Bob's Books

Why this book: I’ve always been interested in optimizing health and fitness and a good friend of mine’s wife strongly recommended this book. I looked up reviews, and though I was a bit skeptical of Tony Robbins as a health guru, the reviews looked promising so I decided to give it a try. Really glad I did.

Summary in 4 sentences:  Tony Robbins in conjunction with two of the most highly respected doctors in researching longevity and wellness put together a compendium of the latest research in long term health optimization, disease prevention, repairing of organs, muscles and other damaged parts of the body, and the latest research in almost anything else that may be common causes of sub-optimal health, fitness and well being. He gives separate chapters to different areas of concern, but what is most exciting and impressive is that he outlines the current (as of 2022) state of research into stem cell and other regenerative therapies that promise to extend not only life but wellness well past current norms. While he continues to stress the foundational requirements of optimal health – exercise, nutrition, sleep, and stress management – he also offers options and strategies to almost exponentially magnify the benefits of these basic good health practices with various bio-hacks, some of which are easily available to everyone, some of which are rather esoteric.  He concludes with classic Tony Robbins appeal to positive thinking and belief in oneself and one’s own responsibility and power to optimize one’s own health and life. 

My Impressions:  Life Force provides a fascinating look behind the curtain of what bio-medical research is exploring for means of optimizing health, recovery, and wellness into the future.  I’ve recommended this book to several friends, each of whom I would grade is much healthier and more fit than the norm for their age, and each of whom thanked me for the recommendation and are taking action based on the recommendation in this book. Some of what he describes in the means for  regenerative health and fitness seems almost like science fiction, but, he tells us – no this is real, and these therapies will be available within a few short years. Ray Kurzweil who wrote and reads one of the chapters, says that if we can stay alive and healthy for a few more years, he expects there will be therapies and bio-hacks available that will then keep us alive and healthy for many more decades to come.

I chose to listen to this book, but partway through, I decided to buy a copy, since it contains so much information that I couldn’t absorb listening to it, and I wanted to be able to review it in hard copy.  Tony Robbins himself reads the first and last chapters, a designated reader reads most of the chapters, and then a couple of chapters are written and read by experts who he called upon to contribute to the book. This book is clearly a collaborative effort with Doctors Peter Diamandis and Robert Hariri clearly contributing their extensive knowledge in molecular genetics and cellular biology, as well as Ray Kurzweil, one of he world’s specialists in longevity research. Many other experts were consulted and their inputs are included – many of the best known names in health and wellness optimization.

Tony supports his points with many examples from his own life, and the experiences of people he’s met and worked with over the years.  One key message of this book – do not automatically trust your doctor.  Do your own research.  While he shows respect for doctors, he emphasizes that they are human, each is limited in their own experience and perspective, and if your health and wellness are at stake, you MUST get multiple opinions and make your own decisions. Don’t outsource decisions on your health and wellness to a single medical professional.  They may not know of the latest research, and they can be and often are wrong in their diagnoses and treatments. 

Life Force is written for the layman and it is easy and enjoyable to follow, though there were a few sections that had some details about molecular biology that were beyond my ability to fully grasp.  But I was able to easily get the point, even if I didn’t fully understand the mechanisms.  I looked forward to my listening sessions, as they were full of amazing information that is relevant to me and my life. Even the sections which may not apply to me, like breakthroughs in treatment of stroke victims, were fascinating.

I perhaps more than most have given attention and priority to long term health, wellness and fitness and I learned many things from this book that I didn’t know. Regarding longevity, I wrote a blog a few years ago that even then stressed that average life and health span are increasing, and that research is advancing rapidly to significantly increase life and health span in the not-too-far-distant future.   Life Force is an update to what I had learned then and so much more. I’d recommend this book to anyone who is willing to take extra steps to enhance their wellness and fitness and increase their life and health span.  

Perhaps the best summary of the scope of this book is to provide a list of the chapters.  

Introduction

Section 1: The Life Force Revolution

• Chapter 1: Life Force: our Greatest Gift
• Chapter 2: The Power of Stem Cells
• Chapter 3: Diagnostic Power: breakthroughs that Can Save your life
• Chapter 4 Turning Back Time: Will Aging soon be Curable?

Section 2 Heroes of the Regenerative Medicine Revolution

• Chapter 5: The Miracle of Organ Regeneration
• Chapter 6: The MightyCAR T cell: A Breatk through Cure for Leukemia
• Chapter 7: Incision-less Brain Surgery: The impact of Focused Ultrasound
• Chapter 8: Gene Therapy and CRISPR: The Cure for Disease
• Chapter 9: The Wondrous Wnt Pathway: The ultimate Fountain of Youth?

Section 3: What You Can Do Now

• CHapter 10 Your Ultimate Vitality Pharmacy
• Chapter 11: Living Pain Free
• Chapter 1: The Longevity Lifestyle and Diet
• Chapter 13: The Power of SLeep the Third Pillar of Health
• Chapter 14: Strength, Fitness & Performance: Your Quick Guide to Maximum Results
• Chapter 15: Beauty: Enhancing your Visible Health and Vitality

Section 4: Tackling the top 6 Killers

• Chapter 17: How to Mend a Broken Heart
• Chapter 18: Your Brain: Treating Strokes
• Chapter 19: How to Win the War on Cancer
• Chapter 20: Conquering Inflammation and Autoimmune Disease: Bringing Peace to the Body
• Chapter 21: Diabetes and Obesity: Defeating a Double Threat
• Chapter 22: Alzheimer’s Disease: Eradicating the Beast

Section 5 Longevity Mindset, and Fulfillment

• Chapter 23: Longevity and the Power of Exponential Technologies
• Chapter 24: Creating an Extraordinary Quality of Life: the Power of Mindset
• Chapter 25 The Power of Decision: the Gift of Living in a Beautiful State

Your 7 Step Action Plan for Lasting Results

End Credits

Why this book: Selected by my Science Fiction reading group, and though not “science fiction” per se, the science facts it reveals almost seem like science fiction.

Summary in 3 Sentences:  Author Ed Yong takes the readers on a tour of the wide variety of methods by which other creatures from all dimensions – insects, fish, mammals, reptiles even bacteria, spiders perceive their environments. These various sensory methods, from enhanced sensitivities to odors, to different spectra of light, to ability to hear sounds at a wide spectrum of frequencies, to echolocation, to creating electrical fields and sensing disturbances in those fields, to reading the earth’s magnetic field and more – are all adaptations that evolved over millennia  to help these creatures evade predators and find food in their particular environment – what Yong calls their “Umwelt.”  He concludes by describing how most species do not rely on a single sense, but on multiple senses that they integrate to help them survive and prosper, and then how many species have adapted or failed to adapt to human influenced pollution of the sensory environment.

My Impressions: A wonderful book which opens the readers eyes to how limited – anthropocentric – is our perspective on our world.  In fact this book reveals whole “universes” that exist all around us that we don’t perceive but that other creatures do.  It is akin to reading about human cultures very different from our own, and having the scales fall from our eyes revealing the narrowness of perspective that comes from taking for granted that how we perceive the world, is indeed how the world is. This book forces the reader to reappraise our conception of “reality.”   Reading about the capabilities of species of animals from as small as insects, to as well known and large as elephants and whales is almost like a science fiction novel – what these creatures can sense and do is almost magical. 

And Jong describes and writes about these insights in a most engaging and charming way – with enough science and footnotes to establish him as a legitimate scientist, but with a gift for writing in a way that will fascinate the a reader like me.  He writes with a sense of whimsy and fascination (which are contagious!) and sprinkles his book with interesting personal anecdotes from his own exploration of the topic as well as many from the numerous scientists and biologists that he visited and consulted in his research. I was not surprised to see An Immense World on several top 10 rankings of best books of 2022.

Jong begins An Immense World with an Introduction entitled “The Only True Voyage” in which he introduces the reader to his adventure of exploring how other animals live in their sensory bubbles – and thereby revealing how we humans also live in our own sensory bubble, and he explains why he calls this an “Umwelt” (the German word for environment or surroundings.) He explains how in the book he will refer to stimuli  and receptors which are part of sensors which turn stimuli into information. He also admits to the humility of this adventure – that we still know so little and that new details, and in some cases entirely new senses are being discovered regularly, and he notes that our efforts in this regard are biased by our own senses and in particular by our primary sense – vision.  He reminds us that “When we pay attention to other animals, our own world expands and deepens.”  

Up front, he tells us that all creatures senses evolve to support and enhance survival and procreation in the specific environment in which the creatures finds themselves, and those environments are as distinct as the bottom of the deep, blue sea, tropical jungles, or the middle of a blazing desert.  He reminds us that “The first step to understanding another animals’s Umwelt is to understand what it uses its senses for.”  In the course of his book, we are introduced to animals with amazing senses with capabilities that are way beyond those of human senses,  but which suit that animal in its Umwelt – creatures such as mantis shrimp, jumping spiders, naked more-rats, fire-chaser beetles, star-nosed moles, as well as animals with which we are more familiar, such as sea otters, elephants, vampire bats, rattle snakes.

Jong divides his book into thirteen chapters each of which addresses a sense that we may take for granted, and (falsely) assume that other creatures senses must mimic our own.  He divests us of this misconception throughout the book.

