A Better Idea: Start Reading – Part 2

By Colleen O’Connor

If your attention has shifted fatigue mode with an inability to comprehend the Silicon Valley Bank financial crisis, the reality of California flooding, global terrorism, climate change, environmental disasters, poverty, homelessness, crime and a litany of other maladies, amid government paralysis — here is a better idea.

Indeed, you may be channeling Dante’s Vestibule of Hell, which bears the inscription: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

Dante passes through the gate of Hell, which bears an inscription ending with the phrase “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate”,[17] most frequently translated as “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”[nb 1] Dante and his guide hear the anguished screams of the Uncommitted. These are the souls of people who in life took no sides; the opportunists who were for neither good nor evil, but instead were merely concerned with themselves.

Rather than despair or abandoning any chance of comprehending a world that is moving faster than the slower evolutionary brain can comprehend, here is a suggestion.
Start Reading any one of these three books. Each very well written. One like a mystery novel. Other two as simple primers into what ails the planet in 2023 and beyond.

Each worth a rainy-day reading binge.

Start with: This is How They Tell Me the World Ends, The Cyberweapons Arms Race by New York Times cybersecurity reporter, Nicole Perlroth. As the Times’ reviewer honestly writes,

“This is no bloodless, just-the-facts chronicle. Written in the hot, propulsive prose of a spy thriller, Perlroth’s book sets out from the start to scare us out of our complacency.”

Next up, The Watchman’s Rattle, by Rebecca D. Costa, a former GE and Silicon Valley executive whose clients included Apple, 3M, Oracle and others. A Californian, Costa compares the current U.S. quagmire as precursor like the collapse of the Mayan, Roman, Egyptian, and Byzantine empires.

Why? Our brains cannot keep up with the speed of change. “There is simply no way an organ (the brain) that requires millions of years to adapt can keep up with the change that now occurs in picoseconds.”

“From a strictly biological standpoint the human brain can’t help but fall behind.”

Think tech, AI, cyber-tech, global warming, computers, radioactive waste, the ever-changing Internet, WMD, viruses, cold fusion, wars, poverty etc. Depressing, yes, but

Costa actually suggests solutions. Her plea:

“This book is the sound of the watchman’s rattle in the dead of the night. A summons for help. A plea to change the course of humankind by calling on the greatest weapon of mass instruction every known: the human brain.”

Finally, for a local perspective on what ails our own City of San Diego and how to successfully address the problems, read Jonathan F. P. Rose’s, The Well-Tempered City. What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life.

Rose, starts with the ecology of sound and the grandeur of nature, exemplified in Bach’s The well-Tempered Clavier.

Rose believes everyone needs a “sense of purpose greater than themselves” and that “common purpose move the city towards harmony.”

Each of these books confronts a society of grievances, information silos, and dwindling trust, plus the need to repair, replace, re-imagine, and restore the planet and our society before its collapse.

A Better Idea than panic. Start reading.