A few weeks ago I was having one of my existential crises.
The world sucks, life sucks.
It's possibly true. Here, on the east coast of Australia, we feel like we were having fun at the beach one fine Summer's day, playing in the breakers, when tidal waves of natural disasters began rolling in. 2019 was the year of catastrophic bushfires. Then without warning, a pandemic-sized wave swamped us in 2020. Even before we could stand up, cough the seawater from our lungs and get the sand out of our swimmers, a wave of multiple floods felt like a rip dragging us out to sea sucking what little breath we had from our bodies until we were precariously perched on an unstable mound of sand waiting for the lifesavers rescue boat.
Some of those left standing are now confronted by economic conditions that have capsized the lifesaver's rescue boat.
My normal response to problems, no matter how small or big, is to read. I want answers.
These are big problems, I need big thinkers and bigger answers.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. - Albert Einstein
There are a couple of books that have been on my radar for a while that looked like they would present me with a different perspective of the world and what we as insignificant humans living on a fragile lump of rock hurtling through space might be able to do.
He who doesn't understand history is doomed to repeat it - Pittacus Lore
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
This is a hugely ambitious book; its broad approach condenses huge topics into short chapters in an attempt to provide a chronicle of the whole evolution of our species.
it is a very well-written, engaging and enlightening read. Even though I knew lots of the pieces of history, Harari weaved it all together into the story of us, warts and all. Idea by idea, revolution by revolution, religion by religion, concept by concept, our Sapien history was simplified without ever being boring.
However, there were shocks.
I learnt how evolution happened on the back of imagined abstract concepts. Prior to this small groups of sapiens co-operated with a sound degree of trust, the size limited to around 100-150. The generation of myths allowed larger groups to bond around myths and ideas. They could cooperate with others they may not have known but now shared a common idea. Imagine the emergence of merchant or artisan guilds or freemasonry. A person, having shaken hands in a secret way, would instantly be in accord with the other, able to trade or assist. Religions and other -isms grew from this initial concept.
We also take 'corporations' and 'money' for granted, but both are abstract concepts. So long as enough of us are confident the concepts will continue to exist, they will exist.
The shock for me came with the realisation that we all have, at the core of our being, abstract concepts that form the basis of our thinking, our mindset.
For example, being Australian, a country born from convict stock and English values, we see the world differently from an American who arrived as a free settler to the land of promise or the Asian raised on Confucious or Mao. Generational bias has been ingrained. It's like the fish can't see the water it is swimming in. We have ingrained assumptive ideas to the point we can't see the water we are swimming in.
While I intuitively know these facts, this book presented the history of these ideas and the implications became very real in my search for answers.
It made me think. At least I recognise my cultural biases more accurately. I felt myself step outside my paradigm, my model of the world and see it for what it is: malleable. If I am not tied to a concept, 'Who could I be? Who do I want to be?' That is my challenge.
Our history is not our destiny - Alan Cohen
What We Owe The Future by William Macaskill
This is one of the most well-researched (10 years of research followed by 2 years of fact-checking before publication) and thought-provoking books I have read.
The book is essentially about longtermism: an idea that we can positively influence the long-term future is presented as a key moral priority of our time. Macaskill focuses on the major threats to civilisation like extinction, collapse and stagnation, explaining them from abstract concepts to personal reality.
Imagine that future people count, there's probably going to be a lot of them and we may just be able to make their lives better. While I may have considered my DNA grandchildren or great-grandchildren, I hadn't put much attention to the society they will live in.
He urges us to take a million-year view of our position in history. What matters most as we look far down the lens of the future?
Likely scenarios, meteor risks, war, pandemics, AI are explored and probabilities assigned to calculate what really matters with mathematical significance.
While the book is not difficult to read, the content challenged me so much, I had to, at one stage, skip from the detailed scenarios to the Part V: Taking Action to get some relief from the plausible but dystopian perspective presented.
However, the answers proposed are both transformative and counterintuitive. A couple of ideas for taking action didn't quite gel for me. He does, however, devote a lengthy passage to career choices for young people in this unstable world, which makes more sense for my grandchildren than this oldie.
But I agree with both authors. We need to examine our history as well as our best estimates of the long-term future to learn from mistakes as well as allocate precious resources as efficiently as possible for what may be a very long future or not!
I have to admit that my critical analysis of these books could definitely be improved. Both best-selling authors have been savaged by some very capable critics. For me, reading reviews is a crucial method for improving critical thinking skills. It is too easy to take a well-presented book at face value without question.
Unfortunately, the ability to think critically is being lost to the sea of carefully curated how-to literature. We are also swallowing our news from dubious sources without question.
We must continue to interrogate our thoughts and challenge ourselves to read difficult books in a quest to fully engage with and contribute to family, community and humanity.
But for the moment I turn my attention to the approaching weather and cross my fingers that Mother Nature spares us the third Summer of flooding rain.