Erik Boisen

A collection of short stories and writings from Kurt Vonnegut. It was compiled and released about a year after Kurt’s passing. A book released like this can sometimes be a money-grab, but there are many good stories in this compilation. All are based on some sort of Armageddon, be it war or the coming of Satan.

Included in the beginning is a copy of the letter Kurt wrote to his parents after he was released from a POW camp towards the end of WWII. His parents had not heard anything from him for over six months, other than he was missing in action. He does a pretty good job of bringing his parents up to speed on what he has endured, and does so with his trademark humor. He was not treated well as a prisoner of war. Who would have guessed that Nazis were not hospitable captors? He gets this point across, but manages to keep the letter in good spirits. He was a pretty good writer, even back then. After reading this, I got a pretty good insight into what gave him his unique perspective on the world. The fact that he got to live and breath humanity at its worst as a prisoner of war and still come out ok gave him insights into the human condition that few others can claim. He always seemed to find the humor in a situation, regardless of how dire. Seemingly more so, if it is really dire. This is absolutely reflected in his writing. This ability to sprinkle humor into nearly anything is much of the reason he is my favorite author.

Three of the stories really stand out. The first is Brighten Up. It appears to be an account of a situation he actually lived through while a POW. One of his fellow prisoners, Louis, somehow was always able to charm the people that ran the prison into letting him do things no one else could get away with. This allowed him to exploit his fellow prisoners who were desperate for cigarettes and bread. The story details each of Louis’ prison schemes that eventually drained all the prisoners of anything of value. It paints a vivid and humorous picture of how humans can exploit with a smile.

The second story that really stood out was called, Just you and me Sammy. It also involves prisoners of war just before they are liberated, but this is one is definitely a fictional account. I do not want to give away too much on this one. It is the best of the bunch. I will leave it at that. Please give it a read.

The third story that really stood out is the same as the title of the book, Armageddon in Retrospect. It is definitely the funniest, despite its main theme being Armageddon. It uses the theme of people exploiting each other for their own gain and also shows the incompetence of people who are often in charge of things, such as the government. It addresses widespread misinformation and manipulating the public for personal gain. I doubt these kinds of stories will ever get old as these themes seem to be more and more prevalent in modern life.

I believe that any of these three stories would make for a pretty good film, if adapted. Despite his popularity, adaptations of Vonnegut’s films have not fared well. I believe this is mostly due to the time in which they were made coupled with the elaborate nature of his stories. The special effects were not good enough to make his visions believable, particularly with his best novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. Perhaps some producer will have another look at his work and bring it to life on the screen once again. If not, we still have his wonderfully funny novels and short stories in print to enjoy.

I just finished The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was a pretty easy read and a fairly short book. I did not know when I started reading it that it was part of a “five-part trilogy” (This is the sort of humor you are in for). This book is written as a sort of a science fiction meets Monty Python type epic storytelling. Absurdist humor is always the go-to. It starts off with the main character, Arthur Dent, a typical, snobbish, living-alone, middle-aged Englishman, trying to prevent his house from being bulldozed to make way for a new highway bypass. His quirky friend, Ford Prefect, convinces Arthur to leave his home and have some ales at the pub while his house is being demolished and informs him that the earth is about to be destroyed. It turns out that Ford Prefect is actually an alien that has been living on earth for 15 years and is trying to help his earth friend, Arthur, escape the planet before the Vogons destroy it. The Vogons need earth out of the way to create a hyperspace bypass.

Previous to this, Arthur had no idea that his friend Ford is an alien. Ford gets both of them off the planet just before earth is destroyed by hitching a ride on a Vogon ship.  After a short time, the grumpy Vogons learn of Arthur and Ford’s freeloading and eject them into space. Fortunately for them, another ship happens to be in the area and rescues them 29 seconds after they were hurled into space.

The rescue ship is piloted by Zaphod Beeblebrox and an earth woman named Trillian. In a twist of fate, both Arthur and Ford know Zaphod. Arthur through a chance encounter at a party on earth and Ford as a distant cousin of Zaphod. Arthur also knows Trillian. It is a woman he had a crush on and made unreturned advances on at a party on earth. Zaphod, disguised as an earthling, left said party with Trillian.

