Tag: BookReview

REVIEW: Right Ho, Jeeves #2

Jon Del Arroz reviews Hungry Hearts, the second in the Right Ho, Jeeves series.

The first issue of Right Ho, Jeeves had a lot of set up. Characters were introduced almost with bios, the scene was set for nearly half the issue. It was enjoyable, but it took for issue 2 for this series to really hit full stride. Kwapisz shows a mastery of cartoonist-style art that gives characters poignant and identifiable features to amplify the humor of the situation. The period pieces and drawings are absolutely gorgeous in the background, which won’t get much credit, but should.

This issue starts where the main character has set a bunch of his colleagues up in different romantic schemes to impress their ladies, and all of them have backfired. Instead of extricating himself from the situation, he doubles down and tries to repair them with more schemes based on deception, only resulting in more hi jinx and more troubles. Jeeves, the butler, is the confidante in these schemes, and one can tell he thinks his master is somewhat crazy, but he’s very diplomatic in the way he phrases his thoughts on the plans.

Read the whole thing there. And just think how this issue is going to look in print!

While we’re at it, one minor bit of production news. After meeting with our printer today, we’ve learned we are going to be able to offer limited edition gold logo comics to add a collectible aspect to Arkhaven and Dark Legion comics. The first 2,500 comic books and 1,000 graphic novels off the press for each issue will sport the gold logo. We have ZERO interest in getting into the games of variant covers and fake #1 issues that the more established publishers play, but this is a harmless way of giving collectors a potential long-term reward for being the first to support us.

The backer editions will not feature the gold logos, but will be set apart in other ways, including the unique covers for the hardcovers.

Decline is everywhere

Even the quality of the fake reviews on Amazon is in serious decline these days:

1.0 out of 5 stars
By Seth Rutledge January 15, 2018
This man writes for the Daily Stormer…
You should be ashamed of yourself for agreeing with this neo-nazi garbage.

That’s definitely news to me. On the other hand, my column has appeared in both Pravda and The Boston Globe, two well-known organs of the global Neo-Nazi movement.

UPDATE: Assuming this is the same Seth Rutledge, and the other reviews suggest it is, this low-effort fake review appears to represent the first direct attack of the Art-SJWs doing what SJWs always do.

Last night Ethan asked about why SJWs behave the way they do, and I mentioned it was something I’d addressed in SJWs Always Double Down. Here is the relevant passage:

SJWs are creatures of pain. They are in a near-constant state of mild psychological distress, which is why so many of them are in therapy or on various psychotropic medications. This is why they are so sensitive, so fragile, and so prone to angry, incoherent rants for reasons that often seem inexplicable to others. They might well be pitied, were it not for the behavior that their suffering inspires in them.

Now, it may seem bizarre that individuals whose primary objective is to mitigate their emotional pain would make a habit of seeking out conflict, much less generating conflict where none previously existed. But that is because you are a normal, psychologically healthy individual whose normal state is not one of internal distress. It is only through conflict that the SJW can generate the feelings of moral superiority he requires in order to drown out his steady state of emotional pain. This is why the Narrative can never stop mutating and why no solution will ever suffice regardless of how perfectly it complies with SJW demands.

It also explains why SJWs are so relentlessly critical of others. In a paper entitled “Holding People Responsible for Ethical Violations: The Surprising Benefits of Accusing Others”, funded by the Wharton Behavioral Lab, researchers found that people who accuse others of unethical behavior can derive significant benefits from doing so. Compared to normal people who do not make a habit of accusing others of crimethink and other moral failures, accusers are perceived by others to have higher ethical standards. In one study, it was found that the act of making accusations increased trust in the accuser and lowered trust in the target. This is precisely the purpose of the disqualify and discredit routine that SJWs so often utilize. In a second study, it was found that making accusations tends to elevate trust in the accuser by boosting other people’s perceptions of the accuser’s ethical standards. And in a third study, it was found that accusations boosted trust in the accuser, decreased trust in the target, and even more significantly, promoted dissension within the group.

In other words, SJWs transfer their own emotional pain into making themselves feel more positive about themselves while simultaneously elevating their social status at the expense of others and at the cost of group harmony. This is why group after group, organization after organization, find that acceding to the demands of the SJWs in their midst inevitably generates more conflict, not less.

This explains why the moderate response to SJWs invariably fails. You cannot solve the problem of childhood obesity by giving the fat, screaming kid the candy for which he is screaming. All that acceding to SJW demands will accomplish is new and more outrageous SJW demands.

And this is also why it is simply false to claim that we are the “mirror image” of SJWs. We have literally nothing in common with them and it would be more accurate to say we are their polar opposites. Unlike their ever-shifting narratives, our standards do not change. We are psychologically strong and stable. We don’t care what others do, so long as they don’t interfere with our ability to do as we please.

Wright on Knight

The illustrious John C. Wright adds to the increasingly incandescent luster of the Castalia House blog with his first regular post there:

It is an eerie thing to reread the half-forgotten stories treasured in one’s youth. For better or worse, the hold haunts never look the same. The worse happens when eyes grown cynical with age will see tinsel and rubbish where once glamor gleamed as fresh and expectant as the sunrise in the Garden of Eden. And, to the contrary, the better happens when one discovers added layers of wonder, or deeper thoughts to savor, than a schoolboy’s brain can hold.

So I decided to read, in their order of publication, the Conan stories of Robert E Howard. I was not a devout fan of Conan in my youth, so some stories I had read before, others were new. But in each case I was surprised, nay, I was shocked, at how much better they were than I recalled.

In this space, time permitting, I hope to review each tale as I read it, starting with Phoenix on the Sword. But before any review talks about what Conan is, let me tell the candid reader what Conan is not.

