Thoughts for the Day: Sunday 1 August 2021

 

To Move the World

Jeffrey D. Sachs

"Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again."--John F. Kennedy.

Henry Adams and the Making of America

Garry Wills

To emphasize from the outset the importance of Napoleon to the Jeffersonian administrations, Adams introduces him in the History's first volume with a Miltonic flourish: "Most picturesque of all figures in modern history, Napoleon Bonaparte, like Milton's Satan on his throne of state, although surrounded by a group of figures little less striking than himself, sat unapproachable on his bad eminence; or, when he moved, the dusky air felt an unusual weight" (227).

The Collected Works of Henry Adams

Henry Adams

History had no use for multiplicity; it needed unity; it could study only motion, direction, attraction, relation. Everything must be made to move together; one must seek new worlds to measure; and so, like Rasselas, Adams set out once more, and found himself on May 12 settled in rooms at the very door of the Trocadero. [From The Education of Henry Adams.]

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

“In short,” said Rousseau, “it is the best and most natural order for the wisest to govern the multitude, as long as it is certain that they govern for its benefit and not for their own.”

The Wedge

Scott Carney

Despite the threat—or rather because of it—we’re focused. The potential for someone getting hurt is the wedge that forces us into coordination.

The Wedge

Scott Carney

[O]ur nervous systems can really only issue two commands: tension or release.

The Soul's Code

James Hillman

“In non-linear systems [and surely a life is a nonlinear system] tiny, seemingly trivial differences in input can lead to huge differences in output.… Chaotic systems are not predictable [and surely unpredictability, too, is a characteristic of life] but they are stable in their irregular patterns.” Chaos theory gives great importance to “sensitive dependence on initial conditions.”

The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus

Gary Lachman

The difference between the Gnostics and the Hermeticists is that Hermetic man doesn't want to escape from the world, but to realize his full potential within it, in order to embrace his obligations, so that, as Hermes tells Asclepius, he can 'raise his sight to heaven while he takes care of the earth'.

Thoughts for the Day: Friday 5 March 2021

 

Men in Dark Times

Hannah Arendt

If such a human nature were to exist, it would be a natural phenomenon, and to call behavior in accordance with it “human” would assume that human and natural behavior are one and the same. In the eighteenth century the greatest and historically the most effective advocate of this kind of humanity was Rousseau, for whom the human nature common to all men was manifested not in reason but in compassion, in an innate repugnance, as he put it, to see a fellow human being suffering.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Restoration in Europe appears today in the form of three fundamental concepts. First there arose the concept of collective security, which is in reality not a new concept but one taken over from the happy times of the Holy Alliance; it was revived after the last war in the hope that it would serve as a check on nationalistic aspirations and aggression. If this system went to pieces, however, it was not because of such aggression but because of the intervention of ideological factors.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Montesquieu’s moving and guiding principles—virtue, honor, fear—are principles insofar as they rule both the actions of the government and the actions of the governed.

Collingwood's The Idea of History

Peter Johnson

However, not all of past life is historically reclaimable. What cannot be re-enacted cannot be known. And what cannot be known, for Collingwood, includes the immediacy of the past, an immediacy that is essential to sensation and to feelings, and which is to some degree present in thought, too. Historical blunders, failures of various kinds, even accidents and strokes of luck can be rethought so long as they can be related to the agent’s aims and purposes.

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

Mainstream conservatives organized themselves in parties of the center-right. They were flanked by two kinds of dissent from within the right: conservatives on the party fringes who refused to compromise with the liberal-democratic status quo, and conservative critics, outside party politics and often indifferent to policy, who found ugly or unethical the liberal-modern world that political conservatives were helping to create.

The Ingenuity Gap

Thomas Homer-Dixon

[T]he economic optimists’ view implies that the human species is biologically exceptional and that our modern economies are historically exceptional.

Time Warrior

Steve Chandler

The main reason people have a problem with procrastination is that they don’t see the connection between completing something and having new, fresh energy come out of that.