Chapters: 

1. Leaking Sacks of Chemicals – Smells and tastes
2. Endless Ways of Seeing – Light
3. Rurple Grurple, Yurple – Color
4. The Unwanted Sense – Pain
5. So Cool – Heat
6. A Rough Sense – Contact and Flow
7. The Rippling Ground – Surface Vibrations
8. All Ears – Sound
9. A Silent World Shouts Back – Echoes
10. Living Batteries – Electric Fields
11. They Know the Way – Magnetic Fields

He then concludes with

Chapter 12 Every Window at Once- Uniting the Senses 

And finally

13. Save the Quiet, Preserve the Dark – threatened Sensescapes.

Each chapter is a cornucopia of fascinating information about how different creatures experience the world in ways that are hard for us to imagine.  And just as fascinating as what we learn about these very different senses is how biologists ingeniously run experiments to test and learn about how these creatures sense the world.   Then he adds a bit of humility, beginning his chapter on “pain’ by noting that “We can chart how an animal reacts to what it senses, but it’s much harder to know how it feels.  And that distinction becomes especially difficult – and important -when thinking about pain.”

At the end of the book, he describes how for us and for many species, different senses work together, to back each other up, or compensate for miscalculations.  He writes “Each sense has pros and cons, and each stimulus is useful in some circumstances and useless in others. That’s why animals tap into as many streams of information as their nervous systems can handle, using the strengths of ones sense to compensate for the shortcomings of another.  (p323)  One of the most interesting sections was when he described how blind people often learn to use echo-location to compensate for lack of vision – and some become  surprisingly adept at it.

He concludes in Chapter 13 with a cautionary note about our efforts to preserve or enhance the habitability of our Umwelt for humans.  He gives numerous examples of how well-meaning efforts to make our Umwelt more user-friendly for us, can disrupt whole ecosystems for other creatures, whose senses are more sensitive to changes than ours. When we change any aspect of an environment – light, sound, temperature, color, moisture, etc – we may be significantly disrupting an umwelt that other creatures have adapted themselves to over millennia.  He gives a fascinating example of the unintended consequences of streetlights in a parking lot near the Tetons, or streetlights near the beach in Florida. 

There are so many amazing examples and stories in this book. A friend of mine who’d read it told me that when he hears a bird chirping, he now asks himself what parts of its song am he is not hearing, sounds outside of our capacity to hear that communicate with other birds, to tell them of food opportunities, or danger or mating opportunities. 

This will be a book that will change the way you see the world, and  (I suspect) add some very appropriate humility to our view of ourselves as the masters of the world we live in.  

Why this book:  I am in a SEAL reading group that read as one of our selections,  2034 – A Novel of the Next World War – which is a novel about a prospective war between the US and China.  Reading that book was disturbing, and after hearing about this book, I wanted to find out HOW we might avoid such a catastrophic eventuality.

 Summary in 3 Sentences:  The author walks us quickly through the history of US-China relations beginning in the early 19th century and brings us quickly into the 20th century, the Maoist communist revolt, and their assumption of power in 1949.  It wasn’t until 2013 however, when Xi Jinping came to power that things started to get tense. Much of this book is about Xi Jinping’s vision for “making China great again,” his antipathy toward the US and the US led international order, his distaste for liberal Western values and human rights, and how he is leveraging China’s economic power internationally, and Chinese Nationalism domestically to enhance his own and China’s power and influence in the world.  

My Impressions:   This is an impressive and eye-opening book that looks at multiple dimensions of the tense and evolving relationship between the US and China.  It current  as of the beginning of 2022.  But most importantly we get this unique perspective from a sinologist and fluent Mandarin speaker who twice served as Prime Minister of Australia, and who has met and worked with Xi Jinping himself and many of China’s top leaders over the last 2 decades. Rudd has lived in China, Taiwan and the United States and knows their cultures well.  Since his last term as Prime Minister, he has been a careful student of the evolving nature of China place in the world order and has served as  an advisor to leaders from many nations. 

This book offers a broad and balanced perspective on the issues that cause tension and competition between the US and China.  Learning about how these two formidable world powers interact is also very instructive on how nations compete and cooperate with each other, and vie for influence and power in the world.  We also learn the impact that the words and actions of these great powers have on foreign policy, trade, economics, ideological issues and the many factors, overt and subtle, that affect the way the international community responds.    He is able to address how he saw things change with US policy as America transitioned from the Trump to the Biden administrations.

Rudd was head of the Labor party in Australia and is clearly no fan of Donald Trump. He makes the  case that when Donald Trump pulled America out of many international organizations and forums for cooperation and discussion, he left the door open for China to fill the vacuum of great power influence in these organization, which they were more than eager to do.  Thereby, Xi Jinping was able to increase his and China’s power, influence and prestige internationally.  America was seen by many as no longer unreliable ally, which gave Xi Jinping and China a significant amount of leverage, and gradually and with small steps, he has increased his and China’s presence and influence all over the world.   Rudd describes how Xi Jinping has courted with money and infrastructure, many countries, especially in the developing world, and they are unable to resist the gravity of China’s huge economy and market for goods and services, all of which give China more power, wealth, and influence. 

Bur Rudd is also very open on where he sees China’s and Xi Jinping’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities.  He notes that the US is still ahead in many areas of economic and political competition, and that most countries would prefer a close relationship with the US, but China has been more forthcoming with aid, loans and attention.  Rudd notes that the US and Chinese economies are today in direct and almost ruthless competition in areas where there had been a more symbiotic relationship in the past. This he attributes to China clearly and explicitly setting out to supplant the US in power and influence, especially in Asia, but also in Africa, Latin America, and even in Europe.  

Xi Jinping is clearly the central figure in this book.  He reminds me a lot of Putin – having recently listened to Mr Putin – Operative in the Kremlin  I see in Xi Jinping a more cautious and calculating leader than Putin, but equally ruthless and ambitious.  He is not to be taken lightly.  Xi Jinping’s world view, ambitions and his priorities are central to this entire book. Rudd identifies three values that are core to Xi Jinping’s drive for power and influence.  1. He is a Marxist in his ideology, with a Chinese take on traditional Marxism; 2. Economic strength will be the source of his power and influence abroad; and 3. Fostering Chinese Nationalism will ensure his power at home.  He is not unlike President Trump in that regard, but unlike Trump, Xi Jinping is very cautious and deliberate about what he says, and is very invested in engaging with and influencing politically, diplomatically and economically the rest of the world to win friends and influence. Especially in the developing world. 

I listened to rather than read this book which meant I couldn’t highlight or take notes, which made it difficult to review.  The book includes so much content, most of which was new and fascinating to me.  But a list of the chapter titles will give a sense for how comprehensive his approach is.  Rudd’s writing is also very accessible to an informed lay reader – it is not written in economic or political science jargon – I found it easy and fascinating to listen to, and I looked forward to periods when I could give it my attention.

Rudd describes what he regards as Xi Jinping’s top 10 priorities – he calls them circles of importance – the first being the most important, and number ten being important, but less so than the previous nine.  He has bounced this list off of others who know China well, including those in Xi Jinping’s circle and has received general agreement.   He gives each of these circles a comprehensive chapter and goes into detail into how each of  Xi Jinping priorities stacks up against US capabilities.  He examines competition between the US and China and the West in each of these areas and how they affect US  foreign policy.  

After an opening introduction, the book has 17 chapters, ten of which address Xi Jinping’s priority interests, what Rudd calls “circles,” and he conclude with four chapters that tie it all together and a brief epilogue. Here is how the book is organized.

     Introduction: On the Danger of War

1. A short history of the US-China Relationship
2. The Problem of Distrust
3. Understanding Xi Jinping’s Worldview: Ten Concentric Circles of Interest
4. The First Circle: The Politics of Staying in Power
5. The Second Circle: Securing National Unity
6. 6. The Third Circle: Ensuring Economic Prosperity
7. The Fourth Circle: Making Economic Development Environmentally Sustainable
8. The Fifth Circle: Modernizing the Military
9. The Sixth Circle: Managing China’s Neighborhood
10. The Seventh Circle: Securing China’s Maritime Periphery: the Western Pacific, the Indo-Pacific, and the Quad
11. The Eighth Circle: Going West – the Belt and Road Initiative
12. The Ninth Circle: Increasing Chinese Leverage Across Europe, Africa and Latin America, and Gaining an Arctic Foothold
13. The Tenth Circle: Changing the Global Rules-based order
14. America’s Emerging Strategic Responses to Xi Jinping’s China
15. Xi Jinping’s China in the 2020s: The politics of the Twentieth Party Congress
16. The Decade of Living Dangerously: Alternative Futures for US-China Relations
17. Navigating an Uncertain Future: the Case for Managed Strategic Competition

       Epilogue

The final four chapters are particularly instructive, answering the “so what?” question that may arise out of his discussion of the 10 circles. He offers a multitude (over 10) possible scenarios that he could foresee coming to pass between the US and China in the next decade or so – many of which include war or armed conflict between the US and China, and what he thinks might be the consequences of each of these possible scenarios. 

He concludes by making his case for what he calls “Managed Strategic Competition” -what we used to call “strategic engagement” and the Chinese called “win-win strategy.”  In Rudd’s Managed Strategic Competition, the US and China would acknowledge that they are great powers competing for power and influence, but managing that competition well could serve both nations and avoid war, which many see as inevitable, and the horrific potential consequences that could ensue. Rudd points out how war between China and the US would be a major disruption in the international order, would probably cause untold death, destruction and suffering, and whoever might “win” would still lose. As would the rest of the world.

