Reviews

This is America Don’t catch you slippin’ now Don’t catch you slippin’ now Look what I’m whippin’ now 0/10 On first read through though I thought this book was difficult to understand and made a lot of HUGE assumptions that the readers are just supposed to agree with. It doesn’t seem like this book is a good primer into communism but more like a good closer if you are already leaning in that direction. The book included a chapter of excerpts from various Engles/Marx’s writings which was more helpful to understand why they said what they said. I’ll definitely be doing so more research. ...

At some point during a conversation, I asked a question that was half-joking and half-serious. I asked, “If life is suffering, why is it morally okay to continue bringing more life into this world?” Little did I know, I would soon read a book that asked the same question. This book, published in 2010 by Thomas Ligotti, was an explanation of his own philosophy, which happened to be extremely dark. Ligotti starts by explaining that most people have the assumption that “being alive is alright,” and it is from this assumption that most philosophy is built. Instead, Ligotti starts with the assumption that “being alive is NOT alright,” and proceeds from there. This book could be considered an agreement and expansion of Peter Zapffe’s “The Last Messiah,” in which Zapffe argues that consciousness (mostly a sense of self) is a class A blunder by evolution. Ligotti calls this level of consciousness the “Mother of All Horrors,” as it has given us the ability to realize that we are puppets, turning us into uncanny things that no longer belong in nature. Zapffe concludes that the best course of action is for humanity to implement a two-child limit, causing the gradual extinction of the human race. Ligotti and other philosophers argue that parents have blood on their hands for bringing more uncanny, absurd creatures into this world of suffering. He also points out the similarities between this worldview and Buddhism, in that the destruction of the self is the goal of both, just with different wrapping paper. Ligotti argues that many philosophers have arrived at the same conclusion that he has, but they have made a twist at the end to allow them to tell the same story differently or come to a different conclusion, which is usually the conclusion that “being alive is alright.” There was a quote near the end of the book that has really stuck with me, which captures the isolation communicated in the book. It went something like, “Humans are the only species that, if they were to instantly go extinct, would not be missed.” As a bit of trivia, this book was a primary inspiration for Matthew McConaughey’s character in the first season of True Detective. Overall, this book was difficult to read due to how dark it was. The writing was quite good, but it was the definition of defeatist. It has given me much to think about. ...

This book was a wild ride like watching some guy on the history channel talk about something that you have no clue about. Could be classy…. could be demonic, but either way entertaining! I found his points about the complexity of DNA and the stability of animal archetypes after the Cambrian explosion to be quite interesting and something that I will have to keep an eye out for in the future. Big bang debunked?! But seriously, I think we should be able to hold Darwinism as loosely as we hold Mormonism. If something else comes along and replaces it, all the better! I thought the book raised a lot of good questions and gave some pretty shaky answers, not that I have any better theories to sally forth, I shall sit back and let someone braver face the ridicule of the scientific world. As Planck’s principle says, “Science progresses one funeral at a time”. Perhaps our conceptions of soup to cell, needs a snake!

“How does it happen that a writer who’s not even very good—and I can say that, I’ve read four or five of his books—gets to be in charge of the world’s destiny? Or of the entire universe’s?” “If he’s not very good why didn’t you stop at one?” **Dark Tower VII, Chapter III ** Stephen King is the Lay’s Potato Chip of authors. His omnipresence makes him an easy target for abuse. The above quotation captures it perfectly. King is a bad writer, but an excellent storyteller—in the same way that Lay’s makes bad chips, but the kind you can’t stop eating. ...

Summary Army at Dawn documents the United States entry into the fight against Germany in North Africa. This picks up after the allies seized the critical port town of Tunis. This allied victory opened the possibility of attacking in the words of Churchill “the Axis’ underbelly” in Italy. Crossing from Tunis to Sicily (the island attached to the toe of the Italy’s boot) the allies began their slow march towards Rome. During and after the capture (or liberation if you prefer) of Tunisia there was a great deal of disagreement between the British and the US over what the next target of attack should be. The Americans favored a cross channel invasion jumping from England to France, but on the other hand, after the Dunkirk debacle the Brits were much keener on the idea of invading Italy. So in a compromise they decided to do both, but since the allied troops were already stationed near Italy it was decided that the cross-channel invasion would occur a year later to allow for planning and logistical difficulties to be sorted out. In the meantime, the allies would use their deployed units to invade Italy and try to take some pressure off of Russia. It sounds good on paper, but as the casualties mounted and progress crawled to a halt in the inhospitable Italian mountain winter, victory was far from certain. ...

