Review – The one-handed economist

Review: Think Again

I got this 2021 book after hearing an interview with its author, Adam Grant, who sounded really sensible… for a psychologist (I kid!)

Anyways, it was far better — in terms of insights and techniques — than I planned, so I made far too many notes. I will give the highlights below, but do also consider this book as an interesting companion to Supercommunicators (my review).

But before I go on, let me point you to three “cheat sheets” (now called “sketchnotes”?) that summaries some of the book’s major themes in pictures (and words — you still need to read!)

Four thinking modes (preacher, politician, prosecutor vs scientist) [bup]
Three types of rethinking (individual, interpersonal, collective) [bup]
Just a lot of related ideas on the book [bup]

So, to the notes:

Rethinking and unlearning is more important than raw intelligence. “When it comes to our knowledge and opinions, we tend to stick to our guns. Psychologists call this seizing and freezing. We favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt, and we let our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We laugh at people who still use Windows 95, yet we still cling to opinions that we formed in 1995. We listen to views that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard.”
Sometimes we need to confront our identity before we can rethink. “A hallmark of wisdom is knowing when it’s time to abandon some of your most treasured tools—and some of the most cherished parts of your identity….rethinking who you are appears to become mentally healthy—as long as you can tell a coherent story about how you got from past to present you.”
Three modes: “We go into preacher mode when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy: we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals. We enter prosecutor mode when we recognize flaws in other people’s reasoning: we marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case. We shift into politician mode when we’re seeking to win over an audience: we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents.”
A better mode: “We move into scientist mode when we’re searching for the truth: we run experiments to test hypotheses and discover knowledge… When second and third graders learned about “doing science” rather than “being scientists,” they were more excited about pursuing science. Becoming a scientist might seem out of reach, but the act of experimenting is something we can all try out. Even prekindergarten students express more interest in science when it’s presented as something we do rather than someone we are.”
Entrepreneurs trained to think like scientists (hypothesis, test, analysis, update) made far more money than the control group because they were willing to discard old ways and try new ways of doing things.
“Research reveals that the higher you score on an IQ test, the more likely you are to fall for stereotypes, because you’re faster at recognizing patterns. And recent experiments suggest that the smarter you are, the more you might struggle to update your beliefs. [How?] One is confirmation bias: seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias: seeing what we want to see.”
“In preacher mode, changing our minds is a mark of moral weakness; in scientist mode, it’s a sign of intellectual integrity. In prosecutor mode, allowing ourselves to be persuaded is admitting defeat; in scientist mode, it’s a step toward the truth.”
“People who scored the lowest on an emotional intelligence test weren’t just the most likely to overestimate their skills. They were also the most likely to dismiss their scores as inaccurate or irrelevant—and the least likely to invest in coaching or self-improvement… When we lack the knowledge and skills to achieve excellence, we sometimes lack the knowledge and skills to judge excellence.”
Are you persistent or stubborn? “You can be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future while maintaining the humility to question whether you have the right tools in the present. That’s the sweet spot of confidence.”
“Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe. Values are your core principles in life—they might be excellence and generosity, freedom and fairness, or security and integrity… You want the doctor whose identity is protecting health, the teacher whose identity is helping students learn, and the police chief whose identity is promoting safety and justice. When they define themselves by values rather than opinions, they buy themselves the flexibility to update their practices in light of new evidence.”
“When you form an opinion, ask yourself what would have to happen to prove it false. Then keep track of your views so you can see when you were right, when you were wrong, and how your thinking has evolved. `I started out just wanting to prove myself,’ Jean-Pierre says. `Now I want to improve myself—to see how good I can get.'”
“Relationship conflict is generally bad for performance, but some task conflict can be beneficial…. when it brings diversity of thought, preventing us from getting trapped in overconfidence cycles. It can help us stay humble, surface doubts, and make us curious about what we might be missing. That can lead us to think again, moving us closer to the truth without damaging our relationships.”
“Rethinking depends on a different kind of network: a challenge network, a group of people we trust to point out our blind spots and help us overcome our weaknesses… The ideal members of a challenge network are disagreeable, because they’re fearless about questioning the way things have always been done and holding us accountable for thinking again. There’s evidence that disagreeable people speak up more frequently—especially when leaders aren’t receptive—and foster more task conflict.”
“Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger. Weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker.”
This sentence reminds me of me: “Agreeableness is about seeking social harmony, not cognitive consensus. It’s possible to disagree without being disagreeable. Although I’m terrified of hurting other people’s feelings, when it comes to challenging their thoughts, I have no fear. In fact, when I argue with someone, it’s not a display of disrespect—it’s a sign of respect. It means I value their views enough to contest them. If their opinions didn’t matter to me, I wouldn’t bother.”
“Experiments show that simply framing a dispute as a debate rather than as a disagreement signals that you’re receptive to considering dissenting opinions and changing your mind, which in turn motivates the other person to share more information with you…When social scientists asked people why they favor particular policies on taxes, health care, or nuclear sanctions, they often doubled down on their convictions. Asking people to explain how those policies would work in practice—or how they’d explain them to an expert—activated a rethinking cycle.”
“Skilled negotiators rarely went on offense or defense. Instead, they expressed curiosity with questions like “So you don’t see any merit in this proposal at all?” … We won’t have much luck changing other people’s minds if we refuse to change ours. We can demonstrate openness by acknowledging where we agree with our critics and even what we’ve learned from them. Then, when we ask what views they might be willing to revise, we’re not hypocrites.”
How to find common ground? Rather than attack the straw-man version of your opponent’s argument, state their “steel man” (strongest) points. When you agree with someone’s point, then you give them the chance to (a) agree with you and (b) question themselves.
Don’t fight with the other person’s views, but treat the discussion like a dance in which you try to understand their emotion rather than fighting it. “In a heated argument, you can always stop and ask, “What evidence would change your mind?” If the answer is “nothing,” then there’s no point in continuing the debate.”
I have said that I have “strong opinions, weakly held.” I interpret this as a sign of willingness to change my mind, but some people react more to “strong” than “weakly” so it’s better to include uncertainty, i.e., “strong opinions, open to updates” (my words). More from AG: “An informed audience is going to spot the holes in our case anyway. We might as well get credit for having the humility to look for them, the foresight to spot them, and the integrity to acknowledge them”
“Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell reflected. “From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’” This reaction is known as the overview effect”
How do you get rabid sports fans to stop attacking “the enemy”? Remind them of how arbitrary their anger is. (What if you were born in New York rather than Boston? Would you be a fucking idiot for supporting the Yankees?)
“People gain humility when they reflect on how different circumstances could have led them to different beliefs. They might conclude that some of their past convictions had been too simplistic and begin to question some of their negative views. That doubt could leave them more curious about groups they’ve stereotyped, and they might end up discovering some unexpected commonalities.”
“Motivational interviewing starts with an attitude of humility and curiosity. We don’t know what might motivate someone else to change, but we’re genuinely eager to find out. The goal isn’t to tell people what to do; it’s to help them break out of overconfidence cycles and see new possibilities. Our role is to hold up a mirror so they can see themselves more clearly, and then empower them to examine their beliefs and behaviors. That can activate a rethinking cycle, in which people approach their own views more scientifically. They develop more humility about their knowledge, doubt in their convictions, and curiosity about alternative points of view. The process of motivational interviewing involves three key techniques:
- Asking open-ended questions
- Engaging in reflective listening
- Affirming the person’s desire and ability to change.”
“When we try to convince people to think again, our first instinct is usually to start talking. Yet the most effective way to help others open their minds is often to listen…Listening is a way of offering others our scarcest, most precious gift: our attention.”
“Sustain talk is commentary about maintaining the status quo. Change talk is referencing a desire, ability, need, or commitment to make adjustments. When contemplating a change, many people are ambivalent—they have some reasons to consider it but also some reasons to stay the course. Miller and Rollnick suggest asking about and listening for change talk, and then posing some questions about why and how they might change.”
“There’s a fourth technique of motivational interviewing, which is often recommended for the end of a conversation and for transition points: summarizing. The idea is to explain your understanding of other people’s reasons for change, to check on whether you’ve missed or misrepresented anything, and to inquire about their plans and possible next steps. The objective is not to be a leader or a follower, but a guide.” Also see “looping to understand” in my Supercommunicators review.
Rather than present a dispute as right or wrong, black or white, allow for the reality of a middle ground, a gray area. “An antidote to this [0/1] proclivity is complexifying: showcasing the range of perspectives on a given topic. We might believe we’re making progress by discussing hot-button issues as two sides of a coin, but people are actually more inclined to think again if we present these topics through the many lenses of a prism.”
“The greater the distance between us and an adversary, the more likely we are to oversimplify their actual motives and invent explanations that stray far from their reality. What works is not perspective-taking but perspective-seeking: actually talking to people to gain insight into the nuances of their views.”
“Many teachers don’t do enough to encourage students to question themselves and one another… extraordinary educators foster rethinking cycles by instilling intellectual humility, disseminating doubt, and cultivating curiosity.”
“Some teachers send students out to interview people with whom they disagree. The focus is less on being right, and more on building the skills to consider different views and argue productively about them.”
“Lectures… are not enough to develop students into lifelong learners. If you spend all of your school years being fed information and are never given the opportunity to question it, you won’t develop the tools for rethinking that you need in life.”
Senior Penn students who wrote letters to their younger selves didn’t just give good advice; they had an excuse to re-think — and maybe change — some of their habits. “The students encouraged their younger selves to stay open to different majors, instead of declaring the first one that erased their uncertainty. To be less obsessed with grades, and more focused on relationships. To explore different career possibilities, rather than committing too soon to the one that promised the most pay or prestige.”
“When students confront complex problems, they often feel confused. A teacher’s natural impulse is to rescue them as quickly as possible so they don’t feel lost or incompetent. Yet psychologists find that one of the hallmarks of an open mind is responding to confusion with curiosity and interest. One student put it eloquently: “I need time for my confusion.” Confusion can be a cue that there’s new territory to be explored or a fresh puzzle to be solved.”
Do more than one draft… of a letter, an essay, a drawing, a jump. Drafts give us space to improve without putting pressure on doing it right or perfectly the first time. They also improve with each revision because we learn by doing. You can’t write a perfect final draft without a lot of imperfect earlier drafts.
“We randomly assigned some managers to ask their teams for constructive criticism. [it didn’t go well] … Another group of managers shared their past experiences with receiving feedback and their future development goals. We advised them to tell their teams about a time when they benefited from constructive criticism and to identify the areas that they were working to improve now. By admitting some of their imperfections out loud, managers demonstrated that they could take it—and made a public commitment to remain open to feedback.”
“It takes confident humility to admit that we’re a work in progress. It shows that we care more about improving ourselves than proving ourselves”
“It isn’t until a high-stakes decision goes horribly wrong that people pause to reexamine their practices… When we dedicate ourselves to a plan and it isn’t going as we hoped, we tend to double down and sink more resources in the plan. This pattern is called escalation of commitment.” And that’s what happened to me (what I did) when my boat was sinking — doubled down, instead of stepping back. Since then, I have tried to step back more quickly from (a) perfection (90% of good enough) and (b) confidence (maybe I don’t know what I am doing… what do you think?)
“Gritty mountaineers are more likely to die on expeditions, because they’re determined to do whatever it takes to reach the summit. There’s a fine line between heroic persistence and foolish stubbornness. Sometimes the best kind of grit is gritting our teeth and turning around.”
Paraphrasing… “Career checkup questions can periodically activate rethinking cycles. Ask some key questions twice a year. When did you form the aspirations you’re currently pursuing, and how have you changed since then? Have you reached a learning plateau in your role or your workplace, and is it time to consider a pivot? A CC helps you maintain humility about you ability to predict the future, contemplate doubts, and stay curious enough about new possibilities or previously discarded ones.”
“Data suggesting that meaning is healthier than happiness, and that people who look for purpose in their work are more successful in pursuing their passions—and less likely to quit their jobs—than those who look for joy.”
“Those only are happy,” philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, “who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.”