His compelling conclusion is that the US and China must manage their competition and relationship in such a way as to avoid war and best serve each country’s interests – at least over the next decade.   He makes that case strongly, and after reading (listening to) this book, I am a believer.  The Avoidable War is a great primer not only on US-China issues but on foreign policy and strategy in general. 

Why this book: I had read this book over 20 years ago and had found it captivating. Much of it takes place in the vicinity of Talkeetna, Alaska, which I recently visited, in large part motivated by having read this book. I continue to be somewhat infatuated with Alaska and wanted to read this story again and see how 20 years of life experience might change how it impacts me.

Summary in 4 Sentences: The book is Rick Leo writing in the first person about his personal experiences after his move to Alaska to build a remote homestead, and how he made a life for himself in the wilderness. He had graduated from Harvard and taken a job as an editor on Wall Street in the late 70s but was very disillusioned with life in New York City, and so, convinced his girl friend Melissa to pack it all up, leave the rat-race and move to Alaska and learn to live off the grid. Their initial year there was spent meeting people, making plans, getting the lay of the land, finding a place to build a home, learning what would be required fo live there, and also having a child and getting to know each other – amidst all the challenges of creating a new life deep in the Alaskan wilderness. Eventually Rick and Melissa realize that their hopes, dreams and needs were not in alignment and they struggled to find compromises that would allow them to raise their son while allowing them each to live the life they wanted.

My Impressions: I loved this book both times I read it, but for different reasons. When I read it 20+ years ago, I was mostly amazed and impressed by Rick’s resourcefulness in how he meet each new challenge and was able to build a home deep in the Alaskan wilderness several hours by foot from the nearest road. That indeed impressed me again in my second reading, but this time, I’m realizing the book is more about the struggles of a husband and wife to work together on this formidable project, to raise their son, and to find a way to keep their family together while being true to each other’s personal dreams, needs and goals.

Rick had grown up in the urban Chicago area and had little background in living as an outdoorsman. He had been a humanities student at Harvard and had graduated cum laude – and his impressive English skills had landed him a job right out of college as a magazine editor on Wall Street. He hated the job, but his skills as a writer, editor, and narrator of his own life and experience are evident in this book. His his story is sprinkled with references to the Western canon of classical philosophy and literature – as well as demonstrating a more than passing familiarity with Buddhism and eastern philosophy.

Early on, there is a tension between Rick’s creativity and resourcefulness in pursuing his dreams, and Melissa’s somewhat s tentative acceptance of this direction for their lives – she became ever more concerned that they may be in way over their heads. She soon realized that she didn’t share Rick’s enthusiasm for this adventure – especially after she became pregnant. Meanwhile, Rick learns to run a dog sled, to build a cabin, and finds a way to make much needed money in Anchorage as a copy editor and a cab driver, sleeping in his car to save money, chartering a helicopter to airlift building supplies to the site of his homestead in the wilderness. All of this being new to him as a man raised in the suburbs of America – he had to figure it out, learning many things the hard way. And as he did so, Rick was happy – almost ecstatic – proud of his ability to rise to the many challenges. He shares the joys of living amidst the splendors of the unspoiled natural world, amongst the trees and the animals, the stars and the mountains, and savors the excitement of introducing all of that to the enthusiastic reception of his and Melissa’s young son Janus.

Melissa did indeed appreciate the beauty and simplicity of life in the cabin in the wilderness, but she simply didn’t want to live there. It was not a life she had bargained for; she needed a social community and a sense of family that included more than her husband and child. Rick did indeed appreciate the value of the social community in Talkeetna, but he came to Alaska to live primarily away from people – in a place he built in the wilderness.

It was sometimes painful to read how these two good people are torn between their love for each other, their dream of making a family, and their very different needs. There are passages in which Rick describes his almost mystical communion with the primeval world he lived in. I admired his courage and success taking on what to me seem almost insurmountable challenges of learning, not only how to survive, but to build a home and a life, and meld with the unforgiving natural world he chose. And there were indeed moments of great intimacy and connection between him and Melissa, but as time went on, these were overshadowed by misunderstanding after misunderstanding and Melissa’s increasing frustration and anger at Rick for not seeming to understand what she needed and how she felt.

So much of the beauty of the book is sharing not only Rick’s growth and evolution in learning to live in Alaska, but also Melissa’s. We also learn from Janus their son. Rick takes Janus with their dog team camping in the winter and he shares Janus’s perspective as a 2 year old, for which everything is immediate, new and exciting, with no overlay of previous biases or expectations. Janus’s perspective is fresh and refreshing, and Rick sees and appreciates that, while he’s teaching him about the world they live in, and how to survive. Janus teaches Rick a new and fresh perspective on that world.

At one point Rick is visited by his best friend from university, Alexander, a thoughtful insightful man, who stayed in NYC and was living the fast-paced world of a single man making a living on Wall Street. Alexander was incredulous that Rick had chosen to live in such a primitive manner. But after a couple of weeks, Alexander came to appreciate the magic of living so close to nature, and dealing with practical challenges of living simply in the woods, as opposed to the complexity and craziness of living in the urban maze of New York City.

So much magic in this book in its many dimensions: The urban American learning to live in the primeval wilderness, the love and tension in the family, and the learning and growth that takes place within that family. I was sometimes stunned by Rick’s lyrical and almost poetic descriptions of the Mountains and wilderness where he lived. But he doesn’t neglect to share the impersonal dangers facing anyone who lives with little support in the wilderness.

The first half of the book is largely about the trials and tribulations experienced by Rick and Melissa getting established in Alaska. The second half is Rick taking on different challenges from his homestead, going into the mountains and with his dogsled visting some of hte most remote parts of the Alasaka outback, while also teaching Janus, and learning from Janus, while Melissa lives in Talkeetna. At the conclusion, Rick shares what has happened to every one who he’s met, and learned from in the book, as of 1990 about 7 years after the story began. Included in “the rest of the story,” he shares that his friend Alexander had died. Several years after Edges of the Earth was published, I sat next to a woman on an airline flight who told me about her son Alexander, who had passed away, but who had had visited a close friend in Alaska, who’d built a cabin in the wilderness and with whom he’d climbed Denali It was she who introduced me to this this story about Rick and her son, and who inspired me to find and read this wonderful book.

Why this Book?  Selected by my SEAL Book Club as our Oct 2022 selection. I’d heard about it from others and looked forward to reading it.

Summary in 4 Sentences: The Righteous Mind looks at our human decision making in general, but primarily decision making for issues that we feel have moral content, to include how we vote and where we stand on political issues.   The book is written in three parts: PART ONE makes the case that “intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second” -how most of our moral decisions are built upon an emotional, not a rational base, and that we usually use our reason to rationalize responding in accordance with that initial emotional response. PART TWO makes the case that “there’s more to morality than harm and fairness” and he argues for six foundational ethical values that most healthy people share, explains how he came up with them, and explains that our differences are based on differences in the weight we give to those values, since they can often be in tension with each other.  In PART THREE, he explains how “morality binds and blinds” – that we are both selfish and groupish, and describes what he calls our “hive mentality” and how this explains our impulse to fulfill ourselves by turning to religion and membership in political parties and movements. 

My Impressions: An Extraordinary book about who we are, how we make our key choices and why. He says at the end of the book that he took us “on a tour of human nature and human history.”  In the introduction, he says “the take-home message of the book is ancient. It is the realization that we are all self-righteous hypocrites.”  He indeed covers a huge amount of territory and does it in language and form that is accessible to most thoughtful readers. 

PART ONE: Title: “Intuitions Come First, Strategic Reasoning Second.”  Central Metaphor: “The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant.” As a former Ethics teacher at the USNA and at USD, I was fascinated by his point in Part One, that our ethical intuitions are the drivers of our moral decision making. He argues against Kohlberg, Plato and Kant and others who believed that reason is and should be the primary driver of our moral decisions, noting  that he agreed more with David Hume that moral reasoning is more often a servant of moral emotions.  He notes that children learn early the difference between social conventions such as what clothes to wear when, what to say under what circumstances, and moral rules that prevent harm and are related to justice, rights, and how people treat each other. He distinguishes between socio-centric cultures which put the needs of the group and institutions first, and individualistic cultures which put individuals and personal freedom at the center, and makes society a servant of the individual. The US is clearly an individualistic culture.  He notes that “…we cut ethical corners …when we think we can get away with it, and then we use our moral reasoning to manage our reputations and justify ourselves to others.  We believe our post-hoc reasoning so thoroughly that we end up convinced of our own virtue.” p220

He shares his personal experience living in India and contrasts two very different moral codes between the US and India, but notes that though their values were very different from his own, he really liked and appreciated the people he met in India.  In India the moral domain includes many behaviors which we in the West would regard as social conventions.  He also describes fascinating experiments he’s conducted to explore how people view moral issues, bringing in ideas like disgust and disrespect and where they fit into moral thinking. (Is something that we would find abhorrent that someone does in the privacy of their own home and harms no one, immoral, or merely disgusting?) He says that if morality doesn’t come from Reason, then “that leaves some combination of innateness and social learning as the most likely candidates.” And he shows from the evidence that what we would call effective moral reasoning requires an emotional component.

