Tale of Two Kinds of Books

During early new year and the vacation before that, I had a tough time enjoying anything other than the little work I managed to get done . Then it slowly improved. Here is how it happened.

Few months ago, before the vacation, I began reading a lot of non-technical books on various topics like history, arab spring, religion etc. The authors of these were highly educated. But almost all of them had selective amnesia. Each would claim objectivity in the foreword and then proceed to glorify one side and demonize the other. The Arab narrative would go like: ‘Our invasions brought architecture and science to Andalusia while the crusaders brought death and destruction’. Israeli narrative would be ‘We made this godforsaken desert bloom amidst savages’ and so on till the information age. When you superimpose those black and white views you look at an abyss of darkness : hate, narcissism and bigotry majestically chronicled. Even if you choose one side, there is no escaping the depression caused by the vileness of the other and extremities of your own. After it has shocked me enough, it made me a very bitter person. I ranted against anything remotely religious or sectarian, I was not sure about believing any news/opinion at all, I felt like burning those books to express my anger, I probably hated many things about humanity .. I dont think I was more disturbed on a non-personal issue ever.

Then, somehow a book on urban engineering led me to a series of books that were basically a history of both ancient and modern engineering. These books stated merely numbers, procedures, scale and impact. It took me through the stories of the Interstate Highway System of US that shaped its destiny, the Statfjord oil field that effectively ran the motor of the world, Japan’s Bullet train system, Ferdinand de Lesseps who connected half the world with Suez Canal and lost half his men and fortune trying to build the Panama Canal, Norman Borlaug whose efforts saved more lives in the third world than any philanthropic organization did and so on. These are glowing tributes to our ability to build and fix things, courage and thought. And they are not in books, not in our imagination .. but in front of us .. still working. They ‘connect the world’ in the true sense. No matter from which side you view these, it is hard to find anything that is depressing in these. They are sources of pure joy. It surprises me that science, logic and technology etc. are usually associated with lack of any emotional aspect to them and yet they result in such fulfillment and sense of purpose. Anyway, that calmed me down a lot. I still work the same amount but I worry much less.

It does bother me that burning a revered ‘holy’ book causes the world to go in flames while the most reviled products of science, nukes, proved to be the best peace-keepers we ever had. I does not bother me in the ‘I hate this shit’ way but in the ‘We need to fix this shit soon’ way. I struggle to explain people when they ask me what I think ‘value’ is. Hopefully, you will find the story useful.