PROPAGANDA by Edward Bernays

On By David HarkaczIn ClassicLeave a comment

“It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading, committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best kinds of food for us to eat. But we have chosen the opposite method, that of open competition.” – Edward Bernays

Propaganda has become a dirty word. That “become” may be a surprise as, for centuries, it was not. This change in public use of the word came shortly after World War 1 when people began to realize how little the romanticism of war matched the horrors of reality; a word was needed to capture the betrayal of their sentiments. Currently it is used almost exclusively to convey something negative – the emphasis is placed on the misleading nature of the subject described, whereas it was previously a benign term. The tide has come and gone, and the original conception of the word may never return. But Edward Bernays disagreed with the word’s transformation and sought to redeem the idea of propaganda. It is worth asking if Bernays should have won this battle for the word’s identity – and if it should be fought again.

Bernays did so through his well-known 1928 book Propaganda. While he was born in Vienna in 1891, his family would move to New York City in the following year. He is largely known for pioneering the field of public relations; major companies such as General Electric and Proctor and Gamble would pay for his advisement. No introduction of him appears complete unless it is stated that he is the twice over the nephew of Sigmund Freud – his mother was Freud’s sister, and his father was the brother of Freud’s wife; few would doubt the influence of psychology throughout the book and his work.

The word “propaganda” itself originated from the Congregation for Propagation of the Faith in Rome, founded by Roman Catholic Cardinals in the 1620s. The congregation sought to expand and improve the missionary efforts of the church, and so it sent out missionaries to propagate – to spread and promote widely – the faith of the Church. From around this time until World War 1, the word was seldom used.

The title of his first chapter, “Organizing Chaos,” is his essential thesis about what is positive about propaganda, serving as the theme of the word’s redemption: “In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything.” That is, propaganda is a means of organizing the world’s chaos by raising awareness of a cause by making its nature clearer (idealistically) and highlighting its significance to the public.

For a word that has been used, misused, and suffered from fundamentally different implications, it is important to arrive at definitions. In the second chapter, The New Propaganda, Bernays addresses dictionary and public definitions of propaganda. He quotes from the Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary’s definition at the time: “Effort directed systematically toward the gaining of public support for an opinion or a course of action.” Later, he arrives at his own definition: “Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group.” Ultimately, Bernays’ efforts were not enough. One of The Oxford Dictionary’s current definitions for propaganda is: “The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a particular cause or point of view, often a political agenda.” Bernays’ essay, then, was a battle against the potential addition of the “biased or misleading” clause to the word’s identity.

To prevent this addition, Bernays argued that propaganda is just only to the extent to which it is righteous and truthful: “Yet whether, in any instance, propaganda is good or bad depends on the merit of the cause urged, and the correctness of the information published…” He also quotes from a Scientific American article that pleads the case for the word: “Truth is mighty and must prevail, and if any body of men believe that they have discovered a valuable truth, it is not merely their privilege but their duty to disseminate that truth. If they realize, as they quickly must, that this spreading of the truth can be done upon a large scale and effectively only by organized effort, they will make use of the press and the platform as the best means to give it wide circulation.”

A potential contradiction appears to those cognizant of Bernays’ work on the whole. He is partly infamous for his work for the American Tobacco Company where he conceived a campaign branded “Torches of Freedom.” This was a propaganda campaign designed to create more female smokers by combining the idea of smoking with empowerment. Smoking, as per the advertisements, was a sign of liberation, freedom and rebellion. While this point provides many difficulties, it does not demonstrate an outright contradiction to Bernays’ defense of propaganda as the deadly effects of smoking were not directly understood at the time of his campaign.

He provides a handful of examples of his propagandist work throughout the book. In one instance, Bernays describes how the old method of advertising would say, for example, ‘YOU – buy a piano NOW,’ but modern propaganda would operate more subtly: “The music room will be accepted because it has been made the thing. And the man or woman who has a music room or has arranged a corner of the parlor as a musical corner, will naturally think of buying a piano. It will come to him as his own idea.” He also increased the sale of ivory soap by promoting nationwide soap carving competitions for children while also utilizing the word of a reputed sculptor to promote the idea. In another campaign, the NAACP sought to hold a momentous event to fight against lynching, segregation and other forms of discrimination. Bernays advised that it must be held in the South to garner the most attention and that diverse leaders from across the country should be invited so that the nation would hear about the speeches given.

The later chapters approach the concept of propaganda as it pertains to specific ideas and groups: business, politics, women, education, social service, arts and sciences. These chapters are largely only significant for providing further examples of propaganda as a positive tool: “A campaign for the preservation of teeth seeks to alter people’s habits in the direction of more frequent brushing of teeth. A campaign for better parks seeks to alter people’s opinion in regard to the desirability of taxing themselves for the purchase of park facilities…” Only the chapter on “women’s activities” seems to have aged poorly with its overemphasis on homemaking, cooking, etc.

Bernays ends with optimism about the popular conception of propaganda: “If the public is better informed about the processes of its life, it will be so much the more receptive to reasonable appeals to its own interests…” There is something desirable about propaganda – and, Bernays argues, that by understanding how it works we will be more welcoming to further propagandized efforts to garner our interest and investment. His final page is hopeful – he wants the public to become more aware of how propaganda operates: “If the public becomes more intelligent in its commercial demands, commercial firms will meet the new standards. If it becomes weary of the old methods used to persuade it to accept a given idea or commodity, its leaders will present their appeals more intelligently.”

Now, nearly one hundred years after Propaganda’s publication, we may consider Bernays’ proposed hope of redeeming the word as a lost war. It is primarily used as a derogatory accusation, synonymous with perceived manipulation or deception. But it also seems safe to say that there are few words used as uncritically as propaganda. As a litmus test for the sincerity of the word’s usage – how frequently is the word used to describe something that the accuser finds agreeable? Those we disagree with are propagandists – those we agree with speak Truth, or at least the righteousness of the cause minimizes any falsehoods; to call some political speech or text “propaganda” often conveys little apart from the speaker’s opposition. It is largely, to misuse a lyric by Them Crooked Vultures, “…an incomplete thought coming to a complete stop.” On the other hand, it should be stressed that it is far better to be cognizant of some trick being performed than to absorb propaganda dogmatically.

This line of thinking can easily snowball, but it is not within the scope of this essay to make broad prescriptions for the overall state of public discourse or to prepare dissections of how entrenched people are in their political camps. Rather, let us rest this point to say that the concept itself of ‘propaganda’ is seldom considered clearly– and that is why the bulk of Bernays’ points are enduringly significant.  

But is something off? The previous comments have tried to understand and clarify the text’s arguments themselves, but let us consider the work as a whole. In one moment, Bernays quotes high-sounding phrases from Scientific American: “Truth is mighty and must prevail…” In another, he tells us how he boosted the sales of one brand of soap. Is Truth and its dissemination Bernays’ priority – or is he merely an all-too-clever salesman? To use Bernays’ own definition, this book was ‘an effort to influence the relations of the public to an idea’ – that of propaganda’s righteousness, and so it must be stressed that the book Propaganda is certainly itself propaganda according to his terms.

