A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens. 1859.

The first scene of A Tale of Two Cities involves a carriage full of mail making its way up a muddy hill. It is cold, the mud is very deep, the horses are tired. It is slow going, agonizing work. This is what it felt like to read most of this novel. Dickens' writing style involves a great deal of flourish. It took effort to get through.

In the end I was glad I made the journey, as all the hard work more than paid off. Among other effects, the stylized prose sets up a tension that magnifies the impact of important turns in the story. There are three scenes specifically that are so amazing that I was left somewhat stunned after reading them. I can't even allude to them here for fear that I will spoil the experience. One of them is the very last chapter, especially the last 7-8 paragraphs.

A good example of what you would be getting into is the first paragraph. Most are aware of the first couple of lines, but not the entire paragraph it is part of (technically, it is only a single sentence). It is shown below in its entirety. Pay particular attention to the last couple of lines (emphasis mine):

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. 

At least for me, figuring out what these lines were saying took some effort. I couldn't just immediately move onto the next paragraph. More to the point, it's a complex idea that is being expressed. It would be difficult to express the same idea in a simpler way, so it could be argued that it is not a 'style' element per se that I am referring to here. Dickens was a great thinker. It makes sense that following his ideas might be challenging.

The point is, there are a lot of paragraphs like this in this novel.

Here's a short summary of the plot that won't spoil anything. In fact, you might have an easier time getting to the good parts with this road map.

1. A man is unjustly imprisoned in the Bastille for many years. He is in solitary confinement for so long that he starts to lose his mind. A covert French revolutionary group somehow reclaims him, after the reason for his imprisonment is long forgotten and he is no longer considered to be a threat.
2. This man has a daughter. She has long ago considered him dead. A banker is assigned to find the old man's family. After he reunites the two of them, he becomes a family friend.
3. A French aristocrat has an interest in this bank, which causes the banker to come to his aid when he is put on trial. The banker hires a lawyer to defend him. The aristocrat and the lawyer, coincidentally, are very similar in appearance. This aids in the aristocrat being acquitted of the charges against him.
4. The aristocrat and the old man's daughter fall in love and get married. It is then discovered that the aristocrat's family is responsible for the old man's imprisonment, which leads him to the aristocrat being imprisoned. By this time, the French Revolution is in full swing. Any aristocrats, and anybody with any connections to aristocrats, are being guillotined. The lawyer, again, comes to the aristocrats aid.

In my mind, the narrative is not really what this novel is about. The narrative is a vehicle for something else.

Christian themes appear frequently in the novel. Dickens was raised in the Anglican church, but later adopted Unitarianism. He frequently criticized Christian Churches for not living up to their stated ideals, especially in their treatment towards the poor. For these reasons, it is more philosophical than religious when Dickens raises Christian themes. It is also more subtle.

Vengeance / Forgiveness

Dickens' heroes selflessly sacrifice for the people they love. Dickens' villains seek vengeance on their enemies. Any reader of A Tale of Two Cities will undoubtedly want vengeance on the entitled French aristocracy after the first half of the novel. This reader, after having finished the novel, will also undoubtedly want vengeance on the ruthless French revolutionaries that give the aristocrats what is coming to them. By the time it was done, so much evil had been done with so little discretion, that it is hard to see the positive effects it had. It is hard not to sympathize with the aristocrats, even in their cruelty.

Just when it appears there is hope that the people are being liberated from the forces of evil, it becomes clear that those doing the liberating may not be any better than what they replaced. This is the cycle of vengeance on a large scale. The only thing that may stop the cycle is forgiveness. Of course, forgiveness doesn't claim to be able to resolve the original wrongdoing. So it less compelling to those in power. The people demand justice, and vengeance claims to be able to right what was wrong. The fact that vengeance cannot do this only becomes clear later.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) was a contemporary of Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Lowell wrote a poem in the mid 19th century that refers to this concept. The poem, The Present Crisis, has a couple of lines in the stanzas below many will recognize.

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn this iron helm of fate,
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din,
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,—
"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."

The French Revolution was part of the Age of Enlightenment, a cultural transformation in Western culture that created or set in motion many of the conditions of life we consider to be unique to the modern era. Secular government, free market principles, personal liberty, social mobility, all have their roots in the Age of Enlightenment. In Europe, the implementation of these values into society largely began with the French Revolution.

Dickens seems to be making the point that despite the positive changes that took place in society following it, the violence of the French Revolution was pointless and shameful. Humanity can be proud of many things during that era, but they were actions taken between families and individuals on each others behalf. The progress of society is less important than the progress of human beings, which happens despite violent revolution in the background, not because of it.

The City of God / The Earthly City

St. Augustine (354-430) was a spiritual leader and philosopher. He was baptized and converted to Christianity at the age of 33, after which he eventually became a Bishop. His writings significantly influenced Christianity. One of his books, City of God, describes his view of the best humanity can achieve and the worst acts it can commit. To do so he uses two metaphors: the city of God and the earthly City. These "cities" are all around us and in constant conflict. From the book:

Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, "Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head."

In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, "I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength."

Dickens' novel was about Paris and London, and he is clearly not saying that one is good and one is bad, or that one influenced the other to revolt. In other words, one is not the City of God and the other is not the opposite. In fact, very little of London is necessarily involved in the story. He is not trying to draw a distinction between those two literal cities. The title more appropriately refers to the distinction between the two metaphorical cities in Augustine's work.

In Dickens' novel, the characters live in the City of God when they care for each other, sacrifice for each other and defend each other. These actions lift them out of their surroundings, protecting them, and in the case of two characters, giving them a kind of second life. Meanwhile the Earthly City rages against itself all around them.

Steve Jobs. Walter Isaacson. 2011.

Before reading this book, all I knew about Steve Jobs were the things anybody in America likely knew: he was a household name due to his success at Apple and he always did the new product demonstrations. I own Apple products, but wouldn't call myself a  fan. Every few months I get frustrated with all my Apple crap and just want to throw it all away and start over with PCs. I didn't know much about the history of Apple, other than the fact that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs hated each other (turns out they didn't).

I minimized Steve Jobs' personal role in Apple and the computer revolution of the last 30 years. I assumed he was simply a smart leader and happened to run a successful business. I knew there was a great deal of hype around him, but figured it was due to the same neuroses that make people camp out in front of Apple stores prior to major releases.

After having read the book, I now think he didn't receive enough credit. Steve Jobs was an amazing man. He deserved the acclaim he received in life and his story will be deserving of examination for many years to come.

I should point out, however, that I say all of this with as little positive emotion towards him as possible. At this moment I can't say if I hate him or not. I definitely hated him at times while reading the book, but now I think my emotions are more settled on acceptance and amazement.

