2020 books and thoughts (1/2)

I came back to Vancouver from Brazil in Nov 2019. Because of my experience in Brazil, I couldn't stop thinking about social issues. Why is there such inequality? Why caused poverty? Why are our societies structured in this way? For these reasons, at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, I was reading books like "Capital in the 21st Century" and "Poor Economics".

There's another book I haven't finished, it's called "Progress and Poverty". It wasn't until this moment, when I tried to understand these questions, I realized the importance of studying economics. Economics is an important tool for us to understand the structure of our society.

"Capital in the 21st Century" gave a very approachable analysis of why the poor get poorer and why the rich get richer. More importantly, I realized that I asked the wrong question. I once wanted to know "what caused poverty?". Actually, the right question should be "what caused wealth?". We were all poor back in the days. It was some people found a way to get rich.

Both "Capital in the 21st Century" and "Poor Economics" emphasized that if we want to live in a society, in which we always have roughly the same chance to succeed regardless of our family background, then public policies are the critical component. Policies that foster such a society are policies like progressive taxation, public education, and universal healthcare.

However, like the "Poor Economics" rightly pointed out:

Speaking of my experience in Brazil, though it has been a year, it was still a tough memory for me to look back. I rarely look back to those times. Because every time I think about it, I felt sorry and guilty. There's always have been this thought in the back of my mind, which was that I gave up on them; I did not have the strength to improve their lives and I escaped back to my comfortable world. I kept moving forward and was hoping that experience would somehow magically leave me.

Nonetheless, I did also realize that your experience will always leave a trace in your life. Inequality and other social issues have become something that I deeply care and I do hope I would have more time to read more studies on this topic in 2021.

About how to handle the emotional part of my Brazilian experience, I found the book that Melinda Gates wrote --"The Moment of Lift", which I just finished last week (last week of 2020) helpful. In this book, she shared her experience and thoughts during her years working at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Her writing was touching and personal. Through her book, I felt that she was a very self-aware and reflective person.

It was hard to imagine that a person like her, someone with so much wealth, is so aware of the situations and lives on the margin. She not only went to those places but also made lots of effort to understand those people's situations without any glossing over. For example, she would live with a local family for a couple of days. When she tried to have a dialogue with some mothers to understand women's suffering, she would ask all the men to stay back and only went in with a few female colleagues.

She mentioned a couple of times how situations were too emotionally overwhelming for her sometimes - for example when a mother begged her to take her child because the mother said: this kid would have no future with me. I wonder how she handled those emotions. Towards the end of the book, she said:

Near the end of January 2020, I went back to Toronto for 2 weeks. It was at this time that I decided to change my career path. After coming back to Vancouver, I had to put aside many books that wanted to read and make room for technical books. Nonetheless, I was still using audiobooks to listen to histories. My deep interest in ancient history originated in 2019 as well, when I picked up an old book in a second-hand book store in Argentina. It was aimed to be a history textbook for high school students back in the 1800s'.

On the first page of the book, the author listed some questions that he wanted to answer in this book. The first question was: "What were the Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, Hebrews, Latins, Spaniards, English, etc.? What did each of these nations contribute to the common stock of civilization?" It was opening this book that I suddenly realized, I had no idea why our civilization unfold in this way? How did we get here?

This book was good at giving a structure. I found the part where he outlined the development of languages interesting. From Latin, we had Italian, French, and Spanish. Engish was a combination of Germanic and Romance languages. The path of these language developments actually captures the history of and relationship among these countries. What's more interesting was how history turned out. Athen was a lot more civilized than Sparta but Sparta eventually ruled over Athen. The Greek countries were a lot more civilized than the Romans. However, Roman eventually ruled over all of them. This made me wondered about the Western countries now vs. let's say, North Korea.

Out of curiosity, I then listened to History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective, Hannibal, I learned about our civilization from the Mesopotamian, the old and new Babylonian to the rise and fall of Romans, to the spread of Christianity, and to the start of modern Europe. They say, if you wanted to understand the thoughts and beliefs of Ancient Greeks, you need to read Homer. So I listened and read The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. I then went on to the Hannibal, Famous Romans, The Persian Empire, and Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon.

