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The life and times of David Geisert

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The Science of Enlightenment

The title of this book is a misnomer.  The book has very little about science, and the little it does have is half-science.  It isn’t pseudoscience, just all the science in it is reported anecdotally.  I was very disappointed by this book.  There were also large portions of the book dedicated to meditations and overall expounding on meditation, mindfulness, and enlightenment having nothing to do with science.  I would recommend avoiding this book.  The book also had a bit of a different view on mindfulness and what that means vs. the way I had been understanding it in other books on the subject.

The one good thing I can say about this book is the way it points out how Buddhism, and other religious groups, could be more like the scientific community.  The best of these is open logical discussions on policy and practice.

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The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It

This was not that great of a listen.  The author spent most of the time in somewhat related anecdotal stories, as well as only giving moderately useful guidance on what to do to better yourself.  The last book I read “The Power of Habit” was much better, even though it only talks about willpower in one chapter of the book.  This book also mirrored much of the Buddhist teachings of mindfulness that I’ve been listening to.  It has been a really interesting how I’m hearing those Buddhist overtones in parts of many of the books I’m listening to now.  I think it has to do with the ideas being very tested and refined.  Western teachings on self-improvement are just catching up to the idea of being mindful.  That said, I still don’t agree with some of the other Buddhist teachings.

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The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

This book shows some great ways to be less mindful and still good.   The power of habit is all about how people get into habits, how they take over, and how they are structured.  The habit is composed of 3 parts, the trigger, the action, and the reward.  Knowing about how these 3 are a part of your habit will help in changing the habit.  Triggers are something you try to recognize, not change.  This is the same with the reward, just recognize the reward.  In the middle of the habit change the action, so that the trigger can tell you when to do it and so that it produces the expected reward.  This is a somewhat paradoxical way of mindfully being unmindful.  As much as I don’t really buy into the whole end state of the Buddhist teaching, the practice of mindfulness has been nagging at me more and more.  The power of habit makes unmindfulness mindful, and is something that can be leveraged when our willpower is low.

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Eating Animals

This is a very interesting book, and I liked the listen.  It goes into depth about the raising and slaughter of animals.  Factory farming vs. pasture farming.  How factory farming is pushing out any pasture farming they can.  It makes me think more about the mindfulness proposed by the Buddhist books i’ve been listening to.  This book is all about the mindfulness of eating.  It makes complete sense about how Buddhists have a strict vegetarian diet.  This is something that I’d like to be more mindful about, but it will be hard.  The book also makes a note about how the social nature of eating can make it hard to start doing anything mindful about eating.  If you say that you are not eating anything that comes from a factory farm, then people will have no idea how to meet your eating requirements.  If you simply say you are vegetarian then people will know how to meet your culinary requirements.  On the same point that it is hard to be around people and eat mindfully, it will make other people around you eat more mindfully if you do so.  The social impacts of the eating go both ways, and can have a critical mass.

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Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

This book looks at many of the similarities of evolution of genes and memes as has been put by other authors.  The book also looks at the power laws associated with speed of activity, and how the requirements of a body, or city will diminish with the fourth root, the output will actually increase with the fourth root.  This law doesn’t just apply to the physical world, but also applies to the digital world.  The author then breaks does the innovations into two dimensions  individualist vs. group and market vs. open source.  He points out that the shift in the innovations of the past decades has been to group and open source.  I think the principles of this book bring to mind some ideas that can be applied in larger settings, such that the previous norms will be destroyed, and replaced with much more open and fluid methods.  I can think of a few markets that could use this kind of opening up.  They open source does not need to be fully open, but only on the scale of a mostly open API.  With your API and data being at the source of the platform.  The example of this mostly open API that the author goes into detail about is twitter.

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Confucianism and Taoism

This was a pretty good summary of the basics of Confucianism and Taoism.  I like the points it makes about how the view of ethical leadership in Confucianism is a great way to take it in as a modern person, but some of the patriarchal and controlling ideas that stem from it’s practice don’t mesh with modern life.  The little part on Taoism was short, and said that there are lots of good ethical points made in Taoism, but it is more personal and deals with balance.  Both of these have prospered in their pure forms due to not being made into political weapons like many other religious or philosophical beliefs have been.  I listened to this twice, just to make sure I got the smaller points it made.

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Abiding in Mindfulness, Volume 2: On Feeling, the Mind, and Dhamma

This was not as strange as the first book but a lot more meta.  The first book had a lot about physical things that simply could not happen.  This book focused on the mind and how we can view thoughts as though they are simply thoughts and not necessarily us.  I like the theme, but the exact way they define it leaves no definition of self.  That is somewhat the point of the definition, but I don’t agree with it.  I can tell that this concept was used by Scientologists to define the concept of Thetan, but there are many significant differences.

The overarching practice of being mindful, and always aware of what you are doing and why.  Using this you can teach yourself to think objectively more often instead of emotionally, realize that your actions should not follow from anger, confusion, sloth, or ‘desire.’  Desire as they put it is something that I would more describe as coveting.  The idea of desire being a bad influence isn’t something I fully agree with, even though that is more or less what they mean.  The subset of desire, which I would call coveting, is what I would consider a bad influence.  I believe that there are many desires that can be good influences.  When I was reading the section on good and bad influences I got images in my head of hands representing the good and bad, while being the same shape.  Coveting is a hand reaching out trying to grab something, while charity and good desire is a hand reaching out to give.  Both these hands are the same shape, only one is palm down, the other palm up.  Similarly the idea of confusion and clarity are two hands making circles between the thumb and middle finger.  The confusion has the hands linked, and the clarity has them separate.  Anger and Empathy are hands illuminated from the top by a red light and the hands are flat.  The angry hands were palm down showing bright red knuckles, the empathic hands were palm up and looked like they were cupping blood.  The slovenly vs. productive hands were in the shape of holding a rod.  The one was holding a tool, the other was holding something else.

I think the last book will be far too meta for me to enjoy, but I still look forward to listening to it.

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Hinduism: Bolinda Beginner Guides

This book was a lot more about the history of Hinduism than the beliefs.  Due to the fragmented nature of the beliefs it is necessary to explain the history of the different traditions, but there was surprisingly little on the actual belief structure as it exists today.  Some of the interesting parts were about the rebirth cycle and how the god/gods work by being separate, but the same.   It reminds me a lot of how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is said to be separate but the same.  I’m going to need to listen to a few more books on hinduism before I feel that I have a decent understanding of the religious beliefs.

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What Every BODY Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People

This book points out a lot of ways to determine if a person you are talking to is under stress, how to identify exactly what part of what you are saying is causing stress, and how to lead that to determining what the stress is about with regards to that part.  The author points out many times that the techniques will indicate stress much more than they will indicate deception.  Deception is only one thing that will cause stress.  The biggest thing the author says is an indicator is a change in behavior.  The behaviors themselves can be normal, even if they seem strange, but a change in a behavior is indicative of something no matter what kinds of behaviors are normal for a person.

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