Seb Palmer

Hmm!?

I saw Jordan Peterson talking, and very well I thought, in several online videos. So I thought I’d try this book. The subtitle also appealed, as I feel that my life would benefit from more clarity, order and structure.

Before I’d even started reading it, however, a post on Facebook about the fact I was thinking about reading it drew a shocking level of opprobrium. I was, frankly, rather surprised at how much hatred for JP there is amongst my peers, many of whom clearly see him as a reactionary right-winger. I hadn’t got that impression myself, from the online stuff I’d seen.

However, having now read about three-quarters or so of this book, I think I’m beginning to get glimpses of what all the fuss is about. But for me it’s not any alleged traces of ‘alt-right’ type thinking, but his love affair with the Bible and Christianity that I find most bizarre. And his is not a Bible-belt fundamentalist reading of Christianity, but a myth as poetic or philosophical insight type reading. I’ll be returning to this strand throughout.

Most of what he’s saying about things like the depth of conditioning on humanity of long-term evolutionary traits, I still find strike me as very sound. But the way in which he continually goes back to Christian texts and myths for parable style ‘wisdom’ baffles and disappoints me. Is it in part the context? Is modern Canada as Bible-bound as the US?

I think he takes on certain flaky contemporary sacred cows of the left quite admirably, at least online, coolly, calmly – and very reasonably – showing that some of the assumptions in such trains of thought are, frankly, well off the rails. Whilst he does attend to this theme here, that’s not what this book is really about.

The fact that because he’s attacked an institutionalised part of the academic left he has, I’m told, become a darling of some on the right IS an issue for me. But I’ve not heard him espousing the lunatic views of many of the alt-right morons who, it is alleged, seem to want to claim him. Indeed, I’ve not even encountered very much of this ‘darling of the alt-right’ phenomenon either – a little, yes – which so clearly upsets most left-ish folk I know.

Anyway, Peterson’s continual harping on Christian lore/mythology and a few other things – he seems to take an almost sadistic pleasure in running down the assumed subject/reader* – have seriously dented the enthusiasm for JP I initially felt after seeing him talk online.

At the point in time at which I’m writing this, this book seems to me, as far as I can tell, to be neither the great font of wisdom it’s admirers make it out to be, nor a particularly pernicious right wing or conservative attack on left-ish or progressive culture.

There is some wisdom in it, chiefly around confronting reality honestly and taking personal responsibility. But that’s hardly new or unique. It is, as I’ve said a few times now, the highly selective reading/interpretation of Christian themes that most puts me off.

At this point I’ve run out of steam, with the book unfinished. And I don’t feel compelled to continue right now. So, all in all, I can’t honestly recommend 12 Rules. Not right now, at any rate.

*A classic bullying ‘deconstruct to reconstruct’ (my phrase!) approach, as used everywhere from families to corporations to cults. Often inferred via the currently trendy term ‘gaslighting’.

Having said all of the above, in fairness to the book and it’s author, I feel I ought to address his ‘12 Rules’ directly. I found the above image listing his rules when searching for the cover image.

Some of them, such as the first four seem eminently sensible, and just ‘common sense’ forms of self-respect. Rules VI-VIII also seem very wise, in a simple homely way. The two about kids I’m slightly less clear on. The first, V, I’ve read and broadly agree with, the second, XI, I haven’t read yet, so can’t really comment on. Although I deal with kids all the time in my teaching work, we don’t have kids of our own. So chapter five felt odd, as it’s so clearly addressed to parents. Of course there is transferable knowledge here, but… well, let’s move on.

Rules IX and X are, in my view, both wise and advisable as principles for discussion. And JP seems particularly good at precision of speech, rule X, himself. I must confess he doesn’t come across so strongly re Rule IX, in the public debating I’ve seen him in.

Rules XI and XII are both in the chunk of the book I’ve not as yet read. So I can only address them in the broadest and vaguest of terms: Rule XI I’ll leave for now, and only address (although I can guess at the gist of it) once I’ve read the relevant chapter.

Rule XII I feel a little safer considering, despite not yet having read the chapter that fleshes it out. Once again it seems like a simple bit of inoffensive homely wisdom, with – I’m guessing/assuming – roots in the simple value of enjoying the moment. And as folk with a pet cat, the joys of interacting with a funny little furry critter are abundant and plain to see for me already.

