The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

Source of book: I own this

 

As regular readers of this blog know, I was homeschooled from 2nd grade on - one of the first, before it became popular. The main reason for this was that I was a sickly child, and missed so much school that the principal recommended my parents homeschool me. 

 

Back in the day, the curriculum you could buy was extremely limited. Most publishers refused to sell to individuals, so even what we were able to get when we first started was “grey market” - a middleman would pose as a “private school” and pass it along to parents. 

 

By the time I graduated high school, this had completely changed. The profit motive finally kicked in. Fast forward to when we homeschooled our own kids (mostly through 8th grade), and a true explosion of options had occurred, and every mainstream (and a lot of fringe) stuff was easily available for ordering, and fairly affordable. 

 

But back when I was a kid, the available curriculum broke down into: (1) right wing (2) really right wing, and (3) lunatic fringe fucking racist nazi right wing. 

 

Or, in other words, A Beka, most other curriculum, and Bob Jones, respectively. We went mostly with (1). 

 

Which is to say, academically rigorous for math and English, biased as fuck for history, and utter propaganda for science. Fortunately, my parents supplemented it with other sources. For example, their anti-racist beliefs (which unfortunately they later abandoned) meant we read books like Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. 

 

I mention this because as part of the high school curriculum for World History, the Renaissance was a topic covered. Let’s just say that Fundies are not down with the Renaissance in many, many ways. (Which is ironic because Fundamentalism is rooted in both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment in ways that Fundies do not understand or even see.) 

 

Machiavelli was particularly contemned: he was blamed for “moral relativism” as if what he wrote about was somehow something new; that before him, realpolitik and unscrupulous power plays never plagued “christian” governments. 

 

Allow me to die laughing over here. 

 

Over the course of my informal self-education, one of the things I have tried to do is go back and actually read these classic writings myself, and see if they actually hold up. 

 

And, of course, if they actually say what people claim they do. (Case in point: most of what Fundies claim the Bible says isn’t actually in there, but was made up relatively recently.) 

 

Now, having read The Prince for myself, I was struck by how, well, mild it is. I mean, the basic ideas aren’t even controversial, and I doubt they were back then to most people living in the real world. True, he challenged the official Catholic doctrines of the time, but for centuries, popes had been living his ideas in practice. Just saying. 

 

The book is addressed to a particular prince, and assumes that the political system in play is one of “principalities.” That is, one where a single ruler has the power, perhaps tempered by other nobles. In other words, not a “republic,” which definitely existed, and which Machiavelli refers to throughout the work. (He also wrote Discourses on Livy, which looks at various forms of government, and he refers to that as well.) 

 

Given the specifics of his target audience and specific political situations addressed, Machiavelli comes across as perceptive, in my view.

 

Actual governance - and staying in power - has always been about pragmatism rather than abstract morality. Whether you think this is a good thing likely depends on your perspective, of course. 

 

For me, having endured far too much of governance by ideology myself, I find Machiavelli’s ideas to be compelling at times. And also dated and questionable at others. 

 

At a fundamental level, I believe in democracy and representative government, derived from the consent of the governed. In other words, I am a post-Enlightenment thinker. Monarchy, particularly hereditary monarchy, is not something I approve of, and I think history supports me in this. 

 

Modern readers will also take issue with the idea of murdering political opponents. That said, in a system where the Rule of Law is non-existent, and political change can only occur by removal of politicians, political violence becomes the norm - inevitable even. (Again, history is on my side here - which is why autocracy isn’t stable, but leads to assassination after assassination…) 

 

Despite the differences in the political assumptions, there are actually a lot of things that hold up really well in this book. For example, the grave risks of trying to change traditional laws, rights, and tax structures that affect the common people. And the advice to “avoid being hated by the common people.” 

 

I was also struck by the fact that even though Trump and the Theofascists and Technofascists supporting him have adopted the unscrupulousness and “win at all costs” commonly termed “Machiavellian,” the actual book reveals them to have failed to learn any of the lessons. They are fundamentally incompetent and self-defeating. 

 

Will this self-destruction occur quickly? I’m not sure. And in the meantime, the damage they are doing is incredible and will probably not be reversed during my lifetime. But what they are not doing is actual governance, but throwing tantrums and breaking stuff because they can. This is not the way to build a stable government with the public support needed. This is how you find yourself bleeding out in the plaza after a violent coup. (Gotta love Italian Renaissance politics…) 

 

My particular edition (I have two, actually, with different material added) contains two additional works. One is the story of how Duke Valentino murdered his political opponents. It’s every bit as violent and lurid as you would expect. The other is a semi-fictionalized account of Medieval politician Castruccio Castracani, written late in his life. This one is commonly paired with The Prince because it demonstrates many of the dilemmas and political maneuvers necessary to maintain power in turbulent times. 

 

Anyway, I found the book fascinating. It does contain a lot of Italian history, with footnotes to explain who everyone is. Which is helpful. These parts can drag a bit, but are interesting to demonstrate who Machiavelli is thinking of for his ideas. 

 

I would compare this book in a number of ways to The Art of War, in that both look at human politics and violence in a philosophical light, and both advocate for many of the same realpolitik pragmatism in action, while noting that pragmatism tends to support doing right by your people in the end. 

 

I should mention that The Prince was avant garde in its time for being written not in scholarly Latin, but in the vernacular of the Italian at the time. It was readable by anyone literate, not merely the educated elite. My translation is by W. K. Marriott.

 

I wrote down quite a few lines, of course. The book is definitely quotable, not least for “it is better to be feared than loved” - although that one is often quoted out of context. Machiavelli noted that it is best to be both feared (by one’s enemies) and loved (by one’s people and allies), but if you have to pick, fear is more effective when the chips are down. 

 

Let’s start with the dedication. It is helpful to remember that Machiavelli wasn’t just a writer and philosopher - he was a working diplomat.  

 

Those who strive to obtain the good graces of a prince are accustomed to come before him with such things as they hold most precious, or in which they seem him take the most delight: whence one often sees horses, arms, cloth of gold, precious stones, and similar ornaments presented to princes, worthy of greatness. 

Desiring therefore to present myself to your Magnificence with some testimony of my devotion towards you, I have not found among my possessions anything which I hold more dear than, or value so much as, the knowledge of the actions of great men, acquired by long experience in contemporary affairs, and a continual study of antiquity; which, having reflected upon it with great and prolonged diligence, I now send, digested into a little volume, to your Magnificence. 

 

That’s a pretty epic humblebrag. “I may not have gold and stuff, but my own wisdom is more precious anyway.” He’s not wrong, but damn, that's hella cheeky.

 

Early in the book, Machiavelli looks at what a prince needs to do to maintain power when he has annexed a new territory. There are two parts to this:

 

He who has annexed them, if he wishes to hold them, has only to bear in mind two considerations: the one, that the family of the their former lord is extinguished; the other, that neither their laws nor their taxes are altered, so that in a very short time they will become entirely one body with the old principality. 

 

In other words, whack the old guy and his heirs, so nobody can claim your throne, but leave the basic government and tax burden in place, so the people will say “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” and not rebel. 

 

This is a lesson most authoritarians fail to learn, to their own disaster. (And yes, they also forget that the usual cure for unpopular tyrants is the extermination of their entire families. Fail to learn from history…) 

 

Later, Machiavelli expands on this. If you acquire a state which is used to its own laws and freedoms, there are a limited number of approaches you can use. One is to utterly destroy it. Which causes its own problems, not least of which is destroying much of the value of what you gain. You can also personally live in and govern a state - this gives personal control and a feel of the pulse of the place. Or, you can leave the laws and freedoms in place. Failure to do that leads to disaster. 

