Welcome to the new issue of Zappa Times.Enjoy your reading,Zafer Yenal

“So many books so little time...” Inspired by Frank Zappa, Zappa Times writes about literature, nature, food, and economics.

Zappa Times

An alternative history of civilization

State or barbarism?

Welcome to the new issue of Zappa Times.

The happiness industry and our lives

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Middle Class

Welcome to the new issue of Zappa Times.Enjoy your reading, Biray Kolluoğlu - Zafer Yenal

The paradox of happiness studies

Do we have to be happy?

Welcome to the new issue of Zappa Times.Enjoy your reading, Zafer Yenal

Is it possible to do otherwise, from knitting to weaving?

Being a craftsman in the 21st century

"To live, free and single like a tree
but in brotherhood like a forest"

Will we save the trees, or will the trees save us?

Science related articles and publications

Science

Culture related articles and publications

Culture

Food & Beverage

For those who follow the innovations in the food and beverage world, especially at the upper levels, foraging is one of the most popular trends of recent years. Its ability to combine the qualities of naturalness and locality in the same pot, which are essential to all sustainability formulas that are thought to be a cure-all for many of the environmental and health problems of our age, is perhaps one of the features that make foraging timeless. Likewise, the paleo diet is among the most talked about and controversial food topics of the recent period. It is also known as the stone age, caveman or hunter-gatherer diet. Those who follow this diet believe that they will lose weight and stay healthy by avoiding products that were not eaten in the "paleolithic period", including dairy products, pastries, legumes, refined oils, and sugars.<img src="https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/images.aposto.com/2022/7/5/1660905548147.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="1.31" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">René Redzepi, chef and owner of the world-famous Noma Restaurant, collects ingredients for his dishes on Dragor beach near Copenhagen.Photo: New YorkerGathering on the one hand, and the paleo diet on the other, are the biggest signs that history (the desire to return to the pure past?) and nature (the longing for a natural life?) are, at different levels and in different tones, the fundamental concepts that determine the current trends in today's food and beverage world. Here, too, the familiar, oft-repeated questions immediately come to mind, ranging from the most naive to the most political: Are we healthier today than in the past? Are we better nourished? What has civilization brought and taken away from human life? Does a long life necessarily mean a happy life? How did people come to live in crowded communities? What was the role of agriculture, the role of economy, the role of the state in this process? Why do states exist, are they really necessary? Do they really make our lives easier?<img src="https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/images.aposto.com/2022/7/5/1660905577825.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="0.67" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">At the center of today's post is a book that has the potential to change the way we look at these and many other questions about our lives and the social institutions that regulate them: James Scott's latest book Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (2017, Yale University Press). Much of the empirical material for this book comes from recent research on the history and archaeology (from 6500 BC to 1600 BC) of Mesopotamia (especially the part south of today's Basra), which is partly located in Turkey and whose fertile lands around the Tigris and Euphrates were home to the first human societies in world history. James Scott, previously known for his work at the intersection of political science and historical anthropology, continues the long-term historical and archaeological critique he began in his previous book, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.<img src="https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/images.aposto.com/2022/7/5/1660905591713.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="0.66" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">This critique is centralized around the linear developmentalist historical narrative that focuses on agriculture and civilization. This grand narrative has been taught in schools all over the world for more than a century, and its assumptions underpin dominant discourses on the course of history and future of the world, both in politics and in everyday life.The grand narrative, which centers on the idea of linear development (progress) that Scott criticizes and finds wrong in many respects, is this: Human societies were first hunter-gatherers and nomadic. Over time they domesticated plants and animals and thus moved from nomadic to sedentary life. This also meant that agriculture (and the accompanying irrigation) emerged and became the main economic activity. This led to the division of labor, specialization, and stratification. Increasing material prosperity led to the formation of cities and migration to them. In this process of civilization, states emerged, and their decline or collapse often meant disorder, war, and loss of prosperity.In his book, Scott quite convincingly <a fr-original-style="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; outline: none; cursor: pointer; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: auto; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank">falsifies</a> all the defining elements of this grand narrative one by one: One, examples of sedentism begin to appear long before the domestication of plants and animals. In other words, hunting-gathering and settlement can co-exist. Two, agricultural villages emerge about 4,000 years after both domestication and settlement. Three, contrary to popular belief, towns and settled life do not emerge with the expansion of states and irrigation, but primarily around wetlands. Four, states (3100 BC) are established as small, walled, tax-collecting centers where political power is concentrated much later than the emergence of agriculture on fixed land (9000 BC). In other words, states do not emerge as a natural consequence of agriculture and settlement, as institutions that would most efficiently ensure political order. Five, moreover, states and the civilizations they spearhead are not, as one might think, centers of attraction for people because they offer better life opportunities. On the contrary, states usually create the population that will be subject to them by force, by capture. And even for the "barbarians" who refused to be civilized, who refused to be subordinated to states, life was probably much easier, freer and healthier (compared to those outside the state elite).This entire process of historical deconstruction, of course, led Scott to question the material and spiritual benefits of agriculture for humans. One of Scott's main arguments in the book is that, at least at the very beginning, sedentary cultivation and animal breeding activities were not a great step forward in human welfare, happiness and nutrition. According to Scott, perhaps for this reason, it was not easy for people to give up their nomadic, mobile way of life of hunting and gathering and to settle down under one roof on some land, and they often resisted this process. Permanently living in one place often meant being more susceptible to diseases and serving the state (drudgery, taxes, etc.). Therefore, the transition from land or sea gathering, shepherding, hunting, or even more mobile cultivation activities