“In 1378, two years before Poggio's birth, the seething resentment of these miserable day laborers, the populo minuto, had boiled over into a full-scale bloody revolt. Gangs of artisans ran through the streets, crying, 'Long live the people and the crafts!' and the uprising briefly toppled the ruling families and installed a democratic government. But the old order was quickly restored, and with it a regime determined to maintain the power of the guilds and the leading families.”

First time for me to hear of the Ciompi revolt in Florence. Also from Stephen Greenblatt's THE SWERVE, which covers so much ground.

“Poggio's way of fashioning letters was a move away from the intricately interwoven and angular writing known as Gothic hand. The demand for more open, legible handwriting had already been voiced earlier in the century by Petrarch (1304-1374). Petrarch complained that the writing then in use in most manuscripts often made it extremely difficult to decipher the text, 'as though it had been designed,' he noted, 'for something other than reading.'”

Extremely my shit on so many levels, this book.

#reads

“Ancient Greeks and Romans did not share our idealization of isolated geniuses, working alone to think through the knottiest problems.”

From Stephen Greenblatt's riveting book, THE SWERVE: HOW THE WORLD BECAME MODERN.

“Such scenes—Descartes in his secret retreat, calling everything into questions, or the excommunicated Spinoza quietly reasoning to himself while grinding lenses—would eventually become our dominant emblem of the life of the mind. But this vision of proper intellectual pursuits rested on a profound shift in cultural prestige, one that began with the early Christian hermits who deliberately withdrew from whatever it was that pagans valued: St. Anthony (250-356) in the desert or St. Symeon Stylites (390-459) perched on his column. Such figures, modern scholars have shown, characteristically had in fact bands of followers, and though they lived apart, they often played a significant role in the life of large communities. But the dominant cultural image that they fashioned—or that came to be fashioned around them—was of radical isolation.”

I maintain that the very notion of the “isolated genius” today—still prominent in contemporary culture—is an absolute fiction. No man is an island, though certain aspects of one's environment or social makeup may drive a person to feel they are an island, but true and genuine absolute islandhood is bound to spell the death of one's creative life.

“Not so the Greeks and Romans. As thinking and writing generally require quiet and a minimum of distraction, their poets and philosophers must have periodically pulled away from the noise and business of the world in order to accomplish what they did.”

The keyword here, being “periodically.”

“But the image that they projected was social. Poets depicted themselves as shepherds singing to other shepherds; philosophers depicted themselves engaged in long conversations, often stretching out over several days. The pulling away from the distractions of the everyday world was figured not as a retreat to the solitary cell but as a quiet exchange of words among friends in a garden.”

House-sitting for friends now, and spotted the book on one of the shelves. Decided to flip through it a few days ago and haven't been able to put it down since.

“The invention of movable type in the fifteenth century changed the scale of production exponentially, but the book in the ancient world was not a rare commodity: a well-trained slave reading a manuscript aloud to a roomful of well-trained scribes could produce masses of text. Over the course of centuries, tens of thousands of books, hundreds of thousands of copies, were made and sold.

“There was a time in the ancient world—a very long time—in which the central cultural problem must have seemed an inexhaustible outpouring of books. Where to put them all? How to organize them on the groaning shelves? How to hold the profusion of knowledge in one's head? The loss of this plentitude would have been virtually inconceivable to anyone living in its midst.”

Call me a pessimist but I kind of foresee an inevitable halt to the plentitude of data (along with “content”) being collectively churned out by present human civilization as well.

“Then, not all at once but with the cumulative force of mass extinction, the whole enterprise came to an end. What looked stable turned out to be fragile, and what had seemed for all time was only for the time being.”

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, after all.

“Starting as early as 300 BCE, the Ptolemaic kings who ruled Alexandria had the inspired idea of luring leading scholars, scientists, and poets to their city by offering them life appointments at the Museum, with handsome salaries, tax exemptions, free food and lodging, and the almost limitless resources of the library.”

Take me back to ancient Alexandria please.

“The recipients of this largesse established remarkably high intellectual standards. Euclid developed his geometry in Alexandria; Archimedes discovered pi and laid the foundation for calculus; Eratosthenes posited that the Earth was round and calculated its circumference to within 1 percent; Galen revolutionized medicine. Alexandrian astronomers postulated a heliocentric universe; geometers deduced that the length of a year was 365 ¼ days and proposed adding a “leap day” every fourth year; geographers speculated that it would be possible to reach India by sailing from Spain; engineers developed hydraulics and pneumatics; anatomists first understood clearly that the brain and the nervous system were a unit, studied the function of the heart and the digestive system, and conducted experiments in nutrition. The level of achievement was staggering.”

