Review by jimmylorunning - Axiomatic

A review by jimmylorunning
Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin

4.0

axiom: (n) a statement that is regarded as self-evidently true.

Self evident? Or just unexamined? Does self evident stand for "passed down from generation to generation without thought"? If you examine it deeper, will you realize it's not self-evident at all? Or that it's not even evident. Or that it's not even true.

Using axioms as an organizing principle, does it work? Does she undress the axioms?

The sections are each an axiom: "Time heals all wounds," "Those who forget the past are condemned to re-," "History repeats itself," "You can't step in the same river twice," etc.

These beliefs we hold self evident by general consensus so that we cannot see the truth that would otherwise be evident if we didn't hold beliefs at all. To truly see without preconceived notions. The particularities that prove the sayings false time and time again we choose to ignore. We say: it's an outlier. Or: it can't happen to us.

These are not the only axioms she explodes. Some aren't so pithy, just beliefs without a saying:

Like the belief that helping people out a little is better than none at all. But in reality, it could do more harm:

“But what if the something good men and women do is largely nothing masquerading as a something, or if the something’s worse than nothing because it plucks people out of their own world then dumps them, with fewer resources, less hope, once the good people collapse in their inevitable moral exhaustion? Helping someone in unspoken expectation of their often impossible rehabilitation is frequently worse than not helping.”

Or the belief that children are innocent:

“Innocence—talking about that as the thing defining of children, and which trauma rips out of them… I like how an Australian philosopher, Joanne Faulkner, deals with innocence. Three big problems she says: first it’s a self-serving adult fantasy; also it makes adults give up on children believed to be no longer in possession of their innocence; finally it stops children participating in an ethical and civic life.”

“Do you remember what it was like, to be young? You do. Was there any innocence there? No. Things were exactly what they looked like. If anyone tries for innocence, it’s the adult, moving forward, forgetting. If innocence is ignorance of the capacity for evil, then it’s what adults have, when they forget what it’s like to be a child. When they look at a child and think of innocence they are thinking of how they can’t remember what that feels like.”

She's interested in examining trauma, obviously, but also in how institutions like schools, prisons, and the judicial system break down when dealing with individuals with trauma. They don't treat them like individuals. Institutions don't have compassion. She's also interested in cycles repeating themselves both in history (wars, violence) and in terms of personal histories (a suicide in the family means your chances of committing suicide go up).

Her tone reminds me of my friend Cid in its no bullshit manner of laying down the truth and judgements. Some would say she puts in a little too much of her own opinion, but I really enjoyed her perspective. I liked that this wasn't some no-skin-in-the-game type journalism.

Some references here I didn't get, and may be aimed more at an Australian audience. I was on vacation (I know this isn't vacation reading material, like maybe the LEAST vacation reading material out there, but I'm weird, I always read shit that's not vacation material on vacation. I also read Edinburgh and that one's about childhood sexual abuse) and did not have wifi access (thus no Google to Google the references).

GR review by Katarina: "the words sometimes feel like they're tumbling artlessly out of her mouth, sentences sometimes lack the punctuation I might expect, it feels mid-conversation; and yet you know that this book took many years of reflection and re-reflection."

I felt this too. There's no scene setting. Sometimes almost like we're reading directly from her journalist notebook. She starts in the middle of a thought. At first it was frustrating but once I got the hang of it, I liked it. You have to work to connect all the dots. And it felt like less clearing of the throat, less artifice (while still being artistically composed).

Like many others here, I didn't "get" the last chapter. It seemed buried in the author's own personal history, and not enough was shared for me to know what the hell she was talking about. It's ok, it was the shortest chapter, and the book didn't need it.

GR review by Amanda: "what Axiomatic lacks from a visceral perspective is hope. Fictious happy endings are overrated, but hope is not. Tumarkin puts forth unattainable Utopian standards both for society and its participants in order to fix its ills and therefore Axiomatic is ultimately nihilistic."

I'm highly suspicious of that word, unattainable. I was having this same thought while reading [b:A Map to the Door of No Return|379994|A Map to the Door of No Return|Dionne Brand|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1174322794l/379994._SY75_.jpg|369800] by Dionne Brand (another excellent non-vacation read that I read during vacation!) when she was talking about how we turn away from those "on the edges" of society--and that is that if this pandemic has taught me anything, it is that nothing is unattainable.

If cities and whole countries can grind to a halt for this pandemic, then that means that if enough people cared about something to the point where we think it's unacceptable, then we can stop everything and address it. Doesn't mean we'd solve it, but at least we're not living with it like it's normal. If we decided that certain things are unacceptable--not just the pandemic, but

- poverty
- child abuse
- climate change

just to name three of many, then we can begin to address it in a humane way. A lot of what is "unattainable" is only so because it has not been attained (or we have not wanted to attain it badly enough as a society).

Also, a lot of these problems could be eased, maybe not solved but eased, by better public policy, more compassionate institutions, and more social safety nets. That's a first step, at least. Reducing suffering is not an all or nothing proposition. We can't say just because we can't fix everything, we might as well not try at all.

A review by jimmylorunning Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin

A review by jimmylorunning
Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin