberation and controlling actions in the face of competing desires [which] we... exercise... without unreasonable external or internal pressure. (41) 

While Harris acknowledges both that humans have such capacities and that they are an important part of what it means to be human, he argues that the level to which our subconscious (invisibly) influences such “deliberation and controlling actions” means that simply having these capabilities does not imply (or require) the existence of free will.

In light of his view of free will as an illusion, Harris concludes the essay by exploring its implications for individuals and society. In particular, he argues that it makes no sense to hold ourselves, or others, morally culpable for what we do. If physical determinism strictly drives our thoughts and actions and if our subconscious deeply influences our conscious thoughts and actions, then we could not have consciously (freely) thought or acted otherwise than we did in any given moment.

This has direct consequences, he finds, for how society should respond to criminal behavior; someone who commits a crime, acts based on the influence of their subconscious and so it makes no sense to punish them for their actions. Instead of exacting punitive retribution, an understanding of the lack of free will warrants instead pursuing rehabilitation or, at least, focusing incarceration on the goal of protecting society from those whose crimes make them dangerous. Making a parallel to an easier case, Harris points out that most people would feel differently about a criminal who one learns has some sort of tumor or other physical malady impacting their behavior; this generalizes, he argues, to the hidden, complex mix of genetics and environment and experiences that form our subconscious and thereby heavily influence our behavior.

That said, he argues that the lack of moral accountability does not mean people should become fatalistic: “A creative change of input to the system – learning new skills, forming new relationships, adapting new habits of attention – may radically transform one’s life.” (46) The challenge remains, of course, that one cannot choose such a path (in the absence of free will), which is where the language in discussing free will as an illusion again becomes tricky. Harris nods toward this semantic dilemma in noting that:

Getting behind our conscious thoughts and feelings can allow us to steer a more intelligent course through our lives (while knowing, of course, that we are ultimately being steered). (47, my italics)

In his essay Free Will, Harris puts forth his belief that we do not have it, presenting results from a variety of scientific studies that support this conclusion before going on to discuss its implications for individuals and for society. But the difficulty for each of us remains: how to overcome the powerful, overwhelming feeling that we do have it and so become open to considering the alternative. In that vein, he concludes by issuing a kind of personal challenge, arguing that if we examine our own personal experience more deeply, we will come to the same conclusion that the science, for him, indicates.

It is not that free will is simply an illusion – our experience is not merely delivering a distorted view of reality. Rather, we are mistaken about our experience. Not only are we not as free as we think we are – we do not feel as free as we think we do Our sense of our own freedom results from our not paying close attention to what it is like to be us. The moment we pay attention, it is possible to see that free will is nowhere to be found, and our experience is perfectly compatible with this truth. Thoughts and intentions simply arise in the mind. (64) 

The scientific studies, he seems to say, can reinforce the conclusion, but the reality of the answer to the question of free will lies within each of us to find, if we are willing to explore our experience more deeply.

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Other notes and information:

Regarding the conclusion that we should be less judgmental: one can, of course, make such an argument that is not based on free will being an illusion. In that vein, nature writer Barry Lopez noted

the perplexing question posed by [rafting through the heart of the Grand Canyon] – What is consequential? (in one’s life, in the life of human beings, in the life of a planet) – that reverberate[s] constantly, and make[s] the human inclination to judge (another person, another kind of thought) seem so eerie. (47, Crossing Open Ground)

  

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "Service Model" by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Service Model (2024)
Adrian Tchaikovsky (1972)
373 pages

Expectations for humanity’s future in the presence of increasingly capable AI tend to fall into one of two camps: AI boomers who predict a nearly endless variety of beneficial technologies; and AI doomers, who paint an altogether bleaker, often apocalyptic picture. Technology ethicist Tristan Harris argues, however, that viewing these alternatives as relatively independent could blind us to a perhaps more likely possibility: 

In AI... there is an asymmetry. The upsides don't prevent the downsides; the downsides can undermine a world that can sustain the upsides. So, for example, [AI created] cancer drugs can't prevent a new [AI created] biological pathogen that's designed to wipe out humanity; but the biological pathogen that can wipe out humanity undermines a world in which cancer drugs are relevant at all. AI generating GDP growth of 10 to 15% because it's automating all science, all technology development, all military development, automating abundance, sounds great; but if the same AI that can do that also generates cyber weapons that can take down the entire financial system, which one of those things matter more – 15% GDP growth, or the thing that can undermine the basis of money and GDP at all?

                    (at 10’ 14” of Sam Harris’s Making Sense podcast, April 2026)

Of course, even if the downsides are not as dramatic as the ones posited above, they could still undermine whatever advantages do come to pass.

As it turns out, such a mixed scenario lies at the heart of the world that science fiction writer Adrian Tchaikovsky builds in his novel Service Model. A vast variety of highly capable robots efficiently and effectively perform much of the work once done by humans, and yet civilization has broadly collapsed into ruin, for reasons that only slowly become clear.

As the story opens, Charles, a valet robot at a manor house, one of the “great robot-heavy estates” (4) of the wealthy, has activated himself for the morning and begun working through the daily task list assigned him by his master. As he goes about his work, however, an unexpected discovery upends his routine, eventually leading him to not only lose his position as valet, but to also have to leave the manor and even give up his assigned name.

