FINISHED READING - The Ultimate Hidden Truth Of The World by David Graeber

'Imagine that the experience of lockdown and economic collapse actually allows us to see the world as it really is and we acknowledge that what's referred to as "an economy" is simply the way we collectively keep one another alive, providing one another with the things we need, and generally take care of one another. Say we also reject the notion of social control.'*

David Graber unexpectedly died in 2020 at the age of fifty nine. He was an American Professor of anthropology, who made a study of modern social and cultural phenomena, and was an extremely influential commentator and theorist. A life long anarchist, he was also deeply involved in the political and financial protest movements that became Occupy Wall Street. He coined many terms still in use today such as 'We are the 99%' and 'bullshit jobs'. 

As a theorist, he was adept at disrupting common assumptions by presenting a whole new way of looking at an issue. In the first essay in this book There Never Was A West, he subverts the whole notion the West has of itself as the originators of democracy. By questioning whether some form of basic democratic decision making and consensus seeking actually was prevalent in most early civilisations. That the whole notion or a civil urbanised society could not function without it in some form.

He also re-examines the whole notion of Athens and it's demos as the source for Western notions of democracy. First, the demos didn't extend its political participation to women nor slaves. And Second, when the Renaissance rediscovered classical civilisation, or the French and American Revolutions happened, they chose to model themselves on the Greek and Roman Republics, and if anything they despised the ideals contained within democracy. Only much later on, in the early decades of the 19th century, in the middle of the age of empires, did a more noble presentation of democracy slowly form itself in the Western mind as it's 'gift' to the world. 

In The Phenomenon Of Bullshit Jobs, he asks where the increased leisure time went, that we were once promised would appear as technology improved. He discovered there was the hellish creation of empty 'bullshit jobs' that even the people who execute them know  have no substantial meaningful purpose. Jobs in telemarketing, human resources, public relations, financial services, academic and health administration. What is now broadly known as the service sector. The definition of a job being 'bullshit' is - if they were to go on strike would anyone notice or their lives be seriously inconvenienced by this?

His involvement in the Occupy movement, caused him to study policing strategies. In the essay On The Phenomenology of Giant Puppets, he enquires why the first thing police do during any demonstration is to take down 'the puppets' and other Papier mache made mocking figures. And why is it when demonstrations are planned with the police, the ones who first break the boundaries and agreements made, are the police themselves?

In What's The Point If You Can't Have Fun, he suggests that most animals have behaviours which are not necessary for their survival, but they do them simply to have fun. We need to reassess the purpose of our human need to be playful, and how having fun can actually be the source for real boundary breaking creativity, and thinking outside of the box, That a single minded serious focus simply on profound meaning, purpose and productivity sort of misses the point of.

'Imagine we jettison the idea of production and consumption being the sole purpose of economic life and substitute care and freedom.' *

I found this an extremely stimulating book to read. It was such a joy to simply watch an intellectually flexible mind take things apart, examine all the inner workings and then put it all back together, sometimes into an entirely different shape. Graeber had a playful wit, that even in an apparently dry dissection of the finance industry or economic theory flashed it's mischievous brilliance.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

* Taken from the essay The Museum of Care, in The Ultimate Hidden Truth Of The World by David Graeber, Published by Penguin. 2024.

FINISHED READING - The God We Never Knew by Marcus J. Borg

Phllip Goff, in Why, The Purpose of the Universe, credited this book by Marcus J. Borg as being the spiritual progenitor for some of his ideas about Panpsychism. That everything in the world is conscious to some degree. In it he proposed a whole gamut of possible explanations for the evolving of consciousness in the universe, none of them particularly orthodox from a traditional Christian God perspective. In this he shares a similar perspective to Borg, who appears to be someone on the free thinking wing of American Christianity. And, if judged by this book, he is also a clear thinker that values clear expression. Presenting what are often quite complex ideas in a remarkably practical straightforward manner. 

Borg opens this book with the question - How are we to think of God?, because how we think or imagine God, or Enlightenment for that matter, sets the agenda for how we practice and orient our lives. He spends much of the first half of this book explaining the evolution of his way of imagining, thinking about, and relating to God.  Built initially on a childlike view of God as a being 'out there', 'somewhere else,' the God as disapproving 'finger shaker'. The classic supernatural theism of an interventionist God, apparently picky about where, who and how to interact with his 'creation'. There are two major threads in Christianity,  that of a transcendent distantly placed God 'out there' and an Imminent closely placed God 'in here.' This dichotomy has over time been replaced in Borg's case with a Panentheistic viewpoint. This is not a mis-spelling of Pantheism, where the universe and God are indistinguishable as one entity. Panentheism posits a God who is both transcendent and imminent, and Borg believes this accords more with what early Christians actually believed. It's a sort of half way position between the unpredictable paternal interventionist on one side and a more diffuse sense of a divinity, the apophatic viewpoint of the unknowableness of God, that can be harder to grasp or directly relate to.

' Running throughout the biblical tradition is a conflict between two different social visions, two different understandings of God, two different theologies. Both claim the same religious tradition, told the same stories,and use the same language. But each told the stories and used the tradition differently. The theology of the elites used the tradition to legitimate the existing order. The passionate champions of God's compassion challenged the present order and dreamed the dream of God.'

Whether it's a Transcendent or an Imminent model of how to view God, has repercussions for how not just God, but the world is related to. How you might view and practice Christian teachings. And Borg is very good at delineating how this division between the Transcendent and the Imminent view of God, also informs how this split in approaches to Christianity appears within the United States. How that manifests as a politics of righteous individualism on the right and a politics of compassionate collectivity on the left. Opposing political standpoints of Christian exclusivity or inclusivity, which we see today in probably their most extreme positions. Though Borg was writing this book in the mid 1990's, that religio-political dichotomy was strongly apparent even then. And since then the gulf between extremely rich and destitute poor has continued to widen, into a bleakly intransigent hostility.

' What does a community commited to a different paradigm (compassion) and living by a different imperative ( the dream of God) do in a cultural situation as our own? Do we dare, in our time and in the church, to talk about elite-driven politics? Are we persuaded that's the case? Do we dare to say that social policies are central to becoming a more compassionate society? Are we willing to consider that economic policy is the central political question of our time? How large do we think the gap between the richest ten percent of our population and the poorest ten percent should be? And is that decision for the community, the body politic, to make, rather than a decision to leave to the elites? Just as we as Christians need to learn how to pray, so also we need to learn how to see and think and live compassionately.'

I personally have always been quietly impressed with how effectively Christianity can muster its resources to campaign and support the development of a social good it believes in. To put compassion readily and practically to work. In a way that, in England at least, Buddhism consistently falls rather short of. How would you manifest the Bodhisattva Ideal in practical policy initiatives? And this too is a result of how we as Buddhist's view and relate to the world, the spiritual work has a distinctly individualistic focus, that is all 'in here' and the extent that it manifests 'out there' is a somewhat less considered outcome. 

