希修 공동체의 화합!을 원한다면 비판!을 잘 하고

Facebook

希修

< 공동체의 화합!을 원한다면 비판!을 잘 하고 또 잘 받아들여야 한다는 것이 부처님의 가르침 >

.

.

비구들의 공동체 생활에서 비판을 잘 하고 또 잘 받아들이는 일의 중요성에 대해 초기경전은 여러 곳에서 반복하고 있으며 (MN 15, SN 21.9 등), 특히 비판이나 충고를 받아들이는 데에 미숙한 사람은 '신뢰할 수 없는 사람'이라고까지 MN 15는 말한다. 

또 타인이 나에 대해 부당한 비판을 할 경우 제3자들을 동석시켜 자신을 변호하고 함께 토론하도록 율장에서 절차를 정해 놓고 있다고 Bodhi 스님은 말씀하신다. 부처님은 공동체 내의 화합도 중시하셨지만, 동시에, 잘못이 있는데도 안으로 곪도록 은폐하거나 외면하기보다는 함께 성장할 수 있도록 서로 정성껏 비판해 줘야 한다고 생각하신 듯. 실제로, A라는 사람을 '해치는' 것은 타인이 A를 향해 사용하는 '모욕적인 언어'가 아니라 A 스스로 저지르는 불선업이므로, A의 잘못을 지적해 주는 일이야말로 진정한 자비라는 것이 초기불교의 논리. 

.

우리가 흔히 집착하는 '겸손'/'현명'/'자비' 등에 대한 오해들과는 전혀 딴판인 내용이라 한편으론 놀랍지만 생각해 보면 정말 합리적인 가르침이다 싶은 것이, 서로의 부족함으로 인해 부정적인 영향을 늘상 주고받는 것이 인간 세상의 현실이고 (그 어떤 바이러스보다도 훨씬 더 지독한 것이 바로 인간의 탐진치), 서로의 체면과 당장의 감정 때문에 이런 문제들을 그때 그때 바로잡지 않고 방치하면 그 공동체는 속으로 점점 불만과 스트레스가 쌓여 곪아 가다가 하향 평준화를 거쳐 결국 와해될 수밖에. 

(자신보다 못한 사람과는 친구하지 말라고 부처님도 공자님도 말씀하셨다. 공자님이나 부처님이 말씀하시는 ‘친구’란 친목이 아닌 배움의 관계이기 때문이며, 

사적으로 친밀하게 지내지 않더라도 모든 존재를 仁, 慈, 존중, 예의로 대해야 함은 물론이지만, 

내공 부족한 평범한 사람들의 수준에선 서로 원만하게 지내려 하다 보면 상향 평준화 아닌 하향 평준화로 귀결될 수밖에 없기 때문이 아닐까 싶다. 

현재 한국 조계종의 '일부' 스님들이 도박장과 룸살롱에 드나들고 축재와 축첩을 하는 것도, 비판 자체를 무조건 금기시하는 오류가 크게 한몫하는 것 아니겠는지.) 

그러므로 차라리 합리적이고 공정한 토론을 거쳐 그때 그때 갈등을 해소하고 합의를 이루어 나가는 것이 현실적. 마치, 아이들이 싸울 때 민주시민답게 생각, 토론, 논쟁하는 법을 가르쳐 줘야지, "친구끼리 서로 이해하고 용서하며 사이 좋게 지내야 돼!"라고 야단만 치는 건 "부처님이 되라니까!"라는, 아무 도움 안 되는 주문일 뿐인 것처럼 - 그렇게 말하는 어른 자신도 실천 못 하는. 

.

그러니, 나이만 먹었지 여전히 오류와 실수 투성이라는 점에서 아이들보다 크게 낫지도 않으면서 자존심과 체면만 중시하지 말고, 아래 (1)의 Right Speech 기준들에 맞추어 잘 비판하고 또 잘 받아들이는 훈련이 중요하다는 얘기. (표면적인 화합만 강조하면서 얼렁뚱땅 억지로 갈등을 봉합하는 것은 아무 것도 해결하지 못 한다고 초기불교는 가르침.)  

• '나는 겸손한 사람'이라는 self-image/자만에 붙들려 있지 않다면 자신의 지식/지혜를 나눠 주는 일에 인색할 필요가 없고 (유교도 겸손만 강조했을 것 같지만 "군자는 배우는 일뿐 아니라 가르치는 것도 좋아하는 사람"이라는 게 순자의 말씀),
•  '나는 고매한 사람'이라는 망상과 쓸데 없는 자존심에 집착하지 않는다면 인간인 이상 누구나 늘상 저지르는 실수를 인정 못 할 이유가 없음. (공직자라면 더더구나! 자신의 과오를 정직하게 인정하고 댓가를 감수하는 것이 자신이 속한 공동체에 대한 예의의고 의무.)
•  이런 소통도 불가능하다면 공동체를 이룬다는 건 애초부터 불가능하며, 그 어떤 인위적인 노력/억압을 하든 '화합'도 어차피 불가능.

.

------------------------------------------------------

.

(1) Right Speech의 조건: 

.

a. true / factual.

b. beneficial / necessary.

c. timely.

d. affectionate / endearing / agreeable.

.

가장 중요한 것은 a. '착한'/''선한' 거짓말 같은 건 절대로 불가능하다는 것이 부처님의 관점. Right Speech의 조건에 대한 언급이 초기경전에 여러 번 나오는데, 어떤 곳에서는 a~c만 언급되고, 어떤 곳에서는 a~d가 모두 언급됨. 즉, 표현 자체의 부드러움은 중요도가 떨어진다는 의미. 잘못된 견해에 대해서는 실제로 부처님도 일부러 찾아가서까지 논쟁하고 가차없이 신랄하게 논파하셨음. 

.

그러나 말하는 의도/동기는 매우 중요함. 상대방에게 상처를 주려는  목적이 아니라, 잘못된 견해로부터 상대를 해방시킨다라는 compassion/goodwill이어야만 함. 

다음은 초기경전에 나오는 비유: 

.

아기가 날카로운 물건을 입에 넣고 입을 열려고 하지 않을 때, 완력을 써서라도, 그러다 아기 입에서 약간의 피가 흐르는 한이 있더라도 그 날카로운 물건을 아기 입에서 꺼내는 것이 최우선이다. 이것이 진정한 compassion이다. -- Majjhima Nikaya 58. 

.

여기서 날카로운 물건은 잘못된 견해를 상징하고, 피는 감정적 상처를 가리킴. 날카로운 물건을 삼켜서 아기가 죽는 것은 잘못된 견해로 인해 악처로 윤회함을 의미. 다시 말해, 상대방의 잘못된 견해/행동을 바로잡아 주기 위한 의도에서 비롯되고 위의 a, b, c 조건을 모두 충족하는 말은, 결과적으로는 상대방의 자존심에 '상처'를 입히는 비판/비난이라도 compassion이요 right speech라는 것이 부처님의 말씀. 

.

칭찬받을 만한 행동에 대해서는 칭찬을, 비판받을 만한 행동에 대해서는 비판을 하는 것이 불교의 right speech. — AN 4:100.

.

.

(2) Wrong Speech의 4종류: 

.

ㄱ. lying: 사실/진실을 구부려서 오해를 유도하는 행위, 거짓말을 용인하는 행위 포함.

ㄴ. divisive tale-bearing: 이간질을 목적으로 하는 고자질/말옮김. 

ㄷ. abusive speech: 타인을 조롱하거나 짓밟기 위한 목적에서 하는 말.

ㄹ. idle chatter: 꼭 필요한 내용이 아닌 모든 종류의 대화.

.

'수다'가 wrong speech인 이유는.. '공감'이랍시고 쳐 주는 맞장구가 서로의 탐진치를 본의 아니게 부추기거나 악화시키기도 하고, 내가 컨트롤할 수 있는 것은 오로지 내 자신 뿐이건만 시선이 자꾸 외부로만 향하는 인간의 습성이 강화되면서 마음이 흩어지기 때문일 듯. 기본적으로 불교는 다른 존재를 매개하지 않는 자립의 행복만이 진정한 행복이라 간주하기도 하고.. 

.

.

20 comments

希修

'Well-Meant Well-Delivered Timely CRITICISM Is Essential to HARMONY, Buddhism Says'

https://www.facebook.com/keepsurfinglife/posts/1019975885041161

 · Reply · 1 y · Edited

Kihwan Lee

모두를 위하는 마음에서 나오는 행동은 부끄러워할 필요가 없는것 같습니다.

 · Reply · 1 y

崔明淑

여러번 되새김질하며 읽고 싶네요.

 · Reply · 28 w

Hanjin Kang

아아....왜곡되어 전해진 세월이 얼마나 유구한지 ㅜㅜ

 · Reply · 28 w

希修

Hanjin Kang 아주 복장이 터질 지경이죠. 앞으로, 뒤로, 한 단어씩 건너뛰며, 두 단어씩 건너뛰며 등등 온갖 방법으로 三藏 전체를 암송한, 왜곡 없이 부처님 말씀을 전하고 보존하고자 했던 그 초인적이고 눈물겨운 노력을 생각하면 말이예요.

 · Reply · 28 w · Edited

Hanjin Kang

선생님 그러면 지금 초기불교의 진면목을 제대로 접할 수 있는 언어가 우선은 당연히 영어이고, 또 독일과 일본도 이 분야에서 선두주자라는 얘기를 얼핏 들었는데 사실인가요? 일본어는 한자를 배제할래야 할 수가 없으니 별로일 것 같긴하네요.

제일 좋은 건 당연히 팔리어 원문이겠지만 전공할 것고 아니고 그건 너무 빡세죠

 · Reply · 27 w · Edited

希修

일본 얘기는 저도 알고 있는데 독일도 그렇군요! 초기경전 번역으로 가장 유명하신 보디 스님과 타니사로 스님의 설명이, 표현의 차이는 조금씩 있지만 내용 자체가 근본적으로 판이하게 다르다고 느껴지는 부분은 아직은 발견하지 못 했어요. 그러니 재가자 수준에선 두 분의 책/강의를 공부하는 것으로 충분하지 않을까, hopefully, 그렇게 생각하구요. Pali어는 저도 도전해 보고 싶기는 한데, 아마도 다음 생에? ^^;

아 그리고 그냥 희수님이라고 부르시면 됩니다. 선생님 아니예요. ^^

 · Reply · 27 w · Edited

Write a reply…

최신우

진실을 깨닫기 위해서는 윤리, 즉 수행자 간의 엄격한 윤리가 실천되어야 한다고 봐도 무방할까요?

 · Reply · 10 w

希修

최신우 그렇죠! 산속에 파묻혀 홀로 산다 해도 여전히 규율 (일상속 매 생각/말/행동에서의 탐진치 관리)이 중요합니다. 현대에 들어 'spirituality without religion'이 '쿨한 트렌드'처럼 되어 버리면서 교리와 계율 없이 명상만 하겠다는 사람들이 점점 늘어나고 있는데, 

교리와 계율 없이 명상만 하는 건 심신의 건강에는 도움이 되지만 

'수행'이라고 하기는 힘든 측면이 있죠.

 팔정도의 8요소들이 

견해 (right view, right resolve) 

=> 일상의 규율 (right speech, right conduct, right livelihood) 

=> 명상 (right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration)의 순서로 

나열되어 있는 것도 

이전 단계의 요소들이 이후 단계의 요소들의 밑바탕이 되기 때문입니다. 

마치 사다리를 타고 올라가려면 rung을 하나씩 잡고 올라가야 하는 것과 마찬가지 원리라고 타니사로 스님은 비유하십니다. 물론 8요소들을 골고루 계발해야 하지만, '중점'은 한 번에 하나씩 둘 수밖에 없다는 것이죠. 그래서 동남아의 상좌불교 국가들에서는 재가자들에게, 특히 초심자들에게는 일상의 규율만 강조하고 명상은 별로 강조하지 않는다고 하네요. 절대다수의 재가자들은 일상에서 계율을 확실히 지키는 자체도 충분히 어려운 도전/과제이고 그 단계에서 더 나아가지 못 하는 것이 현실이기 때문이죠.

.

팔정도 순서대로 수행을 진행해야 하는 보다 근본적인 이유는, 

부처님 말씀을 이해하지도 못 하면서 skillful/wholesome vs. unskillful/unwholesome에 대한 정확한 판단!을 할 수 없고, 

그런 정확한 판단 없이 '바르게' 살 수 없으며, 크고 거칠고 심지어 눈에도 뻔히 드러나는 탐진치 행동조차 정돈하지 못 하면서, 

훨씬 더 미묘하고 elusive하며 또 deceptive한 마음 작용을 명상 중 알아차리기는 이론적으로도 불가능하기 때문이죠. 

우리가 그러지 않으려고 해도 인간의 의식은 자기기만의 달인이고, 우리는 우리 자신의 '마음' (드러내놓고 인정하기 무안하여 의식의 표면 아래로 깊숙히 밀어놓고서 은폐해 버린, 혹은 그럴 듯한 명분으로 포장한 탐진치)에 늘 속아넘어가니까요. 크고 거칠고 심지어 눈에도 뻔히 보이는 탐진치 행동조차 부인하고 그 어떤 증거가 드러나도 여전히 자기 믿고 싶은 대로만 믿는 것이 인간인데 (정치라는 것에서 우리가 늘상 목격하는 것이 바로 이 현상이죠), 눈에 보이지도 않는 마음 작용을 알아차린다는 것은 이론적으로도 불가능하죠. 탐진치라는 녹내장이 눈에 끼어 자동차 크기의 장애물조차 알아차리지 못 하는 사람이 엄지 손톱 크기의 장애물을 알아차리기란 아예 불가능한 것처럼요.

.

"나더러 주여 주여 하는 자마다 다 천국에 들어갈 것이 아니요 다만 하늘에 계신 내 아버지의 뜻대로 행하는 자라야 들어가리라"는 예수님 말씀의 불교 버젼은 아마도 "부처님 말씀에 대한 지적인 이해와 일상에서의 그 실천 없이 명상해 봐야 심신이 차분해지는 효과만 있을 뿐 의식은 계발되지 않느니라"가 되지 않을까 싶습니다.

 · Reply · 10 w · Edited

----------------

최신우

希修 코로나 19 가 어느 정도 잡히면 불교의 견해를 공부하고 규율을 실천에 옮기는 시도를 하고 싶습니다...

 · Reply · 10 w

Write a reply…

----

崔明淑

바른 것이 아닌데도 귀찮은데 말려들고 싶지 않아 입을 다물거나 

자기 욕망를 위한 비판를 하거나...자기가 불이익을 당하지 않는 선에서 바른 말을 하는 스킬을 어떻게 연마해야 하는지 관심이 있네요. 옳은 말씀인데 실천할 때 리스크가 따를 수 있으니...

