But let's get to the book first, I'll go back to that idea later. Seemingly semi-auto biographical, it tells the story of an Australian convict making a new life in Mumbai, where he spends time on a slum, and gets involved with the local Mafia. A very, very well rounded book (recommended by Munish), it has super style, well developed characters, an exotic setting, a sustained plot. It did remind me a bit of Álvaro Mutis in terms of romanticizing the criminal world and remote parts of the world, it also reminded me of Alexandria´s Quartet and even Casablanca (the main character shares multiple personality traits with of Rick), it`s saturated with great quotes (which I can't retrieve now because I used bookmark instead of highlight on the kindle), and it handles love in a very elegant way (I love what he did with Karla's character). It is a novel of adventures, and for that perhaps more focused on the male reader, but I may be wrong about that.
One of my typical complaints about a novel, is that everything that happens in the city is connected to the main character; in this case is even more unbelievable because the character is not only involved, but apparently is the cathartic agent, every little problem in the slum has to be taken to the white man to be solved. At some point I thought of this as a bit paternalistic towards the Mumbai habitants, but then I think how at work brilliant engineers come to me all day with very simple, minute problems, so maybe is a dynamic of roles and perspectives. And again, I won't harpoon too much on this criticism given that much of the book is based on the author's own experience, so maybe that's how the things happened.
The second one is a defect but also a blessing, just like in with Álvaro Mutis novels, every character from the grocery store clerk to the gun-toting counterfeiters, uses every mundane conversation lo launch into speeches of philosophical insight about the nature of love, life, universal values, etc. that would put the Dalai Lama to shame. Is a defect because is not real, I can testify that when I go to cut my hair, the guy just talks about the weather, his boy's soccer team and local politics. If real people speaks like David Robert's characters, then I've been hanging around the wrong crowd. But, it is blessing, because is really enjoyable to read those ideas, those long speeches and conversations.
And it brings me back to that key idea of the book that would make it worthwhile reading even if all the rest was garbage. One afghan mafia lord is talking of his personal philosophy (of course, what else afghan mafia lords speak about?), and the he blurts out this:
“The whole universe is moving toward some ultimate complexity. This has been going on since the universe began, and physicists call it the tendency toward complexity. And… anything that kicks this along and helps it is good, and anything that hinders it is evil…
“And this final complexity… it can be called God or the Universal Spirit, or the Ultimate Complexity, as you please. For myself, there is no problem in calling it God. The whole universe is moving toward God, in a tendency toward the ultimate complexity that God is…"
When I read this, I thought an idea so fundamental couldn't come from a novel written by an ex-heroin addict, I thought he most have lifted it from some previous philosopher. I'm by far no expert in philosophy, but I've done some research and so far I've not found any previous mention of such idea.
This idea resonates with me enormously because this is an idea I buy into, actually an idea I've developed myself independently... I know, you're saying 'yeah, right' and rolling your eyes (btw, does anyone read my blog, I wonder), but the way I came to this idea is so straightforward that it amazes me it wasn't a common idea before.
I've long ago given up on the idea of a God with anthropomorphic appearance, I don't think he would look like any of the representations in any church. I've given up on dressing up God with anthropomorphic feelings of compassion, hate, love, disappointment, revenge, etc. If there is a God, I think describing his actions as result of love, forgiveness or anger is so rudimentary as to describe Napoleon's invasion of Russia in terms of the bee's instinct to sting or the moth's reflex to seek light. Feelings are so much more complex than instincts and reflexes that they deserve a different name and are in a whole new category; the only difference is complexity, but in complexity, a difference in degree results in dramatic differences in kind.
The second one came from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, he emphasizes that the progression from nomadic tribe, to village, to kingdom to nation (to united nations?) is seen by many people as a natural progression, but is far from natural. It didn't HAVE to happen. Tribes in Amazon, Australia and Africa lived almost like stone age people all throughout modern history. Modern civilization is a form of organization so much more complex than the first hunters tribes that is totally unrecognizable from those. Once again, a difference in degree of complexity results in a difference in kind. And once again, this increased complexity was possible, but not guaranteed. We all kind of know that, but is hard to really grasp it.
And the third one, was the 2009 trip to Egypt. The stern contrast between the Pharaonic civilization, the modern world, the Islamic culture and the bare, barren dessert make you think a lot about what is good, what is bad, and what are the options. When looking at the evidence of the negative traits of religious fanaticism in the context of the survival challenges, you wonder "what if religious fanaticism was the only force capable of keeping the communities going on and surviving in this environment?,if the alternative is disappearing isn't fanaticism a good thing by comparison?" And you consider that a civilization with many failures, such as the western civilization, with corruption, waste, suffering, abuse and superficiality is better than no civilization at all, is better than no life at all (if you don't agree with that then you are a good candidate for a sci-fi villain with a plot to destroy the world). Thus, a few years ago, looking out the window at the Sahara dessert, I concluded that increased complexity is always desirable (living things vs stones, humans vs mosquitoes, Manhattan vs. cave man's tribe), but is not granted, is precious, not guaranteed. Luxor had to be carved out of stone with sweat and intention, but the empire died, and there is not guarantee that Europe, US, or any country won't collapse and implode, quite the contrary, it takes lots of effort to keep civilization going.
