THE CHAOS THEORY

“Bumi Manusia” by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

This is a 1973 novel about life in Dutch-occupied East Indies in the 1890s. Vividly portrayed through the fictitious characters that are described in such impressive details they could easily be mistaken for a real-life person from history.

The book shows the social structures of the time, the apartheid law, the race discriminations and class struggles, the colonial injustice, the media scenes, and the local customs straight from the historical archives, all written in a semi-poetic style.

Using charming old jargons and 1970s expressions, the book is narrated through the voice of its main protagonist, Minke, a character loosely based on Tirto Adhi Soerjo. And it started slowly, in a simple enough circumstance that would later proven to be an aftermath of a complex conflict.

This is the author’s strength, where Pramoedya can construct some complex situations but thread them neatly in a simple narrative.

This will be apparent later in the development of the story, where in every step of the way the rich backstories of the characters are revealed one by one, some with a surprising twist, which delightfully add into the thickness of the plot of the ongoing main story. Like the most unbelievable back story of the mother Nyai Ontosoroh or the tragic tale of the Japanese prostitute, to name a few, which are so mesmerising.

It is indeed an incredible story worthy of all the awards that it has received over the years. But for the life of me I cannot understand why the book was banned during Suharto era in Indonesia, on the grounds that it promoted Marxist-Leninist doctrines and Communism, because neither doctrines are promoted in the book. All book stores and agents were visited by the government and Pramoedya’s books were all confiscated, his English translator, Maxwell Lane (a staff at the Australian Embassy), was sent home.

Pramoedya was even arrested and exiled before this, by the Suharto regime between 1969-1979 to Buru Island in Eastern Indonesia, with his library back home burned. He wasn’t permitted access to pen and paper either in exile, but that didn’t stop him for creating his magnum opus: the 4 books that became known as the “Buru Quartet”, which he recited orally to other prisoners in 1973 in Buru before they were eventually written down and smuggled out in 1975. Including this book, the 1st out of 4 books. Such was the power of his ideas that the books were then quickly banned and confiscated.

Today Bumi Manusia (or the Earth of Mankind) has been translated to 33 languages, it is now freely circulating in Indonesia since the fall of the Suharto regime, and Pramoedya has since considered as one of the biggest writers (if not THE biggest writer) in Indonesia.

And spoiler alert, this book at first seems to be heading towards a conclusive and happy ending. But my God the bombshell it gives when it was just about to end! Which is a perfect setting for the sequel. Screw it, I’m going to start reading book no 2 right now.

More on Buru Quartet: Book 2 | Book 3 |Book 4 | The making of Buru Quartet

“Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain

This book is a sequel of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, now narrated from the vantage point of Huckleberry Finn.

The story begins where the first book left off: when the boys decided to form a robber gang. But soon afterwards, Finn broke out on his own adventure where he suddenly posses a considerable sum of money, and the headache that came along with it. Including his alcoholic father that reappear in his life to get his hands into the money but eventually kidnap and imprison Finn when this attempt failed.

Finn’s escape from his father and a friendship he developed with a runaway black slave is the main adventure narration of the book, alongside the colourful characters he met and the places he visited along the Mississippi river.

Unfortunately, however, the casual racism from the Adventures of Tom Sawyer is enhanced in this book, where the slave named Jim becomes a key part of the story. While it does give a unique view on how slavery really works in that era and how it also humanised the slave, some of the humor was written at the expense of Jim’s negatively-stereotyped behaviour, where he is portrayed as gullible, uneducated, superstitious, helpless and dependent on a white boy to make decisions, but have strong principles – the archetype of a nobel savage.

And the book also uses a whole lot of the N word. Like a lot, a lot. Some are even used not in a casual descriptive way (in a 1890s style), but indeed with a racist connotation to it. Which create this uncomfortable feel whenever I’m reading the book and leave a bad aftertaste.

Hence, a conundrum. I generally believe that society will benefit more from more context over old written work, instead of censorship. That it is necessary to still show the old ways so that we can clearly see the progress made in society over the years. But holy crap. Now I get it why so many people are trying to ban or cancel this book.

“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain

This is a great American novel about the mischievous adventures of a boy named Tom Sawyer.

Right from the get go we get that old childhood feel of carefreeness and wonder, in a small town environment where the orphan Sawyer lived with his aunt Polly, half-brother Sid and cousin Marry. The book is a never ending suspense of what will Sawyer do next with his juvenile demeanor and clever tricks. And when he eventually meet Huckleberry Finn? Forget about it, it’s a match made in hell.

