Vigil

 by George Saunders

I felt a new and powerful truth being beamed directly into me, by a vast, beneficent God, in the form of this unyielding directive:

Comfort

Comfort, for all else is futility

This is a story of a spirt sent to guide a man, a remorseless oil Barron, into the afterlife. 

I read Saunders because his essay "Though Experiment" sent me down a path of exploring radical but active non-judgment. From this I've read Simone Wells, Camus, Murdoch, Foucault and others. 

Saunders would call this elevation. AI says elevation is a movement towards moral, emotional and spiritual clarity-- rising above habitual pettiness, fear or self centeredness. 

Vigil explores this idea though fiction. How does one deal with the challenge and problems of being elevated? Especially with someone who has lied to and hurt many others. You can't be passive here. And, you can't let those with (perhaps rightful) judgements run you over.

Elevation assumes that who we are is hard to change. Many of our choices are driven by our background and opportunities. Our ability to change ourselves is very limited and our ability to change our ability to change ourselves is even more limited. You didn't choose to come into this earth. You are inevitable. 

All we can do is accept people for who they are. Comfort them. Build relationships with them. Everything else is futility. 

Part of me worries that, taken to an extreme, this approach looks passive. I have a cousin who is a police officer. I would love to see how she responds-- there are people in this world who are violent and dangerous. We need to take action to protect ourselves. 

Having said that, the more I explore elevation, the more I realize the truth in it, that there is very little we can do to change people. In adversity, we can stand our ground, look at the facts of the situation, and decide our actions on that. 

Perhaps a hurricane is good metaphor. Of course I have to take action to mitigate the destruction of a hurricane. But, becoming angry or being afraid of a hurricane... that is waisted time and energy. Instead I must respect the hurricane and deal with it as it is. 

Loving what is

by Byron Katie

Some books are a paragraph of idea plus hundreds of pages of exploration, application and examples. This is one of those. In this case the exploration is all warranted as Katie wants to help us suffer more successfully.

Suffering is caused by believing stressful thoughts, not by external events. The Work helps you see that "what is actually true" is what you want when your mind is clear. 

When suffering because of something, ask yourself

• Is it true?
• Can you absolutely know that it's true?
• How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
• Who would you be without the thought? 

Is Earth Exceptional? The Quest for Cosmic Life

by Jack Szostak and Mario Livio.

Is there life elsewhere than planet earth? That question is still open. This book is very dense with facts, explorations and lines of inquiry that cover the efforts to answer this question.

Death on the Nile

By Agatha Christie

Another well written mystery by Christie. Even though I saw the movie a few years ago, I still enjoyed reading the book just to see how well the pieces were woven together. 

There is a small plot hole in that the first murder had to be planned out before hand, yet executed with perfect luck and timing otherwise the murderer would have easily been exposed. You don't realize that unless reflect back on the book after you've finished reading. So, I'll forgiver Christie.

Eichmann In Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

By Hanna Arendt

Eichmann was a German-Austrian official in the Nazi Party and an officer in the SS. He wasn't a particularly bright individual. He followed the law. He followed his orders. He wasn't particularly antisemitic, yet somehow he oversaw the death of millions of Jews. 

There is a great amount of detail in the book. What struck me is how the Nazi's twisted their law and their language so that the majority of officials and officers didn't need to actually need to admit what they were doing. The officers were each doing their small part, following their lawful orders, to help accelerate the final solution for the Jewish problem. One helps improve the process needed to strip Jews of their citizenship. One helps build interment camps. One helps organize transport of undesirable people. And one helps build gas chambers so that there is an opportunity for a peaceful death, rather than starvation, slavery or defeat by the enemy. 

So much pretty language. 

In "The Plague" a character says "I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from the failure to use plain clear-cut language. So I resolved always to speak-- and to act-- quite clearly, as this was the only way of setting myself on the right track."

Amp It Up

By Frank Slootman

This book is a contrast with "Slow Productivity." Though Slootman is an executive and Newport is self driven.

I discussed with a coworker. She wonder what Slootman would have changed if the book was written after years of malaise, and not during a tech bubble. Of course you should work and fast when the wind is at your back. 

None the less, the book is a good reminder....

1. Raise you Standards

2. Align Your People and Culture.

3. Sharpen Your Focus

4. Pick Up The Pace

5. Transform Your Strategy

Now that I reread the above, except for #4, Slow productivity is well aligned with the above five points.

Raise Your Standards = Obsess over Quality

Align Your People and Culture + Sharpen Your Focus + Transform Your Strategy = Do Less

A whole essay could be written about the difference between “Pick up your pace” and “Work at a natural pace”

Laziness Does Not Exist

By Devon Price PhD. 

Part of me wants to love this book, especially the message. The narrative was too stuffed or choppy for me to deeply embrace it. The focus is too much on those who skimp on sleep, work 18 hour days and neglect their health. 

Things to take away...

Laziness Is Not Evil

If someone is acting lazy, then are they really...

• Not taking proper care of themselves?
• Depressed?
• Procrastinating?
• Apathetic?

Is your laziness a sign that you are depressed, procrastinating or apathetic? What is behind that?

Pick your battles.  Life is Messy. You can't do everything. Take care of yourself. Seek inspiration, not shame. You can't save the world. 

The author says the solution to all of this is boundless compassion. If we really want to dismantle the Laziness Lie and set our selves free, then we have to question every judgment of laziness.

 

Slow Productivity

By Cal Newport

Do less.

Work at a natural pace

Obsess over quality.

Newport covers the way genius grow there ideas.

Now, do I want to grow my ideas? Different question. 

Alison Roman

Nothing Fancy and Something From Nothing.

So, these cook books are fancy, and the recipes are not from nothing. Either that or Roman’s pantry is much more exotic than mine.

The recipes are wonderful. The techniques are never complicated, which is nice.

I want to keep them as a reference. 

Five Little Piggies

By Agatha Christie

As alway's, Christie's writing is high quality.

I appreciate her drive to vary the form of her mysteries, clues and characters without lowering quality or bringing in bizarre twists. After one writes dozens murder mysteries, it would be easy to stop caring. 

Feal Free

 by Zadie Smith

Amongst other things, Zadie takes pop culture and applies philosophy to it. 

"To be truly free, we had to rid ourselves of all bitterness and resentment too. How was this possible when bitterness and resentment are generated afresh every day?" -- This is open and unanswered.

"In Britain we are always doing this-- mistaking an esthetic choice for an ethical one"

"People can be too precious about their heritage, about their tradition-- writers especially. Preservation and protection have their place but they shouldn't block freedom or theft." Smith and cultural appropriation, not the theft of objects.

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist though any other medium." --Martha Graham on the drive to create.

"Compassion helps. You may not sleep the deep unruffled sleep of Hero Boy, but in Kaufman's (And Schopenhauer's) that's about as good as it gets. 

"Like so many of us, he remains stuck between those twin poles of want and boredom."  

"One way of dealing with the border of our own needs is to complicate them unnecessarily, so as to always have something new to desire."

World of Wonders

By Robertson Davis

A worthy conclusion to Davis’s Deptford series.

There is a theme in this book about how different people can have different perspectives on the same thing. To one person, a rock is a reminder of how small things may have big consequences. To another that rock is evidence of a grudge harbored over decades. These perspectives color, our choices and actions where the actual facts may suggest the situation is somewhere between the two. 

Davis uses these dueling perspectives to explore various topics, including Canada. Is it the backwaters of a dying empire? A blank canvas, full of new possibilities?