A Trinity of Troubling Books

If nothing you read troubles you, you know nothing of learning

These three books are a mess! Here’s why:

Blood Meridian:

Brief Summary:

Stunning descriptions of unimaginable brutality, cruelty and suffering, followed by “He spat,” and then “They rode on.” Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. The End.

I have never read a book so bleak and murderous. It makes Lonesome Dove look like a kindergarten reader. But McCarthy’s descriptive ability is unparalleled; perhaps that’s the only redeeming quality. The Judge, who is the single survivor of this murderous tale, makes the only intellectual deposit for us to consider amidst all the bludgeoning, beheading and scalping. He is a Nietzschean blowhard who believes power, control, and most of all war are all that matter in life. Since he is 6’6” 320 pounds, stronger, smarter and more talented than anyone else, so it makes sense that he would hold this position.

But I have to ask, is strangling someone to death while you take a dump in an outhouse really a high water mark of existence? I’m sorry, Judge, you are no warrior sage come to enlighten, you are a wicked deviant, and the kid should have shot you when he had the chance; it would have shortened the book considerably, something I would have liked.

Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning

I remember reading somewhere that the only thing the British Empire was good for was the worldwide spread of the “F” word and soccer; other than that, it was a really bad idea that hurt a lot of people.

But is that true? Nigel Biggar doesn’t think so. So he wrote a book defending the British Empire. Can you do that? Wouldn’t that be like writing a book defending Darth Vader’s galactic empire? Aren’t empires, by definition, bad? What is an empire but the rich and powerful keeping the poor and weak under their thumb?

A LOT of people think Biggar is a moron for writing this book. In fact, I learned about it only after I heard that a speaking engagement of his was cancelled here in Vancouver, where I live, because of protests. This is a troublesome book indeed! But is Biggar on to something? Is a more nuanced understanding of the British Empire more in line with the truth, rather than simply “It's all bad?”

There was plenty of bad — Biggar doesn’t deny this, regularly throughout his book, he points out numerous instances where British rule was overbearing, disrespectful, unjust, racist, and murderous.

But there was also a lot of good. What bugs Biggar is the “Unscrupulous indifference to historical truth.” What about the Herculean effort to end slavery? What about all the investments in colonies which raised everyone's standard of living? What about the underlying humanitarian effort that stemmed from Christianity's desire to help the poor, feed the hungry, and free the captive? It was John Wesley who boomed from his pulpit, “Liberty is the right of every human creature, away with all whips, all chains, all compulsion.” He was one voice among thousands that inspired an army of people to travel the globe for all the right reasons. What about all the efforts to educate native populations, teaching them the ways of science and technology? What about the many British who fell in love with the cultures they inhabited and were instrumental in their preservation? What about the rule of law and the reduction of crime worldwide? Does the vision of eventual self-rule for the colonies count for nothing? What about the spread of democracy, the free press and religious liberty? How about the British Empire's willingness to self-criticize in order to improve? Can you imagine the Mongolian or Roman empires allowing themselves to be criticized?

So why all the bad press, if it wasn’t so bad? Biggar thinks a plot is afoot:

“The plan is to tear down the Anglo-American world order, which has prevailed since 1945…Denigrate the record, thus subverting self-confidence through exploiting guilt.”

But who is carrying out this plot, especially when so many anti-colonialist historians are white Europeans? To this little mystery, Biggar has only one shaky answer. According to him, one of Christianity's greatest drawbacks is a hypersensitivity to guilt. Christians often feel guilt when they shouldn’t. Biggar wants Westerners to knock off the guilt complex a little and restore pride in all the good that was accomplished through the empire. We can learn from the bad while at the same time celebrating the good.

What about Canada’s Residential Schools?

Since this topic comes up often in our part of the world, I was curious if Biggar had anything to say. He does.

In our anti-colonial climate, I have only ever seen racist comments attributed to John A Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister. But that’s not the whole story, John seems to be for the native’s as well:

“We must remember that they are the original owners of the soil, of which they have been dispossessed by the covetousness or ambition of our ancestors..I hope to see some day the Indian race represented by one of themselves on the floor of the House of Commons.”

As for the schools themselves, Biggar wants more nuance. He wants us to understand that they were well-meaning, only that poor planning and a lack of funding, without proper oversight, led to horrible abuse in many cases. To be sure, there were lots of problems, however:

1. Indigenous leaders lobbied for residential schools. He quotes Chief Paulus Claus of the Mohawk who said, “We cannot be a people unless we conform ourselves to the ways of the white man.”

2. Residential school was entirely voluntary until 1894 and generally voluntary until 1920

3. It was not a universally negative experience for the estimated 150 thousand who went (only 1/3 of native children), but positive perspectives are systematically rebuffed or ignored.

4. The rhetoric of “genocide“ and the discovery of “mass graves” are very misleading. The language links residential schools with such atrocities as the Gulag, Nazi concentration camps or the killing fields of Cambodia, which is not at all the case.

I couldn’t help but think that Biggar is not wrong on some of his points. That said, Empires become empires not because they are nice to people. Maybe thanks to Biggar's hard work, we could conclude that as far as empires go, the British one was the best. But that may or may not be saying much. As the American empire lustily eyes our Canadian land, I wonder, will we get swallowed up? There would be nothing we could do to prevent it. It would be empires doing what empires do, I guess, but that’s not good news for me. I love Canada the way it is, just like many of the indigenous populations would have been thinking before the British showed up.

The World In A Grain

This might be one of the worst titles going. A book about sand is already going to be coming out of the gates late. The status of sand in our world is hardly a scintillating topic for most of us.

How about:

• Sinking Sands

• Nothing Left in the Hourglass,

• Sand Crisis: Humanities Undoing

• Vanishing Beaches, Sinking Islands, and the Greatest Theft of all Time

Something to grab a potential reader’s attention. What did grab my attention, however, was the content. We have a bit of a sand problem. Here it is in a nutshell. Sand is used to make just about everything, it seems. Concrete, cement, asphalt, glass, computer chips, even the elastic band on your underwear. Human populations are booming, and everyone lives in cities now. Cities are made of sand. Here is the cruel twist. Desert sand is no good for construction. So the sand we build with has to come from river beds, beaches and ocean bottoms. The need makes for greed, and as supplies diminish, islands disappear, whole beaches are stripped down to nothing, farmland gets scalped, and ocean floors along with their coral reefs get demolished. There is a sand mafia now, people are getting killed over those little annoyances you feel in your sandal on your way home from the beach!

Solution:

Someone needs to figure out how to use desert sand — solve this mystery, and this book becomes the yawner the title makes it out to be.