Their days are filled with skipping school to play, sneaking out of the house at night, trading “treasures” that they find (including a tooth), performing a superstitious ritual at a graveyard at midnight, witnessing a gruesome murder, forming a robber gang, meeting Indians, went out for an adventure for few days with another friend – Joe Harper – without telling anyone (and were presumed dead) to become pirates in the Mississippi river, and of course making a surprise appearance at their own joint funeral.

Mind you, however, this is a book written in 1876 with all its charms and backwardness. And this includes casual racism that was the norm at the time. Still a classic though, considering the context of its time, that is filled with humor, wit and veiled social criticism that became Mark Twain’s signature style.

“The Psychology Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained” by Nigel Benson, Joannah Ginsburg, and Voula Grand

This is a complete big-picture book about psychology.

First, it provides the context of the evolution of psychology, from ancient Greece to modern era. It shows its many different branches and the many thinkers with different approaches and even conflicting ideas. Then it explains the many overlaps with other disciplines, such as with medicine, physiology, neuroscience, computer science, anthropology, sociology, education, politics, economy and the law.

The book then goes down straight to business. It covers a wide range of topics in psychology, such as multiple personality disorder, Pavlovian conditioning, the fascinating world of the unconscious mind, the inferiority complex and superiority complex, the psychology of adopted child, on self hatred, conditions of worth, on giving meaning to suffering, on accepting our negative emotions rather than repressing them, understanding schizophrenia, Stoic-based therapies, or how unfinished tasks have different status in memory.

Moreover, there is the implementations of psychology in advertising, the magic number 7 in memory, the filter theory, memory retrieval clues, how events and emotion are stored in memory together, on flow state, the fascinating forensic psychology, the benefits of mindfulness meditation, nature vs nurture in behaviour, flashbulb memory, just-world hypothesis, cognitive dissonance, the now famous Stanford Prison experiment, the contextualisation of trauma, the pros and cons regarding catharsis effect, on violence on video game and TV, on autism, introvert-extrover spectrum, and back to multiple personality disorder at the end of the book to make it a full circle.

Along the way, it answers some of the key questions on psychology, such as how ordinary people are capable of cruelty when under pressure to conform, is intelligence hereditary, how a cat and a mouse can live peacefully if conditioned from babies, the explanation behind obsessive compulsive behaviour, how our preference is not rational but can be conditioned, what happens when you put good people in an evil place, the association between genius and psychotic temperament, and of course the analysis of the marshmallow test that has been cited in almost every self help books.

The book generates all of this from the best of the best minds in the field, from Sigmund Freud, to Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow, Viktor Frankl, Daniel Kahneman, Steven Pinker, Stanley Milgram, to the influential Carl Rogers, Albert Ellis, Virginia Satir, Bluma Zeigarnik, Endel Tulving, Donald Hebb, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Albert Bandura, to the controversial ones like Timothy Leary, non psychologists such as Alan Turing and Noam Chomsky, to my new favourites Fritz Perls and Erich Fromm.

All in all, this is a book about theses of the human minds, that have been tested, re-tested, debunked, few buried and got resurrected, others debated and still inconclusive, while some became world changing. And this book shows them all in a concise manner.

“A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson

From the Big Bang, to the 5 mass extinctions, to the rise of Homo Sapien, Bill Bryson takes us in an incredible journey to learn about our universe, our planet, and everything in it. Within the 500+ pages the book covers, well, nearly everything about what we know [so far] from the lens of science, narrated in an easy style of writing suited for non-scientist lay people.

We’ll hear about the best of the best people, the Nobel Prize-winning all stars, and their stories in discovering their theory, their struggles in testing their hypothesis, and their eureka moments in inventing their ground breaking device for the advancement of humanity.

We’ll learn about the planetary system, how to make sense of time and space, the discovery of dinosaur, what’s inside atom, on proton and neutron, on gravity, how to calculate carbon dating, on predicting earth quake and volcano eruption, about the Ice Age, the younger dryas period, on complete human biology filled with mitochondria ATP and the rest, the curious case of DNA, the many types of humans other than Homo Sapien and what happened to them, and so much more, including how 99.99% of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us, and how the average lifespan of complex organism is about 4 million years (roughly where we are now).

And while the range of topics in the book is very wide, Bryson is still able to demonstrate that everything in the universe are connected and prove his most profound conclusion about life in the universe: that all life is one. It is such a fascinating book, perfect for understanding the big picture.

“How to Live with a Huge Penis: Advice, Meditations, and Wisdom for Men Who Have Too Much by Dr. Richard Jacob and Rev. Owen Thomas

This is a hilarious book about a condition called Oversized Male Genitalia (OMG), aka “huge penis.” (Not sure why I use quotation marks for that).

