Book Review: "Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason" by William Davies

Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason (2018)
William Davies (1976)
252 pages

Donald Trump is not simply a serial liar; he is attempting to murder the very idea of truth, which is even worse,” said Peter Wehner, a former strategic advisor to President George W. Bush …. “Because without truth, a free society cannot operate.
                                                                                      The New York Times, 1 Nov 2019

The first part of Wehner’s comment seems fairly indisputable at this point; even Trump’s supporters tend to concede he is fast and loose with the truth, however little it impacts their support of him. To Wehner’s conclusion, however, that “without truth, a free society cannot operate,” political economist and author William Davies would perhaps argue that truth, in the sense of facts, has actually become, at the very least, insufficient for the successful administration of society.

In his book Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason, Davies claims that the technocratic, science-based structures that have come to undergird Western political philosophy and governments over the past several centuries have lost their effectiveness:

Experts and facts no longer seem capable of settling arguments to the extent that they once did. Objective claims about the economy, society, the human body and nature can no longer be successfully insulated from emotion. (xiv) 

He identifies recent events in the U.S. and Western Europe as in fact revealing a growing shift in the West from a centuries old attempt to rule by “the authority of facts” (xiv) to a reality in which emotions and feelings hold more sway than objective claims.

But, far from lamenting this shift, he finds it encouraging.

Davies dates the origins of “the authority of facts” and the primacy given to dispassionate experts in Western regimes to the 1600’s. Philosophers of the time tied the seemingly unending cycles of destruction from deadly conflagrations such as the Thirty Years War to the dangerously unpredictable emotions in the public space, and specifically to the consequences of fear among a population. They argued that people’s deepest desire is actually freedom from fear – to be able to feel secure in their lives and their future – and specifically that the danger of fear leads to violence:

What makes violence inevitable, Hobbes reasoned, is not so much that certain people are strong and aggressive, but that most people are weak and fearful. If you and I are both afraid of each other, it makes sense for me to attack you, or else risk being attacked first. (40)

In a fictional setting, science fiction writer Cixin Liu has taken this concept to its logical extreme in his Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, which builds on the idea that just such a fear is why we haven’t found evidence of other civilizations beyond Earth. Liu imagines that civilizations that arise in the universe will come to realize the perilousness of their position relative to other, unknown civilizations and become consumed by fear, deciding that the best course of action is to hide their presence from the rest of the universe, and, when they themselves discover evidence of any other civilization, to strike out immediately in a preemptive attack. (A review of the first book in Liu’s trilogy at left, with links from there to reviews of the other two books.

The theme of Liu’s story rests on the reality that civilizations in the universe necessarily exist in stark isolation due to the immense distances involved, and so cannot effectively communicate with one another. Here on Earth, in contrast, by the 1600’s once isolated peoples were becoming enmeshed in economic networks that created the first rudimentary, world-wide communication links – unimaginably slow by today’s standards, but the beginning of a revolutionary transformation. In his work 1493, Charles C. Mann referred to this period as the “great unification” (24, 1493), one initiated by the voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492, and after which "the world’s ecosystems collided and mixed as European vessels carried thousands of spices to new homes across the oceans." (7, 1493; a review at right)

In the West in particular, this global economic expansion was intimately connected to the emerging Scientific Revolution. Historian Yuval Noah Harari explored the symbiosis of these two developments in his engaging book Sapiens, in which he notes that rapid advancements in science enabled European nations to aggressively expand their global reach and markets, which in turn led to economic growth that provided funding to support further work in the sciences and so complete the circle. Thus, Harari writes, “as time went by, the conquest of knowledge and the conquest of territory became ever more tightly intertwined.” (284, Sapiens; a review at left.)


And, according to Davies, this flourishing of the Scientific Revolution in the 1600’s also inspired philosophers seeking to provide security to populations gripped by fear and so prone to violence. These philosophers promoted a shift away from governing approaches and language that triggered people’s emotions, and toward the methods of the Scientific Revolution, hoping “to institutionalize experimental methods of natural science” (48) into the political sphere. They argued for governance built upon experts and knowledge, that is, on the authority of facts; and governments quickly came to embrace these ideas, eager for the stability they promised. The result was a “convergence of political and scientific authority [referred to as] ‘technocracy.’” (53)

The Scientific Revolution, then, provided not only the conceptual basis for the technocratic regimes that have held sway for some three centuries, but also the means for them to expand their reach and dominance across much of the Earth.

But Davies argues that many among the governed in these societies have long realized that the idealized vision of a dispassionate expert – whether in government or even in science – has never truly existed. In the second half of the book he examines the forces that have led to the questioning of support for technocracies, and the rise of what he refers to as a “politics of feeling."

This shift toward a politics of feeling has its origins, according to Davies, in the blurring of the lines between war and peace, which he traces back to Napoleon’s mobilization “of a conscripted, popular army … fueled by nationalist fervor” (129), and against which the earlier, aristocratic approach to fighting was powerless. In order to combat Napoleon effectively, other nations were forced to recreate his methods, mobilizing their populations by “cultivating a similarly popular enthusiasm for war.” (129)

Critically, according to Davies, this approach of public mobilization eventually led to a move away from the concept of publicly shared learnings that had been an ideal of the Scientific Revolution, toward instead intelligence- and information-gathering efforts focused on acquiring and owning data. Over time this ethos spread to the economic sphere, leading to a social and cultural

philosophy [that] respects no clear distinction between the realm of intellectual competition and that of economic competition … the pursuit of wealth, of power, and of truth start to gradually blend into one. (171)

Such a culturally enshrined state of constant competition – of war, effectively – “represents a form of politics where feelings really matter” (119), unavoidably ensnaring even ostensibly impartial governing officials into emotional appeals and reactions.

In fact, the public has come to recognize that “the need [by technocrats practicing evidence-based policy] to create a picture of the world can also be born out of [their] desire to own it.” (59) Davies makes an intriguing analogy between historical colonial discontent and the now familiar lament of people in the fly-over-states of invisibility, writing that:

The cultural and political divisions separating centers of expertise from other sections of their societies have created a [current day] situation with rhetorical echoes of the colonial one, in which methods of science and expertise seem like an arm of some foreign leviathan state. (60)

Recognizing these now increasingly evident consequences for peoples caught up in the competitive cultures fomented by technocratic states, Davies argues for a more sympathetic view of the current public mood. Rejecting disparaging accusations that people vote against their interests or are ignorant of science or facts, he feels that

Reactions against expertise may seem like an irrational rejection of truth itself … [but] they are more often a rejection of the broader political edifice from which society is governed. (29)

And this rejection leads to a desire by the disenfranchised to take control over some aspect of their lives, reflected in the shift toward a “politics of feeling.” (117) Thus, for example, the apparent motivation in the 2016 election to, as the rallying cry put it, burn it to the ground: “Disruption [becomes] an alternative to control.” (20)

Davies finds support for his arguments in recent revelations in neuroscience that blur the stark distinction of the 17th century ideal of mind being separate from feeling, and that instead reveal the predominant impact of our feelings over our thoughts, decisions and actions. The developments in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology Davies refers to have been explored by Robert Wright in his fascinating work Why Buddhism Is True:

From natural selection’s point of view, the whole point of perception is to process information that has relevance to the organism’s Darwinian interests --- that is, to its chances of getting its genes spread. And organisms register this relevance by assigning positive or negative values to the perceived information. We are designed to judge things and to encode those judgments in feelings. (161, Wright; a review at right)

For Davies, these ideas support the intensifying feeling among the public that experts cannot be relied upon to truly dispassionately pursue, identify and reveal truth and facts.

Using examples from recent political and social movements, Davies demonstrates the resulting decline in trust for professionals in a wide range of fields, from politics to the media and the sciences. He notes an attendant rise in “direct democracy” and “the logic of crowds”, with groups mobilized through appeals to their emotions and feelings, “allow[ing] every individual to become (and feel) part of something much larger than themselves.” (7)  Populist leaders have done this masterfully, of course, but Davies points out that an event like the March for Science in 2017 reflects the emergence of a new paradigm even among organizations outside of nationalist movements, an approach that appeals to emotion rather than relying on dry, expert pronouncements.

