Cryptonomicon

By Neal Stephenson

Cryptonomicon is a book about patterns, numbers, and patterns in society.  It is a macho laced adventure that takes place on two parallel time continuum involving characters of two generations of family.  Mixed in this is a moral message.  The whole book is a metaphor on how cryptic this moral message is. It’s the unfolding of character traits with the suggestion that through all of the history of mankind, there is a thread that can be pulled through to our origins, God.  The message is cryptic and the reader only needs to tune in to it.  Essentially the center theme, stated through the character Avi a Jew, is to redirect the energy put in to war driven greed towards good.  Now that sounds real sappy.  So Stephenson as opposed to a Marvel Action comic book, presents an intellectual action thriller.

One comes to appreciate in the first story thread that takes place during WWII how much value should be placed on intelligence.  Knowing what the Germans or Japanese were going to do was essential to being ready for their attacks. We woke up to this reality on December 7, 1941.  The prime characters in this thread are the intellectuals that decrypt coded messages.  Mixed in with the character set is one action hero that stands apart.  Amazing how need to survive catapults technology.  There is little moral message in this thread.  Some of the characters are fictional, and some are genuine as in Alan Turing.  Turning and Waterhouse, college buddies combine their efforts to give birth to what has grown up to be artificial intelligence.  Yeap computer punch cards, with patterned punches decrypted enemy messages.  At that time, and I believe it is still mostly true today that artificial intelligence still requires a human to input the original algorithm.  I say this because the reader will find in this book the answer to that question through school: “why do I need to learn math”?

On the other time continuum the second generation comes in the form of hi-tech adventure capitalists stumbling into the opportunity to recoup enough war gold to realize the kernel of capital to eliminating the greed/power seeds of war.  The reader becomes aware of the fundamentals of an economy and therefore appreciates that any economy must be underwritten with the ability to pay on a promissory note, no matter what technology, that being a coin, a piece of paper, or a digital bitcoin.  Yeap the book gives legitimacy to the reality of a totally digital currency.   

Moral Message:  First you encounter these words that draw on the gods of the Greek that go back to origin, it speaks to patterns of thinking that transcends time:  From the book:  "“If you think of the Greek gods as real supernatural beings who lived on Mount Olympus, no. But if you think of them as being in the same class of entities as the Root Rep, which is to say, patterns of neurological activity that the mind uses to represent things that it sees, or thinks it sees, in the outside world, then yes. Suddenly, Greek gods can be just as interesting and relevant as real people. Why? Because, in the same way as you might one day encounter another person with his own Root Rep so, if you were to have a conversation with an ancient Greek person, and he started talking about Zeus, you might—once you got over your initial feelings of superiority—discover that you had some mental representations inside your own mind that, though you didn’t name them Zeus and didn’t think of them as a big hairy thunderbolt-hurling son of a Titan, nonetheless had been generated as a result of interactions with entities in the outside world that are the same as the ones that cause the Zeus Representation to appear in the Greek’s mind. And here we could talk about the Plato’s Cave thing for a while—the Veg-O-Matic of metaphors—it slices! it dices!”"

So past events are tied to a future of world peace at the grace of super heroes who use brain and brawn to get you there.  But Stephenson gets you there with a moral message tied to Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  In the end there is much dialogue that begins with a Catholic priest and Randy Waterhouse a crypto-geek in a prison cell that carries on to an executive of a very powerful Japanese firm  who knows  where the war gold is: 

From the book: "“I came to the Church because of some words.”“Words?”“This is Jesus Christ who taketh away the sins of the world,” Goto Dengo says. “Enoch Root, no one knows the sins of the world better than me. I have swum in those sins, drowned in them, burned in them, dug in them. I was like a man swimming down a long cave filled with black cold water. Looking up, I saw a light above me, and swam towards it. I only wanted to find the surface, to breathe air again. Still immersed in the sins of the world, at least I could breathe. This is what I am now.”

Enoch Roots reply: “Jesus takes away the sins of the world, but the world remains: a physical reality on which we are doomed to live until death takes us away from it. You have confessed, and you have been forgiven, and so the greater part of your burden has been taken away by grace. But the gold is still there, in a hole in the ground. Did you think that the gold all turned into dirt when you swallowed the bread and the wine? That is not what we mean by transubstantiation.” Enoch Root turns his back and walks away, leaving Goto Dengo alone in the bright avenues of the city of the dead."   

The author’s moral message in my mind: it ain’t the Church that gets you there, but rather your own relationship with that energy that many refer to as God does.  In the mean time, try and do something good to improve the situation in our world.  Live by the grace of the sacrifice of Christ.

You may disagree with me…but only those who’ve completed the book need respond.