PART TWO: Title: “There’s More to Morality than Harm and Fairness” Central Metaphor: “The Righteous Mind is like a tongue with  six taste receptors.”  Here he talks about cultural differences in morality and develops the acronym WEIRD morality – reflecting how a large percentage of psychological research into morality focuses on a rather small sample size – people from cultures that are primarily of what he calls WEIRD people – Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.  “The WEIRDer you are, the more you see a world full of separate objects, rather than relationships, and whereas most people in the world see things holistically, WEIRD people think more analytically.” (p113) He notes that in non-WEIRD cultures, relationships, context, groups and social conventions are more important than individuals and their “rights.”  He notes that you can’t study the mind while ignoring culture, because minds function only once they’ve been filled out by a particular culture.  He divides ethics into systems which emphasize three different domains:  Autonomy,  Community, Divinity.

He also gives us a primer on Deontology, Utilitarianism, which he calls single principle, moralities but makes the case for pluralistic Humean approach which gives priority to  naturalist and sentimental (emotion-based) approaches..  He makes the case for six foundational moral principles that are innate in us, but are expressed differently and weighted differently in different cultures.  Each has a positive and a negative valence – a virtue is seen as the positive expression of that principle; sin or moral failure in it’s opposite.  He goes on to lay out what he believes to be the moral foundations of politics.

These are the six foundational values that he believes all humans share, and beneath them their negative sides – what the positive is seeking to avoid.

CARE,         LIBERTY,          FAIRNESS,    LOYALTY,        AUTHORITY,     SANCTITY                        and their opposites:                                                                                                                       >Harm,    ->Oppression,    ->Cheating,   ->Betrayal,     ->Subversion,     ->Degradation.

He argues in this chapter, and elaborates in chapter 12 of Part Three how these foundational values and our relationship to them help explain the differences in political parties and outlooks.  In these three figures, the darker the line, the greater priority that political group gives to that value.   

PART THREE    Title: “Morality Binds and Blinds”  Central Metaphor: “We are 90 percent Chimp and 10 Percent Bee.”   In this part he argues for why, culturally and genetically, we as a species thrive in groups, and that we have mental mechanisms that drive us to promote not only our individual interests, but also our group’s interests in competition with other groups.  “We are not saints, but we are sometimes good team players.”  Our social virtues are based on the fact that “people are passionately concerned with ‘the praise and blame of our fellow men.'” Haidt argues convincingly that as humans have evolved, “groupishness helped us transcend selfishness.”

“Man and many animals are social: they live in groups, flocks, or herds.  But only a few animals have crossed the threshold and become ultrasocial, which means that hey live in very large groups that have some internal structure, enabling them to reap the benefits of the division of labor.” p 235  Bees, ants, and humans are examples of ultra social groups.  Then he argues that natural selection favored species, especially human groups,  that have learned to to conform to social norms, and develop what he calls a “vast web of shared intentionality,” with a sense of “we” that extends beyond kinship.  He notes that we are “selfish primates who long to be a part of something larger and nobler than ourselves.”

He has a chapter entitled “The Hive Switch” in which he argues that “human beings are conditional hive creatures.  We have the ability (under special conditions) to transcend self-interest  and lose ourselves  (temporarily and ecstatically) in something larger than ourselves.” p258 He goes on to say that “If the hive hypothesis is true, then it has enormous implications for how we should design organizations, study religion, and search for meaning and joy in our lives.”  He invokes the work of Peter Durkheim who believed that people have a metaphorical “switch” to go from self-interest, to a group focus, and natural selection favors both impulses – individual self interest can obviously support survival, but those who are members of the most coherent groups will out-compete and out-survive those in less coherent groups. 

He identifies three ways in which people transcend their self-focus: 1. Awe in nature; 2. Psychedelics and mind altering drugs; 3. “Raves” – music and other events where people’s consciousnesses seem to ecstatically merge.  He also has a section on the biology of the hive switch, including the hormone oxytocin, and the “mirror neuron” which helps people feel each other’s pain  and joy “to a much greater degree than any other primates.”  His chapter “Religion is a Team Sport” is an extension of his chapter on the Hive Switch – he argues that the impulse to religion and to join religious groups is part of our need for a social group of people we can trust, into which we can subsume ourselves, transcend our personal identity, and which makes moral “everything that is a source of solidarity, everything that forces man to regulate his actions by something other than his own egoism.”  He says that “Religion is therefore well suited to be the handmaiden of groupishness, tribalism, and nationalism.”

His final chapter “Can’t We All Disagree more Constructively” revisits the value differences between the three political theories that are listed above – Liberalism, Libertarianism, and Social Conservatives.  In fact the pictures I show above are from this chapter.  This chapter has what I believe are some great insights about the sources of the polarity we are experiencing in American politics now – regarding both liberal and conservative perspectives.  As is seen in the figures above, he argues that we all share common values, but the differences are in the priority and weight we give to those values. He states at the end, “liberals and conservatives are like yin and yang – both are ‘necessary elements of a healthy state of political life,’ as John Stuart Mill put it.”

He has a short chapter entitled “Conclusion” in which he admits that his book covers a lot of territory, and he offers an excellent concise summary of the key points he made in Parts 1, 2, and 3 and the entire book.  

This is a fascinating book that has generated great discussion in two of my reading groups that have read it.  I strongly recommend reading it with other thoughtful friends, and discussing the three parts, each separately.  

Why this Book? I found this book on my bookshelf – somewhere (used book table?) I had purchased this book. I was looking through books on my shelf for a novel to read between other books assigned in the various book clubs I’m in. I found this one, checked the reviews – they are excellent – and so started to read.

Summary in 4 Sentences: The Setting: A young girl in 1938 Germany is orphaned and given over to a foster home of a poor Germany family living in a village outside of Munich. Though 11 years old, she is illiterate, and now traumatized by the loss of her family and being delivered to strangers, she struggles to adapt to her new foster family, but her foster father is kind and offers to teach her how to read. The Story: Over the next several years, she manages to survive and adapt within the village, attends school, makes a few friends (other outcasts) while all around her, Hitler’s Third Reich and anti-Semitism increasingly reach into her village and her life, and though her family is not political, the oppressive Nazi climate affects them all. Finally: The war itself reaches into the village, people she knows and loves have to take tough decisions, and her strength of character is tested in ways neither she nor the reader would expect.

My Impressions: Wonderful book that deserves its many accolades. Great characters living during one of the main dramas of the 20th century, in a small German town, which could be a small town anywhere, except that this one is sitting at the edge of a world in crisis. The main character is Liesel Meminger and this story is her story – but it is told from the perspective of “Death” – a personification of a “being” who carries souls from their earthly body to the next (undefined) world. Death is telling the story in retrospect – he knows what will happen, and occasionally reveals that this character or that will die much too young, or that this would be the last time a person would see, hear or experience X. But mostly, Death is simply telling the story in a detached observant way, from time to time revealing a human-like sadness or regret. And the author also uses another different literary tool – Death will occasionally step in from outside the story’s narrative to provide additional background or other explanatory information indented in bold letters as an aside.

Liesel is a great character. She is a traumatized orphan turned over to authorities by a similarly traumatized mother. Liesel is delivered to her foster family, initially doesn’t fully understand what is going on, but is alert to what she needs to do to survive. She keeps her mouth shut. She keeps her pain to herself, and does what she’s told. Life has dealt her a very tough hand and she is intent on surviving – by staying as low profile as possible, by trying not to attract attention, to just survive. But she is very curious and desperately wants to learn to read. Early in the book, at her brother’s funeral, she had picked up a dropped copy of a gravediggers manual, which she holds on to as representing her lost brother, and desperately wants to read it. Her kind new foster father Hans Hubermann nurtures her through her nightmares at night, and teaches her to read. She loves to read – it provides her an escape from an indifferently hostile world. Her foster mother Rosa Hubermann is harsh, condescending and unsympathetic, and presses Liesel into service, helping with the laundry Rosa does for the more well-to-do families in the village to help pay the bills. Liesel adapts – does what she’s told, tries to stay out of trouble, keeps to herself while the political temperature in the small village continues to rise in response to the Nazi propaganda.

She makes friends with Rudy, a young boy her age who like her, is an outsider in school, something of a loner who marches to his own drummer. She and Rudy become fast friends, form something of a partnership in navigating the challenges of poor young people in the village. Liesel is a tom-boy and she and Rudy play soccer together, give each other a hard time, but all the while, Rudy is romantically interested in Liesel, regularly asking her for a kiss – which she refuses him.

The story digresses to foster-father Hans’s experiences in WW1 and how he owed his life to a comrade. This incident incurred a debt that that Hans had to his benefactor’s family, which resulted in Max, a Jew escaping the roundup of Jews for the concentration camps, showing up at the Hubermann’s home asking Hans to make good on his debt and protect him. This brings the cost of Nazi anti-Semitism home to Liesel and the Hubermanns, and the story takes a new twist.

In their effort to hide and protect Max while also protecting themselves from the Nazis for the crime of hiding Jews, the Hubermann family including Liesel is transformed. They adjust their lives to bring no attention to their household, to protect Max and share as much of their meager resources with him as they can. Max demands little and is most grateful, and the Hubermann’s – and esp Liesel – become quite attached to him.

