iGuerilla, by John Sutherland

In this mostly ridiculous book, John Sutherland details the things in this world that he hates and thinks we should all fear. That includes Muslims, Arabs, and Communists, amongst others. He tells us why these things are awful and why they’re getting worse (well, except for Communism, which is responsible for all the new bad stuff).

Sutherland's iGuerilla: Reshaping the Face of War in the 21st Century careens back and forth attempting to explain how technology is making the world a scary place, while comparing everything to the Fall of Rome or the Rise of Hitler or Pearl Harbor. Anything he doesn’t like is immediately compared to Hitler, and there is nothing bad said about that which he loves – the great countries of America and Israel.

The book is full of stupid and annoying metaphors, always completely overblown and often mixed with other imagery. His language is sneering, violent, and sensationalistic:

They are barbarous and yet tech-savvy denizens of the modern world. They resemble a schizophrenic cross between Attila the Hun and Mark Zuckerburg. (sic)

He thinks in terms of pure Good and Evil, and thinks all change is bad. In his world, the Cold War was good because at least he knew where he stood. Now everything is awful and getting worse, and it’s Russia’s fault for not being tough enough. His logic is overly simplistic, ignoring anything inconvenient.

iGuerilla is researched from Wikipedia, a number of low-brow or right-wing media outlets, and a scattering of reputable sources just for appearances. He also seems to be relying upon his fanciful memory of history class. The author seems fearful about technology and yet also largely ignorant, using ancient terminology like “cyberspace” that no self-respecting author of a book about technology would ever utter. He is vague in describing the threats that our “enemies” pose, but they involve computers.

In the end, this whole awful mess of a book is designed to instil fear in its reader. Yet, like the godawful right-wing news channels Sutherland appears to enjoy so much, his book is shallow, misleading, and woefully lacking in subtlety. Just read this abominable passage and I’m sure you’ll agree this is not a book I could in good conscience recommend:

There’s no shortage of enemies determined to strike Americans. We will face our Arminius just as Rome did...

…We no longer have the luxury of focusing on the very visible state dragon. We now face a snake pit filled with a myriad of non-state threats and their shady rogue state sponsors…

…They can attack the homeland although they aren’t an existential threat – yet. They aren’t toting nukes or superbugs – yet.

The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science

"Intelligence is no inoculation against bias." 

Perhaps to some, the above quote is blindingly obvious, but I suspect that most of us, myself included, like to think that with acquired knowledge comes freedom from all forms of ignorance - biases included. Alas, that's only true up until a point. Intelligent people are far from perfect, and we all have our own biases in life - some more damaging than others. 

I think that we all, more or less, over-estimate our own intelligence, too, and that probably contributes to our idea of intelligence as precluding us from the trap of bias. We assume that bias and ignorance go hand in hand because we see these in the people around us, and yet that's not very likely, is it? We're all biased in some way, regardless of intelligence. 

This a key theme of Will Storr's book, The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, which I bought after reading a few Jon Ronson books and being promised by the algorithms at Amazon that Storr was popular among Ronson fans. And I was not disappointed. 

I admit that I bought the book because I like books about science and psychology. The title made me think that Storr would simply berate religious types throughout the book. So there's my bias: I'm an atheist, and whilst I believe in a live-and-let-live world, I enjoy reading books that tell me I'm right about the world, and then educate me with lots of stuff I didn't know, too. 

The book begins with Storr out in the Aussie outback, talking with a famous creationist. I was excited. This was the beginning of some creationist-bashing. I love evolution and books about the history of our world. 

Indeed, Storr is also an atheist and a man of science (well, an interest in science). He makes no secret of the fact that the creationist is undeniably wrong in his beliefs, and yet he makes another interesting point: the creationist is a highly intelligent man. 

In our modern social media world we like to engage in tribalism just like the days of yore. Liberals and conservatives, religious and non-religious alike, we are evolved but nonetheless ruled by our tribal mentality, and we forget sometimes that people on the other side - the "them" that Ronson wrote about, are often just as intelligent, if not more, than "we" are. Yes, they can be wrong and still smart. So can we. 

That should be obvious but it's not. Or at least it's something that we need to remind ourselves of. As the quote I began this article with observes, our adversaries aren't necessarily stupid because they're wrong, and we aren't necessarily right because we're smart. 

Storr goes on from the anti-evolutionist to speak with holocaust deniers, past life regressionists, homeopaths, Illuminati-believers, and other people who are absolutely, 100% wrong in their beliefs. He doesn't mock them, but instead explains through science how they came to be this way. How could intelligent people believe such unintelligent things? 

I've not read a horror book in a long time but this one gave me the chills. Reading it, I realized just how unreliable the human mind is. We cannot trust our memories, nor can we rely upon our perceptions. Our brains make stories to justify gut feelings. No matter how scientific we try to be, we are only human and we make mistakes. 

Storr also takes on skeptics and the defenders of science to show that it is not just the religious people who are wrong, or the ones with non-mainstream beliefs. The title, in fact, is a tad misleading in that regard. At the end of this book I felt I couldn't trust my own mind. I worried I'd start seeing ghosts because maybe they were real and I'd deluded myself, or maybe they wouldn't be real but my brain would see them anyway.... 

The conclusion to this fantastic book is that humans are natural story-tellers and we don't even realize that we're telling stories. Liars don't usually know that they're lying. The heretics don't mean to be wrong and they're not idiots; they're just flawed humans like all of us. We all think of ourselves as the hero of a story, but:

"Heretics are often betrayed by the spotless coherence of their plots. They tell the clearest tales with the most perfect separation of good guy and bad. It is why they should be trusted." 

Read this book. It will change you. 

Them: Adventures with Extremists, by Jon Ronson

Lately I've been on a bit of a Jon Ronson binge. I first read his book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, and then worked through The Psychopath Test. Going back through his bibliography I've now gotten to Them: Adventures with Extremists.

I really like Ronson's style. I was a huge fan of Hunter S. Thompson and although it might seem a bizarre comparison, I like Ronson for the same reasons. He may be timid and neurotic and full of self-doubt - the very opposite of Thompson - but their penchant for adventure and ability to weave a narrative is inspiring.

In this outing, Ronson goes, as the title suggests, on adventures with extremists. And he's not being liberal with his use of the word "adventure." He is outed as a Jew at a jihadi training center, followed by security agents for the world's most secretive elite, and infiltrates the Bilderberg group with a pre-fame Alex Jones.

What I love about Ronson is his ability to humanize the weirdos. Not just weirdos, but people that you really, really want to hate. In this book he tackles Islamic fundamentalists, the Ku Klux Klan, and conspiracy theorists. He paints them in a sympathetic light, causing the reader to laugh gently and perhaps wonder what went wrong to make these people the way they now are.

Ronson also weaves his stories well - connecting seemingly disparate strands. In this book he connects all these extremists not by the fact that they're seemingly crazy or evil, but rather by seeing similarities in their viewpoints and following that story to its logical and, frankly, exciting finale.