Review: The Anthropocene Reviewed

 The Anthropocene Reviewed is a book full of random reviews written by John Green. I was, of course, uneasy about reading another piece of non-fiction by him, given my one experience with his non-fiction left me feeling dumber for having read it.

Fortunately, this book avoids all the weaknesses of Everything is Tuberculosis. For one, every essays is relatively short, no more than 3-5 pages, essentially a blog post or short podcast, which is a format that enables any competent writer to hide his lack of knowledge about any topic.

Secondly, since he picks essentially random things to write about, and frequently the title of the topic is only a jumping off point to either a different point that caught Green's attention or for Green to provide some sort of autobiography, the human interest side-stories that would annoy me in a longer piece of work doesn't annoy me here. I will note that in the middle of this book, I had to take a break to read another book as a palette cleanser --- even in this format, I can only cope with unadulterated non-fiction Green for 100 pages or so at a time.

I learned that he settled down in Indianapolis, but that Kurt Vonnegut was also from there. He did note that Vonnegut moved away as soon as he could and never returned:

Indianapolis’s favorite literary son, Kurt Vonnegut, wrote that one of the flaws in the human character “is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” Home ownership was all maintenance. There were always window treatments to install and light bulbs to change. The water heater kept breaking. And most of all, there was the lawn. God, I hated mowing the lawn. The lawn and the mini-malls of 86th and Ditch became the two poles of my resentment. I couldn’t wait for Sarah to get a job somewhere else. (kindle loc 2163)

There was one particularly poignant story in which he discusses being on call as a trainee chaplain when he's asked to  serve when a badly burnt little boy of 3 came in. He described the story as one of the contributors to him quitting his career as a chaplain to become a writer, but then he finds out later that the boy survived.

The voice of the book is unaffected, at times sensitive, and at times very contemporary bro-like. Green seems to be an interesting character. I'm afraid to watch his youtube videos or podcasts for fear that I won't like him very much if I see or hear him instead of reading him.

In any case, I had fun reading the book. The star rating (1-5 stars) is kinda used weirdly. I give them book 3.5 stars.

Stories are Weapons

 Stories are Weapons is that most unusual book - a nonfiction piece by a science fiction author. The thesis of the book is that Americans have been subject to psychological warfare techniques and propaganda for so long that they've become gaslit to the point where most Americans cannot tell the difference between reality and fiction. Judging by the polls for the upcoming election I'd definitely agree with the thesis!

There’s a pervasive anxiety in the United States—and, sometimes, a hope—that people will imitate what they find in the stories they consume. It’s why policymakers argue that kids playing violent games could become school shooters. It’s also why right-wing pundits worry that teens reading about trans characters in young adult books might become trans themselves. In the United States, we treat fiction as politics—and vice versa. As a result, it’s difficult for us to build a public sphere where we can come to a consensus about what’s true rather than which story we like best. This conundrum leads us back to where we began: storytelling. (kindle loc 213)

 The book covers the history of the US military's conception of psychological warfare and a biography of Paul Linebarger, also known as the science fiction writer Cordwainer Smith:

Linebarger felt that one of the OWI’s greatest accomplishments was the establishment of Voice of America, a radio station aimed at bringing a US perspective to the world. The OWI took over Voice of America in 1942, and programmed everything from popular music to carefully crafted bits of truth. Voice of America could be read as a real-life analog of the cranching wire from the Cordwainer Smith story “Scanners Live in Vain.” Using their wire antennas to tune in, people deprived of information and entertainment could briefly experience the freedom that comes from both. Eventually, Linebarger hoped, the joy of cranching with Voice of America might lead to the reform of closed regimes like the People’s Republic of China. Throughout the Cold War and beyond, adversaries could hear American voices whispering in their ears, almost as if they were sending telepathic messages about why democracy is good for the world. (kindle loc 516)

Then there's a full-on narrative about the Cambridge Analytica approach at Facebook. Some might have dismissed those as being ineffective, but what's interesting was that Cambridge Analytica was explicit about ways to turn people into racists and antisemetes:

 What they found, after years of running the F-Scale Test, was that certain people do have a measurable disposition that primes them to follow strongman leaders with racist and antisemitic tendencies. The three researchers collaborated with philosopher Theodor Adorno, who had fled Nazi Germany, to publish a book in 1950 called The Authoritarian Personality. In it, they broke down the psyches of latent fascists. People with “authoritarian personalities” were often cynical about humanity: they believed the strong would always rule the weak and that force was the only way to resolve conflicts. Authoritarians also had deep ethnocentric feelings that led to hatred of all manner of people unlike themselves: Jews, immigrants, homosexuals, political adversaries. They had a strong mistrust of science, which they associated with too much rapid social change. The higher a person scored on the F-Scale, the more likely they would fall for fascist propaganda. And yet, as Frenkel-Brunswik and her colleagues discovered, people with authoritarian leanings often didn’t realize it. UC Berkeley intellectual historian Martin Jay, who has studied Adorno’s work, told me that the book’s “basic intuition” is that “people have surface beliefs but if you dig down they have psychological limitations that take them away from those beliefs. There are differences between conscious and unconscious motives—which explains why people would betray their ideals.” A person might see herself as kindhearted, but clever anti-immigrant propaganda would get her thinking that “those people” are criminals who should be forced into detention camps. When triggered by rapid social changes, those unconscious beliefs could erupt into full-blown genocidal movements. (kindle loc 1105)

 The rest of the book covers how this sort of mass paropaganda allow a small number of influencers can create the illusion of mass agreement just by retweeting a meme or concept that might also come from someone else in their networks.

While Annalee Newitz gave me a good feel for the research in her coming to her conclusions about the current state of American mass delusion, she doesn't give good answers as to how we can inoculate people against misinformation or concerted groups trying to influence the outcome of elections. For instance, she mentions libraries as being particularly good places for people to do deep thinking:

“If somebody is trying to come to terms with being a human, there is an instinct to hide, but there’s also an instinct to explore. And in the library those two don’t contradict each other. Hiding in the stacks is a form of discovery.” She said she’s not against social media, but doesn’t feel that it’s as conducive to sharing ideas as browsing in the stacks...As physical spaces, libraries are models of what Gordon called structured communication. Often they contain at least one special-use room where people can hold public meetings, author readings, or after-school study sessions. But the rest of the library defaults to silence. They are places where we come to be alone with our thoughts, to learn from what other people have said without anyone else yelling in our ears about it. We need that silence. It’s a space to make our own decisions, to evaluate what we as individuals actually think rather than what influencers and operatives tell us is right. (kindle loc 2832-2851)

As a book nerd and the kind of person who loves to read, I agree with her. The problem is that we've had libraries for the entire time, and it hasn't helped the population break through the mass propaganda being deployed by Fox News, TikTok, or any number of right wing hosts. Even if it did work it would take generations for people to learn that the misinformation is out there, and we don't have generations until the next election.

Nevertheless, you should read the book. In the mean time the best thing to do is to avoid getting your news from social media altogether.