The Way of Zen

Alan W. Watts

It is fundamental to every school of Buddhism that there is no ego, no enduring entity which is the constant subject of our changing experiences. For the ego exists in an abstract sense alone, being an abstraction from memory, somewhat like the illusory circle of fire made by a whirling torch.

Apologies to the Grandchildren: Reflections on Our Ecological Predicament, Its Deeper Causes, and Its Political Consequences by William (Patrick) Ophuls

 

                                                                Published in 2018

 

Civilization is, by its very nature, a long-running Ponzi scheme. It lives by robbing nature and borrowing from the future, exploiting its hinterland until there is nothing left to exploit, after which it implodes. While it still lives, it generates a temporary and fictitious surplus that it uses to enrich and empower the few and to dispossess and dominate the many. Industrial civilization is the apotheosis and quintessence of this fatal course. A fortunate minority gains luxuries and freedoms galore, but only by slaughtering, poisoning, and exhausting creation. So we bequeath you a ruined planet that dooms you to a hardscrabble existence, or perhaps none at all.  

Ophuls, William. Apologies to the Grandchldren: Reflections on Our Ecological Predicament, Its Deeper Causes, and Its Political Consequences (p. 1). Kindle Edition.

I first read this book in March 2019, as soon as I became aware of it. It only took me a couple of days to read it. This fast reading was the result of several factors: first, it's relatively short (140 pages); second, I'd read several other books by Ophuls, and this book is more a less a summary of his work; and third, it was compelling. I gave it five-star ratings on Amazon and Goodreads. However, because of some travel and other commitments, I didn't get around to reviewing it then. But now I've been prompted to return to it and do it full justice. This short book is indeed a summary of Ophuls's work in the field of politics, ecological scarcity, and their effects on human life and well-being. Also, another prompt was my recent reading of Thomas Homer-Dixon's most just-published book, Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril (link to my review).  Indeed, I will consider Ophuls's book by comparing and contrasting his outlook and work with that of Homer-Dixon. Between the two of them, I believe we have two of the savviest and most worthwhile thinkers about the economic, social, and political consequences of our ecological predicament. (I.e., it's greater than "just" climate change.) I'll start with some brief biography of these two scholars.

The following is a brief biography of Ophuls taken from a book he wrote under his given name, Patrick Ophuls, Buddha Takes No Prisoners: A Meditator's Survival Guide (2012) (link to my review):

Patrick Ophuls graduated in 1955 from Princeton University with a degree in Near Eastern area studies and obtained a PhD from Yale in political science in 1973. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1959, was a political analyst on the Afghanistan desk at the State Department, and was also posted to American embassies in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and Tokyo, Japan, as a personal aide to two ambassadors. Leaving the Foreign Service in 1967, he became a professor of political science at Northwestern University. Patrick Ophuls has practiced insight meditation intensively for over 30 years. He began sitting with the Thai teacher Dhiravamsa in 1974, graduating from his teacher training program in 1977 and going on to assist him during several retreats in 1978. He began studying with Insight Meditation Society founders Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg in the late seventies, an association that continues to this day.

Ophuls (b. 1934) is a generation older than Homer-Dixon (b. 1956). Ophuls, after completing college in 1955 spent time in both the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Foreign Service before attending Yale to receive a Ph.D. in political science in 1973. But after this, Ophuls served only a brief stint in academia before becoming what he describes as an independent scholar. By the early 1970s, Ophuls was publishing works about environmental issues, and he's continued writing about this topic--and especially its implications for economic and political life--ever since then. Of course, there are a lot of questions that arise from this brief biography, such as the influences that his experiences in the Coast Guard and the Foreign Service had on his outlook about the environment, political life, and his interest in Buddhist meditation practice. Also, I wonder about the reasons for his relatively brief tenure in academia while nevertheless writing some very learned and provocative books aimed at readers with a high level of sophistication. And, does Ophuls have grandchildren?

