The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, David Wallace-Wells, 2023 edition adapted for young adults, 157 pages, ISBN 9780593483572, Dewey 304.28 WThe Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, David Wallace-Wells, 2023 edition adapted for young adults, 157 pages, ISBN 9780593483572, Dewey 304.28 W155un new teen collection
mya = million years ago
Extinction events: 450 mya 86% of species dead 380 mya 75% of species dead 255 mya 96% of species dead 205 mya 80% of species dead 70 mya 75% of species dead
All but one of these involved greenhouse-gas-produced climate change. p. 3.
The worst, 255 mya, 96% of species dead, was caused by carbon dioxide raising global air temperature 5°C, leading to methane release. p. 3.
We are now adding carbon to the atmosphere at more than 10 times the rate of 255 mya. p. 4.
We're going to
bake, starve, drown, burn, parch, lose ocean life, choke, sicken, be impoverished, go to war, and worse.
Yet the author says he's optimistic because, "we remain in command."
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, David Wallace-Wells, 2023 edition adapted for young adults, 157 pages, ISBN 9780593483572, Dewey 304.28 WThe Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, David Wallace-Wells, 2023 edition adapted for young adults, 157 pages, ISBN 9780593483572, Dewey 304.28 W155un new teen collection
mya = million years ago
Extinction events: 450 mya 86% of species dead 380 mya 75% of species dead 255 mya 96% of species dead 205 mya 80% of species dead 70 mya 75% of species dead
All but one of these involved greenhouse-gas-produced climate change. p. 3.
The worst, 255 mya, 96% of species dead, was caused by carbon dioxide raising global air temperature 5°C, leading to methane release. p. 3.
We are now adding carbon to the atmosphere at more than 10 times the rate of 255 mya. p. 4.
We're going to
bake, starve, drown, burn, parch, lose ocean life, choke, sicken, be impoverished, go to war, and worse.
Yet the author says he's optimistic because, "we remain in command."
Dumont sought to describe a society he assumed eternal and unchanging, based on ancient Brahminic ideals. --Thomas Piketty, /Capital and Ideology/, 20Dumont sought to describe a society he assumed eternal and unchanging, based on ancient Brahminic ideals. --Thomas Piketty, /Capital and Ideology/, 2020, pp. 319-320....more
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber (1961-2020) and David Wengrow (1972- ), 2021, 692 pages, Dewey 901, ISBN 978037415735The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber (1961-2020) and David Wengrow (1972- ), 2021, 692 pages, Dewey 901, ISBN 9780374157357
The authors set out to write a history of inequality. They learned that there was never an original natural state of human society. People have been organizing themselves in a variety of political ways for 200,000 years. The current organization into states can't be thought of as inevitable.
Homo sapiens 200,000 BCE- p. 1.
No better way to get anthropologists denouncing each other than to mention Napoleon Chagnon. p. 16. (Chagnon said the Yanomami of Amazonia are violent, and that their case may indicate that so are we all. According to Steven Pinker, if not for Voltaire and police, academics would be actually stabbing each other in this debate.)
European missionaries to Native Americans in the 1600s struggled to translate concepts like "lord," "commandment," or "obedience" into indegenous languages. p. 44.
Native Americans said, Europeans wouldn't need to coerce each other to behave well, if not for their system of money and property rights, that encourages them to behave badly. p. 54.
The political "right" and "left" originally referred to seating positions of aristocratic and popular factions in the French National Assembly of 1789. p. 69. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natio...
A few powerful people are wrecking the world. How'd that happen? p. 76.
Egalitarianism can exist only if there's no possibility of accumulating any sort of surplus.--anthropologist James Woodburn p. 128. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Americans are free from having to obey the arbitrary orders of superiors--unless, of course, they have to get a job. p. 131.
When someone else's purpose in life is to interfere with you, he must be stopped, lest you become his slave, his pet. --an indigenous Californian, 1800s. p. 203.
We make our own history, but not under conditions of our own choosing. --Karl Marx. p. 206.
Çatalhöyük, Turkey, was first settled c. 7400 BCE. 13 hectares (32 acres, .05 sq mi, .13 sq km), 5,000 population. (100,000/sq mi, 156/acre). p. 212. https://www.google.com/maps/place/K%C... Practised flood-retreat farming. p. 235.
Harvesting wild plants and turning them into food, medicine and complex structures like baskets or clothing is almost everywhere a female activity. p. 237.
Settlements inhabited by tens of thousands of people make their first appearance in human history around 6000 years ago, on almost every continent, at first in isolation. p. 283. The largest early cities were in Mesoamerica. p. 285. Teotihuacan reached 100,000 largely of refugees of volcanic and seismic disasters, 100 BCE to 600 CE. pp. 286, 329, 336, 341-344. River floodplains settled in their courses, and sea level stabilized, around 7,000 years ago.
Ukrainian and Moldovan cities of over 1,000 500-square-foot houses, in a 750-acre built area, were inhabited 4100 - 3300 BCE. pp. 290-291. No evidence of social stratification.
From around 2800 BCE onward, monarchy starts popping up everywhere. p. 298.
Uruk is the first city for which we have extensive written records. p. 306.
Aristocracies, and maybe monarchy, first arose in opposition to the egalitarian cities of the Mesopotamian plains. Compare Alaric vs. Rome, Genghis Khan vs. Samarkand, Timur vs. Delhi. p. 313. Argives vs. Troy, Attila vs. Europe p. 445, Vikings vs. Europe, whoever brought the war chariot there vs. India. p. 311. [Let's continue the list: British East India Company vs. India. British Petroleum vs. Mosaddegh. Chiquita vs. Árbenz. Michelin vs. Vietnam. Allen Dulles vs. JFK. Kennecott Copper vs. Allende. Al-Qaeda vs. US. Putin vs. Ukraine.]
At Taosi, China, 2000 BCE, aristocracy was apparently overthrown; the city then increased in size over the next 200-300 years. pp. 325-326.
At least 100,000 people lived in Teotihuacan, which covered 8 square miles, 100 BCE to 600 CE. pp. 286, 329, 336, 341-344. No overlords nor kings.
Cortés in 1519 found no kings in Tlaxcala, a city of 150,000. p. 348. Governed by consensus of a city council. p. 353.
Elections often choose charismatic leaders with tyrannical pretensions. p. 356.
Control of violence, control of information, and individual charisma are the three possible bases of social power. p. 365.
As late as the 1780s, as Max Weber liked to point out, Frederick the Great of Prussia found that his repeated efforts to free the country's serfs came to nothing because bureaucrats would simply ignore the decrees or, if challenged by his legates, insisted the words of the decree should be interpreted as saying the exact opposite of what was obviously intended. p. 394.
People have an unfortunate tendency to see the successful prosecution of arbitrary violence as in some sense divine. p. 395.
Three freedoms: to relocate, to disobey, to make and break social alliances. p. 426, 503.
Minoan Crete, 1700-1450 BCE. No evidence of monarchy. Female political rule. Palaces unfortified. [The eruption of Thera (Santorini) has been estimated at around 1642 BCE, from Greenland ice cores.] Linear A writing hasn't been deciphered. p. 434-438. Greek mainland: walled citadels 1400 BCE, soon overtook Crete. p. 436. Linear B is Greek. p. 437.
3000 BCE - 1600 CE: miserable for farmers, great for barbarians. --James C. Scott. p. 445.
Karl Jaspers' "Axial Age," 800-201 BCE, Greek/Indian/Chinese philosophy appears in the wake of coinage. p. 450. Also the spread of chattel slavery. Which then declined as axial empires dissolved.
Cahokia, Illinois, 1050-1350 CE. City of 15,000, 6 square miles. Ritual mass killings and burials. Entire area abandoned. pp. 452, 465, 481-482.