Let us remind ourselves that what inevitably consigned all that achievement to oblivion and brought it all down was the prejudice exercised by the Roman Empire—some 270 years after Ptolemaic rule—against one of its minority groups/cults concentrated in the eastern provinces, and—as the story goes—charging one member of that minority with treason against the empire before executing him.

#reads

Upon reading what I felt was an absolute throwaway book—THE COMMONSENSE OF NUDISM by George Riley Scott—an idea for a most unusual sort-of-sequel to THE SOLAR GRID made its way into my mind. Now, THE SOLAR GRID actually already ends in a way that kind of invites a sequel (though unnecessary, it's a completely self-contained graphic novel), but that sequel if pursued would be too expected, I think. This other sort-of-sequel I can't stop thinking about, wouldn't at all be expected and would likely come off as highly peculiar (I can't help myself apparently). But it would also be so perfect in a way. It wouldn't feature any of the characters from the original THE SOLAR GRID (itself surprising, given how many characters there are in the book—it'd be so easy to pluck any one of those and do something entirely focused on them), but would instead feature a new cast of characters and how they get on in the aftermath of THE SOLAR GRID's destruction. Fertile ground for social friction, and the rise of new ideas and ways of being despite most people at large holding onto the old. Even when the very conditions that created the logic and reasoning for the old has clearly disintegrated before their eyes.

To be clear, THE COMMONSENSE OF NUDISM is a shit book. Published in 1934, it's filled with much quackery, false arguments, and casual racism, but it's sprinkled with a kernel of interesting enough reason throughout, and a handful of passages that are kind-of historically overlooked—like how Hitler cracked down on the rising nudist movement in early 1930s Germany.

Obviously, I will refrain from engaging with this sequel idea or any other ideas concerned with graphic-noveling unless I'm able to land a good enough publishing deal for THE SOLAR GRID. Can't be placing the cart in front of the horse, which is something I have a history of doing but have finally managed to overcome, I think.

#storycab #tsg #comix #reads

Almost 3:00pm and I've already been awake for 12 hours. My circadian rhythms have been all out of whack since I got here. Spent most of the day reading before paying one of my storage units a visit (and coming to terms with the impossibility of completely clearing it out this time around) before situating myself at my cafe of choice. Lter, I pick my son up from school and take him out to dinner.

Given that it is the 5th, and my newsletter goes out every 10th, I should be drafting it right now, but I kind of have nothing to say. You'd think that between my travels, the workshop I just gave, and war breaking out, now would be just the time to have plenty to say, but I really don't. I'm more in a quietly observational mood right now than anything.

Presently house-sitting for a friend, who just so happens to be safekeeping quite a few of my books. So I took it as an opportunity to read through a few I have yet to finish, and just this morning found myself completing DAILY RITUALS by Mason Currey. Nothing groundbreaking but includes a great many amusing vignettes that I think would be delightful for most creatives to leaf through.

“Mencken's routine was simple: work for twelve or fourteen hours a day, every day, and in the late evening, enjoy a drink and conversation. This was his lifestyle as a young bachelor—when he belonged to a drinking club and often met his fellow members at a saloon after work.”

See, it can be done! To be productive and have an active social life. Twelve-to-fourteen-hour workdays however strike me as overkill and wholly unnecessary (though I am guilty of it myself from time to time). The sweet spot it seems, if one can extract a commonality between the vast majority of creatives surveyed in the book, is probably working in 3-4 hour shifts. Either breaking before carrying on for another shift, or calling it a day at that. And this even applies to some of the most prolific creators.

Georges Simenon, for example, who published 425 books over the course of his career, only wrote from 6:30 A.M. to 9:30 A.M. “Then he would go for a long walk, eat lunch at 12:30, and take a one-hour nap. In the afternoon he spent time with his children and took another walk before dinner, television, and bed at 10:00 P.M.”

This schedule seemed to allow for a pretty active social life beyond the home and family too. “When living in Paris, Simenon frequently slept with four different women in the same day. He estimated that he bedded ten thousand women in his life. (His second wife disagreed, putting the total closer to twelve hundred.)”