Zaphod is on the run and has stolen the ship they are in. It turns out that Zaphod has a good reason for stealing the ship, he just doesn’t remember what it is because he did a sort of targeted, self-lobotomy, so that his thoughts could not be read regarding this information.

In their travels, they end up at what is thought to be a planet of folklore.  Magrathea is populated with a race of beings that used to build planets, but when a recession hit, they decided to sleep until it was over. No one can afford new planets during a recession. They had been asleep for five million years when Ford, Trillian, Arthur, and Zaphod arrive on the planet. It is revealed that the Magratheans had built earth for mice, which ran it until the Vogons destroyed it. The mice had been using earth as a sort of laboratory to determine the Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe, and Everything. The answer, it turns out, is 42, which provides no one with any meaningful information.

At the end of the book, the mice feel that they could perhaps get some meaning from the answer through one of earth’s former inhabitant’s brains, namely Arthur Dent. Arthur and his mates are appalled and make a run for it just as the galactic police arrive to try and apprehend Zaphod. With no hope of escape, and the galactic police blasting at them with their space weapons, the shooting abruptly stops and it is revealed that the galactic police’s life support computer committed suicide after a short conversation with Zaphod’s perpetually depressed robot, Martin. With this, they board their ship en route to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe for a meal.  Restaurant at the End of the Universe is name of the next novel in the series.

If my description of the plot of this book seems ridiculous, it’s because it is. The plot is fairly absurd, but nonetheless captivating. If the biography of Elon Musk, see previous post, is correct, this book is the impetus for Elon Musk’s creation of SpaceX and desire to travel to Mars. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction – even absurd science fiction.

At the conclusion of this book I will have read all but one of Walter Isaacson’s biographies.  The only remaining one is that of Henry Kissinger. These books are all 600+ pages, so they are quite the investment in time.  I felt that all were fairly easy reads. Isaacson is quite adept at writing very captivating biographies that do their best to paint an accurate and interesting picture.  It tells the story, warts-and-all.  I do not feel that anything was written to placate the billionaire subjects in instances where they were the focus.  (Musk is one, Steve Jobs was the other. )  Steve Jobs’ biography was written while he was alive and my review of it can be found in the November, 2019 page of this blog.

A year-or-so ago, I mentioned Musk in one of my meetings at work during a casual break.  I did not realize that he was such a polarizing figure, at the time.  It was pretty obvious I actually made some people uncomfortable by mentioning him.  Much akin as to what might happen if I mentioned a former billionaire President. It seems like the love’em or hate’em mentality came into our culture along with social media.  Musk can definitely be blunt and off-the-cuff at times, but I find it hard to believe that, at least in some peoples’ minds, it negates all his accomplishments.  Someone this driven is going to have some sharp edges.  If we value a person based on whether or not he or she made the world a better place than would have existed in his or her absence, then I feel pretty strongly that Elon Musk ends far on the plus side of that equation.

Before reading this book, I thought I knew most of what I was about to read. I did not.  Elon Musk has his hands in many more ventures than I had realized. He founded OpenAI because he felt that AI might “get away” from humanity. Musk wanted to ensure that human consciousness was preserved and not usurped by AI.  Preservation of human consciousness is also his motivation for SpaceX (more on that later). OpenAI was originally created as an open source alternative to AI that was being developed privately by huge companies. He felt that there needs to be some form of human conscience monitoring the application of AI that is not driven purely by profits and where a community can review its use and source code. Musk initially had intended to have a strong role in the non-profit company, but his attentions led him to his other endeavors, and OpenAI has since gone to a “capped” for-profit. Musk was not happy with this outcome. It was done without his consent by Sam Altman, OpenAI‘s CEO.  Microsoft appears to have assumed a great deal of control over this entity. AI may enslave and/or eliminate humanity after all.