In this biography Jobs is often mentioned talking about how he wanted to "make a dent in the universe." I accept that somehow, despite his shortcomings, he was able to do exactly that. I am amazed at exactly what he was able to accomplish. For example, two of the three companies Jobs spent his career in, Apple and Pixar, became more than just leaders in their industries. Both companies revolutionized the industries to which they belonged.

Apple

• Apple became the largest publicly traded company in the world in September, 2011. Apple's market capitalization currently exceeds $390B. Total sales in 2011 exceeded $100B and the company reported more than $115B in total assets.

(For some perspective, General Electric and Walmart both have market caps around $200B.)

• Apple's iTunes music service became the largest music vendor in the US in April, 2008. It then became the largest music vendor in the world a little more than a year later. The service currently sells billions of songs annually. In April, 2010 iTunes sold its 10 billionth song.

(Again for perspective, less than two billion albums were sold in 2005 by all music vendors worldwide.)

• One of Apple's retail stores located in NYC on 5th Avenue opened in May, 2006. It is the highest grossing retail store in all of New York City, estimated to have annual sales exceeding $350M. During its first year, foot traffic in the store exceeded 50k people per week. Apple has close to 400 such retail stores in multiple countries. 

 Pixar

• Pixar has produced 12 feature films, which grossed an average of $600M. This is by far the highest per-film gross of any studio.

(For perspective, Paramount averages around $50M per film. Warner Bros. averages around $40M per film.)

• Toy Story 3 grossed over $1B worldwide. This makes it the highest grossing animated film of all time and the 7th highest grossing film (animated or not) of all time.

• Pixar films have been awarded 26 Academy Awards, 7 Golden Globes and 3 Grammy Awards.

• Disney purchased Pixar in 2006 for $7.4B. This purchase also put Pixar EVP John Lasseter in charge of the Walt Disney Animation Studios. So, while the studios were technically not merged, the creative control of all future Disney movies will filter through Pixar leadership.

After reading the biography, I don't think these accomplishments can be attributed to Steve Jobs being a brilliant businessperson or an exceptional leader of people. He was neither. There were aspects of his personality that made him at times completely awful on a personal level, but made him an inspirational leader. The biography doesn't define these characteristics in exactly this way, but they are repeated throughout his life in various ways.

1. He Defined His Enemies

Steve Jobs imagined a world where he alone was fighting for all that was good in the world, while powerful enemies conspired against him to keep humanity in darkness. The famous "1984" commercial was based on Jobs' view of the competing visions offered by IBM (evil) and Apple (good).

That he sincerely believed his company had a stronger philosophy is obviously not unusual for CEOs. Leaders believe in the visions they advocate. What was unique was his view of the competition. Steve Jobs seemed to be personally offended by his view of the vision offered by Apple's competitors (first IBM and eventually Microsoft).

Defining an enemy is an important part of group psychology. Steve Jobs was always good at drawing the line between "us" and "them." He was expert at pointing across that line and defining exactly who "they" were and the threat they represented.

This approach to the development of the Apple brand wasn't based on a marketing strategy, it was based on Jobs' personality. What made Steve Jobs an annoying know-it-all at a personal level were the same characteristics that allowed him to create world class corporate culture and brand loyalty. The fact that this individual characteristic had so many positive repercussions for the Apple organization was somewhat accidental. In other words, Jobs didn't act this way because he was thinking "this is exactly the culture we need at Apple to compete with the big players in technology." Jobs acted this way because this was his personality. 

2. He Knew About Technology And Aesthetics

Steve Jobs was not a brilliant engineer like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Jobs did have enough technical knowledge, however, to be aware of things that would one day become possible. In addition, Jobs had very refined aesthetic sensibilities. This characteristic is not typical in people who know about computers today, but was rare for people who knew about computers in the 70s.

These two traits (technical knowledge and aesthetic tastes) gave Steve Jobs vision. He didn't always know exactly what his companies should do, but he knew the kinds of things they should focus on. Possibly due to his black/white view of the world, he was often able to describe what should be done by first describing what was wrong with the products being offered by the competition.

Jobs vision was so prescient that many of us take it for granted as being inevitable. It was not. For evidence, here are some examples of tablet computers being offered within the last 5 years before and after the release of the iPad.

Jobs knew that the capabilities of a thing were made less important if a person's experience with the thing was unpleasant on any level. As a specific example, if that thing was ugly, people wouldn't enjoy using it. Because technology experts tend to not care about aesthetics, they tend to forget this.

The vision went beyond just appearance, it embodied everything a person experienced in relation to the device. In other words, he knew that a customer's relationship with a brand begins before they are using a product.

The relationship begins at advertising/marketing, then progresses to the purchasing experience, then moves to unwrapping and setting up the device, and ultimately begins to be influenced by the device itself.

Jobs knew that his competitors were ignoring all of these steps and as a result creating an unpleasant experience. By controlling how pleasing the packaging of a device was, for example, Apple could create a more lasting and positive relationship with its client.

The vision wouldn't have mattered, however, unless he was able to execute it with a team, which leads to the next characteristic.

3. He Was Sensitive But Cruel

When Jobs was a sophomore in high school, he was looking for a specific electronics component and eventually called Bill Hewlett (founder of HP) at home to try to find it. In those days, people didn't have unlisted phone numbers. Steve was charming enough over the phone that he was able to get a job at an HP plant nearby. Eventually, he would have to be put to work on the night shift. He refused to take baths or shower in those days, claiming his fruit-only diet prevented B.O. (it didn't). More problematic was the fact that he would get in arguments with anybody he worked with.

People who worked with Steve Jobs would describe two defining characteristics: black/white thinking and brutal insensitivity. People were either geniuses or dumbshits. Results were either the best in the world or shit.

But more interestingly, Jobs wasn't an unfeeling savant. He was capable of being sensitive. He chose to flatter and compliment some people, while he chose to mercilessly insult others until they were fired or their output met his expectations. He often had difficulties with his children or within his family, but many in the industry were shocked when he was able to convince major record labels to sign up with the iTunes music service.

His employees were often in fear of angering him or being on the wrong end of a bad mood, but they all relied on him to make the important deals.

At the end of the biography, there is a letter Jobs has written explaining some of the criticism he receives. He makes the comment that he always felt complete honesty was the "ante" one paid to be in the room. He wasn't worried about hurting feelings. He was worried about something else, something more of us should probably be focused on.

4. He Cared More About Results Than Money, Deadlines or Status

By the time he passed, Steve Jobs was a billionaire. Still, despite the success of Apple and Pixar, his wealth was dwarfed by other businessmen who were more shrewd with their investments. Jobs' estate is estimated around $8B. For comparison, Bill Gates is currently worth around $56B. Warren Buffett is worth around $50B.