[Adam’s] Bottom Line: “It takes humility to reconsider our past commitments, doubt to question our present decisions, and curiosity to reimagine our future plans. What we discover along the way can free us from the shackles of our familiar surroundings and our former selves. Rethinking liberates us to do more than update our knowledge and opinions—it’s a tool for leading a more fulfilling life.”

Here are 30 tips for thinking again [pdf]

I give this book FIVE stars. Don’t just read it — use it in your life.

Here are all my reviews.

Review: Supercommunicators

I read this 2024 book after hearing an interview with Charles Duhigg. His main points were (a) he was embarrassed that he was not as good a communicator as he thought he was and (b) that there are techniques to improve communication.

Somewhat coincidentally, I’ve recently decided to put more time into promoting communication among people (e.g., getting my students/colleagues to talk with each other), so this book is even more interesting to me now than when I started to read it 🙂

Here are my notes:

One key idea is that “many discussions are actually three different conversations. There are practical, decision-making conversations that focus on What’s This Really About? There are emotional conversations, which ask How Do We Feel? And there are social conversations that explore Who Are We? We are often moving in and out of all three conversations as a dialogue unfolds.” A lot of communication failures come from two sides talking past each other because one person is having an emotional conversation while the other focuses on their identity (or deciding what’s for dinner!)
- Effective communication requires recognizing what kind of conversation is occurring, and then matching each other. On a very basic level, if someone seems emotional, allow yourself to become emotional as well. If someone is intent on decision making, match that focus. If they are preoccupied by social implications, reflect their fixation back to them.
- …high centrality participants were constantly adjusting how they communicated, in order to match their companions. They subtly reflected shifts in other people’s moods and attitudes. When someone got serious, they matched that seriousness. When a discussion went light, they were the first to play along. They changed their minds frequently and let themselves be swayed by their groupmates.
Our goal, for the most meaningful discussions, should be to have a “learning conversation.” Specifically, we want to learn how the people around us see the world and help them understand our perspectives in turn.
- Here are four rules to a learning conversation:
  Rule One: Pay attention to what kind of conversation is occurring.
  Rule Two: Share your goals, and ask what others are seeking.
  Rule Three: Ask about others’ feelings, and share your own.
  Rule Four: Explore if identities are important to this discussion.
- One: When a student comes to a teacher upset, for instance, the teacher might ask: “Do you want to be helped, hugged, or heard?”
- Two: How are we going to make choices together… Are we going to make decisions through analysis and reason, or through empathy and narratives?
The correct approach isn’t trying to put yourself in “someone else’s shoes.” That, after all, is impossible. Rather, maybe the best you can do is ask questions.
- Ask about people’s lives, about what they’re feeling, about their hopes and fears, and then listen for their struggles, disappointments, joys, and ambitions.
- Asking about someone’s beliefs or values (“How’d you decide to become a teacher?”).
- Asking someone to make a judgment (“Are you glad you went to law school?”).
- Asking about someone’s experiences (“What was it like to visit Europe?”)
- These kinds of questions don’t feel intrusive—asking “How’d you decide to become a teacher?” doesn’t seem overly personal—but it’s an invitation for someone to share their beliefs about education, or what they value in a job. “Are you glad you went to law school?” invites someone to reflect on their choices, rather than simply describing their work.
The difference between a shallow question and one that sparks an opportunity for emotional connection is vulnerability. And vulnerability is what makes How Do We Feel? so powerful.
- Questions about facts (“Where do you live?” “What college did you attend?”) are often conversational dead-ends. They don’t draw out values or experiences. They don’t invite vulnerability. However, those same inquiries, recast slightly (“What do you like about where you live?” “What was your favorite part of college?”), invite others to share their preferences, beliefs, and values, and to describe experiences that caused them to grow or change. Those questions make emotional replies easier, and they practically beg the questioner to reciprocate—to divulge, in return, why they live in this neighborhood, what they enjoyed about college—until everyone is drawn in, asking and answering back and forth.
- The researchers found that “questioners assumed that asking sensitive questions would make their conversation partners uncomfortable and would damage their relationships. But in fact, we consistently found that askers were wrong on both fronts.” Asking deep questions is easier than most people realize, and more rewarding than we expect.
- Try 36 Questions for Increasing Closeness with a friend or family member.
When someone proves they’re listening it creates “a sense of psychological safety because [the listener] instills a confidence in the speaker that at least their arguments will receive full consideration and will, thus, be evaluated based on their real worth.” When people believe that others are trying to understand their perspectives, they become more trusting, more willing “to express their thoughts and ideas.” The “sense of safety, value and acceptance” that comes from believing a partner is genuinely listening makes us more willing to reveal our own vulnerabilities and uncertainties. If you want someone to expose their emotions, the most important step is convincing them you are listening closely to what they say.
- So if a listener wants to prove they’re listening, they need to demonstrate it after the speaker finishes talking. If we want to show someone we’re paying attention, we need to prove, once that person has stopped speaking, that we have absorbed what they said. And the best way to do that is by repeating, in our own words, what we just heard them say—and then asking if we got it right.
- We all crave control, of course. And while there are many factors that determine if a romantic relationship succeeds or flounders, one is whether the relationship makes us feel more in control of our happiness, or less. It is natural for couples to wrestle over control in a relationship; it’s part of working out how to balance each person’s needs, wants, roles, and responsibilities. But as the researchers watched their videotapes, they noticed a previously overlooked dynamic: During fights, happy and unhappy couples seemed to approach control very differently.
- Among happy couples, however, the desire for control emerged quite differently. Rather than trying to control the other person, happy couples tended to focus, instead, on controlling themselves, their environment, and the conflict itself.
- One advantage of focusing on these three things—controlling oneself, the environment, and the boundaries of the conflict—is that it allowed happy spouses to find things they could control together. They were still fighting. They still disagreed. But, when it came to control, they were on the same side of the table.
- This explains why looping for understanding is so powerful: When you prove to someone you are listening, you are, in effect, giving them some control over the conversation. This is also why the matching principle is so effective: When we follow someone else’s lead and become emotional when they are emotional, or practical when they have signaled a practical mindset, we are sharing control over how a dialogue flows.
- On Facebook, people kept trying to control one another. These struggles for control weren’t the only thing disrupting conversations—but when they emerged, they tore dialogues apart. Some Facebook participants, for instance, tried to control what others were allowed to say, which opinions were permitted, what emotions could be expressed: “It’s ridiculous to say you’re scared because your neighbor owns a gun,” one person told another. “There’s no way you should feel that way.”
- Sometimes people don’t know how to listen. They think listening means debating, and if you let someone else make a good point, you’re doing something wrong. But listening means letting someone else tell their story and then, even if you don’t agree with them, trying to understand why they feel that way
The desire for belonging is at the core of the Who Are We? conversation, which occurs whenever we talk about our connections within society. When we discuss the latest organizational gossip (“I hear everyone in accounting is going to get laid off”) or signal an affiliation (“We’re Knicks fans in this family”) or figure out social linkages (“You went to Berkeley? Do you know Troy?”) or emphasize social dissimilarities (“As a Black woman, I see this differently than you”), we’re engaging in a Who Are We? conversation.
- It’s crucial, in a Who Are We? conversation, to remind ourselves that we all possess multiple identities: We are parents but also siblings; experts in some topics and novices in others; friends and coworkers and people who love dogs but hate to jog. We are all of these simultaneously, so no one stereotype describes us fully. We all contain multitudes that are just waiting to be expressed. This means that a Who Are We? discussion might need to be more meandering and exploratory. Or it might need to go deep and invite others to talk about where they come from, how they see themselves, how the prejudices they confront—racism, sexism, the expectations of parents and communities—have impacted their lives.
- First, try to draw out your conversational partners’ multiple identities. It’s important to remind everyone that we all contain multitudes; none of us is one-dimensional. Acknowledging those complexities during a conversation helps disrupt the stereotypes within our heads. Second, try to ensure everyone is on equal footing. Don’t offer unsolicited advice or trumpet your wealth or connections. Seek out topics where everyone has some experience and knowledge, or everyone is a novice. Encourage the quiet to speak and the talkative to listen, so everyone is participating. Finally, look for social similarities that already exist. We do this naturally when we meet someone new and start searching for people we know in common. But it is important to take those connections a step further and make our commonalities more salient. Our similarities become powerful when they are rooted in something meaningful: We may both be friends with Jim, but that’s not much of a connection—until we start talking about what his friendship means to us, how Jim is an important part of both our lives.
- These kinds of comments sparked irritation because the listeners had been assigned to a group (the wealthy snobs, the selfish Republicans, the undeserving college students) they didn’t identify with. Or, they were denied membership in a group (people who understand how the law works, people who sympathize with children) where they felt they rightfully belonged. So the listener, offended, would become defensive as their sense of self—their identity—was attacked. In psychology, this is known as identity threat, and it is deeply corrosive to communication.
- Put differently, the researchers hypothesized that nudging participants to think, just a little harder, about how a Who Are We? conversation will unfold, before it starts, might make identity threats a bit less threatening. Who will speak first? (Studies suggest the person with the least power should begin.) What kinds of emotions should we anticipate? (If we prepare for discomfort and tension, we make them easier to withstand.) What obstacles should we expect? When they emerge, what will we do? Most important, what benefits do we expect will emerge from this dialogue, and are they worth the risks?
- When conversations focus on creating belonging for everyone, as well as diversity and inclusion, “you’re inviting people to participate and learn, to take responsibility for improving things.” It is important to note that these kinds of discussions will almost never be perfect. But perfection is not the goal. “Most of the work is about gaining awareness of yourself, your culture, and the culture of others”… to recognize our own biases.