This book is a short story that focuses mostly on the last few days of Ivan Ilyich. Ivan is a judge in high court. Tolstoy briefly gives a bird’s eye view of his life by describing it as neither as cold and formal as his elder brother nor as wild as the younger, but was a happy mean between them an intelligent, polished, lively, and agreeable man. Ivan took great pains to structure his life to be described just in that way. The Radiohead song “everything in its right place” comes to mind. Climbing the social ladder and making all his decisions based on what was most “decorous”, Ivan is struck down by an unforeseen terminal illness and spends his last days introspectively considering the life he’s lived. He feels like he doesn’t deserve sickness he has been afflicted with because he views his life as being lived well. This book articulates most people’s worst fear, which is living your entire life but only at the end of it having the clarity to see it was mostly a sham. I think everyone considers their own life. Some people more than others, but no matter how much you do consider it one thing is true. You will never be able to manufacture the clarity of the final which you will be faced with on your death bed. This book, like other Russian books, places emphasis on living truthfully. The alternative is spiritual death. This book has really funked with the headspace for which I am thankful. This book was written later in Tolstoy’s life, and many translate it as his own struggle with the reality of death which can be summed up in this quote: ...

This book is Sagan’s ode to science. The point of this book is to argue the science is the most reliable way that humans have come up with for making descriptive statements about reality. Not a particularly novel concept but it is deftly laid out in this book. He starts out by destroying the man in the moon with facts and logic. Showing how only simpletons could believe the moon is made out of cheese. He then talks about aliens and draws very interesting links between alien abduction stories and the stories of witches during the 1600s. He draws a causal link between scientific knowledge and economic success and its converse which is the loss of scientific thinking producing poverty. He makes compelling arguments as to how America is largely scientifically illiterate and that more funding should be directed away from defense and towards education and general science. He gives some historical insights for funding general science and not just science for the sake of medicine and technology, arguing that general science is typically the best way to make technological and medicinal breakthroughs. The secondary point of this book was to try and convince everyone to be a skeptic. In line with this he describes what he calls as a “bologna detection kit”. This kit contains several logical fallacies used by politicians and bad actors to trick people into believing something. Shots fired at the authors of the bell curve in this book as well which was unexpected. I was expecting this book to be a lot more condescending than it was. Sagan’s tone was actually fairly polite and made a lot of sense. Definitely a little bit of a wet blanket to have at a party though. A lot of good ideas in here, not mind blowing but definitely helpful to remember when trying to build your worldview. ...

Summary “The Denial of Death” is Ernest Becker’s pivotal contribution to the intersection of psychology and philosophy. Rooted in psychoanalytic insights, Becker presents a framework later known as Terror Management Theory, or TMT. The central premise is that to function, one must find a way to ignore or mitigate the central fact of existence: its inevitable end. Becker argues that humanity engages in various strategies to suppress or forget this reality. For example, someone might sacrifice their life for a concept like freedom or, alternatively, for avarice. In the first case, Becker suggests that dying for ‘freedom’ is an attempt to attach oneself to a concept larger than oneself, thereby achieving vicarious immortality as the concept of ‘freedom’ lives on. Similarly, in pursuing greed, a person operates under the conception of a certain cultural hero (e.g., the gangster, the successful stockbroker), seeking to become this hero for self-justification. Becker posits that no culture has, or probably ever will, avoid evading death’s implications. ...

I have read Dante’s Inferno a couple times, but it is part one of the trilogy titled the Divine Comedy. The first part is Inferno, then Purgatorio, and lastly Paradiso. So, when I finally got a hard copy that contained all three parts I was excited to check out the other pieces of it. First things first, these books are very difficult to read for two main reasons. Language The language in this book can be very tricky. That is because the whole book is a poem written in (3-line stanzas) also in Italian. This makes the job of translator especially difficult to try and maintain the rhythm of the poem. On top of that since it is poetic there are many times where a very simple action like: person A asks person B a question can span paragraphs and therefore make it difficult to always keep track of what is going on. ...

This is essay was written documenting Huxley’s psychedelic experience while being given Mescaline (the active ingredient in peyote). Huxley’s theory was that the ego acts a “reducer valve” on consciousness and by taking a psychoactive drug he could thereby sidestep this valve and widen his experience of reality. According to the essay this is exactly what happened. He was administered the drug by a psychiatrist who had been studying the drug for some time before this event. This psychiatrist and Huxley’s wife accompanied him for the 8hr trip with a tape recorder and some questions to help document the effects of the drug. While high Huxley looks at some fine art paintings and suddenly understands that the artist could see things the way he currently was seeing things and that he could tell his consciousness had been brought up to the level of “visionary”. Among other things he later makes an argument that the relationship of alcohol and Christianity should be abandoned and replaced with Mescaline. I feel like if you were to have that conversation the response would just be laughter, but to me it was an interesting argument. People/Aldous Huxley