The Reality Bubble by Ziya Tong review - blind spots and hidden truths | Society books ... - 0 views
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“To us,” she writes, “reality may appear human-sized, but in truth 95% of all animal species are smaller than the human thumb.”
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The matter and life we cannot see are demonstrated with stunning effect. Bacterial cells make up 0.2kg of your body weight; one handful of soil contains more microbes than there are people on Earth; the tiny particles called neutrinos generated by the sun’s nuclear fusion are so small that they can penetrate the Earth, enabling a subterranean observatory to come up with an image of the sun.
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In three sections – on biology, society and civilisation – Tong relentlessly focuses on all the things we either do not know, or decide not to pay attention to, as we carry on with our lives
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It feels like being shown around a fascinating exhibit by an enthusiastic curator. Yet The Reality Bubble is essentially a warning: our blind spots, Tong contends, are responsible for the destruction of our habitat
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showing why there is a balance to nature, while making clear that there is so much about other creatures we are blind to.
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humans have subordinated the elements and the animal kingdom to our will and our desire for consumption, and in doing so have sown the seeds of our own demise.
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the folly of the idea of human exceptionalism and how, if we are to survive as a species, we need to get very good at scale, and fast. But she doesn’t preach
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From a chimpanzee with a photographic memory to beetles that navigate by means of the Milky Way, Tong’s revelatory examples inspire a sense of wonder
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Tong also discusses time, space and ownership as initially useful concepts that became co-opted in the march towards efficiency and more profit. In a striking passage she writes that “the illusion of free time is the ouroboros of capitalism. Leisure has entered the marketplace so that it feeds back into the economy”.
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The Reality Bubble is no knock-off but a new addition to the “human journey” genre. It is not just a book that tells a story of humanity; it is a gentle but highly effective wake-up call.