Positive effects from negative history

Most books I read tend to be text-heavy. I tend to like stuff which is analytical but lively, preferably chronological and focused on either a specific event, time, or place. I usually plump for depth over breadth, but sometimes I make exceptions. One was Towers of Defiance, a comprehensive look at the castles of the Welsh Princes. Another more interesting read, which I've just finished, is Philip Matyszak's Lost Cities of the Ancient World. 

You can read my short review-assessment here. In even briefer form, it's a wonderful hardback coffee-table compendium of an assortment of lost cities from classical antiquity, meaning Europe and its immediate surroundings from ~5,000 BC onwards. I was lured by the wonderful photographs and, to be honest, the thickness of the paper, which just made it feel so dang... high quality. As a souvenir-treat from my recent Berlin trip it's just a lovely thing to have.

But what I want to elaborate on here is not the factual content of the book (which is excellently presented – Matyszak writes in a much more readable style than the authors of most other compendiums) but a concept that it made me think about. In Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites, the protagonists develop a form of magic which revolves around not... doing any magic. That is, not summoning specific demons and not turning people into frogs. Matyszak explores something equivalent here : negative history.

Lost Cities is a fascinating look at cities which died. Some were destroyed, others suffered climate change or other natural disasters that rendered them uninhabitable. A few were out-competed by their neighbours, sometimes (in the case of what Matyszak calls a "vampire city") deliberately, much as though cities were agents in an ecosystem. Despite the title only a few were actually lost in the usual sense of being forgotten and then rediscovered; Matyszak generally means they were abandoned. A few don't really even fit this category, evolving into modern versions of their original selves which are only slightly different locations.

But some were truly lost in the fullest sense of the world. A few remain so : we know that cities like Tigranocerta existed, we know roughly where, but the precise site has yet to be discovered. And even of those which were only abandoned, Matyszak seems to deliberately pick the ones which are largely forgotten by the modern public, eschewing obvious candidates like Pompeii and Herculaneum in favour of the nearby Stabiae. Some cities were great administrative capitals in their day, while others seem to have played no great role in any important historical events whatsoever. All were once thriving metropolis, but for a host of reasons they failed and faded.

This is truly negative history, the known unknowns : we know the gaps in our knowledge, can see the rough size and shape of them, but have little idea as to what to fill them with.

By drawing attention to these gaps directly, Matyszak reminds us just how incomplete our understanding is. Not only have vast amounts of written records succumbed to the ravages of time, but dozens upon dozens of cities have literally crumbled into dust. Whole cultures and lived experiences are now vanished. And all this reminds us that what we have left is so easily susceptible to misinterpretation. Just as in astronomical catalogues of poor completeness, without proper context things can look very different.

With a degree of mild frustration, many's the book I've read where a throwaway statement makes it clear that there whopping great fundamental gaps in what we know that, if filled, would surely transform how we think about historical events and peoples. Most of the time even the best of history books tend to gloss over this; look, I love everything Tom Holland writes, but he's the absolute master of creating a filled narrative. Matyszak instead opts to draw our attention to the gaps head-on. He doesn't explicitly point out the importance of doing this because he doesn't have to : once a gap is noticed, its importance becomes self-evident.

To be fair, sometimes other popular historians do do this as well. Marc Morris is particularly adept at making the unknown gaps almost something to celebrate by inflaming the reader's curiosity. Trow's Spartacus is another one which is commendable in emphasising how little source material it has to go on; he tries his best to look at what the Romans didn't say to recreate what probably happened. But overwhelmingly, historians (though not archaeologists) tend to prefer actual hard data, verifiable facts and records, rather than inferring things from non-statements and gaps.

Which is all quite understandable, of course. Still, I feel that Matyszak's offering is a welcome change (so much so that immediately on completion I ordered his other book : Forgotten Peoples). Exploring the gaps, even – or especially – if we have to speculate, reminds us of how little of what we have to rely on and how our interpretations might be subject to change. We often only have what one side would wish us to have, but history is written perhaps not so much by the victors as the survivors.

There are obvious parallels to science. In astronomy we're actually really keen on this, "knowing" that so much of the Universe is invisible and inexplicable : exploring the gaps is what we do. In popular history books this is no doubt difficult, and I suppose that professional historians are more like scientists than the storytellers one gets from the bookshop. Even so, perhaps this is something to consider for the popular history author. Trying to feel out the size and shapes of the gaps, inferring what might be inside them... surely this too is interesting for the lay reader ? It's a bit like if we were to have charted the whole boundary of the Pacific Ocean but not bothered to even speculate as to whether there were any islands or continents lurking inside it : except worse, because often is history it seems we know there are massive gaps in which something very important must have happened.

Similarly in philosophy, understanding the mindset of ancient peoples can benefit greatly by looking at what they don't say. At least, when we have good reason to expect them to. Again the parallels to astronomy, in which non-detections are genuinely very interesting but only if we expected to find something. A galaxy without any gas isn't especially interesting, but if it's in a group and all the rest are chock-full of hydrogen, well, that non-detection becomes a bit more exciting.

Take Plato's non-discussion of the morality of slavery. Naively, given his minute, word-by-word dissections of other issues, we might expect him to discuss this, so why didn't he ? Likewise, why didn't he come up with a more liberal (in the strong sense of the word) basis for his ideal societies ? The concept today that everyone should allowed to do as they wish except when that interferes with others seems simple enough.

To be fair to historians, Michael Scott made very interesting suggestions in this area, namely that society at the time was concerned far more with the collective than the individual, and that such a spirit of individualism (epitomised by Plato's mentor Socrates) would have seemed alien indeed. Socrates and Plato alike were not pseudo-fascists or pseudo-Communists, despite advocating certain policies that the more modern extremists on both sides would happily go along with. No, they were just more individualistic than many of their contemporaries. Individualism is sometimes a derided word, but it no more makes one a fascist than it makes one a liberal or a libertarian. All these concepts simply did not exist in ancient Athens. Without considering these vital negatives, one gets a limited and perverted view of history that warps too easily in moralising, entirely missing out on the changes in human thought that have evolved over the last two thousand years or more.

Anyway, rant over. My take-home message is very simple : sometimes, directly drawing attention to the gaps is important and you can't rely on readers doing it for themselves. A degree of speculation about what they might contain and how this would influence the facts you do know is extremely useful. It's not good to go nuts with this, but if you don't do it at all it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that all the facts you have are all the facts there are.

And I'm currently reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, surely a classic example of the importance of negatives. The esteemed author apparently thought that recording the appointment of individual bishops and noting epidemics of bird flu was tremendously useful, but cared little for any details of battle tactics or political allegiances or, well, basically anything else. It's a rather fascinating but strange read, and I'm definitely looking forward to more Matyszak.

Dune part two : first impressions

I covered Dune : Part One when it came out, so it seems only fair I should cover the "concluding" part as well. I'm gonna do this in two sections, first without and then with spoilers. I added the suffix "first impressions" because Czech cinema doesn't provide English subtitles for the Fremen-language scenes. There are quite a lot more of these than in the first film, and while not understanding them didn't spoil my enjoyment, I did feel there were some substantial sections missing. I'll update this when I see it at home with full subtitling.

Without Spoilers

Technically this is a masterpiece and anyone who disagrees is a bit weird. The story is a clever blend of the truly science-fictional and contemporary sociological commentary, which in many ways is less subtle but more emphatic than Herbert's original. The message is clear and unapologetic without being overbearing or distracting, and, crucially, both sticks to and aligns with the theme of the original book(s).

The audio-visuals are simply stunning. To paraphrase Herbert himself, this is a movie to be experienced. It's loud – very, very loud – to the point where it becomes genuinely physically exhausting. In fact I don't think I've seen any other movie which has this sheer, visceral, brutal physical power. It's like being punched in the face, but somehow in a good way. The sandworm-riding scenes... these are seat-grippingly intense. I would not have done it like that, and I'd have been wrong. They're better than I ever dared hope.

The acting... well, Rebecca Ferguson is a fucking terrifying Jessica to the point where it's hard to imagine anyone ever equalling this performance. Even, perhaps especially, when she's not doing the Voice with a capital V she's got one of the scariest, almost horror-film voices of anyone. Chalamet too has really dialled it up to 11. At one point, even though it was all in Fremen with no English subtitles, I would probably have risen from my seat with a cry of "LISAN AL GAIB !" and charged into battle against... well, whoever, really. The ushers, probably.

The Harkonnens remain suitably villainous, the Baron a virtual demon and Feyd a true sadistic psychopath. These simple monsters aside, all the other characters feel if anything more human and developed than in the novel. As in the first movie, the added humour makes them feel more believable than the virtual archetypes of the novel, and from this much is gained while very little is lost. Chani especially feels like a more developed person; Jessica's progression to full Revered Mother is also commendably well-done. The Fremen as a whole have more diversity of cultures and beliefs which I feel adds something, even if it's a little too explicit in pointing out how diverse they are.

I don't have much I could honestly find fault with. There are certainly choices in how to do things which I personally would have done differently, but to my mind I feel Villeneuve's decisions are perfectly valid. Certainly they don't undermine the original story and if anything they tend to enhance its clarity for the viewers who haven't read the books, without dumbing anything down for the fans. 