So, given very little in the 12 Rules list seems controversial or politically charged, why all the left wing hostility for JP? I believe that stems from how he rose to prominence as an internet sensation, in the context of Canadian legislation (or possibly just proposed legislation?) around ‘politically correct’ behaviour in public discussion of gender identity and terminology.

It’s my view that there’s something of a leftist knee-jerk reaction against JP that throws several babies out with the bath water. Which is a pity. Having said that, it might also be true that JP may actually belong to an intellectual tradition all too easily adopted or co-opted, even if mistakenly so, by certain sections of the political right.

It’s my view that a lot of so called ‘new-atheist’ and modern evolutionary writers/thinkers are occasionally enduring similar rather harsh and largely unfounded allegations of being in cahoots with forms of Spencer-ian versions of ‘social Darwinism’. Leftist attacks on JP seem to partake of the same essential dynamic. But this is all a bit off-topic, tbh, re 12 Rules (so far), and is stuff I address elsewhere here on my blog.

In conclusion then, there seems to be, for some potential readers of this, too much associated political baggage. That’s not entirely the case for me, even now I’ve become aware of it all. If taken purely for what it is, the elucidation of 12 principles for living, the book comes out better. If, however, you do believe that JP is a standard bearer for a form of neo-con or alt-right way of thinking/living, then that is a serious enough issue to give pause for thought.

Personally I feel that JP has some wisdom and insight from which I can benefit, but is also too in thrall to what one might call the Western Christian tradition. What forms of conservatism I do glean from him, at least via this book, are not of the repellently racist and frankly fascist kind that grew like rampant weeds so much under Trump, but rather of a, for the most part, quite reasonable variety.

But here we could very well get into tricky territory, as regards such topics as family cohesion vs individual rights and freedoms. But once again, this is to wander further afield than the main scope of this book (although he does touch on such stuff).

So, to sum up, despite the fawning praise of the acolytes, and the ‘damn his eyes’ of the detractors, JP is clearly an interesting if divisive figure, whose views clearly touch certain contemporary nerves. But, rather oddly perhaps, 12 Rules isn’t really as controversial as all that.

There’s some wisdom here, and also views or assumptions one might challenge or plain disagree with. But the book is neither a new Bible (12 Rules/12 Commandments!?) nor a new Mein Kampf.

Well, it’s been a while since I posted about the greenhouse. It’s now much closer to completion, but still needs a considerable bit of glazing, and the filling in of little gaps and whatnot.
We are already using it as a greenhouse, as the accompanying pictures show. We’ve also garlanded it with various lights, which look pretty at night.

The video linked to on this post shows The Dave Brubeck Quartet playing their famous hit Take Five. An instrumental jazz number that is essentially a vehicle for a drum solo. And it charted! I can’t really see such a thing happening nowadays. 

The Quartet’s drummer, the near-blind – hence the Mr Magoo specs – Joe Morello, who started out playing violin, is one of the greatest drummers ever to have wielded sticks. Jazz isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (but as anyone who knows me will know, I personally love a lot of it), but both this number and the drum solo are essential listening/learning for aspiring drummers, which is why I’m posting this here on my blog. 

Originally shot in black and white, this clip has been both colourised and enhanced, by a chap whose YouTube channel is, very aptly, called Drum Lucidly (and also has another similarly enhanced video, of a Buddy Rich performance), for greater clarity, really helping bring it to life for a more modern audience. The drum solo starts around 4:40-ish. I hope you enjoy watching this master drummer at work as much as I do?

A friend on Facebook posted about this set, and I immediately ordered it for our home. It’s not quite a good as I’d hoped. And ultimately it’s the older earlier-era covers I like the most. The middle period stuff is ok, if rather Yellow-Submarine/psychedelic, but the more modern stuff is less appealing to me. Hence the star rating.

Nevertheless, this is still an interesting collection, even if only for the sub-set of ‘chosen’ or preferred images. And it is of course constrained by the remit of Penguin only book covers. There are other series of Sci-Fi book and magazine covers with even greater ‘vintage futurism’ type appeal.

Of course one can also use these as, um… postcards!? And bookmarks. I love a nice postcard bookmark! But the main reason for the purchase is to create a multiple image display piece for somewhere in our home. When that’s done, I’ll doubtless share it here.

This set is certainly nicely presented, and cheaper like this than in the also available book form. I’m guessing the latter might also have textual components? Not checked as yet.