In terms of lifestyle options of course, the difference between $7B and $50B is basically irrelevant. Despite Jobs' billionaire status, however, his home was almost devoid of furniture. He just couldn't find anything that was good enough.

This meticulous nature extended to his diet. Even from a young age, Jobs was very careful about what he ate. He was either only eating fruit, or fasting, or vegan, etc. When his cancer got worse, there were very few things he could eat.

He just wasn't a very reasonable person. He didn't worry about the things most people worried about. He worried about tons of things nobody thought twice about.

For example, when Apple was first getting started, the typical computer design process worked like this:

1. Specialists in each area (motherboard, memory, hard drive, power supply, etc.) are given specs which they design components to meet.
2. All components are jammed together in a case that can hold them all.
3. Product is completed.

The end result was a beige, metal case that was unpleasant to look at and only decent to use.
Steve Jobs started at the end result and worked backward. He imagined what the device should feel like, what it should look like to interact with, after which he brutally enforced component specialists to conform to that end result.

Similarly, when new office buildings or Apple stores had to be built, Jobs was intimately involved in the design process. In a few cases, new technologies had to be developed to achieve the structural goal Jobs set out to achieve.

This approach was extremely expensive and could never have been justified financially, especially in the early years of the company. There was no evidence that customers cared about what a product looked like.

It is sometimes difficult to find evidence for things that are later revealed to be true. Jobs famously asked if it was necessary for Alexander Graham Bell to do market research before inventing the telephone. We all now know that it is really important if a smart phone is nice to look at and simple to use. The only reason we know this specific thing to be true is because Jobs knew it first and because he cared more about that than anybody else did.


A lot of talented people worked at Apple. Without them, Steve Jobs wouldn't be a household name. Without Steve Jobs, however, Apple never would have become anything at all. In a way, Apple was Steve Jobs. At a personal level, his characteristics were at best annoying, and at worst abhorrent. Those same characteristics, when applied to the talented people around him, served as the foundation for a world class organization.

After finishing the book, I found myself searching for videos of him in interviews or in his product demos. I think simply due to the fact that I can't figure him out. Everybody should watch his commencement address to the Stanford graduating class of 2005. There is so much to his character. He is simultaneously humble and pompous, smart and simple. He was at times the most amazing thing to happen to technology. At other times, he was a complete dumb-shit.

Steve Jobs passed away on October 5th last year at the age of 56 after having made an impressive dent in the universe.

A New Kind of Christianity. Brian D. McLaren. 2010.

I don't go to church. I've been to various Christian churches a handful of times, but can't really claim to be either Christian or religious. I believe in God, but wasn't raised with any specific dogma. Despite all these things, I really loved this book. Before I get into the content, let me first try to describe why.

While I can't claim to be a member of the Christian Church, I do consider myself to be an interested observer. The story of Jesus is fascinating and beautiful, even if you ignore the supernatural elements or replace them with natural, metaphorical equivalents. I think Christians have had a profoundly positive impact on humanity over the last two thousand years. I think certain elements of the philosophy of Christianity are true, regardless of any supernatural or religious backing they may have.

For example, forgiveness is superior to vengeance even if it isn't rewarded with a blissful afterlife. This isn't because people who do wrong deserve forgiveness, in many cases they clearly don't. It is because vengeance makes the situation worse. Forgiveness is the only thing that prevents this from happening. Vengeance multiplies wrong-doing. Forgiveness subtracts. Vengeance breeds more vengeance. Forgiveness allows something else to be bred.

In treating his enemies with forgiveness, Jesus lead his followers with an example that may have prevented a popular uprising that would have taken many lives. The story was remembered, retold and undoubtedly lead to countless acts of forgiveness over the last two thousand years. It is of course impossible to say what the world would be like today if all of these people had taken revenge. In my mind, all of that revenge would have undoubtedly made our world much worse than it is today.

There are many other examples, and my knowledge of Jesus is quite limited so I imagine others can think of many more than I am able. His influence has changed our culture and attitudes in a profoundly positive way. Whether or not he was divine, this is true.

One obvious counter-argument is that any positive influence Jesus or Christians have had over the last two thousand years has to be compared against the negative influence Churches acting in his name have had. Despite my positive feelings about the philosophy of Christianity or the beauty of Christian stories, I am concerned about many of the things institutions claiming to act on Christian motivations are doing.

For example, I've met a gay person or two in my life, and I can't imagine that if they prayed really hard that they would be able to change who they are attracted to. I didn't choose to be straight, it's just the way that I am. I imagine the situation for gay people is similar. Yet, large Christian institutions cannot reconcile certain statements in the bible to the harmless, private behavior of gay people. Consequently, these institutions dehumanize a large group of people for a trait they seem to have no control over.

Another example, I think the world has been around for billions of years. I have this opinion because thousands of smart people who have spent their lives studying such things believe that it is the best possible explanation for the things we see. For most of my opinions in various topics, I tend to trust the experts in those topics. Yet, large Christian institutions cannot reconcile certain elements of their worldview to the scientific theories of the modern world. Consequently, these institutions ignore objective science and demonize scientists.

I am concerned because It seems like foundational elements of many major Christian churches are pointed against the flow of history. They deny aspects of human nature that are harmless and essential. They are opposed to scientific theories that are critical to the development of our understanding of the natural world.

Rationality is an essential part of being human. So is belief. We have the ability to analyze our environment, remember what has happened to us and predict what will happen in the future. Because our sensory capacities are not perfect, we have the ability to fill in the blanks with our beliefs.

In my view, elements of major Christian Churches are doomed because they advocate beliefs that paint over things we know to be true. For example, many Christians argue against theories of evolution, neurobiology and genetics because discoveries in those fields seem to threaten an image of the natural world those Churches have held for hundreds of years.

If a Church cannot adapt to truths our evolving civilization reveals, it creates an unsustainable process. The Church's influence will diminish and it will hold back the people it is important to. I want Christianity to survive because I think the lessons of Jesus are profoundly good and for that reason important to humanity. A New Kind of Christianity presents a picture of a Church that stays true to principles that are inherently Christian, but adapts to truths that are apparent in the modern world. This is why I loved the book, it gave me hope.

Many Christians, of course, see it differently. Within the Christian community, this book is a polarizing influence. The author, Brian McLaren, is a pastor of Ceder Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Maryland. This church has grown to involve several hundred members, many of whom were previously not members of any Christian church. He was rated by Time Magazine as one of the 25 most influential Evangelicals in America. This influence is largely the result of his many books, of which this is one, on the topic of the emerging church.

A New Kind of Christianity is based on ten questions that address areas where existing major Churches seem to be weak, but where the emerging church is attempting to adapt. These are the three examples that stuck with me.

