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542. Making Sense

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Sam Harris

Genre:  Non Fiction, Science, Psychology, Religion, Politics, Race

444 pages, published 2013

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

Sam Harris (neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author) is a very smart guy who has been studying some of the most important questions confronting humanity.  In Making Sense, we hear his interviews with a dozen of the best known world experts and deep thinkers (including Daniel Kahneman, Timothy Snyder, Nick Bostrom, and Glen Loury) on a variety of fascinating issues.

Quotes 

 

My Take

While there were plenty of fascinating things in this book, there were also some parts that really lagged.  It really depends on who is being interviewed by Sam Harris.  My favorites were Daniel Kahneman and Glen Loury.

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415. Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   John Ortberg

Genre:   Nonfiction, Christian, Theology

208 pages, published April 22, 2014

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Soul Keeping is an in depth exploration of the state of your soul and has prescriptions for how to improve it.  By trying to buy your way to happiness and focus on the material concerns of the world, your soul will pay the price.  In this practical and spiritual book, author John Ortberg helps you to discover your soul, which is the most important connection to God.

Quotes 

“You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God.”

“Many Christians expend so much energy and worry trying not to sin. The goal is not to try to sin less.  In all your efforts to keep from sinning, what are you focusing on? Sin. God wants you to focus on him.  To be with him. “Abide in me.” Just relax and learn to enjoy his presence.  Every day is a collection of moments, 86,400 seconds in a day.  How many of them can you live with God? Start where you are and grow from there. God wants to be with you every moment.”

 

“Being right is actually a very hard burden to be able to carry gracefully and humbly. That’s why nobody likes to sit next to the kid in class who’s right all the time. One of the hardest things in the world is to be right and not hurt other people with it.”

 

“If your soul is healthy, no external circumstance can destroy your life. If your soul is unhealthy, no external circumstance can redeem your life.”

 

“Your soul is what integrates your will (your intentions), your mind (your thoughts and feelings, your values and conscience), and your body (your face, body language, and actions) into a single life. A soul is healthy — well-ordered — when there is harmony between these three entities and God’s intent for all creation. When you are connected with God and other people in life, you have a healthy soul.”

 

“Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”

 

“If you ask people who don’t believe in God why they don’t, the number one reason will be suffering. If you ask people who believe in God when they grew most spiritually, the number one answer will be suffering.”

 

“In the Bible, God never gives anyone an easy job. God never comes to Abraham, or Moses, or Esther and says, “I’d like you to do me a favor, but it really shouldn’t take much time. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.” God does not recruit like someone from the PTA. He is always intrusive, demanding, exhausting. He says we should expect that the world will be hard, and that our assignments will be hard.”

 

“The soul integrates the will and mind and body. Sin disintegrates them. In sin, my appetite for lust or anger or superiority dominates my will. My will, which was made to rule my body, becomes enslaved to what my body wants. When I flatter other people, I learn to use my mouth and my face to conceal my true thoughts and intentions. This always requires energy: I am disintegrating my body from my mind. I hate, but I can’t admit it even to myself, so I must distort my perception of reality to rationalize my hatred: I disintegrate my thoughts from the reality. Sin ultimately makes long-term gratitude or friendship or meaning impossible. Sin eventually destroys my capacity even for enjoyment, let alone meaning. It distorts my perceptions, alienates my relationships, inflames my desires, and enslaves my will. This is what it means to lose your soul.”

 

“For the soul to be well, it needs to be with God.”

 

“A very simple way to guard your soul is to ask yourself, “Will this situation block my soul’s connection to God?” As I begin living this question I find how little power the world has over my soul. What if I don’t get a promotion, or my boss doesn’t like me, or I have financial problems, or I have a bad hair day? Yes, these may cause disappointment, but do they have any power over my soul? Can they nudge my soul from its center, which is the very heart of God? When you think about it that way, you realize that external circumstances cannot keep you from being with God. If anything, they draw you closer to him.”

