Books

This was fun. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Melville does a great job of giving you a sense of place and feeling. This book made me want to be a sailor, maybe i’ll buy a sailor outfit at least. Who knows. It exposes various human foibles, like Quaker whalers who are fundamentally anti violence while spending large portions of their time inflicting violence on the largest creature on earth or the animal rights person who writes their edicts in the light of a whale oil lamp. The book teaches its reader a lot about the anatomy of a whale and engenders a respect for an animal and then proceeds to graphically describe the exciting whale hunt that ultimately causes much pain and suffering to the animal you just learned about. I wonder if the point is that we are all walking contradictions in our own way? Maybe we need to give each other some slack…Who knows either way great book.

Written by Jordan Peterson’s daddy himself this book was really quite enjoyable. I preferred it over some of the books I’ve read from Freud. It is a collection of 11 essays that cover various topics from dreams to metaphysics. Opening the book, the reader is asked to make two assumptions. Assumption one, the subconscious exists. While this doesn’t seem like a big deal in a post Freud world (which Jung is post Freud) there is still some debate. The second assumption is that there exists in humans a soul. This is still up for heated debate today, but if you accept these two assumptions daddy Jung takes you on a ride, explaining his approach to psychoanalysis, modern man vs primitive man and the overlap between the two. The waning effectiveness of the church to treat psychoses due to the approach of the education system. This is one of those books like a C.S Lewis book where everything he says just makes sense. Made for an enjoyable read but I also know whenever I am feeling that comfortable with what someone is saying it means that I have not been educated enough in contra-ideas. Overall, I’d highly recommend, it’s given me much to think about and I will definitely be returning to re-read later on. ...

This set of short stories was recommended to me by a friend. Each story takes about 5-10 minutes to read. Akutagawa published these stories in 1915 and the six stories included have some really interesting psychology in them investigating honor, revenge, humiliation, and morality in subtle ways. Impress your friends and buy a copy of this to put on your toilets good bathroom reading.

This was a sort of rando pick I made but was definitely the best book I’ve read this year. There is a well-known guy in the computer science community who coined this idea that code quality can be judged by the “number of WTFs/minute” the person coming behind that code has. Well, I’d like to say that when it comes to a book like this, the quality of it can be judged by how many times your mind gets blown by a unique thought or viewpoint that I haven’t had. This book has hundreds of those. In a nutshell this book outlines science’s best “story” about the development of man in the following stages ...

Finished this, this weekend. Still processing it. I think the moral of the story is you can’t teach wisdom, the only way to learn that is through personal experience. Especially being aware enough to know when you are fighting a useless battle trying to “teach” someone wisdom when they aren’t ready. While this is somewhat of a common idea, being able to graciously accept that is not common at all. I’ve often found it frustrating trying to impart my “wisdom” on people who clearly just aren’t ready. Why can’t they see I’m always right?

I first listened to the Bhagavad-Gita in its entirety. I found it somewhat interesting but ultimately a dud because it felt like every other word was either a Sanskrit deity that i was supposed to already know about or a Sanskrit word that represented an entire doctrine like the word “transubstantiation”. It felt like watching marvel’s avengers end game with a Spanish voice over without any context. Probably similar feeling to someone who has never read the bible reading a book like Hebrews or something. That being said there were some interesting things in there that made me want to dig a little further. I then washed down the Bhagavad-Gita with a book by Jack Hawley. He basically walks through every verse in the Gita and translates it into more modern western terms, adding a couple clarifying sentences to those pesky single word Sanskrit ideas. The idea that was most novel to me in the Gita was that Krishna and also (luckily) other Hindu philosophies break people and actions into 3 categories. Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. Sattva being the highest representing balance, harmony and goodness. Rajas representing energy and motion and Tamas representing lethargy and darkness. The idea being that each person and action has all three of these present at all times but in differing proportions. This was an interesting choice and makes for a more dynamic categorization of actions than the dichotomies of the west. I will have to think more about this in the future. Another question this book brought up for me was wondering why the particular virtues of “Grace, gentleness, self-control, and humility” to name a few appear to be somewhat universal in religions? The Gita did overlap a lot with ideas of the New Testament. One of the biggest differences I recognized was that Krishna did not call for evangelizing his ideas. All in all, worth the read and has opened up new frontiers to think over. Also don’t let your wives become corrupted or they will ruin this whole caste system we have set up. That is all. ...

I found it somewhat interesting but ultimately a dud because it felt like every other word was either a Sanskrit deity that I was supposed to already know about or a Sanskrit word that represented an entire doctrine like the word “transubstantiation”. It felt like watching marvel’s avengers end game with a Spanish voice over without any context. Probably similar feeling to someone who has never read the bible reading a book like Hebrews or something. That being said there were some interesting things in there that made me want to dig in a little more.

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

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 read this book after seeing it tangentially referenced in the “Doors of Perspective”. Written as the forward states in response to the short story by William Blake, C.S Lewis sets out to refute the idea of Hell and Heaven being made of the same stuff. Or put in more general terms this is his refutation of the concept of non-duality. Instead of using arguments he chooses to use story as a device to get his points across. In this story the main character takes a bus ride from what turns out to be hell to a place that turns out to be heaven, or more accurately a place of transition to heaven. Upon arrival he eventually runs into George MacDonald, and MacDonald acts much like Virgil did in Dante’s inferno and guides the main character through this new and foreign place. What unfolds is a series of vignettes where the residents of heaven would interact with old friends from hell and try to convince them in various ways to “see the light”. The main points of these small exchanges are that each person chooses to keep themselves in hell and out of “eternal joy”. Like other C.S Lewis stories I’ve read his strongest talent is his ability to spot and succinctly point out deficiencies in character. Especially of the self-righteous. Every time I read any of his stories, I feel self-conscious of some way in which I am acting selfishly or harming others with my choices. If you ever read any of his works, you’ll know exactly what I mean. This is a weak point in secular philosophy (IMO) because it is difficult to justify telling someone to alter their behavior without the authority of a metaphysic behind you. Lewis continually manages to thread the needle between intellect and faith in a compelling way that is difficult to ignore. That being said I don’t really feel like this book did much in the way of addressing some of the more difficult questions about hell and heaven. It did a fantastic job of shedding a light on how even good things like love and pity can be twisted into bad things. But in the stories people continually chose hell and their own misery over the joy they were created to experience, but the question of whether or not there was actually a “choice” to begin with is a slippery slope which leads to a lot of other complications. That being said this is a short read and does give the reader plenty of things to think about and is definitely worth the read. ...