URSABLOG: Reading Through The Past And Into The Future

The New Year always seems a little artificial to me, especially as for many of us it’s bang in the middle of festivities where new resolutions seem doomed to fail. I prefer to think of the New Year beginning in September, because that’s when new beginnings were embarked on when we were at school: a change in gear, a step up, new experiences, new classmates.

Nevertheless as the change of the number of the year approaches – and the days left in 2024 decrease – it is for most of us a time to reflect on what has happened in the last twelve months, and what could happen (as opposed to what should happen) in the year ahead.

I look back on 2024 with some regret. I have not achieved what I wanted to – at least not in the extent I intended to, or dreamed of – this time last year. This makes me feel almost impatient for the year to end, draw a line under it, and move on to the next one. But as I examine what I have done, rather than what has been achieved, I can see not only why some things didn’t happen, but what has been done instead. In trying for one thing, and not reaching that goal, I tend to feel a failure at the same time failing to see, and acknowledge, what progress has been made.

Books for example. I have an app called Goodreads on which I can scan the books I have read and keep a track of what I thought of them on finishing them. As with most apps these days, there is a gaming element to it, to encourage you to achieve a target, in this case how many books you will read in a year. As with most years I set a target of 50 books, but unlike most years this year I have failed to achieve that target, not even close. This, on the face of it, is not up to my normal standards, but it doesn’t feel that way to me.

The reason maybe because there were some pretty long, important, and not that easy to read books in that list, that took me weeks rather than days to complete. But it is these books that have stuck in my mind, almost to the point of me wanting to go back and reread them, something I almost never do.

Five of them deserve rereading for different reasons, fiction and non-fiction. They all deal with important themes even though they couldn’t be more different and have informed my thinking, and consequently my actions and writing.

That two of them were picked up at random in bookshops because I just fancied the look of them – not recommended by some algorithm or AI-related suggestion – shows the importance of unguided choices, and trusting instinct in life. The other three follow on from other things I have read already, a continuation of a road already set out on.

By far the most influential from a geopolitical perspective is a book written almost twenty five years ago: The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History, by Philip Bobbitt, a professor of constitutional law, an historian of nuclear strategy as well as serving in the White House, the Senate, the State Department and the National Security Council in both Democratic and Republican administrations. It is long, but informative and challenging, and it caused me to rethink the course of history, and how geopolitics, and war, are a necessary part of human development, however evil their effects are. It also made me think about where we are now, and where we are heading to.

I agree with Bobbit that we are now living in a world of market states – rather than nation states defined by identity and ethnicity – where the relationships between these market states is as important as the desires and goals of the states themselves. The book also led me to conclude that all states – however they are made up – are legitimate in themselves, despite whether they are structured democratically or autocratically (or somewhere in between), and are themselves changing, structurally, almost without it being noticed.

The victory of the west over communism – or as Bobbit puts it parliamentarianism over totalitarianism – with the fall of the iron curtain brought into being fresh tensions exacerbated by the rise of globalism even as that globalism was being trumpeted as part of that victory. The rise of China – the extent of which even Bobbit could not foresee – and the embedding of their world view in global trade, has caused a reaction from the previously sole superpower – the USA – in ways unthinkable even ten years ago. That many of the people I speak to confess uncertainty and confusion over what lies ahead should not be surprising as market states adjust to a changing world whilst still thinking that they are nation states, and the old rules should still apply. As we are finding out (from Putin, to Trump, to Xi, to Biden, to Modi let alone the rest of the world) we are living in a world of unintended consequences closer to chaos theory – where the flap of a butterfly’s wings in the Amazonian rain forest can cause a tornado in Texas – than to the predictable statecraft practiced by seasoned statesmen and women.

There are many themes in the book – historical and political – that I would like to go back and study, but for shipping at least I found at least a different framework to express myself, and found some comfort in understanding the reasons why we are living through a period of profound uncertainty and confusion. We will have to be nimble, curious, non-judgmental and open-minded to navigate this troubling new world. I believe we cannot afford to be too moralistic and prejudiced, whether about national identity, and national traits – our own or anyone else’s – before taking time to investigate and understand other perspectives: there are many, and it takes time to sift through them, even though time is short. Anyone surprised – as I was – about the decisiveness of Donald Trump’s victory in the US Presidential Election should start by challenging themselves about where they get their news and opinions from, and make efforts to learn and understand opposing points of view, however unpalatable they may be.

Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, another long, and at times difficult book was ultimately rewarding. I found strange echoes of the time the novel is set – before the First World War, at a exclusive sanatorium in Davos in the Swiss Alps – and now. How people in the novel are self-obsessed to the point of ridiculousness in their comfort zones: the comfort of clinging to their way of thinking, their own personal growth, relationships, feelings and destiny in a world that they cannot escape until they get better, or when they die. The conclusion of the novel is jarring and inspiring at once. I felt a better person, but also a slightly more sadder and more jaundiced one, when I turned the final page and shut the book.

Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, by controversial – but brilliant – Chinese author Mo Yan, is a novel set amongst Chinese peasants from the time of the victory of the CCP in 1949 completing the Chinese revolution all the way through to the 1990s. It is a book worth reading in its own right – absurd, fantastical, funny, tragic – it was also extremely informative about Chinese society during those crucial years. I finished it concluding I had really known nothing about the development of Chinese society, and was again determined to not believe the hype as far as news about China is concerned, wherever it comes from.

For the longer view – bearing in mind that in the long run we’re all dead anyway – I found Doris Lessing’s opening novel of the “Canopus in Argos: Archives” series, Shikasta mind-blowingly creative and thought provoking. The beauty of the writing itself is enough to recommend it, but the originality of the ideas gave me – paradoxically enough – some peace of mind when considering the world I find myself in at present.

Finally, in a short but almost revelation-inducing novella that was one of those books I picked up by chance, Antonio Tabucchi – an Italian novelist I had never heard of – gave me, in Requiem: A Hallucination a fresh way of looking at my life, and the people I have spent time with during it. The importance of relationships, stories, perspective, food and drink, memories, love (and the loss of it), wrapped up in such a slim volume took me out of myself and into the dreamlike and empty Lisbon where it is set. Apart from firing up a renewed desire to visit Portugal – inexplicably missing from travels so far – it took me back into my own memories and challenged my role in them. Food – and drink – for thought that left me changed, and I think for the better.

If you have got this far, then I apologise profusely for this self-indulgent trawl through my reading experience this year, but I don’t have many people I can share my reading with, or the thoughts and reflections that come from them. Thank you for bearing with me. But in sharing these thoughts with you, I have realised that although I failed to reach many of the targets I had set myself – including reading fifty books – I have been able to put these ‘failures’ into some context.

I tend to view my life like climbing up a mountain where you can’t see the peak. You struggle sometimes, pushing through cold headwinds, being lashed by rain and blinded by snow, wondering whether it is all worth the effort, with your muscles and senses screaming that this is all folly. Then you are tempted to just lie down, and let the inclement weather and the harsh environment take whatever strength you have left and assign you to oblivion. Then the sun comes out, and the going gets easier, and you pause a while and look back from where you have come from, and reflect a little, take some sustenance and comfort from it, and keep going, to the top of the mountain, which you still cannot see.

As it turns out, some of the books that I have read this year have been wise and thoughtful companions, helping me to keep going, giving me hope. Other books – which I will not mention here – have been fickle, shallow and faithless friends who disappeared immediately when the going got tough. This is true of my life too: there are the siren songs of those who would sing you to shipwreck for the sake of their own needs and desires. And then there are those who – however foolish and frustrating my own actions, or stumbling missteps, have been – remain by my side, determined to assist my ascent.

As I wait with impatience for this year to end, as I reflect on the losses and pain I have suffered, I am also finding hope and strength in those books, those friends, who have given me the inspiration to carry on, better informed, with a greater understanding of the world, and of life. It’s not a bad ending to 2024, and not a bad foundation to start 2025. I wish you, your families, colleagues and friends good health, hope, love, happiness and strength for a fulfilling and successful new year ahead. It’s the least I can do: I have a feeling that we are going to need as much of them as we can get.

Simon Ward