Book Report 6/29/14

Currently Reading (nonfiction): The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond

Diamond continues to explore how traditional societies work, and how the people in them deal with conflict, justice, childrearing, the elderly and other issues. He points out that one of the benefits of modern state society is in how imposed systems of justice are able to breakdown patterns of vengeance that can fuel wars or prolong conflict among tribal peoples. The lack of a central authority with a monopoly on the use of force allows for individuals and families to seek revenge on their own, acts that usually trigger new waves of retribution. In state societies disinterested courts and law enforcement agencies provide justice without pandering to the impulse for revenge.

In some ways traditional societies offer better models for dealing with restitution in cases involving unintended injury or death. Rather than focusing on mere compensation as a means of resolving these incidents, traditional societies focus on making a sincere apology for the pain caused to the injured parties. Performing rituals that demonstrate genuine remorse can diffuse a situation that might devolve into one of those cycles of revenge.

Of course traditional societies deal with the young and the elderly in ways that range from appalling to enlightened, with our own state societies probably falling somewhere in between. It is tempting to judge these practices based on our own experiences and ideals, and infanticide or abandoning the elderly are clearly practices we can condemn, but it is equally important to understand the environmental conditions that have led these societies to develop these practices.

Perhaps the most interesting concept introduced by Diamond is that of Constructive Paranoia. People in traditional societies live with so much risk during their lives that they sometimes take extreme caution in situations that might not appear to be that dangerous. You might camp under a dead tree because the odds that it will fall on you the particular night you happen to be sleeping under it is rather slim, but a New Guinean will never choose to camp under such a tree because he spends every night under a tree and he expects that the chance is fairly high that getting crushed by a dead tree will catch up to him. He won’t take the risk. Diamond discusses his own experiences with risk and danger and how he has adopted Constructive Paranoia in his own life.

Book Report 4/14/14

Book Report 4/14/14

Currently Reading (nonfiction): The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond

What can we learn from traditional societies? That is the subtitle and question at the heart of Jared Diamond’s The World Until Yesterday. Diamond, who has given us plenty to think about in previous books (Guns, Germs and Steel, Collapse, The Third Chimpanzee), explores some of the different ways that traditional societies approach issues such as justice, child rearing and language, contrasting them with the general approach of the complex state societies most of the rest of us live in. The book promises a look at the diversity of human responses to typical situations by societies (bands, tribes and chiefdoms) that have a longer historical foundation than those state societies. Diamond seems intent on avoiding romanticizing these societies, warning that they will offer as many bad lessons as good. The first chapter offers a look at land use (and the level of exclusive use by several cultures); the definitions of friends, enemies and strangers; and the how trade is transacted between different tribes.

Currently Reading (fiction): Southern Haunts Part 2: Devils in the Darkness edited by Alexander S. Brown & Louise Myers

Although I am only three stories and a poem into this anthology of demon themed short stories, if the quality of the writing fails to improve I may regret the purchase. I get the idea that most of these writers understand the subject that they wish to write about, but that few of them have heard that most basic of writing advice “show, don’t tell.” Sure, I’m willing to accept a certain level of exposition in order to set the stage for a story, but these stories seem to be composed almost entirely of exposition, explaining things about the character’s past or the devils and demons plaguing them rather than constructing scenes where the characters act and interact with other elements of the story. A story titled The Battle of Vicksburg doesn’t even have any characters, but sets the stage for some kind of supernatural conflict between a demon and former Civil War Generals Lee and Grant. The narrative is told in the second person, not a particular problem except that there is no character attached to that perspective, so I’m not sure that it technically is a short story. But I’m still reading, with the hope that there are better stories in the remaining pages.

Book Report 4/7/14

Book Report 3/20/14
Book Report 2/27/14