Monthly Bookpost, November 2016
Shit Happens: Bellwether, by Connie Willis
Mood Rings (1975)--Jewelry fad consisting of a ring set with a large "stone" that was actually a temperature-sensitive liquid crystal/ Mood rings supposedly reflected the wearer's mood and revealed his or her thoughts. Blue meant tranquility; red meant crabbiness; black meant depression and doom. Since the ring actually responded to temperature, and after a while not even that, no one achieved the ideal "bliss" purple without a high fever, and everyone eventually sank into gloom and despair as their rings went permanently black. Superseded by Pet Rocks, which didn't respond to anything.
Omigosh, what a wonderful, funny, thought provoking novel about chaos as applied to what we do in our day to day life, the behavior of crowds, and mighty butterflies devastating the coasts of Florida with a flap of their wings.
SHE is a scientist researching the origin of fads (and every chapter opens with a little blurb like the one quoted above, about a historical fad from Dutch "tulipmania" to knights wearing impractically long shoes to Rubik's cube and bobbed hair and horoscopes and specialty Barbie dolls) who is forever being interrupted at the worst possible moment and made to drop her work to go to management affinity group meetings, rescue childrens' parties or cope with the depressing trends set by her truculent office assistant (had the book been written now instead of the 1990s, said assistant would be cringeworthily denouncable as a "typical Millennial brat"; here, she is cringeworthily denounced as a "typical Generation X brat". Some fads never go away).
HE is a biologist with a pronounced way of self-presentation that avoids any of the packaged stereotypical identities of the day and thus subconsciously offends everyone, trying to study group behaviour in animals.
THEY are stuck in a hellhole of a relentlessly PR-pursuing research corporation. Do romantic hijinks ensue? Our market research says YES!
And everything in the book points at the silly, mundane fads and group behaviours going on in society, even as the scientists discuss how and why these things happen. Management leadership fads. Consumer fads. Menu fads and social networking fads and exercise fads and what kind of people are going to be ostracized this season and what everybody is doing solely because everybody else is doing it, from the laugh out loud funny to the frightening.
Bellwether was sent to me by a friend to get me through a depressive episode. It worked. Just read it; you'll be glad you did.
Bye Bye Love: Bonjour, Tristesse, by Francoise Sagan
A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.
Francoise Sagan's first book is a novelette-length narrative about a teenage girl who doesn't know what an Electra complex is (though Sagan certainly does), but boy does she ever have issues about her widowed father who is beginning to date again.
The book isn't quite a journal, but the chapters are short, and the narrator writes with simultaneous innocence and sophistication, talking in depth about her feelings about her dad, her boyfriend, and her dad's mistress, while managing not to be emo about it. Eventually, she does The Stupid Thing to try to break up her dad's relationship, and tragic mayhem ensues.
Harvard Classics: Minor works of Edmund Burke
THE PASSION caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect.
Edmund Burke is a second-tier intellect of the Eighteenth century (who probably would have been first tier in the Seventeenth, but was outshone by some much greater lights in his own era). I'm surprised that the Harvard Classics (which I've taken to calling "Doctor Elliott's Fifty Volumes of Odd Choices") would devote an entire volume to Burke while Swift, Voltaire, Rousseau, Johnson, The Federalist and Kant get representative snippets, and Diderot, Gibbon, Bentham and Walpole aren't there at all.
Burke is most remembered for Reflections on the Revolution in France (which takes up most of the HC volume, and is probably to be reviewed next month), and is therefore classified as a "conservative' for having scolded the Revolutionaries about throwing away revered old traditions. In fact, Burke was a bourgeoisie liberal like me, who was very much in favor of reform but wanted to do it through government rather than overthrow, since he wisely knew what happens to the bourgeoisie as well as the aristocrats when guillotines are built. Burke spent most of his career in parliament advocating for the civil rights of the Irish and getting laughed at because everyone knew the Irish were just a bunch of dirty, smelly, illiterate, impoverished subhumans unworthy of equality, after over a century of English rule in which all of their money and property was stolen and they were forbidden to educate their children or even have access to sanitation.
The shorter works in the HC volume include "A Letter to a Noble Lord", which is a short gem of political snark, "On Taste" (an introduction to "On the Sublime and the Beautiful", and "On the Sublime and the Beautiful", which is a fairly lengthy list of one-size-fits-all categorizations as to what makes a particular thing "sublime" or "beautiful".
I was struck by Burke's definition of "sublime", which seemed so different from what I had meant whenever i said it, that I needed to go look up the word for myself. I had thought of sublime things as being worthy of very serious reverence, love and awe, like one would give to God and angels. Burke, for all the quoted definition above, seems to give "the sublime' qualities that are pointedly the opposite of beautiful, and more calculated to inspire horror, revulsion and dread than reverence, thereby defining the devil as more sublime than God, which, it seems to me, can't be right. As contrasted with "the beautiful', which is always small, dainty, mild, smooth and fragile---wait for it---like a woman. Always the proverbial ideal woman as the example of every simpering "beautiful" quality there is.
This is the moment at which I threw the Harvard Classice Burke volume across the room and resolved to pick it up and read about his thoughts on the French Revolution next month.
Kant Get No Satisfaction: The Critique of Practical Reason, by Immanuel Kant
A man can return unread an instructive book which he cannot again obtain, in order not to miss the hunt; he can go away in the middle of a fine speech, in order to not be late for a meal; he can leave an intellectual conversation, which he otherwise enjoys, in order to take his place at the gambling table; he can even repulse a poor man, whom it is usually a joy to aid, because he has only enough money in his pocket for a ticket to the theater. If the determination of the will rests on the feelings of agreeableness or disagreeableness which he expects from any cause, it is all the same to him through what kind of representation he is affected.
Thankfully, much shorter than the Critique of Pure Reason, which kept me occupied for the better part of three months. Practical Reason can be read in full during a seven hour airplane flight, with enough time left over to begin a Nero Wolfe story. Really, the bottom line of Kantian ethics is the "What if EVERYBODY did that?" principle (called "categorical imperative") where your duty is to govern all your actions as if you willed that they should be universal laws of behavior. Also, you should perfect yourself as much as possible and help others as much as possible. Because duty, not because you get rewards in Heaven or on earth, or even because you might feel better about yourself. Compare and contrast with Bentham, below, who has us all seek pleasure and avoid pain as only natural.
It's somewhat longer than the Fundamental principles of the Metaphysick of Morals (Bookpost, July 2016), in that it is more "scholarly" (dense) and raises comparisons and critiques of other ethical systems, such as the Epicureans, who (wrongly, according to Kant) sought pleasure as the highest good and declared that virtue was good because it led to enlightened well-being, or the Stoics, who rightly accepted virtue as the highest good but (wrongly, according to Kant) ignored the drive toward happiness as irrelevant.
One more critique to go.
