Odysseus
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Trump = Disaster
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Post by Odysseus on Jan 30, 2021 19:35:17 GMT
Well, I finished up the big tome on US Grant a week or more ago.
I've since taken up with another book in my unread collection: The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan.
It's one of the few books that I actually read the entire author's preface (about 15 pages worth), because it sheds useful light on his reasons for writing the book and how it may differ from other books on human history.
Basically it purports to present a view of civilization outside the traditional euro-centric point of view. It's called the Silk Roads because of the great importance that silk played in trade between East and West, often taking the place of coinage and other useful substances.
I'm only about 1/20th through it and no doubt have more to share later.
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Post by Mercy for All on Feb 3, 2021 16:03:32 GMT
Well, I finished up the big tome on US Grant a week or more ago.
I've since taken up with another book in my unread collection: The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan.
It's one of the few books that I actually read the entire author's preface (about 15 pages worth), because it sheds useful light on his reasons for writing the book and how it may differ from other books on human history.
Basically it purports to present a view of civilization outside the traditional euro-centric point of view. It's called the Silk Roads because of the great importance that silk played in trade between East and West, often taking the place of coinage and other useful substances.
I'm only about 1/20th through it and no doubt have more to share later.
I read that book. Basically history through an economic lens without a western-centric POV. Pretty good, I enjoyed it. |
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Odysseus
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Trump = Disaster
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Post by Odysseus on Feb 3, 2021 16:14:58 GMT
Well, I finished up the big tome on US Grant a week or more ago.
I've since taken up with another book in my unread collection: The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan.
It's one of the few books that I actually read the entire author's preface (about 15 pages worth), because it sheds useful light on his reasons for writing the book and how it may differ from other books on human history.
Basically it purports to present a view of civilization outside the traditional euro-centric point of view. It's called the Silk Roads because of the great importance that silk played in trade between East and West, often taking the place of coinage and other useful substances.
I'm only about 1/20th through it and no doubt have more to share later.
I read that book. Basically history through an economic lens without a western-centric POV. Pretty good, I enjoyed it.
Yes, it's generally a well needed perspective.
I just wish it was more of a history text - with dates and eras more clearly defined, and eras grouped by the primary actors. As it is, it's well written but sometimes a bit trying to follow.
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Odysseus
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Trump = Disaster
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Post by Odysseus on Feb 10, 2021 23:17:04 GMT
I had to pad an Amazon order to avoid shipping charges, so I purchased a book titled "Office Assholes; Use FBI Profiler Techniques to Protect Your Job". Even though I'm essentially retired now, some of the descriptions of office assholes ring a bell - one individual in the 90's in particular. LOL.
It's a slim book, can't be more than maybe 100 pages, but entertaining nonetheless. At the end of the book is a list of 40 interview questions for hiring managers to weed out potential office assholes. A lot of them revolve around identifying psychopathic narcissism. Sound familiar?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2021 22:03:38 GMT
I'm trying to wrap up the final volume of McCloskey's Bourgeois Trilogy. With about 300 pages to go, we are looking at the relationship between the protestant reformation and the emergence of a bourgeois culture valuing common people "having a go" and participating in commercial life. There are few books I have enjoyed as much this.
I am not sure what is next on the agenda. It will probably be something by Don Lavoie, such as "Rivalry and Central Planning," or maybe I will read Steve Horwitz's "Hayek's Modern Family."
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Post by Mercy for All on Feb 12, 2021 23:09:10 GMT
Why are you enjoying it?
Hmmm...just looked it up on Amazon. Looks interesting.
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jasmine
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Post by jasmine on Feb 12, 2021 23:42:29 GMT
I am currently reading “KILLING THE BUSINESS - From the Backyards to the Big League’s.” It is the autobiography of brother’s Matt and Nick Jackson, who grew up loving pro wrestling and who, as teenagers, staged their shows in their backyard home in Southern California. The book chronicles their amazing journey from backyard wrestlers to their current status as the most decorated and influential tag team in the world.  |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2021 23:49:40 GMT
Why are you enjoying it? Hmmm...just looked it up on Amazon. Looks interesting. Well, I just really enjoy all the different strands of the conversation. It is partly a re-evaluation of numerous core ideas in economics, by an economist at the top of their profession, at the end of their career. These are thoughts that have had time to develop and it shows. Along with the economic theory and history, we also get an enlightening discussion on ethics, a defense (and elaboration) of virtue ethics, and the evolution from aristocratic to the bourgeois virtues; and a telling of how that evolution first happened in 16th Holland and how it spread across the globe. It is also a discussion of these themes in literature, theatre, and film. Jane Austen and Shakespeare offer a nice illustration of this change in the diverging way they treat commercial life and the issue of whether commercial prudence can ever be honorable (Austen) or not (Shakespeare). Part of the project is to call economist's attention to the importance that the "sacred" plays in human motivations and why a pure profit seeking/self interest/ utility maximizing approach to studying the economy is incomplete. One of the reasons why this project is so interesting to me is that McCloskey has neatly disabused me of a number of ideas in economics that I thought were rather well grounded, but it turns out aren't. I have mentioned the utility maximization idea, that's one example. Another deals with how much causal weight we want to place on things like private property rights, saving, international trade, etc for understanding how and why the modern world developed the way it did. The modern world is such a break with the past and the typical rate of growth known for millennia. Economists since Adam Smith have tried to answer this question and none have really solved it. In short, we escaped the Malthusian trap which had perennially haunted human society. Explaining this "great enrichment" is the purpose of these books. My old explanations were materialistic or economistic. "Piling brick upon brick" (as McCloskey puts it) does not suffice for explaining it as people have been piling bricks upon bricks for millennia. And the same is true for saving money, trading internationally, private property rights, contracts, the rule of law, etc. These are all ancient so if they explain the great enrichment, it should have happened 2000 years earlier. The routine gains from established practices do not add up to enough to explain the great enrichment. McCloskey turns our attention to culture & ethics as the change that ushered in the great enrichment. New norms and beliefs. New ways of talking and thinking are her answer for the change. And the evidence marshaled in support of it is vast. I love learning. I love seeing things in a new way. And this trilogy has done that for me, over and over again. |
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Odysseus
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Trump = Disaster
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Post by Odysseus on Feb 13, 2021 0:43:16 GMT
Why are you enjoying it? Hmmm...just looked it up on Amazon. Looks interesting. |
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bama beau
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Post by bama beau on Jul 12, 2021 2:58:29 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2021 15:19:55 GMT
I'm reading three books right now:
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Ken Wilber
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche
Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough & Chris Tomlinson
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bama beau
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Post by bama beau on Jul 21, 2021 8:27:03 GMT
I'm reading three books right now: Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Ken Wilber Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough & Chris Tomlinson I was blown away by Nietzsche. I must admit, I kind of still am. BG&E, Morals, Zarathustra . . . What other can rival that trilogy? He seemed to be speaking my language so powerfully, even in translation, but his conclusions were troublesome. He was unsettling. Or maybe he was cautionary. It is said that he witnessed a horse being flogged, and that the psychic pain which this caused him disabled him immediately, a disability from which he never recovered until it killed him a decade later. I can believe it. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2021 15:25:17 GMT
I'm reading three books right now: Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Ken Wilber Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough & Chris Tomlinson I was blown away by Nietzsche. I must admit, I kind of still am. BG&E, Morals, Zarathustra . . . What other can rival that trilogy? He seemed to be speaking my language so powerfully, even in translation, but his conclusions were troublesome. He was unsettling. Or maybe he was cautionary. It is said that he witnessed a horse being flogged, and that the psychic pain which this caused him disabled him immediately, a disability from which he never recovered until it killed him a decade later. I can believe it. That's an interesting tidbit. I was turned off by him in college but after reading a book about Alejandro Jodorowsky and Nietzsche's influence on his crazy films, I realized I needed to revisit him. I think I am in a better place to appreciate what he is saying now. If I am gleaning the right message, he is basically making a "post-modern" point. "God is dead" can be read to say there are no universal truths that man can know, which means no morals and ethics, only our will and power. I haven't gotten to the part yet but I am curious how dropping ethical concerns promotes the emergence of man as a superman? Why can't ethical man also develop his faculties to become a superman? Why is it only the amoral that is super? |
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Odysseus
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Trump = Disaster
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Post by Odysseus on Jul 21, 2021 16:48:26 GMT
I became aware of Nietzsche, tangentially, back when "2001: A Space Odyssey" came out. I saved up my pennies and saw it with some other budding naturalists. Took a while to learn that the Richard Strauss theme music, from Also Sprach Zarathustra, was based on something Nietzsche wrote. I guess. And the more I learned of Nietzsche, the less I wanted to know about him. Maybe he had a brain tumor.