such as <a fr-original-style="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; outline: none; cursor: pointer; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: auto; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank">slash-and-burn agriculture,</a> to settled agriculture was a long, back-and-forth, and very challenging process. The Art of Not Being Governed, which he wrote before Against the Grain, focuses on a historical example of how this process is still not entirely in favor of the state, "civilization" and settled agriculture even today. He describes the centuries-long struggle of indigenous communities (i.e. "barbarians") in the high-altitude <a fr-original-style="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asian_Massif#Zomia" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; outline: none; cursor: pointer; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: auto; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank">Zomia&nbsp;</a>region of Southeast Asia, which includes Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and some provinces of China, to avoid state control, which would mean conscription, taxation and drudgery. An important part of these struggles is the maintenance of mobile subsistence activities outside of settled agriculture.Against the Grain is a great title in both senses, pointing to the essence of the book. "Going against the grain" means questioning and rejecting what is considered normal and correct. Therefore, what we have discussed so far is related to the first motive behind this title. One of Scott's main arguments in his book is that grain agriculture developed together with the state.Historically, classical states can only exist with grain agriculture. Or the state likes plain lands rather than mountains, forests, wetlands and swamps. In communities where root crops or legumes are at the center of the economy, diet, and livelihood, the state as a central authority cannot gain power. For example, unlike wheat, maize or rice, potatoes, cassava or lentils are not easy for the state official to measure, easily tracked by the tax system, or easily stored after transportation. On the contrary, because they grow underground, because their harvest time cannot be tracked with temporal regularity, because they are "scattered", they can be more easily hidden (i.e. more easily evaded taxation) by the growers...Therefore, going "against the grain" also means opposing the "state" and the state's efforts to make people legible (legibility), appropriation, and control of their vital activities. A comprehensive discussion of the conceptual and empirical framework underpinning this argument can be found in James C. Scott's early work Seeing Like a State (1999, Yale University Press).<img src="https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/images.aposto.com/2022/7/5/1660905606840.png" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="1.43" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">A photo of a natural forest with a state-owned forest.Source: Seeing Like a StateAgainst the Grain is not just a book about recent archaeology and historiography. Scott has also reviewed relevant studies in fields such as environment, geography, demography, biology, epidemiology and osteology, which have proliferated and diversified over the last few decades. Scott's reading of these studies gives us the following general picture: human societies with dynamic life practices, especially hunting-gathering, have not lived bad lives. They consumed different foods within the diversity provided to them by their environment, and managed to be energetic and healthy thanks to their mobile lifestyles. Because they lived in smaller communities, they were also able to avoid epidemics. Of course, the fact that they were not intertwined with animals before domestication also contributed to this process.With agriculture came more monotonous and less nutritious diets centered around grains and animal products. After animals took over more of the gathering (it is not wrong to say that chickens, sheep and cows took over the gathering for us!), people's lives became less active, and the frequency and spread of diseases increased with the increase in trade and the close relationship with animals. According to Scott, all this explains the gap of at least 4000 years between the domestication of plants and animals and the emergence of the first states. In other words, for a very long time before people had to transition to more crowded and settled lives under the discipline of centralized authority, they had been engaged in different kinds of living/productive activities (gathering, hunting, small-scale domestication, sowing and reaping, etc.).&nbsp;Yes, it is impossible not to see that after thousands of years, the ineptitude of human beings has grown exponentially. As such, the longing and interest for skills and handicrafts are increasing, as it has been in recent years. On the other hand, of course, there are the disasters that the Anthropocene era has unleashed on us all over the world. This is fueling the desire to return to nature today. Against the Grain opens a window through which we can approach issues such as naturalism and our renewed interest in crafts. It makes the activities of gathering and hunting visible, which have actually been widespread until today. In other words, it points out that we should see many cultural and political practices, from the herb gathering not only by<a fr-original-style="" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/one-of-the-worlds-most-famous-chefs-wants-to-help-you-forage-for-your-food/2017/06/29/b59a1d34-5ceb-11e7-9fc6-c7ef4bc58d13_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; outline: none; cursor: pointer; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: auto; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank">&nbsp;René Redzepi</a> but also by women to the opposition of the villagers in Ceylanpınar against the state's land ownership of their pastures, as a historical and enduring trajectory.Against the Grain should not be read as a proposal to start a new life of hunter-gathering on the edge of the forest. The complex, interdependent and crowded world we live in is not one that makes such returns possible for the masses. But on the other hand, this reading is essential to undermine the linear narrative of progress that states use to legitimize themselves and cover their violence, and to imagine lives that are perhaps more "barbaric" but much more fair and healthy.One last note: If you want to listen to a good talk by James C. Scott that is partly related to Against the Grain, you can click on the <a fr-original-style="" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO__r8Q0bmU" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; outline: none; cursor: pointer; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: auto; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank">link.</a>The title of the talk is quite revealing in itself: "How grains domesticated us." Scott gave this talk as the 2014 Honorary Lecturer of the Centre for Food Studies at the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London. This program is one of the best food/meal studies centers in Europe.You can forward this publication to your circle, tell them to subscribe for free at <a fr-original-style="" href="https://apos.to/n/zappa-zamanlar" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; outline: none; cursor: pointer; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: auto; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank">apos.to/n/zappa-times.</a> You can contact me at zappazamanlar@gmail.com, share your thoughts and reading, listening suggestions with me.Until next time.