 

“A paradox of the soul is that it is incapable of satisfying itself, but it is also incapable of living without satisfaction. You were made for soul-satisfaction, but you will only ever find it in God. The soul craves to be secure. The soul craves to be loved. The soul craves to be significant, and we find these only in God in a form that can satisfy us. That’s why the psalmist says to God, “Because your love is better than life . . . my soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods.” Soul and appetite and satisfaction are dominant themes in the Bible — the soul craves because it is meant for God. “My soul, find rest in God.”

 

“I was operating on the unspoken assumption that my inner world would be filled with life, peace, and joy once my external world was perfect.”

 

“A soul without a center feels constantly vulnerable to people or circumstances.”

 

“The best place to start doing life with God is in small moments.”

 

“The soul seeks God with its whole being. Because it is desperate to be whole, the soul is God-smitten and God-crazy and God-obsessed. My mind may be obsessed with idols; my will may be enslaved to habits; my body may be consumed with appetites. But my soul will never find rest until it rests in God.”

 

“We will always take the most care of that which we value most deeply.”

 

“The soul was not made to run on empty. But the soul doesn’t come with a gauge. The indicators of soul-fatigue are more subtle: • Things seem to bother you more than they should. Your spouse’s gum-chewing suddenly reveals to you a massive character flaw. • It’s hard to make up your mind about even a simple decision. • Impulses to eat or drink or spend or crave are harder to resist than they otherwise would be. • You are more likely to favor short-term gains in ways that leave you with high long-term costs. Israel ended up worshiping a golden calf simply because they grew tired of having to wait on Moses and God. • Your judgment is suffering. • You have less courage. “Fatigue makes cowards of us all” is a quote so ubiquitious that it has been attributed to General Patton and Vince Lombardi and Shakespeare. The same disciples who fled in fear when Jesus was crucified eventually sacrificed their lives for him. What changed was not their bodies, but their souls.”

 

“Here’s the deal: The more you think you’re entitled to, the less you will be grateful for. The bigger the sense of entitlement, the smaller the sense of gratitude. We wonder why in our world we keep getting more and more and more and keep being less and less and less grateful.”

 

“The “with God” life is not a life of more religious activities or devotions or trying to be good. It is a life of inner peace and contentment for your soul with the maker and manager of the universe. The “without God” life is the opposite. It is death. It will kill your soul.”

 

“Our problem is that this world does not teach us to pay attention to what matters. We circulate résumés that chronicle what we have accomplished, not who we have become. The advertisements we watch, the conversations we hold, the criteria by which we are judged, and the entertainment we consume all inflame our desire to change our situation, while God waits to redeem our souls.”

 

“Despite the rise of the mental health profession, people are becoming increasingly vulnerable to depression. Why? Martin Seligman, a brilliant psychologist with no religious ax to grind, has a theory that it’s because we have replaced church, faith, and community with a tiny little unit that cannot bear the weight of meaning. That’s the self. We’re all about the self. We revolve our lives around ourselves.”

 

“We’re generally quite good at doing something, but we’re really bad at doing nothing.”

 

“Good habits are enormously freeing — we accomplish good things almost on autopilot. One study from Duke University found that more than 40 percent of the actions people take every day aren’t decisions, but habits. Good habits free us, but when sin becomes a habit, our souls lose their freedom.”

 

“The alternative to soul-acceptance is soul-fatigue. There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the body. When we stay up too late and rise too early; when we try to fuel ourselves for the day with coffee and a donut in the morning and Red Bull in the afternoon; when we refuse to take the time to exercise and we eat foods that clog our brains and arteries; when we constantly try to guess which line at the grocery store will move faster and which car in which lane at the stoplight will move faster and which parking space is closest to the mall, our bodies grow weary. There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the mind. When we are bombarded by information all day at work . . . When multiple screens are always clamoring for our attention . . . When we carry around mental lists of errands not yet done and bills not yet paid and emails not yet replied to . . . When we try to push unpleasant emotions under the surface like holding beach balls under the water at a swimming pool . . . our minds grow weary. There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the will. We have so many decisions to make. When we are trying to decide what clothes will create the best possible impression, which foods will bring us the most pleasure, which tasks at work will bring us the most success, which entertainment options will make us the most happy, which people we dare to disappoint, which events we must attend, even what vacation destination will be most enjoyable, the need to make decisions overwhelms us. The sheer length of the menu at Cheesecake Factory oppresses us. Sometimes college students choose double majors, not because they want to study two fields, but simply because they cannot make the decision to say “no” to either one. Our wills grow weary with so many choices.”

