Publication date of 2000: still relevant?
This past September, shortly after publication, I read Thomas Homer-Dixon's Commanding Hope (link to my review) because I'm a big fan of his work. I read his The Upside of Down shortly after learning about it, and I've read many of his shorter pieces (some of my notes here & here) and watched some of his presentations. And I read his first work intended for a general audience, The Ingenuity Gap--except I hadn't finished it! (This used to happen to me on occasion when I had a full-time law practice plus family, etc. You know how it is.) And, to be honest, one other excuse (weak) must be acknowledged visually:
Of course, my "current read" doesn't scowl at me or chastise me when I set it aside to "take a look" into another book. Oh, no! An uncompleted book just looks at me hauntingly, like a hungry puppy begging at the dining table, as it sits silently on my bookshelf or (more often these days) when it occasionally pops up on my Kindle as a specter from among the uncompleted books of my reading past.
Anyway, I got a copy of The Ingenuity Gap and decided to dig in, expecting that I'd still enjoy it, and this time I'll read it to completion! But then I paused. I looked at the publication date: 2000. Twenty years ago! A generation ago! It was published before 9/11, before the Crash of 2008, and before the rise of authoritarianism and the attendant decline of democracy and the rule of law in the U.S. and elsewhere. Would it still prove relevant, or would I find it dated by fast-changing events? Well, there's good news and there's bad news. First, the good news: this book is still timely and more than relevant. And the bad news? This book is still timely and more than relevant. And why is this "bad news"? Because Homer-Dixon catalogs examples of, and future prospects for, problems from which we can't extricate ourselves. We create problems so perplexing and entangling that our ingenuity won't be able to tame them. Homer-Dixon describes his thesis:
In this book I’ll argue that the complexity, unpredictability, and pace of events in our world, and the severity of global environmental stress, are soaring. If our societies are to manage their affairs and improve their well-being they will need more ingenuity—that is, more ideas for solving their technical and social problems. But societies, whether rich or poor, can’t always supply the ingenuity they need at the right times and places. As a result, some face an ingenuity gap: a shortfall between their rapidly rising need for ingenuity and their inadequate supply.
Homer-Dixon, Thomas. The Ingenuity Gap (p. 1). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Homer-Dixon explores his thesis via both arm-chair theorizing and field exploration, interviewing the wise and talking with the marginalized as he strives to come to grips with the scope of the challenges that he investigates. As a result of his investigations that he undertook on the verge of the twenty-first century, he concludes that
In the twenty-first century, the growing disparities between those who adapt well and those who don’t will hinder our progress towards a shared sense of human community and erode our new global society’s stability and prosperity. The next century is likely, for this reason, to be a time of fragmentation and turmoil, of divisions and rivalry between winners and losers, and of humanity’s patent failure to manage its affairs in critical domains. Id., pp. 1-2.
Homer-Dixon explains his central concept--ingenuity--in the following summary:
Ingenuity, as I define it here, consists not only of ideas for new technologies like computers or drought-resistant crops but, more fundamentally, of ideas for better institutions and social arrangements, like efficient markets and competent governments. Id., pp.2-3.
Homer-Dixon charts a course that will avoid readers branding him as simply a Cassandra or as a Polyanna. He notes and appreciates the advances and advantages of technology, the market, and Western modernity in general, but he declines to accept the rather naive optimism of technological optimists, such as Julian Simon (still perhaps the most prominent technological-economic optimist of the time). Homer-Dixon states his conclusion succinctly:
But—and this is the critical “but”—we should not jump to the conclusion that the supply of ingenuity always increases in lockstep with our ingenuity requirement: while it’s true that necessity is often the mother of invention, we can’t always rely on the right kind of ingenuity appearing when and where we need it. In many cases, the complexity and speed of operation of today’s vital economic, social, and ecological systems exceed the human brain’s grasp. Very few of us have more than a rudimentary understanding of how these systems work. They remain fraught with countless “unknown unknowns,” which makes it hard to supply the ingenuity we need to solve problems associated with these systems.
In this book, I explore a wide range of other factors that will limit our ability to supply the ingenuity required in the coming century. For example, many people believe that new communication technologies strengthen democracy and will make it easier to find solutions to our societies’ collective problems, but the story is less clear than it seems. The crush of information in our everyday lives is shortening our attention span, limiting the time we have to reflect on critical matters of public policy, and making policy arguments more superficial. Id., pp. 4-5.
Perhaps you can see in the above-quote why I find Homer-Dixon's book still quite relevant and useful: he anticipates Donald Rumsfeld's description of the problems arising from the ill-considered Iraq War, the "unknown unknowns" (and they certainly exist in abundance). And Homer-Dixon's remarks about technology and democracy could have been written today as we struggle with political developments in the age of Twitter, Facebook, and "Parler."