Hannibal was probably my favorite general thus far. I have always felt that Hannibal and Alexander the Great made a sharp contrast. Alexander the Great was born with so much good fortune. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu said that to win, you need the timing of heaven, the advantage of the geography, and the harmony of people （天时，地利，人和). Alexander always seemed to have the first and second given to him.

On the other hand, Hannibal always seemed to have either the first or the second missing. Nonetheless, he used his discipline, his resilience, and his knowledge to create the harmony of people. He was leading a multicultural, multilingual, and not officially trained army. He made the Romans feared him for more than 10 years with such an army. He made his name known in history.

Resilience also happened to the Romans' most notable characteristics. The Romans were losing terribly at the beginning because they knew nothing about military strategy. However, the Romans never gave up and they learned from their failures. For the Romans, they might lose a battle but they never lose a war. Finally, after years of hiding from Hannibal, they wore him out and beat him with the strategies that Hannibal taught them. As many history books said: After Hannibal, Romans were unstoppable. Isn't this crazy to think about? One single person almost stopped the rise of a nation?

Every book has its own exciting points and each of them gave me a deeper understanding of our modern cultures and politics. I don't want to go into the details but to look from a high level, I found history to be simply fascinating. You have people like Alexander the Great, born to be great; you have people like Hannibal, self-made but still lost the final battle; you have people like Julius Ceaser, self-made plus born into the right time (Roman republic was very corrupted and bureaucratic at that time, which caused lots of inefficiencies); and you have people like Napoleon, a hero who is more like a product of that unique period of time.

When Julius Ceaser was in his 30's, he once looked at the statue of Alexander the Great and felt so behind. He still got nothing while Alexander had already conquered the world by this age. He might not even believe that when he succeeded, his impact on our civilization would be far beyond Alexander's.

Athen civilization was like the jewel of ancient times. Its long-time rivalry was the Persian. Even by the time that Alexander died and the empire started to fall apart, the Romans were still unheard of. Who would have thought, it was they, who ruled the world over a thousand years. If you looked at the world again in the 9th century, when the Roman Empire crumbled, you would see east civilizations, especially the Tang China, were overwhelmingly more advanced and powerful. Europe was still in its embryo. Who would have thought, that the following history would turn out to be the exact opposite?

Since the very beginning of human civilization, we have always wanted to grasp the fine line between what we can control and what we cannot. I truly believe The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer have captured our attitudes or feelings on this matter the best. I actually read lots of novels when I was younger, including some classics like War and Peace and The Count of Monte Cristo. Homer is by far the one I liked the most.

In both the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Gods and humans exist in the same world. We know the Gods exist and we worship them. The Gods can intervene in human affairs but men generally would not know they were down by a god. For example:

There's a scene in the Odyssey in which Odysseus needed to ask help from a princess. However, he was naked and the setting was at a random beach; he was hiding in the bushes when the princess approached the beach with her slaves. Any girl would freak out if Odysseus appeared at this point even though, of course, Odysseus was eloquent and did a great job presenting himself not to be a creep. The princess did not freak out though feeling scared. From a human perspective, she simply gathered her never. But as readers, we could read everything that happened behind the scene. We knew it was Goddess Athena who put some courage in her heart.

Some scholars do argue about the roles of God in both pieces. Some people believed that Homer is hinting at the idea that God is just our unexplainable feelings, like the act of sudden courage or simply back luck. Other scholars disagree because there were times when God made unambiguous appearances. In my opinion, it is this ambiguity, this grey presentation captured human attitudes and beliefs about God most accurately.

Lots of people almost pointed out that how the Gods were not perfect creations. They had emotions and conflicts of their own. This image is different from our modern image of God. I will come back to this topic later. I think recent advancements in computer science actually made this version of gods rather convincing.

