Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World, by Peter Zeihan

Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World, by Peter Zeihan

• Category: Non-fiction
• Rating: 3 out of 5
• Tags: Forecasting, Geopolitics, Globalization
• How I learned about it: Recommended by a friend.

The idea for this book came from competing theories about how the world would change after the end of the Cold War.  Would America maintain the status quo, continuing to provide enough security to hold things together?  Or, freed from the burdens of the Cold War, would the US spread technology, wealth and security to the whole world, improving global well-being?  Zeihan thinks we’re facing a third option, a decline in global security, and explores the consequences.  As global trade and security decline, which regional powers will rise to the top?  The book contains regional analyses of Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the Americas.

Zeihan’s list of the things that make a nation succeed includes defensible borders, self-sufficiency in food and other natural resources, and a geography that makes it easy to move around inside the country.  His style is informal and entertaining; it’s as if you were listening to a knowledgeable dinner guest amuse the group over drinks.  He’s not afraid to be borderline outrageous in his comments and summaries, but his arguments are plausible, and the predicted outcomes are counter-intuitive.

There are chapter titles like “How to Rule the World, Part I: The American Model”, and “Japan: Late Bloomer.”  The latter refers to the prediction that Japan, not China, will rise to become the next regional power in Southeast Asia.  Zeihan provides a one-page report card of each country he analyses, and then a one-word summary for the country.  Saudi Arabia (“Arsonist”) is run by “a family that’s a cross between Game of Thrones and The Beverly Hillbillies.”  Japan’s one word summary is “Jefe,” China’s is “Overhyped.”  The French will be pleased to learn that it’s their turn, “Finally,” while Germans might be offended at being dismissed as “Outdated.”

It would be great to talk in person to Peter Zeihan over a beer.  Why did his analysis of the Middle East not include the effects of Iran becoming a nuclear power?  Would an estimate of the remaining lifetimes of regional oil reserves change his predicted outcomes?  What about the effects of climate change on food and hydrocarbon production, or the impact of a navigable northwest passage?  Perhaps these are topics for another book.

In a word: Provocative.

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Kingbird Highway: The Story of a Natural Obsession That Got a Little Out of Hand, by Kenn Kaufman

Category: Non-fiction; Rating: 3 out of 5; Tags: Big Year, Bird Watching, Birding, Birds, Travel; How I learned about it: Recommendation from a friend.

Kenn Kaufman became interested in birds at the age of six.  By age nine, a cross-country moving trip on his birthday was not a disappointment but an opportunity to see new birds.  At age sixteen he convinced his parents to let him drop out of school so he could travel and birdwatch full-time.  His parents wanted him to use public transport, but Kenn quickly learned that hitchhiking was better.  Bus stations weren’t where the birds were, and it was impractical to walk any distance out of town, so hitching rides was the answer.

In 1973, at age 19, Kenn decided to try doing a Big Year, to see as many different species of birds as he could in one year.  At the time, the rules of the American Ornithologists’ Union specified that birds could be counted within the continental US, Canada, Greenland, Bermuda and Baja California.  Kaufman wound up hitching some 69,000 miles.  He didn’t have a lot of money, but he had a lot of time.  To see a new bird, Kenn could hitch across the country in a few days while spending next to nothing.  He slept under trees or bridges and ate cold canned food, or sometimes even cat food.  His total spending for the year was under $1000, and half of that was for flights to see birds in Alaska.

At the end of the year, his list total was 671 bird species.  Other birders were doing a Big Year that year, but who “won” depends on how you count – the Baja was later excluded from the official area, and species have been lumped or split over time.  Kaufman learned that a Big Year was “a great excuse to go birding”, but list-building was not a great way to learn about birds.  By the end of the year the contest hardly mattered; learning about birds, their behaviour and habitats was more important.  That attitude is reflected in the book: huge chunks of personal life are summed up in one-liners.  It’s all about the birds.

 

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The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession, by Mark Obmascik

Category: Non-fiction; Rating: 3 out of 5; Tags: Big Year, Birding, Birds, Bird Watchers; How I learned about it: Recommendation from a friend.

A Big Year is defined as one in which a bird watcher tries to see as many different species of birds as he can in one year.  For the official American Birding Association title, the birder can count species seen anywhere within the continental US and Canada, as well as up to 200 miles offshore.  A good-sized life-list of species spotted within these boundaries is 600 or more, but Big Year birders try to see more than this in a single year.

