What I've Been Reading Lately

Ernest Becker: The Denial of Death. This book has to rate in my top three in terms of those that have impacted my life. I've read Becker's Pulitzer Prize-winning magnum opus yet again recently. Each time I come away with a deeper appreciation for his simple yet arresting thesis: Our uniquely human capacity for self-consciousness puts us in a psychological bind--we feel as if we're immortal, but we know we are going to die someday. In order to give our lives and the universe some semblance of meaning, we've created culture in all its varieties as an unconscious defense against death anxiety. Our cultural constructions prescribe what is real, good and valuable, and our lives are lived in a "heroic" attempt to validate ourselves. We do this by attempting to rise above others, or by blending in with others--attaching ourselves to that which seems to "have it all figured out" (e.g., persons, projects, institutions, ideologies, religions, science, etc.), thus giving us a sense of security and immortality. Unfortunately, in the post-modern era, these traditional hero systems have lost their power to enthrall us. Science is unlikely to come up with solutions to the problem of mortality, nor to the psychological problem of "finality in infinitude." Therefore, says Becker, we need new, self-transcending illusions which will bring the world together rather than pitting us against one another.

I would also highly recommend the 2006 documentary film, Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality for a fascinating portrayal of Becker's central ideas. The film is beautiful yet startling in content, narrated by Gabriel Byrne, and includes riveting monologue with the likes of Irv Yalom, Sam Keen, Sheldon Solomon, Daniel Liechty, and others.

Greg Grandin: The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World. The timing of Grandin's latest book couldn't have been better, given the Oscar success of Steve McQueen's compelling yet difficult-to-watch film, Twelve Years a Slave. Grandin's main focus is on the life and times of Amasa Delano, an ill-fated, early nineteenth-century Duxbury, MA, ship captain. Delano and his crew happened upon a slaving vessel (the Tryal) drifting off the coast of Chile which had, unbeknownst to them, been taken over by its hold of West African slaves. Delano and his crew ultimately manage to overtake the vessel, returning the ship to its captain and its slaves to captivity (and many to immediate execution in Chile). Never receiving the substantial, life-changing financial compensation be believed would be forthcoming for his act of maritime heroism, Delano meanders from one unsuccessful ocean and land venture to another (including writing a memoir of his encounter with the Tryal, which Hermann Mellville later drew upon to write his novel, Benito Cerreno). Delano ultimately dies a broken, jaded man, beset by self-doubt and bitterness. In the midst of Delano's story, Grandin deftly weaves a rich, textual tapestry filled with remarkable Melvillian anecdotes from the time, little known historical details about the dubious and ruinous sealing trade--not to mention the seemingly bottomless horrors of the Atlantic slave trade at its peak--and the plight of West African slaves who, if they survived the perilous Middle Passage, found themselves in equally perilous times once they reached the shores of South America. Throughout the narrative, the deep spiritual contradiction at the heart of the American slave trade is underscored again and again. One simple passage illustrates the immensity of the problem:

It might seem an abstraction to say that the Age of Liberty was also the Age of Slavery. But consider these figures: of the known 10,148,288 Africans put on slave ships bound for the Americas between 1514 and 1866 (of a total historians estimate to be at least 12,500,000), more than half, 5,131,385, were embarked after July 4, 1776 (pg. 8).

Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined. This book is a tour de force in support of the assertion that despite conventional wisdom to the contrary, overall human violence is actually at its lowest level in history. Embedded in the midst of engaging prose and frank depictions of barbaric past practices (some of which will really blow your hair back), Pinker takes great pains to visually display the archival and other data sources he used in support of his thesis. He goes on to posit numerous "pacifying factors" (e.g., the Leviathan of the state, cosmopolitanism, the rise of gentle commerce, and the escalator of reason, to name a few) that have played a substantial role in the recent precipitous decline in violent practices. Indeed, we still have much work to do in terms of our collective enlightenment as a species (Pinker acknowledges this). However, this book goes a long way toward debunking the claims of those on the religious far-right who assert that the world is only becoming a worse place--more chaotic and immoral--as time goes by.

Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. Jonathan Haidt advances not only a plausible thesis about the differences between liberals' and conservatives' perceptions of morality, but an empirical one (see his website: http://www.yourmorals.org/ to participate in the on-going research and to see the results). Haidt argues that there are six bases of morality coming from human evolution: (1) care/harm, (2) fairness/cheating, (3) liberty/oppression, (4) loyalty/betrayal, (5) authority/subversion, and (6) sanctity/degradation. He goes on to assert that liberals, while caring to some degree about the other five, overly emphasize care/harm, whereas conservatives emphasize all six more equally, and that this is a better way to live. My primary disagreement with Haidt's assertion is that in order for liberal democracies to flourish (such as those in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Australia), it is necessary that care/harm be the foundational moral basis for society. If other moral bases are considered to be of paramount importance, then extreme violations of human rights--in the name of protecting sancity/degradation or fairness/cheating, for example--are much more likely to be commonplace. Ask yourself: If the protection of life is not the most significant value to center a society around, then what is (i.e., what is more important than life), and why is this necessarily so? If care/harm is not the most important moral basis, then should the degradation of any of the other five moral bases be sufficient grounds for terminating the life of the offending human being? If so, would you prefer to live in such a society (e.g., medieval Europe, Taliban-governed Afghanistan, North Korea, China, etc.)? If not, then we must agree that the protection of life and the minimization of harm is indeed the most important basis for morality. The available evidence (e.g., see Steven Pinker's tome, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined) seems to suggest that as human societies advance, they are more likely to be convinced that this is so.

