88 Scientific American, July 2019 Illustration by Matt CollinsANTI GRAVITY
THE ONGOING SEARCH FOR
FUNDAMENTAL FARCESSteve Mirsky has been writing the Anti Gravity column since
a typical tectonic plate was about 36 inches from its current location.
He also hosts the Scientific American podcast Science Talk.What, Us Worry?
Fixing a problem first requires
recognizing that it exists
By Steve MirskyPerhaps the only funny item in Jared Diamond’s new book
Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis is an anecdote
about what was known as the Winter War. When the Soviet
Union invaded Finland in late 1939, the Finns resisted against
the much larger Soviet forces until the two countries compro-
mised on an uneasy peace.
Various countries sent equipment to help Finland defend itself.
One such gift was World War I artillery from Italy. “Each artil-
lery piece requires not only a gunner... but also someone called
a spotter stationed some distance in front of the gun, in order to
spot where the shell lands and thereby to correct the range set-
ting for the next shot,” Diamond explains. Of course, these large
guns have hefty recoils—and they were not designed well for
absorbing that jolt. So the Finns wound up using two spotters:
the usual one in front to see where the shell landed, “plus anoth-
er spotter behind the gun to see where the gun landed!”
Other than that story, the book ranges from unemotionally
informational to somewhat grim—but necessarily so. Diamond—
a professor of geography at the University of California, Los
Angeles, National Medal of Science honoree, recipient of a
MacArthur “genius grant” and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for
nonfiction—focuses on seven countries he knows well, includingus, aka the U.S., as the convenient abbreviation would have it.
We and the world are facing big problems, and Diamond
points out that we’re never going to solve those problems with-
out acknowledging their existence. In fact, he sets up his argu-
ments by examining how individuals in personal crises do or do
not deal with those situations successfully and then drawing
analogies, when possible, to countries.
In such a framework, a decision by a smiling Senator James
Inhofe of Oklahoma in 2015 to display a snowball on the Senate
floor to somehow refute the reality of climate change could be
considered a symptom of a national delusional disorder.
Of course, that disorder has really bloomed in the years since.
“Not enough American citizens and politicians take our current
major problems seriously,” Diamond writes, regarding the dete-
rioration of political compromise, the increase in incivility, taint-
ed elections (including by voter suppression) and economic
inequality. (Climate change is in the section on global threats.)
The U.S. is also hampered by what I think is a misinterpreta-
tion of the idea of American Exceptionalism—a term first coined,
ironically, by Joseph Stalin, when he wasn’t busy attacking Fin-
land. The notion of exceptionalism dates to Alexis de Tocqueville
in the 19th century and originally covered the country’s democ-
racy and personal freedoms. But in more recent times it often
seems (especially if you tune for a moment to Fox News) like
exceptionalism has come to signify a belief that the U.S. is sim-
ply special—and shame on you if you question that specialness.
Nevertheless, Diamond notes, “although per-capita income is
somewhat higher in the U.S. than in most European countries,
life expectancy and measures of personal satisfaction are consis-
tently higher in Western Europe. That suggests that Western
European models may have much to teach us.”
But we seldom even bother to see if there’s anything to learn.
“That’s because we are convinced that... the U.S. is such a spe-
cial case that Western European and Canadian solutions could
have nothing relevant to suggest to us. That negative attitude
deprives us of the option that so many individuals and countries
have found useful in resolving crises: learning from models of
how others have already resolved similar crises.”
Perhaps the only hope of curing that particular flight of fan-
cy can be found in this hypothetical exchange that Diamond
quotes: “QUESTION: When will the U.S. take its problems seri-
ously? ANSWER: When powerful rich Americans begin to feel
physically unsafe.”
Finally, and perhaps of most concern to this audience, Dia-
mond delivers a solar plexus punch: “Skepticism about science
is increasingly widespread in the U.S., and that’s a very bad por-
tent, because science is basically just the accurate description
and understanding of the real world.” But as the muckraking
writer Upton Sinclair put it in 1934, “It is difficult to get a man to
understand something, when his salary depends upon his not
understanding it.” Especially if that man is a U.S. senator.JOIN THE CONVERSATION ONLINE
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