I'll conclude this initial part of my review with Homer-Dixon's description of what the remainder of the book entails and how he structures it:
These pages also tell the story of a journey of discovery—a quest—that took me around the world and to the farthest reaches of our knowledge. This journey was a search for the pieces of a puzzle—pieces that when fitted together would give me a picture of how we use our practical knowledge—ingenuity in all its variety—to adapt to rapid and complex change. . . .
Because it’s a puzzle, each piece plays an important part, and I must describe them in detail. They include recent theories of turbulent systems, of Earth’s ecology and atmosphere, of the evolution of the human brain, of how we produce wealth, of the factors that shape and reshape our technologies, and of the forces behind war and terrorism. I tell a story about the many forms of complexity around us and about our biological capacity to grasp, manage, and benefit from this complexity. I also tell a story about how we are altering our planet’s most fundamental rhythms and processes. Six metaphors are woven through this story—metaphors of flight, faces, light, the night sky, pyramids, and water. For me, these metaphors have enormous emotional and spiritual power, and I hope they can aid us in answering one of the most basic questions humanity faces: How can we solve the problems of the future? Id., p. 7.
(Homer-Dixon's lucid explanations and summaries make quotation--perhaps excessive quotation--a constant temptation.) I'll limit my further discussion of the contents of this book to a couple of tales in the book that especially resonated with me out from among the many stories he shares, the many interviews and discussions he held, and the many ideas that he develops.
The first tale in the book that I'll relate is his account of UA flight 232 on 19 July 1989 (my mother's birthday). On that day, with 296 people aboard, while flying over northwest Iowa, what can only (and rightfully) be described as a freak accident occurred. Homer-Dixon describes the scene:
Twelve thousand meters above the U.S. Midwest, shards of the [tail] engine’s fan rotor cut through the rear of the aircraft, shredding its hydraulic systems. As fluid bled from hydraulic tubing, the pilots in the front of the plane lost command of the rudder, elevators, and ailerons essential to stabilizing and guiding the craft. Immediately, the plane twisted into a downward right turn . . . [and] was out of control. Id., p. 11.
I will spare a further account of the incident except to say that to get that plane on the ground without a spiraling crash was an example of extraordinary ingenuity and professional deportment. Lives were lost, but enough were saved to label the result a miracle of sorts. But Homer-Dixon's point has nothing to do with divine intervention and everything to do with the benefits and limits of human ingenuity. It's an enthralling (and frightening) tale that sets the scene for other of his (less harrowing) accounts of ingenuity realized, or conversely, the failure of ingenuity to manifest a solution.
The other portion of the book that struck me on a personal note was his account of his time in India. Homer-Dixon, an MIT-trained political scientist, began his career specializing in the relationship between resource scarcity and political violence and went to India to conduct research. His description of dealing with the Indian bureaucracy to access records is spot-on. My wife and I lived in India for nearly two years, and while I worked privately, she worked with government institutions. So while I had only limited (but more than enough) contact with the bureaucracy, my visits to her workplace and her after-work tales provided me vivid accounts and lasting memories about her encounters and observations. Hearing Homer-Dixon's tales of his struggles sparked a joy of recognition.)
And during this early sojourn to India, he had photographed a young girl in Patna, and upon returning, he wanted to see if he could find her to update her situation.
So he traveled again to Patna after visiting Las Vegas --what a contrast! Here's what Homer-Dixon writes about his arrival in Patna:
Heat. Everywhere there was heat. It surrounded and penetrated me. It defined the world around me. Sweat gushed out of my body, running in rivulets down my chest and the small of my back, gluing my shirt to my skin. Everything was tangibly hot: tables, chairs, and pens were weirdly warm to the touch, because everything outside my body was hotter than my body. The water in my bottle felt like soup on my tongue. Any movement of the air—a draft, a slight breeze—was a relief; while any movement of my body or mind was an effort. Physical action, thought, even consciousness itself seemed to take place in slow motion, weighed down and dulled by the relentless, inescapable heat. I had finally arrived in Patna. Unfortunately, it was early June, and my visit had coincided with one of the worst heat waves in India’s history. Every day, the temperature soared above 45 degrees Celsius, sometimes hitting 50 degrees, while hundreds of people across the country died of heat stroke, dehydration, and heart failure. Id. p. 365.