Bernays makes plentiful points in favor of propaganda, but the absence of those against it precludes sincerity. He emphasizes how propaganda helped the NAACP fight segregation but avoids mentioning how it enticed young men to horrific deaths across the sea in the first World War (or, even, how it may have been used to ensure segregation endured as long as it did to begin with). Bernays was doubtlessly cognizant of the negative uses; an earnest argument for the word would have provided destructive examples while stressing that the word should be redeemed in spite of them. Yes, to an extent he covered his tracks – Bernays would simply say such examples would fall under his conception of “bad” or unjust propaganda, but the absence of these points prevents the book from appearing honest in its seemingly lofty ambitions and keeps it far removed from being an earnest scholarly examination.

It is easy to share his proposed wish for a more enlightened public, but it is worth estimating whether his hope was genuine without assuming telepathy. Bernays had popularized what is now known as the ‘Third-Party Technique” which involves, for example, hiding or obfuscating the fact that an otherwise impartial expert is on the propagandized cause’s payroll; the fewer fingerprints on the propaganda from its originator, the better. This leaves an abundance of work to be done by individual minds to determine what is honest and what is manipulation; his teachings have made it difficult to distinguish between the perceptive eye and the merely conspiratorial. Perhaps a more honest way to rephrase his hope for the public becoming “more receptive to reasonable appeals” would be: ‘Those in power and those chasing it are only going to become more cunning with my help; you’d better keep up.’ Yes, we should always desire a more intelligent and informed populace that can continually sniff out these tricks with ease, but the public has lives to lead and can only take a passing interest in subjects not close to their hearts; meanwhile clever people, inspired and empowered by Bernays, have devoted their lives to propagandizing a cause with his tricks.

The man has been increasingly demonized as the awareness of his work grew, and it can be argued that his influence has been a net negative for humanity, but let us not forget that we are only able to damn him because we know of him. He could have remained in the shadows, empowering corporations and politicians who would keep these secrets to themselves without ever allowing the public to know the name Edward Bernays. Instead, the magician openly reveals his own tricks and how those by his predecessors, peers, and those to come are performed; the instruction manual is available for anyone to explore, and perhaps some gratitude is owed for the fact that these tactics were not pioneered and popularized by someone with worse intents. Regardless, we must finally come to terms with his proposed plea for the redemption of propaganda.

In the first chapter, to stress how broad the varied interests in society are, Bernays lists dozens of organizations featured in the World Almanac that begin with the letter ‘A’. In the nearly one-hundred years since Propaganda’s publication, our population has grown from two billion to eight billion. Through the advent of the internet and its ability to connect distant individuals we have seen the formation of an unprecedented number of differing groups, creating a vastly larger diversity compared to the amount that astounded Bernays. It is unlikely for any of these causes or groups to succeed or expand without propaganda, especially as the tools Bernays provided are now far more widely known – but certainly not well-known enough – and those competing for public attention and support are lost without utilizing his devices; so too is it hopelessly romantic to think that they will pursue these goals through solely honest and noble means.  But necessity alone does not answer the question, and perhaps there is a bit of irony here – it was easier to argue the case for propaganda’s redemption prior to the book Propaganda being published. Now, after the fact, the tools for propagating a cause are subtler, cleverer and more multifaceted; thanks to his work, it is more important than ever to keep one’s guard up – thereby securing the appropriateness of the inclusion – especially in a biased or misleading way.

LESSONS OF HISTORY by Will and Ariel Durant

On By David HarkaczIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

“It is a precarious enterprise, and only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.” – Will Durant, The Lessons of History

It is easy to believe to study history is simple – that when we open any book on the subject, we are reading the objective relaying of a collection of facts that an author utilized to present clear-cut examples of cause and effect; the reader need not be so critical, he is merely an audience absorbing truth. But in The Age of Faith, Will Durant wrote that “The historian always oversimplifies, and hastily selects a manageable minority of facts and faces out of a crowd of souls and events whose multitudinous complexity he can never quite embrace or comprehend.” In the face of this difficulty, what lessons are there to truly learn from history? What wisdom can be gained honestly from its study – that is, not merely sought out to confirm an existing bias? In Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant reflect on a lifetime spent as two of history’s most diligent scholars, sharing their great gift of perspective.

Lessons of History was first published in 1968. This book, along with Interpretations of Life, was published before the Durants would move on to publish their eleventh and final Story of Civilization: The Age of Napoleon. The book itself is divided into thirteen chapters, wherein the authors discuss the insights the study of history has to offer on biology, race, character, morals, government and more.

While rereading and revising their ten volumes of The Story of Civilization, Will and Ariel Durant “made note of events and comments that might illuminate present affairs, future probabilities, the nature of man, and the conduct of states.” This book is the result of that survey. It opens with Hesitations, a chapter defined by the couple’s characteristic humility, with the authors asking: “Of what use have your studies been?” Much of the book is spent adding perspective to studying itself of history: “Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded by ambivalent evidence and biased historians, and perhaps distorted by our own patriotic or religious partisanship… Even the historian who thinks to rise above partiality for his country, race, creed or class betrays his secret predilection in his choice of materials, and in the nuances of his adjectives.” They quote their own words from The Age of Reason Begins, writing: “History smiles at all attempts to force its flow into theoretical patterns or logical grooves; it plays havoc with our generalizations, breaks all our rules; history is baroque.”

The lessons throughout it are insightful, clever and substantial. In History and the Earth, the Durants describe the immense influence geography and climate had on the development of civilizations past but observe that “the development of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows” – that is, with the modern technological revolution and the rise of the airplane, we are living in an unprecedented era.

In Biology and History, they comment on the ‘survival of the fittest’: “…the laws of biology are the fundamental lessons of history. We are subject to the processes and trials of evolution, to the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest to survive. If some of us seem to escape the strife or the trials it is because our group protects us, but that group itself must meet the tests of survival.” Much of the chapter is spent discussing the timeless and unending strife between freedom and equality: “Since Nature (here meaning total reality and its processes) has not read very carefully the American Declaration of Independence or the French Revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man, we are all born unfree and unequal… Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.” Other points in this chapter mirror themes he covers in his Pleasures of Philosophy, and he expands upon them here: “Inequality is not only natural and inborn; it grows with the complexity of civilization. Hereditary inequalities breed social and artificial inequalities; every invention or discovery is made or seized by the exceptional individual, and makes the strong stronger, the weak relatively weaker, than before. Economic development specializes functions, differentiates abilities, and makes men unequally valuable to their group.”

In Character and History, The Durants describe the dialectical forces that continually shape history: “Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.” Continuing later in the chapter, they state: “It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole.”

It is a short work at a mere hundred pages, and it is easy to wish for the book to be longer so that we might squeeze as much insight as we can from the Durants – but in doing so we would defy the nature of the book and its intentions. This book largely succeeds in Nietzsche’s goal of saying in a few sentences what it takes others a book to say – for to find ourselves wanting an expansion of observation or supply of additional evidence is to miss the point. It is their Story of Civilization that serves as evidence and argument. These are authentic observations, not theses supplied with immediate proofs. After such a tireless work as the prior volumes, they have earned the right to make these brief reflections.

