The Challenge of Things: Thinking Through Troubled Times by A.C. Grayling (Notes)

Notes and mental highlights:

" Christianity not only does not have a monopoly on tolerance, kindness and generosity – these are attributes of individual human beings of any religion and none – but in a bloody and tumultuous past it has often exhibited the opposite of these characteristics, and that must not be forgotten."

" If you get to the New Testament for instruction on how to live, you are told to give away all your possessions, make no plans for the future, reject your family if they disagree with you, and stay celibate if you can.  This is the outlook of people who sincerely believed that the Messiah was going to return next week or next month, anyway very soon."

" Christianity is not Christianity but borrowed Greek philosophy."

" The story of a prominent individual's life cannot be complete without the truth about what people felt at the moment of summing up, whether it is in mourning or rejoicing. Let us say what we think, and be frank about it: death does not confer privileges."

" Remember that all this Christian teacher training is aimed at Christian indoctrination of the young, not least the very young. Without indoctrination of the young religion would wither and die of its own implausibility."

" Children should be taught about religion as a socialogical and historical fact, and left to make up their own minds about the merits, such as they are, but each when they have reached maturity.

" When individuals cannot allow their religious loyalties to be trumped by their public responsibilities, they should resign; the alternative is for the public domain to be invaded and disrupted by a Babel of claimed individual religious sensitivities, or even worse, by various religious organizations whose prejudices, taboos, anxieties and antipathies distort the overall public endeavor for a decent and equitable social order which is as inclusive as possible."

"  The Internet is like the Agora of all, except that everyone can attend and have a say. The downside is the volume of rubbish, the anonymous viciousness and sneering, the ad hominem attacks, the paragraph long pretensions to authoritativeness, the degrading of debate it encourages, making the Internet what I before now called the biggest toilet wall in history."

" The sleep patterns of famous people are intriguing. Churchill slept in about two short bursts, the first in the predawn and the second in the afternoon. Lady Thatcher is said to have scarcely slept it off, and some would say it showed. As we age we sleep less, subconsciously aware that we are soon to sleep forever."

"  Is it in irony, a sense or an encouragement that the traditional gift to a retiring employee is a watch?  It is an irony if retirement is a state in which time no longer matters, and the days drift into each other, all resembling Sunday. It is a hint of mortality if retirement is seen as the last chapter in life story, for then it will measure the counting down of one's days. But it is an encouragement if it suggests that the time is at least come to have freedom, fun, opportunities, variety, classes, travel, projects, hobbies, new beginnings."

"  The chief mortuary technician told him that he would not be much needed until January; 'Not many people die at Christmas', said the technician 'but we will be swamped after new year'. My friend asked why, surmising flu and pneumonia, but the technician said, 'People see family and friends over the holidays. But for the old and ill, early January is the start of a long, cold, dark time, with nothing to look forward to. They switch off in droves.'"

"  There is not much middle ground when it comes to teachers. They are either good, in which case they are among the most important people in the world, where they are not good, in which case at best they represent a missed opportunity – which is a serious matter – and at worst they are positively harmful. Teachers are harmful when they put students off a subject of study, thus depriving them of a chance at the fullness of what it could offer. To put the matter harshly, the crime involved is not far removed from poking out someone's eye with a sharp stick."

This Book Will Make You Smarter

Takeaways from the book  This Book Will Make You Smarter; New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking edited by John Brockman. There were a number of scientists and learned people contributing articles. However I understood about 20% of the book. I guess I need to be smarter.

The mediocrity principle simply states that you are special. The universe does not revolve around you; this planet is not privileged in any unique way; your country is not the perfect product of divine destiny; your existence isn't the product of directed, intentional fate; and that tuna sandwich you have for lunch was not plotting to give you indigestion.

Why do you half of all Americans believe in ghosts, three quarters believe in angels, 1/3 believe in astrology, three quarters believe in hell? Why do a quarter of all Americans believe that the president of United States was born outside the country and is therefore ineligible to be president?

