Yearly Archives: 2009

One-sided thinker: Ayn Rand

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I’ve been meaning for a while to respond to Jacob’s nomination of Ayn Rand as the greatest thinker ever. You notice that Rand did not make it into my roster of great thinkers, and I want to explain why.

First, you have to understand where I’m coming from. In my twenties, I had an extreme Objectivist phase. For me, as for many of her fans, her radical and uncompromising individualism had as much romance–yes, romance–as the diametrical opposite ethic, socialism, had for other young people. And that is what young people need above all in a philosophy: romance. The time for nuance is old age; the time for bold clarity is youth.

So there we were, the young’uns. Some had Che Guevara posters on their walls (sexy, romantic, idealistic). Others were curled up with Atlas Shrugged and pictured John Galt (sexy, romantic, idealistic). Oh, and yes, they stood for opposite ways of looking at the world. But we were all revolutionaries in our ways, and happily so.

My type went on to become libertarians (properly called liberals), which I am. We reveled in our individualism, as I did and do. It was a great party.

Later in life, when I got to Silicon Valley, I had flash-backs of nostalgia. A lot of the geeks there still call themselves Objectivists. I remember a fun conversation I had with Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia and a Rand enthusiast. Indeed, some of us are still at it.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that Rand’s philosophy and, worse, her characters do not age. They are caricatures. Howard Roark, the über-architect in The Fountainhead, John Galt, the über-entrepreneur in Atlas Shrugged, are sketches of square-jawed action heroes as a girl who had escaped from Soviet Russia (ie, Rand) would draw them. They have no complexity, no nuance, no contradictions; they are, in short, not human. As you get older and put more life behind you, you lose interest.

Unfair? Not at all. Because Rand chose to deliver her philosophy through these characters, through narrative, through stories. And, as someone fascinated by storytelling, I think she got that part right. But her stories do not cut it.

I am still an invidualist today. But what Rand offered us was not individualism but atomism, the misguided and rather naive view that individuals exist discretely of one another and their surroundings and do not interact in patterns that reflect back on them.

She wrote at a time when Objectivism (the notion that there is one objective and observable reality) should already have been seen as untenable, given that Heisenberg had given us his uncertainty principle. Everything we have learned since should make us even more humble about our ability to observe reality. If I see red and the dog sees grey, thanks to the way photons form different patterns in his neurons and mine, what is the objective part?

Regarding individualism, it was always a distortion to deny collective patterns. Ask E.O. Wilson about his ants! Just as our cells do not run around bragging about their individualism but (usually) work together in our bodies, insects form colonies that come close to having their own consciousness.

If I were to nominate an individualist and libertarian for great thinker, it would not be Ayn Rand but Friedrich von Hayek, who thought about freedom and individuals holistically.

Finally, I cannot forgive Rand for making no allowance for humor. And don’t any of you Galtians pretend that there was any. Here, remind yourself:


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Learning history through language

As you know, I love language and I love history. So what would I think of a book that is not just a history of language but a language history–ie, world history as told from the point of view of its various languages? I would love it, of course.

The book is Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, by Nicholas Ostler.

Fist bumps to Tom for recommending it first, and to Jag for reminding us. Language lovers unite! (Jag’s book on language is imminent.)

I will not try to summarize  559 pages, but do let me try to get you to think: What would you say determines which languages spread and which die out?

I bet some of you said conquest. Fair enough. Let’s review (this is a partial list!):

Languages successfully spread by conquest:

  • Latin in Gaul and Iberia
  • Arabic in Mesopotamia and northern Africa
  • German (meaning Saxon, Frisian, Jutish and Anglish) in Britain
  • Spanish and Portuguese in Latin America

So conquest is the answer, right? Well, let’s try:

Languages not spread, despite conquest:

  • Latin in Britain and the eastern Mediterranean
  • Arabic in Iberia, Persia and beyond
  • Mongol, and later Manchu, in China
  • Mongol (and Tartar and Hunnish) almost anywhere
  • German in France, Iberia, Italy or nothern Africa (meaning: Frankish in Gaul; Ostrogoth and Lombard in Italy; Vandal and Visigoth in Iberia; Vandal in northern Africa)
  • Dutch in Indonesia

My point here is simply that history and language are far from obvious and thus infinitely mysterious and fascinating. Unravelling the reasons for the rise and fall of the various languages is a great way to understand, really understand, history.

Bonus 1:

The Hannibal Blog has weighed in on Alexander the Great and on Patanjali, but I hardly thought it possible that the two might have been aware of each other. Well, along comes a footnote on page 245, in which I discover that Patanjali (who, incidentally, wrote a famous grammar of Sanskrit besides his Yoga Sutras), noted that Alexander’s phalanxes were getting awfully close when he wrote “The Greek has besieged Saketa.”