As with HP Lovecraft’s spooky tales or with the adventure yarns of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the unwary reader often confuses the popularized and simplified versions of iconic characters, Cthulhu or Tarzan, with the character as first he appeared in the pages of a pulp magazine. Tropes now commonplace, endlessly copied, at the time were stark and startling and one-of-a-kind.

The original character who is later taken into a franchise or revised for comic books, film and television, or who is copied or reincarnated by the sincere flattery of lesser talents, is inevitably more raw and real than such dim Xeroxes of Xeroxes. These franchise writers, imitators, and epigones rarely do justice to the tale they copy, some, for whatever reason, do grave injustice.

And, of course, certain writers of modest talent and no memorable accomplishment delight to assume the pen and mantle of the art critics and connoisseur in order to diminish the stature of author they cannot match. They do a deliberate injustice to iconic characters, and further muddy the perception.

Read the whole thing there, and not just because Mr. Wright administers Damon Knight, the John Scalzi of the Silver Age of Science Fiction, a well-deserved posthumous kicking. It is ever so fitting that the SFWA Grand Master award bears that petty little mediocrity’s name.

“an extraordinarily important book”

Peter Grant, who as priest and soldier has witnessed more things that should not be seen than most of us will see in 100 lifetimes, expresses his thoughts on Moira Greyland’s new book:

I’ve written more than once about child sexual abuse, particularly in the context of the Catholic Church’s clergy crisis.  I also had not inconsiderable contact with child molesters and abusers as a prison chaplain.  I wrote about some cases in my memoir of prison ministry.

However, nothing can capture the agony of child abuse, mental, spiritual and physical, like the recollections of an abused child.  Moira Greyland is one such person….

I think this is an extraordinarily important book.  I believe we all need to understand the horrifying impact of child sexual abuse on its victims.  Most of them can’t speak for themselves.  I commend and applaud Ms. Greyland’s courage in speaking out, not just for herself, but on their behalf, too.

On a personal note, I find this book a ghastly reminder of why I took the stand I did when the Catholic Church hierarchy signally failed (and has continued to fail to this day) to address the issue of clergy sexual abuse in any meaningful way. I don’t think the bishops, archbishops and cardinals in general have any idea of just how horrifying is the reality of child sex abuse. If they did, I can’t believe they would have allowed their neglect of the situation to continue for so long. Nevertheless, they did . . . and the result for the Church has been catastrophic.  By their wrong actions and deliberate inaction, they have destroyed the faith of millions – their faith in the Church, certainly, and in tragically many cases, their faith in God too. That destruction will be weighed in the scales against them when they come to the Judgment we all must face. I would not like to be in their shoes when that happens.

I can only suggest most strongly that you read Ms. Greyland’s book for yourself.

From the first reviews of THE LAST CLOSET: The Dark Side of Avalon:

  • This is a painful book to read, especially if you have children or loved ones. Doubly so if you have the latter who have suffered sexual abuse. Nevertheless, it is a book which absolutely has to be read. I feel almost embarrassed to add it also is an excellent guide to the inner workings of the science fiction circles of 70s and 80s as well but it is. This is a painful book to read about some bizarre grotesques but the sad fact is the very human Alice in her distorted terrible Wonderland was forced to keep much of this secret until now. 
  • A hard book to read, not because of the writing, but because of the subject. But this is a book that should be read. If it can inspire more victims to speak out and educate people to the hidden-in-plain-sight depredations that surround them then it will be worth the struggle of the author to put her life out for all to see.
  • I obtained this book through the Kindle Unlimited program. Here’s how important it was to me: I had a backlog of 9 books to read and review, 9 books by 9 good authors, that I expect to enjoy reading. THIS book was just released today, and I grabbed it up, and started reading immediately. Because it was important. It IS important. I just finished about 30 minutes ago; and I found myself being continually astounded that this person is ALIVE, much less strong enough to speak out. 
  • This is an important book. A book of horror and redemption. A book that needed deep courage to write and deep courage to publish. A book that churns the unchurnable stomach. A book that needs bravery to read, bravery to acknowledge the horror, the deep evil, that exists in our fallen world.
  • I didn’t mean to even start it, but now that I have, I can’t put it down – no matter how much I want to. It is a VERY important book. Astounding.
Today’s #DailyMemeWars

Amazon goes after fake reviewers

Amanda at Mad Genius Club alerts us to a major change in policy at Amazon:

Since Amazon first opened its virtual doors, there have been concerns about reviews. Not just for books but for all the products sold through its site. It is no secret that authors have paid for reviews — and some still do. Or that there have been fake accounts set up to give sock puppet reviews. There have been stories about sellers and manufacturers planting fake reviews as well, all in the hopes of bolstering their product rankings and ratings. From time to time, Amazon has taken steps to combat this trend. One of the last times they did it, they brought in a weighted review system. This one differentiates between “verified purchasers” and those who did not buy the product viz Amazon. Now there is a new policy in place, once that should help — at least until a new way around it is found.

Simply put, Amazon now requires you to purchase a minimum of $50 worth of books or other products before you can leave a review or answer questions about a product. These purchases, and it looks like it is a cumulative amount, must be purchased via credit card or debit card — gift cards won’t count. This means someone can’t set up a fake account, buy themselves a gift card and use it to get around the policy.

Eligibility
To contribute to Customer Reviews or Customer Answers, Spark, or to follow other contributors, you must have spent at least $50 on Amazon.com using a valid credit or debit card. Prime subscriptions and promotional discounts don’t qualify towards the $50 minimum. In addition, to contribute to Spark you must also have a paid Prime subscription (free trials do no qualify). You do not need to meet this requirement to read content posted by other contributors or post Customer Questions, create or modify Profile pages, Lists, or Registries

Whether this change will work in the long run, I don’t know. But, for now, I welcome it.

