Alec
Self-orientalizing, meandering travel brochure framed by the thinnest veneer of a self-help message
I don't have all of the book mentally present, because my Spotify audio hours were used up last month before I could finish it in one go, but it's just a masturbatory tour de farce of Japanese cultural anecdotes that frames mundane human phenomena out as profound because they are being done by Japanese people.
Does Japan have a unique cultural history? Sure, absolutely. The confluence of feudalism, animism in the form of Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism and the material limitations of living on a moderately sized archipelago have created some unique traditions and social emphases, but "ikigai" is not one of them. Finding personal meaning and its opposite – alienation – are one of the most universal human experiences you can think of, and nothing about the ostensible prerequisites argued by this text to be highly integrated in Japanese life are novel. Yes, mindfulness enriches life satisfaction, yes, taking your interests seriously and making regular time and effort to engage with them is good for the mind. Many cultures have come to this conclusion and just as many have come up with an equivalent of ikigai – joie de vivre, carpe diem, Lebenssinn, eudaimonia, and so on.
The most unconscionable part of the book is the deafening silence on how Japanese cultural structures led to the Meiji regime and the atrocities committed during World War 2, or something more recent like the Fukushima disaster. If you want to analyse how Japanese culture influences the experience of modernity and postmodernity in that country, so be it, but then don't duck out of the uncomfortable parts. The contemporary abominable work culture in the country also only gets a passing mention.
Possibly the most important political text of the 21st century and it funnily enough would not even sit in the politics aisle in a book store. Sapolsky closes all of the gaps into which free will was in the past shoved into and goes toe-to-toe with a swathe of philosophers to prove it. And the derived policies are radical...ly leftist (as all good policy is). Punishment is irrational and so is reward for "exceptional merit".
Be glad for all the ways you got lucky, work towards compensating the misfortune of others with the power you possess, "quarantine" those who pose a threat to others and try to help their re-entry into society. That's all that you really need to take away, but if everyone did, the world would be an unrecognizable utopia.
The book could definitely be shorter overall, Sapolsky still loves his tangents as much as during those lectures on early YouTube. Due to the earth-shattering scientific clarity with which free will is debunked and its implications for society, I would want a shortened ~100 page version to recommend to people to get the gist, but alas that does not seem to be in the cards.
The audiobook version was fine, but I really was disappointed that it was not Sapolsky voicing it. You can "hear" his voice in the text still, so it is uncanny in parts.
This book came to me at the right time in my life, and it came through a random, recent interview of Mr. Fugelsang by Richard Wolff. I loved his way of speaking and the message he brought, so I gave it a chance.
In my childhood I went through Catholic religious studies by random chance. My mom who was Orthodox, asked me if I want to go to Protestant or Catholic classes in school. I picked Catholic, because I thought it sounded cooler. That's literally it.
At around 12, I became an atheist. The story of the Abrahamic all-knowing and yet vengeful God made no sense to me, and it still does not. I loved arguing with people about it and watching skeptic content on YouTube. A few things have made me soften a little on the subject however, like the album Geogaddi, Stalker (1979) and most recently "Wake Up, Dead Man" by Rian Johnson, with the last one on the list flooring me with a strange wash of emotions and thoughts before I went to bed. I (think I) believe now, but what I believe in is the power of the idea of Christ, a good shepherd trying to reach those who have lost the way, a kind and merciful figure who helps without expecting anything back.
And so, reading this was quite cathartic, very close to tears multiple times. Seeing the unrecognizable shape of hatred and power-lust that has insisted on itself being Christianity, be disentangled and returned to its basic form, the teachings of a compassionate advocate of human decency and social justice: I did not not know I needed, but wow, I really did.
Being a comedian while still showing warmth and kindness is a hard tight-rope to walk, but Mr. Fugelsang does it easily. I like Carlin, but I wouldn't have wanted to grab a beer with him, but the author here just seems like a super level-headed and well-read guy. I loved listening to him in the audiobook form and can recommend it as a way of experiencing the book.
Originally posted at www.youtube.com.