Homer-Dixon's biography is a bit more conventional, at least in the field of academic life. But part of the charm of Homer-Dixon's works, which are aimed at a general but sophisticated audience, arises from his sharing bits of his personal biography along the way. Born and raised in British Columbia (western Canada), he had a lot of exposure to nature, as his father was a forester. Time in nature and knowledge about nature came early to Homer-Dixon. He traveled as a young man, and he worked in the Canadian oilfields for a while. Since completing his doctoral work at MIT in political science in 1989, he's held academic positions in Canada. He began his career focusing on issues of international conflict arising from environmental scarcity, and he then expanded his research into a variety of other areas concerned with environmental issues, complexity theory, and related topics. In reading Commanding Hope and Homer-Dixon's two prior works intended for the general public, I find Homer-Dixon relying a great deal on social scientific research to guide his thoughts about political and economic issues and--especially in Commanding Hope--thinking about how to persuade the general populace about the need for a new economic-political paradigm. Ophuls, on the other hand, while acknowledging social scientific research, chooses to base his arguments and perspectives on the classics of political thought (in addition to his emphasis on the basics of natural science that underlies ecological thinking). Plato, Rousseau, Jefferson, and Thoreau figure most prominently in Ophuls thinking, along with many others counted among the classics of political thought. He also acknowledges the importance to his outlook from 20th-century thinkers like Jung, Lippmann, Niebuhr, and Arendt, to name but a few of those he acknowledges in his excellent bibliographical essays. But now let me turn to what may be the most interesting contrast between these two thinkers about our future. And here I refer to the issue of "hope," which both thinkers address in the most recent books.

The second chapter of Ophuls's work is entitled "What Can Give Us Hope?" and it begins with this sentence: "Industrial civilization is in a hopeless position, an impasse from which there is no visible avenue of escape." Id., p.25. Not an encouraging thought, I must say. He goes on to argue that industrial civilization can't stand still (stop growing) because this would halt "progress," the religion upon which the last two-hundred-plus years have been based. Such a change would "crush morale" and destroy the "American dream" (and the Chinese Dream and all of the other variants of dreams of material wealth in the world today). Ophuls rejects both the hope that "renewable energy" will allow industrial civilization to continue on course, and he rejects technological miracles such as "the Singularity." Ophuls comes to this conclusion about any attempt to maintain the status quo:

We face a stark choice. We can expend our waning stocks of fossil fuels, our scarce capital, and our limited political will in a vain attempt to maintain industrial civilization as it exists, or we can use those same resources to effect a necessary transition to a radically different type of civilization. But we cannot do both, and we must choose reasonably soon. For if we follow the line of least political and societal resistance and wager everything on an attempt to preserve our energy-intensive, mass-consumptive way of life, we will go bankrupt energetically. Without the resources to make the transition, deep collapse will become inescapable. Id., p. 30.

Lest one believe that we can change course simply by sounding a clarion call to reason and rationality, Ophuls reminds us that

It is abundantly clear that scientific evidence and rational arguments, no matter how weighty or well formulated, are not enough to overcome sheer inertia, vested interests, ideological blinders, the shortcomings of the human mind, or the extent to which we are all increasingly entangled in the trappings of modern life. Thus industrial civilization seems destined to continue on its current trajectory until one or more of the limits bites so deeply as to precipitate collapse. Id., pp.30-31.

He continues:

As industrial civilization begins to implode, we will witness an upsurge of prophecy of all kinds—fantastic, salvational, millenarian, apocalyptic, and reactionary. Id., p. 31.

According to Ophuls, fantasies about "the Singularity" are simply a new variation on the more traditional reactions he lists above. Silicon Valley won't be our salvation. At this point, the reader is approaching the end of the chapter and is probably wondering, as I did, where is the hope? And in the closing lines of this chapter Ophuls provides us with this tantalizing observation:

But the prophetic madness attending the death throes of industrial civilization will also contain a small but significant ray of hope: out of the welter of false prophets there may arise one whose message will effect the metanoia that is the only real way out of the impasse. For only by transcending our obsession with material power and progress and recovering a deep empathic connection to the planet and the life it bears can we hope to reconstruct civilization to be sane, humane, and ecological. Id, p. 32.

 "Metanoia." It's a term that I used in my review of Homer-Dixon's Commanding Hope, although Homer-Dixon didn't use this term. Ophuls refers to it as a "change of heart" as in a religious conversion, while I defined it in my review of Commanding Hope as a change of the "heart-mind," but this is a quibble. "Metanoia" is the term used in the New Testament about the effect of Jesus' teachings that has been translated also as "conversion," "finding salvation," and such. Later in this book, Ophuls suggests that this is his "hope":

Thus I would expect (or hope) that a future religion would transcend tribalism and take a more cosmic stance, expounding a universalist teaching that offers abundant spiritual succor and moral support without having recourse to the Grand Inquisitor’s miracle, mystery, and authority. An inkling of such a teaching is perhaps to be found in the Upanishads or the Tao Te Ching. All this is to take a very long view, but living sub specie aeternitatis is exactly what is needed now. Crises tend to rob us of everything except ego’s immediate fears and needs and to create a climate of desperation. That is why the shadow flourishes during a time of troubles. Only the long view will save us. For twenty years a Japanese Zen master tirelessly taught retreats, ordained priests, and established centers, not only in the U. S. but also in other parts of the world. Yet when asked how Buddhism was faring in the West, he replied, “Ask me in 500 years.” Id., p. 104.

 If you've received the impression that Ophuls doesn't promote hope liberally, you'd be correct. The attitude of Ophuls seems to be "yeah, maybe," without much encouragement beyond that. Again, to compare Ophuls's take with that of Homer-Dixon, Homer-Dixon takes a great deal more time and effort in Commanding Hope to make hope both legitimate and yet grounded in the face of the same ecological perils that both writers identify. Perhaps some of the difference is that Homer-Dixon writes about (and for) his children (ages 15 and 12 at the time of his writing), while Ophuls, a generation older, is writing to "the grandchildren."

Another point to know about Ophuls is that his analysis spares no one perspective. He not only critiques contemporary industrial-consumer capitalism, but also democracy, liberalism, tribalism, the media, elites, libertarianism,  and modernity. In short, he pulls no punches. Whether you're a liberal, conservative, reactionary, a leftist--whatever--you can find something that Ophuls has written that challenges your fundamental assumptions. Homer-Dixon, despite his "Dr. Doom" nickname, remains within academia and wants (I surmise) to remain restrained enough not to become totally foreclosed from the public (political) conversation. Thus, Homer-Dixon goes easy on the political particulars of policy prescriptions. Homer-Dixon argues in a more rhetorically restrained mode, while Ophuls uses a much blunter, more prophetic rhetoric. Both rhetorical voices are valid and useful, and I'd deploy one or the other depending on the audience and occasion, although at my point in life--just three years older than Homer-Dixon but with adult children and therefore grandparent-eligible, I tend to favor the more prophetic mode. But, again, given a particular audience, I might soften the blows.

Apologies to the Grandchildren provides a summary of the project that Ophuls has pursued since the 1970s. It's not the book that I'd recommend if one was just beginning to read Ophuls. I'd nominate Plato's Revenge (2011)  (link to my review) for most readers. Nor is it his most comprehensive work (Requiem for Modern Politics: The Tragedy of the Enlightenment and the Challenge of the New Millennium (1997) (link to my review) would be my choice for a top-to-bottom view. But if you want to start with an executive summary (of sorts) that entails a minimum of any doubt or hesitation, you can begin with this work of prophecy. And note well, prophecy isn't about predicting the future, it's about the consequences of choices that we make that create our future. In my book, Ophuls is a true prophet. And I wouldn't mind at all if, in the passage of time and with luck, he's proven even just a bit wrong!

