Posts from — June 2009

I tweeted a few days ago how much I love reading book lists. It doesn’t seem to matter who makes it or what is covers, I will always stop what I’m doing to read through one. I’m not sure what it is that causes the intrigue, but as I’ve discussed it with others it seems I’m not the only one who loves them. So, in an attempt to consolidate some of the best book lists I’ve found in one easy place, I present to you the following: THE GREATEST LIST OF GREAT BOOK LISTS!!!

1. The Modern Library 100 Best Novels

25. 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read: The Definitive List

Popularity: 5% [?]

It seems there is lots being written about tribes these days.  Here are three interesting examples:

Tribes in Iraq and Afghanistan

Three years ago (though I just found it recently, shame) Stephen Pressfield wrote an article called, “It’s the Tribes, Stupid,” where he makes a convincing argument that what we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is not Islam, but rather “…tribalism articulated in terms of religion.”  He argues that tribalism seeks security over freedom, hence strongmen, not democracies, have ruled their cultures for years.

Pressfield rejects the notion that an American-style democracy with widespread power-sharing cannot survive in Iraq or Afghanistan.  I’ll be honest, there’s a large part of me that agrees and has for the past several years, but it’s very hard to stomach the loss of life, money and time it has taken to prove this point.  I would like to hear/study more from the Iraqis and Afghanis themselves on freedom vs. security before concluding that Pressfield is spot on, but he definitely has my ear at this point.

Here are his words (emphasis mine):

“The tribe is the most ancient form of social organization. It arose from the hunter-gatherer clans of pre-history. A tribe is small. It consists of personal, face-to-face relationships, often of blood. A tribe is cohesive. Its structure is hierarchical. It has a leader and a rigid set of norms and customs that defines each individual’s role. Like a hunting band, the tribe knows who’s the top dog and knows how to follow orders. What makes Islam so powerful in the world today is that its all-embracing discipline and order overlay the tribal mind-set so perfectly. Islam delivers the certainty and security that the tribe used to. It permits the tribal way to survive and thrive in a post-tribal and super-tribal world.”

—

“The heart of every tribal male is that of a warrior. Even the most wretched youth in a Palestinian refugee camp sees himself as a knight of Islam. The Pathan code of nangwali prescribes three virtues – nang, pride; badal, revenge; melmastia, hospitality. These guys are Apaches.  What the warrior craves before all else is respect. Respect from his own people, and, even more, from his enemy. When we of the West understand this, as Alexander did, we’ll have taken the first step toward solving the unsolvable.”

—

“To deal successfully with the tribe, a negotiator of the West must first grant it its pride and honor. The tribe’s males must be addressed as warriors; its women must be treated with respect. The tribe must be left to its own land, to govern as it deems best.  If you want to get out of a tribal war, you must find a scenario by which the tribe can declare itself victorious.”

—

“Perhaps in the end, our leaders, like Alexander, will figure some way to bring the tribal foe around. More likely in my opinion, they’ll arrive at the same conclusion as did Lord Roberts, the legendary British general. Lord Roberts fought (and defeated militarily) tribesmen in two bloody wars in Afghanistan in the 19th century. His conclusion: get out. Lord Roberts’ axiom was that the farther away British forces remained from the tribesmen, the more likely the tribesmen were to feel warmly toward them; the closer he got, the more they hated him and the more stubbornly and implacably they fought against him.”

Building Tribes for Security in a Chaotic World

John Robb, author of “Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization,” wrote a blog post on how to build your own tribe. He views the tribe as an important structure for security and survival in a global depression.  Though traditional tribes have been erased in the last few centuries (at least in the West) due to, as Robb explains, “…pressures from the nation-state that saw them as competitors and the marketplace that saw them as impediments,” they can pick up the slack where the nuclear family or social circle have failed.