As a frequent target of fake reviewers, I think this is fantastic. It should work brilliantly, because fake reviewers almost invariably try to hide their identities. Now that reviews will be tied to actual Amazon accounts, it’s very easy for Amazon to see whether the reviewer has a pattern of reviewing books that he has actually bought or not as well as giving Amazon the ability to deny the fake reviewer future access to Amazon’s retail channel if he makes a habit of regularly posting fake reviews or is the recipient of a large number of complaints about abusive reviews.

It was pretty clear that Amazon was already beginning to target fake reviews earlier this year. One SJW who left a fake review of SJWAL back in June even complained about his previous fake review being removed by Amazon.

Interesting that VD presents himself as an enemy of the “thought police”–he has already had my review taken down once, simply because it was negative. SAD!

First, I did not take the review down, Amazon did. And they did so, not because it was negative, but because it was obviously fake. Demonstrating, once more, that SJWs always lie. And given that SJWADD, published in October, has no fake reviews while the most recent fake reviews for SJWAL and ATOB are both from October 2017, I conclude that it was Amazon’s more aggressive policing of fake reviews this fall that led to this new policy. I also think Amanda’s wish for Kindle Unlimited subscribers to be permitted to post reviews is unwise because in my experience, I have already seen how some KU subscribers will download a book they have no intention of reading in order to be able to post a fake review that is marked as a Verified Purchase.

Since Amazon can see exactly how many pages a KU subscriber has read of the book he nominally reviewed, I have no doubt that they saw enough reviews being posted by KU non-readers to decide that KU subscribers cannot be trusted to post honest reviews. Amazon also appears to understand how permitting KU subscribers to post reviews creates a disincentive for authors to put their books in Kindle Select.

Amazon’s decision is an excellent application of Taleb’s “skin in the game” and I expect it will significantly improve the quality of Amazon’s reviews.

Speaking of Amazon, now that I’m able to return to finishing a certain extended edition, I’ve decided to celebrate by making A THRONE OF BONES free on Amazon tomorrow and the rest of this weekend. And if you’ve already read it, then perhaps you should consider getting the hardcover for your bookshelves.

BOOK REVIEW: MAGA 2020

This is a review by a guest reviewer, Castalia House narrator Jon Mollison:

Regular readers of this blog need no long and detailed rehashing of the decades of success globalists have achieved by injecting their message fiction into every nook and cranny of every medium of news and education and entertainment.  Regular readers of this blog have all too often put down books, walked out of theaters, or snapped off the television with an angry snarl of, “enough with the message fiction!” Nor do they need yet another reminder that technological advances have reduced the barrier to entry for books and comics and videos such that the left-wing stranglehold exists solely by dint of decades of inertia and capital accumulated by their forebears.  This being the Current Year Plus One, we can take that wonderful theory and expose it to the harsh light of scrutiny to see how well it works in practice. Before we grab our Deerstalker Cap and hold our magnifying glass up to Superversive Press’s latest collection, “MAGA 2020 & Beyond”, we need to get something out of the way.

This is not message fiction.

For decades, “message fiction” has been used to describe “ugly left wing lies wrapped up inside pretty fiction packages”.  Mainly because that was the only message fiction available.  Right wing message fiction was consigned to the dustbin of unpublishable  Now that the Pandora’s box of self-and small press publishing has been opened, the peddlers of message fiction and their supporters want to change the meaning of the term to encompass all fiction with any message. But just as they no longer get to decide which messages are conveyed via fiction, they also no longer get to decide the definition of “message fiction”.  And so the meaning retains its stink of left-wing propaganda.  Hence, this collection of pro-Trump essays cannot be classified as “message fiction”.

Granted, MAGA 2020 & Beyond” is filled, cover to cover, with the exact same sort of heavy handed symbolism and wishful thinking and oversimplification you would expect given the title and cover art. And yet it isn’t message fiction, because the messages conveyed by these tales are neither ugly, nor left wing, nor are they predicated on a view of the world that just ain’t so.  These works represent a direct challenge to message fiction.

So it isn’t message fiction, but is it any good?

Some of it is good.  Some of it is great.  Some of it is lousy.  I can’t tell you which is which, though.  That you’ll have to discover for yourself.

This collection contains thirty pieces of fiction and non-fiction, many of them by well recognized authors such as Brad Torgerson, L. Jagi Lamplighter, Declann Finn, Milo, Ivan Throne, John C. Wright, and Jon Del Arroz. It also includes works by rising stars such as Alfred Genesson, Dawn Witzke, Marina Fontaine, and the inimitable @Kaijubushi.

While the writing snaps and pops across the board, the styles of works in this eclectic collection of authors runs the gamut. The tone of the stories varies wildly, from Del Arroz’s over-the-top wahoo story of a TrumpMech piloted by young Barron fighting an irradiated Kim Jong-Unzilla (spoilers!) to the Christine Chase’s much more understated tale of a young woman serving as the audience for her grandmother’s reminisces about the days of fighting the black bloc and driving them from the streets way back in the early 2020’s. The weight of the message varies within the works as well. Sometimes the point of the story is a thin patina, as in Marina Fontaine’s story of a man coming out of the conservative closet and admitting his wrongthink to relatives. Sometimes it has all the subtlety of a Neil Blomkampf movie, as in Scott Bell’s story of police officers forced to head into the bleak hellscape of a city set aside as a reservation for socialists to live out their dreams of starvation and death camps where their idiocy can’t hurt decent Americans.