The title of this article could have easily been "Can you paint the picture of happiness for me, Wellbutrin?" (For those who don't know yet: "Wellbutrin" is a drug used to treat certain symptoms of depression.) But I didn't want to rely on Nazım Hikmet again, and Milan Kundera didn't seem like a bad alternative this week. I was still at university when The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) came to the bookstores in Turkey. I remember that I found the book too "bourgeois" and refused to read it because I was very leftist at the time. When I read it later, I was quite impressed. Those years, of course, I was as surprised as everyone else. The "iron curtain" was coming down piece by piece in Czechoslovakia and Poland. So much so that when the Soviet Union, accompanied by the concepts of Glastnost and Perestroika, which Gorbachev taught the whole world, flipped the switch in 1989, not only the iron curtain but also an era in the world was coming down. In those years, Francis Fukuyama, with his book The End of History and the Last Man, heralded that Western liberal democracy had become the political norm all over the world.Especially when we look at the developments in recent years that make the hairs on the back of the neck stand with fear, anxiety and sadness of anyone with a modicum of conscience and reason, we can discuss how politically liberal this world is. But the fact that the dominance of liberalism in the economic sphere and the discursive/ideological hegemony of liberalism has come to this day without being shaken is pretty much undebatable. Even though the 2008 Crisis and most recently COVID have beaten people into seeing that it can't go on like this for much longer, thanks to this hegemony, people almost everywhere in the world have learned to be individuals, to think individualistically.Almost all of us have internalized being an individual by printing our names on coffee cups, or by eating chocolates and biscuits that express our emotions, and we have embedded it into the values of our daily lives, especially through consumption practices.In the post-1980s, when neo-liberal capitalism became unrivaled, the world has become a place of “every man for himself,” where the ones at the bottom can’t raise their voices even when they are suffering. And how do we know this? The number of impoverished people has steadily increased, and inequality has multiplied. At the same time, social protection networks have been pierced more and more; the public space that would pave the way for the pluralization of demands for rights into collective actions, and the transformation of grievances into political demand has become smaller and smaller.It has become increasingly difficult to be happy in such a world. Perhaps this is precisely why happiness is no longer just a personal matter, it has moved out of the private sphere and has become an area that needs to be researched, studied, and regulated through interventions. Under the umbrella of what Wiliam Davies calls the "happiness industry", economists, psychologists, doctors, neuro-scientists, market researchers, and publishers have been working hard to access and disseminate the knowledge of happiness. Not to be misunderstood when I say dissemination, I mean "for a price" of course ... A psycho-therapy session, a workshop on "well-being", a pill for depression, an anti-anxiety medication, or a strategy book on the path to happiness all have a price tag. Everything from watching television shows that seem to be free of charge and "make dreams come true and make people shed tears of happiness" to our posts on Facebook has turned into an economic input in the economy where emotions are bought, sold, and measured through ratings and likes, even if they are not directly monetized.William Davies's book The Happiness Industry (2018, Sel Publishing) provides a gripping account of the main building blocks of this economy, especially large corporations and states, its historical development with a focus on the transformation of the concept of happiness, and its manifestations in everyday life in many different ways over the last 20-30 years. From the prevalence of studies on happiness in behavioral economics to the indices developed by international organizations such as the OECD to measure wellbeing, the book provides an engaging discussion of the prevalence of the pursuit of happiness today. As a result, as the wheels of the happiness industry efficiently turn, achievements, responsibilities, and freedoms are defined on an individual scale, while the social processes behind them are increasingly invisible.In such a world, it is no wonder that self-help books have been bestsellers for years. It is hard to know what and how much people learn from these books. But what is certain is that people have a great appetite for books that teach them the secrets of a good and happy life. Bookstore chains (nowadays the book market is largely dominated by chains and online sales) have much wider shelves for such books now than ever before. From "the rules of lasting love" to "learning in infancy", from "preparing for an exam with your family" to "feeling like yourself", from "minds that talk to the body" to "nonviolent communication", many aspects of daily life and human relations are the subjects of these books. On the other hand, if we take into account the different categories of books that guide, advise, and help people organize their lives under different headings such as business and management, health and food, we can easily say that the concern for personal development covers every aspect of life.It can be said that there have always been people in a corner of some newspapers and magazines