This Week at the Library 22/3

Posted on March 23, 2009 by smellincoffee

Books this Update:

  • The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell
  • An Open Heart, Tenzin Gyatso
  • Here If You Need Me, Kate Braestrup
  • Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis
  • The Naked Sun, Isaac Asimov
  • Real-Life X-Files, Joe Nickell
  • Ten Discoveries that Rewrote History, Patrick Hunt
  • Frontiers II, Isaac and Janet Asimov
  • Ethics for the New Millennium, Tenzin Gyatso
  • Archangel, Robert Harris

The week of spring break was busy for me. Although I was able to spend time with my extended family and watch a host of movies, I also managed to read a little bit. I began with Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates, a curious book that is hard to describe. Vowell’s subject is John Winthrop, leader-ruler of the Massachusetts Bay colony of Puritans. While telling us of the Puritans’ commitment to build a shining city on a hill, their struggles settling, Winthrop’s numerous personal conflicts with fellow Puritans, and the Pequot War, she comments on the contemporary United States. It’s not a history book, a biography, or a work of political commentary — but it is a little of each.

Next I read An Open Heart by Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama. This book builds somewhat on his The Art of Happiness while explaining some tenets of Buddhism and providing some specific meditative techniques for cultivating compassion. The explanation of religious principles was somewhat informative, but I prefer a more natural approach to dealing with other people: rather than engaging in mental exercises where I “take on” someone else’s pain and give them mine. The book didn’t seem to have the life that The Art of Happiness did.

In a similar vein, I read Here If You Need Me, a book by Unitarian Universalist minister and chaplain Kate Braustrup. She entered that service after the accidental death of her husband, a Maine state trooper who had planned to become a Unitarian Universalist minister. Reverend Braustrup mixes stories of her current service with stories from her past. Some of the stories are happy and some tragic, but they all have a point to them — or Braeustrup has found meaning in them. She shares the meaning of those stories with the reader, all the while reflecting on ideas of life, compassion, and religion. I found the book to be very enjoyable as well as intensely moving. I definitely recommend it.

Staying in the general neighborhood of religion, I read C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. I’ve heard much of these book and began reading it with the anticipation that I would find much to grapple with. This was not the case. The first thirty pages did give me something to think about — here Lewis claims that human beings are aware of a Natural Law of Morality that they are supposed to be following, but don’t — but I realized in writing in my journal that I’ve dealt with that topic before in my own essays on philosophy. Past this, Lewis makes no arguments: he makes no case for Christianity, even though part of the book is labeled The Case for Christianity. He never explains why he believes that the originator of his supposed natural law is the god of the Hebrews — never tries to justify his faith in the divinity of Yeshua of Nazareth, a character around whom a legend has been cobbled based on second-hand information. If I put myself into the role of a Christian believer, I can see how Lewis’ explanations might give me some rational basis for bothering with the “mystery of the Trinity”. Lewis seems wholly credulous. If this book is the height of Christian apologetics…I don’t know what to say.

Getting away from religion, I enjoyed another novel by Isaac Asimov, this time The Naked Sun. It is second in his Robots series, and is again a detective novel starring Elijah Baley and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw. Baley, who has never been exposed to the open sky of Earth, living in the enclosed domes and boxes of Earth’s “Cities”, leaves Earth to solve a mystery on one of the “Spacer” worlds. The Spacers are humans who settled fifty planets in systems ringing Earth many hundreds of years ago, who do their utmost to keep Earth from expanding any more into space. Their cultures are quite different from Earth’s, and have no history of crime. Thus, when a citizen of Solaria is murdered, they call Baley and Olivaw in to deal with the crime. The book is completely enjoyable.

Next I read Joe Nickell’s Real-Life X-Files, forty-seven accounts of his attempting to find reasonable explanations for supposedly supernatural phenomena like weeping statues and crop circles. I found Nickell through Point of Inquiry, a skeptical podcast I catch on a weekly basis, and enjoyed the book. Nickell writes well, explaining the problem, his approach, and the history and science behind matters.