Borg takes an approach to the whole idea of Christian salvation, that asks, is it salvation within this life or after life? Originally the whole idea of purgatory was to provide extra time for you to perfect your salvation within, before ascending towards heaven. The focus was not on punishment, but a cleansing purgation. Enlightenment and karma can hold a similar dynamic. He is skeptical about firm declarations about the nature of that after life, which we could all do with bearing more in mind.

' I mention these diverse beliefs and puzzlements about the afterlife not for the sake of undermining the notion but to suggest why it is that I am agnostic about the details of an afterlife. I can't imagine knowing the answers to these questions, and choosing to believe one way or the other has nothing to do with how things might really be. We cannot solve not knowing by believing.'

Borg is strong on the communal dimension of spiritual practice and progress, that rampant individualism makes increasingly difficult to relate to. There is a lot in this book concerning the social and cultural consequences of beliefs and perceptions, which I found quite easy to relate to my own Buddhist perspective. I have found reading this book more approachable and comprehensible than some Christian books I've read. His approach felt very human and realistic. He holds a firm understanding of the underlying theology, but does so lightly, and generally translates that theology into practical consequences and outcomes that are readily comprehended. Whilst, I remain fundamentally not a Christian, I found his exposition of it gave me a better understanding of how fundamental Christian beliefs can underpin and feed through into everything else, socially, economically and politically. However you envisage what your goal is, this colours the nature of all your future actions and the landscape you believe you inhabit.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

FINISHED READING - John of John by Douglas Stuart

It is probably a universal experience of anyone who has gone away to college, that when they return to their parental home, they come back a subtly changed person. Everyone may treat you as though you are exactly the same person who left. Families feel like they know the truth of you, and are often reluctant to update their perceptions. The experience of leaving, and learning who you are whilst you were away from home, from parental supervision, and the framing context of your upbringing, adjust you and your outlook on your life, both past and present. The dynamics of relationships at home, may feel familiar, but not necessarily comforting. It can feel like you are returning to a way of being you no longer wish to inhabit. This disjuncture can be hard to live with. And the story, as told here by Douglas Stuart in John of John, captures that state of returning to a situation where you feel instantly trapped. Finding yourself rebelling in major or petty ways, against the reasserting of old constraints. Here, the desire to leave almost overwhelms it's central character Cal from the very moment they arrive back on the island of Harris.

For Cal, has been away to Art College to study fashion. He's attained his degree, but not his fully adult independence. He's been sofa hopping and living off the kindness of friends for months. His future career has yet to take off.  A lack of perceived inaction or ambition, hence makes Cal reluctant yet, to return to the island of Harris and to Falabay. He phones home every week to speak to his Father. They talk little about what he is actually doing. It's more like a Bible class, a religious instruction, in order that Cal does not stray from the straight and narrow of his Father John's faith. 

Cal is gay, but cannot even contemplate telling his father, because the consequences, well, they don't bear thinking of. For John, has a deep well of frustration and anger within him, which is horrible for everyone when it erupts. It's origins Cal frequently misdiagnoses. He has never understood why, when Cal was only ten, John seperated from Grace, Cal's Mother. Something went wrong in their relationship. Cal's Mother largely takes the blame, just because it was her that left. Though this is clearly not the whole story. There is hidden knowledge here, and it is not getting any better for being kept so secret. John indicates in one phone call to Cal, that his Grandmother Ella does not appear well to him, and this convinces Cal this is the time when he should return to the island and people of his birthplace.

Stuart describes island life, in evocative small details, the colours and sensory qualities of the landscape, the air, the sea, it's deceptive but cruel beauty. There are sensitively aesthetic descriptions of the process of choosing the mix of colours when weaving tweed cloth. Falabay appears to uphold ancient traditions and conventions, if judged by the externals alone. Though in a small intimate population where everyone knows everyone else's busines, keeping secrets you don't want other folk to know, means maintaining a stern stoney unknowable exterior. Island inhabitants always have something tucked away, they've never told anyone. The island economy runs on sheep farming, the weaving of tweed cloth and increasingly tourism. The latter is gradually changing the island and it's people, from a community into a commodity. The old traditions and beliefs of the islanders, though they are desperately clung onto, are teetering on the edge of becoming uneconomic to maintain. 

In the dwindling faithful of a church congregation, there is a clear demarcation between those who have taken Christ into their life, and those who have not.  Everyone knows which side of that line they are currently standing on. The Minister's gentle soft voice might seem benevolent in its intent, but his level of control over his congregation is coercive and invades the privacy of islanders inner lives. And beneath their subservience to the word of God, many of the island men inhabit conflicted and unfulfilled existences of disquieting loneliness. Some of them may indeed be gay, but no-one takes the risk of stepping outside the perceived shadow of shame and exile.

The feeling woven through this novel, is of an over hanging weight of despair and sadness. Of people struggling with unfulfilled lives, self betrayal and guilt. Of men trying, but often failing, to enforce a firm level of control over their inner lives, desires and impulses. And the sense is that so easily, and quite soon, the lid could blow off all these scrupulously maintained stand offs between what men say and don't say, what they feel they are, and what they actually publicly do. All of it buried under unchallenged moral expectations of them. 

The feeling that something personally tragic is being revealed to you here, makes this novel often a heartbreaking story to read. I found I had to space out my reading as I got nearer the end, just in case I couldn't bare where the story was heading. It is that good. Stuart slowly and almost imperceptibly feeds you snippets of information that lead or mislead you into thinking you know where the characters may be headed, and then it doesn't go there, but to somewhere else close by. Will exposing the truth, clear the air, or resolve anything here? Or is there bound to be a dark peaty clod of brutal tragedy discovered in some ditch or on the harbour foreshore, somewhere on this island? 

The Booker Prize winner, Shuggie Bain was like watching a slow motion car crash happen. His second novel, Young Mungo', felt a bit heavy handed and overly contrived in its evocation of grooming and abuse. John of John, takes you far away from Stuart's lived experience of working class life in Glasgow, to a much older geographically isolated rural culture on the Scottish islands. Its written with descriptive and emotional fluency, peppered with flashes of quite subtle perceptive brilliance. However reprehensibly some of these people may behave at times, you still appreciate, love and have some feeling of care for these people. So much is so gently inferred here, of truths understated, briefly mentioned casually in passing, rather than double underlined. It is a superb evocation of the nature of a people, landscape and the predicaments of an island existence. 

