Sunday, June 22, 2025

Book Review: The Secret Perfume of Birds

Image: The cover of the book is a powder blue background with two hoopoes- birds with long curved bills, rufous bodies, and black and white wings and crests- in the upper left and lower right. In the center in large black print is "the secret perfume of birds." Below that in smaller print is "uncovering the science of avian scent" and below that "danielle whittaker."

I was excited when I first discovered Danielle Whittakers book on avian scent-  The Secret Perfume of Birds - in part because I was struck by how little I knew about the subject. There are many myths, old and new, surrounding birds ability, or inability, to smell. This book not only taught me a lot about this subject, but also helped me understand some things about myself and other humans. This book is well written, albeit in conflicting styles at times. It also functions in part as a memoir of an unintentional scientist. Whitaker had an unusual path to becoming a researcher, which adds an interesting element of storytelling. It also shows how people with diverse educational backgrounds often find important ways to collaborate with researchers from other fields. At times I felt like the switch between memoir and harder science made the book geared towards conflicting audiences. Sometimes this served the text, but others it did not.

One of the things that struck me early on about this book, that made me quite excited, was the author's discussion of social issues and how they pertain to sciences and the history of research on birds. In many texts, we learn information about great ornithologist of the past such as John James Audubon. Times have been changing, and some Audubon Societies have voted to shift their names to something other than a man who enslaved people and shot birds that are portrayed in his famous artwork in order to pose the dead bodies. It was interesting to see a text not only mentioned Audubon's history, but also call attention to one of the times that he really messed up in both his research methods and his conclusions. Due to his extremely faulty studies of turkey vultures (and through ineptitude mislabeled black vultures,) a myth was spread that birds do not have a keen sense of smell in his publication of his results. We now know the turkey vultures can smell carrion from miles away- they are one of the few species of birds whose evidence for keen sense of smell is widely accepted. Other ornithologists called him out on this. The issues remained. 

When discussing the exclusion and oppression of women in sciences, the author draws the conclusion that the reason that smell was not given as much attention in ornithology and other research is that women like her were the ones studying it. I think this is a bit more complicated as she discusses men rebutting claims that birds could not smell early on. She bases much of this on personal (accurate, believable) experiences being shut down by men regarding her hypotheses and findings. It is also worth noting that the biggest beneficiaries of things like affirmative action are white women, but race is not discussed much until the end. She also discusses the myth that birds cannot smell you (being the reason that returning nestlings is ok.) While well intentioned, it is not true, and luckily many warnings have been updated to say returning baby birds to the nest even if they do smell like you isn't a problem. In my experience, most people working in in bird and other animal rescue are women. So it seems the proliferation of the myths came for many sources. None of this is to say that we should not be aware of these biases as it is well known that women are over represented in many fields that involve the care of and understanding of other animals

Another reason why the myth of birds having an inability to smell proliferated was due to incorrect hypotheses about brain size.  You may have heard the phrase bird brain used to describe someone negatively. The reality is that while birds have smaller brains, the neurons within are much more densely packed. This is why we find out through research, and to be quite honest through observation of anyone with an open mind, that birds are able to think, feel, have culture, individual differences, and so on. We also learned through research like that of the authors that birds have keen senses of smell that are important in many aspects of their lives. Through her own and others research, the author has found evidence that smell influences birds' social lives, mate choices, health and well-being, traits of offspring, and even the proliferation of a healthy microbiome. I will not go into too much detail of these because I want to focus a little bit more on how science was written about in this book.

I did not have the same reaction that some other readers had to the science reporting in this book. There is more nuance to it for me. I believe that the biggest error is that this book seems to be written for the layman at times and at others is geared toward people with science and statistical backgrounds. As a result, when the author reports an observation and then refers to that observation as not being "statistically significant," folks with a science/statistics background know that this means that that result could be caused by chance (or human error/bias.) We know that this is something that needs to be studied further or something that may not exist at all as a result. People without any science or statistics background may read these passages and take away from them that the result was proof of a behavior. Whittaker choosing to mix many of her statistically significant results with other observations that may be caused by pure chance or coincidence can be seen as irresponsible with a mixed audience.

