The Cosmos from the perspective of a biochemical reaction with self-delusions

 In the zoo, a man is standing in front of an enclosure which holds a group of primates. Of the latter, most are doing the things that primates like to do when left to their own devices: eating, sleeping, arguing and so on. Yet one primate in this group is different. From where he is standing in the primate enclosure, he is looking outside, beyond the walls of the enclosure. Beyond the bars. To the skies and the freedom, but also this primate that is standing there. Outside the enclosure, looking at him.

As the gaze of both these primates meet, many thoughts flash through their minds. Who is this other primate? What are they thinking of? What would it be like outside these walls that confine? What would living inside the enclosure be like? Might these other primates at the other side of the confinement also hold similar thoughts?

As night falls and the group of primates is herded back into their night enclosure, this one primate in the group steals one last look behind him. At the night sky with so many points of lights, and the place beyond the enclosure where that odd primate was standing earlier that day. The thoughts they shared with that one gaze. Maybe one day...


If there's one thing which is remarkable beyond description, it truly has to be the ability of the human species to both amaze and disappoint. When on one hand you have thousands of years of science and the most brilliant minds that humanity has produced so far, and on the other the ceaseless attempts by humanity to not only sabotage itself and destroy as much of itself as it humanly can, but also to ruthlessly ignore or even destroy the scientific works produced by others.

After reading Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos', one cannot help but feel a sense of intense loneliness and pointlessness, along with desperate hope and appreciation for the amazing feats that humanity is capable of during its better moments. Even so, humanity as a species has barely registered in a geological sense, never mind on a cosmic scale. Are we alone in the Cosmos? What is the point of all of this?

Unless we are actually just that group of primates in an enclosure called 'Earth', while being observed by other intelligent species, it is highly likely that we are in fact alone. Or at least in this tiny, minuscule, mostly deserted part of the Milky Way, which itself is a rather dull galaxy in a Cosmos that is so vast that the primate inside the enclosure has more of a chance to grasp the vastness of Earth's surface, rather than us human primates of grasping even the vastness of our neighbourhood of the Milky Way, never mind the Cosmos.


Most of the Cosmos we have never even seen or observed in any fashion, as all electromagnetic radiation and other forms of signals that we could observe are still on their way to this part of the Milky Way. Even after billions of years, the speed of light is not fast enough to cross these vast distances. On such vast time scales, it leaves one to wonder whether maybe humanity reached this stage in their evolution too early, or too late compared to any potential other intelligent life.

Perhaps these other civilisations don't live near enough, but a few galaxies over. Perhaps there simply is no way to communicate with another civilisation that far away which doesn't take thousands or millions of years at light speed in each direction. Or perhaps we really are the only form of life that is capable of any level of inter-planetary communication and beyond that happens to be around at this point in time.

Perhaps another civilisation will show up on a world within easy communication and perhaps even travel distance, within a mere few thousand years after humanity has managed to destroy the Earth's biosphere sufficiently that survival is no longer an option for even the most wealthy or influential members of the human species. Perhaps they caught the radio transmissions we sent out many years before that, and decided to pop over in their faster-than-light (FTL) capable spacecraft.


Carl Sagan worried when he wrote 'Cosmos' in the late 1970s that humanity would wipe itself out in a great nuclear weapons fuelled fire amidst the feud between the Empires of the USSR and USA. That fear has fortunately not come to fruition, in no small part due to the strategy of MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction. This had both sides essentially in a stalemate position with each only a hair trigger away from obliterating the other Empire and plunging the Earth's biosphere into a violent and highly uncertain nuclear winter. Since neither side felt like a suicide attack at any point in time, and a few technical glitches fortunately didn't culminate in the accidental launch of nuclear-tipped ICBMs, Sagan was able to write further books well into the 1990s, until his death in December of 1996.

Since that time, humanity has launched the International Space Station (ISS), and robots are scouring the surface of Mars and soon other planetary and other bodies within the solar system. The Voyager space craft, which Sagan was involved with, have made it far out of the solar system and beyond the reach of our Sun. Humanity has never before been this close to making new discoveries and cover ground in new explorations that may - and likely will - change our fundamental understanding of this solar system and everything beyond it forever.