 · Reply · 15 h

希修

崔明淑 그쵸. 그래서 '지혜'인 것이겠죠. 이런 gross한 레벨에서의 지혜/분별력이 생겨야, 그래야만 훨씬 더 subtle한 문제들을 다루는 명상에서도 발전이 가능해진다고, 지혜/분별력의 계발 없이 108배든 1080배든 절만 하거나 하루 12시간 앉아 있기만 한다고 해서 정신이 계발되는 것이 아니라고 하는 이유이기도 하구요. (마음을 가라앉히는 효과는 물론 있겠습니다만.. 부처님은 절을 수행으로 언급하지도 않으셨죠, 사실..) 누구에게나 무조건 좋은 말만 해 주고 무조건 높여 주고 부추겨 주고 "허허" 해 주면, 세상살이에서야 최고죠. '인격자'라는 얘기도 들을 테구요. 하지만 부처님 가르침의 궁극적 목적은 '세상에서 벗어나는' 것이지 '세상을 발전시키'거나 '이 세상에서 세속적 의미의 행복을 얻는' 것이 아니니, 양자택일의 순간들이 자주 찾아오긴 할 것 같습니다. 아무리 '좋은'/'선한' 의도에서라도 사실과 다른 얘기는 절대 하지 말라고 부처님은 가르치시는데, white lies 안 하면서 처세 잘 하기란 거의 불가능할 것 같아요, ㅎㅎ.

 · Reply · 15 h · Edited

Write a reply…

===============

希修

치매 환자들에게 위로/안심을 주기 위한 white lies의 '윤리성'에 대한 글. 

'정상인'들이 '공감'/'격려'/'친절' 차원에서 서로 서로에게 일상적으로 하는 좀더 가벼운 '거짓말'은 얼마나 더 '윤리적'인지 등의 의문을 제기하는 글.

.… See more

====

The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care

NEWYORKER.COM

Many facilities are using nostalgic environments as a means of soothing the misery, panic, and rage their residents experience.

By Larissa MacFarquhar

October 1, 2018 

A woman in a care facility sits outside.

The memory-care unit in Ohio’s Chagrin Valley is designed to look like an American town from its residents’ childhoods.Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

The large central room of the memory-care unit was designed to look like an old-fashioned American town square. There was a small fountain, surrounded by plants and a low stone wall; there were a couple of lampposts, and benches, tables, and chairs set about. The carpet was mottled with darker and lighter shades of green, to resemble grass growing and bending in different directions. Along the walls were the façades of what looked like clapboard houses, with wooden shutters and shingled pitched roofs and porches that extended into the room. Two long hallways, which led off from opposite sides of the central room, looked like streets in the same town, with more clapboard façades and porches on either side. These façades were not altogether fake: each front door opened onto a suite of small rooms—living room, bedroom, bathroom—that was a resident’s home.

Some of the porches had rocking chairs that you could sit in and watch people go by. Many of the residents were quite restless, and there was nowhere else to go, so people did walk by fairly often. Daylight came in through high windows just below the ceiling, and the ceiling itself consisted of bright light panels painted to look like a blue sky dotted with clouds. In the evening, as it began to grow dark outside, lights on the porches came on. Sometime later, the street lamps were lit; and finally, around eight o’clock, the ceiling sky was switched off, so that the unit came to look like a small-town street at night.

The illusion was surprisingly effective. While the central area didn’t feel like outdoors, exactly, it didn’t feel like a room, either—it was halfway between the two, at once enclosed and public. People who spent time there found themselves referring to the hallways as streets, and the suites as houses. And although the unit was conceived as a kind of nostalgic stage set, a harkening back to an America of eighty or ninety years ago, when many of its residents were children, in fact it looked much like the town outside: Chagrin Falls, Ohio, in the Chagrin Valley just east of Cleveland, a town of clapboard houses with wooden shutters and shingled pitched roofs and rocking chairs on the porches.

Watch “The Backstory”: Larissa MacFarquhar on the facilities that are using nostalgic environments to soothe their residents.

The impression that the unit was outdoors and public was all the stronger because the people who gathered each day in the central room had no common purpose or shared understanding of what they were doing there. Some knew that they had come to live in the memory-care unit because they could no longer manage living on their own: they could no longer drive, or they tended to forget their medication or leave the stove on, or if they went for a walk they might get lost. Some knew that they were in a memory-care unit but didn’t believe they needed to be there and tried to get out. Others did not know where they were, or knew sometimes but not at other times, or else seemed to have reached a point at which the question of where they were was no longer important.

The staff tried to keep the residents busy. They played hangman and trivia and bingo and beanbag toss. They performed stretching exercises and cognitive exercises every morning. There was Bible study and crafts and manicures each week. They watched Indians games on TV in the summer, and Cavaliers and Browns games in the fall. Elsewhere in the facility, there was an artificial main street, with a library, a gift shop, a beauty salon, a chapel in which services were held on Sundays, and a couple of faux storefronts—an oil company, a hardware store. Sometimes the residents were taken on outings—picnics or fishing at a nearby lake—and sometimes relatives came to take them to lunch, but most of the time the clapboard streetscape of the memory-care unit was their world.

The streetscape at the Lantern, the home at Chagrin Valley, is particularly encompassing and detailed, but comforting fictions—scenery, props, and other simulations—are employed in many homes for people with dementia. Some nursing homes offer their residents realistic vinyl baby dolls, along with diapers, bottles, and clothes. Some residents grow so attached to the dolls that it seems they believe they are real babies, although it is difficult to tell. Many people become visibly calmer when they are holding the dolls; but some relatives and staff find the dolls demeaning, and wonder whether it’s possible not to infantilize a person who is cuddling a toy baby.

People with dementia often ask to go home. Some ask even if they’re still in the house they’ve lived in for years; but people in institutions can ask many times a day. Telling a person in an institution that they live here now, that this is their permanent home, is usually neither comforting nor convincing, so, to address this problem, many nursing homes and hospitals have installed fake bus stops. When a person asks to go home, an aide takes them to the bus stop, where they sit and wait for a bus that never comes. At some point, when they are tired, and have forgotten what they are doing there, they are persuaded to go back.

Some years ago, a company in Boston began marketing Simulated Presence Therapy, which involved making a prerecorded audiotape to simulate one side of a phone conversation. A relative or someone close to the patient would put together an “asset inventory” of the patient’s cherished memories, anecdotes, and subjects of special interest; a chatty script was developed from the inventory, and a tape was recorded according to the script, with pauses every now and then to allow time for replies. When the tape was ready, the patient was given headphones to listen to it and told that they were talking to the person over the phone. Because patients’ memories were short, they could listen to the same tape over and over, even daily, and find it newly comforting each time. There was a séance-like quality to these sessions: they were designed to simulate the presence of someone who was merely not there, but they could, in principle, continue even after that person was dead.

In recent years, many more of these kinds of props and simulations have been devised: not just fake bus stops but fake buses, with screens for windows, on which footage of a passing scene gives the impression of movement; one home has made a simulated beach, with heat lamps, sand on the floor, and the sound of waves. There are versions of the Chagrin Valley streetscape in many countries around the world—in the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Australia. Many homes have rooms that re-create, with period details and vintage artifacts, a past world that their residents remember from childhood: the Dutch countryside of the nineteen-forties; small-town California in the nineteen-fifties; East Germany under Communism. All these fantasies are conceived of as a means of soothing the misery, panic, and rage that sometimes accompany dementia: to convey to people in later stages of the disease the impression that life is still as it was once, with children to take care of, and holidays at the seashore, and familiar homes to return to.

The residents homes consist of suites of small roomsliving room bedroom bathroomand have front porches that make the...

The residents’ homes consist of suites of small rooms—living room, bedroom, bathroom—and have front porches that make the hallways look like streets.Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

Fifty years ago, it was common in nursing homes to use physical restraints to tie a resident to a chair or a bed, to prevent them from causing trouble or coming to harm. Then, in 1987, a federal law was passed that limited the use of physical restraints to situations where the safety of the resident or someone else was at stake—they were not to be used for punishment or for the convenience of the staff. The physical restraints were then often replaced by chemical ones, and residents were tranquillized with powerful antipsychotics such as Haldol. Many people thought the use of such drugs was a terrible thing, so they began searching for non-pharmaceutical alternatives to quelling troublesome behaviors, and psychological placebos such as fake bus stops proved to be quite effective. One patient who had been given Haldol every night to stop him from screaming was so calmed by Simulated Presence Therapy that he no longer had to be tranquillized at all.

But psychological placebos, like any placebos, are a form of deception, and so they make people uncomfortable. They seem like a throwback to a time, not long ago, when it was normal and acceptable for a doctor to lie to a patient. Until recently, for instance, it was thought that telling the truth about a fatal illness was pointless and cruel. The Hippocratic oath said nothing about lying—it only proscribed doctors from doing harm. And what was harmful if not delivering a death sentence and destroying hope? Lying to most patients in this way now seems obviously wrong; but when it comes to people with dementia there is no consensus. To lie is to violate the respect that one person owes another; but lying to a person with dementia can protect them from awful truths that they have no power to alter. If a woman asks for her husband, having forgotten that he is dead, should you tell her the truth and cause her terrible grief, knowing that this fresh bereavement will likely repeat itself, over and over, day after day? Or should you just tell her that he is at the office? And is direct lying different from various forms of passive lying—encouraging delusions, or allowing existing delusions to persist? What is more important—dignity or happiness?

In Chagrin Valley one evening in early summer, Rachel and Jane sat eating dinner together at a small table by the window. (Some names have been changed to insure privacy.) Rachel had a bob of curly gray hair, and wore little metal-framed spectacles. Every now and again she made an anxious, high-pitched squeaking sound. “What’s that noise you’re making?” Jane asked. “Are you O.K.?” Jane wore a red hoodie and a red-and-white gingham shirt. Rachel didn’t answer. For a while, they ate without talking.

“Sweetheart, you’re making noises,” Jane said.

A woman stands in front of a selection of greeting cards with messages for celebrating new pies.

“I know,” Rachel said. “I can’t help it.”

“Yes, you can.”

“How?”

Becky sat by herself in the opposite corner. She had a strong face with vivid blue eyes; her cheeks were ruddy and her wild gray hair was escaping from a loose bun, as though she had just come in from a walk across a windy moor. Every so often she tried to stand up, but bumped against the table and fell back down into her wheelchair. Becky was married to another resident, Cal, but she no longer knew him, although sometimes his presence distressed her, which the nurses thought might be a sign of recognition. Cal sometimes seemed to recognize her—sometimes he would sit next to her and stroke the back of her head—but at other times he did not. Becky could not speak anymore, and spent most of her time being cared for by an aide.

George, Angela, and Carmen sat together at a long table in the middle of the dining room. Eleanore came into the room, wheeling her walker, and went up to the table. “O.K., ladies, what would you want for dinner tonight?” she asked. Eleanore had been a Girl Scout troop leader for many years, so she was used to taking care of people. Her hair was short and fine and colored a pale brown, and she wore round glasses. She had trouble with her memory and sometimes grew confused, but she knew that she was living in a nursing home and was still very much herself.

“I didn’t bring anything for dinner tonight,” Angela told her.

“I didn’t think you would bring anything,” Eleanore said. “I want to know if we can make anything for you.”

“Who is that back here?” George cried out, clutching the arms of his wheelchair and twisting around, trying to see behind him. “Why are you back there? Why aren’t you talking to me?” There was nobody there just then, but sometimes aides came up behind him and started wheeling his chair away without alerting him first, so he knew that someone might be lurking at his back where he couldn’t see them.

“I am talking to you,” Eleanore said. “I’m trying to ask you what you want for dinner.”

“What are you doing?” George said. “What’s going on back there?”

“Will you tell us what you want to eat?” Eleanore repeated. “Do you like spaghetti? Do you like macaroni or spaghetti?”

A man lies on a grey pillow beneath a collage of family photographs in his room.

A resident, a former dentist, lies beneath a collage of family photographs in his room.Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

Many of the clothes worn by the residents of the Chagrin Valley facility are labelled.

Many of the clothes worn by the residents of the Chagrin Valley facility are labelled.Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

“I don’t know what to do,” George said. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Tell me yes or no, do you like macaroni?” Eleanore asked him patiently.

“What is she talking about?” Carmen asked Angela.

“She’s talking too much,” Angela said.

“You eat things, you drink things, you don’t have a goddam thing,” George said.

“Don’t swear,” Angela said.

An aide told Eleanore that there was a set menu for dinner, so she went to sit at her customary table by the door with Dr. Joe, a retired dentist. Dr. Joe did not talk much, so they usually ate together in silence. But at other times Eleanore would muse aloud about the course of her life. During the Second World War, she had worked as a switchboard operator for the military. She then stayed home to raise her children and never worked for pay again, but she had loved that job and still talked about it.

Later that month, she was going to turn one hundred, and she was trying to figure out how to think about this strange event. “I mean, that’s ridiculous,” she said cheerfully. “Who lives a hundred years? So I never believed it. If they have a party for me at a hundred, then I’ll be a hundred. I’m not objecting. But I’m not going to stay that way. After all, the year keeps going, and I’ll keep going along with it, and next year’s going to be a hundred and one, and then a hundred and two, and pretty soon I’ll be a hundred and five, and then what are they going to do with me? They’ll put me on a fence post and say, Look at that lovely lady, she lived a hundred and five years and nobody knows why, so we’re trying to find out why. What’s the point in living all that long if you can’t live it? And I don’t think I’ve been living it. I’m just existing. And when the time goes by and I say, Yeah, another year passed, and I’m a hundred and two, a hundred and three, a hundred and four, and then what? What number do I have to reach before something changes? Do I have to go to a hundred and ten, and then be something else? Or what? What’s it all for? That’s the question I’m asking, and I can’t get any answers.”

Jim Beitel was too upset to sit down for dinner. He had come to Chagrin Valley only a couple of days before; for the first forty-eight hours his wife, Sondra, had stayed with him all the time, both of them miserable. A little while earlier, Sondra had forced herself to leave. Jim was fifty-eight; he had been given a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s at fifty-three. Now he barely spoke. He was a big, athletic man, six feet two, two hundred and twenty-five pounds. He was wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, a rope necklace, black surf shorts, flip-flops, and a pair of sunglasses on his head. He had short, bristly gray hair and a short gray beard. He paced continuously, up and down the corridors, in and out of the dining room, into doorways and out again. Every now and then, he stopped suddenly and threw his arms out wide in a gesture of utter bewilderment.

Later in the evening, Sondra came back. She was a tiny woman in her late forties, with short blond hair. She stood with Jim in the central room and demonstrated how to throw a rubber ball into a toy basketball hoop. Then she gave the ball to him. Jim looked up at the hoop as though he didn’t know what it was. He hugged the ball to his chest and began to cry.

An aide helps a resident in her room.

An aide helps a resident in her room.

Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

Jim and Sondra had both worked as engineers in the Columbus, Ohio, office of a multibillion-dollar construction company. Jim oversaw big commercial projects—convention centers, hospitals, ballparks. They had met twenty years earlier, playing on a local soccer team. In 2009, Jim’s brother, to whom he was very close, died of kidney cancer in his early fifties, and Sondra thought that might have triggered something in Jim, because his symptoms started soon afterward.

The first thing she noticed was his reaction time: one day she said, while they were working on the computer together, “Close that window and open another,” and she noticed that it took him time to process what she had said. She then saw that in meetings he had begun asking people to repeat things and writing down what they said. Then one day he had an appointment with a doctor he’d been seeing for twenty-five years and he couldn’t remember how to get there. Because he was so young, nobody thought of dementia. Doctors tested him for inflammation and hepatitis and mad-cow disease and autoimmune diseases; they gave him spinal taps and put him on steroids. Finally, they ordered a pet scan of his brain and diagnosed Alzheimer’s.