I'm old! Gimme, Gimme, Gimme! How to Make Your Money Last, by Jane Bryant Quinn
Sorry--risk tolerance questionnaires are generally bunk. You'll lean toward more risk if stocks are going up, you've had a good day at the office, and your shoes don't pinch. If you've had a bad day because stocks went down and your unemployed child is moving in, you'll suddenly feel more conservative. In either case, the risk questionnaire will probably steer you toward "income and growth", which covers just about any investment option on the planet.
Sometimes a retirement planning book jumps out at me from the special promotional shelf at the library, and I snap it up in the hopes that it will say something useful. someday, I will learn.
I'll give Quinn points for not telling me that I could put away a bundle towards retirement by skipping a latte every day. I have already calculated that I can become a billionaire by age 70 by skipping ONE HUNDRED lattes every day. So far, it hasn't been very effective. And I can't think why not.
Quinn does, however, provide a whole lot of other vague advice so useless I had to go back and confirm that this was really written in 2016. Hey, kids--you should match your employer's 401(k) contribution! You should keep your employer's health plan as long as possible before retiring! You should put at least 20% of your earnings from your unpaid internship or the gig you're performing for the exposure or even your minimum wage part time position at WankerMart and put half of that into an emergency fund and the rest into a tax-deferred index fund matched by your employer contributions! Just let me simplify it--take the expendable part of the gobs and gobs of money you're being paid, and SAVE it, you slacker! Otherwise you're a "grasshopper" who deserves to have rich old people point and laugh at you while you starve in the gutter in Trump's America!
Good golly, why didn't *I* think of such a strategy? Oh, right. I did. I skimmed through all the parts about what your wonderful, generous employer's pension/health/slavings plan would do for you if you weren't too stupid and immediate-gratification oriented to take advantage of it, and all the reverse mortgage/tax shelter/AirBnB gold mines you can create with the spare rooms in the house you own free and clear....and pretty much finished the book in half an hour.
Bottom line: If you have money, you can make more. Otherwise, you are shit. Just in case you needed a well-dressed financial expert like Jane Bryant Quinn or Suze Orman to tell you that.
Weighty Problems: The Rubber Band and The Red Box, by Rex Stout
"Wolfe settled back in his chair. "There are three things I like about you, sir, but you have several bad habits. One is your assumption that words are brickbats to be hurled at people in an effort to stun them. You must learn to stop that. Another is your childish readiness to rush into action without stopping to consider the consequences. Before you definitely hired me to undertake an investigation you should have scrutinized the possibilities. But the point is that you hired me; and let me tell you, you burned all bridges when you goaded me into that mad sortie to Fifty-second street. That will have to be paid for."
Nero Wolfe mysteries. Really good ones featuring the stock stocky detective who never leaves home and who divides his attention between cuisine and orchids while solving crimes as an afterthought and being mostly a pompous jerk with some tender moments. He's fun to read once in a long while, in small doses, and his mysteries are very clever. I solved The Rubber Band in full while getting most of The Red Box but being completely fooled as to the main fact that reveals the motive behind the crime.
Crime and Punishment: Introduction to the Principles of Morals & Legislation, by Jeremy Bentham
A man with a numerous family of children, on the point of starving, goes into a baker's shop, steals a loaf, divides it all among the children, reserving none of it for himself. It will be hard to infer that that man's disposition is a mischievous one upon the whole. Alter the case, give him but one child, and that hungry perhaps but in no imminent danger of starving, and now let the man set fire to a house full of people, for the sake of stealing money out of it to buy the bread with. The disposition here indicated will hardly be looked upon as a good one.
Bentham's best known work reads like the commentary in my old criminal law textbook, with a heavy emphasis on the mens rea. Bentham wrote a book of ethics as a way of drafting a sensible penal code in which acts were deemed "crimes" and subject to punishment only when some good to the greater society would ensue from said punishment, such as restitution, the rehabilitation of a criminal, or prevention of other crimes
And so, again and again, we see hypothetical situations stated, conclusions drawn, and then elements of the hypothetical changed: Lord so-and-so shoots the king with an arrow during a stag hunt. Was he trying to shoot the stag, and missed? Did he ignore a substantial risk that the shot might hit the king? Did he intend to assassinate? Different states of mind would require different outcomes in order for justice to prevail. This is an old, old principle of English and American law, but Bentham may have been the first to articulate it--as well as the first to formulate "utilitarianism"--the ideas that all people seek to gain pleasure and avoid pain and that justice (or moral duty) involves giving the greatest pleasure to the greatest number of people.
Reading so many "great books", I've been struck by the number of them that are very sloppily written. This book by Bentham is an uncharacteristic clear line of argument with a beginning, middle and end. Highly recommended.
Bechdel's Test: Fun Home (A Family Tragicomic) by Alison Bechdel
Daedelus, too, was indifferent to the human cost of his projects. He blithely betrayed the King, for example, when the Queen asked him to build her a cow disguise so she could seduce the white bull. Indeed , the result of that scheme--a half-bull, half-man monster--inspired Daedelus's greatest creation yet...he hid the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, a maze of passages and rooms opening endlessly into one another, and from which, as stray youths and maidens discovered to their peril, escape was impossible. Then there are those famous wings. Was Daedelus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure?
Alison Bechdel is the creator of the long-running strip Dykes to Watch Out For, as well as the "Bechdel Test" in which movies are evaluated based on whether they have ANY scenes in which female characters interact with each other about something besides male love interests. I'm not her target market--or at least, I had assumed (my bad0 that a lesbian writer wouldn't have anything to say to me--and why should she? Everyone else is already telling people who look and desire like me the stuff they think we want to hear, over and over.
HOLY SHIT IS THIS BOOK GOOD
Seriously, I've been reading what passes for "Great Literature" of the past on purpose for the past six years. I should have waited and put Fun Home toward the end of the list. It is all about literature applied to her autobiography, from ancient myths to Fitzgerald and Proust and Joyce and eventually Kate Millet and Colette, and how the themes of those works speak to her own life growing up in middle Pennsylvania in the mansion her father restored by hand, having issues with parents and siblings, discovering her sexuality, and reacting to the confusing and mean world on the unsteady child and adolescent legs we have all tottered around on once upon a time. Intense feelings about her father. Intense everything.
And yes, dyke child or no dyke child, I found myself relating to most or all of it, at a het cis male age of 49, and wishing I could be friends or at least have a conversation with her. Mostly for the literary references; other people will relate to different parts.
It's a graphic novel. Pictures and descriptions of the formative books, with references to translated terms and supplemental material that made it clear that--yes, I HAD READ THE EXACT SAME EDITIONS of those books. Which should not have thrilled and surprised me, since she grew up something like six to ten years before me at a time when the northeast was filled with secondhand copies of the same books. I found it unnerving, to get such a strong "you're not alone" vibe from a "growing up lesbian" book, but...yeah. Very highest recommendations, and I'm glad I read it.
Duckling Into Swan: Demelza, by Winston Graham
"I am that grieved. I thought I would show 'em that I was a fit wife for you, that I could wear fine clothes and behave genteel an' not disgrace you. An' instead they will all ride home snickering behind their hands. 'Have you not heard about Captain Poldark's wife, the kitchen wench?' Oh, I could die!"
