Filed under: Books | Tags: anxiety, hot flat and crowded, the world is flat, thomas friedman
I did a book swap with my boss a couple months back: Friedman for Friedman. I lent her Hot, Flat and Crowded in exchange for his previous tome, The World Is Flat. If HFC is Friedman’s sober step back from the hype surrounding globalization, TWIF is him taking a Koolaid bath. Not that he doesn’t recognize the inherent challenges presented by the time honored practice of outsourcing all the dirty work to the lowest bidder. If anything, Friedman has to be one of the most honest and balanced writers out there in terms of looking at the issues from a well-rounded perspective. Strangely, reading this book actually made me more anxious about the future than HFC, which describes the doomsday scenario around the corner. What hit home for me was the realities of a highly competitive world in which, barring some dramatic turnaround, the position of the U.S. will continue to slide. Being mainly concerned with the rise of China and India, Friedman doesn’t talk much about Germany, but I always think Germany makes a telling contrast with the U.S. Unlike our service and financial based economy, Germany still relies on manufacturing as the engine of its economy. We, on the other hand, produce things like “social networking tools” to allow out of work PR professionals to have a second career as social media “gurus”. But this is the kind of economy we have created. As Friedman describes, Americans are being forced to scramble in order to keep pace with change and demonstrate their added value above and beyond the folks in other countries we have outsourced most of the real work to. We’ve still got a cushy lead, but how much longer can we stay ahead of the pack? (And, as individuals, stay employed?)
Gladwell has spawned a new genre of book: Blink, the power of reading without thinking. Books in this genre are a lot like browsing the internet. You are able to consume them rapidly with minimal effort, and they provide you enough just enough superficial fact and opinion to allow you to leave you with the feeling that you’ve learned something substantial. They also arm you with buzzwords of the zeitgeist to sprinkle into your language so that you and your colleagues can share profound analytical insights such as whether company x is truly an “outlier” or not.
Hmm, I think I’m coming off a bit harsh in that first paragraph. I actually admire Gladwell’s engaging writing style and knack for pattern recognition, i.e. the ability to derive big ideas from the flimflam of contemporary life. And he’s provocative: yeah, maybe I should pay more attention to my gut and at the same time be aware of my built-in prejudices. And there’s all those little nuggets of smaller ideas, such as the notion that being courteous and friendly to colleagues and clients may actually be more important than doing a good job (what I got out of his anecdote about people being far less likely to bring a malpractice suit against doctors who were nice to them).
Way back when, early on in the 2008 election (which probably must have been something like 2006), a phone conversation with my mom meandered into politics, and she told me I had to read Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father. At the time I was doing my best to buck the tide of history, supporting the totally uncool Hillary Clinton. And I sort of bristled at the suggestion, because it sounded like my squandered youth was being unfairly compared to Barack’s well-spent early days of soul-searching, community service and leadership. As in, perhaps I could take a few hints from this fine, upstanding man.
Well, perhaps I could. As noted on the cover, one of the primary themes of this book is race. Barack’s insights into the issue of race in America have been well-documented and praised, and I won’t go into that here, in part because I found some of the other themes more interesting: the search for identity, the significance of family and the broken American society. The first two I could relate to on a very personal level as someone who grew up as an Army brat, with extended family scattered across the US. It struck me, as Barack describes his voyage to Africa, that black Americans are not alone in being cut off from their heritage. Most American families would be unable to trace their roots back to a country – let alone a town – of origin. And though Barack does not state it explicitly, it is this sense of displacement that contributes to the fragmentation of our own culture. He tends to romanticize the pastoral scenario in which people were connected to the community in tangible ways through their work and thus understood their place in it.
It’s a pretty rich book, dense with nuggets of ideas and an accurate portrayal of not just a man, but a country and its people.
Here’s a book that should be mandatory reading for all humans, especially those with a conscience and in positions of power (or is that an oxymoron?). The premise of the book is simple: resource depletion, global warming, population growth, imbalances in energy distribution, the effects of globalization, and the explosive growth developing nations (a.k.a. the BRICs) are all factors combining to form a perfect storm of planetary destruction. Unless we get off the couch and lead a revolution in new energy technology. The first half paints a doomsday scenario, while the second half, notably, discusses solutions, some of which are already underway. The main takeaway, though, is that we – the United States in particular – are not doing nearly enough, and time is running out. In some arenas, China is already doing much more than we are to incentivize green practices.