It is, according to the book, “[a] genetic birth defect that causes the penis to grow absurdly large. The condition is thought to affect about 1 million American men, though that number may be artificially low due to underreporting.” Ah yes, the underreporting. Finally, a book that understands.

The book covers everything about schlong-related matters. It has a chapter on big dicks throughout history (not sure how the authors can possibly know), on dealing with discrimination, the step-by-step guide to come out to your family and friends, on care and maintenance, on sexual intercourse, it has a dedicated section for daily affirmation journal, there’s even a ruler in one page to measure the length gauge of your package and a some kind of round target image in another page to measure the girth gauge. And the best part is, the book is co-authored by a PhD in Asian economic psychology and a reverend (yeah, reverend. He even provides a prayer for the wiener at some point in the book).

However, jokes aside, it is quite hard at times to figure out whether the book is joking or being serious. I mean, just look at this sentence: “OMG sufferers have a suicide rate 30 times that of the average population. Many more express their pain through self-mutilation, often harming their penises or—in rare cases—cutting them off entirely.”

But due to the overall nature of the book as two blokes having a laugh, I treat this book nothing more than just one huge (pun intended) joke, where nothing is factually correct, no lessons supposed to be learned, and nothing inspirational can be found within its 132 pages. Just dick jokes, dick jokes everywhere. And it’s very entertaining.

Because, c’mon is this sentence even real? “if you fail to remove lingering ejaculate from the urethra of a huge penis, it could harden into a cementlike substance called “cumcrete.” Or this one: “Almost all cases of adult phallophobia (the unnatural fear of penises) are the result of a frightening encounter with a huge penis while in the womb.” Or the claim that due to the vast amount of blood needed to create an erection, someone with a massive dong when having a boner could absorb more blood than needed from elsewhere like from our brain, thus it can cause problems and even deaths (this one’s gold).

But it’s not all nonsense, as the authors are teaching tolerance and harmony, as well as giving excellent advices on how to live life with an enormous junk, advices that can also be applicable for men in any walks of life, any shape and sizes. Such as “[u]nless your partner is a professional sword swallower, it’s probably best to leave oral sex off the bedroom menu.” Or the types of usage your humongous knob can be utilised for, described in a pretty graphic way: as a cliffhanger, as an alibi to escape court sentence, to win an audition for a broadway acting job, to stop a leaking boat.

They also have a lot (like a lot, a lot) of random testimonies from fellow OMG sufferers, and sympathetic sentences such as this: “When you have a weapons-grade wang, the occasional penile wound is a fact of life. Every OMG sufferer over the age of 20 can tell you stories of sitting on his penis, slamming it in a car door, getting it caught in a pool filter, or waking up to find the family cat using it as a scratching post.”

Now can you think of any other book that have such widths and depths of analysis over 1 particular subject than this one? It’s a nice palate cleansing in between the literatures, the history, the psychology, the religion, and books with topics like the rise of AI and government conspiracy crap. Suggestion: they should make a sequel to this book, on balls.

“The Moviegoer” by Walker Percy

This is a charming novel that gives the feel of what’s life like in 1960s southern USA, especially New Orleans. The book revolves around the character of Jack “Binx” Bolling, a stockbroker and a son of a wealthy family who has troubles living his life after the trauma from his childhood (when his father committed suicide) and the Korean war.

He also has difficulties in having a long lasting relationship, has the tendency to date multiple women (including few of his secretaries) and is so into the artificialities of movies that he tend to daydream more than actually living his life.

And then leading up to his 30th birthday, in a desperate need of spiritual redemption and without any sense of direction, Bolling then left the rat race of his everyday life and went to a journey in search of meaning. Starting from the Mardi Gras in New Orleans then to Chicago and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where he is having philosophical epiphanies along the way about all the important things in his life from family, to friends, career, and ultimately to the 1 unexpected woman who can truly understands him.

Indeed, it is a book about existential crisis and the journey to overcome it, with the protagonist meeting new people with colourful characters along the way in a distinctively southern flavour. No wonder that it became an instant American Classic.

“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert M. Pirsig

This is a classic book that was published in 1974 after 121 rejections, but eventually proceeded to sold millions of copies in 23 languages, listed in the best-seller category for decades, with the book once described in the press as “the most widely read philosophy book, ever.” It is also influential in the cultural transition from the rebellious 1960s to the “me decade” of the 1970s.