On the other hand, there is a large issue in science publication wherein only certain results that support certain hypotheses end up being published. However, it is very important for us to also publish when studies do not support the hypothesis, but these papers aren't as sexy and as a result, are not found in journals nearly as much. With this reality in mind, I found the author's humility regarding what she found in many of her studies to be refreshing. She discusses the results in a rather young field and admits when her team made mistakes, didn't find what they were looking for, or where the methodology even if it does provide a cause and effect result, may not tell the whole picture. The last point is extremely important and something that I find highly frustrating in a lot of science reporting on other animals. I thought the author did a good job of this provided that the reader understands what some of the terminology is ahead of time.

The ethics reporting in this book started off strong but ended up mixed or disappointing at times. While she did highlight some of the problems with researchers like Audubon and mentioned that some studies with birds are cruel, she goes on to discuss many of these things later to support her points. She does so not only without criticism, but with faulty euphemisms to turn off the reader's (and I assume her own) empathy and cognitive dissonance. I would honestly rather someone report on horrific abuse of animals in sciences without comment, than to do so in a way that falsely placates the warranted worries of the reader. I also found some of her descriptions of her own actions with birds to go against her assertion that research causes stress that must be accounted for and reduced as much as possible. None of this is unusual for science writing, but I expected better from an author claiming to go against the grain in terms of oppression in science. We need to accept that the idea of "no difference that humans chose to see" does not mean suffering did not occur. I believe anyone who's had brain surgery or injury can explain pretty definitively that is it is not like getting a paper cut yet it is always treated that way and text like these, and those are people who can actually grasp what has happened and why.

I believe her reporting regarding evolutionary advantages to certain aspects of avian scent to be frustrating at times. This is another thing that is very common in science texts and I don't really understand why. Perhaps it is the need to be able to streamline things into a simple conclusion, or just seeing what we want to see. We know from the entire study of evolution that traits existing currently in any living creature are not all entirely advantageous. We know the evolution is something that takes place over an extremely long amount of time with traits appearing randomly and some proliferating through selective breeding. However, since you cannot isolate or remove one aspect of anyone, other traits will proliferate with those some of them being advantageous in others being not at all- sickle cell anemia being protective of malaria infection for instance. There are also tons of individual differences especially psychologically. Whitaker goes out of her way a lot to talk about why every single thing birds do is due to evolutionary breeding advantages. Maybe birds sometimes just like having sex. Maybe some birds that are paired for the season, or especially for life, don't mind raising the young that is genetically sired by another bird because they like their partner. Or maybe they're just used to that partner and the comfort of staying there outweighs the need to genetically pass on information. Think about how many things humans do that are not evolutionarily advantageous. Other animals like humans are messy in this arena. I don't think we really need it as much time spent on evolutionary reasoning for results as they are interesting enough on their own.

The large section at the end of the book on microbiomes is where I learned the most. There was so much interesting information in there that I'd never heard before and the sections which included human information ended up making things more personal. I have hyperosmia. My sense of smell being so strong and my reactions to scents both ruin my life at times. Post-covid-19-lockdown era (covid is not over,) we know that many human beings have also experienced changes in both the scents they emit and what they can/not smell. I never realized how much physical distancing would have to do with that though until reading this book. Discussions on the combination of microbiomes through affection and socialization being important was extremely interesting. To folks wno commonly DNF books, even if you're familiar with things in the first chunks of the book I really recommend reading through the last part.