The effectiveness of using emotion to animate groups of people was explored by the author Eric Hoffer, in his engrossing 1951 treatise The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, in which he identified appeals to emotion – rather than facts or truth – as a common basis, historically, for drawing individuals into “religious movements, social revolutions or nationalist movements.” Although acknowledging that such movements are not all identical, he claimed that “they share certain essential characteristics which give them a family likeness,” and noted in particular that “the frustrated predominate among the early adherents.” (xi-xii, The True Believer; a review at left)

Precisely such frustration, according to Davies, has arisen in recent times from people’s perception of having lost control over their lives, leading to feelings of fear that leaders of movements of all types exploit to mobilize their supporters. He notes, in fact, that “crowds are liable to a vicious circle of fear … [that] produces a rising desire for safety, which autocrats satisfy through making threats toward others.” (16-19)  And, again, such tactics are not confined to autocrats; he notes that the organizers of the March for Science also rallied people around a shared fear, in this case

a series of alarming appointments and policy decisions made by the Trump administration that appeared to threaten the public status and financing of scientific research. (23)

These rallies then, were focused not just on support for science, but in fact became directed protests against Trump and his administration as the ‘enemy.'

Based on our developing understanding of human behavior, and our current political, economic and social situation in the West, Davies concludes that attempts to reverse the shift from technocracy to a politics of feeling are hopeless, doomed to failure. He rejects the calls from Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins and their compatriots that we walk back from the developing politics of emotion by “reassert[ing] our commitment to scientific objectivity and institutions” (207), as well as their desire to achieve a “de-escalation of tactics associated with ‘identity politics,’ such as ‘no platforming’ and campus ‘safe-spaces,’ which exclude distressing idea and speakers” (208), disparaging it as “bravado rationalism.”

Certainly Davies has little regard for Pinker’s claims of “how objectively better things are now than in the past,” dismissing such views as requiring “a cold, emotionless look at history.” Instead, he notes “the fallout of modern science and technology includes the gravest dangers facing us today,” and sees “the future of progress” envisioned by “ultra-privileged elites” as one that “cannot be something that includes most people.” (226)

A detailed exploration of Davies’ arguments (if not perhaps an agreement with his conclusions) about the coming dangers if we continue down our current economic and political path has been presented by Yuval Noah Harari in his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. There he predicts that the escalating biotech and infotech revolutions will first and foremost benefit members of the upper-class of society, who will, based on these technologies, be able to then further increase their advantage. As I wrote in my review of Harari’s book (linked to at right):

according to Harari, inequality will rise to such unprecedented levels that the current social compacts --- already fragile --- collapse entirely, as the biologically enhanced super-rich isolate themselves ever more completely from the rest of humanity, who will no longer be needed to perform work, and so will discover themselves to have become irrelevant.

To counter this, Davies argues that effective democracy is achieved by embracing a politics of feeling, which will be “organized around vital needs and demands,” citing Black Lives Matter and the Missing Migrants Project as examples of the types of movements “that will likely dominate the twenty-first century, aimed at highlighting inequalities in the defense of life itself.” (225) He dismisses calls that “political institutions should celebrate the aloof, apolitical, unyielding nature of the rational expert,” finding them to imply that “democracy comes second.” (208) Instead of yielding the realm of feelings in politics to demagogues and autocrats, it must be seen as the next stage of democratic governance, one that “could fuel a different version of populism in the West, built on the truthful recognition that many marginalized populations are being physically and mortally harmed by the present model of progress.” (225)

Even someone who shares Harari’s dystopian view of our potential future and sympathizes with Davies’ quite reasonable concerns about “the present model of progress,” however, will likely be left unconvinced by Davies’ prescriptions. His arguments that “fear, pain and resentment” have been ignored by the technocratic regimes of the past several centuries and have now “invaded our politics anew” (226) and should be embraced – rather than shunned – by rationalists, ignore the very real challenges of such a political direction. He doesn’t address, for example, the evident dangers of identity politics, with its tendency to divide people into emotionally and politically splintered camps, creating an all-against-all set of tribes that can struggle to overcome their differences and unite in common cause, even in the presence of seemingly existential threats.

Precisely such challenges have been explored by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in their book The Coddling of the American Mind (a review at right), in which they identify and define what they refer to as Three Bad Ideas, or untruths, the second of which – how one feels about an event or situation provides a valid understanding of what has occurred – stands in direct opposition to Davies’ desired direction. Lukianoff and Haidt go on to describe how, for someone conditioned to accept this belief, the feeling that an aggression has occurred means that by definition it has. This leads to the tendency to view any sort of unwelcome behavior or statement in the worst-possible light, defining even accidental and unintentional offenses or aggressions, which leads to the concept of micro-aggressions, a view that apparently no miss-statement – however unintentional it may have been – is too minor to be condemned.

Thus, the risk is that, when ruled by the politics of feeling, a splintering of the citizenry can occur that leads to an autocrat potentially being the last one standing, able to unite a small but sufficient minority by lumping all those splintered groups together as a dangerous “other."

Beyond leaving unaddressed such concerns with incorporating a politics of feeling, Davies also gives little if any concrete indication of what the framework would functionally be if current representative governments transitioned toward a more direct democracy. He calls for more movements like Black Lives Matter and the Missing Migrant Project, but, however beneficial these movements may be for particular causes, simply expanding their model doesn’t constitute in itself a successful government.

That said, Nervous States provides an informative review of the origins of our current, technocratic political and social structures, and the critical challenges they face from populations feeling not only increasingly disenfranchised, but in fact powerless over the direction of their lives and their societies. Davies adds his voice to the growing chorus of those pointing out the unsustainability of our current economic systems, and the political regimes that support them. Even if his prescriptions may seem insufficient, they further the critically necessary conversation on this potentially existential threat.

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In his book, Davies makes an intriguing connection to the opioid crisis, viewing it as the desperate act of people wanting to take control of the one area they feel remains open to them – their own bodies.

Read quotes from this book

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Book Review: "Die Akte Vaterland" ("The Fatherland Files") by Volker Kutscher

Die Akte Vaterland (2012)
(The Fatherland Files)
Volker Kutscher (1962)
564 pages

“Many say, [he’s] the best speaker in the district and should actually go into politics.”

“Well,” said Rath, “if politics is supposed to mean telling the people what they want to hear, and thereby making yourself popular, then he’s certainly a good politician.”

(“Viele sagen, Wengler sei der beste Redner im Landkreis und sollte eigentlich in die Politik gehen.”
“Na ja,” meinte Rath, “ Wenn Politik bedeuten sollte, den Leuten zu erzählen, was sie hören wollen, und dich damit beliebt zu machen, dann ist er bestimmt ein gutter Politiker.”) (334)

Gereon Rath, the police inspector at the center of Volker Kutscher’s detective story The Fatherland Files (Die Akte Vaterland), has little use for politics, and even less for rabid political ideologies and ideologues. At one point, in fact, he says it directly: “I’m not interested in politics … I fight crime.” (“Ich interessiere mich nicht für Politic …. Ich bekämfe Verbrechen.” 181)

But Kutscher has set his story in the Germany of the summer of 1932, a fraught time, with Hitler’s SA (Sturmabteilung, or Storm Detachment) paramilitary forces and communist party members fighting pitched battles in the streets, and the Nazis on the verge of taking power. For Rath these events present not only additional criminal activity to be dealt with, but also, more broadly, complications to his investigations.

As the story opens, Rath and his team learn that the owner of a liquor distribution company has been found murdered in an elevator at the Haus Vaterland, “Berlin’s largest pleasure palace” (“Berlins größtem Vergnügungstempel” 18), an entertainment mecca worthy of modern day Las Vegas, with restaurants, bars, shows and more. As the investigation proceeds, what appears at first to be an isolated murder reveals multiple strands that generate more questions than answers.