With a tribe, Robb says, you have, “A group of people that you are loyal to you and you are loyal in return.”  Sidenote: I’d be interested to ask Robb how a tribe differs from a typical street gang because the sound similar in many ways.  Anyway, here’s how Robb says one should go about starting their own tribe:

A strong tribe, in this post-industrial environment*, isn’t built from the top down.  Instead it is built organically from the bottom up.  A simple tribe starts with cementing ties to your extended family, a connection of blood.  The second step is to extend that network to include other families and worthy  individuals.  A key part of that is to build fictive kinship, a sense of connectedness that leads to the creation of loyalty to the group.  That kinship is built through (see Ronfeldt’s paper for some background on this):

• Story telling.  Shared histories and historical narratives.
• Rites of passage.  Rituals of membership.  Membership is earned not given due to the geographic location of birth or residence.
• Obligations.   Rules of conduct and honor.  The ultimate penalty being expulsion.
• Egalitarian and often leaderless organization.  Sharing is prized.
• Multi-skilled.  Segmental organization (lots of redundancy among parts).
• Two-way loyalty.  The tribe protects the members and the members protect the tribe.   If this isn’t implemented, you don’t have a tribe, you have a Kiwanis club.

Building Tribes to Spread Ideas

Seth Godin, author of “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us,” is interested in building tribes of a different kind, the ones that spread ideas and change the world.  Here’s Seth Godin’s recent TED presentation where he explains why the world needs YOU to lead a tribe.

Popularity: 1% [?]

It is an oft-repeated, but accurate axiom that “things” are not the key to attaining happiness. For those who have traveled the third world, the smiles of men and women who live on less per year than we make in a few days deal a mighty blow to our notions of the good life and what is necessary to attain it.

We tell ourselves that keeping up with the Jones’ is a fool’s game, but our credit card statements say otherwise.  Like many truths of life it seems that those regarding happiness are often relegated to the later years, after we’ve spent ourselves into oblivion and finally decided that maybe our fathers were right, real happiness is independent of our circumstances.

These reflections came today after reading a great piece in The New York Times by Pico Iyer entitled, “The Joy of Less,” (see full article here) in which he discovers, as so many have, that the roots of happiness are often more subtle than we’d like to believe.  He writes,

“There is nothing either good or bad,” I had heard in high school, from Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.” I had been lucky enough at that point to stumble into the life I might have dreamed of as a boy: a great job writing on world affairs for Time magazine, an apartment (officially at least) on Park Avenue, enough time and money to take vacations in Burma, Morocco, El Salvador. But every time I went to one of those places, I noticed that the people I met there, mired in difficulty and often warfare, seemed to have more energy and even optimism than the friends I’d grown up with in privileged, peaceful Santa Barbara, Calif., many of whom were on their fourth marriages and seeing a therapist every day. Though I knew that poverty certainly didn’t buy happiness, I wasn’t convinced that money did either.

So — as post-1960s cliché decreed — I left my comfortable job and life to live for a year in a temple on the backstreets of Kyoto. My high-minded year lasted all of a week, by which time I’d noticed that the depthless contemplation of the moon and composition of haiku I’d imagined from afar was really more a matter of cleaning, sweeping and then cleaning some more. But today, more than 21 years later, I still live in the vicinity of Kyoto, in a two-room apartment that makes my old monastic cell look almost luxurious by comparison. I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media — and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can’t think of a single thing I lack.

He goes on to say that the simple life isn’t always easy.  Having to travel an hour to print his latest article, or missing the N.B.A. finals tempt him to return to his previous lifestyle, but it appears the trade off has helped him live his life in the present, something I’ve struggled with for years.  It wasn’t until my daugther came along and showed me how to slow down that I recognized the waste of glossing over the present, constantly dreaming of tomorrow.  I wrote about it here and here.

Iyer goes on to question common sources of happiness, the great job, stability, recognition — the pursuit of these things do not seem to make his friends happy.  What are most of us missing when it comes to the pursuit of happiness?  He concludes,

I certainly wouldn’t recommend my life to most people — and my heart goes out to those who have recently been condemned to a simplicity they never needed or wanted. But I’m not sure how much outward details or accomplishments ever really make us happy deep down. The millionaires I know seem desperate to become multimillionaires, and spend more time with their lawyers and their bankers than with their friends (whose motivations they are no longer sure of). And I remember how, in the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.