 

And he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always been the watchword of liberty and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget. 

 

This is a reality that the Trump Regime is already running up against with the increasing ineffectiveness of ICE in the face of popular displeasure and resistance. 

 

Also related to this is that the most effective and long-lasting changes are evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. Machiavelli puts his finger on why. 

 

And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. 

 

After all, the new hasn’t yet been proven. This cuts across political lines, of course. Which is one reason progress is difficult, and often comes as the result of the clear failure of the old ways. (Great example: the New Deal arising out of the Depression.)  

 

Another insight of the book is that success is often due, not to merit, but to good fortune and the aid of others. And neither of these is to be counted on to last forever - particularly for those who lack the personal merit to maintain what they have inherited. 

 

Such stand simply on the goodwill and the fortune of him who has elevated them - the two most inconstant and unstable things. Neither have they the knowledge requisite for the position; because, unless they are men of great worth and ability, it is not reasonable to expect that they should know now to command, having always lived in a private condition; besides they cannot hold it because they have not forces which they can keep friendly and faithful. 

 

This is, in my view, the future of MAGA. Here is another relevant passage, on whether one should try to please the oligarchs or the people. In Machiavelli’s view, the oligarchs will always consider themselves equal to the prince, and thus perfectly willing to overthrow him if he fails to suit their purposes. Whereas the people….

 

Besides this, one cannot by fair dealing, and without injury to others, satisfy the nobles, but you can satisfy the people, for their object is more righteous than that of the nobles, the latter wishing to oppress, whilst the former only desire not to be oppressed. It is to be added also that a prince can never secure himself against a hostile people, because of their being too many, whilst from the nobles he can secure himself, as they are few in number. 

 

War is a significant topic of the book, and Machiavelli challenges the common practice of relying on mercenaries. In his view, a prince needs soldiers who are loyal to him personally, not just to their paycheck. (After all, if the other guy offers more…) But also interesting is that he sees the soldiers of republics to be the most formidable of all - they are the ones loyal to their country, not to a person or a paycheck. 

 

And experience has shown princes and republics, single-handed, making the greatest progress, and mercenaries doing nothing except damage; and it is more difficult to bring a republic, armed with its own arms, under the sway of one of its citizens than it is to being one armed with foreign arms. 

 

A pair of world wars gave strong evidence of the truth of this. 

 

It is chapter 15 that contains the statement of the core values of Machiavellianism. I think it is more nuanced than the stereotype, but it does contain the amoral pragmatism as its core. 

 

But, it being my intention to write a thing which shall be useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the real truth of a matter than the imagination of it; for many have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never been known or seen, because how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.

Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it according to necessity. 

 

That really is the core idea of that particular chapter, but in context of the entire work, it is a lot more nuanced than it has often been made out to be. Likewise, the idea of “fear or love” isn’t a simple dichotomy. 

 

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed, they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. 

 

He also clarifies another distinction:

 

Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women. 

 

For Machiavelli, this is a line you don’t cross. If you have to be harsh, be harsh in a defensible way, for a defensible reason, but not because of greed or selfishness. 

 

I would update this idea a bit for our own time and situations. For a manager (like my wife), it is more important that she be respected than loved. For the same reasons Machiavelli notes here. But on the other hand, hate often comes from favoritism and arbitrary decisions, while scrupulous fairness and rational decision making earn respect in the long run. 

 

I suspect that another “controversial” assertion of the book is that appearance is more important than reality; hypocrisy is a virtue and a tool in its own way. Unfortunately the truth of this is all too apparent in practice. Here are a few highlights:

 

But it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic, and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived. 

 

Sigh. 

 

Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite. 

…

For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. 

 

I might note again that this is an area where Trump and MAGA seem to have skipped the assignment. If the goal was to win over a majority of the population, this is the way, not flaunting one’s horribleness. Sure, that works for the racist base, but being hated by more than a majority seems….risky. See above…and this next one in the longer chapter on how and why to avoid being hated. 

 

But concerning his subjects, when affairs outside are disturbed he has only to fear that they will conspire secretly, from which a prince can easily secure himself by avoiding being hated and despised, and by keeping the people satisfied with him, which it is most necessary for him to accomplish, as I said above at length. And one of the most efficacious remedies that a prince can have against conspiracies is not to be hated and despised by the people, for he who conspires against a prince always expects to please them by his removal; but when the conspirator can only look forward to offending them, he will not have the courage to take such a course, for the difficulties that confront a conspirator are infinite. 

 

Uneasy is the head that wears the crown indeed. 

 

In contrast, Machiavelli argues that a prince should inspire the love and admiration of his people through his deeds. 

 

Nothing makes a prince so much esteemed as great enterprises and setting a fine example.

 

While Machiavelli sees “renown” primarily in a military context, I think that it should be expanded beyond that - and indeed “renown” in a national context in our world (and the past too, actually) goes beyond whose military is the best. Commerce, education, opportunity, infrastructure - all of these can and do inspire pride in a people and attract others to join them. 

 

Machiavelli expands this into the question of meddling in foreign wars, and choosing a side in an inevitable conflict. For him, it is better to pick the losing side - at least in that case you have a future ally when fortunes turn - than to try to straddle the fence. Only “irresolute princes” fear present dangers and try to play both sides, thus being ruined no matter who wins. Show some backbone. 

 

In the same chapter, Machiavelli expands his ideas beyond war to advise a prince to encourage those of ability and skill, and thus enrich his nation. 

 

A prince ought also to show himself a patron of ability, and to honor the proficient in every art. At the same time he should encourage his citizens to practice their callings peaceably, both in commerce and agriculture, and in every other following, so that the one should not be deterred from improving his possessions for fear lest they be taken away from him or another from opening up trade for fear of taxes; but the prince ought to offer rewards to whoever wishes to do these things and designs in any way to honour his city or state. 

 

Um, again, the Trump Regime hasn’t done its homework. The smart, skilled, competent people are the ones you should encourage, not the ignorant, stupid, and often drunk grifters. And slapping tariffs on commerce…well, not recommended. 

 

Does Machiavelli also have opinions about who to hire for one’s cabinet? Of course he does!

 

The choice of servants is of no little importance to a prince, and they are good or not according to the discrimination of the prince. And the first opinion one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him; and when they are capable and faithful he may always be considered wise, because he has known how to recognize the capable and to keep them faithful. But when they are otherwise one cannot form a good opinion of him, for the prime error which he made was in choosing them. 

 

I’ll end with an interesting passage about the effect of fortune in human affairs. I think that Machiavelli is pretty accurate here - and his advice is sound. Understand that fortune plays a significant role, but make provision to take the tide in the affairs of men. (Although maybe Brutus isn’t the one to consult for when the tide is favorable…) This seems like fitting for our own turbulent times. 

 

It is not unknown to me how many men have had, and still have, the opinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by Fortune and by God that men with their wisdom cannot direct them and that no one can even help them; and because of this they would have us believe that it is not necessary to labour much in affairs, but to let chance govern them. This opinion has been more credited in our times because of the great changes in affairs which have been seen, and may still be seen, every day, beyond all human conjecture. Sometimes pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion. Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less.

 

So yes, fate, fortune, god, whatever - it all does have an effect. But not the whole effect. We are left with choices. 

