Category: Books

Can you choose your religion?

If you could, these two books would be a good start.

God is Not One is a survey of eight world religions, their beliefs, practices, and varieties.
Every religion asks different questions and finds divergent answers.
For some, belief is not important, even if orthodoxy is primary in yours.
Aspects of these religions might resonate, but each of them are distinct endeavors with varied goals and methods.

How to Live a Good Life is a collection of essays by practitioners.
The essays proselytize a little, but given the collection’s liberal bent these are a soft sells.
The book offers a multitude of voices, but leave you to complete the comparison.

The two pair well.
A survey coupled with individual perspectives from the inside.

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But I’m not sure you can choose your religion.
Maybe you can modulate your level of devotion, but can you choose its object?

“Give me a child till he is seven and I will show you the man.”
After listening to these books, I’ve realized my roots are in Christianity, Confucianism, and Taoism.
My parents are Christian, but our heritage is Chinese.
They might have converted, but they couldn’t escape their milieu.
Me too.

I don’t believe in the literal claims of the Bible, but I spent my first twenty years in the good book.
The prophets and the apostles molded my worldview.

I came across Lao Tzu in my thirties, and only recently read Confucius.
I didn’t expect to appreciate the stuffy Confucius or wacky Taoists.
But unlike other philosophies (such as Epicurus) their writings just fit, like finding the perfect pair of sneakers.
I see unwritten aspects of my upbringing with these dusty tomes.

What next?
Drill deeper.

Maybe I’ll find a way to read the Bible that elides its cosmology.
Or study moral order for this fragmented age.
Shall I meditate around philosophical conundrums?

Or maybe it will be something else altogether.
Unplanned and predetermined.

Last year, my friend recommended the book when it was still available online.

It was engrossing and depressing.

Dalio uses monetary policy to diagnose what ails our country — decay and dissention within, decadence and coasting upon the gains of the past.

It’s good to be a citizen of the empire, but the throne is never comfortable. It doesn’t help that China is rising as our internal polarization threatens to tear us apart.

I’m not an economist nor a historian, so it’s hard to judge these claims. There are plenty of counternarratives predicting an impending Chinese economic collapse with demographic decline.

Either way, Ray Dalio spins a plausible narrative, but he doesn’t help with the hard part. What should an individual do in this market? After reading the book, I looked him up on youtube. All he says is that beating the market is really hard. It all leaves you in a swamp of doom, without much hope.

If he’s right, then we’re due for another round of painful renewal. The best scenario is to restart the cycle, and wish for the best for our kids.

The other scenario? Get ready to hit the road again.

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After my investing kick over the past few months, I’ve soured on Dalio. His predictions might be right or wrong, but it would only be coincidental to his analysis, which is thinner than it appears.

Ultimately he’s a salesman for his business. Doom and gloom will always sell.

I don’t regret skimming the book, but I can’t recommend it.

A business self help book that is unashamedly both. As a businessman, Christensen starts with incentives and culture.

He splits incentives into motivation and hygiene factors. Hygiene (fair pay, good team) are the basics that allows you to avoid disliking your job. Motivations are the warm fuzzies that turn your work into a passion.

He starts with corporate culture to discuss family culture. I generally despise the work = family equivalence, but he frames it well to present a fresh perspective on the matter. I need to ponder how incentive factors affect our family culture.

Following his thesis from the Innovator’s Dilemma, his key refrain is that the little things beneath our notice are what will determine our future.

The time and resources that you devote today, at this moment, prove your real priorities. Repeated execution of these priorities create your life.

His final chapter is a warning to stick to one’s standards. A small compromise in the moment may be a clever marginal play, but the full cost might be realized after one’s course has been steered in an ill direction.

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I listened to it at 1.5x speed. It’s another classic pull yourself up by the bootstraps self help book, this time from a business consultant’s perspective. I haven’t felt the need to listen to it again, but I should watch his TEDx talk.

The Wisdom of Solomon might be a fine devotional for a believer. It’s chock full of paeans to wisdom defined as the faithful adherence to God,

But there’s nothing else.

As a former Christian, I view the religion from both the inside and the outside. My parents still practice, but my house is very much non-devout.

Growing up, Bible stories felt as real as other historical stories. But try explaining Bible stories to someone who wasn’t indoctrinated from birth. Last Christmas, I told the gospel story to my daughter. It was fantastical. I’m certain she’ll have a similar look on her face if I ever recount Greek myths.

