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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2638 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 31, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm going through Richter's Pictures of a Socialistic Future, and early novel on dystopian socialism. It's a slow burn, and it's interesting to see what was within the imagination of early observers.

Ooh, I've heard of that book. Quillette had a clever article contrasting passages from it with recent reporting about Venezuela.

I'm reading When We Cease to Understand the World, a non-fiction novel... thing which presents a series of vignettes about real-life scientists and mathematicians, explaining how they arrived at their most famous discoveries. It's really interesting.

"The Happiness Trap, 2nd edition" by Russ Harris. I was recommended this book as a "low-cost, low-effectiveness" potential solution to a wide range of mental problems (depression, anxiety, addiction, etc.). I'm only about 30% in and it's too early to say anything for sure.
I have used a similar book on CBT in the past and that one was definitely worth reading.

I'm reading several things at once. One of them is The Fountainhead. I've said this before, but: I wish that Ayn Rand occasionally turned her skills towards less political subjects. I actually enjoy her writing style a lot and find her fun to read.

Another one I've got going is Peachy Keenan's Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War. Easily the Motte-iest thing I've ever seen in print - it's almost disorienting to see references to BAP, the Cathedral etc. in a book held in my hands, published by an actual press with wide distribution.

I thought The Fountainhead was better than Atlas Shrugged, and came a lot closer to justifying its massive page count.

Agreed. By the time I got to the 60 page speech at the end of Atlas Shrugged, it was a battle of willpower to finish the book.

So, what are you reading?

Re-reading my CS Lewis: Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain, plus some of his other apologetics for the first time. (Last month's subthread on christianity and theodicies put me in mind of him.) I must say, as an atheist, they are the best steelman of christian faith you will encounter. They present a version denuded of all things the sort of person who hangs out on the Motte dislikes. The mystical elements reduce to two foundational miracles: that God was made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, and that your conscience is communication of God rather than a consequence of brain chemistry.

Better, Lewis presents a heady, masculine version of the faith which is largely absent in the therapeutic sop of modern nondenominational churches. He stresses that Christianity calls for radical striving and self-abnegation, for walking through the "narrow gate" ; that accepting Christ means, not nuzzling into the unjudgmental embrace of mother, but asking for father to break your will and reforge you with soul of a saint.

It's unfortunate. The mind-body dualism introduced in the first chapters of Mere Christianity, on which everything else builds, doesn't stand to reason. He spends a good deal of time arguing against the idea the conscience coming from "herd instinct", as he calls it, but his objections have easy answers. Human brains have an id and superego which are represented by different neural pathways; they make "bids" in the parliament of our ego, and the stronger case decides our action. You can see a primitive version of this in the warring segments of lamprey brains trying to decide whether to swim out to seek mates or hide in the rocks.

While Lewis's christianity may be pro-social and psychologically appealing, believing what your reason rejects for emotional relief is cowardly and base. If I am a seeker, I must remain one.

I, Claudius.

I’m really enjoying it so far. It’s interesting to me how older books (I, Claudius was written in the 1930s) tend to have much longer paragraphs compared to todays ADD-riddled one and two sentence paragraphs. I’m thinking particularly about NYT articles where you hardly ever reach four sentences in a paragraph. But modern books are written that way as well.

Reading these older books takes some getting used to, but I find they can be just as compelling and page-turning as the modern stuff.

Anyway, the book itself is quite interesting and I’m looking forward to finishing it.

Most current fiction seems like it's written to be adapted as a movie/tv show - 80% dialogue and 20% spectacle. Some first-person stuff still has significant sections of internal monologue but even that is getting less common in my experience.

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