I realize that my review appears highly critical, but this is not because I did not enjoy nor get a lot out of this book. On the contrary, I learned a great number of things and this vastly expanded my understanding of birds. I now find myself thinking about avian scent research when I'm out birding, adding an entirely new aspect to the way I understand these birds' interactions and lives in general. I chose to focus critically on the writing based in part on how other reviewers discussed this book. All of this is to say that I recommend reading this book even with these criticisms in mind. Going into it already knowing to look out for some of these things enriched my experience and allowed me to focus on the things that I really wanted to learn. I would definitely read more by this author and I look forward to hearing about new advances in research on avian olfaction. 

This was also posted to my storygraph and goodreads.

Monday, June 16, 2025

Book Review: Red Flag Warning

Image: the cover of the book is an overexposed low contrast image of flames in colors of white and red. Across the top and black is Red Flag Warning. Below that in white is mutual aid and survival in California's fire country. Below that in Black smaller letters is edited by Dani Burlison and Margaret Elysia, introduction by Manjula Martin.

Red Flag Warning, edited by Dani Burlison and Margaret Elysia, is necessary reading in current times. This collection of essays covers a lot of ground for such a small amount of pages. I found all of the entries to be very well written and edited. The use of space in this book is quite efficient and appreciated. 

Equal parts affecting and pragmatic, RFW manages to capture the horrors and desperation of wildfire while also understanding it as an inevitable and sometimes useful part of the landscape. I am in my 40s now and grew up in SoCal until I was about 9 years old. I remember back then the droughts, fires, and heat waves. Over these few decades since, it is frankly terrifying to see how much ecological disaster and collapse has accelerated. Now I watch the destruction from afar, gaining glimpses but no longer experiencing it the same way. The entries in this book bring the issue more front and center and grounded me more in the dire situations now plaguing fire prone areas. 

The way some of the authors capture the experience of terror and loss has left me thinking about them for days. The book can be difficult at times for this reason, but not without purpose. We also learn the many ways that communities came together to solve problems that the state would not solve. We learn about love, resilience, and cooperation even when that alone at times is not enough to save us.

There are multiple entries discussing indigenous knowledge about controlled burning and other methods of living alongside fire. I liked that it did mention that all humans cause disruptions of the ecosystem, which burning can be part of in a negative way. The reason this stood out to me was that some writing about (and even by) indigenous people can be tokenizing- treating all indigenous folks as a single homogenous tribe of mythical entities living in pristine wilderness. We can acknowledge that humans have had diverse and disruptive effects on other species and environments in every location that we have traveled to. We can acknowledge that colonialism exponentially exacerbated these effects. We can note what we have learned over time and we can also take wisdom from the past. There were effective methods of preventing fire via controlled burning and combining that with the new limitations caused by the population levels and ecological collapse of today provides accessible solutions. Indigenous people have been instrumental in finding ways to preserve their own land and communities - both environmentally and culturally. They have also taught other people throughout the area how to preserve the wisdom of the past and apply it to the future. They do so with generosity and solidarity, despite so many being descendents of colonizers who led us to the catastrophic present in fire country.

The book also focuses on the myriad of people often left out of discussions around wildfire. Many of the stories we see on the news are about wealthy celebrities who have lost their third home in some affluent area of California. Many of the people most affected by wildfire are those of smaller rural low-income communities, indigenous people living on reservations, immigrants-especially undocumented folks, and people of other marginalized communities. There is also an entry on the fire fighters who are also prisoners, putting their lives on the line to protect these communities, only to find themselves unable to find employment when they are out due to unjust restrictions. 

I like that they included an essay on the financial effects of fire. I didn't realize until I was reading it that we often don't have this sort of economic viewpoint in many leftist or mutual aid based texts because we understandably don't want to center capitalism. It was enlightening seeing someone sort out some of the statistics to create a wider view of the effects of disaster. For instance, I had never realized that state of emergency designations are often based on economic loss and other numbers, not relative to population. This means that smaller communities, even if the fires are far more dangerous and devastating in that location, will often not be labeled as in a state of emergency because there are not enough people there to meet some sort of criteria. This happens on top of the other oppressions facing these communities.