In the United States, recent polls show that 39% consider astrology scientific and 40% believe that our human species is less than 10,000 years old. If everyone understood the concept of scientific concepts, these percentages would be zero. Moreover, the world would be a better place, since people with a scientific lifestyle, basing their decisions on correct information, maximize their chances of success.

For youngsters, learning a foreign language and typing should trump long division and writing cursive.

Economists, forecasters, and professional portfolio managers typically do no better than chance, yet command immense salaries for their services.

Although we are pretty good at storing information in our brains, we are pretty poor  at retrieving it. We can recognize photos from our high school yearbooks decades later, yet find it impossible to remember what we had for breakfast yesterday. When we need to remember something in a situation other than the one in which it was stored, the memory is often hard to retrieve. 

Information has importance in proportion to its relevance and meaning. Its ultimate value is how we use it to make decisions and put it in a framework of knowledge.
We live, after all, in the age of information, which makes the ability to focus on the important information incredibly important. Herbert Simon said it best: "a wealth of information creates a property of attention." 

Making good decisions requires concentrated mental effort, and if we overdo it, we run the risk of being counterproductive through increased stress and wasted time. So it's best to balance, and play, and take healthy risk, as the greatest risk is that we'll get to the end of our lives having never risked  them on anything.

Alan Watts Words of Wisdom

Words of wisdom from The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts...

If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will of the wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.

Where belief in the eternal because impossible, and there is only the poor substitute of belief in believing, men seek their happiness in the joys of time.

As far as we can judge, every animal is so busy with what he is doing at the moment that it never answers his head to ask whether life has a meeting or a future.

We fall in love with people and possessions only to be tortured by anxiety for them.

So long as the mind is split, life is perpetual conflict, tension, frustration, and disillusion. 

But the best pleasures are those for which we do not plan, and the worst part of pain is expecting it and trying to get away from it when it has come. You cannot plan to be happy. You can plan to exist, but in themselves existence and nonexistence are neither pleasurable nor painful.

The Christian mind has always been haunted by the feeling that the sins of the Saints are worse than the sins of the sinners, in some mysterious way the one who is struggling for salvation is nearer to hell and to the heart is evil than the unashamed harlot or thief.

Ten Most Inspirational Books I've Read in My Life

While most books one reads generally fall away from memory after you are done with them, I have listed 10 books that I found particularly inspiring, transformative or thought provoking. For my religious friends, this is exclusively a secular list though several of these books speak about faith.

10. Hardy Boys by Franklin W. Dixon, Chip Hilton by Claire Bee, Rick Brant by John Blaine, Tom Swift by Victor Appleton.

My # 10 is a series of books that helped a shy, skinny kid who had lost his father to a heart attack and needed some direction. Plus these books started me on my passion for reading. I got my homework done early so I could read these books.

9. The Complete Book of Running by Jim Fixx

A few decades ago and about 50 lbs. lighter, I used to jog and occasionally raced 5 and 10K races. Fixx was the running guru in the 70s. Geez, I remember a day where I jogged about 10 miles and was not tired.

8. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmshayli

I remember this wasn't an easy book to read. However flow became a mantra. Flow was described as a state where people experienced deep enjoyment, creativity and clarity. Within this state of flow, you lose all track of time. I experienced flow playing basketball or working on a project that interested me. Not enough activities generating flow now.

7. The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts

Watts provides insights on “finding security and peace of mind in a world whose very nature is insecurity, impermanence and unceasing change.” This book was written in the 1950s but it’s wiser that any self-help book you can read today. I've underlined quite a bit of this book.

6. How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Everyday by Michael Gelb

I admire people who are accomplished with many talents and various types of achievements. Those types of people are usually called Renaissance Men or Women. Gelb offers a guide to Renaissance living and pursuits.

5. The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education by Craig Mullaney

Old men start wars and young men fight them. I found it very inspiring and gratifying to read about the education of a man who was a West Point graduate, Rhodes Scholar, a Ranger and an Officer who led men into battle in Afghanistan. I felt better about the prospects for America in the future. Hopefully future generations will do better than what the leaders of the Baby Boomer generation have accomplished.