I’ve usually missed out on any Joni news in recent years. For example, when they did the boxed set of her first 10 or so albums… I missed it! But then I have all those albums on vinyl already, and on CD, as well.

Still, hearing that Seagull was significantly improved, and all four had been remastered, I thought, yep, let’s get this set. In some ways I love it. I’m such a Joni junkie that if money were not an object I’d simply buy pretty much everything. But funds are, alas, an issue.

Compared with the threadbare Tom Waits remastered re-isssues, which i thus far haven’t even bothered with, these are at least nicely packaged, with the gatefold card covers, lyrics, and even separate inner-sleeves, like ye olde vinyl. But sound wise I haven’t as yet noticed any great improvement. I’ll have to do some proper A/B comparisons.

Joni has said she thought Seagull sounded awful, as if it had been recorded under a jello-bowl, or something like that. Produced by her one time lover, David Crosby, it certainly sounded different from all the later recordings, but not awful. Not to my ears, at any rate. Indeed, it’s differences even give it some charm. And, regarding the ‘improved’ new version, I’ve read some reviewers saying they actually think the new mix is worse, over-compressed and muddy, etc!

All things considered, I do feel that as great as all this Joni stuff is, that’s going on right now – and far and away the best stuff is the previously unreleased material that’s gradually coming out – it could have been even better. Brandi Carlisle’s little written homage is ok-ish. But many fans, like myself, would’ve loved proper essays on each album, as you sometimes get with the rare jazz, funk and souls reissues.

It’s a bit like those Steely Dan remasters that came out some time ago now, whilst Becker was still with us, and that had those rather silly notes, written by Becker and Fagen, as added ‘bonus’ material. Ok, that was at least something new. But hardly something of any great value. Indeed, in some ways it served to tarnish their legacy, seeming a bit sophomoric in tone. It seems odd and rather sad to me that some of the stars of contemporary(-ish) popular music appear to hold such a sway over their legacy that they actually inhibit it’s appreciation.

Anyway, it kind of goes without saying – around here at any rate – that the content of these four discs is some of the twentieth century’s greatest singer songwriter artistry ever committed to wax. I love all four of these albums, and some of those that came soon after this, just about equally. I’m not one of those that holds Blue to be her Holy Grail. Indeed, Blue is the one album of the four presented here that I sometimes can’t listen to all the way though. It’s just sooo intense!

Song to A Seagull has a very special place in my own life, for reasons I dursn’t enter into online, to be honest. Just as Kris Kristofferson said ‘Christ, Joni, keep some for yourself!’ I shall do likewise in this instance. Suffice to say that I went through a very intense time with this album as my chief accompaniment. It is true that this is her most naïve and dated sounding album, in some respects. But that suited the naïve young me to a tee! And to counter-balance that, there is poetry in the lyrics and magic in the music that I believe is the equal of anything in her long and prolific career. My pick for this disc, Sisotowbell Lane. Sublime!

Clouds is another solid gold slice of musical brilliance, with no bad songs at all. Just like Seagull, in that respect. The production aesthetic is more natural and ‘transparent’, and consequently a tad less dated than her debut. But her music and delivery are very similar. Whereas there are no famous hits on her first record, here we have Chelsea Morning and Both Sides Now. But for me the standout track is the hauntingly deep Songs To Ageing Children. Rather like Tom Waits, Joni had a kind of old head on young shoulders.

Ladies of The Canyon also has a few ‘name’ tracks, from the jaunty Big Yellow Taxi – the Chelsea morning of this record – to Woodstock, the ode to the festival she spurned and yet kind of wanted to both be at, and not be at. But once again the real gem is The Circle Game, which, like Songs To Ageing Children cuts much deeper. Again, all killer, no filler. And on this disc Joni starts adding some more diverse sounds. A sign of things to come.

And then, of course, there’s Blue. Inescapable in her canon, and undoubtedly a rare instance of a lionised record that really does live up to (and, in all honesty, transcend/surpass) all the hype. Ironically there’s only the slightly more jovial – tho’ still melancholy – Carey, to follow numbers like Chelsea morning and Big Yellow Taxi. Everything else, like the album’s name and hue, is deeply, darkly blue. And as a result this is the easiest Joni album for me to O.D. on. Standout tracks? Well, it’s hard, they’re all so good. But if pressed I might say Little Green and This Flight Tonight. In the parlance of yore, man, this is one heavy trip!