At this point the War has begun, the German Army has occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia, has invaded France and Russia, is fighting on two fronts, and life becomes ever more difficult in their little town. Money and resources are scarce, people are hungry, the men are conscripted, though at this point Hans, a veteran of WW1 is too old. Liesel becomes ever more engaged in her reading, and one of the wealthy patrons of Rosa Hubermann’s laundry business had a library, and allows Liesel to spend time there when she comes to pick up or deliver laundry. This was the only contact Liesel had with the world of books. Eventually Liesel would break into the house and steal books – one at a time – thus she became “the Book Thief.”

As things get tougher in her village, Liesel is forced to rise to the challenges that emerge, stepping up to help adults who are struggling to handle the increasing pressure and hardship. We see her courage, and the courage and cowardice, strength and weakness of many who live in the village, struggling to adapt and survive, so close to Munich and the heartbeat of the Nazi regime.

One thing I noticed in reading the book was that most of the “bad” characters in the book, those we were inclined to dislike, eventually showed their humanity in one way or another. The war brought out the worst, and sometimes the better sides of their characters.

I loved this book – The Book Thief is a coming of age novel – a “bildungs roman” about how Liesel grows and develops from a scared young girl into a strong young woman by dealing with the adversity of life in a small German village during the war. It gets better and better, more and more engaging as one reads through the story. The voice and perspective of Death the narrator becomes engaged as “he” narrates this story, all the while being called upon to carry the millions of souls who are dying during this war, into the next world. It is a book I will not soon forget.

Why this book:  Selected by my Navy SEAL reading group because one of our members had a connection to Fiona Hill and she agreed to join us on zoom to discuss the book.

Summary in 3 Sentences. The book is part biography of Putin as well as a look at how he got to the top of the Russian government, and the patterns of his behaviour and decisions. Much of what we learn abou this childhood and young adulthood is from his own accounts and a few published accounts of others, showing him to be shrewd in developing connections and influence, and a strategic thinker not only in his personal professional career, but also for Russia. The book concludes with the final chapters addressing his distrust of the West, esp America and the EU, and his relentless effort to strengthen Russia’s influence in the former Soviet states to counterbalance the power of the US and EU.Though the book was published before Russia invaded Ukraine, it concludes with a description of how his goal of bringing Ukraine back under the Russian sphere of influence is an obsession,  and that when he commits to a goal, he will stop at nothing, will fight dirty and do whatever it takes to win.

My Impressions: I listened to the book and in fact skpped a few of the chapters in the middle in order to finish it before our scheduled meeting with Ms Hill, which unfortunately I missed, since I was on a bike trip in Alaska when it took place.  I found it enlightening and disturbing – enlightening, about the cultural background in Russia that Putin grew up in and which shaped him as a Russian leader, and his country to where it is today.  Disturbing, in that it reflects a paranoia and sense of persecution from the West that Putin and his supporters feel, and which is a key component in our current tensions with Russia.  Though the book was written before Russia invaded Ukraine, it is very instructive as to the origins of that war, and of Putin’s mindset and goals.  

The first part of the book is Putin’s biography – his childhood, his various positions in the KGB, and events which the authors believe most shaped his thinking.  Then how he navigated and his lessons learned in the aftermath of the break up of the Soviet Union.  A lot is not known about him because Putin has controlled the narrative on his life, and in his early years, he was very much the quiet gray man – not making waves, not standing out, but cultivating his network and his future. After he came to power in the late 1990s and early 2000s, people knew that he had the means and the will to exact revenge against those who might undermine his image or his own narrative.  The authors apparently did exhaustive research to find what they could, and made the assumptions that made the most sense, and it seemed to me that they tell the story of his rise to power as best they could.

That story also informs the reader about their system, the political and economic chaos and disarray of the 1990’s after Glasnost and Perestroika, and how Putin’s promise of stability so resonated with the political establishment and the Russian people. The book also provides interesting background on his mistrust of and resentment against the EU for what he perceives as almost an economic conspiracy against Russia, and what he perceived as an effort to keep them weak and vulnerable after the wall came down.  Also we learn of his perception that the West in general and the EU and NATO in particular are conspiring to undermine Russia’s relationship with it’s former client states like Georgia and Chechnya, thus explaining his brutal crackdowns – noting that the West made threats about what they would do if he invaded those countries which were never carried out – thus emboldening him in his long term goal to bring Ukraine back into the Russian orbit. 

The book concludes in the final chapters – after chapter 12 – with a  look at Putin’s relationship to the US and NATO and his ambition to bring Ukraine back into the Russian sphere.  The authors laid out the steps leading up to and following Russia’s annexation of the Crimea, of actions they’d taken in Georgia without a strong reaction from the West.  And the authors noted that one thing they can promise about Putin – he will stop at nothing to get what he wants – lie, cheat, steal – he has subordinated all values to: 1. his intent to stay in power, and 2. his intent to recreate Russia as a major world power.  This is ominous, because as of this writing, Russia and Putin are becoming increasingly desperte in Ukraine, and Putin is threatening dramatic measures to achieve his goals, or at least to deny the West their objective of keeping Ukraine out of Russian hands.  Those who know him are warning that we should take his threats seriously.

Ukraine has become Putin’s war, but he’s busy making it Russia’s war to assert itself in what Putin and many Russian’s believe to be strictly their sphere of influence.  The West was not wise in provoking him by advocating Ukrainian membership in NATO or membership in the EU – it just fed Putin’s resentment and paranoia.  We’ll see what happens. 

Why this book:I’ve already read this book twice before, but the last time was 20 years ago. I was interested in revisiting it with the sensibilities of greater “maturity.” Several of my friends have experienced interest in exploring Science Fiction and so I got a few of them to agree to join me in reading this book – for me, again.

Summary in 4 Sentences: The Philosopher’s Stone is written in the first person as an autobiographical account of Howard Lester exploring the potentialities of the human species to move to the next level on the evolutionary spectrum.  His story begins when he is a precocious young man who is particularly moved by literature and music, and adopts an older mentor with whom he spends most of his spare time as a youth and eventually lives with him, and together they explore the possibilities of the mind.  The remainder of the book is our narrator’s journey in developing his own mental strengths and powers, exploring the works of others in the same field and eventually developing a metaphysics and theory of human evolution that have at their center, the power of the human subconscious and imagination to transcend the trivialities and needs of our physical existence.

My Impressions:  A powerful statement of Colin Wilson’s philosophy and his belief in the capacities of human beings to become more than they are.  One must be ready for this book, and this, my third time reading it, I believe I finally am.  I’ve read a lot Colin Wilson’s work – but not for a while – and I’m fairly familiar with his philosophy.   As a novel, The Philosopher’s Stone  gives him the freedom to create the world he wants, to express his views freely through his fictional character, mixing what he believes to be true with what might be true about the potentiality of humans to become much more than they are.  In this novel, Wilson accelerates the development of the human ability to harness the subconscious with a  brain operation which makes it much easier for people to relax the mind, focus attention, tune one’s senses to the environment, and put on hold most of our normal survival instincts which distract us from the insights that our subconscious mind could offer us. 

The ideas he expresses are familiar to me, as I’ve recently read Joseph Murphy’s The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (several times) , Shatki Gawain’s  Creative Visualization, and Henriette Klauser’s Write it Down, Make it Happen – all emphasizing that the subconscious mind is somehow connected to a dimension of reality that we don’t understand, and that putting effort into developing that connection, and learning to use it can give us greater freedom and power. 

The novel takes our narrator and protagonist from being a youth to a man in his late 30s or 40s through his journey to understand his own mental powers and the nature of our true powers by experimenting on himself, and then drawing inferences from his experiences and the experiences and ideas of others to better understand the nature of reality and where human beings fit into the universe. One cannot help but be impressed with the Lester’s (and therefore Wilson’s) familiarity with the canons of Western culture, literature, philosophy and art that he draws upon to make his argument for the powers of the mind, man, and potentialities for the future.  In fact he digresses in his explorations to make the case from some of his insights, that indeed, Francis Bacon was the secret author of many, if not most of Shakespeare’s works – an idea that has been around for centuries.

He emphasizes the Value Experience as a flash of insight that gives one a bird’s eye view that transcends the immediacy of the moment.  He says that Value Expeience depend on health, vitality, and will power.  I read a separate work by Wilson, written much later in his life entitled Super Consciousness: the Quest for Peak Experiences (which I review here) in which he expands on the Value Experience he describes in this book, and notes that he got the idea of Peak Experiences from Abraham Mazlow. 

There are strong echoes of Nietzsche’s ubermensch in his description of the powers that the few who indeed do develop their minds will attain, and the weak will of the majority who are satisfied with the banalities of following the rules of social convention, pleasure-seeking an self-indulgence.  

At the end of the novel, some of these ideas get a bit outlandish, proposing the “existence” of supernatural beings who have created and guided human civilizations over millennia – to include civilizations that pre-date what we currently understand as the trajectory of the development of civilizations.  

That said, there are many unanswered questions about how ancient civilizations developed, and if one takes his Ancient Great Old Ones as a metaphor for the God of most cultures and civilizations and religions, the ideas that Wilson proposes, through Howard Lester may not be so preposterous. 

