Weekly Non-Fiction Reading List 12.11.23
This week we have 3 books from some great authors. We have a book about the art of being heard and how to truly hear others. We have one about some awful techno billionaires ruining the world as well as one about polarization. Enjoy!
Each of the links to the books are affiliate links, so if you use my link to purchase any of these books, some comes back to support what I do (and it also helps fund my reading habit).
The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time by Yascha Mounk
Is this a good book? Yes. If you’ve read a bunch of books about why “woke is bad”, do you really need to read this book? Probably. I really wanted to write off this new Yascha Mounk book as just another anti-woke book, but this is one of the few books that does well with its arguments. How many people it’ll persuade in either direction, I don’t know. Yascha is basically what I think of as a “rational liberal”, but he uses the term “philosophical liberal”. And rather than “woke”, Mounk refers to it as “the identity synthesis”, which may get more people to listen to him.
Mounk does an excellent job explaining how people on the far left are hurting our own cause with some of the over-the-top policing of speech that’s going on. But, you can tell Mounk’s heart is in the right place and sees the world through a leftist lens because, throughout the book, he discusses systemic racism, issues the lower classes face and much more. He also discusses how the right policies speech just as much while acting like free speech absolutists.
It’s a great book, but it’s just one of those where I feel like it’ll only live in echo chambers where people already agree. Maybe that’s not a bad thing because it can help strengthen the arguments of the readers.
How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks
This is an excellent book, which Brooks mentions is really about hearing others and being heard. This is a skill that everyone should learn because we’re often so caught up in our thoughts and feelings that we neglect to really hear others, and they know when we’re not listening. Brooks discusses a ton of different ways we can hear others while intertwining stories of his years of experience of bring a writer who interviews people.
On a more pessimistic note, this book is largely about the extreme polarization we’re seeing, and I think some of these books simplify it way too much. In my humble opinion, it’s a two-way street, and often only one person is practicing what’s in this book. A lot of people are fully entrenched in their groupthink and believe some pretty crazy things, and it’s going to take a lot more work than simply listening to them.
What I will say is that if you truly listen to even the craziest of polarized people, you’ll hear the underlying issues. It’s not necessarily that they believe in outlandish conspiracies, but they’re struggling with day-to-day living and sensationalist gurus on “their side” are promising them a better future.
The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto by Jonathan Taplin
This is a decent book that’s all about four of the techno billionaires who are causing a lot of issues in this world and are a threat to democracy and the well-being of all of this. Taplin writes in-depth about Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Andreesen, and Elon Musk. The book dives into a variety of different forms of tech these guys are pushing as well as the insane ideologies of each of them and all the whacky stuff they do.
I will say that this book is 75% awesome book about tech billionaires being awful, but the other 25% had me rolling my eyes because it’s techno fear porn. Taplin is a major tech doomer, and there were points in the book where I audibly laughed. In the chapter on AI, he references the Google employee who claimed their AI was sentient, but the author neglects to mention how the guy’s claims were thoroughly debunked. Then, at the end of the book, Taplin goes through a list of tech we shouldn’t use, and he says, “Don’t use VR,” and I laughed super loud. Yes, the Metaverse has some ridiculous stuff going on, but ALL VR? That’s a bit much.
Overall, it’s a decent book that I’d recommend reading with some skepticism when it comes to the techno fear porn.
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