Hopewell Interaction Sphere, 100 BCE to 500 CE, network tying nearly all parts of North America together, centered near Chillicothe, Ohio. p. 457.
Osage Missouri River trading empire, 1678-1803. p.476.
To get a sense of a society's values, see what they consider the worst behavior. For the Haudenosaunee (League Iroquois: Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Mohawk), giving orders is almost as bad as cannibalism. pp. 483, 485.
1230 - 1375, Iroquois began to give up seasonal mobility, settle in palisaded towns of up to 2,000. p. 487.
Patriarchic rule may have originated as orphans, widows, and others in need relied on the hospitality of the chief. pp. 520-521.
Societies lacking both slavery and war were common outside the Eurasian Iron Age. p. 523. [1300 BCE, Caucasus foothills, Hittites first used iron weapons, so says Isaac Asimov, Asimov's Chronology of the World, p. 43. "Iron has been discovered for the evil of mankind." --Lichas the Lacedemonian, quoted in Herodotus' History, Volume 1.]
New truths replace old when old theorists die. --Max Planck. p. 525.
When God Stops Fighting: How Religious Violence Ends, Mark Juergensmeyer (1940- ), 2022, 179 pages, ISBN 9780520384736, Library-of-Congress BP190.5.V5When God Stops Fighting: How Religious Violence Ends, Mark Juergensmeyer (1940- ), 2022, 179 pages, ISBN 9780520384736, Library-of-Congress BP190.5.V56
Clear, insightful, succinct. Distilled from thirty years studying religious violence (and a lifetime studying religion, society, and conflict). p. xi.
Three religiously-motivated wars, now ended: Juergensmeyer interviewed participants who did, and who did not, recant their militancy. The rebels, and the authorities, each entered into a state of imagined war in treating their opponents as extreme enemies, as less than human. p. 139. After the war ends, the image of cosmic war may live on symbolically, perhaps someday to rise again. p. 148.
Islamic State, Iraq and Syria, 2003-2019, militarily provoked, militarily defeated. pp. ix, 2-3, 5, 7, 17-54. "We Sunni are second-class citizens under Shi'a rule. ISIS may or may not kill you; the Shi'a surely will. ISIS? Maybe it's a political movement dressed up like religion." p. 25. The inability of the US-occupied country to find a role for former soldiers in Saddam's huge military was a reason that many of them joined ISIS. p. 138. ISIS used extreme violence to control its enemies and its own population. p. 30. ISIS installed its own imams: few traditional Muslim leaders supported ISIS. p. 43. "A band of vicious men collecting cars and women." p. 51. Iraqi jihadists called the American prison camp "Jihadi University." Prisoners held classes on Islamic theology, jihadi ideology, militant organization, and strategy. Ex-convicts emerge as hardened, well-trained militant zealots. pp. 34-35, 39. Jihadi recruiters painted anti-government slogans on walls at night in Sunni areas. Security forces next day would arrest lots of young Sunni men who had nothing to do with it, and send them to prison, where the jihadi workshops are. The arrests turned their families anti-government, too. p. 41. Everyone in the American prison confessed to anything, to stop the torture. p. 39. Most suicide bombers were young boys or non-Arabic-speaking foreigners, recruited online. p. 47. Some 30,000 recruits came from outside the Arabic-speaking Sunni-majority Middle-Eastern region. p. 46. Many were sons of migrants from the Middle East, alienated and marginalized in the West. p. 49. "I estimate the online community declined 20% to 40% after 2018, lower by 2021. Much communication has shifted to the encrypted dark web." p. 50. "I was seldom able to speak with women since they were more hesitant about interacting with foreigners, though often I found that when they did begin to speak it was hard to stop them." p. 23. ISIS was militarily defeated, but Sunnis in Iraq still feel disrespected: conditions are ripe for renewed militancy. pp. 142-143. "When Muhammad said he would willingly kill Americans, my nervousness turned to apprehension. Seeing me, he smiled and said, 'not you, Professor.'" p. 144. Ten thousand ISIS fighters remained in Iraq and Syria, and attacked hundreds of times, long after ISIS lost all its territory. p. 147.
