Archive for January, 2011

Book Review — The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out Of Extinction by Rebecca D. Costa


Every now and then, for a variety of reasons, a book stands out to me as either a major paradigm shift and therefore so important that everyone on earth should read it, or it contains as a such a grand and systemic review of what brings us to our present that everyone on earth should read it.  Both type of books are so important to who we are and where we are going that I cannot over stress the effect they have on me.  For the first category, books like Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse shine forth.  Now I read a lot and it’s a rare book that will show me the world in such a way that, in addition to ringing true, I will have never considered anything close to that viewpoint before.  They both had completely new ideas on every page for me.  I couldn’t put those two down, and in fact, I start reading Collapse to my son this afternoon.

In the category showing us how we all got to this point, the example that comes most firmly to mind is Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.  People may laugh at this choice but I can recall few other books that even approach its ability to show the sheer humanity involved in science.  With humor and an irreverent awe, Bryson shows us our world in a level of detail that thrills me.  I’ve read this book three times and most strongly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in a history of science.

Does The Watchman’s Rattle live up to these books?  Could  it possibly reach the bar set so high by it’s predecessors?  Goddamn it!  That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out these last few days.  Thus far I just don’t know.   At times, brilliant, at others, provoking, the book lunges through ideas like mega-churches through money, thrilling me with the scope and grandeur of the work and convincing me of its authenticity.    Then I’ll stumble upon one little section, sometimes only a phrase that will cast the rest of it in doubt.  Provoking, it is.  Truths, both massive and new, are woven throughout.

But is it an accurate vision of our past and future?  Well… Beats the hell out of me, and not just because I can’t see the future. It’s more because I can’t see that what she lays out as solutions aren’t just panaceas created out of a hope for humankind to survive.  I just don’t know.  More research will have to be done.  At the very least, this is a book that I will be chewing through for a very long time.  That alone should recommend it to many of you.

The Watchman’s Rattle thoroughly discusses the problems facing mankind but not the common problems we are all used to hearing about.  Oh sure, climate change, overpopulation and dwindling natural resources are all mentioned, but these are not the root of the problem.  According to Costa, the root of humankind’s problems and the reasons so many civilizations have fallen is that they have all reached a “cognitive limit”  on what they could figure out.  Every civilization reaches a point where the complexity of its troubles becomes too great for merely human brains to figure out.  Once a people’s troubles become too complex for our brains using knowledge, they revert to beliefs or faith in what they cannot prove to help them.  Any reader of this blog will understand my horror of that.

Is this true?  Not being an expert, my opinion here must be taken appropriately, but this rings so true it hurts.  As our own world grows in complexity and the problems we face today look too impossibly convoluted to solve, I see many people reverting to belief or faith only because it’s simpler and easier.  The world has become so specialized that a mere human could never hope to understand everything even in their specialized field.  Therefore, we must increasingly rely on experts and specialists to guide us, but there is growing resistance.  The acrimonious debate over climate change is a prime example.  Many are no longer willing to turn over complicated science to the experts but demand, without merit, that they can understand it too.  But to truly understand it would take years of study that virtually none aren’t willing to put in.  So they espouse a belief that it isn’t true and find erratic bits of evidence to support that belief… or just make shit up.

They haven’t expanded their knowledge to encompass the problem.  They have dumbed down the problem to fit readily on a neat shelf within their own minds comfortably resting next to similar beliefs about pollution, abortion and God. If it’s too hard to understand the problem just believe you do.  It won’t solve anything but will give you some smug satisfaction and superiority over the so-called experts.

In a nut shell, this is the root of the problems in The Watchman’s Rattle.  Costa then breaks these down into separate “supermemes” that humanity tends to fall into that support belief over knowledge.  I can’t get into the specifics here only because I couldn’t do them justice.  Suffice it to say that people often prefer the simpler solution over the right one.  And look around.  Can anyone really argue with that assessment?  Shit no!

It’s not her analysis of the problem that I find difficult.  I think she is spot on there, one of the best I’ve read.  My trouble lies with her optimism for overcoming the problem.  This is very reliant on altering human behavior and cognition through a variety of ways, most of which would be considered speculative to say the least.  She finds the most comfort in the studies of “insight”, the brain’s way of unconsciously arriving at conclusions without apparent effort.  Now I admit, this area does fascinate me and perhaps we can study and control this mental ability better, but to hold on to it as tightly as she does makes me lose hope in our future rather than gain it.  The study of insight is at it very beginning and I think that most of what we could infer here could safely be labeled unproven.