Perhaps the one thing I would say could be improved is the mysticism. Dune is primarily a science fiction rather than a fantasy story, but the one genuine element of magic (prescience) is underdeveloped, in marked contrast to the first movie. It's there, but its importance is underplayed, and the interesting theme that Herbert developed of how to know the future is to be constrained by it is not much explored. This is a shame, but it's a theme which is lacking rather than absent. Everything that needs to be there is there, even if the balance is occasionally questionable. If you've read the book, you can fill in a lot of the blanks for yourself without being inconsistent with the movie's version of the story.

Finally, pacing. I perhaps would have liked the film to be about 30 minutes longer, not to develop the story any further (nothing much is needed here, though more of the Imperium would have been nice) but just to slow things down, just a bit. It would have been beneficial to rebalance things to have a bit less of the relentless pounding of the lasguns for the first two thirds of the film and develop to a longer final battle sequence.

All these thoughts, I stress, are petty in the extreme. They are minor quibbles, not complaints. Similarly for the ending. I love the original, incredibly rounded ending : I think Herbert was at his narratively most magnificent in suddenly and satisfyingly bringing the whole, hugely complex tale to a clear and decisive conclusion in the space of a few pages of shining brilliance. Villeneuve opts not to do this, going for a more open, ominous ending (hence I termed it the "concluding" part) that is nevertheless distinctly an ending. It's not how I would have done it, but it works.

As I said of part one, this isn't the decisive version of the movie adaptation but it's a damn good one. All my quibbles really are a matter of personal preference and no more than that. I'm giving this 9/10 : this is, realistically, the best version of Dune we can ever hope to see.

With (Minor) Spoilers

Okay, now for the juicy bits ! Don't worry, there's a big gap so you won't accidentally read any shock revelations about how Paul is actually an elephant in disguise or whatnot. I don't think I give away anything that would actually spoil someone's enjoyment of the movie, but you have been warned just in case.

I first read Dune when I was a teenager. It's safe to say I was more enthralled by the world itself than anything else at the time : the sheer brutality of Arrakis, the magnificence of the ships and sandworms, the blend of psychology, science, politics and mysticism all at once, with some enormously complex character interactions. There were elements of the classical heroes and villains, the truly good and truly evil, richly blended with subtly of difficult moral choices.

It would never have occurred to me that it's about oil because my mind just doesn't work like that, I always enjoy stories on their own basis first and only read in any analogies (if at all) much later. Indeed, to create a world you can enjoy on its own terms, without needing to draw parallels with real life, this is the highest form of imagination : a story that only works in its contemporary context is in my view a shallower thing.

In the book, if I remember correctly, Paul falls for his own mythology. He may know he's a man, and often doubt his own choices, but he tries to actually behave as a god or prophet. There's a mood that something truly supernatural and inexplicable is at work, that the gift of seeing the future is, in a way that's never clearly stated, far more advanced than the similar abilities of the Guild navigators. Paul may have the emotional turmoil of a real person but he does not, so far as I remember, ever really doubt his own messianic duty. And duty it is. He doesn't relish the choices he has to make, indeed he can be repelled by them, but he makes them nonetheless because he believes he must. He finds a way forward which is the only possible way, and makes that choice despite its terrible purpose and abominable moral cost.

Teenage me was to an extent happy to go along with this from Paul's own perspective. In this way the ending of the book definitely gives the reader the legitimate option to accept it as something basically optimistic, that while tragedies have occurred, a better future awaits and justice has been served. This isn't the only interpretation but it is possible to read the book in this way. Not so in the movie. Here the moral ambiguity is thrust more directly in the viewer's face, and Paul's own doubt makes it unavoidable that he's not the messiah he's a very naughty Fremen. This definitely does work and is absolutely consistent with the underlying message of the book. Intellectually, I have to say I prefer it. But emotionally, I equally have to say I preferred my original reading and Kyle McLaughlin's' creepy-demigod 1984 depiction of Paul. This version was to me more impactful but less thoughtful. As I say, I regard Villeneuve's choice as an absolutely valid one.

Of course, it fits the complexity of the story perfectly that the differences from movie and novel are here only that : differences, neither better nor worse in and of themselves.

Likewise Chani. In the movie, the Fremen are more fragmented in their religious beliefs than the novel : firmly united against the Harkonnen but culturally more diverse than what I remember from the book. Chani, as Paul's not-wife, is a sensible choice to represent the more prophesy-skeptical Fremen faction. Having made the decision that Paul himself doesn't believe in his own divinity, it makes good sense to have Chani, the woman he falls in love with, be someone who is publicly against the notion of prophesy. It gives her a more active role in the story, even though it's occasionally a bit too blunt in its moral delivery.

That morality is an important point, however. Certainly there's an element of the white saviour trope at work behind the novel, but only at most subconsciously. Anyone seeing it as being Desert Avatar has very badly missed the point, for several reasons. First, the Bene Gesserit planted superstitions among the Fremen as a means of control (as a safety option in the book if I remember correctly, but deliberately to facilitate the Kwisatz Haderach in the movie). And this is Chani's key point, that the prophesy is a means of enslavement. Paul in this sense is a saviour only because the situation was engineered. It isn't any innate racial superiority that gives the Atreides an advantage, it's political manipulation and deliberate military repression of the Fremen by the other peoples of the Imperium.

Second, as someone pointed out elsewhere, Paul could never have succeeded anywhere else but on Arrakis. Without constant exposure to the spice and the Water of Life, the sleeper would never awaken : had the Harkonnen attacked the Atreides on another world, Paul would simply have died. Paul without the Fremen is really not much of anything; a key part of the story is that Paul is a genuine blend of cultures. He is shaped both by the gentleness of Caladan and by the bitterness of Arrakis, both an Atreides and a Fremen. They lead him as much as he leads them, they raise him from boy to manhood more than his own parents do (albeit this aspect is present in many white saviour stories). And it's the Fremen themselves who, though with some coaxing, almost actively choose to make Paul into a Messiah, rather than merely passively accepting him as such. They have genuine agency and awareness in how they respond to the situation.

Thirdly, and arguably most importantly... Paul is just not a saviour in the classical sense. Here too the movie makes this clearer than the book, having been informed by the sequels. Paul is in no sense a despotic villain, but he isn't a white knight. The only way to save the Fremen is jihad, or "holy war" in the movies understandably more political terminology. The consequences of this are unimaginable horrors on a galactic scale. You could call him a saviour, but only if you think salvation should be soaked in the blood of a million worlds.

That latter is the part I'm most uncomfortable with. I still like the simpler, good-versus-evil vibe of my teenage reading of the book, but I respect Villeneuve for going down this darker path. It's a discomfort that I'm actively comfortable with, so to speak.

For this reason I get even more annoyed (as per last time) about any efforts to make Dune more diverse or appealing to modern moral sensibilities. That is exactly what it should not do. Dune revolves around unpleasant choices in an unpleasant dystopian reality. Making Liet Kynes a woman is of no import whatever because it has no bearing on the story; making any Bene Gesserit male would be insulting to the point of bordering on the offensive. The whole point of the story is that some aspects of reality are simply bad. It doesn't promote anything, in any way. It simply presents. I'm far from adverse to direct morality tales which present an author's personal opinion, but Dune is not it, and trying to make it into one would have been farcical.

All in all, a stunning piece of cinema, and I might well go and see it in 4DX just so I can be blasted with sand and really get the full sandworm experience.

What's next ?

I've recently come across two discussions in which the moral point of an argument seemed to be absent. Consequently the whole point of the debate seemed to be missed, with everyone dancing in circles around the target while never getting anywhere near it. Specifically, these boil down to :

1. What do you want to do with this information ? For example, why do you want to know if two demographics have fundamentally different abilities ? 
2. What do you think will happen next if this policy is implemented ? I mean the immediate consequences of, saying, giving more rights to an underprivileged group. Do you think that this is in and of itself inherently bad, or is it only the foreseen slippery slope that causes you problems ?

The first was about whether men and women have similar abilities. It's an interesting question, I suppose, but... why ask it ? What are you going to do with the answer ?

The second was about the rising debate in the UK on legalising assisted dying. Okay, fair enough, those campaigning against it say it will ultimately lead to (in essence) public suicide booths. As the worse-case scenario, that's clearly bad. But what about the best case ? What about the cases where someone was properly informed, repeatedly consented well ahead of time and at the moment of decision, to ending their life to escape unendurable agony – should those people actually be forced to continue against their own wishes ?

Now proclaiming a slippery slope is not itself a fallacy. It can happen that one thing will lead to another, ending in a position that nobody wanted. But it's a fallacy to insist that this will happen without justifying why this would be so. In particular, when other countries have implemented similar legislation and found that actually, yes, people do want to end their own suffering but (amazingly enough) remain steadfastly against suicide booths... then why do you think it would happen in some countries but not others ? Or even if sometimes a slippery slope has happened but not universally, still you must then justify why it would be likely to occur in the particular case under consideration.

It's far safer and simpler to first say what you believe about the thing-in-itself. If you say that mercy killings are fundamentally immoral, then we don't have to worry about all the paraphernalia and secondary concerns. We can skip the complex pragmatic issues and go directly to the basic moral issue at hand. Otherwise, these objections to AD feel similar to me to early objections to gay marriage : that it would eventually end in people marrying their cars and pets and siblings and suchlike. Okay, those scenarios, which failed to happen, would be bad, but what about the issue at hand, the thing-in-itself ? What exactly was supposedly wrong with gay marriage ?