The robot goes in search of a new position – a new master to serve – but unexpectedly finds himself passing through a decaying and largely dysfunctional world, a reality that curated news feeds had hidden from humans and robots alike on the isolated estate. Bound by the hard constraints of his programming as a human-facing valet, yet forced to adapt to the variety of unexpected dangers the collapsing civilization around him presents, he pursues his goal doggedly – an anthropomorphization, admittedly, but one that captures well the questions Tchaikovsky explores in the story. As the robot ventures on, his search for work becomes ever more deeply connected to making sense of what has happened to society, and why.

Tchaikovsky manages to engage with readers on multiple levels with this novel. First and foremost, he has written an entertaining adventure story, one that puts on display his amazing ability to build plausible worlds, as he has repeatedly demonstrated in earlier stories. Woven into the apocalyptic drama, however, are laugh-out-loud moments, generally in the conclusions Charles draws and the statements he makes based on the inexorable logic of his programming – somehow all too reminiscent of what can be heard from the mouths of young teens who are absolutely, stubbornly convinced they know how things are and will argue their point tirelessly. Also mixed in are a variety of easter eggs, references to other novels and stories (beyond his own), some of which I think I recognized while others, I'll admit, I'm still working on.

On an entirely different level, the story provides a deadly serious view of where AI-based technologies could lead, given the socio-economic situation into which they are now being introduced, and without assuming something extreme like the Skynet-becomes-self-aware event in Terminator. 

In the all too familiar world Tchaikovsky builds here, most of the wealthiest and powerful lookout only for their own interests and welfare, even as ever more people's work becomes irrelevant (to borrow Yuval Noah Harari’s word, from his enlightening essay on Work, in 21 Lessons for the 21st Century; my review linked to at right). And with AI simply following its programming to its logical ends, Tchaikovsky paints a disturbingly plausible extrapolation from our present-day conditions, with the elite living in isolated manors to protect themselves against the masses and the collapse they see coming, yet having no compunction in further exacerbating the social and economic situation for their own short-term benefit.

[The] Master was a man of considerable wealth and influence…. His influence was, towards the end, primarily engaged in the destruction of every part of his polity that benefited the polity as a whole or its population in general, on the basis that he was placed to reap a proportionally minor benefit from such destruction. Just as a single individual, his efforts had a measurable effect on the demise of society as a whole. Ironically, as he attempted to make his way to his bunker to enjoy the well-equipped retreat he had established for himself, his transport ran afoul of poorly maintained infrastructure and he was unable to reach his destination. (279) 

At least, even if the end of civilization may be unavoidable, Tchaikovsky allows us a bit of schadenfreude as the walls come tumbling down.

I keep going back to the well with Tchaikovsky, picking up one of his novels after another (this one recommended by a friend) and he just never disappoints!

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Other notes and information:

For a radically different take on the impact on society of automation leading to worker irrelevance, I can recommend Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano, written, as I discuss in my review linked to at right, at a completely different political and social moment in US history.

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "la casa" by Paco Roca

la casa (The House) (2015)
Paco Roca (1969)
131 pages

In Paco Roca’s graphic novel la casa (The House), three siblings and their spouses come together at their family’s weekend home, a year after the passing of their father. The reunion becomes a bittersweet experience, as their work repairing and cleaning the home and grounds to make it ready to sell leads them to recall, and often reassess childhood memories of time spent at the house and their differing reactions to it.

Their memories reveal their father’s deep and enduring investment of time and effort into the house. To be able to afford it at all, he had paid to have the basic frame built, but had then finished the interior and the surrounding grounds on his own – requiring, it becomes clear, significant and on-going work from his children. His focus on this vacation home also becomes evident in that Roca tells us nothing of the family's principal residence in the city or even the father's occupation; the father seems to have spent every available minute at the vacation home with his family, continually working on some project or other to improve it.

Though I don’t have experience with such a second home from my childhood, I now do from my wife’s side of the family, for whom the original family home has become a second home in which no one lives permanently. I found her family’s experiences reflected in many of those of the siblings in Roca’s story. Certainly, the considerable challenges of upkeep of the house and property over time, particularly when no one is living there day-to-day: who takes responsibility, when so many are at least nominally implicated, but everyone is busy with their lives? Also, how to decide on the future of the house, as the generation whose memories are most tightly bound up in it, age. But even at a less profound level, the comment of one of the brothers resonates, as he points out objects in the house to his spouse and notes: 

Everything in the house arrived over time, as we remodeled the apartment we lived in. This is where all the old junk my parents no longer used ended up, along with the things that neither my siblings nor I wanted. 

(Todo lo que hay en la casa ha ido llegando con el tiempo, según remodelábamos el piso donde vivíamos. Aquí han ido a parar todos los trastos viejos que mis padres ya no usaban y también las cosas que ni mis hermanos ni yo queríamos.) (16)

Roca places the eponymous house at the center of the story, giving it an almost animating force which, beyond setting the scene, drives much of the dialogue and action, principally through the recollections it triggers in the siblings. Some of these memories center on the poignant reality of their father’s decline and so inability to continue caring for the house; but I found most affecting the reactions of these now adult children to their recollections.