Already, some of the action called for by Friedman is coming to pass, as in the recent Clean Energy bill. (Incidentally, I happened across this video appeal by Al Gore around the time of the House vote, and goddamn if he hasn’t morphed into a televangelist.) Aside from a somewhat repetitive and dumbed-down writing style – one can almost overhear Friedman and his editor discussing their no-reader-left-behind strategy – this is a magnificent read that, if it does not make you rethink your lifestyle and priorities, will at least leave you considering a move to Germany.
I’ve finally finished reading Gavan Daws’ nuanced history of Hawaii, by all accounts the best, most comprehensive volume ever written. The first three quarters of the book are really engrossing. Daws has a real knack for making the characters of Hawaii’s past come alive, teasing out very believable psychological profiles and tangible motives from the primary sources. He is also adept at weaving the large themes with well-told “talk-story” anecdote in a way that gives them ring of near-irrefutable truth. I thought the narrative began to drag through the WW2 account and subsequent battle for statehood. Perhaps, having much more source material to work with, and less perspective (Shoal was published in 1968), it was more difficult for Daws to massage these storylines into a seamless narrative. I’ve read that native Hawaiians don’t rate Shoal because it ignores the indigenous perspective. I actually thought it gave fair air time to native personages, events and perspectives, and would be willing to bet that a comparable “native” history would be far less inclusive of “haole” events. But I am withholding final judgment until I’ve read that book.
Actually, I didn’t read the whole thing, I only read half. Although, since half of the last half of the book was acknowledgments, a glossary, footnotes and appendices, it turns out that I read three-quarters. However, I am fairly certain I got the drift of the story. It goes something like this:
“I’ve read a lot of philosophy, and most of it is rubbish. Especially Plato, although I am not really going to bother constructing an argument as to why he is rubbish. Instead I am going to coin a neologism, ‘Platonified,’ to refer to all nerds, i.e. academics with their theories and models that have no relevance to the reality that a hard-nosed banker such as myself deals in. The only decent philosophers are the ones who happen to support my big idea, and the best of them are ones you have probably never heard of. I won’t bother going into too much depth on their ideas – though I will talk about them more in Chapter ??; instead I will regale you with anecdotes about their lives, to demonstrate their humanity, because that is a much more valid way of certifying their ideas are to be trusted. What is my big idea? It is that we are very bad at predicting, and we don’t know how bad we are at predicting, and that anomalous events can have a disproportionately large impact. I’d go into more depth on the subject, but I’d rather spend my time regaling you with tangentially relevant, semi-disguised semi-autobiographical parables that demonstrate my wit and character.”
I’m sure the guy talks a good game at cocktail parties and on the speaking circuit, but in print the whole exercise comes off as presumptuous. And his overwhelming arrogance is just a little repellent.
Filed under: Books, Hawaii | Tags: digestible, Hawaii, history, michener, novel
Just finished reading Michener’s mammoth historical novel Hawaii. While he is certainly no master stylist, the sheer scale of the work, the ability to crystalize dense layers of history into digestible essentials, to approach multiple cultures with an attitude of respect and openmindedness – all this is impressive. Michener’s approach to writing has a very Hollywood feel to it (with all the positive and negative implications that entails), and in fact it is no wonder that it took filmmakers just seven years to base a movie on the novel. Although it was nominated for and won several Oscars, I can’t imagine it compares favorably with the book.
I had been told to read this before coming by someone who had lived here, and I understand why. It is an excellent companion to time spent here, condensing the cultural issues of the place for the non-local, providing him with a frame of reference for filing real life encounters with the locals. So many of the conditions and challenges posed by the islands mentioned throughout the novel still persist today, a fact that is sometimes a little scary. The disenfranchisement of the native Hawaiians has only soured, and the materialistic drive for domination of the island’s scant resources that infected each subsequent culture that came to the islands has only deepened. At the same time, the beautiful, truly multicultural (in contrast to the fragmented subcultures of mainland America) society that Michener saw blossoming in the 50s has come to pass – albeit with only a partial inclusion of the native Hawaiians.
One of my favorite passages comes early on, a prophetic admonition at the end of Michener’s lengthy description of the geological formation of the islands:
Do not come to these islands empty-handed, or craven in spirit, or afraid to starve. There is no food here. In these islands there is no certainty. Bring your own food, your own gods, your own flowers and fruits and concepts. For if you come without resources to these islands you will perish.