 

I think as a whole, what Machiavelli is attempting to do with this book is to give advice as to how to act wisely, within his framework of what that means. It is not a moral absolute, but a practical and pragmatic approach to governance, power, and stability. Sure, be unscrupulous at times, and earn respect before love. But also, win the hearts of your people, reward competence, build alliances with discretion, and do what you can within the bounds of the fortune you have. 

 

The Prince is neither the “godless, immoral poison” that I was taught it was, nor an infallible guide to politics; but it is interesting, with some good insights, and pragmatic lessons for governance. It is both of its time and timeless, in varying measure. 

 

So, read it like one would govern: pragmatically, and practically, and with an open and flexible mind. 

 

 

Latino Poetry (Library of America) Part 1

Source of book: I own this

 

The Library of America has been on a roll the last few years, bringing back into print many works by women and people of color that have been unjustly neglected during my lifetime. One of the ones that I have been particularly enjoying is the anthology of poetry by African Americans. So, you can bet that when they came out with a sister anthology featuring Latino poets, I was all over it. 

This collection is edited and selected by Rigoberto Gonzalez, a native of Bakersfield, and a well-respected writer and teacher.

 

For purposes of this book, Gonzalez has defined “Latino” as poets whose nationality or ancestry is one of the independent Latin American countries, plus Puerto Rico - places that were once part of the Spanish empire. He has chosen to exclude the Portuguese empire (Brazil), French empire (Haiti and others), and British empire (Jamaica and others.) Obviously, those other places have their own rich histories and cultures, and one could see an interesting anthology entirely from the places left out of this book.  

 

The book, as with the other, is divided chronologically into sections. I am continuing my practice of reading one section at a time, so as to more fully immerse myself in the poems, without the pressure to finish all 600 pages before reading other poems. 

 

The first section of this book is called "Antecedents.” It is the most cobbled-together section in the book, including colonial texts documenting the brutality of the era; an excerpt from what is considered the first American (North or South) epic poem from 1610, Historia dela Nueva Mexico by Gaspar Perez de Villagra; part of a play glorifying imperialist actions. Contrasted with these are poems by writers from the early 19th Century, at the time when Latin America was transitioning to independence from Europe. This includes some familiar names, and some unfamiliar ones. 

 

I suspect that the anthology will hit its stride more in subsequent sections, and I look forward to reading those in the future. 

 

The poems are mostly in Spanish, and are presented with the original and the English translation. I don’t really speak Spanish, but I can pronounce it, and pick up some meaning when reading it. The beauty of poetry is in the sounds, not just the meaning, so reading aloud in Spanish is worthwhile. 

 

I thought I would start with the opening of the introduction. 

 

“Latino” is a capacious, unruly, sometimes misunderstood term. There is no one narrative that speaks for all Latinos, nor should there be. So it is with poetry by Latinos: the anthology you hold in your hands goes beyond stereotypes, surface definitions, and fixed categories, embodying the variousness of the Latino poetic tradition. In compiling this anthology, I sought to challenge the usage of Latino as a rubric that, like the metaphorical “melting pot,” homogenizes cultures. Rather I conceived of Latino poetry as a kind of landscape, a communal, open space where many different visions - Mexican American, Cuban American, Puerto Rican, Dominican American, Afro-Latino, and Indigenous Latino, among others - can flourish. Across these varied expressions, however, I also detected a distinctive way of using language, fusing Anglophone, Hispanic, and Indigenous resonances, as well as a shared embeddedness within interwoven legacies of colonialism and imperialism, and connections to ancestral wellsprings of speech and music. Perhaps above all I was aware of a sense of urgency animating these poems, as political as it is aesthetic, a belief that “poetry is not a luxury,” to borrow a phrase from African American poet Audre Lorde. 

 

It is always fascinating to see what poems appeal to poets, and how a particular editor ties disparate elements together to create a picture. 

 

I read all of the colonialist stuff, but didn’t find anything worth quoting in this post. They are interesting, but definitely dated in outlook. The best parts are the natural descriptions, and the worst the condescending views of native peoples. Worth reading primarily because they are one of the roots of the far better poetry to come. 

 

The first one I want to feature is by Miguel de Quintana, born in Mexico City in the late 17th Century. Much of what we know about him comes from the archives of the local Inquisition, which condemned him as a heretic for his writings challenging church orthodoxy. His one poem in the anthology is quite good. The original Spanish flows better, of course, and rhymes. The English translation by Francisco Lomeli and Clark A. Colahan is still beautiful and meaningful. 

 

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

 

Gain that understanding

That the power of God has given you.

Perfect it, Miguel, and write

For you have in no way strayed.

 

God’s strength moves you,

And there is no power

That can resist it

Nor make you, Miguel, have qualms.

 

Very sure is the expression,

Which the great power has given you

Because of your humility,

For God favors you as He does the humble.

 

Miguel, save and enlighten me,

For I burn on the coals

Of this sea of tears

Which I show to you weeping.

 

Fear not, for you’re on the right path.

Believe, Miguel, that the priest 

Will not question those verses.

Help me, for I implore you.

 

You are safe from suffering

Any harm or insult, Miguel,

Given what you hold back.

Express it, for I yearn to hear it.

 

Moving ahead a century, there are a number of poets who wrote moving lyrics. Jose Marti stood out for his longer work Simple Verses. I have chosen a few stanzas that I particularly liked. (These are not in order, each stands alone.) 

 

A sincere man am I

Born where palm treeds grow,

And I long before I die

My soul’s verses to bestow.

 

No boundaries bind my heart

I belong to every land:

I am art among art,

A peak among peaks I stand.

 

As if by wings set free,

I’ve seen women’s shoulders rise:

And beauty emerge from debris

In a flight of butterflies.

 

The jewel esteemed the most?

The value I most revere?

I would of friendship boast

And hold not love so dear.

 

I know that the foolish may die

With burial pomp and tears

And that no land can supply 

The fruit which the graveyard bears.

 

I also enjoyed the haiku by Jose Juan Tablada, who perhaps represents the cultural fusion which characterizes the best of art and culture throughout the Americas. Octavio Paz considered him an underrated and influential poet. He ran in literary circles after moving to the United States in the early 20th century. I have picked a few that I liked - the Spanish originals are also fascinating. The English versions were translated by A. Scott Britton.

 

A hundred songs at once;

The musical aviary

Is another tower of babel. 

 

Drops

Of honey from the comb

Each one a bee.

 

Dragonfly:

Glassy hobnail 

With glittering wings.

 

The garden floor now holds

More dry leaves than the green tree

Ever could in spring.

 

The heron 

Is an arrow in

Flight.

 

Clear-bright moon

Crossing the spider’s web,

Keeps it awake tonight. 

 

I would be remiss if I didn’t quote one of the handful of poems by William Carlos Williams in this collection. He is one of my favorites, and, amazingly, I do not recall any of the ones here in my other collections. 

 

The Poet and His Poems (I)

 

The poem is this:

a nuance of sound

delicately operating

upon a cataract of sense.

 

Vague. What a stupid

image. Who operates?

And who is operated

on? How can a nuance

 

operate on anything?

It is all in

the sound. A song,

Seldom a song. It should

 

be a song - made of

particulars, wasps,

a gentian - something

immediate, open

 

scissors, a lady's

eyes - the particulars

of a song waking

upon a bed of sound.

 

Finally, I will end with longer poem, My Nicaragua, by Salomon de la Selva. The whole poem is a beautiful description of the city on one sees, the part away from the tourists, the real Nicaragua. 

