Let me just start by saying Steven Johnson is one of my favorite authors. I fell in love with his writing when I first read Mind Wide Open (a book about the neuroscience of every day life) and I have read that book several times since. He has a way of talking to you like he is sitting in front of you having a conversation, not talking AT you or trying to sound like he knows more than he does. It’s really awesome.
Anyway this book I just finished, Where Good Ideas Come From, was a really great read. I finished it in about a week. It talks about his theory on where most of the best ideas/inventions come from (open source as opposed to being secretive) and how they are formed. He talks about what some of the great inventors of the last 200 years had in common (they hung out in coffeehouses or commons and talked with a varied amount of kinds of people instead of a tight-knit group, and they tended to have a lot of hobbies and varied interests in different studies.) He talked about how most great ideas are not eureka moments but slow hunches that take a long time to develop and conjure. It really is fascinating how he pulls all these ideas together. In fact it really has given me a swift kick in the ass to be more active. Be more active in pursuing all of my interests, and instead of reading in bed or on the couch to go read at a Starbucks, to take lots of walks, and write down more of my thoughts and ideas. To be ok with not getting it right all the time and to absolutely revel in all the serendipitous moments in my life. Like I said, its a great read, and I highly recommend it to those interested in where good ideas come from and potentially interested in having some of their own.
Two favorite quotes:
“Chance favors the connected mind.”
“‘Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified.’ - Benjamin Franklin”
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Art Of Non-Conformity
What a book! This beautiful masterpiece is pure inspiration for those who have always felt like their path isn’t that of what society tells us it should be. It gives you hope that you can do it (and also to stay realistic in your journey of non-conformity), it makes you realize that you are certainly not alone in feeling uncomfortable living the life you were told you are supposed to have, and it makes you just want to get up and do it! Chris also has a website where he posts his newest work, ideas, and his own journey in completing his goal of visiting every single country in the world by the time he turns 35 (amazing, right?). I subscribed to his email list and get a weekly email of his most recent inspiration and story that makes you think and keeps you wanting to work toward doing whatever it is you need to do for yourself. I highly suggest buying this book, or at the very least check out the website. It’s worth the read/look and you could find it very useful to getting the courage to do what you want to do (which I know from experience, can be a very very hard thing to do).
Monday, July 11, 2011
Atlas Shrugged
Excellent book! I just could not put it down. I will admit when I came to the sixty page manifesto near the end I just had to skip it, it was pretty much reiterating everything Ayn had said already and I was going to be just so bored. Otherwise marvelous, just marvelous. Some very interesting ideas, although a bit extreme. But I suppose that’s just how she works.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
“This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the rarest one person could pay another: the tribute of feeling free to acknowledge one’s own greatness, knowing that it is understood.”
“Two things were impossible to him: to stand still or to move aimlessly.”
“‘Every man builds his world in his own image,’ he said. “He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.”
“By holding nothing -nothing- above the verdict of my own mind.”
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
“This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the rarest one person could pay another: the tribute of feeling free to acknowledge one’s own greatness, knowing that it is understood.”
“Two things were impossible to him: to stand still or to move aimlessly.”
“‘Every man builds his world in his own image,’ he said. “He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.”
“By holding nothing -nothing- above the verdict of my own mind.”
Friday, July 8, 2011
"I"
So I just finished Sam Harris’ book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. GREAT book, I highly recommend it to all. It also ended on a chapter that I was totally NOT expecting in the slightest. It touched on Buddhism (how it is not an actual religion), mysticism, and how they can actually be good for you and he touches on the topic of consciousness and blazay-blah. REALLY awesome. and I was totally not expecting him to go there considering he is an EXTREMELY famous atheist (lots of great TED talks out there if you’re interested) who just spent a good portion of the book tearing apart Islam and Christianity and how we need to throw them out for our own sake. (Once again, a really great read and I recommend it to all whether you are religious or not).
Anyway, so I just finished that last night and started reading Ayn Rand’s book Anthem, because it was just next in line and it too dealt HEAVILY with the notion of “I” and how imperative it is for happiness and growth. I also strongly recommend this read, and its VERY quick, I finished it in just a couple hours. And because I read at work now (awesome.) I knew I’d finish Anthem fast so I picked up another book before heading out the door and it was I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter (author of Godel, Escher, Bach). And it’s entire focus is the concept of “I” and his theories on….that.
I’m telling you this, aside from bragging about how much I read, because I just think it is SO awesome when things sometimes just seem to come together. These books, when thought about are all very seemingly random and unrelated turn out to, albeit different topics, deal with some same underlying thread. I love it.