Eventually the clues lead Rath to the eastern-most part of Germany, Masuria, a region that between the World Wars became cut-off from the rest of Germany, connected only by plane and a transit corridor through Polish territory. Once there, he finds a population that feels their isolation from the German heartland distinctly, and that has become caught up in a fervid cycle of mutual hatred with their Polish neighbors. Their isolation makes them particularly receptive to Hitler’s ideology of patriotic nationalism – ready supporters of anyone “telling [them] what they want to hear,” in particular regarding their inherent superiority over the Poles. It also exacerbates their already profound mistrust of any outsiders who appear to threaten their neighbors or their culture, making it difficult for Rath to know who he can trust.

Circling doggedly in on the complex truth behind the murder that opened the investigation, Rath gradually uncovers ever more complex layers of iniquity and duplicity. And, as he does, he finds many of the townspeople uniting against him, some passively while others more aggressively, but all defending their carefully constructed version of nationalist reality. For them, Rath becomes the embodiment of the meddling outsider come to destroy a way of life its adherents already perceived as at risk. Will Rath manage to assemble the proof he needs to reveal the rotting core of belief about their past the townspeople so desperately cling to before his newfound enemies catch up with him?

Kutscher opens the novel in Berlin, and the tension builds only slowly over this first section of chapters as Rath and his colleagues discover more questions and mysteries than concrete answers. When Rath is sent to Masuria to follow the enigmatic clues that the team has managed to stitch together, and he encounters the active resistance and dissembling denials of most everyone he questions, the pace of the story picks up, as does the danger for Rath himself. In the final section of chapters Rath moves between Berlin and Masuria, franticly trying to get a step ahead of his suspects and their legion of protectors.

Along with the standard disclaimers regarding the main characters in the book having no relation to real people, Kutscher makes clear in a post-script that he invented the crime at the heart of the novel. Not so, however, the historical crime underway in the period in which he has set the story – the summer of 1932, when Germany descended finally, and what would be irretrievably, into the darkness of Nazism.  In Berlin Rath bumps up against the increasing brazenness of the fascists; but when he travels to the German equivalent in the 1930’s of what Americans refer to as “fly-over-land” – Masuria – he comes face-to-face with Germans far from the centers of power, many, if not most, of whom have developed a growing fascination with and attachment to the extreme patriotic nationalism of Hitler.

Though this is the first of Kutscher’s novels I’ve read, the subtitle of the book is Gereon Rath’s fourth case. There are occasional references to what seemed to be events in the earlier cases and also some plot threads left unresolved undoubtedly as fodder for future cases, but a reader can enjoy The Fatherland Files on its own, as I did, without having read the earlier books. However, after finishing this engaging story, with a sympathetic – if appropriately garrulous – detective and a fascinating historical background, fans of noir and history will most likely be off to the bookstore to buy and read the earlier stories in this engaging series.

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The translations from German are mine.

There do appear to be American translations of Kutscher’s series of Gereon Rath stories available.

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Book Review: "Inhuman Resources" by Pierre Lemaitre

Inhuman Resources (2019)
Pierre Lemaitre (1967)
Translated from the French by Sam Gordon
392 pages

Beware HR!

In the last several years, articles in various media outlets have cautioned employees to not forget that the first and primary concern of their colleagues in Human Resources is the good of the company, not the employee. For that reason, these reports point out, it is generally a mistake to assume that a conversation with someone in HR, even someone an employee knows well, is confidential. These recent reminders have identified the success of the “me too” movement as having given employees the dangerous notion that they can, for example, take their concerns about harassment to HR and expect to have them acknowledged and addressed to their satisfaction, only to be surprise to be dealt with as themselves a threat to the company, and potentially even let go or forced out.

Not surprisingly, the most capable HR personnel develop a deep understanding of human psychology and a broad set of techniques to enable them to navigate this delicate role, finding ways to defuse employee issues in a way that leaves the company unscathed. And, as writer Pierre Lemaitre makes evident in his novel Inhuman Resources, these same tools can make a skilled HR person with sufficient motivation a formidable opponent in the cat-and-mouse world of a noir thriller.

Lemaitre’s story opens with a man is his mid-fifties, Alaine Delambre, describing his morning at the latest unfulfilling part-time job he has picked up: sorting packages of medicines into boxes. Having lost his full-time job as an HR manager to a younger colleague four years earlier when his company was bought out by another firm, his frustration at being unemployed and his inability to find a suitable new HR position and so provide the comfortable lifestyle he and his wife had become accustomed to have left him at a slow boil. When his mercurial boss at the packaging operation first berates him as lazy and then gives him a kick in the butt, Delambre – though he contends that he’s “never been a violent man” (11) – pauses only a moment before head-butting the manager to the ground.

Even as he reels from being fired from that job and threatened with a lawsuit, he receives a callback from an interview for a potential position as HR manager for a large firm. The next step in the hiring process comes with a twist however: he must participate in a hostage-taking exercise being set-up for the dual purpose of evaluating the HR candidates, and selecting from among several existing managers at the firm to find the one most capable to execute the upcoming shut-down of a major facility for the company, expected to be a difficult and volatile event requiring a confident and unshakable leader.

Though recognizing the request as a highly dubious, if not outright unethical, hiring strategy, and despite his wife’s categorical demand that he retract his name, Delambre’s desperation leads him to sell out completely on getting the job. What begins as a cover-up with his wife – not telling her what’s happened with his part-time job and not admitting to her that he’s going to participate in the hostage-taking role play despite her objections – escalates into ever more audacious measures to maximize his chances of getting the job. He quickly reaches a kind of ends-justify-the-means mentality, placing all his chips on winning the job, and ultimately needing to get it just to cover the many and varied liens he takes out – both monetarily and in his relationships – to improve his chances.

Then, when on the eve of the day set for the hostage taking scenario, Delambre learns a disheartening truth behind the hiring process, he finds his hopes and plans utterly shattered. To what lengths will he go in response?

Setting the story in the time immediately after the Great Recession of 2008, Lemaitre incorporates into the story a liberal sprinkling of newspaper and TV news headlines regarding the economic difficulties of that period and the ongoing job losses that resulted. These references to the broader economic and social situation play like a sound-track in the background of events, adding weight to Delambre’s desperation, underscoring his frustration at the loss of the dreams he had had for his life together with his wife.

As Delambre becomes consumed by his schemes, Lemaitre brilliantly ratchets up the tension over three sections of chapters, labelled simply “Before,” “During,” and “After.” In the period before the hostage-taking role play we are inside Delambre’s head, listening to him slowly but steadily build himself into a frenzy as he prepares to ‘win’ the job, at whatever cost.  Delambre's realization that he is sliding into a morass from which he may not be able to recover is captured perfectly when, meeting his daughter outside the school where she teaches to trick her into unwittingly helping him, he notes that

All around us the schoolchildren are yelling, jostling, taking the piss out of each other, drunk with the joys of being alive and fancying each other.  For them, life is nothing but one huge prospect. (104)

Then, in an extremely effective move, Lemaitre shifts the perspective and narration to a different character during the hostage taking scenario, leaving readers to witness Delambre’s actions without knowing his thoughts; we become a kind of participant in events, experiencing the consequences of Delambre’s plans without being privy to his goals, or even knowing if he has any. As the role play of the hostage situation evolves – and not surprisingly goes off the rails – we watch the tightly wound Delambre seemingly unravel before our eyes.

When finally the story moves to the period after the hostage taking scenario has played out, Lemaitre returns the narration back to Delabmre, and the pace of the story becomes frenetic. We watch him bring to bear his career-long training in HR techniques of manipulating situations and people in an effort to not only succeed in his plans but now to simply stay one step ahead of his persistent and unyielding adversaries. As he tailors his tactics to the personalities and predilections of both his antagonists and his allies, and then adapts them as he encounters roadblocks, it becomes like watching a juggler who keeps adding more balls to the mix, until dropping one appears to become inevitable.