I was left hugely moved and often impressed with the depths this novel was prepared to go to. John of John, is Douglas Stuart's best novel yet. It haunted me, and held me in a state of tension, even whilst I was reading it, and lives on vividly in my mind still. It will be hard to find another novel published this year, to beat this one.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

FINISHED READING - Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

"What I am claiming here is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience."*

Neil Postman, once a Professor of Communication Arts & Science at New York University, published this book Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985 ** It has the subtitle Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.  It's a detailed, thoroughly engaging examination of how technologies, and specifically television, have altered the nature of our communication and culture. Turning it from one based on printed communication and the authoritative written word, to one, which through the medium of television, sacrificed intellectual depth to immediacy, with little need for context or comprehension, why this is being communicated, or what this might mean in terms of how we respond. What we must do as a consequence, is a question rarely posed. 

Postman's book paraphrases Marshall McLuhan's maxim, that ' the medium is the message', and turns it into ' the medium is the metaphor'. The prevailing metaphor of elevision programming is entertaining, and is primarily focused on retaining your attention through constant visual stimulation. Anything educational or informative that it says it's imparting is entirely coincidental, irrelevant as a justification for its existence. Television isn't about encouraging thinking at all, but emoting, and the necessity for everything you watch to be enjoyable.

"And there is no Newspeak here. Lies have not been defined as truth nor truth as lies. All that has happened is that the public has adjusted to incoherence and been amused into indifference."*

Imagery, how things look dominate our daily perceptions and political discourses. Television has made the conveying of information a subservient quality, it has turned us into passive receivers of insufficient information, that we can do little or nothing about. It has made us feel impotent. The expression of opinions has changed from a rational carefully worded statement into an irrational emotive sensationalism. That Postman's book is still in publication forty years later, demonstrates how his analysis has found a continuing relevance in describing the causes and effects of our internet social media age, which was presaged by television.

" If on television, credibility replaces reality as the decisive test of truth-telling, political leaders need not trouble themselves very much with reality provided their performance consistently generates a sense of verisimilitude......For the alternative possibilities are that one may look like a liar but be telling the truth; or even worse look like a truth-teller but in fact be lying."*

It is to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, that Neil Postman looked to speak of the zeitgeist of our time, and the perils our civilisation is currently facing. In Huxley's imagined future people become addicted to technologies, that subtly and quietly take away their capacity to think, their ability to form a critique or retain any sense of history, and the perspective that can bring to the present. Now, doesn't all that sound rather discomfortingly familiar?

"Thinking does not play well on television, a fact that television directors discovered long ago. There is not much to see in it. It is, in a phrase, not a performing art. But television demands a performing art, and so what the ABC network gave us was a picture of men of sophisticated verbal skills and political understanding being brought to heal by a medium that requires them to fashion performances rather than ideas."*

Postman uses famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A Douglas as an example for what has changed. In 1858 they engaged in a series of public debates.  At there height Lincoln would talk for three to four hours on a topic, Douglas would talk for a further three to four hours, to be followed by a concluding response of indeterminate length. And these talks were extraordinarily popular events, that were well attended. Thousands of people would stay engaged and listen intently. You could spend an entire day at these debates. There were breaks for meals where folk went home to eat, and then came back for the next bit of the debate.

American literacy and access to written information at that time was probably the highest it's ever been, The broad general population was well informed, and more than capable of following such long complex debates. Wind forward to modern televised political debates, where speakers get five minutes tops to state their case. This demonstrates how immediacy and the need to keep things moving lest the TV audience get bored, has changed our relationship with how much information we are presented with, or can take in. Add to this that every ten to fifteen minutes their will be the incongruous interruption of an advertising break and you have no clearer example of how television as a medium has messed with, and infantilises, our attention spans.

"And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?"*

Neil Postman undoubtedly was a very skilled and succinct communicator. ( He died in 2003)  Abjuring complex jargon, silly acronyms, specialist academic terms. He uses language and imagery deftly to aid comprehensibility and deeper understanding. And he was able to do all that without you ever getting a sense of being talked down to, or the subject matter being over simplified or dumbed down. This was a simulating book of ideas and perceptions, that took you on a journey into the inner workings of our modern communication media. He repeats several times that he is not implying what is happening is the result of a conspiracy or deliberate malign intent, what is happening to Western culture is a consequence of the essential nature of television itself, as a technological medium.

" Public consciousness has not yet assimilated the point that technology is ideology.....To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a programme for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make assumptions that technology is always a friend to culture, is at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple. "*

I found reading this book both compelling and curiously reassuring, simply because it nails quite precisely how we have arrived where we are today. When Presidents of the world's largest democracy are drawn from the world of entertainment, from film or TV reality programmes. Where a lack of seriousness, of being clearly ill informed, of blatantly lying, have become acceptable as just part of the political landscape. Because so long as you keep the attention span moving on, by bombarding the viewer with the next outrageous statement or provocation, people become increasingly numbed to the outrage. Advancing quickly on to the next sensationalised event that's just been generated. This would be a person that clearly understands the nature of modern tele- visual media, and how to exploit it. Enabling them to get away with dismantling democracy, create the foundations for a totalitarian state, and ignore climate catastrophe, whilst amusing the rest of us until we are all dead.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

* All quotations taken from Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman, Published by Methuen, 1987. 

** With gratitude to Jared Henderson and his You Tube channel, for first making me aware of this book.

FINISHED READING - The Anarchy by William Dalrymple

" The East India Company remains today history's most ominous warning about the potential for the abuse of corporate power - and the insidious means by which the interests of shareholders can seemingly become those of the state."*

The Anarchy, The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, is a part of William Dalrymple's quartet of history books about the British in India. This reads like an exciting, but particularly tawdry adventure romp. It demonstrates how without moral principles underpinning it, everyone was cravenly in search of making themselves insanely rich, very quickly, then taking the first ship home. The whole idea of sending your delinquent, depraved and troublesome offspring out to the colonies to make something of themselves, starts here. So much of Edwardian hero worship and daring do, on show in Boy's Own Annuals and Rider Haggard stories is feeding off this type of Colonial Empire behaviour. 

How did a small venture set up in the last years of Elizabeth 1st's reign, modelled on, and as rival to, the Dutch East India Company, become this gargantuan Corporation? Single handedly building itself a complex civil service and administration, to construct the London Dockyards we see today. Add to that the creation of its own city and trading centre in Calcutta. The company came near to generating half of Britain's trade, spending eight and a half million pounds a year in Britain alone, funding a quarter of the British government's total expenditure. They referred to themselves without any sense of irony as ' the grandest society of merchants, in the Universe.'

The history that Dalrymple lays out in this volume, shows just how much the East India Company initially had a completely free hand wherever it went to trade. British governmental oversight was extremely hands off. As long as profits came home, no one thought to check how they had come about, nor how much was syphoned off to enrich a Company employees pockets. The Company was extraordinarily lucky in that it arrived in India, just as the supremely rich and opulent Mughal Empire was at its most fragile, and would fragment, if given a little push. And in the anarchy which ensued, the East India Company became very effective in seizing, but more often creating, opportunities for business advancement when they came it's way. 