Active social life or not, there is no doubt that many of us are way too pampered compared to some of the artists of old. Take Willem de Kooning and Elain Fried for example, who would have a breakfast that “consisted mostly of very strong coffee, cut with milk that they kept in winter on a window ledge; they did not have a refrigerator, an appliance that in the early forties was still a luxury. (So was a private phone, which de Kooning would not have until the early sixties.)”

The heat also automatically went “off after five o'clock because they were commercial buildings.”

#journal #Reads

The title (SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND) does not lie, it really is a brief history of humankind. The keyword here however being brief, which means Harari will sometimes mention a major historical event or finding in passing, which may frustrate the curious mind that really wants to know more about said historical event or finding. This isn't a bad thing, this is a great way to note particular events or subjects one might like to find more in-depth writing on. The downside however is that there is a high chance many readers might assume they know everything that needs to be known about whatever is mentioned in the book, a foolish and likely popular assumption. But make no mistake, the book is very much a must-read.

It is divided into four parts, what Harari hypotheses to be the four revolutions that got us to where we are today: The Cognitive Revolution, The Agricultural Revolution, The Unification of Humankind, and the Scientific Revolution.

The first, second, and fourth are largely self-explanatory, so let's do something a little unorthodox and talk about the third.

Full review: Ganzeer.Reviews

#reads

“In fact, Ecological turmoil might endanger the survival of Homo Sapiens itself. Global warming, rising oceans and widespread pollution could make the earth less hospitable to our kind, and the future might consequently see a spiraling race between human power and human-induced natural disasters. As humans use their power to counter the forces of nature and subjugate the ecosystem to their needs and whims, they might cause more and more unanticipated and dangerous side effects. These are likely to be controllable only by even more drastic manipulations of the ecosystem, which would result in even more chaos.”

The premise of my graphic novel THE SOLAR GRID in a nutshell basically, courtesy of Yuval Noah Harari's SAPIENS.

“Many call the process 'the destruction of nature'. But it's not really destruction, it's change. Nature cannot be destroyed. Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid wiped out dinosaurs, but in so doing opened the way forward for mammals. Today, humankind is driving many species into extinction and might even annihilate itself. But other organisms are doing quite well. Rats and cockroaches, for example, are in their heyday. These tenacious creatures would probably creep out from beneath the smoking rubble of a nuclear Armageddon, ready and able to spread their DNA. Perhaps 65 million years from now, intelligent rats will look back gratefully on the dissemination wrought by humankind, just as we today can thank that dinosaur-busting asteroid.”

Future graphic novel premise?

SAPIENS by Yuval Noah Harari.

#reads

“In 1717 the Mississippi Company, chartered in France, set out to colonize the lower Mississippi Valley, establishing the city of New Orleans in the process. To finance its ambitious plans, the company which had good connections at the court of King Louis XV, sold shares on the Paris stock exchange. John Law, the company's director, was also the governor of the central bank of France. Furthermore, the king had appointed him controller-general of finances, an office roughly equivalent to that of a modern finance minister. In 1717 the lower Mississippi valley offered few attractions besides swamps and alligators, yet the Mississippi Company spread tales of fabulous riches and boundless opportunities. French aristocrats, businessmen and the stolid members of urban bourgeoisie fell for these fantasies, and Mississippi share prices skyrockets. Initially, shares were offered at 500 livres apiece. On 1 August 1719, shares traded at 2,750 livres. By 30 August, they were worth 4,100 livres, and on 4 September, they reached 5,000 livres. On 2 December the price of a Mississippi share crossed the threshold of 10,000 livres. Euphoria swept the streets of Paris. People sold all their possessions and took huge loans in order to buy Mississippi shares. Everybody believed they'd discovered the easy way to riches.”

From Yuval Noah Harari's SAPIENS

“A few days later, the panic began. Some speculators realized that share prices were totally unrealistic and unsustainable. They figured that they had better sell while stock prices were at their peak. As the supply of shares available rose, their price declined. When other investors saw the price going down, they also wanted to get out quick. The stock price plummeted further, setting off an avalanche. In order to stabilize prices, the central bank of France — at the direction of its governor, John Law (also the Mississippi Company's director) — bought up Mississippi shares, but it could not do so forever. Eventually, it ran out of money. When this happened, the controller-general of finances, the same John Law, authorized the printing of more money in order to buy additional shares. This placed the entire French financial system inside the bubble. And not even this financial wizardry could save the day. The price of Mississippi shares dropped from 10,000 livres back to 1,000 livres, and then collapsed completely. By now, the central bank and the royal treasury owned a huge amount of worthless stock and had no money. The big speculators emerged largely unscathed — they had sold in time. Small investors lost everything, and many committed suicide.”