Humans are a primate species which has made it pretty far through a series of lucky coincidences. We are now at a level where we should theoretically be living in peace and safety, as no predators can harm us, and we have the means to not have to fear lacking shelter, food or clean water to drink. And yet here we are.

Maybe it is that humanity is held back by its evolutionary roots. Courtesy of many millions of years of evolution, adding and tweaking, primate brains are built up out of distinct regions, identifiable as belonging to distinct eras in the evolutionary tree. We are after all self-replicating, highly complex biochemical processes that didn't form this way overnight, but had to fight to survive, to replicate and evolve. This may put certain constraints on what the average human being would prioritise and focus on. Because it was the right thing to do for millions of years.


It's depressing to consider how close humanity came well over two-thousand years ago to having a scientific revolution courtesy of the Ionian culture that spawned most of the great thinkers we often refer to as just 'Ancient Greek'. Yet ultimately humanity instead ended up dragging itself through thousands of years of darkness before the Renaissance began to revive those old ideas about science rather than superstition and kin. Tragically even today we can observe today the ongoing destruction and vilification of the scientific method and those who seek to adhere to it. All of this paint humanity as a whole into a rather grim light.


Even without the Sword of Damocles in the form of thermonuclear destruction dangling above our heads every moment, most of humankind is like the rest of the group of primates in their zoo enclosure. Uninterested in learning more about the world and everything else around them, content to live out their brief lives, or too occupied with procuring the means to maintain their existence before it naturally expires to ever really notice that there's a whole world beyond the bounds of Earth.

Those of us who gaze at the stars and wonder what else is out there find ourselves torn between hope as well as the fear both of, and for the human species. The good we can do, and the terrible things that many of us end up choosing. Will we ever make it out there, among the stars? Or will human civilisation flicker and die, leaving barely a scratch on Earth's geological record, left there for perhaps another, an alien civilisation to stumble over and wonder what things must have been like back then?

That history is still left for us and future generations to write.


Maya

On Caitlin Doughty's Smoke Gets in your Eyes, death and control

 After stumbling over Caitlin Doughty's videos on YouTube and learning her thoughts on not only the (US) funeral industry but also many other death-related stories from all over the globe, I felt I had to get a copy of her first book: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, And Other Lessons From The Crematorium. What follows are my thoughts on this book, as well as (probably) copious spoilers for those who haven't read the book yet.


In this book, Caitlin details how her fascination with death formed at a young age due to a confrontation with the (presumed) traumatic death of a child at a shopping mall. The sudden disruption of a cheerful and carefree life to that point made young Caitlin realise the nature of mortality, and that - in fact - everyone around her would die some day. Perhaps less common a response, Caitlin felt compelled to 'do something' with death and mortality, to the point of making her career out of it.

Imagine spending part of your twenties shoving corpses into an incinerator, or retort as these corpse-burning machines are called. Shovelling bone dust and chunks of bone out of the machine and grinding these down into the fine ash that is commonly recognised by society as 'corpse ash'. Even though all organic matter got burned off and escaped into the atmosphere (with or without filtering) already.

The way society looks at and deals with death says a lot about the society. In the US, the funeral industry has moved more and more towards taking the 'death' out of the 'death industry', instead adding glamour and kitsch to it. From overly fancy caskets (instead of body-shaped coffins), to elaborate final resting places and of course the process of embalming, which aims to make a corpse as decay-resistant and eternally appealing as a McD Happy Meal, modern day (Western) society has become highly divorced from the true nature of death.


For the people who work at a crematorium or funeral home, there is the constant process of picking up bodies. Every few seconds another handful of people die, after all. That means that in a big city like San Francisco there are (white, unmarked) vans driving every which way each and every day to pick up the dozens of new corpses. These include everyone from the wealthy, rich and famous, to the poorest and most anonymous. Death is the ultimate equaliser.

One day each of us will die, and be whisked away by one of those vans or equivalent to be buried, cremated, chopped up to be fed to ravenous predators or given a Viking burial. So why are we (as in Western societies) so good at pretending death doesn't exist?