Now if you don't object to the TII, that's okay. At that point we can proceed to the pragmatics and potential for a slippery slope. But we shouldn't skip the phase of discussing the TII, because this is the most important and morally interesting part of the discussion. It also provides vital information about the basis on which the debate should proceed : if we both agree on gay marriage or AD or whatever being fundamentally moral, but only disagree on what's likely to be the practical result, that's different from having a really basic moral disagreement.

And after all, your pragmatic objections might be valid. There's nothing inherently wrong or false about presuming that one good thing will lead to other bad things; sometimes one thing does carry unintended consequences. The problem is that you must demonstrate that this is (a) likely to actually occur (e.g. gay marriage has not led to incest or auto-erotica and there was never the slightest reason to think that it would, because these are not sexual desires that are inherent but repressed in any sizeable fraction of the population), and (b) that any consequences you see happening definitely would be problematic in themselves, that they would have some intrinsic moral problems.

As for why you want to know... it might be that you want to account for genuine differences and allow for people of different abilities, providing facilities to accommodate them. But here you generally only need to know what abilities and ability levels actually exist, and how common they are. Demographics are often irrelevant, except for schemes to deliberately uplift targeted underprivileged groups. You need to know what the abilities are, not who has them, because you can meritocratically test for this on an individual basis.

If you insist on judging people based on demographics... well, that's why the question, "what will you do with this information ?" is an important one. It may well be that you're just curious. Okay but why pursue the issue at all ? Why do you apparently want it to be true ? Why exactly does it matter to you ? If you have some good evidence that the groups are different then you probably don't need a study to confirm it. If you don't, it's probably safe to assume they're the same. Presuming a difference is, in general, a very strange thing to do, and I don't think it's at all unfair to want to know why it should matter.

There is of course a major exception : medical data. Men and women do have physical and physiological differences, and especially if one group is more prevalent in some area than another, it makes sense to be prepared for this eventuality. Presuming similarity here should be no more than a starting assumption, which you can actively test for to determine the proper course of treatment. Here though, the obvious physical differences should make it equally obvious that there might be medical differences as well, whereas in the case of mental skills, the case is (to put it mildly) infinitely weaker. It would seem that there is an obvious need to allow for medical differences existing; there is no such case for mathematical or creative faculties.

But in general, if you can recognise that the question of demographic differences might be unpleasant, and take steps to address this, and show that your response won't be simple unfair discrimination... well then, perhaps you have a case to make. Until you do this, however, you should be able to understand why I might view your curiosity as being uncomfortably close to bigotry.

The unifying factor in these cases, of what happens next and why do you need to know, is that metadata is essential. Knowing the moral preferences of each side changes the entire tone of the debate. So it's incredibly helpful to present this information first, i.e. state what you think is fundamentally wrong with the proposal in and of itself, or tell me what you want to do with the information which you think is very important. Do this first, I repeat, and only then we can move on to discussing the secondary effects. If we both accept that there's nothing wrong the with TII, then we can debate the slippery slope; if neither of us is clearly trying to be a bigoted twat, then we can discuss demographic differences.

Moral issues are anyway often complicated. Perhaps this guidance might help simplify the discussions, if only just a little bit.

More than one way to skin a Lord

This article from The Independent asks the obvious question of what, if anything, should replace the House of Lords if it were scrapped. It starts off a bit odd, noting that the Lords is "almost impossible to justify on any grounds other than their utility". Come again ? You can only justify its existence because it is in fact very useful ? I should have thought that would be more than enough to justify pretty much anything, really.

Anyway I'm just going to very briefly set down my own proposal here as a go-to reference. I will also note that Labour's plan isn't quite non-existent, but the idea of an elected "council of nations" is so vague as to be meaningless. Scrapping the upper House altogether would be ridiculous : it would make Parliament into a tyranny, as Oliver Cromwell already discovered. There's absolutely no point going down that road.

But I don't believe it's that difficult to come up with an alternative. What I would do would be :

• Restrict the number of voting peers to the same as the number of MPs.
• Immediately following each general election, peers eligible to sit and vote in the Lords would be chosen by lot from all existing peers, whose numbers would be drawn in accordance with proportional representation based on the election.
• Peers would be in some way affiliated with the major political parties but much more loosely than in the Commons, with no whipping system instructing them which way to vote on any issue whatsoever.
• Peers would not necessarily be appointed by political parties directly. Their total number would be unlimited (honours being handed out on some general merit-based principle each year), only the number allowed to sit and vote would be restricted.
• Nominations would be subject to an independent panel and not just at the behest of any one party. It would be possible to nominate for political service, but not for political donations alone : would-be peers would have to some sort of relevant experience of actually doing something.
• Powers for the Lords to delay or even block legislation might be increased, with the Commons only able to override with a two-thirds majority free vote and possibly requiring MPs from multiple parties.

This would give us a political system that uses representation and appointment, sortition and proportional representation all at once. It also utterly avoids any attempt by any government to pack the Lords in its favour.

A big problem with any alternative elected chamber is of course, "why wouldn't it just be the same as the Commons", and thus not acting as any sort of check at all. So let's just not bother with that. No, it's a good thing to have the proposed laws checked by a body formed on a different basis. As I noted at some length previously, democracy is best protected by non-democratic processes. As a general principle, I consider diversity key here. The more people of different ideologies in different backgrounds in bodies formed from different processes agree on something, the more likely this is to be correct. Hence a deliberate blending of democracy with other selection mechanisms.

Of course I haven't fleshed out any details because that's not the point. I'm not wedded to this either; it just seems like the most obvious solution to me. I'm perfectly open to alternatives. Show me a system of choosing an upper chamber that will at least given some degree of tension with the Commons and I'm listening.

Incoherency

Feel free top skip ahead if you don't need any background and just want a look at what is meant by "incoherence" and the problem of whether we can really hold contradictory beliefs.

Decoherently

I called this blog Decoherency for a simple reason. I wanted to make it sound scientific(ish) but also imply that posts wouldn't necessarily have any connection to each other. I would deliberately permit myself to write posts that would suffer from flagrant contradiction and not have to worry too much about what I'd written elsewhere. I think of this as a public notepad : a safe space for my immediate thoughts, with no real attempt to reconcile any paradoxes, generalise anything or establish robust principles.

What I jot down should hopefully be interesting enough to be worth bothering with, and at least have something to offer in its immediate context – but nothing whatever beyond that is guaranteed. Each piece should be self-consistent but that's it.

Incidentally, I do from time to time re-read this, and you know what ? I'm pretty happy with it, actually. Most posts seem to contain at least something of moderate interest, even if there are plenty of times when I think, "what the hell was I on about?". Sometimes I'm consciously aware of problems when I set something down but I just let it go because overall the content still holds and it makes a rhetorical point more clearly. Other times I genuinely don't realise until long after the fact, and only the benefit of hindsight reveals that something is now "obviously" just wrong, or at least lacking context. 

And that's okay. That's what a notepad is for. It's a sort of conversation with myself, fleshing something out to the point where the fundamental essence of a thing is preserved, but not bringing it to a full flowering, as it were. It's a notepad after all, not a book.

I also think all would-be commentators should give this a go. I find that when I try and really articulate precisely what it is I want to say, be that from something that's just popped into my head spontaneously or (more often) in response to something I've read, the process takes me in directions I rarely anticipate. Often I find that my initial ideas were just wrong-headed, and the final piece, even in this notepad-level form, isn't much like what I initially set out to write. The process of writing stuff down, re-reading the original text, trying to paraphrase it, all that generates ideas I simply never would have had otherwise. 

Of course discussion with others is often even more important. But the writing process for me is something special. It has the the powerful advantage of setting everything out in a more permanent way, something I can point back to and reference in a self-contained unit : here are my ideas at this particular moment, without too much of a meandering journey that some of the mega-long threads on social media can become. And the journey is one that I direct, where I get to decide what to focus on, where I can concentrate on what I'm interested in with with a freedom to fail all on my own terms.

These days it's almost a compulsion. I don't feel that I've completed the reading experience until I've blogged it up. I do this mainly for my own benefit and if anyone else gets anything out of it, well that's good for them, but that's a bonus, not a goal.

Incoherently

I take decoherency to mean, in this context, this process of working things out, of getting words on a page that attempt to be self-consistent only in their immediate environment. But this is a made-up word for my own purposes. What about the truly incoherent ? What do we do when we encounter ideas which are mutually incompatible ?

This Aeon piece is quite a nice (albeit overly-lengthy) examination of the whole notion. Incoherency is essentially just this synonym of incompatibility : two things which cannot both be true. So in the address/title the author asks a very valid question : is it really possible to believe things which are mutually exclusive ? The answer, I think, is very much yes, but we'll get to that.

Philosophers call the kind of incoherence that’s involved in these states means-end incoherence – I intend an end (getting new shoes), believe that a means (going to the mall) is necessary for that end, but do not intend the means. There are many other kinds of incoherence. For example, it’s incoherent to have ‘cyclical’ preferences – say, to prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla, prefer vanilla to strawberry, but prefer strawberry to chocolate. And it’s incoherent to have beliefs that are straightforwardly logically inconsistent – say, to believe that great cooks never overcook eggs, believe that you are a great cook, but also believe that you have overcooked the eggs.

It seems obvious that if you believe you need to go shopping because you need new shoes but you also believe you don't, you've hit a very hard kind of incoherence. Likewise if you believe great cooks both do and do not overcook eggs, you're in a bind. But I must object to the cyclic example here because this is obviously wrong. For example, the Welsh rugby team frequently beats England, and England occasionally beat New Zealand, but Wales haven't beaten New Zealand basically ever. This can't be incoherent because it's simply a fact.

So it's perfectly possible to have cyclical preferences. The style of play of rugby teams is qualitatively, not just quantitatively different, and what works well against one team can be useless against another. And in Robot Wars (a "sport" I followed far more closely than rugby) it became clear that there was no perfect design, that Robot A could beat Robot B which could in turn beat Robot C, but Robot C was perfectly capable of trouncing Robot A. These things happen all the time. 

Ice cream flavour preferences are if anything an even better example of this, because preferences are so utterly subjective : the difference between the flavours is qualitative, not quantitative, and they can't really be ordered in a linear scheme like this at all. As with which movies or books you "should" like according to the critics, none of this changes how you actually do emotionally respond. Empirical data cannot itself be incoherent, only the interpretation allows for that... if you believe people must have a linear sequence of flavour preferences, you haven't understood people very well.

This doesn't invalidate the notion of incoherence as incompatibility, however. Not at all. The author continues :

It helps to contrast being incoherent with merely being unreasonable. Consider someone – call him Derek – who believes that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen for Joe Biden, and that in reality Donald Trump received far more votes. His beliefs certainly could be logically consistent. Moreover, Derek might think that his beliefs are well supported by the available evidence, thinking that the information provided on QAnon message boards, by One America News, and by Trump himself is extremely weighty evidence, and that information provided by the mainstream media is entirely unreliable. Like many conspiracy theorists, Derek might dismiss the evidence against his views by saying that it has been fabricated by malicious actors.

What’s enticing about charges of incoherence, by contrast, is that they seem to skirt these kinds of disputes. If I can show that Derek’s worldview doesn’t make sense from the inside – that it doesn’t even hang together coherently – then, the thought is, I can show that he’s being irrational without having to settle which sources of information are reliable, or what counts as good evidence for what. This, I think, is part of what makes us inclined to reach for charges of incoherence (or inconsistency) in political debate. When we reveal incoherence in someone’s political beliefs, we’re tempted to think, then we’ve really got ’em. Or, at least, then we’ve really shown that they are being irrational.

Pointing out that a vote against a bill would knowingly frustrate the politician’s own goals is both an easier way to show the irrationality of his intentions, and more likely (though far from certain) to be effective in changing his mind.

This is all well and good. The author continues to note that that incoherence could be taken as the hallmark of irrationality, with unreasonableness not really being irrational at all – but then, thankfully, rejects this. He notes instead that rather this points to different levels of irrationality. To believe in the Flat Earth is irrational, not merely unreasonable, but to hold in your head entire systems of mutually incompatible thoughts ("structural" irrationality) is surely worse still than merely in believing in one system which has been refuted. And here too I agree with the point. 

He goes on to say that inconsistency largely happens simply because we haven't noticed it, that we hold two thoughts fully independently, acting on them without realising the incompatibility :

My contention is that the cases where people most clearly have incoherent mental states are those in which their mental states are not perfectly transparent to them. It’s not particularly hard to make sense of incoherence in these cases; what’s harder to make sense of is incoherence that persists even when the incoherent states in question are brought to the attention of the person who has them... we hold incoherent beliefs, but never think about them together, and that’s how we manage to sustain the incoherence.

It fits with the fact that reporting one’s own incoherent states aloud in speech seems a lot stranger than merely being incoherent: this is because reporting the state aloud in speech requires bringing all the states to one’s conscious attention, making them transparent. And it explains why, when our incoherence is brought to our attention, we scramble to revise or reinterpret our mental states to make them coherent: ‘When I said “all”, I didn’t really mean all’; ‘I’ll do anything to help small businesses within reason’; and so on.

Again I not only agree but make an active conscious effort to search out and resolve inconsistencies. When I realise that I'd said something which is inconsistent with my other assertions, I try and generalise to keep everything consistent. Sometimes this means examining the full implications of what I said and finding that actually everything is fine. Sometimes I have to abandon one or more statements and admit I was mistaken. Sometimes I realise I was missing data which helps the whole thing hang together, or necessarily changes my interpretation of what's going on.

A simple example that's stuck with me : there was a meme explaining why women are distrustful of men in certain situations because they might be dangerous, comparing them to some fraction of snakes being venomous. I disliked this because I also dislike the notion that we should be distrustful of certain ethnicities or religions because of terrorism. The resolution in this case was a simple one, that the quantitative difference in the dangerous fraction is so high as to point to a qualitative discrepancy. If 0.0002% of your population is dangerous, that can't be taken as evidence that they're a bad lot. If it's 20%, well, there the claim has an awful lot more substance to it.

But... often I'm unable to reconcile the propositions. When confronted with the "transparency" of the inconsistency, as the Aeon piece describes it, I'm sometimes left with a nagging doubt. Like being presented with a brilliant, coherent, well-constructed argument about why a particular movie was terrible, it doesn't actually stop me from enjoying it, or vice-versa : you can't really persuade people to like or dislike something, these are things we simply do. And I've found myself more than once being unable to refute an argument but know, or at least doggedly believe, that the argument must have been deeply flawed despite being unable to express why. 

Consequently I go away in a state of confusion, still believing what I originally believed, unable to refute the counter-argument but unable to accept it either. 

This can happen to varying degrees. I might intellectually accept the argument but just not emotionally subscribe to it, or I might be partially persuaded (thinking perhaps, "yes this is true in these particular conditions"), or I might end up in a state of utter bewilderment. Or I might start veering back and forth between the two claims. And sometimes my eyes simply glaze over either with total incomprehension or utter boredom when someone else tries to convince me of something.

Perhaps intelligence also plays a role here, where even if you notice the two disparate propositions, you're simply unable to understand how they're inconsistent – thus you haven't really spotted the incoherency at all.

But at a deeper level I think the key to this is bullshit. There is a tendency for the very rational to assume that this is how everyone thinks, that everyone else must be fundamentally rational, logical, careful, and therefore unable to accept inconsistencies. I disagree. I think people can have wildly irrational beliefs, that are not just inconsistent with empirical data, but are even internally inconsistent. If they ever do notice, then they just don't care (the essence of bullshit). And if you don't care about consistency then you're free to believe the most outlandish, incoherent, self-contradictory nonsense. It's not that people have simply subscribed to a different set of trustworthy sources (something I've noted before at length in response to other Aeon essays), it's that their whole world view just is not rational. 

Ignorantly, Malevolently

To understand irrational ideas by rational means is, sadly, the height of folly. It can't be done. You cannot reason people out of positions they haven't been reasoned in to. Sometimes reason just plays no role in belief whatsoever. It's like people who openly admit that their favourite politician is a liar but then believe them anyway : I don't get it, but nevertheless it definitely happens. This is about as far as we can get by rational means, to simply acknowledge that it happens. 

This idea of people having different beliefs, even irrational ones, as a result of an information deficit is a dangerously compelling one. It would mean putting everyone on the same intellectual podium : not necessarily at equal heights, but at least thinking in similar ways. Differences could be reconciled simply by providing more or more comprehensible information (look, this source claims something in contradiction to the evidence so you can't trust them; look here's a simpler explanation of how internal combustion engines work). The problem is that if we insist this is true in the face of evidence, if we continue to insist that people are believing in fascism and despotism out of some perverted but fundamentally rational viewpoint, any efforts to thwart them will fail.

If I don't stop here this post will spiral out of control, so I just want to close with a few points. First, things are complicated. Sometimes we can and do behave rationally, acting much like a Bayesian net. Second, we consider metadata as well as direct data : that is, we consider who-believes-what to be a form of evidence in itself. But finally, that the human brain is also capable of being totally irrational. It can, under some circumstances, look two mutually incompatible ideas squarely in the eye and say, "yep, both of those are true".

It doesn't matter if these last two points are fallacies. Giant lists of the types of errors people make are of no help whatever, any more than yelling, "be more rational you dumb twat !" is likely to actually make them calm down and think more carefully. Rather we have to, if we want any chance of overcoming the lunatics, first begin by realising that we won't succeed with rational arguments. We cannot simply convince unreasonable people that they should be more reasonable; we cannot go around pointing out the logical flaws in illogical arguments and expect much in the way of successful persuasion. 

It would be nice to believe that people are basically rational. Conversely, the cynics seem to draw a weird comfort in the idea that people are irrational angry baboons who cannot ever be reasoned with. I think both neither and both of these positions are true. People, I suggests, aren't fundamentally rational or irrational. Rather both aspects, like it or not, are fundamental to being human.

Hume's Multiverse

Here's a nice little piece from IAI about reality not having any fundamental level to it. You might remember a previous discussion about this from another, more in-depth IAI piece which considered two main options : either reality becomes at some point self-referential, with some aspects being impossible to define without reference to others, or it's turtles all the way down.