The authors conclude with remarking again on the difficulties of the book’s endeavor: “History is so indifferently rich that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.” It is human nature to crave easy conviction – to seek out edicts whereby we may consider ourselves morally exceptional or generally superior to those who have not subscribed to our principle of the moment. The existential discomfort of living provokes us to seek some cornerstone upon which we tell ourselves: “I may not know what I’m doing, but at least I am better than those who are not like me.” The Durants do not humor this all-too-human frailty, and for that their work is all the more crucial to wisdom, empathy and understanding.

THE SLEEP SOLUTION by Chris Winter

On By David HarkaczIn ModernLeave a comment

“This book is meant to be read like a sweeping novel. It is not a reference book. I do not want you to skip ahead to the part of the book that you think is most important for you. It’s all important! – Chris Winter

Thomas Carlyle once asked: “Does the boxer hit better for knowing that he has a flexor longus and a flexor brevis?” That is, while scientific knowledge is necessary to science itself, is the understanding of this knowledge worth more than a bit of trivia to someone developing a relevant skill or ability? And to what extent is physiological and biomechanical knowledge useful to an athlete vis-à-vis the development of his competitive prowess? Does knowledge truly improve his athletic intuition, or is it largely unnecessary to the development of the skill?

I make this point to address one of the fundamental woes of people attempting to improve their sleeping habits: to what extent does scientific knowledge of sleep affect the layman’s ability to sleep well? The public at large may have a passing idea of the importance of the known science of sleep – there are stages like REM and NREM, we all have something called a circadian rhythm, sleep is good for our health – and so on. Yet if we want to improve our ability to sleep – for sleep can be properly understood to be a skill – can we practically utilize these facts? Or do we require the consultation of other schools of thought – namely, psychology – to translate this information into something practical? To utilize the scientific and psychological foundations towards improving the skill of sleep, we can turn to Chris Winter, who succeeds in providing the best of both worlds in The Sleep Solution.

The Sleep Solution was published in 2017 by Chris Winter, a sleep specialist who is board-certified in both neurology and sleep medicine. It is an interesting book. There are many great and uncommon insights throughout the work and the author may largely succeed at re-inventing the way most people think about sleep for the better. Unfortunately, he occasionally leans too heavily into what it means to write a ‘layman’s’ book, and while he does have an excellent sense of humor, his style can mar the making of a great point and argument. Winter takes a bit too long to hit his stride, but when he does, he largely triumphs at his intention at providing a “solution” to most woes, and his intelligent application of the principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in the fight against insomnia earns the work its right to be titled so.

The solution itself is both the forest and the trees. It is the book itself, the sum of its parts, but the different parts have different sizes and values – and some certainly stand out as flashes of brilliant reasoning over the rest. The work is divided into two parts and features a literal intermission chapter, and while the purposes of the first and second half cross over into one another, they are largely distinct. The first half is primarily concerned with communicating the scientific foundations of sleep, while the second half represents the bulk of solutions.

Winter sets the crucial scientific foundations in his early chapters. Within the first chapter, titled “What is Sleep Good For? Absolutely Everything!”, he details the relationship between sleep and: the brain’s function, obesity, blood pressure, mood, cancer, and the overall immune system. He continues part one to break down the primary drives of the body, the stages of sleep and the circadian rhythm. He also provides a chapter to make an interesting distinction between sleepiness and fatigue, emphasizing that these are distinct terms, but people often mistakenly use them interchangeably. My intention is not to gloss over these vitally important foundations, for Winter does present various solutions within these early chapters – but these foundations are largely common knowledge – and while they are necessary points, they are not the point of the book.

To start the second half, the author places particular emphasis on common-but-crucial bits of sleep advice to make a point: if you are not respecting these facts, further advice is unlikely to do you any good. In the chapter Sleep Hygiene, he focuses on knowledge that would be familiar to anyone who searched for sleep advice in the past. You ought to keep your bedroom dark and respect the bed as the ‘landing’ for the end of a day. Avoid the light from electronics. Exercise in the “melatonin suppressing sun.” If you must eat near bedtime, then eat foods with tryptophan, melatonin, or those with a high-glycemic index. Be wary of your vices. Nicotine and caffeine are stimulants and should be avoided in the hours before your bedtime, albeit by now you know to avoid the former regardless of circumstance. His points on alcohol are particularly interesting, as while many people consider it a positive sleep aid, Winter counters by clarifying the distinction between sedation and sleep. Alcohol is a sedative, but being sedated does not necessarily translate to good sleep, as Winter points out: “… what’s not disputed is the mess alcohol makes of the second half of your night as the alcohol is metabolized. Ever wake up about four to six hours after a binge and find it absolutely impossible to go back to sleep? It’s like an amazing Caribbean cruise that ends with your boat sinking. Is there anything in the first half of the cruise that could compensate for the soggy ending?” Alcohol may have calmed you and aided in letting consciousness wane, but that is not the same thing as a good night’s rest. 

While I have said the solution is largely the entirety of the work, its major theses come out in the chapters Insomnia and Hard Insomnia. His approach is largely to assist you in thinking as clearly as possible at sleep. After some insightful deconstruction of the concept of insomnia, Winter concludes with the following definition: “Insomnia is not when an individual can’t sleep. The true definition of insomnia consists of two components: 1. A person is not sleeping when she wants to sleep. 2. The person cares, and usually cares a lot, about not sleeping, whether or not she wants to admit it.”

He chooses the words “can’t sleep” to make a point that recurs throughout the book, with this quotation appearing in the second chapter: “They [insomnia patients] are sleeping; they just don’t perceive their sleep effectively. In other words, their assertion of not sleeping is just plain wrong. The medical fact is, we all sleep. It’s a primary drive. The body insists on it. So the first thing I need to tell you if you are one of those people who “never sleep” is this: You need to accept one simple fact, or you will be doomed to struggle with your sleep forever. YOU SLEEP.” At first glance, this may feel like a petty, merely semantic hill to die on, but Winter is here utilizing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to make a point that is anything but petty.    

Anxiety is overwhelmingly cited as the most common cause of insomnia, and one of the greatest tools psychologists have conceived to combat anxiety is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Winter’s major solutions utilize this form of therapy. One of the main concerns of CBT is the nature of sentences we tell ourselves. This school of thought stresses that we often fail to distinguish between truly innocent hyperbole and the unhealthy, exaggerated sentences we tell ourselves. Albert Ellis, one of the pioneers of CBT, refers to these latter sorts of statements as “catastrophizing.” Instead of recognizing of something as “unfortunate,” it is “awful.” Instead of recognizing something as “difficult,” we say it is “impossible.” These latter terms are far more anxiety-inducing than their former counterparts – and this is the crux of Winter’s point. When he wants you to stop saying you “can’t sleep” and to understand “you sleep,” he is gravitating the reader to a far less catastrophizing idea. He points out that patients refer to their insomnia as “terrifying,” that they feel “helpless.” This is why, psychologically, it is crucial to understand that you do sleep.