Here I feel I should interject my own thoughts as someone who grew up on a dairy farm. My view and that of others who grew up in similar conditions is that 'city folk' are the ones who are detached from reality. Not just in the sense that they often haven't the foggiest where their milk or meat comes from (beyond the grocery store or butcher), but also in the sense of having seen life and death from up close.

From a young age, the spectre of death was ever-present, as one of the aspects of running a dairy farm is that you have a lot of animals, some of whom will die on a regular basis. Of course we had the young male calves who'd be taken away by this big truck, knowing that they'd be fattened up and butchered, but we also had the occasional sheep and cows who'd succumb to some illness or injury. Seeing cattle, sheep and other corpses alongside the road near some farms wasn't uncommon. They were just waiting to be picked up by the corpse truck, much as human corpses get picked up.

Death is the great equaliser, no matter your species.

Except of course that a cow doesn't get a funeral or cremation. The remaining cows and sheep will often notice the absence in some manner, and a dead calf would lead to a distressed mother cow. Yet none of them got upset to the point of demanding a viewing of their dead family member or ask to receive the ashes. Where would a cow even leave the urn with ashes of her dead mother?

Growing up in this world where new life and new death is just part of everyday life, you come to accept it as The Way Things Are. Which is not to say that there are things which fall outside this pattern. I remember finding one of the farm cats as a child one day. She was frozen stiff, but I still took her into one of the stables and put her all warm in some straw, hoping she'd revive. Of course corpses do not come back to life.

Each year we'd also have litters of new kittens everywhere, from the farm cats that were roaming not just on our farm, but also between the other farms in the region. As nobody had bothered to neuter or spay these cats, there were a lot of kittens, and my dad would sometimes take a litter he found and drown a sack full of kittens in one of the water-filled ditches around the farm. Learning about that made me very upset. It didn't seem fair to me that such new life should face capital punishment for merely having been born. Even if they were seen as 'unwanted'.


While reading Caitlin's book, you can see the pattern of people moving into cities and pushing away this spectre of death. In a sense, a city is the ultimate death-denying place. Here one can see, hear, feel and experience people being alive every second, without a moment of solitude or reflection. Since there is no need to get to know the neighbours or everyone else who lives in the hundreds of anonymous flats within throwing distance, people dying in those apartments and being taken away by people emerging with a stretcher from an unmarked, white van is of little concern and easily forgotten. Even inside hospitals anything that may resemble death is quickly whisked away, smoothed over and scrubbed off.

Living desperately to ignore the spectre of one's death coming ever closer, this seems to be the overarching theme.


Would people be happier if they could just accept death for what it is? Caitlin thinks so, and I would agree. Death is a reality of existence, and to pretend that it doesn't exist, or - perhaps worse - that corpses are something to be terrified of, is not helpful in the slightest. To not accept death is akin to not accepting that a machine or electronic device will cease working one day.

The body is a marvellously complicated piece of biochemical processes, all working synchronously in order to sustain a living, breathing organism, which in the case of humans at least is also gifted with a brain that allows it to contemplate and consider the cessation of these processes and how this makes one feel. Here one can seek to further escape the obvious conclusion of oblivion by suggesting that the cessation of the body's essential functions is merely the prelude to 'something' else. To deny not death, but to deny what death means.

With the cessation of the heart's beating and the rapidly decreasing activity in the brain before complete neural depolarisation makes revival impossible, the person that was created inside that brain is no longer. All that remains is the now defunct body that used to sustain it. That's both a tragic, but also comforting thought, as there still is something physical and tangible there that used to be part of this person. Through rituals including the washing and clothing of the body, before it is put to rest for the last time, family members and loved ones can come to terms with this death, and channel their grief and mourning.

Taking away these rituals and by turning death into something abstract is in that sense as cruel as hiding the death of a child's pet by swapping them with a newly bought one, or by pretending that Fido didn't die, but just moved to the Big Dog Farm up-state where she's all happily hanging out with other dogs. Hiding death from a child who grows up on a dairy farm would be hard to impossible, and my parents never even tried to hide the truth from me. I do not feel that this in any way, form or shape harmed me. In fact, it probably is for the best to confront a child with mortality in such a safe setting as soon as possible.