The French, were there too, playing one Mughal prince off against another, as were the British, both angling to obtain, extend or retain influence. The British government became concerned the French would use their superior military force to push the East India Company out. So they encouraged the Company to hugely increase the armed capacity of the East India Company itself.  Which overtime became 200,000 strong, twice that of the British army at the time, and with little to rival it in any other  country. Through this initiative, they became the first Corporation in the world ever to hold its own military force. 

As the Mughal Empire slowly imploded into precarious vassal states, the Company opportunistically stepped in offering protection, with the obligatory trading arrangements on the side. Mughal princes and Emporers became puppet administrations. Whilst in the background reprobate individuals like Robert Clive, fought battles for control of territory that further enabled the asset stripping of the Mughal economy. Over a series of adventures in India, Clive amassed, then lost a fortune, and then proceeded to amass yet another fortune. Each time becoming ever more pumped up and self aggrandise, until he attained the top job in the Company - Governorship. Through sheer moral indifference and brutality, combined with luck and military chutzpah, Clive kicked off the process whereby the Company could take full control of whatever it wanted, in what was left of Mughal India. Able to pick up the priceless pieces of its broken states, and then run the rest it into the ground.

The Company taxed the citizens mercilessly and despite warning signs that the Bengal economy was at the point of collapse, as famine struck, they continued taxing the poor starving Indian population. So long as money was still funnelled back to Britain, no one investigated how in the middle of a catastrophe, this was even possible. As the famine bit deeper and wider, the Company found itself with unmanageable debts and had to go cap in hand to the British government for huge loans. The Company was by then, far too big to fail. The government could do nothing else but cough up the money, but did demand it take charge of the Governorship and administration of the Companies operations in India. This move would eventually lead to the the East India Company's closure, the founding of the British Raj and Queen Victoria becoming Empress of India.

What they soon discovered, was the Companies financial rape of Indian resources, the standard but essentially corrupt practices of the Company, and the greed, immorality and cruelty of its administration. This was exposed for all to see, shocking and appalling the gentle folk back home. Robert Clive came close to being imprisoned over the inhumanity of his transgressions, retreating to his multi million pound estates in Claremont and Walcott, his reputation left in tatters. No longer the poster boy for the superiority of the East India Company and Empire. The Company's trading activities were directed increasingly via government dictat.The precedence of military interventions, taking over areas of India in order to secure their trading market and investment, did, however, continue. With the rise of Napoleon's interest in India, they sent Richard Wellesley to be the new Company Governor and defender of its Indian assets. He came with the deliberate intent of clearing the French out of India, and placing the entirety of the country under the Company's rule and military control. This he proceeded to do.

Though you might be inclined to think of Dalrymple's history as another example of British Empire revisionism, think again. This sorry tale of capitalist entrepreneurship and moral depravity is salutary and uncomfortably true. Heavily documented by people at the time, in the British press, within the Company, the Mughal Empire itself, and the British government. All expressing their disgust at the moral depravity the Company had sunk to. And though there was certainly a campaign that generally cleaned up its trading operation, the asset stripping 'mafia lite' protection racket continued, but in a more gentlemanly manner. Because everyone understood that the money the East India Company generated was keeping Britain, and the British Empire, in the status and manner to which it had now grown very accustomed.

" In both India and Britain, people still talk about the British conquering India, but, as this book has attempted to show, that phrase disguises a much more ominous and complex reality. Because it was not the British government that seized India in the middle of the eighteenth century, but a private company. India's transition to colonialism took place through the mechanisms of a for-profit corporation, which existed entirely from the purpose of enriching it's investors."*

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

* Taken from the Epilogue of The Anarchy, by William Dalrymple, Published by Bloomsbury 2019

FINISHED READING - Why? The Purpose of the Universe by Philip Goff

Philip Goff is a philosophy Professor at Durham University, specialising particularly in mind and consciousness. Becoming more widely known in recent years as a proponent of Panpsychism, which, put simply, is the belief that everything in the universe is conscious. This book explores ideas that underpin Panpsychism, concerning the origins and nature of consciousness. And argues by the end of it that probably physical science may never have the language or concepts sufficient to fully capture the nature of its qualities, and how consciousness works.

What is admirable is how he structures this book, Writing an accessible presentation of his ideas, followed by more complex academic addendums that Dig Deeper into the arguments pro and against his viewpoints. He guides you through these, telling you when he is about to enter difficult terrain, advising you when skipping specific chapters may be helpful. Giving you permission to hop around the book, whilst remaining engaged with the general thrust of his arguement.  I know I can easily lose the plot in closely argued jargon infested territory. So feeling free to miss out some of the complex theoretical sections, was liberating, and strangely reassuring. As a philosophical exploration, it is designed to be relatively user friendly.

We all may think we know what consciousness is, from personal experience. Though we posses it, we don't fully understand the what or how of it, at all. This has particular contemporary relevance, when tech developers of AI are in rapid pursuit of producing a synthetic version of it. What sort of consciousness is it, they are trying so earnestly to mimic?  Consciousness is a whole lot more than a data enriched calculator. From the start Goff makes it clear just how limited our understanding of our own consciousness is, how it may have come into being, and how it operates:-

 " Science is used to dealing with unobservables; fundamental particles, quantum wave functions, perhaps even other universes; none of these things can be directly observed. But there's a crucial difference when it comes to consciousness. In all other cases, we postulate unobservables 'in order to explain what we can observe.' In the unique case of consciousness 'the thing we are trying to explain' is not publicly observable"

Goff begins with a distinctly small observable positioning in the fundamental particles of the universe. As scientists developed an understanding of particle physics they produced a standard model, this contained 'constants' fixed numbers.masses and forces that were required in order to make it function. Having done that they postulated how much variance in these was permissable before the whole thing might evaporate or blow up. The nuclear force that binds all the elements in an atom together is represented by the number 0.007.  If that figure became 0.006 then there'd be nothing but hydrogen, if it were 0.008 or more then there would be the equivalent of an almighty bang. So, when you hear people referring to the 'fine tuning' of our universe, this is what that means. These particles found value in positioning themselves in this particular way, and it is extremely delicately balanced. He does not imply that this is 'intelligently designed' only that at a particle level things appear to have a purposeful direction.

" The essence of the Value Selection Hypothesis is simply that, however the numbers associated with these constants were determined, it was done in order to allow for a universe containing things of value.....at a fundamental level certain things happen 'for the sake of some future good.' "

Goff refers to these particles as having 'proto-agency', and from that state the sense of having purpose further evolves into an experiential understanding, that gradually becomes 'having agency,' what humanity calls conscious 'free will'. Although this process could be interpreted as purely instinctual, this changes with the arising of free will. Where we are able to chose to do things which are for some higher good, that is beyond any immediate need for survival. A particle, according to Goff's hypothesis contains the potential for this.