In the second part of the definition, “The person cares, and usually cares a lot, about not sleeping…,” he is referring to the unfortunate, anxiety-ridden cycle people get themselves into about sleep. They have put so much mental pressure on themselves to sleep that they are unable to fall asleep easily, worrying “…their productivity will suffer at work or they will feel exceedingly bad during the day. Their anxiety about the consequences of not sleeping ratchets up to fear…” He counters this by arguing “bad sleep is much more dangerous in your mind than it is in real life.” Occasionally getting insufficient sleep is an inevitability of life – but obsessing over these nights and believing you were dysfunctional because of poor sleep is what leads to these vicious cycles of restless nights. Regarding what patients irrationally think about sleep, Winter says: ‘“When I don’t sleep, I can’t function.” Cognitive therapy would say, “You woke up, you taught your third-grade class, you went grocery shopping afterward, and while you didn’t make it to the gym, your day was not dysfunctional.”

Winter differentiates between simple insomnia and hard insomnia. Simple insomnia is so named to “…reinforce the idea that it’s just that. Simple. Harmless even. Most likely the cause is staring you in the face. I put this section in the book so people who develop simple insomnia can learn to recognize it early and nip it in the bud before it becomes hard insomnia and more difficult to treat. Simple also implies optimism.” Hard insomnia, however, is far more difficult to wrangle with. Hard insomnia comes about after dealing with sleep issues for many months on end, wherein poor sleep and insomnia have become part of the patients psyche and identity. “I’m not saying that they are traumatized because they aren’t sleeping. What I’m saying is that the presence of hard insomnia for years and years is itself traumatizing.” These patients are so damaged that they fail to be objective about the reality of their sleep, which leads Winter to make a distinction between sleep identity and sleep quality – the necessary implication being that these do not always align, and this misalignment is a primary characteristic of hard insomnia patients. He summarizes this problem: “To feel poorly, you don’t have to sleep poorly (or sleep too little); you just have to believe you do. This too was seen in studies. Good sleepers with high distress functioned more poorly than good sleepers with low distress. No surprise there. What was surprising was the high-distress poor sleepers functioned similarly to the high-distress good sleepers. This seems to give some insight into the “dysfunction” seen in some insomnia patients. The dysfunction is more tied to the patient’s view of her sleep quality (and the resulting stress over it) than it is to her actual sleep!”

His conclusion is to largely condition yourself to care less about sleep: “When you talk with good sleepers, they all have a flip-flops-and-Hacky-Sack mentality toward their sleep. “Whatever, dude.” Within them is an inner belief that they are basically going to be okay no matter what happens that night in bed. This is the mentality you must find, or you will be doomed to struggle forever.” There are far more solutions contained within the book than I have communicated, but Winter will frequently stress that it is absolutely worth consulting a professional if (and especially if) the book was unable to resolve the reader’s woes. While insomnia as anxiety is the most frequent cause of sleep disturbances, Winter does his diligence to make the work definitive. His concluding chapters discuss sleeping aids and medications, sleep schedules, naps and the medical (as opposed to psychological) conditions that can incite sleeping problems.

I have not said much of his style, but it is worth concluding with as it is one of the most distinctive qualities of the book. Winter is eventually charming, often downright hilarious, but his sense of humor occasionally interferes with the making of a point. “All of this talk of poor sleep, heart failure, Alzheimer’s disease, and not fitting into your favorite jeans is a super downer. Want something to help brighten your mood? Try sleeping. Seriously.” Amusing enough, but this quotation from the first chapter appears before any inkling of a solution is offered – that is, the reader is first introduced to Chris Winter, the comic, long before they meet Chris Winter, the insightful sleep researcher. If he wants his early quirkiness to be tolerated because of his credentials alone, he should remember how many doctors with similar credentials he dismisses throughout the book. Yes, the chapter is detailing various studies on why sleep is so important, but for the first half of the book Winter struggles to elevate himself above someone merely with access to Wikipedia. In Insomnia he writes: “But bad sleep is much more dangerous in your mind than it is in real life.” Then why are these mortal conditions associated with poor sleep, such as cancer, detailed in the beginning? It would not be so hard to do away with this contradiction, either by eliminating the sentence or by qualifying this statement further, but Winter fails to address this Gordian Knot and leaves it largely untouched. So too have I framed his early Cognitive Behavioral Therapy points better than he did, and his introduction of those points does read like a petty semantic battle. If this book undergoes a second edition, which it arguably requires, Winter should restructure much of what appears prior to the intermission. Do not misinterpret my meaning here – Winter does have a brilliant sense of humor. I would not suggest he “tone it down,” but rather be more critical of when to joke and when to communicate clearly. The Sleep Solution has the potential to be an icon of the self-improvement genre, these sloppy weaknesses hold it back.

Despite the preceding paragraph, I nevertheless recommend reading it. Winter has taken a profound approach to the subject and makes the bold decision of embracing uncomfortable truths. As anxiety is overwhelmingly the number one cause of recurring sleep issues, it is the patient’s or reader’s identity that must be coerced to change if their sleep is to improve. The book will likely succeed improving the sleeping habits of every reader to some degree, and where it may fail it nevertheless informs as to how to think more clearly about sleep in general. As per the recommendation of the author himself – if the methods and points made in The Sleep Solution are not enough to get you on the right track, it is likely time to consult a specialist in person.

THE SECRET LISTENER by Yuan-tsung Chen

On By David HarkaczIn ModernLeave a comment

“But like many dreams of many Chinese people, mine was crushed, such that, in order to protect myself from becoming the target of an ongoing political campaign, the Anti-Rightist Purge, one that had already claimed my friends and colleagues, I burned my manuscript and scattered its ashes, like one does after a cremation.” – Yuan-tsung Chen

In Faust, Goethe wrote that “sons must win anew their fathers battles” – people cannot merely rest on the victories and knowledge of their ancestors. Wisdom is not easily imparted, and it is something of a tragedy that lessons must be relearned again and again by each succeeding generation. Yet humanity still stands on the shoulders of giants, with every generation desperately trying to communicate what wisdom they have gained to the next in the endeavor to save them from so much pain, grief and error. Yuan-tsung Chen aims to do just this. Having personally survived Mao’s Great Purges and Cultural Revolution, she is observing history being both repeated and wiped away.

To do her duty against this cyclical tide, she produced her autobiography, The Secret Listener: An Ingenue in Mao’s Court. While she considers the book a life-long work, China’s Cultural Revolution forced her into delays, and she only recently ensured its production in lieu of the recent Hong Kong protests. Yuan-tsung Chen was born in Shanghai, “then the Paris of the East,” in 1929. Through her father’s connections, then later prestigious marriage and positions in the Communist cultural ministry, she was able to see behind the curtain of the many devastating acts of Mao Zedong’s regime.

Chen discovered an early passion for literature and film and envisioned herself as a writer at a young age, but she mistakenly believed she would be a lucky exception and be permitted to thrive in Mao’s China: “Yes, the Communists were well known for killing creativity, but my siblings made me believe that I could succeed where others had failed.”  This dream is especially shattered when she sees Hu Feng, a renowned critic, stand up to and later be persecuted by the regime. She learns that little of what can be considered art is permitted, for it wasn’t merely writing that was suppressed, but film as well: “Film, with its mass appeal, was considered the most important propaganda tool, and to be ideologically correct every film had to be based on an ideologically correct script.” These principles came from Mao’s talks in Yan’an in 1942: “The unaltered principles were that (1) all art should portray the revolutionary masses and (2) all art should advance the cause of the socialist revolution.”