Finally, Caitlin also touches briefly on the subject of immortality, and denounces it, stating essentially that this spectre of death looming over her shoulder is what drives her. Here I want to state first and foremost that I have absolutely no problem with people who feel comfortable with their own impending death and have no issues with embracing it. I do however think on the same note that it is equally wrong to have issues with those who do feel that they would like to 'cheat death'.

I think an important distinction here is how one regards the body. Whether one sees it as part of a cycle of life & death, or more as a machine. If one sees one's existence more as just a brief flicker in the former, then it would seem wrong, almost sacrilegious to not embrace the sweet embrace of death whenever it comes to you.

Yet to others the view of the body as a biological machine is obvious, and with it the same impulses that drives us to conserve countless parts of human history that by all rights should have turn to dust by now. From reconstructing ancient settlements and ruins, to restoring machines and devices decades to centuries old, we find the notion that with the right drive, spare parts and skills we can keep more than just a 1930s truck or 19th century steam engine running.


The funny thing here is that this also appears to tie into the whole 'right to repair' movement. When you 'own' a device or machine, shouldn't you be able to repair it if you desire so? Whether it's performing maintenance on an excavator or combine harvester, a computer-controlled gadget or a laptop or smartphone, nobody should have the right to tell you that you cannot repair it, or that it isn't worth it. That's up to you as the owner of the machine or device in question to decide.

If we extend that idea of ownership and control to one's own body, then I think that the notion of giving everyone the freedom and control to either repair their body or let it decay naturally is the only right choice. Yes, we should bring back the understanding of what death truly is - and with it put nonsensical scaremongering like zombies to rest - while also not demonising medical science today and tomorrow. After all, we happily embrace antibiotics, vaccines and living in clean, hygienic houses, instead of accepting 19th-century levels of death and not naming newborns as they'd likely die before their first birthday, conceivably along with their mother. We have been 'cheating death' for countless millennia at this point, and it seems unlikely we will cease doing so any time soon.


Today we know that we will certainly die one day, yet at the horizon we can see the day when this will be a personal choice. To me that represents the most beautiful part of what it means to be human: to use our intellect and reasoning skills to create more choice, health and happiness rather than settle for just raw survival as back in our hunter-gatherer days. The point of a brain is after all to use it, not merely to have it rot away in the ground or sizzle and evaporate in a retort's fiery embrace after decades of gathering proverbial dust.

Here is to life, death and human genius and intellect.


Maya

Atlas Shrugged: on the pursuit of personal happiness

It's been a few days now since I finished reading Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged', and I can honestly say that it was quite an experience. Having given it some time to percolate through my mind, I can say that I consider it a work that is very enlightening, if flawed. Although at one point I thought that I much prefer The Fountainhead [1] to Atlas Shrugged, I'm now no longer so sure.

I think that the main differences between The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are that although they seem to both encompass the same underlying life philosophy, Atlas Shrugged is more confident and bombastic. Whereas The Fountainhead was mostly about 'show, don't tell', Atlas Shrugged likes to tell you what it thinks. A lot.

This unfortunately led to me rolling my eyes at a lot of internal dialogue, especially at the beginning of the book when Mr Rearden considers his family and near the end of the book with Galt's small novel worth of... ranting, I guess. I'm somewhat sorry to say that this latter exposition appeared to me tedious and repetitive enough that I mostly skipped through it.


So it's a poorly written story, then? Far from it. As I mentioned earlier, it's an enlightening if flawed experience. When the book tones down the preaching and posturing some, it's actually a really good story with highly detailed and intriguing characters. I especially found myself really liking one of the main characters: Dagny Taggart. Her frustrations as she sees her life's work taken away from her and demolished in front of her eyes was palpable.

It should be noted here that over the years I had been informed by others that 'Atlas Shrugged' is a novel about a bunch of rich folk deciding that they don't want to pay their due to society any more and establish their own 'perfect' society somewhere else. This concept is also what for example the Bioshock video game series is based on. Colour my surprise when I found out that Atlas Shrugged is nothing like that premise.


As the story begins, Dagny Taggart is the head of Operations at US rail company Taggart Transcontinental, who together with childhood friend Eddie and others try to keep the business together even as it is clear that some kind of rot has set in. New rail from a steel foundry has not been delivered for months, resulting in an entire section of track reaching a state where it can no longer be safely used. The owner of the foundry claims a situation beyond his control.