I do have a couple of quibbles with Wilson’s philosophy. It is indeed very individualistic and I don’t believe he gives adequate attention to our human communitarian instincts – our needs for social support and family.  Of the three great approaches to ethical living – autonomy, community, divinity – Wilson’s approach neglects “community.”   I also don’t believe he gives adequate attention to the mind-body connection. He emphasizes the importance of exercising the mind and making it stronger, and he does recognize that being tired depletes vitality and energy, but he doesn’t acknowledge that putting energy into being physically healthy and robust can indeed enhance the energy and vitality of the mind.  I suspect that the world of English Intellectuals with which Wilson associated probably never exposed him to that idea.

Here are some of the major themes and ideas that I took from Wilson in The Philospher’s Stone:

• Man’s most important capacity for self development is his will.  It is the primary tool by which he can overcome the limitations of his instinctual desires and the trivialities of daily life.
• It takes a strong will to transcend the instinctual impulses for food, pleasure, and comfort, to achieve something greater – a vitality that can overcome the erosion of aging and increase life and health-span.
• He emphasizes the “Value Experience” as a key to inspiring the will to transcend the trivialities of daily living.
• The mind has the power to open the senses to subtler dimensions of reality and the environment -such as history, relationships, mood and possibilities.  These extra-sensory capabilities include second sight, time-vision, and sensing peoples feelings and intentions.
• Most people don’t have the courage to develop themselves to become what they are capable of; they are bored with the trivialities and repetitions of life, and this drives them to find excitement and stimulation thru drugs, alcohol, crime, and evil behaviors. 
• Developing mental will, focus and transcendence are the most important next steps in human evolution. 

This is not a book for everyone – it is not a page-turner novel.  But for those who have thought about and explored the potentialities of the mind, and explored some of its hidden powers, it will be thought provoking and perhaps even inspirational.  As Wilson says on page 276, “Who could possibly prefer being asleep to being awake, especially on a spring morning?”

————

BELOW are ALOT of quotes and ideas from The Philosopher’s Stone.  Some are paraphrases, some are quotes.   Going thru my underlines and adding them here helped me to review and better understand the book.  Some are paraphrases, some are quotes.  Page numbers are from the paperback edition pictured above:

When one is completely absorbed in a project, one’s work, a meaningful task, a discussion of “happiness” is a “pointless irrelevancy.”22

What is the point of studying science and “dead facts” if not to make a difference in the lives of the living.23

“The main problem of human life is easy to define.  We live too close to the present, like a gramophone needle travelling over a record.  We never appreciate the music as a whole because we only hear a series of individual notes.” 25-26  (My note: Transcendence?)

Deepest insight of all: Science is not man’s attempts to reach  ‘truth.’  He wants wider consciousness, freedom from this strange trap that holds our noses against the gramophone record – which is why he has always loved wine and music….26

….wider consciousness, those breathing spaces when you feel like a bird, contemplating your existence from above, instead of from the gutter…..The mystics, like the poets, knew all about this ‘birds eye consciousness’ that suddenly replaces our usual worm’s eye view. 26-27

a symphony was always an incantation to induce the same state of mind, the sense of detachment from our humanity,  of entering into the eternal life of mountains and atoms. 31

The past five years had flown by like 6 months. Time’s a confidence trick.  It like a crooked guardian who keeps dipping his hands into your bank account. You think you’ve still got a  fortune left, and then realize that you’re on the edge of bankruptcy.32

The scientist is unwilling to face death and so he sacrifices his humanity and tries to identify himself with the abstract and the eternal.  And the religious man has the same motive, except that he may believe in an after-life for which he has to prepare.  32

If life is consciousness, then the problem of prolonging life should be the problem of increasing consciousness – the aim of science as well as art.32

Shaw: “Minding your own business is like minding your own body – it’s the quickest way to make yourself sick.”   Why should thinking about yourself increase the sickness, and thinking about something else diminish it?35

Science is not a meaningless abstraction, unrelated to human life.  Like art, literature, music, religion, it is the pursuit of an ‘other-ness’ that connects us to some obscure source of power inside ourselves. 36

Is the final end of human knowledge to teach man his own unimportance? 38

The no-man’s land between philosophy and psychology.39

The “value experience” (VE) – the bird’s eye moment, the Buddhist’s ideal of nirvana, rapt contemplation, moments of ‘contemplative objectivity.’40

The 5% of human beings are a dominant minority, driven by an urge for self-development and maturity, mostly expressing themselves through social dominance.  5% of the 5% – .00025% need to express their dominance by another kind of self-expression – the evolution of the mind – basically obsessed by the value experience – the highest form of self expression.  For these people, all other forms of achievement and dominance seem barren.  41

it is hard to achieve VE’s at will, unless you have outgrown the desire to dominate other people and replaced the old domination experience with the value experience.  41 (my note: In his book Super Consciousness, he gives guidance about how to achieve VEs with some regularity)

VE’s increase vitality. 42

People gradually lose the will to live as they get older because the future holds less in store by way of excitement, or love, or discovery43

Man has a deeply ingrained idea that old age is merely a running down – his evolution is frustrated by physical decay, which in turn is the outcome of the collapse of the will. 44

VE’s depend on vitality, health, and will power.44

Evil is the outcome of the frustrated evolutionary drive..  45

Marks’s experiments demonstrated that longevity depends on a sense of purpose..Frankl made the same observation in a concentration camp.  49

The essence of all poetry particularly of the romantic poetry of the nineteenth century. Detachment…floating freedom from one’s personal little problems… the sense of wider horizons.  51

…Clear glimpses of a godlike state of detachment  52

Man is normally trapped in the trivialities of his everyday life, scarcely able to see beyond the end of his nose.  But in certain moments of beauty, he relaxes; his soul expands; he sees distant horizons – of time as well as space.  his mind overflows with beauty – for what is beauty but this sudden expansion of consciousness into other times, other places  the delightful relaxation of tension, accompanied by the realization that man is not really himself unless he is contemplating immense vistas? (my note: Wilson’s Peak Experiences) 53

Nature is as interested in right and wrong as are the saints and moralists.  But it is attached to evolutionary success.  When the dog is in heat, it is impervious to heat, cold injury, because sex is the most primitive form of the evolutionary appetite. 55

What destroys the evolutionary urge in many – habit, repetition and triviality. 55

When man is able to develop this evolutionary faculty for “other-ness” he will be able to resist the erosion of death.  55

There is a reason why most people die fairly early. Their presence would only encumber the earth.  61

Value Experiences have the effect of raising vitality – cancers are the result of a sudden drop in vitality.  70

I saw with perfect clarity why the ‘value experience’ does not guarantee long life, or even immunity of illness.  It is totally unimportant.  It is like a flash of lightning.  But what is important is not the lightening,  but what you see by it.   73

What distinguishes the greatest men is precisely that ability to focus to concentrate the attention.  So my search for longevity through the value experience was a waste of time.  73

Since Husserl, we have realized that consciousness is ‘intentional’ – that you have to focus it or you don’t see anything.  73

Consciousness is not only intentional, it is rational – it keeps relating new meanings to one’s experiences 76

A healthy consciousness is like a spider’s web –  and you are the spider at the center of the web, which is the present moment.  the MEANING of your life depends on those fine threads which stretch away to other times, other places, and the vibrations that come to you along the web. 

Visions and ecstasies of the mystics are perfectly normal and any human being is capable of experiencing them – these moments of meaning are also moments of tremendous affirmation , a clear recognition of what human evolution is all about. 

Man’s freedom is the evolutionary urge which drives him upward, and which therefore provides a REASON when he is confronted by choices.  79

The mental activity involved in imagination is the highest form known to man 81

The mechanism of imagination – associated with ‘relational consciousness.’ – when the  narrow beam of our consciousness broadens and illuminates a wider area, these are Marks’s ‘value experiences.’82

**If we could achieve control over the ‘mental hormone’ that breaks habit patterns, we should be on the verge of becoming supermen.  For the chief human problem is our slavery to the trivial, which we can only break by rather dubious methods – alcohol, drugs, violence, and so on. Yet our need to escape the trivial is so compulsive that we prefer to commit crimes or start wars rather than remain bored.  83

A man does not die of ‘old age’  He gets fixed in old habit patterns until his capacity for ‘other-ness’ is destroyed, and then he allows himself to sink into death.  83

From the beginning I felt the answer lay in the prefrontal lobes of the brain.84

The talent develops as a result of a certain search – the search for value experiences, the childhood moments of universal ‘newness’ and happiness. Most people forget them; poets cling to them and spend their lives searching for them.  87

It is extremely hard for poets to divert brain energy from more practical areas of the brain to these great memory tanks; our animal caution refuses to allow it. So these strange moments of pure vision, of broad relational consciousness only occur when there happens to be a lot of brain energy to spare. 93

False assumption of gerontologists that life is chemical in nature. Men die for the same reason they fall asleep – because the senses close up from boredom when there is nothing to occupy them.  But a man who is deeply interested in something can sty awake all night  (Bob’s NOTE-however the body DOES need sleep) 102

When we are young, the senses are wide awake; life is intensely interesting: anything might happen.103  

Life is sustained by will… but it is gradually creeping automatism that kills him off.  103

Control over the powers of the prefrontal cortex is the ability to widen the beam of attention at will.  103-4

Most human beings live like trains  they just chug forward through life, held on course by the railway lines of convention and habit. …evolution has been aiming at creating a new type of human being , who sees the world with new eyes all the time, who can readjust his mind a hundred times a day to see the familiar as strange. 106