 

My Nicaragua

 

You take the street on which the large church fronts
And go some twenty blocks and up a hill
And past the three-arch bridge until you come
To Guadalupe, where the houses are
No stately Spanish buildings, flat and lazy,
As in the center of the town you see them —
Heavy with some three centuries upon them,
Accustomed to the sunlight and the earthquakes,
To sudden dawns, long days and sudden sunsets,
Half bored, you fancy, by these ways of nature —
But little things, ugly almost, and frail,
With low red roofs and flimsy rough-cut doors,
A trifle better than an Indian hut,
Not picturesque, just dreary commonplace —
As commonplace and dreary as the flats
Here, in your cities, where your poor folks live —
And yet, you notice, glad the sun is shining,
And glad a cooling wind begins to blow,
Too glad, too purely, humbly glad to say it;
And all the while afraid of the volcanoes,
Holding their breath lest these should wake to crush them.
Look through these doors and see the walls inside
With holy pictures, saints and angels, there,
Sold to my people, reverenced by them;
Look through these doors and see the children, playing
Or wrangling, just as children will elsewhere;
Look through these doors and see the women, sewing,
Setting their tables, doing the thousand things
Hardly worth noticing, that women do
Around their houses, meaning life to them.
And if you listen you may hear them singing —
Not anywhere are better songs than theirs.
It’s nothing thrilling! Tourists do not care,
And if you hire a common guide he’ll never
Think of directing you, to see this mere
Unhonored dailiness of people’s lives
That is the soil the roots of beauty know.

Yet, if you wish to know my country — it’s there.

The old Cathedral that the Spaniards built,
With hand-carved altars for two thousand saints;
The ruined fortress where they say that Nelson,
Who was a pirate then, lost his left eye
Fighting a woman, all that tourists see —
That’s what my country used to be, not now.
The “dear” hotel, with palm-trees in the courtyard,
And a self-playing piano drumming rags;
The shops of German, English and French owners;
The parlors of the ruling class, adorned
With much the same bad taste as in New York —
That’s not my country either! But the rows
Of ugly little houses where men dwell,
And women — all too busy living life
To think of faking it — that is my country,
My Nicaragua, mother of great poets.
And when you see that, what? Just this: Despite
Newspaper revolutions and so forth,
The different climate and the different
Traditions and the different grandfathers,
My people are pretty much the same as yours:
Folks with their worries and their hopes about them,
Working for bread and for a something more
That ever changes, hardly twice the same;
Happy and sad, the very joy and sorrow
Your people feel; at heart just plainly human:
And that is worth the journey to find out.

 

That could apply to these poems as well. It is worth the journey to find out…

 

I definitely look forward to reading and savoring the rest of this collection. 

 

The American Healthcare System Pays More For Worse Care

The fact of the matter is, compared to other first-world countries - and some third world countries - the healthcare system of the United States sucks.

 

It sucks at least a little for everybody. 

 

And it sucks a LOT for certain people. (This is important because it explains why enough Americans continue to support a system that really sucks.)

 

There are a number of problems with the US system. These are well-known, and are not really debatable, although some right-wing ideologues will still try to lie and misrepresent the situation.

The problems with the US system:

 

Problem #1: Cost

 

Healthcare in the United States is the most expensive in the world, and it isn’t close. Note, this cost is per person for the entire population. Because we fail to cover millions of people (see below), the cost for each insured person is even greater.

 

The US spends at least 40% more than any other country, and we spend double the average for first world countries. 

 

This is absurd. And it is a political choice to do so. 

 

There are some reasons for this, which I may talk about in more detail in a future post. But some of the undisputed factors are that we pay far more for prescription drugs, and that our administrative expenses are far higher than for other countries. And, let us not forget, because health insurance is a for-profit industry, we also pay for profits to shareholders and giant salaries for upper management. 

 

I would, from my professional experience, note that, while there are profits to be made in healthcare, they are very unevenly distributed. Insurers and some giant providers make huge profits. But most hospitals (which are either government owned or non-profit) teeter on the edge of bankruptcy. This is even more of a problem in rural areas and red states. 

 

Another issue here in the United States is our pathological fear of death and demand for life extension at the expense of quality of life. And the more religious the person is, the more terrified of death the family is, believe it or not. Again, this may be a whole post. The US has both a systemic issue (the way we pay incentivizes futile treatment at end of life over preventative and earlier age care), and cultural (our sense of entitlement and fear of death.)

 

There are other ways that we are “penny wise and dollar foolish” - those are worth looking at too.

 

There is a lot more to say about all of this, and I may in the future. But suffice it to say that whatever the United States has as a healthcare system, it is disproportionately expensive. This is an issue that affects everyone, because we all pay one way or another. 

 

This might be worth it if our care was better. But it isn’t, as revealed by the other problems in the system.

 

Problem #2: Uninsured People

 

The United States in 2023 (the most recent data I could find) had more than 25 million uninsured, of which nearly 4 million were children. That’s 8 percent of the population - about 1 in 11 of us. 

 

What happens to those people? Well, they go without healthcare, mostly. Sure, in an emergency, they can go wait in the ER, but that doesn’t help chronic issues such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune diseases - in other words, things that will eventually kill or disable you, but aren’t killing you right now.

 

If you think that is meaningful access to healthcare, well, to borrow from Abraham Lincoln, I would like to see that tried on you personally. 

 

There is one bit of good news here: the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) significantly reduced that number - particularly for children. 

 

Naturally, killing the Affordable Care Act has been the number one focus of the Republican Party since its enactment. Next year, the subsidies that have maintained the insurance exchanges will be eliminated (the Big Ugly Bill), likely throwing an additional 10 million people off insurance. Consider that when you vote. (I’ll definitely talk more about that in a future post.)

 

For this problem, though, the costs are borne mostly by lower income people, which means that middle class and the rich don’t tend to give much of a shit about it. We got ours, sucks to be them. But, as I will discuss below, any of us can join the ranks of the uninsured in a moment. 

 

So, despite paying far more for our care, we leave a lot of people out of it. Does that sound like a good deal? 

 

And this leads to the next problem.

 

Problem #3: Dead People

 

I know several people who either died or had family die because they couldn’t afford a timely diagnosis or treatment of their diseases. Literally, they are dead because of our healthcare system. 

 

They are not alone, either. 

 

Numbers vary, because it is difficult to “prove” exactly what killed someone. Particularly when there are confounding variables such as poverty, diseases of despair (suicide and substance abuse, for example), and other factors in play. 

 

The low number seems to be just short of 50,000 unnecessary deaths, with three times that as the higher estimate, particularly before the ACA was enacted. 

 

In any case, even the low number means more people are killed by lack of access to healthcare than die from either gun violence or motor vehicles. This is literally a public health crisis that we refuse to address. 

 

Problem #4: Poor Outcomes

 

So, maybe we put up with some unfortunate deaths, because the rest of us get better outcomes, right? (That’s morally appalling, but Americans love taking morally appalling political positions. We are a cruel people.) 

 

Unfortunately, the facts do not back this up. There are a few areas the US does well at - certain screenings and preventions (at least if you have insurance), but these aren’t due to our insurance system so much as it is our formerly robust public health organizations. 

 

When it comes to life expectancy, we are pretty damn low. For outcomes to specific diseases, we tend to be about the same as other countries, but not noticeably better. 

 

In others, however, we are truly horrible. For maternal mortality, we are #62, behind countries you may not expect, such as Russia.

 

We aren’t much better when it comes to infant mortality: we are #57, significantly behind Cuba and other far poorer countries. 

 

So, we aren’t getting better outcomes for our high costs. 

 

How do we perceive our system? We pretty much hate it. But we refuse to adopt a better system - universal socialized medicine. (See my previous posts.) 