Bonus 2:

At last an easy and memorable explanation of the difference between pidgin and creole: When adults meet and do not share a language, they will communicate in pidgin; when their children turn this into a new language, it becomes creole.

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The Blogging Sutras

An old thread

An old thread

I’ve been using the term threads lately. Then Christopher asked me whether that meant simply topics, which it does. Immediately and instinctively, I heard alarm bells ringing in my head: Had I succumbed to a cliché or jargon?

I seem to have picked up the word thread from the blogosphere, for which it seems uniquely suited. Many bloggers weigh in on any number of topics. But organizing disparate posts within each topic becomes a challenge, given that a blog is one single stream of posts mixing all topics together. (Tags help, of course.)

So the word thread seems perfect. Why? Because it’s an old idea for, in effect, exactly that situation.

The Sanskrit word for thread is sutra. It comes from the same Indo-European root that gave us to sew. But ancient Yogis and Buddhists and Hindus began using it as a metaphor for stringing (sewing, threading) together aphorisms into a coherent and larger whole.

Hence Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, or the much more famous Kama Sutras (excerpt above), or any number of other high-minded thought-constructs around a given topic of interest.

So, the term seems to fit. A post is really an aphorism, and a blog is really a clew of threads. (Feel free to cry foul if you smell a cliché, but it works for me. Indeed, I may rename this blog The Hannibal Sutra.)

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A freedom-lover’s critique of America

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Oh, puleeze

No, I am not “anti-American“, just to get that straight. Instead, as regular readers of The Hannibal Blog will know, I am a lover of freedom and individualist, and thus nominally aligned with America’s putative founding philosophy. And I am in the rare (although not that rare, nowadays) position of being simultaneously an insider (citizen) and outsider (dual citizen, long-time expatriate).

Hence my idea, half-baked at this point, to weave yet another thread into The Hannibal Blog. (None of the existing threads will be interrupted.)

In short: vignettes of American life, told from the perspective of an outsider on the inside. And yes, it would amount to a critique. But an educated, insightful, informed and witty critique, not the usual, frothy nonsense that you get from America-haters.

The basis of my idea is the this unholy symmetry:

  • America-haters around the world usually don’t know much about America and so end up sounding ridiculous to those of us who do.
  • America-lovers inside of America usually don’t know much about the rest of the world and so end up sounding ridiculous to those of us who do.

So, get ready. This will, in time, draw a new crowd of internet trolls eager to smear their graffiti into the comments during the commerical breaks on Fox or Al Jazeera. To the hard-core readers among you, I say: Steel yourself! You already know that the critique will, above all, not contain the old clichés.

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Tell me about my threads

My WordPress statistics page tells me that the readership of The Hannibal Blog is climbing at a good clip, but it tells me little else. I know nothing about the interests, tastes and proclivities that brought, and keep, most of you here.

So please take a nanosecond of your hectic online life and vote (ie, click) in the poll at the bottom of this post. I’d like to know which of the threads on The Hannibal Blog engages you most and least. I’m not necessarily planning on changing anything (I will always blog whatever is on my mind), but I’d love to know.

As you will have noticed, The Hannibal Blog currently follows several threads:

  • My book: Anything to do with my book, obviously. But at the moment, while the manuscript is with the publisher, there is not much to report. I have yet to work out the title and publication date with my editor, and I don’t want to give away too much plot too early.
  • Writing: Brainstorms on book-writing and writing in general; and, coming out of that, story-telling and language in general.
  • Ideas: Intellectual currents/nuggets that strike me as interesting, whether or not they have anything to do with my other threads, such as my series on great thinkers.
  • History: Backdrop to some of the stories that will appear in the book, mostly from ancient history, but occasionally from recent times.
  • The Economist: Anecdotes and color from my day-job and life at The Economist. Of great interest to some subscribers, certainly, though possibly not to the rest of you.
  • The media: Musings on my industry as a whole–ie, thoughts on journalism, newspapers, the media.


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Pyrrhus meets Rome; the world takes note

Let me now start to unravel some of the mysteries I have been setting up in my recent thread about Carthage, Rome and Hellenism–the historical backdrop for the main plot in my coming book.

The first mystery, in brief, is this: Why did two powers, which had been very alike and on friendly terms for centuries, start fighting some of the most brutal wars in all of history, ending in one of them (Rome) completely erasing the other (Carthage)?

In this post, let’s first look at how Rome even came to the attention of the Mediterranean world as a whole. Recall that Rome had been an obscure and small land power in central Italy of which Alexander had apparently never even heard!