1. What is the Overarching Story Line of the Bible?

This is a visual representation of the story line of the Bible:

Even non-Christians will immediately recognize this as the fundamental story of Christianity. It explains what has happened and is the argument for why people should adopt the faith. That is, we started in a divine state, there was a fall from grace, we were condemned, then some of us (if we do the right stuff) can be saved and then return to the divine state. Those of us who don't do the right stuff are doomed.

McLaren makes the argument that this storyline is not articulated anywhere in the Bible itself. The interpretation is a projection of the prevailing philosophy during the birth of Christianity as a mainstream religion. That is, the philosophy of ancient Rome, which was primarily the dualism of Plato and Aristotle. McLaren refers to this as the Greco-Roman philosophy:

Plato believed that reality was based on forms. All of the changing, material world we see is an illusion. What lies beneath is perfect and never changes. Redness, for example, applies to apples and blood. But neither apples nor blood perfectly embody the quality of being red.

Aristotle believed that reality was based in the material world. Ideal concepts become "instantiated" in the natural world.

In other words, the foundation of what most Christians believe is not what the Bible is about or what Jesus advocated, it is a simplification of those things that resulted from Roman society attempting to fit Christianity inside of itself. In other words, it is the consequence of Western civilization assimilating the philosophy of Jesus. This was based either consciously or unconsciously on the ideas early Christian leaders were raised with. These ideas, however, miss the point of the actual stories in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, which were much more complex.

2. How should the Bible be understood?

McLaren makes the argument that most major Churches today use the Bible as a form of legal constitution.

With that approach, simply given the size of the work being considered and the eras of human history during which it was written, an industrious person can find an argument to justify a number of acts that by today's standards would be considered unethical, immoral or at worst, criminal.

For example, slavery has been fact of the human condition for a large portion of our time on this planet. Due to this, many of the stories in the Bible involve slaves and arguments in favor of slavery. Approaching the Bible as a legal constitution, therefore, made it easy for people defending slavery in the United States to say they were on the side of God. All they had to do was find a few passages, and there you have it: legal precedent from God's hand.

Reading the Bible in this way, however, is a mistake. McLaren makes the claim that we should instead see the Bible for what it is: a community library. It is a collection of stories that trace the progression of people oriented around shared ideals and beliefs, all the way back to Abraham.

The problem is, the expectations we have of a constitution and a library are very different.

A constitution needs to be an efficient, neat document. It covers all relevant subjects to avoid creating uncertainty. And in each of those subjects, only one opinion is revealed: the law of the land. Furthermore, the constitution can only be changed to adapt to new challenges through a regimented process. (Of course, no such process exists to change the Bible.)

In a library, there are often dissenting opinions and irrelevant information. We cannot be sure when we examine any one part of a library if we are seeing an instruction, a recommendation, or a cautionary tale.

This view obviously makes the Bible much more difficult to use as an instrument of proof. It makes the Bible something to be filtered through our capacities of critical thought. In this way, the document becomes far less useful to some and far more beautiful to others.

3. Is God Violent?

Stemming from the previous question, McLaren presents the stories in the Bible over time. The Bible was not written in one generation, it had contributions from societies at many different stages of civilization. As a consequence, one cannot interpret fully the meaning of the Bible from any one story. Instead, we have to look at the direction those stories seem to be progressing along as the contributors to it changed over time. In the diagram below, each letter represents a story from The Bible:
 
There is a greater truth to be gleaned from the Bible, but looking at individual passages or stories can sometimes be misleading.

There are many stories in the Bible that depict God as violent and uncaring. These stories, though, tend to change in a positive way over time. As we understand more about God, deeper truths are revealed to us. God starts as a violent defender of a tribe to a more mature lover of all humanity. McLaren argues that there are five significant ways that our view of God changes through the course of the Bible:

1. God's uniqueness - our God becomes the one and only God.
2. God's ethics - concern for ritual becomes concern for social justice.
3. God's universality - our tribe's God becomes God of all tribes.
4. God's agency - God intervening becomes God is everywhere/nowhere.
5. God's character - God is violent becomes God is love.

The character of Jesus in the stories of the Bible plays a unique role in this evolution. We cannot gather from everything Jesus said and did what his true motivations were. As the story goes, he was divine. Jesus represented the ideal end point in the direction of the Biblical narrative:
 
As stories of humanity are added, to the Bible and to our lives, we move along the path. We never reach the destination. Over time we reveal more details of the natural world, and possibly deeper understanding of Jesus' motivations and goals, but there is always more that remains to be discovered.


They say there are two things you should never bring up in polite company: politics and religion. People tend to have strong opinions about both that are based largely on emotion and cultural identity. Disagreements about these kinds of opinions are not likely to result in a conversation. At this level of thought, the human mind resorts to Us vs. Them. I think books like this are important because they dare to start the conversation, polite or not. The conversation begins with one opinion both sides can agree on: this subject is important.

Tradition is also important, it always will be. One has to understand that people in a position of ownership over a tradition have an interest to claim that things have always been the way they are now. Things change all the time. Christianity is different today than it was in the Holy Roman Empire, or in Europe five hundred years ago.

I believe there are elements of the Christian philosophy that may have been lost by focusing too much on tradition. I believe these elements can benefit our lives, even if they have no influence on what happens to us after our lives are over.

Story. Robert McKee. 1997.

Robert McKee is an instructor of creative writing who has had a profound influence on Hollywood for the last 25 years. In 1983, while a Fulbright Scholar and a professor in the University of Southern California he developed a lecture series called the 'Story Seminar'. This lecture series was ultimately opened to the public and has been delivered to sold out audiences ever since.

This book covers an outline of what is presented in McKee's lecture series. It is basically a book about how to write a good screenplay. It is currently required reading in the film and cinema schools at Harvard, Yale, UCLA and USC and known as the 'Screenwriter's Bible'.

This may lead one to think that the book is of value primarily to people who are interested in writing a screenplay. In fact, the appeal is much more broad.

About three quarters of the book is focused on two subjects: elements of story and story structure. The remainder of the book concerns the creative process and contains advice for aspiring Hollywood writers. It's the former two sections that best highlight the fact that there is more going on in this book than one might think. When McKee talks about essential elements of stories and how they are built, even while he frequently references successful films to illustrate his points, it is clear that the medium of film is not necessary. The ideas that McKee discusses can be applied to any storytelling medium.

Elements of Story

McKee describes roughly a dozen different elements that are essential to any story. His approach is not structured. He bounces back and forth between topics, so the quotes below are pulled from several places.