So, all the music contained herein is top-drawer 24-carat undiluted brilliance, of a rare and unique kind.

But… the thing is, does this latest release really add anything? And, as much as I love having it, and rate it highly for the sublimity of what it contains, the basic answer is… no, not really. The biggest potential benefit is the ‘fixing’ of the mix/production on Seagull. And although I can hear an audible difference in the music, it’s not so big as to be remarkable, either in a good or a bad way. At least not so far. I have only had this a few days, and listened through it all just the once so far.

Some folk would dock something for the fact that this doesn’t really add to or augment the Joni legacy, as such. I can’t do that. The musical genius that is contained herein is off the scale. To knock stars off they’d have to have sabotaged it all in some way. And they haven’t. It may not add anything. But nor does it take away. What you get is four utterly wonderful albums, presented in a rather lovely manner. So, it’s the full five stars.

This was the sole new book purchase, of my recent trip to Topping Books, Ely. I bought two very cheap books that same day, from Oxfam. One on Caravaggio, the other, A Tolkien Bestiary. The Caravaggio one is for cutting up and framing prints. The Bestiary was a book I had as a child. Something for old times sake!

Picasso 1932, was an entirely new thing to me. I hadn’t even been aware of the recent-ish Tate exhibition, of which it is a catalogue/accompanying monograph. I’m a massive Picasso nut. I just love his prodigious output; the rampant fecundity and diversity of it all. The single year theme is great. It really accentuates Picasso’s incredible creative energies. The quantity, variety and quality of his work is, I find, always astonishing. It’s kind of like he’s a conduit for continent-shifting levels of energy, a continually erupting vent of Krakatoan proportions.

Picasso often talked about making art like a child. And here he talks about painting ‘arses’ (got to love his earthiness!) like a blind man; painting it as it feels to the touch. How delicious! The Mirror, pictured below, achieves just this, I reckon. And rather cheekily, I might add. It’s even as if the lady’s ‘pillow of clouds’ type backside is actually a dream object, in a cartoon-style thought bubble. Which of course it is.

The above pictured Reclining Nude has a soft spot (or two, or three…) in my heart, as it’s a painting I bought as a picture postcard on a visit to the Musee Picasso, in Paris, many, many moons ago. And I love how speaking of moons, he uses crescents of white repeatedly. And the use of apple-esque red and green, also, is delicious.

Briefly returning to the theme of arseholes, as well as this cataloguing the Tate Modern exhibition (2018), it also covers and celebrates Picasso’s first career retrospective, of 1932, around the time he was turning 50. I’m 49 now, so this is very resonant for me.

Rather ironically, one of Picasso’s exhibitors, Paul Rosenberg, is quoted in here as saying ‘I refuse to have any arseholes in my gallery’. I love art and artists. But many – and it’s often been said of Picasso – are, frankly, the very epitome of assholes. And gallery owners and art critics? Even worse!

How ironic that Rosenberg would object to hanging arseholes on his walls, but could be very tolerant of the same populating the environment of his gallery!

One of the many, many, many things I love so deeply about Picasso is how varied and prolific his work was. Have I said this before? I’ll say it again; one of the many things I love about Picasso is how much work he did and how diverse that work was.

In this year/book alone, he ranges from monochromatic drawings and paintings to orgies of colour, soft round pillows and hard sharp angles, and then there’s the sculpture. Sometimes the links between periods, styles or themes are clear, whilst at others he jumps around like a grasshopper on PCP.

And very often he works through ideas in series of closely related works. Riffing away (appropriately enough he often riffs on guitars/flutes, etc*), looking for perfection, or that elusive magical alchemical quality great art can have. As he puts it: ‘ I can rarely keep myself from redoing a thing… after all, why work otherwise, if not to better express the same thing? You must always seek perfection.’

Ironically, for one of the greatest artists of all time, he is incredibly unlike most appallingly hip artsy types, whose preciousness often manifests in a combination of spiky arrogant feeling obscurantism, and an almost monomaniac visual aesthetic.

The series of crucifixions above illuminates several of these ideas; his playfulness, the stark stylistic contrast between this stuff and his colourful cream-puff nudes, and how he sought perfect through re-iteration.

That said, Picasso’s own spoken words – at least as communicated in books such as this – range from the refreshingly earthy and unpretentious (I like his statement about not making art ‘serving the interests of the political, religious or military art of any country.’) to the painfully self-consciously intellectual or opaque: ‘I will never fit in with the followers of the prophets of Nietzsche’s superman.’