Moving from skepticism to history, I read Patrick Hunt’s Ten Discoveries that Rewrote History. AHunt takes us on a tour of the world, visiting ten sites important to archeology and history — ten places that changed the ideas people had about the cultures or time to which they belonged. The ten are: the Rosetta Stone, Troy, Nivenah’s Assyrian Library, King Tut’s Tomb, Machu Picchu, Pompeii, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Thera, Olduvai Gorge, and the Tomb of 10,000 Warriors. After giving an account of how these various sites were discovered, Hunt then dives into their importance and the background of the subject they influenced. Such is his attention to detail that my appreciation for sites that I was familiar with — like Troy and Olduvai — was increased. This was a very enjoyable book.

I next read Frontiers II, a collection of science essays by Isaac and Janet Asimov, collected and published after his death. I’m sure Asimov would be amused to know his bookcount (over five hundred) continued to grow even after his passing, thanks to his wife Janet. There are a hundred and twenty-five essays in here covering a range of topics — from robots to atomic physics to dinosaurs. Regardless of specialized interest, a student of science will find something to enjoy reading in here. The essays are not long, are are written to the general public. Quite enjoyable.

I returned to philosophy with the Dalai Lama’s Ethics for the new Millennium, written and published in 1999. Gyatso believes the modern world to be in trouble, stricken by diseases born of our societies — stress, loneliness, self-hatred, and psychological misery. Despite this, he believes all human beings can achieve happiness, that it is ours for the having. All we need be is serious about cultivating it. He sees the cause of happiness as compassion, as wrapped up within that is tolerance, empathy, patience, forgiveness, reason, and other virtues. Some of the book treats the same material as The Art of Happiness, but here is focus is on the natural life of human beings — with no religious doctrines or practices present. It is authentically and purely human. It is difficult to compare this to The Art of Happiness, but I am almost tempted to say I enjoyed this one more. I would enjoy returning to both.

I finished the week with a spot of fiction in Robert Harris’ Archangel, a mystery thriller set in Yeltsin-era Russia: a time of declining standards of living and growing levels of crime and misery. It is a nation in want of a leader, and some of the western historians visiting Moscow for a symposium on Soviet history fear that Russia’s plight may be an echo of the Weimar’s republic — with the same disastrous results if the leader Russia rallies behind is sufficiently intent on reviving his empire with no regard to anyone else. Our main character is “Fluke” Kelso, a British historian who arrives intending to give a speech on Stalin, but who quickly finds himself involved in a mystery involving the supposed last testament of Joseph Stalin — his private papers, written in his declining years and which vanished shortly after his death. Kelso’s curiosity and financial circumstances compel him to risk his life at the hands of old Soviets and devotees of the new Russia, both of whom do not want a westerner involved unveiling their secrets. Kelso’s hunt for the the journal quickly turns bloody and climaxes in the frozen and economically devastated city of Archangel, where Kelso faces a madman who is the answer to the riddle of what Stalin’s testament contains.

Quotation of the Week:

There is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine, or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter what or who they are: ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practiced these in our daily lives, […] there is no doubt we will be happy.

– Tenzin Gyatso

Pick of the Week: Ethics for the New Millennium, Tenzin Gyatso

Next Week:

  • Transforming the Mind, Tenzin Gyatso
  • Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
  • Rubicon: the Last Years of the Roman Republic, Tom Holland
  • Roman Blood, Steven Saylor (I’ve an abundance of Steves this week!)

Having to plan my reading two weeks in advance meant that I had to make some random grabs. Roman Blood was reccommended to me, and I’ll probably enjoy Transforming the Mind, but I can never be too sure. In any case, I may not finish even those four as I have a sociology paper to plan for involving Weber, Simmel, and a few other theorists.