And now, my favorite quotes of these books (thus far):
The End of Faith“Faith is rather like a rhinoceros, in fact: it won’t do much in the way of real work for you, and yet at close quarters it will make spectacular claims upon your attention.”
“Even if we were to grant that one of our religions must be correct in its every particular, given the number of conflicting views on offer, every believer should expect damnation on mere probabilistic grounds.”
“It is time we recognize that belief is not a private matter; it has never been merely private. In fact, beliefs are scarcely more private than actions are, for every belief is a fount of action in potentia. The belief that it will rain puts an umbrella in the hand of every man or woman who owns one. It should be easy enough to see that belief in the full efficacy of prayer, for instance, becomes an emphatically public concern the moment it is actually put into practice: the moment a surgeon lays aside his worldly instruments and attempts to suture his patients with prayer, or a pilot tries to land a passenger jet with nothing but repetitions of the word “Hallelujah” applied to the controls, we are swiftly delivered from the provinces of private faith to those of a criminal court.
“As a man believes, so he will act. Believe that you are the member of a chosen people, awash in the salacious exports of an evil culture that is turning your children away from God, believe that you will be rewarded with an eternity of unimaginable delights by dealing death to these infidels - and flying a plane into a building is scarcely more than a matter of being asked to do it. It follows, then, that certain beliefs are intrinsically dangerous.”
“That such metaphorical acrobatics can be performed on almost any text - and that they are therefore meaningless- should be obvious. Here we have scripture as Rorschach blot: wherein the occultist can find his magical principles perfectly reflected, the conventional mystic can find his recipe for transcendence, and the totalitarian dogmatist can hear God telling him to suppress the intelligence and creativity of others. This is not to say that no author has ever couched spiritual or mystical information in allegory or even produced text that requires a strenuous hermeneutical effort to be made sense of. But to dredge scripture in this manner and discover the occasional pearl is little more than a literary game.”
“At the core of every religion lies an undeniable claim about the human condition: it is possible to have one’s experience of the world radically transformed… -most of us know, however dimly, that extraordinary experiences are possible. The problem with religion is that it blends this truth so thoroughly with the venom of unreason. Take Christianity for example: it is not enough that Jesus was a man who transformed himself to such a degree that the Sermon on the Mount could be his heart’s confession. He also had to be the Son of God, born of a virgin, and destined to return to earth trailing clouds of glory. The effect of such dogma is to place the example of Jesus forever out of reach. His teachings ceases to be a set of empirical claims about the linkage between ethics and spiritual insight and instead becomes a gratuitous, and rather gruesome, fairy tale. According to the dogma of Christianity, becoming just like Jesus is impossible. One can only enumerate one’s sins, believe the unbelievable, and await the end of the world.”
“Respect for diversity in our ethical views is, at best, an intellectual holding pattern until more of the facts are in.”
Anthem“There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else. At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of centuries behind him has been spilled.”
“My happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is my own goal. It is my own purpose.”
I Am A Strange Loop“Despite its title, this book is not about me, but about the concept of “I”. It’s thus about you, reader, every bit as much as it is about me. I could just as well have called it “You Are A Strange Loop”. But the truth of the matter is that, in order to suggest the book’s topic and goal more clearly, I should probably have called it “‘I’ Is A Strange Loop”- but can you imagine a clunkier title? Might as well call it “I Am A Lead Balloon”. ”
Anyway, so I just finished that last night and started reading Ayn Rand’s book Anthem, because it was just next in line and it too dealt HEAVILY with the notion of “I” and how imperative it is for happiness and growth. I also strongly recommend this read, and its VERY quick, I finished it in just a couple hours. And because I read at work now (awesome.) I knew I’d finish Anthem fast so I picked up another book before heading out the door and it was I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter (author of Godel, Escher, Bach). And it’s entire focus is the concept of “I” and his theories on….that.
I’m telling you this, aside from bragging about how much I read, because I just think it is SO awesome when things sometimes just seem to come together. These books, when thought about are all very seemingly random and unrelated turn out to, albeit different topics, deal with some same underlying thread. I love it.
And now, my favorite quotes of these books (thus far):
The End of Faith“Faith is rather like a rhinoceros, in fact: it won’t do much in the way of real work for you, and yet at close quarters it will make spectacular claims upon your attention.”
“Even if we were to grant that one of our religions must be correct in its every particular, given the number of conflicting views on offer, every believer should expect damnation on mere probabilistic grounds.”
