My Favorite Books of 2020

My Favorite Books of 2020

The following is a review of the favorite books that I completed last year. Some  started the year before, or even earlier, but they go in for this year if I completed them this year. And, of course, I started some books in 2020 that I've yet to finish. I include most of the books that I read last year. There are two reasons for this. One, I read even more news articles and essays than usual to keep up with current events (and my goodness it was a busy year on that account). And, two, I'm a very selective reader. I usually won't start a book unless I'm confident that I'll be getting something worthwhile out of taking the time and effort to read it. Most of the books I will cite I've reviewed, although a couple of late reads haven't been reviewed yet and I don't tend to review well-known fiction. 

So, on to the list. 

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

by 

Bryan Stevenson

This was an outstanding book, at once uplifting and horrifying. Uplifting as we read about Stevenson and his colleagues and clients struggling for justice. Horrifying as I read about the South (mostly) in the 1990s maintaining a legal system that seems little different than of Jim Crow days. One would have thought that the world of To Kill a Mockingbird would be long past, but not with many of Stevenson's cases. 

The Principles of History and Other Writings in Philosophy of History

by 

R.G. Collingwood,

 

William H. Dray (Editor),

 

W.J. Van der Dussen (Editor)

Okay, first, I read this book quickly before this, but this was a careful and complete reading. And I won't bore you with details, as this is clearly a work of limited interest to most people. But if you've any interest in thinking very deeply about history (and you've already read his The Idea of History), then this book is a must. 

Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World

by 

Robert D. Kaplan

This book now holds a special resonance with me. When I read it in early 2020, I had no idea that C and I would be moving later that in the year from Brooklyn to Colorado, now living where we can see Pike's Peak out our front windows. This made Kaplan's road trip (which continued on to San Diego) all the more poignant. But even if you don't make this trip, like all of Kaplan's work, it's a deep reflection on the State of America and the world. He combines a journalist's eye with a scholar's learning. My review. 

Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions

by 

Jeffrey J. Kripal

This book, like the other books by Kripal that I've read, provides the intellectual equivalentof a roller-coaster ride. The book revolves around Kripal's personal story,which begings with him as a devout Catholic kid from a small town in southeast Nebraska, then becoming a monk, then becoming a scholar of Hinduism, then a chronicler of Esalen, and then becoming an explorer of the fringes of reality in contemporary America, which includes UFOs and other weird (paranormal) phenomenon. And he approaches all of these topics as an extraordinary scholar-explorer. My review. 

The Return of Holy Russia: Apocalyptic History, Mystical Awakening, and the Struggle for the Soul of the World

by 

Gary Lachman

I'm an established fan of Lachman's work, so my appreciation of this work should come as no surprise. Lachman isn't a scholar, at least in the traditional sense of holding an academic post or by concentrating his inquiries on one limited topic. Perhaps he can best be described as an intellectual journalist whose main interest centers on aspects of the Western intellectual and cultural tradition that are no longer (or never where) on the center stage of Western intellectual life. In this book, he takes an intellectual journey east to Russia. For those, like me, who held only a partial and fragmented sense of Russian history, culture, and thought, this book is a great boon. Lachman, with his usual patience, thoroughness, and lucidity, provides a grand tour of Russian thought and culture from its Byzantine and Viking roots up to the present. My review. 

Men in Dark Times

by 

Hannah Arendt 

Even bum times have some rewards. One upside for me was that I took advantage of a "pandemic" offer that opened up the Hannah Arendt virtual reading group to all comers.

(It's sponsored by the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College.) This was the first work that we discussed when I joined. I'd read some of this book before, but not all of it. It's a book of biographical essays about a wide array of individuals: Karl Japters, Pope John XXIII, Isak Dinesen, Bertolt Brecht, and others. What more need I say: it's Hannah Arendt! 

New Leviathan: Or Man, Society, Civilization, and Barbarism (Revised)

by R.G. Collingwood & 

David Boucher (Editor)

This wasn't my first reading of The New Leviathan, but my first reading of this edition that Collingwood scholar David Boucher edited. It includes Boucher's introduction and some additional material. But one needs no excuse to read and re-read this great work. Its continued relevancy is apparent to anyone looking around our world today. My review.  