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Post by Mercy for All on Jul 22, 2021 15:52:41 GMT
I was blown away by Nietzsche. I must admit, I kind of still am. BG&E, Morals, Zarathustra . . . What other can rival that trilogy? He seemed to be speaking my language so powerfully, even in translation, but his conclusions were troublesome. He was unsettling. Or maybe he was cautionary. It is said that he witnessed a horse being flogged, and that the psychic pain which this caused him disabled him immediately, a disability from which he never recovered until it killed him a decade later. I can believe it. That's an interesting tidbit. I was turned off by him in college but after reading a book about Alejandro Jodorowsky and Nietzsche's influence on his crazy films, I realized I needed to revisit him. I think I am in a better place to appreciate what he is saying now. If I am gleaning the right message, he is basically making a "post-modern" point. "God is dead" can be read to say there are no universal truths that man can know, which means no morals and ethics, only our will and power. I haven't gotten to the part yet but I am curious how dropping ethical concerns promotes the emergence of man as a superman? Why can't ethical man also develop his faculties to become a superman? Why is it only the amoral that is super? I think Nietzsche's influence has quietly pervaded our culture, as we are moving to reduce the criteria of human relationship to "power." I think that comes from Nietzsche. We have thrown off the "source of our morality" as we have privatized or discarded religion, and all that is left as a value or source of morality is "the will to power." Perhaps it is misunderstood or not what Nietzsche intended (he was certainly somewhat ambiguous), but I think some of our main struggles and concerns these days are either predicted by him or influenced by him. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2021 15:59:00 GMT
That's an interesting tidbit. I was turned off by him in college but after reading a book about Alejandro Jodorowsky and Nietzsche's influence on his crazy films, I realized I needed to revisit him. I think I am in a better place to appreciate what he is saying now. If I am gleaning the right message, he is basically making a "post-modern" point. "God is dead" can be read to say there are no universal truths that man can know, which means no morals and ethics, only our will and power. I haven't gotten to the part yet but I am curious how dropping ethical concerns promotes the emergence of man as a superman? Why can't ethical man also develop his faculties to become a superman? Why is it only the amoral that is super? I think Nietzsche's influence has quietly pervaded our culture, as we are moving to reduce the criteria of human relationship to "power." I think that comes from Nietzsche. We have thrown off the "source of our morality" as we have privatized or discarded religion, and all that is left as a value or source of morality is "the will to power." Perhaps it is misunderstood or not what Nietzsche intended (he was certainly somewhat ambiguous), but I think some of our main struggles and concerns these days are either predicted by him or influenced by him. I would agree. We seem to be in the age of private truths (with a little t), aka the post-modern age, which is clearly influenced by Nietzsche. |
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bama beau
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Post by bama beau on Jul 23, 2021 7:32:24 GMT
I became aware of Nietzsche, tangentially, back when "2001: A Space Odyssey" came out. I saved up my pennies and saw it with some other budding naturalists. Took a while to learn that the Richard Strauss theme music, from Also Sprach Zarathustra, was based on something Nietzsche wrote. I guess. And the more I learned of Nietzsche, the less I wanted to know about him. Maybe he had a brain tumor.
He was obsessively neurotic and an avid opium consumer. Still, countless revelatory observations like "there are no beautiful surfaces without terrible depths" have to matter. |
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Odysseus
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Trump = Disaster
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Post by Odysseus on Sept 16, 2021 15:31:04 GMT
Currently reading Jack London's classic, "The Scarlett Plague". The connections to our current pandemic abound. London sets in far in his future, to 2013, when a devastating pandemic has wiped out most of humanity. Civilizations have basically vanished, leaving only very small groups of survivors here and there.
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Odysseus
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Trump = Disaster
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Post by Odysseus on Sept 30, 2021 21:24:20 GMT
And now I've moved onto Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth". Interesting.
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Post by elmerfudd on Nov 1, 2021 23:15:14 GMT
Why are you enjoying it? Hmmm...just looked it up on Amazon. Looks interesting. Well, I just really enjoy all the different strands of the conversation. It is partly a re-evaluation of numerous core ideas in economics, by an economist at the top of their profession, at the end of their career. These are thoughts that have had time to develop and it shows. Along with the economic theory and history, we also get an enlightening discussion on ethics, a defense (and elaboration) of virtue ethics, and the evolution from aristocratic to the bourgeois virtues; and a telling of how that evolution first happened in 16th Holland and how it spread across the globe. It is also a discussion of these themes in literature, theatre, and film. Jane Austen and Shakespeare offer a nice illustration of this change in the diverging way they treat commercial life and the issue of whether commercial prudence can ever be honorable (Austen) or not (Shakespeare). Part of the project is to call economist's attention to the importance that the "sacred" plays in human motivations and why a pure profit seeking/self interest/ utility maximizing approach to studying the economy is incomplete. One of the reasons why this project is so interesting to me is that McCloskey has neatly disabused me of a number of ideas in economics that I thought were rather well grounded, but it turns out aren't. I have mentioned the utility maximization idea, that's one example. Another deals with how much causal weight we want to place on things like private property rights, saving, international trade, etc for understanding how and why the modern world developed the way it did. The modern world is such a break with the past and the typical rate of growth known for millennia. Economists since Adam Smith have tried to answer this question and none have really solved it. In short, we escaped the Malthusian trap which had perennially haunted human society. Explaining this "great enrichment" is the purpose of these books. My old explanations were materialistic or economistic. "Piling brick upon brick" (as McCloskey puts it) does not suffice for explaining it as people have been piling bricks upon bricks for millennia. And the same is true for saving money, trading internationally, private property rights, contracts, the rule of law, etc. These are all ancient so if they explain the great enrichment, it should have happened 2000 years earlier. The routine gains from established practices do not add up to enough to explain the great enrichment. McCloskey turns our attention to culture & ethics as the change that ushered in the great enrichment. New norms and beliefs. New ways of talking and thinking are her answer for the change. And the evidence marshaled in support of it is vast. I love learning. I love seeing things in a new way. And this trilogy has done that for me, over and over again. I like learning, too, but Heavens to Murgatroyd! Do you not sleep well? I've been reading some novels by Nelson DeMille. Strictly entertainment and pretty good entertainment. Author recommended to me by someone on another board. Just before that a couple books by Marvin Kittman. Better of the two was George Washington's Expense Account. Old George knew how to suck a government teat! |
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