White Fragility

May21

If you have ever wondered why some people respond to the suggestion that something they’ve said is racist with outrage over the implication that they could ever be racist rather than with a desire to understand why, make amends and educate themselves, this book will help you understand.

White Fragility: Why it’s so hard for White People to talk about Racism is written by Robin D’Angelo, a white person with decades of experience delivering racial justice training to organizations. Throughout that experience she has met with responses that are familiar to me, and probably many other people. These responses generally go along the lines of ‘I define myself as not-racist, so therefore nothing I say or do could possibly be racist’ and ‘You saying something I said or did was racist is far, far more offensive and harmful to me than the racist thing I said is harmful to someone else, and therefore it is much more important for me to defend myself than to entertain the idea that I inadvertently said something racist’. What we’re not talking about here is the overt sentiments and statements of someone who consciously identifies as a white supremacist. We’re talking about progressives, moderates and conservatives who truly believe they are not racist (and certainly don’t intend to be) but who do not understand how growing up in historically racist societies have embedded attitudes and language that have their origins in racist ideology.

For me, knowing that I grew up in a country with an imperial legacy that used racist ideology to justify its exploitation of non-white peoples, some of which was enshrined in law, and lots of which was embedded in literature, art and other cultural media, makes it seem pretty obvious that I enjoy privileges that I wouldn’t have if I weren’t white, and pretty obvious I might not be fully aware of all the racist opinions and beliefs I’ve absorbed from my culture. Of course I would be horrified if someone told me I’d said something racist and probably my first instinct would be to be defensive (isn’t it always?). But I like to think I could move past that to apologising and figuring out what was behind what I’d said so that it didn’t happen again.

D’Angelo’s book pulls apart the various factors that lead to a different response and it’s illuminating. Central is the idea that we like to see ourselves as good people and the definition of a good white person currently includes not being racist. This means that being called out for saying something racist is an identity threat – to which people tend to respond with some emotional heat.

I found the discussion on how white people are taught about their own history or, more to the point, not taught interesting. When I was at school I learnt about a sanitised, positive British empire focused on exploration, adventure and discovery, and it wasn’t until reading more as an adult that I began to understand what empire was really all about. Even if a white person grows up in an area where there are lots of non-white people, that doesn’t mean we understand anything about the social construct of race and how it impacts people, because it is not openly talked about in the arenas most white people get their information. Also interesting is the information about how classifications of someone as white – in order to determine who was eligible to own property – developed and how convoluted they became, all in the service of restricting wealth and privilege to a small minority.

Reading White Fragility gave me a lot of insight into why it is actually so hard to shift the systemic disadvantages/privileges associated with race and to create more equal outcomes and opportunities for people. It also gave me better ways to talk about these things. Highly recommended.

DeGrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era

May10

DeGrowth: A Vocabularyfor a New Era is a collection of essays exploring degrowth and related concepts.

Degrowth is a philosophy that says in order for human societies to survive the climate catastrophe, we have to shrink our economies, and to re-think what it means to live a good life. The dominant ideology of our time is rooted in constant, devouring growth, using up finite material resources such as oil and rare earths. The degrowth movement says that we have to let go of growth as our marker of progress and success. Sustainable development is rejected as a delusion; we can’t halt or reverse the damage we’ve done to the earth and still have a consumerist society.

A challenge with the degrowth point of view is how societies are organized and focused if we are not driven by growth. Many of the concepts defined in this book are ideas of how to do that both in terms of institutions and individuals. Some sectors of the economy, such as care, healthcare and education would be expected to expand, and societies would be more focused around community. Ways in which to reduce inequality and to ensure that the onus of degrowth is put in the right place (on the over-consuming elites of the Global North) are also described.

This is a useful book which lays out a series of concepts that could help us live more at peace with the earth and each other. It’s also a good pointer to the thinkers in this space so that you can read more.

Tantra

Apr23

There will be a British Museum theme to most of the next few posts.

Tantra by Dr Imma Ramos is the book of the British Museum exhibition on Tantra. It had just opened in early 2020 when the pandemic hit and so I didn’t get to see the exhibition itself.

The book and exhibition tell the history of the development of Tantra as a reaction to and subversion of conservative and hierarchical Hinduism. It took the taboo or forbidden elements and turned them into ways to connect with the gods and absorb their power. There was a path that took the teachings and rituals literally and one which took them symbolically, using visualization rather than practice. Given that Tantra had a focus on power in the mundane world, it was enthusiastically adopted by rulers in the Indian sub-continent. Tantra spread east and was also absorbed by Buddhism, creating new Tantric paths with a Buddhist flavour. Using art and sculpture from the time, Dr Ramos shows how themes of conquering ego and ignorance are represented and unlocks the symbolism in the representation of Tantric gods and goddesses.

The book explores how Tantra was misunderstood and misrepresented by the British during the colonial period. Tantric sex means uniting the masculine and feminine energies in order to connect with divinity and is not about purely sexual pleasure, but the representation of this element of Tantra in sculpture and painting was interpreted salaciously by western minds. It was also considered pagan and demonic. The way Tantra was viewed and talked about in the West then evolved into the way it was adopted by the counter-cultural movements of the late 20th century, with an emphasis on sex rather than spirituality.