As well as the series of related artworks, some on themes such as seated ladies, female nudes, bathers, crucifixions, Bacchanalian scenes, etc, there are whole sketchbooks, reproduced here, as well as photo-articles such as Andre Breton’s Brassaï illustrated piece on Picasso’s sculptural work at Boisgeloup.

And, rather nicely, the importance of places, as well as people, is really addressed nicely in this book, via maps, black and white photos, and text.

This review is primarily my initial response to the visual content of this terrific book. Most of my interest in art books lies in simply looking at the artworks, and other images. Art history texts are infamous for all too often being tortuously verbose and pretentious. What little I’ve read here, thus far, seems alright.

But the real treasures here are not the words, obviously, but the artworks. And for these alone, this book is, for me, essential. Love it!

I often feel somewhat peeved at the adulation that Blue is regularly accorded, to my mind very much at the expense of other equally great Joni albums, from her mind-blowing ’68 debut, Song To A Seagull, to one of my personal favourites, For The Roses (1972). As Brandi Carlisle puts it in the liner notes to the recently released The Reprise Albums, 1968-71, whatever else might be right or wrong about the times we live in, we can at least say we lived in the era of Joni Mitchell. Amen to that.

Anyway, having got that out of the way, here are some notes I made whilst listening to the 50th Anniversary re-release of the Joni Mitchell Archives Demos And Outtakes release…

Wow! This is what we want. Or at least it’s what I want. I’ve been a bit of an ornery curmudgeon regarding the recent 50th anniversary celebrations of Blue. Sure, it’s a brilliant album, by the best female singer songwriter that’s ever lived. But it’s also the most talked about and lionised of her albums. And I always have issues with such adulation.

So, rather than joining the (very justified) hallelujah chorus singing the praises of the album itself, I find it far more interesting to discover new sounds from the period. And that’s exactly what these demos and outtakes provide. Okay, there are only five tracks, and of those only one – Hunter – is out and out new to me. And even this track is familiar, parts of the guitar sounding very like another Joni track I can’t quite put my finger on.

The full track listing is Case of You, California, Hunter, River, Urge For Going. What I love is that these recordings are absolutely superb in quality – however they were recorded, they could easily be on any album – and yet they feel to me like they capture that perennial image of Joni as the girl with guitar and portable reel to reel, continually ‘sketching’ (‘I am a lonely painter’).

And, even better, these aren’t just track-x take #whatever, i.e. very like the tracks we know. They all have certain aspects that mark them out as significantly different. This is most obviously so on Case of You, which kicks things off. It’s a more staccato take, instrumentally, with quite a bit of difference in the lyrics. California is perhaps the closest to what you hear on Blue. But it’s still audibly different, if only quite subtly.

Hunter is – to me – completely new. Although, as already noted, it sounds like she may have recycled some of the guitar elsewhere. River is very like the version in Blue, except that at the end there are added horns, riffing on the Christmassy vibe Joni evokes by quoting that familiar seasonal melody I can’t name right now. And then there’s Urge For Going, which wasn’t on Blue, but is widely known, having been released elsewhere on numerous occasions. Again there’s a new element, this time overdubbed strings.

In conclusion, these recent archival releases are absolutely terrific! And these demos and outtakes partake of that grooviness. If you’re a Joni devotee, as I most unashamedly am, then this undeniably essential.

As a work of art, and labour of love, this is a five star affair. So why have I, rather meanly, knocked off a half star? 

Well, the truth is that I really rather dislike – though in truth that’s not a strong enough word, detest is better – the Bible. The over-reverence, or even just plain attention, that it is accorded, even by it’s critics, is energy that could be better spent on other things. [1]

The task of illustrating Genesis took Crumb about five years, according to the artist himself. And it was a challenge in numerous ways; he wanted to draw in a more ‘realistic’ and historically accurate manner than he might sometimes adopt in other works, and this was to be a ‘neutral’ even-handed rendering. Neither the drooling sycophancy of the acolyte, nor the cutting satire of critical disbelief. 

Both of these factors impact on the total work of art. Fans of Crumb’s more celebrated stylised exaggerations might find his style here a bit straight-laced. But, truth be told, I reckon his pure passion for rendering decent art wins out. And enough of his slightly icky primitivism seeps through to keep it well within ‘signature Crumb’ territory (he already has a strong tradition of cartoon as documentary, from his prolific sketching to his histories of early jazz, blues and folk musicians).