Event

A story event creates meaningful change in the life situation of a character that is expressed and experienced in terms of a value and achieved through conflict. For example: alive/dead (positive/negative) is a story value, as are love/hate, freedom/slavery, truth/lie, courage/cowardice, loyalty/betrayal, wisdom/stupidity, strength/weakness, excitement/boredom and so on.

"Event" means change. Story Events are meaningful, not trivial. To make change meaningful it must, to begin with, happen to a character. 

Character

Characterization is the sum of all observable qualities of a human being, everything knowable through careful scrutiny: age and IQ; sex and sexuality; style of speech and gesture; choices of home, car, and dress; education and occupation; personality and nervosity; values and attitudes - all aspects of humanity we could know by taking notes on someone day in and day out. The totality of these traits makes each person unique because each of us is a one-of-a-kind combination of genetic givens and accumulated experience. The singular assemblage of traits is characterization ... but it is not character.

True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature. Pressure is essential. Choices made when nothing is at risk mean little.

Aesthetic Emotion

Your intellectual life prepares you for emotional experiences that then urge you toward fresh perceptions that in turn remix the chemistry of new encounters. The two realms influence each other, but first one, then the other. In fact, in life, moments that blaze with a fusion of idea and emotion are so rare, when they happen you think you're having a religious experience. But whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion.

... A story well told gives you the very thing you cannot get from life: meaningful emotional experience. In life, experiences become meaningful with reflection in time. In art, they are meaningful now, at the instant they happen.

 Story Design

The below diagram is copied from Story:

A story begins when the protagonist acts to achieve an object of her desire. This action is believed to be minimal and conservative, all that is required to reach the desire. The action, however, prompts forces of antagonism which drive the protagonist further from her desire. At this point, the protagonist realizes that only continued action will allow her to reach her goal. Moreover, she realizes that this action involves risk.

This is also known as the story arc. A story arc involves a character striving for something they desire and in the process encountering an obstacle that forces them to change. Within the primary story arc there are minor arcs. Each arc must contain characters interacting with each other in a way that is logically consistent and encountering environmental factors that are logically consistent.

I've never taken a creative writing class or been involved in drama, so it's possible that these concepts meant more to me than they would to somebody who has been exposed to them before. McKee makes it clear that he has not discovered most of what he discusses, and in fact much of it is as old as Aristotle. But for someone with a recreational but deep interest in storytelling of all kinds, the clarity of McKee's approach was profound. Also, it would be impossible to demonstrate without additional paragraphs of quotes, but the writing is poetic in its own right. Story is a work of art about works of art.

But that is not the primary observation I want to share. The fact that these principles seem to work in any storytelling medium has broad implications.

Stories without the elements described above, and built without taking basic story structure into account do not achieve what all stories are meant to achieve. Something fails in the minds of the audience. I imagine that all of us have experienced a feeling of oneness with the protagonist while seeing a good movie, reading a good book or being told a good story. We naturally put ourselves in the shoes of the character whose experiences are being relayed to us. When these story elements are lacking, we are either not compelled to see our sameness (we are bored) or we don't believe the sameness being communicated (we don't buy it).

It can be argued that the reason storytelling works at all is due to this principle: the fact that the human mind merges the self with the protagonist. The human psyche naturally inserts itself into the protagonist role of any story it is exposed to. In this way human beings can communicate a great deal of information to each other in a short amount of time. Details that would otherwise have to be described are imagined by the audience. Good stories put us in a position to see this "truth" in a very efficient way, they only describe what is essential to put us in a believable, alternate life. 

This was the concept that really stood out to me in this book, and why I argue that it appeals to a broad audience. But it is not because the book is intended to be anything more. Story makes it clear that its purpose is to assist aspiring Hollywood writers. In doing so, however, it also shows that the purpose of a film is more than just to entertain. To me, it seems that there is a much more primal force at work, one that has been a part of human life for thousands of years.

We take for granted now that technology has made it easy to pass on great deals of detailed information to the next generation. We have whole institutions dedicated to educating our population and buildings devoted to storing our collective wisdom. For the majority of our time here, this was not possible. People had to find a way to ensure the hard lessons they had learned about the principles of life would not be lost. They had to somehow prevent the people who had done so much to shape civilization from being forgotten by their ancestors. For thousands of years, stories were the only way to do this. Either because they are inherently efficient in their ability to transmit information, or because our species adapted to their use, they became essential to the human experience.

Fragments of the oldest stories still survive today (e.g. creation stories, religious texts, pieces of wisdom, archetypes, themes, etc.) We naturally work to protect these stories by ensuring our children know about them and by creating new works of art that incorporate them. We seem to instinctively sense how important they are. We don't always know exactly what they mean, but we know they mean something.

Stories serve to define communities, cultures and nations. Whether stories like these have been passed along via oral tradition or by summer blockbusters, it is the same principle. Perhaps this comparison is obvious, but what may not be is this: behind all of these stories is a person trying to communicate more than just what is on the surface. Life is filled with subtext, symbolism and metaphor. In many cases, the authors of stories themselves may not know exactly what is beneath the story they are telling, perhaps there is meaning deep within their subconscious trying to articulate itself. Artists frequently describe the sensation that they are not creating their art, but discovering it.

Late in Story, McKee provides the following advice:

We all share the same crucial human experiences. Each of us is suffering and enjoying, dreaming and hoping of getting through our days with something of value. As a writer, you can be certain that everyone coming down the street toward you, each in his own way, is having the same fundamental human thoughts and feelings that you are. This is why when you ask yourself, "If I were this character in these circumstances, what would I do?" the honest answer is always correct. You would do the human thing. Therefore, the more you penetrate the mysteries of your own humanity, the more you come to understand yourself, the more you are able to understand others.

To me, this seems to be obviously true, but I believe the opposite is just as true: the more we understand others, the more we are able to understand ourselves. All of us know one story better than any other: the story the human psyche creates of our own experiences. The one protagonist that is all protagonists. The amalgamation of all of the stories we have ever been told. The story of "I am." 

Good stories have a depth that we do not frequently enough explore. American films are often about more than what they appear to be. I encourage you to think about this the next time you pay $12 to see the latest Hollywood offering. When you dig through a couple of layers, though, don't be surprised if you see a part of yourself looking back.

Adaptation to Life. George E. Vaillant. 1977.

Every person is given a unique set of challenges in life. To overcome them, a person employs a unique set of techniques. Most people, it seems, try to do the best they can within their circumstances. That being said, I'm sure all of us have at times wondered about those people whose successes exceed our own, and developed theories about how they accomplished what they did.

Maybe these people were born with natural traits far exceeding our own. Maybe they were not held back as we were by some obstacle or environmental shortcoming. Maybe they received help from their social or family environment we were not privileged to. Or maybe they simply mustered the will that we cannot.