Jim went on disability, and Sondra bought a trained English setter to keep him company while she was at the office. The dog brought Jim’s medication to him at the sound of an alarm. When Jim was still able to drive but grew disoriented in large parking lots, he could tell the dog, “Truck,” and the dog would find his truck. If he got lost walking in the neighborhood, the dog tracked him down. The dog enabled Sondra to keep working awhile longer. But after a year it took so much out of Jim just to manage simple tasks like finding his coffee cup that he was exhausted by the end of the day, and she stopped working so that they could spend time together while he was still aware of it. They decided to check off some items on their bucket list. They took money out of Jim’s retirement account and travelled to New Zealand and Italy and Hawaii.

Sondra decided that if Jim did something weird, or said something that wasn’t true, she wouldn’t correct him. If he put on four baseball caps at once, or put a flip-flop on one foot and a sneaker on the other, she would just go with it. Then again, he had always been a pretty obstinate person, so this wasn’t a big change in their relationship. “Everyone knew if Jim says the grass is blue it’s not worth trying to talk him out of it,” she said. “And that just rolled right into when he was sick.”

Eventually, things got to the point where Sondra couldn’t manage taking care of him alone anymore, so she began looking into nursing homes. Chagrin Valley was much nicer than other places she saw—no funeral-home carpeting, no grim hallways with wall protectors and handrails—but it cost about the same. She dreaded leaving him there, but she also hoped that finding someone else to help with daily tasks would allow them to be close again. “I spent so much time taking care of him that I had no time to be his wife anymore,” she said. “By the time where I can sit down on the couch and hold his hand, I’m so completely drained mentally and physically that I can’t even go through a photo album with him. I’m hoping now I can hold his hand and go for a walk and just have that husband-wife relationship. We still have it; it’s just that we haven’t been able to really experience it in a long time.” Many people said this: that while they were taking care of their wife or their father at home they were no longer a husband or a child—just a nurse.

The staff gives residents cognitive exercises such as puzzles tracing and hangman.

The staff gives residents cognitive exercises, such as puzzles, tracing, and hangman.Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

Jim mostly lost his ability to speak early on, but he could still recognize faces, and he could show emotion. Oddly enough, while many people with dementia grow angry and difficult, Jim was the opposite. “He got a lot nicer,” Sondra said. “Not that he was mean before, but he was always very businesslike, very serious and by the book. The disease changed his personality. People would ask, Who is this guy?—he was just so kind, and there was a softer side to him that they hadn’t seen before.” Before, when he was frustrated he would get angry; now he was more likely to cry.

In losing his language so early but remembering faces, Jim was unusual. Most people with dementia start to become confused long before they stop speaking. Many people mistake one relative for another—mistake their daughter for their mother, or their son for their husband—and many forget that their spouse or their parents are dead. It is common to imagine that you are somewhere else, such as a hotel or a prison or a ship, and to believe, therefore, that those who tell you you’re in a nursing home are trying to trick you. Some people believe that dramas on television are real. People with Lewy body dementia often experience visual and auditory hallucinations, and people with dementia of all sorts have problems with depth perception and find it difficult to distinguish dark patches on the ground from holes. Many imagine themselves to be living through an earlier time, when they had an office to go to or small children to pick up from school, or even earlier, when they themselves were small and dependent on their parents. Doctors have observed that there seems to be a “reminiscence bump”: that people whose memories are failing tend to remember the period of their late childhood and early adulthood more vividly than other stages of their life.

It is because of these characteristic confusions that dementia care has developed its characteristic lies. “I think for the most part it’s kinder to just go with the moment,” Jennifer Karp, the former acting director of nursing at Chagrin Valley, says. “Because the chances are within the next few minutes they’re not going to remember what just occurred anyway. To tell them repeatedly that their spouse has passed away, or when they’re crying out for their mother to say, ‘You’re ninety-four years old, where do you think your mother is?’ That’s just cruel. So we say, ‘Hey, maybe they’re at the store.’ Someone asked me yesterday, ‘Where do you think all the kids went?’ And instead of saying, ‘What kids?’ I said, ‘I think they’re playing—it’s a beautiful day outside.’ And she said, ‘That’s good, they can go play.’ That was all she needed to hear.”

In dementia care, everybody lies. Although some nursing homes have strict rules about being truthful, a recent survey found that close to a hundred per cent of care staff admitted to lying to patients, as did seventy per cent of doctors. In most places, as in Chagrin Valley, there is no firm policy one way or another, but the rule of thumb among the staff is that compassionate deception is often the wisest course. “I believe that deep down, they know that it is better to lie,” Barry B. Zeltzer, an elder-care administrator, wrote in the American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease & Other Dementias. “Once the caregiver masters the art of being a good liar and understands that the act of being dishonest is an ethical way of being, he or she can control the patient’s behaviors in a way that promotes security and peace of mind.” Family members and care staff lie all the time, and can’t imagine getting through the day without doing so, but, at the same time, lying makes many of them uncomfortable. To ease this “deception guilt,” lying in dementia care has been given euphemistic names, such as “therapeutic fibbing,” or “brief reassurances,” or “stepping into their reality.”

The current prevalence of lying is in part a reaction to the opposite approach, which was favored in the middle of the last century. Oddly, at the time when doctors routinely lied to ordinary patients about their diagnoses, experts in dementia care advocated confronting confused patients with facts and truth. In the early nineteen-sixties, Lucille Taulbee and James Folsom, a nurse and a doctor working with a range of geriatric psychiatric patients, including some with dementia, at the V.A. hospital in Tuscaloosa, developed a program they called “reality orientation.” Small groups of patients were taught by an instructor standing at the front of a classroom with a pointer, which he used to indicate various props: a clock, a calendar, a picture, a map, plastic numbers, and, most important, a “reality-orientation board,” on which were listed such things as the name and location of the hospital; the year, month, and day of the week; the name of the next meal; the next national holiday; and the day’s weather. In the class, the teacher told each patient his name, where he was, and the date. The teacher rehearsed these facts over and over until the patient managed to retain them, at least for the moment, at which point the teacher moved on to a new set of facts, such as the patient’s age, home town, and former occupation. These lessons were not confined to the classroom but reinforced continually throughout the day. Each patient wore a nametag at all times; there was another nametag attached to their bed, and a third tag identified their seat in the dining room. Before the patient ate each meal, they were reminded of what time it was.

A couple on a couch is in a living room full of giraffes.

“If we get a bigger place, we’ll just accumulate more giraffes.”

Taulbee and Folsom claimed considerable success as a result of this program. Mr. R., for instance, who had lived in a psychiatric hospital since 1923, and at the time of his entry into the program had not spoken a word for fifteen years, could after seven and a half months not only read the entire reality-orientation board out loud but had begun to chat with staff outside the classroom. The core of the program was not giving up hope that even the most bewildered, isolated patient could, with enough training, return to the world. And the key was facts: these were the handles that the patients would cling to, to pull themselves back in. “When they arrived, they all were frightened, unhappy, and uncomfortable people,” Taulbee and Folsom wrote. “But their look of hopelessness soon changed to hopefulness when we told them their names, where they were, and what date and day of the week it was.”

For decades, reality orientation was extraordinarily influential—even now, it is a rare nursing home that does not have a reality-orientation board somewhere on display. R.O. was one of the first efforts not only to halt but actually to reverse the cognitive symptoms of dementia, and as such it gave the staff of nursing homes something to do that felt more hopeful than the endless round of washing, dressing, and feeding. But, even as reality orientation became mandatory in many places, its rigid methods were resisted and mocked by patients and staff. A pair of sociologists who spent time in some Midwestern nursing homes in the early nineteen-seventies discovered that reality-orientation training had degenerated into farce:

Aide [pointing to the weather on the R.O. board, which reads “raining”]: What’s the weather like today, Emma?

Emma turns her head slightly and quickly looks out the window.

Emma: Well, it looks like the sun is shining kinda bright.

The sun happens to be shining at the moment.

Aide: Are you sure? It says it’s raining. Doesn’t it? [finger still pointing to board]

Emma: Well, it doesn’t look like it from here.

Aide: What does it say here, Emma? [directing Emma’s attention to the board].

Emma: It says it’s raining.

Aide: [warmly] That’s correct. Very good.

In some cases, the training seemed worse than pointless, forcing patients to confront realities that might have been better left unconfronted. One patient the sociologists encountered had been relatively calm until she started R.O. training, during which she was continually reminded that she lived in a nursing facility. Once this sank in, she began to cry all the time and pace around the ward, saying that she wanted to go home. It was far from clear that R.O.’s version of reality was relevant or helpful for long-term patients. Keeping track of the weather seemed unnecessary when a patient was rarely allowed outside a locked ward. And keeping track of calendar and clock time only drew attention to the dreariness of nursing-home life, where each day was more or less like the last. The kind of reality most relevant to dementia patients was not the kind that would be represented on an R.O. board: not “Today is Monday/Tuesday, the weather is rain/sun” but “Your spouse’s name is ___. He/she is alive/dead.”

In the early nineteen-eighties, a social worker from Cleveland named Naomi Feil began to practice what she called validation therapy, which rejected R.O.’s absolutist position on truth. She believed that it was wrong to lie outright, but also wrong to correct: the thing to do was to enter into the emotional world of the person with dementia and validate their feelings, because feelings were more important than facts. To many people working with patients, the idea that rigorous truthfulness was unnecessary and even harmful came as an enormous relief.

Dementiacare facilities offer regular manicures and other salon services to break up the monotony of the days.

Dementia-care facilities offer regular manicures and other salon services to break up the monotony of the days.Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

To advocates of reality orientation, Feil’s validation therapy seemed not empathy so much as collusion. But the validation approach grew more and more popular, to the point where the idea of sticking to the truth came to be an unconventional position. Then, in the nineteen-nineties, an Englishwoman named Penny Garner came up with an approach to dementia care that was considerably more radical in its rejection of truth-telling, and aroused considerably more hostility.

Garner’s mother, Dorothy, began to notice, in her late fifties, that her memory was failing and she was getting confused, and she grew sufficiently worried that she insisted on a brain scan. The scan revealed extensive atrophy, but her husband, a doctor, thinking it best, didn’t tell her. He told her only that she didn’t have a tumor, and not to worry; if she wanted to remember things, she should just try harder. Dorothy grew disturbed when confronted with her mistakes, so Garner found that the best way to keep her mother happy was to go along with everything she said, no matter how peculiar. Dorothy had travelled a lot, and Garner saw that, when surrounded by strangers, in a line at the supermarket, or in a doctor’s waiting room, she often guessed that she was at the airport, happily anticipating boarding a flight. Garner always went with it. Her father couldn’t adjust to this strategy at all—he insisted on setting Dorothy straight—but Garner discovered that she quite enjoyed the Alice in Wonderland quality of those days with her mother.

After Dorothy died, Garner decided that she ought to use what she’d learned taking care of her. She had no medical training—she was a stay-at-home mother living in the Cotswolds, a bucolic region just west of Oxford—but in the early nineteen-nineties she started volunteering with dementia patients at her local hospital, in Burford. During the next ten years, she refined her ideas into a system. First among her rules: Never ask questions. Questions, she thought, put you on the spot: they could cause a person with dementia to panic by demanding an answer that they might not be able to give. Instead, she learned to start a conversation by rambling on about something boring—usually the weather—in order to ease her way into the person’s attention in an unthreatening manner. Once they started talking, she would use words they had used, mirror their gestures, and declare herself fascinated by what they said, to create a sense that at last they were with someone who really understood them.

Another of her rules was: Never contradict anything the person said, no matter how distant from reality, in order to spare them a distressing confrontation with their own decline. But it wasn’t enough simply to avoid correcting; to keep the person truly happy, she thought, you had to identify the roles in which they were happiest and which fit common situations—as Dorothy was happy, while waiting for something, to believe she was a traveller at the airport—and then you had to keep them playing those roles as much as possible. Garner instructed each person’s family to figure out what those roles might be. For instance, one woman in the hospital, Alice, had been a crack bridge player. Garner arranged for two bridge novices to ask Alice to teach them. After a while, she could not play very well anymore, but she no longer needed to: Garner found that all it took to trigger Alice’s sense that bridge was being played was a certain velour tablecloth. “As time went by, most of Alice’s waking life revolved around Bridge,” Oliver James, a psychologist and Garner’s son-in-law, wrote in “Contented Dementia,” his book about her technique. “Penny created a loop for her in which a large part of every day consisted of waiting to play, playing, having tea while playing, recovering from having played and discussing plans for playing tomorrow—like a happy version of the film Groundhog Day.”

Alice was not unusual, Garner found: often, a single prop or gesture was all that was needed to keep a person feeling that they were playing their accustomed role in a beloved activity—that, and a caregiver who could keep the scene going. The requirements were few enough that Garner found she could keep several scenes going at once. “You might have ten or twelve people with dementia in the same room, but they’d all think it was something else,” Jan Dewing, who was the director of the Burford hospital in the nineteen-nineties and is now a professor of nursing at Queen Margaret University, in Edinburgh, says. “One guy who used to work in London, in the City, years ago thought it was his club. Someone else thought it was a church hall where they came to practice the piano. There was an ironing board there, and someone thought it was an offshoot of the laundry where she used to work. One used to be a Wren in the Royal Navy and thought she was having a reunion with her Wren friends.”

In order to keep a person safely inside their world, it was necessary to figure out the boundaries and contents of that world—who lived in it, what activities took place there, and in what era—so that there would be as little dissonance as possible when the person used information from that past world to interpret the present. If there was someone missing from the present, for instance—because that person had moved away, or died—it was necessary to arrive at an explanation for this absence that the person with dementia would accept. This had to be done by a careful process of trial and error. If, for example, the person asked often where their son was, it was necessary to find out, by experimenting with answers and watching their reactions, how old they believed their son to be at that moment. If they believed him to be a small child, then telling them truthfully that he was out of town at a medical conference, say, would cause bewilderment or suspicion; but if they believed their son to be a college student, telling them that he was playing in the garden would also be a mistake. Continuity was essential. Even a momentary glimpse of another reality that led patients to doubt their understanding of things could be horribly traumatic; all the more so because they would not remember exactly what they had been traumatized by, and so would be left only with a feeling that something was threatening and incomprehensible.

Garner’s method had much in common with improv comedy, following the same rules: Never say no to the reality you’re given; say “Yes, and,” building on whatever the other person said; don’t ask questions. It also called on the same skills—quick thinking, refusal to be embarrassed, delight in the absurd. The best preparation for caring for a person with dementia, Garner thought, was learning such techniques at drama school. And, indeed, professional actors elsewhere were making that connection. Northwestern University’s medical school was working with the Lookingglass Theatre Company, in Chicago, and Karen Stobbe and Mondy Carter, improv artists, were travelling around the U.S. giving workshops on the uses of improv in dementia care.

Some relatives worried that they couldn’t make Garner’s method work because they weren’t good actors. They found the constant manipulation upsetting, and feared that their deceptions would be detected. Garner recognized that sticking to her method with the necessary consistency required a certain emotional remove. She concluded that in order to put her method properly into effect it was necessary for the relative to stop thinking of the person with dementia as their mother or father or husband or wife; they must start thinking of them, instead, as their client.

