Clif's Book World

I read this back in 2006 as part of a book group discussion. All I remember about it was that it was long and that Dickens has a chapter in the book that sounds much like an editorial critical of the prison system of his day. I was reminded of the book because it showed up on my PageADay Book Lover's Calendar for today. The review from the calendar is below:

Against the backdrop of the soul-sucking English legal system unfolds a novel that encompasses both miraculous goodness and shocking villainy. Despite the gloomy-sounding title, our heroine, the orphaned Esther, is a bright light of morality and smarts, who triumphs in the face of all odds. Although Charles Dickens is known for his brilliant characterizations, rest assured that this 1853 classic also provides no shortage of murder and mayhem.
BLEAK HOUSE , by Charles Dickens (1853; Signet Classic, 2003)

I was hopeful this book might provide me with some sociological tools and rhetorical tricks to clear away the views of those who disagree with my positions on politics and religion. Of course this book does not deliver on this unrealistic hope. What the book does provide instead is an explanation why not everybody agrees with my definition of morality. This knowledge does not make disagreements go away, so the best I can hope for after reading this book is to comprehend the intuitive motivations of both myself and others, and then comprehend why those motivations can lead to morals that steer reasoning to opposite conclusions.

The author, Jonathan Haidt, is a psychologist who has specialized on the nature of morals. This book could have been more accurately titled "The Moral Mind." The book is divided into three parts. The main point of the first part is what Haidt calls the first principle of moral psychology: Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. The second part of the book explores the second principle of moral psychology: There's more to morality than harm and fairness. The third part presented the principle that morality binds and blinds.

Part One 

This author weaves together a history of moral psychology and the author’s own story to create a sense of movement from rationalism to intuitionism. The author throws in historical anecdotes, quotations from the ancients, and praise of a few visionaries. The author then set up metaphors (such as the rider and the elephant) that recur throughout the book. He then discusses the evidence to “tune up” the reader’s intuitions about moral psychology.

The message here is that value judgments are seldom products of rational deliberation. We are hardwired by evolution to function first with our emotional brain at an intuitive level, and what follows may claim to be rational reasoning that explains our judgment but is actually rationalization of quick intuitive decisions. The inherited human brain is also social in nature and must exhibit behavior that is compliant with a person’s social environment (i.e. group or tribe). This explains why people don’t necessarily vote for their own self interests. Instead they vote in compliance with the values and belief system of the group they most closely associate with. 

Part Two

The main point of this section of the book is that conservatives base their morality on six types of considerations or value judgments: care/harm, liberty/oppression, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. Liberals base their morality on three areas: care/harm, liberty/oppression, and fairness/cheating. Haidt says this give conservatives an advantage when campaigning for votes because they can appeal to their supporters in six ways and liberals can appeal to only three. 

Part Three

Haidt in this section drives home the point that the tendency for humans to form morals has been ingrained into humans by evolution. Humans are products of multilevel selection, which made us both selfish and groupish. Haidt describes it as being 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee. He suggests that religion played a crucial role in our evolutionary history--our religious minds co-evolved with our religious practices to create ever larger moral communities, particularly after the advent of agriculture. 

Quotations of Interest to Me

I was surprised to learn from the following quotation that conservatives understand liberals better than liberals understand conservatives. After the following quotation in the book Haidt explains the reasons for the lack of understanding on the part of liberals.

"In a study I did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, we tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the moral Foundations Questionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a "typical liberal" would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a "typical conservative" would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other. More important, it allowed us to asses how accurate they were by comparing people's expectations about "typical" partisans to the actual responses from partisans of the left and the right. Who was best able to pretend to be the other?
The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as "very liberal." The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. When faced with questions such as "One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" or Justice is the most important requirement for a society," liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree."

The following quotation is not really part of the main focus of this book, but I found it interesting because it illuminates an irony about many Christians who emphasize "correct belief" (i.e. orthodoxy) whereas modern polling shows "correct belief" not to be a reliable predictor of neighborliness and good citizenship. Haidt is quoting from Putnam and Campbell's 2010 book,American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.

"Why are religious people better neighbors and citizens? To find out, Putnam and Campbell included on one of their surveys a long list of questions about religious beliefs (e.g., "Do you believe in hell? Do you agree that we will all be called before God to answer for our sins?") as well as questions about religious practices (e.g., "How often do you read holy scriptures? How often do you pray?) These beliefs and practices turned out to matter very little. Whether you believe in hell, whether you pray daily, whether you are a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Mormon ... none of these things correlated with generosity. The only thing that was reliable and powerfully associated with the moral benefits of religion was how enmeshed people were in relationships with their co-religionists.It's the friendships and groups activities, carried out within a moral matrix that emphasizes selflessness. That's what brings out the best in people.
Putnam and Campbell reject the New Atheist emphasis on belief and reach a conclusion straight out of Durkheim: "It is religious belongingness that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing."

The following is Haidt's definition of moral systems:

"Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technology, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to oppress or regulate self interest and make cooperative societies possible"

This definition makes morals dependent on the social environment. There is no one single definition of morality that is true in all cultures.

