Books & Talks that Shaped My Life & Philosophy


 
I love Augustus Hare's adage, "Thoughts are the Wind, Knowledge is the Sail and Mankind the vessel".  Here is a photo of books that have profoundly shaped all aspects of my life.  (bounded on the left by Ken Kesey's remarkable poem, "The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery." 




However you were brought up, you have been inculcated (aka indoctrinated) with stories and beliefs, many originating before the dawn of science and literacy (i.e., before the enlightenment era.).  This programming is powerful and pervasive as Anthony de Mello explains so well in the "The Way to Love".  Even so perhaps you had doubts or questions that you either never fully resolved or in some cases let slide without knowing all the facts and counter arguments? This was my experience. 

To resolve this dilemma you will follow one of 2 paths:
1) Wanting truth wherever it leads or
2) Looking for evidence to support your beliefs 

I took the former aka "the road less traveled". Today, I am a happy and contented humanist and stoic 🤗  See my "God" page and my Nov 2019 Immortality blog post summarizing my epiphany. 13 of the books in the picture above were the foundation for my worldview enlightenment and transformation beyond the programming of my early years (see my 'Wisdom for Life' page for more details).  If you only read two, then I recommend, "The Way to Love, "followed by "Immortality-The Quest to Live Forever  "Listed in the order I read them they are:  
  • The Glory Road - Heinlein  Read as a teenage and convinced me I don't want to die lying in bed and to seek an adventurous life 
  • The Road Less Travelled - Peck    Solving life's difficult problems using 4 tools gives meaning to life and understanding about what love really is rather than what society teaches. See my wisdom page for more info   
  • Man's Search for Meaning - Frankl  The 3 ways people find meaning in life, formulated from experiences in the WWII Auschwitz prison camp 
  • The Power of Now - Tolle  (Liberation from fear and anxiety and control by your ego)
  • 8 Steps to Happiness - G. K. Gyatso  (compassion for others is the source of everlasting contentment)
  • Stoicism 101 on web  (4 cornerstones of living - wisdom, courage, moderation, social justice)
  • Fabric of the Cosmos - Greene (The universe is much grander than what traditional church taught).  Also an illuminating Nova TV series) 
  • More than Two - Veaux & Rickert (Our capacity and need to love many is real - aka polyamorous) 
  • Sapiens - Harari (How 200,000 years on earth evolved us into what we are including our social structure)
  • The Way to Love - The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello" Wonderful booklet that succinctly integrates the best tenets of Humanism, Buddhism, Stoicism, Scott Peck and Eckhart Tolle without the falsehoods religion and society programmed into us.  Its bottom line - Attachments are the cause of all unhappiness)
  • "Immortality The Quest to Live Forever and How it Drives Civilization" - by Stephen Cave was the lynchpin in this phase of my life's journey enabling me to "come out of the closet" regarding what I believe and round out my Canman the Sojourner blog "manifesto".  YouTube Summary here 
  • "Jesus Interrupted" Bart Ehrman - World's foremost biblical history scholar illuminates the bible real roots, fallacies and how he went from bible thumping Christian to agnostic. 
  • "Ecclesiastes" "Reflections on temporal nature, meaningless and unfairness of life
  • "The God Argument" A.C. Grayling - How embracing Humanism is a better way to live one's life. 


The other 16 books in the picture above deal with social science and personal growth topics 
  • "Falling Upward" Rohr  Perspectives on the 2nd half of life
  • "Capitalism & Freedom" Milton Friedman - Why the freedom to make our own choices in life is essential for a productive society
  • "You are Stronger than you Think", -Parrot - A book on real relationships and what it means to be a true friend.
  • "The Black Swan", Nassim Taleb  The effect of highly improbable catastrophic events and how to mitigate them 
  • "Decision Traps"  - Russell & Schoemaker, Landmark study showing the fragilities of human decision making and how to overcome them
  • "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" - Stephen Covey, How to Organize your life strategically and tactically
  • "Outliers"  Malcolm Gladwell,  Case studies demonstrating that genius in any vocation really lies in practice - early and often
  • "The Omnivores Dilemma",  Michael Pollan,  If you like cooking and food (and keeping in mind food is the religion of Italy - see my Oct 2019 post) I would say the most enlightening and fun lifestyle book I have read. Time magazine called the author, "the most influential person of the decade." After reading I can see why. It won't make you vegan, but I'm willing to bet it will influence how or where you procure meat. 
  • "Who Moved My Cheese?", Spencer Johnson, The effect of your mindset on dealing with life's unexpected events
  • "How Smart Machines Think", Gerrish, Explains AI
  • "The Five Love Languages", Chaplan, Understanding how to express love may be different what you want.
  • "Life in Space"  -  A look at what it might be like to live in space. 