Which would displease us all much more than a brush with John Treneglos." He put his hand on her ankle. "This is but the first fence, child. We have had a check. Well, we can try again. Only a faint heart would give up the race so soon."
"So you think I am a faint heart..."
Speaking of odd stories where I would feel personally involved in the protagonists' story, the second in Graham's Poldark series is all about a waif rescued from a poverty-stricken, abusive peasant/mineworker house by a member of the landed gentry, and how she, through a strong depth of character that transcends upbringing, manages to become the kind of fashionable lady who puts to shame the ladies who were born into society (where "society" is closer to Squire Western than to Lord Piddle-Widdle of London). There are so many cringe-worthy gender and classist issues, but the overall story is a thrilling one that has its heart in the right place. In addition to the main "coming into her own" plot, there are breathtaking depictions of industrial strife and jail conditions. High recommendations here too.
The 18th Century Murders: The Eight, by Katherine Neville; The Scottish Prisoner, by Diana Gabaldon; The Master Puppeteer and Of Nightingales that Weep, by Katherine Paterson
"Thank you," he said, coming even with Fraser again. "For not allowing the Irishman to kill me."
Fraser nodded, not turning his head. "You're welcome."
"May I expect this courtesy to continue?"
He could have sworn that the corner of Fraser's mouth twitched. "You may."
--from The Scottish Prisoner
The Abbess smiled. "I have told you already that our lives are in great danger if we remain in this abbey. I have told you that the soldiers of France seek to confiscate the treasures of the Church and are, in fact, abroad in that mission even now. I have told you further that a treasure of great value and perhaps great evil was once buried within the walls of this abbey. So it should come as no surprise to you if I reveal that the secret I was sworn to hold in my bosom when I first took this office was the secret of the Montglane Service. It is still buried within the walls and floor of this room, and I alone know the precise location of each piece. It is our mission, my daughters, to remove this tool of evil, to scatter it as far and wide as possible, that it may never again be assembled into the hands of one seeking power. For it contains a force that transcends the law of nature and the understanding of man."
--from The Eight
Then she sang other songs--of Momotaro, the boy who was born out of a peach and who with his companions, a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant conquered a whole island of giants; of the day the Gods teased the Sun Goddess out of hiding to return light to the world; and of Urashima, the fisherman, who married the Dragon King's daughter and lived for four hundred years under the Deep sea.
--from Of Nightingales That Weep
One September evening, soon after dusk, a small group of Komuso monks approached the entrance of the rice brokerage of Yamamoto and begged for alms. They wore the traditional basketlike hats from under which they played their flutes so plaintively that the gatekeeper, an emotional man, it was said later, could hardly keep from weeping. He opened the door for them, though he couldn't explain afterward why he had done such a foolish thing, but they were holy men and hungry. Perhaps anyone would have done the same. At any rate, the monks appeared in a few minutes and made their way out of the city. When the clerks found the gatekeeper the next day trussed up like a chicken on a spit, he told how the basket priests, who had seemed so gentle outside his door, had roughly overpowered him once they were within. Inside the baskets were secret compartments into which they stuffed rice and money, and then they put the baskets back upon their heads, bowed deeply, and left him there. He swore he could hear their flutes for an hour or more after they departed.
--from The Master Puppeteer
The Scottish Prisoner is a stand-alone Outlander book set in England and Ireland between the first two books in the series, during the time when Jamie is a prisoner of war under Lord Grey's parole in the Lake District. Jamie, under Lord Grey's orders, is required to accompany him on a frenemy road trip across Ireland to catch a traitor to the English cause. Jamie, who would just as soon remain out of the conflict, has divided loyalties between the Jacobite rebels and his duty to keep parole, while Lord Grey is bitterly aware of said divided loyalties. Tragic hijinks ensue.
The other books were recommended by friends in response to my call for "18th century mysteries". The Eight fits the bill distinctly. The action alternates between French Revolution era Europe and the 20th Century, with some digressions as far in the past as Charlemagne as it traces first the dispersal, and then the macguffin hunt for, the pieces of a large jewelled chess set, the pieces and board of which might be cursed and might contain secrets to ruling the world. A cast of historical characters including Marat, Talleyrand, Jacques-Louis Davide, Mme. de Stael, Catherine the Great, Voltaire and Rousseau contribute to the story.
The Katherine Paterson books are neither mysteries nor set in the 18th century, and I'm puzzled as to why someone would suggest them as books that are. Both are YA or younger fiction about kids growing up in Feudal Japan, and I read them anyway because they're brief and add a little diversity to my reading list. The Master puppeteer, about a boy who apprentices himself at a puppet theatre that has a connection with a notorious outlaw who robs the rich and gives to the poor, could be considered a "thriller" if you squint hard enough, while Of Nightingales that Weep, named for the girl protagonist with a beautiful singing voice who serves at the Emperor's Court during a time of civil war, is considerably less so. Both children flee abusive families and can be considered to be wanderers cruelly torn from their roots. Well written and recommended for younger readers.
Why They Built Guillotines: Les Liaisons Dangereuses, by Choderlos De Laclos
How I blame myself, my tender friend, for having spoken to you of my passing troubles too much and too soon! It is because of me that you are now in distress, the grief which came to you from me still lasts when I am happy. Yes, all is forgotten, forgiven; let me express it better, all is retrieved. Calm and bliss have succeded grief and anguish. O joy of my heart, how can I express you! Valmont is innocent--a man who loves so much cannot be guilty. He has not done me the heavy, offensive injuries for which I blamed him with such bitterness; and if I needed to be indulgent in one point, had I not my own injustices to repair?
This epistolary novel about a complicated evil love pentagram was adapted into a 20th century movie in which Glenn Close and John Malkovich managed to redeem the main antagonists Mertueil and Valmont, with some major on-screen charisma. That charisma is mostly absent from the original novel, which is supposed to be light and humorous, with the tragic consequences of their actions brought in at the end as an afterthought, the polar opposite of the redemption and goodness at the end of a De Sade novel full of cruelty and misery.
Mertueil and Valmont are a couple of one-percenter people of leisure and boredom who break hearts and wreck homes out of boredom, or our of extreme revenge for petty slights. They seduce and ruin three innocent people and eventually destroy each other and themselves. How very witty. I wanted to reach into the book and throttle them. Again, the movie adaptation gave a much different impression, squeezing some actual lightness into it. Or maybe it's just that in my current state of mind (Holy Shit This Is Not a Dream Horny Boo Boo Is Really Going To Be President We Are So Fucked), it is impossible for me to see humor or lightness in, oh, anything.