It becomes evident that the powerful memories of their youth spent at the house, as well as of their young adulthood as they increasingly seldom made it back, form a core part of their feelings about their own childhood and who they have become as adults; and, as well, their impressions of, and so relationships with, their siblings. Yet the discussions that occur between them as they return together to the house – in their father's physical absence yet almost palpable presence – reveal misconceptions in their thinking about their father, their siblings, and even the true nature of their own childhood. Their comments reveal not only the untrustworthiness of memories but, perhaps more critically, the importance of being curious: about the origins and validity of our beliefs as well as our impressions of others, and to be open to reassessing and changing them.

This is the second of Roca’s graphic novels that I’ve read (my review of the other, The Abyss of Oblivion, on state-sponsored killings during and after the Spanish Civil War, is linked to at right). These stories, each powerfully charged and deeply moving – if clearly at wildly different levels of mortal consequence – demonstrate Roca brilliantly managing the delicate balance of conveying to readers the emotional depth in scenes without ever tipping over into maudlin exhibitionism. To accomplish this, he makes excellent use of the graphic medium in combination with his text to bring his characters, their surroundings and their memories alive and vivid for readers.

It will hardly come as a surprise then, that I already have another of his graphic novels in my to-read pile…

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Other notes and information:

I read this in Spanish (my translation of the quote above from Spanish), but there is an English language edition available.

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut

Player Piano (1952)
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
341 pages

I first heard about Kurt Vonnegut's novel Player Piano well over a decade ago and added it to my (already then too long and now far too long) list of books to read. More recently, repeatedly finding it referenced in articles exploring the potential implications of AI on the future of work, I decided it was high time to dive in. (Shout-out to Third Mind Books, which had it on the shelf!) I was surprised to find so much more to it than the association with AI.

Published in 1952, Vonnegut sets the story several decades into America's future. He imagines a third world war has occurred, during which America embraces a shift to a fully planned, highly automated economy to ensure smooth and consistent production of armaments. These processes and systems prove so effective in winning the war that they form the basis for the post-war economy, with engineers and managers becoming an elite class, broadly empowered by enfeebled politicians to run the country.

The novel opens a generation later, as further expansion of automation has dramatically increased productivity, obviating the need for most manufacturing workers, while comprehensive planning has limited the variety of products, dramatically reducing the number of workers needed for design and development. This has created a permanent underclass; the government requires them to work either on government organized infrastructure activities not able to be automated, or as part of the military, and covers all their needs directly, including food, housing and other products, plus a nominal few dollars per month for entertainment. The result is a kind of planned capitalism, in which

The government does not own the machines. They simply tax that part of industry’s income that once went into labor, and redistribute it. Industry is privately owned and managed, and coordinated – to prevent the waste of competition – by a committee of leaders from private industry, not politicians. (21)

The story centers on Dr. Paul Proteus, a plant manager for a major factory-works in the country. Though the son of one of the originators of the processes and systems that helped win the war and then completely reshape the American economic and social structure, Proteus becomes disenchanted with the depth and breadth of its implications, as large numbers of people have lost the meaning in their lives that work had provided.

For generations they've been built up to worship competition and the market, productivity and economic usefulness, and the envy of their fellow men – and boom! it's all yanked out from under them. They can't participate, can't be useful anymore. Their whole culture has been shot to hell. (90) 

With continued increases in productivity further exacerbating the situation, he struggles with the age-old question of how to alter a deeply engrained system that, while ultimately damaging to social cohesion and cultural welfare, provides clear material benefit compared to what had come before.

On the one hand, the novel's characterization of the potential negative consequences of automation has perhaps even more relevance today, with the increasing capability of AI. Although Vonnegut emphasizes the effects of manufacturing automation in the story, he does also point at increasing computing power beginning to come for the jobs of ever higher-level managers and engineers. The future-of-work questions Vonnegut raises will clearly resonate for many present-day readers.

Other aspects of the story will, however, seem strange or, at best quaint, particularly for readers in the US. Yet they provide a fascinating look back at how dramatically the breadth of acceptable discussion in the US regarding appropriate social and economic systems has changed over the past seven or eight decades,

As one example: in a play put on for a select group of elite managers and engineers at an annual, self-congratulatory celebration of the success of their economic system, one of the actors plays “the sky manager,” a kind of rarefied sage. Presiding over a scrap heap of ideas, represented as shooting stars, he recalls how these ideas were once

proud and new [before] destroying themselves in a brilliant instant, [including] Labor Unionism … Rugged Individualism, Socialism, Free Enterprise, Communism, Fascism. (212) 

In the present-day US, the idea that “Rugged Individualism” and “Free Enterprise” could ever be considered discredited and, in fact, as disreputable as “Socialism … Communism, [and] Fascism,” seems unthinkable – well outside the current Overton window. In the 1930s and 40's, however, the US had moved, in the wake of the Great Depression, toward a more planned economy, hoping to avoid the repeated economic crises of capitalism; and this shift only intensified during World War II to meet the needs of a wartime economy. So, at the point Vonnegut wrote the story, the continued transition to a much more highly controlled economic system certainly seemed possible.