The book is not about Zen Buddhism and not really about motorcycle maintenance, however. The title is a play on a 1948 book “Zen and the Art of Archery” by Eugen Herrigel, and it is more of a fictionalized autobiography of the author, Robert Pirsig, who, just like in the book, went on a motorcycle journey across America with his 11 year old son.

It was during this trip that Pirsig started to contemplate questions about the meaning of life, especially after all the extraordinary things he had experienced throughout his real life. Experiences such as having an IQ of 170 and skipped 2 grades and enrolled to university at age 15, enlisted in the US Army and got sent to Korea, studied philosophy for a year in Banaras Hindu University at India, had a mental breakdown and spent time in and out psychiatric hospitals for 2 years, diagnosed for having a schizophrenia and endured an electroconvulsive therapy on numerous occasions, and began a PhD in philosophy at the University of Chicago but quickly feuded with the department head over his interpretation of “quality”, a topic that eventually became the central philosophical focus of this book.

“I’m happy to be riding back into this country”, said the narrator in the book, as the father and son duo is joined by a husband and wife friend John and Sylvia Sutherland. “It is a kind of nowhere, famous for nothing at all and has an appeal because of just that. Tensions disappear along old roads like this.” Indeed, this is about going out of the daily routines and wandering around the open road, embracing the sceneries, smelling the air, feeling the wind in your face and stomping directly on the ground. No music, no pressure, no distraction, just you and your thoughts.

“You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other”, the narrator continues. “In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.”

However, this is not only a tale of motorcycle adventure, as we do get a some form of discussion on motorcycle parts and structures in chapter 8, which also serve as an analogy of the structure and hierarchy of the government. As the narrator observes, “[t]hat’s all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel. There’s no part in it, no shape in it, that is not out of someone’s mind.”

The maintenance of the motorcycle also serves as an overall analogy of life, where John and Sylvia are described to be people who enjoy the look and the feel of riding a motorcycle but utterly hopeless on the maintenance part while Phaedrus (whom the narrator uses as the main philosophical muse) is fascinated by how the machineries work and proficient on the maintenance part to keep it functioning properly.

This is key in life, the narrator argues, where we can go far in life if we understands the inner working of the machines that support us and have the know-how to fix them when broken. And this book illustrates this point through the many interactions between the characters in the journey.

As the narrator remarks, “[t]o put it in more concrete terms: If you want to build a factory, or fix a motorcycle, or set a nation right without getting stuck, then classical, structured, dualistic subject-object knowledge, although necessary, isn’t enough. You have to have some feeling for the quality of the work. You have to have a sense of what’s good. That is what carries you forward.”

Here are some more of my favourite quotes from the book:

• Some things you miss because they’re so tiny you overlook them. But some things you don’t see because they’re so huge.
• He was insane. And when you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he’s insane, which is not to see him at all. To see him you must see what he saw and when you are trying to see the vision of an insane man, an oblique route is the only way to come at it. Otherwise your own opinions block the way. There is only one access to him that I can see as passable and we still have a way to go.
• But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible.
• You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
• Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.
• The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality.
• Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.
• Zen Buddhists talk about “just sitting,” a meditative practice in which the idea of a duality of self and object does not dominate one’s consciousness. What I’m talking about here in motorcycle maintenance is “just fixing,” in which the idea of a duality of self and object doesn’t dominate one’s consciousness.

“The Prince” by Niccolo Machiavelli

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) lived in Renaissance Florence in the 15-16th century, during the time when the Medici ruling family gradually went out of power especially after the collapse of their Medici Bank in 1494.

In the midst of the chaos that ensued, Machiavelli observed from his position as secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence (1498 to 1512) all the political deceptions, treacheries and crimes occurring in front of him, and eventually wrote this book in 1513 that is filled with his ideas of a perfect leader in the context to deal with this political wave in Florence.

It became a polarizing hit when it was finally published in 1532 five years after his death, where at one side people saw that for the first time there’s a practical political book that directly dwell on realpolitik without mentioning the likes of religion and allegiance (and written in Italian as well, rather than the customary Latin). But the other side of the argument saw it as a ruthless book that give advice to govern people with the absence of morality (if needed) or to justify any means necessary to reach the goals. And both sides of the argument are correct.

It is one of those chicken-and-egg dilemma, where the book was written to observe the nastiness that had already happening, but it is also accused to be the inspiration for the nasty political maneuvers ever since. There’s even a term for this political ruthlessness: Machiavellian.