Today's piece considers only the latter.

Perhaps reality has no foundation. Atoms, it turned out, could be divided into protons, neutrons and electrons, which it turned out could be further divided into quarks. Maybe we can keep going, further dividing and further dividing without ever reaching an end.

Why rule out the possibility of infinite regress in the composition of reality, whether that be infinitely many distinct layers, each more fundamental than the previous, or whether it be reality going in a circle, such that if you dig down far enough you discover the universe as a whole?

The claim that reality must have an ultimate level is often supported by little more than an appeal to intuition or incredulous bafflement at the alternative. If an argument is given, it is usually that reality must have foundations if anything else is to get off the ground. To go back to our analogy of the buildings, we might argue that there needs to be a foundational level for every other level to ultimately rest upon. If there is an infinite regress of distinct levels of reality, more and more fundamental but never ultimately fundamental, then (it is argued) there is nothing whose existence can account for the existence of everything else. A circular regression might seem even worse, from this perspective, since then every level of reality ultimately depends on itself, metaphysically bootstrapping itself into existence. The foundationalist, by contrast, can offer a picture whereby everything non-foundational ultimately inherits its existence from reality’s foundations.

Foundationalists take the ultimate beings - whether they be God, minds, quarks, quantum fields, or something else - for granted; there is no deeper explanation of where they come from. Why is an unexplained Prime Mover okay when an infinite regress of greater and greater movers is not, or a circle of things each moving each other? In fact, why isn’t it worse? The foundationalist posits some things that are, by definition, unaccounted for. In an infinitely descending or circular reality, at least everything is accounted for.

My objection would actually first be infinity : that once one invokes infinity, one is applying mathematical magic that can explain anything. This is why I concentrated last time on the idea of a circular, self-referential reality which would neatly avoid this. But yes, there's certainly also a nagging doubt about what something truly fundamental would mean. Supposing atoms were really indivisible, what would they be made of ? What is the "stuff" of a quark ? Why can't it be split ?

But perhaps I've let my own anti-infinity bias get in the way here, though I do still think any infinity means we've found a flaw in our mathematics. The issue for me is that infinity completely does away with causality, that one can simply point to an infinite multiverse and say, "our patch is the way it is because of sheer chance, all is probability, all parameter space must be occupied somewhere". This robs physics of any claim on meaning. Nothing is more or less real, it would seem, than anything else.

Or does it ? 

Recall that one about whether chairs exist. Let us suppose that the answer postulated, that it depends on the applicant conditions, is the correct one. In this way, perhaps infinite regress and causality alike can be cheerfully reconciled. If we can say that indeed, objects as we describe them do have some level of existence, then by the same token, we ought to be able to say that they experience certain processes. We can save causation thus. We might not have access to the true, fundamental nature of reality, but our observations of one thing leading to another are not meaningless either. Causality has the same level of reality as our observations do. If it's meaningful to say that a chair exists, then it is at least equally meaningful to say that pushing on a chair is what causes it to lean over.

Again, "equally meaningful" does not mean we've got at the true, underlying cause. We haven't considered electrostatic forces or atomic structure, let alone psychological motivations or the nature of mind. So Hume too, he can come along for the ride, happy that his seemingly bizarre claims that we don't understand causation can be saved after all. Rather the claim here is that our explanations for the cause of things are perfectly valid at the same level of the observations : they are correct, just not fundamental.

How does this hold up if there's nothing foundational but only infinite regress ? Well, at our level, the cause of the chair leaning is us pushing on it. At the atomic level, the cause of one atom moving is another pushing on it, with the existence of the experimenter being totally unknown and irrelevant. And at the subatomic level all is forces.

As we go down the levels, the ones above become less and less "real" in that they are less and less relevant. What seems to us to be truth, the existence of curious humans poking their noses into things because they want to, seem at first like at best emergent constructs : an atomic-scale observer wouldn't say a human is "real", just a collection of atoms that happen to be in a particular large-scale arrangement right now (just as some astronomers say exactly the same thing about filaments of galaxies). They'd say a human is no more than a label for that collection of atoms, not "real" in any fundamental sense.

And the deeper we go, the more detached from each other the layers become. At the subatomic the causes are electrostatic forces and the like. At even smaller scales it might be dominated by fluctuations in the quantum foam. Beyond that ? Impossible to say. We could likely not understand it anyway, even at the most - ahem - fundamental level. It would be utterly meaningless to us. To the denizens of this world, however, there might be yet smaller and smaller realms beyond. 

The point is that these levels do not affect one another. The processes at work simply do not exist in the different worlds, just as a single atom can't have a temperature but to anyone caught in a winter chill or a heatwave temperature becomes a very real consideration. So infinite regress does not mean avoiding causation : it means causation works on different scales, with there being literally zero chance of the smallest scales affecting the largest. This particular flavour of infinity isn't a mere substitution of meaningless statistics for physics.

Hmmm.

Review : Napoleon

Ever since we discovered the VIP cinema where you get a buffet, unlimited snacks and electronically-adjustable seats, we've been reluctant to go back to "normal" cinema. But by the time there was enough time to go, Ridley Scott's latest offering was no longer showing in VIP. Since I really wanted to see this one on the big screen, we were forced to choose another option.

... which turned out to be even better than the first. Oh, it's expensive. But you get actual table service during the film. Glasses made of actual glass. You pre-order your food and they bring it to you approximately when you asked to have it served. And the seats were even more comfortable than the first ! Little tables between each pair of couches with no more than a couple of dozen seats in total, on about four or five different levels so nobody gets in each others' way. I mean this is just a whole other level of civilised.

At this rate the next time I go to the cinema I'm expecting a full-on pool party with actual mermaids. But I digress.

Anyway, Napoleon. I personally loved it and rank it as one of 2023's great films, easily on a par with Barbie and Oppenheimer. Is it for everyone ? Certainly not ! For one thing there's no way this one will do anything but sink like a stone in France. But it works for me.

Like Oppenheimer, this one has in some ways plenty of breadth but little or no depth. Even more so than I was expecting, since I'd heard that it stopped before Waterloo, but that turned out to be false : it actually covers all the main parts of Napoleon's military career right up until his death. Necessarily, large tracts are omitted or glossed over. Of politics and government there is precious little. This is purely a character study with plenty of battles thrown in as a spectacular but also genuinely important backdrop : even Napoleon's harshest critics would concede his military genius, and I think this is more than apparent from Scott's film.

I also give major level brownie points since at no time have I heard any claims of historical accuracy being bandied about; this is a dramatization plain and simple. And I'm absolutely fine with that. I care not a fig that Napoleon didn't blast the pyramids with cannon or personally witness the execution of Marie Antoinette, because what difference does that make to anything ? Nothing. Likewise I'm fine with Gladiator not being historically accurate because nobody every made the claim that it was going to be, even though that too features real historical figures. This is clearly the film the producers wanted to make and dang anyone who wanted something else, and this is the correct way of doing things as far as I'm concerned*.

* This doesn't guarantee I'll approve of the final product, of course, which is a different issue.

And I like that Scott very clearly and openly has an axe to grind. While Napoleon's military genius is evident, especially at Austerlitz, Phoenix's portrayal is also petulant, vindictive, a raging egomaniac utterly convinced of his own greatness even in the face of overwhelming evidence, and sexually downright weird. 

By and large these attributes are blended together nicely. One thing that has become apparent to me as I've gotten older is that people don't really grow up, as such. They don't change from children to mature adults in quite the way you expect when you yourself are a child – they're generally still all the same kinds of weird as they were when they were younger, only maybe they get a bit more repressed*. And this seemingly paradoxical mixture of the extreme arrogance and insecurity in Napoleon is something I think Phoenix captures very well indeed. The film is almost purely a character study and I think the main point – look, this guy was bad, but he was also a complex human being – is done in a very satisfying, quite convincing and believable way.

* Not literally true exactly. It's perhaps more that the weirdness shifts around, changing but not really going away.

It's not how I would have chosen to do it, mind. What we get is essentially Napoleon on the battlefield and in the bedroom and little else. I would have liked more of the positive aspects of Napoleon's rule on Europe because to me that's genuinely interesting; I can't say I'm a fan of Napoleon, but I also wouldn't put him on the same pedestal of monstrous villainy as Hitler or Stalin. Certainly, at least not in comparison to other rulers of the time.

There's a reason for this (at times) almost-pantomime monstrosity in the film though, and it's a good one. I previously made a comparison between Gladiator's Commodus and Trump; here things are, I think, even more blatant. Not so much that one has been substituted for the other, but just with a nice, subtle slant on things. This is history interpreted very much to make a point, the transition from Republic to autocracy being too easy and too dangerous. Even at Austerlitz, when his military brilliance shines most clearly, Phoenix's Napoleon has a calculating, Putin-esque menace about him. 

There's also many references to Napoleon's lack of good manners, and if that's not referring to Trump then I don't know what is. And I'm completely fine with this approach. Realism is good, but not always necessary. To me it feels that while the movie is a character piece, what's it's primarily concerned with is not the character of Napoleon himself, but the viciousness of the autocracy he represents. The final ending screen may rub the viewer's nose in it, but I think in this case it should. To have those casualty figures in black and white is all by itself a damning indictment of those who would get too caught up with any benefits Napoleon might have brought throughout Europe; one should remember the tremendous cost behind it all.