More of the Same Old Garbage: A View on the Evidences of Christianity, by William Paley
I desire that in judging of Christianity, it be remembered that the question lies between this religion and none, for if the Christian religion be not credible, no one with whom we have to do will support the pretensions of any other...Suppose, then, the world we live in to have had a creator; suppose it to appear from the predominant aim and tendency of the provisions and contrivances observable in the universe, that the Deity, when he formed it, consulted for the happiness of his sensitive creation. Suppose the disposition, which dictated this counsel, to continue; suppose a part of the creation to have received faculties from their Maker, by which they are capable of rendering a moral obedience to his will, and of voluntarily pursuing any end for which he has designed them; suppose the creator to intend for these, his rational and accountable agents, a second state of existence, in which their situation will be regulated by their behaviour in the first state...under these circumstances, is it improbable that a revelation should be made? Is it incredible that God should interpose for such a purpose?
Unfortunately, there was still theology even in the Age of Reason, and Paley 's attempt to prove the "truth" of the New Testament is one of the more laughable . I should have put it down at page one, where the above quoted passage appears, beginning the argument with the assertion that, if Christianity is not true, then neither is any other religion because Christianity is just superior is why...and then asserts as axiomatic the existence of a benevolent God who wants to communicate with its creations. Deny the axioms, and the rest of the text is not worth reading and is as practical as the old joke about the economist trapped on an island with many cases of canned food and no opener, and solves the dilemma by assuming the existence of a can opener.
The major argument for Christianity, according to Paley, is the historically verifiable record of very zealous followers who abandoned their friends, families and prior faiths, and who were willing to endure torture and death by Romans rather than deny Christ as Lord. They would not have done this had they not received revelations, says Paley. I wonder how Paley would respond to the present day existence of millions who would willingly martyr themselves on the belief that Allah is Lord and Mohammed his prophet, or of the Hare Krishnas and other cultists and true believers who endure "deprogramming torture" for the goodness of some charismatic leader who seems like a charlatan to most other people.
The rest of the book consists of "ancillary proofs" such as the good character of Jesus (as written) and the clearly superior teachings (again, just asserted, not proved nor compared with other teachings), and a few dismissals of the contradictions between the four Gospels as unimportant. None of it has any credibility for those who do not begin by acknowledging Chritianity as the One True Religion, and of course, those who already do do not need to read Paley. Therefore, the book is a waste. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
Dollars and Sense: The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
To restrain private people, it may be said, from receiving in payment the promissory notes of a banker, for any sum whether great or small, when they themselves are willing to receive them; or, to restrain a banker from issuing such notes, when all his neighbours are willing to accept of them, is a manifest violation of that natural liberty which it is the proper business of law, not to infringe, but to support. Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respect a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments; of the most free, as well as of the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed.
The revenue of an individual may be spent, either in things which are consumed immediately, and in which one day’s expence can neither alleviate nor support that of another; or it may be spent in things more durable, which can therefore be accumulated, and in which every day’s expence may, as he chuses either alleviate or support and heighten the effect of that of the following day. A man of fortune, for example, may either spend his revenue in a profuse and sumptuous table, and in maintaining a great number of menial servants, and a multitude of dogs and horse; or contenting himself with a frugal table and few attendants, he may lay out the greater part of it in adorning his house or his country villa, in useful or ornamental buildings, in useful or ornamental furniture, in collecting books, statues, pictures; or in things more frivolous, jewels baubles, ingenious trinkets of different kinds; or, what is most trifling of all, in amassing a great wardrobe of fine clothes, like the favourite and minister of a great prince who died a few years ago. Were two men of equal fortune to spend their revenue, the one chiefly in the one way, the other in the other, the magnificence of the person whose expence had been chiefly in durable commodities, would be continually increasing, every day’s expence contributing something to support and heighten the effect of that of the following day: that of the other, on the contrary, would be no greater at the end of the period than at the beginning. The former too would, at the end of the period, be the richer man of the two. He would have a stock of goods of some kind or other, which, though it might not be worth all that it cost, would always be worth something. No trace or vestige of the expence of the latter would remain, and the effects of ten or twenty years profusion would be as completely annihilated as if they had never existed.
Earlier writers wrote about commerce, or about economics as a matter of philosophy or ethics, with governmental economic policy called "political economy", but Adam Smith was apparently the first to write abour economics as a 'science', with laws of supply and demand, and assertions of what peoples and businesses would do if certain things happen (bad crop harvest = food prices go up; high profits from ironworking = more iron foundries built until market is oversupplied and profits go down again, at which time people stop entering the field), with the analogy of an "invisible hand" directing markets toward inevitable outcomes as if it were the will of God.
Predators and other assholes who have read Readers' Digest summaries of The Wealth of Nations have cited the invisible hand ever since as a basis to assert that the absence of any and all economic regulation is best for everybody, and that any attempt to relieve the misery of the poor or to prevent corporate evil will hurt the very people supposed to be protected (usually because the mansion-dwelling corporate overlords will have no choice but to starve the poor into submission, otherwise they would be reduced to beggar status themselves), and that all problems are solved by laissez-faire neglect (if a bad doctor or drug kills patients, why, leave it alone--word will get out and then people will stop using said doctor or drug, and the problem will go out of business, No problem! Except for those patients who died, or in the case of small charlatans who make a fortune ripping people off by moving quickly from place to place, or of those Big Pharmas, Leagues of Catholic Hospitals, and other monopolies that can either cover up the harm they do, buy and pay for the government, or eliminate all other choices). Smith DID speak of laissez-faire as a better alternative to the ridiculous tariffs and artificial state monopolies attempted under the European mercantile system, which were excessive enough that they really did have the effect of depressing local markets. However, Smith also advocated for some government interventions (see the first quoted part above) as a matter of common sense; it never occurred to him that citizens of a civilized nation would be unwilling to pool some of their means in the service of infrastructure and relief that would clearly be to the benefit of the nation as a whole. How far we have fallen.
Smith also had an almost religious faith in human predictability and knowledge of their self-interest. If your favorite food is pizza, you will always choose pizza if it is available, no matter how often. And if collecting valuables is a more profitable means of using your disposable income (see the second quoted part above) than meals, servants and a stable, then you will logically choose one over the other, regardless of personal taste. This is not how human minds work. On the concept of division of labor, which is maybe the most famous part of the book, he is spot on.
Like most "great books", the structure is sloppy, but the digressions are often interesting and cover vast areas of the humanities, even those that have little to do with the subject matter. Under the guise of a chapter on "the expenses of education of the young", for example, he launches into a discourse on education in general. Another chapter on "the expenses of the education of the public", he goes into religion (because education for adults who have finished school is what going to church is. Really, Adam?). "The expenses of a standing army" is all about war theory, and every economic argument is backed up by digressions into history from Persia, Greece, Rome, Feudal Europe, contemporary Europe, and all the "savages" not in Europe who stand to benefit from Europe's wise colonial policies. Smith even has advice for King George as to what changes should be made in dealing with the North American colonies to prevent a rebellion that seems likely if drastic steps are not taken. The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776. Oops.
As with most first attempts to describe a vast new field, The Wealth of Nations comes across as clunky and sometimes misguided, but it is thought provoking. Seems to me the first three "books" of it (not necessarily including the long final chapters of Book 1 unless you're very into herring) are worth serious study by most people; later sections can be grazed depending on where your interest lies.