Being self-employed will always make for a precarious life; these days, it is more uncertain than ever, especially since my tools of choice, written words, are coming to seem like accessories to images. Like almost everyone I know, I’ve lost much of my savings in the past few months. I even went through a dress-rehearsal for our enforced austerity when my family home in Santa Barbara burned to the ground some years ago, leaving me with nothing but the toothbrush I bought from an all-night supermarket that night. And yet my two-room apartment in nowhere Japan seems more abundant than the big house that burned down. I have time to read the new John le Carre, while nibbling at sweet tangerines in the sun. When a Sigur Ros album comes out, it fills my days and nights, resplendent. And then it seems that happiness, like peace or passion, comes most freely when it isn’t pursued.

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For the past year I’ve become fascinated with great writers, many thanks to Ben Casnocha for tipping me off to Tobias Wolff, John Updike and some good literary blogs.  The following comes from the L.A. Times blog, Jacket Copy.  See full post here.

It’s always interesting to hear someone talk about their passions, but even more so when it is a writer.  That their job is one of communicating and story-telling makes their descriptions more potent and memorable.

A pitcher might say that he likes pitching because he’s always been good at it and he likes the roar of the crowd, or a pilot might say he flies simply for the freedom of traveling through the skies (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry being a glaring exception).  It’s not that they don’t love what they do, but few have the ability to express it in a way that wholly represents their passion.  A writer on the other hand will give you an answer like the following from Updike:

Why write? As soon ask, why rivet? Because a number of personal accidents drifts us toward the occupation of riveter, which preexists, and, most importantly, the riveting gun exists, and we love it.

Think of a pencil. What a quiet, nimble, slender, and then stubby wonder-worker he is! At his touch, worlds leap into being; a tiger with no danger, a steamroller with no weight, a palace at no cost. All children are alive to the spell of pencil and crayons, of making something, as it were, from nothing; a few children never move out from under this spell, and try to become artists. I was once a rapturous child drawing at the dining-room table, under a stained-glass chandelier that sat like a hat on the swollen orb of my excitement.

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We’re told a lot what we should eat and drink these days.  Most of the time it just annoys me.  It’s probably because since birth I’ve been blessed with an incredibly high metabolism, allowing me to live outside the normal nutritional rules.  Much to my mom’s befuddlement, as a boy I would eat her healthy meals then make myself an Oreo sundae or put chocolate chips on my Eggo waffles in the morning.

My poor eating habits accelerated rapidly once I wasn’t under her watchful eye, but still without any detriment to how much I weighed or looked.  Will, my roommate at the Academy, would grow visibly frustrated with my gleeful disregard, explaining that the amount of chocolate I ate was going to weaken my immune system, give me acne and all kinds of other terrible disorders.  Never happened.

Then I got married to a woman who can cook like a Food Network star, but more importantly who believes in eating healthy.  Slowly, like a wild bronco being broken, she began to reign in my terrible eating habits by substituting them with healthy alternatives.  Sometimes I resisted, but over time I began to realize she was right and more importantly, healthy didn’t have to mean tasting bad.

During this process I’ve begun to pay more attention to nutritional articles and medical studies touting the health benefits of certain foods.  The following are a few that I’ve grown to love and would recommend to anyone trying to develop a healthier eating plan:

Blueberries- these little guys are considered by many to be a “superfood” for how many health benefits they pack.  Blueberries are among the fruits with the highest antioxidant activity.  Antioxidants are thought to prevent diseases such as cancer, heart disease and stroke by fighting the free radicals which cause damage to cells.  They also act as an anti-inflammatory, helping your skin remain younger by preventing aging and wrinkles.

Blueberries are also good for your brain.