My opinion here is not helped by what I consider the weakest part of the book, that is its reliance on single very controversial demonstrations of how we are missing the boat.  These go by with hardly a word of explanation, but raise the hackles on the back of my neck.  Events like NASA research into spaced based power systems are brought forth as near perfect solutions to today’s problems that we are missing because of our inability to accept new things.  Um… Maybe… Someday.  Does she have any idea what it would take to get a system up and running, even a prototype?  She falls victim to her own list of human frailties by grandly simplifying an unbelievably complex and unproven system into something to be taken for granted.  There are other similar issues.  I could have made this book three times as good by simply going through and editing out two pages of speculation as fact.

In all truth Costa’s book holds close to the fine edge between genius and fantasy.  I just wish I could better judge which side of that line she is on.  I am not into woo.  I hate the stuff and my woo detectors are generally pretty effective at sniffing out bullshit, but here, I am just not sure.  What do I rate it?  Ask me tomorrow and again next week and I’ll likely have different answers for you.  For making me think… A ten!  For bringing forth an original statement of the problems facing us… a ten!

I wish I could stop there, but alas.  The book is very thought provoking, very original.  This I can say without a doubt.  Is this an accurate roadmap to the future?  Sigh!  Rating that I’d have to give it somewhere between four and ten.  Don’t like my wishy-washy analysis? I don’t either.  It frustrates me that I can’t  accept it or throw it out.   I’ll tell you what.  Why don’t some of you read it and we all could discuss what the book really means.  At the very least, this book has provoked me to think and think hard, and that makes it worth reading right there.

So someone help me out here and tell me what you think.  I need someone to talk to about this.

2011
01/14
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Atheism
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56 comments

Interesting!


James Haught, editor of the Charleston Gazette,  sent me his column the other day, and I found it interesting enough to reprint.  I also found it interesting that the editor of West Virginia’s largest paper is not only an avowed atheist but has written several books on the subject.  Nine, I believe.  Cool and worth the read.  Pardon the irony, but Goddamn, I hope he’s right.  I’m going to have to look a some of his books.  One more thing to add to the list.

A huge news story, barely noticed

(The Charleston Gazette – Nov. 9, 2010)

By James A. Haught
Philosopher-historian Will Durant called it “the basic event of modern times.”  He didn’t mean the world wars, or the end of colonialism, or the rise of electronics.  He was talking about the decline of religion in Western democracies.
The great mentor saw subsiding faith as the most profound occurrence of the past century — a shift of Western civilization, rather like former transitions away from the age of kings, the era of slavery and such epochs.

 
Since World War II, worship has dwindled starkly in Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and other advanced democracies. In those busy places, only 5 or 10 percent of adults now attend church.  Secular society scurries along heedlessly.
Pope Benedict XVI protested: “Europe has developed a culture that, in a manner unknown before now to humanity, excludes God from the public conscience.” Columnist George Will called the Vatican “109 acres of faith in a European sea of unbelief.”

 
America seems an exception. This country has 350,000 churches whose members donate $100 billion per year. The United States teems with booming megachurches, gigantic sales of “Rapture” books, fundamentalist attacks on evolution, hundred-million-dollar TV ministries, talking-in-tongues Pentecostals, the white evangelical “religious right” attached to the Republican Party, and the like.

 

But quietly, under the radar, much of America slowly is following the path previously taken by Europe. Little noticed, secularism keeps climbing in the United States. Here’s the evidence:

 
| Rising “nones.” Various polls find a strong increase in the number of Americans — especially the young — who answer “none” when asked their religion. In 1990, this group had climbed to 8 percent, and by 2008, it had doubled to 15 percent — plus another 5 percent who answer “don’t know.” This implies that around 45 million U.S. adults today lack church affiliation. In Hawaii, more than half say they have no church connection.

 
| Mainline losses. America’s traditional Protestant churches — “tall steeple” denominations with seminary-trained clergy — once dominated U.S. culture. They were the essence of America. But their membership is collapsing. Over the past half-century, while the U.S. population doubled, United Methodists fell from 11 million to 7.9 million, Episcopalians dropped from 3.4 million to 2 million, the Presbyterian Church USA sank from 4.1 million to 2.2 million, etc. The religious journal First Things — noting that mainline faiths dwindled from 50 percent of the adult U.S. population to a mere 8 percent — lamented that “the Great Church of America has come to an end.” A researcher at the Ashbrook think-tank dubbed it “Flatline Protestantism.”

