'China' by Arthur Cotterell

 China.  A vast and complex country with an equally vast and complex history.  What book should you start with to grapple with all that China has been and done?  'China: A History' by Arthur Cotterell should be your first point of call.

Starting in pre-history and ending just after 1945 this relatively slim three hundred page book covers all main events in between trying to grasp what makes China China.  No small feat in either researching or making that research comprehensible to the general reader.  \Certainly, I feel, this book will, or should, be on the history and international politics syllabus for a long time.  As a primer on the subject this is the gold standard.

With a history as long and rich as China's it is surprising that in the West we know so little about it.  All the warriors, emperors, philosophers, poets and inventors' stories haven't travelled very well, which is a great shame as there are plenty to draw inspiration from here.

Take one of my favourite stories in this book, about the Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zi, which I will re-print in full:

'One day the ruler of Chu sent two high officals to ask Zhuang Zi to assume control of the government.  They found Zhuang Zi fishing.  Intent on what he was doing, he listened without turning his head.  At last he said: "I have been told there is in the capital a sacred tortoise which has been dead for three thousand years.  And that the king keeps this tortoise carefully enclosed in a casket on the altar of the ancestral temple.  Now would this tortoise rather be dead but honoured, or alive and wagging its tail in the mud?"  The two officials answered that it would prefer to be alive and wagging it's tail in the mud.  "Clear off, then!" shouted Zhuang Zi.  "I, too, will wag my tail in the mud here." 

The Daoists believed in non-engagement, relinquishing control to be better able to understand the world around them.  But China isn't all wise sages handing down ancient wisdom.  There are also foolish rulers like Di Xin on whom the fall of the Shang dynasty is blamed.  The following anecdote, about lusting after the beauty of Dan Ji, demonstrates this:

'Around her ornate chamber, decked out with the precious stones from the royal treasury, he heaped up mounds of meat, hanging dried joints on all the trees, filled a pond with wine until they could row a boat on it, while naked men and women would appear at the beat of a drum and drink up the liquor like cattle.'

This is just a sample of what is in this book and only a particle of what must have really happened in that fascinating country's history.  There is so much more to explore.

In this book I think I have found a motto for my life that comes from Confucius:

'Love of humanity without love of learning soon becomes silliness.  Love of wisdom without love of learning soon becomes lack of principle.  Love of rectitude without love of learning soon becomes harshness.  Love of courage without love of learning soon becomes chaos.'

Now it's audience participation time!  If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways:

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'The Grand Masters'

It's been a strange year.  Not too many posts and plenty of time for reflection.  However I am happy to admit that a new book of mine is available to get, so some achievement.   

'The Grand Masters' is an allegorical tale about a man who has to travel the world to defeat the Grand Masters in an otherworldly series of Games.

It's my first novel and am glad that I am no longer working on it, as it has taken a long time.

 The Grand Masters by Alistair David Todd | 9781839459849 (feedaread.com)

Buy Me a Coffee

Now with the wonders of technology you can now Buy Me a Coffee if you like my work and want to help support me creating blogs about books.  It is a one-time donation and really does help with  my work.  Or if you want to help support me long term then look at my Patreon page where for a small sum you can receive a copy of any self-published book I may bring out.  The link is below: 

Alistair David Todd is Poetry (buymeacoffee.com)

The Bandaged Hand

It's that time of the year where I get to plug on of my own books.  

'The Bandaged Hand' is a collection of poems written over a five year period, dedicated to the NHS for their helping me to cope with my bi-polar.  It is as Melanie Branton says 'eclectic' as it digs deep into life and finds treasures.  

As part of the private pleasure of writing it is also a pleasure to be sharing it publicly to others who may want to read my sustained efforts of writing.  

For those who read this blog I want to thank you for showing an interest as it has helped me keep on with my passion and curiosity of reading and writing.

There is more to come...

