I put in on my wish list, though while perusing the title I happened upon the work of Iain McGilchrist. He seems to think along the same lines, certainly parallel in orientation, but attributes the fall of culture specifically to the left hemisphere of the brain. The left hemisphere is a fine tool, he says, but a poor master. This tool has come to dominate Western culture, its way of perceiving the world, and the only way back to balance is to employ the right-brain more, much more, and always remember that the left-brain is just a tool and the right-brain is the master.
The Iliad or the Poem of Force, by Simone Weil
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I’m at around page 70. I’m skeptical of the brief history he provides of the scientific takeover of religion and of the positioning of science as a malevolent force destined for dehumanization.
Maybe it’ll round out as I read on.
My (evolving) view is that we’ve become so overly enamored at technological advancement that we’ve lost our way in terms of defining any goals and instead decided science can’t be restrained. We treat all discovery as sacred and must permit it space to breathe. It’s not that technology is malicious. It’s that we can’t abdicate our uniquely human sense of morality just because we’ve discovered new shiny objects.
And that perhaps is where religion fits in because surely no one is blind to the horrors of theocracies, particularly those that stand in the way of progress, but religion at some level does serve as a bastion against the machine.
But a book that says, “let’s be careful how we handle emerging technologies by using time honored methods of preserving human value” isn’t much of a book.
Anyway, my thoughts so far.
Just finished re-reading Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots. Feels like with her writing that I pick up on something new each time.
Just started to read Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy. I am having some trouble enjoying the parts where his rhetoric feels aggressive and forceful, but he has a lot of interesting insights.
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This is certainly part of it. Technology is not, in itself, malicious, is inevitable, and in certain fields is indispensable. On the other hand, there is something pernicious in the way advanced technologies integrate themselves into the way we live at every level, social, psychological, practical, to the point that to be without them for any extended period of time manifests as being without a part of ourselves. That is to say, they have made themselves a necessary part of our identity, which is spooky.
I’m a little further ahead in the book and the thesis I think is stronger and better supported than that. But I’ll withhold final judgement until I get to the end. I have also started reading Ellul’s “The Technological Society”, which dovetails with this book, but should be a bit more philosophically rigorous.
The Hive by Camilo José Cela.
Capitalism: A Global History by Sven Beckert
Dengue Boy by Michel Nieva
The Family Moskat by Isaac Singer. Lots of names to keep straight.
I have NO idea how I got to this thread other than hitting search.
Very trippy. Hell yeah.
Currently Reading:
The Early Modern Subject: Self Consciousness and Identity from Descartes to Hume by Udo Thiel
The Soul: A History of the Human Mind - Paul Ham. Massive read, happened upon it at the local bookstore.
Waverley
by Walter Scott
The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy by Ernst Cassirer
Starts with some good stuff on Nicholas of Cusa and his attempt to recover and expand on notions of something similar to intellectus, while informed through the coincidence of opposites. However, it is relying early on a number of unfortunate caricatures of scholasticism (even of the nominalists I don’t care for)and Platonism to set up its points, which I find annoying.
I just happened to read two books on Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican monk who managed to displace the Medici as de facto leader of Florence before being tortured and executed by the elites’ return to power (all this despite coming from a modest background himself).
The first is Death in Florence, which is an able history of the period. It avoids the tendency of some polemical histories to focus on Savonarola strictly as a saint and critic of the abject corruption of the Borgias Papacy, or more often, as a fanatic set against Renaissance culture and humanism. The irony the author notes is that Savonarola really did represent the majority in the poor in key ways, and was far more committed to republican government that his elite rivals (this is indeed how he ended up getting couped, allowing rivals equal access to being randomly selected as leaders). But it was precisely because he represented the poor and emerging middle class that he managed such a repressive state, and one not nearly so kind to the humanist artistic revolution.
The second is a fiction, fantasyish by Jo Walton on the same man, called Lent. She’s an able historical fiction writer and really captures core figures. The first half, which is just straight historical fiction, is excellent. The second half is more interesting in terms of plot. Through a plot device I won’t spoil, we get to see multiple, somewhat plausible alternative histories. However, as she moves away from the actual history the characters start to feel a bit less realistic. It also ends a bit suddenly. Still a fun read to pair.
There is, as of 2020, renewed efforts to have Girolamo Savonarola made a saint BTW.
Finally, going further back with Florence, I finally started reading Took’s book on Dante. To be honest though, the introduction was every bit as plodding and pretentious as reviewers said. The history parts have been good though. I’m also confusing myself with names and alliances reading about Florentine history two centuries apart.
Identity (L’Identité) by Milan Kundera.
As everyone knows, Kundera was exiled to France in 1975. For this reason, he published some works in French. That novel is one of them. Intriguing and unique, as most of the novels of his bibliography.
Got a copy of Herman Melville’s short stories. Just read Bartleby. Highly recommend, unless you prefer not to.
An exercise of pure freedom despite the machine, but not a rebellion, just an obliviousness to its power. Radical freedom.
I think.
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I read that in my early twenties. It strangely shadowed all of my subsequent employment.
I had my son read it. The “I prefer not to” sums up his work ethic. It had me laughing until it got a bit more serious toward the end, but Bartelby was an identifiable sort.
The ease of classification does not remove an unsettling portion of the story.
At the same time, the employer is captured by an element unlike what others present to him.
You finish Jung vs Borg? Recommend?
I’m about a quarter way through. I find it more interesting and less pessimistic than I find Kingsnorth. I subscribe to a radical optimism that rejects doom and gloom. I don’t think we’re on a societal collision course. I just think we need to remain human and forge our way else we’re going to be miserable internally. I feel like Kingsnorth gets super pissed off at Musk saying we’re going to colonize Mars, as if thinking the solution rests in finding new paths and new frontiers and that that has to stop and we need to deal with what we’ve got. Maybe, but whatever. It’s about making a meaningful world, not about saving the planet, just don’t become slaves to the machines we create to do that.
But I digress. Yes, I recommend it.
I read like five books at once and flip through them like channels late at night. Novels make easier reading, so I’m reading about the Moskat family also. I also just read Bartelby the Scrivner, and that seemed to hit on these threads.
And then I just got a book distinguishing Chochmah and Binah, which can mean different things, but my understanding per the Chabad is that the former is the spark of creativity and the latter the expansion of it into structure. The key is not to live in the Binah, but the Chochmah because the Binah is where AI and alorithms thrive, just computing out the creative spark. Live within the human.
But I digress. Yes, I recommend it.
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The Adventures of a Photographer in La Plata by Adolfo Bioy Casares.