Well, that’s because the Romans had been busy for several centuries fighting their immediate neighbors in Italy. As they subdued them piecemeal, these tribes–such as the Samnites and Etruscans–essentially disappeared from history. But with each victory, the Romans got closer to the tip, or “boot”, of southern Italy. And, this being the Hellenistic era, this brought the Romans into contact at last with the Greek world. The first great city of the Greeks in Italy to take offense was Tarentum (modern Taranto).

545px-gulf_of_taranto_map

As it happened, there was at this time a very colorful and strapping young king just across the Adriatic in today’s Albania, which at that time was a Hellenistic kingdom called Epirus. His name was Pyrrhus. He is one of my favorite characters in ancient history (as I told you when I talked about Pyrrhic victories).

Pyrrhus had a bit of a complex. The Epirotes, like the Macedonians next door, were sort of, just barely, Greek. Which is to say that the “real” Greeks couldn’t quite make up their minds whether the Epirotes were really barbarians masquerading as Greeks. So Pyrrhus was forever overcompensating.

He claimed that he descended from Achilles, the greatest Greek hero ever. And he wanted to be as grand as Alexander, the Macedonian who had made himself the lord of all Greeks and conquered their old enemies. So Pyrrhus was constantly getting into wars here and there to prove his mettle.

His big break, or so he thought, came in 281 BCE, as Tarentum invited him to come over to help fight off some barbarians (the Romans). Pyrrhus, the defender of the Greeks! Pyrrhus, the descendant of Achilles fighting Trojan War 2.o against the descendants of Troy! He was thrilled. He packed his bags and swords, along with 20 war elephants and a huge, splendid army of Greek hoplites. And off he was to Italy.

Call me Achilles

Let’s pause briefly to grasp what kind of man Pyrrhus was. Here is Plutarch, describing a moment when Pyrrhus was wounded in the head once and his enemies were closing in for the kill:

one of them advancing a good way before the rest, large of body and in bright armour, with an haughty voice challenged him to come forth if he were alive. Pyrrhus, in great anger, broke away violently from his guards, and, in his fury, besmeared with blood, terrible to look upon, made his way through his own men, and struck the barbarian on the head with his sword such a blow, as with the strength of his arm, and the excellent temper of the weapon, passed downward so far that his body being cut asunder fell in two pieces.

Pyrrhus was more than brawny and brave; he was also a great tactician and general, perhaps the best of his time. So now, for the first time ever, Roman legionaries clashed with the famous phalanxes of Greek hoplites.

greek_phalanx

This picture actually does not do it justice. The hoplites in the phalanx stayed in tight formation, each holding his long spear so that the phalanx as a whole advanced as though it were a deadly porcupine with its quills pointing forward.

The Romans gave way. Then Pyrrhus’ elephants did the rest. And so Pyrrhus won victories, but they were “Pyrrhic”–which is to say that they did not help him win the war and cost him so much in lives that he himself said that he could not afford another.

Roman and Greek: Clash of Civilizations

But there was more going on here than battles. This was the first time that these two cultures actually met en masse. And the Greeks did not know what to make of these Romans.

In the Greek (Hellenistic) world, war was a higher form of sport and art. One or two victories on the battlefield, and the gentlemanly thing to do was to make a treaty, call it quits and go to the gymnasium to get oiled. So Pyrrhus was waiting for the Romans to cry Uncle.

But they didn’t. And the Greeks just did not understand. Why did the Romans just keep coming, and coming and coming, when they were dying in such large numbers? Who, or what, were these people?

There were more surprises. In the Greek world, you opened diplomacy with a gift or two, and perhaps the equivalent of a discreet brown envelope to the right persons. So Pyrrhus sent an envoy to talk to the Romans. But when he offered his gifts to the Roman senators, they were so shocked at the implication of venality that all diplomacy ended abruptly.

Bizarre! Even stranger, the Romans then saved Pyrrhus’ life. The king’s own doctor was a traitor and offered the Romans to poison Pyrrhus. The Romans, far from accepting the offer, promptly informed Pyrrhus, who had his doctor taken care of. There was nobility in these barbarians, he thought!

Long story short, Pyrrhus, after some distractions in Sicily, eventually left Italy and went home to Epirus, to keep looking for adventures and glory there.

Rome had survived its first encounter with the Greeks unbeaten and was now master of all Italy. All over the Mediterranean, people sat up and held their breath. Wow. A new power, living by exotic values and playing by incomprehensible rules, had arrived on the scene.

Even Rome’s old friends in Carthage suddenly realized that these Romans were now awfully close to Sicily, and rather more menacing than Carthage had ever thought. Whatever Rome was now, it was certainly no longer obscure.