Find all of my previous Bookposts here: http://admnaismith.livejournal.com/tag/bookposts
Mood Rings (1975)--Jewelry fad consisting of a ring set with a large "stone" that was actually a temperature-sensitive liquid crystal/ Mood rings supposedly reflected the wearer's mood and revealed his or her thoughts. Blue meant tranquility; red meant crabbiness; black meant depression and doom. Since the ring actually responded to temperature, and after a while not even that, no one achieved the ideal "bliss" purple without a high fever, and everyone eventually sank into gloom and despair as their rings went permanently black. Superseded by Pet Rocks, which didn't respond to anything.
Omigosh, what a wonderful, funny, thought provoking novel about chaos as applied to what we do in our day to day life, the behavior of crowds, and mighty butterflies devastating the coasts of Florida with a flap of their wings.
SHE is a scientist researching the origin of fads (and every chapter opens with a little blurb like the one quoted above, about a historical fad from Dutch "tulipmania" to knights wearing impractically long shoes to Rubik's cube and bobbed hair and horoscopes and specialty Barbie dolls) who is forever being interrupted at the worst possible moment and made to drop her work to go to management affinity group meetings, rescue childrens' parties or cope with the depressing trends set by her truculent office assistant (had the book been written now instead of the 1990s, said assistant would be cringeworthily denouncable as a "typical Millennial brat"; here, she is cringeworthily denounced as a "typical Generation X brat". Some fads never go away).
HE is a biologist with a pronounced way of self-presentation that avoids any of the packaged stereotypical identities of the day and thus subconsciously offends everyone, trying to study group behaviour in animals.
THEY are stuck in a hellhole of a relentlessly PR-pursuing research corporation. Do romantic hijinks ensue? Our market research says YES!
And everything in the book points at the silly, mundane fads and group behaviours going on in society, even as the scientists discuss how and why these things happen. Management leadership fads. Consumer fads. Menu fads and social networking fads and exercise fads and what kind of people are going to be ostracized this season and what everybody is doing solely because everybody else is doing it, from the laugh out loud funny to the frightening.
Bellwether was sent to me by a friend to get me through a depressive episode. It worked. Just read it; you'll be glad you did.
Bye Bye Love: Bonjour, Tristesse, by Francoise Sagan
A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.
Francoise Sagan's first book is a novelette-length narrative about a teenage girl who doesn't know what an Electra complex is (though Sagan certainly does), but boy does she ever have issues about her widowed father who is beginning to date again.
The book isn't quite a journal, but the chapters are short, and the narrator writes with simultaneous innocence and sophistication, talking in depth about her feelings about her dad, her boyfriend, and her dad's mistress, while managing not to be emo about it. Eventually, she does The Stupid Thing to try to break up her dad's relationship, and tragic mayhem ensues.
Harvard Classics: Minor works of Edmund Burke
THE PASSION caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect.
Edmund Burke is a second-tier intellect of the Eighteenth century (who probably would have been first tier in the Seventeenth, but was outshone by some much greater lights in his own era). I'm surprised that the Harvard Classics (which I've taken to calling "Doctor Elliott's Fifty Volumes of Odd Choices") would devote an entire volume to Burke while Swift, Voltaire, Rousseau, Johnson, The Federalist and Kant get representative snippets, and Diderot, Gibbon, Bentham and Walpole aren't there at all.
Burke is most remembered for Reflections on the Revolution in France (which takes up most of the HC volume, and is probably to be reviewed next month), and is therefore classified as a "conservative' for having scolded the Revolutionaries about throwing away revered old traditions. In fact, Burke was a bourgeoisie liberal like me, who was very much in favor of reform but wanted to do it through government rather than overthrow, since he wisely knew what happens to the bourgeoisie as well as the aristocrats when guillotines are built. Burke spent most of his career in parliament advocating for the civil rights of the Irish and getting laughed at because everyone knew the Irish were just a bunch of dirty, smelly, illiterate, impoverished subhumans unworthy of equality, after over a century of English rule in which all of their money and property was stolen and they were forbidden to educate their children or even have access to sanitation.
The shorter works in the HC volume include "A Letter to a Noble Lord", which is a short gem of political snark, "On Taste" (an introduction to "On the Sublime and the Beautiful", and "On the Sublime and the Beautiful", which is a fairly lengthy list of one-size-fits-all categorizations as to what makes a particular thing "sublime" or "beautiful".
I was struck by Burke's definition of "sublime", which seemed so different from what I had meant whenever i said it, that I needed to go look up the word for myself. I had thought of sublime things as being worthy of very serious reverence, love and awe, like one would give to God and angels. Burke, for all the quoted definition above, seems to give "the sublime' qualities that are pointedly the opposite of beautiful, and more calculated to inspire horror, revulsion and dread than reverence, thereby defining the devil as more sublime than God, which, it seems to me, can't be right. As contrasted with "the beautiful', which is always small, dainty, mild, smooth and fragile---wait for it---like a woman. Always the proverbial ideal woman as the example of every simpering "beautiful" quality there is.
This is the moment at which I threw the Harvard Classice Burke volume across the room and resolved to pick it up and read about his thoughts on the French Revolution next month.
Kant Get No Satisfaction: The Critique of Practical Reason, by Immanuel Kant
A man can return unread an instructive book which he cannot again obtain, in order not to miss the hunt; he can go away in the middle of a fine speech, in order to not be late for a meal; he can leave an intellectual conversation, which he otherwise enjoys, in order to take his place at the gambling table; he can even repulse a poor man, whom it is usually a joy to aid, because he has only enough money in his pocket for a ticket to the theater. If the determination of the will rests on the feelings of agreeableness or disagreeableness which he expects from any cause, it is all the same to him through what kind of representation he is affected.
Thankfully, much shorter than the Critique of Pure Reason, which kept me occupied for the better part of three months. Practical Reason can be read in full during a seven hour airplane flight, with enough time left over to begin a Nero Wolfe story. Really, the bottom line of Kantian ethics is the "What if EVERYBODY did that?" principle (called "categorical imperative") where your duty is to govern all your actions as if you willed that they should be universal laws of behavior. Also, you should perfect yourself as much as possible and help others as much as possible. Because duty, not because you get rewards in Heaven or on earth, or even because you might feel better about yourself. Compare and contrast with Bentham, below, who has us all seek pleasure and avoid pain as only natural.
It's somewhat longer than the Fundamental principles of the Metaphysick of Morals (Bookpost, July 2016), in that it is more "scholarly" (dense) and raises comparisons and critiques of other ethical systems, such as the Epicureans, who (wrongly, according to Kant) sought pleasure as the highest good and declared that virtue was good because it led to enlightened well-being, or the Stoics, who rightly accepted virtue as the highest good but (wrongly, according to Kant) ignored the drive toward happiness as irrelevant.
One more critique to go.
I'm old! Gimme, Gimme, Gimme! How to Make Your Money Last, by Jane Bryant Quinn
Sorry--risk tolerance questionnaires are generally bunk. You'll lean toward more risk if stocks are going up, you've had a good day at the office, and your shoes don't pinch. If you've had a bad day because stocks went down and your unemployed child is moving in, you'll suddenly feel more conservative. In either case, the risk questionnaire will probably steer you toward "income and growth", which covers just about any investment option on the planet.
