Posts in: Books

Currently Reading: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman 📚

The Hmong have a phrase, hais cuaj txub kaum txub, which means “to speak of all kinds of things.” It is often used at the beginning of an oral narrative as a way of reminding the listeners that the world is full of things that may not seem connected but actually are; that no event occurs in isolation; that you can miss a lot by sticking to the point; and that the storyteller is likely to be rather long-winded.… If a Hmong tells a fable, for example, about Why Animals Cannot Talk or Why Doodle Bugs Roll Balls of Dung, he is likely to begin with the beginning of the world.

Started and stopped reading: All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld 📚

Doubt I’ll pick it back up. I enjoyed the Commonweal interview with Rothfeld — at least I think I did; I’m only ever half paying attention to podcasts.

I think very often of a quote from one of CS Lewis’s essays, (wonderfully read by Ralph Cosham here):

When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget but as an ideal we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority.…The man who cannot conceive a joyful and loyal obedience on the one hand, nor an unembarrassed and noble acceptance of that obedience on the other, the man who has never even wanted to kneel or to bow, is a prosaic barbarian.

Add minimalist tendencies to equality I suppose that’s what I expected to find — a praise for excess over minimalism and equality. But if that’s what Rothfeld is doing, it’s absolutely nothing like Lewis. The first essay not only shows no sign of Lewis’s sentiment, but seems to lack any sense of satisfaction or reverence at all.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I found no indication that this would improve through the book. And I’m too slow a reader to find out

Finished reading: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff 📚

Because, ya know, I needed to reaffirm the horror of it all. 🤓

I have way more thoughts than I feel like writing down. And since very few of them are nice or happy anyway, I’ll skip most of them for now.

Zuboff is ardent (and absolutely correct) about the disorienting world that the surveillance capitalists — from Google on down the line — are creating more-or-less unimpeded, but she leaves you with a bit of an anxious disorientation, too. Democracy, individuality, personal freedom, community, even resistance — although these words and ideas are peppered throughout the book, they lack any flesh-and-bone quality.

Fortunately, those aren’t the things I read it for, and my own anti-surveillance project now enjoys some fresh vigor.

My new mantra, jumping off one of Zuboff’s subheadings, is Be the friction you hope to see in the world. The world needs more friction than it currently and increasingly avoids, and that will require more unpolished faith, and more gritty resurrections. And if you plan on doing any of this yourself, you might take heart from a quote from Karl Jaspers which I am once again thrown back upon:

The truly real takes place almost unnoticed, and is, to begin with, lonely and dispersed. . . . Those among our young people who, thirty years hence, will do the things that matter are, in all probability, now quietly biding their time; and yet, unseen by others, they are already establishing their existences by means of an unrestricted spiritual discipline.

While I was reading JD Hunter’s recent book, the routine was to take 5-month-old Will and before reading to him ask, “Do you wanna read about demooocracyyy?” The subject matter is more or less as bleak, but now that I’m reading Shoshana Zuboff that routine has taken a more ominous tone…

”Do you wanna to read about surveillance caaapitalism?”

He prefers Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. 📚

Finally Reading: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff 📚

I’ve put this off because a) I’m sure I already agree with it, b) I’m sure I already hate everything it’s about as much as anyone can hate such things, and c) I stubbornly refused to order it and for the last 5 years I felt like maybe I was politely shaming bookstores across the country who didn’t stock it on their shelves.

I’m reading it now because a) last month I finally found a bookstore in Brunswick who had it (the owner simply said, “It’s terrifying”), b) I’m inspired by the fun fact that the author lives not far from us (or so the bookstore owner tells me), and c) I’ve fallen behind on the anti-smart phone project this year and need a little extra motivation.

It’s also an increasingly important and unavoidable question: How as parents are we going to handle the incredible stupidity of this invasive and life-destroying rectangle?

And so, without further excuse or ado…

Currently Reading: The Present Age by Soren Kierkegaard 📚

Inspired by Matthew Crawford’s recent bit on AI and wedding speeches

What does it mean to outsource a wedding speech to AI? In a very real sense, says Crawford, it means to not show up to the wedding.

And this is, of course, what AI means for most of the things we so happily and thoughtlessly apply it to: It means to not show up for the life you were made to live.

It’s tempting to label the excerpts from Kierkegaard that Crawford uses as nothing short of prescient, but they are probably more accurately described as deeply insightful but oh-so-human.

As Walter Kaufmann puts it, in what is probably the most interesting preface ever written:

Read for the flavour, chew the phrases, enjoy the humour, feel the offence when you are attacked, don’t ignore the author’s blunders, but don’t fail to look for your own shortcomings as well: then the book will make you a better man than you were before. But if you should find it too strenuous to read for the joy and pain of an encounter with a human being who, exasperated with himself, his age, and you, does not—let’s face it—like you, then leave the book alone and do not look for marvellous anticipations!

I shall do my best.

Finished reading: Democracy and Solidarity by James Davison Hunter 📚

Really, very, and quite disappointing. Without question or surprise, Hunter’s description is spot-on and his diagnosis illuminating. But while he kinda-sorta points in a few hopeful directions — namely, hope itself, but also forgiveness, the practice of distinguishing between the morality of citizens and systems, a de-emphasis on the primacy of voting as a marker of citizenship — he says very little about them. In the final chapter, Hunter does say he is hopeful and that he believes “the times are full of real opportunity if one has eyes to see them.” True enough, I think hope. But he follows this immediately by admitting, “Sadly, my eyesight is not very good.”

😒

And that’s about 8 pages from the end of the book.

Among the many reasons for the gloom, I’m sure that the status of our media and social media is high on the list. The healthy, dynamic public square, however elusive it has always been, is a noble and necessary aim. But our current modes of communication and self-education preclude, it seems, even the desire for a public square.

Regardless, in a sense, of America’s particular history, a central prognosis is stated rather bluntly and abruptly in Chapter 11, “The Great Unraveling.” Hunter refers to the “nebulous” status of “truth and falsehood, fact and fiction, real and unreal,” and admits that “the problem will remain entrenched for as long as [our current] media environment exists.” And, aside from the generic need to convince nearly the entire population to “stop snorting and smoking that shit” — i.e. get off social media and turn off the television — who has a solution for that?

Sadly, no one does. (Though some are doing a lot of work in that direction.)

Don’t get me wrong. A clear diagnosis and a sober view of history are worth their weight in democratic gold. As for prescription, Hunter’s previous guidance for “affirmation and antithesis” is as relevant and urgent as ever. And to his credit, he is still nothing if not truthful about the situation. As Makoto Fujimura put it, “hope can be hope only if it admits that which is darkest while urging toward the light.”

I plan to carry the baton of hope as best as I can and to continue pointing in as many good directions as I can find. (Jürgen Moltmann is not a bad place to start 🙂)

But, man, if this book didn’t feel like a really bad handoff…

📚Happy New Book in the Mail Day! Celebrate accordingly — by putting it on the shelf behind all the other books you’ll read “very soon.”

I purchase books in such a way that I can walk up to my own bookshelf and say, “Ooo, I should read that!” 📚