Parallels can certainly be drawn in the appointment of Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson as head of U.S. Treasury in 2006, barely a couple years before the crash of 2008-09, or even now appointing the “former” CEO/CIO of a major hedge fund as secretary of U.S. Treasury.

“The Mississippi Bubble was one of history's most spectacular financial crashes. The royal French financial system never recuperated fully from the blow. The way in which the Mississippi Company used its political clout to manipulate share prices and fuel the buying frenzy caused the public to lose faith in the French banking system and in the financial wisdom of the French king. Louis XV found it more and more difficult to raise credit. This became one of the chief reasons that the overseas French Empire fell into British hands. While the British could borrow money easily and at low interest rates, France had difficulties securing loans, and had to pay high interest on them. In order to finance his growing debts, the king of France borrowed more and more money at higher and higher interest rates. Eventually, in 1780, Louise XVI, who had ascended to the thrown on his grandfather's death, realised that half his annual budget was tied to servicing the interest on his loans and that he was heading towards bankruptcy. Reluctantly, in 1789, Louise XVI convened the Estates General, the French parliament that had not met for a century and a half, in order to find a solution to the crisis. Thus began the French Revolution.”

They don't mention that backstory when teaching the French Revolution, now do they?

Harari is kind of a contrarian, because he uses the example of the Mississippi Bubble to illuminate why autocracy-based Capitalism doesn't quite work compared to the kind of Capitalism that is bound to fair laws and regulations, the kind of Capitalism that allowed the Dutch to prosper, at least around the time their joint-stock companies established New Amsterdam in what is now lower Manhattan. Yet he will also make a statement like this:

“When kings fail to do their jobs and regulate the markets properly, it leads to loss of trust, dwindling credit and economic depression. That was the lesson taught by the Mississippi Bubble of 1719, and anyone who forgot it was reminded by the US housing bubble of 2007, and the ensuing credit crunch and recession.”

Unless he means to say the facets of US capitalism are de facto autocratic without wanting to say it out loud.

#reads

“Samuel Greedy, a shrewd financier, founds a bank in El Dorado, California. A.A. Stone, an up-and-coming contractor in El Dorado, finishes his first big job, recieving payment in cash to the tune of $1 million. He deposites his sum in Mr Greedy's bank. The bank now has $1 million in capital. In the meantime, Jane McDoughnut, an experienced buy impecunious El Dorado chef, thinks she sees a business opportunity — there's no really good bakery in her part of town. But she doesn't have enough money of her own to buy a proper facility complete with industrial ovens, sinks, knives, and pots. She goes to the bank, presents her business plan to Greedy, and persuades him that it's a worthwhile investment. He issues her a $1 million loan, by crediting her account in the bank with that sum.”

Still slow-reading Yuval Noah Harari's SAPIENS

“McDoughnut now hires Stone, the contractor, to build and furnish her bakery. His price is $1,000,000. When she pays him, with a cheque drawn on her account, Stone deposits it in his account in the Greedy bank. So how much money does stone have in his bank account? Right, $2 million.

“How much money, cash, is actually located in the bank's safe? Yes, $1 million.”

And about a page later:

“What enables banks — and the entire economy — to survive and flourish is our trust in the future. This trust is the sole backing for most of the money in the world.”

In a way yes, I agree with Harari, but also no, I don't, because most capitalists lack imagination and tend to only trust proven track records. So their trust in the future tends to be tied to something's proven success in the recent past. It is trust in the future as long as that future is tethered to the past, in most cases anyway.

Another interesting bit a few more pages in:

“Over the last few years, banks and governments have been frenziedly printing money. Everybody is terrified that the current economic crisis may stop the growth of the economy. So they are creating trillions of dollars, euros and yen out of thin air, pumping cheap credit into the system, and hoping that the scientists, technicians and engineers will manage to come up with something really big, before the bubble bursts. Everything depends on the people in the labs. New discoveries in fields such as biotechnology and artificial intelligence could create entire new industries, whose profits could back the trillions of make-believe money that the banks and governments have created since 2008. If the labs do not fulfil these expectations before the bubble bursts, we are heading towards very rough times.”