Though Inhuman Resources builds to the heart-stopping pace and moments of brutal violence that have characterized earlier Lemaitre novels such as Alex (my review here), at its heart it tells a radically different story, from a distinctive viewpoint. Central to Alex, for example, was the detective in the story who was, whatever his failings and foibles, clearly on the right side of the situation. In Inhuman Resources on the other hand, the police play only a bit role, and readers have a compromised, civilian protagonist in Delambre, one who straddles the line between hero and antihero.

Certainly we want to root for Delambre to win back some of the dignity taken from him by a heartless economic system focused on minimizing costs, one that has spit him out of the workforce for becoming a bit too old, and that seems to conspire at every turn against his efforts to find decent work. Through the depiction of Delambre and his plight, Lemaitre has embodied the ever more frequently appearing arguments by philosophers and economists identifying the damaging consequences of critical and potentially fatal structural flaws inherent to the capitalist system, such as its focus on working time as the measure of value of a human life, and on profit above all else, as described for example by Hägglund (my review here). Playing particularly to the fears of middle class Western readers, Delambre becomes a kind of current day everyman, caught in a system rigged against him, and just fighting for his life.

But the lengths to which Delambre is willing to go as he becomes ever more deeply entwined in his increasingly complex and risky schemes, and the relationships he is willing to jeopardize along the way, make it challenging to continue supporting him. We are forced to ask ourselves – even as we try to imagine our own desperation in such a situation – at what point do the ends no longer justify the means?

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Book Review: "Exhalation" by Ted Chiang

Exhalation (2019)
Ted Chiang (1967)
350 pages

Science fiction has a reputation of being mostly space opera adventures – entertaining diversions, but nothing to be taken too seriously. Such a simplistic characterization, however, ignores a host of writers who have used the genre to explore, with compelling effectiveness, the many and varied questions that arise from the intersection of our technological development and our cultural, social, economic and political realities.

Some novels of this latter type imagine how our present civilization will evolve into the future, such as Kim Stanley Robinson’s expansive vision of humankind’s evolution – both genetically and culturally – in 2312 (and other of his works), or Alfred Bester’s disturbing prognosis from the 1950’s in The Stars My Destination of the eventual consequence of the continuing shift toward a corporatocracy as a seemingly inevitable outcome of the fundamental precepts of capitalism. Others present a dystopic view of our future, whether the classic – and powerfully disturbing – novel of nuclear destruction On the Beach by Nevil Shute, or Jeff VanderMeer’s tale in Southern Reach Trilogy of nature rising up to avenge damaging human disregard of the environment, to name a couple. And then there are those who look outward, to our place in the universe, such as Cixin Liu’s eye-opening answer to the Fermi Paradox – why we have not found evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations despite the seemingly high likelihood they should exist – in his Three Body Problem trilogy. What all of these stories have in common is the combination of a thought-provoking premise and a captivating plot. (Reviews of these novels and other wonderful examples can be found here, in the sections dedicated to Science Fiction.)

Add now to this kind of thoughtful writing the beautiful short stories of Ted Chiang’s book Exhalation. In the nine tales of his collection, he employs an engaging mix of science fiction themes – from future technological developments on Earth to alternative histories to alien civilizations – to reveal and reflect on the fundamental hopes and fears that characterize our passage through life, from the debilitating frailties we desperately try to hide to the strengths of resolve we display at the most unexpected moments; from the afflictions we weather to the blessings we receive.

The first story, The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, sets the tone for those that follow. Opening in the Baghdad of perhaps a thousand years ago, we are introduced to the alchemist of the title, who has invented a gate that allows a person to pass through to the same place twenty years earlier. Out of this simple conceit unfold a delicately-spun set of intricately woven tales that evolve around the basic human desire to change fate, whether out of a wish to improve – or enrich – our future destiny, or to assuage a guilty conscious, by attempting to change something that’s happened in the past. A merchant who happens upon the alchemist’s shop and is shown the device seizes the opportunity to go back to counsel his younger self, in the hopes of changing a traumatic event. He comes to discover that fate is a force not easily diverted.

Chiang explores a variation on this theme of fate and free will in Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom, in which he imagines the impact on humanity of a device – based on the principles of quantum probability – that when activated generates the two possible outcomes of a quantum measurement. The device causes two parallel realities to be created, and allows communication for a fixed period of time between these two then diverging timelines, allowing people to learn the alternative outcomes of a decision they make. Despite the inherent restrictions of the short story format, Chiang creates a realistic history of the technical evolution of the device, as well as its evolving impact on people’s behavior, even as he builds up a drama around specific characters dealing with the ramifications of this capability. How would people react to being able to know the outcome of decisions they have made? And, if seemingly all possible outcomes exist and play out in some parallel universe, does it really matter what one does in any particular timeline?

In the title story, Chiang imagines an alien world of mechanical beings who get the ‘air’ they need to live (argon in their case) from two tanks in their body that must be swapped out daily for a fresh, full pair. (The commonplace distinction in defining “flesh-and-blood” as life and “Mechanical” as not becomes a question of perspective as one gets deeper into the story, though Chiang doesn’t address this distinction directly.) Death in this world turns out to only occur in the extremely rare cases of a catastrophic failure of the tanks, an event that ends up largely destroying the body. For that reason, as well as an unwillingness to hazard invasive procedures on living beings, the science of anatomy has had little opportunity to develop more than wild suppositions regarding the functioning of the brain. When one scientist is finally prompted by an unexplainable set of coincidences to perform a risky experiment to learn how the brain actually works, his learnings lead to an existential crisis for the civilization. A more transcendent and sublime exploration of the inexorable process of entropy has surely never been written.

And so it is with the remaining stories. In the novella length The Lifecycle of Software Objects, the plot develops unhurriedly, like a life, to become a delicate examination of what it takes to become a conscious entity. Omphalos, meanwhile, looks at the concept and implications of creationism in the context of an alternative history. These and the remaining stories demonstrate Chiang’s delicate touch as he explores fundamental questions of our human condition through the lens of the impact of science and technology.

When I bought this book – attracted to it by the cover design and sold on it by the cover flap description of the stories – I hadn’t yet heard of Ted Chiang. But the employee who rang up the sale mentioned that she had loved also his first book of short stories, titled Stories of Your Life and Others. After reading this current collection, I’m looking forward to checking that one out – look for a review of it to appear here sometime in the not too distant future.

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Some links to information on the Fermi Paradox: SETI, QuantaMagazine, and, an earlier of my blog posts.

Finally got around to reading Chiang's earlier collection Stories of Your Life and Others, and I enjoyed it as much as I did Exhalation.  My review at right, in which I mention that

Although wildly different in themes, the two sets of stories share a distinctive sensibility, as well as a dedication to the wonders and mysteries of science and ancient traditions, stretched and bent just a bit through Chiang’s imagination to create marvelously engaging works that explore our human condition.

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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.
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Book Review: "Homeland" by Fernando Aramburu

Homeland  (Patria) (2019)
Fernando Aramburu (1959)
Translated from the Spanish by Alfred MacAdam
592 pages

The complex social dynamics of internecine conflicts can often remain profoundly inscrutable to those not directly impacted. Though the broad outlines of the political motivations may be clear, the intensity of the resulting violence and the ability, despite that ongoing violence, of a relatively small core group to maintain the support over decades of the broader community in which they operate can seem nearly incomprehensible to those not intimately involved. And all this can be particularly perplexing given the apparent desire of the vast majority of people to want to simply live in peace, going about the quotidian business their lives.

As a case in point, the Basque separatist movement in north-eastern Spain, along the Atlantic coast around the border with France has stood out – a bewildering tragedy mostly reported on internationally in the wake of a deadly attack. Led for over half-a-century by ETA (Basque Homeland and Liberty), the main political goal of the group was relatively straightforward: a desire to separate from Spain and form an independent Basque homeland. Less clear is how they continued to maintain local support over such a long period as the violence – involving executions and bombings – expanded from attacks on government officials and the security forces, to include business people and others in the private sector, and even targeted Basques not felt to be sufficiently supportive of the movement; then, too, the violence also inevitably led to ever more aggressive reactions within these communities from national security forces.