 

Problem #5: Bankruptcies

 

What is the number one cause of personal (non-business) bankruptcy in the United States? 

 

Medical costs. Followed by loss of income from injury or illness. These cause a half a million bankruptcies every year. 

 

Some 14 million Americans owe significant medical debt - this is 6 percent of the population. 

 

This has been my experience in 25 years of working with clients on healthcare issues. 

 

ALL of us (except the obscenely wealthy) could become uninsured in an instant. One bad accident. One diagnosis. One heart attack. One stroke. 

 

We lose our health, we then lose our job, and then we lose our health insurance. This is the unfortunate progression I have seen thousands of times over the years. 

 

Any of us could at any time face this - it is a cost we pay to have our current system. 

 

Problem #6: Denial of claims

 

While any system can have this issue - and indeed Medicaid denials are a real problem, and other countries have their own issues - the fact that our medical insurance system is profit-based is an open invitation for insurers to deny needed care. That’s literally the business model. 

 

And it is getting worse.

 

I wasn’t able to find a specific number; I don’t think there has been systematic study of the issue. But we all know someone who was denied coverage for something they needed. Some of those have died, others have suffered. 

 

As I discussed in my prior installment, the problem is that we refuse to treat healthcare as infrastructure. That is, a service that needs to be provided, not a good to be sold at profit. 

 

As long as healthcare is treated as a profit-making enterprise, there will be a strong financial incentive to deny care. 

 

Note that there is a difference here between wages and profit. Medical providers are incentivized to provide services - that is how they get paid. Insurers, in contrast, are incentivized to collect premiums while denying care, so that the shareholders (aka, people with money) can rake in profits. 

 

This is a cost that we all will pay sooner or later. While mine is minimal compared to many, I have been denied a medication that I pay for out of pocket. It’s stupid, IMO, and not cost effective, but here we are. 

 

Problem #7: Coverage of long-term care

 

The US is weird in what it doesn’t cover. For example, “healthcare” doesn’t include eyes and teeth. You have to insure those separately. Which is ridiculous. 

 

But another absurd gap is long term care. This is a specific area of my legal practice, and the US simultaneously overspends and covers too little. 

 

Because long term care is not covered by Medicare, it has to be covered with other sources. For nursing homes, this is almost entirely Medicaid. But because Medicaid is “means tested,” people who receive it pay most of their income toward care first, and often have to spend down most of their assets to qualify. (This is a gross oversimplification - Medicaid law is complex, and varies greatly by state. Do NOT use this post for legal advice on your Medicaid situation. Seek advice from an attorney who practices in this area.) 

 

What this means is that in many cases, developing a chronic disease that prevents you from safely living alone at home means the loss of one’s assets and much of one’s income. 

 

Furthermore, for people who lack sufficient assets and income to pay for less restrictive levels of care, such as assisted living or in-home care, the nursing home is their only option. This is essentially a segregation of our senior citizens by income level, placing the poor in the most restrictive and institutional settings, while the more wealthy can (at significant expense) live in a more home-like environment. 

 

I could write a whole post about this, but the bottom line is that there are profound economic consequences for becoming old and frail. These consequences fall harder on women than men both because of the sexist regulations regarding spousal income and because women tend to live longer. 

 

The difference between, for example, dying of a heart attack, and dying of Alzheimer’s can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs. 

 

Other countries have chosen to cover long term care for the elderly. We have, largely, refused to do so; instead shifting the burden of care onto the elderly and their often overstretched families. 

 

***

 

So, to summarize, we have a system that:

 

Costs all lot more

Doesn’t cover everyone

Kills tens of thousands every year

Delivers outcomes that are at best the same and often are much worse

Bankrupt a half million a year and place millions in debt

Denies care to boost profits

Treats the elderly poorly by impoverishing and institutionalizing them

 

We could fix all of the above by adopting universal healthcare - “socialized medicine.”

 

Why don’t we? I will (eventually) get to that. 

 

*** 

 

Previous installments:

 

Americans Claim to Hate “Socialized Medicine” But They Actually Depend on It

Why Healthcare (and a lot of other things) Needs to be “Socialized”

 

The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

 

My wife picked this one for a recent vacation - something short enough for our modest drive, available, and one that interested her. It is a cozy British mystery, more or less, but one with an unusual epistolary format that harkens back to Wilkie Collins, but with a modern setting. 

Apparently, this is the second in a series of books featuring The Fairway Players, a small-town community theater group, which is modeled after one the author was part of for many years. It has the usual petty squabbles that any non-profit or community group has - if you have ever been part of a church, you know exactly what I mean. 

 

Central to this mystery is the controversial change in leadership after the deaths of the couple that ran the group for many decades. Celia Halliday, pretentious and “old money,” assumed she was next in line. But the vote elected Sarah-Jane and Kevin MacDonald instead - younger upstarts with new ideas. 

 

There is already a lot of drama surrounding the use of a giant beanstalk for the yearly pantomime - it’s old, heavy, scruffy, and may be made of asbestos - but things escalate during the performance itself, when Celia’s attempt at sabotage leads instead to the appearance of a mummified body in a Santa outfit appearing on stage. 

 

Of course, this being theater, the show goes on - rather brilliantly - but then, the investigation begins. Who is the body? Who killed him? How long ago did he die? 

 

In keeping with the conventions of the British Murder Mystery, nearly everyone is a suspect - all of the main characters for sure. And the investigation leads to other strange discoveries. Are some members running a drug ring? Was there domestic violence below the surface of the happy company? It turns out that a lot of people have secrets - many of them buried for decades. And, of course, there is the question as to whether the pantomime will raise enough money to fix the roof of the church, or if the company will lose its venue. 

 

As I mentioned, the book is written in epistolary form. The framing story is that of the two attorneys, Femi and Charlotte, who read through all of the documentation - emails, police reports, newspaper articles, texts - and try to reconstruct the case. 

 

Most of the book consists of these documents, which gradually reveal what happened. It takes a bit of work to follow at first, particularly as an audiobook, because there are a lot of characters to keep straight, along with their relationships - and role in the factions that divide the company. 

 

The book is also very British - be prepared for “jumpers,” “trainers,” and even the idea of a “pantomime,” a very British form of entertainment. For those of us who were practically raised on British literature, this isn’t an issue, but neophytes might want to look a few things up. 

 

The humor is pretty good in the book, starting with the “Round Robin” (what we Americans would call an annual Christmas letter) from Celia, which is an excellent over-the-top satire of the genre. I mean, how does one make one’s son being released from prison sound triumphant and pretentious? Celia can do it, for sure. 

 

The petty bickering, the very local politics, the bitchiness behind the scenes - these are all hilarious and familiar. I wish I could remember more lines, but I was driving, and am writing this over a week after we listened to it, and I can’t find any quotes online; and for that matter, they were funny in context but would make little sense out of it. But I did laugh at many of them. 

 

This is light reading, a good winter equivalent of a beach read (although, this being California, we did have a lovely warm day at the beach on this trip…) I’ll give it points for tight plotting, without the holes that some modern mysteries have. (Seriously: some authors desperately need a good editor.) The ending was fine, although not unexpected. The fun isn’t so much in solving the mystery in this case, as enjoying the characters navigating each increasingly ludicrous situation. Nothing wrong with that. 

 

I could see reading more of Hallett’s books when I need a light read. 

More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI by John Warner

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

I discovered John Warner (who has a column with the Chicago Tribune as well as an excellent blog) through Peter Greene, who writes about education and education policy. You should check out Warner’s blog as well, which covers a lot of territory from a thoughtful, progressive viewpoint. 