Another reason why I loved the epic poem is that it showed the tenderness and delicacy of human relationships so vividly. Here are two of my favorite examples.

One is the scene where Odysseus finally identified himself to his wife after more than 20 years of separation. They both longed for each other for such a long time and each of them suffered tremendously during their separation. However, when they finally met, it was not passionate hugging or kissing, nor there was crying or complaints; it was silence.

The great orator Odysseus couldn't speak a word but looking down to the ground. Penelope who defended herself against more than a hundred intruders while Odysseus was gone couldn't speak a word either. She was sitting across from him, looking at his face in silence.

Their son couldn't understand and questioned his mother why she reacted so coldly. Odysseus asked their son to leave them alone and the scene fell back to silence. This silence worth more than a thousand words.

Another scene was where the book described the sorrow of Achilles when he lost Patroclus. He was flamed by hatred at first. He refused to eat, drink, or sleep and wanted to take revenge. He slaughtered trojans all the way while chasing Hector and killed Hector with his own hand. He had the revenge that he wanted. However, he still refused to hold a funeral for Patroclus, he refused to admit the fact of his death.

He dragged Hector's dead body behind his chariot all the way back to Achaean camp and run around the camp with his dead body dragging. Nonetheless, he did not find pleasure nor did he find any relief.

I found this part brilliant when I read it but I couldn't tell why until I was reading a book on emotions later. I realized that when we face painful events, anger and hatred made us hold on to the event. We are angry because we think we should still have the power to change an event. We only start to move on when we enter the grieving phase. Grieving was when we truly accepted what happened and face our pains.

Achilles only started to grief when he met Hector's father, Prima. Prima came to Achilles to beg Achilles to have his son's body back so that they could bury him properly. When Achilles saw that another person also lost the most important person in the world, when he realized that another person is having the same amount of pain that he's having, he finally embraced his pain and wept with Prima.

It was also in this chapter that Apollo told other gods:

It was hard to imagine such a book was written in something like 700 AD. It's the 21st century now. These words still shine like gold.

In the first half of 2020, I also read some books about other species. I finished the Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs. I started but haven't finished the Hidden Life of Trees and the Hidden Life of Animals. I also read the book called the Next Billion Years by Darwin. I wished to read more books about Darwin. I read another one that collects the letters exchanged between him and his friends and family. He writes nicely. I hope I could read the Origin of Spices and the Descent of Man.

In the Next Billion Years, Darwin discussed what he considered to be THE challenge of our species. One billion years is the average lifespan of one species on Earth. Darwin thinks that the ultimate challenge will be the question of population and limited resources like food and energy. Therefore, he believed two kinds of technology were critical. One was the technology in food production and another one is the technology in biology, in other words, if we could alter our biological setting to control the population.

In my opinion, the problem of the population if one day indeed becomes the problem, coming up with the technological solution is not the most difficult part. In our civilized human society, the most difficult part will always be morality issues or policy-making issues. For this, I think Three Bodies painted a good picture.

I really liked the Hidden Life of Trees. In there, it showed us that plants actually have lives. They are not merely breathing, they are living as well. For example, they actually have a strong idea about kinship or family. Trees often share nutrients but they only share that with their relatives. That's why though some trees are cut or harmed by humans but they could still live for a long time. It was because other trees or their family members were taking care of them. Plants have the ability to learn too!

The author also mentioned that we often think trees don't move. Actually, they do lots of things. However, they have a very different lifespan from humans. Some of them live for over a thousand years. That's why they do everything extremely slowly. They have a different clock from us.

Books in this domain were very interesting but many of them were put aside by me because of my limited time. It's fine to put them aside due to the priority of my life now. Nonetheless, it will be nice to pick them up again sometime in 2021. Reading these books reminded me that we oftentimes are only using our own senses to measure the world. However, the world could have other different measurements or interpretations.

Note: The second part of this has also been written. However, it was in Chinese. I'm not sure when I will have time to translate that piece. You could find the Chinese one in the Chinese section.