Adaptation to Life is based on a longitudinal study of hundreds of men who entered Harvard in the 1940s. These volunteers were tracked over the courses of their lives and submitted exhaustive data about their careers, relationships and emotional states. The originators of this research (known as the Grant Study) felt that psychological data at the time focused too much on physical disease and that a more comprehensive data set would be needed to determine what constituted wellness. The author, George Vaillant, is primarily focused on what traits lead to or prevented success and happiness in lives of the test subjects.

The identities of the participants are kept confidential with the exception of John F. Kennedy. Even knowing he was one of the subjects of the data, however, does not reveal anything about him or any other subject specifically. The author's descriptions of the lives of these men are relayed via fictionalized characters that we are told best represent categories within the volunteers.

A great deal of Vaillant's analysis is based on the Freudian concept of defense mechanisms. In short, a defense mechanism is an unconscious impulse that protects the ego from anxiety caused by conflict between opposing id impulses or between the id and the super ego.

For example, one of the characters in the book is an avid outdoorsman. His relationships with family and friends are virtually nonexistent, but he seems consciously unaware of this fact. When asked if he is close with his sister, he says something to the effect "oh yes we are very close. She just had a child, but I don't know the name." The energy involved in mastering wilderness survival while ignoring his natural desires to develop human bonds is displacement. His unconscious mind replaces struggles he cannot bear with struggles he can.

Vaillant catalogs and defines dozens of defense mechanisms, and then makes a further argument that they can be placed on a linear scale from immature to mature. The most immature defense mechanisms are pathological and lead to criminal or otherwise socially unacceptable behavior. The most mature defense mechanisms balance competing id impulses and the demands of the superego, but they also produce positive side effects. 

This is Vaillant's scale of defense mechanisms from Adaptation to Life. He of course offers long, clinical definitions for each category. The quotes shown below are mine.

Level I - Psychotic Mechanisms (common in psychosis, dreams, and childhood) 

Denial - "I know I don't have a job, but there's plenty of food in the fridge."
Distortion - "I haven't worked in years, but I could get work anytime I wanted, wherever I tried."
Delusional Projection - "I try to find work, but everywhere I go to apply they all hate me." 

Level II - Immature Mechanisms (common in severe depression, personality disorders, and adolescence)

Fantasy - "I know I don't talk to the people I work with often, but they like me and respect my work."
Projection - "This new policy management is making us follow is stupid, I can tell everybody feels the same way."
Hypochondriasis - "Work has been so tough lately, and now on top of that I have this weird rash. I think I'll have to take some time off."
Passive-Aggressive Behavior - "This assignment my boss gave me is impossible. I'm going to have to stay all night working on it and I know I can't ask for help or she will think I'm an idiot."
Acting Out - "My job sucks, that's why I wake up every morning and get high." 

Level III - Neurotic Mechanisms (common in everyone)

Intellectualization - "This business plan isn't quite where it needs to be. I will start working on it as soon as I get the margins and the font exactly right."
Repression - "My team tells me this issue flares up in Bob's department once a month, but I never remember them raising it to me in the past."
Reaction Formation - "I LOVE doing this report. Sure there are issues every week I have to solve, but that just gives me a reason to talk to my team about concepts we don't have time to fully train."
Displacement - "That hole in the wall is from last week when I was talking to my boss and the call dropped. God I hate my phone."
Dissociation - "I don't remember much about the Christmas party, but everybody told me I spent the whole time with Bob and the rest of the jerks in his department talking about how much I loved them." 

Level IV - Mature Mechanisms (common in "healthy" adults)

Sublimation - "Bob can be so hard to work with sometimes. It was fun to kick his ass at tennis last weekend."
Altruism - "We have a huge problem in that department. Sometimes I go to their building, find 3-4 people to work with and I stay with them all day and help. It's a drop in the bucket, but it reminds me that there is hope."
Suppression - "It was hard to hear that feedback from my boss. I could drop everything and spend a day fixing all the problems that she raised. Of course, that might cause new problems. I've blocked out some time this week to address what she brought up."
Anticipation - "I knew the meeting would be tough, so I spent time thinking about the hardest possible questions that might have come up so I'd be ready."
Humor - "This company is a giant shit storm and all of these problems seem hopeless. Do you guys know if the Post Office is hiring?" 

It is probably obvious from how I've attempted to define each mechanism that I saw much of my own life in these techniques. So much of my personality seems to be built by a combination of these mechanisms. More to the point, it has been several months since I read the book, and now I can't help but see the behavior of so many others through this prism. 

Human beings are not completely rational beings. We have the capacity for rationality, but so much of what we do is guided by other motivations. We are driven by our emotions, but also by our subconscious mind. The subconscious mind could be much better at getting us what we want, emotionally, but it seems to be completely irrational. It will spend a whole life hiding a problem that, fully exposed, would take an afternoon to solve.

What emerges from this book, then, is a startling definition of identity. On one hand, the book is filled with talented, brilliant, wealthy individuals who are adept at making themselves miserable. More to the point, many of them seem to have no conscious awareness of their misery. Their principle obstacle is their own psyche. Many of the most pronounced personality traits these individuals exhibit, the things that make them who they are, seem to be elaborate tricks designed to shield them from having to confront elementary challenges.

The other side of that coin is, of course, those who clearly succeeded in their lives. These people are defined primarily not be idiosyncrasies but by generous helpings of mature defense mechanisms. These traits imbue their owners not with personality, but with a knack for openness. These people don't exert themselves on others, they accept and represent others. Their identity seems to diminish with their maturity. They are less themselves than they are a reflection of their environment. They are, in a word, an adaptation.

East of Eden. John Steinbeck. 1952.

A good story connects the audience with the lives of its characters. It provides enough detail to create a believable reality and enough meaning to compel the audience to imagine themselves in the characters' shoes. 

The best stories persist in our culture because the details that matter are timeless, making the conditions of life that change over time less important. On a timescale, the oldest stories are the simplest. Old stories are archetypal. They serve as the foundation of our understanding about ourselves and our relationship with each other and the natural world. More recent stories tend to be the most detailed on the surface. They have settings and challenges that the audience can relate to. Unlike older stories, they haven't eroded after years of being retold. But, because they have not yet been time-tested, it is possible that their allure is simply a consequence of the similarities of their surface details, as opposed to depth and meaning. 

East of Eden is a novel that links very old stories to a more recent story. It is essentially a retelling of Cain and Abel, set in early America. In this way it adds incredible detail to the biblical fable, while adding deep meaning to the condition of American life. The novel is beautiful, sad and profoundly true.