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

by 

James Nestor

Breath? We all breathe, so what's the big deal? Read this book and you'll find out. Like my choice of Scott Carney's book (below), Nestor is a hands-on investigative journalist who not only researches his topic, but he also dives into experiments and travels to out-of-the-ordinary places (such as the catacombs of Paris) to make his story vivid and complete. 

The Golden Day: A Study in American Literature and Culture

by 

Lewis Mumford 

Lewis Mumford is one of the great humanists of the twentieth century and a great explorer and expositor of the American experience. This early work about some of the greats of American literature and letters is a wonderful appreciation of those who shaped the American experience with their reflections, writers such as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Melville (whom Mumford helped rescue from obscurity). My review. 

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism

by 

Hannah Arendt,

 

Jerome Kohn (Editor)J

These are the early essays of Hannah Arendt that run from her days as a young scholar in Germany (with the prologue of a television interview in Germany from the early 1960s) on through 1954, shortly after she'd burst onto the American scene with her work The Origins of Totalitarianism. A must for any serious student of Arendt; i.e., anyone who wants to think deeply about politics. Alas, no review, too much that could be said! (Lame excuse.) 

Collingwood's The Idea of History: A Reader's Guide

by 

Peter Johnson

Perhaps you're not ready for a dive straight into Collingwood's The Idea of History, or you want a considered overview and assessment (as I did), then this is an excellent choice. My review. 

Mavericks, Mystics, and Misfits: Americans Against the Grain

by 

Arthur Hoyle 

One perk of throwing one's book reviews onto the internet, not only on my blog, but also onto Goodreads and Amazon, is that occasionally an author will contact me to ask if I would read his or her book and share a review. If the book looks like it would suit me, I agree to do so, and this book is one such instance. And a happy one indeed. Hoyle gathers a series of biographical essays about a wide array of American characters, beginning with the early American divine Roger Williams to persons living among us today. The diversity of these characters (some known to me beforehand, some not) is counter-balanced by the sense that they are all Americans and a part of our shared American experience. The book provided an enjoyable and valuable read. My review. 

The Wedge: Evolution, Consciousness, Stress and the Key to Human Resilience

by 

Scott Carney

Like James Nestor (Breath, above), Scott Carney is a hands-on investigative journalist who takes a thourough and intriguing look at the interactions of the human body and mind. A fun and informative read as Carney, like Nestor, travels far and wide to investigate his topic, and, like Nestor, he undertakes some exciting (and risky) ventures to provide first-hand insights into his topics. All in all, fun and instructive. My review.

Angle of Repose

by 

Wallace Stegner 

For a long time, C has described this novel as one of her favorites. So, as we contemplated our long trek in a rental truck from Brooklyn to Colorado Springs this past June, the audio version of this novel received a nomination for a listening project and was so selected. And what a great choice it was! We thought something that related to the American West would be most appropriate given that we were moving to the Mountain West. This novel provides a wonderful tale that flips back and forth between the late nineteenth century and the 1970s. Thanks to C for tolerating (nay, enjoying) another trip through this novel. No review from me, but plenty of takes are available of what is perhaps the best work of this outstanding novelist. 

Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril

by 

Thomas Homer-Dixon  

In September I learned that Thomas Homer-Dixon was releasing a new book, and I bought it as soon as it was available. I'd read his book The Upside of Down and gotten through a chunk of his The Ingenuity Gap (see below). I've also read many shorter pieces and watched presentations by Homer-Dixon. He is, for my money, one of the most important voices addressing issues surrounding climate change and environmental degradation. In this book,  Homer-Dixon asks--in a very deep and considered way--whether we can realistically hope to change the disastrous course upon which our civilization remains intent upon. Homer-Dixon trained as a political scientist, but his scope of expertise reaches into the natural sciences and the humanities. It's a bracing but also hopeful book. 

Prairie Nocturne: A Novel

by

Ivan Doig  

C and I decided to read to each other after we finished The Angle of Repose. This book, by another writer centered in the American West, Ivan Doig, is set in the 1920s. It's a fine tale. It's at the end of a trilogy, but that wasn't any impediment to our enjoying it. 

One of Ours

by 

Willa Cather 

Another read-aloud. We'd read aloud Cather's My Antonia years ago, and enjoyed it. In fact, C has read most of Cather's works, but not this one. So into it  we went. This one begins in rural western Nebraska before the First World War and runs into the war (in more than one way). It was quite an engaging story centered on Claude, a young man coming of age and trying to find his place in life. The tale moves from the Nebraska prairie to New York harbor to a troopship crossing the Atlantic to the battlefields and villages of France. I was deeply impressed by Cather's mastery of so many characters and settings. An outstanding work.  