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Archangel

Posted on March 23, 2009 by smellincoffee

Archangel: A Novel
© 1998 Robert Harris
432 pages

No one can accuse Robert Harris of same-ness in his settings: after one alternate history mystery novel set in 1975 Nazi Germany, two novels set in ancient Rome, and another set in 1943 Great Britain, his Archangel is set in Yeltsin-era Russia. Western museums are vying for the purchase of Russia’s soviet archives, much to the disgruntlement of loyal Bolsheviks. British historian Fluke Kelso is one of the historians visiting Russia for a symposium, but immediately has more to deal with than simply delivering a lecture and listening to his colleagues’ own. An old Soviet employee approaches Kelso, hinting that he knows the location of the secret writings of Joseph Stalin — his “Testament”, which vanished shortly after his death. The book opens with the old Soviet telling his story in flashback form to Kelso, who is utterly intrigued after he verifies elements of the old man’s story. He begins an inquiry as to where Stalin’s papers might be found, attracting the attention of an old KGB man who is committed to restoring the Soviet Union and of Russia’s current security police. Blood is shed and the mystery sees Kelso racing to the miserable town of Archangel near Siberia with angry men with guns right behind him. While the book is a fairly enjoyable mystery thriller, it is also a partial commentary on Yeltsin-era Russia: a nation experiencing declining standards of living and rising crime. One of Kelso’s colleagues believes that Russia is a new Weimar Republic, needing only a charismatic strongman to lead it and the world to further ruin. The contents of Stalin’s “testament” may reveal such a man. Although it was hard to get into at first, the book developed into a fascinating read.

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Ethics for a New Millennium

Posted on March 22, 2009 by smellincoffee

Ethics for a New Millennium
© 1999 Tenzin Gyatso (the XIV Dalai Lama)
237 pages

Every so often I encounter an author who I find to be delightful, and the Dalai Lama is one of them. I was somewhat dubious about reading this, as An Open Heart was something of a let-down — lacking the personality of The Art of Happiness — but Ethics for a New Millennium is just as enjoyable as The Art of Happiness, and perhaps more so. Ethics is a frank address to the reader: the “bookishness” of An Open Heart is nowhere to be found. Some of this book repeats The Art of Happiness. He begins by claiming that all human beings want to be happy, and that the cultivation of it amounts to spirituality. He sees the world at the turn of the millennium suffering from diseases of cultural environment: just as “third world” countries suffer from disease and immense poverty, “first world” countries suffer from loneliness and distress. The nature of our societies has removed us from the human contact that we depend on for happiness:

It is possible today to be far more independent of others than ever before. But with these developments, there has arisen a sense that my future is not dependent on my neighbor but rather on my job, or at most, my employer. This in turn encourages us to suppose that because others are not important for my happiness, their happiness is not important to me.

We are increasingly unable, he says, to express affection or communication with our fellows. This is further agitated by the “contemporary rhetoric of growth and ecnomic development which greatly reinforces people’s tendency toward competitiveness and envy.” He calls for a spiritual evolution. His spirituality is not one of ritual and doctrine, however: it is concerned with the qualities of the human spirit: love, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, responsibility, and harmony. He believes that all these are wrapped in compassion and that the practicing of them leads to happiness. I cannot disagree, as his spirituality is the very same I worked out for myself. It is the “grand religion” I have begun to suspect behind the words of people as varied as Epictetus, Robert Ingersoll, Anne Frank, Zelig Pliskin, and the Dalai Lama: the religion of human happiness.

He does not simply repeat what he said in The Art of Happiness, however. The Dalai Lama explores the practical aspects of this spirituality in our individual lives and as it relates to society. He comments on crime, education, economics, and religion. This commentary is somewhat lacking in that I do not have the book with me or my notes, so I cannot look at the table of contents and organize my thoughts to convey to you everything he says. What I can say is that I enjoyed this book immensely. This is pure human spirituality, completely bereft of forced belief and doctrine. It was an excellent read — quite edifying.