To better understand situations such as this one, an outsider could turn to history books that explore in detail a movement’s political motivations, the violence it perpetrated and the social and economic consequences for local communities. But that kind of factual analysis can struggle to give an appreciation for the complexity of the cultural and psychological dynamics that lead young people into such groups and that underpin the support these groups get from so many in the local population – whether from ‘true believers’ or from the larger set of those cowed into silence despite their reservations. And the profound impact on those touched – directly or indirectly – by the ongoing violence of such conflicts can also be difficult to make evident. For a deeper understanding of these aspects, one can often more profitably turn to fictional accounts that explore the situation up close, from the perspective of individuals caught up in the unfolding calamity. The best such works provide a clear-eyed depiction of the whole through a nuanced portrait of the details.

Just such a feat regarding the history of the impact of ETA’s violent role in the Basque conflict of the past half century has been accomplished by the Spanish writer Fernando Aramburu, with his amazing novel Homeland. Through the experiences of two families in a small town south of San Sebastián (in Basque: Donostia), the capital city of one of the provinces of the Basque Autonomous Community of Spain, he explores the social complexities that arose from how deeply embedded the ETA movement was into daily life in the local communities of the Basque region.

At the heart of the story are the matriarchs of the two families, Bittori and Miren. Inseparable childhood friends who in their youth had considered entering a convent together, they ended up instead marrying, and their husbands over time also become best friends, regularly found together at the local pub drinking and playing cards, as well as riding with the local community bicycle touring club. Eventually Bittori has a son and a daughter, and Miren two boys and a girl, and the families end up spending significant time together as the children grow up, including attending local festivals and events.

But as the children grow into early adulthood, differences creep into the families’ relationship, differences that, as is so often the case, can be papered over when things are going well but become festering wounds when conflict arises. For one, Bittori’s husband Txato becomes a relatively well-off businessman in the small town as the owner of a trucking company while Miren’s husband remains a poor factory worker. Although Bittori and Txato don’t intentionally flaunt the wealth they’ve acquired, every vacation they mention and every trinket they buy for their friends’ children makes a tiny, but enduring and corrosive mark on Miren’s pride.

Then, in a community in which ETA has a strong presence, and even those who are not supporters attend the rallies and demonstrations out of a distinct fear of standing out if they don’t show up, one of Miren’s sons gradually becomes involved with the organization. Slowly, inexorably, he graduates without conscious commitment from participating in demonstrations with his friends, to acting out, to more serious violence – before suddenly being forced to escape the police by taking the only path he knows: entering more deeply into ETA. Thus, while Bittori and her family view the organization with disdain, Miren confronts a more complex reality.

All this eventually comes to a head some years later, when graffiti begins appearing on the walls around town accusing Txato of being a police informant and traitor to the Basque cause. He and his family suddenly become ostracized by the townspeople as none are willing to risk the wrath of ETA, especially in such a small town in which everyone knows one another. To Bittori and her family’s shock, this rejection comes also from Miren, for whom the fact of having a son in ETA has led her to harden her heart – her mother’s love allowing no doubts to exist in her mind about her son and his cause. As we learn already in the opening chapters, a crushing moment of violence sends both families spinning wildly apart, each on their own destructive trajectory; and yet their deeply intertwined past leaves them with seemingly unbreakable ties that continue to weigh heavily on them. Can they find peace, forgive the seemingly unforgiveable?

For readers not directly connected to Spain and the Basque conflict, hearing about the unremitting series of deadly attacks – whether in this novel or in the news – for what seems like a political dispute can leave one with a clear judgement of ETA as the more guilty party in what occurs. Certainly the words of Christopher Hitchens in his essay Letters to a Young Contrarian seem both relevant and reasonable:

In some ways I feel sorry for … fanatics, because they so much miss the point of being human, and deserve a sort of pity. But then I harden my heart, and decide to hate them all the more, because of the misery they inflict and because of the contemptible excuses they advance for doing so. (109)

In that vein, it can be easy to view the Basque conflict in a simple dichotomy of good and evil, and for an author to write a story with characters similarly sharply defined.

But Aramburu has done readers the immense favor of foreswearing a simplistic perspective on the situation as he explores it through his novel. In Homeland he presents his characters as deeply flawed and vulnerable: some react with merciless anger and spite, while others try to ignore the reality by turning inward or leaving home behind. But he demonstrates that these same characters can eventually grow and learn and change, rising above their past feelings to find some measure of understanding, mercy and forgiveness in their hearts. In short, he presents them as human beings, with all the complexity that that entails. The result is a story that provides a nuanced portrait of the conflict, of youth caught up in the violent program of a pitiless organization, a community impacted by its presence and its acts, and the victimization that results on all sides.

Through his story he demonstrates that it is possible to understand, to strive to understand, the reasons for why someone does something – anything, really – without necessarily countenancing their behavior.

To be clear, however, Aramburu does not trivialize the violence, or excuse the community that, through their silence, tolerates it and allows it to happen. Late in the novel, in response to the brutal event at the heart of the story, a character notes:

In my village people are probably saying in low voices so no one hears them that this is savagery, useless bloodshed, you don’t build a nation that way. But no one will lift a finger. By now they’re already hosed down the street so there won’t be a trace of the crime. And tomorrow there will be whispering in the air, but deep down it will be business as usual. People will turn out for the next demonstration in favor of ETA, knowing that they’d better be seen with the rest of the herd. That’s the price you pay to live in peace in the land of the silent. (426)

And, in fact, among the many heartrending aspects of the story – the senseless violence against an innocent, the seemingly inexorable radicalization of a young man, the heart-breaking dissolution of lifetime friendships – perhaps the most disturbing and dispiriting is the recognition of the culpability “of the herd” and “the price you pay to live in peace in the land of the silent.” The power of a few radicals willing to resort at any moment to brutal violence cows many if not most into quiet, compliant submission in the community. Easy enough for a reader to condemn in the abstract context of a distant conflict, but each must wonder what our reaction would be, if confronted by the same circumstances, the same decisions.

In constructing his novel, Aramburu has used a particularly effective structure – splitting the story into 125 chapters of a few pages each, and moving back and forth in time within the several decades covered by the story. Thus a reader often comes to learn of consequences before detailed causes, gets brief glimpses into each character’s life before shifting again to the next one, and so only slowly over the course of the book comes to see and understand the full complexity of their lives, of their relationships with one another, and the variety and challenges of their experience. His approach teaches – forces – readers to withhold judgement, to wait until more of the puzzle pieces are in place, before drawing final conclusions about motivations and intent.

And so ultimately this book about the Basque conflict is really a story about humanity, wherever we may live. We must each confront our own choices and motivations, in the face of the injustice and inequality we see around us, of whatever form.

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The priest in Aramburu’s story comes across as particularly compliant to ETA and its power in the community. At one point, trying to comfort Miren, he tells her that:

[God] made us Basques the way we are, tenacious in our purposes, hardworking, and firm in the idea of a sovereign nation. For that reason, I would go so far as to assert that on us has fallen the Christian mission of defending our identity, therefore our culture, and above all our language. … I say to you, completely honestly, our struggle isn’t only just. It’s necessary… (286)

The priest’s claim that the Basques have “the Christian mission of defending our identity”, and that by implication the violent means ETA uses “isn’t only just … it’s necessary,” reminds me of the preacher in Mark Twain’s The War Prayer, who, as his congregation’s sons march off to war claims God’s preference for his countrymen, beseeching

Lord our God,
Father and Protector
of our land and flag!

Arambaru’s priest needs a visit from the “aged stranger” who then enters the church as the preacher completes his lecture, stands before the congregation, and once the preacher finishes, says

I come from the Throne –
bearing a message from Almighty God!

He tells the congregation the other side of what they and their preachers are requesting, the violent destruction they are wishing on their enemies, who, he reminds them, are also God’s creatures.

But, of course, Twain’s story concludes: “It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.”  And, so it would likely go with someone trying to convince the priest and his congregation in the small town to reconsider their stand.