Other relatives worried that to lie was to betray a trust. To them, Garner said, “Grow up.” To insist on the truth seemed to her immature and selfish when a vulnerable person’s happiness was at stake. Having witnessed the desperate anxiety that could make life with dementia a hell for both the sufferer and their family, she felt that to worry that lying was bad was to miss the whole point.

Some dementia experts felt that Garner’s method was unethical, because it encouraged delusions. The British Alzheimer’s Society felt strongly enough about this that it issued a formal statement on the subject: “We struggle to see how systematically deceiving someone with dementia can be part of an authentic trusting relationship in which the person’s voice is heard and their rights promoted.” But to Garner the reality of people with dementia was not a delusion in the way that a belief that they were Queen Victoria or Napoleon would be: it was not a delusion but a memory. Her clients were living in reality—they were just using the reality of the past to understand the present. Besides, she wasn’t promoting delusions; she was just refusing to correct them. “You’re not actively reinforcing the idea that Fred is alive when you know he’s died,” she said. “You are simply not disturbing the idea that Fred is alive that the person with dementia already has. Imagine a conversation between two people in which one says, ‘Fred is so good at tennis,’ and the other person says, ‘Yes, Fred is good at tennis, but we can’t forget that he’s dead’!”

Some people in the dementia field believe that to think of the disease as a terrible harm is to think slightingly of...

Some people in the dementia field believe that to think of the disease as a terrible harm is to think slightingly of people who are living with it.Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

A woman in a wheelchair is shown in a green room.

Sometimes relationships between a person with dementia and their family grow more emotional and intimate as talking falls away.Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

Garner was an outsider with no medical training, which made experts suspicious, but some were sufficiently impressed by what they saw at Burford to conduct studies. Positive results were published in Aging & Mental Health and in the Journal of Social Work Practice, and, more recently, Niall McCrae, a senior lecturer in mental health who specializes in the elderly at King’s College London, embarked on a multiyear study of Garner’s technique—both its effectiveness in improving patients’ well-being and the feasibility of putting it into practice in places larger than Burford. “In a textbook of mental-health care, you will not see advice that you should meet the person with delusions halfway,” McCrae says. “But, in reality, the best nurses, the best carers, do that.” Garner’s method allowed many people with dementia to avoid panic and misery and to live out their last years in a state of happy delusion—how could that be wrong?

Years ago, the philosopher Robert Nozick proposed a thought experiment: a person could be hooked up to an Experience Machine, which would provide any experiences the person chose, for the rest of their life, and which the person would experience as their life—the only catch being that it wouldn’t be real. Would people want that? Nozick thought that they would not, because, as the medical ethicist Maartje Schermer puts it, people “not only want to experience certain things but also to do things, to be a certain kind of person and to live in contact with reality.” Schermer believes that deceptive treatments of dementia patients have something in common with the Experience Machine, and to that extent they are suspect. But she feels that dementia changes a person in a way that makes the calculation different.

“The Experience Machine shows that there is more to the good life than merely experiences,” she writes. “Well-being comprises more than just ‘feeling good.’ But this does not necessarily show us that illusory pleasant experiences have no value at all.” To reject happy delusion on principle seems to her too puritanical, too rigid. Besides, she believes, once a person with dementia has lost the capacity to tell the difference between truth and falsehood, or, really, to hold beliefs at all, that person has also lost the capacity to be lied to. “When there is only pain and no capacity left to deal with that pain, to really understand or come to grips with it, nor even to remember it for very long, then the truth cannot contribute to a good life.”

In the memory-care unit at Chagrin Valley, it was time for the Tuesday-morning cognitive exercises. Kelly, a nurse, handed out pieces of paper on which the letters of the alphabet were written with dotted lines, so that they could be traced. Some of the residents could trace them easily; others could not do it at all. Rachel traced the letters carefully, with intense concentration, but she saw only the letters on the left side of the paper. “Jimmy, write me a sentence, any sentence,” Kelly said, and held out a pencil. Jimmy Carter was one of the abler residents, in his mid-seventies—too able for tracing letters. He took the pencil from Kelly and wrote, “I Jim Carter would like to get out of this mud, out of hope.”

Jimmy Carter was always cracking jokes, but he was also very unhappy that he couldn’t leave. “I don’t understand how I got here,” he said. “They didn’t tell me, they just dropped me off. The patients, some of them are bad. It’s not for me, to be in a place like this.” Kelly looked over Jimmy Carter’s shoulder and read his sentence. “Why don’t you tell me something about your company?” she suggested. He wrote, “My wife and I started our business forms company along with our 3 daughters. We have been for 4 years.” A resident named Paul sat opposite Jimmy Carter and sketched him. The sketch was very good. George, who had been dozing, woke up and started singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” in a rich bass voice, beating time on the arms of his chair.

Jim Beitel continued to wander, but his mood was very different from what it had been the day before. He no longer seemed distressed, just restless. When he tried to open a locked door, which set off an alarm, he raised his hands in mock fright, giggled, and moved on. Entering the dining room, he nearly walked into Carmen, and he shifted rapidly from side to side, as though joking that they couldn’t figure out how to pass each other. Carmen was not amused, and waited for him to stop. He arrived back in the central room and spotted the basketball hoop and the rubber balls. An aide saw him holding a small orange ball; she picked up a giant beach ball and showed it to him. He couldn’t think of the words to say in response, but he knew the expression to substitute: he widened his eyes and tipped his head back as if to say, Whoa, that is a huge ball. A minute later, he remembered the words. “That’s a big one, huh?” he said.

Later on, in the evening, Jim wandered over to Jimmy Carter, who was sitting in a rocking chair.

“How d’you get here?” Jimmy Carter asked Jim.

“I don’t know!” Jim said.

A king and queen play chess.

“Sacrificing your queen pretty cavalierly, aren’t we?”

Jimmy Carter pointed to the Abbey Road T-shirt that Jim was wearing. “The Beatles!” he said. “A great group.”

Jim shrugged. “What the hell?”

“You figured out a way to get out of here?” Jimmy Carter asked him.

“No,” Jim said.

“Me, either.” They both laughed.

Some people in the dementia field, notably members of the Bradford Dementia Group founded, in 1992, by the late psychologist Tom Kitwood, believe that to think of the disease as a terrible harm is to think slightingly of people who are living with it. They argue that, with proper care, a person can live as good a life with dementia as without—in some ways and in some cases even better. Sometimes relationships between a person with dementia and their family grow more emotional and intimate as talking falls away. Kitwood believed not only that a happy life is possible with dementia but that such lives could be instructive to the rest of us. “People who have dementia, for whom the life of the emotions is often intense, and without the ordinary forms of inhibition,” he wrote, are “inviting us to return to aspects of our being that are much older in evolutionary terms: more in tune with the body and its functions, closer to the life of instinct.”

One resident of Chagrin Valley who rarely came out of his room to participate in the activities was an electrical engineer from Mississippi named Ed Magee. Ed was eighty-four; he had worked on nuclear-power-plants, and his work had taken him all over the world—he had lived in Indonesia, China, and Mexico. After he retired, he was living alone in Florida—he was divorced, and then his ex-wife, Anne, died—when his daughter, Linda, noticed that when they talked on the phone he asked the same questions again and again. Then one day he fell and hit his head and was found unconscious in his front yard. He was given a diagnosis of dementia and later moved to Chagrin, not far from Linda’s home. Linda liked that Chagrin had what she felt were activities appropriate for male residents—a basketball hoop and a Ping-Pong table and a carpet with a miniature putting green. “My dad wasn’t going to sit at a table making bunnies with cotton balls for tails, or glue beads to coloring-book pages,” she said.

A woman with grey hair and a plaid shirt walks across a porch decorated with images from the past.

A resident walks across a porch decorated with images from the past.

Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

Linda did not lie to her father. This was not a moral position for her but a practical one: she wanted her father to understand the reality of his life for as long as possible, so she reinforced this every way she could think of. She hung family photographs on the wall of his living room and labelled them with the names of the people depicted. She hung up a whiteboard on which she wrote messages that pertained to his current anxieties and mistakes: “Always eat dinner!”; “Wear hearing aids every day! Turn on!”; “If it’s written on the calendar, it’s correct.” For a while, Ed had been preoccupied with the thought that he needed to attend to a house he had owned in Alabama, so she wrote, “No need to move or go to Huntsville. You stay right here . . . permanently.”

She emphasized that he was going to be in Chagrin Valley forever, because, while he understood that he was in a facility, he seemed to think it was a kind of rehab, from which he would eventually be discharged and sent home. Often, Ed thought that he needed to go to his office, and he would call Linda or her brothers and ask them to pick him up. One of Linda’s brothers sometimes went along and promised to take him, but Linda refused to do this. She believed he could still handle the truth. “There was one time when he was getting upset that we weren’t picking him up, and I told him, ‘No, Dad, you’ve been retired since 1998, you don’t work anymore,’ ” she said. “And he said, ‘Yes, I do,’ and I said, ‘No, you don’t,’ and he said, ‘Yes, I do,’ and so I said, ‘Where are the time cards?’ He said, ‘They’re on my computer,’ and I said, ‘O.K., show me.’ ” As he turned to his computer and tried to find the time sheets, she began filming him. She wanted him to remember this moment. “After a long time, he realized there were no time sheets on the computer. And he turned to me and said, ‘Wow, I’ve got to get with the real world.’ ”

Her father often called her many times in the middle of the night, and it got to the point where she wasn’t sleeping, so she set up her phone so that after she went to bed only calls from the staff would ring through—the rest went to voice mail. One morning, she woke to see that he had called her twenty times between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. “The first one started with a voice mail to the effect of ‘Hey, Linda, it’s Dad, I just wanted to let you know your mother isn’t here, I can’t find her, I don’t know where she is, I’m going to go to the front desk and get them to call the police.’ Then he left messages—‘Hey, where are you, are you in the hospital, are you drunk, are you in jail?’ Then the messages went to ‘Hey, Annie, it’s Edward.’ My mother’s name was Annie.”

Her father had called her many times before, wondering where her mother was. He had forgotten that they had divorced, he had forgotten she had died. To Linda, it seemed that if he no longer understood these basic facts about his life he was lost, and she wanted fiercely for him not to be lost yet. So she called him back that morning and told him over and over, Mom is dead. Mom is dead. Mom is dead. Mom is dead. No matter how many times she said it, though, she sensed that it somehow wasn’t getting through to him. Then the thought occurred to her that she needed to go back further. “I finally said, ‘Anne is dead.’ And he got real quiet for a moment. And then he said, ‘You’re right. I forgot about that.’ ”

For Linda, giving up trying to pull her father back into reality did not seem like a kindness, even if the truth was distressing. And many people with dementia, those who are still able to express an opinion on the subject, agree with her. A few years ago, Graham Stokes, a British expert on dementia care, chaired a study on ethical issues in the field, and included on his panel several people with the disease. “All of them said, Why do you lie to us when we are at our most vulnerable? Would you wish your relationships with others to be based on deceit? Why do you create fake worlds for people with dementia? Why do you convert care homes to look like pubs or cinemas? For me,” he says, “that was a light-bulb moment. It shouldn’t be about deceiving people. It should be about giving them meaningful lives in the present, rather than trying to keep them in nostalgic themes from the past.”

Those working in dementia-care often ask, Should a person be defined by thoughts and memories? Aren’t emotions and bodies enough?Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

Stokes was one of the people who pushed the British Alzheimer’s Society to issue its statement condemning Penny Garner’s method. To him, even passive lies—artificial worlds and fake bus stops—were just a lazy short-term solution that avoided deeper problems and engendered problems of their own. “It just creates confusion,” he says. “You’re standing in the hallway of a building and there’s a bus stop. It’s not easy—it’s challenging when someone wants to go home. But that gives you an opportunity to talk about the desire to go home, because home represents something they’re not getting in the present. I think that’s a far more meaningful way of working than sticking up a bus stop when you know it’s nothing more than a blazing lie.”

There are practical problems with lying, too. Dementia doesn’t proceed in a steady, systematic fashion; in most people, at least in the early and middle stages, periods of confusion alternate unpredictably with periods of lucidity. So if you tell someone their mother is coming to pick them up, and at that moment they remember that their mother has been dead for thirty years, they will know that you are untrustworthy, and might justifiably be suspicious of other people as well. Even if they forget the reason they don’t trust you, the feeling may linger. (A study published in Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology in 2014 found that Alzheimer’s patients feel emotions long after they remember their cause.) And, even if the person never glimpses, in an awful moment of lucidity, how they are being manipulated, still they have lost something in the relationship, whether they know it or not.

Then there is the issue of inconsistency among all the people with whom the person comes in contact. What if a person with dementia asks for his mother, and one person says, “She’s out shopping,” another says, “I’m afraid she’s dead,” and a third says, “Are you feeling sad?” This problem is not a minor one. Many people with dementia are already suspicious of those around them. Some suspect that people are lying to them (and, of course, they are often right), or that someone who claims to be a relative is actually an impostor. Some suspect that their belongings have been taken (they may be right about this, too—residents of nursing homes often wander into one another’s rooms and pick things up), or that they’re going to be attacked. Some believe that the care staff have abducted their children. Even if they don’t suffer from these more extreme fears, they will likely be aware that, since their diagnosis, other people suspect them of being confused whether they are or not, and so may be second-guessing what they say, or making decisions without consulting them. So the risk of arousing suspicion is a big risk to take, especially if the whole idea is to ease a patient’s anxiety.

There is also the problem that, since lying implies a lack of respect, its acceptance can lead to disrespect of other sorts. “Most of the caring workforce is quite transient and not very educated, and you want to convey to them the value of the person they’re working with,” Graham Stokes says. “But, if they see you lying to patients, you’re saying, They’re not really people. And then you see other parts of the care changing: they might leave the door to the toilet open, while you wouldn’t do that with real people.”

It might be possible to deal with the problem of lying and dementia by means of advance directives. People already specify what sorts of medical treatment they want and don’t want in the future, in case they later lose the capacity to make those decisions; could they not also specify how they want to be treated in other ways? Someone who most values happiness, however simple, might choose lies and medicine; someone who feels that life with late-stage dementia, without a certain degree of awareness, is not worth living might choose truth and death. The trouble is, advance directives themselves bring up all kinds of problems in the context of dementia. Suppose a woman signs a directive that she is not to be lied to but, at a later stage of the disease, suffers terrible bereavement each day as a consequence—should her family feel obliged to respect her wishes? Or suppose a man believes that life with late-stage dementia is not worth living, and signs an advance directive to have all medical treatment withheld, even antibiotics, once he reaches that point; but then, when he does reach it, he seems very happy with his life—he still enjoys visits (even if he can’t identify the visitor), his meals, beloved music, walks in the sun. Should his directive be respected, ending his life?

The late philosopher Ronald Dworkin believed such advance directives should be respected. People don’t just live for pleasure, he argued; they also want to preserve their dignity, and to feel that their life as a whole has integrity and coherence. When people dread the total dependency of late-stage dementia, they don’t just dread its effect on others; they dread the way it warps the shape and story of their life. For some, the prospect that they might live their last years content with childlike pleasures, kept happy with benevolent lies, would not be a relief but a horror. In the case of such a person, Dworkin believed, it is no more legitimate or kind to contradict their advance directive in late-stage dementia than it would be if they were in a permanent vegetative state.

