The Big Book of Nuture

 

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition) by Jared Diamond was a sensation when it was first published, and since it has come under some justified criticism. 

In the marshaling of such meta-historical information, the incentive to ignore counter examples is strong.  Diamond sites the Viking abandonment of Greenland a few times.  For decades, it was believed the Norse failed to adapt to an increasingly colder Greenland.  They were farmers and herders and failed to hunt the abundant sea life like their Inuit neighbors.  In recent years, we have learned that the Norse were involved in the ivory trade with Europe. They also ate arctic marine mammals.  Greenland became a less appealing place to live not because of mal-adaption to climate, but money.  When the African ivory market opened in the 1400s, Greenland became an unappealing place to make a living.

Also, the book is also highly repetitive.  Diamond revisits topics at the end that he handled in the beginning, adding nothing to the discussion.  I wonder why. 

Despite all this, the book is thought provoking; a great jumping off point toward an examination of why cultures differ from each other.  The topic itself is fascinating.

 

Israel is laid waste and his seed is not

 

The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman does an admirable job in presenting a possible ancient history of the people known as Israel.  As a culture, we have gone from believing the bible told the entire truth about history as the unerring word of God, to seeing it as a human production that tells a story shaped by the time of its composition and redaction, and that bears no resemblance to what we consider modern history.

The problem with this approach is that ultimately we’d like to eliminate the bible in seeking out a history of Israel but we never can; there is a paradox at the heart of biblical history and this book falls into it like all others. While seeking to show the bible is not history invariably some parts of the bible will be shown to be history, or at least worthy of historical seriousness.  

A prime example is the discovery of the Book of the Law in the Temple during the reign of Josiah.  Scholars believe this is the book of Deuteronomy, or an early version of it, but we have zero evidence that this is the case.  Yet so many histories of Israel use this as a vital crux, or historical pivot point.

All we have are hard points of fact outside the bible that most scholars agree are authentic.  The earliest is the Egyptian Merneptah stele which explains that a people known as Israel, most likely semi-nomadic and living in the hills of Canaan in 1270 BCE were completely destroyed.  Any statement beyond this basic fact is some kind of conjecture. 

Israel is laid waste and his seed is not;

X Troop & Jewish Identity

 

X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War II by Leah Garrett tells the story of German Jewish (or Jews from mainland Europe, and some German dissenters) who fought as commandos for Great Britain.  Most of these men were detained as enemy aliens when the war began.  Some were sent to camps in Australia and New Zealand.  Then they volunteered for elite commando training in the army of the country that imprisoned them.  They fought in dangerous places with distinction.  After the war many of them had difficulty becoming naturalized British citizens.

I see Garrett’s book as a one of those footnotes of the complex and tragic fate of many Jews in the twentieth century.  These men gave up their identities, often did not marry Jewish women, and their children did not know of their Jewish origin until late in life in many cases.  This is the story of Jewish commandos, but also the shifting foundations of modern Jewish identity.

Late Capitalism Stoicism (somewhat)

 

I read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations in college, and have continued to return to the work for thirty years now.  Recently I was excited to see Stoicism experiencing something of a revival.  This brings me to The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday. Written in the radically pragmatic spirit of the “late” Roman era Stoics, Holiday does some interesting work in this book.  

But for me, Stoicism is not useful for “turning trials into triumphs” but rather accepting the trials of life with equanimity.  The beginning of Holiday’s book reads like an advertisement for entrepreneurial capitalism.  I am not interested in this at all, and too much of an emphasis on "success" distorts Stoicism. 

Toward the end the author turns to more serious Stoic topics – including the fine art of disengaging from a reality... being less connected with things that enslave us.  It seems the author wrote the first half purposefully optimistic, so as not to turn off readers.  So if this author’s voice bothers you in the first half, hang on, he will turn things around and develop a more rounded vision.

The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual

 

In The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual by Ward Farnsworth the reader will find a very rigorous treatment of Stoic philosophy, and its innumerable applications to our lives.  Farnsworth makes ample use of Seneca, who throughout history has had his Stoic credentials questioned.  Farnsworth shows us that Seneca’s seeming Stoic unorthodoxy is very well suited to our time.  Seneca’s less doctrinaire approach to Stoicism can be well-adapted to the Neo-Stoicism this is flourishing today.  This is an important book for our uncertain times.