The Ingenuity Gap: How Can We Solve the Problems of the Future?

by 

Thomas Homer-Dixon

As I mentioned above about Homer-Dixon's Commanding Hope, I'd started his The Ingenuity Gap long ago but never finished it. This year I took the opportunity to read it all the way through. It is worth it, to say the least. Alas, it's insights recorded a generation ago are still all too relevant to the world today. My review. 

The Grapes of Wrath

by 

John Steinbeck

Another read aloud, and a great one. I'd read some Steinbeck before (The Pearl, in high school--it's a wonder that I can remember that far back), but nothing since then, so I really only know him by reputation. As it turns out, his reputation is well-earned. Not only is this a powerful, deeply moving tale, but the writing is quite extraordinary. In one brief chapter, Steinbeck describes a turtle crossing the road with the attention to detail of a great painter. And, of course, he moves his readers with the pathos and tribulations of his characters and the horrible injustices that they face. It's a portrait of America, complex and disturbing. A great book. 

The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World

by 

Barry Gewen 

One of the great traditions about the end of each year are lists of best books chosen by different folks. This book, and the following two, come from these lists. Thse three books allowed a strong finish to the non-fiction reading year. This book centers on Henry Kissinger, a figure who's been both honored and reviled, but who can't be ignored. Gewen delves into Kissinger's role and decision in Chile and Vietnam, but the most intriguing part of the book is Kissinger's relation to other Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany who thought deeply about politics.  All were exiled from their native country (Germany) and all of them eventually settled and worked in the U.S.  The three, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, and Hans Morgenthau became seminal figures in American political thinking. (But only Morgenthau had a close relationship with Kissinger). An outstanding work of intellectual history. My review. 

The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes

by 

Zachary D. Carter

I described the preceding book as "an outstanding work of intellectual history." So is this work and the following one. A trifecta! In this work (review forthcoming), Carter traces the career of John Maynard Keynes and his most noteworthy intellectual progeny. One would not have thought it possible, but my appreciation for Keynes increased significantly having read this work. 

Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy

by 

Wolfram Eilenberger

The final entry for this year and another strong contender. These four individuals were the giants of German philosophy in the period from 1919 to 1929, and they taught or  influenced some of the most important thinkers who came after them. I came away with a better understanding of the project of each of them. I now enjoy a greater apprecation of Wittgenstein; I still think Heidegger a stinker and Benjamin an enigma (I still don't grasp what others find valuable in him); and I have a new found interest in Cassirer. Cassirer is the oldest, most "bourgeois," and traditional of the four, and the one of the four whom I definitely intend to read more of. I suppose that says a lot about me. I suppose that I'm a philosophical fuddy-duddy, but so be it. I y'am what I y'am. 

In reviewing my list, especially the last three books and my continued reading of Arendt and Collilngwood, highlights my interest in the period from the First World War to the conclusion of the Second World War. I'll be reading more of thinkers from this period and more about this period. This was a period of social, political, economic, cultural, and intellectual upheaval. Sound familiar? As I write this, the U.S. Capital is under siege from a mob. (History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. A cliche? Perhaps, but some truth in it, nevertheless.) 

Now, for my top picks. In fiction, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, with a strong showing by Stegner and Cather. 

For the non-fiction, I will exclude consideration any works by Arendt or Collingwood, as they are sui generis. And I will avoid anything else too nerdy and pick something that most folks might read. Thus, the award goes to James Nestor's Breath, with Scott Carney's The Wedge a strong second and Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy also a strong contender. You can't go wrong with any of these. If you want to take a deeper dive, read Thomas Homer-Dixon. 

So, hope you all had a great reading year and on to 2021!

Reflections on 6 January 2021 Through the Lens of 4 May 2016

A posting from my Facebook page today.

I posted this blog entry on 4 May 2016, long before Trump became president or even the Republican nominee.

Why do I post this again here and now? To say "I told you so?" Frankly, yes, in part.