Sometimes a retirement planning book jumps out at me from the special promotional shelf at the library, and I snap it up in the hopes that it will say something useful. someday, I will learn.
I'll give Quinn points for not telling me that I could put away a bundle towards retirement by skipping a latte every day. I have already calculated that I can become a billionaire by age 70 by skipping ONE HUNDRED lattes every day. So far, it hasn't been very effective. And I can't think why not.
Quinn does, however, provide a whole lot of other vague advice so useless I had to go back and confirm that this was really written in 2016. Hey, kids--you should match your employer's 401(k) contribution! You should keep your employer's health plan as long as possible before retiring! You should put at least 20% of your earnings from your unpaid internship or the gig you're performing for the exposure or even your minimum wage part time position at WankerMart and put half of that into an emergency fund and the rest into a tax-deferred index fund matched by your employer contributions! Just let me simplify it--take the expendable part of the gobs and gobs of money you're being paid, and SAVE it, you slacker! Otherwise you're a "grasshopper" who deserves to have rich old people point and laugh at you while you starve in the gutter in Trump's America!
Good golly, why didn't *I* think of such a strategy? Oh, right. I did. I skimmed through all the parts about what your wonderful, generous employer's pension/health/slavings plan would do for you if you weren't too stupid and immediate-gratification oriented to take advantage of it, and all the reverse mortgage/tax shelter/AirBnB gold mines you can create with the spare rooms in the house you own free and clear....and pretty much finished the book in half an hour.
Bottom line: If you have money, you can make more. Otherwise, you are shit. Just in case you needed a well-dressed financial expert like Jane Bryant Quinn or Suze Orman to tell you that.
Weighty Problems: The Rubber Band and The Red Box, by Rex Stout
"Wolfe settled back in his chair. "There are three things I like about you, sir, but you have several bad habits. One is your assumption that words are brickbats to be hurled at people in an effort to stun them. You must learn to stop that. Another is your childish readiness to rush into action without stopping to consider the consequences. Before you definitely hired me to undertake an investigation you should have scrutinized the possibilities. But the point is that you hired me; and let me tell you, you burned all bridges when you goaded me into that mad sortie to Fifty-second street. That will have to be paid for."
Nero Wolfe mysteries. Really good ones featuring the stock stocky detective who never leaves home and who divides his attention between cuisine and orchids while solving crimes as an afterthought and being mostly a pompous jerk with some tender moments. He's fun to read once in a long while, in small doses, and his mysteries are very clever. I solved The Rubber Band in full while getting most of The Red Box but being completely fooled as to the main fact that reveals the motive behind the crime.
Crime and Punishment: Introduction to the Principles of Morals & Legislation, by Jeremy Bentham
A man with a numerous family of children, on the point of starving, goes into a baker's shop, steals a loaf, divides it all among the children, reserving none of it for himself. It will be hard to infer that that man's disposition is a mischievous one upon the whole. Alter the case, give him but one child, and that hungry perhaps but in no imminent danger of starving, and now let the man set fire to a house full of people, for the sake of stealing money out of it to buy the bread with. The disposition here indicated will hardly be looked upon as a good one.
Bentham's best known work reads like the commentary in my old criminal law textbook, with a heavy emphasis on the mens rea. Bentham wrote a book of ethics as a way of drafting a sensible penal code in which acts were deemed "crimes" and subject to punishment only when some good to the greater society would ensue from said punishment, such as restitution, the rehabilitation of a criminal, or prevention of other crimes
And so, again and again, we see hypothetical situations stated, conclusions drawn, and then elements of the hypothetical changed: Lord so-and-so shoots the king with an arrow during a stag hunt. Was he trying to shoot the stag, and missed? Did he ignore a substantial risk that the shot might hit the king? Did he intend to assassinate? Different states of mind would require different outcomes in order for justice to prevail. This is an old, old principle of English and American law, but Bentham may have been the first to articulate it--as well as the first to formulate "utilitarianism"--the ideas that all people seek to gain pleasure and avoid pain and that justice (or moral duty) involves giving the greatest pleasure to the greatest number of people.
Reading so many "great books", I've been struck by the number of them that are very sloppily written. This book by Bentham is an uncharacteristic clear line of argument with a beginning, middle and end. Highly recommended.
Bechdel's Test: Fun Home (A Family Tragicomic) by Alison Bechdel
Daedelus, too, was indifferent to the human cost of his projects. He blithely betrayed the King, for example, when the Queen asked him to build her a cow disguise so she could seduce the white bull. Indeed , the result of that scheme--a half-bull, half-man monster--inspired Daedelus's greatest creation yet...he hid the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, a maze of passages and rooms opening endlessly into one another, and from which, as stray youths and maidens discovered to their peril, escape was impossible. Then there are those famous wings. Was Daedelus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure?
Alison Bechdel is the creator of the long-running strip Dykes to Watch Out For, as well as the "Bechdel Test" in which movies are evaluated based on whether they have ANY scenes in which female characters interact with each other about something besides male love interests. I'm not her target market--or at least, I had assumed (my bad0 that a lesbian writer wouldn't have anything to say to me--and why should she? Everyone else is already telling people who look and desire like me the stuff they think we want to hear, over and over.
HOLY SHIT IS THIS BOOK GOOD
Seriously, I've been reading what passes for "Great Literature" of the past on purpose for the past six years. I should have waited and put Fun Home toward the end of the list. It is all about literature applied to her autobiography, from ancient myths to Fitzgerald and Proust and Joyce and eventually Kate Millet and Colette, and how the themes of those works speak to her own life growing up in middle Pennsylvania in the mansion her father restored by hand, having issues with parents and siblings, discovering her sexuality, and reacting to the confusing and mean world on the unsteady child and adolescent legs we have all tottered around on once upon a time. Intense feelings about her father. Intense everything.
And yes, dyke child or no dyke child, I found myself relating to most or all of it, at a het cis male age of 49, and wishing I could be friends or at least have a conversation with her. Mostly for the literary references; other people will relate to different parts.
It's a graphic novel. Pictures and descriptions of the formative books, with references to translated terms and supplemental material that made it clear that--yes, I HAD READ THE EXACT SAME EDITIONS of those books. Which should not have thrilled and surprised me, since she grew up something like six to ten years before me at a time when the northeast was filled with secondhand copies of the same books. I found it unnerving, to get such a strong "you're not alone" vibe from a "growing up lesbian" book, but...yeah. Very highest recommendations, and I'm glad I read it.
Duckling Into Swan: Demelza, by Winston Graham
"I am that grieved. I thought I would show 'em that I was a fit wife for you, that I could wear fine clothes and behave genteel an' not disgrace you. An' instead they will all ride home snickering behind their hands. 'Have you not heard about Captain Poldark's wife, the kitchen wench?' Oh, I could die!"