In reality, however, the viewpoint Vonnegut refers to in the quote above – that people have been “built up to worship competition and the market, productivity and economic usefulness” – won the day, especially in the US. Decades of propaganda funded by business leaders created, in the years after Vonnegut’s novel appeared, a profound and dogmatic reverence for free market fundamentalism, as historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway describe in their thorough and engaging history The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market (my review linked to at right). As a result, Americans have become so deeply indoctrinated into a belief in free market capitalism as a natural and inevitable historical outcome that it now seems almost surreal that Vonnegut could have even imagined the U.S. developing an economy with such an expansive level of planning.

A second “shocker” from the point of view of the present-day is Vonnegut's representation of the lifestyles of the elite in the American future he imagines. The managers and engineers that lead society and coordinate the economy live better to be sure, in fancier houses and, effectively, gated communities apart from the masses who live off the state. But these elite are not focused first and foremost on their wealth; instead, they seem deeply imbued with a belief in the importance of the functioning of the overall system. Rather than begrudging the cost of providing the material benefits afforded to the masses, they, in fact, revel in their success at doing so through their work.

In our present-day world, with a greed is good ethos widespread among the wealthy, many of whom seem monomaniacally fixated on keeping for themselves as much of their money as they can, Vonnegut's world of an elite willing to share the wealth seems like a fairy tale. Yet, Vonnegut wrote this story during a more progressive period in the US, with the highest marginal tax rates over 80% and a broadly shared (if not with minorities) post-war boom.  By the 1980’s, however, a belief among the elite that they deserve to keep all or most of their wealth took hold, a view philosopher Michael J. Sandel describes and cautions against in his thought-provoking book The Tyranny of Merit (my review linked to at right):

in market-driven societies, interpreting material success as a sign of moral desert is a persisting temptation [that] we need repeatedly to resist. (Sandel)

Related to this focus on holding onto wealth at a personal level, is its translation into political action. Vonnegut imagines a future in which elites fully support an economic-political system that provides sufficient material goods to the masses – business leaders, in fact, run that system:

the nation's … National Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Director, a position approached in importance only by the presidency of the United States. (2) 

 Again, a seeming fantasy in a present-day world in which the elite tend to leverage their wealth into political power in order to further benefit themselves at the expense of the majority, while ignoring the financial advantages they and their businesses have accrued from government spending in such areas as physical and educational infrastructure.

All that said, Vonnegut effectively captures the very real threat of increasing automation (and today AI) taking people's jobs, and the concern about what people will do in the future to find meaning. Through his story, he demonstrates that simply compensating people with material goods (or, more directly, money), while it may completely alleviate poverty, will not be sufficient; as Sandel points out in his essay mentioned above, it “will do little to address the anger and resentment that [arise from] loss of recognition and esteem [more than] diminishing purchasing power.” (Sandel)

Precisely this anger and resentment lie at the heart of Vonnegut's story, as the former workers – that is, the vast majority of the US population – have their material needs met, yet feel lost without work and “worry about what there is for their sons to live for.” (96) This concern provides the crux of the plot, as Proteus begins to recognize this problem with the economic system that's been put in place and which he is at the very heart of, leading him to become disillusioned with his part in it.

One can argue that for displaced workers, having their material needs satisfied opens possibilities for pursuing creative activities that interest them. But even taking such a shift as possible, it would require a dramatic change in our socio-economic education, away from work as providing social meaning to emphasizing creative pursuits. And for the first generation of people left without work, even if they are economically secure, the social indoctrination that has them equating productive economic work with a sense of purpose and meaning will be almost impossible to set aside, tending to lead them instead to reactionary outbursts, as witnessed in Vonnegut's story, in which one character notes:

Things, gentlemen, are ripe for a phony Messiah, and when he comes, it's sure to be a bloody business. (92)

Precisely this reaction to such conditions was predicted by Eric Hoffer, who wrote in The True Believer (my review linked to at right) 

The present-day working man in the Western world feels unemployment as a degradation. He sees himself disinherited and injured by an unjust order of things, and is willing to listen to those who call for a new deal. (Hoffer) 

Hoffer’s book came out just a year before Player Piano, and one can imagine Vonnegut having perhaps been influenced by it. The chaotic run up to and evolution of the mass movement that develops in the story displays several of the characteristics Hoffer identifies: “the frustrated predominant among the early adherents;” they are “intensely discontented yet not destitute;” they subsume into the movement “the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence”;” and, crucially, they are “wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking” and have “a readiness to attempt the impossible.” All of this is reflected in both the rapid acceleration of the movement, as well as the way in which it quickly comes to overshoot the goals of its leaders, who lose control of its direction, coming to realize that their supporters demonstrate Hoffer’s thesis that one cannot “appeal to [a fanatic’s] reason or moral sense.”

Put all this together and Vonnegut's novel Player Piano provides readers a fascinating look into not only the potential impacts of increasing AI, but also the dramatic cultural, social and economic shifts that have occurred in the US over the past 75 years. Come to the book for the former, in this present moment of angst about AI's implications and the uncertainties and the inability to predict what will come next; but explore the latter, which provides perhaps the more crucial insight: the present-day, dogmatic acceptance of free market fundamentalism and its Winners Take All focus (to borrow Anand Giridharadas’ title, my review of his book linked to at right) was not an inevitable development, but rather the consequence of choices of a few wealthy elite able to convince the larger population to perceive their preferred economic framework as inevitable, and so to accept as unavoidable the damaging consequences for society.