who answered readers' questions on different topics, especially intimate matters, and provided guidance. Yes, but the general visibility of such "columns" was limited, and although they seemed to address the individual, they were much more "social" in terms of both function and content. They were not yet specialized through books or advice platforms on the web, they did not seem to be written "for you personally". There were answers to problems that anyone could face, that everyone could understand and agree on. Moreover, things were not yet professionalized. In other words, the columnist was a journalist, not an expert on the subjects they wrote about. Like all areas of consumption, the consumption of happiness has not only expanded, but has also become more effective and complex. It has become a field that reflects social inequalities on the one hand and constructs them on the other.Today, not everyone is equal in terms of consuming enough to be happy, to benefit from the products of the happiness industry, and ultimately to feel good. While a smaller minority has the financial means to become "clients", a larger majority is content with being "spectators". While the lucky individuals of the middle class run from one appointment to another with their doulas, life coaches and "mindfulness" instructors in order to feel lighter, gain self-confidence and achieve success, the poorer ones are left to survive on city buses, in overcrowded hospitals, in jobs that are here today and gone tomorrow, trying to find ways to survive one way or another, and raise their children. Who is happier?Unfortunately, the ways to be happy are lost for everyone in a life where happiness is talked about so much. While one side of the world is on fire, the other side is never able to enjoy life in their own homes as they wish. Wherever you go, the city follows you with its racism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, class hatred, and the violence that is created by all of these. Where there is violence, there is anxiety, fear, and uncertainty, but happiness, even in the best of situations, is always an "as if.” It is time to read <a fr-original-style="" href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51295/the-city-56d22eef2f768" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; outline: none; cursor: pointer; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: auto; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank">C. P. CAVAFY and his poem "The City"…</a> You said: "I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,find another city better than this one.Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrongand my heart lies buried like something dead.How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?Wherever I turn, wherever I look,I see the black ruins of my life, here,where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally." You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.This city will always pursue you.You’ll walk the same streets, grow oldin the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world. Let's imagine for a moment that the following scenario is real: You enter a bookstore and the first books that greet you are not books on how to raise your child as a leader, the 10 golden rules of competition, or the story of who knows who that will be an example/inspiration for everyone. Rather, books such as the virtues of solidarity, forty-one ways of collective work, and how we can multiply our commonalities are placed right at the entrance. In a huge section, books on social welfare and collective well-being, suggesting strategies and tactics to achieve this are displayed. So many books have been written on cooperatives, trade unions, and NGOs that more shelves were needed... Wouldn't the world we live in be a very different place? One, because it already would be a different place. Two, the world would continue to be a different place because more books like this would be written and read. If half of the time and energy spent on writing and reading books on how to be happier were devoted to answering the question "how can we make this world better together", we would probably be less tired and happier.&nbsp;<img src="https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/images.aposto.com/2022/7/3/1660141521644.png" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="1.36" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">If you want to hear first-hand how real people experience many emotions, including surprise, disappointment, loss and happiness, in real relationships and love and affairs, I have an exciting podcast recommendation for you: "Modern Love". This podcast is like the audio version of a huge industry on its own. A popular column in the New York Times for 15 years, Daniel Jones has been editing the series, and two years ago Amazon Video made a series. There is also a book version of Modern Love published in 2019.That's it for this week. The cover image, "Değirmendere, 1999" belongs to my dear friend Özge Açıkkol. I would like to thank her again for sharing her photo with me. Now for my usual reminders: You can forward this publication to your circle, tell them to sign up for free at apos.to/n/zappa-times. You can contact me at zappazamanlar@gmail.com, share your thoughts and reading, listening suggestions with me.I wish everyone a wonderful, healthy week.

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State or barbarism?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Middle Class

Do we have to be happy?

Being a craftsman in the 21st century

Will we save the trees, or will the trees save us?

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