P.S. Here's the blurb that Thomas Homer-Dixon provided for Ophuls's Plato's Revenge: 

For decades, William Ophuls has been among the world's most original thinkers about the implications of our global ecological crisis for freedom, democracy, and political order. In Plato's Revenge, he goes to the essence of this crisis: the deep, tacit, and widespread beliefs that nature and society are nothing more than machines, that the state should play no role in cultivating citizens' virtue, and that self-interested individuals should rely solely on reason to guide their lives. Ophuls weaves together the ideas of some of history's greatest thinkers to argue that humankind's future lies in small, simple republics that cultivate their citizens' virtue through natural law. In doing so, he shreds conventional wisdom and invigorates our conversation about the kind of world we intend our grandchildren to inherit.

Thomas Homer-Dixon

University of Waterloo, author of The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization

 

Andrew Yang, Collingwood, Technology, Prospero, & the Sorcerer's Apprentice: Random Thoughts & Questions

Micky, the Sorcerer's Apprentice, eases his burden & all seems good 

Just thinking out loud after listening to an interview of Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang by Ian Bremmer and then coming upon the quote bellow from R. G. Collingwood.
Consider this quote:

I knew that for sheer ineptitude the Versailles treaty surpassed previous treaties as much as for sheer technical excellence the equipment of twentieth-century armies surpassed those of previous armies. It seemed almost as if man’s power to control ‘Nature’ had been increasing pari passu [with equal step; hand-in-hand] with a decrease in his power to control human affairs.  

R. G. Collingwood, Autobiography (1939)

Regarding the second sentence of the quote, please consider & comment upon the following questions and propositions:

1. Do you agree or disagree with Collingwood's assessment?

2. Collingwood lived during the First World War & the Treaty of Versailles (he worked in the Admiralty during the war), and he wrote this piece on the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War. Do you think if he was writing today, his conclusion would be different? State the grounds that support and that challenge your answer.

3. Has humankind displayed "moral progress" throughout history? Or, as Rousseau contended, have our morals declined from those of "noble savages?"

4. Are you optimistic about the ability of continued technological change to improve the lot of humankind, or do you fear for the future because of the increased powers that it places in human hands? Explain and justify your conclusion.

5. Prospero the magus in Shakespeare's "The Tempest", decided to "abjure" his "magic" (power) and

"break my staff,

Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

And, deeper than did ever plummet sound,

I’ll drown my book."

Gielgud as Prospero: could we "break our staff" & "drown our book" even if we wanted to? 

Could humankind, or at least a thoughtful majority, simply bury our technological magic or even just the most lethal possibilities that it creates? Or are their constraints that prevent us from taking this action as a species? Provide the grounds for your conclusion.

6. I have referred to technology as a form of magic. Is this an appropriate means by which to describe technology? Is this an appropriate metaphor or analogy, or is the relationship inherent in our understanding of what constitutes magic? State your grounds for agreeing or disagreeing with the designation of technology as magic.

7. The "Sorcerer's Apprentice" (think Micky Mouse in "Fantasia") loses control of his

magical technology (the hands-off floor cleaner). The apprentice loses control of the process because he doesn't know the proper spell to stop it. The run-away process is only brought to a halt when the wizard returns and provides the proper incantation to break the spell. If humankind is Micky, who is the Wizard? God, Nature, Enlightened Humanity? Or is there a Wizard or higher power that can rescue us from any folly that we might perpetrate with our technological magic? And if a "higher power" intervenes, will that higher power act as gently and beneficently as the Wizard does toward Micky, or will the Wizard (for instance, "Nature") respond in an angry, aggrieved manner? Consider and respond to these propositions.

Happily, no one has qualified me as a teacher, and if you've read to the end of this, I"m surprised and I'm more than happy that you've done so. Hell, I'd give you an "A" for simply getting this far. And if it's caused you pause to stop and think a bit, all the better. Enjoy the day.

The Wizard returns, peeved but no punitive. Will we be so lucky?

