The Monday edition: examined readings
The Monday edition: examined readings
In the Monday edition of the newsletter I am sharing observations about books or articles I am currently reading or have recently finished. The Friday posts are the longer essays inspired by the literature and other sources.
I am excellent at starting books, less good at finishing them — another book always begs starting! But I am also wary of quoting out of context, i.e. I hold it important to try to understand a book or an article in the broader body of work by the author (which takes time and effort!)
When I can, I will add the books to a list at bookshop.org with an affiliate link, i.e. purchasing them that way helps me a little. That’s for full disclosure.
Pick’s for Monday, 19th of February 2024
Examined book of the week
Christopher D. Wallis, Near Enemies of Truth: Avoid the Pitfalls of the Spiritual Life and Become Radically Free
I recently finished this wonderful book. The author analyses several spiritual platitudes such as ’listen to your heart’ and ’be in the moment’ as notions that appear as meaningful but actually betray their origins. Thus, they become what modern Buddhism regards as ’near enemies of truth’ ie “states that appear similar to the desired quality but actually undermine it”, Wallis writes.
For example, trying to always stay in the moment easily leads one to avoid taking responsibility and changing one’s behaviour for the better. In contrast, as wise people have noted, there is an exceptional nature to being human in that we remember and always carry our past with us while simultaneously living towards the future. The mortality that comes with that is what gives our lives meaning.
Insisting on living in the moment, without any nuance to it, then becomes an instance of spiritual bypassing where one plays the spirituality card as a performative act and avoids coming to terms with difficult matters. I will return to these themes in future posts. Meanwhile, Wallis’ book is a great read.
Examined article of the week
The Virtual Reality pioneer Jaron Lanier has written about VR following Apple’s Vision Pro headset launch. Lanier’s work is always enjoyable to read and often thought-provoking. In the New Yorker piece, Lanier repeats his views that he has consistently promoted across the past decades, i.e.
1) the notion about users wanting to spend 24/7 (or anything close to that) with such devices is fundamentally flawed, and
2) one of the more poignant aspects of a multisensory technology like VR is actually taking the headset off and re-entering the physical reality in all its richness and vibrancy.
Around this topic, I have also been reading — slowly, in fits and starts —David Chalmers’ Reality+ over the past few months. Chalmers’ argument is that, because we can’t define what reality is in absolute terms, we can’t say that virtual reality is not real either. I find this argument largely an intellectual exercise, with little to deliberate around one’s own relationship to such a technology, and therefore somewhat frustrating. However, I will address the topic in detail in a future longer post.
Examined Substack of the week
I am still in the process of figuring out a balanced attention towards Substack, i.e. how many fellow authors and newsletters I can and want to engage with, while allocating a reasonable proportion of my attention. Therefore, this recommendation might not be weekly.
Nevertheless, I first came across
via Sam Harris’ Waking Up app, where they have a lovely conversation. She writes about non-duality and contemplative approaches, among other good stuff.Thank you for reading — next post will follow on Friday.
With love and kindness,
Aki