I thought I would share some of the books I have been reading lately. All relate to the theme of watching the world fall apart.
The End of Normal, by James K. Galbraith (son of John Kenneth Galbraith), the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. Simon & Schuster, New York (2014).
The question of why is the economy not growing the way it used to is very complicated. In truth the economy was not really growing all that strongly after the 1970s but we had come to expect that the right policies (by the Fed mostly) should lead to 3-4% growth in GDP y-o-y. Why did the Great Recession happen? Why has the recovery been so weak? Why can't the Fed seem to stimulate growth (as we would expect)? And what does debt have to do with all of this (both private and public)? He has some very worthwhile (that is systems-oriented) insights, it seems to me.
How Will Capitalism End? by Wolfgang Streeck, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Research in Cologne, Professor of Sociology, University of Cologne. Verso, London (2016).
A compilation of mostly updated essays. Note he doesn't ask IF capitalism will end, but HOW. Of course he is talking about the modern version of capitalism, neoliberal, in which profits and growth are above all else. He does an excellent job of deconstructing the mechanisms that give rise to the instabilities inherent in this form, such as the income distribution problem leading to widening wealth gap. And then there is that pesky problem of debt again. He tackles the difficult subject of the inherent conflict between capitalism and democracy and how it leads to the death of the latter (think how money has taken over politics and politicians are now "brands").
Earth in Human Hands: Shaping our Planet's Future by David Grinspoon, Senior Scientist (astrobiologist), Planetary Science Institute and adjunct professor of astrophysical and planetary science, University of Colorado, Grand Central Publishing, New York (2016).
This book made me do a lot of rethinking about the concept of 'geoengineering'. My initial thoughts about the subject, where things like proposals to seed the ocean with iron to stimulate algae growth to absorb CO2, or seed the stratosphere with sulfate aerosols, in order to combat global warming seemed to me like really desperate measures, especially since I thought no one knew enough about such ventures to understand how it would work (or if it would work). Grinspoon brought a lot of light into the room on this subject. He has actually convinced me that we may already have inadvertently re-engineered the Earth to a point that our only hope is to enter into the role of thoughtful (intentional) managers of the whole Ecos. He argues that there could be a way to change the world on purpose rather than as we have already done by accident. What I really liked about his thoughts is his recognizing that in order to do something like that is going to demand a lot more cooperation and coordination. Humans are going to have to become more sapient or suffer the consequences. Have an open mind about the topic and you may find yourself thinking about the subject less based on emotions and gut reactions after reading his thoughts.
The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone by Steven Sloman, Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychology, Brown University, and Philip Fernbach, Professor of Marketing, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado (a cognitive scientist). Riverhead Books, New York.
The subject of this book is actually why I found myself rethinking my position on geoengineering. The fact is that I did not know what I did not know and didn't know that there was much more to it than I did know. In other words I was really quite ignorant of some of the facts in the matter that do matter. My initial thoughts about the problem were based on very shallow understanding of what was being proposed and the rationale for it. I did not have the same initial reaction to GMOs, in part because I was a biologist with a pretty deep understanding of how DNA, genes, and protein production in cells works. Not that I would throw caution to the wind; there are still some unanswered questions about GMOs and research is needed. But the objections that most people make are based on what is called the Frankenstein fear rather than actually knowing what genes do and how they work.
The fact is that all of us are really very ignorant about most things and we rely on social networks and opinions of our communities to form our opinions about a great many things. Consider the biggest current example of a community forming a set of opinions about a 'leader' and how it is reinforced inside that community. We're all subject to group think - nothing new there. What is new in this book is the way in which all of us tend to think we are knowledgeable even when we are not. We don't know what we don't know and then tend to think we probably do!
I think the authors go a bit far in downgrading individual knowledge playing a significant role in life. They seem to want to place the greater role in the hive mind. They constantly remind us that the world is too complex and no one can know everything. I don't think that platitude is helpful. I have argued that there is a general template of knowledge - systems knowledge - that is at the base of all other specific system-kind knowledge. If one learns general systems thinking early, one is able to learn a great deal about many different knowledge areas. Since everything is a system and a subsystem, systems knowledge acts like the ultimate in reusability; simply substitute domain specific terms for system-general terms and use general systems semantics to grasp what the domain specific system is doing. You don't have to learn domain specific knowledge as if it is isolated from other domains. I suspect that many more people would be able to participate in more in-depth transdiciplinary work if they started out learning systems science.
That's it for now. I have a few more books on my summer reading list and will share if I find anything really interesting.
George