This sets the tone of the next chapters: even as Dagny Taggart and Rearden with his new metal alloy called 'Rearden Metal' are dreaming of how they can transform the country with high-speed Diesel trains running on solid tracks made with this super-durable Rearden Metal, they're finding that contracts are not being fulfilled and then a new law gets passed that essentially forbids market competition. Instead each US state should see exactly the same rail services, same job prospects and so on.

These regulations gradually gets expanded, all in the name of equality. Suddenly no manufacturer of steel, coal, or anything else is allowed to produce more than their competitors. Any protests against these regulations are met with an explanation that it is all for the common good. That this isn't the time to think about one's personal situation, but about the failing companies, the starving and desperate people in society. Many of these measures just temporary anyway, until the economy recovers.


Throughout this time, Dagny is astounded to learn that many people she knew suddenly seem to vanish. Some suddenly announce that they are 'retiring', leaving behind a factory or other company with no word about a successor, while others just vanish overnight without leaving a trace. She is afraid that there is a 'Destroyer' behind this, someone or some force which will end up also getting to her. It aren't just industrialists who are vanishing now, but also a lot of good workers, bankers and even artists.

In a world that feels ever more desolate, Dagny finally finds out what is happening as she intercepts a brilliant young scientist who she had working for her on a new engine design. Following the airplane he is in using her own airplane, she crash lands in a remote valley, where she meets this 'Destroyer'. As it turns out, all the people who 'vanished' simply followed John Galt and the others like him.


Meeting back up with all these friends and acquaintances, Dagny is confronted with the greyness of her life back in New York. How every waking moment is spent on keeping a railroad network together, even when there are practically no foundries any more, and even what Rearden produces is 'equally distributed' so that Rearden Metal can be used for metal gadgets instead of railroad tracks to keep the country together.

Even then, Dagny is not ready to abandon 'her' railroad like so many of these people in the valley have already given up their life's works to escape that cycle of self-exploitation. Returning to New York, she keeps fighting for another few months, ripping out parts of still usable track to repair the main lines to keep a few trains running. Meanwhile the country suffers from shortages in just about everything. Coal, gasoline, food, everything is rationed and power shortages lead to frequent blackouts.

As the country slowly dies, the US government ends up capturing John Galt, the man who has been this persistent rumour for many years now, immortalised in the saying 'who is John Galt?'. Pinning their hopes on John Galt, the latter refuses to let himself to be used to try and fix what is wrong with the country, since those leading the country refuse to admit that their policies were flawed to begin with.

After a harrowing escape, Dagny, John and those who came to rescue them find themselves waiting out the collapse of society in their hideout, as they plan out how to bring the country back again.


The basic tenets here are similar to those portrayed in The Fountainhead: one's own happiness is paramount, as is fairness towards others. Talent and dedication in others is to be acknowledged and rewarded. One never gives anything without expecting something in return of equal value. One can only be guilty of a crime if one accepts the particular set of morals in which one's actions would be a transgression.

Another important point here is that personal happiness cannot be achieved through the exploitation of others. Although one's own happiness is more important than the happiness of others, one does not increase one's own happiness by reducing the happiness of others. Similarly, the exchange of something of equal value is a very relative thing, not necessarily defined in a monetary value. After all, material possessions mean nothing if one's heart and mind are devoid of joy.


Wrapping up, as I mentioned at the beginning, the flaws in this story are found mostly in its tendency to preach instead of just showing what it means. Looking at the story outside of those flaws, it is a highly enjoyable story that manages to bring its points across in a harrowing and haunting fashion. It contains very real, if simplified, warnings about both the dangers of totalitarianism as well as those of neo-liberalism [2], systems which are based on coercing the individual into self-exploitation.

Although I would hardly call myself a devout follower of Objectivism even after reading some of Ayn Rand's works, I find it very refreshing to read stories based around a philosophy which is so close to humanism and yet so scorned by many.