These notes are not nearly as useful as reading the book and its many examples. FIVE STARS.

Here are all my reviews.

Review: Bureaucracy

Ludwig van Mises published this short book in 1944, around the same time as Hayek’s Road to Serfdom was published but before Hayek’s 1945 article, “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” These other references are important because (a) Mises was Hayek’s teacher and (b) both were heavily involved in the “calculation debate” in which they (as non-planners who supported the “emergent order” of markets) opposed the planners in the USSR and other countries who wanted “scientific management.”

This book’s place in that debate is even more obvious when you read what Mises writes, in his relentless, yet clear style:

The main issue in present-day social and political conflicts is whether or not man should give away freedom, private initiative, and individual responsibility and surrender to the guardianship of a gigantic apparatus of compulsion and coercion, the socialist state. Subtle.
But now, for many years and especially since the appearance of the New Deal, powerful forces are on the point of substituting for this old and well-tried democratic system the tyrannical rule of an irresponsible and arbitrary bureaucracy… Government commissions and bureaus issue decrees and regulations undertaking the management and direction of every aspect of the citizens’ lives. Not only do they regulate matters which hitherto have been left to the discretion of the individual; they do not shrink from decreeing what is virtually a repeal of duly enacted laws. By means of this quasilegislation the bureaus usurp the power to decide many important matters according to their own judgment of the merits of each case, that is, quite arbitrarily. Whelp, the Supreme Court just did a number on THAT power, but it tool them 80 years?
Powerful political parties and pressure groups are fervently asking for public control of all economic activities, for thorough government planning, and for the nationalization of business. They aim at full government control of education and at the socialization of the medical profession. There is no sphere of human activity that they would not be prepared to subordinate to regimentation by the authorities. In their eyes, state control is the panacea for all ills. These enthusiastic advocates of government omnipotence are very modest in the appraisal of the role they themselves play in the evolution toward totalitarianism. While I agree that this vision is scary, I wonder if/when Mises will exclude any sort of “bureaucracy” from critique. (Yep. See #10.)
Capitalism means free enterprise, sovereignty of the consumers in economic matters, and sovereignty of the voters in political matters. Socialism means full government control of every sphere of the individual’s life and the unrestricted supremacy of the government in its capacity as central board of production management. There is no compromise possible between these two systems. Sweden (and others) have entered the chat.
But which capitalism? The present-day champions of free enterprise are romantics like the eulogists of the medieval arts and crafts. They are entirely mistaken in attributing to mammoth corporations the qualities which once were the excellence of small or medium-size business. There cannot be any question of breaking up the big aggregates into smaller units. On the contrary, the tendency toward a further concentration of economic power will prevail. Monopolized big business will congeal into rigid bureaucratism. Its managers, responsible to nobody, will become a hereditary aristocracy; the governments will become mere puppets of an omnipotent business clique. Ahh, not that kind!
A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before. A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made. He does not owe anything to the favor of those in power. But, on the other hand, the government can bring about conditions which paralyze the efforts of a creative spirit and prevent him from rendering useful services to the community. Channeling Ayn Rand (1943)?
The modern state is built upon the ruins of feudalism. It substituted bureaucratic management of public affairs for the supremacy of a multitude of petty princes and counts… Totalitarianism is much more than mere bureaucracy. It is the subordination of every individual’s whole life, work, and leisure, to the orders of those in power and office. It is the reduction of man to a cog in an all-embracing machine of compulsion and coercion. It forces the individual to renounce any activity of which the government does not approve. It tolerates no expression of dissent. It is the transformation of society into a strictly disciplined labor-army—as the advocates of socialism say—or into a penitentiary—as its opponents say… Modern socialism… is totalitarian in the strict sense of the term. It holds the individual in tight rein from the womb to the tomb. At every instant of his life the “comrade” is bound to obey implicitly the orders issued by the supreme authority. The State is both his guardian and his employer. The State determines his work, his diet, and his pleasures. The State tells him what to think and what to believe in.
The preëminence of the capitalist system consists in the fact that it is the only system of social coöperation and division of labor which makes it possible to apply a method of reckoning and computation in planning new projects and appraising the usefulness of the operation of those plants, farms, and workshops already working. The impracticability of all schemes of socialism and central planning is to be seen in the impossibility of any kind of economic calculation under conditions in which there is no private ownership of the means of production and consequently no market prices for these factors. Hayek said the same a year later, but here’s a good example of the zeitgeist. Mises continues for several pages on this theme, highlighting the need for “groping” for profits: The actual world is a world of permanent change. Population figures, tastes, and wants, the supply of factors of production and technological methods are in a ceaseless flux. In such a state of affairs there is need for a continuous adjustment of production to the change in conditions. This is where the entrepreneur comes in.
What’s needed is competition! Consumers are merciless. They never buy in order to benefit a less efficient producer and to protect him against the consequences of his failure to manage better. They want to be served as well as possible. And the working of the capitalist system forces the entrepreneur to obey the orders issued by the consumers… The price of labor is a market phenomenon determined by the consumers’ demands for goods and services. Virtually every employer is always in search of cheaper labor and every employee in search of a job with higher remuneration.
Bureaucracy in itself is neither good nor bad. It is a method of management which can be applied in different spheres of human activity. There is a field, namely, the handling of the apparatus of government, in which bureaucratic methods are required by necessity. What many people nowadays consider an evil is not bureaucracy as such, but the expansion of the sphere in which bureaucratic management is applied. This expansion is the unavoidable consequence of the progressive restriction of the individual citizen’s freedom, of the inherent trend of present-day economic and social policies toward the substitution of government control for private initiative. People blame bureaucracy, but what they really have in mind are the endeavors to make the state socialist and totalitarian.
Now, to definitions: In public administration there is no market price for achievements. This makes it indispensable to operate public offices according to principles entirely different from those applied under the profit motive… Now we are in a position to provide a definition of bureaucratic management: Bureaucratic management is the method applied in the conduct of administrative affairs the result of which has no cash value on the market. And Public Choice — a term dating from the 1940s — has a lot to say about how those principles (the ones incongruent with the profit motive) are abused by bureaucrats favoring themselves over citizens.
Homo bureaucratis? The majority were tied up with the bureaus for life. They developed a character peculiar to their permanent removal from the world of profit-seeking business. Their intellectual horizon was the hierarchy and its rules and regulations… In a properly arranged civil-service system the promotion to higher ranks depends primarily on seniority. The heads of the bureaus are for the most part old men who know that after a few years they will be retired. Having spent the greater part of their lives in subordinate positions, they have lost vigor and initiative. They shun innovations and improvements. They look on every project for reform as a disturbance of their quiet. Thus, my proposal for a time limit for bureaucrats.