SpaceX was created to satisfy Musk’s desire to make human beings a multi-planetary species. This company earns it money largely by putting satellites into orbit for governments and private industries, but Musk has said that this is just a means to advance technology so that humans can some day travel to, and inhabit Mars.  Again, this is to preserve human consciousness in the event Earth becomes uninhabitable. Most of the space travel in the world is now done through SpaceX, and by a large margin. NASA has basically handed off its duties to SpaceX. SpaceX operates for private corporations and even foreign governments. Musk’s motivations seem a little far-fetched at times, but everything he claims seems to come to fruition at some point. He may very well send people to Mars.

Musk seemed to be driven by the typical economic motivators early in his career, when he developed a company called Zip2 and X.com (not the company formerly known as Twitter), which morphed into Paypal. After basically being forced out of these companies that he created, he had a net worth of somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million. At this point, he seemed unconcerned with acquiring additional wealth. His motivation turned to the preservation of human consciousness. Ironically, he has acquired most of his fortune since he quit pursuing money for money’s sake. He invested in Tesla when it was little more than an idea to make an electric version of a Lotus Elise. He gambled his fortune entirely on Tesla in the hopes of providing sustainable transportation for humanity. He later updated this motivation to include self-driving transportation.  The company is worth more than half a trillion dollars at the moment. Full self-driving still has not happened for Tesla, but it now seems like it is inevitable. Waymo, although a Google, and not a Tesla product, is a driverless taxi service currently available in Phoenix. This is happening.

In addition to OpenAI, Tesla, and SpaceX, Musk also formed Nueralink. This company was also aimed at preserving human consciousness by creating  direct interfaces between the human mind and machine. This is so we can “go along for the ride” AI is creating. One of the most interesting things they developed was an interface between a chimpanzee and a computer. A chimpanzee can play a game of pong with just his mind. Video here.  Musk hopes to use this technology to help those with spinal cord injuries walk again by bypassing the spinal cord in the interface between the brain and legs.

Finally, there is Twitter. Elon saw social media being taken over by governments and private interests. Much of social media is currently controlled by the FBI, CIA, foreign governments (TikTok), and large corporations. They dictate the algorithms that decide what you see and determine who will see what you post (This has been well-documented). Musk sees this as damaging to humanity. I do too. Acquiring Twitter turned out to be much more time-consuming for him than he expected. Upon realizing what he had gotten into, he tried to back away from the deal. His lawyers advised him that he has to, “swallow the hairball.” He had legally committed to do so. The repercussions are still occurring with Musk recently being pulled into a lawsuit with the Brazilian government regarding Twitter‘s refusal to ban accounts the Brazilian government deems unworthy.

As stated earlier, this book is over 600 pages. I have left much out. I cannot condense 600 pages into 1199 words, but I hope this gives the reader some additional insight into Elon Musk. He clearly acts in ways that appear cold and inhumane at times. He regularly demands results from employees and ends his demands with terms to the effect of, “in the absence of these results, I will consider your resignation tendered.” Certainly not the norm for the modern workplace, but it is hard not to recognize his impact on the world. Musk is definitely a polarizing figure and his story and personality is very interesting. He seems to care most about people on a macro scale, rather than an individual one. This book was a fascinating read. It contains a great deal of personal and family history, which I have omitted here for brevity’s sake, but if I have piqued your interest, please give it a read.

I guess this book falls under the category of “self-help”.  I am not sure why I seem to be reading more of these types of books lately. The last one, The Four Agreements, just happened to be on my bookshelf when I was looking for something else, and it caught my eye. I am not saying that I don’t need self-help, but I bought this book because Jordan Peterson kept popping up on my social media news feeds he always seemed to be giving wonderful perspectives on difficult topics in video clips. Jordan Peterson is a psychologist by training, with a PhD in clinical psychology. He was an associate professor at Harvard and then a full professor at the University of Toronto. I am not sure of the status of his current employment, as he has gotten into some hot water for his seemingly constant presence in the current social media zeitgeist, but this book was quite successful, so I doubt you will find him anywhere with a tin cup at arm’s length.

As far as interesting reading goes, this was what I would consider an enthralling book.  It always held my attention. As a self-help book, I feel that The Four Agreements was more useful in that I am able to remember and apply all the principals in The Four Agreements in my everyday life situations exactly as they are written.  12 Rules For Life gave me a kind of direction, but the principles are not as cut and dry in their application. The thing that surprised me most about the 12 Rules For Life is the many references to religious texts. There is no hint of it on the cover, or in the marketing of the book. Probably a wise move, as a book deemed to be a religious text may only appeal to a niche audience.  As far as references to religious texts, Peterson does tend to grab more from the Christianity than other religions, but he certainly hits some Buddhist, Judaist, and Hinduist principles as well.  

These are the rules:

1. “Stand up straight with your shoulders back.”
2. “Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.”
3. “Make friends with people who want the best for you.”
4. “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”
5. “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.”
6. “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.”
7. “Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).”
8. “Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie.”
9. “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.”
10. “Be precise in your speech.”
11. “Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.”
12. “Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street. “

Rule 1 is akin to smiling when you are not feeling happy. The act of smiling will actually improve your mood.

Rule 2 is a reminder to step back and view yourself and your actions as a third-party observer – should you be drinking that much alcohol or eating that much fast-food?

Rule 3 is very important. Are your friends scumbags, or good people? They will strongly influence who you are. Make sure they are good.

Rule 4 means that you should not engage in comparisons with yourself and others. Just make sure you are better than you were yesterday and you will eventually find the high ground.

Rule 5 should be something like “don’t let things fester”. In other words do not ignore a situation or behavior until it has turned into an untamable monster.

Rule 6 is pretty obvious, but if you look at most comments on social media, it appears to be largely ignored.

Rule 7 is another rule that appears to be largely ignored nowadays. Immediate gratification is rarely the best path for you.

Rule 8, 9, and 10 are pretty self-explanatory, but are nevertheless important.

Rule 11 Refers to not Nerfing the world. Kids can be empowered by having to rely on their skill in the face of danger.

Rule 12 means to try take advantage of and find joy in the simple opportunities that life provides.

What I got out of this book, in a nutshell, is that you need a purpose. The most rewarding purpose is helping others. Self-improvement is also very important. You should always be working to be better than you were yesterday. You also need to find God. Life can be hard sometimes. Belief in a higher power can often be the only thing that will get you through tough situations. If you do not intend to read this book, please re-read this paragraph a few times. When employed, these simple ideas will improve your life.

The Thicket is set near the turn of the 20th century. For the most part, it is a Western that, without a couple appearances of motorcars, easily could have take place fifty or a hundred years earlier. It is a very well-crafted story that will definitely hold your interest, but it is quite violent. I try not to read books that are too creepy or violent, but this one had a good enough story that I continued reading it after some pretty awful scenes early in the book.

The story starts off in Texas where the main character, Jack, has just watched his parents die from smallpox, and is now going off with his grandfather and younger sister to go live with Jack’s aunt. They never make it to the aunt’s house as  Jack’s grandfather is killed on the journey and his sister Lulu is kidnapped by a notorious gang of criminals led by one particularly despicable scumbag by the name of Cut Throat Bill.

Jack manages to enlist the help of two bounty hunters to retrieve Lulu. One, shorty, is a little person and former circus performer. The other is Eustace, a large, muscular African American man who makes his money digging graves and tracking bounties.  Eustace travels with a giant wild hog that has befriended him and carries an enormous four gauge shotgun. Jack strikes a deal with Shorty and Eustace to track down his sister in exchange for the deed to his family’s land in Texas.

Cut Throat Bill and his gang do all sorts of despicable deeds as they travel back to their hideout in the Thicket, following a bank robbery that resulted in the murder of a local sheriff.

Despite some pretty horrific depictions of violence, the book does have quite a happy ending with all the villains being dispatched and the majority of the “good guys” living happily ever-after. This book is an absolute page-turner and will soon be released as a movie with Peter Dinklage playing shorty and Juliette Lewis playing Cut Throat Bill. I am guessing the film will have to veer a little from the book’s story since Cut Throat Bill is a mountain of a man in the book, and Juliette Lewis is neither a mountain, nor a man. I am kind of expecting the film to disappoint me because of the odd casting choices, but I will give it a shot anyway, as the book it is based on is excellent.

I was looking for a particular book, The Thicket, on the various bookshelves in my house. It appeared to have mysteriously vanished. I did, however, happen upon this book. I have no idea where it came from. I was about to head off on a short trip for work and wanted something to read while I was gone, so I grabbed it. It turned out to be a very interesting book about the Toltec belief system and how it can be applied to modern life. The Toltecs were an early Mexican civilization that built structures similar to the Aztecs and Mayans. Their belief is that we create our own heaven or hell and by following the four agreements, we allow ourselves to enjoy freedom, happiness, and love to build our own heaven. The four agreements are quite simple to explain and appear to be very useful. Simply stated, the four agreement are – be Impeccable in your word, always do your Best, never make Assumptions, and do not take anything Personally. I have remembered it with the acronym IBAP.

Being Impeccable in your word is pretty self-explanatory. It means that you always do what you say you are going to do, and also not agreeing to things, you have no intention of doing. I cannot imagine anyone can find find fault or controversy in this. No one likes a person that agrees to things and does not follow through. Always keeping your word will definitely help you avoid unnecessary drama in your life.

Always doing your Best is also pretty self-explanatory. The main reason for doing so, may not be. The Toltec belief is that if you have done your best at something, regardless of outcome, you will have a clear conscience. Even if you fail at a task, if you gave it your best effort, it will not haunt you. If you half-ass something, even if it works out in the end, you probably do not feel great about it. Always doing your best avoids this feeling. Your conscience will always be clear.

Never make Assumptions appears pretty obvious as well. How much time has each of us worried about something that has never come to fruition? I know that I have wasted plenty. If you do not have information regarding something, do not make assumptions. This will create needless worry. Misunderstanding is very commonplace in life. We all bring our unique viewpoints and oftentimes others view the same circumstance with radically different perceptions. Without proper information, if you are filling in gaps in knowledge with assumptions, you are creating an avenue for unnecessary worry and wasted effort.

Do not take anything Personally. This to me is somewhat similar to Never make Assumptions. Perhaps someone appears to treat you in a way that might appear that the person does not care for you. You may have no idea what is going on in this person’s life, or what kind of day this person is having. Even if this person does not, in fact, care for you, what good does it do you to take it personally? Taking something personally will only lead to internal discomfort. Perhaps make a mental note to not invest too much time with this person, but continue on with your life. Do not let this person infect you with drama that will do you no good. Perhaps you can pray for this person. Pray that this person will overcome whatever makes him behave in an unkind way. Do not allow negative interactions to burrow their way into your consciousness. This will do nothing but rob YOU of happiness.

So there they are, the four agreements in four short paragraphs. Use them as I have presented them here, or read the book an use them as you interpret them. I can find no reason not to. The last chapter of the book, in fact, shows how these agreements fit in neatly with most of the world’s religions. I believe that this book has helped bring me some peace. It is well worth the time I spent reading it.

The day I finished reading this book, I noticed The Thicket, front and center on the bookshelf in my living room. I have no idea how I did not see it earlier, but I am glad I did not. This was a fantastic read. I will start on The Thicket next.

This was a short, but fantastic novel that was translated from Portuguese. It centers on the life of a young, Spanish shepherd boy, Santiago, who is looking for meaning in life. The main theme of the book is one’s “Personal Legend”. A personal legend is fulfilling one’s life purpose. Everyone and everything has a Personal Legend, and most people recognize theirs in their youth, but discount or ignore it as they get older. Even though a Personal Legend is a path to happiness, most ignore it to pursue what is expected of them or what is easily at-hand. To quote the book, “Very few follow the path laid out to them-the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.” People often fear following their dreams, as they get older, they may even forget them. This robs them of happiness.

The book acknowledges that following one’s Personal Legend may not always be easy, “Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.”  Early on the young shepherd boy pursues the difficult job of being a shepherd so that he can see the world. He learns much leading his sheep through Spain in search of food and water for his flock, but eventually feels he has reached the end of what shepherding will provide for him. He decides to sell all his sheep for money to travel to the pyramids of Egypt, where he is told he will find great treasure by a king disguised as an old commoner. He leaves Spain and makes it across the Strait of Gibralter. There he is swindled of all his money.  He strikes up a deal to work for a crystal merchant where he learns Arabic and the crystal trade. Both Santiago and the merchant benefit greatly from their working together. Santiago finds that his life is becoming comfortable, but he decides to take the money he has earned to continue on to fulfill his Personal Legend. He resumes his course toward Egypt through a most hostile desert where war is being waged. He encounters an Englishman, also a believer in Personal Legend, who teaches him about alchemy. The Englishman, who is not himself an Alchemist, wishes to find one so that he can properly learn all its secrets. Previously, he has gained knowledge of alchemy only from books. While with the Englishman, he also finds a love interest, Fatima, a sort of desert flower in an oasis, and swears to return to take her hand in marriage. She accepts his proposal, despite knowing that Santiago has a dangerous journey ahead and may never return.

In a twist of fate, on his journey through the desert, it is Santiago who encounters the alchemist and gains his guidance. Again Santiago gains and loses his wealth, but eventually finds himself at the pyramids, where a scarab beetle appears to mark the location of his treasure. He digs to the point of exhaustion, whereupon he is robbed once again by passersby recognizing his odd behavior. The robbers spare his life, but one of them reveals that he once had dreams similar to Santiago’s, but he was not foolish enough to cross continents pursuing them. The robber describes a Sycamore tree in Spain where a treasure is supposed to be buried. Santiago recognizes the location as one he had brought his sheep to early in the story. He journeys back to Spain and finds the treasure and resolves to return to Fatima with it.

 

I spent a short time working as a high school math teacher. While I was teaching, I noticed that a number of students had this book. It was required reading for a literature class. Many of the students seemed to have pretty strong opinions on the book and the eerie cover caught my attention. I remember reading the first dozen or so pages back then. It seemed interesting, but then I forgot about it. Fast-forward many years. I am trying to find something to read and I suddenly remember it. I love older books like these. They are well-vetted, so they are almost always a good read, and they are always plentiful and cheap. I think  I paid a few dollars for it. The author, William Golding was a Nobel laureate. He was also a veteran of WWII. During the war he was witness to the many atrocities of man. This book takes place shortly after this war.

I believe this book projects much of what Golding saw in the worst of human nature onto a group of young boys who are left to fend for themselves after a plane crash on an uninhabited island. The book starts a short time after the crash with a group of boys ranging in age from very young, perhaps five years old, to early teens scattered throughout the dense vegetation of the island. One of the older boys, Ralph, makes his way to a clearing by a beach and, using a found conch shell, blows on it to signal everyone to gather together. Slowly, the kids follow the sound to the beach, each emerging from different parts of the vegetation.   Things are very orderly initially. They chose Ralph as their chief and he assigns everyone roles to build shelters, gather wood, and find food. Not long after, people slowly begin to shirk responsibility.  Ralph believes, rightly so, that a fire should be maintained so that they have some chance of a passing ship finding them by seeing the smoke from what should be an uninhabited island. They begin tending the fire in shifts, but oftentimes a shift falls asleep and the fire goes out.

They build shelters, but many in the group take off to play in the water instead of work. There is also another older boy, Jack, who has taken up hunting. Jack’s hunting is initially a good thing as he becomes adept at killing the wild pigs on the island and providing meat for the group. As time goes on, however, hunting is all Jack cares about. He forgoes all other tasks and eventually sees his hunting skills as being so valuable that he should be chief. This creates a power war between himself and Ralph. Ralph is not a perfect leader, but he thinks about the well-being of the group and realizes that the fire is the key to a chance of being rescued. Jack thinks only of hunting and being in charge.  As the group slowly slips into two factions. Jack’s group becomes blood-thirsty savages, while Ralph’s group dwindles down to the very young boys and a corpulent, but intelligent older boy nicknamed “Piggy”. In the end Jack turns many of the boys into scared soldiers. He uses intimidation, beatings, and torture to control his group. Eventually, when Ralph’s group is at its weakest, Jack’s group begins to steal from Ralph’s group and attack them in their sleep.  Ralph tries to reason with Jack as he is amenable to sharing resources. The most important being fire and Piggy’s glasses, which are used to start fires. There isn’t a reason to steal, but Jack wants to steal and impose himself on the others. In the end two of the boys, Piggy and Simon, end up getting killed through Jack’s actions and has the remaining boys “hunting” Ralph.

In an effort to drive the hiding Ralph out of thick foliage, Jack and his crew ignite the entire island. Fortunately for Ralph, who appeared to have been flushed out and nearing his end, the fire has caught the attention of a passing military vessel whose crew arrives just in time to save Ralph.

The book is very well-written, as would be expected from a Nobel laureate in literature, and outside of a few phrases, is not really dated. This book would not be much different if adapted to present-day. I did find the last couple of chapters to be pretty gruesome. To me, it is borderline inappropriate to mandate its reading for high school students. It does paint a fairly grim picture of the bad side of human nature, but what probably makes it gruesome is the fact that you believe that the behaviors portrayed are quite plausible for a group of people. It only takes one person with a greedy heart and a little power to destroy a large group. Jack does not start out malevolent, but as he gains power and becomes drunk in his killing for thrill, he loses all morals. This book is a very interesting study in human nature.

This is the second book I have read that was co-authored by Robert Lanza. The previous one was a fictional work named Observer : A Novel. This book  is more of an explanation of the science at the core of the story in Observer. The science, as the title implies, has to do with Biocentrism. Biocentrism dictates that reality is a construct of consciousness. The authors cite many commonly accepted scientific principles to support the idea that life creates the universe.  Nothing can happen without an observer witnessing it. This goes back to the question of whether a tree that falls in the forest makes a sound if nothing and no one is around to hear it. The author does the best job of arriving at the answer that I have ever heard. Sound is really just a person’s or animal’s interpretation of air pressure waves.

In the absence of an observer, a falling tree will certainly create a pressure wave when the tree strikes the ground, but there will be no sound unless someone, or something is there to create it from the pressure wave. Sound is merely a human’s or animal’s consciousness-created signal from an air pressure wave vibrating an eardrum. A bee can see things illuminated with just ultraviolet light.  We cannot. We cannot discern anything with our eye in the absence of visible light. Ultraviolet light is outside of our visible spectrum. Bees see a bullseye of color to direct them to the flower and its pollen. We see none of this. Most of what we do see, is just our brain’s interpretation that is arriving from natural sensors – our eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue. We will interpret air pressure and light waves one way, and a different species may interpret it another way, or maybe not at all. Light has no inherent color. We, discounting color blindness, associate a particular frequency of light with a particular color because that is how our eyes and brain interpret it.

The above examples illustrate the differing realities that different observers of the same event might have, but the observer can also influence the outcome of an event merely by observing it. The author like to reference the famous double-slit light experiment to illustrate this.

An electron will exhibit particle-like or wave-like (diffraction and interference) behavior based on whether it is observed or not. Obviously, an electron or a photon falls under the realm of the very small with regards to physics. Newtonian, or classical physics, does not describe the behavior of very small things very well. For this, the rules of quantum mechanics must be applied. Things appear to behave very differently in the quantum realm than they do in the world we see with our eyes, but biocentrism declares that the strangeness that applies to the very small also has applications to the world we observe and our consciousness actively influences it.

Biocentrism declares that consciousness brings reality into existence.  Space and time, just like the apparent color of light, are products of the consciousness that do not exist without it. Time is merely a way of organizing events that are all occurring concurrently and there is no physical universe out there without consciousness. This is an awful lot to digest. It implies that without time, there is no death. We have simply ended an existence in one of an infinite number of universes and we carry out living in another one. As bizarre as this may sound, it does line up in a sense with the afterlife in Christianity or reincarnation in Hinduism and Buddhism. If any of this is to be believed, attitude would appear to be everything. If we can be happy and content in almost any circumstance and we live forever, is this not heaven?

Best I can tell, nothing in this book can be disproven. Not everything can be proven, however. This makes it an excellent topic to ponder. The only knock I have on the author is that he brings up the case of Sybil, a pseudonym for Shirley Ardell Mason. This is the patient that the famous movie about a woman with dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities) is based on. The author uses this example somewhat as proof or explanation for multiple realities. The psychoanalyst that treated “Sybil” has admitted to fabricating some of the facts and most of the patient records related to “Sybil” were mysteriously destroyed before outside sources were able to review them. Dissociative identity disorder, which “Sybil” was thought to be suffering from, is also one of the least understood psychological disorders. I have no idea why the author would throw this example in when it does not really help his argument.

The authors do throw in some interesting anecdotes about the nature of things. I would imagine most people know that dolphin use a sort of sonar to “see” things in the water at a great distance. A dolphin will emit a series of chirps or noises and then, from the sound reflected back, paint a mental image, of say, a school of fish in the distance. What is really interesting is the dolphin can emulate this reflected sound and repeat it to other dolphin. Those dolphin will get the same mental image of the school of fish as if they had used their own  sonar.  People certainly have a leg-up on dolphin in terms of tool use, but dolphin seem to be capable of incredibly efficient communication that borders on telepathy.

I found this to be an interesting read, but definitely less interesting than the fiction-based Observer that Lanza has more recently co-authored.

 

I cannot recall what caused me to choose this book. I think I saw some mention of it in a documentary and the story seemed interesting. It is written from the point of view of Holden, a 17 year-old, well-off boy from New York. The story begins on a cold Saturday evening in early winter with Holden revealing that he is about to be expelled from yet another boarding school. The current school is named Pencey Prep and it is in the fictional town of Agerstown, Pennsylvania. Holden appears to be a fairly intelligent boy who has no desire to apply himself academically. His interactions with others are all superficial, with the exception of his little sister, Phoebe. Holden also reveals that he had a slightly younger brother, Allie, that died of leukemia, and an older brother that works as a Hollywood screenwriter. His dormitory mates all seem to annoy him in one way or another and he gets into a fistfight with a particularly athletic one named Stradlater, that results in Holden getting laid out. This, combined with the fact that he is soon to be expelled, makes Holden despondent. He is supposed to go home at semester’s end on Wednesday, but decides instead to have an adventure in New York before going home.

He leaves the school and catches a late train to New York with all his belongings in tow. Holden has flunked all his classes with the exception of literature. He appears to be a pretty good writer. I am guessing a great deal of Holden’s character is based off of the author, J.D. Salinger. Salinger admitted in interviews to being a poor student in his youth and having trouble fitting in at the private schools in New York and Pennsylvania that he attended. The thing that I find interesting about this book, is that you do not necessarily find Holden that likeable. He has serious personality flaws, however, you still find yourself rooting for him to find his way. I guess this is kind of like Bryan Cranston’s character, Walter White, in Breaking Bad, or James Gandolfini’s, character, Tony Soprano, in the Sopranos. These characters are not inherently good people because they say and do some awful things, but you still seem to be rooting for them.

(Artist’s depiction of the main character, Holden Caulfield)

Perhaps we have a soft spot for Holden’s character because he is dealing with the loss of his brother and does seem to treat his sister Phoebe pretty well. He also has a short moment where he is quite pleasant to a couple of nuns he meets in a diner. In most other interactions, however, he is grumpy and self-involved. He largely looks at everyone and everything in a negative manner and dreams of a life where he doesn’t have to interact with anyone. His character is definitely a misfit. Maybe that’s another reason to accept his shortcomings. Everyone likes the underdog.

In his New York escapades, he has a run-in with a prostitute and her pimp, an old classmate, and what appears to be deviant behavior from a former teacher of his. Throughout the book Holden smokes like a chimney, all the while acknowledging the harm he is doing to himself. In the end, Holden has thoughts of hitchhiking to the West coast, working a menial job, and living in a cabin in the woods outside of society, but feels unable to abandon his sister Phoebe to do so. Holden embodies what we all hate about in ourselves when we act selfishly, are ungrateful, and are less than optimistic.  He seems to be ready to make changes in his life and strive to be a better person at the very end, but the reader is left being unsure. This is a very well-written book worthy of all the praise and accolades it has received. There are some references to songs, plays, and movies that are a bit dated, but this book was written before 1950, so that is to be expected.  Oddly, the day I finished this book, one of the songs referenced, “Smoke gets in your eyes,” was playing at the pool while I was doing laps at my local gym. I did not recognize the title when I read it, but realized I had heard the song before. This book is an easy read and has a very unique “voice” that is well worth the time.