 

Warner is a busy man, teaching creative writing at College of Charleston, and editing the delightful internet humor site, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. 

 

More Than Words is all about writing and AI, and is as good as anything I have read. Warner keeps an even tone, a fair and open mind, but also refuses to back down on his core points. 

 

I personally believe that AI is a huge bubble right now, and will crash and burn pretty spectacularly before too much longer. It is mostly hype - as bubbles are - and makes wild promises that it cannot deliver and will never deliver using its current form. 

 

It’s not a matter of adding ever-increasing processing power. The whole premise that LLMs are “intelligence” in any meaningful sense is just straight up bullshit. 

 

For Warner, who teaches writing, anything that an AI can do isn’t actual writing - it’s an automation, just like a robot assembling widgets. 

 

Writing requires thinking, not mere grammatical assembly, which is a distinctly human process. AI doesn’t think - it literally has no idea of meaning. It instead predicts how actual humans would string together words. Which is not only why it is prone to “hallucinations” - GIGO applies here - but why it cannot actually evaluate truth at all. It has no concept of it because it does not understand what it is saying. 

 

Warner correctly notes that “AI” is false advertising. It isn’t “intelligence” at all - it is automation. 

 

That can’t be fixed by more computing power. It would require a completely different approach and level of technology that isn’t even being pursued right now. 

 

In case it wasn’t obvious, this blog is not written by AI. It is written by me, the Autodidact, personally. I also do not use AI to summarize the books I read - I personally read them, take notes, and write about my thoughts. 

 

Yes, I use the internet to look stuff up - I try to support things with evidence when needed. But that is a tool, not the source of my writing itself. 

 

Like Warner, I believe that the fundamental purpose of writing - indeed language itself - is to communicate with other humans. Sure, language is imperfect, and communication can never be complete. But the very process of communication is key to human society, empathy, and so much else. 

 

For Warner, this goes both ways. Students should not be expected to take things more seriously than teachers. If a teacher is going to use a computer program to evaluate a paper, for example, the student will correctly understand that using a computer program to write the paper is the same thing. It’s just machines talking to machines at that point. Which is why, in my own Wills and Trusts class, I tell my students that I will be personally reading everything, so write with the intent of communicating to me. I will respect them enough to read what they write. 

 

This leads into the issue of what “writing” actually matters. Too much of writing (and I include the law school essays we all have to assign in preparation for the bar exam) is fake. It is more about reproducing a format than actually thinking. Which is why AI can actually do it. The same applies to many school assignments, which are a temptation for cheating because they are essentially meaningless. 

 

My students had been incentivized not to write but instead to produce writing-related simulations, formulaic responses for the purpose of passing standardized assessments. This happens not because teachers are bad or students lack ability but because these simulations have been privileged in a system where “schooling” is divorced from “learning.”

 

I could not agree more. Warner goes on to note that what he can learn from AI is which assignments actually mean something. If AI can do it, it is meaningless.

 

[Note here: I want to call out my longtime musical colleague and my kids’ history teacher Ernie for his approach to essays - students pick the topic themselves from the study topics of that month, and write what they want about it. My kids confirm that they learned so much about actual writing and thinking from the freedom - and the feedback from their teacher.] 

 

In my ongoing quest to make the experience of writing meaningful for students, for teachers, for those at work, and for those at play, I see ChatGPT as an ally. If ChatGPT can do something, then that thing probably doesn’t need to be done by a human being. It quite possibly doesn’t need to be done period.

The challenge is to figure out where humans are necessary. 

 

What writing should be is an expression of our humanity, not mechanical assembly of words. 

 

It is frankly bizarre to me that many people find the outsourcing of their own humanity to AI attractive. It is akin to promising to automate our most intimate and meaningful experiences, like outsourcing the love you have for your family because going through the hassle of the times your loved ones try your spirit isn’t worth the trouble. 

 

And further:

 

Generating syntax is not the same thing as writing. Writing is an embodied act of thinking and feeling. Writing is communicating with intention. 

 

This next passage captures a lot of my own experience blogging - having written over 1500 posts over a 15 year period - where my thinking is transformed by the acts of reading and writing. 

 

Writing is thinking. Writing involves both the expression and exploration of an idea, meaning that even as we’re trying to capture the idea on the page, the idea may change based on our attempts to capture it. Removing thinking from writing renders an act not writing.

Writing is also feeling, a way for us to be invested and involved not only in our own lives but the lives of others and the world around us. 

Reading and writing are inextricable, and outsourcing our reading to AI is essentially a choice to give up on being human. 

 

Warner does an excellent job of debunking the hype about what AI is. It does not think. It does not evaluate. It does not consider. It has no memory. It has no intention. It is automation, nothing more, and nothing less. 

 

Large language models do not “write.” They generate syntax. They do not think, feel, or experience anything. They are fundamentally incapable of judging truth, accuracy, or veracity. Any actions that look like the exercise of judgment are illusory. While the term hallucination has come to mean outputs from LLMs that are incorrect or untrue, it is arguably more accurate to say that from the point of view of the LLM, everything is a hallucination, as it has no reference points from which to judge its own production. ChatGPT is fundamentally as “bullshitter” as defined by Harry Frankfort in his classic treatise on the term (On Bullshit), something “unconnected to concern for the truth.” It’s not that ChatGPT makes stuff up. It has no capacity for discerning something true from something not true. Truth is irrelevant to its operations. 

 

Totally recommend reading the Frankfort book, by the way. 

 

One of the weirdest passages in the book looks at the parallel between people who consult psychics and those who consult AI. Both require a belief in the underlying illusion, that psychics really can see the future, and that AI is intelligent. 

 

Neither is true. Rather, as Warner suggests, “The intelligence illusion is in the mind of the user and not in the LLM itself.”

 

Having established that AI is just another automation, Warner cites Emily Bender (an AI researcher), who notes that “AI” is a misnomer - and that we should use the correct description of “automation” and ask the hard questions: what is being automated, why, and who benefits. And also if it actually does the job expected (usually no), who is harmed, who is legally and financially responsible for the harm, and how will we regulate that. 

 

These are the real questions we need to be asking. And also how to mitigate the environmental destruction AI is causing through its ludicrously high consumption of water and power. 

 

Throughout the book, Warner talks about his own experiences, and he does tell a good story. One that I particularly loved was his description of kindergarten, which largely matches my own. 

 

Thanks to my ability to get through a Dr. Seuss book on my own, I started kindergarten with my age cohort, knowing my ABCs and even my XYZs upon entry, while struggling mightily to learn how to tie my shoes and zip my coat, facts made apparent by being the last to receive his gold stars on the class accomplishment poster board kept by my teacher. 

 

Did anyone else have that poster board? Yep, I struggled with physical coordination, yet I was reading at the chapter book level by first grade. I was also the shortest kid in my class, and it wasn’t close. Sigh. 

 

Part of the point of the story is that Warner is not opposed to automation or technology in writing, per se. Like me, he hated cursive, and struggled with it. Discovering typing was a game changer for both of us. 

 

For the first time, I experienced what it was like to capture my thoughts at close to the speed in which they occurred. 

 

YES!!