Ahhh…. the sins of a bureaucratic monopoly: If a government-owned enterprise operates at a loss or with a part only of the profit which it could attain if it were conducted solely according to the profit motive, the falling off affects the budget and thereby the taxpayers. If, for instance, a city-owned transportation system charges the customers so low a fare that the costs of the operation cannot be covered, the taxpayers are virtually subsidizing those riding the trains. Or a city-owned parking system? Indeed.
And why do they fail? Missing profit motive, wrong prices, weak competition? It is precisely the efficient and honest manager [of a state enterprise] who will try to make the services of his outfit as good as possible. But as he is not restrained by any considerations of financial success, the costs involved would place a heavy burden on the public funds. He would become a sort of irresponsible spender of the taxpayers’ money. As this is out of the question, the government must give attention to many details of the management. It must define in a precise way the quality and the quantity of the services to be rendered and the commodities to be sold…. The criterion of good [bureaucratic] management is not the approval of the customers resulting in an excess of revenue over costs but the strict obedience to a set of bureaucratic rules.
Mises against fascists: The good is embodied in the great god State, the materialization of the eternal idea of morality, and the bad in the “rugged individualism” of selfish men. In this antagonism the State is always right and the individual always wrong. The State is the representative of the commonweal, of justice, civilization, and superior wisdom. The individual is a poor wretch, a vicious fool. When a German says “der Staat” or when a Marxian says “society,” they are overwhelmed by reverential awe. How can a man be so entirely corrupt as to rise in rebellion against this Supreme Being?
You could revolt against a Bourbon king, and the French did it. This was, of course, a struggle of man against man. But you cannot revolt against the god State and against his humble handy man, the bureaucrat… The individual citizen, in violating one of the laws of his country, is a criminal deserving punishment. He has acted for his own selfish advantage. But it is quite a different thing if an officeholder evades the duly promulgated laws of the nation for the benefit of the “State.” In the opinion of “reactionary” courts he may be technically guilty of a contravention. But in a higher moral sense he was right. He has broken human laws lest he violate a divine law. Kafka would recognize this issue.
In the nineteenth century the parliaments were intent on restricting public expenditures as much as possible. But now thrift became despicable. Boundless spending was considered a wise policy. Both the party in power and the opposition strove for popularity by openhandedness. To create new offices with new employees was called a “positive” policy, and every attempt to prevent squandering public funds was disparaged as “negativism.” Representative democracy cannot subsist if a great part of the voters are on the government pay roll. If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, wages, subsidies, doles, and other benefits from the treasury, democracy is done for. Mises must be rolling in his grave now!
Nineteenth-century liberalism tried to limit the right of the Ministry of Education to interfere with the freedom of university professors to teach what they considered true and correct. But as the government appointed the professors, it appointed only trustworthy and reliable men, that is, men who shared the government’s viewpoint and were ready to disparage economics and to teach the doctrine of government omnipotence… To maintain the theory that there are such things as economic laws was deemed a kind of rebellion. For if there are economic laws, then governments cannot be regarded as omnipotent, as their policies could only succeed when adjusted to the operation of these laws. Thus the main concern of the German professors of the social sciences was to denounce the scandalous heresy that there is a regularity in economic phenomena.
1944! European totalitarianism is an upshot of bureaucracy’s preëminence in the field of education. The universities paved the way for the dictators… Every dictator plans to rear, raise, feed, and train his fellow men as the breeder does his cattle. His aim is not to make the people happy but to bring them into a condition which renders him, the dictator, happy. He wants to domesticate them, to give them cattle status. The cattle breeder also is a benevolent despot.
Is there hope? Every half-wit can use a whip and force other people to obey. But it requires brains and diligence to serve the public. Only a few people succeed in producing shoes better and cheaper than their competitors. The inefficient expert will always aim at bureaucratic supremacy. He is fully aware of the fact that he cannot succeed within a competitive system. For him all-round bureaucratization is a refuge… The man who is aware of his inability to stand competition scorns “this mad competitive system.” He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them. Not too much.
Interesting foreshadowing: Those who were not killed in the wars and revolutions are today pedantic and timid bureaucrats in the innumerable offices of the German Zwangswirtschaft [planned economy]. They are obedient and faithful slaves of Hitler. But they will be no less obedient and faithful handy men of Hitler’s successor, whether he is a German nationalist or a puppet of Stalin. Porque no los dos?
T.I.L. Marx never attempted to explain in unambiguous language what the characteristic mark of an economic class is. When he died, thirty-five years after the publication of the Communist Manifesto, he left the manuscript of the third volume of his main treatise, Capital, unfinished. And, very significantly, the manuscript breaks off just at the point at which the explanation of this fundamental notion of his entire philosophy was to be given. Neither Marx nor any one of the host of Marxian writers could tell us what a social class is, much less whether such social classes really play in the social structure the role assigned to them in the doctrine.
Cui bono? The capitalist variety of competition is to outdo other people on the market through offering better and cheaper goods. The bureaucratic variety consists in intrigues at the “courts” of those in power. There was a good deal of flattery, adulation, servility, and cringing at the courts of all despotic rulers.
Beware the Intelligensia: The most enthusiastic supporters of Marxism, Nazism, and Fascism were the intellectuals, not the boors. The intellectuals were never keen enough to see the manifest contradictions of their creeds. It did not in the least impair the popularity of Fascism that Mussolini in the same speech praised the Italians as the representatives of the oldest Western civilization and as the youngest among the civilized nations. No German nationalist minded it when dark-haired Hitler, corpulent Goering, and lame Goebbels were praised as the shining representatives of the tall, slim, fair-haired, heroic Aryan master race. Is it not amazing that many millions of non-Russians are firmly convinced that the Soviet regime is democratic, even more democratic than America?… They always tacitly assume that the dictator will do exactly what they themselves want him to do. Like many Trump voters.
When citizens are under the intellectual hegemony of the bureaucratic professionals, society breaks up into two castes: the ruling professionals, the Brahmins, and the gullible citizenry. Then despotism emerges, whatever the wording of constitutions and laws may be. Democracy means self-determination. How can people determine their own affairs if they are too indifferent to gain through their own thinking an independent judgment on fundamental political and economic problems? Democracy is not a good that people can enjoy without trouble. It is, on the contrary, a treasure that must be daily defended and conquered anew by strenuous effort.
It is imperative to unmask the inferiority of bureaucratic methods when compared with those of private business. The aim of such a scrutiny is certainly not to disparage the work of tax collectors, customs officers, and patrolmen or to belittle their achievements. But it is necessary to show in what essential respects a steel plant differs from an embassy and a shoe plant from a marriage license bureau, and why it would be mischievous to reorganize a bakery according to the pattern of the post office. I got you!
And we leave with this zinger! The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in its intellectual history; for the rest, I think it’s a bit long and perhaps off-topic for them, although it seems rather timely to me! FOUR STARS.

