reading review - unsettled

Hi - one last book from my April 2022 reading list.

Unsettled by Steven Koonin

Technically speaking, I thought this was among the best books I've read so far in 2022. (Yes, I'll address the qualifier.) Unsettled promises to detail the shortcomings in the communication of climate science, and Koonin has a long list of credentials which qualify him for the task. On the whole, I think the book keeps its promise. Koonin makes his argument across a wide range of examples, pointing out common sense details (such as the way percentages can be manipulated based on reading temperature using C or F units) in addition to raising more nuanced questions that may escape the average reader (such as the replication challenge, where current climate models fail to "predict" the past using retroactive inputs). He returns time and again to the idea that science should inform rather than persuade which, by the end of Unsettled, turns out to be a quite compelling conclusion based on his recap of how the information has been presented to the public.

I was pleasantly surprised with Koonin's recommendations regarding the best courses of action. His observation that reducing emissions works best through conservation rather than efficiency, for example, or his conviction that addressing global poverty will alleviate some of the underlying pressures on climate change are the types of simple recommendations that I feel get lost whenever I hear commentary on this topic. The WHO (at the time of writing) points to indoor air pollution in poor countries as the most serious environmental issue in the world, but being distracted by the headlines I have no idea what rich countries are doing about it. I also have no idea how the forty percent of humanity without adequate access to energy will be involved in the solutions to the climate crisis, or if they would consider the solutions adopted by rich nations as adequate responses to their specific concerns. The idea that we need to preserve poverty to save the planet seems to me, for the lack of a better word, unsettling.

So, then, the qualifier. I think my experience predisposes me to see Koonin's point through a strictly technical perspective. I routinely interact with others in the context of informing with data, these colleagues or partners generally well-versed in the original analysis, but I rarely find that their summaries and conclusions maintain the same level of rigor that went into the analysis. The end result is something I'm sure Koonin would relate to - the quality of information that reaches the audience is often a step or two lower than the quality of the original analysis. But what is the point, so to speak, about this point, particularly in the context of a climate crisis? A crisis usually requires action, but in this specific example it's the lack of action that is becoming its own crisis - when so many in power have been unresponsive for so long, there is a growing case for persuasion rather than informing. In the context of climate change, Unsettled reads as an aside to determine whether the data meets a certain standard of scientific rigor, but to me an aside feels beside the point.

Is it necessary to rearrange the deck chairs when so many are panicking that the ship is sinking? It may not be the moment to get lost in the precision of exactly how the ship is taking on the rising sea. I am sympathetic to the importance of maintaining scientific rigor but I'm willing to deal with that issue after we get ashore safely. It seems to me that we know what we need to know about climate change, and by this I mean we know the big things which should set our direction, but despite knowing these things it still feels a bit directionless at the moment. Why wait for the Arctic to flood the Charles before we acknowledge that some things need to change? There are things big enough to work on regardless of the details in the science.

I am perhaps the least qualified person around to make such a point, but I don't feel unqualified when I say that a smokestack spewing black clouds into the air should be banned on the account of raw ugliness. Regardless of whether I thought Unsettled was well-written, I won't lose any sleep worrying about scientific standards when society remains tethered to a fossil fuel industry that enriches a small handful while nearly one-tenth of humanity remains in extreme poverty. I'll accept that the data is not always as conclusive as it has been presented, but this doesn't really change my main concern. My main concern remains that there are some major problems which need to be resolved, these problems requiring resolution whether they can be tied conclusively to the climate science or not, and books like Unsettled give certain people excuses, via technicalities, to dismiss the urgency of how these problems should be solved regardless of whether you think they have any relationship to the climate crisis or not.

reading clearout - april 2022

Trust me, reader, I meant it last month when I said this TOA thing was going to get restarted in the near future, just a moment, imminently. But then a day went by, and a week, now a month... I suppose it's time to acknowledge that maybe I was feeling a tad optimistic in that moment.

Still, I'm sure it's now only a matter of time before I return to some semblance of The Real Writing. I'm much more sure of this now than I was even at the time of my last post. There are some essays I would like to finish and a couple of lingering topics that I feel compelled to write about, but the strongest indicators are those instances over the past few weeks when I wrote something down as a potential writing topic. For me, having this steady stream of possibilities, even if I end up abandoning most of them before I start any serious work, is always the best signal that my interest in writing is returning to a healthy level.

I'm not quite at the point of full return but I think it would be wise to begin some basic preparations. Like an athlete emerging from the offseason, I have a few months of rust that have accumulated in the various soft spots of my craft. I think the best place to restart is always with the fundamentals, reflecting the importance of a back to the basics mentality, and on TOA the bread and butter has always been my commentary on reading experiences.

Let's start - restart - with my thoughts on the books I finished in April.