Dworkin assumed that the man who dreaded late-stage dementia and the one who is perfectly happy are the same person. But what if the happy person can no longer remember anything about the man he once was—is he still the same person in any meaningful sense? And, if not, is it right to end his happy life in order to preserve the dignity of, in effect, somebody else? Also, does it make a difference what his family thinks about this? Whether they feel, in the later stages, that the person they loved is gone; or whether they feel that that person, though much changed, is still there—still recognizable in his body, in his smell, in his eyes, in his hands when held, in some of the things he appears still to delight in? Why should a person be defined by thoughts and memories? Aren’t emotions and bodies enough?

Those who advocate lying to people with dementia are usually thinking chiefly, sometimes exclusively, of the short-term happiness of the person with the disease. They ask themselves, Will a lie prevent misery right now? Does it seem like the kindest thing to do? But, as the philosopher Sissela Bok, the author of the 1978 book “Lying,” points out, the person with dementia is not the only person involved, or the only one who matters; and no lie is an isolated event. “You need to be very careful,” Bok says. “What other kinds of harm might there be? The most important effect is on yourself. What am I doing to myself if I do this over and over? If lying becomes a habit? Will I start doing it when I don’t need to? And, if I start doing it with one relative, why not with others?” It is easy to imagine a white lie as a kindness that does no harm, Bok believes, but most lies do harm to someone. Lying resembles violence, she says, because it can coerce people to act against their will. Even lying for benevolent reasons risks a coercive kind of paternalism, and can be corrupting, like any other unchecked exercise of power.

“Quit hogging the covers!”

Moreover, it is not only the liar’s character that is at stake but also that of people around them who see and hear what they’re doing. “Let’s say it’s a family with children listening in,” Bok says. “There is so much lying in families anyway—how will children distinguish this from other kinds of lies?” A child hearing a parent lie will be particularly affected, but so will anyone who hears another person lying without compunction—lying, in fact, in a spirit of kindness. The commitment to truth is very fragile, Bok believes. It can be preserved only if we believe that other people are also committed to it. “The veneer of social trust is often thin,” she wrote in “Lying.” “As lies spread—by imitation, or in retaliation, or to forestall suspected detection—trust is damaged. Yet trust is a social good to be protected just as much as the air we breathe or the water we drink. . . . When it is destroyed, societies falter and collapse.”

Afew miles southeast of Amsterdam, in the small town of Weesp, is De Hogeweyk: a nursing home for people with advanced dementia which is both the source and the most fully realized version of many of the ideas in dementia care that are now being experimented with in Chagrin Valley and around the world. De Hogeweyk, which was founded in 2008, is far more elaborate than the Chagrin Valley streetscape: it is a three-and-a-half-acre campus of two-story buildings which looks like a modern neighborhood in a Dutch city. The front entrance opens onto a large outdoor courtyard with a fountain planted with trees and flowering bushes. In one corner stands a theatre, which hosts regular performances. On the other side of the courtyard, a glass door leads into a small indoor mall that houses a restaurant; a pub, the Café de Hogeweyk; a room for art and cookery classes; and a little supermarket. From the main courtyard, a passage leads past more storefronts—a physiotherapy center; the Mozart room, where the classical-music club meets—to other courtyards, where the residences are.

Staff at De Hogeweyk refer to the places where residents gather, and which are designed to look like normal homes or shops or courtyards, as “onstage.” “Backstage”—the administrative and medical infrastructure of the nursing home, the charts and the records, the medications and the stretchers—is kept out of sight. Everywhere in De Hogeweyk, the physical and psychological atmosphere is curated with attention to the tiniest detail. The Mozart room, for instance, is decorated with chandeliers, gilt mirrors, and busts of well-known composers, so as to create a setting congenial to aficionados of classical music. Activities, it is thought, are more convincingly enjoyable if they take place in appropriate surroundings, and it is also important, if the houses are to feel like homes, that club activities take place elsewhere. After all, in a normal living room you don’t have strangers coming in and telling everyone to start knitting or baking or listening to Mozart. But although De Hogeweyk is in some ways a stage set, to call it fake would be too simple. The supermarket, for instance, is part real, part fake: there are few price tags, and most transactions don’t involve money, but the store stocks real food that is needed to cook real meals in the houses, and, when the aides bring residents to shop there, their purchases are tallied at the checkout.

People with dementia often ask to go home many times a day. Telling a person in an institution that they live here now is usually neither comforting nor convincing.

Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

Spread across the complex, there are twenty-seven housing units, divided among four different “life styles.” De Hogeweyk’s founders wanted life there to feel normal, which to them meant that you lived in a small, family-size group—no more than seven—consisting of people like yourself in matters of background, taste, and ideas. At the haute-bourgeois “Gooise” houses, for example (named for Het Gooi, a prosperous region in the middle of the Netherlands), classical music is played, apéritifs and wine are drunk, and manners are formal; residents eat on tablecloths under a chandelier, and dinner is served on individual plates, as in a restaurant, rather than family style, on platters. The “urban” life style denotes informal, gregarious manners, brightly colored décor, popular music, and beer. In the “homey” houses, décor is plain, the residents listen to folk music, and meals are traditional, involving lots of potatoes and avoiding anything too foreign, such as pasta. There used to be houses for other lifestyles, too: a Christian house and a house for the inhabitants of the former Dutch East Indies, whose rooms were kept warmer and more humid than those in the other units.

Once a person has dementia, the time for novelty and cosmopolitanism is past, the staff thought. The guiding principles at De Hogeweyk are familiarity, comfort, like-mindedness. And although some houses are more materially luxurious—the linens and the glassware in the Gooise houses are of a finer quality than those in the other houses, for instance—the cost to the resident is the same: the life styles are not supposed to be aspirational. Before a new resident arrives, their family is interviewed to determine the life style that seems most appropriate, which means the one that they are used to.

In an effort to make the houses feel as homelike as possible, the domestic tasks are not centralized but performed house by house, as they are in a normal neighborhood. In the morning, an aide from each house, often accompanied by a resident, goes to the supermarket to pick up supplies for the day. Each of the houses has its own kitchen where the meals are made. The residents can help to prepare the meals, chopping vegetables and washing dishes, all of which breaks up the monotony of the days. Even if they don’t want to help (and in the Gooise houses they rarely do), they smell the meals as they are cooking, in the way that you do in a normal home, and so they are less likely to be taken by surprise when a plate of food appears in front of them and they are invited to eat.

The staff of De Hogeweyk wanted to get away from traditional institutions, Eloy van Hal, one of the founders, says—“where you’re locked up indoors, where you are living in a big group with nice nurses running around in white uniforms saying, ‘Please be seated, please be seated.’ ” In a traditional nursing home, residents sit around on chairs in large, clattery dayrooms, the television turned up loud, surrounded by noisy crowds of odd-seeming people and nurses bustling about. The lights are too bright, the furniture and pictures are ugly. There is nothing to do other than some childish crafts, and nowhere to walk to. The residents almost never go outdoors. Small wonder, van Hal and his colleagues thought, that they began acting in ways that staff found difficult to deal with—banging on tables, shouting, kicking at doors, trying to get out.

The door from De Hogeweyk to the outside world has to be locked. Many people with dementia wander and become lost, so they can’t go outside on their own. But within De Hogeweyk residents who can get about by themselves are allowed to wander where they like—along the brick paths, through the indoor mall, up and down in elevators. The staff were told by experts that it was too dangerous to allow such a thing, that unsupervised residents would climb into the fountain or eat the leaves off the bushes. But the founders believed that it was better to accept some risk for the sake of freedom, and that Dutch people didn’t eat bushes or climb into fountains, and, in fact, in all the years that De Hogeweyk has been open only one resident has ever climbed into the fountain, and she did it on purpose, to annoy the staff, because she was angry that she couldn’t leave. So the residents walk about freely and sit around in the courtyards, watching people go by.

Early in the morning, aides and some residents came from the houses to shop at the supermarket. Members of the baking club turned up for their meeting at the cookery room. Aides gathered for a morning coffee at the table outside the pub. It was pleasantly noisy in the indoor mall—supermarket carts rattling along the brick floor, aides calling to one another as they walked by, jazz audible through the open door of the Café de Hogeweyk. An elderly woman wearing a lilac scarf and a hot-pink jacket scooted past in a motorized wheelchair. Another woman, in red jeans and a purple fleece, strode rapidly through the mall, carrying a large zippered bag, and soon afterward strode equally rapidly back in the other direction. A woman with a long gray braid and a stricken look wandered slowly around, murmuring to herself.

In the late morning, a group of young mothers and their toddlers began to gather at the tables in the main courtyard. Some weeks earlier, a staff member had spotted a mother playing with her child on a tiny lawn on a nearby street, and had invited her to bring the child to play in the spacious courtyards of De Hogeweyk. Now groups of ten or twelve mothers came for lunch every Wednesday, and their toddlers ran about with their toys. Since the residents of De Hogeweyk can’t go outside, the staff tried to cultivate a more normal atmosphere by bringing the outside in. The restaurant was designed to emulate a chic urban establishment, with statement ceiling lamps and a fifteen-foot-high backlit bar, in order to attract people from the town to eat there. At midday, two coroners, a man and a woman, both wearing black suits, walked quickly through the mall to the residences on the other side. Sometime later, they returned, wheeling a coffin out through the courtyard, past the mothers and children.

After lunch, the mothers packed up and left. A little later, an elderly man in a beige windbreaker who had been walking restlessly around all morning came upon their now empty tables and chairs. He picked up the chairs one by one and rearranged them by type; then he moved about the area, picking up dead leaves and tiny bits of rubbish from the ground and depositing them in a trash can.

At two-thirty, there was to be a piano-and-harp concert in De Hogeweyk’s indoor mall. Two rows of chairs were lined up to face the piano, and each resident was guided to a seat. Before the performance, an aide wheeled a cart around, offering wineglasses filled with advocaat, a traditional Dutch alcoholic drink resembling thickened eggnog, which isn’t drunk much anymore but used to be served at special events by older generations.

The pianist played and sang old songs that everybody knew—“Edelweiss,” “ ’O Sole Mio,” “The Blue Danube,” “Moon River.” Many in the audience sang along: some people with dementia who can no longer speak can still find the words to sing. Then the harpist took her turn, and she, too, played well-loved music that was deeply familiar—“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” “Ode to Joy,” Brahms’s “Lullaby.” A woman in a blue cardigan knew the words to Brahms’s “Lullaby,” and sang along in a strong alto voice. A man in a wheelchair wearing a pale-gray blazer beat time to the music with his eyes closed, a look of intense joy on his face.

After a while, some people—those who could—began to dance. They stood up from their chairs, holding hands with aides, and shifted slowly from side to side. The woman with the gray braid and the stricken expression walked to the middle of the floor but then stopped to listen to the piano. The harpist, standing there while the pianist played, smiled at her and offered her hands; the woman smiled back and accepted her hands and began to sway to the music. The man in the beige windbreaker, who had not stopped moving all morning, had stopped now, and sat in the back row. The music was neither fake nor true. It was both past and present, and could be understood without fear of mistakes or forgetting.

The harpist played “Greensleeves.” The pianist played “Für Elise.” Administrative staff emerging from a meeting on the second floor of the mall leaned on the railing of the balcony outside and stood with the residents to listen. ♦

Published in the print edition of the October 8, 2018, issue, with the headline “The Memory House.”

Larissa MacFarquhar, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is the author of “Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help.”

---

More:

Dementia

Old Age

Nursing Homes

Alzheimer’s

Elder Care

Deception

Lies

---

--

Well-Meant Well-Delivered Timely CRITICISM Is Essential to HARMONY, Buddhism Says'

https://www.facebook.com/keepsurfinglife/posts/1019975885041161

Favourites  · 28e tJSSpmaonruncntsoarydc 2re0eiul2idsl0m  · 

< Well-Meant Well-Delivered Timely CRITICISM Is Essential to HARMONY, Buddhism Says >

.

Bikkhu Bodhi interprets Majjhima Nikaya 15 'Anumāna Sutta' that giving and accepting well-meant non-personal criticism! of one another's defilements/mistakes is indispensable to the harmony! of a community. The sutta says, a person who cannot do this cannot be trusted. According to Bikkhu Bodhi, the 'capital punishment' of a noble being for such a person would be just not to teach him anything. (Then the person won't be able to break through the vicious cycle of suffering.) Bikkhu Bodhi also says, if someone accuses you for an unfair unjustifiable reason, then you can defend yourself or ask others to participate in a collective discussion to resolve the issue.

.

How this teaching contradicts our conventional 'wisdom'! As humans who have not become arahants yet, we keep creating some tension with others through our mistakes and differences from one another. And just to ignore such tension is neither a healthy nor a realistic solution in the long run - if the primary purpose of a community is to grow together. Also, unless you are attached to the image of yourself as 'noble' or 'humble', you will be neither too arrogant to acknowledge your mistake nor too miserly to share your knowledge/wisdom. This is why the Buddha taught us to help one another to grow by lending and borrowing each other's wisdom.

.

I keep realizing over and over and over again that the 'mercy' in Buddhism has nothing to do with indulging in each other's self-centered thoughts/emotions or saving face. On the contrary, the Buddhist practice is all about going beyond the self-centered-ness. (Even if I am the center of my world, I cannot be the center of other people's worlds. Us remembering this much all the time will make our lives much easier and smoother, I believe.) Condoning false accusations or repeated unwholesome deeds is neither compassion nor wisdom. We shouldn't be attached to our common sense based on false ideas about compassion or wisdom.

.

https://youtu.be/CouZw1Jo5YE

YOUTUBE.COM

Majjhima Nikaya (MN 15: part 1, 2010.1.16) Bhikkhu Bodhi.MPG

"The Majjhima Nikaya, the Middle Length Discourses" Chapter 15: Anumana Sutta: Interfence T

홍진표의 “철학이 묻고, 과학이 답하다 – AI 시대에 돌아보는 서양 근대철학,

Namgok Lee
43 m ·



홍진표의 “철학이 묻고, 과학이 답하다 – AI 시대에 돌아보는 서양 근대철학, 데카르트에서 마르크스까지”를 일독(一讀)했다.

요즘 집중력이 떨어져 1주일 정도에 읽을 생각이었는데, 3일 만에 읽었다.
교양 수준에서 철학 공부를 하려는 사람들에게 절실하게 하고 싶은 말이 생겼기 때문에 책을 내게 되었다고 하면서, 그 말이 ‘철학 공부 굳이 하지 말라’ 였다.

서양 근대철학의 중심 과제들이었던 경험론과 합리론, 관념론과 실재론, 관념론과 유물론의 대립과 복잡한 뒤섞임 등에 대해 철학이 묻고 과학이 답하는 식으로 여러 사상 이론 등을 소개하고 있다.
과학과 철학이 함께 다룬 영역들에서 이 책은 제목처럼 ‘철학의 물음을 과학이 답하는’ 방식으로, 지금 시대의 사람이라면 그 이름도 유명한 철학자들(데카르트,로크, 흄, 칸트,스피노자, 헤겔, 마르크스 등)의 이론이나 사상을 머리 아프게 ‘굳이 공부하지 말라’라는 말을 설득력 있게 이야기하고 있다.
그런데 굳이 하지 않아도 좋으려면 이 책을 한번 읽는 것이 좋다는 생각이 든다.