Ecology & the Politics of Scarcity Revisited by William Ophuls & A. Stephen Boyan, Jr.

Published in 1992 but still worth the time.

The first question to ask about this book is why anyone would want to read a book that was originally published in in 1977 and then revised in 1992 about topics such as the environment and ecology, about which we've gathered so much new data and written so much in the intervening years.  Haven’t things changed a great deal since then?  Won’t the information contained in this book prove ridiculously out of date?  The answer to these questions is both yes and no, but the gist of the book remains remarkably pertinent to our current situation.  My intention in reading this book was to further mine the insights of its primary author, William Ophuls.  I have already read the five books that Ophuls has published since Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity Revisited (1992), but I’m eager for more.

In this work, which is an updated version of his 1977 original, Ophuls and coauthor A . Stephen Boyan, Jr. continue the original project that Ophuls undertook: to come to terms with the implications of the science of ecology and the environmental degradation that had gained public and political attention in the 1960s and 1970s.  I’m not aware of any other work that so directly addresses the political implications of adopting an ecological mode of thinking and our need to confront our environmental sins.  Ophuls comes to the project with a doctorate in political science from Yale, but he’s done his homework in the science of ecology as well.

The first part of the book addresses the premises of ecological thinking and the current state of our environment.  As Ophuls himself notes in his Afterward to this updated edition, facts and circumstances have both changed and not changed. However, the fundamental dilemmas remain virtually unaltered since 1977 (when his work was first published) and even since the “revisit” of 1992. I  believe that in the 27 years since the publication of this book—although the particulars have changed—the fundamental dilemmas remain and have become starkly apparent.  One benefit of reading Ophuls’s book is that it takes my mind off of the increasingly frightening realities of climate change. It forces me to appreciate that we face a host of other environmental dilemmas that include pressing issues of scarcity and pollution.  And when one thinks systematically about these issues, the number of challenges that we continue to face—no doubt even more compelling than in 1992--leaves me with a sense of foreboding.  Ophuls never glosses over problems or provides comforting bromides or easy solutions.

So the first part of the book remains useful, although particulars are different today than in 1992.  The second part of the book addresses the political implications of ecological scarcity. The political analysis and vision that Ophuls provides are the hallmarks of his work, and these insights make the price of admission (time and money) well worth the expenditure. This book and Requiem for Modern Politics (1997)  provide insights that his later works, Plato’sRevenge (2011), Immoderate Greatness (2012), and Sane Polity (2013), and Apologies to the Grandchildren (2018) don’t address as thoroughly, such as the realities of American politics. The later works explore the need and the possibilities of a new political order, while Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity spends more time on current political realities. (Sadly, those realities remain as real now as they did then—albeit in worse shape.) Thus, even as many of the factual particulars at the beginning of the book are dated, the book is worth reading to receive the benefit of Ophuls’s understanding of American politics and the degree to which our politics depends on an economy of abundance and growth.  As we move toward the 2020 election cycle, we can see that the underlying premise of American political life hasn’t changed, although it is badly frayed by new realities. Candidates must talk about economic growth and expansion—it’s a much easier and comforting sell then talking about the stark realities of climate change and environmental degradation. But if the economic pie can no longer expand (and will likely shrink), what will happen to American politics?  Even vexing national issues, like the role of labor unions, civil rights, and women’s rights were resolved (in some measure) via a tacit understanding that the national economic pie would expand. This frame allowed more groups into the American dream of material abundance without impinging significantly upon those who already hold wealth and power.  But as the decline of the white working-class has continued, we see the politics of fear and desperation coming to the forefront. How can we channel our whole enterprise in a completely new direction?