And from that perspective, a more realistic, positive depiction of Napoleon would actually be in very poor taste. Movies have the capacity to reach audiences unreachable by traditional political avenues, and in the present era of would-be autocrats in the west, maybe now is just not the time for rehabilitating a despot.

I'd would someday like to see other versions though. I love the much earlier Waterloo, which remains to this day one of the most spectacular movies ever made, but that too gives a a tremendously one-sided (and again British) perspective. So, I can see why not everyone is going to like this approach... but what exactly is stopping the French from making their own version ? Exactly nothing. Go and make the version in which Napoleon is forced into conquering all of Europe and gives everyone better infrastructure and bestows the gift of surnames on the Dutch; this would be eye-opening for sure. But I for one like my villainous autocrats, so long as nobody's trying to convince me that this is really how things actually were.

Visually the movie just wins 2023 hands down. Barbie had its zany funtimes and Oppenheimer its arthouse minimalism (and of course that explosion), but Napoleon... that's where it's at. It doesn't have the astonishing depth of the emotive force of the charge of the Rohirrim, nor the sheer outrageous spectacle of Waterloo, but the whoosh of cannonballs overhead, the blood-soaked carnage, the freezing wastes of Russia, the grim and gritty sight of the armies clashing all conspires to give an effect all its own. It manages to convey horrendous chaos without being confusing. The audio-visual on this one is a real treat, with not only the big screen but also the big speakers really outfitting this as a proper, magnificent epic.

For me this is an easy 8 or 9 / 10. It's a thumping-good historical epic which makes me want to learn more about Napoleon. As a pure dramatization, I didn't take it too seriously and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Review : Pax

I was dismayed when reading the acknowledgements at the start of Pax by the reference to "one of the world's great cancer surgeons". Had my favourite non-fiction history author been struck down with cancer ? There's precious little about it online, but it seems that all was not as bad as it first appeared.

Tom Holland is my favourite largely for his incomparably magisterial prose. Edward Gibbon, you say ? Edward Gibbon can go suck a monkey. In book after book Holland consistently, apparently effortlessly, manages to weave narrative and analysis into a seamless chronological narrative. There are no (or the absolute minimum) of footnotes or explanations of sources as distractions, just one great continuous flow of uninterrupted, gripping narrative awash with blood and perverted sex and gripping speeches and all the great stuff about history.

It's not always the ideal way to do history, mind. And it almost certainly wouldn't work for all periods or for all authors. Some, like Francis Pryor and Marc Morris, do amazingly well with weaving the uncertainties into lively and engaging parts of the text, joining the reader in a journey of discovery and mystery, and I wouldn't want them to change a thing. But Holland in full flow is damned hard to beat.

Pax is the latest in a thus-far trilogy of the history of the Roman Empire. In Rubicon we went from the fall of the Republic to the rise of Empire, while in Dynasty he took us through the turbulent early years of the First Family of the Caesars. In Pax we follow the Empire to its apogee. In some ways this is the most difficult period for the narrative historian. It's easy enough to chart a story of change, but a period of stability is much more challenging. Holland opts to emphasise change where change occurs, such as the protracted series of civil wars and Trajan's spectacular but brief military successes. 

But the really interesting stuff, which to be honest I'd like a bit more of, is : what kept things stable while it lasted ? What was it about the Roman Empire that worked ?

It would be much too big a leap to paint Imperial Rome as any sort of socialist bloc. But despite its winner-take-all hyper-capitalism, with no concern for the poor save to prevent plague and rebellion (see Holland's magnificent Dominion) it did have streaks of modern leftism. Taxes were wealth taxes, not income-based : ancient societies didn't have the ability to monitor income well enough for this. These taxes worked, but they were understandably hugely unpopular, because taking even a little of what you've already got is quite a lot different to taking what you never received*. I add this even though Holland himself doesn't mention it; I think a lot of historians seem to take it for granted as widespread knowledge even though it really isn't.

* This is not relevant to modern wealth tax proposals, however, which are generally aimed squarely at the super rich. Perhaps the poll tax would be a fairer comparison in terms of its effects.

What Holland does mention is that in place of Universal Basic Income, there was Universal Basic Corn. Though even then, complaints were made that it would only make people lazy : "for what was a handout but a threat to Rome's moral fibre ?". And in the Emperor Galba's failure to restore the UBC after a period of economic turbulence, but lavishly spending on his own warehouses, it would be all too easy to detect some very modern hypocrisy. Perhaps most strikingly of all, Holland gives one quote from Seneca :

"No-one finds poverty – inconvenient though it may be – a heavy burden, unless he is minded to do so."

Being poor is a lifestyle choice ! Though to be fair, Seneca's stoicism, however daft and irredeemably flawed, doesn't actually intend this, but the author of the anonymous graffiti in Pompeii that wrote, "I hate the poor" is probably a better example of the general Roman attitude to the plebs. It's pretty hard to misinterpret that one.

(That's got me wondering now if Roman anti-poor attitudes had some role in fostering the bizarre ideas of certain stoics, but I digress. Still, here I think Holland is being unfair by not quoting the source, because the Stoic attitude is certainly not the same as the pantomime malevolence that is the modern Tory party.)

A final example of some very modern tensions : the Roman elite became concerned as the composition of the Senate diversified to include non-Romans, "it barely seemed to be Roman at all". They notoriously saw all non-Romans as barbarians, even the Greeks. And yet others, though by no means a majority, might instead see the possibility of the Romans being made rather than born as the very quality that was most distinctly Roman. The Romans, says Holland, "never claimed to have possessed a distinctive bloodline", with their founding myth depicting them as outlaws and fugitives, and their willingness to free their slaves seen as unique. 

This sort of cognitive dissonance feels again like a thoroughly contemporary attitude; one only has to look at the news for a few minutes to be sure of witnessing an ethnic-minority Prime Minister spouting the most deplorably racist claptrap. That the Romans might have paradoxical attitudes to racism should not be of any surprise. 

Of course while fundamental attitudes and the structures of society were important, the person of the Emperor himself mattered a great deal. Gibbon compares Nero and Augustus. Nero wanted to be an actor, to be known and admired for his acting skills. Augustus, and the other successful emperors who came after him, didn't. They were actors, but not for the sake of winning glory for their performances, but for the sake of maintaining the fiction of the Republic. By shunning naked autocracy, veiling it in a pleasant fiction in which senators could believe they still had real power, they kept the vital systems (especially the political systems) of the empire intact and functioning. By permitting them their illusions, reality was denied them. Exposing themselves as actors, as Nero did... that could not be tolerated. That would expose the whole lie for what it was.

But the Roman's own attitude to why their civilization worked seems to have been quite clear, and something altogether different : climate. 

Just as the cold weather of northern Europe bred men who were spirited but stupid, so did the enervating heat of Syria or Egypt breed men who were brilliant but soft. The happy medium, those who were simultaneously spirited and brilliant, were the people who occupied 'the middle-position geographically'. The Greeks, with their customary conceit, had identified this with their own cities. A comical error. History did not lie. The 'mid-position geographically' was patently, self-evidently Rome.

Whether the Romans saw this as literally affecting the bloodlines, actually changing racial features, or simply shaping individual characters (the Greeks refused hot baths on the dubious grounds it would make them soft), Holland doesn't say. Perhaps they viewed it as both.

One final interesting point underscores the sheer complexity of understanding why Rome worked. It's common to say that an external threat can be a powerful unifying force... and it can, but it isn't necessarily so. Holland notes that while the Roman invasions of the Middle East forced the Judeans and Samaritans to cease hostilities, it did absolutely nothing to alleviate their "mutual hatred". Which suited the Roman approach of divide and rule very well, yet, paradoxically, Rome was superb at making everyone Roman.

While the ancient Greeks have earned something of the reputation as being the brains of the Empire and the Romans usually just guilty of wholesale cultural appropriation, this isn't entirely deserved. Holland describes Pliny's indefatigable, imperial quest for ultimate knowledge :

The wonders of the world merited respect. This was the conviction to which Pliny had devoted a superhuman degree of effort. The true value of Rome's empire lay not in the opportunities it provided for profit, or for ransacking previously inaccessible reaches of the world, or for stimulating jaded palates, but in something altogether nobler : its success in pushing back, to a degree never achieved before, the frontiers of knowledge.... Knowledge was power. Such was the supreme achievement of the Roman people : to have fashioned a dominion that could reveal to humanity the fundamentals of the cosmos.

Holland is of course here, as always, trying to tell the story from the protagonist's viewpoint without actually endorsing it, lest anyone should take this too literally. And more amusingly, regarding Pliny's nephew :

An earnest and dutiful young man, he had once been told off by Pliny for walking rather than taking a litter : for by taking a litter he would have had the opportunity to read a book. 'All time is wasted which is not devoted to study.' Such was Pliny's maxim.

The Stoics would not approve of course, with Epictetus explicitly against excessive, impractical book-learning. But screw 'em, I like Pliny's approach more. If more people spent more time with their heads in books instead of doing "practical" things like cheering for sports teams or donating massive amounts of money to Taylor Swift for some reason, the world would be a happier place.