교양 수준이라고 말은 했지만, 부록에 그가 참조한 책만 해도 65권이었다.
그가 오랫동안 집중한 노고에 편승하여 쉽게 ‘굳이 어렵게 철학 공부를 하지 않아도 되는’ 기회를 만난 것은 나에게 행운이라는 생각이 든다.

과거의 과학(자연과학에서 점차 심리과학까지 확장)과 철학과 종교가 함께 섞인 테마들에 대해서, 많은 신비(神祕)들이 과학의 발전으로 베일을 벗었다.
그러나 과학이 벗긴 베일은 광대한 우주에서 보면 아직 아주 작은 것일 수 있다.
그러나 분명해진 것은 이제 과학이라는 창구(窓口)를 거쳐야 우주 자연 인간의 신비에 옳게 다가갈 수 있다는 것이다.
그리고 그가 머릿글에서 이야기한 공부를 하지 않아도 되는 철학은 ‘주로 서양 철학을 말하는 것이고 그 중에서도 정치철학과 도덕철학을 제외한 철학일반’이라는 말이 중요하다고 생각한다.
우리가 철학을 하고 과학을 하고 정치 경제 사회 문화의 운동을 하는 목적이 무엇일까?
어떻게 하면 우리 인간의 삶이 물질적 결핍, 사회 제도의 억압, 인간의 특징인 관념 안에 존재하는 부자유로부터 벗어나 자유롭고 행복하게 되는 것이 아닐까?
그가 정치철학과 도덕철학의 유용성을 인정하는 것은 그런 취지와 닿아 있다고 생각한다.

도덕 철학에 대해 내 의견을 말한다면, 도덕이라는 말이 갖는 규범적 강제성이나 의무성을 넘어서는 것이 과제라는 생각이다.
이런 점에서 축의 시대에 출현한 인간 정신의 위대한 선각자들이 열어간 세계는 근대 철학이 부딪친 함정들을 훨씬 넘어서는 것이다.
여전히 또 앞으로도 AI 시대에도 우리들이 석가나 공자 예수에게 배워야 하는 이유다.
미래의 종교는 아마도 우주 진화의 최고봉이라고 할 수 있는 인간의 관념계에 내재하는 부자유로부터 해방을 돕는 역할이 그 존재 의의가 될 것이다.
요즘은 인류 생존 자체가 위협 받는 사태가 눈앞에 다가왔지만, 궁극적으로는 단순히 살아남기 위한 것으로 되어서는 살아남는 것 자체가 어렵다고 생각한다.
문명전환은 현존하는 문제들을 해결하는 과정과 분리될 수 없다.
특히 한국의 현재의 정치 사회 경제 현상으로 나타나고 있는 과도기적 혼돈을 넘어서야 하는 것은 살아남아 번영하기 위한 절박한 과제로 되고 있다.

586세대에 속하고 특히 정치 분야에서 활동해온 저자가 철학 공부를 집중해서 할 수 있었던 것이 그 자신을 위해서나 사회정치운동을 위해서나 좋은 계기가 될 수 있기를 바란다.
나는 평소부터 우리 정치 운동이 인문운동과 융합되어야 한다는 생각을 가지고 있었는데, 저자의 이런 노력이 그런 방향에 좋은 영향을 줄 수 있으리라고 기대한다.
아무쪼록 퇴영적이고 비생산적인 편가름의 정치, 낡아서 쓸모없게된 관념이나 정서가 발목을 잡는 정치에서 벗어나 문명전환의 새로운 정치, 상생과 연합의 정치로 발전하는데 도움이 될 수 있기를 바란다.

책의 맨 끝에 쓴 내용이다.
“AI 시대를 전망하면서 인류의 삶에 대한 근본적인 변화가 예상되는 만큼, ‘인간이 어떻게 살 것인가?’를 탐구하는 철학을 기대한다. 인류의 진로와 시대정신에 관한 논의는 개별과학의 범위를 벗어난 마지막 남은 철학의 영역이 될 수 있을 것이다.”
그는 AI와 관련해서 바둑을 예로 들었다.
사람은 AI에 이길 수 없다. 그러나 그것이 바둑에 대한 흥미를 감소시키지 않았을 뿐만 아니라 바둑을 더욱 풍부하게 만들었다.
AI와 인간이 어떻게 만날 수 있는지를 어쩌면 바둑이 실생활에서 보여주고 있는지도 모르겠다.
나도 바둑을 즐겨 보는 편이다.
언제 홍 선생과 수담(手談)을 할 수 있었으면 좋겠다.

===

철학이 묻고 과학이 답하다 - AI시대에 돌아보는 서양근대철학, 데카르트에서 마르크스까지

책소개

철학비전공자인 저자가 데카르트에서 마르크스까지의 서양철학을 비판적으로 개괄한 책이다. 책은 철학계의 성역에 과감히 도전한다. 과학의 발전 속에서 철학이 어떤 도전을 받고 어떻게 허물어졌는지? 가감 없이 논하며 일부 철학의 무용론도 제기한다.

저자에 따르면 철학전문가들은 기존 철학사에 대한 비판적 작업을 하기가 어렵다. 거장들의 철학에 대해 ‘가치가 없다’는 비평을 하게 되면 계속 철학계에 남아 있기 어렵기 때문이다. 강단 철학자들 다수는 과거 철학자들의 죽은 지식의 권위에 기대어 생존하고 있다. 이들에게 서양근대철학에 대한 객관적인 평가를 기대할 수 없다.

목차

프롤로그

1. 기원을 찾아서-철학과 근대문명

1.1. 철학이란 무엇인가?

1.2. 철학의 시작

1.3. 철학의 가치와 난해함

1.4. 근대문명과 근대사상

2. 한 발은 중세, 한 발은 근대-데카르트

2.1. 고대의 유산에서 과학의 근대로

2.2. 데카르트 자연관의 한계

2.3. 영혼, 신, 코키토

2.4. 데카르트는 근대인이었나

3. ‘마음’은 없다-정신, 감각, 뇌

3.1. 마음은 어디에?

3.2. 보는 것을 믿을 수 있을까

3.3. 현대 뇌과학이 밝혀낸 정신과 감각

4. 지식은 어떻게 만들어지나-경험론 대 합리론

4.1. 근대이전의 인식론

4.2. 근대적 인식론의 전개

4.3. 합리론과 경험론의 쟁점

5. 인식론의 코페르니쿠스적 전환-칸트

5.1. 인식론의 종합 시도

5.2. 칸트의 도덕철학

6. 세계는 실재하는가-물질과 정신

6.1. 관념론 대 실재론

6.2. 유물론의 등장

7. 관념론의 극단-스피노자, 헤겔

7.1. 두 얼굴의 스피노자

7.2. 관념론의 완성자 헤겔

8. 유물론의 반격-마르크스주의

에필로그

======================

책속에서

이 책에서는 근대철학의 쟁점들에 대해 현재 시점의 지식수준에서 우리가 내릴 수 있는 평가들을 제시해 보려고 노력할 것이다. 과거에 철학자들이 어떤 생각을 했는지 아는 것은 물론 그 자체로 의미가 있다. 그러나 여기서 그친다면 철학이 아니라 역사공부에 더 가까운 것이 되고 말 것이다. 이 책에서는 그때 그 철학자들의 주장과 이론이 오늘날 어떤 ‘지식가치’를 가지고 있는지 살피는데 중점을 둘 것이다. 한편 검증 자체가 처음부터 불가능한 모호한 주장들에 대해서는 가치가 없다는 의견을 분명히 말할 것이다.

우선 오히려 철학전문가들은 이런 작업을 하기가 어렵다는 현실을 알게 되었다. 그들이 철학 거장들의 이론이 가치가 없다는 수준의 비평을 하게 되면 계속 철학계에 남아 있기 어려울 것이다. 유튜브의 <플라톤 아카데미>채널에서 한국의 칸트 권위자인 두 명의 철학교수가 놀랍게도 일반인들에게 <순수이성비판> 읽기를 권유하고 있었다. 이는 마치 고전이라는 이유만으로 천체 물리학자가 일반인에게 오래전 폐기된 천동설의 경전인 프톨레마이오스의 <알마게스트>를 읽어보라는 말과 다르지 않다. 이처럼 강단의 철학자들 다수는 과거 철학자들의 죽은 지식의 권위에 기대어 생존하고 있다. 이들에게 서양근대철학에 대한 과학적 기준에 따른 객관적인 평가를 기대하는 것은 자기부정을 요구하는 것과 다름없다.

유튜브에는 서가명강(서울대 가지 않아도 들을 수 있는 명강의)이라는 채널이 있다. 여기에 김상환 철학교수의 ‘왜 칸트인가’의 철학 강의와, 최영기 수학교수의 ‘이토록 아름다운 수학이라면’의 수학강의가 있는데 뚜렷하고 흥미로운 대비가 된다. 

김교수는 칸트의 철학을 소개하는데 주력하는데 개념어의 난무와 현실과의 괴리로 인해 과연 이 내용을 이해하는 사람들이 얼마나 있을지 의문이 들었다. 대부분의 철학 강의가 그렇듯이 이 강의도 칸트 철학이 지금 우리의 지식과 어떻게 연결되는지에 대한 정보는 전혀 제공되지 않는다.

 반면 최교수는 독일의 수학자 가우스가 유클리드기하학이 절대 진리가 아니라는 사실을 발견하고도 칸트 추종자들의 공격을 의식하여 그 발표를 유보했다는 일화를 전한다. 칸트는 유클리드 기하학의 명제가 보편적 진리라고 전제하고 자신의 논리를 전개하였으니 비유클리드 기하학의 발견은 칸트철학에 타격을 줄 수밖에 없었다. 

이 사례는 우리가 칸트에 대한 정확한 정보를 얻는데 어떤 방법이 더 좋은지 잘 알려주고 있다.

-서문중에서  접기

근대철학의 내용 대부분은 지금 우리가 알고 있는 과학적 지식의 기준에서 보면 조잡하거나 심지어 터무니없다. 근대철학을 통해 그 당시 사람들이 어떤 논의에 관심이 있었는지는 알 수 있지만, 우리에게 새로운 지식을 제공해주지는 않는다. 시대적 한계를 인정하면서 ‘그때’를 기준으로 그 생각이 과거보다 진일보한 면이 있는지 없는지를 판단해 볼 수도 있지만, 아무래도 비전문가들에게는 현재 학문의 기준으로 ‘여전히 유효한’ 내용이 있는지에 더 관심이 있을 수밖에 없다.

이런 방식의 근대철학의 가치 평가는 오늘의 기준에서 그들의 생각의 ‘가치’를 알려는 실용적 요구에 따른 자연스러운 것이다. 특정 철학자를 숭배하거나 비판하기에 앞서, 그들의 이론 가운데 여전히 믿을 만한 것이 있는지 살펴보는 것은 현대의 우리가 가져야 할 합리적 태도이기도 하다. 당시 그들이 왜 알지 못했는지 비웃거나 질책하자는 것이 아니고 그들이 가졌던 의문에 대해 과학이 어떤 답을 내렸는지 알아보자는 것이다.  접기

데카르트는 인류가 근대로 가는 길목에서 지적 자산을 축적하는 데 일정한 기여를 했지만, 냉정하게 보면 길을 잘못 들었다. 특히 신에 의존한 인식론의 전개를 보면, 데카르트는 아직까지 중세에 머물러 있거나 잘 봐줘야 중세와 근대의 과도기에 위치했다고 보인다. 데카르트의 과오는 다행히 뉴턴과 로크 등에 의해 빨리 교정될 수 있었다.

인간의 감각기관에 대한 불신이 관념론의 시초로 보인다. 착시와 사물의 끊임없는 변화를 겪으면서 인간에게 보이는 것들은 허상이고 우리의 관념에 떠오르는 이미지에 불과하다는 발상에 빠지는 사람들이 나온 것이다. 외부에 실재하는 것 같은 세계가 실은 우리의 관념에 불과하다는 인식은 현실의 공포나 고통을 잠시 잊게 하는 효과를 주기도 하였다. 오늘날의 표현으로는 우리 눈앞의 모습이 가상현실일지도 모른다는 의심을 가진 것이다. 이때 꿈이 이런 사고에 빠지는데 큰 영향을 미친것 같다. 과학시대 이전에 꿈은 모든 문명권에서 예외 없이 사람을 혼란에 빠지게 하였다. 이미 죽은 사람이 나오는 꿈은 영생하는 영혼에 대한 믿음을 주었고 미래를 알려주는 신비한 기능을 기대하게 만들었다. 데카르트는 지금 현실이라고 믿는 것이 혹시 꿈일지 모른다는 회의를 했고, 장자는 유명한 ‘나비의 꿈’에서 유사한 의심을 했다. 꿈에서는 모든 것이 관념이듯이 현실세계도 관념이 아니라고 확신할 수 없다는 망상을 하게 된 것이다. 버클리 또한 ‘대화’에서 필로누스의 입을 빌려 꿈에서는 외부대상이 없이도 지각이 가능하다는 것을 관념론의 근거로 들고 있다.  접기

헤겔의 이성은 더 이상 세계를 관찰하고 인식하는데 그치지 않고 세계의 창조자가 된다. 정신자체가 운동을 하고 세계를 창조한다는 망상의 단계로 나가버린 것이다. 헤겔의 철학은 사실이나 논리의 영역을 모두 벗어나 종교와 유사한 믿음의 영역에 놓여있다. 포퍼는 진리탐구에서 단순성과 명백함의 추구는 지성인의 의무이며 명증성의 결여는 죄악이며 과장은 범죄라고 규정했다. 헤겔은 그 반과학적 성격을 볼 때 근대에 속하지 않는다. 헤겔은 정신의 운동으로 세계의 원리를 설명해내겠다는 과욕을 부렸고 결국 실패하였다. 플라톤 이래로 근본원리를 발견하여 세계를 설명하려는 욕망에 빠진 철학자들 중 헤겔은 관념론의 계보로는 최후의 사람으로 보인다.

AI가 등장하면서 정신은 물질 중에서도 유기체에서만 파생될 수 있다는 논리도 수정되어야 한다. 유기체가 아닌 컴퓨터도 물질을 잘 결합시키고 전기라는 에너지를 공급하면 유기체의 뇌에서만 가능했던 정보의 수집과 전달, 연산이라는 지적활동을 할 수 있다. 특히 AI는 학습과 판단이라는 창조활동의 단계로 나가고 있다. 지능은 정신활동의 핵심이라서 무생물도 정신활동이 가능하다는 예상은 이제 더 이상 가설이 아니라 현실이 되었다. AI시대에는 정신을 신비화할 이유가 완전히 사라져버렸다.  접기

=====

저자 및 역자소개

홍진표 (지은이) 

1963년생으로 광주 인성고등학교를 졸업하고 서울대정치학과를 중퇴했다. 전민련 조국통일위원회 부장, 자유주의연대 사무총장, 국가인권위원회 상임위원, 사상이론지 <시대정신> 편집인을 지냈다. 현재 사)시대정신 상임이사로 있다.

최근작 : <철학이 묻고 과학이 답하다>

============

출판사 제공 책소개

철학비전공자인 저자가 데카르트에서 마르크스까지의 서양철학을 비판적으로 개괄한 책이다. 책은 철학계의 성역에 과감히 도전한다. 과학의 발전 속에서 철학이 어떤 도전을 받고 어떻게 허물어졌는지? 가감 없이 논하며 일부 철학의 무용론도 제기한다.