In 1998, three men independently decided to make it a Big Year.  These guys were obsessed.  Flying across the country to see a rare bird was standard practice.  Crawling through swamps was par for the course.  Enduring long bouts of seasickness was just part of the package, required in order to see offshore birds and raise the count.  Spending a couple of frigid, rainy weeks on a remote Aleutian Island was great, because storms brought Asian “accidentals”, species only rarely seen in North America.  Catching pneumonia was just something to ignore until the year was over.

After flying tens of thousands of miles and spending tens of thousands of dollars each, the results were in.  At the end of the year, in third place, Al Levantin had counted 711 birds.  Greg Miller spotted 715 bird species, the third highest count in any Big Year so far.  Sandy Komito, on his second Big Year, smashed his own 1987 Big Year record of 721 by seeing 745 separate species.

It’s just a story about people watching birds, but Mark Obmascik makes it humorous and entertaining.

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Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul, by Stephen Jenkinson

Category: Non-fiction; Rating: 3 out of 5; Tags: Death, Grief, Western Culture; How I learned about it: Recommendation from a friend.

Stephen Jenkinson has seen a lot of death, sitting with hundreds of dying people, trying to help them die.  He calls it helping them to die, because dying is hard work.  The dying person is trying to find a way out of their failing body.  They are trying to do this mostly without help or preparation, in a death-phobic culture that asks people to die “hopefully, positively, and not very obviously.”  From experience he writes about the problems with the way we die. There are no five-point checklists or offers of comfort; just the hard truth about death.

The anguish experienced by the dying comes from cultural attitudes, the application of medical technology, and the assumptions behind palliative care.  He notes that people don’t want to die, and try their best not to be there when it happens, using pain killers, sedation, and anti-depressants.  The pattern many follow after a terminal diagnosis is to “cope, hope and dope.”  First, to live as normally as possible in spite of the diagnosis and treatment, then to hope for a silver-bullet treatment, and when that fails, to be drugged into oblivion.  But living normally after a diagnosis denies the truth that everything has changed.  Hope is misplaced when a person really is dying; acceptance is not depression, and dying is not a mental health issue.

Medical technology is often applied according to the mantra, “if you can, you should”.  Expecting a person to be strong and hopeful can amount to treatment by compulsion: reluctance to talk about death limits the level of informed consent.  Life after treatment may be awful, with physical limitations and mental anguish.  The mental anguish comes from a more prolonged death: living while knowing you are dying.  No one knows what to do with their “More Time”, except to get their affairs in order and live as normally as possible.  Jenkinson suggests instead that if you work hard, you can let the news of your impending death change your life; “It could mean the beginning…of your one true life and its work.”

Palliative care is focused on managing the trauma assumed to be associated with dying, but not all cultures believe that dying is a trauma.  Jenkinson thinks our culture needs a different approach to death, with more openness, discussion and acceptance.  For example, if one spouse in a couple receives a terminal diagnosis, the one that will live longer has a difficult road ahead.  The best thing the dying spouse can do for the survivor is to tell them what it’s like, so that they can learn what they need to know when it’s their turn.

It’s Jenkinson’s view that our fear of death has its roots in displacement, rootlessness, and loss of ancestral burial grounds.  Ancestors become formless spirits attached to no particular place, instead of being buried near where you live, part of your land.  Loss of homelands leads to loss of culture; death becomes associated with loss and trauma.  With no burial grounds to care for, there is no sense of indebtedness to the world.  A sense of entitlement arises; the world becomes a place to meet your needs instead of a place you need to nourish by returning your body to the soil.

What the dying need most is a faithful witness to their dying.  Pain is largely manageable, so what people fear is that their lives will have had no impact; that those left behind will adjust and go on as before.  They see others before them die without much fuss, and fear the same for themselves.  Perhaps it helps to know that your life has effects that continue after you die.  This realization can change the way you live, and help you as you die.

I have some quibbles: when the author means “cite”, he writes “sight”, or “site”, and it’s hard to understand such phrases as “[keep] your willingness close to your memories and skills”, but that’s the nature of Jenkinson’s poetic style, and eventually he gets his nuggets of wisdom out in the open.

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