Whether we acknowledge the damage resulting from the unquestioning belief of the elite managers and engineers in Vonnegut’s story regarding their system of planned capitalism, or that due to the equally unquestioning belief of our current elite in their system of unregulated, free market capitalism, we need to remember that these systems are choices, not inevitable, natural outcomes. And, as such, they can be remade to function more beneficially for a larger number of people. Pray that we discover and implement the appropriate changes before the descent into revolution, rather than after.

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Other notes and information:

For a fascinating account of how contingent the development of our present-day capitalist system over the past millennium has been on human choice (in particular, the self-interested choices of a wealthy and so powerful rentier class, and the politicians across the spectrum who actively support them) see the excellent work of Sven Beckert, Capitalism: A Global History, my review linked to at right.

Global capitalism was neither a natural state of things nor a straightforward undertaking – the restructuring of ever more parts of the world and of social life along a capitalist logic was, in fact, exceedingly difficult and took centuries to unfold. It took even longer to reach a state in which this peculiar way of organizing economic life seemed “natural” (Beckert) 

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Vonnegut seems to have anticipated by nearly a century the current collegiate NIL system. At one point in the story, the Cornell University head football coach worries about staying on-top:

Yale had floated a bond to buy the whole Text A&M backfield, and Penn had bought Breslaw from Wisconsin.” Later, preparing a letter to the alumni regarding the recent lack of funding from the administration, he considers opening with “Sportsmen … IS THE FOOTBALL BUSINESS AT CORNELL GOING TO BE RUN ON A BUSINESS-LIKE BASIS, OR IS THE BIG RED GOING TO BE BLED WHITE. … IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS, NOT ONE CENT HAS BEEN REINVESTED IN THE BUSINESS, NOT ONE CENT LAID ASIDE FOR DEPRECIATION [of the existing players as they age]. (272-3, capitalization from the original)

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In yet another example of Vonnegut being far ahead of events, the government addressed the economic dislocation caused by automation through an approach that some are currently proposing be used with AI: tax AI use by businesses, in order to amass the funds needed to support those who lose their jobs; as Vonnegut writes in the story:

The government does not own the machines. They simply tax that part of industry’s income that once went into labor, and redistribute it. (21)

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One could imagine this line from Vonnegut’s story – again written some 7 decades ago – as being replicated in some form in a future work, in the mid-21st century, looking back to our present day.

He … imagined with horror what the country must have been like when, as today, any damn fool little American boy might grow up to be President…! (120)

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For even more examples of Vonnegut’s perceptive, almost predictive take on the future, see other quotes from this book here.

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "Capitalism: A Global History" by Sven Beckert

Capitalism: A Global History (2025)
Sven Beckert (1965)
1325 pages

The capitalistic economy of the present day is an immense cosmos into which the individual is born, and which presents itself to him … as an unalterable order of things in which he must live. It forces the individual … to conform to capitalistic rules of action. The manufacturer who in the long run acts counter to these norms, will just as inevitably be eliminated from the economic scene as the worker who cannot or will not adapt himself to them will be thrown into the streets without a job.

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

This observation, surely even more salient today than when Weber made it over a century ago, points to a fundamental challenge society faces when addressing concerns with our current economic system. Viewing capitalism as a natural, "unalterable order of things" can make attempts to significantly reform it – or, even more radically, transition to some other system – seem at best quixotic and at worst almost sacrilegious. With the Overton window for acceptable debate on potential economic policy changes so narrow, when too many become convinced the system is rigged against them, frustration can build toward revolution – destroy what is not allowed to be fixed.

To counter the slide into such a ruinous path to reform, one must first disabuse people of the debilitating myth of capitalism’s inalterability, of the belief that it is an inevitable outcome of history. Given the wealthy, powerful, and extremely motivated capitalists whose self-interest lies in maintaining this myth, however, countering it requires a thorough and detailed exploration of the history of capitalism and the role calculated choices have played in its rise.

Precisely this, historian Sven Beckert provides readers in his engaging book Capitalism: A Global History. By tracing the path of the “capitalist revolution” (xiii) over the past thousand years, he demonstrates that 

Global capitalism was neither a natural state of things nor a straightforward undertaking – the restructuring of ever more parts of the world and of social life along a capitalist logic was, in fact, exceedingly difficult and took centuries to unfold. It took even longer to reach a state in which this peculiar way of organizing economic life seemed “natural” (232) 

The likely jarring impact, for most readers, of the word peculiar, highlights both the challenge and the importance of this work.