The story revolves around two sets of brothers, primarily in the Salinas Valley around the beginning of the 20th century. The first set of brothers, Adam and Charles, are the sons of Civil War Private Cyrus Trask. Cyrus, due more to his story telling abilities than his experience in war, becomes an important figure in the US military. Both sons hold him in great esteem. It is due to this esteem that his apparent favor towards Adam causes the younger brother Charles to resent and in one case nearly kill his sibling.

The second set of brothers are the twins Cal and Aron. It is never clear who fathers them, Adam or Charles, but they move with Adam to the Salinas Valley which is where the bulk of the story is told. The two brothers have a relationship similar to that of their father and uncle. Aron is likable, strong, popular and favored by his father. Cal is darker, complex, and in several situations not favored by his father.

Unlike Charles, however, Cal does not approach his resentment toward his brother with outward violence. He is more calculating, learning at an early age how to play his brother against others. He subtly teases and mocks the affection people automatically show Aron, finding ways to create situations where both his brother and the people who favor him feel rejected and hurt.

Both sets of brothers are allusions to Cain and Abel, a story so old that it has been worn down to 16 verses in the King James Bible (consolidated into paragraphs for space). Steinbeck makes an argument about the real meaning of this story that is described in the link below ("thou shalt"). Technically, this link gives away a critical theme of the novel, but even if you intend on reading the novel and don't want any spoilers, I encourage you to read it.

And Adam knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is they countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel they brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?

And he said, What has thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.

And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from they face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.

And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.

In an effort to help articulate what makes East of Eden such a wonderful novel, consider these elements of the Cain and Abel story:

• Cain, the unfavored brother, is apparently the father of the entire human race. We are all marked with the curse of his crime.
• This mark is not a part of Cain's punishment. Cain's punishment is being ejected from paradise. The mark is for Cain's protection, an act of mercy shown by God to ease his punishment.
• Abel was favored by God, but this does not mean Cain was necessarily rejected or inherently evil. Cain acted not out of malice, but out of love for God. A love that he felt was not returned.

As you can see, there is so much more to this fable than just what is on the surface. It is not simply about good versus evil. Using the two sets of brothers in East of Eden as instruments, Steinbeck creates a symphony of allusions to Cain and Abel. Cain's struggle repeats itself in multiple generations of Trasks in Salinas Valley and reverberates into the rest of the characters.

This topic, however, is just the foundation of Steinbeck's study in the human condition. The book is filled with poignant explorations into traits and truths we all share. A quick example:

In human affairs of danger and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry. So often men trip by being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he would not be moved to false action by anxiety or hurry or fear. Very few people learn this.

At times in the novel, whole paragraphs diverge from the story being told to plumb the depths of the people involved.

East of Eden connects a description of human life at the dawn of our nation to an outline of human nature at the dawn of our species (literally or figuratively depending on your beliefs). In doing so, it connects American life to a view of human life, in all its beauty, cruelty and depth. In this way it becomes less of a story than a meta-story, a story about the foundational stories of our culture. 

There is so much to this book, so much more than I can express here. In convincing you to read it, I will leave you with this closing argument. Steinbeck is one of the great American authors, and he considered this novel his best work.

When he finished East of Eden, Steinbeck placed his 250,000 word manuscript into a mahogany box he had carved and sent it to his friend Pascal (Pat) Covici. The note he placed on top became the dedication page of the novel.

Dear Pat,
You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, "Why don't you make something for me?"
I asked you what you wanted, and you said, "A box."
"What for?"
"To put things in."
"What things?"
"Whatever you have," you said.
Well, here's your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts - the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.
And of top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.
And still the box is not full.

After reading this novel, I don't think there is a better way to describe it. East of Eden is a box, and nearly everything is in it.

Cryptonomicon. Neal Stephenson. 1999.

When future historians analyze US culture in the beginning of the 21st century there will likely be many PhD dissertations dedicated to our fascination with WWII.
 
Sometimes I find myself watching another movie, miniseries or documentary, wondering if we will ever run out of material. Maybe it will never stop, not before we have a complete digital recreation of every moment. Like the project to model ancient Rome in 3D.

So what could possibly add to the discussion? What hasn't been explored dozens of times in countless mediums?

Cryptonomicon primarily covers the efforts of the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. This is the entity that enabled the Allies to decipher German and Japanese radio communications. The importance of code breaking in WWII is a topic that has obviously been explored, but I don't often see it referenced in fiction about the war. In that sense, the book is in a category of its own.

More important than that, however, the book is able to make a point about the war and its aftermath that I'd never considered prior to reading it. The point is complex, it can't just be restated. It involves really being inside the minds of people involved in the war and its human toll. It makes this point by switching between narratives in different eras based on characters with indirectly connected roles. For me, this was the intellectual meat in the book that made a lasting impression. 

Cryptonomicon is very long (almost 900 pages in paperback). My goal in this review is to provide a glimpse of what I believe Stephenson's point about WWII is. I hope it is enough of a glimpse to encourage you to make the investment in reading it.

So, let me set the stage.

In the early 1940s the human race was engaged in global warfare. A group of nations not raping, slaughtering and enslaving races of people were doing everything they could to stop a group of nations who were. Distinctions between civilian and military life were blurred or irrelevant. The future of human society was at stake. Would genetic identity have an official role in the future of a person's life? Or would equality and justice prevail?

Life in those times meant trying to find a way to apply one's life and skills to the war effort, there was no greater cause. 

Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse was a young man at the beginning of the war, and his attempts to apply his life and skills in the Allied forces is the narrative in Cryptonomicon focused on code breaking. Lawrence had the privilege/burden of being born with a rare type of mind. As a child, he is said to have had "a peculiar relationship with sound." Due to his father's occupation as a preacher, he spent a fair amount of time around pipe organs. One day, the church instrument broke and the only person who could fix it was the local math teacher. Being curious about the device, young Lawrence sat with the math teacher as he removed the panels concealing the pipework inside. Curiously, there were long pipes and short pipes.

The organist/math teacher sat down with a few loose pipes, a pencil, and paper, and helped Lawrence figure out why. When Lawrence understood, it was if the math teacher had suddenly played the good part of Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor on a pipe organ the size of the Spiral Nebula in Andromeda - the part where Uncle Johann dissects the architecture of the Universe in one merciless descending ever-mutating chord, as if his foot is thrusting through skidding layers of garbage until it finally strikes bedrock. In particular, the final steps of the organist's explanation were like a falcon's dive through layer after layer of pretense and illusion, thrilling or sickening or confusing depending on what you were. The heavens were riven open. Lawrence glimpsed choirs of angels ranking off into geometrical infinity.

Lawrence, with his rare mind, is great at math. It is because of this greatness perhaps that he is an abject failure at pretty much everything else. Consequently, the interpersonal, self-discipline and goal-setting skills required to get, say, a degree in mathematics are things he does not possess. Even though he spends time studying with Alan Turing and others in Princeton, he eventually has no choice but to join the Navy. The only responsibility he can be assigned with any confidence in that organization is to play the glockenspiel.