And then there’s the actual Biblical content. Some of it, such as the most colourful and celebrated mythical parts, like the Creation, the Flood, Joseph in Egypt, etc, is perfect material for Crumb. But there are other aspects – in particular the lineages – which are a part of the Bible, in particular the Old Testament, that I’ve always loathed. 

So, whilst Crumb’s art itself, and his sheer chutzpah in even attempting such a project, are all five star, the material itself is considerably less. The importance of the Bible in history, as great as it undoubtedly has become, is, nevertheless, continually overstated. It’s position, rather like it’s very genesis (pun intended), is one of those accidents of evolution; it just so happened, rather than the texts winning a place in history by merit, never mind Divine authorship!

Having said all that I have, I’m intending to read Isaac Asimov’s two part Biblical work as soon as time allows. My excuse for this Judaeo-Christian navel-gazing and time wasting is the working out/off of my own very religious childhood. 

As works about the Bible go, this is undoubtedly a very good one. The way Crumb treats it, very literally and completely, is a good antidote to either the fawning reverence of believers, or the sometimes overly gleeful mockery of the disbelievers. 

Believers might, one hopes, start to sense the human historicity of their founding text, and we can all marvel at the sheer nuttiness or banality of certain parts, or even cogitate on the potentially more profound ‘psychological truths’ (should you feel that way inclined) of some of the potential readings of certain foundational myths. 

In addition to an intro or preface (I forget exactly how he titles it!), there are Crumb’s ‘commentary’ notes on the text, at the end. This stuff reveals Crumb’s own take on it all more clearly, as someone with a secular historical interest in his source material. There’s a particularly interesting thread in here regarding how certain textual oddities might result from a later patriarchally slanted redaction of originally more mixed stories, some of which would have (or might have) originally had a decidedly more matriarchal slant. Fascinating!

If you’re a Crumb fan, or interested in the history of religion/myth, and I’m both, I’d say this is well worth having and/or reading. 

——————

NOTES:

[1] It’s a ‘pop culture’ thing; why endless genuflecting before The Beatles, or Dylan, or Miles, or even Bach or Mozart? Hero worship always requires lowering of critical faculties, a kind of group reverential hysteria takes over, and masses of ‘lesser’ stuff gets swept aside and ignored. To the loss of all. 

Fooling Yourself, The Better To Fool Others

I found this pretty compelling at the time of reading, but now I come to review it, I’m surprised at how little of it has stayed with me. Deceit and self-deception are fascinating facets of life, and I share Trivers’ desire to better understand these areas. But at times I found his writing a little opaque, either just being plain confusing, or assuming knowledge I didn’t have. I feel the best authors of such popular science books (as this appears to want to be), have the skill of making themselves understood. So, whilst I certainly admire Trivers intent, I wasn’t entirely bowled over with the execution.

Much of what Trivers discusses here, i.e. the bigger more basic ideas (such as that alluded to in the books subtitle), seemed rather obvious to me. Granted, he does in places go into some depth and detail, compared to which one’s own intuitions perhaps ought to be considered interesting but insubstantial. But I didn’t find the book as robustly scientific as I might’ve have hoped. One aspect I found rather trying being the unsignposted blending of scientific findings, anecdote and opinion. All these things may be welcome components of his thesis, but knowing if and when a statement is supported by scientific research (and the nature of that research, and it’s source) seems vitally important to me. So, for example, his comments on the cognitive dissonance reduction of ‘lifers’ who say they would murder again, whilst plausible (and predictable, really), strikes me as pure speculation, unless he has some kind of evidence for his view, in which case it should be cited.

In contrast with the way in which some of the broader ideas seem obvious, where Trivers cites material that appears to be drawn from research in his own field (biology), he’s not always clear enough, making too many assumptions for the ‘lay reader’ like myself. Perhaps he’s simply assuming a familiarity with evolutionary terminology and science I simply don’t possess? One example might be the use of the term ‘selected’, which in everyday language assumes the conscious selection of a discerning agent, whereas ‘selected’ in the context of natural selection has an entirely different meaning. His use of the term selection, though not clarified, is something I was able to cope with, but the following – “In competition over access to maternal investment, paternal genes in offspring are inevitably less related to siblings than are maternal genes” – is far from obvious (to me), and needs more and better ‘unpacking’ than I feel it got.