Anyway, I'm giving this one a solid 8/10. It's great stuff, rock-solid rhetoric, immensely and intensely readable. What I would have liked more of, however, is, well... Pax. The first half or so is dedicated to the turbulent wars, and while it's important to see how this eventually led to stability, I think a good deal more could be said about the institutions that made Rome work. There was plenty of politics in Rubicon and not enough of it here. 

Specifically, more of the big stuff is needed, more context-dependent generalisations : sure, Trajan overreached Rome's power with his continued expansion, but why was the cycle of, "conquer -> assimilate -> grow army -> conquer", fundamentally broken ? Trajan seemed to have just done too much all at once rather than trying anything really impossible; the flaw was in the method, not the concept. I'd like more insight in particular into Hadrian - what was he thinking with the wall ? What was the long-term plan ? And most vitally of all, what was the secret to preventing the endless rebellions that plagued other emperors ?

Perhaps all that will be in a future book; I for one would love the sequence to continue until Rome's bitter end. As it stands, a thoroughly good read.

Review : Persians - The Age of the Great Kings

This next review takes us considerably further back in time, to the age of Cyrus the Great and ending with the Macedonian conquest of Persia. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (one of the most Welsh names ever) takes a much-needed look at the history of ancient Persia from the perspective of the Persians themselves, attempting to dispel some of the myths propagated by their considerably more famous Greek adversaries.

In this I have to say he's only partly successful. There are times when he does an outstanding job, both spinning a gripping yarn and plausibly correcting some of the more deliberately-bigoted acts of Greek misinterpretation. But there are other times when he comes across as blatantly anti-Greek, which I think is bloody daft considering the debt modern society owes to them. Perhaps worse are the times when he's flagrantly self-contradictory. I'm not quite sure if he's being deliberately provocative, trying to take the Persian side just a bit too hard, or has genuinely fallen for it. Either way, pointedly labelling Athens as "democratic" with the quotation marks just feels extremely petty and mean-spirited.

I also have to say that the style is a bit old-fashioned. It's partly narrative history, partly archaeological reconstruction, and it tells the reader very explicitly what's being done and why. It all feels rather forced, often stating things which are really very obvious. The narrative sections are generally good (though the military aspect is very poor), and while switching back and forth in its different approaches does basically work, it could also have been done more effectively. I don't think it was necessary to compartmentalise things like this. A better way would be to control the narrative to focus each section on a particular aspect of Persian life, whilst maintaining a chronological flow.

Still, it does accomplish the important goal of making me want to know more about the Persians on their own terms rather than merely as a foil for ancient Greece. But ironically, I have to say I've come away thinking they're probably... nothing all that remarkable, to be honest. Important, certainly. But if one was to do a Python-esque sketch of what the Persians have ever done for us, the answer would have to be, "not much". 

Overall, I give this one 6/10 : a mixed bag, with some parts a respectable 7 or even a commendable 8, but enough stupid statements and tediously bland passages thrown in to be... not fatal by any means, but irritating.

I do however respect Jones very much for having an axe to grind, even though I don't agree with his conclusions. He begins by provocatively declaring the idea that the Persian conquest of Greece would have ended democracy and altered the course of civilisation as "absurd". Fair enough, points rightly made that some Greek cities in Asia Minor under Persian rule were permitted their democracies. But later he says that a successful conquest would have seen the Athenians deported ! And Persian rule was above all autocratic, so the idea that Athens would have been allowed to follow the imperial course that it did, that its greatest philosophers would have come up with the same thoughts without Persian interference... sorry, no, that's complete bollocks. It's not in the least bit credible, just a fashionable bit of self-loathing. If you're going to posit this idea, it needs much more development than a couple of paragraphs in the introduction.

Another glaring contradiction Jones makes is the role of concubines. Again, fair enough, try and explain the harem by going beyond the sexual stereotypes : a worthy goal ! But then having spent some pages explaining that it wasn't like this, that this is all just western sexualisation... Jones then describes in quite lurid detail that most of the concubines'* duties revolved around sex. Having tried to describe the harem as being far from the popular image of flowing silk curtains and scantily-clad nubile young ladies, Jones pretty much then describes things as being exactly like this. This doesn't do him any favours.

* Though not the harem, strictly speaking. This referred to the collective of imperial Persian women, mothers and daughters and sisters and concubines alike. But this is a very petty terminological issue to get hung up on, with the more obvious point being that yes, there were lots of concubines, and yes, they fulfilled exactly the sort of duties one would expect. It's good to be the Great King.

More interesting is Persian governmental structure. This is strongly reminiscent of the later Mongolian empire. It was a merger of many different civilizations and cultures under the umbrella of the Persian khans (the Persians themselves being of nomad stock), a true empire rather than anything like a nation-state. It was enormously tolerant and vibrantly multi-cultural, far more so (says Jones, not without merit) than Rome or, much later, Britain. In essence the Persians themselves were the rulers, the aristocrats with their hands firmly on the reins, but all the lower institutions were allowed to persist more-or-less as they had previously.

Jones may at times hate the Greeks but he's not an unapologetic fanboy of Persia either. He's clear that Persia could use extraordinarily brutal methods of executions (e.g. the ordeal of the boats, don't say I didn't warn you) when it felt it was necessary and that it took a very different view of the truth than western ideas. Darius could thus paint himself as both a foreign conqueror and the legitimate ruler of Egypt; their idea of history had yet to approach even the attempt at getting at objective truth in the way the Greeks at least claimed to try. Persia didn't seem to even understand the concept, and this lack of knowledge about its own history may have been a fatal weakness.

Fascinatingly, Persian culture held the concept of the Truth and the Lie as almost physical entities or deities. The way of Truth was the correct one, the way of the Lie was the realm of devils and monsters. But which was which seems to have been entirely arbitrary, very much in the vein of might is right. If the Great King decided that this was Truth, then so it was. By Jones' own admission, the best rulers of Persia were astute at the art of fake news and bullshitting, putting out messages for their efficacy rather than out of any interest in anything as petty as what really happened.

When it comes to the Greek wars with Persia it's very much a mixed bag. I commend Jones for two very plausible reinterpretations of stories in Herodotus. Firstly, rather than Xerxes stopping to all but make love to a tree because he was actually mad, Jones' version of this being an exaggeration of a widespread Persian practise of tree-worship feels far more believable. Secondly, that Xerxes would seek to appease the waters of the Hellespont with prayers and offerings sounds much more likely than he would whip it out of despotic anger, with the scope for misinterpretation being obvious. 

In like vein, Jones does an excellent job of demonstrating that Cambyses I was a competent and astute ruler, in stark contrast to the Greek portrayal of an ineffectual despot. And he makes the valuable point that it was probably simple imperial ambition that led to Xerxes' invasion, not any sort of revenge for the earlier defeat at Marathon or the Ionian revolt. Unfortunately he rather undoes the latter by apparently forgetting it was the Greeks who were on the receiving end of the invasion force, and getting all prissy because they said mean things about the vast army burning its way through their lands.

Militarily it's on very thin ice. Jones' numbers for the size of Xerxes invasion are on the extremely low side, lower than the lowest values given on Wikipedia. To me they just don't feel plausible. If we allow the city-states of Athens and Sparta to each field armies of 10-40,000 well-armed hoplites each, as is well accepted, then it seems like massive underkill to suppose that Xerxes invasion force was a mere 70,000 infantry. If Athens alone could manage 200 triremes, then for Xerxes to find just 500 seems downright pathetic given the vast scale of the empire*. To note that Greece was not a united front in defending itself is correct but disingenuous, the main point surely being that Athens and Sparta, two astonishingly different societies, did manage to unite. And to spin Thermopylae as a "great Persian victory" is honestly laughable in a grim sort of way, the sort of propaganda the Great King would have approved of.

* Granted, Michael Scott notes that the ability to field disproportionately large military forces was one of the principle advantages of early democracies.

Later Jones uncritically repeats stories which feel a lot more like Greek titillation than anything else. The idea that the Great King would have an occasion at which he would be unable to refuse any request is just plain silly (see Trump, immunity from prosecution...). Trying to justify the actions of an autocratic serial killer on the grounds of trying to protect her dynasty is just mind-wrenching, as is saying that Darius was destined to have a glorious reign... absolutely nothing about it was glorious, ending as it did with his utter defeat at the hands of Alexander. 

Likewise, the argument that Darius wasn't a coward by fleeing battle (an argument I've heard from others) just isn't tenable either. It's ludicrous to expect anyone in that situation to be so conscious of their dynastic obligations that they run away out of duty, and far, far simpler to suppose that they did so because they were bloody terrified. Alexander faced exactly the same dynastic pressures but was made of considerably sterner stuff.

Jones clearly loves his subject. Some of his narrative passages are genuinely gripping, but here he seems to be only repeating the historical sources. At the end of it all I'm reminded again of John Man's comments on Mongolia. Man too loves his subject but for all the light readability of his books, he's clearly thought a lot more about it than Jones. The Mongol Empire, according to Man, was driven by nothing much more than a pure desire for conquest. It had ultimately nothing to offer the world, no new ideologies, no new perspectives. It was conquest for conquest's sake. That gave it an extraordinary, paradoxical capacity for both tolerance and violence alike. 