(My review of Twain’s story The War Prayer 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: "The Black Sheep and Other Fables" by Augusto Monterroso

The Black Sheep and other fables (1969)
(La Oveja Negra y demás fábulas)
Augusto Monterroso (1921-2003)
79 pages

Exploring human foibles and frailties through stories with animal protagonists has a long history in literature, with perhaps the most famous example being Aesop’s fables, believed to have originated some six centuries BCE. By having characters based on animals, writers can assume that readers will readily visualize the animal characters with a minimum of description, but, more importantly, their animals characters can take on human traits without implying to readers a particular nationality or race.

With his book The Black Sheep and other fables (La Oveja Negra y demás fábulas), Honduran author Augusto Monterroso has followed in this tradition, introducing his intent already in his choice of epigraph: “Animals appear to be so similar to humans that at times it is impossible to distinguish them.” (“Los animales se parecen tanto al hombre que a veces es imposible distinguuirlos de éste.”) And in fact this collection of stories, each from a few paragraphs to a few pages long, mostly feature animals acting out human behaviors, though a few deviate from that motif by, for example, invoking incarnations of good and evil in human form, or involving humans observing animal behavior.

That said, these are most assuredly not the morality tales of Aesop. Instead, Monterroso has written deeply satirical stories that poke fun at human habits and behaviors, exploring the weaknesses and blind spots in our thinking and actions that we generally try to pretend aren’t present. He hints at the tone he takes already in the epigraph quoted above: it is attributed to one K’nyo Mobutu, listed in the Index of Names and Places (Ídice onomástico and geográfico) at the back of the book, as an anthropophagus (antropófago); one can find the word anthropophagus described in Merriam-Webster as “man-eater, cannibal.”  Thus this evidently fictional character and his ‘profession’ give another level of meaning to Monterroso’s epigraph – the English expression ‘it tastes like chicken’ works in Spanish too...

In the story The Monkey Who Wanted to be a Writer of Satires (El Mono que quiso ser escritor satirico), Monterroso perhaps self-references his choice of using fables of animals as a basis to satirize humans. The titular monkey spends a long time studying human behavior, eventually becoming an expert at the many and varied aspects of it that he observes. But once he decides he has learned enough to begin writing, he struggles to select particular animal species to represent the behavior he wishes to satirize in each story, loathe to insult his friends among whichever species he might choose – certainly an abiding challenge of the satirist.

Several of the more trenchant fables address idiosyncrasies of religious belief. One such story, Faith and Mountains, plays off the ancient conviction that faith can move mountains; in it, Montrorroso takes a literal view of the metaphor, writing that “in the beginning Faith would move mountains only when it was absolutely necessary” (“al principio la Fe movía montañas sólo cuandao era absolutamente necesario”), and so for many millennia the countryside remained stable:

but when Faith began to become more widespread and people found the idea of moving mountains entertaining, they wouldn’t do it without changing the location of the mountains, and it became more and more difficult to find mountains in the place where one had left them the night before…
For that reason, good people abandoned Faith and now the mountains generally stay permanently in their place.
When on a road there is a cave-in from which several travelers die, it’s because someone …has had an ever so brief flickering of faith.

(Pero cuando la Fe comenzó a propargarse y a la gente le pareció divertida la idea de mover montañas, éstas no hacían sino cambiar de sitio, y cada vez era más difícil enconrarlas en el lugar en que uno las había dejado la noche anterior…
La Buena gente prefirió entonces abandoner la Fe y ahora las montañas permanecen por lo general en su sitio.
Cuando en la carretera se produce un derrumbe bajo el cual mueren verios viajeros, es que alguien … tuvo un ligerísimo atisbo de Fe.) (16)

In a similar vein, The Repentant Apostate (El apóstata arrepentido) makes a pointed distinction sure to offend many:

It is said that there was once a catholic (according to some), or a protestant (according to others), who in far off times and assailed by doubts, began to seriously consider becoming again a Christian; but out of fear that his neighbors would believe that he had done it only to appear witty, or to call attention to himself, he renounced his outrageous feebleness and intention.

(Se dice que habiá una vez un católico, según unos, o un protestante, según otros, que en tiempos muy lejanos y asaltado por las dudas comenzó a pensar seriamente en volverse cristiano; pero el temor de que sus vecinos imaginaran que lo hacía para pasar por gracioso, o por llamar la atención, lo hizo renunciar a su extravagante debilidad y propósito.) (29) 

His stories on Good and Evil also take up this theme of people creating enormous distinctions – with often violent implications – out of differences that a dispassionate observe finds minor or even inconsequential.

Ultimately, however, Monterroso is an equal opportunity satirist, with also scientists being fair game for his focus. In Rabbit and Lion (El Conejo y el León), “a celebrated psychoanalyst” finds himself lost in a jungle and, climbing a tree to find his way out, happens to observe a lion and a rabbit approach one another, unaware of each other’s presence. When the two animals finally cross paths, the lion roars and the rabbit freezes for a moment, looking it in the eye, before running off, and

Upon returning to the city the celebrated psychoanalyst made public … his famous treatise in which he demonstrated that the lion is the most childish and cowardly animal of the jungle, and the rabbit the most valiant and mature: the lion roars and gestures and threatens the universe out of fear; the rabbit notices this, recognizes his own strength and withdraws before it might lose its patience and finish off that outrageous and out of control being, which it understands and which after all it hadn’t done anything to.

De regreso a la ciudad el célebre Psicoanalista publicó … su famoso tratado en que demuestra que el León es el animal más infantile y cobarde de la Selva, y el Conejo el más valiente y maduro: el León ruge y hace gestos y amenaza al Universo movido por el miedo; el Conejo advierte esto, conoce su propia fuerza y se retira antes de perder la paciencia y acabar con aquel ser extravagante y fuera de sí, al que comprende y que después de todo no le ha hecho nada. (10)

Taken together the stories of this collection form a bit of an uneven mix, with some being mere trifles – cute and good for a chuckle, but little more. In many of them, however, Monterroso provides readers with biting commentaries on the human condition; these engaging tales both entertain us and, at the same time, give us pause for thought about the unspoken assumptions and expertly concealed contradictions of our natures and our beliefs.

(Dedicated to Jesús)
 

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Book Review: "The Man They Wanted Me to Be" by Jared Yates Sexton

The Man They Wanted Me to Be (2019)
Jared Yates Sexton (1981)
255 pages

In the wake of the 2016 US presidential election, wide-spread soul-searching occurred around the failure to have anticipated the outcome. Though many seemed inclined to settle on a particular cause they felt had ‘swung the vote,’ in an election decided by some 80 thousand votes across five states most any of the myriad reasons put forward could have been sufficient to provide the margin of victory.

That said, there has been one explanation that has appeared particularly frequently, and that can be summarized as: frustration over stagnant wages and lost jobs, particularly in manufacturing and heavy industries, has led to a growing existential uncertainty among people in communities across the country about their position in society, their future, and the possibilities for their children. In reaction to this uncertainty, the narrative goes, working class voters have blamed globalization and immigration as the primary sources of these disruptions, and, finding little concrete support for their concerns among traditional Democrats and Republicans, were open to a populist-sounding candidate who bashed the entire system. In this line of thinking Trump hit all the right buttons, making it acceptable to disparage in the harshest possible language not only global trade agreements and alliances, but also any group identified as a scapegoat for working class dissatisfaction – such as immigrants and minorities – as counter to American interests, whatever the reality.


And that line – of the working class feeling disenfranchised and abandoned – has been accompanied by an implication, sometimes more explicitly expressed than others, that the political and social elite had failed to recognize and acknowledge what has been lost in these communities, and that given what’s been lost, it’s perhaps understandable, goes that line of thinking, that so many working class voters supported Trump.

Journalist and author Jared Yates Sexton begs to differ with this narrative and its conclusions.