Maya



[1] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/05/my-formal-apology-to-ayn-rand-or.html
[2] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/07/altruism-is-anathema-to-humanism.html

My formal apology to Ayn Rand, or: reviewing The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand's works generally do not get a lot of attention unless it is in more conservative and liberal circles, with her philosophy of Objectivism [1] mostly receiving ridicule when covered by popular media. Although video games like the Bioshock series are heavily inspired by her later book 'Atlas Shrugged', these revel in showing off just how much Objectivism is wrong and cannot work in real life.

Admittedly, I was among those who thought like that. What is after all more selfish than putting one's own happiness over that of others? What monster wouldn't put altruism and selflessness over one's own self-worth and ego?


At the recommendation of a lawyer friend of mine, I got a copy of The Fountainhead [2], her 1943 novel. After a rough start, I managed to finish the book yesterday and had some time to collect my thoughts on it. Note that in this review I will heavily spoil this 77-year old book, so be forewarned.


At the core of the book's story are the twin stories of two young architects, as they make their way into society. One - Peter Keating - is eager and glad to please. The other - Howard Roark - is self-assured and prefers to go his own way. One follows whatever building style is demanded without putting his own stamp on anything. The other desires only to follow his own style, refusing to ever compromise on his vision.

For most of the book's story, it is Peter who seems to be doing the best, as he gets nearly every commission. Though what Peter knows - but doesn't want to admit to - this is because of two other characters who are merely using Peter for their own goals. There is Ellsworth Toohey, who seeks only power over others, and who promotes Peter over Howard when folk come to him for advice on picking an architect for a new commission. There is also Dominique, whose motive in getting commissions to Peter instead of Howard is one of love. Love for Howard, that is.


I must admit that when I started reading this book, I was biased against it. I expected to dislike it, to see the relentless egoism and selfishness dripping from every page and being glorified. As I finished chapter after chapter I did not see any of this. Instead I got a careful building up of the US architectural world of the 1930s, and the struggles of two young men as they find their place in this highly traditional and unforgiving world. Both Peter and Howard, as well as the other main characters are portrayed in a fashion that is decidedly human. None of them feel like cardboard cut-outs placed there to represent some kind of stereotypical concept.

The story has many shades of grey in it, and as the story progresses, you aren't really sure who to root for. Peter, maybe? He seems nice. Howard feels so arrogant, so maybe not him. Dominique is just an ice princess, so what can one expect from her? Then, as another part completes and the story progresses through the seven year timespan plus flashbacks to characters' childhoods, it becomes so obvious which character is the one to sympathise with.


At this point the character of the publisher Gail Wynand has been added as well, as a newspaper mogul who has risen up from a meagre existence in the ghettoes of New York (Hell's Kitchen). At first glance he seems like he has managed to escape this world, to escape judgement of society and reach sweet freedom. By bouncing Howard Roark's character off these characters, against the background of the struggle around commissions and Howard's uncompromising attitude towards bringing his vision and only his vision to life, we learn more and more about Howard's character, even though he is set up to be as hard to read as possible at the beginning.

By the time the climax rolls around in the final chapters of the book, it feels as though one can finally truly understand the character of Howard Roark. While the character of Peter was easy enough to understand, Roark's character is of such depth and integrity that it really did take an entire book to see most aspects of it and to grasp his motivations. Roark was the only person who was morally and ethically integer, while Keating and Wynand had compromised themselves, setting themselves up for failure once the winds of fortune changed direction.


At the center of it all is the fundamental truth that a brain is an attribute of an individual. There is no collective brain, and thus no thought is ever collectively thought. Instead a thought, an idea or concept is produced by one individual, and can be transformed or expanded upon by other individuals. A creator doesn't create because they are told to do so, but because they want to. They invent, draw, compose and design because it is in their nature. They provide that which ultimately makes society.

Creators by definition place themselves before others, as otherwise they cannot create. If they were to sacrifice themselves for others, they could no longer create. Second-handers are those who praise the concepts of self-sacrifice, of altruism and sacrificing one's happiness and freedom for some goal. Altruism is thereby a kind of slavery, or masochism. It is to surrender oneself to something higher, like society, or religion. It means worshipping or idolising. It means living for someone or something other than oneself.