저자에 따르면 철학전문가들은 기존 철학사에 대한 비판적 작업을 하기가 어렵다. 거장들의 철학에 대해 ‘가치가 없다’는 비평을 하게 되면 계속 철학계에 남아 있기 어렵기 때문이다. 강단 철학자들 다수는 과거 철학자들의 죽은 지식의 권위에 기대어 생존하고 있다. 이들에게 서양근대철학에 대한 객관적인 평가를 기대할 수 없다.

책은 고대그리스에서 시작된 서양철학의 존재론과 인식론 등 주요한 문제의식이 마르크스주의에서 일단락된다고 보고, 철학을 전공하지 않은 사람들에게 서양철학사의 핵심을 간추려서 제공하는데 주력한다.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster Gates, Bill Amazon.com: Books

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need (Random House Large Print): Gates, Bill

---

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The most comprehensible explanation for what’s driving our warming planet; how to measure the impact of the myriad contributions to this staggering and seemingly incalculable problem; and ultimately how to go about finding more effective approaches to each of them. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a how-to guide for addressing the climate crisis.” —Clinton Leaf, Fortune

 

“How to Avoid a Climate Disaster presents ideas with the methodical approach of a college textbook . . . Remarkably, given the state of the world, it is an optimistic, can-do sort of book, chock-full of solutions.” —Christina Binkley, The Wall Street Journal Magazine

 

“The most refreshing aspect of this book is its bracing mix of cold-eyed realism and number-crunched optimism . . . Ultimately his book is a primer on how to reorganise the global economy so that innovation focuses on the world’s gravest problems. It is a powerful reminder that if mankind is to get serious about tackling them, it must do more to harness the one natural resource available in infinite quantity—human ingenuity.” —The Economist

 

“The author’s enthusiasm and curiosity about the way things work is infectious. He walks us through not just the basic science of global warming, but all the ways that our modern lives contribute to it . . . Gates seems energized by the sheer size and complexity of the challenge. That’s one of the best things about the book—the can-do optimism and conviction that science in partnership with industry are up to the task.” —Richard Schiffman, The Christian Science Monitor

 

“With the help of experts in fields such as physics, engineering, chemistry, finance and politics, the technologist and philanthropist offers a practical and accessible plan for getting the world to zero greenhouse gas emissions and averting climate catastrophe.” —Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today

 

“How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is clear, concise on a colossal subject, and intelligently holistic in its approach to the problem. Gates may not be the perfect messenger, but he has written a fine primer on how to get ourselves out of this mess.” —Adama Vaughan, New Scientist

 

“Bill Gates has a plan to save the world . . . While acknowledging that the challenge is daunting, and how we make things, grow things, move around, keep cool and stay warm will all need to fundamentally change, Gates argues that wholesale transformation is possible while maintaining lifestyles in high income countries and continuing to lift billions out of poverty.” —Greg Williams, Wired

 

“His expertise . . . is apparent in the book’s lucid explanations of the scientific aspects of climate change. The solutions he outlines are pragmatic and grounded in forward-thinking economic reasoning. Although he does not avoid the hard truths we must face as our climate changes, Gates remains optimistic and believes that we have the ability to avoid a total climate disaster.” —Miriam R. Aczel, Science

 

“Concise, straightforward . . . Gates has crafted a calm, reasoned, well-sourced explanation of the greatest challenge of our time and what we must change to avoid cooking our planet.” —Jeff Rowe, Associated Press

 

“A persuasive, optimistic strategy for reducing greenhouse emissions to zero by midcentury . . . Though Gates doesn’t shy away from acknowledging the daunting challenges ahead, his narrative contains enough confidence—and hard science and economics—to convince many readers that his blueprint is one of the most viable yet . . . supremely authoritative and accessible.” ––Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

 

“Those looking for an accessible review of how global warming can be countered will find this a handy—and maybe even hope-inspiring—guide.” ––Publishers Weekly

 

“Gates has put his considerable wealth behind global health, educational, and economic initiatives and now turns his laser-like attention to this most existential of issues . . . He provides illuminating contexts for [his] perspectives and offers a treatise that is imperative, approachable, and useful.” ––Booklist

-----

About the Author

Bill Gates is cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and founder of Breakthrough Energy. In 1975, Bill Gates founded Microsoft with Paul Allen and led the company to become the worldwide leader in business and personal software and services. In 2008, Bill transitioned to focus full-time on his foundation’s work to expand opportunity to the world’s most disadvantaged people. Along with cochair Melinda Gates, he leads the foundation’s development of strategies and sets the overall direction of the organization. At Breakthrough Energy, he’s putting his experience as an innovator and problem-solver to work to address climate change by supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs, big thinkers, and clean technologies. Bill uses his experience partnering with global leaders across sectors to help drive the policy, market, and technological changes required for a clean energy transition. In 2010, Bill, Melinda, and Warren Buffett founded the Giving Pledge, an effort to encourage the wealthiest families and individuals to publicly commit more than half of their wealth to philanthropic causes and charitable organizations during their lifetime or in their will.

Read more

----

Product details

Publisher : Diversified Publishing; Large type / Large print edition (February 23, 2021)

Language : English

Paperback : 384 pages

-----

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars

Top reviews from the United States

J. A May

1.0 out of 5 stars Bill Gates has not studied climate science

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2021

Verified Purchase

Bill Gates is obviously a bright person, he built Microsoft and was a great innovator. But this book is disappointing. Gates has clearly not studied climate science, he just assumes the IPCC reports and models are correct. Then he accepts their health and economic projections, built with climate model output. He does no due diligence. If he ran his business like this, he would not have succeeded.

So after blindly accepting, the consensus position on climate science he then proceeds to tell us what we must do to combat his hypothesized scourge of climate change. Later he implores the governments of the world to unite in forcing us to do what he wants.

In my opinion, this is a very shallow look at a complex topic. It is more of a propaganda pamphlet than a serious book. Bill Gates should do his homework for his next book. Not recommended.

777 people found this helpful

---

Sophismother

1.0 out of 5 stars Unrealistic pie-in-the-sky nonsense

Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2021

Verified Purchase

Bill Gates' new book was very disappointing to me. He did not seem to be able to relate to the realities of life. He imagines that the federal government will fund all kinds of very expensive bits of technology. The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated financial woes and increased the tendency of elected officials to be more tight-fisted. Doesn't he know this? Senators and Representatives from fossil-fuel-dependent states are not going to go along with Gates' idea of deliberately making fossil fuel products so much more expensive that people will want to buy carbon-free alternatives. Gates seems to imagine that there will be money available to upgrade the electric grids, the need for which was seen in the recent Texas power outages. He is giving some funding, but even billionaires cannot come up with trillions of dollars. Gates' true colors can be seen in what he did fairly recently - convincing Oxford University NOT to allow its Covid vaccine to be used for free by the entire world. (Jonas Salk gave his polio vaccine free to the world.) That example of Salk's apparently didn't sit well with Gates. He managed to convince Oxford University to partner up with AstraZeneca, so that Oxford's vaccine would enter the world of for-profit medicine. Meanwhile the Secretary-General of the UN reminds us that people in poor countries can't get Covid vaccines. Way to go, Gates. Morally bankrupt and a pie-in-the-sky billionaire who doesn't seem to see how close the world is to climate disaster. It is not going to be able to wait for his "wonderful" innovations. There was only one US plant to capture and sequester carbon emissions and it closed in early 2021. Let's have some reality checks.

Read more

353 people found this helpful

---

Rachel Lafontaine

1.0 out of 5 stars No Mention of Regenerative Agriculture

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2021

Verified Purchase

Bill Gates, with his vast supply of wealth and power surely has to have heard of the carbon-sequestration benefits of regenerative agriculture and no-till methods by now. However, instead of highlighting what will likely be one of the best solutions we have, he ignores it altogether, goes on a rant about cow farts and promotes the fake-meat companies he’s heavily invested in as our best solutions. Unfortunately, this thinking will still continue to kill the majority the planet’s soil and will also do nothing to stop the loss of carbon from the soil by tilling. Only regenerative agriculture can do this but Bill Gates doesn’t want you to know it exists because he’s got money to make off of turning people into fake-meat eating vegans, with zero long-term knowledge or consideration of the effects. Oh the joys of capitalism.

Very disappointed but not surprised. Automatic fail.

241 people found this helpful

---

linda galella

TOP 50 REVIEWERVINE VOICE

3.0 out of 5 stars Approachable, Readable and even includes a plan that’s

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2021

Verified Purchase

pie in the sky, Gates totally ignores the single biggest issue that’s plaguing climate disaster in today’s world - POLITICS.

To his credit, Gates doesn’t get bogged down and techie in this book. There’s enough data and science to support his assertions to make them seem reasonable, providing everyone holds hands and plays nice; providing everyone involved in fossil fuels just rolls over and drinks the KoolAid, no job required anytime soon, anywhere close to home.

There are lots of examples for how things can improve rather quickly, what they will potentially cost, how rich countries can and should help poor countries; there are countless opportunities for involvement should readers find themselves motivated for service. Once again I’m struck by the complete absence of the need for political support and cooperation. Does he REALLY think that a change from red to blue will move this project forward so easily?

Gates continues fly around on his private jet while working on this issue. Incongruous? Oxymoronic? Perhaps it’s just plain entitlement, but it doesn’t make for good optics. There are other options and as he said repeatedly in the book, “hard choices need to be made”. Maybe not by everyone?

No doubt I’ll be in the minority on this one but I’m a fan of the reality bus. All the good writing and professional publishing in the world cannot sweep away the fact that what we truly need is cooperation from our elected officials at EVERY level. So far, the price of gas for cars in the NE, (I drive a hybrid), has risen 20% since January 20th; that hurts. It’s too soon to understand the impact this white, cold winter will have on my heating budget. According to my “green provider”, I’m running ahead of last year but more efficient than others in my area. It’s many degrees colder and we had ZERO snow last year. This should be way more fun than huddling under a blanket with my pup in relative darkness each night; yup - hard choices📚

Read less

167 people found this helpful

----

Top reviews from other countries

Ruben

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent - Must Read Book - 5 *

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 16, 2021

Verified Purchase

Excellent book. Bill Gates, really outlines the ins and outs of something most of the society ignores. Such optimism on his innovative perception and will on solving this global issue. I highly recommend.

56 people found this helpful

---

Adam Bowie

5.0 out of 5 stars Practical steps the planet can take

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 17, 2021

Verified Purchase-

A year or so ago I read The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, which laid out in often horrific details, the kinds of things that would happen to the planet if we didn’t change our ways.

Bill Gates goes for the much more practical, “So what can we do about it now?” approach. This book is basically his plan to cut our carbon emissions from 51 billion tonnes to zero by 2050. That’s it in a nutshell. If we don’t then, like a bath, with even just a slow dripping tap, we’ll end up overflowing and facing some of the consequences that Wallace-Wells laid out in his earlier work.

To do this, in this enormously readable book, Gates takes us through where the emissions come from, and examines ways to work through each of those sectors, which he breaks down into making things, plugging in, growing things, getting around and keeping warm and cool.

He tackles each in turn, although he notes that we spend a lot of time thinking about “getting around” – aka transport – which accounts for 16% of net emissions, but not so much on making steel and concrete. The food industry also gets a good look-in.

Gates is putting his money where his mouth is. Throughout the book he talks about the various companies he’s invested in. This could sound a bit, “Aren’t I clever?” but it doesn’t. He’s just being practical. It comes from the work he and his wife Melinda have carried out through their Gates Foundation in doing very practical things like fighting malaria. So he’s constantly referring to people he’s met, and businesses he’s keenly following.

And throughout, he is very pragmatic. Only a few of us are willing – or even able – to pay a “Green Premium” for some of life’s essentials. He readily acknowledges that the lower the income you are in, the bigger a proportion of your overall costs something like transport will be. So paying even a small premium is simply not affordable. He’s also very aware that the big growth in greenhouse gases is likely to come from developing parts of the world where billions are coming to expect the same kinds of middle-class lifestyles that Americans and Europeans have experienced.

So, what are the solutions? Well, this isn’t really a list of things that you or I can do directly – assuming neither of us is a world leader. There are some of those things, but this is more about policy as well as corporate and governmental support and investment. When we buy the cheapest concrete or steel, there is no carbon-cost attached to it. There’s no incentive to use the greener materials.

And where there are financial incentives, they don’t necessarily help. The energy industry is rife with them, but they protect the enormously cheap fossil fuel industry. On the other hand, laws might make it ridiculously hard to build things like windfarms (a particular problem, seemingly, in the US).

There are things which make you raise your eyebrows a bit. Gates doesn’t believe that just planting lots of trees will fix things. He’s got nothing against trees but I think sees them as a too simplistic solution that will require ongoing care to payback their investment over centuries. He is a big proponent of nuclear fuel, pointing out that while wind and solar energy are fantastic, they don’t provide consistent power. And even though at heart, Gates is a technologist through and through, he doesn’t see battery technology meaningfully moving on, which causes difficulties if you need to store vast amounts of power to even out supply on windless or cloudy days.

Some will look at Gates, flying around in his private jet and wonder if he really practices what he preaches? He acknowledges his own shortcomings, but I think this book shows that he is indeed putting his money where his mouth is.

Getting to net zero will not be easy, as he repeats throughout, but it’s achievable and he’s laid out a plan to get us there.

Read less

45 people found this helpful

-------------

S Hussain

5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional book written by an exceptional individual.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 16, 2021

Verified Purchase

Thought provoking. Insightful.

43 people found this helpful

----

Amazon Customer

5.0 out of 5 stars Allows normal people to understand the necessary battle on climate change.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 17, 2021

Verified Purchase

The book is written in a way that's easy to read, not too long, and deeply impactful throughout. In only a few hours I was able to dramatically further my understanding of the larger picture on climate change. This included the breakup of challenges that we face to avoid a climate disaster (which I personally found somewhat surprising), along with the current and future measures needed to tackle it (some of which I already knew more about than others).

29 people found this helpful

----

Amazon Customer

5.0 out of 5 stars When oil is cheaper than coca cola it is hard to save the world

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 19, 2021

Verified Purchase

This is a really good accessible book explaining how we have arrived at the edge of climatic disaster and how we can all do something about it. There will be need for rethinking of policies and there are some hard problems such as how to make CO2 free cement. The challenges of increased economic growth around the world, keep our standards of living, more people having our standards of living, and at the same time cutting CO2 emissions from 51 billion tonnes to net zero in 30yrs is enormous. There are some sobering examples if what will happen eg reductions in food production in a warmer world. Bill highlights the 5 key sectors that emit the most CO2 and identifies the incredible opportunities and returns on green investments. He also advocates for technological advances to lower the 'Green Premium' paid for replacing products and services that normally emit CO2 eg purchase price electric vehicles being more expensive than existing petrol vehicles. There are already some success stories such as drought and flood tolerant crops. But the message is clear, at all levels of society, be it governments, corporations or individuals action has to happen.

This is a very readable book which I found hard to put down ( I read it over 3 evenings). It gives clear facts and makes recommendations that make sense, for example the need for more research and development spending and the problems of existing investment in clean tech due to higher costs, risks and long term payback particularly in energy systems.