In India, Tantra became associated with the resistance to colonialism and became closely connected to Indian nationalism. Dr Ramos shows how Tantric deities were used to promote Indian-made goods and how the symbolism came to include the fight for independence.

This is an eye-opening book and it’s a real shame I missed the exhibition. I both learned and unlearned a lot.

Stonehenge

Apr23

Welcome to my annual flurry of posts about books, where I realise I haven’t posted anything in months, have a few weeks of activity, and then get distracted by work and life again.

Anyway, recently I went to the World of Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum and, as I do, I bought a book. Stonehenge by Rosemary Hill is about how Stonehenge has been interpreted, treated and used throughout the centuries. From the romantic fiction dressed up as fact of Geoffrey of Monmouth to roughly about ten years ago, Hill traces the history of our efforts to understand the ancient monument.

Particularly interesting is how the druid theory has taken on a life of it’s own. Starting as an idea based on nothing much more than a mention of druids by Tacitus, supposedly an eye witness account, and an idea that Stonehenge dated from the Roman era, it has morphed into a movement that sees druids celebrating the summer solstice amongst the stones. We know nothing about the druids as they left no written records. Everything that is said about them is a modern invention. It might be right, but we don’t know.

Hill covers the ownership of Stonehenge, mostly private and the campaigns to acquire it for the nation. Some of those owners chose not to allow any archeaological digs, which given the damage some of the early ones did is probably a good thing. More recent digs have discovered burial mounds, human remains, and evidence of the age of Stonehenge and that it was built in at least three stages.

Stonehenge has inspired art, literature and poetry for centuries. Hill’s explores how it has been used as a canvas for the spiritual and philosophical ideas of the age. She shows how the more bloody, sacrificial interpretations are comnected to times of civil unrest.

This is a thoughtful and engaging book, well researched and constructed. Definitely worth reading.

Lion: Pride before the Fall

Aug14

Lion: Pride before the Fall is a photography book featuring the last lion prides in Africa, profits from which go to support the conservation work of Born Free.

There are only 20,000 lions left in the wild and their range is limited to a few places in Africa, where once they could be found in Europe and Asia as well. The photographs are gorgeous, but this is a profoundly upsetting book. It is possible that lions will be extinct in the wild by 2050. They are under threat from the clash with people as settlements encroach on lion territory. Lions will kill livestock. People poison lions to protect their livelihoods. They are also at risk from poachers and trophy hunters.

There are more lions in captivity. Those in private collections, zoos, and in farms where they are bred for canned hunting. Captive lions are a tragic shadow of themselves. Without the space they need, ranges of tens of miles, and the ability to engage in their natural behaviours, they are nothing like they are in the wild.

It seems lion populations can recover fast. If their habitat is protected and a balance can be found between lion and human populations.

Addressing the horrors of the canned hunting business and the trade in lion bones is also important but lions rescued from these farms can rarely be released into the wild.

It’s a beautiful, devastating book. Well worth investing in.

Reality is not what it seems

Jul20

Writing popular science books is hard. Taking very complex topics and making them understandable to a lay person is a special skill.

Carlo Rovelli is the best science writer I have ever read. Reality is not what it seems: the journey to quantum gravity is indeed a joy to read.

Rovelli takes us on a journey from ancient Greek philosophers to today’s edge of theoretical physics. The first half of the book is devoted to telling the story of how our understanding of reality has developed from early Greeks like Democritus and Leucippus through Galileo, Newton and on to Faraday, Einstein and Bohr. It is amazing to me how what we know of the physics of the ancient Greeks is pieced together from tiny fragments of their writing, and what other philosophers said about their ideas. How devastating to understand what we’ve lost, and yet incredible that we know anything at all.

Rovelli builds up a picture of how we have come to understand the world, starting with concepts of atoms and particles, adding waves and fields, and ending with something quite different to what we might have learnt at school. I wonder how different the physics that is taught now is to what I was taught thirty years ago.

The second half of the book gets into what current theoretical physics is thinking about what reality is, with some description of how experimental physics is providing evidence for those theories. It ends with some discussion about the two main theories now competing to draw all this together.

I am obsessed with the idea that the reality of the universe is so completely alien to the human perception of our surroundings. It’s amazing that with such limited brains and ways of experiencing the world that we can even begin to understand what reality is. For me the best bit of this book is that time doesn’t exist independently of humans. There is no objective, separate thing that is time: our sense of time is generated by our existence.

Loved it. Definitely read this.

Writing from the Inside Out

Jun26

Book number two from the writing course reading list is Writing from the Inside Out by Dennis Palumbo. A good quarter of the books on the reading list are books on writing technique and other ‘how to write a novel’ type books.

Dennis Palumbo is a scriptwriter turned psychologist whose practice centres around working with writers and other creatives. He spends his days listening to writers who aren’t writing. Well, that seemed relevant.

In a series of small chapters talking about the various things that get in the way of writing, like isolation, waiting for inspiration, rejection, feeling blocked, fear and doubt, Palumbo draws on his writing experience and his therapeutic practice.

