531–540 of 1001 posts
I read through the bible every year and each time it shapes my thinking. For example, I was reading Exodus this morning about how we should care for the foreigner. I imagine several thousand years ago this was pretty radical. It also seems very relevant today.
Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg is an amazing eye-opener. It's a book about how how to interact with your fellow humans in a way that enriches the lives of everyone around you. It's full of things that should be obvious, but in practice are not. You can think of it as a more advanced version of Dale Carnegie's "How to make friends and influence people", with more focus on conflicts, and a specific c…
All this "if you answered c, e and f, we are not of the same opinion" feels passive-aggressive to me.
The whole thing feels manipulative to me. It makes me think that people try an insincere way of talking to me, in order to manipulate my feelings and reaction.
I've had huge discussions with friends who try to live the book, and neither of us could make the other see their point.
One of their examples was "My boyfriend likes to go DJing, but sometimes I'd love for him to stay home and cuddle with me. So I clearly tell him that him leaving makes me feel alone and that I would like some warmth. But I don't tell him what to do, to stay at home, for example. I only talk about my own perception and feelings." – "Yes, that's great, but in communication there is the level of pragmatics above pure logical semantics. And you telling your boyfriend that him leaving makes you feel very alone is just another way of saying 'please don't go'".
I always viewed reading a book as collecting a soul. If you fully grok a book, you grok the authors thoughts. Being able to put yourself in another persons mindset is crucial. Speaking of "groking", Stranger in a Strange Land , Time Enough for Love and The Fountain Head have probably had the most impact on my mindset. Each book is rather different, but in general the idea of all three is > You have to be in life for…
Welp. And this is why I think Ann Rand was deeply evil and The Fountain Head was a horrible work of propaganda. It's not okay to be greedy, nor is it okay to be selfish. And these ideas are responsible for much of the harm in the world. It is okay to know what you need and advocate for your needs, to take care of yourself. But that is not being greedy or selfish. And to do it effectively means you have to be able to…
Namely, that people tend not to think for themselves and slavishly follow social convention for no reason. Not for things like, "should I take all this money?" But rather for things like, Does doing this thing actually bring meaning and joy into my life? Or, Do I actually find deep value and beauty in consuming this media? Or noticing how often we adopt opinions of others for our own, without reflecting on whether or not we actually agree, and whether or not we actually care about what this other person thinks.
And then apply these thoughts to your own creative potential. How often have we not created something because others would not have appreciated it or preferred it another way? When was the last time we did something without consensus or approval, on our own, because we wanted to? How many things are we hanging on to because that's what everyone else does and we don't want to be cast out?
Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance This helped me understand the duality of the logical/mechanical and the creative/artistic. Then merging the two.
Yes! This book also got me to read Walden by Henry David Thoreau, which was also life changing. I never fully understood what Pirsig meant by Quality though. I could not understand what it really was, but I didn’t need to. I got so much good out of the book. But if someone could explain better I’d love to hear.
"Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error" by Kathryn Schulz. I especially loved the bit where she explained that if people see things differently, we 1) think they are uninformed. If we know they are informed, we think 2) they are stupid. If we know they aren't stupid, we decide 3) they are evil. I also read another great book that talked about differences between conservative, liberal, and libertarian viewpoi…
Atlas Shrugged: I like this book because it attempts to show how things some people think are virtuous can be bad, and visa versa. The protagonists have a sort of honor code to them that defies common ideas of morality.
Don't Shoot the Dog: Describes how to do positive reinforcement training on dogs, horses, and even your children. People don't seem to realize how similar we are to other animals. Also, it's nice to know that positive methods can be more effective than punishments and dominance tactics.
Grant Cardone's Be Obsessed or Be Average last week.
Finally, but mostly, Maurice Nicoll's Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of P.D. Ouspensky and G.I. Gurdjieff, though I recommend reading what is widely considered the "introductory" text, "In Search of the Miraculous" by P.D. Ouspensky.