But I also want to rub some noses in this in order to drive home a hard lesson. If you act like a child and play with fire, you'll get burnt. While all of these past four years have been shocking they've not been surprising. The utter capitulation of the Republican Party has shocked (and saddened) me. I thought there were more patriots among them. And now, today. I remain hopeful that these events today represent the death throes of a dying regime. But even when Trump is out of the White House, we know that far too many Americans aren't committed to democracy and the rule of law. That is truly frightening. Folks committed to democracy and the rule of law--including former Republicans and anti-Trump Republicans--have gained the upper hand for now. An electoral battle has been won. But we're in a long struggle to win back our American heritage. To bring back our fellow Americans to the value of democracy and the rule of law.

My concluding words from my blog of May 2016:

"I join him [Andrew Sullivan] in urging everyone concerned with the well-being of our Republic to take heed of his warning. This is no longer an issue of party victory or a time to gloat over the collapse of any semblance of respectability in the GOP. It's more serious than that. Much more serious."

These words apply today and for times to come.

SNGTHOUGHTS.BLOGSPOT.COM

Andrew Sullivan Takes on Trump the Demagogue

A reader's journal sharing the insights of various authors and my take on a variety of topics, most often philosophy, religion & spirituality, politics, history, economics, and works of literature. Come to think of it, diet and health, too!

Thoughts for the Day: Wednesday 6 January 2021

 

David Sloan Wilson, biologist & economics thinker

The Invisible Hand Is Dead! - Evonomics

evonomics.com

Or, as another Wilson (Edward O.) and I put it in a 2007 article, “Selfishness beats altruism within groups, altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.

--David Sloan Wilson

Dark Star Rising

Gary Lachman

“Oceania is at war with Eurasia. It has always been at war with Eurasia,” Orwell tells us at the start of 1984—although, of course, as in Vladislav Surkov’s “nonlinear war,” here the sides change according to the directives of Big Brother. With [Alexander] Dugin, however, they remain stable, although for Oceania we should read the Atlanticists; the maritime character is the same. Eurasia has always been at war with the Atlanticists, and if the way in which Dugin’s meme has gone from simulacrum to reality is any gauge, some of the most exciting stages in this battle are to come.

Collingwood's the Idea of History

Peter Johnson

In Collingwood’s view, historical facts are significant only as answers to questions.

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt 

Men, though they are totally conditioned existentially—limited by the time span between birth and death, subject to labor in order to live, motivated to work in order to make themselves at home in the world, and roused to action in order to find their place in the society of their fellow-men—can mentally transcend all these conditions, but only mentally, never in reality or in cognition and knowledge, by virtue of which they are able to explore the world’s realness and their own.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Since the rise of the scientific approach in the humanities, that is, with the development of modern historicism, sociology, and economics, such questions [the traditional questions regarding the nature of this form of government and the principle which sets it in motion] have no longer been considered likely to further understanding; Kant, in fact, was the last to think along these lines of traditional political philosophy. Yet while our standards for scientific accuracy have constantly grown and are higher today than at any previous time, our standards and criteria for true understanding seem to have no less constantly declined.

The Master and His Emissary

Iain McGilchrist

I share Wittgenstein’s mistrust of deceptively clear models: and, as Waismann said, ‘any psychological explanation is ambiguous, cryptic and open-ended, for we ourselves are many-layered, contradictory and incomplete beings, and this complicated structure, which fades away into indeterminacy, is passed on to all our actions.’

The Way to Love

Anthony De Mello

This is what happened: First your society and your culture taught you to believe that you would not be happy without certain persons and certain things. Just take a look around you: Everywhere people have actually built their lives on the unquestioned belief that without certain things—money, power, success, approval, a good reputation, love, friendship, spirituality, God—they cannot be happy. What is your particular combination?

Thoughts for the Day: Tuesday 5 January 2021

 

"Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount."

- A Chinese proverb made famous in the West by Winston Churchill.

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt

Here we shall have to concern ourselves, not for the first time, with the concept of history, but we may be able to reflect on the oldest meaning of this word, which, like so many other terms in our political and philosophical language, is Greek in origin and derived from historein, to inquire in order to tell how it was —legein ta eonta in Herodotus. But the origin of this verb is again Homer (Iliad XVIII) where the noun histor (“historian,” as it were) occurs, and that Homeric historian is the judge. If judgment is our faculty for dealing with the past, the historian is the inquiring man who by relating it sits in judgment over it. If that is so, we may reclaim our human dignity, win it back, as it were, from the pseudo-divinity named History of the modern age, without denying history’s importance but denying its right to being the ultimate judge.