Rest in Peace, Mark, you would have loved Ready Player One
My fourth read of this in less than a year has more than solidified my position: This is the most important political text of the 21st century. Without it you have a snowball's chance in hell of understanding what is going in the world.
It's dense but short, and I am humble enough to admit that even I was stumped at a few passages on my first and second read.
Hat mir auf jeden Fall geholfen, dass theoretische Wissen, was ich mir durch englische Medien im Internet selber beigebracht habe, nochmal zu festigen, und auch einige Zusammenhänge zu verdeutlichen (besonders Eigenschaften des Quintenzirkels), was ich aber ein bisschen bedenklich finde ist, wie das Narrativ “Die westliche Spielweise, die im 18. Jh profilierte, hört sich am besten an, und wenn du davon abweichst, tust du dir und deinen Zuhörern keinen Gefallen” dem Leser eingeflößt wird, und mit Konzepten und Ideen, die aufgrund ihrer Unbeliebtheit in der Musiklandschaft als Ganzes (Sonettform, etc.) nicht häufig vorkommen, viel zu viel Zeit verbracht hat. Ich fände es dann doch besser, wenn man mehr Wegweiser in verschiedene Genres bekommen hätte (“Der Jazz zeichnet sich durch X, Y und Z aus, wenn man daran Interesse hat, dann lohnt es sich in Richtung A umzuschauen” und solche Sachen halt, wenn überhaupt kam das nur ganz am Ende durch die kurzen Personenprofile auf).
Obwohl ich mich übermäßig und auch schon seit Jahren in progressiven Kreisen aufhalte, habe ich erst durch dieses Buch so richtig verstanden, wie sich die konstante Belagerung von rassistischen/vorurteilhaften Verhalten auch in auf dem Papier egalitären Ländern einem gegenüber wohl anfühlen muss.
Ich glaube, dass der Höhepunkt/der erste Teil des Buches, der im Kopf der Autorin entstanden ist, das Kapitel “Deine erste Schwarze Freundin” ist. Von der Schlagfertigkeit und dem Perspektivwechsel ins Hypothetische sich vom Rest des Buches stilistisch unterscheidet, und schon fast einem Slam Poem ähnelt.
Ich würde aber auch lügen, wenn ich sagte, dass ich mit allen Positionen im Buch zu 100% übereinstimme, ich bin mir auch bewusst, dass dies nicht eine finale und absolute Schrift zum Weg der farbenblinden Utopie ist, sondern eher ein emotionsgeladener Blick in eine Welt, die trotz sozialer Nähe den Meisten gegenüber unsichtbar bleibt. Hierzu ein paar Gedanken:
-Bezüglich der Verwendung des Wortes Rassist/Rassistisch: Die variierenden Definitionen des Wortes waren auch früh im Buch ein Thema, und grundsätzlich habe ich kein Problem mit der Definition für dich sie die Autorin entschieden hat, und der überwiegenden Mehrheit der in diesem Kontext genannten Situationen stimme ich eindeutig als rassistisch zu, jedoch frage ich mich bei Beispielen wie dem Berühren von Haaren, ob es sinnvoll ist dies als rassistisch einzustufen und auch so an den Akteur zurückzugeben, oder ob man der Person lieber Taktlosigkeit oder Dreistigkeit vorwirft. Denn wie im Buch erwähnt kommt es zu so einer starken kognitiven Dissonanz bei Menschen, die sich selber nicht als rassistisch sehen, und aber solches Verhalten eingeräumt wird, dass sie vielmals sich direkt verschließen und mögliche Lernprozesse im Keim ersticken. Und aus meiner (vermutlich auch verzerrten) Perspektive sprechen solche Beispiele mehr für ein Mangel an Verständnis und Erfahrung mit nicht-homogenen Lebensweisen und auch Taktgefühl, als für eine Weltanschauung, die BIPOC als unterlegen sieht.