She eventually moves to Beijing and takes a position at the Central Film Bureau. At one point during her career there, a man accused of being a spy rapes a woman. The victim is later interrogated for her relation to the supposed spy and is forced to relive the moment again and again. Chen consoles the woman – which, in China’s Communist culture, naturally places herself in danger as well. Her boss discovers this ‘incident,’ and he informs her that her life is indeed in jeopardy and that she desperately needs “political capital” if she is to survive. Chen is then relocated to the northwest, where “For the next six months, my job was consciousness-raising among the village women. With a burst of oratorical fervor, I encouraged them to fight for their own rights, land, and equality. I expected them to roar back in approval. To my disappointment, they drifted away as if having watched a street performance they couldn’t quite comprehend. Everything was predestined, all their hardships and oppression. Dynasties changed again and again, but poor people remained poor. This was a mandated truth from heaven.”

Later, she is taken to an opera as a date with a well-connected man – so well-connected that the pair is seated next to Zhou Enlai, the man who was effectively Mao’s ‘number two,’ serving as China’s first “Premier” – or Prime Minister. While her conversations with Enlai are brief, she notices how different his private nature is from his public persona. Shortly after, she is invited to watch a debate between Mao and Liang Shumin – a debate that much of China was eagerly awaiting as it will inform what the political climate and future of their government will be. While it is initially civil, Mao gradually loses his patience and explodes at his opponent. In the months to come, the debate and further prosecutions are revealed to have confirmed the populace’s fears: “…Its purpose was to warn us that from now on there will be zero tolerance for dissent.”

But in 1956, three years after the debate, it appears that the opposite is true, and Chen discovers she may finally write in earnest. Unexpectedly, Mao and the party had created a new policy titled “Letting a Hundred Flowers Bloom and Letting a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend,” more commonly referred to as the Hundred Flowers Campaign. Chen writes: “It affirmed the principle that people should have full freedom of speech and expression, that they should be allowed to criticize the Party, to point out its shortcomings, and that there would be no more crackdowns on dissidents.” Her friends and colleagues debate the earnestness of the campaign, cautiously celebrating after hearing that they will soon even allow non-Communist publishing houses to open. In 1957, Chen finishes her first manuscript for a novel, wherein a teenage protagonist has doubts about Mao’s Yan’an talk and its principles. She sends the manuscript to her sister, who sends it to a publisher in Shanghai. At long last, Chen was able to realize her dream of being a writer.

So she thought. The Hundred Flowers Campaign is soon revealed to be a trap: Mao had used free speech as bait so that his enemies could be identified, and his real purges could begin: “Once they had exposed themselves, Mao had said, he would strike back at them so fast and hard that they would have no time to realize what was happening.” The Anti-Rightist Campaign, as it is historically called, is initiated and claims at least 550,000 casualties. Mao believed that “counterrevolutionaries comprised 5 percent of China’s population, and as his purges picked up steam, that number came to be treated as sacred. It became a quota, a target to be reached by party officials as they ferreted out counterrevolutionaries, to be exceeded for extra credit.” With her critical manuscript in a publisher’s hands, Chen’s life is in grave danger.

She burns all that remains of her writing still in her possession and, for the near future, manages to elude becoming a victim of the purge. Chen marries in 1958, but she and her husband are sent to live in slums as punishment for her husband’s elite status. It is there that she recounts her experiences of going to great lengths to smuggle a mere pig, buying mutton on the black market and witnessing the effects of the Great Leap Forward’s famine firsthand. She eventually conceives a new dream – to flee to Hong Kong. It is only finally in 1971 that she and her husband are able to escape. Chen largely remained in Hong Kong through the present day, though she briefly immigrated to the United States, working as a library assistant for the University of California. It is during her time there that she found the connections to publish this book through the Oxford University Press.

There is, naturally, a question of memory. Yuan-tsung Chen is recounting these memories decades after they have transpired. Dialogues and conversations are relived so long after the fact, leaving the reader to ask to what extent it reflects reality. Are they to be taken seriously at face value? Or – is that the wrong question? Is casting too much doubt effectively blaming the victim? To have written “truth” during Mao’s reign was a death sentence – or worse. The modus operandi of 20th century Communist nations was to ensure anything that contradicted government propaganda was severely punished with imprisonment or death; it was the talking points of the party that were to be accepted as truth and historical fact, not lived experience and reality. While she may have escaped and survived the purge, Mao’s legacy nevertheless claimed countless victories by coercing writers like Chen to reduce their record to dust.

On June 30 of 2020, China unanimously passed the National Security Law, a broadly termed, vague decree that effectively allowed the government to grant itself power to arrest whoever they please. The law enables China to arrest and punish any and all who “endanger national security” – a concept left broad enough that anyone who is critical of the Chinese government can be imprisoned. Arrests were made for owning a flag or t-shirt. Journalists, lawyers, academics and activists were charged and thrown into prison. Using or possessing an item that bears a ‘dangerous’ slogan such as, in the eyes of China’s government, “Liberate Hong Kong,” is a prosecutable crime.

In the face of China’s whitewashing of its history, and its repetition of its worst, tyrannical qualities, Chen wants to make a stand: “All my life I have been waiting for China to be allowed to face its Maoist past bravely and unflinchingly, and especially to restore the humanity of its victims. But rather than allow the faces of the past to reemerge, the Party authorities are further obliterating them… To me, this is personal, not abstract. I went through the purges. I witnessed events up close.”

THE LAST QUESTION by Isaac Asimov

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“The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way…” – Isaac Asimov

It is nearly an obligation of our human consciousness to, at one point or several, individually attempt to wrangle with the “big” questions: What is the meaning of life? Is there a God? What happens after death? How does it all end? Isaac Asimov’s The Last Question stands as one of the greatest short stories for its profound exploration of this last example. By utilizing the progress of scientific understanding from the past century to give clearer language and significance to the question, Asimov provided an iconic story about humanity’s attempt to comprehend the end of everything. 

The Last Question is a short story published in 1956 by Isaac Asimov, first appearing in the magazine Science Fiction Quarterly. Its length – just shy of 4,500 words – is no reflection of its ambition. Asimov set out with a thesis and goal, as he writes in his introduction, of wanting to “tell several trillion years of human history in the space of a short story…”

The story itself features seven distinct eras, wherein different people (and later, something far beyond human) address the Multivac – a supercomputer-to-end-all-supercomputers. It changes name and form throughout time – but its function remains relatively constant. It is fed data, is “self-adjusting and self-correcting,” and has evolved from largely solving mere flight trajectory problems to being able to “answer deeper questions more fundamentally…”  Its processing ability grows alongside the flow of time, evolving from the Multivac to the Microvac, to the Galactic AC, the Universal AC, the Cosmic AC, until finally “Man’s last mind fused and only AC existed — and that in hyperspace.”