According to a USDA study…a diet rich in blueberry extract reversed some loss of balance and coordination, and improved short-term memory in aging rats…This particular USDA study is the first to actually demonstrate a reversal in dysfunctions of behavior, going farther than earlier studies which linked high-antioxidant fruits and vegetables to prevention of function loss only. – prnewswire.com

And in case you needed one more reason, researchers at Rutgers University have found that blueberries reduce the risk of urinary tract infections by preventing bacteria from attaching to the walls of the urinary tract.  Not sure what it’s like to get a urinary tract infection, but it sounds gross and painful…so I eat blueberries on my waffles now instead of chocolate chips.

Almonds- almonds are the most nutritious of all the nuts, but many never consider how healthy they are because they’ve heard that they’re high in fat.  They’re right, but almonds contain the good kinds of fat, like monounsaturated that actual helps lower your LDL (bad) cholesterol.  Almonds have been shown to lower the risks of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

“A one-ounce serving of almonds (about 23 almonds) is an excellent source of vitamin E, magnesium and manganese, and a good source of fiber, copper, riboflavin, and phosphorus. Not to mention, every ounce has 6 grams of protein, and 12 grams of heart-healthy unsaturated fats. Now that’s a lot of nutrients for such a small package.” – almondsarein.com

Finally, just like blueberries, almonds contain antioxidants which are healthy for the skin and can prolong the appearance of wrinkles and other signs of aging.

Red Wine- For years now the Europeans have been laughing at Americans who say they only drink wine because it’s good for the heart.  “Why not just drink it because it tastes good?” they ask.  Both cultures have a good point and I tend to fall somewhere in the middle.  I drink wine because I love the taste, the culture and because I know that it’s good for my health.

Many people have heard of the healthy effects of red wine, but believe that it is simply the best choice if your going to have alcohol.  In fact, there are many health benefits that red wine drinkers experience over those who drink no alcohol at all.  Thus far, doctors have been reluctant to advise their patients to start drinking alcohol because of the highly negative effects alcohol abuse.  Understandable.

Kim Marcus and Jacob Gaffney recently wrote an article in the May 2008 issue of Wine Spectator summarizing the recent findings of various medical studies and tests and what they mean for wine drinkers.  Here’s a sample of what they found:

Heart: Many studies have shown that regular and moderate consumption (one to two glasses per day) of red wine is associated with the greatest amount of benefits, such as better circulation and overall heart health.  A fascinating new angle of study is being pursued by researchers at Stanford University, who have discovered that one of the factors behind alcohol’s effect on the heart is that it activates an enzyme called aldehyde dehydrogenase 2.  The enzyme, which helps process alcohol, also eliminates toxic byproducts created by the breakdown of fats in cells during a heart attack.  Eliminating the byproducts prevents additional damage to the heart cells.

Delaying Dementia: Several studies have not only amassed evidence that moderate wine-consumption may help delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, but are also now detailing the complicated physiological processes at play…Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York have found that grape seed polyphenols block the formation of the plaques (that kill surrounding brain cells).

Preventing Arthritis: Researchers in Sweden have found that drinking an average of five to 10 glasses of wine per week may cut the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis by up to 50 percent, compared to the risk of nondrinkers.  In addition, other studies have found that moderate wine-drinking is linked to increased bone density in elderly women, possibly lowering their risk of osteoporosis.

Lowering Diabetes Risk: People who consume moderate amounts of wine daily appear to be at an advantage when it comes to preventing type 2 diabetes; studies have shown that light to moderate drinkers may have a substantially lower risk of developing the disease.  A Harvard School of Public Health study from 2003 found that women 25 and older who consumed a glass or two of alcohol a day were at a 58 percent lower risk of developing diabetes than nondrinkers.

More info on almonds:

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/health-benefits-of-almonds.html

http://tinyurl.com/d5nhku

More info on blueberries:

http://www.trueblueberry.com/blueberry/default.asp

http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/oprahshow/slideshow1_ss_oz_20080205/3

More info on red wine:

http://stanford.wellsphere.com/wellmix360/benefits-of-drinking-red-wine

http://eating.health.com/2008/02/11/6-reasons-to-drink-wine/

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