"There is not some magical capacity that appears out of thin air. Rather,the basic capacity to respond rationally - that very capacity possessed by the humble particle - has latent within it all of these possibilities. But these possibilities can be realised only when conjoined with the right kind of conscious understanding.'

So attention is a vital element. This is the foundation for his understanding of Panpsychism. This doesn't necessarily mean we are back to an omnipresent God as the answer to why the universe appears to have cosmic purpose. Omnipresence cannot adequately explain the purpose of consciousness, and why there is evil and suffering in the world if God created it.  In some respects the quarrelsome contentions of the Greek pantheon of gods, or the Manichean battle between evil and good gods, do a better job than monotheistic theology in providing an understandable context for why suffering happens. As a professor friend of Goff expressed it-' You've seen Luton airport, right? Why would an all powerful being motivated by beauty allow humans to create such monstrosities as Luton airport.' 

Recognising that humanity tends to get trapped in dichotomies of - its either God or atheism - an all powerful loving creation or a meaningless universe, Goff opens up some wilder alternative suggestions, for why this universe is manifested in this particular way. A much neglected area for philosophical speculation in Western thought. Some theoretical physicists are now proposing that those fundamental particles could exist within universe wide fields, the particles being localised vibrations within it. This may start to summon up ideas of a universal mind and guiding entity, but let's just park that there for now. 

Most ideas for why a universe of consciousness exists do entail some being other than us, creating it. The universe and humanity within it, being part of some eternal experiment, run by a higher being, in order to explore how consciousness develops. Though this doesn't necessarily have to have an all knowing God at the helm of it, though it is a notion we tend to forever cling to. The opposite of a good beneficent God, an evil God with malevolent intent, well, this runs into contradictions too that are the opposite of the former model, in a world of evil, why would there be good ? why would there be altruism? So is the universe then a creation of a completely amoral designer, who is deaf to the suffering they've created? There is the interesting idea we may all be part of an experimental simulation, run from a parallel universe. Or are we the creation of a God whose creative abilities are limited, hence the rough and ready, chaotic aspects of existence. Though quite why anyone would put much faith in such a God is another question. Then, as HL Menken once pithily remarked, 'Why assume that the God who presumably created the universe, is still running it?

Then there are suggestions that don't require a godlike being of any kind. Goff explores the ideas of Thomas Nagel, that cosmic purpose without a creator God is feasible, if we broaden our understanding of the laws that the universe is governed by. Most of the laws of nature we know posit a linear movement from past to future, what if that could also work from future to the past, to ensures the present remained on track for the emergence of life, for instance. This began to remind me of Dogen's writings about 'firewood and ash' in the Genjo Koan, that transcend linear ideas of time, where both time past and future remain factors in how the present moment manifests. The idea of a godless universe is also an old one. Goff cites Aristotle.

" Aristotle thought that organisms had essentially goal-directed natures, without feeling the need to postulate a designer who put the goals into things. That view was coherent although arguably disproven by the discovery that biological organisms had been shaped by blind process of natural selection. However, perhaps the evidence for cosmic purpose....gives us grounds for thinking that the universe as a whole is a kind of Aristotelian organism: it exists, in part, to fulfil a good purpose, despite the fact that nobody created it for that purpose. Perhaps the universe is like a plant that, in the fullness of time and with a bit of luck, will grow and blossom into something beautiful."

This is a thought-provoking book, which I certainly gained from reading, in amongst the many explications that were lost on me. The final chapter on Living With Purpose I found particularly useful, and resonated with some of my own conclusions, whilst giving me further pause for thought on how these ideas might relate to Buddhist views of consciousness and reality.

CARROT REVIEW -5/8

FINISHED READING - The Will To Change by Bell Hooks

"Men cannot change if there are no blueprints for change. Men cannot love if they are not taught the art of loving. It is not true that men are unwilling to change. It is true that many men are afraid to change. It is true that masses of men have not even begun to look at the ways that patriarchy keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with feelings, from loving. To know love, men must be able to let go the will to dominate, they must be able to choose life over death. They must be willing to change."

I picked up this copy of The Will To Change, as part of my continued reading on the 'masculinity crisis'. I've encountered books recently by Richard V Reeves and felt a feminist perspective, though acknowledged, was rarely fully applied.  Of Boys and Men, in my opinion got bogged down in it's allegiances to facts and figures, and as Reeves is a former political adviser, he treated the masculinity crisis as any 'policy wonk' would, with a practical legislative agenda. That is one of many, perfectly valid approaches.

"The grief men feel about the failure of love, often goes unnoticed in our society precisely because the patriarchal future really does not care if men are unhappy....... The masculine pretence is that real men feel no pain."

This book by Bell Hooks, looked like a different place from which to start exploring a more psychologically imaginative feeling based perspective. At its root is the question - why is it so difficult for men to change themselves? If feminism's success is not the imagined progenitor of the current masculinity crisis, then what is?

"Once upon a time I thought it was a female thing, this fear of men. Yet when I began to talk with men about love, time and time again I heard stories of male fear of other males. Indeed, men who feel, who love, often hide their emotional awareness from other men for fear of being attacked or shamed. This is the big secret we all keep together - the fear of patriarchal maleness that binds everyone in our culture."

From the start she lays out a clear message, that this isn't just about achieving gender equality, or pay parity,  but examining the persistent and pernicious effects of patriarchy upon our collective world view. We are not seeing the pressures patriarchy applies, twisting our psyche's out of shape, and the effect that this has upon the lives of both men and women. And whilst there are very good men and women out there doing sterling work to challenge these effects, only small changes in this underlying zeitgeist are being made. 

"No male successfully measures up to patriarchal standards without engaging in an ongoing practice of self-betrayal."

She repeatedly states, how she understands women's reluctance to get drawn into men liberating themselves from the shackles patriarchy puts upon them. But the tendency is to then diminish the problem, in order to return the focus to further advancing women's progress. Which means we are only really addressing one half of patriarchy's sphere of influence. And you could say, well that's for men to sort out for themselves. Which if all things were equal that would be the case, but they are not. Because the effect of patriarchy upon men is so tightly drawn, so narrow and limiting in it's perspective, that stepping outside of it without some sort of guide or external help, can almost be too impossible to imagine.  

" Despite the contemporary visionary feminist thinking that makes clear that a patriarchal thinker need not being male, most folks continue to see men as the problem of patriarchy. This simply not the case. Women can be as wedded to patriarchal thinking and action as men . "

Unless, of course, you feel you are placed outside of it by being gay for instance. This, in my experience, can force you to question the whole idea of masculinity you are being presented with. Though as Hooks points out, even in gay male culture strong patriarchal echoes of insensitive brutality and predatory none consensual sex can still be found within it.

If patriarchy were truly rewarding to men, the violence and addiction in family life that is so all pervasive would not exist. This violence was not created by feminism. If patriarchy were rewarding, the overwhelming dissatisfaction extensively documented ... would not exist."