There is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine, or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter what or who they are: ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practiced these in our daily lives, […] there is no doubt we will be happy.

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Frontiers II

Posted on March 20, 2009 by smellincoffee

Frontiers II : More recent discoveries about life, Earth, space, and the universe
© 1993 Isaac and Janet Asimov
369 pages

Given Isaac Asimov’s deliberate attempt to be famous for sheer volume in terms of books, I think he would be amused beyond words to know that he wrote books even after his death. Frontiers II is a collection of science essays penned for newspapers by Isaac and Janet and published after his death. Most of the essays come from Isaac’s typewriter, but Janet’s articles were also quite enjoyable. The book is organized into four parts: “Life: Past, Present, and Future”; “Our Planet and Our Neighbors”; “Science and Technology”; and “The Universe from Quarks to the Cosmos.”

Because there are so many articles, there are many topics to choose from. The essays are not long — they were penned for a newspaper syndicate — so even if the reader has no interest in one topic, another is not far away. Although the articles on biochemistry were not as interesting to me as the articles on planetary science, I was able to get through them. They are neither technical nor simplistic: this is science for anyone who has achieved a high-school level of literacy and an interest in science. Some of the information is dated, given how long ago this was published, but much of it holds true. Very enjoyable — if you want to relax with a little science reading, I’d recommend this if you can find it.

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Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History

Posted on March 19, 2009 by smellincoffee

Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History
© Patrick Hunt 2001
226 pages

I spotted this while ambling through the history section of the Selma library, and it turned out to be a splendid read. Archaeologist Patrick Hunt takes on a tour of the world, visiting ten sites important to archaeology and history — ten places that changed the ideas people had about the cultures or time to which they belonged. The ten are: the Rosetta Stone, Troy, Nivenah’s Assyrian Library, King Tut’s Tomb, Machu Picchu, Pompeii, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Thera, Olduvai Gorge, and the Tomb of 10,000 Warriors. I was familar with all but two (the Assyrian Library and Thera), but Hunt was able to increase my apppreciation for even those I was quite familar with, like Olduvai Gorge.

Hunt is a storyteller and a teacer. He begins each chapter by telling how each discovery was made, and he does this well enough so that we are with Henrich Schliemann as he stands on a hill in Turkey, reading Homer and and matching his descriptions to the landscape. We scale the mountains of Peru and see Machu Picchu appear through the mist as if by magic: we walk the dusty valley basin of Olduvai and see the same strange bone at the same time as the Leakeys do. Hunt takes us past this discovery to its reception, writing on the importance of it and showing how it completely changes to the perceptions we once had. He is an enjoyable writer, and even after finishing I enjoyed a nice history buzz — the type I get when reading really good stuff.

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Real-Life X-Files

Posted on March 18, 2009 by smellincoffee

Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal
© Joe Nickell 2001
326 pages

Joe Nickell is a frequent guest of Point of Inquiry, a podcast I listen to weekly. Past readings have come from Point of Inquiry, and this is another. Nickell examines paranormal claims. He does not set out to “debunk” them, only to examine the cause of the reports. He claims to be open to admitting to supernatural activity in the advent that no natural explanation can be found. This book contains forty-seven episodes in his experience as a paranormal investigator, each meriting its own chapter. Some of these paranormal events are familiar to almost everyone: Roswell, crop circles, the Shroud of Turin*, and the Oak Island “money pit”. Other chapters do not deal with particular episodes, but a type of phenomenon: snake oil, for instance, or haunted inns. According to the inside flap, Nickell was a “former private investigator and forensics writer”. Judging by his numerous interviews, he’s also quite civil with people he disagrees with. He cites numerous other books and provides pictures (many taken by him) when necessary. He does a good job (in my estimation) of explaining why he believes what may be the case, and I didn’t observe any leaps in logic. There is one of his explanations I can’t accept, though. In chapter 28, “Ghostly Photos”, Nickell states his believe that the “ghostly” images are simply caused by the camera’s “hand strap getting in front of the lens”. Their sheen, he says, “enables them to reflect brightly the flash from the camera’s self-contained flash unit”. He shows photographs of his own and observes that the photos look very similar. The problem with that explanation, at least regarding one of the “ghostly” photographs that he is trying to explain, is that I can see through the ghostly part. If it were a reflection of the band — the solid band — how can I see through it? I believe there may be another explanation behind that particular photo. You can see the “ghostly” photos here. The two in the book are figures 1 and 2, while some of Nickell’s work is below. What do you think?