Other enlightening and witty reads concerning human evolution, society and philosophy that offer truth and liberation from traditional myths include: 
  • "Homo Deus - A Brief History of the Future" - Harari  - The World we are heading into is going to be VERY different
  • "Enlightenment Now - The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress" - Steven Pinker - A surprisingly strong case for optimism, market economics and humanism 
  • "Human Errors" - Lents  - Proof that our evolutionary makeup is an odd jumble of selections - some very non optimum
  • "Power of Myth" Joseph Campbell ( All the world's religious beliefs have many similarities and are believed because of indoctrination by a society)
  • "The God Delusion"  Richard Dawkins, A reference guide to understand the fallacies of religious doctrine 
  • "The  Ape Who Understood the Universe"   Makes scientific case that the root cause for everything we think and feel derives from evolutionary biology
  • "The Right Stuff" Tom Wolf
  • "Little Big Man", Thomas Berger. 
  • "The Subtle Art of not Giving a F*ck"  Mark Manson
  • "The Federalist Papers"  (Start with #10)
  • "First & Last Notebooks", Simone Weil 
Three excellent (and fun) Sci Fi Books that helped expand my concept of our universe and life are:
  • "The Book of Strange New Things "
  • "The Boat of a Million Years" - Anderson
  • "The Harvest" - John Krygelski

As the readings above and my world travels enlightened me and radically changed my paradigms, it was important to me to revisit biblical apologetics via reading, classes, talks and discussions that I was raised on.  I wanted to objectively reconsider their premises and rationale in light of my exposure to diverse cultures, modern science and life experiences gained over the years. 

This included listening to some thought provoking online discussions and debates:
Classic books that attempt to make a case for traditional Christianity include: 
  • Mere Christianity - C. S. Lewis
  • Jesus Among the Secular God's - Zachararias
  • Cost of Discipleship - Bonhoeffers
  • Case for Christ - Strobel 
  • The Quest for Jesus -Schweitzer (by attempting to reconcile theology with historical knowns Schweitzer goes a long way towards showing Jesus as a man who lived and died as a rebellious Jew who firmly believed that the end of days was imminent. And that the gospels were conflicting works of men with their own agendas. 
Recognizing traditional Christian viewpoints and books such as the ones above are insufficient, the Christian authors below attempted to make God more relevant in modern society:
  • The Myth of Certainty - Taylor 
  • The Language of Science and Faith - Giberson and Collins
  • The Reason for God - Keller 
  • Speaking Christian - Borg
  • Heart of Christianity - Borg
  • Complete Works of Emily Cady (An amazing doctor who lived in the 1890's)
  • When Bad Things Happen to Good People - Kushner
  • Measure of a Man - Getz
  • The Man in the Mirror - Morely 
  • Empty Promises - Wilson
  • Robbing Peter to Pay Paul - Powell
  • The Rapture Exposed - Rossine
  • The Heresy of Orthodoxy - Kruger
  • Searching for God Knows What
  • Ecclesiastes - Solomon?
My takeaway from all these books is that all of the relevant wisdom tenets and moral tenets of Christianity are not exclusive to Christianity (i.e. one can find them in Humanism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Stoicism philosophies.)  Nor do I need a deity to create, cajole, or punish me into "behaving and living a good story." Cults and religions both use the same techniques to attract lonely, confused, and disenfranchised followers.  Furthermore, arguments for key foundational religious tenets don't hold up in light of modern scientific knowledge, historical veracity, and rational thinking.  Superstition in a word. They evolved as feel-good antidotes to appease and placate dealing with death, scientific ignorance, or scary postulates - often to order or control society.  And some Christian and other religions premises are downright unethical (view Hitchens Youtube above about why religion has been bad for humanity) 

If you desire additional references to understand a humanist worldview consider:

"The Selfish Gene"   Richard Dawkins
The Confessions"  St Augustine  
"The Age of Reason"  Thomas Paine
"36 Arguments for the Existence of God"  
"Mortality" Hitchens

I'll end with this thought from Douglas Adams (‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy’ ). "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"  

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