Here are all my reviews.

Review: Pictures from the Water Trade

I found this book in our local “give a book, take a book” shelf just before we left on vacation for Tokyo. What an excellent coincidence!

John David Morley’s 1985 novel is a semi-autobiographical story of his time in Japan (mostly in Tokyo), as witnessed in its subtitle — The extraordinarily evocative, at times erotic, story of an Englishman’s discovery of Japan (shortened to Adventures of a Westerner in Japan for squeamish American audiences).

“Water trade” refers to the late-night, dark and obscure culture of small bars, where strangers showed their other sides to each other and hostesses. That world — and thus the fit of the title — is not only for bars, but in other places where Japanese people escape from the obligations and confinements of uchi, or family and community.

The book is full of interesting anthropological observations, many of which persist to today. I found myself constantly referring to 50-year old anecdotes as we passed through various conversations, events and places on our vacation here.

The most gripping — and emotionally wrought — story appears in the middle of the book, as Boon (the main character modeled on Morley) and Mariko struggle between passion and uchi in a modern version of forbidden love.

There are other scenes of “at times erotic” that I will leave to you. All of them contrast “Western” habits and mores with those of Japan; none of them show one side to be superior.

Another main theme (besides stumbling among dozens of bars and their various denizens) draws from Boon’s friendships with Japanese, which are possible by his learning of the language as well as their curiosity about outsiders. (I remember how Americans were afraid of “Godzilla Japan” in the 1980s, just as they now fear China.)

These friendships range from hilarious (his roommate decides to marry to escape Boon’s terrible cooking; the roommate, of course, doesn’t cook at all) to challenging (veering between power games and paranoid alliances) to baffling (“we all scooped some of grandpa’s ashes into the urn and went to eat a terrible meal”). You feel as if you are there — sometimes drowning, sometimes swimming — with Boon.

Uchi is (partially) explained by the lack of privacy in Japanese houses with thin walls and shared rooms, which has led the locals to adapt: merging self with group, indirectly (and deniably) asking and answering questions, adopting dual personas within the same day with the same people (rigid in the office; shitfaced drunk right after). The Japanese seem to be good at compartmentalisation.*

Some notes:

Golfing is expensive, so normal people buy the best gear… for hitting on an indoor driving range.
The Japanese appreciate Nature for its beauty but also its constant attempts to kill them with fire, floods and earthquakes.
In spoken and written (calligraphic) language, there is meaning in what is not said and the white spaces where nothing is written. With calligraphy in particular, one must commit. There is no undo so a pause is appropriate.
Japanese houses are (were) designed for summer’s sticky heat, which means they can be freezing in winter. (They are now full of climate controls, which have many drawbacks.)
“In Japan the public-private axis is really the insider [uchi]-outsider axis.”
“Expressions of gratitude often come in the form of apology.”
“The water trade was a valve. This was where the strain of Japanese society was borne, more or less everything found a reflection or an echo here. For a student of Japanese affairs like Boon study of the water trade was a duty as rewarding as it was congenial. Knowledge acquired in more conventional ways was also necessary, but without the attuned, receptive ear schooled in the forum of the water trade a library of books would have been of limited use to an understanding of the Japanese. The transition from spoken to written Japanese not merely brought a loss in immediacy; it also evinced a change in character. Distaste for the written memorandum, the preference whenever possible for the physical presence of one’s interlocutor, made evident a reliance on the spoken word for which it would be difficult to find parallels in any modern society as sophisticated and complex as Japan’s.“
Wives and mistresses each played their own role, aware of the other. (I think this sentiment has probably changed. Not unrelated, the birth rate per Japanese woman dropped from 3.65 in 1950 to 1.8 in 1980 to 1.25 in 2020.

I really enjoyed this book. FIVE STARS.

*The book doesn’t spend a lot of time discussing clutter vs Zen calm, but this article does a nice job demolishing the idea that the Japanese live in a spartan environment. Marie Kondo was popular in Japan because they have a clutter problem. Only the very poor and very rich live with empty rooms.

Here are all my reviews.

Review: Death and the Penguin

This 1996 novel by Andrei Kurkov tells the story of a failign writer who suddenly finds himself with a full time job writing obituaries. He also has a penguin, Misha, who he “rescues” from Kyiv’s zoo when they run out of money to feed their animals.

The book’s most interesting “contribution” is its description of the weirdnesses of 1990s Ukraine. It was hard for anyone to count on anything, as the Soviet world turned upside down.

You’d have to read it, but here are some characteristic passages:

“Am I ill?” he wondered, staring at the blank paper protruding from the typewriter. “No, I must, must, sometimes at least, make myself write short stories, or else I’ll go mad.” He fell to thinking of Sonya’s funny little freckled face, her red ponytail with its elastic band. Odd times to be a child in. An odd country, an odd life which he had no desire to make sense of. To endure, full stop, that was all he wanted.
For lunch Viktor gave Misha fish, while he and Sonya had fried potatoes. “I’ll buy a bit more food tomorrow,” he promised. “This’ll do me,” she said, taking the larger plate
“So no need to worry. Look at me [Viktor’s editor], serene as a tank, even though they’ve just murdered my driver! Believe me, life’s not something to be concerned about.”
Those who merited obituaries had usually achieved things, fought for their ideals, and when locked in battle, it wasn’t easy to remain entirely honest and upright. Today’s battles were all for material gain, anyway. The crazy idealist was extinct – survived by the crazy pragmatist …
Viktor made coffee, rejoicing in the peace of the flat… A peace which enabled him to sit down with a cup of coffee and calmly think it all over. A peace which made it possible to sit without thinking even, just drinking coffee, dwelling on its flavour, keeping at arm’s length thoughts capable of disturbing equanimity.
And there was another, the Principal Friend perhaps, that someone whose bold, sweeping signature approved Viktor’s obelisks [obituaries]. Though whether it was the text he approved or the subject, was now not at all clear. And then there were the dates, obviously determining the day of publication, but clearly predetermined during the subject’s lifetime! Death as planned economy!
Something was wrong with this life, he thought, walking with downcast eyes. Or life itself had changed, and was as it used to be – simple, comprehensible – only on the outside. Inside, it was as if the mechanism was broken, and now there was no knowing what to expect of a familiar object – be it a loaf of Ukrainian bread or a street pay telephone. Beneath every surface, inside every tree, every person, lurked an invisible alien something. The seeming reality of everything was only a relic of childhood.

FOUR STARS.

Here are all my reviews.

Review: The World without Us

I just read this 2007 book by Alan Weisman, and it’s encouraging — not because it gives me any hope for humans but for the Earth.

Weisman goes on a tour of human impact (and destruction), looking at one problem (plastics, pollution, biodiversity, etc.) or place (the oceans or cities) at a time. The book is packed with facts and useful context. Here are a few notes (not quotes!) of interest:

Plastic will take millions of years to disappear, via plate tectonic sublimation. GHGs, OTOH, will be “back to normal” in 100,000 years. Oceanic life, even if all the corals die in the short run, will come back strongly after only a 1,000 years. The same is true for avian life.
Evolutionary pressures will reverse nearly every intervention we’ve made to “improve” animals and plants. Some of the invasives we’ve introduced (e.g., rats) will persist, but they will be disadvantaged without our constant protection of their (our) habitats.
If the clathrates melt, then we’re going to a climate of 250 million years ago, which will dramatically challenge anything now alive.
The species we claim to be protecting (“save the whales”) are only in trouble because of us. The best thing we can do for them is to voluntarily extinct our own species. That would really be “giving back” but — ironically — it’s unlikely as long as humans think that the Nature is only there for our entertainment or subsistence.
It’s kinda sad that the entire funeral industry promises some sort of “eternal memory” but delivers environmental pollution.
Weisman more or less proposes the same “one child per woman” policy (or goal) that I had around 15 years ago , i.e., to either give every baby boy and girl a permit for 0.5 kids (cap and trade) or to sterlize half the population, so that kids grow up as either “breeders” or “players.”

I don’t think that we will ever make space for other species, so the ideas in this book will probably only manifest as we collapse ecosystems and force humanity into a future that could vary from interesting to savage. Nature will be fine.* I give this book FIVE STARS.

*”You know what makes me happy? Watching my species destroy itself. I take it as a sport, as a kinda hobby, and I root for the complete destruction of this culture that we live in. I root for the underdogs. I root for Nature because on this planet at this time, Nature is the underdog.” — George Carlin

Here are all my reviews.