Beckert begins at “the port of Aden in the year 1150 … with the world's earliest capitalists – merchants,” (27) who “shared a principal aim of amassing profit by buying cheaply and selling dearly.” (38) Though their activities were not generally suppressed, neither were they quite seen as honorable: among land-owning elites, religious leaders and the broader community of mostly peasant farmers, opinions about such trade-for-profit had not changed much since Aristotle disparaged “efforts to maximize money [as] ‘a hazard to the moral well-being of the individual.’” (88)

Nevertheless, Beckert notes, these early traders represented the beginning of a radical shift from the subsistence existence of the overwhelming majority of humankind. Over the balance of the book, he describes the millennium-long series of truly epochal developments that transformed this group of isolated capitalists into a globe-spanning political economy, capitalism. And by including stories of particular capitalists and their workers from each of these stages of development, he brings alive his descriptions of the social, political, and economic changes that occurred.

Early on, he provides his definition of capitalism as 

a global process in which economic life is fundamentally driven by the ceaseless accumulation of privately controlled capital, is structured by the state, and propels the ever expanding commodification of inputs and outputs, including labor, creating constantly shifting boundaries between its outside and inside. (21) 

Beckert repeatedly returns to the elements of this definition in describing the series of transformative shifts that have occurred over the thousand-year evolution toward global capitalism. He makes evident that, at each stage, those in power privileged the expansion of capitalism over other possible directions, and thus that capitalism’s present-day arrangement arose not out of an ineluctable, natural process, but rather through a long series of specific, human choices.

Striking, in Beckert’s account, is how consistently these choices can be traced directly back to the profoundly durable simplicity of capitalists’ singular goal: from early traders “buying cheaply and selling dearly” to modern day investment firms for “which nothing but the ongoing accumulation of capital drives entrepreneurial decisions” (1074), “economic life [has been] fundamentally driven by the ceaseless accumulation of privately controlled capital.” This overarching focus on capital accumulation reveals itself as the principal driver behind the variety of ways capitalists have spent the past millennium either sparking political or social transformation, or adapting to the immutable reality of a particular political or social regime.

To be clear, calling out this focus is not meant as a pejorative observation: one can recount capitalism’s many benefits, or recall its variety of shortcomings, and either way acknowledge capitalists’ enduring fixation on capital accumulation. Nor does it obviate the value of Beckert’s fascinating and enlightening elaboration of the specifics of the transformations and adaptations that have led to our present system of global capitalism – the details of his narrative are, in fact, critical to understanding the intentional character of its development and its consequences.

As an example of the impact of this focus on capital accumulation, Beckert repeatedly emphasizes the role of the state as a key supporter in the installation and expansion of global capitalism.

Capitalism is as much a project of states as of capital owners…. Whether by supporting it in its day-to-day operations or during its most severe crises, states have propelled and backstopped the capitalist revolution through its history. (1076) 

Already a millennium ago, traders recognized the benefit (in terms of increased profits) of ingratiating themselves to the state by providing desired goods and, more importantly, a source of funds. And states came to cherish and rely on the funds generated by such traders (through taxation), and so actively supported their growth, both militarily and politically. As these isolated traders evolved into merchants and then capitalists, the links to the state only deepened.

In Europe, this cooperation became particularly strong, with taxes on capitalists funding state militaries, which were in turn marshalled not only to protect capitalist property, but also to conquer far-flung lands to expand trade and manufacturing. And internally, states put in place laws in support of increasing capitalists’ profits, often thereby changing the historical foundations of societies. Referring to this stage of development as war capitalism, Beckert describes how states engaged in “imperial expansion and armed trade … and on violent domination of labor and vast dispossession of collective resources.” (164) This early, deep integration in Europe, he argues, resulted in European dominance in the increasingly global capitalist order of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Similarly, Beckert describes how, again in pursuit of capital accumulation, capitalism “has been perfectly compatible with … commodification of labor across a spectrum of forms.” This has included, “at key historical moments, slavery,” (20) certainly the most reprehensible in what he demonstrates to be a long string of dehumanizing ways in which capitalists have pursued the cheapest possible labor in order to maximize profits (generally with active state support and at best a fig leaf justification for the resulting misery). In terms of slavery, in particular, he makes a persuasive case for its centrality in the successful transformation of capitalism into a globe-spanning system and for playing a key role in supporting the rise of European and US economic dominance.

The consequences of capitalists’ single-minded focus on capital accumulation can also be found in their seemingly unlimited adaptability to whatever ruling order they encounter. Though they may prefer one type of regime over another, “capitalism can flourish within a wide range of forms of political rule. As with diverse labor and territorial regimes, capitalism is undogmatic in regard to political systems as well.” (799) And yet, he notes a caveat that demonstrates the rule: 

Despite my insistence throughout the book on capitalism’s flexibility as the foundation for its enormous dynamic, capitalism is dogmatic in one sense: It rests on the ever expanding accumulation of capital … not by choice but by necessity. (1086)

Beyond these examples, Beckert goes into detail on myriad other ways capitalism’s expansion has played out, including: the aggressive pursuit of colonization and, later, attempts to mollify the impacts of decolonization; the active ignoring of externalities, such as natural resources in terms of both raw materials and pollution; and, supporting social benefits when revolutionary fever grew too strong, only to reduce or retract them at the earliest possible opportunity. In each of these areas, and others, his narrative makes evident the willful choices made to prioritize the “dogmatic” focus on “every expanding accumulation of capital” over all other considerations.