Finally, the impact on the world economy of COVID-19 reduced emissions by 5%. Bill Gates was surprised by how little this was given the economic shock showing our reliance on fossil fuels in our daily lives. Change is possible but it has to come soon.

-----------------

13 people found this helpful

Report abuse

Gates How to Avoid a Climate Disaster - Wikipedia

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster - Wikipedia

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigationJump to search

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs

Publication date February 16, 2021
Media type Print (hardcover and paperback), e-book, audio
Pages 272
ISBN 978-0-385-54613-3 (hardcover)
OCLC 1122802121

Dewey Decimal 363.738/747
LC Class QC903 .G378 2020


How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need is a 2021 book by Bill Gates. In it, Gates presents what he learned in over a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address global warming and recommends strategies to tackle it.[1]


Contents
1Summary
2Publication
3Reception
4References

Summary[edit]

• Gates argues that both governments and businesses have a role to play in fighting global warming. 
• While he acknowledges that there is a tension between economic development and sustainability, he posits that accelerated green technology would resolve it. 
• He calls on governments to increase investment in climate research, 
• but at the same time to incentivize firms to invest in green energy and decarbonization. 
• Gates also proposes a carbon pricing regime that would account for all externalities involved in producing and using carbon-emitting energy.
• 
  
• Gates thinks that decarbonizing electricity should be a priority, because it would not only reduce emissions from coal and gas used to produce electricity, 
• but also allow an accelerated shift to zero emission transportation like electric cars. 
• He advocates increased innovation and investment in nuclear energy, and warns against overly focusing on wind and solar generation, due to their intermittent nature.

Publication[edit]

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster was published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf on February 16, 2021. An audiobook narrated by Gates and Wil Wheaton was released the same day. A large-print paperback edition was published on February 23, 2021.[2]

The book debuted at number one on The New York Times non-fiction best-seller list for the week ending February 20, 2021.[3]

Reception[edit]

In its starred review, Kirkus Reviews called it a "supremely authoritative and accessible plan for how we can avoid a climate catastrophe."[4]

Publishers Weekly agreed, calling it a "cogent" and "accessible" guide to countering climate change. However, the publication wrote that "not all of his ideas strike as politically feasible."[5]. 

British newspaper The Economist praised Gates for the book's "cold-eyed realism and number-crunched optimism."[6]

Climate activist Leah Stokes described the book as largely "Technology solutionism" when compared to other books published at a similar time such as Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert.[7]

References[edit]

1. ^ Cooper, Anderson (February 15, 2021). "Bill Gates: How the world can avoid a climate disaster". 60 Minutes. CBS News. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
2. ^ "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates". Penguin Random House. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
3. ^ "Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction - Best Sellers - Books". The New York Times. Retrieved February 27, 2021.
4. ^ "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates". Kirkus Reviews. December 15, 2020. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
5. ^ "Nonfiction Book Review: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates". Publishers Weekly. November 23, 2020. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
6. ^ "Bill Gates has a plan to save the world". www.economist.com. The Economist. February 20, 2021. Retrieved March 1, 2021. The most refreshing aspect of this book is its bracing mix of cold-eyed realism and number-crunched optimism.
7. ^ "Reviewed: "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster" by Bill Gates, "The Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson, and "Under a White Sky" by Elizabeth Kolbert". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved March 8, 2021.

===

Bill Gates Weighs In On 'How To Avoid A Climate Disaster' With New Book


March 14, 20215:05 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered


MICHEL MARTIN

LISTEN· 8:068-Minute ListenAdd toPLAYLIST

Download
Embed

Transcript



How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, by Bill GatesKnopf

Editor's note: The introduction of this interview with Bill Gates should have stated that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is an NPR funder.

Climate change has been called the greatest existential threat of our time — and it has already had devastating effects on people throughout the world.

Now Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, one of the world's most prominent business leaders and philanthropists — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been a supporter of NPR — is sharing his thoughts on how to solve it.

In his new book How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have And The Breakthroughs We Need, he outlines how his own thinking on the topic has evolved over the years — and he describes a path forward that he says everybody can participate in in some way.

Interview Highlights

On his belief that the world has to reduce emissions of greenhose gasses from 51 billion tons a year to zero

Sadly, as long as you're emitting CO2, you're causing the temperature to go up. And so all the dire effects of coral reefs dying off, of it becoming, you know, basically impossible to work outdoors in the tropical regions — these things are simply proportional to how many of those emissions you make. And so it gets hotter and hotter until you actually get down to the ultimate goal, which is the zero emissions. And that's why you have to know all the different sources of emissions and look at why it's so expensive right now to make those products in a way that does not involve emissions.

On the fact that developed countries have contributed the most to this problem — and the argument that countries wanting to improve their standard of living should make different choices

The key thing is that if we — take India as a good example of a developing country whose historical emissions have been very low, but if they keep doing things the same way we've done them, their emissions will be very high. And so only through innovations that bring that down by about 95%, then it is reasonable you could say, OK, not only did the U.S. reduce its own emissions, but the U.S. used its — the power of government R&D and private market risk-taking to create these products that will allow you to keep building basic shelter and providing lights at night and air conditioning at a very basic level without the massive emissions that would result if they don't change.

On his being excited about nuclear energy — and people's fears about it

Even though nuclear, you know, per unit of energy, has caused far, far less deaths than coal or natural gas, any design that has high pressure or requires operators to do something as opposed to just using physics to show that the radioactive material cannot escape, it's always going to cause concerns. 

And so this is an area where we should keep it alive as an option. If we can create that green grid that will have to be three times as large because it's taking over from gasoline to power cars and natural gas to heat homes — if we could do that without something that isn't weather-dependent and still keep the reliability, that would be great. But as we saw in Texas, we have these weather events that are fairly extreme, and yet people expect their electricity to stay on.


On making the climate change debate more thoughtful and constructive — and puting hope in facts

Well, I don't think the understanding of climate change is nearly as deep as it needs to be. And, you know, unless this becomes a gigantic cause — and we see signs that's the case, the interest level usually when we have something like a pandemic, the interest in long-term problems often goes away. And we saw that during the financial crisis. During this crisis, actually, interest in climate, particularly in young people, went up quite substantially.

Now, part of that is they're seeing the sea level rise and the wildfires and the inability to do typical farming in the southern parts of the country. And, you know, so the early effects are upon us. But the pandemic shows that you can't wait until the disaster hits to be ready. And so the part about engaging an entire generation — I think there's incredibly creative people out there who are going to help drive that. And so my contribution was to say, OK, here's a plan: If we're going to use every year of the next 30 years and make this a priority, then, you know, here's the metrics, and here's the outline of how you accelerate about that.

On what people can do

Well, everybody needs to learn more. And they need to share those learnings, hopefully, with people from both parties. So your political voice is very important. Your purchasing voice and — an electric car, artificial meat, looking at the products you buy in terms of the emissions they're involved with — and then making sure that the company you work for is leading the way, buying green products with their purchasing power and taking, you know, their skillset and contributing. So, you've got to use all those ways of influencing the world — and drive both understanding and commitment to this thing to a level even beyond where we are right now.

===

ow to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates review – why science isn't enough

The co-founder of Microsoft looks to science and tech to end climate crisis ... but can nations cooperate?

=====================

Bill Gates at the UN climate action summit in September 2019.

‘Show me a problem and I’d look for a technology to fix it’ … Bill Gates at the UN climate action summit in September 2019. 

Photograph: Jason DeCrow/AP

Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown

Wed 17 Feb 2021 20.00 AEDT

291

Bill Gates has changed our lives through his Microsoft software; he has improved countless lives through his foundation’s work to eliminate polio, TB and malaria; and now he proposes to help save our lives by combating climate change.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster details the transformation necessary to reverse the effects of decades of catastrophic practices. We need, Gates calculates, to remove 51bn tonnes of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere every year. Failing to do so would cost more than the 1.5 million lives already lost to Covid-19 and could cause, he calculates, five times more deaths than the Spanish flu a century ago.

Ever the technologist, Gates sets out a spreadsheet for getting rid of those 51bn tonnes of greenhouse gases and achieving net carbon zero emissions by 2050. We would need to use more renewables and fewer fossil fuels (which would account for roughly 27% of the reduction needed in emissions), and change how we manufacture our goods (31%), grow our food (18%), travel (16%), and keep our buildings warm or cool (6%).

To achieve this, Gates provides a set of measures that could, if the UK government is listening, be transposed point by point into the formal agenda for the this year’s 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, Cop26, in Glasgow. He favours a green new deal, carbon pricing and heightened corporate responsibility. But Gates’s most important proposals involve new technologies. Just as his global health initiatives specialised in scientific solutions to combat disease – “show me a problem and I’d look for a technology to fix it”, he writes – his principal interest is in a technological breakthrough, the environmental equivalent of the Manhattan Project or the moon landing.

Gates is right about the scale and urgency of the problem. Global carbon emissions are now 65% higher than they were in 1990, and the term “global warming”, with its cosy overtones and accompanying stories of vintners making English and even Scottish champagne, does not adequately explain the intensity of storms, hurricanes, floods and severe droughts that are putting our planet on course to reach temperatures not seen in millions of years. Nor, as this book shows, does it satisfactorily reflect the biggest market failure in history and the most difficult global collective action problem the world has ever had to face.

Gates is right about the scale and urgency of the problem. Global carbon emissions are 65% higher than they were in 1990

Recognising that we cannot continue to deny electricity to 800 million of the world’s poorest people, his starting point is a plan to develop clean energy and cut its costs. Already, scientific advance has brought an astonishing reduction in the prices of solar, wind and wave energy, battery storage, electric vehicles, remote sensing monitoring and smart grids. But if we are to deliver affordable clean energy, we have to go much further. Gates demands what he calls “a renewable portfolio standard” of energy pricing and an immediate quintupling of climate-related research and development. This would include investing in nuclear fusion as well as nuclear fission; thermal energy (creating energy from hot rocks underground); carbon mineralisation; sea-based carbon removal to de-acidify the oceans; and direct air capture using scrubbing machines. Because even the most advanced solar panels currently convert only around a quarter of the sun’s energy, we need to address problems caused by the intermittency in the output of renewable energy, seasonal differences in its supply, and the high storage costs.

But we must also do more to capture emissions across the entire energy, transport and manufacturing sectors before they are released back to the atmosphere: to store them deep underground or in long-lived products such as concrete, or even by combining CO2 with calcium to produce limestone that could replace concrete.

Taken together these measures could meet the world’s objective of net carbon zero. But if politics was simply the application of reason and science to contemporary challenges, we might have not only solved the climate crisis by now but easily cured Covid-19 and other infectious diseases too.

So we have to ask why, when what needs to be done seems obvious, we have been so slow to act. And why, when it is more cost-effective for advanced economies to fund the total cost of mitigation and adaptation in the poorest countries than to suffer decades of worsening pollution, has the world simply failed to come together?

Gates clearly prefers science to politics – “I think more like an engineer than a political scientist” – and his touching, admirable faith in science and reason reminds me of a similar faith, this time in economic rationality, held by the great prewar economist John Maynard Keynes. His breakthrough in economic thinking offered a way out of the world depression and mass unemployment of the 1930s. But he was unable to persuade the political leaders of the day, and in frustration decried politics as “the survival of the unfittest”. “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones,” he concluded.

We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN

Read more

Gates is modest enough to say: “I don’t have a solution to the politics of climate change,” but he too knows that the solution he seeks is inextricably tied up in political decisions. Seemingly unanswerable scientific evidence can be torpedoed by powerful vested interests, or sidelined by bureaucratic indifference, or undermined by weak and incompetent political leaderships that make commitments they do not honour. Or they can be sabotaged by geopolitical rivalries or simply by nations clinging to old-fashioned and absolutist views of national sovereignty. As a result, the multilateral cooperation necessary to deal with a global problem does not emerge, and the very real tensions between economic and environmental priorities, and between the developed and developing world, go unresolved.

I look back on the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009, when the UKand Europe’s enthusiasm for a deal failed to overcome both the reluctance of the US to make legally binding commitments, and the deep suspicion of China, India and the emerging economies of any obligations that they believed might threaten their development. So determined were they to avoid binding commitments that they rejected Europe’s offer to unilaterally bind itself to a 50% cut in its emissions. So bitter were the divisions that the Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, who bravely stood out for an ambitious deal, exchanged an angry war of words with the Chinese negotiator.

The Paris accord of 2015 helped reverse many of the setbacks of Copenhagen. Agreement was reached on a global target: to prevent temperatures rising to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – preferably 1.5 degrees. And we created new obligations on each country to report, monitor and continuously review their emissions. And while we could not bind the major economies to precise commitments on carbon reductions, they agreed to a ratcheting up of their ambitions every five years.

The importance of Glasgow’s Cop26 in November is that it is the first of these “ratchet” points, and, with 70 countries already committed to net zero carbon emissions, it represents the best opportunity in years to make progress. It also comes at a time when the science is more definitive, the technology more cost-effective, and the price of inaction far clearer. What’s more, President Biden and his new climate envoy John Kerry are promising a renewal of American leadership, and corporations and cities are on board for change.

The Unterer Theodulgletscher glacier above Zermatt is melting at a markedly increased rate.

The Unterer Theodulgletscher glacier above Zermatt is melting at a markedly increased rate. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images

In addition to accepting Gates’s proposals for more funding of new technologies, I envisage advances in Glasgow on four major fronts. First, the globally coordinated fiscal stimulus we now need for a post-Covid economic recovery should have, at its heart, a green new deal, centred around a massive expansion in environmentally sustainable infrastructure and the creation of millions of much needed new jobs.

Second, new corporate laws should be agreed, to be applied worldwide, that ensure global companies disclose their carbon footprints, adopt impact-weighted accounting that would reveal the full environmental cost of their operations, and break with business-as-usual by publishing transition plans to a zero net carbon economy.

Third, we should advance the cause of carbon pricing by agreements to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and by taking up Biden’s plan for border adjustment mechanisms that, for the first time, tax carbon-intensive imports and exports. And fourth, we could agree a big boost to nature-based solutions from afforestation to the better land use now championed by the World Resources Institute. In doing so we could finally make a reality of the promised $100bn green climate fund that was planned 10 years ago to collect and allocate payments for climate mitigation and adaptation in the developing world.

But to operationalise the Paris agreement – to limit warming to 1.5 degrees – requires countries to halve their CO2 emissions by 2030. So vested interests like big oil will have to be enlisted for change. The populist nationalist and protectionist rhetoric of irresponsible demagogues will have to be taken head on. And supporters of a stronger set of commitments will have to show why sharing sovereignty is in every nation’s self-interest, and that coordinated global action is indeed the only way to end the mismatch between the scale of the environmental problems we face and our current capacity to solve them. Success will come by demonstrating that the real power countries can wield to create a better world is not the power they can exercise over others but the power they can exercise with others.

 How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need is published by Allen Lane. Gordon Brown’s Seven Ways to Change the World will be published by Simon & Schuster in June.

 This article was amended on 24 February 2021. An earlier version included Gordon Brown’s recollection that Kevin Rudd “had to be physically restrained from punching the Chinese negotiator” at the 2009 Copenhagen summit. The Australian prime minister was reported to have been very angry about China’s stance in the climate talks but the writer has confirmed that no threat was issued.

====================

Support The Guardian