 
| Catholic losses. Although Hispanic immigration resupplies U.S. Catholicism with replacements, many former adherents have drifted from the giant church. The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey found that 20 million Americans have quit Catholicism — thus one-tenth of U.S. adults now are ex-Catholics.

 
| Fading taboos. A half-century ago, church-backed laws had power in America. In the 1950s, it was a crime to look at the equivalent of a Playboy magazine or R-rated movie — or for stores to open on the Sabbath — or to buy a cocktail or lottery ticket — or to sell birth-control devices in some states — or to be homosexual — or to terminate a pregnancy — or to read a sexy novel — or for an unwed couple to share a bedroom. Now all those morality laws have fallen, one after another. Currently, state after state is legalizing gay marriage, despite church outrage.

 
Sociologists are fascinated by America’s secular shift. Dr. Robert Putnam of Harvard, author of “Bowling Alone,” found as many as 40 percent of young Americans answering “none” to faith surveys. “It’s a huge change, a stunning development,” he said. “That is the future of America.” He joined Dr. David Campbell of Notre Dame in writing a new book, “American Grace,” that outlines the trend. Putnam’s Social Capital site sums up: “Young Americans are dropping out of religion at an alarming rate of five to six times the historic rate.”

 
Oddly, males outnumber females among the churchless. “The ratio of 60 males to 40 females is a remarkable result,” the 2008 ARIS poll reported. “These gender patterns correspond with many earlier findings that show women to be more religious than men.”

 
Growing secularism has political implications. The Republican Party may suffer as the white evangelical “religious right” shrinks. In contrast, burgeoning “nones” tend to vote Democratic. Sociologist Ruy Teixeira says the steady rise of the unaffiliated, plus swelling minorities, means that “by the 2016 election (or 2020 at the outside) the United States will have ceased to be a white Christian nation. Looking even farther down the road, white Christians will be only around 35 percent of the population by 2040, and conservative white Christians, who have been such a critical part of the Republican base, will be only about a third of that — a minority within a minority.”
Gradually, decade by decade, religion is moving from the advanced First World to the less-developed Third World. Faith retains enormous power in Muslim lands. Pentecostalism is booming in Africa and South America. Yet the West steadily turns more secular.

 
Arguably, it’s one of the biggest news stories during our lives — although most of us are too busy to notice. Durant may have been correct when he wrote that it is the basic event of modern times.

 

(Haught, editor of The Charleston Gazette, West Virginia’s largest newspaper, can be reached by phone at 304-348-5199 or e-mail at haught@wvgazette.com. This essay is adapted from his ninth book, Fading Faith: The Rise of the Secular Age.)

2011
01/13
CATEGORY
Atheism
3 comments

Introducing the Northern Prairie Secular Society


Well, we’ve had our first official meeting of the Northern Prairie Secular Society and it went well.  No one died, and I feel that’s always a good start (The secret to feeling successful is to set the bar really low.) In addition, we picked a name and set some guidelines.  Combine that with the party we had last night and it was a great set of events and a good start for North Dakota Atheism. All in all, I happy with the progress we’ve made.  My wife is quite pleased because the name she created and voted for won.  Now she’ll be impossible to live with.  Obvious proof that there is a God and that he hates me.  Sigh!

The party was great too.  Good beer. Good food.  What more could an atheist ask for.

We’ve also a bare bones website right here started by yours truly.  Not much there now, but please stop by and wish us all luck.  We’ll need it.  It takes some time and effort to create a group like this, and presently,  I feel we are groping our way into the future blind as cave fish.  But then again, aren’t we always.

2011
01/09
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3 comments

Book Review: Pandora’s Seed — The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization.


at its essence, Pandora’s Seed is a cautionary tale regarding the history of the human race and the paths we have taken.  Author of the popular The Journey of Man, Spencer Wells’ newest book encompasses a wide scope, all the major forks we have come to in our cultural evolution. The book attempts to cover how the choices made millennia ago deeply affect every thing from obesity and mental illness to climate change and religious fundamentalism.  The scope is vast.  The depth is, unfortunately, is not. While the book in its smaller scale is admirably comprehensible for the general reader, the in-depth study I wished for is missing.  There really should be no diving signs posted around most of the chapters because I can easily see the bottom.  I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but I would have preferred to plumb the depths of this topic more thoroughly. There is plenty of good solid information.  I just rue the fact that there is not more.