“It is time we recognize that belief is not a private matter; it has never been merely private. In fact, beliefs are scarcely more private than actions are, for every belief is a fount of action in potentia. The belief that it will rain puts an umbrella in the hand of every man or woman who owns one. It should be easy enough to see that belief in the full efficacy of prayer, for instance, becomes an emphatically public concern the moment it is actually put into practice: the moment a surgeon lays aside his worldly instruments and attempts to suture his patients with prayer, or a pilot tries to land a passenger jet with nothing but repetitions of the word “Hallelujah” applied to the controls, we are swiftly delivered from the provinces of private faith to those of a criminal court.
“As a man believes, so he will act. Believe that you are the member of a chosen people, awash in the salacious exports of an evil culture that is turning your children away from God, believe that you will be rewarded with an eternity of unimaginable delights by dealing death to these infidels - and flying a plane into a building is scarcely more than a matter of being asked to do it. It follows, then, that certain beliefs are intrinsically dangerous.”
“That such metaphorical acrobatics can be performed on almost any text - and that they are therefore meaningless- should be obvious. Here we have scripture as Rorschach blot: wherein the occultist can find his magical principles perfectly reflected, the conventional mystic can find his recipe for transcendence, and the totalitarian dogmatist can hear God telling him to suppress the intelligence and creativity of others. This is not to say that no author has ever couched spiritual or mystical information in allegory or even produced text that requires a strenuous hermeneutical effort to be made sense of. But to dredge scripture in this manner and discover the occasional pearl is little more than a literary game.”
“At the core of every religion lies an undeniable claim about the human condition: it is possible to have one’s experience of the world radically transformed… -most of us know, however dimly, that extraordinary experiences are possible. The problem with religion is that it blends this truth so thoroughly with the venom of unreason. Take Christianity for example: it is not enough that Jesus was a man who transformed himself to such a degree that the Sermon on the Mount could be his heart’s confession. He also had to be the Son of God, born of a virgin, and destined to return to earth trailing clouds of glory. The effect of such dogma is to place the example of Jesus forever out of reach. His teachings ceases to be a set of empirical claims about the linkage between ethics and spiritual insight and instead becomes a gratuitous, and rather gruesome, fairy tale. According to the dogma of Christianity, becoming just like Jesus is impossible. One can only enumerate one’s sins, believe the unbelievable, and await the end of the world.”
“Respect for diversity in our ethical views is, at best, an intellectual holding pattern until more of the facts are in.”
Anthem“There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else. At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of centuries behind him has been spilled.”
“My happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is my own goal. It is my own purpose.”
I Am A Strange Loop“Despite its title, this book is not about me, but about the concept of “I”. It’s thus about you, reader, every bit as much as it is about me. I could just as well have called it “You Are A Strange Loop”. But the truth of the matter is that, in order to suggest the book’s topic and goal more clearly, I should probably have called it “‘I’ Is A Strange Loop”- but can you imagine a clunkier title? Might as well call it “I Am A Lead Balloon”. ”
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Ayn Rand & Sam Harris
So my friend David Peppers (who is absolutely fantastic. sweetest, most intelligent and funny man you will ever meet. a total doll.) suggested I read The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand. He gave me a small description of what Rand proposes in the book and it sounded really interesting so I asked and received it for Christmas. I have only been able to digest a couple pages at a time. It is one THICK book to take down. And by thick I don’t mean the size of the book, I mean the content and way it is delivered is just…rough. It’s been awhile since I have really read any philosophy so to say the least I dont feel I am quite at the level I need to be to take it in properly. I am only twenty some pages in right now but I think I will put it down and read some of her other work first. I intend on starting with Anthem and then reading Atlas Shrugged before attacking The Virtue of Selfishness again. It is some DEEP stuff and I would like to read it the way it was meant to be read and understood and I am not going to try and fool myself into thinking I can read stuff higher than the level I’m at right now. That’s not to say I’m stupid or I couldn’t comprehend it if I tried. But I guess I just want to read it with more ease and fluidity than what I’ve experienced so far. You know there is something slightly uplifting about admitting your flaws or weaknesses, knowing I dont think so highly of myself to not admit I struggle from time to time. ha. Anyway, I’m REALLY excited to read Anthem and Atlas Shrugged, I’ve meant to read both for years now and just haven’t gotten around to it. I’ve always heard great things about Rands works.
