Ethical Philosophy, Psychology Or Bsology

Ethical Philosophy, Psychology or BSology

Topic for Examination on 2012 August 20

Awaking From

Dogmatic Slumber

Books That Changed My life.

Coined by Immanuel Kant, the phase was chiseled into the souls of thoughtful folk. By “awakened from my dogmatic slumber,” he meant that David Hume’s insights into knowledge opened his eyes, turned on his lights, made him realize something that he had not noticed before.

We’ve all had them. WHAT ARE YOUR’S?

In roughly chronological order, here are some of mine.

Games People Play by Eric Berne

I’m OK, You’re OK by Thomas Harris

What I Learned: These books, read long ago, made millions see for the first time that they were free to choose their own ways of being.

It’s hard to explain now, but it seemed like in those days people had few personal choices. The Cold War and Vietnam were raging, Americans were told we had to obey. Johnson, Nixon, et al were unashamedly authoritarian and the WWII generation was running the world. Racial integration was a scary, uncertain, possibly Communist idea. Equal rights for women, birth control, homosexuality not being a crime, those were radical and terrifying ideas for millions. They said it would destroy the country. Did it?

If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him by Sheldon Kopp

What I Learned: Don’t believe anyone completely. There are no saviors.

Kopp tells the story of his journey of discovery from believing childish stereotypes about his and other ethnic groups into real knowledge. His theme is that each person should learn life’s lessons for himself.

When someone tells you what to believe; from the pulpit, the government, bench or where ever, he is a fool and a con-man.

Grow up, take responsibility for yourself, you are your own teacher.

The Devils Of Loudon by Aldous Huxley

What I Learned: Each person lives out of his very deep drives, so personal they are mostly outside of his awareness.

Huxley relates a famous 14th Century demonic possession of nuns in a French convent. Oddly, it resulted in the trial and execution of the town priest. Huxley tells us about it in a tediously detailed but profound way.

Events were/are driven by deep, intimate, psychological drives that rule human behavior. He couldn’t possibly know those details about those individuals some six centuries before; they would not have known about them themselves. But Huxley brings them to life and makes you realize how humans really work.

Look around today, do you really think the modern Tea Party if fueled by love of country?

Living Myth Personal Meaning as a Way of Life by D. Stephenson Bond

What I Learned: The subconscious has deeply personal narratives, archetypes, hard-wired scenarios. Sane societies, unlike our own, accept and support people in living in harmony with their own personal myths. Our society accepts only public myths which are promoted for the financial benefit of some small group.

How myth works for the individual on a deep psychological level. Myth of course, is NOT a story that someone else believes that is not true. Myths are stories we like to tell ourselves, truth is irrelevant. Everyone lives in a blizzard of myths, it’s called our culture. But creative people create their own personal myths, myths that help them cope. They are a way of getting in touch with our deeper, irrational selves. The animals that evolved into us.

We do it everyday,

The Search For Meaning: A Short History by Dennis Ford

What I Learned: Deep, probably hardwired psychological ways of feeling meaning is real for people. Nothing is more important for people, differences cause deep hostility.

The author lays out eight common ways that people find the feeling that their lives have meaning. To many people they are mutually exclusive. If you believe X is true, what you are saying is that I am lost, nothing in a vast and meaningless universe.

That’s pretty harsh and explains much extreme political hostility today. I was so impressed by these ideas that I build a quiz based upon it.

The purpose is to discover how you find meaning, then go be with other people like yourself.

Nuremberg Principles / International Criminal Court Law / War Crimes

Related in The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, book by Michael Morris.

What I Learned: How could I have been so deceived by the culture?

This is the only thinking by legal minds (I know of) that takes reality into account. Most law givers simply pontificate, set down rules as if by writing them down people will change. It’s a pointless fantasy, as light as air.

The Nuremberg principles take real human nature into account and place the blame for consequences squarely where it belongs. Be it Julius Caesar or George Bush, war creates downstream famine, plague, murder, rape, plunder, destruction, etc. It always has and always will. Just watch the news, Abu Ghraib etc.

Any head of state who starts a war is guilty of knowingly committing all the resulting crimes and destruction. He is a war criminal. To read those principles and not blame much of the world condition on the U.S. government, you’d have to be delusional.

That is why the U.S. is not a member of the International Criminal Court.

The Portable Atheist by Christopher Hitchens

What I Learned: Wow, that is obvious!

Hitchens book simply compiles all the best writings of famous thinkers about the supernatural. As you go through it you can hear yourself saying to yourself

“Oh, yea, of course, well yes, that’s true, how silly of me, why yes, how embaras-sing, how could I have…etc.”

All people e live in a storm of nonsense force fed them by all kinds of institutions, for profit and control. To step beyond it and see it for what it is, that is an extraordinary experience.

Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves and

Homage To Catalonia by George Orwell

What I Learned: My experience with war was right. It is shitty nonsense conducted for the financial benefit of somebody sitting safely somewhere cheery about patriotism.

In these days of government sponsored soldier worship, soldiers are people you don’t know and who can’t tell the truth. The draft was suspended in order to loosen the public restraints upon government war-for-profit.

These are non-fiction accounts of real soldiers in the field, not Pentagon PR.

The Road Less Traveled, People of the Lie by Scott Peck

What I Learned: Life is complicated and being a psychologically mature isn’t easy. Most people simply do not try to go there.

“Life is difficult” was his famous opening line. Peck’s books affirm the value of psychological growth, constant revision of beliefs, adult self-discipline, maturing etc.

He uses many traditional religious words (grace) for psychological processes. It’s a cheap trick but it does communicate to a certain audience. It turned me off, but I got beyond it.

Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos by Dennis Overbye

What I Learned: What intelligent, educated and honest people can do is remarkable. Religionists today who deny evolution etc. are just plain embarrassingly ignorant.

This amazing story, from Hubble to Cern, is how science works. Astronomy, The Big Bang, Quantam Mechanics, these are particularly difficult problems. You can’t put them in a lab experiment or watch them directly. It’s all estimate/try-to-confirm-by-reason, estimate/try-to-confirm-by-reason, etc.

They guys who have changed our view of everything (Hubble, Sandage, etc.) are very human. Since the 1940’s they have made scientific progress in the hardest of arenas.

When compared to traditional religionists, it’s embarrassing for them. They just don’t know enough and aren’t honest enough to notice.

Moral Man & Immoral Society (Ethics in Politics) by Reinhold Niebuhr

What I Learned: So that is why governments (which represent decent people) are so unashamedly evil.

People will do a large mobs what they would never do as individuals. In groups;, large groups, especially nations, we have no morality whatsoever.

NONSENSE ON STILTS from Ph.d.s

First Causes and Real Ethics

What I Learned: Sometimes guys with PhD’s and professorial posts at legitimate sounding institutions are dishonest, mean-spirited con-men.

I probably have the only copies ever printed, they are dishonest to the core. Both of course, espouse conservative politics.

I keep the around to remind myself of how dishonest some people can be, while hiding behind the illusion of legitimacy.

When I googled, “books that changed my life”, I found this list from the National Book Foundation. Some I’ve read and wonder how in the world could that change anyone’s life?

National Book Foundation

List of “life-changing” books

1. Absalom! Absalom!, William Faulkner - Paul West
2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain- Lloyd Alexander, Mark Bowden, 3. Alice In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll - Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Peck, Richard
4. All the Kings Men, Robert Penn Warren- Jill Abramson, Madison Smartt Bell
5. Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis - Myron Levoy
6. The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron - Laurie Halse Anderson
7. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner - Mark Bowden, Beth Kephart
8. Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster - Tracy Kidder
9. Audubon: A Vision, Robert Penn Warren - Howard Norman
10. ~NBA Finalist~ Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison - Andre Dubus III
11. ~NBA Finalist~ Beloved, Toni Morrison - Beth Kephart
12. Black Boy, Richard Wright - Charles Johnson
13. ~NBA Finalist~ Body Rags, Galway Kinnell- Ai
14. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Ai
15. The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer - Susan Mitchell
16. ~NBA Finalist~ Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger - Adam Bagdasarian, 17. Charlotte's Web, E.B. White - Laurie Halse Anderson
18. The Collected Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway-Tracy Kidder
19. ~NBA Winner~ The Color Purple, Alice Walker - Andre Dubus III
20. Confessions, St. Augustine - James Carroll, Charles Wright
21. The Counterfeiters, Andre Gide - Myron Levoy
22. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Stephen Dixon
23. Dark Symphony: Negro Literature in America, edited by James A. Emanuel and Theodore L. Gross - Nikki Giovanni
24. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens- Lloyd Alexander
25. ~NBA Finalist~ A Death in the Family, James Agee - B.H. Fairchild
26. Death of a Lake, Arthur Upfield - Tony Hillerman
27. Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann - Paul West
28. Dracula, Bram Stoker - Don Delillo
29. Eight Men, Richard Wright - Nikki Giovanni
30. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe - Mark Bowden
31. Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway - Mark Bowden, Myron Levoy
32. Fathers And Sons, Ivan Turgenev - Ivan Doig, Stephen Dixon
33. Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce-Laurie Halse Anderson
34. ~NBA Finalist~ Of a Fire on the Moon, Norman Mailer - Mark Bowden
35. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway - Mark Bowden
36. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck - Andres Dubus III
37. ~NBA Winner~ Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon - Mark Bowden
38. Great Dialogues of Plato - Ann Cameron
39. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens - Tracy Kidder
40. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald - Adam Bagdasarian
41. ~NBA Finalist~ The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin - Nikki Giovanni
42. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers - Kimberly Willis Holt
43. The Essential Akutagawa, Ryunosuke Akutagawa - Howard Norman
44. ~NBA Finalist~ Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow - Tracy Kidder
45. Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell - Ivan Doig, Tracy Kidder
46. Horseman, Pass By, Larry McMurtry - Andre Dubus III
47. The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Stephen Dixon
48. Kafka's Other Trial, Elias Canetti - Sherod Santos
49. The King James Bible - B.H. Fairchild, Joyce Carol Thomas
50. The Left-Handed Woman, Peter Handke - Sherod Santos
51. Legends of the Fall, Jim Harrison - Andre Dubus III
52. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo - Lloyd Alexander
53. Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain - Jacques Barzun, Richard Peck
54. Lord of the Flies, William Golding - Stephen King
55. The Lottery, Shirley Jackson - Laurie Halse Anderson
56. The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Roberto Calasso - Sherod Santos
57. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius - Ann Cameron
58. Metamorphoses, Ovid - Susan Mitchell
59. A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare - Susan Mitchell
60. Moby Dick, Herman Melville - Tracy Kidder
61. Monsenor Quijote, Graham Greene - Andre Dubus III
62. ~NBA Winner~ The Moviegoer, Walker Percy - Philip Schultz
63. My Book House, edited by Olive Beaupre Miller - Ellen Howard
64. My Name Is Aram, William Saroyan - Adam Bagdasarian
65. Native Son, Richard Wright- Ai
66. The Negro Caravan: Writings by American Negroes, edited by Sterling A. Brown, Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses Lee - Nikki Giovanni
67. Of Time and the River, Thomas Wolfe - Ivan Doig
68. Open Secrets, Alice Munro - Andre Dubus III
69. Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen - Ivan Doig
70. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Roddy Doyle - Mark Bowden
71. Paradise Lost, John Milton - Mark Bowden, Susan Mitchell
72. The Pointed Bone, Arthur Upfield - Tony Hillerman
73. ~NBA Finalist~ The Poorhouse Fair, John Updike - Myron Levoy
74. Portrait of a Lady, Henry James- Jill Abramson
75. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce - Beth Kephart, Tor Seidler
76. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen- Diane Johnson
77. The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain - Ann Cameron
78. Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust - Paul West
79. The Richard Trilogy, Paul Horgan - Beth Kephart
80. A Season in Hell, Arthur Rimbaud - Clarence Major
81. ~NBA Winner~ The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen - Mark Bowden
82. ~NBA Finalist~ So Long, See You Tomorrow, William F. Maxwell - Beth Kephart
83. The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake, Breece D'J Pancake - Andre Dubus III
84. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway - Adam Bagdasarian
85. The Tale of Genji, Lady Murasaki Shikibu- Ai
86. Tales of the South Pacific, James A. Michener - John Balaban
87. The Tempest, William Shakespeare - Tracy Kidder
88. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Yukio Mishima- Ai
89. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe - Joseph Bruchac
90. The Times Are Never So Bad, Andre Dubus - Andre Dubus III
91. Tom Jones, Henry Fielding - Mark Bowden
92. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson - B.H. Fairchild
93. The Twelve Caesars, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus - Tracy Kidder
94. Ulysses, James Joyce - Deirdre Bair, Don Delillo
95. The Voices of Marrakesh, Elias Canetti - Sherod Santos
96. Walden, Henry David Thoreau - Ann Cameron, Milton Meltzer
97. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy - Lloyd Alexander
98. Watt, Samuel Beckett - Paul West
99. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte - Jill Abramson
100. The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - Lois Lowry