In essence altruism and self-sacrifice are the exact opposites of self-acceptance and of being allowed to exist and create. Creators are sacrificed on the altar of altruism.


One does have to wonder about how concepts like altruism and self-sacrifice are considered to be such important and self-evident concepts in society, when those who are in charge display neither characteristic. When politicians, sport and music idols can make in a week what the average person working a regular job makes in more than twenty years of backbreaking work, yet the latter are still being asked on TV and in radio spots to be 'altruistic' and donate part of their meagre income to some abstract goal like 'helping the poor', then that should evoke some strong feelings in any reasonable person.

Even though I am the first person to admit that we have to share in some respects for a healthy society, such as with details like health care and schooling, I find myself grudgingly agreeing with aspects of Ayn Rand's arguments. Ideally, a society would have no distinction between individuals in terms of wealth. Those who wish to create can freely do so. There would be no concept of 'jobs', as those who want to create will do so without being forced to do so. There are those who want to run a restaurant or a shop because it appeals to them. Others will still want to play sports, or draw or sculpt even if the only reward they get out of it is to see their vision become reality.

One thing which Aynd Rand really protested against is essentially Stalinism (authoritarianism), portrayed by the Ellsworth Toohey character. It is the worst kind of collectivism, where an individual has less say about what they can and cannot do than under an already oppressive system like neo-liberalism. Where neo-liberalism promotes self-exploitation and sacrificing oneself for 'the greater good', Stalinist-style authoritarianism like that in her native Soviet Union takes it that much further. Instead of promoting self-sacrifice, in an authoritarian system such self-sacrifice is demanded at the point of a gun.


Reflecting on this one book and the world contained in it, I can honestly say that it has left a big impression on me. I also feel sorry for casually dismissing Ayn Rand's works before. She truly was a great writer, with a very good, engaging style and immaculate character building. After reading The Fountainhead I will not say that I am a new convert to Objectivism, but I am grateful for having had this in-depth look at the fundamental ideas and concepts behind it.

True to her own philosophy, Ayn Rand did everything she could to be a creator, and it shows.


Maya



[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead

Finished my new book

I realise that I haven't written about this at all before, and there are a number of reasons why I didn't write about this new book that I was working on before. Suffice it to say that after more than half a year of work I finally completed my new book titled 'Mastering C++ Multithreading', with it hitting the stores last Friday.

The book was published by Packt Publishing, and can currently be found for a mere 10 Euro/dollar on their website [1] with a normal retail price of over 40 Euro. It is also available via Amazon [2].


So far this has been my second book to be published. The first one was also published via Packt, on the topic of game development on Android devices. This new book was a lot easier to write for me, to be honest, as I have far more extensive experience in both C++ and on low-level topics such as multithreading.

Having such an interest in low-level details shows for example in the second chapter of my new book, where I dive deep into how multithreading concepts as well as general processing is implemented in the hardware. Though chapters like these cost me an enormous amount of time in research, one of the things which I have learned over the years is that the most important thing for a software developer is to understand the underlying hardware.

I guess I had quite a bit of fun writing this book, even if it was quite an ordeal, with the past few weeks consisting out of me racing deadlines in order to get the book ready for publication by the end of this month. Yet I made it, and now I get to indulge in not having any imminent deadlines and immediate responsibilities.


One of the reasons why I decided to accept the task of writing this book when someone from Packt approached me with the idea is because I absolutely love both the C++ programming language and fundamentals such as multithreading and associated concepts such as atomics. C++ is wonderful to me - even after over 15 years - for being a highly flexible, multi-paradigm language. Computer hardware fascinates me to the point where I'm working on writing my own CPU architecture in VHDL, targeting FPGAs. To write about this passion was pretty much irresistible to me.

Do I feel that the resulting book is perfect? Far from it, but as one notices after using a language like C++ for nearly two decades, there's always so much more still to be learned. Worse, there are new concepts and new inventions just waiting around the corner. Much like older languages like COBOL, I expect C++ to be around in 20, 40 years time, each time adapting to new hardware and implementing new concepts. I look forward to updating the book with any such new concepts over time.

