For all the progress updates in one place:
Progress Update: August 2024
Here are the books I read/listened to for my research during August 2024
Thinking in Systems
That Sucked. Now What?
Chatter
Introducing: Hegel
The Book of Disquiet (Pessoa, only read sections)
Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard)
The Little Book of Hygge
The Metamorphosis (Kafka, re-read)
Introducing Wittgenstein
Resilience (The Cambridge University Press one)
Learned Optimism
Free Will (Sam Harris)
Philosophy: Who Needs It (Ayn Rand)
You, Happier
Hardwiring Happiness
The Art of Happiness
The Happiness Trap
Positivity
Life Lessons
How to Love
The Expectation Effect
Rules for a Knight
Self-Compassion
Notes:
• August was a slow month. I took it easy during the weeks I spent traveling and then adjusting back to Montreal. Although it looks like a good number of books, several were short and easy.
I know I read the least amount this past month. Not a problem, just an observation. I wouldn’t want to have done it differently; the trip was a blast, and it deserved all the time it took away from my research.
I gained a lot of valuable lessons and information from many of August’s books, but I wouldn’t recommend any one book in particular. So far, “At the Existentialist Café,” “The Great Guide,” and “The Upside of Stress” remain the best I’ve read out of around 180 books since last December.
• The best book this week was “Thinking in Systems.” We don’t naturally look at the world and life as systems. Training ourselves to do so opens up a new mental model for making decisions and thinking about the environment, the economy, politics, and even our sense of self.
The book is challenging to get through, but the lessons you learn from it are worth the effort. Thinking in systems is a whole new way to understand the world.
I included a book on this subject in my research because I suspected that complex subjects, such as happiness, identity, and “the self,” would be better approached through a systems model than traditional linear, reductionist, or formulaic thinking. It paid off.
Traveling cut into my reading. I still took time to read at airports, while flying, during downtime at parks, or in the evenings, and turned to audiobooks while walking and exploring. It seems like the usual volume, but many of those books were short and easy.
• “Hardwiring Happiness,” although not an excellent book, presented a compelling model of three happiness pillars: Safety, Development, and Connection. I liked the concept better than Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, though they overlap in many respects.
• More importantly, I want to talk about Epicurus. I don’t agree with his entire view on ‘how to live,’ but wow! It makes a difference to read about his philosophy directly from him and from a knowledgeable commentator.
Epicurus was damn smart, and once you understand his point of departure (the nature of things), along with a clarification of what he meant by “pleasure,” you can see how his philosophy comes together with real value.
Whether you agree with it or not is one thing, but it’s a well-thought-out perspective on life that doesn’t deserve the mistaken and oversimplified version popularly associated with it.
It’s unfortunate that rival schools of the time turned Epicurus into a caricature. The Stoics are largely to blame for that. And though I like the Stoics, it’s sad to read Seneca, for example, being petty about rivalries with Epicurean teachings while at the same time appropriating great ideas from them.
Epicureanism, a philosophy based on the natural world, independent of the influence and whims of gods, encourages its followers to seek a life of ‘non-pain’ (both physical and mental) and to make the most of this earthly life without fear of death. The philosophy deserves a fair judgment based on its actual teachings, rather than on the version that has been sadly handed down to us by its rivals.
• I settled into a good pace during July, with enough reading to make good progress but not so much that it would take over my life. Looking forward, August should be a slow month with a two-week trip coming up. I’ll still try to hit my target of 4 books per week, but it’ll likely be shorter, easier books during my time away.
• The best of the month were “The Power of Regret” and “Resilience.” Highly recommended
• “How to Love” by Gordon Livingston was the best read this week. The title doesn’t do justice to the book. It’s more of a guide to toxic personality types, explaining how to identify them and why you should avoid them.
The premise is that friendships and romantic relationships have a significant influence on our lives; they are also the source of the greatest pleasures and miseries we can experience, so we must be cautious about who we bring into our inner circle.
I’ve liked everything I’ve read by Gordon Livingston. I don’t know why his books aren’t more popular. Maybe it’s because he’s direct and honest about life’s challenges and hardships, which for some people can be depressing.
Few want to read about the harsh truths learned from decades of working as a psychiatrist and therapist, having fought in a war, and losing two kids (one to suicide) within the same year. Livingston is an example of going through the bad, the ugly, and the unbearable in life and still having a message of hope and zest for living.
“This, I’ve come to believe, is the human condition: uncertain, confusing, often absurd, and full of anxiety in the face of an indifferent universe that can and frequently does crush our best hopes and dearest loves. Still, we push on into a future we can neither imagine nor control, with nothing to guide us but some words we share with each other and a faith that we are not alone”—Gordon Livingston