Premise : group of boys 13 and under get stranded on a desert island. Chaos ensues as they try to build a society with immature minds. Gets dark pretty fast. Interesting implications about the origin of religion and the effect of personality on political tendencies. Definitely more of a Hobbes take on men in the state of nature. Very entertaining and not hard to follow Leviathan
Lost in the Cosmos is a uniquely styled book. It loosely follows the theme of modern alienation. In most chapters Percy sets up a scene, asks a question, and then provides multiple choice answers leaving it to the reader to decide. I can see how the format could be a turn off for some, but I found the whole exercise very interesting although I admittedly never stopped to formulate my own answers. He also takes a detour into semiotics (the study of signifiers and signified) which never fails to get into the weeds but provides a context for many of his thought experiments. The central thesis of the book is that humans are “naming things”. We live in a world full of objects that we name and put inside boxes. This is all well and good but something uncanny happened when we became self-aware. We found that in a world full of named things we are unable to name ourselves. Everything is something to the subject, but the subject is nothing to itself. The attempt to say who you are is like trying to see the back of your head. This creates alienation in the individual that used to be salved by religion naming you as a creature, brahman, atman, something is better than nothing but now we live in an age where it is extraordinarily difficult to believe in those stories so most jettison the whole thing leaving themselves alone in the cosmos. To further illustrate this idea the book opens with a beautiful quote from Nietzsche: ...
Read this while on vacation. Luckily this particular edition came with definitions for most arcane words and phrases used. If I had not have had this the book would have been fairly unintelligible. Overall, even with definitions this book was just “pretty good”. This might be because it is not written as a book but as a play. So much of the weight of what is happening is only as heavy as your imagination can make it. Living in the TV era I can hardly imagine anything, it left me mostly in the dark. With that being said I was still able to piece together that action and character development of the story. The language and metaphors in the book are truly Shakespearian (pause for chuckles). But really the word play is masterful and renders emotions in high dynamic range. The thing that struck me most about this story was that it had many parallels to the movie Scarface. I was not expecting that connection. Some great quotes in this book to be sure.
Summary Foucault writes a history of civilization’s ever-changing relationship to madness. Starting inquires around the Renaissance, he tracks how madmen were once considered to be bearers of knowledge, although unintelligible from the edge of experience. His central thesis was that there once was a language that connected reason to unreason, and through various shifts in culture that dialogue has been cut off. The Renaissance gave way to the “Age of Reason” that signaled the beginning of the shift towards confinement. This separation eventually created a new category, the “insane”. This category objectified and concretized madness as both a thing to be studied, and something undesirable to be cured. From here the rest as they say is history, all sorts of treatments and testing were tried to cure and restore sanity. ...
This book tried to capture the zeitgeist of the 1950s and therefore by necessity over-simplified and added artificial narratives to the decades preceding it. This narrative laid the preamble for the book by arguing that different ages had had different defining psychological hang ups. Whether this is true or similar to a horoscope reading it is up for debate. As a psychologist coming at the problem of identity from an existential viewpoint authentic individuality was the focus of the book. Some points that stuck out to me are: ...
The author is a neuroscientist and psychologist who is also a concentration camp survivor. The first half of the book is split between an autobiographical description of his experience in the camps as well as some psychoanalysis on himself and other inmates and guards. After being released he founds a new school of psychology called “logotherapy”. The second half of the book talks more about what this school of psychology is and how it works. To boil down this guy’s philosophy is as follows: ...
Summary H.G. Wells writes his own version of Plato’s Republic laying out the process required to make humanity 2.0 otherwise known as the ‘New Republican’. Abandoning hope of finding absolute answers on any questions social, political or ethical, Wells decides to view life in its essence as a succession of births. If this be so, then how might we improve this succession and make it the best process possible? Wells has a plan, and he spends the next 10 chapters walking the reader through how a new republican would be welcomed into life, early education and eventually seated into the greater world of society. His ideas touch on many areas of life, sex, literature, and parenting styles. ...
Marcus Aurelius, one of the greatest emperors Rome ever produced, wrote a series of notes to himself. It is believed that these notes were never meant to be published but were part of his personal practice of self-improvement and philosophical reflection. Scattered with exhortations to not bend beneath the pressures of life, the reader is presented with a picture of life as something to be endured: “Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds.” ...
Summary Split into six separate meditations, Descartes seeks to discard everything uncertain and rebuild philosophy from first principles. His chief goal is to demonstrate that the existence of God can be made evident and irrefutable by philosophy alone. This, in turn, suggests that the mind is the only ingredient required to discover God. Thoughts As often happens in life, the thing we set out to do bears little resemblance to what is actually done. Intended as a work of apologetics, it is Descartes’ doubt that would forever be remembered. The prevailing school of thought at the time was one of certainty in the senses. Descartes’ success lay in his ability to cast doubt on the reliability of the senses because they can often be tricked. For example, we trust our senses while dreaming, yet discard their reality upon awakening. I personally have also had dreams where I wake up, and yet, in reality, am still dreaming. The film “The Matrix” plays with this idea of a curated reality designed explicitly to trick the experiencer into a “false” experience. Accepting this possibility, what then can we know? This question produces his famous statement, “I think, therefore I am.” If one imagines reality to be the most extreme version of untruth, where everything we experience is a trick, one thing remains true: it is the “I” that is being deceived. Descartes then takes this as his foundation for the rest of his arguments, which are, unfortunately, less convincing. Another valuable insight is his distinction between “clear” and “confused” ideas, or more clearly, ideas that can be confused and those that cannot. For example, consider a square. It is impossible to think of a square without the geometrical properties that designate it as a two-dimensional shape. On the other hand, if you imagine any “real” object like an electron, lamp, or airplane, there will be something lacking in your idea of the thing and the thing itself. One can approach the real, but in the end, the real cannot be entirely captured by the mind. I hear criticisms of Descartes more than of almost any other philosopher. In most professions, that would be considered a bad thing, but in philosophy, it means that you are difficult to discard. While the last few meditations can easily be disregarded, the first few will persist as long as writing does. They represent a clear illustration of the correct philosophical approach to ideas: a mind that interrogates, doubts, believes, and entertains. ...
This is pretty much a handbook on how to start a successful anti-establishment movement. It has been used to great affect by a handful of dictators including Saddam Hussein to help organize movements. So, it is full of actually brilliant ideas on how to present/ manage an insurgency. Probably most notably how to produce effective propaganda. It touches on many big ideas about group mindsets including but not limited to, who you should target your revolution too, how you should handle other revolutionary groups with similar ideas, and how to select proper targets to keep your mini revolution energized. Aside from that he had some interesting ideas about education, compelling anti-democracy arguments, and an unexpected view about morality of the state. That being said obviously he has some less than flattering things to say about people of Jewish heritage and others. To be honest I was surprised to see how weak his racial arguments were. There wasn’t much proof to any statements that he made about races. It was mostly just true because he said it was. I could see that if you were a German living in post WW1 Germany where you had probably lost several family members to the war and had got less than nothing in return that assertions that Hitler makes might be attractive. But to an outside observer it mostly just seemed convenient. This was probably one of my least favorite books I have read this year because of the length. It seemed to drag on unnecessarily long for the subjects that were covered in it. I was happy to put this book behind me and move on to hopefully greener pastures.