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

Keynes could examine patterns of human behavior and study trends in the way people actually made decisions; that was science, a subject of meaningful inquiry. But he could not investigate rationality itself. Rationality simply was—or was not.

Breath

James Nestor

When perceived stress level is very high, the vagus nerve slows heart rate, circulation, and organ functions. This is how our reptilian and mammalian ancestors evolved the ability to “play dead” hundreds of millions of years ago, to conserve energy and deflect aggression when under attack by predators.

The Master and His Emissary

Iain McGilchrist

Bureaucratisation and capitalism, though not necessarily themselves the best of bedfellows, and at times perhaps in conflict, are each manifestations of the will to power, and each is linked to Protestantism.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

And in his celebrated critique of Max Weber’s separation of fact and value, Strauss traces Weber’s thought forward from its benign origins in neo-Kantianism to a dangerously judgment-free social science. “In following this movement toward its end we shall inevitably reach a point beyond which the scene is darkened by the shadow of Hitler.” Weber’s commitment to objectivity, which translated into a refusal to make value judgments, was a direct path, Strauss maintained, to Nazi nihilism.

Super Brain

Rudolph E. Tanzi and Deepak Chopra

Stop repeating what never worked in the first place. Stand back and ask for a new solution. Stop struggling at the level of the problem—the answer never lies there. Work on your own stuckness. Don’t worry about the other person. When the old stresses are triggered, walk away. See righteous anger for what it really is—destructive anger dressed up to sound positive. Rebuild the bonds that have become frayed. Take on more of the burden than you think you deserve. Stop attaching so much weight to being right. In the grand scheme of things, being right is insignificant compared with being happy.

The Anatomy of Peace

The Arbinger Institute

So self-betrayal—this act of violating my own sensibilities toward another person—causes me to see that person or persons differently, and not only them but myself and the world also. When I ignore a sense to apologize to my son, for example, I might start telling myself that he’s really the one who needs to apologize, or that he’s a pain in the backside, or that if I apologize, he’ll just take it as license to do what he wants.

Thoughts for the Day: Monday 4 January 2021

 

A Secret History of Consciousness

Gary Lachman

But Einstein was only one of many thinkers and artists for whom “time” had become a central concern. The cubist visions of Picasso and Braque presented a perception of “simultaneity,” of “everythingatonce” rather than “one-thing-at-a-time.”

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

Wars, when they erupted, increasingly were likely to be intrastate rather than interstate. Kissinger, the power politician focused on nation-states and national interest, looked on this future with gloom. He knew he had no answers.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

Many factors went into building political power among nations, from the most unchanging, like geography, to the most mutable and evanescent, like public opinion or morale. Population, raw materials, industrial capacity, technology, and leadership all contributed to power, but for Morgenthau no factor was more important than national character.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

And yet, with his love of the Western tradition, Strauss insistently denied that the Nazis could be traced back to Europe’s Christian heritage. To believe such a thing was to grant a victory to the Third Reich and its nihilistic destruction of the past. “Only someone completely ignorant would say that anti-Jewish thugs are a matter of Christianity,” he declared. “Of course not.” Hannah Arendt agreed. In 1945 she wrote that Hitler and the Third Reich owed “nothing to any part of the Western tradition, be it German or not, Catholic or Protestant, Christian, Greek or Roman. Whether we like Thomas Aquinas or Machiavelli or Luther or Kant or Hegel or Nietzsche. . . . They have not the least responsibility for what is happening in the extermination camps.”

The Machiavellians

James Burnham

The myths are, in the first place, a necessary ingredient of social life. A society in which they would be eliminated in favor of exclusively scientific beliefs would have nothing in common with the human societies that have existed and do exist in the real world, and is a merely imaginary fantasy. Here once more our investigation must be concrete. Certain derivations or myths under certain circumstances are socially useful, others detrimental; when the circumstances change, so may the effects of the myths. The doctrine of the divine right of kings is scientifically ridiculous.