Sam Harris: Lying. I've read all of Sam Harris' books, listened to most of his lectures online, and am a contributing member to his "Waking Up" podcast, where Sam interviews some of the world's foremost thinkers, movers, and shakers. Despite the typically iconoclastic nature of Sam's work, I recommend it all highly. This product is similarly impressive, albeit brief. Harris makes a compelling argument against the ubiquitous social practice of lying (including so-called "white lies"), given its cost on our lives, both in terms of the extra emotional energy it takes to craft and maintain lies, and their high moral cost. Until shown otherwise, I continue to believe that Sam Harris is the most articulate man alive in America today...

J. Anderson Thompson: Why We Believe In Gods: A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith. For those who may not be familiar with the burgeoning scientific research on the naturalistic origins of religion, this short book is a good place to start. Thompson reviews how science is coming ever closer to a complete, coherent, empirical explanation of religion's origins. In essence, the religious impulse is being shown to be a by-product of various mental capacities and social adaptations that have substantially aided human survival over the millennia. These inclulde decoupled congnition, patternicity, theory of mind, and hyperactive agency detection, among others. These capacities of mind not only enhanced our ancestor's ability to survive, but they also set the stage for a religious conception of human life to take root and flourish.

Robert Jay Lifton: The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Robert Jay Lifton (in addition to the fact that he's now 90+ years old and still able to hold his own in debates with the likes of Steven Pinker) is the fact that his many books result from decades of direct personal contact with individuals experiencing some of the last century's seminal tragic events, including survivors of the Hiroshima bomb, victims of brainwashing and thought reform in China and Korea, and veterans of the Vietnam War, to name a few. This book's focus may be the most tragic of all--human evil in the guise of Nazi doctors. Here, Lifton plumbs the depths of the human psyche's capacity for duplicity ("doubling"), rationalization, and cruelty. In the process, he lays bare the morally bankrupt Leitmotif of the extremist's (be they Nazi, Pol Potian, Rwandan, or Al-Quadian) vision: "Kill in order to heal."

Stephen Cave: Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and how it Drives Civilization. Steven Cave's first book-length project pleasantly surprised me. It's more than a simple rehashing of the powerful insights of Ernest Becker and the Terror Management theorists (and I can't recommend these highly enough); rather, it's a treatise of humanity's four central methods of attempting to attain immortality, and how each of these eventually fails us. Cave manages to imbed this analysis into a narrative illuminated through the lives of figures from history or great literature (e.g., Alexander the Great, Nefertiti and Akhenaten, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the Epic of Gilgamesh, among others) bringing each of these vividly back to life in fresh, new ways (no pun intended...). Ultimately, Cave recommends "the wisdom narrative" and its various key insights as a more sure guide for our lives in the present.

Kirk Strosahl, Thomas Gustavsson, & Patricia Robinson: Brief Interventions for Radical Behavior Change: Principles and Practice for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. The textbooky cover and title may suggest a snoozer lies within the pages. Not true... This book's topic--rapid behavior change through the implementation of FACT's premises--is delivered in clear, crisp prose, one pithy statement after another. Indeed, it's hard to be bored when the wisdom expressed is so often of the unconventional variety, but also timeless. For example, FACT encourages us to adopt a more accepting stance toward our painful emotions, intrusive memories, unpleasant physical sensations, and negative thoughts rather than trying to rid ourselves of them though various avoidance strategies. Instead, come to see unpleasant inner experience as signals of a life out of balance rather than as pathology to be eliminated. We are encouraged to stay in the present moment, not get lost in "self-stories", accept distressing private experiences in a detached, nonjudgemental way; then, act courageously in the direction of our chosen values. This seemingly paradoxical approach helps symptoms diminish as we live vitally in the midst of periodic suffering.

Junot Diaz: This Is How You Lose Her. This is a very readable and enjoyable collection of short stories by fiction writer Junot Diaz, whose best-selling book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, completely won me over with its awkward, Asperger's-esque, Dominican anti-hero. This Is How You Lose Her continues the theme of the plight of the Dominican young man and woman in America, ultimately wanting the same thing (i.e., love, happiness, and prosperity), but going about it using antithetical, often wrong-headed methods. Over and over, the central male character in these stories tries to meet his perceived needs at the expense of the women in his life, rarely learning anything from their pain and humiliation until it's too late. The story lines are compelling, the dialogue is convincing, (and often edgy), and the themes are universal in their appeal.

Yuval Noah Harari: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. I was raised in a devoutly religious home, and attended a university sponsored by my faith (BYU). My particular line of study at the undergraduate level largely steered clear of classes in biology, anthropology, or history. Given the underlying faith-supporting agenda at BYU, I doubt that--even had I taken such courses--I would have been exposed to some of the information presented in Harari's excellent book. His elaboration of three primary human epochs--the Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific Revolutions--goes a long way toward explaining how it is that Homo Sapiens, rather than our primate cousins, came to dominate the planet. Harari explains--in clear, engaging prose--the boons but also the staggering costs of all three revolutions. In doing so, he puts forth intriguing assertions I'd never encountered before. For example, Harari argues that--far from being the boon that most conventional thinkers assume it to be--the Agricultural Revolution may have contributed more to human misery than any other element of our history as a species. Our domestication of grains did indeed lead to dramatic increases in food production, but it also was responsible for our population explosion leading to many of the ills that beset us today, such as pandemics, the extended workday, class societies, and standing armies, to name a few. Brimming with insights, Harai's Sapiens reads much like Jared Diamond's classic Guns, Germs and Steel, except that this time, it is the entire species that stands to lose if we do not carefully navigate the up-coming AI (artificial intelligence) epoch.