As to the non-fiction, they covering an equally wide spread of political ground. Ivan Throne offers an apologia for Trump that resonates with those who appreciate the multivariate ways in which the God-Emperor operates to destabilize the Deep State. John C. Wright’s unique erudition shines through as bright as ever in his think piece on how the cockroaches have and continue to scurry about in the wake of the 2016 election. My personal favorite of the non-fiction pieces is Monalisa Foster’s essay on the nature of language and her experience as a right-wing writer bobbing along in a sea of the left-wing subculture of writing.

That broad spectrum of approaches solidifies the book’s appeal for those across the political spectrum – at least that part of it that lies to the right of NPR. Edited by Jason Rennie, an excellent judge of work and a fine editor, “MAGA 2020 & Beyond” in unafraid of a little experimentation.  Some of the experiments work, and some don’t, but they are all worth reading, if only to find out where your personal line lies between “fun” and “preachy”.

The skinflints among this book’s readership will feel likely cheated and argue that the works they don’t like somehow took enjoyment away from the works they do. That’s an unfortunate way to view this book, given that one of the underlying themes that consistently occurs in each work is a message of optimism and hope for the future. Like America herself – like Trump himself for that matter – this is not a perfect book. It has a few sour notes and no one will like everything they find between its covers, but on the whole, this book is fantastic. It stands for something much greater than itself, and it inspires those who embrace it to do more, to do better, and to make more of themselves.

It’s also worth noting that MAGA 2020 & Beyond largely forgoes pessimistic sneering at the common culture in favor of a more sunny approach.  This book oozes with optimism and takes the path of building something worth reading rather than conducting more Monday morning quarterbacking of the dumpster fire that is American media.  It’s a positive approach to replacing the dumpster fire with a roaring backwoods bonfire, complete with an invitation to men of good will to join in the laughter and fun.  In that, this book also represents another example of the shift in the cultural war from a decades long Republican rear-guard action to an aggressive attack by the right-wing newcomers who seek to capture the cultural high ground through building something up rather than trying to tear something down.  As such, this book represents a far more effective action than all of the think pieces ever written by the National Review crowd.

Of course, the real question for readers is whether or not this collection is worth the money, and the answer to that is a resounding YES. You probably won’t like all of it, but there’s a definitely something in here for everyone.

For certain definitions of the term, “everyone”.

Book Review: HITLER IN HELL

Fabius Maximus reviews Martin van Creveld’s HITLER IN HELL:

Summary: Hitler in Hell is one of the most important books of the year. As America drifts to fascism, we must understand what happened to Germany. Books like this can help us avoid taking a dark path like they did. It can happen here, in some form.

The fall of Germany to fascism was one of the epochal events in western history. Fascism, in its many forms, is endemic to western societies. But Germany, a center of culture and science, should have been the most resistant of nations. How did it fall so far, so fast? These answers might help us prevent this infection from flaring up again.

An ancient adage says that you do not understand a situation unless you can explain how each party saw it. The countless histories of WWII ignore one perspective: Hitler’s. How would he explain his actions? What methods brought him to total rule of the largest nation in Europe and conquests unrivaled since Napoleon?

Based on a stupendous amount of research, Martin van Creveld has given us some answers in his newest book, Hitler in Hell.

“The method I chose was to try to get into his skin, as far as possible, so as to understand what made him tick. …Where there were gaps, I used what knowledge and understanding I thought I had in an attempt to close them. …I tried to understand Hitler’s actions, views, and thoughts as I think he, observing the past and the present from Hell, would have explained them.”

This is the ultimate celebrity bio, the extreme version of a “how to” book. Hitler started with nothing, joined the Nazi party when it was little more than a sewing circle, took command of Germany at the depths of the Great Depression, and led it to the fastest recovery in the world. This book explains how he did it. So much of the 20th century followed paths that he blazed. If only he had stopped there.

The book is important in two senses. First, the tides of fascism are rising again in Europe and America. Screaming Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! probably doesn’t help. It is like a disease. We need to understand it better. Causes, contagion, and cures. History, in the form of Hitler’s words and deeds, is a useful guide.

Second, Hitler’s story is rich with useful lessons about building organizations and changing the course of nations. It is one of the most insightful and practical guides to success I have seen. Seeing events through Hitler’s eyes makes learning from him easier, since Hitler’s monstrous deeds make objective analysis of — let alone learning from — them almost impossible.

It’s a solid, detailed review. Read the whole thing there.

Book Review: SAPIENS by Yuval Harari IV

Review of Yuval Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
by C.R.Hallpike
The complete PDF

Part IV of IV

Harari’s next major turning point in world history he refers to, reasonably enough, as  ‘The Scientific Revolution’.  Around AD 1500 ‘It began in western Europe, a large peninsula on the western tip of Afro-Asia, which up till then played no important role in history.’ (p. 272) This is a unconvincing assessment of a region that had been the seat of the Roman Empire, the Christian Church, and Greek science which was one of the essential foundations of the Scientific Revolution. Harari’s opinions about how this got started are even less persuasive:

The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has above all been a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important question. (p. 279).

This is a statement whose truth is not immediately obvious, and he justifies it as follows:

Premodern traditions of knowledge such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism asserted that everything that is important to know about the world was already known. The great gods, or the one almighty God, or the wise people of the past possessed all-encompassing wisdom, which they revealed to us in scriptures and oral traditions (pp. 279-80).

These traditions may have claimed to know all that was essential to salvation and peace of mind, but that kind of knowledge had nothing whatsoever to do with pre-modern traditions of science. In Europe this meant Aristotle and Greek natural philosophy but about which, astonishingly, Harari has nothing at all to say anywhere in his book. Apart from a willingness to admit ignorance and embrace new knowledge, science

…has a common core of research methods, which are all based on collecting empirical observations – those we can observe with at least one of our senses – and putting them together with the help of mathematical tools (p. 283).

