What I’m Reading

This is the first short post listing some of the things that I am currently actively reading; I may write longer posts on these once I’m finished, but they’re all excellent so far:

• “Shock to the System: Coups, Elections, and War on the Road to Democracy” (2021) by Michael Miller: How do democracy’s emerge? Following the French and American revolutions, one might be inclined to believe that it comes from the “will of the people”. Miller provides a detailed analysis to argue that democracy almost always arises out of one of two patterns, both of which are led by the ruling elites: either a violent shock (such as a coup) or through “electoral continuity” (where an weakened autocrat believes they will stay in power within a democracy).
• “Being You: A New Science of Consciousness” (2021) by Anil Seth: Consciousness research has long been an active field with philosophy of mind^[1] Especially following Thomas Nagel’s (1974) “What is it like to be a bat?” paper., neuroscience, and other related fields, but interest has increasingly broadened following the recent advances in artificial intelligence. Anil Seth’s “Being You” is a fascinating journey through different areas of research, presents a compelling perspective on what consciousness actually physically is within brains and bodies.
• “Know Thyself: The Science of Self-Awareness” (2021) by Stephen Fleming: Self-awareness is having a moment amongst the intelligentsia, although many of these efforts have focused on Meditation (e.g. Sam Harris), a viewpoint that always struck me as problematically subjective, so it’s encouraging to find a book that considers “metacognition” from a purely scientific perspective.
• “Life as We Made It: How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined―and Redefined―Nature” (2021) by Beth Shapiro: I have read many books on the evolution of homo sapiens in the last few years ^[2] Some of my favorites include “The Secret of Our Success”, “Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony”, “The Goodness Paradox”, and “Behave”., but hadn’t encountered as much about the co-evolution of humans and other animals. “Life as We Made It” considers the how future evolutionary development through technologies such as CRISPR relate to the history of homo sapiens: manipulation of our environment haas always been a part of human evolution, and lessons from the past are worth acknowledging in thinking about the future.
• “Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music” (2020) by Alex Ross: Cultural history at its best, in the spirit of the kind of work that Jacques Barzun used to produce. Wagner was one of the most important figures in musical history, yet his work is often associated with the darker sides of humanity, especially the Nazi’s. Ross provides not only an appreciation of the Wagner’s achievements, but also considers the numerous ways that Wagner was embedded in society throughout history. Ross’s earlier book “The Rest is Noise” is also worth reading. ^[3]Coincidentally, I had also recently read Sue Prideaux’s 2019 biography of Frederick Nietzsche — “I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche” — that discussed the … Continue reading