The last question itself, “asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061…” is this: “How can entropy be reversed?” The question comes about organically from two attendants of the machine who begin debating the problem of entropy and the meaning of forever:

“Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert.”

“That’s not forever.”

After exhausting the conversation to the best of their (inebriated) ability, they decide to consult the Multivac. When asked the last question, the Multivac responds – “INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.” Asimov’s story then takes us across exponentially increasing oceans of time, wherein the Multivac is asked the last question again and again, and despite millennia to learn and evolve more and more, its answer is the same – until the conclusion.

Asimov called this work “by far my favorite story of all those I have written.” It has enjoyed considerable fame – so much so that people will often consider any “greatest short story” list incomplete if The Last Question is absent. Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, and Wolfram Alpha, an online computational knowledge engine, both quote the Multivac/AC when queried “How can entropy be reversed?”

What makes the story so exceptional? With the relatively recent discovery of entropy, the author made the brilliant connection to translate “How does it all end?” into “How can entropy be reversed?” – that is, the latter question is a logical evolution of the former, rephrased based on the progress of scientific knowledge. By translating this into a narrative, one that showcases humanity’s attempt across eons to understand the nature of the universe and its finitude across time, Asimov gave form and feeling to a fundamental question of existence.

But its ending and conclusion is not without hope. Long after humanity’s disappearance, after matter, energy, space and time end, the AC completes its analysis and discovers how entropy can be reversed – and so the story concludes with a creation myth of its own, utilizing a line from the Old Testament – “And AC said, “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” And there was light –”

PUTTING THE RABBIT IN THE HAT by Brian Cox

On By David HarkaczIn ModernLeave a comment

“However, as usual, we digress.” – Brian Cox

Suppose your friend is describing a party where Barack Obama surprisingly shows up. Would you prefer them to gloss over that detail, “sticking to the point” of the party and why they were originally there – or would you say: “Cut the bullshit, what was he like?” Consider this point in the context of an autobiography where the author has spent a life working with dozens of household names. How often would you begrudge the author for getting easily distracted?

That is the overall style of Brian Cox’s autobiography, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat. It is often chaotic, covering a dozen topics in fewer pages, but rarely uninteresting. The title comes from a statement Cox overheard from Oliver Cotton who, when their frustrated director was begging to pull some magic out of their ailing play, stated: “You’ve got to get the rabbit into the hat in the first place.” Across 51 chapters Brian Cox candidly discusses his own life’s story, provides insight into the world of acting and entertains the reader with gossip about performers he has shared a stage with – including a live panther.

The man himself was born to a working-class family on June 1st, 1946 in the city of Dundee, Scotland. From a young age he saw himself as “…an infant determinist. Later on in life I’d have a mentor who told me, ‘It’ll be the long haul for you, Brian,’ a condition I accepted, unconditionally. And I see now how Dundee’s whaling history acts as a metaphor for that state of being. The long haul meant keeping astride the lost whale through sea and estuary, wave after wave after wave.” His father would pass from pancreatic cancer when Cox was only eight, a tragedy that incited severe mental illness in his mother and led to an especially difficult childhood. From there he details the beginnings of his acting career in Dundee, progressing in age and career throughout theaters across the United Kingdom and his eventual journey to Hollywood.

The book opens with a chapter largely devoted to mocking Steven Segal from the time Cox worked with him on the movie The Glimmer Man. The overall tone, then, is immediately set – Cox does not fawn or play nice for the sake of appearances. He is frequently critical about his coworkers and writes freely about their nature behind the scenes and their respective approaches to acting, including Kevin Spacey, Keanu Reeves, Samuel Jackson, Ian McKellen, Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Dustin Hoffman – and many others.  

If mere gossip isn’t your thing, Cox is perhaps most interesting when discussing his profession: “…the thing about my job is that you never stop learning. You never stop learning how to take a moment, how to circumvent it, how to knock it forward, how to not dwell, how to understand the verb but keep it moving and not get trapped into it.” He is open about his own growth – such as how two contrary pieces of advice helped him improve at different points in his career – “Don’t just do something, stand there” and “Don’t just stand there, do something,” – his lesson being not to adopt one mindset wholeheartedly in all circumstances. He is additionally critical of his own ego and the neuroses common in his peers, writing: “After all, we actors are whores for praise, locked into approbation, capable of killing our offspring in return for validation and living only for applause, both literally and figuratively.”

Writing is also a frequent topic. Cox identifies the most significant and common reason for a film’s failure as the script. After arguing this point on his own, he provides a collection of quotes: “One of Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous quotes is, “To make a great film you need three things – the script, the script, and the script.’ But there are a million others I could choose from. George Cukor: ‘Give me a good script and I’ll be a hundred times better as a director.’ Steven Soderbergh: ‘The key is – don’t monkey around with the script. Then everything usually goes pretty well.’ Howard Hawks: ‘You can’t fix a bad script after you start shooting.’ Richard Attenborough: ‘There is nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay.’”

It is mostly endearing – but not always. The book is often written in a sort of stream-of-consciousness. Its chapters are not titled – not a fault in-and-of itself, but I mention it to communicate that any endeavor of highlighting the subject of a chapter in a few words would be hopeless. Cox’s relevant age and the decade being discussed can frequently change multiple times in a chapter and not always with clear transitions and, when certain chapters lack smooth transitions, it is disorienting to determine if we’re back to the main timeline of his life or not.

Still, the stylistic choices are rarely aggravating. In one nine-page chapter, Cox is asked to come to the Paramount lot in LA, and he begins discussing his initial attempts to locate the director he was to meet, who is currently editing Marathon Man. Cox then briefly discusses Marathon Man, which brings him to Dustin Hoffman’s method acting style, then Daniel Day Lewis’s, then the history of acting styles through the icons of Stanislavski and Adler, until we’re back hearing about Cox’s first Paramount experience. While it sounds chaotic enough, the author largely achieves an authentic, organic style; yes, the subjects will frequently change, but Cox cannot help but think of points more interesting than what was being addressed a moment before and that could not fit neatly into a more organized work.

Life itself is seldom strictly linear – and we should not begrudge the author too much for not feigning a constant clear structure in his own life’s story. The man is interesting enough to make you forget that you are reading a celebrity actor’s autobiography. Yes, while much of it is merely gossip for people who consider themselves above TMZ and Twitter, it is worth a read for his insightful commentary on all things theater and film. If not for that, then, it is still enjoyable for his sense of humor: “‘I need to understand this,’ he [the director] would fret, ‘I really need to understand this.’ Yes, we thought to ourselves. Understanding Julius Caesar would indeed be an advantage when it comes to directing it.”  

INTERPRETATIONS OF LIFE by Will Durant

On By David HarkaczIn ClassicLeave a comment

“I need another indulgence. In almost all these studies I have found the author himself more interesting than any character in his books, and his career more instructive than the imaginary world by which he revealed or cloaked himself. I varied an old motto, and told myself, Cherchez l’homme – search for the man.” – Will Durant, Interpretations of Life

In 1967, Will Durant published Rousseau and Revolution, his tenth and – so he thought at the time – final entry to his monumental Story of Civilization, a series of books published over nearly four decades, each aiming to capture and convey the essence of a significant era in human history. Eight years later he would give the world his eleventh and truly final volume, The Age of Napoleon. Between these books and before this realization that he had another Story to tell, Durant pivoted to biographize, analyze and reflect on twentieth century literature and its authors; the result is Interpretations of Life.