This is a nineteenth-century view of what science does, whereas the really distinctive feature of modern science is that it tests theory by experiment, and does not simply collect empirical observations. On why modern science developed specifically in Europe Harari has the following explanation:

The key factor was that the plant-seeking botanist and the colony-seeking naval officer shared a similar mindset. Both scientist and conqueror began by admitting ignorance – they both said ‘I don’t know what’s out there.’ They both felt compelled to go out and make new discoveries. And they both hoped that the new knowledge would make them masters of the world (pp. 316-17).

Botany was actually of quite minor importance in the early stages of modern science, which was dominated by studies of terrestrial and celestial motion (Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton), and by chemistry which involved the revival of Greek atomism. And Columbus, to take a useful example of ‘a colony-seeking naval officer’ knew quite well what was out there. He knew that the earth is round, and concluded that if he sailed west for long enough he would find a new route to the East Indies. So when he reached the islands of the Caribbean he was convinced that their inhabitants were ‘Indians’ and never changed his mind. I think we can perhaps do a little better than Harari in explaining the European origin of modern science.

Greek science was dominated by the belief that reason, and particularly mathematics, was the true path to knowledge and its role was to be the tutor of the senses, not to be taught by them. The idea of performing an experiment did not really exist, and the great Alexandrian engineer Hero, for example believed that water pressure does not increase with depth. He defended this belief with an ingenious theory from Archimedes, but ignored the practical experiment of taking a glass down to the bottom of a pool where it could easily have been seen that the water rises higher inside the glass the deeper it is taken. Aristotle’s theories of terrestrial and celestial motion, and Ptolemy’s elaborate geometrical model of the heavens, for example, were seen as triumphs of reason, and were inherited by the medieval European universities who began a critical study of them. The importance of Greek science, however,  was not that it was right – it contained fundamental errors – but that it presented a coherent theoretical model of how the world worked that stimulated thought and could be tested.

The Islamic world had transmitted much of Greek science to medieval Europe, and Aristotle in particular was greatly admired by Muslim scholars as ‘The Philosopher’. But under the influence of the clerics Islam eventually turned against reason and science as dangerous to religion, and this renaissance died out. In rather similar fashion, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian closed the philosophy schools of Athens in 529 AD because he considered them dangerous to Christianity. But while in the thirteenth century several Popes, for the same reason, tried to forbid the study of Aristotle in the universities, they were ignored and in fact by the end of the century Aquinas had been able to publish his synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology in the Summa Theologica.

This illustrates a vital difference between Europe and the other imperial civilisations. Whereas the Caliph and the Byzantine Emperor had the authority to impose intellectual orthodoxy, in Europe the Popes could not enforce their will on society, and neither could the secular authorities, because there were too many competing jurisdictions – of the Holy Roman Emperor, of kings, of free cities, of universities, and between church and state themselves. Another vital difference was that in the other imperial civilisations there was that basic gulf between scholars and artisans and between merchants and the rest of the upper classes to which I referred earlier. Medieval European towns and cities, however, were run by merchants, together with the artisans and their guilds, so that the social status of artisans in particular was very much higher than in other cultures, and it was possible for them to interact socially with learned scholars. This interaction with scholars occurred in the context of a wide range of interests that combined book-learning with practical skills: alchemy, astrology, medicine, painting, printing, clock-making, the magnetic compass, gunpowder and gunnery, lens-grinding for spectacles, and so on. These skills were also intimately involved in the making of money in a commercially dynamic society.

It is highly significant that this interaction between scholars and artisans also occurred in the intellectual atmosphere of ‘natural magic’, the belief that the entire universe is a vast system of interrelated correspondences, a hierarchy in which everything acts upon everything else. Alchemy and astrology were the most important components of this tradition, but by the thirteenth century Roger Bacon, for example, was arguing that by applying philosophy and mathematics to the study of nature it would be possible to produce all sorts of technological marvels such as horseless vehicles, flying machines, and glasses for seeing great distances. It was not therefore the admission of ignorance that was truly revolutionary, but  the idea that science could be useful in mastering nature for the benefit of Man.

By the time of Galileo, whom Harari does not even mention, the idea that science should be useful had become a dominant idea of Western science. Galileo was very much in the natural magic tradition and was a prime example of a man of learning who was equally at home in the workshop as in the library – as is well-known, when he heard of the Dutch invention of the telescope he constructed one himself and ground his own lenses to do so. But Galileo was also enormously important in showing the crucial part that experiment had in the advancement of science. He was keenly interested in Aristotle’s theory of terrestrial motion and is said to have tested the theory that heavier bodies fall faster than light ones by dropping them from the leaning tower of Pisa. This is somewhat mythical, but he certainly carried out detailed experiments with metal balls by rolling them down sloping planks to discover the basic laws of acceleration. He did not simply observe, but designed specific experiments to test theories. This is the hall-mark of modern science, and it emerged in the circumstances that I have just described so that reason and the evidence of the senses were thus harmonized in the modern form of natural science. (On the origins of science see Hallpike 2008:288-353; 396-428).

Science, then, is not exactly Harari’s strong point, so we need spend little time on the concluding part of his book, which is taken up with speculation about where science and technology are likely to take the human race in the next hundred years. He concludes, however, with some plaintive remarks about our inability to plan our future: ‘we remain unsure of our goals’, ‘nobody knows where we are going’, ‘we are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power’ (pp. 465-66). He has just written a book showing that mankind’s social and cultural evolution has been a process over which no-one could have had any control. So why does he suddenly seize upon the extraordinary fiction that there ought to be some ‘we’ who could now decide where we all go next? Even if such a ‘we’ existed, let us say in the form of the United Nations, how could it know what to do anyway? 