 In this early work, Ophuls provides the first draft of an alternative politics that he believes the realities of ecological scarcity and limits will impose upon us.  And as we see in his later works, Ophuls draws much of his inspiration and insight from some of the great names in the Western political tradition: Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Burke, and from the American tradition, Jefferson and Thoreau. (He also draws, although to a lesser extent, on the Asian traditions.)  From his references to these thinkers and others, we readily discern that Ophuls’s thinking defies any current popular categories of political thought.  He is at once conservative, liberal, reactionary, and anarchist if one would attempt to classify him. Ophuls’s project is not so much about new political institutions as the need for a whole new political culture and consciousness.  Ophuls uses that Gospel term, “metanoia,” which indicates a change—or conversion—of the heart-mind of a person; to wit, a complete reorientation of values.  Ophuls argues that our entire culture needs to undergo a metanoia that will involve a  new way of experiencing the world ( ecological) and a new way of acting in the world that will replace the dominant paradigms of modernity, including those of upon which our economy and our politics currently operate.  

This new (best case) political order will call upon ways of decision-making that will realize Rousseau’s “the general will” as opposed to “the will of all.” I've been exposed to writers (such as Robert Nisbet) who attribute Rousseau’s “general will” and his injunction that men must be “forced to be free” as the root of hideous modern tyrannies. Thus, these references caused me to pause. But Ophuls never posits a position on the assumption that we humans will become angels--although we’d find ourselves much better off if we learned to curb our appetites. Ophuls’s position, following Rousseau, addresses fundamental issues of game theory that any collective undertaking must resolve to reach some level of success. Given the extreme anti-“collectivist” feeling in the U.S. (and the attendant immiseration of public goods and services that we experience), we realize what a long way we will have to go if we are to achieve the best-case scenario that Ophuls promotes.

For me, going back into this first effort by Ophuls to bring the issues of ecological thinking and environmental realities was well worth the time and effort. It’s not comforting—little that Ophuls writes is reassuring—but it’s good to know the enemy. And through reading Ophuls, we have met the enemy. And it is us.

Why Grow Up? by Susan Neiman

Published in 2014

In this book, philosopher Susan Neiman examines a simple but provocative question: why grow up?

But as one quickly recognizes, simple questions often don't yield simple answers, and this question provides no exception. What we get then is the answer in a short but enlightening book. And I use the term "enlightening" quite intentionally, for Neiman draws upon some of the most significant names of the Enlightenment to provide some answers to her simple question. Her discussion includes Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and David Hume. Along with way, you also encounter Plato, the Stoics, Cicero, Simone De Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Goodman. This is a book about growing up, but it's not a book for children. 

The theme underlying this book is that growing up is no treat, and it's not easy adjusting oneself to an imperfect world and our flawed incarnation in it. How should we initiate children into this world? And how should we either accept the requirements of adulthood or attempt to slough them off?

Because this is a short book, I'll keep my review short. But if you're on the path to adulthood or thinking about shepherding in your young ones, this book provides a thoughtful perspective on this challenge. 

Age of Anger: A History of the Present by Pankaj Mishra

Published February 2017. The title captures the key point.

Here’s an idea for a history professor who teaches a class in European Thought from the Age of Enlightenment to the advent of the First World War. You give this question as the take-home exam:

Identify a trend in European thought that spread throughout the continent and beyond and that has a connection to events in the contemporary world. Identify the trend and explain how this trend relates to significant contemporary events.

I imagine that something like this popped into the head of Pankaj Mishra, and the Age of Anger is his answer to this challenge. Our imaginary professor need not look further than this brilliant book to find an “A” answer.

In this book, Mishra looks at terrorism, rising popular frustrations, and the shift toward populist politics, ardent nationalism, and autocratic rulers in the contemporary world. In Mishra’s book, we see connections between Islamic terrorists, Hindu nationalists, Brexit, and Trump voters. Each group manifests a fundamental rebellion against the social and economic—and therefore political—strictures of modernity and its most forceful representative, global capitalism. Others have identified these contemporary connections, but Mishra reaches back to the Enlightenment in 18^th century France to see how the foremost nation of the age understood modernity and how it responded to the changes modernity imposed upon individuals and societies. Mishra focuses on the leading figure of the French Enlightenment, Voltaire, and its most prominent critic, Rousseau. European politics after 1789 can be viewed as a continuation of the battles of the French Revolution, and in the same way, European social and political thought can be seen as a continuation of the contending viewpoints of Rousseau and Voltaire.