The book is generally well-written and interesting. It’s always interesting for me to see how the human mind can play tricks on us, but in some cases people don’t care. In “Adventure of the Weeping Icon”, one woman said to Nickell “I don’t care if there’s a pipe and a hose behind that picture. I don’t care if the Virgin Mary jumps right out of the painting. You either believe in miracles or you don’t. I believe.” The ability to believe in a obvious lie is unfortunate. While that woman’s belief was relatively harmless, what of those who spend their money in schemes or trust obviously unfit politicians like Stalin?

*I didn’t comment on this at the time, but Thomas Cahill seems to place faith in the Shroud of Turin in his Desire of the Everlasting Hills. Cahill’s such an interesting author — skeptical one moment, credulous the next.

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The Naked Sun

Posted on March 17, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Naked Sun
© Asimov 1957
187 pages

A note to readers: I have been avoiding reading science fiction because I don’t like it rivaling my history reading. Being in Selma gave me access to The Naked Sun, though, and so I seized the opportunity. The Naked Sun is the second in Asimov’s “Robot” series. In this novel’s preceding work, The Caves of the Steel, we readers were introduced to detective Elijah Baley and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw. We were also introduced to the universe that Baley lives in. Fifty or so planets have been colonized by Earth, although these “Spacer” worlds have quickly surpassed Earth in technological prowess and have been engaged in a policy of keeping Earth down. The Spacer worlds are lightly populated by our standards or anyone else’s. The Spacers have cleaned themselves of Earth’s germs and want little to do with Earth people. When one of their number is murdered, however, they have no choice but to resort to Elijah Baley, who in The Caves of Steel helped solved the murder of a Spacer on Earth.

Baley and his partner Olivaw travel to Solaria, a very sparsely populated world where the inhabitants are very keen on their privacy. They have intimacy taboos and are never in the company of other humans in their adult life, save for the occasional visitation by a spouse. They do their visiting through what amount to holographic images. Given their intense taboo against being in the company of another, and given that robots in Asimov’s universe cannot kill a human being (given the Three Laws of Robotics), Baley has quite a problem. If the humans couldn’t do it, and the robots couldn’t do it,….whodunit?

The novel is excellently written. I was able to derive the solution by myself, but that’s probably thanks to the volume of Asimov I’ve read. As usual, very enjoyable.

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Mere Christianity

Posted on March 17, 2009 by smellincoffee

Mere Christianity
© 1952 C.S. Lewis
191 pages

This is a little book I have heard an awful lot about. While friends and readers may know of my interest in philosophy, few know that it stems from a period back in late 2006 when I found a teacher in Ravi Zacharias. Zacharias is a Christian philosopher and apologist, and he shaped my worldview. In attempting to articulate why it was I disagreed with him on various points, my principal of freethought became a practice: to deal with his conclusions I found I had to question his premises and the assumptions that they were built on. I found I enjoyed thinking about philosophical matters, and so as a consequence of listening to Zacharaias, I became both a freethinker and a philosopher. Zacharias quoted from C.S. Lewis a lot, and many of my devout Christian friends have Mere Christianity on their “favorite books” list. Two of them have requested that I read the book, and so I have.