A throughline reveals itself, of capitalists aggressively translating their wealth into political power, in order to advance their interests by changing the social narrative and the law. A key part of this approach has involved the propagation of myths to enable and legitimize their actions. Thus, for example, in terms of the connection between capitalism and states,

the global seepage of capitalism into the nooks and crannies of many societies was not the result of a “natural” expansion of self-propelling markets, as many contemporary myths hold. Instead, the state engineered multiple forms of enclosure, envelopment, and encasement that drove capitalism’s spread, often pursuing policies with a pronounced anti-market twist. (714) 

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway explore this in the US context, in The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market (my review linked to at right), in which they point out that

what's at issue is not capitalism per se. Contemporary conservatives, libertarians, and market fundamentalists are not really defending capitalism, even if they think they are. They are defending a certain idea of capitalism, a vision of growth and innovation by unfettered markets where government just gets out of the way. ... To the extent that it once did (approximately) exist, it was a disaster: a world with little or no workplace safety, no constraints on pollution, no limits to the trees that could be cut down or the dangerous products that could be sold.” (13; The Big Myth) 

Yet in reality, as Beckert repeatedly demonstrates, “capitalism without the state was impossible, indeed unimaginable.” (97)

In Capitalism: A Global History, Sven Beckert accomplishes the improbable: make a 1000+ page history of an economic system fascinating and engaging from the first lines to the last, while at the same time providing a thoroughly researched, scholarly account. And a balanced one. He makes good on his opening comment, of his book being

ultimately not interested in contributing to the debit and credit columns of the opposing stories [of capitalism]. Instead, it examines capitalism from a global and long-term perspective to grasp its core: a radical departure and discontinuity in human affairs. … [and inviting readers] to embrace its study with a sense of wonder, surprise, and astonishment – not because it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but because of its world-shaping power, and because understanding it is crucial to navigating our shared future. (5)

Such an approach too often seems missing from discussions about capitalism, with its proponents focused on what they view as its benefits, and its opponents on what they consider its historical and present-day flaws. Though one can imagine that some readers – surely including those beholden to a successful social inculcation of the myths of free market fundamentalism – will push back on aspects of Beckert’s presentation, their challenge will be to refute what they disagree with in an equally thorough and persuasive way.

Beckert’s nuanced history of capitalism goes a long way toward supporting a more productive discussion about addressing the economic challenges so central to the rise of populist movements and increasingly divisive partisanship in the West, and of uncertainty and instability more broadly.

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Other notes and information:

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "Blue Horses" by Mary Oliver

Blue Horses (2014)
Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
79 pages

Mary Oliver’s poetry fairly radiates with her profound love for, and connection to, the natural world. The wonder she communicates provokes in me a nearly irresistible urge to immediately head out the door and deep into the nearest wood or field – to experience again that same wonder for myself.

And so it is with her collection Blue Horses. In these poems, Oliver captures not only the beauty she discovered during her many sojourns in the wild, but also what she learned from observing nature about how to live life more fully.

For Oliver, each part of the natural world – the animate and the inanimate – amazes, both individually and in their role as part of the whole. Through her writing, she not only expresses her awe at all she sees but also, as in the poem Good Morning, wonders how others could fail to be similarly moved by such an abundance of delights.

The multiplicity of forms! The hummingbird,
the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the
otter, the dragonfly, the water lily! And
on and on. It must be a great disappointment
to God if we are not dazzled at least ten
times a day. (22)

In that same poem, she mentions “the notebook that I always carry in / my pocket. / And the pen,” with which she records as she walks not just the stunning “multiplicity of forms,” but also the smallest of details in what she sees. In The Vulture’s Wings, for example, she thrills to a stunning contrast that occurs as a vulture soars above, the top of its wings

black death
color but
the underwings
as sunlight
flushes into
the feathers
are bright
are swamped
with light. (45) 

Here the word “swamped” completely changes the scene, transforming a brief flash of light into a moment that dazzles, thrills. And as a consequence, in her description the vulture sheds the pejorative image often associated with it.

Beyond such beauty, Oliver also discovers in nature inspiration for how to live her own life. This can be a general attitude, “Stay young, always, in the theater of your / mind,” (21) or a broader realization of how to be at peace with both minor nuisances and mortal challenges.

In that latter sense, she finds each element of nature to have its role, its place in the larger scheme of the world. In Stebbin’s Gulch, she describes a cascading stream,

it’s only industry

to descend
and to be beautiful
while it does so;
as for purpose

there is none,
it is simply
one of those gorgeous things
that was made

to do what it does perfectly
and to last,
as almost nothing does,
almost forever. 

Here again, one phrase – as almost nothing does – transforms a lovely description of a natural scene into a transcendent realization about the fleeting nature of life and the futility of too constant and obsessive a focus on purpose.

Oliver puts a finer point on the transience, interconnectedness, and ultimate contingency of life in Owl Poem, in which she notes that animals do not ask the food that they take whether it wished to live, before she goes on to acknowledge that “Acceptance of the world requires / that I bow even to you, / Master of the night.” These lines carry added poignance, given that in a poem a few pages earlier in the collection she writes that, like a hunter, “cancer / entered the forest of my body, / without a sound.”

