B : Books in Lockdown #AtoZChallenge2020

It is the third time, in four April A to Z blogging challenges that I have participated in, that I have chosen Books as a topic from Letter B. Books are something I love, and this fact reflects that. Today, I am going to talk about the books which I read recently, in later half of 2019. Since the corona virus Covid19 related lock-down was announced about 10 days ago in India, I have been thinking of these three books because of their deep rooted understanding of politics and future. They all paint vividly, our dystopian future in some form or other, and dystopia as a theme is playing out right now in real world. Also one of the books claimed, that the period of epidemic as a problem was over. An epidemic has now shut down the planet. Ironical!

Today I am sharing my views on these three books below. 

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

The inside of the cover jacket says that Sapiens (reviewed here) explored the past and Homo Deus (reviewed here) explored the future. And this one, these 21 Lessons explore the present.

It is a decent categorisation as the book is essentially drawing from past and exploring the future. If you have read the earlier two books, you might find few things repetitive, especially in first 9 chapters / lessons under the two sections of technological challenge and political challenge. But these chapters are still fascinating to read. But as you read the next set of chapters, the book makes some strong criticism of all the stories we have been fed with. It philosophically tries to explore the meaning of life and yet is rooted in grim realities of our world. The author's scepticism comes to fore and so does his objectivity. I may not always agree with his predicted future but he definitely puts across a compelling case.

His chapters / lessons on terrorism, truth & post truth, criticism of his own religion and meaning of life are subjects, he didn't explore in his past books in detail. These offer new perspective. At times, I don't agree with him, because he assumes that anything that can't be proven through direct observation or evidence doesn't exist.  Like soul. Well, he might be right. But centuries ago, people hadn't found internet and WiFi. They just saw thin air. May be we should still believe in world's mysteries.

In hindsight, when Harari claims in his earlier books that mankind has overcome the three challenges of war, famine and epidemic in previous century and now it has to deal with problems of future, there is nothing disagreeable. Even corona epidemic will claim lesser human lives than previous big epidemics and hopefully we will have a vaccine soon. But I think he hadn't fully understood the challenges new age epidemics will pose. Like shutting down of entire economies. Like poor people suffering more because of financial problems than because of the disease itself. He recently came up with an essay on this subject. You can read it here.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Animal Farm is a political allegory under the garb of a fairy tale, published first in 1945. It talks about a revolution in a farm by animals against the humans. And how this political revolution formed on the basis of utopia soon gets corrupted.

I had earlier read Orwell's book 1984 (reviewed here) . That book constantly reminded me of our current loss of privacy, enabled by government snooping across the world and our personal data availability with Google and Facebook.  That book was highly cynical and made me reflect on our current times. Animal Farm takes that cynicism, dare I say nihilism of our lives, several notches  higher. The revolution on the farm, originally reflecting on events of Russian Revolution  of 1917 followed by Stalinist era, constantly reminded me of a revolution in India - India Against Corruption (IAC). And how this revolution also converted into some thing abhorrent, leading to formation of of a political party which is similar to many that already exist.

The parallels were uncanny. The old boar in the book reminded me of Anna Hazare (Indian social activist) who inspired people to join IAC movement. In the book founders of the revolution are eventually thrown out, just like what happened in Aam Aadmi Party. In the book all inefficiencies of new system formed by animals is explained through externalization. All Indian political parties do the same. In the book, the pig named Napoleon becomes the main deal. Now he is served not the revolution. At the end book goes onto describe how humans and pigs are the same. One can read so much into it.

The book also made me feel that no political or management system can be saved from greed, corruption and ignorance. Thus I have stopped siding with any -ism. The guys who can champion a paradise after death, will always have something to sell, though.


The Time Machine by H G Wells

This one is a yet another classic. From Terminator to Avengers Endgame, we have seen so much about time travel on screen, that at first you may feel that reading this book about this much bandied about concept would have nothing new to offer. And truly on surface it's just that only.

But the moment you bring in the perspective that Wells wrote it in 1895, you wonder about his ability to look into the future. It is his ability to not only look into future of material development but also into future of social as well as cosmic evolution. Given the fact that in 100 plus years since the book was written, we have far more knowledge about the universe and tools to predict future, this book is nothing short of genius.

While Well's visual description about the world in future centuries is vivid, it is his ability to assess the societal structure in future that really impresses me as a reader. He presents humanity as a  blip in the timeline of cosmos and insignificance of everything we have done or achieved so far lends the book its bleak but thought provoking outlook.

---
What are your favorite books on sci-fi or dystopia? Please tell me in comments section. 

---

My theme for this year's #AtoZchallenge is Lock-down Blues. I intend to write and talk about how I deal with it, what it inspires me to read or watch or any aspect of it which fascinates me. You can read the theme reveal post here. 

Previous Challenges : Letter B

2017: Books (My journey with books - not any review)

2018: Books that I read in March'18 (book reviews)

2019: Bhes Badalna (Putting on a disguise) in Hindi Films / Bollywood

All Marketers Tell Stories & 1984 - Book Reviews

I generally don't like such self-assured books that are meant to provide you with one silver bullet for all problems in your work domain. So it is no surprise that I didn't like All Marketers Are Liars Tell Stories by Seth Godin too much. This one had come highly recommended, so picked it up for reading despite my apprehensions about this genre of books. Let me assure you that I am actually aligned with the core concept, the author talks about in this book and fully agree with his theory - That a brand story has to be good and authentic and also in line with the world view of the target group. Then only your brand story will spread and create a want for your products. 

At the same time, I felt that this subject didn't require a book, but a blog-post which can be read in 10 minutes would have been enough. I found it highly repetitive. The case studies / brand stories - both successes and failures - that author has used in this book as an evidence to prove / disprove his hypothesis, at times felt force-fitted. Some of these cases have been used by other Management Gurus in their books, to explain their respective frameworks. As they say, hindsight is a perfect science. 

As a practicing marketer though, it made me think about certain issues that plague the industries where products/services have become commodities, and differentiation is the key to success. That helped me crystallize my thoughts on a particular plan I was working on. All was not lost!

---

1984 by George Orwell is as sharp and incisive as a political commentary today, as it would have been, when it was first published in 1949. So much has been written about this book, that I am not even sure what new I can say about it. As the book is also about freedom to express one's views, I think I will go ahead and write my views on this book anyway. 

It is a dystopian novel, written in 1948, set in the future year of 1984. It deals with the issues of political overreach and propaganda. It is a political satire on totalitarian governments and the havoc they wreck in an individual's life through their surveillance. The chapters in the novel that talk about the power structures and purpose of power itself, are so well written that they hit the readers hard. 

As a reader, I constantly hoped (like the lead protagonist Smith) for the revolutionaries and brotherhood to exist. I wanted an underground revolution to happen by the end of the book. But by the end, the thought of revolution itself is killed. It was gut wrenching. For me the book turned out to be a manual on "How to kill Human Spirit?". I kept thinking about the book days after I had finished reading it. It is fascinating, how so many things described in the book, find parallel in today's world - politics and more so in the corporate world. Not only present day governments, but how big corporate companies are constantly monitoring us. How politicians, coin words and phrases, which make us think in one direction, rather than let us evaluate! There is an appendix at the end of the novel that explains a language (NewSpeak) used by the government described in this book. It is fascinating to understand, how language or lack of it can be used as a tool of oppression.

---

You now know which book to pick among the two reviewed in this post!