Ah, I should mention a 4th idea. A small one about the universe itself. This one is on Brian Greene's "The hidden universe: parallel universes and the deep laws of cosmos" (2011).
There is no Paris without humans, there is no humans without life, there is no life without solar system, there is no solar system without our galaxy and the universe... and he illustrates how the properties of the universe that made possible matter and the universe itself are so extremely unlikely that either the universe is product of of The Greatest fluke conceivable, or that there are so many universes, that probabilistically one of them simply HAD to have the properties our has. Properties that allow atoms, planets, stars.
And we are back to complexity, complexity is desirable and precious, but what's the enemy of complexity? chaos? nothingness? since school I thought there was a better villain: entropy. The entropy of a system always increases, complexity always decreases, that's just nature (or that's just God if you prefer that nomenclature). But just as I finished Shantaram, I started "In pursuit of the unknown. 17 equations that changed the world" I learned that entropy is a model that can't be applied to the universe because it doesn't consider attractive and long distance forces, such as gravity. So my long held conviction that entropy was the worst villain has now crumbled. The opposite of complexity is not easy to define, simplicity? triviality?
In any case, when I read this complexity theory in the novel I almost jumped around the room with my arms in the air (why are we allowed to do that for Worldcup or Superbowl matches, but not for books?). the afghan mafia lord is probably wrong about something: the world is not moving towards complexity, quite the contrary, in closed systems, entropy ensures complexity will decrease. But I fully agree with the second part of the statement "anything that kicks this along and helps it is good, and anything that hinders it is evil"
some favourite quotes:
“My culture had taught me all the wrong things well.”
“Good doctors have at least three things in common: they know how to observe, they know how to listen, and they’re very tired.”
“He was one of thousands of health professionals working in the city, with careers as distinguished in what they denied themselves as in what they achieved every working day. And what they achieved was no less than the survival of the city.”
“Justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.”
“Pain can exist without suffering, and it is also possible to suffer without feeling pain.”
“She’s a very special kind of chick. She needs to get all the hating done, like, before she can kind of cruise into the loving part”
“Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey”
“The universe has a nature, for and of itself, something like human nature, if you like, and its nature is to combine, and to build, and to become more complex. It always does this. If the circumstances are right, bits of matter will always come together to make more complex arrangements.”
Note: false; entropy is inevitable, complexity is just an statistical accident
“And that final complexity, that thing we are all moving to, is what I choose to call God. If you don’t like that word, God, call it the Ultimate Complexity. Whatever you call it, the whole universe is moving toward it.’”
Note: Very ineresting, god is work in progress Edit
‘In essence, you are right. Anything that enhances, promotes, or accelerates this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is good,’ he said, pronouncing the words so slowly, and with such considered precision, that I was sure he’d spoken the phrases many times. ‘Anything that inhibits, impedes, or prevents this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is evil.”
“Avoid chaos, in building houses and dividing land and so forth, by having an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of length. We call it a metre and, after many attempts, we decide upon a way to establish the length of that basic unit. In the same way, we can only avoid chaos in the world of human affairs by having an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of morality.”
“The girls danced into a million dreams.”
“Thoughts drift like ocean weeds and vanish in the distant, grey somnolency, unperceived and indeterminable.”
“We know who we are and we define what we are by references to the people we love and our reasons for loving them”
“Pure and precise language of his own—something more than slogans and less than proverbs”
“I knew that my life, there and then, was no more than a handful of sand squeezed into my clenched fist”
“This movement from the simple to the complex is built into the web and weave of the universe, and it’s called the tendency toward complexity. We’re the products of this complexification, and so are the birds, and the bees, and the trees, and the stars, and even the galaxies of stars. And if we were to get wiped out in a cosmic explosion, like an asteroid impact or something, some other expression of our level of complexity would emerge, because that’s what the universe does. And this is likely to be going on all over the universe.”
“The final or ultimate complexity—the place where all this complexity is going—is what, or who, we might call God. And anything that promotes, enhances, or accelerates this movement toward God is good. Anything that inhibits, impedes, or prevents it is evil.”
“Lord Frederick Roberts, because, you see, the man who killed my people in hundreds was so kind to his own soldiers that they called him Uncle Bobs. And they said that if he was in charge, everything would be well—Bobs your uncle”
“He was a rebel without a cause, in a world that doesn’t have enough rebels for the real causes”
“She’d confused honour with virtue. Virtue is concerned with what we do, and honour is concerned with how we do it”
“You can fight a war in an honourable way—the Geneva Convention exists for that very reason—and you can enforce the peace without any honour at all”
“Slowly, desolately, the fist of what we’d done unclenched the clawed palm of what we’d become”
Idriss,
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