The only criticism I really have about this text is how discussions of other animals were treated. Some of the most horrific stories I've heard about these fires are of farmed animals who were left trapped, unable to escape, as the flames engulfed them alive or of already threatened wild animals being surrounded. The only real reference is to domesticated animals are as "livestock" and there are few things more capitalist than designating others as property. Other animals are unable to offer their stories and this book so they rely on us to have to tell them for them. Near the end there is mention of one community who offers a place for some people to take their animals. However the rescue networks for animals, both domesticated and through wildlife rehabilitation, are really important parts of this puzzle that I would have liked to be better represented and discussed. Mentioning animals as an afterthought without truly immersing them and discussion shows a lack of scope in terms of understanding some of the greatest contributors to climate change and those who are most affected by it outside of humans. 

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph

Book Review: The Starving Saints


Image: the cover is a black background rimmed in gold with a painting of a religious saint in the center, a gold sun behind her head, draped in cloth from head to toe, with orange hands holding up a square partition from a beehive. Inside the face of the saint are painted three small faces in shades of pink and red with their mouths open. Across the top in pink Old English style lettering is the title of the book. At the bottom in white letters is Caitlin Starling - author of the death of Jane Lawrence.

I almost passed on Caitlin Starling's The Starving Saints. Medieval stories usually aren't my jam. I have enjoyed Starling's other work and this one seemed surreal and insane enough to give it a shot. The cover is also fantastic. I am very glad I picked this one up. 

So many reviewers referred to this book as a fever dream and they were not kidding. The world building in this book is excellent and the build up to the more fantastical of the horror aspects is complete with real life horrors of the time. I could imagine myself there, with the smells, sights, growling insides, and uncertainty. The desperation of starvation and war is clear while also transporting the reader into a time in history that none of us have ever touched. 

Starling manages to navigate historical fiction and fantasy in a way that feels very real. I not only pictured the characters in this story, but also people throughout these histories who committed their own myths and explanations for events around them to writing. Without the sort of scientific knowledge that we have these days, people came up with descriptions for things that made sense given the knowledge or belief systems of the time. I imagined what these people must have felt and thought while trying to understand the world around them. I imagined the sense of betrayal the religious must have felt when atrocities abounded regardless of how hard they prayed. This book does very well to capture all of that. It is a story of how those assumptions can be turned against people. 

I'm being as deliberately vague as possible as so much happens in this story that is best for the reader to experience without having read about it beforehand. One note I want to make is that the queer aspects of this story were quite enmeshed and believable. There are often criticisms from people, even in the realms of fantasy where you have flying lizards, that certain stories remain unbelievable when characters of certain demographics are included. I really liked the way Starling included a variety of strong, queer, and flawed women. Much like her other book that I read, The Luminous Dead, the theme of conflict and betrayal between women is there. There is darkness, light, and everything in between all the way to the end. 

This was also posted to my goodreads and Storygraph.

Saturday, June 14, 2025

Book Review: The Power of Adrienne Rich

Image: The cover of the book is a white background with "the power of Adrienne Rich" ,in large black letters across the top. Below that in red is "a biography" and I'm black "Hilary Holaday."Below that is a black and white photo of Rich, wearing a black long sleeve shirt, a short haircut, and holding her hand to her chin held in a light fist while looking directly into the camera.      

I initially sought out Hilary Holladay's The Power of Adrienne Rich due to my knowledge of her as a feminist during and after the second wave movements. I had been exposed to her quotes and writings sparsely throughout my life, but having been born in the early '80s, many of these things came to my awareness long after they had occurred. The retelling of history tends to change it over time. I've written before about how mischaracterizations of certain radical feminists caused me to have a prejudiced idea of who they were and miss out on their wisdom (or just the complexity of their flaws.) I had not heard too many messy things about Adrienne Rich, but she still got the same mischaracterization of many lesbian feminists of the time- of being a man hating, sex hating, creature of some sort. I find myself more and more wanting to read about things through the lens of the time period where they took place. Now that I've read this book, I've come to see Adrienne Rich as another historical feminist that was open to expanding her viewpoint outside of the limits of a specific wave. Though I still feel that important pieces are missing.