Moro Movement for a Muslim Mindanao, Philippines, 1969-2019. Ended by negotiation. pp. ix, 1-2, 7, 55-85, 109. In 1972 President Marcos instituted martial law to quell the unrest. The result was the opposite. p. 57. There were about 1,000 fighters in the peak year, 2000. p. 59. Guerrilla attacks failed to force the government to create the militants' desired autonomous Muslim homeland. p. 63. Splinter group Abu Sayyaf degenerated into a criminal gang, kidnapping and extorting millions of dollars from victims' families, beheading if ransom wasn't paid. By 2020, a few hundred militants remained. p. 67. Inaction on negotiations with moderate militant groups lent credibility to extremists. p. 69. In 2017, the criminal-gang faction took an entire city hostage. p. 70. The army bombed the city to rubble. p. 71. More young men joined the militants. After years of inaction, the Philippine legislature finally ratified the agreement granting autonomous status to Muslim parts of southern Mindanao. The army's negotiator with the rebels was a general who had been a rebel himself. "He respected us." p. 139.
Khalistan movement for Sikh separatism, Punjab, India, 1976-1995. p. 113. The Sikh majority felt they were treated as second-class citizens in their own territory, robbed of their water rights and mistreated by police. p. 140. Reasons for end include an all-out assault by the Indian police, and collapse of popular support. pp. ix-x, 3, 7, 86-115. Eventually the people became sick of all the killings. p. 113, 133. "When the villagers turned against us, we knew it was over." --Wassan Singh Zaffarwal. p. 115. Guerrillas are fish who need the water of popular support. p. 135. The Indian army killed 2,000 Sikhs, including militant leader Bhindranwale, in 1984, in the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar. pp. 88, 97, 124, 130. Indira Gandhi was then assassinated 1984.10.31. p. 97. Two Sikhs in 1986 assassinated the army officer who had ordered the temple attack. p. 91. The guerrillas got their weapons by looting police stations. p. 92. All told, 20,000+ people were killed in the uprising, including 6,000+ In 1991. pp. 98-99, 112. Many militants were killed by rival factions. p. 101. They ended up like street gangs. p. 112. Militant violence prompted police to exterminate the movement, which they did. pp. 92, 102. Some 80% of the militants (and many innocent people) were killed. pp. 107, 111. "A greater sin than murder is to not seek justice." --Bhindranwale. p. 98. "Anyone who complies with an oppressive regime is never a Sikh." --Bhai Dhanna Singh. p. 103.
In each case, aspects of the struggle linger on. pp. x, 114. The end is a cessation of hostilities, not friendly mutual tolerance. p. 15. "When do you say, 'He's not a threat anymore?'" p. 52. Peripheral members put militancy behind them and get on with their lives. True believers may accept the end of the battle, but await the restart of the war. pp. 53-54.
Negotiation is not possible until both sides have lost the will to fight. Military conquest works only if survivors give up, rather than continuing guerrilla war or terrorism. Hostilities end with abandoning the idea of war--the idea of a do-or-die struggle between good and evil. The idea springs from fear. pp. 4-6, 16. Enemies may be real and/or imagined. "Those people aren't like us. They don't even follow our religion. Satan is acting through them. God is on our side. This is God's war. We cannot lose. Fighting serves God." pp. 7-8, 12-14.
(As of 3/29/2022, goodreads.com user reviews were inaccessible except by logged-in goodreads members. As of 5/14/2022, all of the following goodreads pages were accessible without being logged into goodreads.)
