Books

Keeping this review short, I really enjoyed this book. Full of very interesting points and theories, really helped to get a grasp on the story about what happened between big bang and man. Got way more acquainted with monkey sexual practices than I had expected. The things that I didn’t like was that on one hand we have the insistence (correctly I think) that evolution is blind and has no destination in mind, where on the other hand there was still the subtle presence of the idea of “evolving past something”. Most notably xenophobia, this struck me as inconsistent with the previously utilitarian view presented on the universe. The other thing that caused some mental friction was their approach to chimps learning language. This section felt like quite a stretch to me, as I think it misrepresented chimps’ linguistical abilities. In total, I still enjoyed this book quite a bit and it is worth a read if only to see the interesting overlaps between monkey culture and human culture.

This was probably one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read, but at the same time one of the most thought provoking. As the first book I’ve ever read from Baudrillard, this book felt like jumping on a bullet train that was traveling to some unknown destination at top speed. Never pausing to offer his readers any lifelines Baudrillard forges on with twisted logic and esoteric analogies. Steeped in the culture and place of France in the 1980s I found myself often at a loss and not catching the references to geography or pop culture. Even so this book has stuck to my mind like glue, and for the rest of the year I was unable to shake it. His view of the world seeped into mine, and irrevocably changed it. Let’s just say I won’t be going to Disney World anytime soon, I for one am satisfied with the unreality that the rest of America has on offer. ...

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!

Was really interested at the start of the book, but the dialogue seemed canned and eventually the weird melting stuff in the book became laughable. Interesting plot, but the execution in the end did not do it for me.

The Good Earth tracks the life of a peasant farmer in early 20th century China. Opening with the main character’s (Wang Lung) wedding day and then follows him and his wife through the end of their lives. Famine, Bandits, War, and odious family obligations stand in between Wang Lung and his quest for good farmland. Written (1931) by the child of an American Missionary in China, I was surprised by the lack of judgment and the sympathetic way it presented the Chinese culture. The author definitely demonstrated an intimate understanding of the Chinese culture, but I still think it was written as an outsider when compared to Wild Swans. A very entertaining and moving book, I would recommend this book if you were interested in the topic. I appreciated the fact that the book didn’t have a clear moral or apparent agenda.

There is a phenomenon where a large group of ideas and people are looked at in the academic world with contempt as if they were below consideration. Or perhaps we have progressed past them in some way. But at every turn we see signs of their influence and general acceptance. I feel like Jung, Campbell, and especially Freud with their ideas fit neatly into this category. The influence of a hero with 1000 faces (1949) is insane. Pretty much any story you’ve ever enjoyed either implicitly follows the structure laid out by Campbell or was directly influenced by this book. From Watership Down to Jim Morrison, the Matrix, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc. Campbell makes the claim that all of the different mythologies in the world are actually part of a monomyth which emerges from the human psyche. As such a myth in any part of the world will loosely follow a structure, which he calls the Hero’s Journey. One way of thinking about myths are that they are stories that can’t not be told. A dream is a personalized myth, and a myth is a de-personalized dream. Myths in this light are our primary link to metaphysics. After having already read the Power of Myth there won’t be much new in this book other than a more rigorous explanation of the stages of the hero’s journey. Also (my favorite part) many entertaining myths that you’ve probably never heard of. Like all work relating to myth, it is highly speculative and prone to the brain seeing patterns that do not exist. This objection must in some sense be ignored though, due to the resonance this book has had. It seems like there must be something to it even if it is just a glitch in our brains. It doesn’t matter if these ideas are ignored, they seem to seep through the cracks of our psyche anyway. For the average reader I would probably recommend just reading this or Power of Myth if you are looking for something shorter. To read both of them is probably only necessary if you are in need of a double dose of mythological pimping.

Heard this book referenced in a podcast as one of the best historical novels ever. I’m not sure I would go that far, but it was a very entertaining read. The writing and setting were beautiful. It follows the last in a long line of Sicilian nobility while Sicily and Italy as a whole is experiencing revolution and political turmoil during the unification of Italy that was happening ~1870s. This novel further cemented my views on the inevitability of history and the material blow to culture from the extinction of the noble class. Any remnants of the nobility left today are mere SIMULACRA of the originals.

This book was fairly interesting if somewhat opaque to me due to my ignorance around Buddhism. There were some interesting ideas put forth in the book, I really liked the following quote The traveler who finds his road blocked by a river will use a raft to reach the opposite shore, but, his shore once reached, he will not carry the raft on his shoulders while continuing his journey. He will abandon it as something which has become useless. ...

Schopenhauer has been on my radar for a while because like Donald Trump, Schopenhauer was a Kantian. To better understand how Trump will complete German idealism, one must first wrestle with this great thinker. While some philosophers content themselves with attempting to explain a single concept Schopenhauer decides he would rather explain everything from magnets to women ☕. Combining Kant’s distinction between idea of a thing vs thing in itself (in short, your idea of a car is not the car) and Platonic Idea (there is a single tree in a realm of forms which all trees in our world are representations of) he comes up with his own spin on things stating that the world presents itself to our experience as individuations of a single thing. That thing is Will. So hypothetically the process could go something like this Will encounters a subject and gets objectified into a Platonic idea. This platonic idea then encounters space and time where it is objectified once more into a perception, like a tree for example. So, what exactly is Will? Will is actually very similar to the Buddhist concept of desire. This is no coincidence as Schopenhauer calls the translation of the Vedas one of the greatest gifts of the 19th century. Will can be considered the universal principle that animates the universe. A blind insatiable striving. One outcome of this is that everything that wills, suffers. And since everything that exists is a manifestation of will it means that everything suffers. This plants Schopenhauer squarely in the school of pessimists. To Schopenhauer life can be broken into two experiences. One is either striving after something or bored (read depressed). Schopenhauer would say that the happiness we feel when accomplishing a goal isn’t actually happiness it is merely the cessation of suffering that was caused by the desire. Once this desire is gone a new one almost instantaneously takes its place. He also has some interesting ideas about art that somewhat resonated specifically that good art lifts a person out of their subject-ness for brief periods of time. It opens them up to look at the world more universally. For example, you hear a sad song and can join in not with particular sadness, but sadness at a universal level. He ends the book by talking about ethics ...

This was a very enjoyable fast paced novel. Would definitely recommend, brilliant! The thing that I loved in this book the most was his attention to little details. These details really helped to complete the feel of the sci-fi world his characters inhabited. The story was great and loved the ending except for the very last chapter. This one felt too much like a concession to leave the door open for an “Ubik 2”. Other than that, a fantastic book. ...