But of course The Prince is much more than just this. With many lessons from the likes of Roman Empire, Persia, Plato, Cicero, and others such as Alexander the Great, the book covers the subject of princedom, on conquering many different types of new kingdoms or states, conquering new states with their own rules already in place, conquest by virtue, conquest by fortune, conquest by crime, becoming an elected prince, how to judge the strength of principalities, ecclesiastical principate, on military and defense, the qualities of a prince, a prince’s duty in military matters, on reputation of a prince, the morality of a prince, how a prince can avoid contempt and hatred, and the prudence of a prince in various matters.

Normally old texts that have been quoted so many times are usually dull in its original form, compared with the new books that quoted them. But this is the exception, as I find The Prince to be very well written and have clear ideas and fitting examples from its time. And just like other well written classics, such as The Art of War by Sun Tzu and The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, this book is a short but concise one. Perfect for game changer ideas to spread.

“Intensity: Inside Liverpool FC” by Pep Lijnders

In 2021-2022 season, Liverpool FC played all available 63 matches across 4 tournaments: the Premier League, the Champions League, the FA Cup, and the Carabao Cup, where they reached all 3 finals as well as just 1 point short of winning the Premier League at the very last match of the season.

Although they eventually “only” won the FA cup and the Carabao Cup, it was the first time in history that an English club have a shot at a potential quadruple (winning all 4 trophies) and they do so by breaking numerous records along the way. So how did they do it?

This is the behind the scene story of that incredible season, a sporting diary written by Jürgen Klopp’s assistant manager, Pep Lijnders, broken down into 44 chapters that represent 38 match weeks for a season + 6 more off match weeks in between.

It is filled with many insights on what they did right, what tactics didn’t work out, all the closed-door chaos, the players’ development, the club culture, the role of the backroom staffs that make things happen, down to the small things such as the many different WhatsApp groups or the fans’ love story with Dua Lipa’s song “one kiss” that became that season’s unofficial anthem.

The book, however, is written with the assumption of the readers’ prior knowledge about the club and its players, so it could be a tad bit confusing at first for those who aren’t familiar with the names. But this is a minor inconvenience that could easily be overcome once we start getting into the flow of the book.

And for the rest of the fans, the book feels like a codified version of the nostalgia that we all remember from that season, but crucially with an added perspective from the inside. It reveals the club’s day-to-day operations and what the people inside the management were thinking during that season, which shows a lot about the overall atmosphere, the dynamism within the club, the synergy between owner-director-manager, the players’ relationship, all the way to Jürgen’s special relationship with the fans (and his fist-pumps).

Nevertheless, the book paints such a complete picture on how Liverpool operates that it started to get me thinking, was this the reason why in the proceeding 2022-23 season Liverpool played so miserably? Not because of the burnout from last season, not necessarily because of the unfortunate injuries, but can it be exactly because of this book that reveals everything? I mean, all opposition managers can just read this book and discover Liverpool’s trade secret, their special sauce, and construct a plan to curb its intensity.

They don’t even need to send a spy to the training ground because the book lay down all the strategy and tactics: it shows how they prepare for every upcoming match, the research approach on the oppositions, the detailed game plan complete with the tactical reasoning behind them, and the many different types of drills and trainings to perfect their game plan, in horrific details! Hence, suffice to say that reading this book has been a mix of “oh wow” and “oh my Fowler, don’t reveal that!”

But at the end of the day it is a book that brings out fond memories, that captures the very essence of Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool era, complete with great sayings applicable for both football and life in general, which are mostly said by Pep but some by Jürgen and others. Here are some of my favourites:

• There is a saying that the way you speak to your players become their inner voice.
• Dominate midfield and you will dominate the game.
• Talents need models, not criticism.
• We attacks with triangles, but we defend with triangles as well.
• If you try to chase the players, they will always run away from you. But if you have what the players want, they will come to you.
• When you don’t smile, the game doesn’t smile.
• That you lose on the scoreboard, it can always happen, but you don’t lose yourself.
• Our players need to react quickly to defence and create confusion when losing the ball. If you want to explain Jürgen’s football ideas in one sentence, this is probably it.
• Give them pressure everywhere and from everywhere, high and in the highest intensity, and give them pressure in an unpredictable way.
• This is what training is all about: You have a problem, you create a solution, start training and see it isn’t working but insist and keep repeating and correcting behaviours until everyone gets the point.
• A player doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
• A good team solves problems, a top team avoids them.
• You don’t prepare for finals in the week leading up to them – it’s a long, long journey.
• The brain beats the muscle, but the heart beats the brain.
• We will repeat until we vomit.
• The world is not full of winners, the world is full of triers.
• What I learned about life is if you stay on track, when you keep going, you get the reward.
• Without clarity there is no consistency.
• Bring together a German who admires Sacchi and a Dutchman who admires Cruyff and you create a monster!