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins, revised edition 1871 (first edition 1868), 552 pages, ISBN 0192100289
This is a whodunit. Narrated by a series of charaThe Moonstone, Wilkie Collins, revised edition 1871 (first edition 1868), 552 pages, ISBN 0192100289
This is a whodunit. Narrated by a series of characters, each well drawn: a steward-and-butler, an aggressively-Christian poor relation, a gentleman, a physician, a physician's assistant, our hero, Sergeant Cuff, another detective, and two others.
"I have (in spite of the bishops and the clergy) an unfeigned respect for the Church." p. 39.
"Take a drop more of the grog, sir, and you'll get over the weakness of believing in facts!" p. 367.
"Women, as you may have observed, have no principles. My family don't feel my pangs of conscience. The end being to bring you and Rachel together again, my wife and daughters pass over the means employed to gain it, as composedly as if they were Jesuits." p. 400.
The Darker Nations, Vijay Prashad, 2007, 364 pages, ISBN 9781565847859, Dewey 909.09724, Library-of-Congress D883 P74 2008 College Library Rm. 1191
A rThe Darker Nations, Vijay Prashad, 2007, 364 pages, ISBN 9781565847859, Dewey 909.09724, Library-of-Congress D883 P74 2008 College Library Rm. 1191
A readable history of the emergence and demise of Third World hopes of liberty and social justice. p. 77. The Third World continues to suffer under debt to northern banks, and repression by local elites. This book recounts the many conferences among Third World nations during the decades when they could entertain hope.
One million dollars. That's all it took in 1953 for the CIA to overthrow a nationalist government. The Shah returned until re-overthrown by a different kind of coup in 1979. p. 75.
In 1500, Europe's per-person income averaged 3 times that of Africa and Asia. In 1960, it was 10 times. Colonial rule plundered the darker nations. p. 66.
"We have seen the Argentines reduced to the status of a British colony by means of economic penetration," enabled by the Argentine oligarchy, the "sellers of their country." --Juan Bautista Justo, 1896. p. 28. Europe controlled 85% of Earth in 1914. p. 41. The U.S. would control after WWII.
GATT allowed the First World to have an advantage in trade, the IMF enabled First World banks to survive fiscal slumps in the debtor nations, and the World Bank engineered development that benefited monopoly corporations. p. 71.
Before and after new nations won independence from colonial rule, the same people were the elites in political and economic power. By the 1970s, the darker nations were suffering under austerity imposed by the IMF and World Bank. The Third World project is over. The rich won. pp. xvii-xviii, 14. Aid from outside (whether capitalist or socialist) purchased time for the dominant elites, who used that money to prevent necessary social transformation. p. 73.
The U.S. fought to destroy the political left everywhere. It succeeded. pp. 38-39. "Pax Americana is the internationalism of Standard Oil, Chase Manhattan, and the Pentagon." --journalist I.F. Stone. p. 39. U.S. "dumping" government-subsidized agricultural commodities, destroyed agriculture throughout the Third World. p. 39. Every pact with the U.S. brought insecurity to the Third World countries. --Jawaharlal Nehru, 1955. p. 40.
We condemn the monopoly of capital and the rule of private wealth and industry for profit alone. We welcome economic democracy as the only real democracy. --Fifth Pan-African Conference, 1945. p. 24.
The world must be taken through struggle. --Umm Kulthum, 1956. p. 52.
"Conflict comes not from variety of skins, nor from variety of religion, but from variety of desires. --Indonesian president Sukarno, 1955." pp. 33-34.
Recommends:
The Seven Sisters, Anthony Sampson, on OPEC. p. xi.
Global Rift, L.S. Stavrianos, on the Third World, 1492 to 1980s. p. xi.
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1961. p. xv.
Discourse on Colonialism, Aimé Césaire, 1955, pp. 3-6, 81.
Documenting Belgian King Leopold's barbarity in the Congo, p. 18: Affairs of West Africa, E.D. Morel, 1902 Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1902, King Leopold's Soliloquy, Mark Twain, 1904.
Thomas Ray
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