The book wraps itself around the premise that human evolution selected for many characteristics in humanity that we no longer need, characteristics that are, in fact, detrimental to our current well being.  It’s a story we have heard many times before.  Millions of years of evolution shaped us to be hunter-gatherers, to live off complicated carbohydrates and meat, to survive in small social bands where everyone knew everyone else, where diseases were rare and not readily spread from clan to clan.  Our self-alteration into an agricultural-based society rapidly changed these constants and thereby altered humanity forever — for good and for ill.

Sensibly, Mr. Wells never advocates a return to a primitive lifestyle. His work suggests more of a careful study of how our cultural evolution is affecting our health and well being today as individuals as well as the health of society in general and the planet we live on. Starting with diet, Pandora’s Seed marches us through humanity’s difficulty in adapting our biology to modern diets and behaviors.  The rise in many chronic health concerns like diabetes, obesity and heart disease can be attributed to the change to agriculture some 10,000 years ago.  The prevalence of many of our infectious diseases today was caused by our long association with domesticated animals and hence their diseases and our need as a farming society to settle in larger and larger groups allowing new diseases to spread easily and rapidly.  These conclusions are well supported by the evidence and Wells does a fine job of arguing this case.

As the book progresses, however, it seems to become less scientific and more conjectural.  I understand that this is due to the author’s entire purpose of the book which is to show how our decisions today will affect not only our children but our descendants for thousands of years.  The purpose is admirable and lofty but the execution is less than stellar.  I felt the need to remind myself of this purpose periodically while reading, but that thread should have been woven obviously and bluntly throughout the narrative.  For instance, when he tells the tale of Mount Tambora exploding in 1815 ( A great tale which he tells well.) and drastically cooling the planet for the next year, I shouldn’t have to wonder why he’s relating this story.  It should be more obvious.

I agree with the concept  that decisions made 10,000 years ago affect who we are.  And, of course, decisions we make today will influence our descendants for dozens, if not hundreds of generations.  This theme should be central in the choices we make today, and Wells does try to get this across but with too loose of a narrative and questionable results.

It is not that I didn’t agree with what he was saying, or that I didn’t learn anything.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  It is just that each individual segment is well written, but taken as a whole, the work is not cohesive enough. It’s almost more of a series of essays than that a single work.  A stronger thread should have tied these widely disparate sections together.  Compared to Jared Diamond, the master of grandly unifying separate ideas, Wells’ book comes up as a distant second.  Cohesion is difficult for many authors, myself included.  I understand.  But in works of this scope, differences in cohesion is the difference between average works like this and masterworks like Gun’s Germs and Steel and Collapse.

I give it six Blessed A’s out of ten.

As an aside, I must relate a discovery I made here.  In the chapter on disease, Wells mentions a researcher at the NIH by the name of Deirdre Joy.  This name rang something in my poorly contrived mind and after a few pages I had to turn back and look again.  I knew a Deirdre Joy in the Peace Corps in the Central African Republic where I served. She was an amazingly competent and funny woman with a blistering wit which could wash away most opponents in a few short words. To be fully honest, I had a complete crush on her and followed her around rather pathetically until it was stated to me in a politely blunt fashion that she wasn’t interested.  That did cool my ardor but not my admiration.  Searching on Google (what in the hell did we ever do before that arrived on the scene?) rapidly proved to me that there is only a single Deirdre Joy of note and that I certainly knew her.

At the risk of looking like a stalker, I also must admit to looking for a picture of her.  Now! Now! It’s not what you think!  As hard as I tried, I just couldn’t picture her.  Struggling mightily with my own brain gave me nothing.  I could see her gestures and hear a few witticisms she threw out.  But… Damn!  This is a woman who I… lusted after… yet aside from blond hair, my mind was completely empty.  Upon looking at her photo, however, the mental images came rushing back, but I must ask. Where the hell were they all that time?  Obviously, the neurons holding that information in an iron grip  had not died.  Were they misplaced, sleeping, being coy?  Were they shy?  Sigh!   If I could only call up all the shit I have stored in my head when I need it, I’d be a genius.  But no, I end up wandering warped and twisted cerebral hallways for days looking for the mental equivalent of lost sock.  If there is any better proof of not being designed by God, I have yet to hear it.

Anyway, I know it’s a bit rednecky but this is the first time I have read a book and found someone I actually knew in its pages.  I’m so happy.

2011
01/01
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Atheism
Religion
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7 comments
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