When it comes to the impact these ideas have on human life, there’s some pretty harrowing stuff, such as the material relating to aircraft accidents, and Trivers is clearly, as we all ought to be, very concerned about the role of deceit in national and international politics, particularly given the ramifications such deceits have in terms of the destruction of lives and environments, these days, thanks to our industry and technology, on catastrophically large scales. Still, I had hoped that he’d engage my interest more deeply, in the manner of someone like Carl Sagan, whose ruminations on similar (but also very different) themes, in his landmark  Cosmos  series, penetrated my consciousness in a more profoundly resonant manner.

Still, despite the caveats and complaints, this is a very welcome opening up of an area that we seem, on the whole, resolutely determined not to look at, And however unsatisfactory it is in places it also contains a lot worth thinking about. Trivers says himself that he sees the book as the first public word in a debate he hopes will mature into a whole area of research and understanding, and I say ‘amen’ to that. I just hope that later editions might clarify or simplify a few things on the one hand, and present arguments a bit more rigorously on the other.

Wired for Culture: The Natural History of Human Cooperation

Wow! Mark Pagel has written a really fantastic book here. This book has the kind of depth and breadth that is awe-inspiring enough to have an almost visceral impact. In exploring how we have evolved culture, or culture has evolved us, Pagel touches on a dizzying array of themes and concepts, never getting too complex or abstruse to follow, and always remaining both erudite and engaging.

And, in a way that reminded me of Arthur Koestler (in particular his excellent Sleepwalkers book), Pagel manages to make some pretty challenging ideas – challenging more to our sense of self (and other ‘cherished illusions’), rather than ‘difficult to understand’ – seem not just plausible, but likely.

In this respect Pagel shows that such scientific understanding as he is dealing in doesn’t necessarily suggest easy ways forward: how are we to square a growing awareness of the illusory nature of the self, along with ever clearer evidence that our access to truth, and even our ability to be author of our own responses to it, is far from what we’ve commonly assumed, with the tendency of the modern world towards a global culture, when biologically, i.e. genetically, our phenotypes (both physical and cultural) have been predominantly sculpted by the vastly longer timespans we’ve spent in smaller tribal groupings? He has answers, neither glib or simplistic, but you should read the book to find out what they are!

He frequently quotes or refers to authors like Dawkins, Dennett and Trivers (I had hoped Trivers’ recent book Deceit might be as satisfying a read as this has proven to be, and Pagel frequently refers to Trivers’ work on deception and self-deception, but I feel Pagel has brought together a broader, richer synthesis in this book), and like all three of these scientific (some might say ‘scientistic’) writers and thinkers, he uses Darwin’s evolutionary insights, chiefly the concept of natural selection, to address vast areas of great fascination, from how languages evolve (or resist change, for that matter), to such profundities as ‘what exactly is consciousness?’ Like these other writers he also demonstrates how, in Dennett’s terminology, Darwin’s dangerous idea is a seemingly ‘universal acid’, eating its way through all aspects of our understanding.

As well as addressing issues like truth and our relations with it, he looks into the origins and functions of art and religion (“beliefs take hold because they promote survival, not because they are true”), possible genetic as well as cultural roots for conflicted aspects of life in general and our being in particular, whose convoluted tendrils might ultimately manifest both in physical and psychological terms, and even why our societies have evolved to function as they do (with their vast disparities between innovation and copying, wealth and power). This really is an amazing, exciting and excellently written book.

Pagel also illuminates the incredible richness, although never glibly, of both what we’ve become and how, suggesting that, whilst in many ways things may not be as they first appear, nevertheless there’s much to admire, be thankful for, and work towards, not least of which is the understanding of our peculiar position as conscious cultural collaborators. Quite where to go from the point of finishing reading this, I can’t really say, as there’s a lot to absorb and reflect on.

In my view, with this book Pagel has stepped right to the forefront of the first rank of writers of popular science, with a superb account of how evolution creates culture and culture creates humans. The warp and weft of his argument and storytelling is densely and intricately interwoven, beautiful, illuminating and nigh on impossible to unravel.

I can’t wait to read more by this stimulating and engaging author… loved it! I just wish more books were so interesting and well-written. It’s an added bonus that this Allen Lane hardback has also been beautifully designed, typeset and printed.