Post your book thread

[Elihu]

I will start off
God of the Machine by Isabel Patterson
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... i=89978449

freedom is the answer life equates to energy circuits

[Elihu]

so the idea for this thread was: have you found a book that says it all for you? clarifies, summarizes, expostulates most everything you have intrinsically felt to be true most of your life? Culmination might be too strong a word, but since we're all well read around here, a convergence of one's learning and experience. Cathartic might be the right word

[DrEvil]

I wont' get into my opinions on libertarianism here, other than to note it went up a couple of notches after they booed and heckled Trump.

This might be a weird pick, but Blindsight by Peter Watts did that for me. Not the spaceships or the cool technology (or the vampires), but the ideas about consciousness and self-awareness - essentially that we're more unthinking automatons than we like to think (heh), and that maybe consciousness and self-awareness is even a drawback in some cases.

Learning about the free energy principle cooked up by Karl Friston only reinforced that belief. Roughly speaking it says that we try to minimize surprise. We have our internal model of the world that we use to predict what will happen in any given situation, and our sensory inputs that we use to tune that internal model to better predict things. In other words: we value routine and predictability, because it requires less tuning/thinking, which uses less energy.

I do think we are self-aware (although I have my doubts about some people), but not nearly to the degree most of us think. Thinking takes a lot of energy, so we evolved to get away with as little of it as possible; it's something we bring out for special occasions. Getting good at something is just another way of saying you don't have to think about it anymore. Driving to work in the morning for the nth time you get there and have no recollection of doing it; small talk is basically a social lubricant that we engage in on a subconscious level, etc. Very few of the things we do on a daily basis require active, focused thinking.

We think we're special because we feel special, not because we are. Most of what we do is just rote learning - pattern matching and imitation. Original thought is lauded (or vilified) because it's so rare, and change is scary to so many because it forces you to think and adapt quickly. It's why change is so hard - people don't want change - they want predictable routine. They want the killer to be caught at the end of the episode. Every time.

Progress happens because we're dragged kicking and screaming into the future.

[BenDhyan]

I suspect this book may only resonate with those who have engaged in deep still mind meditation, dhyan, over a long period, but
HOME WITH GOD. - Neale Walsch
Dying is something you do for you.
You are the cause of your own death. This is always true, no matter where, or how, you die.
You cannot die against your will.
No path back home is better than any other path.
Death is never a tragedy. It is always a gift.
You and God are one. There is no separation between you.
Death does not exist.
You cannot change Ultimate Reality, but you can change your experience of it.
It is the desire of the ALL to Know Itself in Its Own Experience. This is the reason for all of Life. Life is eternal.
The timing and the circumstances of death are always perfect.
The death of every person always serves the agenda of every other person who is aware of it. That is why they are aware of it. Therefore, no death (and no life) is ever ‘wasted.’ No one ever dies ‘in’ vain.’
Birth and death are the same thing.
You are continually in the act of creation, in life and in death.
There is no such thing as the end of evolution.
Death is reversible.

[Elihu]

a great start i must say,

[SonicG]

Some might think I have gone off some deep end but as far as deeply resonating within me...

From my experiment in time, seeing and studying the human as part of the larger self-evolving fabric of the biosphere, I came to the conclusion that the human is living in a time apart from the rest of the biosphere-an artificial time whose climax and termination is inevitable, for nothing artificial can withstand the force of truth. If the human is living in artificial time, the clock is an artifact whose system of measure has nothing to do with natural cycles but is a totally abstract standard, then there must be something called natural time. I will go even farther and state that not only is there natural time, but that there is a law governing natural time, and that is the Law of Time. Just as Newton only discovered gravity some 300 years ago, though gravity has always existed, so the Law of Time has always been in operation, even though it was just recently discovered. It is the Law of Time that governs the entirety of the biosphere and everything else in the universe according to principles which are only dimly known to us, principles like synchronicity and telepathic instantaneity. Yes, to understand what really happened on 9-11 you have to understand the Law of Time and how it governs the biosphere-of which our rampant human civilization is inescapably a part.

***
The current explosion of the world crisis, stemming from the destruction of The World Trade Center Twin Towers, demonstrates the hypothesis of the Law of Time that states: operating on artificial and mechanistic timing standards will cause the human to deviate from natural rime to the point of its self-destruction, the end result of the magnetic instability referred to in this reference. But here we have some further definitions to make. Let us start with a definition of the technosphere, since that word is featured so prominently in the title of this book, Time and the Technosphere: The Law of Time in Human Affairs. While the term biosphere defines the entirety of life as a single coherent unity, inclusive of its inorganic or semi-inert support systems such as the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, technosphere defines an artificial sheathe or membrane held together by industrial technology as a whole system. This technological mantle is the sum of the processes devised by humans resulting from the application of certain scientific and economic principles, especially during the last half century. The effects of the technosphere are to supplant the organic processes of the biosphere with totally industrialized ones, resulting in a severe imbalance in the biosphere. This imbalance, the "magnetic instability between the primal crystalline and vital organic processes" refers to the disruption of the delicate interaction between the inert (crystalline) and biological processes and structures which constitute the vibrant mechanisms and interactive cycles of the biosphere. Phenomena such as global warming and over-population are symptomatic of the technospheric disruption of the natural order of the biosphere.

Time and the Technosphere: The Law of Time in Human Affairs
José Argüelles
https://the-eye.eu/public/Books/World%2 ... SPHERE.pdf

[Elihu]

https://cdn.mises.org/The%20Discovery%2 ... edom_2.pdf
Rose Wilder Lane (daughter of Laura Ingalls)
The Discovery of Freedom

The problem of human life on this earth is the problem of
finding the method of applying combined human energies to
this earth to get from it the necessities of human life.

This problem has never been solved by assuming that an
Authority controls individuals. To the degree that men in
Government have assumed this authority and responsibility,
and have used their actual police force in attempting to control
the productive uses of human energy, the energy
has failed to work.

For instance: If the French people had not believed that the King
should and did control weaving, they would not have been so ragged
and cold that winter.

Another instance: Louis XIV was using the force
that is Government. Force cannot control human energy;
it can only stop the use of human energy... Missourians stopped
producing more wine than they drank. If they had not stopped,
they might have wrecked the vintners of Bordeaux.
Certainly they would have planted more grapes,
produced more wine, lowered the price of wine. They would
have needed more casks, more boats, more settlers. America
might be France today.

It has never been complicated. It has been hard to find.