 

“I am so wrapped up in the hurt I have received that I do not notice the hurt I inflict.”

 

“When evangelist Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, died in 2007, she chose to have engraved on her gravestone words that had nothing to do with her remarkable achievements. It had to do with the fact that as long as we are alive, God will be working on us, and then we will be free. She had been driving one day along a highway through a construction site, and there were miles of detours and cautionary signs and machinery and equipment. She finally came to the last one, and this final sign read, “End of construction. Thank you for your patience.” That’s what is written over Ruth Graham’s grave: “End of construction. Thank you for your patience.” Construction today. Freedom tomorrow.”

 

My Take

I read Soul Keeping as part of my women’s bible study and found it to be one of the best bible study books that I have read in the past 10 years.  Ortberg is a gifted writer and makes a lot of good, thought provoking points.  I also appreciated that he shared a number of personal details, vulnerably opening himself up to the reader.  I came away from reading this book with some valuable takeaways.

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391. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:  Jonathan Haidt

Genre:    Nonfiction, Psychology, Politics, Theology, Philosophy

419 pages, published March 13, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Hoopla

Summary

In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our cultural polarization and explores way to bridge the chasms that divide us.  Haidt mixes his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain. He examines the origins of morality, rejecting the view that evolution has made us selfish.  Rather, we are tribal creatures which accounts for most of our religious divisions and our political affiliations.

Quotes 

“Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.”

 

“Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.”

 

“The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.”

 

“If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.”

 

“Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.”

 

“Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.”

 

“People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.”

 

“We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it’s so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board).”

 

“Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.”

 

“The very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as costly, inefficient and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship.”

 

“Societies that exclude the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully to what will happen to them over several generations. We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few).”

 

“Creating gods who can see everything, and who hate cheaters and oath breakers, turns out to be a good way to reduce cheating and oath breaking.”

 

“Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.”

 

“Everyone cares about fairness, but there are two major kinds. On the left, fairness often implies equality, but on the right it means proportionality —people should be rewarded in proportion to what they contribute, even if that guarantees unequal outcomes.”

 

“The social intuitionist model offers an explanation of why moral and political arguments are so frustrating: because moral reasons are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog. A dog’s tail wags to communicate. You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments.”

 

“If you really want to change someone’s mind on a moral or political matter, you’ll need to see things from that person’s angle as well as your own. And if you do truly see it the other person’s way—deeply and intuitively—you might even find your own mind opening in response. Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it’s very difficult to empathize across a moral divide.”

 

“The “omnivore’s dilemma” (a term coined by Paul Rozin) is that omnivores must seek out and explore new potential foods while remaining wary of them until they are proven safe. Omnivores therefore go through life with two competing motives: neophilia (an attraction to new things) and neophobia (a fear of new things). People vary in terms of which motive is stronger, and this variation will come back to help us in later chapters: Liberals score higher on measures of neophilia (also known as “openness to experience”), not just for new foods but also for new people, music, and ideas. Conservatives are higher on neophobia; they prefer to stick with what’s tried and true, and they care a lot more about guarding borders, boundaries, and traditions.”

 

My Take

The Righteous Mind fulfills one of my basic criteria for a worthwhile read; I learned something new or gained some interesting insight.  With this book, I came to a better understanding of how we make moral judgments and why it is nearly impossible to persuade someone to change their mind on a moral issue with logic and rational arguments.  I also learned why we are so tribal and how banding together has advanced the course of human civilization.  I appreciated that Jonathan Haidt backs up his conclusions with lots of research and anecdotes.  A thought provoking read.

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