Throughout the book there is also a strange vacillation between hard-nosed Darwinism and egalitarian sentiment. On one hand Harari quite justifiably mocks the humanists’ naive belief in human rights, for not realising that these rights are based on Christianity, and that a huge gulf has actually opened up between the findings of science and modern liberal ideals. But on the other hand it is rather bewildering to find him also indulging in long poetic laments about the thousands of years of injustice, inequality and suffering imposed on the masses by the great states and empires of history, and our cruelty to our animal ‘slaves’ whom we have slaughtered and exterminated in such vast numbers, so that he concludes ‘The Sapiens reign on earth has so far produced little that we can be proud of’. But a consistent Darwinist should surely rejoice to see such a fine demonstration of the survival of the fittest, with other species either decimated or subjected to human rule, and the poor regularly ground under foot in the struggle for survival. Indeed, the future looks even better for Darwinism, with nation states themselves about to be submerged by a mono-cultural world order, in which we ourselves are destined to be replaced by a superhuman race of robots.

It has been rightly said that:

Harari’s view of culture and of ethical norms as fundamentally fictional makes impossible any coherent moral framework for thinking about and shaping our future. And it asks us to pretend that we are not what we know ourselves to be – thinking and feeling subjects, moral agents with free will, and social beings whose culture builds upon the facts of the physical world but is not limited to them (Sexton 2015:120).

Summing up the book as a whole, one has often had to point out how surprisingly little he seems to have read on quite a number of essential topics. It would be fair to say that whenever his facts are broadly correct they are not new, and whenever he tries to strike out on his own he often gets things wrong, sometimes seriously. So we should not judge Sapiens as a serious contribution to knowledge but as ‘infotainment’, a publishing event to titillate its readers by a wild intellectual ride across the  landscape of history, dotted with sensational displays of speculation, and ending with blood-curdling predictions about human destiny. By these criteria it is a most successful book. 

Book Review: A THRONE OF BONES by Vox Day

A review by Dystopia Soak. I always find it intriguing to discover how few of my blog readers read my fiction. That’s fine, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest, as everyone has different tastes and preferences. It’s not as if most regulars here get into Eco, Hesse, and Murakami either. But it is still satisfying to hear when someone finally gets around to giving it a shot and then discovers that it’s really not that bad.

After Tolkien, no fantasy novel captured my attention again, though not for lack of trying. Over the decades, I picked up a lot of authors, each of them creating worlds and plots as anaemic and derivative as the rest. Few held my attention for even a chapter. By the late 90s I had stopped picking them up altogether. As far as genres went, fantasy was a dead end.

Then my wife heard about a new television series, and we binge watched a couple of seasons. No prizes for guessing what it was. After the first few episodes, I was so inspired I took a ‘look inside’ the first instalment on Amazon. George R.R. Martin was as good on paper as Benioff and Weiss were on screen. This was good stuff, and I started to wonder if I had finally found what I was looking for.

Alas, no. By the time I got my hands on a copy of Game of Thrones, Martin’s predilection for proving points by killing characters had become tiresome. As had his points about the cartoonish nature of good battling evil. I watched on, losing interest, putting aside the book, which I never started. Besides, my wife heard about Breaking Bad, and GoT faded into the background.

I could be forgiven, then, for skipping over reviews extolling the virtues of a new epic high fantasy by Vox Day when they first started appearing. For several years, I ignored advice to read Throne of Bones from people who struck me as otherwise sensible. I had had enough. It was one thing to read the man’s blog, but quite another to have my antipathy towards the genre confirmed.

That turned out to be a foolish mistake, because Vox Day is not like other fantasy writers. Where others try to mock and tear down all that is central to Western civilisation, Day has returned to the very heart of what makes the West great. And by doing so has provided us with the first true epic high fantasy since Tolkien to confront the consequences of losing out to barbarism.

If you haven’t read A THRONE OF BONES yet, it’s available in Kindle, KU, hardcover, and paperback. And audiobook fans will be pleased to know that Jeremy Daw has begun recording what will be a 36-hour monster. He has already recorded THE LAST WITCHKING & OTHER STORIES if you want to hear what he sounds like.

Those who have expressed interest in giving out copies of SJWADD to members of their organizations should be pleased to know that the paperback should be available on Amazon by the end of the week. And speaking of reviews, of a sort, it was nice to see this in a piece on Hollywood Values champion James Toback over at Taki’s place:

Regarding the allegations being made against him, Toback told the up for sale ass brownie known as Rolling Stone:

The idea that I would offer a part to anyone for any other reason than that he or she was gonna be the best of anyone I could find is so disgusting to me. And anyone who says it is a lying cocksucker or cunt or both. Can I be any clearer than that?

Toback’s statement signals that he’s either well versed in Vox Day’s 2015 masterpiece SJWs Always Lie, a psychopath, or both.

Read the whole thing there. But as grateful as I am for Mr. Spielman’s praise of my book, I can’t say that I agree with his hypothesis. As Nick Cole and I have both independently concluded, the Hollywood Values scandal is not aimed at Warren Beatty (who, as an Alpha, never needed to engage in the predatory Gamma behavior exhibited by Weinstein and Toback), but rather, is primarily a defensive burn by the powerful Hollywood gays to try to distract from their exposure and eventual reckoning.

As Nick pointed out, Dustin Hoffman? How long has it been since he was even remotely relevant? That is the desperate behavior of evil men on a sinking ship throwing out everyone and everything they can get their hands on in a futile attempt to keep the ship from going underwater.