Theoretically web-like consciousness should gradually reveal the deepest levels of the mind. Husserl’s ‘Transcendental ego,’ the hidden self…. the popularity of Christmas is a matter of web-like consciousness…the nearest to mystical experience that most human beings ever approach – forgetting petty worries and irritations and thinking in terms of universal peace. … feeling glad that life occasionally declares a truce.  112 

The insight that we live in the most beautiful planet in the solar system, but meanwhile we live in a dirty narrow claustrophobic life-world, arguing about politics, and sexual freedom and the race problem. 112

The seeds of distrust of life are  planted in us very early  and permanently stunt most human beings.  113

Man is the first objective animal. All others live in a subjective world of instinct, from which they can never escape; only man looks at the stars or rocks and says, “How interesting….” It is the first step toward becoming a god.113

The problem with most people is an obsessive desire for security. They want domestic security and sexual security and financial security and they waste their lives pursuing these until one day they realize that death negates all security, and they might as well have saved themselves the trouble from the beginning.114

They came so close, the romantics… they saw that our capacity to enjoy beauty for its own sake indicates that we have moved into the borderland between animal and god. 115

The senses are not intended to let things in, but to keep things out..most animals possess a degree of second sight… too much insight destroys efficiency. Our senses are so strong that they overwhelm imagination.  116-117

When I look at an object I assume that my senses are giving me its ‘reality;’  but this is not true….When I sink into a condition of meditation, the historical dimension becomes real to me, my senses give me more of its reality than when I am stuck in the present123-4

One of those total infatuations which virile old men are prone…..men who are cautious in business or political life are often prone to rashness in love.  129

The first stage was ‘contemplative objectivity,’ the simple ability to pass beyond the gates of my own personality and to really SEE things, to realize they exist   –  the objective multiplicity of the world. 134

The prefrontal cortex is supposed to rescue us from the present, to allow us to  approach the world from many different angles and points of view, instead of stagnating in a a subjective life world. To escape the subjective134

I had not yet learnt to stop seeing myself as Harry Lester, aged thirty-six, one of fortune’s favored children. Once I managed to lose this personal equivalent of provincialism, time would cease to negate me.137

What is the nature of time? it is a function of consciousness, nothing else. 145

The solution has always been within the reach of human beings – to deliberately increase the brains capacity for concentration by a sustained effort of will.  151

I came to realize that a racial subconscious really exists, and if this is so, then our notion of our individuality is in some sense an illusion, fostered by the separateness of our bodies. 154

“relational consciousness’ – and ability to sense people that can come from not thinking. 154

Time vision is merely an extension of our normal senses..  When the brain is dull, trivialities assume larger proportions.  184

The Great Old Ones?

What would happen if the senses were fully awake, so that every taste or sight or sound produced deep echoes throughout one’s being? Suddenly it seemed to me that I had found a subject really worth the fullest investigation – to find what man is capable of becoming when he is fully awake. The body’s dullness cuts us off from the outside world.   205

I was suddenly aware of the world as a huge sexual roundabout, and for a moment, I ceased to be either male or female, but became both, so that I could simultaneously feel delight of a man as he enters the softness of a girl, and the delight of the girl as she feels his maleness inside her.  206

p207 -desribes the mystic ideal

I was getting the reward that the visionaries in the past should have had: able to hold the world at arm’s length, to see its meaning, to grasp something of its complex pattern.209

his insight demonstrated to me that a man does not need to possess ‘time vision’ to grasp the realities of history215

I launched myself into a sea of serenity, ignoring my personality; my interest in the people in the room, as if observing the earth from some distant point in space…I ceased to be aware of the room.  221

(When we have a sense of confidence that something is going to happen, or that we will win) is not an illusion, born of over-confidence. Our subconscious roots spread farther into the soil of reality than we realize, and in time of unity-of-mind, they control things.  This is not as strange as it sounds..229

The Shavian-Bergsonian philosophy – Running parallel to the universe of matter there is another universe, of pure life. And life has invaded matter.234

Life remained static – until some chance mutation introduced death. And with death came the possibility of reproduction; and with reproduction came new mutations. Evolution was launched.  235

Yes, “they” had created human beings as their servants.  “they” had power , but  no precision.  And for long ages, human beings served them faithfully, and were allowed insights into many secrets….their danger that their servants would themselves become the masters of the earth and learn the ancient secrets.  239

Now most of our human problems are due to the self-division that arises from individuality, for all our problems can be summarized in one word: triviality.  We are victims of the ‘demon of the trivial.’  All human evils can eventually be traced to the narrowness of human consciousness.   241

The intelligent man controls his frustration, examines the obstacle, and calculates how it can best be removed.  It is not that he is naturally patient. Impatience is a sign or high vitality, and intelligence should be more vital than stupidity, not less.  He DIRECTS his impatience as the barrel of a gun directs a bullet. 241

All neurosis and insanity is due to self-division, to self-criticism outweighing vitality. Self-criticism is a brake, and brakes sometimes jam. 242

The legendary civilization of Mu 242

Man has developed a conscious mind that marches in the opposite direction from his instinctive drives.  Every young man who becomes obsessed by literature or music or science is aware that he is creating a personality that has nothing to do with his more violent emotions: rage, lust, jealousy.247

Conscious powers of focusing are dangerous according to one’s degree of control of the subconscious levels of the mind.  248

The Old Ones observed these humanoids they had created, and they realized the power of the human imagination fueled by optimism and purpose…they went through the phase that every intelligent teenager experiences: of developing a new individualized consciousness, and leaving the instincts to fend for themselves.  248

The “focusing muscle” can be strengthened by exercise.250

I sat in the armchair, and allowed myself to sink into contemplative objectivity. 252

Time vision is a complex way of intuiting the inner-reality of an object, in the way a handwriting expert can ‘read’ the writer’s character in his formation of letters. 255

Ted Serios, the man who can make photographs appear on a photographic plate by concentrating on it…256

People needed fear and self-discipline, if they were not to become decadent.258

And then another feeling came upon me – a total,  deep ecstatic loyalty to the Great Old Ones.  It was simply self-evident that they were the most powerful beings in the solar system and deserved the greatest devotion, the deepest love . It was  the Blakeian principle; ‘Everything that lives is Holy, life delights in life.’264

The Ancient Old Ones had made an interesting discovery; that Man was basically a religious animal. 266

But it must be remembered that in a basic sense, the Old Ones were not ‘plural’; they were more like a single being…. Man was a mirror in which the Old Ones could see their faces – or rather their Face.  269

As the conscious mind learned to project its visions of reason and order, the vast energies of the subconscious writhed in their prison, and projected visions of chaos.272

the Old Ones will simple let man stagnate until he suffers the price of stagnation: death… The alternative is clear enough.  The Old Ones must awaken to find a society of Masters, with whom they can collaborate on equal terms. 275

The vast majority of the human race consists of people who will shrink from the great step to inner freedom 275

Who could possibly prefer being asleep to being awake, especially on a spring morning?  276

Man should possess an infinite appetite for life. It should be self-evident to him, all the time, that life is superb, glorious, endlessly rich, infinitely desirable.  At present, because he is in a midway position between the brute and the truly human, he is always getting bored, depressed, weary of life.  He has become so top heavy with civilization that he cannot contact his springs of pure vitality. 277

Why this book: I’ve always been interested in Native Alaskan culture, and I picked this book up at the Native Alaskan Heritage Museum in Anchorage during my visit in Sept 2022.

Summary in 3 Sentences: This is the personal account of the author, growing up in the small, Catholic and traditional Athabaskan village on the Yukon River in Alaska in the 1940s and 50s. It tells about her life, her family living a life of subsistence on hunting, fishing and berry picking, and the values and traditions of the people in that village in the period before modernization truly came to remote villages.  As she became a teenager and young adult, there was more contact with the outside world, and she wrote this when she was in her late 50s, looking back on her life as a child, after having moved to Anchorage to work, get married, and have her own children.  

My Impressions:  This is a first person memoir of a young native Athabaskan Dorothy Savage Joseph’s childhood growing up in Holy Cross, Alaska, a small Catholic village on the Yukon River.  Dorothy was born in 1940 and her childhood and this story take her through the 1940s and the 1950s, up to when, as a young woman she left her home village to work part time in Fairbanks, and then ultimately to marry, raise a family, and live in Anchorage. We don’t hear much about that later part – the book’s focus is on what life was like in Holy Cross, to include in her family’s “fishcamp” during the 40s and early 50s.

The book is short – 143 pages – and includes some grainy black and white photos that give a bit of context to her story. “Fishcamp” itself was a camp that her family established a few miles down the Yukon from their home village of Holy Cross, where Dorothy’s family went to spend the summer, fishing and collecting berries and the like. Her family lived a subsistence lifestyle – her father hunted and fished for food, his mother preserved the meat and the berries and what they were able to collect during the short spring, summer, and fall to help them get through the winter.  What little cash they had was from selling furs from animals that her father hunted, and during the summer, he earned a bit of money piloting boats down the Yukon.

Dorothy was one of apparently 15 children and though she doesn’t mention the burden that so much childbirth had on her mother, it’s clear that there were a lot of children around and all of them were engaged in the project of hunting berries, plucking the feathers from birds her father had shot, cleaning and drying fish, and the myriad activities necessary to live well in the summer, and have enough food to get through the winter, when food would be scarce.