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Great friends for 230 years: Carthage and Rome

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Are you puzzled by Carthage and Rome? You should be, if you’re learning about them through my thread on the historical backdrop behind the main story and main characters in my forthcoming book. So far, I’ve told you just enough to raise lots of questions.

Recap: There we are, in the third century BCE in the Mediterranean: the place is essentially a Greek (“Hellenistic”) pond, with two other powers–one mighty, seafaring and rich (Carthage); the other obscure, land-bound and provincial (Rome)–waving at each other from opposite shores. But one century later, the obscure upstart somehow completely erases the mighty and rich superpower, thereby changing our world forever.

How and why did this come about?

We will get there, but first, let’s take another look at Carthage and Rome before war broke out between them. Not only were these two city-states remarkably alike; they were also … friends!

Not cuddly friends, perhaps, but certainly cordial enough to have four treaties of friendship between 509 BCE and 279 BCE. The terms changed, but the essence stayed the same:

  • You play nice over there, and don’t come armed over here, although if a storm were to blow your ships to our side, we’ll help you out so that you can be on your way.
  • In return, we will play nice over here, and not come over there, unless a storm were to blow our ships to your side, in which case we’ll be on our way as soon as you’ll help us along.
  • Oh, and we both realize that a lot of these places between us are actually Greek, so let’s give them some respect too.

You see this summarized in the map above. The Carthaginian sphere of influence is light green; the Roman light red; the Greek light brown. Notice the three main centers of Greek civilization in this (western) part of the Mediterranean, which were Tarentum (today’s Taranto, in Italy); Syracuse (also Italian today, of course) and Massilia (today’s Marseilles, in France).

This is still a largely happy and peaceful picture. But along came a swash-buckling young lad–no, not Hannibal yet–who caused trouble. He was Greek, his name was Pyrrhus, and you’ve heard and used his name in its adjectival form many times. To be continued.

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Slowness and the young author

Orville Schell

Orville Schell

I recently caught up with Orville Schell, a great Sinologist, former dean of Berkeley’s Journalism School (where he asked me to teach) and author of, wait for it, fourteen books! (To me, of course, Orville is above all one of my three mentors.)

Since then, I’ve been pondering what Orville told me about book editors and book editing, and indeed the entire fascinating change inside an author’s mind that occurs between the initial delivery of the manuscript and the printing of the final product.

The reason, of course, is that I am currently in exactly this phase. It has been almost two months since I sent my manuscript to Riverhead, the publisher. The book industry runs in a parallel time dimension, so I knew this would take a while. So I’m absolutely (and in a very positive way) fascinated by how my own mind is filtering the long (110,000-word) text that I just sent off. And of course I’m eager to hear how my editor will react.

Some editors, Orville said, don’t edit at all. That’s a good thing only if they are terrible editors. The best editors, says Orville, see the manuscript as a long and detailed outline, a sketch of what is to come, the genotype of the phenotype that will result. That’s because so often–at least in Orville’s experience–the real book emerges during this waiting period, as the author’s mind, with help from his editor, digests its own product, tests it, does violence to it, stirs it up, cleans it up and finally emits … a thing of beauty.

This, therefore, is one of the big differences between blogging, magazine-writing and book-writing: Time.

The blogger disdains time. The magazine-writer by turns battles, fears and overcomes time. Only the book writer learns to love, savor and appreciate time. (I happen to be all three, of course.)

Time can do good things to a text, especially if the author’s immodest hope is that it become timeless.

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The trouble with puns

Fantastic essay on puns and their utter, puerile non-necessity, by Joseph Tartakovsky.

I’ve said before that sarcasm is the lowest form of humor. Tartakovsky makes a strong case that punning should get that honor.

In a nutshell:

Puns are the feeblest species of humor because they are ephemeral: whatever comic force they possess never outlasts the split second it takes to resolve the semantic confusion. … They are the scourge of dinner tables and the despised prolongers of office meetings, some letting fly as instinctively as dogs bark and frogs croak, no longer concerned even with drawing applause; they simply can’t help themselves… [Consider] the similitude between puns and fruit flies, both of which die practically the instant they are born, but not before breeding others.

Nonetheless, I found myself pondering the boundary between punning, which I am willing to disdain, and wit, which I esteem. Take, for instance, this exchange between Voltaire and Frederick the Great. Witty, for sure. Punning? Possibly.

Even Tartakovsky includes among his examples one that I’m glad posterity has preserved:

Jean Harlow, the platinum-blond star of the 1930s, on being introduced to Lady Margot Asquith, mispronounced her given name to rhyme with “rot.” “My dear, the ‘t’ is silent,” said Asquith, “as in Harlow.”

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