 

I’m also on board with Warner’s evaluation of cursive, which I have never used since Jr. High. (I type for work daily, though…) 

 

Those who argue that cursive is a route to teaching fine motor skills - not for me, but okay - don’t similarly argue for, [Anne] Trubek’s words, “more useful” skills “such as cooking, sewing, and carpentry.” The calls for the return to cursive appear to be wrapped up more in a kind of cultural anxiety, weirdly attached to a feeling of tradition-rooted patriotism more than any practical, demonstrable benefit to students. One of the common laments of the pro-cursive crowd is that students can no longer read the Declaration of Independence in its original documentation, suggesting the power of the document is in the penmanship rather than the ideas. 

 

So, the problem isn’t automation - Warner also notes spell check and the delete key in a word processor as key to his writing process - but the automation of the thinking needed for writing. 

 

We tend to think of writing as the act of assembling words, but it’s a deeper experience than this. Words may be symbols, but they are not abstractions; they are the method by which we express our ideas. Lots of the writing students produce in school contexts is untethered from ideas, which is one of the reasons writing in school has become so alienating. Without an underlying idea, the words have no importance and very little genuine meaning. 

 

In my own writing, I find that Warner’s description of ideas and thoughts coming long before words and sentences to accurate. Each of my posts starts there, before the words go on the page screen. 

 

I have yet to meet a writer who thinks in sentences. First, there is thought - be that an image, an idea, a notion, or whatever - and only then are there words. Often in writing, the final specifics of the words used to express the ideas and capture the thinking are the last part of the process. 

 

The chapter on writing as feeling is particularly excellent. I am an emotional person, as I have increasingly come to understand as I have grown older, and a lot of my writing isn’t primarily about intellect, but about processing my emotions, putting down in words my experience of being human. 

 

Warner recounts the scandal around the AI condolence statement put out after a school mass shooting. As he correctly notes, our focus on “thoughts and prayers” rather than substantive responses leads to a situation where boilerplate is all that can be said. 

 

Maybe because outsourcing expression following tragedy to tools of automation is the kind of thing that happens in a faceless dystopia.

 

I also have to talk about the chapter on writing as a practice, because of a great story. Warner signed up for Hello Fresh at one point, thinking that it would teach him to cook. 

 

It didn’t. 

 

He soon found out that it was a “meal prep” service, but that the art (and practice) of cooking can’t be put in simple instructions. It takes time, practice, and “feel.” I’m a pretty decent cook, because I started learning as a little kid and cook regularly. This constant practice over years has given me a comfort level in a kitchen - or on the trail - with the art of making delicious food. 

 

Ditto for writing. 

 

The best line in the story is, “I am half-convinced that there is some kind of cooking industry-wide conspiracy about how long it really takes to brown onions because not once in my life has it happened according to the prescribed time.”

 

Warner is correct. Nearly all cookbooks are bullshit about this. It legitimately takes 45 minutes to properly brown onions. The two honest writers are Jeff Smith (The Frugal Gourmet) and Julia Child. That’s literally the list. Plan accordingly. It is worth it for that sweet stickiness of properly caramelized onions. Trust me on this. 

 

Also great in this chapter are the takedowns of two cultural myths. The first is the “10,000 hour rule.” As much as I love Malcolm Gladwell, I agree that this is a myth. The number of hours isn’t nearly as important as how you spend them. As a violinist, I have put in those hours. Sometimes they were productive, other times not. Learning how to be productive is also a practice and an art, which is why a good teacher is so necessary. 

 

The other is “Grit.” All my kids had to read this, and they found it tedious. Warner notes that in many cases, “Grit” can cause you to waste time on something you hate rather than following the better path for one’s talents. 

 

His analysis of the problem is interesting.

 

The 10,000 Hour Rule and Duckworth’s grit theory are manifestations of a particularly American attitude toward self-improvement that a better live is right around the corner if you can simply identify and embrace “one true thing.” 

 

Warner applies this to educational fads - which is definitely a thing. Because there is not in fact “one true thing” that solves problems. 

 

I am reminded of one of Bill Gothard’s false teachings here. After starting with pop-psyche “self-acceptance” that really wasn’t that at all, and going through the core of his system, which was authoritarianism of parents over children and the powerful over the weak, he ended with his principle of “success.” His “one true thing.”

 

What was it? Well, just apply his method of meditating on scripture and God will make you a success in everything you do. 

 

Yep, a lazy proof-text, a “one true thing,” and really utter bullshit. There is nothing about contemplating an ancient holy book that is magic and leads to success. You still need to get off your ass, learn useful knowledge and skills, and do the work. This is why too many of the “graduates” from Gothard’s system have zero employable skills, zero social skills, and zero ability to function in an actual human society. (And the ones that did acquire those skills did so in spite of Gothard’s useless curriculum, not because of it.) 

 

Warner closes the chapter with a solid argument that it isn’t genius that matters - it is skills acquired through practice - in his case, his ability to write by thinking and expressing those thoughts in words. I resonated with his description of himself too. 

 

I will know that in terms of intellectual firepower, I’m reasonably armed, but not tremendously gifted. In my various travels, I have intersected with genuinely brilliant and uncommonly creative people, and I know I am not them…I am, happily, entirely ordinary in just about every way. 

But I have my writing practice, and that matters. 

 

Yep, that’s me. I’m pretty ordinary, no genius by any definition. Reasonably armed is all, with the practice of using words to communicate. 

 

The chapter on the problems with how we teach reading and writing at the primary school level is good as well. I too have been frustrated with how little my kids have been expected to read. It’s almost all excerpts, not whole books. My kids will be fine - they have been readers since they were young, and devour books. But I do not think this focus on “teaching to the test” is a good idea. 

 

This kind of relationship to reading is unfortunately foreign to increasing numbers of young people who have been subjected to a school curriculum in which they are primarily exposed to short texts or excerpts of longer ones and then asked the kind of surface-level questions that are appropriate to multiple choice standardized assessments. Deep reading is largely absent from the student reading diet because it is harder to assess against the standards that have come to dominate the curriculum. 

 

Another chapter is on the endless attempts (dating back a surprisingly long time) to replace teachers with machines. And yes, B. F. Skinner is mentioned. (I found his utopian novel to be fascinating, but not a little creepy.) 

 

In the 1950s, B. F. Skinner, the godfather of behaviorism, was similarly obsessed with the creation of a teaching machine, convinced that children could better learn if they were simply treated like the pigeons he had used to test his theories on the importance of immediate feedback and reward…Despite decades of attempts, Skinner’s machine never caught on. Skinner blamed schools, teachers, even manufacturers for this failure, never considering that perhaps children and not the same as pigeons.

 

A perhaps related concept is the way that Skinner’s ideas were borrowed by Religious Authoritarian Parenting gurus, with similar failures to accomplish the goal. Children are not pigeons. Humans learn socially, not just by instruction. And teaching is a process of adapting to the individual students and their learning styles and needs. 

 

Warner makes another good point, even more relevant in an era when teachers are increasingly devalued by the American Right: 

 

It is not coincidental that teaching was (and still is) a female-dominated profession, while the engineering boom of the 1950s and 1960s was almost exclusively the province of men. This disrespect for teaching rooted in mid-twentieth-century sexism continues to be manifested today as teachers are subjected to an ever-changing list of demands without being given the time and resources necessary to do the job. 

 

But clearly, AI designed by misogynistic tech-bros can replace those expendable female teachers, right? 

 

Warner goes further when it comes to teaching and education. The problem is long-standing, and it is a misunderstanding - often willful - of the purpose of education. Like so many horrible things, this one dates to the Reagan administration and a report on education. 

 

The report established an ethos suggesting the underlying purpose of an education is to secure material advantage in the competition against others, be they individuals in the marketplace or foreign nations on the world stage. The dominant purpose of school would be to rank and sort students against standards and one another. These rankings would be used to determine not only which students were worthy but which schools and teachers were operating effectively as well. 

