Reviews

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

The Double is Dostoyevsky’s second published work and is a definite precursor to much of his later work. Following the life of a low-level bureaucrat named Golyadkin for a couple chaotic days. Golyadkin is a weak and flakey person with crippling anxiety and bordering on psychotic. After attending a party and committing some embarrassing party fouls he is thrown out into the snowy night in St. Petersburg. It is in this state that Golyadkin literally bumps into his double a person that looks just like him and even shares his name. The rest of the book follows the relationship of these two characters as the double is the inverse of the real Golyadkin and has everything the original lacks. This book was also adapted into a movie with Jesse Eisenburg who is a great match for this character. The style is very surreal and also satirical it is much different from anything else I’ve read from Dostoyevsky. It was also the worst book I’ve read from him, in fact I think he says it best ...

Summary Written in 1844, Max Stirner aimed to stir-ner the pot. While teaching at a school for girls by day, he was a revolutionary writer by night. His publication of “The Ego and Its Own” necessitated his resignation from teaching, but earned him a spot among influential German thinkers. As a young man, Stirner attended lectures by Hegel before joining the ‘Young Hegelians’, a group that included Marx and Engels but eventually imploded due to disagreements - a common issue among philosophers. In “The Ego and Its Own”, Stirner seeks to open the reader’s eyes to the world’s workings. He argues that we are born into a body limited by materialistic constraints - we can’t fly, we need to eat, we must stay warm, etc. However, as we mature, we discover a limitless internal mind. This internal world, unbeknownst to us, has been populated with “spooks” or “ghosts” by society, religion, parents, etc. Since we are unaware of the origins of these ideas, we feel they are inviolable and real. Stirner aims to demonstrate that these are not real (in the sense of natural laws) and that surrendering our autonomy to these ideas is a mistake. He argues that all our ideals are egoists, working only for their advancement. Stirner poses the question: why work for another egoist when you can act independently? Beyond this, he suggests that human behavior, when examined, is ultimately driven by egotism. For example, why did person A donate to an orphanage? If you probe deeply enough, it appears that actions are motivated by perceived personal benefit. Stirner posits that there are only two ways to live: either as a conscious egoist or as one who believes they aren’t. Recognizing one’s egoism, according to Stirner, allows a person to cast off any “spook” or ideal like humanity, nation-states, etc., as soon as it no longer serves the individual. He argues that we are more than concepts and should not submit to them when they cease to serve us. Unlike Ayn Rand, he does not elaborate on what this approach might entail in practice. ...

I’ve listened to Sammy boy’s podcast a fair bit so I figured I should check out some of his work. In the End of Faith, he comes out of the gate swinging. This book was written in 2005 while the Twin Towers were still fresh in everyone’s minds. So, while it pulls no punches for any religion there is a special place in Sam’s hell for Islam. He claims that much like we have retired Zeus and Apollo it is time to do the same to Jesus and Mohammed. A central claim of this book is that religion is that last place in society that has managed to remove itself from criticism. It attempts to justify itself from reason while dismissing reason as a valid way to understanding its truths. He then makes some interesting points about religious moderates not really helping things because to those living the letter of the law a religious moderate is a failed fundamentalist who will likely end up in hell. This is a very valid insight in my opinion, moderates have no leg to stand on. To me this has always been my biggest thing against “Jesus loved the gays” viewpoint. Another quip “sacred texts are sacred because they were thought so yesterday”. He then fires some shots at Bill Moyers trying to revivify these traditions. Right or wrong at points in the book Harris feels like an angry parent who wants to tell us: “you’ve been very naughty with your myths and so you’ve lost your privilege to use them! Go to your room and think about what you’ve done.” He also brought up this point (that I haven’t been able to verify) about the impossibility of removing contradictory beliefs from your own head. He said, if there was a computer as large as the universe made up circuits the size of protons running at the speed of light that verified each new belief against all its prior beliefs before continuing, and this computer had been running since the big bang it would still be working on cross referencing its 300th belief. Yikes! Another interesting insight is the concept that belief may be a passive response from the brain while in order to disbelieve something you have to expend mental effort. Good for Tigers in the jungle, bad for Bitcoin taking me to the moon. He then makes the common critique of sacred texts easily being used to justify violence (i.e. stoning an adulterer in the OT or killing infidels in the Koran), indeed he argues that it takes more work most times to sidestep such awkward verses than to accept them. Fair play! He does some minor stanning for the Israel/ Palestine situation, arguing that if Palestine was in power there wouldn’t be a conflict because there wouldn’t be any Israel left. This too seems like a fair point. He criticizes Chomsky for laying the responsibility at the foot of American foreign policy arguing that America’s foreign policy is not the driving factor behind terrorist attacks and that religion is. If you stop and think about it Chomsky’s opinion does seem a little weak, because one would expect many more Vietnamize suicide bombers than Middle Eastern suicide bombers, but to Sam’s point the Vietnamize aren’t Muslim. Chomsky has further made the classic liberal blunder of attributing unequal ethical blame to the actions of those in power. One only has to stop and question the motives of the two sides. The US seems to go out of its way to reduce civilian casualties while the Taliban seems to do the opposite. Cynically you could say that to the Taliban every civilian dead is one less infidel, while to the US every civilian dead is bad PR. He then ends the book making a case for spirituality without un-reason. In particular he singles out how the eastern traditions have largely been able to make a form of spirituality the is based on experience and not faith. Overall, I think that this book, similarly to “The case for Christ” will not convince anyone one way or the other about religion unless they were already halfway there. I found some compelling critiques and ideas to munch on and that is good enough for me. He received a lot of flak in the book for making the statement “There are some ideas that are worth killing someone over”. This is a great statement to vilify someone until further inspection and it becomes patently obvious that this is the only reason, we kill anyone and so the statement is almost pointless. Not a must read, especially if you’ve listened to any of his stuff for very long as you probably already understand most of the ideas put forth in the book. The book itself is well written and entertaining. People/Sam Harris

