The Day Philosophy Dies
by Casey Maddox

I appreciated this book. I was introduced to it by Derrick Jensen. There is much to appreciate in the work. There is at least one aspect of it that annoyed me. It seemed to try a little too hard to twist things in an "unexpected" direction. That said, I think it is a powerful, fictional expression of the ideas and philosophy that Jensen discussed in his work. Maddox does an excellent job of moving the reader from the present into this fictional world and making the fictional seem not so far off.

The Culture of Make Believe
by Derrick Jensen
Jensen writes and when I read it's as though the voice is coming from deep inside of me somewhere. He adds detail and analysis, but the basics of what he writes, I think most people already know or have buried deep in their psyches some where. His conclusion, "What I propose as a 'solution'to this problem of the ascendancy of abstraction is a return to the particular. I support an anti-system to promote a falling in love with the particular....What I'm suggesting is a return to our humanity. If we are to do that, the first thing we must do is to see the inhumanity of our current system for what it is, and we must speak about it....Having fallen in love with our own lives, and the lives of those around us...the next step is to get rid of our whole inhumane system, to quit valuing production over life, and to physically stop those who do. The next step is to bring down that which originated in conquest abroad and repression at home. The next step is a planet liberated from the destruction, the next step is the end of civilization."

6/22/04

Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America
by Ward Churchill with Mike Ryan
Derrick Jensen led me to this book. A fascinating attack on "white, north american" pacifism and the notion of nonviolent social change. Churchill concludes by writing "...I would at least like to state the essential premise of this essay clearly: the desire for a nonviolent and cooperative world is the healthiest of all psychological manifestations. This is the overarching principle of liberation and revolution. Undoubtedly, it seems the highest order of contradiction that, in order to achieve nonviolence, we must first break with it in overcoming it's root causes."
This publication also includes an essay by Mike Ryan called On Ward Churchill's "Pacifism as Pathology": Toward a Consistent Revolutionary Practice.

The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory
by David Loy
I was a bit intimidated as I started this book and the author cited numerous teachings and works about which I had only a very modest awareness. I thought this book might be over the head of this simple, buddhist path follower. While this may or may not have been true, (Does one always recognize when a book or anything else is beyond one's ability to comprehend?) I enjoyed the book. I found it instilled some small degree of hope and offered perspective that will help me function in a lovingly engaged manner. "Perceiving a lack, I therefore vainly try to ground myself by modifying the world outside me. In other words, I try to subjectify myself (make myself feel more real) by objectifying myself (finding something in the world to identify with). Unfortunately, nothing in our notoriously impermanent world can fill up the bottomless pit at the core of my being - bottomless, because there is really no-thing there that can be filled up."

Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our Country and It's Time to Take It Back
by Jim Hightower
One of the more powerful passages in this book is when Jim just lists for several pages, in small type, the actions that the Bush administration has taken that have negative impacts on the environment. It just goes on and on and it leaves one wondering, "How can he do so much harm in this supposedly gridlocked political system that we have?" The answer, of course, is that the entire "gridlocked" political establishment is in agreement in their willingness, beholdeness, and absolute support for the people (corporations) in this country with lots of money.

The New Buddhism
by David Brazier
I managed to read through this book fairly quickly. I started it with some trepidation as I believed I would find some of my beliefs reinforced, but also have some of my failings reinforced. The book did not disappoint me on either count. I found David Brazier's writing to be both provocative and a at least little confusing for me. How can he extoll the necessity of renunciation while publishing and selling a book? It doesn't completely add up. But as with most teachers I read these days, I'll take what has value for me from his work and leave the rest for the intellectually oriented to argue about. I am susceptible to the argument that there is a disconnect in Western culture between our chosen actions and our espoused beliefs. I feel very alone in my renunciations and struggle with why more folks don't get to the similar outcomes. I also struggle with my sense that I am still participating in the many horrific things that are a consequence of our culture. I pay taxes that are buying weapons and moving troops into the Persian Gulf. I purchase products and participate in an economic system that perpetuates class differences between the Western World and the South and East. Brazier spends an inordinate amount of energy criticizing others, while spending way too little time defining himself and showing his actions. I cherished the moments in his work when he discussed briefly the work of his sangha. It's a good book to read.

3/9/03

The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth
by Jeremy Rifkin
I recently started this book after checking it out from the Berkeley Public Library. I'll give my impressions later. I enjoyed this book. It was a bit alarmist at times and I think bought into the Muslim terrorist model of viewing the Persian Gulf and Middle East. So, if you can get past the "We should be worried about our economy because the evil Arabs are gonna screw us" tone of one of his arguments, he makes compelling arguments from an environmental basis for moving toward sustainable energy sources. He also paints a beautiful picture of how hydrogen as a source of power can be a source of political and personal power for the little folks of the world. He doesn't clearly create a portrait of how this would actually come about. I'm cynical enough to expect that if hydrogen is developed as a valuable supplier of the world's energy needs, that big corporations (and individuals) will find a way to prevent folks from exercising control at the cost of corporate profits. Maybe he's expecting a political/cultural revolution to occur along the way.
"In The Hydrogen Economy, best-selling author Jeremy Rifkin takes us on an eye-opening journey into the next great commercial era in history. He envisions the dawn of a new economy powered by hydrogen that will fundamentally change the nature of our market, political and social institutions, just as coal and steam power did at the beginning of the Industrial Age. Hydrogen has the potential to end the world’s reliance on Middle East oil and help diffuse the dangerous geopolitical game being played out between Muslim militants and Western nations. It will dramatically cut down on carbon dioxide emissions and mitigate the effects of global warming. And because hydrogen is so plentiful and exists everywhere on Earth, every human being could be “empowered,” making it the first truly democratic energy regime in history. "