-Bezüglich “Cultural appropiation”:
“Es wäre so, als ob jemand ein Kleid für mich genäht hätte, und auf einmal kämen andere und rissen es vor mir von der Kleiderstange” Diese Aussage stammt aus der Perspektive ihres 13-jährigen Ichs, welches wie im Text erwähnt, darauf aus war, sich eine einzigartige aber auch ansprechende Identität zu bilden. Ich habe aber das Gefühl, dass die Autorin immer noch tendenziell eher auf der Seite der Leute ist, die am liebsten Leuten vorschreiben möchte, ob und wie sie sich mit Kultur auseinandersetzen sollen. Meiner Erfahrung nach ist es nicht das Interesse an fremden Kulturen und Bräuchen, was zu stumpfem und jeglicher Subversivität beraubten Perversionen der Originale führt, sondern Kommerzialisierung und das Profitmotiv. Die fehlgeleiteten Yuppies sind die, die in eine “hippe” Gegend ziehen wollen, die Kapitalisten und Investoren sind es aber, die es tatsächlich gentrifizieren und den möglicherweise guten Willen bösartig machen. Unser jetziger Kapitalismus, der seinen Heil darin gefunden hat, Leuten dasselbe aber jedesmal noch ein bisschen leichter konsumierbar aufzutischen, ist in meinen Augen einer der größten Gründe, warum rassistische Strukturen weiterbestehen können, weil Rassismus in sich selber zu finden und zu konfrontieren, fundamental anstrengend ist, wie die Autorin so zahlreich darstellt, und dementsprechend auf dem Kulturmarkt nicht anspricht.
Aber darüber hinaus, ein top Buch!
Still after all this time it's still an interesting read, I wouldn't recommend it, but interesting it was.
The prose works well enough and for the biggest parts of the story there is an underlying intrigue or suspense building, which kept me coming back to see how it's gonna turn out.
St. John was an interesting character in that he turned from a man with conviction and a more or less humanistic mission in his heart, to a manipulative, gaslighting scumbag REAL quick.
The relationship was as egalitarian and real as it's gonna get, and I can appreciate for that, but as a firm non-believer and hypochondriac, the ending was still a bit too depressing for my tastes.
Also the bits that allude to phrenology are...uh...little showstoppers
this book burns, the same way rubbing alcohol does on a wound
Minor gripe: I'm getting sick of always getting the response of “living in the present/mindfulness” when it's asked how to be more content in life. Yeah, I get that appreciating the moment is falling out of style, but making it out as if the perfect ideal is for somebody to never hope/expect/think about the future is really obnoxious. Yeah, maybe if you live in a preindustrial society, you can live like that. But not now, homie, not in a world full of taxes, rent, retirement plans, mutually exlusive career paths, like come on, get real.
Dug the desert aesthetic, and I'm always a sucker for an interesting mentor character.
But let me tell you this book really doesn't really do a whole lot for someone who's neither religious, a believer in fate or in love at first sight.
The only thought-provoking content for me was the different ways of dealing with desire that were presented in the beginning of the book (like how the muslim shop owner dreamed of Mecca, but doesn't want to go there because he's scared that it won't be as good as he imagines it to be), and how it teaches people to pick up on subtle changes/clues to inform their actions.
Gotta be honest, I like thinking about this book more than I enjoyed reading it.
The aspects that I'm fond of were:
-the prose describing the supernatural events (stories that play with otherwise realistic settings coming into contact with the strange and unexplainable, often give me tonal whiplash, but here that interplay felt very natural and not forced)
-the blurred lines/setups between the story and arc of one character and another
-and the overall “vibe” that everything that happened was meaningless (and caused by impersonal forces like nature or “destiny”), that no generation learned something from the last, and that nobody had a happy end (except maybe Gaston, kudos to him, he just goes with the flow). It was a nice subversion of the usual upbeat energy I expect from engaging with fiction I don't know anything else about.
What bothered me while reading was the obviously intentional, but nonetheless confusing reuse of character names (you really have to get/make a family diagram so as not to get lost in the sea of Aurelianos and Arcadios) and the fixation on sexual fringe topics like incest and pedophilia, culminating in an act of incestuous rape that turns consensual because the rapist is just so very skilled at lovemaking. That last one was just a bit too much for me.
It's a good book, but I didn't really take anything away from reading it.
The lessons this book teaches are so foundational, I'd recommend it to anybody who has the stamina to read moderately scientific writing such as this.