She also asks women to examine their own role in the creation of male patriarchy. How in the difficult state of a mother raising a son and a daughter, they may still hold and perpetuate residual patriarchal instincts or expectations. The far right might like you to believe that patriarchy is biologically determined by God, and is hence a natural thing, not a culturally nurtured choice, but Hooks will have none of that. 

"We cannot turn our hearts away from boys and men, then ponder why the politics of war continues to shape our national policy and our intimate romantic lives."

I found The Will To Change presented a refreshingly open and broad perspective on how patriarchy reinforces itself, in both men and women. She gave me some new things to think about, as well as clarifying my own understanding of why men are currently stuck in a no mans land, unhappy and unloved within the confines of patriarchy, but unable to find an effective route towards a new way of inhabiting being masculine. This is one of he most helpful books I've read on this subject so far.

"We cannot honour boys rightly, protecting their emotional life, without ending patriarchy. To pretend otherwise is to collude with the ongoing soul murder that is enacted in the name of turning boys into men. "

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

FINISHED READING - Lower Than The Angels by Diarmaid MacCulloch

I was really looking forward to getting my head between the pages of this volume. As with so many of Diarmaid MacCulloch's books, it is quite a substantial rifling though of the history of Christianity's rather hesitant, then proscriptive, then punishing, then moderating, to provaricating attitude towards the whole area of sex, marriage, same sex relations etc. MacCulloch guides us through it all. There's a definite air of him thoroughly enjoying the writing of this one. The sentences and expressiveness is considerably more spritely and spikey. His humour more cuttingly on show, with wonderfully wry, and on occasions very dry, passing comments. So, besides being a revelation on the various volte faces of the Christian attitude towards sex, it also investigates it's uneasy handling of gender, particularly the oppressive way it has dealt with the feminine or anything it considers transgressive of moral norms.

Christianity was initial reluctant to intervene in marriage, what happened within it was originally considered a private matter. That became over the centuries increasingly proscriptive. It took the Catholic Church twelve hundred years before it took complete control of the whole marriage procedure.  Marriage became promoted as a means to legitimise the act of procreating the species. Sex for any other reason. for fun for instance, was to be downplayed, or even frowned upon. Encouraging married couples to practise chastity the rest of the time. This links it with the issue of a celibate priesthood, also a late development. The transition in medieval times from having married clergy to a solo celibate priest, was, as you can imagine, pretty messy. It required a lot of chaste relationships whilst the 'aberattion' of previous decades slowly vanished. Clergy and monastics were now meant to exemplify a more 'angelic' way of living to their congregation. Because angels, as every one understood, were asexual or non sexual beings. Though quite how they so firmly established that fact is left mythically vague.

In the middle of all this is a mischievous little paragraph about Pope Gregory :-

"Before Gregory became Pope, he was struck by the good looks of some English boys or youths who, Bede says, were being sold as slaves in Rome. Enquiring where they came from and being told that they were 'Angli', Gregory commented that the name was appropriate to those with angelic faces, and he varied that cheerful thought in a clutch of further devout Latin puns. Traditionally Gregory's reported literary playfulness has been summed up in a misquotation as 'Angli sed angeli': 'Not Angles, but angels.' Perhaps the agreeable neatness of the pun has allowed the survival of a story which, if reframed as ' Pope, impressed by beauty of young enslaved males, launches mission', might not meet modern safeguarding standards in the methods of evangelism."

When he comes to examine homosexuality MacCulloch unearths some interesting facts. Mediterranean attitudes in the South were generally permissive towards same sex relationships, whilst northern countries tended to be more proscriptive. Though Christianity has been greatly enamoured by the works of Ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Socrates, they became deeply shocked to discover their blatant homosexuality. This fact they studiously edited out of copies of these philosopher's work for centuries. Even words, and to whom they are applied can also suddenly pivot.

"There is nevertheless no doubt that 'effeminacy' also completely reversed its meaning as a description, previously, Catholics had mocked Tudor Protestant bishops as 'effeminate'  for their excessive interest in women, rather as John Chrysostom had mocked male partners in chaste heterosexual relationships. A century after the Reformation, the same mockery was applied for the same reason to England's Charles 2nd, that most ebulliently heterosexual of monarchs, so the subsequent switch in meanings after 1700 was very sudden. The new eighteenth century stereotype of the theatrically effeminate homosexual has had a long life; it remains a source both of mockery and of proud gay self-assertion in masculinised heterosexual cultures."

MacCulloch also reveals how even the term 'heterosexual', if examined etymologically, implies an indiscriminate romping across a wide range of the feminine, in and outside of marriage. Literally anything female will do. So, no monogamy there then.  When it comes to trans issues, there are numerous examples of men and women throughout history living as the opposite sex, without that ever becoming an issue with the generally knowing broader population. He resurrects the life of St Wilgefortis as an iconographic example:-

" The bizarre legend and devotional iconography of St Wilgefortis (Uncumber), who had grown a beard in order to escape the threat of a non-Christian marriage and as punishment had been crucified. She/they developed a cult among unhappy wives, and, despite official unsainting by Rome in 1969, Wilgefortis has attracted a new constituency of non-binary interest today."

It does seem that the dual arrival in the 18th century of The Enlightenment, and John Wesley's street evangelism, appeared to trigger a tightening of the moral opprobrium around same sex relationships, and even the more widespread, supposedly deleterious effects of masturbation upon morals. Initially it was unclear from which moral stand point The Enlightenment stood regarding science, sex and it's diversity. Taking far too seriously obvious charlatans like Mary Todd who claimed they have given birth to several rabbits. 

As the narrative moves to more recent times, he charts the difficult arising of the abolition of slavery, women's emancipation, contemporary concerns about abortion and homosexuality, that now include trans issues. The latter three appearing to exist in parallel opprobrium within Fundamentalist Christianity. The propensity for Christianity to move the biblical goal posts when it suits, is exemplified by an attempt to answer the question Why Jesus makes no mention of homosexuality at all in his teachings? The answer apparently was very simple, so the theologians proudly stated; before God's son could be born into the world, the Lord Almighty had eradicated all gay people from the world. It's a neat duck, but a laughably fallacious later concoction. 

In modern times political adoption of Christianity becomes similarly slippery with the actual facts. Putin often borrows the moral cloak of Russian Orthodoxy when it suits his political agenda.  When he was invading Ukraine, he claimed the Donbas region were asking to be saved from 'gay parades 'which as MacCulloch remarks had not previously been ' notably part of Ukrainian President Zelensky's declared military strategy.' Contemporary right wing Christians fail to reflect on their own religion's history with regard to sex, marriage and the family. That for the first millennium it was dominated by the pursuit of an 'angelic' celibacy, and only after the Reformation did bolstering the family unit become a central thrust of its ministry. Plus a long history of campaigning for more compassionate responses towards those who are poor, or minorities being oppressed or abused.