The central theme is that all the feelings writers have, rather than getting in the way of writing, are actually the fuel that we should be putting into our work.

The Doll Funeral

Jun22

I’m doing a writing course for the next nine months and the reading list is quite intimidating. There are nearly 100 books on it. It’s been less than two weeks and I’ve bought ten of them already. Obviously, I’ll buy more than I read and many will sit on the bookcase unread for years. But some will get read, and thus reviewed. Or what passes for a review on this blog.

The first of those is The Doll Funeral by Kate Hamer. I read a three-page extract as part of my homework this week. It was well-written with a rich, evocative style and a real sense of menace in those few pages. Enough to make me want to find out what was going on.

It was not the story I thought it was going to be. From the extract I expected that sense of menace throughout and for the story to be how the protagonist, Ruby, escapes her predicament. It’s not quite that. Ruby learns on her thirteenth birthday that her parents are not her birth parents. For Ruby, this is good news. Her father is violent and hateful towards her and her mother weak and ineffectual. The terror of this situation is effectively conveyed in the first third of the book.

Then the tone shifts. Ruby stands up to her father and, thinking she’s done something irreversible, flees into the forest. After a few days she returns to find that her adoptive parents have decided to ship her off to an aunt. Ruby runs again. This time she finds other lost children and attempts to survive a winter with them. Interleaved with Ruby’s story is her real mother’s tale. Then there’s the thread where Ruby sees the spirits of the dead. In the end Ruby finds out about her real parents and they’re not much better than her adoptive ones. It’s kind of a happy ending, but one that feels out of kilter with the menace of the beginning.

Overall, I didn’t enjoy this much. I liked the first third. The writing is evocative and creates a claustrophobic and frightening opening, but it made promises the rest of the book didn’t keep. In the rest of the book I was more interested in the mother’s story. I liked the way there was always the suggestion that Ruby seeing spirits might have been caused by getting hit on the head so many times, whilst still conveying how utterly real it is to Ruby. I quite like books that resist classification. Despite all that, I found the ending unsatisfying and was disappointed not to read the story I thought I was going to read.

On a daily reading habit

Jun12

In January 2021 I gave myself a challenge to read for thirty minutes a day, every day for a month.

Prior to lockdown in March last year I read on weekdays on my commute. I had two and half hours a day on trains and tubes and at least some of that time was for reading. Then we shifted to working from home. So many upsides to that; and one significant downside. I stopped reading.

It has always felt self-indulgent to read at home. I guess it feels self-indulgent to read at all, but when I’m on train there’s not much else I can do so the two things have become closely connected in my mind. As I wasn’t on a train on an almost daily basis, I wasn’t reading.

Naturally, that didn’t mean I stopped buying books. I just stopped reading them. Or, slowed is more accurate. It’s not like I didn’t read anything between March 2020 and January 2021, I just didn’t do it very often.

Some things I know. Watching TV too much isn’t great for my mental health. My mood slips gradually the more TV I watch and sometimes it takes a while to catch it. At the end of the working day I am tired and it seems like watching TV is a low energy activity and picking up a book will be too much effort for my eyes and brain. I love reading and making time for it makes me feel better, yet somehow it’s hard to do when I’m not on a train.

With the change of routine and the uncertainty of 2020, unusually I felt the need for new year’s resolutions. I needed some small goals and structures for my non-working life, so I decided to give myself twelve monthly challenges, starting in January with reading for thirty minutes a day, every day.

In January, I cracked through about twelve books, plus finished off a few I’d started reading but not quite completed. There was one I started but didn’t like, so discarded it. I’ve grown out of reading books I’m not enjoying for the sake of completeness. I found that if I started the day with thirty minutes reading, I’d often spend another few hours in the afternoons and evenings reading too. I’m not going to tell you that reading consistently made me a better person in some way, because that’s not what it’s about. I can’t say I was more productive or more creative or more informed. It just made me happier.

The twelve monthly challenges thing lasted until March. Then I lost interest. The daily reading habit has stuck. It’s nice to wake up in the morning knowing the first thing I’m going to do is read my book for half an hour. My days are better because of it.

The Selected Poems of Li Po

Jun11

I don’t read a lot of poetry because I mostly don’t really get it, but occasionally something catches me. In this case, a quote in Civilization VI, when you receive the Great Writer Li Bai, an 8th century Chinese poet:

Flowers surround me, alone with my drink,
I pour for myself, no companion to join me.
I raise my glass and toast the full moon,
Who shall with my shadow make us three.

I liked it partly because Civ VI is narrated by Sean Bean and I could listen to him read anything, and partly I liked the simplicity, and partly that Li Bai mostly seems to write about wine. As a result I bought The Selected Poems of Li Po (the westernized name of Li Bai). They are beautiful. Simple and profound. And probably much deeper and more complex than I’m capable of appreciating.

As it happens, neither of the poems quoted in Civ VI were actually in this collection. This is from my favourite, On Hsieh T’iao’s Tower in Hsüan-Chou: A Farewell Dinner for Shu Yün:

 But slice water with a knife, and water still flows,
empty a winecup to end grief, and grief remains grief.