I find it difficult to review biography and memoir as it feels like reviewing someone's actual life. I will do my best here to review the book itself. I have never been much of a poetry person, so I knew this was a slightly odd choice for me as a biography about a poet is obviously going to include a lot about poetry. In terms of personal taste, I do admit that I felt bored at times reading parts of the book that focuses on her upbringing and early life as a well respected poet. It took about 12 chapters before I reached anything about her feminism and it wasn't until the last couple of chapters of the book that we got down to her activism, belief systems, and so on in the sort of detailed way that I was hoping for. I don't think that my personal taste should reflect on the book or biographer's skill in that regard. 

You can tell that this book was a labor of love for the author who is a biographer and poetry scholar. She clearly did an immense amount of research on every aspect of Rich's life that she could get her hands on. I think that this often worked in the book's favor, but also could hurt it at times. I know that, when speaking about someone's life, relationships are going to be a huge part of that. I also know that in poetry and any sort of writing, review processes and public criticism can be issues. (I say, uncomfortably, as I write my own review.) However, I felt disappointed at times that this book focused so much on relationships to the point that the smallest disagreements or shifts were given more space that I'd have rather seen dedicated to other topics. The extensive detail of every review and reaction to them also seemed to be a bit much. 

If relationships and wider criticism were to encompass more, I think a better picture of Rich and those around her could have been achieved. For instance, there are multiple mentions of Rich being friends with and a supporter of Janice Raymond, one of the most virulently anti-trans second wave feminists. Raymond claims to have been counseled by Rich while writing her paranoid rantings about the dangers of trans women. I would have liked if we learned about Raymond's flaws in terms of ideology and how Rich's own beliefs fit into that, rather than about petty disagreements or falling outs that are inevitable in anyone's life. We learn about Audre Lorde's many unreciprocated sexual advances that could have been better spent on a larger examination of Lorde and Rich's growth as feminists. This was covered somewhat, but was so interesting that I wanted more.

Rich grew up in a privileged household with a patriarchal, overbearing father who's internalized anti-semitism affected her greatly. Her mother had bipolar disorder and struggles with stability. The combination of these two things led to Rich being psychologically and emotionally neglected even with a financially privileged upbringing. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in her early 20s as well which added great challenges throughout her entire life. Very young, she noticed that among the poetry she had access to, only male poets were writing about women and Rich wanted to correct that. It would be a long time before Rich found her way to feminism, but the foundation was there from a very young age. She likely had access to educational opportunities and, even in a very male-dominated world, her poetry was appreciated early on garnering her awards and positions rarely achieved by women. Rich later came to see worry that some of this was tokenism, but she was still legitimately appreciated by many people and institutions.

Holladay describes riches evolution aptly when she says that, "creating versions of herself that she could love and respect would be one of the great errands of (Rich's) lifetime."

Like many women of the time, lesbianism wasn't even on Rich's radar as a possibility. She had multiple relationships with men, some better than others, and one ending in massive tragedy that affected her for the rest of her life. Her relationship to motherhood was also complicated, falling into the role due to societal expectations and finding herself going against those expectations later in life. I felt like information was missing here and I didn't quite understand how her split from her husband and children at the time worked. But she remained close with her children.

Rich's Jewish heritage is also something that she would not claim until later in life, and large part due to her father's internalized anti-semitism, which became glaring when Rich chose to marry Alfred Conrad who was a practicing Jew as well as a civil rights activist. Coming into the identities of jewish, lesbian, and feminist, took place over years and involved a lot of changes in Rich that I found quite admirable.

 I often tend to judge myself for not having perfect views or for many mistakes throughout my life, finding myself comparing my own life to others and coming up short. I always find it interesting that pretty much everybody comes up short against inhuman portrayals of heroes, kill yr idols and all that. Rich also had her own myriad of flaws, such as issues with drinking, that placed her in the category of human being instead of distant historical figure. It was interesting to read how she made her way through so many journeys and hardships. It is no easy task to be passionately dedicated to causes and beliefs, while also being open to listening and to change. 

Rich went on to be connected to and involved with many well-known feminist poets such as Audre Lorde after becoming radicalized by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Holladay states that rich admired Martin Luther King Jr and Frederick Douglass for their ability to use words to convey important messages and fight for change. However, I did not like the way Holladay repeatedly name dropped these two as a comparison for where Rich found herself in her career and/or activism. I found it odd that a book about a lesbian feminist poet wouldn't be using women more as goals and comparative figures. It felt a little bit like name dropping two of the bigger names in abolition and civil rights movements while ignoring the great many Black women who were involved or comparing apples to oranges, even if both are very sweet. Rich had her own evolution regarding the topics of race both through friendships and her longest lesbian relationship which was interracial. Over time she came to learn how whiteness and white supremacy were involved and her feminism and strove to combat that, albeit imperfectly.

The parts I was most interested in regarding Rich's activism and feminism were the best parts of the book in my opinion. Until the last few chapters, activism and feminism would get sentences here and there or others and Rich's life- such as Conrad- would have profiles of their activism described in detail. At the end, we get more into the nitty gritty of the many actions Rich took to support anti-war, civil rights, gay liberation, feminist, and other causes. 

I was regularly impressed at how Rich was able to go against the crowd to make statements that were more in line with what she thought was right. When she moved to a neighborhood and community that was supposed to be more of a lesbian utopia, she felt that people were ignoring the greater issues going on around them to focus on infighting instead. This is a common problem with any insular group and one that she sought to resist. 

She was also caught up and debates about sex and sexuality that were common among feminists of the time. She criticized things like BDSM, pornography, other sex work, and so on. Interestingly though, she decided to break with the actions of Andrea Dworkin and Catherine and MacKinnon when she signed a letter against their movement to create laws to combat pornography. This history is very complicated, and often misrepresented, and I do not feel that I have enough space in this review to totally explain it. Dworkin and MacKinnon are often characterized as creating a right-wing anti-sex work bill, but it was more complex- a bill that would make it possible to include pornography and sexual harassment laws and open a door for women to be able to take legal action against pornographers due to harm caused against them. Whether or not one agrees with this, it makes a lot more sense through the lens of often misrepresented history in which second wave feminists were trying to combat misogyny and what they saw as (and what sometimes/often was) abuse of women. Adrienne Rich essentially took the more anti-authoritarian response, even if it didn't seem in line with her own beliefs about pornography. It was Joan Nestle who was able to sway Rich to the other side, noting that any law that was created to punish sex work would undoubtedly be used against not only women in these industries, but women who had sexual lives that were in any way outside the norm.

TPoAR includes hundreds of pages full of info about a long life well lived. I chose to place focus on my review on the things that I sought out the book for. There is so much more there, even if I have crystals about how the information was conveyed and organized. Overall this book is an important piece of scholarship on someone who lived in many worlds and touched so many hearts and minds along the way. 

This was also posted to my goodreads and Storygraph.

Sunday, June 8, 2025

Book Review: Two Cheers for Anarchism

 

Image: the cover of the book is a cream background with red on the right side. In black stenciled letters is two cheers for and James c Scott with anarchism in red letters in between the two. The A is written in a punk style graffiti circle.

Many years ago, I was intending to attend a organizing community member's free class on anarchism. James C Scott's Seeing like a State was one of the first reading assignments. Unfortunately, as was the case of many commitments back when I balanced a life with too many responsibilities, I missed the class and the book remained on my to-read list. When I encountered James C Scott's, Two Cheers for Anarchism, it seemed like a good time to remedy the fact that I'd never read any of his work. I cannot comment on whether or not this book is a repetition of his previous works, as another reviewer mentioned. What I am able to say is that this brief volume has a decent group of ideas that can help introduce the reader to anarchist thought in a simple enough way that it can accommodate a larger audience.