Update (23 sep): Listen to this podcast on abandoned places — the halfway houses of a world without people.

Review: Razor’s Edge

I read this 1944 book by W. Somerset Maugham because it was listed as funny. I’m not sure it’s the funniest book I’ve read but it has its charms — mostly in the characters and Maugham’s delightful writing. OTOH, it is dated in the its sexist tropes.

The plot is set in 1930s Europe, as four Americans discover themselves: Elliot the would-be nobleman, Larry the ex-flyer and semi-sadhu, and Isabel and Gray, a couple united by their desire for “the good life.” Maugham himself narrates.

Here are some witty bits:

L: I’ve been reading a good deal. Eight or ten hours a day. I’ve attended lectures at the Sorbonne. I think I’ve read everything that’s important in French literature and I can read Latin, at least Latin prose, almost as easily as I can read French. Of course Greek’s more difficult. But I have a very good teacher. Until you came here I used to go to him three evenings a week.” M: “And what is that going to lead to?” L: “The acquisition of knowledge,’ he smiled. M: “It doesn’t sound very practical.”

I: Of course I want to travel. But not like that. I don’t want to travel second-class on steamships and put up at third-rate hotels, without a bathroom, and eat at cheap restaurants.” L: “I went all through Italy last October like that. I had a wonderful time. We could travel all over the world on three thousand a year.” I: “But I want to have babies, Larry.” L: “That’s all right. We’ll take them along with us.”

M: Sometimes he was obviously so far from well that I asked him why he didn’t take things more easily. E: “My dear fellow, at my age one can’t afford to fall out. You don’t think that I’ve moved in the highest circles for nearly fifty years without realizing that if you’re not seen everywhere you’re forgotten.” M: I wondered if he realized what a lamentable confession he was then making. I had not the heart to laugh at Elliott any more; he seemed to me a profoundly pathetic object Society was what he lived for, a party was the breath of his nostrils, not to be asked to one was an affront, to be alone was a mortification; and, an old man now, he was desperately afraid.

M: He [Elliot] was dead. I lit the lamp by his bedside and looked at him. His jaw had fallen. His eyes were open and before dosing them I stared into them for a minute. I was moved and I think a few tears trickled down my cheeks. An old, kind friend. It made me sad to think how silly, useless and trivial his life had been. It mattered very little now that he had gone to so many parties and had hobnobbed with all those princes, dukes and counts. They had forgotten him already.

M: “And are you under the impression that America is a suitable place to practise the particular virtues you mentioned?” L: “I don’t see why not. You Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for nothing but money. We care nothing for it; the moment we have it we spend it, sometimes well sometimes ill, but we spend it. Money is nothing to us; it’s merely the symbol of success. We are the greatest idealists in the world; I happen to think that we’ve set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.”

L: “I know. One must adapt oneself to one’s environment and of course I’d work. When I get to America I shall try to get a job in a garage. I’m a pretty good mechanic and I don’t think it ought to be difficult.” M: “Wouldn’t you then be wasting energy that might be more usefully employed in other ways?” L: “I like manual labour. Whenever I’ve got waterlogged with study I’ve taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating. I remember reading a biography of Spinoza and thinking how silly the author was to look upon it as a terrible hardship that in order to earn his scanty living Spinoza had to polish lenses. I’m sure it was a help to his intellectual activity, if only because it diverted his attention for a while from the hard work of speculation. My mind is free when I’m washing a car or tinkering with a carburettor and when the job’s done I have the pleasant sensation of having accomplished something. Naturally I wouldn’t want to stay in a garage indefinitely. It’s many years since I was in America and I must learn it afresh. I shall try to get work as a truck driver. In that way I should be able to travel from end to end of the country.

Suzanne: And then there is my daughter to think of. She is now sixteen and promises to be as beautiful as her father. I have given her a good education. But it is no good denying facts that stare you in the face; she has neither the talent to be an actress nor the temperament to be a whore like her poor mother; I ask you then, what has she to look forward to? A secretaryship or a job in the post office. Monsieur Achille has very generously agreed that she should live with us and has promised to give her a handsome dowry so that she can make a good marriage. Believe me, my dear friend, people can say what they like, but marriage still remains the most satisfactory profession a woman can adopt.

I give this book FOUR stars for its place in the literature of the era (similar to Great Gatsby)

Here are all my reviews.

Review: Sailing Alone

I read this 2023 book by Richard J. King on the recommendation of LS. It’s all about those sailors who take to the sea alone, with only wind (or muscle power). It’s about the mental and physical challenges, and how technology and society have added or (mostly) subtracted from them.

I thought the book was insightful. It definitely convinced me that sailing alone is for other people!

Here are some excerpts I marked:

Davison’s why-go paragraphs present, most importantly, the genuine, unabashedly aspirational belief that a sail across an ocean is a passage of greater significance, a vision quest, a morality tale for how we each should spend our time on Earth. Voyages alone out to sea, taken so intensely and seriously by their sailor-authors, represent one of the nearest and clearest of metaphors of any single human life spent on Earth. A copy-editor for a newspaper in Ohio named Robert Manry, who sailed a 13.5-foot boat across the Atlantic in 1965, wrote that he tried to craft his voyage “into something nearer to a work of art than my life on land had been.” This is perhaps why the single-handed voyage story is so compelling to so many of us—in its madness, pluck, pride, and in its “do not go gentle” journey of solitude before existential unknowns. No one on the planet is more often reminded of one’s meaninglessness in time than the solo sailor in a little boat bobbing about on the eternal indifferent deep.
The sea had emerged as a respite from humanity, finding thousands of survivors seeking new lives, a “Ulysses generation” as Rousmaniere put it: people who perceived the ocean as the last place on Earth that remained wild and untouched by war [after WWII, when solo sailing took off], still seemingly clean and free without national borders and government authorities.
In Sailing Alone Around the World (my review) Slocum regularly quipped about the satisfaction of his own company, “There was never a ship’s crew so well agreed.” Aboard Spray at last, Slocum enjoyed a voyage free from mutiny, domestic life, and living under the roof of another family member. At sea he could avoid any interpersonal conflict at all.
Don Quixote lives in his imagination and yearns to serve a world that has long since moved on. Go to nearly any marina today anywhere in the world and you’ll find a Don Quixote, half-mystic and half-fool, applying another coat of varnish to the rail of his old, beloved Rocinante.
Jones explained to me that they had stuck the famous sailor out to anchor in the current because he did not dress like the yachtsmen at the club, his boat “looked exactly like she had been doing what she had been doing,” and they wordlessly resented this easy-going solo circumnavigator who threatened their self-esteem and view of themselves as sailors.
Maybe, though, there is something deeper here, crudely summarized, in terms of social values in modern Pacific Island cultures: an emphasis on family, serving the community, and decentering the individual? … The social-science researcher Peter Belmi, a Filipino immigrant and professor in the business program at the University of Virginia, has found that people from wealthier backgrounds end up focusing more on themselves, whereas people from communities with fewer resources seek power or success to benefit others, since they have been raised relying on their communities to survive. “We don’t need others as much in order to survive,” said Belmi, referring to the thinking of those in power, “and so what it means to be a good person is to pursue your own identity, to figure out how you are unique, compared to others.
Since the 1960s, even as portions of the general public throughout the world began to really consider anthropogenic threats to the open-ocean environment, this has proven more the exception than the rule among single-handed mariners and the narratives they created: the sailing and adventure came first and then—often, but definitely not always—the environmental advocacy follows.
Adams said that despite what the world sees today as a powerful feminist act of being the first woman to sail the Pacific alone, she did not identify as a feminist then or now. Her why-go was not to prove anything about women. Adams feels as she always had, that this trip was simply something she wanted to do—and could. Her friend and fellow single-handed sailor Carol Baker, who herself in her late seventies still sails alone along the coast of the Pacific Northwest, told me that Adams has never had any axe to grind and “never had any patience at all with the feminist movement.”
An important point: Do I think that Peter Nichols was reflecting on how metaphorically appropriate this was, how sadly perfect his sinking boat was for his future book, even as he was stepping up the ladder onto the merchant ship that had answered his mayday? I do. I do not think, however, there is anything unethical or false in this. Aren’t we all doing this at some level all the time, always imagining an audience? It is part of that fair, old question: can you be a storyteller and be pure of endeavor at the same time? Is an adventurer, athlete, activist, politician, or even a social worker or teacher to be considered compromised, less “true,” if they know from the start that they are going to create something from it, craft some form of art or research project or any other form of creative or scholarly expression? Solo sailors present an exceptionally compelling case study in this fluidity of experience and art and story, because there is so long a tradition of the ancient mariner’s sea stories. There is no one to confirm the tale. For single-handers the stakes are often life and death, and the remains and the reality of a death are almost always unrecoverable and unknown. We will never know if Slocum’s Spray really did steer itself so well, if he did in fact escape pirates, or even how or when he died.
Put another way, it’s often quoted that the novelist Gabriel García Márquez once said: “Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.”
His voice is one of long experience, but also humility. In an appendix, Moitessier makes clear that the ocean’s weather and sea states are too variable and complex for full human knowledge. “The sea will always remain the great unknown,” he says. “It is sometimes enormous without being too vicious; not as high a week or a month later, it can become very dangerous because of either cross-swells, or an unexpected or completely new factor. The person who can write a really good book on the sea is probably not yet born, or else is already senile, because one would have to sail a hundred years to know it well enough.”
Since the 1990s, the technologies of GPS and satellite communications have enabled far more single-handers to go to sea and do so more safely, but the technologies have also encouraged a larger portion of mariners to avoid learning or practicing celestial navigation and wayfinding, which surely reduces their spiritual connections and their deeper awareness of the sea, the clouds, and the movement of the solar system. I used a paper chart, kept track of my dead reckoning, but I relied on that little electronic box far more than I would have liked. Bernard Moitessier would have been disappointed in me.
The satellite phone and now the internet, both still exceptionally expensive out at sea, provide emotional comfort, safety, weather, anchorage information, and gear assistance. But they also reduce the sailor’s focus on the sea and their self-reliant endeavor, which was supposedly why so many went out there in the first place.
I like having this ocean crossing in my pocket. [King sailed solo across the Atlantic.] It’s like when you touch your wallet or phone now and again just to make sure it’s there. I did not plan for this to be the impact of the passage, but it has remained an ego crutch for me, even though I almost never bring it out. I just put my fingers on it when I’m speaking with someone who I think is a condescending jerk. My “pocket reminder” is my five years of (kinda solo) travel.
Many single-handed writers use “we” when talking in their narratives about their progress, referring to themselves and their boat. This makes sense, because it shows humility and the recognition that this couldn’t be done without a good boat. It was certainly true for me that Fox tolerated its new owner, caring for me far more patiently than I deserved.
Slocum, Pidgeon, and other well-known single-handers were relatively poor. They did nearly all the work themselves on shoe-string budgets. In the countries they lived in and the ports they visited, though, as white men, even without much money, they had a path to achieve what they wanted if they had the talent and gumption. Any individual and cultural discouragement they felt before departing was but a scratch on the barricades that had been constructed in front of, say, an African American man trying to build a boat and sail around the world in the 1890s, or 1920s, or 1950s—and still today.
The footage from the news cameras at the time Laura Dekker looks calm, partly confused, very young, but also maturely, mildly amused by the absurdity of the attention. She wrote in her personal notes at the time that she felt terribly depressed and exhausted by the trials, writing “It’s a good thing I’m a fine actress.” The Dutch Council for Child Protection saw Dekker’s idea primarily in terms of child neglect and seemingly a fear that this might break the compulsory education system in the country. (So apt!)
I took solace from wisdom more useful than the texts of the weather service: the words of the lobster captain that I had worked for part-time just before I left on the trip. While we were out hauling pots one morning, I asked him if it was going to stop raining. He said, “Always does.”
Conrad wrote vivid, accurate, and extravagant descriptions of waves and storms—perhaps more passionately than any other writer before or since writing in English (his third language after Polish and French). Here are a few sentences from Typhoon: It was something formidable and swift, like the sudden smashing of a vial of wrath. It seemed to explode all round the ship with an overpowering concussion and rush of great waters, as if an immense dam had been blown up to windward. In an instant the men lost touch of each other. This is the disintegrating power of a great wind: it isolates one from one’s kind. An earthquake, a landslip, an avalanche, overtake a man incidentally, as it were—without passion. A furious gale attacks him like a personal enemy, tries to grasp his limbs, fastens upon his mind, seeks to rout his very spirit out of him.
It is foremost the storm that is the proving ground for the individual, not the doldrums or the sharks or the logistics or the ship avoidance or even the loneliness. The solo sailor might interpret their safe emergence out of a storm as a success born of experience, toughness, personal philosophy, technological expertise, the good boat, the aid of one’s ancestors, the mercy of their god, or just merely dumb luck. Or a mixture of all these things.
Looking ahead toward the future of solo sailing, cruising or racing, regardless of what type of boat people choose to go on and at whatever speed and however connected to shore, the single-hander will always return home with a deeper appreciation for a single human’s smallness in time and on Earth. Sailing a small boat at sea is, especially for the cruisers, a commitment to a low-impact lifestyle that teaches one to adapt and pay careful attention to the natural world. Robin Lee Graham put it well after his five years on Dove in the late 1960s: “One learns from the sea how little one needs, not how much.
During one of Ellen MacArthur’s first ocean passages across the North Sea as a teenager, she tried to bottle up some bioluminescence to bring home. “I began to realize that the beauty of the water can’t be taken away or captured,” she wrote, “It can only properly be appreciated first hand.
I too was almost killed by not only a steamship, but more significantly by a containership, arguably the twenty-first century’s greatest symbol of capitalism, over-consumption, and the linear economy. Could we extrapolate, as literary types are wont to do, that I was a wee symbol of Western culture and so far it has been a near miss, to be killed by our own products, our own emissions, but we have been granted a bit more time to do something with the life we’ve been left?
Then what is courage?” she wrote. “An understanding and acceptance; but an acceptance without resignation, mark you, for courage is a fighting quality. It is the ability to make mistakes and profit by them, to fail and start again, to take heartaches, setbacks and disappointments in your stride, to face every day of your life and every humdrum, trivial little detail of it and realize you don’t amount to much, and accept the fact with equanimity, and not let it deter your efforts.

I recommend this book to sailor. For everyone else, maybe not? FOUR STARS.

Here are all my reviews.

Review: Amsterdam Stories

I read this collection of short stories by Nescio (“I don’t know”) after hearing it mentioned as “maybe one of the few pre-WWII books written in Dutch that people can still read.” Now, I read it in English, but that comment addresses an interesting issue of (a) reforms to the language making it harder for younger Dutch to read older texts and (b) competition from imported (English!) books for Dutch readers’ time. These issues do not affect native English speakers, but they are probably relevant in many other languages.

Anyways, the short stories were fun to me for their portrayal of Amsterdam and some of its people in the 1904-1944 period. I am not sure that the dropped place names (the equivalent of “going to North Beach for a coffee” in San Francisco) are as interesting to non-Mokkumers, so this book’s appeal will be more historical than geographical to most of you. That said, the book (in translation) has many delightful passages, such as these:

He had just one wish: to overcome the body, to no longer feel hunger or exhaustion, cold or rain. Those were the great enemies. You always had to eat and sleep, over and over again, you had to get out of the cold, you got wet and tired or miserable. Now look at that water. It has it good: it just ripples and reflects the clouds, it’s always changing and yet always stays the same too. Has no problems at all.
Japi was good at getting even with those well-disposed cultured Dutchmen who have no patience for anyone who doesn’t look at least as stupid and tasteless as they do, and who scoff at you and say things about you to your face, in public, as though pastors and priests in even the tiniest villages hadn’t been trying to raise people properly for centuries. Japi was a workhorse and he could lay into people, if needed, with such skill and force that even the most brutish lout had to knuckle under.
For the earth everything was simple enough. It just turned on its axis and followed its course around the sun and had nothing to worry about. But the people on it fretted out their days with troubles and cares and endless worries, as though without these troubles, these cares, and these worries, the day wouldn’t turn into night.
Someone who thought it was fine just to let the wind blow through his hair, let the cold, wet wind soak his clothes and his body, who ran his tongue over his lips because the taste of the ocean was so “goddamn delicious,” who sniffed his hands at night to smell the sea. Someone who thought it was enough to be alive and in good health, who went on his joyful way between God’s heaven and God’s earth and thought it was idiotic that people caused themselves so much trouble, and laughed out loud at them, and sat there eternally with his beatific smile, quietly enjoying the water and the sky and the clouds and the fields, and let the rain soak him through without noticing it and then said “I think I’m wet” and laughed. Someone who could eat an expensive meal and drink expensive jenever better than anyone in Holland and then, at other times, on his long walks (because he didn’t always sit around, every so often he spent days at a time on his feet), he’d eat dry rolls day in and day out and be moved to tears because out in the open “a piece of bread like this can taste so good.”
It was eight o’clock. I put my watch down on the table next to my money, the watch that was no longer on its way to the pawnshop, and I said, “For now you’ll stay right here with Old Man Koekebakker, little watch,” and I put my hand back in my pocket. I was used to having conversations with my things since there’s so little that’s worth saying to most people. I was out of the woods for now… I had finally transmuted it to gold at my writing desk and now I could sit and look at it in the form of my own money, money you can count on and that never lets you down and never leaves you in the lurch.
You know what you should do, go get a half dram of old jen-ever, it’s on me. I’ll pay you back when I get the chance. — Japi, the freeloader (uitvreter).
You don’t know what an office job is like, Koekebakker, or you wouldn’t laugh. First you go to school till you’re eighteen. Do you know how many sheep there are in Australia or how deep the Suez Canal is? My point exactly. But I knew all that. Do you know what polarization is? Me neither, but I used to. I had to learn the strangest things: ‘Credited to the inventory account,’ translate that into French. Have a go at that. You have no idea, Koekebakker. And it goes on for years. Then your old man sticks you in an office. And you realize that the reason you learned all those things was so that you could wet slips of paper with a little brush. And it’s always the same old routine, be there nine o’clock sharp, sit there quietly for hours and hours. I realized I couldn’t do it. I was always late, I really tried to get there on time but it never happened, it had been going on too long. And so boring. They said I did everything wrong and I’m sure they were right about that. I wanted to but I couldn’t do it, I’m not the kind of person who is cut out for work. Then they said I was distracting the others
Alone. I’m going to Friesland.” “In the middle of winter?” Japi nodded. “To do what?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Do? Nothing. All you people are so pathetically sensible: everything needs a reason and a purpose. I’m going to Friesland, not to do anything, not for anything. No reason. Because I feel like it.”
And they were always afraid of something and sad about something. Always scared to be late somewhere or get a scolding from someone, or they couldn’t make ends meet, or the toilet was stopped up, or they had an ulcer, or their Sunday suit was starting to wear thin, or the rent was due; they couldn’t do this because of that and couldn’t possibly do that because of this. When he was young he was never that stupid. Smoke a couple cigars, chat a little, look around a bit, enjoy the sunshine when it was there and the rain when it wasn’t, and not think about tomorrow, not want to become anybody, not want a thing except a little nice weather now and then.
You never got anywhere, especially if you only looked at the girls from a distance and let other men kiss their pretty faces, the important gentlemen they as a rule liked a whole lot more than us. They were so much more respectable and spoke so well. And we were bums.
So we didn’t do anything. No, actually, that was when Bekker wrote his first poem. I still remember it perfectly, it was on a Sunday, of course, because whenever anything happened it was on a Sunday. The other six days a week we spent dragging our chains around from nine to six.
Outside, the spring sun shone down on the cheerless street. My God, how could a street like this exist. I was absolutely not allowed to kiss the girl in the tram but a street like this was allowed to exist. That was allowed.
A new batch of little Titans are still busy piling up little boulders so that they can topple him down off his heights and arrange the world the way they think it should be. He only laughs, and thinks: “That’s good, boys. You may be crazy but I still like you better than the proper, sensible gentlemen. I’m sorry you have to break your necks and I have to let the gentlemen thrive, but I’m only God.” And so everything takes its little course, and woe to those who ask: Why?
Who was that gentleman?” asked the little poet. “God,” said the devil, and the knobby bumps on his forehead grew bigger… The God of all those people who say ‘I never expected that from you’ when you try to live a little, and who say ‘I thought so, that was bound to end badly’ when you end up in the poorhouse later. The God who resents that you have Saturday afternoons off, the God of Professor Volmer, lecturer in accounting and business, who thinks you spend too much time looking up at the sky. The God of everyone who has no other option besides work or boredom. The God of the Netherlands.
These were truly strange times. It couldn’t end well. And now he’d gone and said that a new age had dawned. The age of Ironic Dilettantism was over, a new age of Trailblazing Optimism and Dynamic Vigor had begun. That’s what he’d gone and said. And then, with a sigh, God turned back to the manuscript of a thick book about Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management and started reading
And when she tilted her head forward—she wore her hair up now—the God of heaven and earth himself looked up for a moment from his eternal contemplation of the eternal lands and seas and propped his right elbow on his thigh and rested his head on his right hand, thumb under his chin and index finger along the length of his cheek, and he beheld the tan little bumps above the hollow that was a poem, and the fine hairs that glinted in the sunlight, and he smiled. Then he looked gravely back down past his feet at his Rhine winding back and forth between his mountains, and he mused: “What’s going on here? How did I let the Germans found another empire? Those Prussians….”
Why was she here? Why must she die unkissed? Not just kissed, really kissed. She glowed, her whole body glowed, her heart swelled. She unbuttoned her clothes in front of the mirror and looked at her breasts, so white in her black dress, and held them in her hands. She was pure and untouched. What a joke. And in her great confusion she begged God to defile her. “Am I going crazy?”
Last night came the report that the Triple Alliance had accepted Wilson’s proposal. This morning I went into the city to see if people were drunk. It was a soft gray October Sunday morning and the little trees on the Damrak had only a few leaves left. The IJ was so quiet, so bluish gray, and behind a few long furrows it quietly thought back over the year that was coming to an end. But it was quiet on the streets, no drunk people celebrating, no flags. I wonder when shoes will get cheaper
October is especially beautiful this year, we live in a golden city, and not for any amount of money, not for a hundred thousand rijksdollar bills would I want to be respectable. I’d rather just stay who I am, a piece of humanity like this walking right at the edge of the embankment, beyond the trees, stopping and turning around every time, like someone a little confused. And it has stopped raining, it hasn’t rained for days and I’m no longer dreaming about wet feet, I’m wide awake. And definitely confused.

I give this book FOUR STARS.

Here are all my reviews.

Review: Corruptible

Brian Klaas published this book in late in 2021, which was too early to discuss Putin’s second invasion of Ukraine but not too late to discuss Trump’s first term — let alone his first day.

Those oversights do not matter because Klaas discusses the essential features of corrupt “leaders” in a way that helps us understand their psychopathic personalities, i.e., thinking they are smarter than others and can bend reality to their will, regardless of the human costs.

This page turner is a pleasure to read, even if its content and characters can drive you crazy. The pleasure comes in the stories, the diagnoses, and the patterns that Klaas shows to us. The downside — running into a number of terrible people — is mostly balanced by a better understanding of how those people are different from normal people.

Indeed, that’s one of the problems in societies with free elections: How to get decent people to challenge cheaters who respect neither rules nor humans. Klaas spends a lot of time on that subject, and he has some good ideas.

I made dozens of notes in my paper copy of this book, but I won’t be pasting a lot of excerpts here. Instead, here are a few key ideas:

Klaas sets out to answer four questions: (i) Do worse people get power? [Yes.] (ii) Does power make people worse? [Yes.] (iii) How do we let people control us who clearly have no business being in control? [Reliance on outdated concepts of leadership, stimulated by political advertising], and (iv) How do we ensure that incorruptible people get into power and wield it justly [more citizen assemblies; surveilling politicians and bureaucrats rather than citizens; etc.]
Humans, as primates, are very aware of power structures and hierarchies and we do not like to be controlled by others, but we need to update structures as conditions change (wealth, cities, etc.)
We need to pay more attention to the people who do not run for office rather than the people who do, as that’s how voters end up with a choice between Bad and Worse. We need to prioritize political competence over height.
Terrible leaders possess a “dark triad” (DT) of characteristics: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy that result (respectively) in “ends justify means” manoeuvring, self-promotion, and aggressive non-empathy. (DT is too close to DJT to be a coincidence.)
Successful psychopaths are harder to detect, as they are very good at “working the mood,” but unsuccessful ones — who get angry because they cannot get what they want — resort to violence. (Reminds me of my violent neighbor.)
DT people tend to make big mistakes because they (a) are over-confident and (b) take excess risks. #MurderousPutin.
Most of us forgive our own mistakes while condemning those of others. We need to turn that one around if we’re going to get along.
Culture and incentives matter. A “corrupt” person behaves in a non-corrupt environment; an “honest” person misbehaves in a corrupt culture. That said, leaders make tough choices that leave some unhappy.
If men do “fight or flight” then women do “tend and befriend” — both of which have their evolutionary value.
If you’re not getting the diverse pool of applicants you want, then maybe you’re not presenting the “opportunity” (university place; job opening; political office) in a way that appeals to underrepresented candidates?
The Big Gods (monotheism) who displaced Many Gods differed in an interesting, new way: They were omnipotent. Big Gods (a) encouraged would-be sinners to behave and (b) increased trust. These two responses increased social cooperation and wealth.
Are we locking up the wrong people? White collar crimes are not just 20 times more costly than regular crimes; they are also responsible for 20 times more “accidental” deaths.
I love this idea from India — ipaidabribe.com — for good reason.

I give this book FIVE STARS. Read it.

Here are all my reviews.