First published in 1970, the book is titled in appreciation of the widely varied works these authors produced while reckoning the nature of existence. It features seventeen chapters and a several authors more than that. Most authors are given their own chapters. Some are grouped together, such as Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and others in ‘The Philosophers’, and Sholokhov, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn and Yevtushenko in ‘Literature Under the Soviets.’ There are three pairings of writers. John Steinbeck with Upton Sinclair had both passed in 1968 while Durant was writing Interpretations, and so the chapter is framed as a dual obituary: “Each of them fought throughout life against the cruelty of man to man or beast; each struck a lusty blow for justice by writing a book that stirred the nation…” Robinson Jeffers and Ezra Pound are two of the 20th century’s most controversial poets and so are matched here. Sartre is paired de Beauvoir, being the most necessary dual-biography, as Durant argues that to “divorce” their lives and works is to not fully understand them.

Durant, formerly writing mostly on centuries past, here focuses on the era in which he was living. Several authors selected were still alive at the time of publication. Sartre would live one decade more, and he notes that Solzhenitsyn was working on, but had not finished The Gulag Archipelago. This shift proved to be a non-issue; from his lengthy historical works Durant had developed perspective enough to, as he would put it, “see the part in the whole” even as history was unfolding.The selections are, however, colored by an admission Durant emphasizes in the conclusion, wherein he acknowledges the nature of writing about his own era and the inherent, inescapable bias this comes with. These writers lived and breathed alongside him, and the great and terrible moments of the twentieth century that formed the perspectives of these authors formed Durant as well. It is this sentiment of a shared era that he emphasizes in his final, reflective chapter, and he goes on to thus conclude the book: “The twentieth century is the age of Nietzsche, as he predicted it would be: the age of dictators unmoved by any moral tradition, of wars made more deadly and devastating by the progress of science; the age of the “death of God” for those who lead the parade in thought and power…”

The book excels because it does not confine these great and influential minds to vacuums. Their lives, words and deeds are contextualized and their appearance in the world is framed as the events that they were. Here he repeats the style and format he used in his previous The Story of Philosophy (1926). The writers are provided historical background with thorough commentary on the time and place they inhabited. The major events of their lives are chronicled. Similar space is given to their significant works, wherein the nature of the work itself is discussed, significant themes and purposes are identified, and often retrospectives on the influence they later would enjoy. From The Story of Philosophy he also developed the skill of communicating philosophical ideas, works and arguments with clarity, and this quality is reflected throughout Interpretations.  

Durant is a fair critic. He does not fawn too deeply or dismiss too harshly, seeing both the parts and the wholes of a man’s life and career. The chapter on Hemingway provides an excellent example of this. When focusing on biography, he describes the man himself as “totally alive, and had vitality enough for a dozen matadors. His courage was all the deeper for having to fight fear…” He chronicles Hemingway’s remarkable life, experience and heroisms with such appreciation that the pivot to his writing is almost surprising, wherein he asks if any of Hemingway’s books were “…as rich in incident and character as his life? Excepting The Old Man and the Sea his novels were too timely to be timeless…” And yet, in the chapter’s conclusion, Durant provides the perfect synthesis of these themes and observations: “He left behind him a frothy wake of imitators who used his tricks of tough talk and staccato dialogue, of flashbacks and symbolism and stream of consciousness, but who never rivaled the simplicity, clarity, and verve of his style, or the stimulating challenges of his thought. The imitators fade away, but the figure of Ernest Hemingway remains… Voila un homme!”

He is harshest on Ezra Pound, the target most deserving of criticism out of the authors featured, both for his compensated contributions to Mussolini’s propaganda machines and for his undisciplined literary style – the former clearly the more grievous sin than the latter. Preparing to outline Cantos, Pound’s most controversial poem that was published gradually throughout his life, Durant produces one of the sharpest criticisms to be made on some schools of 20th century literature: “Art ceases to be a communication in significant form, and becomes a crossword puzzle for the leisure class.” He characterizes the lengthy poem as reading “like Socialist pamphlets, and become poetry only through typography.” Nevertheless, Durant still sees Pound as a complicated man, and despite his transgressions in life and literature, he is granted a dignified sendoff: “He was often absurd, even as you and I; but we forget our blunders and hide our sins, while Pound spread his follies over the mercuries of the air…”

He handles a century of diverse literature well. There are many genres, ideas, themes, styles and schools of writing discussed and, while he treats them with fairness, it is impossible to read the many works these wildly differing authors produced without adopting clear preferences. Durant is open about his prejudices and how his responses were formed. He occasionally adopts a confessional style – he wants his biases known and understood. He opens the chapter on Jeffers and Pound: “I have given up the attempt to understand contemporary poetry. I am too old, too bound to prose, to puzzle over the built-in obscurity of twentieth-century verse.” Yet in other chapters he does display a great appreciation for recent poetry, and such statements largely seem intended to not wholly cut down the literary contributions of a man like Pound. He makes a similar admission when he praises Camus in the beginning of his respective chapter: “I confess to a personal prejudice in preferring, for these studies, those authors who have dressed in fiction, drama, or poetry the problems of philosophy, rather than those who sought, by sensitivity, imagination, and artistry, to give some passing beauty a form that could be caressed by generations yet unborn.” These statements do not read like deflections from criticism that seek to turn ignorance or humility into an advantage; rather, Durant is inescapably authentic. He is open about his literary inclinations and how these may have formed his estimations. His honesty is refreshing.

As is his wit. The book could not be called “dry” by any means. Durant’s style is consistently charming and often funny. When writing about William Faulkner’s Sanctuary (1931) being adapted into the Hollywood Film The Story of Temple Drake (1933), Durant states: “The film makers responded, the picture prospered, and a critic called the book ‘one of the finest novels in modern literature.’ It is terrible.” And, concerning Joyce: “In July, 1920, Joyce and his family went to Paris for a week’s stay; they remained there twenty years.” So too is he gifted at finding wit in others, again concerning Joyce, specifically the United States censorship boards deliberation of Ulysses – “The ban against it in America was removed by U.S. District Court Judge John Munro Woolsey on December 6, 1933, on the ground that “whilst in many places the effect of ‘Ulysses’ on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.”’

Interpretations of Life is, perhaps, not as interesting or memorable as his other works – but that is through no inherent mistake; titans of literature though they are, the subjects here largely cannot match the depth or importance of those captured in his various Stories. It is easier to reflect on a few leaders, minds or events that time has concluded held the most influence on an era, and move on, than it is to focus on one type of thinker in an era that time is still deliberating. But the book’s theme was chosen, treated with intelligence and care, and succeeded exceptionally well in fulfilling its purpose. There is some lapse of consistency of form and length, and some may find an injustice here, finding that their preferred authors were allotted a few brief pages where others were given nearly fifty; but this quality too makes the work more honest. There are far more books from interesting people than there is time to read them, and even one as well-read as Durant is no exception.  