Before getting to Rand’s books though I am in the middle of The End of Faith by Sam Harris. Wow, what a great writer. I have watched his TED talks and youtube videos for awhile now and it’s so great to finally be reading one of his books. Charles is currently reading his most recent book The Moral Landscape (which I cant wait to get to myself, it touches on how people have morals outside of religion and blazay-blah). Anyway, really great author. He writes the way he talks which makes it that much easier to understand and relate to. Great notes at the end if you want to get further understanding of the things he talks about (you guessed it, he’s an atheist and talks about why and his theories on…everything.) I highly suggest his book if you are interested in that sort of thing, atheism or religion alike. Even if you are religious it is always good to get another’s opinions, even if they differ from your own.
SO many books I want to read next and so little time. I’m always in the middle of two or three books at any given point in time. I just fucking love reading! It’s funny because ever since I quit college (until I have a reason to go back) I have been reading non-stop. I hardly read the books I wanted to read when I was in college, and I read in high school (I’ve always loved to read) but not nearly as much as I have been lately. It just feels so fucking good. AH! I love knowledge! and being challenged! and made to THINK!
word up.
Friday, July 1, 2011
My Running Book List of 2011
Book List 2011:
1. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, Philip K. Dick - January 4th (?)
2. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Anne Rice - January 12th (?)
3. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, And the Future of Reason, Sam Harris - February 8th
4. Anthem, Ayn Rand - February 9th
5. The Power of Myth, Joseph Cambell & Bill Moyers - March 1st
6. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand - April 5th
7. The Element, Ken Robinson - April 26th
8. The Art of Non-Conformity, Chris Guillebeau -April 28th
9. A Brief Guide to World Domination, Chris Guillebeau - April 29th
10. The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla, Nikola Tesla - May 4th
11. The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris - May 19th
12. Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot, Richard Restak - June 2nd
13. Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson - June 11th
14. Everything Bad is Good For You, Steven Johnson - July 18th
15. Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs - July 23rd
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling - July 25th
17. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling - July 26th
18. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling - July 28th
19. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling - July 31st
20. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling - August 6th
21. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling - August 18th
22. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling - August 29th
23. Albert Einstein: The Enduring Legacy of A Modern Genius, Richard Lacayo - September 5th
24. Pictures of The Mind, Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald - September 14th
25. Mind Wide Open, Steven Johnson - October 2nd
Currently Reading:
Synaptic Self, Joseph LeDoux
Books on the Horizon:
How The Mind Works, Steven Pinker
The Feeling of What Happens, Antonio Damasio
The Physics of Consciousness, Evan Walker
The Future of the Brain, Steven Rose
Welcome to Your Brain, Sandra Aamodt & Sam Wang
Books Put On Hold:
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand
Books I've Given Up On:
The Story Of O, Pauline Reage
I Am A Strange Loop , Douglas Hofstadter
1. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, Philip K. Dick - January 4th (?)
2. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Anne Rice - January 12th (?)
3. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, And the Future of Reason, Sam Harris - February 8th
4. Anthem, Ayn Rand - February 9th
5. The Power of Myth, Joseph Cambell & Bill Moyers - March 1st
6. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand - April 5th
7. The Element, Ken Robinson - April 26th
8. The Art of Non-Conformity, Chris Guillebeau -April 28th
9. A Brief Guide to World Domination, Chris Guillebeau - April 29th
10. The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla, Nikola Tesla - May 4th
11. The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris - May 19th
12. Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot, Richard Restak - June 2nd
13. Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson - June 11th
14. Everything Bad is Good For You, Steven Johnson - July 18th
15. Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs - July 23rd
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling - July 25th
17. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling - July 26th
18. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling - July 28th
19. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling - July 31st
20. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling - August 6th
21. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling - August 18th
22. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling - August 29th
23. Albert Einstein: The Enduring Legacy of A Modern Genius, Richard Lacayo - September 5th
24. Pictures of The Mind, Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald - September 14th
25. Mind Wide Open, Steven Johnson - October 2nd
Currently Reading:
Synaptic Self, Joseph LeDoux
Books on the Horizon:
How The Mind Works, Steven Pinker
The Feeling of What Happens, Antonio Damasio
The Physics of Consciousness, Evan Walker
The Future of the Brain, Steven Rose
Welcome to Your Brain, Sandra Aamodt & Sam Wang
Books Put On Hold:
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand
Books I've Given Up On:
The Story Of O, Pauline Reage
I Am A Strange Loop , Douglas Hofstadter
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