Thoughts for the Day: Sunday 3 January 2021

Dao De Jing

Roger Ames, David Hall

The processive and synergistic forces at work in way-making render the language of discreteness and closure inappropriate. The road is always under construction, and the hands at work are many. While there is the punctuation of consummatory events that separates the paragraphs of one’s lived experience, still the narrative is coherent and continuous: a never-ending story.Sco

The Wedge

Scott Carney

Evolution has gifted humans (and vertebrates in general) two immune systems: the innate immune system and the adaptive one. The innate immune system is the front line of defense and has a standard set of responses—fevers, inflammation, mucus generation, attack cells—to biological threats that are quick and easy to deploy. The innate immune system is a blunt instrument that has a pretty dramatic effect on how you feel. It alters your internal environment to make it hostile to invaders. The adaptive immune system is more selective (this is the Special Forces rather than the regular Army); it identifies the specific threat to the body, learns its weaknesses, then deploys a very targeted response.

Commanding Hope

Thomas Homer-Dixon

[I]t’s important to acknowledge that there’s no clear boundary between human beings and their surrounding natural world— that the natural world is intimately part of us. This means that the boundary of our identity— of our “we”— must expand to encompass nature too. “To regain our full humanity,” writes the systems theorist Fritjof Capra, “we have to regain our experience of connectedness with the entire web of life.”

Big Fat LiesDa 

David Gillespie

Sugar makes us fat. It's directly converted to fat by our liver and it destroys our appetite control so we want to eat more of everything. The more sugar we eat, the fatter we'll be.

Thoughts for the Day: Saturday 2 January 2021

Nixon Agonistes

Garry Wills

The greatest generals of our political history—Washington, Grant, Lee, Eisenhower—have been notably unwarlike men. (MacArthur, thank God, existed outside our political world, outside any world but that bounded by Autobiography.) These supreme commanders have been less bellicose than our Little Colonel, our artillery gunner, our PT boat commander [JKK], or—now—our naval supply officer [Nixon].

Time Warrior

Steve Chandler

All fear comes from picturing the future. Putting things off increases that fear.

Time Warrior

Steve Chandler

You will never 'find' time for anything, if you want time you must make it. --- Charles Buxton

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Terror, the obedient servant of Nature or History and the omnipresent executor of their predestined movement, fabricates the oneness of all men by abolishing the boundaries of law which provide the living space for the freedom of each individual.

An Essay on Metaphysics

R. G. Collingwood

If there is to be anything at all which can in any sense be called natural science, the people in whose minds it is to exist must take it absolutely for granted that there is such a thing as ‘nature’, the opposite (contradictory) of ‘art’: that there are things that happen quite irrespectively of anything these people themselves do, however intelligently or fortunately, and irrespectively also of anything any one else may do even with skill and luck greater than their own. They must take it absolutely for granted that somewhere in the world there is a dividing line between things that happen or can be made to happen or can be prevented by art (and art never succeeds without a certain support from luck), and things that happen of themselves, or by nature.

An Essay on Metaphysics

R. G. Collingwood

[One] sense of the word may be defined as follows. A cause is an event or state of things which it is in our power to produce or prevent, and by producing or preventing which we can produce or prevent that whose cause it is said to be.

Thoughts for New Year's Day: Friday 1 January 2021 Happy New Year!

 

Plato's Revenge

William Ophuls

Nature is not a machine. Nor does humanity stand apart from nature entitled by evolutionary right to lord it over the earth. In consequence, the modern way of life and politics based on the mechanical worldview is rendered obsolete, both philosophically and practically.

Breath

James Nestor

Professional surfers, mixed martial arts fighters, and Navy SEALs use Tummo-style breathing to get into the zone before a competition or black ops mission. It’s also especially useful for middle-aged people who suffer from lower-grade stress, aches and pains, and slowing metabolisms.

The Ingenuity Gap

Thomas Homer-Dixon

In the case of nonrenewable resources, the economic optimists seem to be right, at least going by the evidence of the last one or two centuries. Modern economies appear to adjust easily to scarcities of these resources.

The Ingenuity Gap

Thomas Homer-Dixon

Institutions are grounded in culture, and culture generally changes very slowly. If both institutions and culture must change for a society to adapt to new circumstances, a society may not be able to migrate across its fitness landscape quickly enough to avoid disaster.

An Essay on Metaphysics

R. G. Collingwood

Everything that we call specifically human is due to man’s power of thinking hard. Mere increase of effort, intellectual or any other, does little to increase its effectiveness unless the increased effort is well directed. Without such direction the additional effort is always in great part, and sometimes completely, wasted. High-grade thinking, therefore, depends on two things: increase of mental effort, and skill in the direction of that effort.

This could be said of many other endeavors as well, couldn't it? Cf. with the idea of "focused practice" of musical or athletic skill.