The last two chapters cover relatively new concepts, pertaining to distributed computing (clusters) and GPGPU. The latter topic especially is of a lot of interest to me, as adding a powerful vector processor to a system can give an immense boost to certain types of operations. I'm looking forward to experimenting more with that over the coming years.

For now it's onwards with new projects :)


Maya


[1] https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/mastering-c-multithreading
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-AndEngine-Game-Development-Posch/dp/1783981148/

Thoughts on Brave New World

'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley is one of those classics, must-have-read type of books, along with Fahrenheit 451, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, Catch-22 and others. They're books which portray a world which is a dystopian version of our own world, taking elements from it and showing us a world which 'could also be'.

I first read Brave New World many years ago, and the story didn't really stick with me. So after working my way through those other classics last year, I decided to refresh my knowledge of Brave New World by reading it again. In conclusion, while not a bad story by any means, it nevertheless fails to reach the depths required to make the world it describes as tangible or realistic. This is a shame.


The book portrays a 'utopian dystopian' world, a world in which nobody has to ever feel sad, distraught or bad about anything any more. Through the means of careful genetic selection and the growing of humans specifically bred for a specific purpose and copious amounts of entertainment - not in the least through the use of 'soma', a type of recreational drug which erases all worries - as well as the elimination of sex for procreation, conflict is eliminated.

This carefully balanced world is upset when an individual from one of the Savage Reservations - where people still live according to the rules of the old world - is introduced to this seemingly utopian society. Chaos ensues, leading up to a confrontation where the reasoning behind the whole system is revealed. In essence it's the only way humanity could live in harmony, ergo it's for the good of the people.


What somewhat annoys me is that when one is used to a book like Animal Farm, or Nineteen Eighty-Four - both by George Orwell - the world of Brave New World does never truly feel alive. In Nineteen Eighty-Four one can almost feel the world and experience it. It's a grimy, gritty experience, easily visualised and imagined. There are no real gaps left in the story-telling and the end result is that of a crushing sense of defeatism and acceptance of the inevitable in the final scene.

No such thing with Brave New World. The concept could have worked, but it's all too light, too fleeting and distant. More of a glimpse at this world, but not enough time to truly explore and understand it. This sadly leads to an underwhelming experience.


That said, I do agree with the general premise of the book and it's utopian dystopian view of the world is spot-on when looking at today's world. Even if not implemented as described in the book, the end result is fairly similar. Recreational drug use is everywhere, as is casual sexuality. Everywhere is cheap entertainment and there is never any necessity to contemplate the world if one does not want to.

That is, unless one falls outside of this system. Those who cannot accept the status quo. Those who wish to bring freedom and justice to themselves and others. Those who cannot just accept society the way it is.

In that sense we live in a similar dystopia as in Brave New World. Yet it's also like the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both stories - both worlds - are essentially the same, with some differences in how order and peace is accomplished, yet order and peace are there and will remain. No matter the cost.


Are they terrible worlds? The people in them are generally happy and there are few things to worry about, except on the battle lines between the three countries that remain in Nineteen Eighty-Four. If only one can accept the world the way it is.

The way I see it, both books are not about what people generally perceive them to be: commentaries on the threats of mass-entertainment, mass-surveillance, genetic engineering, etc. Instead they provide us with a mirror of the human mind in all its self-absorbed, easily entertained and distracted glory. They are more of a reminder that how easily subverted the human mind is to accept something is ultimately harmful to themselves and the rest of society.

They also provide a chilling reminder of what happens when one dares to go in against popular opinion, or the opinion of those in charge. It's a look back - and forward - on totalitarian regimes, who whisked opponents away to 'colonies' or labour camps, to be an outcast, re-educated or simply be worked to death.


In that sense Nineteen Eighty-Four did what Brave New World somewhat failed to do, even though the latter did something the former did not: provide a glimpse of a world in which one might actually want to live. None but members of the Party would truly want to live in the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, whereas the world of Brave New World would be an easy match for many members of today's society for whom it'd be only the slightest of changes.

Maybe that's why in the end Brave New World has the more chilling world, as it's one we as a society would be all too eager to slip into, not realising the consequences as we surrender every last trace of what ultimately makes us human, or simply not caring about such trivial matters before embracing the warm comfort of ignorance.


Maya