The book combines four books, although the cover lies and says there are three. The books included are The Case for Christianity, Christian Behavior, and Beyond Personality. (There’s a fourth, between the first two, but I’m writing this at the library and sans notes.) According to Zacharias and alluded to by Lewis, he was an ardent atheist who became England’s “most reluctant convert”. I saw very little reluctant in Lewis’ writings here. I am, I must admit, disappointed. I had expected my assumptions to be challenged, my philosophical nose to be tweaked, my worldview to be aided. This did not happen. The first thirty pages did give me something to grapple with, but I realized when writing in my journal on the ideas that Lewis was presenting that I’d dealt with these issues before. Zacharias repeated them in his lectures, and my philosophy/humanities blog started as a way of storing my responses to Zacharias online.

Lewis actually never makes a case for Christianity. He tries to raise some questions*, and then says “Christianity is the best answer to this questions”. He never defends his new-found belief in the inerrancy of the bible, the divinity of Yeshua, or anything else. While the later books may be of use to Christians trying to to justify their faith, this is a book written to believers. Lewis admits in one book — Beyond Personality, I think, which is his attempt to deal with the “mystery of the trinity” — that some things just must be believed.

Although the first twenty or so pages allowed me to revisit my old ideas, I was disappointed in this book. I expected much better. Last year a friend told me that this may give me something to think about, or just be “more fuel for the fire”, but it’s really neither for me. Perhaps if I’d not heard Ravi Zacharias I would have found it more admirable, but I doubt I would be in a frame of mind to read this book without having been schooled in philosophy and freethought by Zacharias, my accidental and probably unwilling teacher.

* Lewis’ entire theology seems to be based on the assumption that there is a Law of Good Behavior that humans disobey and know they’re disobeying, but yet want others to obey. Some of my essays on this subject include “Relativity andMorality” and “Relativity and Absolutes”. “God’s Loophole” may address some questions but I’ve not read it in a while and so cannot be sure.

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Here If You Need Me

Posted on March 16, 2009 by smellincoffee

Here If You Need Me: A True Story
© 2001 Kate Braestrup
211 pages

Here If You Need Me is the story of Kate Braestrup, a Unitarian Universalist minister and game warden chaplain who went into that service after the death of her husband, a Maine State Trooper who had planned on a double career as a Unitarian minister. In a sense, I suppose she converted her pain into a way to honor her husband and help others — and in so doing, helped herself. Reverend Braustrup mixes stories of her current service with stories from her past. Some of the stories are happy and some tragic, but they all have a point to them — or Braeustrup has found meaning in them. She shares the meaning of those stories with the reader, all the while reflecting on ideas of life, compassion, and God. I found the book to be very enjoyable as well as intensely moving. I definitely reccommend it.

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An Open Heart

Posted on March 16, 2009 by smellincoffee

An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life
© 2001 the XIV Dalai Lama
191 pages

Because I enjoyed The Art of Happiness so much, I decided to continue reading the Dalai Lama’s thoughts. An Open Heart is considerably more short than The Art of Happiness, but its singular topic is much more narrow. The book repeated a lot of what was in The Art of Happiness, but this book is different in that it focuses more on ideas to meditate on to cultivate feelings of compassion for everyone. He combines the material from The Art of Happiness and these meditative techniques with explainations of Budhhist concepts like karma, no-self, and reincarnation and of how they apply to what he is teaching. I had a fairly simplistic understanding of karma (what goes around comes around), but the idea he espouses is more severe. If you steal, he says, not only will you suffer the consequences in this world, but when you are reborn you will be reborn lower and will have to fight a greater urge to deal while being stolen from. I imagine if you steal again you’ll be reborn lower and will have a still greater urge to steal, which to me sounds like a negative feedback loop. I still don’t see how the idea of “no soul” works with reincarnation. What exactly is being “reincarnated”?

It was an interesting read, but inferior to The Art of Happiness from my view.

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