Nurture All The Way

Skin Deep: Journeys in the Divisive Science of Race by Gavin Evans, is a detailed exploration of the race science.  Notably, he follows the work of scientists who try and prove one race or ethnicity has a higher IQ than another, among other indicators.   Evans employs the work of other scientists who fail to see that so-called racial or ethnic background are the determiners of intelligence.  These scientists fall on the nurture side of the argument of the age old nature v nature battle.

So, this is an old argument, and common sense seems to dictate that our intelligence or other positive (or negative) traits are driven by a combination of the two.  Yet Evans points out that precious few behaviors or tendencies can be pinned to genetic inheritance alone.  The science does not back it up.

 

Evans takes down many race scientists in this work.  Probably too many for the casual reader.  If you are really into this subject, and are familiar with the literature, than this book is for you.

Back Home and then Back to Exile

The Legends and Myths of Hawaii, by David Kalakaua, has the subtitle “The Fables And Folklore Of A Strange People.” Published in 1888 by David Kalakaua, the penultimate Hawaiian monarch,  he tells the story of his people from ancient times to the early contact with Europeans.  He makes some interesting moves. He incorporates the history of the Hawaiian people with biblical history.  Many of his stories are about knights and princes who rise above their station in the fractured Hawaii before it was governed by Kamehameha, the first monarch.  A beautiful princess is usually involved.  There is a Victorian ring to their tone and structure. This book should be read at a leisurely pace.  Many of the stories are similar.  For most people, the names will be very similar as well.  No doubt this is a vital historical source for native Hawaiians. 

the paperback at Two Step, Hawaii

My particular paperback went along to our trip to the Big Island in early 2020.  While there, I noticed it had a stamp from Haleakala National Park, Kipahulu, Hawaii, which is on Maui.  When we drove north on the Big Island, we could see this side of Maui across the channel.  The book was ordered from Maryland.  It was originally in the library of the national park until at least 1998. After 1998 it left its home. In 2020 it has made its way back to its home, if only for two weeks.  Who knows, maybe this was not the paperback’s first trip to its homeland?  Maybe it will get back there again?

Really, Because They Were Vikings?

Certainly, Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got It Right-and How We Can, by George Lakey, is informative.  The title makes me cringe.  It is designed to sell books, and gives the work less gravitas.  But this is a piddling critique that tells more about me than the book.

Lakey’s work is excellent if you know nothing about the how Scandinavian economics and politics work, and are curious.  We often hear some version of ‘why can’t we be more like…’ Denmark, Sweden, Norway, or Iceland, in some area of economic or political life.  This book shows why.

Yet we come back to the title again.  Lakey explains that these countries have only recently become the paragon of X,Y, and Z in the post-war years.  They worked for their greater equality in the last seventy years.  So what does this have to do with Vikings?

the unrecorded folk legacy of ancient Israel

In one of Arthur Green’s essays, he explains that.. 

“...the notion that the Temple is the opening to heaven and hell, or stands on the spot where Creation began, or is located just below the great heavenly Temple, does not find direct narrative expression in scripture.  Such is of course indicated by biblical language and terminology: Beth  El and Sha’ar ha-Shamayim [the House of God, The Gates of  Heaven]… the fact that these terms grow forth into full and explicit narratives in the post-biblical sources, where less care is taken with regard to such anti-mythic “orthodoxy,” and sometimes in forms quite strikingly parallel in expressions in  Mesopotamian literature of more than a millennium earlier, makes it rather likely that these concept were indeed part of the unrecorded folk legacy of ancient Israel.”

The source he quotes for this statement is Raphael Patai’s Man and Temple.  This book is fascinating, and indeed does explore what we can call mythological elements of both the Temple, and the rites that took place within it.  Perhaps the biggest problem with this work is that it was written when Fraser’s The Golden Bough still dominated folklore studies.  It no longer does, so one has to wonder if Patai’s frame for the stories and legends in here are well out of date and misleading.

But with that in mind, in the end these are wonderful and provocative stories worth reading.

A Bit Hallow

The Singer's Gun, by Emily St. John Mandel, suffers from the not as good as Station Eleven Syndrome.  But give her a break.  She wrote this before Station Eleven.  The novel must be judged on its own merits.

On its own merits Mandel has written a solid book, with interesting characters and a steady plot line, but there is something thin about the execution.  Perhaps because the characters are immigrants, and Mandel seems uncomfortable with making them too ethnic.  Did she feel she would be accused of (negative) cultural appropriation?

Either way, it mars the novel; there is no sense of place or purpose to the characters.  They are a bit hallow.  They lack a sense of authentic history

The Pearl Harbor Effect

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll, explores 9-11 and the Pearl Harbor Effect.  Why was American napping before 9-11?  How did the intelligence community, the career bureaucrats, and our elected official fail?

Coil provides a long and detailed view of this, starting with the American support of Islamic fighters in the Afghan Soviet War, to our period of negligence of Afghanistan following the end of the Cold War, to the heat up in terrorist attacks in the 90s.

Coil shows that it was not just one event or moment that the US missed in the buildup the 9-11, but many.  The first Bush was not aware of the Afghan Civil War, Clinton was too cautious and spellbound by legal niceties in attempting to kill bin Ladin, and  the second Bush came too late to the party.  At first he ignored the threat, only taking it up in the summer of 2001, when the planes  operation was well underway.

Again and Again

Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide by Thomas de Waal, is a very complete investigation of the slaughter of the Armenian people in 1915.  

But the book is so much more: de Waal takes a long look at relations between Armenians and Turks both before and after the killings.  And most importantly, how the killings have been framed by Armenians, Turks, and the world community in the decades following the events.

As creatures we do this: we kill an entire people because of who they are, or the threat we believe they possess.  All of them die: men, woman, children, innocent, guilty... and everyone in between. Genocide happens in 1915 and among the Rohingya in Myanmar in 2017.  

There is no reason to think genocide will not happen again and again.