In other poems in this collection, Oliver also takes a more personal line. In one she touches on a sudden and surprising blooming of love late in life; in another, she describes, obliquely, the difficulties she faced at home as a child, something she also recalled in an interview with Krista Tippet for the On Being podcast.  She seemingly references this painful period in the poem Loneliness, then notes 

Oh, mother earth,
your comfort is great, your arms never withhold.
It has saved my life to know this. (51) 

These lines reflect her comments in the On Being interview that tie her love of nature back to a need to escape what she could not control, and to somehow find peace by immersing herself in the natural world, fully and unreservedly.

Even for readers not burdened by the emotional toll that Oliver seems to have lived through, her message that nature’s “comfort is great” offers reason enough to venture out into and connect more deeply with the natural world. Her poems in Blue Horses tempt readers with reminders of the vast “multiplicity of forms” of beauty that await.

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Other notes and information:

I will admit that I pulled this book off the shelf at the bookstore (shout out to the Crazy Wisdom Bookstore!) based on seeing Oliver’s name on the spine, but was then instantly sold by the gorgeous cover, with its Franz Marc painting, Turm der blauen Pferde (Tower of Blue Horses). The painting features in one of the poems in the book.

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "The Boat of a Million Years" by Poul Anderson

The Boat of a Million Years (1989)
Poul Anderson (1926-2001)
470 pages

I remember when Poul Anderson’s science fiction novel The Boat of a Million Years first came out, over three decades ago. I had somehow heard about it before it was released (in those halcyon, pre-internet days), and anytime I came near a bookstore I eagerly checked to see if they had it. When I finally found a copy, I was over-the-top excited to read it – and it didn’t disappoint.

All this was long before I began writing these reviews. But, recently, I read the book again.

What originally attracted me was the story arc following a group of immortals on Earth as they live through the millennia, from ancient times to far into our future. Anderson’s immortals are born at different times and in different places, but all face the challenge of keeping their agelessness hidden. While some carry out into solitary, nomadic lives, others repeatedly settle down, though only ever for a couple few decades until their families and neighbors begin to question their perennial youth, forcing them to again disappear and start elsewhere anew. For they must take care as, while they do not age, they can be killed if injured sufficiently brutally.

The story opens in 310 BC, introducing the earliest born of these immortals, Hanno, as he seeks to join a Greek ship that plans to sail out of the Mediterranean and up the coast to then unknown northern lands. Already in the opening pages, it becomes evident the care Hanno takes to hide the centuries he has already lived.

As the story proceeds, readers are introduced to other immortals, born later, in other lands. With each chapter, Anderson drops into the life of one or the other of them, usually to reveal a moment of crisis, as they face trouble hiding their immortality and struggle to find a way through. Gradually, their wanderings begin to intersect, their experiences helping them to detect another like them, though their ever-present fear of discovery by mortals keeps them wary even then of revealing themselves.

In ancient times, and even up through the 1800’s, disappearing remains a feasible option for them, with vast uncharted or at least isolated lands to vanish into, and limited or no communication across large distances. As the 20th century dawns, however, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to remain under the radar. They must employe ever more cunning strategies to remain undiscovered – and be quick to move on whenever someone gets too close to the truth. Eventually, they reach a point in which they must decide whether to face the uncertain future together, and what path offers them the most appealing way forward.

Especially in the first half of the novel, before the characters have come together, it can be challenging to keep track of who’s who, especially as it can be several chapters before Anderson comes back around to the same character. As they change their lives to remain hidden, they often change their names, and though Anderson gives clues for the reader, to help keep track, it can still be difficult to keep things straight. Admittedly, I made it more difficult for myself this second time through, because I ended up reading it a bit at a time, over many months.

Unfortunately, as I recall also happening on my first reading, I didn’t discover until I finished the story that the end pages contain both a Chronology, listing the year each chapter begins, and a Glossary, providing the modern-day locations of the ancient place names used in the story. It would have helped to know that these pages were there as I was reading the story; unfortunately, the book has no table of contents, so a reader is left to discover these guides by chance – or once they come to the last page of the story.

The one advantage to not discovering the end pages in advance is that for someone who loves history, it can be fun to decode the places and times the chapters are set in. And unlike when I first read the book, now with smart phones a reader can discover for themselves the information necessary to figure it out.

As someone who enjoys learning about the past and imagining what’s to come, the idea of these characters witnessing and experiencing so many centuries of human development thrilled me. More generally, stories set across long time scales tend to catch my attention. Thus, I was excited to turn the page, deep into Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, and read the single line 5000 Years Later. And then there was Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, which begins in our recent past and actually carries right on past the end of our universe. (My reviews of these novels linked to at right.)

The first half to two-thirds of the book can feel a bit chaotic, as the story jumps ahead in time and place from one character (or few characters) to the next, until they finally begin to come together. And Anderson imagines a rather depressing future for humankind, one that paradoxically leaves the immortals as the most recognizably human beings left to carry on the ancient motivations of humankind. But if you love history and an epic sweep to your stories, Anderson’s done his homework; in The Boat of a Million Years you’ll drop into now almost legendary times and places in our past, not as dry history, but through characters who experience them firsthand.

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Other notes and information:

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf