A Beautiful Report by Karl Ove Knausgaard on Awake Craniotomy in Albania

I'm not a big fan of Karl Ove Knausgaard, and I hated his two-part introspective travelogue for the New York Times Sunday Magazine in March 2015, but I loved his reportage in today's Magazine. He follows the British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh to Albania, where he performs two "awake craniotomies" - brain surgery performed while the patient is awake - that saves the lives of two patients. Knausgaard can be a wonderful writer when he forgets about himself for a moment and allows himself to focus on the world, which he does in this piece. He can of course not completely resist the temptation to (over)step into the story, but he treads lightly enough and his presence mostly helps us understand and connect to the events he is covering.

Here is an example:

"The silence was total. The single focus of attention was a head clamped in a vise in the middle of the room. The upper part of the skull had been removed, and the exposed edge covered in layer after layer of gauze, completely saturated with blood, forming a funnel down into the interior of the cranium. The brain was gently pulsating within. It resembled a small animal in a grotto. Or the meat of an open mussel. Two doctors were bending over the head, each of them moving long, narrow instruments back and forth inside the opening. One nurse was assisting them, another was standing a few yards away, watching. A whispery slurping sound issued from one of the instruments, like the sound produced by the tool a dentist uses to suck away saliva from a patient’s mouth. Next to us was a monitor showing an enlarged image of the brain. In the middle, a pit had been scooped out. In the center of the pit was a white substance, shaped like a cube. The white cube, which appeared to be made of firmer stuff, was rubbery and looked like octopus flesh. I realized that it must be the tumor."

(Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Terrible Beauty of Brain Surgery,
New York Times Sunday Magazine, Jan 3, 2016) 

Yuletide Phishing and other Seasonal and Unseasonal Scams

I got an email from Amazon, which happens a lot in the weeks before Christmas. This one looked very much like a normal Amazon mail, but it was from Amazon.UK.

"We thought you'd like to know that we've dispatched your item(s). Your gift order is on the way."

The gift is a £68.93 ($103) "Garmin Forerunner 10 GPS Running Watch." And it was "Paid by gift card."

As I did not recognize the item and could not imagine that anybody in my family would buy or want a GPS Watch I mailed my wife who answered that "we've been scammed!"

I opened my Amazon account, but not through the email, and changed my password and removed my credit cards that were linked to the account.

Then I checked out the email purporting to be from Amazon.UK., but it was actually linked to a URL with "goodtogreatgolf" as its centerpiece.

The scam was clever on several levels, but that URL pops the bubble. Many who get an email from Amazon that looks real, but tells them that they have bought something strange will probably be upset and want to log in immediately to find out what's going on. If they do, they will give the crooks their login information, and then the next email about something they "bought" may be matched with real charges on their credit cards.

I reported the phishing expedition to Amazon and deleted the email.

*

An hour later we get a phone call:

"Hello, this is the technical department of Windows," says the guy calling from Bangalore or wherever. Not the first time. This must be one of the more stupid scams out there.

Computerworld wrote about this type of scams in May 2014:
Aggressive, persistent Windows tech support scammers continue to stalk consumers

I've gotten similar calls before, sometimes claiming to come from "the Windows operating system."
“I am calling you from Windows”: A tech support scammer dials Ars Technica

Knock, knock...

Populism in Europe, Russia and America - Berlusconi, Putin and Trump

Thomas B. Edsall, a brilliant and very knowledgeable columnist for the New York Times had a column in today's paper where he compared American populists with their European siblings.
Here are a couple of quotes from his article:

Euro-Trump 

Long before the destruction and death in France last week, Trump’s presidential campaign was following the path of right-wing working class parties in Europe. Over the past decade, these parties have capitalized on animosity to immigration and the perceived threat it presents to Europe’s “autonomy, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” its “postwar economic model,” and its “Christian identity.” 

Further down, he writes:

In an effort to place Trump in an international perspective, I asked Herbert Kitschelt, a professor of international relations at Duke, for a more encompassing view of Trump:

A populist leader ventures to establish a personal, intimate relationship with his followers, unmediated by political organizations. Populists have an aversion against organizations and are conspiracy theorists. Consider when Trump invokes that he is in “no one’s pocket” financially. His aversion against the Republican Party establishment. This idiom of the little guys against the machines, with a heroic leader coming to the rescue of the powerless underdogs, is a procedural template in politics that has, of course, inspired many political movements, particularly in times of crisis and economic decline: Think of Latin American populism (especially Juan Perón in Argentina in the 1940s), but also European fascism (Hitler, Mussolini), to Hugo Chávez in the 1990s and 2000s.

Kitschelt added, however, that he associated Trump most closely with Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy:

You have there the same swagger of the self-made billionaire, even if they are not self-made, the womanizer suggesting unlimited sexual prowess and appetite, the slayer of organizational dragons, the Manichean contrast of good and evil, as well as the substantive programmatic vacuity.

Right behind Berlusconi, “I probably would nominate Vladimir Putin,” Kitschelt said.

For an interesting take on Trump and how he attracts low-educated white racist and fascist supporters, read Evan Osnos' article The Fearful and the Frustrated in The New Yorker,

On June 28th, twelve days after Trump’s announcement, the Daily Stormer, America’s most popular neo-Nazi news site, endorsed him for President: “Trump is willing to say what most Americans think: it’s time to deport these people.” The Daily Stormer urged white men to “vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents our interests.”

* 

Hannah Arendt would have recognized what's going on. Highly frustrated people with little knowledge and little political experience are starting to listen to charismatic protofascist demagogues who plays the game as it almost always is played. Attack minority groups. Promise a return to the "good old days" when only white lives mattered, and not even all of those.

Read more about Arendt here:

Does history repeat itself? Does this sound familiar? On the origins of Trumpism...

Headlines that ask questions about the future

Too many people for the future job market...

Artificial intelligence: ‘Homo sapiens will be split into a handful of gods and the rest of us’

Too few people for diverse reasons... 

As China and Europe Age, Path to More Children Lie Beyond Bedroom

Or maybe it's a matter of how the spoils of progress are divided...

Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not Robots

Does history repeat itself? Does this sound familiar? On the origins of Trumpism...

No, I'm not comparing Donald Trump to Hitler or his supporters to the Nazi movement, but there are similarities between the social forces that drove the popularity of yesterday's demagogic and charismatic leaders and today's political clowns like Trump (who has quite a few things in common with Mussolini, but even more with Berlusconi.) Below is a long quote from a classic analysis of the rise of totalitarianism in Europe. Read and reflect.

"It was characteristic of the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and of the Communist movements in Europe after 1930 that they recruited their members from this mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention. 

The result was that the majority of their membership consisted of people who never before had appeared on the political scene. This permitted the introduction of entirely new methods into political propaganda, and indifference to the arguments of political opponents; these movements not only placed themselves outside and against the party system as a whole, they found a membership that had never been reached, never been "spoiled" by the party system. 

Therefore they did not need to refute opposing arguments and consistently preferred methods which ended in death rather than persuasion, which spelled terror rather than conviction. They presented disagreements as invariably originating in deep natural, social, or psychological sources beyond the control of the individual and therefore beyond the power of reason. This would have been a shortcoming only if they had sincerely entered into competition with other parties; it was not if they were sure of dealing with people who had reason to be equally hostile to all parties. 

The success of totalitarian movements among the masses meant the end of two illusions of democratically ruled countries in general and of European nation-states and their party system in particular. 

The first was that the people in its majority had taken an active part in government and that each individual was in sympathy with one's own or somebody else's party. On the contrary, the movements showed that the politically neutral and indifferent masses could easily be the majority in a democratically ruled country, that therefore a democracy could function according to rules which are actively recognized by only a minority. 

The second democratic illusion exploded by the totalitarian movements was that these politically indifferent masses did not matter, that they were truly neutral and constituted no more than the inarticulate backward setting for the political life of the nation. Now they made apparent what no other organ of public opinion had ever been able to show, namely, that democratic government had rested as much on the silent approbation and tolerance of the indifferent and inarticulate sections of the people as on the articulate and visible institutions and organizations of the country.
Thus when the totalitarian movements invaded Parliament with their contempt for parliamentary government, they merely appeared inconsistent: actually, they succeeded in convincing the people at large that parliamentary majorities were spurious and did not necessarily correspond to the realities of the country, thereby undermining the self-respect and the confidence of governments which also believed in majority rule rather than in their constitutions. 

It has frequently been pointed out that totalitarian movements use and abuse democratic freedoms in order to abolish them. This is not just devilish cleverness on the part of the leaders or childish stupidity on the part of the masses. Democratic freedoms may be based on the equality of all citizens before the law; yet they acquire their meaning and function organically only where the citizens belong to and are represented by groups or form a social and political hierarchy . . . "

(Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951)

"Knausgaard transcribes; Ferrante transforms. Her prose is wine to Knausgaard’s mop water."

I was already thinking of reading Elena Ferrante when the latest issue of The Nation arrived with William Deresiewicz's essay about Ferrante's Neapolitan suite. It's brilliant and made me move Ferrante to the top of my reading list now that I have finished re-reading James Michener's novel about the 1960s - The Drifters (which as one can expect from Michener is exhaustively long, complex and highly analytical, but often woody and laden with stereotypes).

Then, in the third paragraph, he delivers this terrific comparison between Ferrante and Knausgaard:

The obvious comparison is to Karl Ove Knausgaard, the Norwegian author of My Struggle, another multivolume first-person epic that has burst upon the literary scene in recent years. Knausgaard assures us, in prose of aggressive banality, that every word is accurate to his experience. Ferrante, in The Paris Review, offers a direct (and perhaps deliberate) rejoinder. “It’s not enough to say, as we increasingly do, These events truly happened, it’s my real life, the names are the real ones, I’m describing the real places where the events occurred. If the writing is inadequate, it can falsify the most honest biographical truths.” Knausgaard transcribes; Ferrante transforms. Her prose is wine to Knausgaard’s mop water. 

On the InterRail Way of Travel

The InterRail Pass was introduced in 1972 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the International Railway Union (Union Internationale des Chemins de Fer). Youth under 21 years old were offered to travel for one month in 21 member countries at a very low cost, less than 30 British pounds or about 50 U.S. dollars.

  Watch a 2012 documentary celebrating the 40th anniversary of the InterRail Pass. 

 

About 5,000 young people bought the InterRail Pass in 1972, and it was so popular that it was repeated in 1973, when about 85,000 young travelers bought the card. Over the years, the InterRail Pass had expanded its reach to more and more countries, while the travel offers has become more varied and even includes First Class travel. Outside Europe the card is known as the Eurail Pass.

For most young people traveling with the InterRail Card/Pass in 1973 was very, very different from how you travel today. Most kids traveled without credit cards, cellphones, Internet, Web, Facebook, WiFi, guidebooks and with very little money. If you couldn't find a campground or a bed in a youth hostel, you had to sleep on a night train, on a beach, with a friend, on a railway station or wherever you found a place to rest your head. It was not always safe, but kids who had come of age in 1968 didn't worry much about safety. They were naive and willing to take risks. And most of them made it home alright.

Falling in Love while Staying True to Self

Auguste Rodin's "The Kiss". Photo: Hans Sandberg

The Italian sociologist Francesco Alberoni wrote that falling in love is “the first stage of a collective movement consisting of two people.”

A single person can do whatever he or she wants, but that freedom is limited to what it is physically and biologically possible. (A human being cannot fly on its own, unless we consider falling towards the Earth a form of flying).

When God created Eve out of Adam’s rib, he created the first society. (Let us for a moment ignore the fact that both men and women normally are born to women who have been impregnated by men. The whole idea of God creating Eve out of Adam’s rib is certainly weird, almost like the Greek myth, where Athena springs fully armed from the head of Zeus.)  

When two people enter into a relationship, they are simultaneously entering into a power relation; a power structure. Many options are possible here: The most likely is that one person –  the strongest, smartest, shrewdest – becomes the dominant actor. It is of course theoretically possible that the two reach an equilibrium where they can work towards a shared goal, whether it is protection against a threat or solving a critical task that can only be achieved by collaboration between equals. When everybody is poor, it is easier to be equal, but once society and production technology allows for creation of a surplus, society is likely to split in some who dominate and others who are dominated. This split can be done along many lines, gender, race, culture, family, tribe etc.

Nobody is truly independent. No couple, family, tribe, society lives alone. When Aristotle wrote that human beings are political, he meant that they are social beings by nature. We are born into a specific social, biological and cultural setting. We are born into a historic setting.

When a man meets a woman he will be doing this in a social and historic context built on established facts, traditions, social structures, prejudices etc. Knowing what we know about human history, chances are that the relationship is complex, reflecting a long history of power, inequality and injustice. (One man and one woman is of course not the only possible combination, but the dominant type due to the Darwinian process of evolution.) 

How should we deal with the pain and inequality inherited from the past?

Jesus supposedly died on the cross for our sins. That is one way to deal with history. We are all sinners, an insight that reflects the fact that there is something fundamental in humanity that makes us want to do the right thing (as defined by the time and society we live in). Unlike the big apes, we belong to a collaborative species where empathy is an essential trait. We suffer if we don’t do what we deep down feel is the right thing.

Sacrifice is one way to deal with this and to build societies that stay together. Religion is one way to address the problem of “free riders,” and one that humans have practiced for a very long time. Humans tried to relieve themselves of guilt by sacrificing either other people or animals. The Christian innovation was to have one historic person sacrificed for all our sins, making further human sacrifice unnecessary. Once could say that this was a step in the right direction.

Every man who meets a woman will face a similar dilemma. He will enter a historic moment where he will have to navigate his own life and responsibility, and the heritage left by history. Even though love is a great equalizer that has the potential to put two individuals on an equal footing by making them strive for a shared goal, this does not eliminate the past. As beautiful and intoxicating as love is (love’s madness) there is no escaping reality other than for a short moment. At some point, the lovers will have to face reality and come to grips with the nature of their relationship, the history of their beings and relations. They carry history with them, and it is unlikely that they are equal or equally passionate or that their goals are perfectly aligned.

This can be a painful discovery. Love’s slate is not clean, but love cannot survive unless the couple acts as if it is. They must learn to take each other for what they are and be ready to forgive and accept. If Eve tells Adam that it is not fair that he came first, then she has already given up on love. If Adam tells Eve that he owns her, as she came from his body, then he does not love her.

Love is new. A person falls in love with another person. In Greek mythology, mankind originally had two heads, four arms and four legs, but was cut in half and since then the two have chased each other. That is kind of silly, but also sweet. The lover wants the other person to be part of him (her). Love seeks unification.

In love we feel complete. When we fall in love, we forget about ourselves, about our needs, and we are willing to sacrifice our identity, but love cannot be sustained unless we remain true to ourselves; unless we hold onto our identity. There has to be an I that enters into a relationship. If that I evaporates, there can be no relationship. It takes two to tango. If we forsake ourselves, love maybe complete, but we are gone. This works for some insects, but not for human beings.

The scars of inequality will always be there, but unless you have committed a crime, you are not guilty. We don’t inherit the sins of our fathers and forefathers. It is I that enter a relationship with another human being. I will treat you as an equal and you must treat me as an equal. It doesn’t matter if you or I am rich or poor, black, brown, yellow or white, gay or straight, man or woman or something in-between. We must both be proud of who we are. I must be proud to be a man and you should be proud to be a woman. (The same goes for other combinations and variations.)

Love is unselfish, but it is an act that requires two strong people who maintain their strength and independence. Love may succeed or it may die, but you and the person you loved will live on even if your particular love affair fails or dies. In fairytales and romantic novels, lovers face death together, or as in the case of Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” – alone. But that has more to do with the needs of storytelling than life.  

A person who is unable to love himself/herself cannot love another person. The torturer knows that to break a person, you must first make them feel bad about themselves; stop loving themselves. Initiation rites often involves acts that makes the person sacrifice its pride; its humanity. Once you stop loving yourself, you will obey orders. Emotional blackmail works the same way. If a person believes that its worth is tied to somebody else or a tribe or gang, then that person can be manipulated.

Whoever you are – man, woman, gay or straight, mainstream or side-stream – you need to protect your dignity. If your lover hurts your feelings, or puts you down in word or action, you need to defend yourself for the sake of your capacity to love. If you allow the loved one to say or do things that makes you uncomfortable, then you are allowing your ability to love to evaporate. You may feel that it is a necessary compromise, and that it is only a temporary thing, but you should not let go of yourself or doubt your own feelings. If it hurts, it hurts. As much as a lover wants to please the one her or she loves, fear of the other is the beginning of the end. If a relationship that starts out as being equal tilts so that it can only be sustained by one person bending over backwards, than it is not love anymore, but a power relationship where one person dominates another. The person being dominated often responds by begging for love (sometimes in words, but mostly in deeds), but such a relationship is already unhealthy and domed. The dominant partner often threatens the dominated by threatening to withhold love. Once the relationship becomes based on fear of losing the love, fear of saying no, then love is gone.

When a man loves a woman, a woman loves a man or a person loves another person, they all need to know who they are, where one begins and the other ends. If you lose your sense of self, you lose your ability to reason and make decisions. Then love is lost.

Trust yourself. Be open and honest. Then love is possible. 

Afghanistan Before All Hell Broke Loose

Roger Cohen, a New York Times columnist, links Afghanistan and the Grateful Dead in his latest column and the connection goes way back.

"We had not planned to be in Afghanistan for the 1973 coup. In fact we had not planned much of anything. But that’s the way it turned out. When the Afghan king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, was ousted after a 40-year reign, we were in Kandahar in the courtyard of some hotel trying to learn how to ignore the flies. Another guest, who’d mastered the fly trick and attained imperturbability, had a short-wave radio. It picked up the BBC World Service news. 

A coup? My two friends and I were on the hippie trail." 

(Roger Cohen, Afghanistan, Empires and the Grateful Dead, NYT, July 20, 2015)

I traveled through Afghanistan a year later, when the king's first cousin and successor, Mohammed Daoud Khan, had been in power for a year and a couple of months. This was despite the coup a relatively peaceful time in Afghanistan's history.

If you want to read more about my 1974 journey, follow the link below:

Taking the Bus from Stockholm to New Delhi.