The village of Holy Cross was founded in 1857 by a Catholic Priest and they created a mission there, which included an in-resident school for those who didn’t live near the village, but also included classes and school for those like Dorothy who lived in the village and could get to school. She attended school as a young girls when urgent chores at home did not preclude her attendance. She was (I believe) the 3rd oldest, so as more kids came along she not only helped he mother with food gathering, prep, and storage, but also taking care of younger children.   As she got older and more capable, several times she had to go to school every other year.    By her account she was a good student and loved school. She also loved to read, but reading material was scarce.

Her mother sounds like an extraordinary person – all the things she was able to do while her husband and Dorothy’s father was away hunting and trapping and preparing and storing all the food they needed to get through the winter.  They also had to take care of dogs, as dog sledding was a major form of transportation in the winter.  

She does note that occasionally there were issues with home-brew and some incidents related to drunkenness, but she doesn’t indicate that alcoholism was as much of a problem as I sometimes read that it is today in native Alaskan communities. Most of the memories she shares, are pleasant and positive, and she said she got a lot of help from her mother and sisters in recalling events for the book. Her book is very conversational, as though she were telling it to you at the kitchen table. Occasionally she apologizes for a digression, and then comes back to her main story.

All in all, a very interesting and enjoyable book to get a feel for Native Alaskan culture in a small village in the interior of Alaska in the mid 20th century.  One can’t help but like and respect Dorothy – and I sent her a note thanking her for writing this book.  I was able to read most of it on my plane ride back to San Diego from Anchorage.  But  her story is restricted to her experience as an Athabaskan Native Alaskan – there are in fact at least five different ethnic groups in Alaska, the Athabaskan being the largest, living in the largest portion of the territory in central Alaska.  Those considered by most of us in the lower 48 as “Eskimos” live on the West and Northern Coasts of Alaska 

Why this Book: Selected by my literature reading group.  Several of them had read the book and wanted to read it again. My wife has read it twice. And we had liked Towles’ other books Gentleman in Moscow, and The Lincoln Highway.

Summary in 3 Sentences: Written from the perspective of a young woman from the midwest living and working in New York in 1938, trying to find her way, living in a women’s boarding house, sharing a room with a rather flamboyant roommate. They are out one evening and meet an intriguing and charming man which sets off a series of events that go in many unanticipated directions.  The story is about the maturing and evolution of her character as her close friends come and go, as she gets into and out of relationships, finds her way into the moneyed social classes,  getting increasing responsibilities at work, and trying to sort out what it all means.

My Impressions:  A really enjoyable read – and I loved the writing.  The characters were interesting and it was fun to look at the lives of a group of well-to-do young adults living in NYC in the late 30s, as the depression was waning and the US was carefully watching what was happening in Europe. But the aggressions of Hitler and what was happening in Europe, and the struggles of most Americans during the depression were of little concern to these self-preoccupied 20 somethings from good families with money, looking for fun, love and excitement in New York City. 

The title of the book is taken from a list found in George Washington’s papers entitled: “Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation,”  and Towles provides all 110 of these rules in original spelling and grammar, as an appendix to the book.  Many are anachronistic, but they are rules for an aspiring social climber in the mid 18th century for how to maintain one’s detached decorum and demonstrate good breeding.  They include table manners, how to show appropriate deference to one’s superiors, and how not to be pulled into the muck of behaving like the unwashed masses.  Very much a reflection of English upper class sensibilities. They would not be out of place in Downton Abbey.

After reading the book, I was wondering if there was any point to the engaging story and clever writing. I believe that perhaps a clue may be in the book’s title, and that Towles included Washington’s “Rules of Civility” in the appendix.  The rules are how to play one’s role, to get one what wants, to climb the social ladder by behaving properly.  To be “authentically” oneself is dangerous.   One must learn to suppress and manage one’s emotions, not threaten the social order, and stay disciplined in following the “rules of civility.” 

I would recommend to anyone choosing to read this book, to go through the appendix first, and keep Washington’s “rules of civility”in the back of their mind as they enjoy the Rules of Civility.  

Many of the characters in this book were indeed young and endeavoring to do what is expected, either to climb to, or remain in the upper classes.  Two of the male characters and one of the female characters broke that rule – sensed the artificiality of the lives they were leading, and followed their heart to find out what they were truly made of.  My assessment of Katey Konent, our narrator, was that she was in the middle – not necessarily drawn to the world of upperclass civility, recognizing its shallowness, but unwilling to give it up.  In the end she chose to follow her own path, but without throwing out the rules – she colored within the lines,  but her heart (it seemed to me) was elsewhere.  

There were spots where Towles opened the door to more substantial topics, but he didn’t dwell there – he didn’t go through the door, left it open and moved on. Rules of Civility does not demand introspection or reflection on one’s values or life,  and can be enjoyed simply aa a good read – largely because of Towles’ writing.  As I read the book, I underlined passages and quips that I found inspired and creative. Towles is the master of the bon mot.  But on further reflection on the topic of authenticity, or conformity to social norms, I came to believe that there is more here than meets the eye.  

Here are but a few of the lines I underlined and which I believe capture some of Towles’ wit and insight, as well as both the wisdom and the prudence contained in Rules of Civility: 

• Be careful when choosing what you’re proud of – because the world has every intention of using it against you.  p 37
• (A group of alienated Russians gathering at a bar) In such close proximity, time slowly strengthened their sentiments while diluting their resolve. 31
• That’s the problem with being born in New York, the old newsman observed a little sadly. You’ve got no New York to run away to.  85
• Wearing a man’s suit and a white collared shirt, she was blowing smoke rings and wishing she was Gertrude Stein.  113
• There are tens of thousands of butterflies: men and women like Eve with two dramatically different colorings – one which serves to attract and the other which serves to camouflage – and which can be switched at the instant, with a flit of the wings.  117
• Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane – in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath – she has probably put herself in unnecessary danger….One must be prepared to fight for one’s simple pleasures and to defend them against elegance and erudition and all manner of glamorous enticements.  128
• But as the Greeks teach us, there is only one remedy for that sort of hubris.  They called it nemesis. We call it getting what you deserve, or a finger in the eye, or a comeuppance for short.  133
• For what was civilization but the intellect’s ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and huate cuisine)?
• …the kind of man who would have been better off at sea – that world without women or children or social graces, with plenty of work and unspoken codes of camaraderie.  141
• After all, where I came from the mission was to pay as little as one could without stealing  190
• Even at ten feet you could tell she was spinning a yarn at a friends’s expense.  As Jack introduced me, I wondered how long I’d have to chat before I could extricate myself politely. 203
• There it was again. That slight stinging sensation of the cheeks. It’s our body’s light-speed response to the world showing us up; and it’s one of life’s most unpleasant feelings – leaving one to wonder what evolutionary purpose it could possibly serve.  204
• On the panel in front of me were two silver buttons. One that said “Now,” and one that said “Never.” 207
• It was like she’s said all along: She was willing to be under anything, as long as it wasn’t somebody’s thumb. 215
• (After being asked what he thought of Thoreau’s Walden) Tinker: Well at first I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. Four hundred pages of a man alone in a cabin philosophizing on human history, trying to strip life to its essentials.  Kate: But what dit you think in the end?  Tinker: In the end – I thought it was the greatest adventure of them all.  228
• Thoreau says (in Walden) that men mistakenly think of truth as being remote – behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the reckoning.  When in fact, all these times and places and occasions are now and here. In a way, this celebration of the now and here seems to contradict the exhortation to follow one’s star. But it is equally persuasive. And oh so much more attainable.  230
• For the most part, in the course of our daily lives we abide the abundant evidence that no such universal justice exists. Like a cart horse, we plod along the cobblestones dragging our masters’ wares with our heads down and our blinder in place, waiting patiently for the next cube of sugar.  252
• Anne: There’s a pretty clear difference between physical and emotional needs. Women like you and I understand this. Most women don’t. Or they’re unwilling to admit it.  256
• Anne: Most people have more needs than wants. That’s why they live the lives they do.  But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs.  259
• The picture was an hour under way, so I watched the second half and then stayed for the first. Like most movies, things looked dire at the midpoint and were happily resolved at the end. Watching it my way made it seem a little truer to life.  259
• As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion – whether they’re triggered by anger or envy, humiliation or resentment – if the next thing you’re going tosay makes you feel better, then it”s probably the  wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I’ve discovered in life. And you can have it, since it’s been of no use to me.  p. 260
• I suppose that Anne was right when she observed that at any given moment we’re all seeking someone’s forgiveness.  297
• I know too well the nature of life’s distractions and enticements – how the piecemeal progress of our hopes and ambitions commands our undivided attention, reshaping the ethereal into the tangible, the commitments into compromises.  324

There is much wisdom in Rules of Civility, and it can be contrasted with the practical prudence we see in the characters, following the “rules,”  going along to get along.  But Towles doesn’t tell us which is which – it is for the reader to distinguish.   Because of the engaging story and his smooth-as-butter writing and wit, Rules of Civility  can be enjoyed superficially as a good and fun read, or one can go deeper and explore where the wisdom might be.  Who were truly happy and fulfilled, and who were simply reaping the rewards of social approbation and a comfortable lifestyle that come from following the “rules of civility,”  keeping the status quo’s values unchallenged and in check.  And what are WE doing?  Who do we know who has thrown the rules of civility to the wind in order to indeed be true to themselves and their dreams, and become the person they aspire to be? And what do we see when we look in the mirror?