In his book The Man They Wanted Me to Be, he argues that a core part of the social and cultural structure that working class Trump voters fear losing deserves, in fact, to be left behind. He argues that some of the current working class frustration has originated not directly from the losses of the jobs themselves, but from the threat such economic challenges have posed to a deeply engrained – and in his view profoundly harmful – way of life, one based on what he describes as a

white patriarchal masculinity, an especially potent and toxic system of power and control that has subjugated women and minorities for generations via methodical and organized actions powered by misogyny and racism, a unique brand of maleness that held sway over the United States of America since before its founding. (9)

Though identifying this system of white male patriarchy as leading to socially disruptive and destructive behavior, Sexton actually characterizes the men who have both benefited from its existence and perpetrated its violent consequences as themselves among its victims. From childhood they have been taught, he argues, to assume as their birthright a wide-ranging set of privileges, in particular with respect to women and minorities, as well as expectations for how they are to behave as white men. Unable now, as a result of ongoing economic disruption, to fulfill what have become for them psychologically fundamental entitlements and obligations, they are experiencing a growing frustration, which has led to aggressive reactions that are having a profound impact on the internal lives of families and communities, as well as more broadly on our culture and politics.

Thus, Sexton argues, the current political dysfunction does not originate directly out of the economic disruptions of globalization; rather those economic disruptions have exposed a long-standing and corrosive social compact, the death-throes of which now savage our social cohesiveness. In language that leaves no doubt about his sentiments, he spotlights

the current political impasse we find ourselves in where fragile white men with fragile manhoods have stalled social progress and propelled into the White House a tough-talking, thin-skinned vulgarian who embodies, more than anyone else, toxic American masculinity. (10)

And Sexton makes clear from the opening pages his own intimate familiarity with the experience and impact of this toxic masculinity, having “grow[n] up in a dirt-poor factory family in southern Indiana.” (3) As he covered that “rolling disaster” of the Trump campaign, “what [he] eventually found, at the dark heart of it all, was white men.” (3) And this realization struck a chord deep within him, recalling the challenges and experiences of his own upbringing, and the long, difficult, never-quite-over-it road he has taken to get out from under the lessons the men of his childhood forcibly pushed on him. Out of that self-recognition on the Trump campaign trail came a desire on Sexton's part to understand the origins of the system of white male patriarchy, the precise contours of what it demanded of men, and the implications for both white men themselves, and our broader society.

Sexton’s view of the current social and political dysfunction he has witnessed within his own family and while covering the Trump presidential campaign as arising out of a frustrated reaction to the unachievable expectations of the system of white male patriarchy, with white “men refusing to come to terms with their situation because to be a white man in America is to expect everything to already be on your terms” (29), resonates strongly with comments by the historian Vincent Harding from a 2011 interview he had with Krista Tippett on her program On Being, in which he said

I have a feeling that one of the deeper transformations that’s going on now is that for the white community of America, there is an uncertainty growing about its own role, its own control, its own capacity to name the realities, that it has moved into a realm of uncertainty that I did not allow itself to face before.

Up to now, uncertainty was the experience of the weak, the poor, the people of color, that that was our realm. But now, for all kinds of political, economic reasons, for all kinds of psychological reasons, that uncertainty, and unknowingness, is permeating what was the dominant, so-called, society. That breaking apart is for me more likely the source of the anxiety, the fear, the anger, the unwillingness to give in, the need to have something that they can hold on to and say, this is the way and it's got to be our way or we will all die.

For Sexton, the “refusing to come to terms with their situation” – Harding’s “our way or we will all die” – has particular poignancy because the white patriarchal structure was a “lie … always destined to fail.” (29) Misled by “the mass culture and capitalistic system of the country” the last several generations of men “were destined to come up short and rage against everyone and everything but the system that had let them down in the first place.” (29, italics mine)

Sexton’s book, then, details his path of discovery and understanding of the concept of toxic masculinity, of his own personal ongoing – and inescapable – relationship to it, and of its complicity in the social divisiveness of the past several years. He finds sympathy for the generations of white men raised on the emotionally crippling expectations of a social structure that was never beneficial to white men, and that has now become increasingly untenable in the face of dramatic social and economic changes.

But his sympathy does not extend to accepting that the system must continue.  Rather, he argues that we must find a new message to transmit to boys as they grow up, one that both gives them better, more achievable goals and reduces their tendency to act out with violence, and so makes them better men. Only then can our society begin to repair itself, and so prepare to confront the complex and difficult challenges facing us in the coming decades.

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Post-script: Here I include a more detailed look at the book, including several extended – and startlingly illuminating – quotes that reflect Sexton’s ability to submerge himself into the subculture he explores, and so to observe and report on it up close.

Sexton traces the roots of white male patriarchy in the US back to well before the country even formally existed, but he identifies the period after the “apocalyptic” Civil War as the moment when “our modern definition of masculinity was forged.” (22)  He writes of the consequences of the economic upheaval caused by the Civil War that “The men who would comprise my family and countless others were laborers who toiled in workplaces devoid of joy and rampant with safety hazards. Before the advent of unions and labor rights movements, these were jobs where men were overworked, underpaid, and maimed regularly. It was hellish, and in order to go to work every day the laborer had to adapt both himself and his expectations to survive his harsh reality.

Faced with a job that paid just enough to keep a family afloat, and sometimes not even that, the American man adapted his idea of self-worth to depend on his identity as a laborer as opposed to his fulfillment of the American Dream. Callused hands and tired bones became indicators of self-worth and proof of an attempt, however futile, to do the necessary work to survive, if not advance.

What made this exchange possible was the laborer’s status as a white male, a privileged position that, regardless of station or worth, prioritized him above women, minorities, homosexuals, and immigrants. He may have failed to advance or conquer the world as the Gods of Industry had, but society was in his favor and at home he was still king. (22) 

Through two world wars and the Great Depression this situation persisted. And then, during the years following WWII, the capitalist economy blossomed, with assembly lines pumping out a dizzying array of consumer goods and modern advertising methods developed to keep the demand high. But, Sexton notes, “with the advent of mass media and anxiety fostered by advertising, [men and women’s] insecurities and fear of failure were multiplied.” (25) The good economic times made life easier, but also further raised both expectations and the specter of not fulfilling them.

Defeat in Vietnam and the associated rise of the progressive counter-culture crashed the party, Sexton argues, beginning a long series of challenges to the system of white male patriarchy, led by fundamental socio-economic changes, such as the introduction of increasing numbers of women and minorities to the workforce. Threatened by these changes, white men aggressively opposed them in ways that “created a stagnant atmosphere in which rusted and regressive technologies and culture stayed well past their expiration dates. … [Then they] saw the mess they had made, and asked how things had gotten so bad.” (28-29) When they eventually found that no one would answer that question to their satisfaction, they ended up on the inexorable path to supporting a Trump presidency.

To illustrate more concretely the pathologies that white men have been raised to believe and embody as a result of the system of white male patriarchy, and the destructive implications for these men’s own lives, for those closest to them, and for society more broadly, Sexton turns to his own family and upbringing to illustrate how it has looked from the inside.

Though the book nominally follows a timeline from his birth, Sexton also looks farther back, to the experiences of his father and his father’s generation as they grew up during the radical economic and social transformation that occurred in American society as the growth economy of the 1950’s evaporated in the 1960’s and the Vietnam war took its toll on social cohesiveness – these changes together breaking apart the hegemony of the white male in US society.

Key to the story of his father, and his own upbringing at his father’s hand, was an expectation that any emotion must be suppressed, any weakness hidden – that, come what may, whether at home, at work or in public, a dominant and unshaken front must be maintained. Sexton points out that these expectations had been reinforced by the performance of the Greatest Generation, and their success in WWII. But, over the course of the 1960’s the economic boom of the previous decade faltered, leaving men’s pay insufficient to support their family without their wives working; at the same time, social reforms such as civil rights and women’s rights advanced the status of non-white-males both socially and economically.  As a result of these changes, the expectations of the white male patriarchy became unfulfillable.

In reaction, white fathers, unwilling and, in fact, unable to give up the expectations of their upbringing, experienced a profound and debilitating frustration, and doubled down on what they knew, becoming ever more unforgiving of any signs of weakness they might see in their sons, or any sign of their wives or girlfriends becoming too independent, any displays by minorities of assuming an equal footing in the community or at work. And, as this frustration deepened, it gradually morphed into ever more aggressive language, and eventually actual violence – against sons, wives, girlfriends, and minorities.