'A hero of mine' -David Oakwood

'There is courage and persistence in these words'-Richard Lawson

'His off-kilter imaginative perspective will surprise and delight'- Melanie Branton

 

 The Bandaged Hand by Alistair David Todd | 9781839455056 (feedaread.com)

'Physics of the Future' by Michio Kaku

For those that have worries about the future fear no more for Michio Kaku in 'Physics of the Future' says that it's going to be unrecognisably amazing. How amazing? Well by the end of this century we will 'control computers directly with our minds', we'll have emotional robots, designer children, programmable matter and increased risk of climate change. Pretty cool, yeah?

There will be those of us (me included) that will find reading this book, written almost ten years ago, with a straight face a little difficult. Kaku is the asbestos optimist, nothing seems to throw him off with how great technology will make our lives. And I'll grant him that it does seem to create a more humane world. 

 But what about cultural, historical and political forces that might get in the way? Will it just increase inequality? Will there be a Roussean backlash with people wishing to return to a simpler 'state of nature'? What if Yuval Noah Harari is right and our governments hack our bio-systems? What if Capitalism eats the world? All this will have a destabilising effect, yet it feels more and more these days that nothing is truly stable so if we can have electronic wallpaper to keep moral up than so more the better.

I am reminded of the game 'Deus Ex' where you played a character in between two camps of people. Those who have no technological implants and those who are fully cyborg. Is it possible that we could see a split between two different attitudes of mind? Mentioned in the book are the Islamic extremist who really don't want modern technology, but the people who do embrace technology in it's fullest will be the people who will be like gods to those who have nothing to do with it.

Kaku isn't just blue-sky thinking as his book is based on over three hundred conversations with leading scientists so it could become a very accurate prophesy if we survive as a species long enough to find out.

It also reminds me of a quote from a climate scientist who said that they thought the problems of climate change was green house gas, rising sea level and erosion of topsoil when really they found that the real problems were greed, apathy, selfishness and lack of compassion. And this really gets to the nub of the problem for me. I can communicate with the whole world from the vicinity of my living room and watch 80s Egyptian films whenever I like but it doesn't solve the fundamental emotional problems I have.

Or put it another way; there's no technological fix for the soul. Of course behaviour is entirely dictated to by economics and environment and by changing these things different behaviours are produced. It could be said that having TV programmes that document the cultures of other countries has given us a global consciousness the like we have never experienced. 

 For me I have a workable knowledge of Japanese society from watching programmes about it. It's partly the reason why I eat noodles every day because I want to emulate aspects of that culture that I like. And so in this way there is an argument that technology is making us more tolerant, peaceable and even kind.

Then there is the argument that it allows total nutters and highly dangerous people to connect and form increasingly powerful groups that could destabilise all the scientific knowledge needed to create this beautifully painted picture of the future.

But hark! Kaku has thought about this and says: 'There is so much noise on the Internet, with would be prophets daily haranguing their audience and megalomaniacs trying to push bizarre ideas, that eventually people will cherish a new commodity: wisdom.' It's going to take a while for that to happen I fear but if that is true then hopefully I could make a killing in the future.

And there is a place for me in the future. When my bartender said to me that AI are now capable to writing structured screenplays, though with largely nonsensical dialogue, I thought my days were done as a writer. But fear not! Kaku again comes to the rescue: 'Novelists, scriptwriters, and playwrights will have jobs, since they have to convey realistic scenes, human conflicts, and human triumphs and defeats'. Now that's a vision of the future I can look forward to.   

 

'Men of Mathematics 2' by E. T. Bell

You may not know it but we deal with maths everyday.  Reading this blog, for instance, requires maths for the algorithms that has lead you here and for the computer/ phone/ tablet to be made enabling such reading.  Yet the stories of the men who have pushed the boundaries of the subject that has transformed our world are not popularly known.  In comes E. T. Bell with 'Men of Mathematics 2' a book of short biographies of the major mathematicians from 1793 to 1918.

I read this book as folk tales of extraordinary people who set their minds to understanding the world through the application of mathematics, full of misfortune, humour and world changing discoveries.  Take Evariste Galois: a boy with a 'madness for maths' failed in his examinations due to the stupidity of his examiners, or as one put it 'A candidate of superior intelligence is lost with an examiner of inferior intelligence'. 