There is now some distance between us and the twentieth century. Looking back, it is easy to agree with Durant’s conviction, quoted earlier from the final paragraph of Interpretations, that it was “the age of the “death of God” for those who lead the parade in thought and power…” Yet Durant was not a pessimist, for the quote continues, and the book ultimately concludes: “…But the poets and artists and dreamers are not dead; they will tell new stories, paint new pictures, of our heroes, our achievements, and our possibilities; we shall be inspired and strengthened again; and we shall go on to add to our heritage.”

THE GREAT CONVERSATION by Robert Hutchins

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“To put an end to the spirit of inquiry it is not necessary to burn the books. All we have to do is leave them unread for a few generations.” – Robert Hutchins, The Great Conversation

The shortest and surest road to wisdom is to understand it by its near synonym – perspective. Wisdom is to see beyond fad and fashion – beyond modern, postmodern; wisdom is historical. If you desire wisdom, and thereby perspective, you must necessarily join the Great Conversation. Perfectly titled, The Great Conversation is Encyclopedia Britannica’s introduction to the company’s ‘Great Books of the Western World’ set. Written by Robert Hutchins, the Editor-in-Chief of Encyclopedia Britannica at the time of publication in 1952, it serves as ‘Book One’ of the set and – despite some awkward decisions, it nevertheless serves as an excellent invitation to the definitive history of Western intellectual thought.

The overarching theme of the book stems from the title itself as it refers to what the set of books is intended to be – humanity’s shared progress in understanding life seen through the lens of a conversation; that is, progressive books in the set appear to know of, converse, debate, and build off those that came before. This conversation is the story of Western intellectual history.

The book is comprised of ten chapters, each seeking to emphasize the importance of The Great Books of the Western World set through a different point and argument. It provides an excellent perspective for the reading of classics through these different approaches – that education should be considered a life-long journey, that this sort of liberal education is on its decline – and so on. Its chapters largely seek the same goal overall – but there is a considerable overlap of points. The overall thesis is to persuade the reader of the value of these books and to convince you to continue reading further into the set. So too do they want it understood that these works are timeless – and the editors do not see themselves as mere “…tourists on a visit to ancient ruins or to the quaint productions of primitive peoples.”

Hutchins too addresses common concerns about the reading of classics. Many were written when men held slaves. Some pre-date the scientific method. How can they possibly be applied to our current society? Hutchins calls the dismissal of the timelessness of these works a kind of “sociological determinism.” That is, the books are not meant for one age alone. Hutchins’ childhood dreams were to become an “iceman” or a “motorman” – occupations dying in his era, completely extinct in ours. He argues – “No society so determines intellectual activity that there can be no major intellectual disagreements in it. The conservative and the radical, the practical man and the theoretician, the idealist and the realist will be found in every society…” – and so too are they found in this set.

I do wish more of the book followed the theme of the preface, explaining more of the methodology and overall process in creating the set as opposed to the ‘preaching to the choir’ sentiment other chapters of the book assume – but a middle chapter, titled ‘Experimental Science,’ is an interesting pinnacle of the book. We naturally grateful for the efforts of Ptolemy, of Kepler, of Gilbert and Huygens – but it is a common question to ask – what use are they to me now? Is it not a better use of my time to simply read the most modern textbook as opposed to these dated works riddled with antiquated knowledge? This is the perspective the editors seek to correct: “…[we] do not agree that the great poets of every time are to be walked with and talked with, but not those who brought deep insight into the mystery of number and magnitude or the natural phenomena they observed around them.” Reading the works of these ancients is not necessarily about learning what is true – it is about conversing with one of history’s greatest minds while it thinks as clearly as possible with the facts it has at its disposal. It is this precision of thought and language that makes the reading of these works worthwhile: “As far as the medium of communication is concerned, they [scientific books] are products of the most elegant literary style, saying precisely what is meant.” In our age, it is not hard to see how many treat science as a kind of faith – ignoring the scientific method and accepting whatever pleases them if it affirms a pre-existing bias. This is another reason why these works are so valuable, so Hutchins states: “The facts are indispensable; they are not sufficient. To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect… Those who have condemned thinkers who have insisted on the importance of ideas have often overlooked the equal insistence of these writers on obtaining the facts. These critics have themselves frequently misunderstood the scientific method and have confused it with the mindless accumulation of data.”

The editors are well-enough aware of how “intimidating” the set of books can feel. The authors and their texts are not condensed or edited – and being presented with the totality of such monumental works can feel insurmountable to understand. But Hutchins counters this sentiment perfectly – “The question for you is only whether you can ever understand these books well enough to participate in the Great Conversation, not whether you can understand them well enough to end it.” And it is this sentiment of uneasiness of being able to feel as though you conclusively ‘finished’ a Great book, understanding it in its totality, that the author wants you to see cannot be done and should not be your goal: “There is a simple test of this. Take any great book that you read in school or college and have not read since. Read it again. Your impression that you understood it will at once be corrected. Think what it means, for instance, to read Macbeth at sixteen in contrast to reading it at thirty-five… To read great books, if we read them at all, in childhood and youth and never read them again is never to understand them.”

My issue with the work largely rests with the book’s ambiguity of purpose and the extent it seems to pamper anyone pre-emptively in agreement. The final chapter, ‘A Letter to the Reader,’ opens thus: “I imagine you are reading this far in this set of books for the purpose of discovering whether you should read further… The Editors are not interesting in general propositions about the desirability of reading the books; they want them read. They did not produce them as furniture for public or private libraries.” The point is noble enough, but it is again attempting to convince those who would never read this collection of works– and thereby has immediately dated itself, betraying a lack of perspective. Who would go out of their way to purchase ‘The Great Conversation’ alone? Yes, there are many who would purchase the set for an unearned appearance of worldliness, but was it worth partly framing the work with them a target audience? What of the rest who jumped in, to phrase it rather arrogantly, with caution to the wind? I can appreciate this catch-all approach to formulating a theme, but such passages can make the book feel over-long, even at a very modest 82 pages. If you are in early agreement with the of majority of the author’s points, you would quickly become suspicious at the degree to which you are being catered to.

Lovers of great books will likely hold Hutchins’ posed truths to be self-evident. Being so ardently coddled would put any decent mind on guard – and cause it to ask what it is being sold. And yet, Hutchins nevertheless presents one of the rarest encounters – where there is no snake oil – and the author is genuinely handing you the keys to the universe. One only wishes they were dealing with a better salesman. In spite of these flaws, I would argue it a worthy read independent of the context of the set of books. More than anything, its intention is to “arm” the reader – to go out and be strong advocates for the reading of great books. It is a work born out of a sense of mourning, and if Hutchins was dismal about the state of liberal education over half a century ago, one could only imagine what he would feel today. Yet my estimation of the faults is likely hyperbolic. Did the editors rise to the occasion of making a satisfying introduction to the set? Yes, but with clauses. Could they have done more? Absolutely. Are their causes one of the most important and noblest in the world? Unequivocally.