This is my one regret from forsaking religion. I wonder if my kids will miss out on the allusions buried throughout western literature. For that alone, it may be worth an extensive study of the classics, including the Bible — but don’t start here.

I fully endorse the exclusion of this book from the Protestant canon. I started focused but only skimmed the second half while watching the kids jump on their bed.

After stumbling across the gem of the Havamal last year, I printed out the wisdom literature in the Apocrypha. After this read, the other books have remained untouched.

Growing up in a Christian home, I didn’t learn about Chinese religions. The one thing I remember is my mom telling me that the Taoists are really crazy.

When I started dabbling in Eastern philosophy a few years ago, I thought she was talking about the slippery mysticism of the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi.

My mom was a history major so I wouldn’t be surprised if she was forced to painfully slog through a philosophy class in college. But I also suspect she saw many religious ceremonies growing up in Taiwan.

The philosophy might be mindblowing, but wait till you check out its practices. This book described a series of practices that run between wild and completely bonkers.

Admittedly, a Bible story (take something as basic as Christmas) is totally ridiculous for someone who was not raised in the hegemony of Christian myth. So to be fair, all religions are pretty far out.

But we entered the modern age to get beyond everyone’s superstition. I’m not sold on the intricate cosmology of Christianity, and there’s no reason to adopt the talismans and esoteric exercises on Taoism.

This book did its job. It gave me enough of an overview to realize that I don’t need to investigate this religion further. Admittedly Taoists are a heterodox bunch so I’m certain there is a more sedate sect that might suit my preferences.

But time is limited, so I’ll just sample the philosophy, proverbs, and wisdom in all these traditions, and leave the religion to their participants, just as I let my parents worship in peace.

TLDR: Here is a quick overview of Taoism on youtube…while you’re at it, he also put together a great takedown of Hollywood depictions of Asian “honor”.

Last year, I listened to the library’s copy of the Upanishads during a 3-hour 10K hike in the hills behind our house.

It may have been appropriate to experience this work as an audiobook because these were originally oral texts, but it was a slog. Unlike the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads are fourteen separate documents and it was difficult to keep attention without the structure of a story.

Given their canonical status, it’s my fault for not properly appreciating this experience. Then again, maybe the translator shares some of the blame (I found the introduction to the book incredibly dry).

Or possibly, these teachings should be sampled one line at a time, slowly pondered in a deliberate fashion.

The audiobook format is great for lighter works that wash past the consciousness, often at 1.5x speed. Self-help books flitter into the consciousness to create an illusion of learning that will be forgotten in a month.

The Upanishads are definitely not fluffy self-help fodder. These texts were orally transmitted from father to son. Something that required this much effort must have embodied deep value to survive the attrition of millennia.

It was too much to digest in an endless stream, even at 1.0x speed.

In all, I don’t regret the listen. But this was the barest of introductions. If I want to get anything substantive out of the Upanishads, I’ll have to sit down and read it slowly.

But if the past year of inaction is any indication, I doubt will ever happen.

Every few months, I rummage through my boxes of books looking for a specific volume. I usually come out with several books to reread, which is what happened last year (even though I didn’t find the book I was searching for).

This photo book takes a journey through North America, photographing the food and waitresses (all women) along his extended road trip, taken over three separate legs.

The early 2000s was a tenuous time, having just dealt with the upheaval of 9/11 and the Iraq war. But our lives had not been infected by the smartphone and its ubiquitous internet in the pocket.

As such, Stephan foretold the incoming future. He just barely beat the trend of uploading sexy photographs of one’s meal and sharing it with the digital world.

Not that he was searching for sexy. It’s a damn shame to travel 13,000 miles in a big loop around this large continent and just eat diner food. But that’s what he signed up to do.

Sixteen years after publication, reading the book felt like entering a time capsule. Twice. Both for my initial page turn and slowly reviewing each photograph over the period of a week, reliving communal scenes from my early adulthood.

As a fan of shoddy diners, the settings are intimately familiar. However, it is strange to think that I am now older than many of the ladies whose portraits are frozen in time. I wonder what they are doing these days. I wonder if they ever ponder what happened to that strange photographer who took a portrait of the meal and of them, almost two decades ago.

After a while, it felt a bit voyeuristic (especially since the German edition is titled “Cuties and Calories”). Even so, I’ll posit this is a good book. It was definitely a great deal as a deeply discounted remainder item at Half Price Books, even worth moving across the continent for its own road trip from Houston to Las Vegas.

The book is an interesting concept, a well-executed portrait of our nation. Well worth a read.