I never visited Patna, but we lived in Jaipur and spent time in Dehli, so when Homer-Dixon talks about oppressive heat, I know whereof he speaks. And, in addition, I can't help noticing how his account of his experience in India in the late 1990s with extreme heat anticipates the opening pages of Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future (2020), which is set in Uttar Pradesh (which lies between Bihar, where Patna is located, and Rajasthan, where Jaipur is located). Homer-Dixon continues his account of India, and he describes the political situation in India at the time of his visit. His description seems no different than what I perceived when we were there (2012-2014) and it's probably no different today, the rise of Modi and the BJP notwithstanding. He also continues to provide commentary about his latest visit to Patna and goes on to contrast that experience with his perceptions about Las Vegas. And while I've never been to Vegas (the desire is nearly nil), his frustration with Patna rang true, although, to be fair, overall, we greatly enjoyed our time in India; it's just that sometimes there were--as one friend put it--"heavy India days." Homer-Dixon writes:
A wave of bitterness about India swept over me—it was a feeling I had experienced many times before, but Patna, at this particular moment, seemed to distill its essence. From the point of view of a rich, pampered Westerner, the people of Patna seemed to have capitulated to ugliness, wretchedness, and inhumanity towards each other. They didn’t do even the small things, like fix that front door, that would significantly improve their lives. The place was a technological, social, and moral calamity. It was a disgrace.
He then goes on to discuss the contrast between Patna and Las Vegas:
If Las Vegas is one vision of the future of urbanized humanity, I felt, Patna is another. Both are extreme and disturbing visions, but both highlight distinct and very real aspects of humanity’s potential. Las Vegas is a vision of the future as a hedonistic, postmodernist fantasy sustained by the heroic application of ingenuity—a lobotomized world of distraction and diversion. Patna, on the other hand, is a vision of despair, cruelty, and vulnerability, where even rudimentary solutions to the technological and social challenges of everyday life are not provided. It is a place of the most grotesque differences in wealth between the rich and the poor where, paradoxically, even the richest aren’t able to enjoy things that members of the middle class in Western societies take for granted. True, they can hire lots of servants, because labor is cheap. But they can’t drink the water running from their taps, if their taps run at all. They can’t rely on a steady supply of electricity. They can’t escape the dust, filth, and pollution that constantly infiltrate their houses, making everything dirty and sometimes making them sick. And they live with a constant, subliminal sense of insecurity, because they are surrounded on all sides by the dispossessed. Most important, whereas in Vegas natural and social realities are usually kept at bay, in Patna they penetrate into the deepest recesses of people’s lives. Even for the richest residents, the heat, bad water, disgusting air, noise, and appalling disparities of the place cannot be avoided. And for the poorest, these things intimately define their lives and who they are. Id., pp. 368-369.
But, as Homer-Dixon notes, India isn't without ingenuity and innovation, to be sure. But, unfortunately, it's built upon swiss-cheese sets of systems, social and technological.
And, finally, Homer-Dixon finds the young girl he'd photographed some years before, and he reports on her situation and that of her family, a tale not without hope but with only limited potential for improvement. Homer-Dixon ponders his conclusions:
I had come all this way in my travels and my learning and exploration. Now was the moment of truth: what did it all mean? Looking out across the Ganges, with a group of Indian children around me, their eyes scanning me in curiosity and silence, I understood that contradictions were at the heart of the story. These contradictions played themselves out on many levels and in many ways. Some were intriguing, and some were productive. Others were frightening. But whatever way these contradictions played out, they rendered the past, present, and future fundamentally ambiguous. I realized that there was no single right or correct interpretation of the world around us, no one answer to my quest, and no single, definitive arrangement of the pieces of the ingenuity puzzle. Id., p. 388-389.
All of the above is just a small sampling of what this book contains. I've skipped over a lot of the theoretical and more abstract material which is intriguing and well-presented. Homer-Dixon exhibits admirable skills in his ability to move back and forth between his exposition of abstract and theoretical subjects and his compelling human narratives. This skill set gives this book (and his later two books) unique qualities. And as I alluded to earlier, I would have preferred that I'd have found this book less compelling than I did. I would like to have concluded that we humans had realized our predicament and taken affirmative steps to resolve the threats we face, not just to our family and friends, not just to our nation, or to our culture, or "the West," but to the entire world inhabited by human beings. Instead, it strikes me that Homer-Dixon's concerns expressed in this book are now more real, more compelling, and more frightening than when he first wrote it over twenty years ago. But to end on a more optimistic note, Homer-Dixon's account and his recommendations, more implicit than explicit--he tends to teach more by showing than by telling--remain valuable. And insights and recommendations are more valuable now than when he first shared them. Although this book stands alone, it can also be seen as a part of a trilogy along with The Upside of Down and Commanding Hope: a set of works published over the course of a generation that provide us with an extremely important and compelling way to think about our world and how we can--we should--we must--act within it.
