Two items today on this topic, first an essay in NY Times, then a letters column today responding to it.
I addressed a similar piece Saturday. Here’s the NYT essay.
NY Times, Victor Kumar, a philosophy professor at Boston University, 5 Aug 2024: Population Growth Isn’t a Progressive Issue. It Should Be.
The next big science tome I’ve begun reading is THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY, by David Deutsch, his only other book following THE FABRIC OF REALITY in 1997, which I reviewed here. This second book was published in 2011. (There’s no clue he might be writing another; presumably these two books constitute his personal theory of reality, and he has nothing more to say without being repetitious.) He continues to be a professor at Oxford.
Let’s try writing up my notes here as I go, instead of waiting until I finish the whole book, then spending another week or more posted chapter summaries. These posts will be indicated by the abbreviated title format; a final summary post will have the book photo in the middle.
His first book, recall, Continue reading
Here’s a piece that challenges my challenge to the assumption, especially in America, than more is better, that the economy must always expand, that the population should continue to increase indefinitely. My point has been that this literally cannot continue forever. At the same time, projections acknowledge that the human population will continue to rise to a point, later this century, and cap out at around 10 or 12 billion, then level off and even decrease — an effect of wealthier populations deciding to have few children all by themselves. Because, in a sense people don’t consciously realize, you don’t need to churn out so many children when most of them these days will survive past infancy.
Big Think, Jason Crawford, 21 Aug 2024: The overlooked virtues of a crowded world, subtitled “In a world of rising cynicism, a celebration of our capacity to create, adapt, and thrive.”
Last night was the end of the Democratic National Convention, with Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech as nominee for president, and it’s been well-covered in all the news media. Most of us thought Harris did quite well, as she bridged from her personal history to issues of the day and finally took on Trump directly. The MAGA media took issue, of course; whatever she could have said would have been bad. Trump, reflexively, calls her a disaster and a bringer of death to the United States — but he would say that whatever Harris said, or whomever else was the Democratic nominee giving any kind of speech. He’s a joke.
A sidebar issue Continue reading
The most striking item I saw today is this, which goes to the heart of the distinction between conservatives and liberals.
Washington Post, Matt Bai, 22 Aug 2024: Opinion | Tim Walz and JD Vance are having the argument that matters, subtitled “In his convention speech, Tim Walz articulated a view of America sharply contrasting with JD Vance’s.”
Then I looked over my shelves to see if there was some other memoir type book, preferably short, that I could read before returning to another big science tome. I found this, by the same author as TRIBE, which I read and reviewed some five years ago. This book is less a personal memoir than a meditation on a theme, that of the title. As in that earlier book, this one considers its titular idea from different perspectives, three in this case.
It’s a memoir to the extent that Junger, with a small group of friends, spent a considerable amount of time walking the railroad lines in Pennsylvania. (Not consecutively, he mentions.) They’re hobos of a sort, sleeping outside, avoiding towns, avoiding the security police that monitor the tracks. It’s an experiment in freedom, in a sense; the book is a meditation about the tension between community and freedom.
Catching up on odds and ends today.
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Vox, Zack Beauchamp, 13 Aug 2024: The right’s plan to fix America: Patriarchy 2.0, subtitled “JD Vance and like-minded conservatives are theorizing a kind of ‘neopatriarchy.'”
Once again: an obsession with tribal morality. To conservatives, nothing else matters than having more children, apparently.
And here’s a third memoir I read recently, inspired by that NYT list — though in this case, the book didn’t place on the final list, though it was nominated by a couple of the 500 contributors who revealed their personal votes. And I had a copy — again, as with Coates, bought sometime after first publication. I have the 19th printing.
What attracted me to this was its story about growing up in rural Idaho, in a survivalist family, and then breaking out and discovering the real world. Just up my alley, right? Knowledge wins out? As it turned out, that’s only part of the story, and not even the main point.
In particular, the reactions by conservatives to things that do change. Topics today:
1, Scaring Conservatives with Lies
Salon, Kelly McClure, 17 Aug 2024: Trump scares his followers with talk of “illegals,” but border crossings are lowest in four years, subtitled “A new tally by border agents shows that illegal crossings are at a steady decline, down 32 percent since June”
Here is the next memoir I read, after Joan Didion’s, as inspired by that NYT list. This is a statement by a black intellectual to his 15-year-old son, about life as a black person and the struggles and dangers he faces in the world. It’s heartfelt and moving and grim and blunt. Its function to readers like me is to reveal perspectives I’ve never had, and couldn’t even imagine.
The book came out in 2015 and I have the 20th printing — with blurbs on the cover about it being a bestseller, and a National Book Award winner. So I didn’t buy it when first published. Its subject is nothing obviously up my alley. Presumably after a year of acclaim, and since frankly that it was short!, I did buy a copy, in April 2016.