Which would displease us all much more than a brush with John Treneglos." He put his hand on her ankle. "This is but the first fence, child. We have had a check. Well, we can try again. Only a faint heart would give up the race so soon."
"So you think I am a faint heart..."
Speaking of odd stories where I would feel personally involved in the protagonists' story, the second in Graham's Poldark series is all about a waif rescued from a poverty-stricken, abusive peasant/mineworker house by a member of the landed gentry, and how she, through a strong depth of character that transcends upbringing, manages to become the kind of fashionable lady who puts to shame the ladies who were born into society (where "society" is closer to Squire Western than to Lord Piddle-Widdle of London). There are so many cringe-worthy gender and classist issues, but the overall story is a thrilling one that has its heart in the right place. In addition to the main "coming into her own" plot, there are breathtaking depictions of industrial strife and jail conditions. High recommendations here too.
The 18th Century Murders: The Eight, by Katherine Neville; The Scottish Prisoner, by Diana Gabaldon; The Master Puppeteer and Of Nightingales that Weep, by Katherine Paterson
"Thank you," he said, coming even with Fraser again. "For not allowing the Irishman to kill me."
Fraser nodded, not turning his head. "You're welcome."
"May I expect this courtesy to continue?"
He could have sworn that the corner of Fraser's mouth twitched. "You may."
--from The Scottish Prisoner
The Abbess smiled. "I have told you already that our lives are in great danger if we remain in this abbey. I have told you that the soldiers of France seek to confiscate the treasures of the Church and are, in fact, abroad in that mission even now. I have told you further that a treasure of great value and perhaps great evil was once buried within the walls of this abbey. So it should come as no surprise to you if I reveal that the secret I was sworn to hold in my bosom when I first took this office was the secret of the Montglane Service. It is still buried within the walls and floor of this room, and I alone know the precise location of each piece. It is our mission, my daughters, to remove this tool of evil, to scatter it as far and wide as possible, that it may never again be assembled into the hands of one seeking power. For it contains a force that transcends the law of nature and the understanding of man."
--from The Eight
Then she sang other songs--of Momotaro, the boy who was born out of a peach and who with his companions, a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant conquered a whole island of giants; of the day the Gods teased the Sun Goddess out of hiding to return light to the world; and of Urashima, the fisherman, who married the Dragon King's daughter and lived for four hundred years under the Deep sea.
--from Of Nightingales That Weep
One September evening, soon after dusk, a small group of Komuso monks approached the entrance of the rice brokerage of Yamamoto and begged for alms. They wore the traditional basketlike hats from under which they played their flutes so plaintively that the gatekeeper, an emotional man, it was said later, could hardly keep from weeping. He opened the door for them, though he couldn't explain afterward why he had done such a foolish thing, but they were holy men and hungry. Perhaps anyone would have done the same. At any rate, the monks appeared in a few minutes and made their way out of the city. When the clerks found the gatekeeper the next day trussed up like a chicken on a spit, he told how the basket priests, who had seemed so gentle outside his door, had roughly overpowered him once they were within. Inside the baskets were secret compartments into which they stuffed rice and money, and then they put the baskets back upon their heads, bowed deeply, and left him there. He swore he could hear their flutes for an hour or more after they departed.
--from The Master Puppeteer
The Scottish Prisoner is a stand-alone Outlander book set in England and Ireland between the first two books in the series, during the time when Jamie is a prisoner of war under Lord Grey's parole in the Lake District. Jamie, under Lord Grey's orders, is required to accompany him on a frenemy road trip across Ireland to catch a traitor to the English cause. Jamie, who would just as soon remain out of the conflict, has divided loyalties between the Jacobite rebels and his duty to keep parole, while Lord Grey is bitterly aware of said divided loyalties. Tragic hijinks ensue.
The other books were recommended by friends in response to my call for "18th century mysteries". The Eight fits the bill distinctly. The action alternates between French Revolution era Europe and the 20th Century, with some digressions as far in the past as Charlemagne as it traces first the dispersal, and then the macguffin hunt for, the pieces of a large jewelled chess set, the pieces and board of which might be cursed and might contain secrets to ruling the world. A cast of historical characters including Marat, Talleyrand, Jacques-Louis Davide, Mme. de Stael, Catherine the Great, Voltaire and Rousseau contribute to the story.
The Katherine Paterson books are neither mysteries nor set in the 18th century, and I'm puzzled as to why someone would suggest them as books that are. Both are YA or younger fiction about kids growing up in Feudal Japan, and I read them anyway because they're brief and add a little diversity to my reading list. The Master puppeteer, about a boy who apprentices himself at a puppet theatre that has a connection with a notorious outlaw who robs the rich and gives to the poor, could be considered a "thriller" if you squint hard enough, while Of Nightingales that Weep, named for the girl protagonist with a beautiful singing voice who serves at the Emperor's Court during a time of civil war, is considerably less so. Both children flee abusive families and can be considered to be wanderers cruelly torn from their roots. Well written and recommended for younger readers.
Why They Built Guillotines: Les Liaisons Dangereuses, by Choderlos De Laclos
How I blame myself, my tender friend, for having spoken to you of my passing troubles too much and too soon! It is because of me that you are now in distress, the grief which came to you from me still lasts when I am happy. Yes, all is forgotten, forgiven; let me express it better, all is retrieved. Calm and bliss have succeded grief and anguish. O joy of my heart, how can I express you! Valmont is innocent--a man who loves so much cannot be guilty. He has not done me the heavy, offensive injuries for which I blamed him with such bitterness; and if I needed to be indulgent in one point, had I not my own injustices to repair?
This epistolary novel about a complicated evil love pentagram was adapted into a 20th century movie in which Glenn Close and John Malkovich managed to redeem the main antagonists Mertueil and Valmont, with some major on-screen charisma. That charisma is mostly absent from the original novel, which is supposed to be light and humorous, with the tragic consequences of their actions brought in at the end as an afterthought, the polar opposite of the redemption and goodness at the end of a De Sade novel full of cruelty and misery.
Mertueil and Valmont are a couple of one-percenter people of leisure and boredom who break hearts and wreck homes out of boredom, or our of extreme revenge for petty slights. They seduce and ruin three innocent people and eventually destroy each other and themselves. How very witty. I wanted to reach into the book and throttle them. Again, the movie adaptation gave a much different impression, squeezing some actual lightness into it. Or maybe it's just that in my current state of mind (Holy Shit This Is Not a Dream Horny Boo Boo Is Really Going To Be President We Are So Fucked), it is impossible for me to see humor or lightness in, oh, anything.
More of the Same Old Garbage: A View on the Evidences of Christianity, by William Paley
I desire that in judging of Christianity, it be remembered that the question lies between this religion and none, for if the Christian religion be not credible, no one with whom we have to do will support the pretensions of any other...Suppose, then, the world we live in to have had a creator; suppose it to appear from the predominant aim and tendency of the provisions and contrivances observable in the universe, that the Deity, when he formed it, consulted for the happiness of his sensitive creation. Suppose the disposition, which dictated this counsel, to continue; suppose a part of the creation to have received faculties from their Maker, by which they are capable of rendering a moral obedience to his will, and of voluntarily pursuing any end for which he has designed them; suppose the creator to intend for these, his rational and accountable agents, a second state of existence, in which their situation will be regulated by their behaviour in the first state...under these circumstances, is it improbable that a revelation should be made? Is it incredible that God should interpose for such a purpose?