In brutally honest language, Sexton details the struggles he had growing up and trying to fit into the mold created for him, first from his father, and then from a series of step-dad’s as his mother sought to create an economically viable home situation for him. Even once he grows up, escapes home to college, and begins to understand what has happened to him, he finds it difficult to resist the core lessons on manhood that he experienced from the men in his life. He repeatedly slides back into the dark lessons of his childhood, and it’s clear he feels their pull even today.

Out of his attempts to explore and come to grips with his upbringing come, however, important background lessons for his understanding of the phenomenon of the Trump campaign. The ugliness Sexton witnessed during the campaign rallies he attended was for him all too familiar from his own upbringing and what he saw within his own family: “While the 2016 presidential election raged and brought to surface all the frustrations and wrath that had been simmering for decades, thus ensuring Donald Trump would gain purchase, home haunted me with new meaning.” (31)

As an example, he recounts a moment from the early 2000’s, in which he goes with his dad deep into the countryside, where they meet up with other men, each bringing piles of guns and ammunition, to do target shooting. After they are done, they gather around their trucks, and conversation begins, and:

idle chitchat gave way to more pressing matters. I’d caught glimpses of this in the past when my male relatives sat in a room empty of women, in a dingy locker room, and later this setting would be re-created at every Donald Trump rally. The guns had jostled something in them. Studies I’d come across later would explain that handling guns actually increases testosterone in men and they were definitely more aggressive, and more than willing to voice their opinions. All of their words were soaked with doom. They talked about war, especially the one raging in Iraq, and soon they were liberally exchanging racial slurs, calling Arabs “camel jockeys,” “sand niggers,” and “towelheads,” many of the men wishing they could go overseas and kill some themselves as their eyes lingered over the guns. One fantasized about lining up a bunch of Iraqis, soldiers or citizens, one was just as bad as the other, and seeing how many he could kill with a single bullet.

Their anger wasn’t just reserved for Muslims, though. Soon it turned to African Americans who needed to be taught a lesson, and then Mexicans flooding over the border and stealing jobs. Somebody mentioned a group of migrant workers who’d moved into the area and the man next to me laughed and reminisced about the “old days” when the Ku Klux Klan controlled the town and the homes of immigrants would’ve been set on fire in the middle of the night.

But that wasn’t it. They moved onto conspiracies and even though they’d been so keen on slaughtering Muslims for retribution, it seemed agreed upon around the truck that 9/11 had been an inside job, that a group they called the New World Order was behind September 11, as well as getting minorities and women riled up about rights, fixing elections, and even spreading HIV/AIDS, which, one of my dad’s friends explained, had been engineered in a lab to reduce the population before the coming apocalyptic battle between good and evil. (154) 

These same opinions come out into the open as part of the groundswell of support that lifted Trump to victory in 2016, notes Sexton. Describing a Trump rally that he attended in June 2016, he writes:

What I witnessed that night was one of the most blatant displays of offensive, fascistic behavior I’d seen since my days in the locker room. It was like all of the troubling, frightening things that’d been saved for private spaces, kept behind locked doors, had suddenly exploded into the public arena. Society had kept these people at bay for years, or at least mostly contained by the threat of consequence, but Trump’s candidacy had sprung the lock and given them safety in the daylight. My reporting was among the first to sound the alarm as to just what had begun taking shape. Up until that point the criticism of Trump was that he was offensive, sure, unacceptable, certainly, but no one in their right mind thought he’d actually get elected. That rally, and the ones that followed, proved these thoughts to be depressingly misguided, and the certainty had only allowed his base of deplorables to take root. (123)

Though Hillary Clinton may have made a political blunder in her use of the word “deplorables” in a speech to describe Trump supporters, Sexton owns the term, and makes it clear that for the attendees he saw at Trump rallies – who reminded him of his family and the community he grew up in – it was the right word. Not surprisingly, his reporting made him an uncomfortable visitor to family gatherings; more broadly, he reports that “white supremacists threatened to murder me in my home [and] people … tried to break into my house.” (31)

In the final section of the book Sexton focuses in more detail on the political calculations that have contributed to supporting the continuation of this lie, to maintaining the righteousness of the system of white male patriarchy, despite the resulting crisis of masculinity and its violent consequences. He begins by noting, crucially, that

besides his most obvious lies … Trump’s message has resonated with large swathes of the country because there is, at its heart, a kernel of truth. The America he’s speaking to, that of my family and others like them, is indeed suffering. (216)

This suffering – the result of the patriarchal structure that white men are brought up to internalize and the social and economic changes of the past half century that have made the expectations that come with it untenable – has been exploited and manipulated, he argues, by the Republican Party and its supporters in the media.  He views these groups as actively working to distract white males from shaking off these damaging expectations and instead pursue a path of “cooperation between the demographics pitted against each other.”  Instead, they are “trained by conservative media to feel attacked.” (217)

In a series of paragraphs that express both the deep sympathy and the profound anger Sexton feels about what he has learned, he cleaves to the heart of his story.  Beginning with those raised on the tenets of white male patriarchy, and trapped in their upbringing, he makes clear that

They’re justified in feeling that something has changed. The world really is transforming around them, and with those changes their advantages are rapidly evaporating. Industry is giving way to a new economy that favors creativity and communication while rewarding empathy and education, which men are taught to oppose. The future is geared for so-called feminine values, and the education and the democratization of mass culture does mean that minorities who have been held back in the past are now realizing more social and economic potential. (217)

For those, however, who have sought to hold onto their power and wealth by manipulating men into continuing to cling to the social structures of the past his critique is withering and merciless.  He pulls no punches in stating that

Republicans lied to men by telling them their factories were coming back. They lied to them by telling them the mines they worked in were going to be reopened. They told them to resist even the most commonsense gun control as their children were murdered in their classrooms. They told them to hate higher learning when all the studies and all the books told the same story: the times were changing and you’d better change with them.

Even more tragically, change has always been in their best interest. The occupations they cling to so desperately—the factory jobs, the mining jobs, the manual labor jobs—were awful in the first place. Men who toil in these careers are underpaid and miserable. They suffer horrific injuries, die prematurely, and are exploited by companies that hardly ever reward their labor or loyalty. But men have long fallen for the great myth of American capitalism. They strive to make it and when they fail they find solace, no matter how dismal, in their pursuit and their work. (218) 

The result has been that white men have doubled down on defending what they were raised to believe was their birthright.  And the consequence has been the the ugliness of the past years, as

we watched men attack women as opportunists, as being too unattractive to be violated, as motivated by political and economic ends, because each conflict was another battle in the escalating war in the crisis of masculinity. No ground can be given to the forces of progress here because with each case of men being held accountable for their actions the whole house of cards could come tumbling down.” (218) 

Sexton argues that men actually have much to gain from the cultural changes underway, but he at the same time makes clear, based on his own experiences and struggles, that the unwinding of the grip that the indoctrination of his upbringing in how a man should behave, what a man should believe, as part of the white male patriarchal system is not a simple feat.

He describes in detail how for every step he himself has taken forward in his personal battle on this front, he has then too often slid backwards – finding himself trying to prove his manhood through descents into drinking, and picking meaningless fights – experiences that have led him to the edge of suicide, when he finds that he can neither live up to the unrealistic expectations nor free himself of them.

With this book Sexton looks into his own heart, and that of the men of his family and his community, to explore the system of white male patriarchy that he feels has been so destructive for both white men and our broader society.

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Other reviews / information:

Sexton notes (quoted more fully above) that men

suffer horrific injuries, die prematurely, and are exploited by companies that hardly ever reward their labor or loyalty. But men have long fallen for the great myth of American capitalism.

This recalls the analysis of the philosopher Martin Hägglund, in his book This Life, in which he argues that such exploitation is inherent, and in fact unavoidable, in capitalism, because capitalism values not the time of the individual to pursue what they desire out of life, but rather values the labor time of individuals, and so attempts to maximize that labor time while minimizing the associated cost of it.  (My review of Hägglund's 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