So it seems to me with the Persians. To unify the disparate lands and hold them together for two centuries was an extraordinary but ultimately pointless achievement. A capacity for synthesis and fusion of artistic styles from a multitude of cultures was all very well, but art alone does not a culture make. To allow local democracies under autocratic overlords in no way compares with instituting democracy as the end point of rule. And mastering propaganda is no substitute whatever for even the worst philosophy; even a bad but honest attempt to get at the Truth is better than embracing the Lie.

Review : Summer of Blood

This is a wonderful little book that I picked up on a whim some time ago. Dan Jones is these days quite the celebrity historian and deservedly so. His first book, from the far-off days of 2009, however, appears to have been overlooked, and now seems a fantastic time to bring this tale of the Peasant's Revolt to wider attention.

Why now ? In 2009 we were in the grip of what should now really be renamed from "the" to "a" financial crisis, and bless little Dan's innocent cotton socks, it must have seemed that that was the perfect moment to tell a tale of a bloodthirsty mob suffering repression from the elite. Oh Dan, my sweet summer child...

Then as now, egalitarianism was in the air. Jones quotes a contemporary French poem from shortly before the revolt, hinting that tensions had been building for years and were not just a British peculiarity. I set it here in prose :

There are three things of such a sort that they produce merciless destruction when they get the upper hand. One is a flood of water, another is a raging fire, and the third is the lesser people, the common multitude, for they will not be stopped by either reason or discipline.

As always with Dan Jones' books, what I like most is his ability to, in his own words, fulfil the "historian's most important duty : to tell, as accurately as possible, a cracking good story" but at the same time deal with things even-handedly and analytically. It would be easy to simplify this to the innocence of the egalitarian peasants and the villainy of the so-called "nobility", but Jones doesn't do this. He makes it clear that while indeed there were powerful economic forces behind the Peasant's Revolt, the way they acted soon became detestable. What began with legitimate grievances ended in an orgy of the most brutal violence for violence's sake, an uncontrolled, anarchic rampage with no goals beyond sheer destruction and bloody murder. 

And he also gives a good many details not found in the standard narrative taught to schoolchildren. That version goes something like this : oppressed by the avaricious aristocracy, especially due to the notorious poll tax, the peasants rose in revolt. Led by Wat Tyler, they met King Richard at Smithfield, who promised to help them but immediately betrayed them. After Richard's henchman killed Tyler, everyone got bored and went home, and the peasants had to suffer yet worse oppression forever after.

This is an oversimplification. To start with, the initial poll tax wasn't in itself the main problem. The problem was endemic corruption. The poll tax itself was unfair, because it was being used to fund not just an arguably unavoidable war with France (albeit badly executed with little strategy), but also a wholly pointless private one against Portugal thanks to the nefarious John of Gaunt. And yet while the peasants rightly grumbled about it, the first poll tax wasn't unfordable, amounting to the equivalent of about three days wages for the poorest : hardly likely to win friends, but very much endurable.

Jones also makes it clear why the aristocracy thought this was a good idea. Thanks to the plague, the lower orders had seen massive wage rises while the upper echelons had not. So a one-off tax to defend the country ? Didn't seem like a bad plan at all.

And perhaps it would have worked, provided that had been the end of it. Of course it wasn't, and further, considerably larger taxes were required. Even though these were much more carefully implemented, scaled according to wealth rather than being a flat fee, it was now just too much to bear : it was not only unfair taxation, but the bulk of the tax fell on labourers who "had no voice at all." Taxation without representation indeed.

Thus began the Peasant's Revolt. It was in large part a spontaneous uprising of the commons, a genuine grass roots mass movement against oppression. But it was not entirely so, with from the start gangs of rebels pressing those who would prefer to steer clear into their ranks. This would continue right until the very end of the rebellion.

The demands of the peasants were mixed to say the least. The firebrand John Ball preached true equality for all in language that feels all too modern :

They are clothed in velvet and camlet furred with grise, and we be vestured with poor cloth: they have their wines, spices and good bread... and we have the pain and the travail, rain and wind in the fields, and by that which cometh of our labours they keep and maintain their estates... we be beaten, yet we have no sovereign to whom we may complain, nor that will hear us nor do us right.

Ball inflamed the commons so much that one of their early petitions called directly for the heads of those who they found responsible for their undeniably sorry lot in life. Needless to say, asking the young king to kill his chief advisors had absolutely no chance of success. While the peasants were more politically informed than the stereotype might suggest, clearly this rebellion hadn't been carefully thought through. Yet Jones is careful to note that in some ways the illiterate peasants were quite justified in their suspicion of book-learning, used as it was to oppress them with no chance of giving them access to any kind of academia. Their deliberate burning of records, a "damning funeral pyre of England's legal system", and their insult taken at King Richard's request for a set of written demands, becomes understandable. The two sides weren't speaking the same language.

Yet shortly afterwards, a group of much more moderate rebels met with the king at Mile End. At this point the rebellion was still mainly organised and coherent. The demands they made of Richard were entirely reasonable and restorative, not in the least bit revolutionary. To be sure, the feudal system was inherently unjust and unfair, but like all systems of government, if it's implemented correctly it could be far better on the ground than on paper. After all, if your lord has the right to claim some percentage of your earnings but doesn't actually do this, this is far better a situation than if he does. So the peasants demands were initially entirely moderate :

"It was a request for a countryside charter of justice. They asked him to make them free for ever [serfdom was by this point already uncommon] - themselves, their lands and their heirs. They asked, specifically, for a rent limit of 4d per acre... Finally, they asked that no man should be compelled to work except by employment under a regularly-reviewed contract."

Not exactly "workers of the world unite", let alone "eat the rich". But here the young Richard made a very foolish mistake. Richard acceded to their demands (though surely only as a way to buy time), but then for reasons best known to himself, he went much further. He gave the peasants license to hunt down those they thought responsible for their rotten situation. Granted, he framed it somewhat more moderately than this, telling them to bring the traitors before him for due legal process, but in the heated atmosphere of the times, with enough of the mob eager for blood, it failed spectacularly. The peasants took it, quite literally, as a license to kill. And kill they did.

What followed was a series of atrocities that came close to the utter ruin of the kingdom. Palaces and homes were set ablaze, mob justice settling petty grievances with beheadings. Panic begat panic; defendable positions were surrendered out of sheer fear. Looting and destruction were widespread but the least of the problems. Hats were nailed to heads and heads were stuck on spikes, summary executions were common and men were burned alive. The legal boundaries had become blurred with mob justice, with catastrophic results. 

While John Ball had been preaching equality for a while, this proto-Marx had no grasp on political theory whatever, no alternative system of government besides bringing the old one down. I get the impression of a self-serving egomaniac, more interested in himself than his goals. He seem to have been completely undeterred by the death and destruction around him, or perhaps encouraged by it.

The rebels by this point were in such a state of bloodlust that they were hardly in a mood to hear lectures on sociology in any case. Contrary to the so-called "myth" of panic, they were not in any state to be reasoned with. They were unhinged.

This led to the second, more famous meeting with the teenage king, which does seem to have happened basically in accordance with the popular tale (Jones also provides some alternatives in the footnotes based on the different sources, but the usual version is the more likely, and the differences are in any case slight). The only nuance he adds here is that Tyler was drunk on power, making demands which, like those of Ball, were impossible for the king to meet : total equality, all Church property divided amongst the commons, no more outlawry. And now Richard's strategy of complete agreement proved successful :

Tyler's demand... had met with the one response that did not suit him : complete acquiescence. Part of the point of asking for such radical terms of peace had been to maintain the momentum of the revolt... Pursuing these sorts of demands kept the movement vital, idealistic and committed. But without such a central focus, it would inevitably dissolve back into local riots and isolated spates of rural complaint. Royal assent to his ludicrous demands guaranteed Tyler nothing.

This then was a smart move. Tyler wanted to inflame the king to use his refusal for propaganda for more recruits. By simply giving in, the king had at once rendered Tyler politically impotent. All that was needed was the slightest pretext, which was Tyler's rude behaviour, and he was famously cut down. The mob, having absolutely no clue what to do next, collapsed.

The wider rebellion, however, persisted for some weeks afterwards. If Ball had been a demagogue and Tyler an amateur general, then Richard became a truly pantomime tyrant. Jones hates Richard, and it's not hard to see why. The guy was about as bad as a medieval king could be. And yet while he did give the famous "villains you are, and villains you remain" speech, and had hundreds of rebels put to death (including Ball), it's not altogether a story of the establishment successfully crushing an uprising through sheer brutality. Many pardons were issued and respected. Eventually even a general pardon was issued for the commons. And it did nothing to solve the fundamental issues that had led to the rebellion, with king and Parliament almost immediately at odds and Richard going on to be a right little shit for the rest of his life. The rest, of course, is history. Hint : it didn't end well for Richard.

Overall, an outstanding read. It wastes not a single word and blends the analytic and the narrative perfectly. With vivid prose that doesn't fail to discuss the uncertainties of details, this, like Gaskill's The Ruin of All Witches, feels like it could almost be directly lifted from page to a big-budget TV miniseries. Judging this one on its own terms, I find it hard to give it anything less than 9/10.