Hoyt's Huns discussion
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what are you reading now?
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Mary
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Dec 30, 2021 05:40PM
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Short stories: Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles BeaumontNovel: Many Marriages by Sherwood Anderson
Poetry: Goblin Market and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti
Non-fiction: Just Kids by Patti Smith
Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice is what I'm listening to in the car, and ConVent on my Kindle
Mary wrote: "The Lost War by Karl K. Gallagher"I'll be interested in your take. I quite liked his Torchship books.
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Mary wrote: "I didn't like it quite so much. It may be the different setting."Thanks. I reckon I will still give it a go.
Hopeful me? 😕
I finished the audiobook of Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice and started the audiobook of The Rift. I finished the eBook of ConVent and started Stepping Stones: A Journey Through The Ice Age Caves Of The Dordogne
I've been reading The WIERDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich, and The Evolution of Desire by David Buss (that title with his last name always makes me chuckle), which is a nice pairing. Both authors are atheistic evolutionists speculating on human social evolution, which is not a subject that sounds all that interesting to me on its own, however they're doing so through modern-day studies on human nature, which are fascinating.I remember watching an episode of Connections, where James Burke was talking about how "we can't understand why people would burn witches," which I thought that an astonishing failure of imagination. And a lot of scientists talking about religion demonstrate that same inability to see the world from someone else's perspective. These two authors only rarely fall into that trap -- they seem to have more than attitude of Jordan Peterson back in his highly skeptical days; "I may not understand what's going on here, but I know it makes sense on some level."
Henrich, in particular, sees more "noise" in the system, and holds on more tightly to the idea that evolution is random rather than thought out, but he also recognizes people are often making rational choices that end up shaping their communities in unexpected ways, which is lovely. And while the Buss book looks unflinchingly at how selfish and vicious people can be, the Henrich book ends up pointing out how societies can calm and control these basic desires and create a better environment for everyone through "evolutionary processes" -- if you can call choices made by thinking brains evolutionary.
I guess I see much of the WEIRD book as more the workings of human nature in society than of mindless evolution, but either way it's interesting. I knew before I picked up the book that people of Western societies think in a profoundly different way than people in other traditions, but I still find many of the concrete examples fascinating, and so far the tracing of how things changed in our own history has been pretty interesting as well.
Buss' book is more review for me but also brings up something new now and then.
Sheryl wrote: "I've been reading The WIERDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich, and The Evolution of Desire by David Buss (that title with his last name always makes me chuckle), which is a nice pairing. Bot..."Well, those sound absolutely fascinating to me.
Faerie, by John T. Kruse. I bought the book because I want to try my hand at writing fantasy and thought it would be good for research. I didn't realize that the author claims a real belief in faeries, so it will be a slightly different read than I expected.
Hoyt's Huns
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