" My observation of the discussion of sexual morality during six decades of ecclesiastical life and politics has been that self-styled traditionalists rarely know enough about the traditions that they proclaim; conservatives do not fully admit to themselves or to others what it is they are trying to conserve, and why they are trying to conserve it. It is important when demolishing myths from the past not to create new ones to justify the present."

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

UNFINISHED READING - The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhardt by Bernard McGinn

This has been in my Book Pile for quite some time. So long, I can't quite remember when it first arrived, probably eighteen months ago. However, I found myself reticent to tackle it, in case it was really theologically too much for me. As it turned out, it was. I got halfway and skipped a whole chapter exploring the difference between God 'boiling over' and God 'boiling through' and I just thought- 'You know, this is not a distinction that has bothered me before, and I'm not going to start now.'

The book has been full of similarly detailed, and no doubt thorough, expositions of what Eckhardt's philosophic/mystical writings were supposedly about. Early on, I got the feeling, that perhaps I really should have bought a book with a selection of his teachings, rather than an academic commentary by a confirmed Eckhardt geek like McGinn. Nothing against the guy, he must know what he is on about, I presume. Had I read some Eckhardt cold beforehand, I'd know whether this book was genuinely further enlightening, or not. For most of the time I was struggling to sustain following his analysis,arguments and explanations. In these sorts of conditions, the quote from Eckhardt's writings I tended to find more lucid than the academic explanation, which merely, to my untrained eyes, succeeded in muddying the water further.

I suspect that this may be another serious case of my further cultivating an antipathy towards Christian theology. This often reads as a series of assertions about the nature of Jesus and God, which are either true and I'm just a bit too thick to fully grasp why that is so, or they are actually preposterous claims that no amount of convoluted exegesis is going to convince me otherwise. If I had a phenomenally clever mind I'd know which it was. It may come down to the specificity of theological language.

Over the years I've been willing to push the envelope of my intellectual limitations a fair way beyond it's comfort zone. Quite often to obtain the general gist, even if the precise detail still escapes me. But I have come to recognise when I've reached the actual limit of my ability to follow and comprehend what the heck someone is trying to communicate. As my brain cells get deeper fried in lard. Yes, it is humbling, to have to say I don't know what this guy is rambling at such length about. But this too, is good for me. 

This may be theological wank or the most profound thing I've never understood. If only I had the sort of brain that could systematically deconstruct things, then I'd be able to explain in very lucid refined terms, why it is all wank. And I'd feel much better, or at least less prone to self justification. Instead of using the increased volume of dismissive curses as my expression of how wrong it is. As it is, I have to trust my gut intuition, which may of course be merely dyspeptic indigestion.

CARROT REVIEW - 3/8

FINISHED READING - Don't Forget We're Here Forever by Lamorna Ash

After completing reading a novel, I press the pause button on literary imaginative fiction, and deep dive into a book that is literal, about something current and vital, that I in someway care about. Lamorna Ash's, Don't Forget We're Here Forever was such a book. An investigative endeavour that takes the temperature of Christianity and researchs the reasons for young people's recent renewed interest in it. It is rare these days to pick up a book, that becomes so all consuming you need to read whilst the hunger for it is still raging.  This is an extremely honest, yet kind hearted book, written with great care and sensitivity towards it's subject matter. My interest  in Christianity has never quite gone to the extent that Lamorna pursues here. Obviously she was writing a book, so she has that as her driver, initially it's her desire to understand more fully the variety of forms of Christianity she encounters, underneath this is her own nascent faith seeking for a place it might rest. 

This book is not then another crude hatchet job on Christianity, that puts it one book nearer to obsolescence. You can tell she is open to the experience of whatever she finds is there. Yes, she has her doubts, even in situations and with people she loves, she has her own self interogating questionings. She meets everyone where they are with a degree of respect and a desire to understand where they are coming from. There are interviews with committed Christians, recent converts, people who left and then returned, people who have had visions, inexplicable encounters with God, those who run Alpha courses or lead Christian retreats. She covers the broadest gamut of approaches from Quaker, through Pentacostal, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox, to newer worship phenomena like Soul Survivor, Youth With A Mission or One Church. And many of these organisations are, or were, far from perfect and she doesn't hide or excuse that. But they are all, whilst not exactly reviving, are receiving more interest these days from younger people of Lamorna's generation in their mid to late twenties. Open to Christianity as something that might fill a significant gap in their lives, that society has nothing substantial to fill it with, other than more distractions and analgesics.

The thoroughness in her writing, keeps digging for something one step deeper than a quickly dashed off sketch will provide. The process by which her task to document her own generations struggle with a world apparently going to pot, and the solutions it is trying to find  is a journey that is fluently and compellingly written. It is also full of humanity, with all the flaws, clumsy feelings, cackhanded efforts to engage with a new form of prayer or communal practice. We all recognise the self consciousness and awkwardness of being in unfamiliar contexts. Gradually as you progress through the book, you get a clearer sense of Lamorna as an individual seeking personal answers, as well as the eloquent descriptive writer. As she discovers the contexts she's been unknowingly searching for. She finds herself standing up in a silent Quaker meeting and 'ministers' for the first time. There are obviously those situations and people she has an instant rapport with and those she does not. But you the reader are always with her.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

FINISHED READING - The Emperor of Gladness

Hai is walking along the bridge over the river, he knows what he intends to do once he reaches the middle. However, just as he puts an uncertain foot towards its precipitous edge, a voice cries out from beneath him to come down this minute. It's an elderly woman living in a dilapidated house near the river bank. She is a Lithuanian refugee from the war, called Grazina, and she is about to save and turn Hai's life around. Hai's emotional resilience has reached rock bottom, his lover has died, only the UPS jacket he wears is a physical reminder. He's grown distant from his Mother, because he continues to perpetrate a lie to her, about being at university learning to be a doctor. Obtaining a job in the local Home Market takeaway through his cousin Sony, a whole bunch of characterful individuals become his oddball chosen family.

Ocean Vuong's second novel is notably more assured and steady in its tone, than his debut. The Emperor of Gladness has these astonishingly vivid runs of prose detail. Taking you on a compelling walk through the houses and businesses that constitute the town of East Gladness. Presenting you with a panoramic sense of the idiosyncratic and traditional nature of small town America. The ordinary straightforward people who live there, and their distinct ways of making the humdrum nature of their lives bearable. They may talk about leaving, but they belong here, they know who they are by living here. 

The emotional core of the book is constructed around Hai's relationship with Grazina. She is prone to incidences of dementia, becoming lost in reliving her own nightmarish memories. Hai builds a rapport and learns how to play act alongside these distressing recollections, to help her escape from them. Most of the deeply heartbreaking scenes in this novel are between these two, as Grazina struggles to maintain here sense of reality and independence. Capturing the mutual need that both of them have, to reconcile themselves to their past. 