This book does have an academic bent to it, but is not excessively jargony. I wouldn't necessarily call these six pieces "easy" depending on one's reference point, but they are readable. I like how Scott used analogies and creative explanations to make his points. There are some historical references that I got a little overwhelmed by at times essentially because I have a terrible memory and I was rusty on some of the details. Someone who is completely unfamiliar with some of the histories discussed in this book might need to look something up on occasion. But overall I think the average reader would be able to parse the point of these discussions with or without perfect historical knowledge. 

Scott offers a frame of reference that shows how anarchist ideas and practices have existed in many places and populations before and after the coining of the term. The central practices and belief systems of anarchism can be found anywhere collective liberation and mutual aid are taking place. Collective action was/is often unintended and selfish- meaning it is not always designed from the start as a wider liberatory framework, but people working together end up creating that in the process.

One element of the text is the idea of seeing things through anarchist glasses. Scott discusses that doing so still results in a wide variation of assessments. However, he is not claiming that anarchist glasses are rose colored. There is complexity to resistance that adds many wild cards to the possible outcomes. There is a discussion about how to use the state in an emancipatory role even while being anti-state. I would see this more as an accident or exception to the rule, such as his example of officers protecting Black schoolchildren during the dismantling of segregation. Yet, I get the point. This leads to a discussion in the other direction. Scott discusses the reality that disruption of the state and authoritarianism is necessary, though it can sometimes result in an authoritarian response. The latter does not take away the importance and inevitability of the former as a step toward liberation. 

I really liked Scott's idea of "anarchist calisthenics," which is a fun term for basically the practice of consistently questioning authority and rule breaking- especially rules that do harm or that are simply stupid. It takes practice to go against the normative human tendency towards conformity or fear of punishment to realize how easy and effective going against the grain can often be. True order in the anarchist sense relies on breaking rules and collectively organizing for effectiveness. He uses the example of speed limits (which due to widespread disobedience have changed in strictness over time) and factory workers resisting en masse (leading to better conditions being the only possible outcome if the factory were to continue.) 

Scott also discussed how (authoritarian) democracies are sometimes created with the intention to institutionalize resistance, but instead are parasitic, using the desire for liberation against the people. He makes an ecosystem analogy wherein a forest is disturbed to focus on propagating a single tree species to increase timber productivity. It works at first, but under the surface, the ecosystem is collapsing. Water and usable soil are running out, biodiversity is disintegrating, and once it becomes clear to everyone, if it does at all, the damage has been done. The imbalance is systemic. 

These are all things I was generally aware of, but I liked some of the framings that conveyed messages in ways I think can reach larger audiences. One newish thing to me from this book was not a new idea in general in anarchism. Yet, it was new in it's framing for me. Scott discusses how important participation in collective democracy is a crucial learning process for all community members. In state based ideology, we're supposed to lift up the most experienced/qualified to make various decisions. (I must mention though that this is often untrue in practice and is exceptionally laughable currently to anyone paying attention to USA politics, but I digress.) However, designing things hierarchically like this robs the public of collective growth that comes from making decisions together and teaching each other in the process. It creates a dynamic where people, especially those with no experience, see only one route forward- one in which they have no power or responsibility.

It all reminds me of a discussion with someone years ago where we were lamenting the length of a particular organizing meeting. She said, "Anarchy is beautiful. Anarchy takes forever." I do think that this book needed a little bit more about what more intentional anarchism is as far as next steps go after you examine the sort of accidental bits of anarchism discussed throughout this text. However, I think this book offers something to both those new to ideas of anarchism and to more seasoned readers (even if we would have liked a neater iteration of the circle A.)

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.