 He lived during the Revolution of 1830 and at a gathering of revolutionaries he stood up with a glass in one hand and a pocket knife in the other and declared 'To Louis Philippe'- the King whereupon the next day he was thrown in prison.  He died aged twenty-one and helped lay the foundation for quantum mechanics.  See, it's not all chalkboards and compasses.

 

Poincare said that 'Mathematical discoveries, small or great...are never born of spontaneous generation.  They always presuppose a soil seeded with preliminary knowledge and well prepared by labour, both conscious and unconscious' and this is what you feel from reading such a book, that the journey is ever continuing and one mathematician takes off from where another leaves.  There is no greatness without learning from the past.  The fact that it is not a solidary pursuit always starting from scratch speaks to how many different things were needed from many people in order to gain the knowledge we have now. 

Mathematics doesn't even have to be approached as a science.  Take Kronecker who 'was an artist who used mathematical formulae as his medium'.  It takes intense creativity to develop the insights needed to proceed and a love of abstract thinking that is like wordplay to numbers.  It's given me a much deeper appreciation of a neglected subject that should be more a part of popular culture.  

Now it's audience participation time! If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways: - by being my patron on Patreon.com -give a one off donation with Buy Me a Coffee -Buy one of my literary books -Share this blog on your social media -Leave a comment, you can even recommend me book -Follow me I can't stress enough how much all this helps me and how in the long run it will help you, so if you can and you want to please support my free content so I can keep on producing my beloved blog. Live long and prosper.

'False Dawn' by John Gray

'The problems facing the world are not fully soluble' writes John Gray (not that one) in his prophetic book 'False Dawn' with the subtitle: Delusions of Global Capitalism.  Gray might be best known for his 'Straw Dogs' a book of aphorisms about the modern human state and general pessimistic outlook scorning both Christianity and Humanism. 

This book may not be a barrel of laughs but it has turned out to be true.  First published in 1998 Gray takes on free market ideology that has been dominant since the 80s.  It's proponents convince the public that the market is the natural state of affairs, to which Gray points out that it is not 'a gift of social evolution.  It is an end-product of social engineering and unyielding political will'.  And with disastrous results. 

What one figure has stuck to me is the divorce rate in the UK in 1992.  One divorce for every two marriages, comparable only to the US.  Unemployment and family breakdown rose after deregulating labour along with a burgeoning underclass unheard of in the rest of Europe.  The visible signs of social erosion after Thatcher are so striking that she was not wrong to claim that she changed everything in Britain.  Certainly it seems that more people are losing out after her than before.

When choice is god than what difference does it make if you are paying for a divorce or pay for a car?  Effectively it nullifies morality and value judgements.  What happens to the things that we can't use money to solve, like a liveable planet or friendship?  Do these become commodified and just a product we can buy and sell?  If I look around my town I can see that the markets aren't good for even businesses let alone creating beautiful surroundings.

I think the quote at the beginning of this blog is useful to think while reading this book.  Gray also says 'free market policies lost political legitimacy while at the same time altering the economy and society in ways that democratic choice cannot reverse'.  This is not utopian thinking but he suggests that what we are becoming is where anarchy is permeant.  In 2009 he wrote an updated foreword after the financial crisis of 2008 where he seems to be vindicated of his view as the correct one before anyone else even considered the question.  We cannot go back and our future is uncertain.  There will be no one way of correcting the situation, if it can be corrected.

A sober read and argued with detail it's the book you need to read to understand out economics today and to be able to at least understand how we got here.

Now it's audience participation time!  If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways:

- by being my patron on Patreon.com

-give a one off donation with Buy Me a Coffee

-Buy one of my literary books

-Share this blog on your social media

-Leave a comment, you can even recommend me book

-Follow me

I can't stress enough how much all this helps me and how in the long run it will help you, so if you can and you want to please support my free content so I can keep on producing my beloved blog.

Live long and prosper.