This checks, and explains the tendency of a particular echelon of Western capitalists to always chase the next new shiny innovation to pump their money into. But it also fails to acknowledge that the problem today isn't the lack of tangible wealth as much as it's a problem of adequate distribution. What investing in new innovations in the past did was allow for the creation of new jobs that relied on that innovation, thus creating just enough “wealth” for those new employees to delay the inevitable market collapse. Presently, all indications are pointing towards new innovations that eliminate jobs rather than create them, creating more even more wealth disparity, with most of the pie going into the mouths of those who have no need for it.

Capitalism is a dead-end system, its very demise being the doing of capitalists (and their science labs) themselves.

This is something Harari unfortunately seems very unwilling to see or acknowledge, despite it being spelled out even in his own description of it. But he seems fascinated by it, more than critical, and given his evident smarts, has a way of convincing you that everything he says must be true. But much of it simply isn't.   #reads #journal

“The imperial civilization may well have absorbed numerous contributions from various conquered peoples, but the hybrid result was still alien to the vast majority. The process of assimilation was often painful and traumatic. It is not easy to give up a familiar and beloved local tradition, just as it is difficult and stressful to understand and adopt a new culture.”

From Yuval Noah Harari's SAPIENS.

“Worse still, even when subject peoples were successful in adopting the imperial culture, it could take decades, if not centuries, until the imperial elite accepted them as part of 'us'. The generations between conquest and acceptance were left out in the cold. They had already lost their beloved local culture, but they were not allowed to take an equal part in the imperial world. On the contrary, their adopted culture continued to view them as barbarians.”

Still the case today thousands of years since the first empires. Take Rishi Sunak for instance, a man of Indian ethnicity who ascended to the seat of British Prime Minister 167 years after the British conquest of India, and who still faced questions about the authenticity of his Britishness despite having practically nothing Indian about him other than his features. If instead a white British PM who'd developed a soft spot for Indian Culture had went on and on about his love for Indian food, music, history, cinema, and textiles, no one would've batted an eye. We still, as a species, seem to be hardwired to be optically xenophobic more than anything. Some of us more than others anyway.

To be expected though, given that the doctrine of equality and human rights is still so very young when considered in the context of human history. But then again, we've kind of been through all this before:

“During the second century AD, Rome was ruled by a line of emporers born in Iberia, in whose veins probably flowed at least a few drops of local Iberian blood. The reigns of Iberian emperors—from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius—are often seen as the empire's golden age. After that, all the ethnic dams were let down. Emperor Septimius Severus (193-211) was the scion of a Punic family from Libya. Elagabalus (218-22) was a Syrian. Emperor Philip (244-9) was known colloquially as 'Philip the Arab'. The empire's new citizens adopted Roman imperial culture with such zest that, for centuries and even millenia after the empire itself collapsed, they continued to speak the empire's language, to live by the empire's laws, and to believe in the Christian God that the empire had adopted from one of its Levantine provinces.”

#reads

“An empire that cannot sustain a blow and remain standing is not really an empire. Yet even the Romans found it hard to stomach the news arriving from northern Iberia in the middle of the second century BC. A small, insignificant mountain town called Numantia, inhabited by the peninsula's native Celts, had dared to throw off the Roman yoke. Rome at the time was the unquestioned master of the entire Mediterranean basin, having vanquished the Macedonian and Seleucid empires, subjugated the proud people of Greece, and turned Carthage into a smouldering ruin. The Numantians had nothing on their side but their fierce love of freedom and their inhospitable terrain. Yet they forced legion after legion to surrender or retreat in shame.”

From Yuval Noah Harari's SAPIENS.

“Eventually, in 134 BC, Roman patience snapped. The Senate decided to send Scipio Aemilianus, Rome's foremost general and the man who had levelled Carthage, to take care of the Numantians. He was given a massive army of more than 30,000 soldiers. Scipio, who respected the fighting spirit and martial skill of the Numantians, preferred not to waste his soldiers in unnecessary combat. Instead, he encircled Numantia with a line of fortifications, blocking the town's contact with the outside world. Hunger did his work for him. After more than a year, the food supply ran out. When the Numantians realized that all hope was lost, they burned down their home; according to Roman accounts, most of them killed themselves so as not to become Roman slaves.”

Can we say hardcore?

History helps us see our present in new light, and perhaps make considerations for our future. We might therefore regard our modern day Numantians to be the people of Cuba and Palestine, both having endured blockades not for a mere year, but for decades.

#reads