This is what he is doing on the deck of the USS Nevada during Pearl Harbor. When the bombs begin dropping he is mostly preoccupied with the complexity of the events around him. Picking up a weapon is out of the question, he's simply not built to do such things.

The book is written in two eras, the second is present-day and concerns Lawrence's grandson Randall Lawrence Waterhouse. Randy is talking to his girlfriend about his male relatives (including his grandfather):

"One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for many people, is not that he's socially inept-because everybody's been there-but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it."
"Which is still kind of pathetic."
"It was pathetic when they were in high school," Randy says. "Now it's something else. Something very different from pathetic."
"What, then?"
"I don't know. There is no word for it. You'll see."

Lawrence Waterhouse is a mystery to his commanding officers and most of his colleagues and peers. What the military eventually discovers, however, is that despite these shortcomings, with a certain amount of freedom and resources, one of the byproducts of Lawrence's mind is near complete awareness of enemy communications.

Lawrence was a member of a nation with a particular approach to civilization. This approach involved, as a principle, making room for him and his idiosyncrasies. The Allied forces represented this approach to civilization. This fact had a decisive impact on the outcome of WWII, a war that decided whether humanity would live in freedom or in slavery. Freedom, apparently, works better. Consequently, we have more of it.

The Allied approach was perhaps messier, less formal, more concerned with what worked than tradition or code. At one point later in the war, Japanese soldiers are watching an incoming bomber squadron from the deck of a ship in the middle of a shipping convoy. Up to that point in the war, bombing runs at sea like this had been mostly ineffective. The bombers just could not line up their targets. A new device was developed, however, to counter this problem: an air-to-sea torpedo. This is the reaction of a Japanese soldier, Goto Dengo, as he watches the new device in action:

The Americans have invented a totally new bombing tactic in a middle of a war and implemented it flawlessly. His mind staggers like a drunk in the aisle of a careening train. They saw that they were wrong, they admitted their mistake, they came up with a new idea. The new idea was accepted and embraced all the way up the chain of command. Now they are using it to kill their enemies.

No warrior with any concept of honor would have been so craven. So flexible. What a loss of face it must have been for the officers who had trained their men to bomb from high altitudes. What has become of those men? They must have all killed themselves, or perhaps been thrown into prison.

The American Marines in Shanghai weren't proper warriors either. Constantly changing their ways. Like Shaftoe. Shaftoe tried to fight Nipponese soldiers in the street and failed. Having failed, he decided to learn new tactics - from Goto Dengo. "The Americans are not warriors," everyone kept saying. "Businessmen perhaps. Not warriors."

The Marine Bobby Shaftoe is a friend of Goto Dengo. They met while they were both stationed in Shanghai before the war begins. He is the heart of this novel, the character whose narrative most readers will look forward to returning to. He is the embodiment of the Allied approach to civilization, the personality that results from flexible, patient strength.

The following is an exchange between Shaftoe and a commanding officer during one of dozens of intelligence and counter-intelligence missions he is given through the course of the story:

Ethridge straightens up and, in the most accusatory way possible, holds up a fistful of pierced and perforated oaktag. "Sergeant! Would you identify this material?"
"Sir! It is general issue military stencils, Sir!"
"Sergent! How many letters are there in the alphabet?"
"Twenty-six, sir!" responds Shaftoe crisply.
Privates Daniels, Nathan, and Bramph whistle coolly at each other-this Sergeant Shaftoe is sharp as a tack.
"Now, how many numerals?"
"Ten, sir!"
"And of the thirty-six letters and numerals, how many of them are represented by unused stencils in this wastebasket?"
"Thirty-five, sir! All except for the numeral 2, which is the only one we need to carry out your orders, sir!"
"Have you forgotten the second part of my order, Sergeant?"
"Sir, yes, sir!" No point in lying about it. Officers actually like it when you forget their orders because it reminds them of how much smarter they are than you. It makes them feel needed.

Of course, the sacrifices of Bobby Shaftoe and the millions of soldiers like him who died in the war, result in victory and peace. A peace that we all now enjoy. It is a peace, however, that will only last until the next time power is seized by forces willing to trade destruction and death for a chance at more power. This is where the modern era and the narrative of Randy Waterhouse comes into play.

Randy's story involves a business he is attempting to build with his friend Avi (a grandson of a victim of the holocaust) and his girlfriend America "Amy" Shaftoe (Bobby's granddaughter). I won't go into a lot of detail about what this business is, except to say that it attempts to address complexities of human society that allowed the worst evils of WWII to happen. For example:

• Having money or power is not the same as wielding it, especially if it is your intent to wield that power in the prevention of suffering.
• Having information or knowledge of history does not necessarily mean you can prevent it from happening again. History is created by masses of people who do not know what you know. There are always forces that have an incentive to prevent the free flow of information for this very reason.
• Having critical information does not imply a way to act on that information. Sometimes, knowing more about a problem can only make it more difficult to solve.

Most readers will probably not identify with the Randy narrative. The idea Stephenson proposes (i.e. Randy's business model) has not yet been attempted even 10 years after this novel was published. For this reason it may be difficult to associate it with anything we deal with in our lives. For a technology-loving nerd like myself, however, the idea has stuck with me. I find myself keeping an eye open for a group involved in actually making it happen. 

I don't know if the idea will actually address these issues, but after reading the book I believe there is hope that it could. I don't know if I can describe exactly how, but it is an idea that seems to be philosophically connected with the approach to civilization the Allied forces represented.

I should stress, though, that Randy's business is not the point of the book. Readers who reach the novel's conclusion, which is focused on Randy's business, may be left feeling underwhelmed. The point of the book that I am trying to provide a glimpse into, is that the three narratives say something important about the Allied approach to civilization.

1. Lawrence is a social outcast and studies with other hyper-mathematicians who would likely not be supported in Axis nations. Alan Turing is a homosexual, for example, and would probably be imprisoned, enslaved or worse in Japan or Germany.
2. Bobby Shaftoe is a loyal but at times insubordinate warrior who would have had his independence beaten or trained out of him in Axis nations.
3. Randy is a lover of role playing games with an obsession for cereal. He succeeds in an environment that has been fertilized for innovation and change. An environment that would not exist today had Axis powers won the war.

The Allied forces represent an approach to civilization that America now largely upholds. As a consequence, all Americans have the privilege and burden of nurturing it. But in order to nurture something you have to understand it. This is why Cryptonomicon had to be so long. It is not enough to say that "we won". This book is about why we won, what made us different. It is about why the challenge will probably come again, and why we must be true to our history when that time comes.