On Freedom by Maggie Nelson

I've posted enthusiastically about some of Nelson's other works - Bluets, The Argonauts - so I suppose the failure of On Freedom to elicit a similar reaction is a unique brand of TOA disapproval. This book, comprised of four long essays tied around a central premise to explore "freedom", was filled with plenty of interesting moments and remarks yet never quite reached the lofty expectations I had going into the reading. I think the best reflection of my feeling came through while reviewing my notes on the book, when I noticed a few of her comments about climate change - all of Nelson's thoughts were without question important or insightful about the situation, but they were also the same things I've managed to figure out on my own over the past couple of decades. Two references Nelson makes early on may end up being all I recall about the book in a few years - that Wittgenstein said the meaning of a word is its use, and that David Graeber defined revolutionary action as acting as if one is already free.

Her comment that artists must learn to stand up for (and perhaps alongside) their work was the most interesting discovery I made when I reviewed my notes about On Freedom. Nelson adds that without doing so, an artist risks allowing criticism to shut down the types of discussions that allow a work to move forward. I don't know many artists but I can vouch for how this idea applies more broadly to your average person. I notice quite regularly that potentially transformative conversations quickly disintegrate into a fact-checking contest, with the proceedings often marred by the appearance of opinion disguised as unquestioned truth. I think freedom of thought is partially enabled by the ability to stand by an idea long enough to learn from it, and a free thinker is someone who moves on to something better once they have learned enough. When people cling to their ideas and shut down the discussions that might challenge or question those ideas, I feel it locks them into a pattern of thinking that limits or even prevents them from realizing the full potential of the mind.

The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans

I didn't keep notes regarding my favorite of the few stories in this collection but my memory is that I enjoyed the work overall. If actions speak louder to you than words, then you will be pleased to know that I checked out another of Evans's works later in the year, which I hope clarifies that I recommend her books.

Like with my notes on most short story collections, The Office of Historical Corrections provided a few insightful yet out of context nuggets that I am now revisiting with a raised eyebrow. Yes, I can relate to the idea that when there are just a couple of minorities in a place then there is a certain pressure for them to have an opinion on each other, but I also know from experience that it's possible to be entirely unaware of this expectation. The thought that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man would be out of place was a nice turn on the expression, but aren't kings always a little out of place? And for that matter, where on the planet is a one-eyed man not a little out of place? I guess this all just highlights an important aspect of fiction, and especially short fiction - it gives us readers a chance to take an idea and see it from many perspectives, evaluating its strengths and weaknesses in various contexts to help us refine the way we understand the world.

Unsettled by Steven Koonin

I ended up writing more about this one than I anticipated so we'll get to it in a separate post.

Severance by Ling Ma

I actually already wrote about this one a few months ago - check the archives!

Whiter by Nikki Khanna

Khanna collects around thirty essays, each a first-hand account written by an Asian-American woman regarding their experiences with colorism (2). I believe Khanna notes in her introduction that the literature on this topic has tended to focus on intragroup bias, where lighter skin tone is privileged within the group, but there are intergroup examples as well that perhaps collections such as this one can bring to wider attention. Whiter in my mind was an important book, but with so many different writers featured in the collection I must share that my experience as a reader was a little uneven (I guess it comes with the territory of such works).

The observations I noted may have a certain shock value - for example, the research findings that suggest some associate lighter skin with intelligence, which has significant implications in areas such as education, the workplace, or politics. But I think for me there were more moments where the observations felt quite routine - that Caucasian women are employed to market skin whiteners to Asian audiences, or that women historically featured in "most beautiful" lists have rarely been people of color. I learned a few details in this book that made for a rewarding reading experience, but I am left wondering who will read this book and experience a full-blown revelation when so much of the material just seems obvious. As one of the essayists notes, a challenging aspect of sharing racist experiences with white people is knowing that one possible result is leaving someone horror-struck. I've been tempted in these moments to push the issue - is the horror because you truly learned something, or is it the realization that you've just had your eyes closed to something so obviously visible to everyone else?

How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon

I preceded this reading with Heavy, Laymon's memoir that I remember seeing on every other trip to the bookstore since it was released in 2018. Heavy was just about the best book I'd read in a long time, so I kept it simple and went back to explore more of Laymon's work (1).

This summary might benefit if I limited myself to two words - read it - but I did want to highlight a couple of my notes from the collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. There was a theme of symbolism that ran through the work, particularly in the way it offers an escape route for those who won't engage with the possibility of change. Solving structural problems is not just about changing symbols, but rather a commitment to living out certain values; change is enabled not by addressing the symbolism of an insult, but rather dealing with the ensuing violence or damage. Laymon also writes that the best way to help others is to demand greatness of them, remembering all the while that it requires forgiveness, truth, high expectations, and patience.

My last note is about the first note I took from the book. It appears to be a quote taken directly from the work, a rarity for my note-taking process. I believe Laymon describes the following as the hardest sentence he ever wrote - I am proud of myself for not giving up, for accepting help, for not drowning in the humiliations of yesterday and the inevitable terror of tomorrow. It's undoubtedly a reflection on his past, but it can just as much be a mission statement for the future. For now, I just think we are all better off that he wrote it, and that I'm better off for having read it.

Footnotes

1. I'm starting with April and moving forward, but we'll work backward too...

In case you were wondering - no, I haven't yet written about Heavy.

2. A recommended essay?

In my notes I marked "What Are You" for a reread.