Book Review: SAPIENS by Yuval Harari III

Review of Yuval Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
by C.R.Hallpike

Part III of IV

Anyway, what was needed here to control these much larger populations were networks of mass co-operation, under the control of kings, and Harari takes us almost immediately into the world of the ancient empires of Egypt, and Mesopotamia, and Persia and China. But how were these networks of mass communication created?

He recognises, quite rightly, the importance of writing and mathematics in human history, and claims they were crucial in the emergence of the state:

…in order to maintain a large kingdom, mathematical data was vital. It was never enough to legislate laws and tell stories about guardian gods. One also had to collect taxes. In order to tax hundreds of thousands of people, it was imperative to collect data about people’s incomes and possessions; data about payments made; data about arrears, debts and fines; data about discounts and exemptions. This added up to millions of data bits, which had to be stored and processed (p. 137).

This was beyond the power of the human brain, however.

This mental limitation severely constrained the size and complexity of human collectives. When the amount of people in  a particular society crossed a critical threshold, it became necessary to store and process large amounts of mathematical data. Since the human brain could not do it, the system collapsed. For thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution, human social networks remained relatively small and simple (p. 137).

But it is simply not true that kingdoms need to collect vast quantities of financial data in order to tax their subjects, or that social systems beyond a certain size collapsed until they had invented writing and a numerical system for recording this data. If Harari were right it would not have been possible for any kingdoms at all to have developed in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, because there were no forms of writing systems in this region until quite late when a few developed under European or Islamic influence (Ethiopia was a special case.)  Nevertheless, pre-colonial Africa was actually littered with states and even empires that functioned perfectly well without writing.

They were able to do this because of the undemanding administrative conditions of early kingdoms. These are based on subsistence agriculture without money and have primitive modes of transport, unless they have easy access to river transport like Egypt, Mesopotamia or China. They also have a simple administrative structure based on a hierarchy of local chiefs or officials who play a prominent part in the organization of tribute. The actual expenses of government, apart from the royal court, are therefore relatively small, and the king may have large herds of cattle or other stock, and large estates and labourers to work them to provide food and beer for guests. The primary duty of a ruler is generosity to his nobles and guests, and to his subjects in distress, not to construct vast public works like pyramids. The basic needs of a ruler, besides food supplies, would be prestige articles as gifts of honour, craft products, livestock, and above all men as soldiers and labourers. In Baganda, one of the largest African states, with a population of around two million, tax messengers were sent out when palace resources were running low:

The goods collected were of various kinds –  livestock, cowry shells, iron hoe-blades, and the cloths made from the bark of a fig-tree beaten out thin [for clothing and bedding]…Cattle were required of superior chiefs, goats and hoes of lesser ones, and the peasants contributed the cowry shells and barkcloths….the tax-gatherers did not take a proportion of every herd but required a fixed number of cattle from each chief. Of course the hoes and barkcloths had to be new, and they were not made and stored up in anticipation of the tax-collection. It took some little time to produce the required number, and the tax-gatherers had to wait for this and then supervise the transport of the goods and cattle, first to the saza [district] headquarters and then to the capital. The amount due was calculated in consultation with the subordinates of the saza chiefs who were supposed to know the exact number of men under their authority, and they were responsible for seeing that it was delivered (Mair 1962:163). (Manpower was recruited in basically the same way, and in Africa generally was made up of slaves and corvée labour.)

Nor do early states require written law codes in the style of Hamurabi, and most cases can be settled orally by traditional local courts. No doubt, the demands of administering early states made writing and mathematical notation very useful, and eventually indispensable, but the kinds of financial data that Harari deems essential for a tax system could only have been available in very advanced societies. As we have just seen, very much simpler systems were quite viable. (Since the Sumerian system of mathematical notation is the example that Harari chooses to illustrate the link between taxation, writing, and mathematics, it is a pity that he gets it wrong. The Sumerians did not, as he supposes, use a ‘a combination of base 6 and base 10 numeral systems’. As is well-known, they actually used base 60, with sub-base 10 to count from 1 – 59, 61 – 119, and so on. [Chrisomalis 2010:241-45])

When the Agricultural Revolution opened opportunities for the creation of crowded cities and mighty empires, people invented stories about great gods, motherlands and joint-stock companies to provide the needed social links. (p. 115)  

The idea of people ‘inventing’ religious beliefs to ‘provide the needed social links’ comes out of the same rationalist stable as the claim that kings invented religious beliefs to justify their oppression of their subjects and that capitalists did the same to justify their exploitation of their workers. Religious belief simply doesn’t work like that. It is true, however, that what he calls universal and missionary religions started appearing in the first millennium BC.

Their emergence was one of the most important revolutions in history, and made a vital contribution to the unification of humankind, much like the emergence of universal empires and universal money. (p. 235)

But his chapter on the rise of the universal religions is extremely weak, and his explanation  of monotheism, for example, goes as follows:

With time some followers of polytheist gods became so fond of their particular patron that they drifted away from the basic polytheist insight. They began to believe that their god was the only god, and that He was in fact the supreme power of the universe. Yet at the same time they continued to view Him as possessing interests and biases, and believed that they could strike deals with Him. Thus were born monotheist religions, whose followers beseech the supreme power of the universe to help them recover from illness, win the lottery and gain victory in war. (p. 242)

This is amateurish speculation, and Harari does not even seem to have heard of the Axial Age. This is the term applied by historians to the period of social turmoil that occurred during the first millennium BC across Eurasia, of political instability, warfare, increased commerce and the appearance of coinage, and urbanization, that in various ways eroded traditional social values and social bonds. The search for meaning led to a new breed of thinkers, prophets and philosophers who searched for a more transcendent and universal authority on how we should live and gain tranquillity of mind, that went beyond the limits of their own society and traditions, and beyond purely material prosperity. People developed a much more articulate awareness of the mind and the self than hitherto, and also rejected the old pagan values of worldly success and materialism. As one authority has put it:

‘Everywhere one notices attempts to introduce greater purity, greater justice, greater perfection, and a more universal explanation of things’ (Momigliano 1975:8-9; see also Hallpike 2008:236-65).