4. The Way of the Ronin by Beverly Potter

A Ronin was a masterless samurai and warrior who depended entirely upon themselves and their own skills to survive in Japan’s feudal society. In most circles, they were considered outlaws. As anyone who has had the fortune (or misfortune) to “manage me” has learned I’m not the conventional employee type. I read this book in the early 1990’s and it changed my thinking about work, career and life balance.

3. Creating the Good Life: Applying Aristotle's Wisdom to Find Meaning and Happiness, James O’Toole

This book is on my list not necessarily for any information or advice it offers. I found the questions very compelling, particularly those related as to what is living a good life. We have to decide what's best for ourselves. A great book for baby boomers reevaluating their lives and what to do next.

2. Learning to Fail: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life Phillip Simmons

Diagnosed with ALS and given less than five years to live, Simmons accurately describes life as a “terminal condition.” His book opened me to new meanings of life. This book and the Barton book described below offer the insights of brave men facing death and how they have accepted their fates.

1. Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived by Lawrence Shames and Peter Barton

Peter Barton, while facing a cancer that would end his life, wrote a book on how to die but more importantly how to live. Barton offered a piece of advice that I wish I could accomplish in my life… “I promised myself that I would not have a bad day for the rest of my life. I f someone was wasting my time, I’d excuse myself and walk away. If a situation bothered me or refused to get resolved, I’d shrug and move on. I’d squander no energy on petty annoyances, poison no minutes with useless regret.”

My End of the Summer Reading List (Business, Religion and Fiction)

Beach reading was not on my agenda for the summer. I did some minor mental lifting instead..

To improve my business writing, I read Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little by Christopher Johnson. If you are trying to improve your communication skills, branding and career prospects, you'll find this book very helpful with practical writing tips. It's an excellent resource for web and social media communications.

Since I chair some business meetings, I was curious to review Read This Before Our Next Meeting by Al Pittampalli. He offers some valid business advice on when to call a meeting, how to develop an agenda and who to invite. His advice not to invite someone to the next meeting who comes to a meeting but does not participate seems a bit politically risky to me. However he was preaching to the choir to this reader who finds 80% of meetings a waste of time.

Based on a New York Times book review article, I skimmed through Janet Reitman's Inside Scientology, The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion and Render Unto Rome, The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church by Jason Berry. Both books appear to be very well researched and I found both books to be well written and interesting. The Berry book, in particular, will raise your eyes if you are a Catholic. There is obviously a need for much better financial management, use and control of money donated by the faithful.

I felt like I came into the middle of a bigger story as I began Cold Vengeance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Since I had not read any of the preceding books in the Agent Pendergast series, I was at a disadvantage. Pendergast searches for his wife who was believed dead. I enjoyed the action sequences though some seemed very implausible, particularly Pendergast's escape after being shot in a swamp. I did not like the ending either.

I could not get into All Things Shining: Reading the Western Canon to Find Meaning in a Secular World by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly.  Dreyfus and Kelly are philosophers and attempted to write this book for a general audience. However this book was too much mental lifting for me at this time.

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar by Cathcart and Klein

The subtitle of this book is Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes. I'm not sure my understanding of the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Hume and Descartes are clearer but I enjoyed many of the jokes in the book.

It is a novel approach. My Greek Philosophy and American Philosophy texts in college were not this interesting or fun.

Carry this book around and impress your friends!

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

From the Publisher:

"A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11.

For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives."

Very interesting book and theory. However at times, I found it very hard to understand what the author was saying or where he was leading me.

What I took out of it was a confirmation of my skepticism towards "experts", predictions, advice and what passes for knowledge.

I was thinking about some sports related black swans like the 1969 Mets, the 1980 U.S Hockey Team and the recent Appalachian State victory over Michigan in college football.

Taleb discusses black swan examples in religion, history, politics, business and philosophy.

A very deep book. Not a page turner. The book's theme challenges how you think, seek knowledge and experience the world.