This is the oldest work of fiction in the history of the world. Read it! The oldest copies date around 2100BC. For reference the oldest copies of the Bible we have on hand are from the dead sea scrolls which date to 200-300 BC. That’s not to say that the dead sea scrolls are the first copies of the bible but they are the oldest we have while the rest are probably lost due to the writing material of choice, so we’ll never really know when the first copy of the Bible was written. The reason this survived for so long was that it was inscribed on a clay tablet. Going into this story I expected it to be dull. I was wrong, probably in part thanks to the particular translation I used, but on the whole this book is a must read. I think the most striking and controversial thing is that in the book there is an account of the flood. Now I know what you picture in your head when I say that, but literally when a character in the book started recounting the flood, it was totally shocking. The similarities and details couched in such exotic settings made for an incredible mind-bending experience. I won’t go over the similarities to save them for those who read. The story was then followed by an essay by the translator who explained where the text came from and how it was translated. This too was helpful to get more of an understanding of its place in history. At any rate I’d definitely put this one on your reading list.

I enjoyed this reread a lot more than the first time through. There were some points where he takes tangents and side roads which left me at times bored at other times frustrated. Yet the author is well aware of this tendency and warns the reader that it will happen from time to time, so I don’t really have anyone to blame but myself. There were so many parts of this book where it would feel as if I was reading my own journal, had I been a better writer. Several overlapping points of personality made a lot of his views relatable. I very much liked his humble approach to knowledge and latitude when it came to accepting other’s customs. His love for life as it is, not in concept but in embodied reality was refreshing. Everything in moderation, this goes for thought as well as action. I am sure the older I get, the more I will appreciate and understand from this humorous and likeable man. ...

I had never read any Emerson and was excited to stick my toe in the water. This book was a collection of some of his most famous essays. Written in the mid nineteenth century he is one of those early American intellectuals which seemed to have burned brightly and all but disappeared. Emerson was one of the leaders of the transcendentalist movement which started in the 1820s-1830s. These essays do a lot to outline in vague terms the ideas Emerson had about life. Which are essentially romantic, you as the individual are the orthodox of your life. Heaven is not a place out there somewhere, but something that can be experienced in everyday life given the right mindset. Humans are at their best when they are reliant on themselves for their ideas and beliefs. Man is one thing, that an individual rises out of, this is what gives literature its meaning in the sense that it speaks to that common denominator in all of us. “The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.” These essays covered a wide range of topics my personal favorites were on friendship and self-reliance. This will definitely be a book I am looking forward to getting a hard copy of, because his writing is so poetic as it is probably best enjoyed a sentence or a paragraph at a time. Very beautifully written. Emerson himself was a Unitarian minister when he was younger but ended up resigning largely because his worldview no longer aligned with what the church’s dogma. I respect that, and that American individualism is everywhere in his texts. As a sad side note in his old age about a decade before his death he started suffering from aphasia. Aphasia is the inability to comprehend or formulate speech. A cruel irony.