Unfortunately, there was still theology even in the Age of Reason, and Paley 's attempt to prove the "truth" of the New Testament is one of the more laughable . I should have put it down at page one, where the above quoted passage appears, beginning the argument with the assertion that, if Christianity is not true, then neither is any other religion because Christianity is just superior is why...and then asserts as axiomatic the existence of a benevolent God who wants to communicate with its creations. Deny the axioms, and the rest of the text is not worth reading and is as practical as the old joke about the economist trapped on an island with many cases of canned food and no opener, and solves the dilemma by assuming the existence of a can opener.
The major argument for Christianity, according to Paley, is the historically verifiable record of very zealous followers who abandoned their friends, families and prior faiths, and who were willing to endure torture and death by Romans rather than deny Christ as Lord. They would not have done this had they not received revelations, says Paley. I wonder how Paley would respond to the present day existence of millions who would willingly martyr themselves on the belief that Allah is Lord and Mohammed his prophet, or of the Hare Krishnas and other cultists and true believers who endure "deprogramming torture" for the goodness of some charismatic leader who seems like a charlatan to most other people.
The rest of the book consists of "ancillary proofs" such as the good character of Jesus (as written) and the clearly superior teachings (again, just asserted, not proved nor compared with other teachings), and a few dismissals of the contradictions between the four Gospels as unimportant. None of it has any credibility for those who do not begin by acknowledging Chritianity as the One True Religion, and of course, those who already do do not need to read Paley. Therefore, the book is a waste. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
Dollars and Sense: The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
To restrain private people, it may be said, from receiving in payment the promissory notes of a banker, for any sum whether great or small, when they themselves are willing to receive them; or, to restrain a banker from issuing such notes, when all his neighbours are willing to accept of them, is a manifest violation of that natural liberty which it is the proper business of law, not to infringe, but to support. Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respect a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments; of the most free, as well as of the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed.
The revenue of an individual may be spent, either in things which are consumed immediately, and in which one day’s expence can neither alleviate nor support that of another; or it may be spent in things more durable, which can therefore be accumulated, and in which every day’s expence may, as he chuses either alleviate or support and heighten the effect of that of the following day. A man of fortune, for example, may either spend his revenue in a profuse and sumptuous table, and in maintaining a great number of menial servants, and a multitude of dogs and horse; or contenting himself with a frugal table and few attendants, he may lay out the greater part of it in adorning his house or his country villa, in useful or ornamental buildings, in useful or ornamental furniture, in collecting books, statues, pictures; or in things more frivolous, jewels baubles, ingenious trinkets of different kinds; or, what is most trifling of all, in amassing a great wardrobe of fine clothes, like the favourite and minister of a great prince who died a few years ago. Were two men of equal fortune to spend their revenue, the one chiefly in the one way, the other in the other, the magnificence of the person whose expence had been chiefly in durable commodities, would be continually increasing, every day’s expence contributing something to support and heighten the effect of that of the following day: that of the other, on the contrary, would be no greater at the end of the period than at the beginning. The former too would, at the end of the period, be the richer man of the two. He would have a stock of goods of some kind or other, which, though it might not be worth all that it cost, would always be worth something. No trace or vestige of the expence of the latter would remain, and the effects of ten or twenty years profusion would be as completely annihilated as if they had never existed.
Earlier writers wrote about commerce, or about economics as a matter of philosophy or ethics, with governmental economic policy called "political economy", but Adam Smith was apparently the first to write abour economics as a 'science', with laws of supply and demand, and assertions of what peoples and businesses would do if certain things happen (bad crop harvest = food prices go up; high profits from ironworking = more iron foundries built until market is oversupplied and profits go down again, at which time people stop entering the field), with the analogy of an "invisible hand" directing markets toward inevitable outcomes as if it were the will of God.
Predators and other assholes who have read Readers' Digest summaries of The Wealth of Nations have cited the invisible hand ever since as a basis to assert that the absence of any and all economic regulation is best for everybody, and that any attempt to relieve the misery of the poor or to prevent corporate evil will hurt the very people supposed to be protected (usually because the mansion-dwelling corporate overlords will have no choice but to starve the poor into submission, otherwise they would be reduced to beggar status themselves), and that all problems are solved by laissez-faire neglect (if a bad doctor or drug kills patients, why, leave it alone--word will get out and then people will stop using said doctor or drug, and the problem will go out of business, No problem! Except for those patients who died, or in the case of small charlatans who make a fortune ripping people off by moving quickly from place to place, or of those Big Pharmas, Leagues of Catholic Hospitals, and other monopolies that can either cover up the harm they do, buy and pay for the government, or eliminate all other choices). Smith DID speak of laissez-faire as a better alternative to the ridiculous tariffs and artificial state monopolies attempted under the European mercantile system, which were excessive enough that they really did have the effect of depressing local markets. However, Smith also advocated for some government interventions (see the first quoted part above) as a matter of common sense; it never occurred to him that citizens of a civilized nation would be unwilling to pool some of their means in the service of infrastructure and relief that would clearly be to the benefit of the nation as a whole. How far we have fallen.
Smith also had an almost religious faith in human predictability and knowledge of their self-interest. If your favorite food is pizza, you will always choose pizza if it is available, no matter how often. And if collecting valuables is a more profitable means of using your disposable income (see the second quoted part above) than meals, servants and a stable, then you will logically choose one over the other, regardless of personal taste. This is not how human minds work. On the concept of division of labor, which is maybe the most famous part of the book, he is spot on.
Like most "great books", the structure is sloppy, but the digressions are often interesting and cover vast areas of the humanities, even those that have little to do with the subject matter. Under the guise of a chapter on "the expenses of education of the young", for example, he launches into a discourse on education in general. Another chapter on "the expenses of the education of the public", he goes into religion (because education for adults who have finished school is what going to church is. Really, Adam?). "The expenses of a standing army" is all about war theory, and every economic argument is backed up by digressions into history from Persia, Greece, Rome, Feudal Europe, contemporary Europe, and all the "savages" not in Europe who stand to benefit from Europe's wise colonial policies. Smith even has advice for King George as to what changes should be made in dealing with the North American colonies to prevent a rebellion that seems likely if drastic steps are not taken. The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776. Oops.
As with most first attempts to describe a vast new field, The Wealth of Nations comes across as clunky and sometimes misguided, but it is thought provoking. Seems to me the first three "books" of it (not necessarily including the long final chapters of Book 1 unless you're very into herring) are worth serious study by most people; later sections can be grazed depending on where your interest lies.
Find all of my previous Bookposts here: http://admnaismith.livejournal.com/tag/bookposts