 

This has led to endless testing and standards and paperwork and teaching-to-the-test. Warner notes Campbell’s Law: when a quantitative measure is used for social decision-making, it will itself distort and corrupt the processes it is intended to monitor. The testing ruins the teaching. 

 

Campbell’s law manifests itself in schools through the use and abuse of standardized tests, where the scores on those tests come to stand in for learning, no matter what methods have been deployed in the service of raising those scores. Rather than being a tool to gauge students’ cognitive abilities, tests have become an exercise in seeing how well you do on the test.

 

By the way, I am saying this as someone who is pretty good at taking tests. It isn’t the same as knowing things - which I also aim for, of course. 

 

Warner returns to how this fits with reading and writing.

 

Unlike the featureless texts that ChatGPT churns out, human writing is spiky, weird, and messy. This is particularly true when we are in the midst of trying to figure stuff out through writing, which is always going to be the case with students. If I wanted my students to become confident writers, I had to let them write, and if I was going to let them write, I had to value something other than the ability to BS proficiently. 

 

As I noted at the beginning, Warner isn’t a reactionary. He consciously avoids the “kids can’t read these days” narrative, for example. He also tries not to get too involved in the specifics of teaching techniques. He trusts teachers. 

 

I am on his side with the so-called “reading wars,” however. So much of the last, well 50+ years have been spent on the Phonics jihadists waging scorched-earth war on everyone else. My poor mom was disabused of this notion early, because not only was I a quick reader, I memorized words. Sure, I can sound words out. But I didn’t need to always. (Also, I am dyslexic, and in practice read fairly fast by going with word shapes rather than sounds. It’s how I read.) Regarding the recent fad of “science of reading” which has become more of a brand name than an evidence-based approach - again, note the “one true thing” belief rearing its ugly head here once again…

 

I am a conscientious objector to this war, which has taken on a bizarre cultural-conflict flavor, where people genuinely interested in exploring how to best help students learn to read have been infiltrated by political forces who never miss a chance to undermine the public’s faith toward public schools. When a group both champions the science of reading and banning books, it seems clear they are not acting out of a passion for phonics. 

 

And, of course, there is a shit-load of money to be made selling new curriculum. 

 

These canned curriculums are extremely profitable for the educational publishers who provide them, but one-size-fits-all mandates ignore that different individuals learn to read differently. Yes, phonics are key for lots of readers, but not for every reader. Some students arrive in school already having surpassed what basic phonics instruction can do for them, while others need to build knowledge from scratch.

 

Let me note here that this is one thing I did love about being homeschooled, and why we did that for our kids when they were young. Everyone learns differently, and school can tend to be lock-step particularly in those formative years when kids learn at different rates. I’ll mention here that my brother was a delayed reader - he didn’t learn until age 7. But these days, he is one of my sources for book recommendations because he reads widely and thoughtfully. A regular school probably would have labeled him as “special needs” rather than wait for his brain to develop at its own pace. 

 

I also have to mention the excellent chapter on “content” versus “writing.” My blog aspires to be writing, not mere content. Which is why it has to be written by a human. AI can - and increasingly does - create “content. 

 

One of the most immediate and potentially damaging consequences of generative AI is its potential to drown us in content whose only purpose is to capture clicks to generate revenue through online advertising. If this sounds like your current experience of the internet, get ready for it to become significantly worse.

 

To fight that, well, subscribe to real writers, such as Warner. (And perhaps Yours Truly as well.) 

 

I will mention the chapter on the challenges of compensation for writing, which Warner notes is nothing new - it dates back to the invention of writing actually. But this issue of “content” is a challenge for real writers who want to, you know, make a living and all. Warner has some genuinely good suggestions for this, and optimism that writers and readers will always be in demand. I think (and hope) he is right. 

 

Quite a bit of fun for me was the chapter on how AI writes. Warner asks ChatGPT to write an article on a topic “in the style of John Warner.” The AI has plenty to work off of - Warner is a prolific writer. 

 

But the result is….weird. Warner analyzes why it has some surface characteristics of his writing, but none of the substance. And also weird errors like words he never uses, and over-emotionality which clearly show a difference with his actual style. 

 

As he puts it, there is a serious “uncanny valley” effect. I think that is absolutely correct - I find I can identify AI writing fairly quickly, and it is for that reason. It shows human features, but is clearly also not human. 

 

Because thought is the most important part of writing, Warner notes that he cannot really teach anything meaningful to a student who does a draft using AI.

 

If a student comes to me with a text that has been generated by an AI, we have nothing to talk about, because we cannot discuss what it is they want to say, because they have yet to say anything. 

 

Also in this chapter is a hilarious example of AI trying (and failing) to write in an author’s style. Warner quotes a brilliant description from David Foster Wallace’s hilarious tour-de-force that is “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” It is amazing, and one reason why I loved the original. 

 

The GPT-4 imitation is so laughably bad. Beyond bad. It is oddly flat and uninspiring. It has no life. The words are sort of close in a horseshoes sort of way, but they aren’t quite right. 

 

I won’t quote the passages, but if you read the book, you will totally get it. 

 

The last part of the book is about how Warner thinks we can fight back against AI, and its creeping dehumanization of writing and reading. As he notes, this risks being dated, as technology will have changed by the time the book was published. 

 

But actually, I think that his prescriptions hold up well, and apply not just to AI, but to so much of what is horrible and dehumanizing about late-stage, corporate capitalism in general. It is all dehumanizing, the endless monetization, the homogenization, the lack of actual human soul. 

 

Warner notes throughout the book that the only reason AI is able to find a niche is that we have already abandoned our humanity in so many ways. He doesn’t mention it, but since he wrote the book, popular songs in Country Music and CCM are both AI generated. The reason these two genres are the first to go this way is that both have been formulaic for decades. The same cliches, the same sounds, the same pablum. Sure, there are gems to be found, but they are the exception. 

 

To reclaim this, we need to focus on our humanity, and use our imagination and ability to connect with others.

 

To figure this out, I realized I had to stop thinking about AI and start thinking about humanity.  

 

The fact is, we are embodied. We live our lives through a series of experiences rooted in a community of fellow humans. If we are machines, the way we are machines is not meaningful to the joys and sorrows of what it means to exist as sentient creatures. 

 

I’ll close with one of Warner’s thoughts that to me seems profound. It’s not just about AI. It is about the way too many of us outsource our humanity to others. In the context of the Fundamentalist subculture I escaped from, it is an outsourcing of even morality itself. But it is more than just an ethics thing, it is all about true humanity, which cannot exist outside of community and empathy and messiness. Warner points out that while guides can be helpful, ultimately, we all have to do the difficult and messy work of becoming human ourselves. 

 

It is important not to mistake a guide for an all-knowing sage. While it is tempting to wholly outsource the difficult work of continuously re-forming our own worldviews, letting weirdos like Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson, or even non-weirdos like Brene Brown, substitute for your own judgment weighed against your values is a recipe for confusion and disappointment. 

 

This is the risk, not just of turning human communication over to automation in the form of AI, but of outsourcing the things that make us human to “experts,” be they digital or other humans. To truly live, to truly be, to truly experience what it means to be a social animal we call human, we have to do the messy work of continuously adjusting, learning, growing, connecting. 

 

Our human superpower truly is language, and to turn that power over to a non-human automaton is to lose something important. Warner’s book is all about that: an encouragement to remain human, and refuse to give away what makes us what we are.