Like his debut, The Emperor of Gladness casts an autobiographical shadow. In both novels the central character lives estranged from his Mother, with oblique foreshadowing references to him writing a book one day. Vuong has developed an easy satirical wit, that is kind but knowing, about the mildly eccentric absurdities of his characters lives. Painting a droll humourous picture of a downtown takeaway that has become slightly grubby and past it's best, with it's longstanding petty rivalries towards other fast food joints. The novel is a celebration of the plain ordinariness of these people's lives. In a place where few other options are available, they make the most out of whatever life serves them. 

One vividly described scene is a side hustle a group of them go on. The psychotic effect on them of repeatedly shooting hogs in the head in a butchers abbatoir, is genuinely disturbing. From its opening pages this is a masterly written novel, seeming to drift into moments of uncertainty in the middle, that then recovers it's sense of direction with a heartbreaking conclusion. This structural unevenness was present in his debut. On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong appeared to suddenly discover the magical tone of his own authorial voice mid novel. 

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading both of his novels. I find I feel much fonder of them in retrospect, than I often do when I'm reading them. The colourfulness of the world he portrays, lingers in the back of my imaginative recall. The struggles we all go through to create something out of our prosaic short lives, is presented through them with such an appealing and good natured fondness.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

RISING UP MY DUCK PILE - July 2026

As it has recently been my birthday, I have been gifted a fair number of books that were on my suggested list to buy me. So my book pile has suddenly zoomed up in height. At 46cm ( not including the duck) it is the highest it has ever been.

I'm already feeling torn what to pick up next. There are books that keep getting neglected, but this was ever so. Sometimes it gets to the point where, rather than going for what appeals most, one behaves counter intuitively and heads for what is least appealing to the momentary heart. Bearing in mind that once upon a time you did want to read this, and may still do, if you can put aside the sexy dalliance that the newbies are proffering a leg to. But, this is what the pile is currently composed of at present.

BERNARD McGINN - THE MYSTICAL THOUGHT OF MASTER ECKHART

In the realm of medieval Christian mysticism Master Eckhart is thought to be somewhat seminal. McGinn's book comes highly rated as an introduction to his controversial, but none the less influential writing. I am quite looking forward to getting round to reading this. But I suspect I will really have to be in the right headspace for it.

Christmas Present 

PHILIP GOFF - WHY? THE PURPOSE OF THE UNIVERSE

I've heard interviews with him and got the gist of some of his ideas. This book is in part an exploration of 'panpsychism' which is an idea I want to know more about. It is in essence that everything is conscious, and guides how everything in the world presents itself. It's present in absolutely everything, including in us. It sort of is and isn't God like.

Birthday Present 

BYUNG CHUL-HAN - NON THINGS

Jared Henderson recommends this author highly. So I'm dipping a toe into the world of Byung-Chul Han's philosophy.  We live in a constantly expanding realm of 'non-things'. The 'infosphere' is not really a tangible object we can touch and comprehend with our full sensory capacities. And this is affecting how we relate, not just to the world, butmost importantly to each other.

Birthday Present

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE - THE COMPANY QUARTET

These four volumes are Dalrymple's magnum opus on the British East India Company. In India it became the world's first Corporation to own and run a country. It had its own army, numbering upwards of 200,000 troops, almost double that of Great Britain's own army at the time. The quartet encompasses is rise, the scurrilous individuals who ran and made a fortune from it, who eventually were forced to hand India back for The Empire to run.

Birthday Present.

OCEAN VUONG - THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS

Vuong's second novel, following on from his debut On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous, builds on further his capacity for wonderfully evocative prose writing. Here you get a vibrant sense of the town of East Gladness as a place, in which his central character Hai, lives in a ramshackle house with Grazina, an old lady who once prevented him taking his own life.

Library Book

Currently Reading

DIARMAID Mc CULLOCH - LOWER THAN THE ANGELS

McCulloch is always a really peachy historical read. This one has the theme of sexuality in Christian theology and how it's terribly oppressive response is not always supported by what you actually read in the biblical source material. McCullough is quite used to writing the epic overview. This is punctuated with his usual dry wit, and you can tell he has really enjoyed writing this one.

Christmas Present 
Currently Reading

YUVAL NOAH HARARI - SAPIANS

Another book which I'm looking forward to getting around to reading. I've been impressed with the clear headed nature of his mind when interviewed. So I'm hoping he writes in a similar vein.

Waterstones

BELL HOOKS - THE WILL TO CHANGE
I've read a few books on the masculinity crisis written from a male perspective. I came across this book by the famous feminist Bell Hooks. So far I'm quite impressed with the depth of her understanding. Her central theme is that men do not understand, and are often running away from the full capacity of their ability to love. Afraid of discovering and hence allowing themselves to love being who they actually are.
The Book Hive - Norwich

Currently Reading

NEIL POSTMAN - AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH

First published in 1985, and subtitled Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness, Postman's book was reissued by his son in 2005, twenty years later and found itself a new audience. Though focused on the effect of TV on not just people's lives but their minds, his essential idea is that in the consumption of some technologies 'the form of it excludes content', rather than stimulating  us, it puts our minds to sleep, turns us into passive receptors of image and amusement. And in the age of the internet this struck a chord.

Birthday Present 

DAVID GRAEBER & DAVID WENGROW - THE DAWN OF HUMANITY

Graeber is an anthropologist and Wengrow an archeologist, in this book they examine how human society developed.  They critique of the traditional view of the linear progressive view of human evolution, and say this is more a philosophical view, unsupported by any evidence in anthropology or archaeology. I came across this through an interview with David Wengrow.

Birthday Present.

DAVID GRAEBER - THE ULTIMATE HIDDEN TRUTH OF THE WORLD
Came across David Graber through an interview with his frequent collaborator David Wengrow. Graber who died in 2020 was a social anthropologist and anarchistic thinker out of all the usual boxes. And I was intrigued enough to want to read something by him. This is a collection of essays on a variety of subject matters.
The Book Hive - Aylsham

LAMORNA ASH - DON'T FORGET WE'RE HERE FOREVER
I saw her being interviewed on The Sacred podcast, and thought she seemed really open and frank in her investigative writing. Here she is examining what a new generation of young people might be seeking from religion. That in the end became her own journey of discovery.
The Book Hove - Aylsham

KAZUO ISHIGURO - THE REMAINS OF THE DAY

I've not read any Ishiguro before. This is of course his most famous, and reputedly his best novel. I just saw it going for a pound in a Nottingham charity shop, so couldn't resist buying it.

Charity Shop

GEORGE ORWELL - NOTES ON NATIONALISM

I am interested to read this short book, just to see what Orwell has to offer by way of analysis of nationalism. As part of my own reading around this subject to see what value nationalism may or may not have, and what causes it to rise up in people's need of it.

Birthday Present