I don't have much more to say about it. It's really enlightening, especially if you subscribe to the idea that humans can will themselves into being rational actors.
Kept my interest the whole way through.
I liked the usage of Cambodian history and culture, because it breaks with the hegemony of supernatural stuff having to come from WW2/Medieval Europe/Ancient Egypt, as well as the character of Elias Mooney.
Maybe it's because my ability to imagine (visually) something described to me, is completely atrophied, but the “mind-bending horrors from beyond the veil” just didn't unsettle me at all.
Very interesting read, although it was quite the effort (a lot of re-reading of explanations and passages) to even get a basic grasp of a lot of the concepts that were being discussed (that being said, the models and diagrams really helped).
My biggest gripe with the book is the interpretation of quantum mechanics that the author describes in a few passages. I'm an absolute layman, but as Mr. Yanofsky stated that consciousness causes wave function collapse (during the exploration of the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment) I couldn't help being in disbelief. There's no explanation for why that has to be, and that's because it's just an interpretation among many others (the “Von Neumann-Wigner interpretation” to be exact), and I personally find it a large leap of faith to think that humans have some sort of resolving effect on the elementary particles of the universe (and where does consciousness even begin? Shouldn't the cat collapse the superposition by observing the poison vial breaking or not breaking? Or do humans change everything by virtue of our brains being more complex?). Isn't it far easier and more along the lines of Ockham's razor to assume that the measurement apparatus collapses the wave function (measurement at that scale is bound to influence the particle in question), or that the state of superposition for some reason cannot be transferred to macro-objects (i.e. a wire which conducts electricity for the mechanism that breaks the poison vial)?
The lessons this book teaches are incredibly insightful (even for someone who is rather pessimistic). I personally detest the term “Factfulness” and the use of “instinct” to describe cognitive biases, these earth-shattering reports about the state of the human race don't need a lame buzzword to attract the attention of the masses, they can stand on their own. I think this book is of great societal value, but I do want to air some minor gripes I have:
-The biggest one I have is that he (or maybe his son or daughter-in-law, for the sake of convenience I'll just assume it's all Hans) also to a small extent tries to give authoritative, hopeful statements on subjects he isn't specialized in (biodiversity and climate change) In the main quiz the question was “1996 the species X, Y and Z were in danger of going extinct. How many of these are now even closer to extinction?”(I'm paraphrasing, I don't have the book in English) But gee golly, that question is some cherrypicking of the highest order, especially since all other questions are in reference to big global trends, this is just a ludicrous circumventing of the fact that the environment is in fact not developing positively, actually quite the opposite. Some other statistics that show how “good” everything is getting are similarly dubious.
The same goes for more political topics that don't really get mentioned in the book (which is reasonable, Hans isn't an authority on that field). The state of political and information rights are looking especially grim and growing grimmer.
-The constant restating of the idea that “humans are dumber than chimps because they don't pick the right answer as much” really bothers me because it has nothing to do with intelligence and nothing to do with chimps, you could replace the chimps with literally anything: snails, cats, camels, atmospheric noise or other random number generators. All it shows, is that we are so systematically disinformed that we actually think of an almost completely different world than the one we live on. Because if we legitimately just didn't know we would average to the same 33% right answers given.
-One major thesis of this book is that you shouldn't believe averages, and yet he says that on average the world is getting better (although things are still bad). Why not just say “Public health is developing nicely” and leave it at that?
All in all, very convincing and informative.
Incredibly strong beginning and end.
It kinda lost me in the middle, but I'm glad I stuck with it.
Very good at suspense and intrigue building, and has some really good pay-offs (especially when you take into account that the book is almost 200 years old).
After reading it I found out that my version (only has 560 pages) is an abridged version, but I don't know if I wanna read the full version some time in the future.
Angenehm und interessant zu lesen.
Das Buch macht nicht die selben Fehler wie viele “Wissenschaft für Laien”-Bücher, und man merkt, dass da harte naturwissenschaftliche Arbeit hintersteckt.
Die Anspielungen auf gesellschaftliche Phänomene waren zur Abwechslung mal nicht komplett taktlos, sondern kurz und witzig.
Empfehlenswert.