One of the consequences of this new cultural order was a fundamental rethinking of religion, so that the old pagan gods began to seem morally and intellectually contemptible. Instead of this naively human image of the gods, said the Greek Xenophanes, ‘One God there is…in no way like mortal creatures either in bodily form or in the thought of his mind… effectively, he wields all things by the thought of his mind.’ So we find all across the Old World the idea developing of a rational cosmic order, a divine universal law, known to the Greeks as Logos, to the Indians as Brahman, to the Jews as Hokhma, and to the Chinese as Tao. This also involved the very important idea that the essential and distinctive mental element in man is akin to the creative and ordering element in the cosmos, of Man as microcosm in relation to the macrocosm.

Intellectually, the idea that the universe makes sense at some deep level, that it is governed by a unified body of rational laws given by a divine Creator, became an essential belief for the development of science, not only among the Greeks, but in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. As Joseph Needham has said, ‘…historically the question remains whether natural science could ever have reached its present stage of development without passing through a “theological stage” ‘ (Needham 1956:582).

Against this new intellectual background it also became much easier to think of Man not as a citizen of a particular state, but in universal terms as a moral being. There is the growth of the idea of a common humanity which transcends the boundaries of nation and culture and social distinctions of rank, such as slavery, so that all good men are brothers, and the ideal condition of Man would be universal peace (Hallpike 2016:167-218).

Harari tries to create a distinction between ‘monotheistic’ religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and ‘natural law religions’, without gods in which he includes Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Stoicism, and the Epicureans. From what I have said about the concepts of Logos, Hokhma, Brahman, and Tao it should be clear that his two types of religion actually had  much in common. In Christianity, for example, Jesus was almost immediately identified with the Logos. The Epicureans, however, do not belong in this group at all as they were ancient materialist atheists who did not believe in natural law of any kind. One of the most obvious facts about states in history is that they all were hierarchical, dividing people into different classes with kings and nobles at the top enjoying wealth and luxury, and peasants or slaves at the bottom in poverty, men privileged over women, some ethnic groups privileged over others, and so on. Harari attributes all this to the invention of writing, and to the ‘imagined orders’ that sustained the large networks involved in state organization.

The imagined orders sustaining these networks were neither neutral nor fair. They divided people into make-believe groups, arranged in a hierarchy. The upper levels enjoyed privileges and power, while the lower ones suffered from discrimination. Hammurabi’s Code, for example established a pecking order of superiors, commoners and slaves. Superiors got all the good things in life. Commoners got what was left. Slaves got a beating if they complained. (p. 149)

 But since these sorts of hierarchies in state societies are universal in what sense can they have simply been ‘make-believe’? Doesn’t this universality suggest that there were actually laws of social and economic development at work here which require sociological analysis? Simply saying that ‘there is no justice in history’ is hardly good enough. In particular, he fails to notice two very significant types of inequality, that of merchants in relation to the upper classes, and of craftsmen in relation to scholars, which had major implications for the development of civilisation, but to which I shall return later.

Harari says that religion and empires have been two of the three great unifiers of the human race, along with money: 

Empires were one of the main reasons for the drastic reduction in human diversity. The imperial steamroller gradually obliterated the unique characteristics of numerous peoples…forging out of them new and much larger groups (p. 213)

These claims have a good deal of truth but they are also quite familiar, so I shall not go into Harari’s discussion of this theme, except for his strange notion of ‘Afro-Asia’, which he describes not only as an ecological system but also as having some sort of cultural unity, e.g. ‘During the first millennium BC, religions of an altogether new kind began to spread through Afro-Asia’ (p. 249). 

Culturally, however, sub-Saharan Africa was entirely cut off from developments in Europe and Asia until Islamic influence began spreading into West Africa in the eighth century AD, and has been largely irrelevant to world history except as a source of slaves and raw materials. And as Diamond pointed out in Guns, Germs and Steel, Africa is an entirely distinct ecological system because it is oriented north/south, so that it is divided by its climatic zones, whereas Eurasia is oriented east/west, so that the same climatic zones extend all across it, and wheat and horses for example are found all the way from Ireland to Japan.

Harari says that at the beginning of the sixteenth century, 90{b05c51a15f0a42d8e7dd687f4cc4bfffd66a97ee173a2742c6182468204332c9} of humans still lived in ‘the single mega-world of Afro-Asia’, while the rest lived in the Meso-American, Andean, and Oceanic worlds. ‘Over the next 300 years the Afro-Asian giant swallowed up all the other worlds’, by which he actually means the expanding colonial empires of the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French and British.

But to refer to these nations as ‘Afro-Asian’  is conspicuously absurd, and the whole concept of Afro-Asia is actually meaningless from every point of view. The general idea of Eurasia, however, does make a good deal of cultural as well as ecological sense, not only because it recognises the obvious importance of Europe, but because of the cultural links that went to and fro across it, so that the early navigators of the fifteenth century were using the Chinese inventions of magnetic compasses, stern-post rudders, paper for their charts, and gunpowder, and were making their voyages to find sea-routes from Europe to China and the East Indies rather than relying on overland trade.

Part IV will be posted tomorrow.