“The Expulsion of the Other” by Byung-Chul Han (translated by Wieland Hoban)

Han writes about how modern society can never escape the dialectic, in the vein of a true neo-Hegelian. This short book concentrates on the dichotomy between the ego and the Other. Han begins, “The terror of the Same affects all areas of life today. One travels everywhere, yet does not experience anything. One catches sight of everything, yet reaches no insight. One accumulates information and data, yet does not attain knowledge. One lusts after adventures and stimulation, but always remains the same…. True resonance presupposes the proximity of the Other. Today, the proximity of the Other gives way to the gaplessness of the Same…. The abolition of distance does not create more closeness, but rather destroys it…. This tension consists in the fact that things are given life precisely by their opposite, by that which is other than themselves.” Hegel could not have said it better himself.

Han has always been concerned with the propensity of neoliberal society to be consumed by commerce. Life has been commodified. Homo Economicus reigns supreme. “Individuals express their authenticity primarily through consumption. The imperative of authenticity does not lead to the formation of an autonomous, self-possessed individual; rather, it is entirely co-opted by commerce.” Modern man has deluded himself into thinking that he is special, different, and unique. “Diversity only permits differences that conform to the system; it constitutes an otherness that has been made consumable. And it perpetuates the Same more efficiently than uniformity does.” Man has also been deluded by his own freedom. “Today, we live in a post-Marxist age. In the neoliberal regime, exploitation no longer takes place as alienation and self-derealization, but as freedom, as self-realization and self-optimization. Here there is no Other as an exploiter, forcing me to work and alienating me from myself; rather, I voluntarily exploit myself in the belief that I am realizing myself…. The first stage of a burnout is euphoria: I plunge into work euphorically until I finally collapse. I realize myself to death. I optimize myself to death. Neoliberal domination hides behind the illusion of freedom.”

Finally, Han critiques the mediums of communication and interaction in the digital age. “Today’s hypercommunication suppresses the free spaces of silence and solitude without which it would have been impossible to say things that were truly worth saying…. Today, the silent voice of the Other is drowned out by the noise of the Same…. Today, we are increasingly losing the ability to listen. It is hampered most of all by the intensifying focus on the ego, by the narcissization of society. Narcissus does not return the loving voice of the nymph Echo, who would really be the voice of the Other…. Listening is not a passive act. It is distinguished by a special activity: first I must welcome the Other, which means affirming the Other in their otherness. Then I give them an ear…. In a sense, listening precedes speaking; it is only listening that causes the Other to speak…. Digital communication connects me, but simultaneously isolates me…. Without the presence of the Other, communication degenerates into an accelerated exchange of information. It creates no relationship, only connection…. Listening means something entirely different from exchanging information…. Without neighborliness, without listening, no community can form. Community is listenership.”

“When We Cease to Understand the World” by Benjamin Labatut (translated by Adrian Nathan West)

As with all books purporting to be historical fiction, one can either struggle with trying to decipher what is fact and what has been invented or one can just go along for the ride. Labatut, in the acknowledgements, reveals that the book veers more and more towards the speculative in its later chapters. Whatever you want to call this book, the whole is mystical and engrossing. It can be read in one sitting, but the scientific themes demand to be pondered at leisure.

Labatut describes the enigma of the Schwarzschild singularity, “At a certain distance from Schwarzschild’s idealized star, the equations of general relativity went mad: time froze, space coiled around itself like a serpent. At the center of that dying star, all mass became concentrated in a single point of infinite density…. With alarm, he realized that if his singularity were ever to exist, it would endure until the end of the universe. Its ideal conditions made it an eternal object that would neither grow nor diminish, but remain eternally as it was. Unlike all other things, it was immune to becoming and doubly inescapable: in the strange spatial geometry it generated, the singularity was located at both ends of time.” Schwarzschild, himself, mused, “Only a vision of the whole, like that of a saint, a madman or mystic, will permit us to decipher the true organizing principles of the universe…. We would be faced with a fairyland geometry, a hall of mirrors whose horrifying perspectives would be more than the civilized mind could bear, as it abhors and flees from all it cannot comprehend…. We have reached the highest point of civilization. All that is left for us is to decay and fall.”

The main section of Labatut’s book focuses on the debate between Heisenberg and Schrodinger on the realities of quantum physics. However, Labatut begins with Louis de Broglie, who would pioneer the alternative pilot-wave theory. Labatut quotes at length from de Broglie’s dissertation defense, “For more than a century, we have divided earthly phenomena into two fields: atoms and particles of solid matter on the one hand, and the intangible waves of light, propagated through the sea of the luminous ether, on the other. But these two systems cannot remain separate; we must bring them together in a single theory that explains their multiple interactions…. We are talking here about the most precious object of physics, light, which allows us not only to see the forms of this world, but shows us the stars that adorn the spiral arms of the galaxy and the hidden heart of matter. But this object is not always singular—it is double. Light exists in two different ways. Thus, it transcends all the categories with which we have tried to encapsulate the myriad forms of nature. As wave and as particle, it inhabits two distinct orders and is possessed of identities as opposed as the two faces of Janus. Like that Roman god, it expresses the contradictory properties of what is discrete and what is continuous, what is local and what is spread out…. All matter is possessed of such dualism! Not only light but each of the atoms with which the godhead has constructed the universe is subject to this twofold nature.”

Labatut describes Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and how his mentor, Niels Bohr, and he tried to reconcile Heisenberg’s convoluted mathematical matrices with Schrodinger’s elegantly simple equation in the Copenhagen Interpretation. “It is the act of measuring that makes it a real object.” Heisenberg had posited, “When we speak of the science of our era, we are talking about our relationship with nature, not as objective, detached observers, but as actors in a game between man and the world. Science can no longer confront reality in the same way. The method of analysing, explaining and classifying the world has become conscious of its own limitations: these arise from the fact that its interventions alter the objects it proposes to investigate. The light science shines on the world not only changes our vision of reality, but even the behaviour of its fundamental building blocks.” Einstein could not prove the Copenhagen Interpretation wrong, although he remained skeptical. “This theory reminds me a little of the system of delusions of an exceedingly intelligent paranoiac, concocted of incoherent elements of thoughts.” To the end, Einstein remained convinced, “God does not play dice with the universe!”

“Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks” by Chris Herring

This book might not have the most elegant prose in the world, but it does have more than a few juicy anecdotes about the 1990s Knicks. From Anthony Mason and Herb Williams to Anthony Bonner and Chris Childs, life on and off the court was colorful. “Mason had an odd fascination with lighting matches, then flicking them at whoever was around.” On the court, Will Purdue admitted, “I don’t want to use the word ‘fear,’ but there was always this thought in your mind that they might take things too far on any given play.” Greg Anthony summed it up, “We’d say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna win something tonight—we’re either gonna win the game, or win the fight.’”

It was astounding and heartbreaking to learn what precipitated the beginning of the end for Pat Riley with the Knicks. “Riley sent Dave Checketts an invoice for the $10,000 he spent for the players to gamble in Reno…. But then weeks went by. Then several months. Riley still hadn’t gotten his money—partly because, according to Checketts, no one at the Garden knew how to officially label the expense, which would be subject to the scrutiny of shareholders of a publicly traded company…. “He never forgot it. That stuck in his craw,” Checketts says of the delayed reimbursement. “If I knew what I know now, I would’ve just paid him back myself. Everything with Pat was black or white. In or out.”” On John Starks’ dismal Game 7 shooting performance in Houston, “Riley called not subbing Blackman in “the biggest mistake I ever made.” The coach has sent handwritten letters to Blackman over the years, but Blackman says he’s never written Riley back.” I can no longer muster much hatred for sports stars. I still despise Pat Riley with a passion. Tim Hardaway hates those 1990s Knicks too, “I hate them with all the hate that you can hate with. Can you hate more than that? If you can, I hate them more than that.”

“The Promise” by Damon Galgut

This novel is framed by four funerals involving a rural South African family from outside Pretoria, the Swarts, spanning the end of Apartheid. “We are the last outpost on this continent . . . If South Africa falls, Moscow will be drinking champagne . . . Let’s be clear about it, majority rule means communism…. My people are a valiant, durable bunch, they outlasted the British and they will outlast the kaffirs too. Afrikaners are a nation apart…. Don’t look at the house, think about the land. Useless ground, full of stones, you can do nothing with it. But it belongs to our family, nobody else, and there’s power in that.” The issue of land, ownership, and title will play a recurring role in Galgut’s novel. “This one has been working here for ever, since Anton was born. The things she must’ve seen and heard! It’s because they’re always around, like ghosts, you almost don’t notice them. But it’s a mistake to think the same applies in reverse, they’re always watching and listening, helping themselves and each other. They know all your secrets, everything about you, even the things other white people don’t know. The stains in your underwear, the holes in your socks. You have to get rid of them before they start to scheme.” Throughout the story, race is, obviously, the elephant in every room. “Never did the middle of town look like this, so many black people drifting casually about, as if they belong here. It’s almost like an African city!” Sport is the one thing that glues the new country together. “Boks versus the All Blacks, the eyes of other nations gazing hotly at us…. Even those who don’t like rugby, owing to whatever deficiency in their characters, are watching today…. When Mandela appears in the green Springbok rugby jersey to give the cup to Francois Pienaar, well, that’s something. That’s religious. The beefy Boer and the old terrorist shaking hands. Who could ever. My goodness.” In the end, however, this novel is also a story about a family just trying to endure and survive. “Once more, in the church, all of us, against our will. Times like these when the clan thickens, in numbers if not in loyalty, eyeing one another from our foxholes. The Swarts sticking together, mostly, though we’ve thinned out a lot by now, just a row of us in the first pew…. There is nothing unusual or remarkable about the Swart family, oh no, they resemble the family from the next farm and the one beyond that, just an ordinary bunch of white South Africans, and if you don’t believe it then listen to us speak…. But enough, we are the rainbow nation, which is to say it’s a mixed and motley and mongrel assembly in the church today.”