Voltaire: more famous at the beginning

Rousseau: greater influence, larger image

Mishra traces the history of Rousseau’s thought as it emigrated to Germany and captured the attention of Herder and the Romantic movement. Germany was late to industrial development and late to nationhood, but it made up for its lost time with a vengeance. Mishra also charts the course of Rousseau’s thought and its attendant nationalism into Italy, which also came late to statehood and only falteringly to industrial capitalism.  And Mishra looks at Russia, its nationhood achieved, but sorely lagging in the cultural and economic markers of modernity. In each nation, throughout Europe (with Great Britain a significant outlier), the demands of modernity and modern industrial capitalism tore the social fabric and created a backlash among those unable to realize the prizes offered by capitalism. In short, a backlash occurred beginning with the French Revolution and continuing through the First World War to now. While the working class struggled for basic living conditions, the intellectual class struggled with the indignities and frustrations that this system built upon mimetic desire created. Mishra examines the work of a variety of continental thinkers in this period, Herder, Proudhon, Marx, Bakunin (anarchist), Mazzini (Italian nationalist), Dostoevsky, Tocqueville, and Nietzsche, to name some of the most prominent writers who addressed these issues. Also, Mishra discusses the spread of these lines of thought through other parts of the world, including Islamic civilization, India, and China. These nations, in seeking to throw off the yoke of Western imperialism, adopted and modified Western thinking both modern and anti-modern.

But don’t think that this is merely an account of abstract thinkers. Mishra’s book also recounts the violence spawned by these thinkers and others like them. From the French Revolution to the Revolutions of 1848 to the anarchist bombings and assassinations of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, violence-plagued Europe, the U.S., and the rest of the world. While the two world wars and the Cold War placed a damper on much of this ferment, it erupted again after the end of the Cold War. Whether massive scale killings like those in Bosnia, or acts of terrorism like the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building and the World Trade Center, in Mishra’s account, it’s all of a single cloth. Indeed, the physical proximity of Timothy McVeigh, U.S. Army veteran, and Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack (1993), represents the similarity of their characteristics. Yousef claimed the mantle of Islam, and McVeigh claimed no religion other than “science,” but both held a deep-seated grievance against the existing order.

The common bond of this tale of violence is ressentiment, frustration, powerlessness, and humiliation. These feelings provide the motivation for both the angry words and the violent deeds that seek to destroy the system, to remake the world. Note that as I write this, a self-proclaimed “Leninist” who want to bring down the system, Stephen Bannon, sits at the right hand of our demagogic president. I fear it events could become uglier more quickly than we can imagine.

Mishra is a native of India and resides currently in London. He is conversant in both worlds. In considering An End to Suffering: the Buddha in the World, which I read some years ago, I noted how fluidly Mishra moved between the Buddhist and Western traditions. His mastery of the material of the “exam question” that he gave in himself in Age of Anger is also exemplary. (He provides a thorough bibliographical essay to show where he has been in this research. It’s impressive.)

More than any other source dealing with the Age of Trump, I found Mishra’s account provides the most useful guide because it reaches back in time and around the globe. I agree with Mishra that economic turmoil and uncertainty, threats such as climate change (which some deny but still no doubt fear), and the ongoing frustrations and humiliations perceived by many have created our volatile political climate. Like me, Mishra looks around the world and sees millions and millions of young men [sic] who are encountering frustrated expectations because economic growth inevitably slows, thereby denying them opportunities to climb the latter of status and success. Alas, Mishra doesn’t have an answer for all of this. I suspect, like me, that he doesn’t want to crush the benefits of modernity to ameliorate its detriments. But somehow, we have to find our way beyond our current fix, or we will suffer much worse to come. 

Revised 8.29.19