Some Links of Interest

The following links came from the Book's Website.
Here is a pdf file of Chapter 9, the chapter on multi-level selection.
Here is a pdf file with all figures and images from all chapters
Here is a pdf file will all of the references (the bibliography)
Here is a pdf file with all of the end notes
You can read the introduction to the book here, and you can read a condensed version of Ch. 12 (on politics and polarization) atReason Magazine.
Here is a summary/outline of the book, with interesting comments and links, from Jan C. Hardenbergh
Here is the out take from ch. 6 on Virtue Ethics, as referred to in Haidt's NYT Stone essay

I listened to the audio version of this book in 2003 or 04 before my Goodreads.com days. I remember being surprised how interesting and well written the story was in spite of my squeamishness regarding the subject of sexual ambiguity. The following review is from PageADay's Book Lover's Calendar for 12-27-2013.

This Pulitzer Prize–winning novel tells the baroque and utterly fascinating story of a girl who decides to become a boy only to find out that she was really a boy all along. Are you following? Jeffrey Eugenides’s wonderful book has such an engaging protagonist with such a big heart that any initial confusion will quickly fall away. Enjoy the ride. If you do, then pick up his long-awaited third novel, The Marriage Plot.

MIDDLESEX, by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002; Picador, 2007)

This book reads much as if it was based on notes taken during an all night bull session with leading scientists. It's sort of a travelogue by a journalist reporting on his itinerant interviews with the leading minds in astrophysics and the earth sciences.  Along the way we learn about science and also a bit about the personalities of those doing the science.

 

Beyond their personal stories and concerns about reduced funding for scientific research, the reader is exposed to “a portrait of our planet revealing how the earth came to life and how someday it will die. It is also a chronicle of an unfolding scientific revolution zooming in on the ardent search for other earths around other stars. Most of all however it is a meditation on humanity’s uncertain legacy.”

 

The "five billion" referred to by the title is the estimated length of time life can exist on earth (i.e. from first appearance of single cell life to final destruction by a dying sun).   We are currently at four and a half billion on that timeline, so we're closer to the end than the beginning. If we manage to survive the other threats to life on earth (e.g. asteroids and nuclear bombs), sometime in the next half billion years we'll need to decide whether to meekly accept our fate or search for other planets to colonize.

 

Topics covered in this book vary widely, some not related in obvious ways to astrophysics or life on earth. (Come to think of it, what's not related to life on earth?)

The following is a rough log of some of the subjects addressed:<blockquote><b>-</b> The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

 

- The probabilities of extra-terrestrial life (longevity of intelligent life is most important variable, and difficult to estimate, in determining likelihood of intelligent life existing concurrently within the same galaxy.)

 

- Recent success in finding planets around other stars (exoplanets).

 

- Using radial-velocity spectroscopy (measuring the wobble) or the transit of planets in front of their stars to calculate number size and orbit size of exoplanets.

 

- Description of fierce competition between astronomers to find planets (even claims of stealing information).

 

- Stories told about past efforts to observe the transit of Venus.

 

- Calculation of the monetary value of a world (the reality of limited resources makes this analysis necessary to help in making decisions regarding where to invest research money)

 

- Description of the geologic history of the earth

 

- Description the the history of life on earth

 

- Description of what we know about history of earth’s atmosphere, temperatures and probable cause of future global warming

 

- Description of geologic history of Marcellus shale formation in northeastern USA.

 

- Story of the history of science from ancient Greeks to modern days.

 

- Explanation of the carbon/silicate interaction in the Archean atmosphere to prevent runaway greenhouse effect like that on Venus.

 

- History of rocket science and the demise of NASA's future space exploration plans.

 

- Possible strategies of using technology to reduce expensive rocket launch costs.

 

- Biographic sketch of Sara Seager, MIT Professor of Physics and Planetary Science.

 

Wikipedia article with latest exoplanet count:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet(1056 planets in 802 planetary systems including 175 multiple planetary systems as of 20 December 2013).

 

 

The question is raised near the end of the book, "Just how many transiting Jupiters do we need?" This raises the possibility that once we confirm the existence of thousands of planets the whole field of exoplanet research may experience a dot-com bubble sort of collapse as people lose interest. Another suggestion is that we need to encourage the Chinese to begin discovering earthlike exoplanets (and naming them Chinese names) so we'll be motivated to not be outdone by them.

According to Wikipedia.org this book argues that the conditions imposed on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles did not lead to the rise of Adolf Hitler. I read the book back in 2003 so my memory of its contents is a bit hazy, but I don’t remember that point being made by the book. What I do remember is that the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires caused numerous cases of minority enclaves being surrounded by hostile neighbors. The resulting ethnic cleansing through migration (and otherwise) continued to the end of the twentieth century (e.g. breakup of Yugoslavia).

 

Wikipedia.org also says that David Lloyd George is the author’s great grandfather. I wonder if that influenced the judgment of the author.

 

I was reminded of this book by the following short review that was on yesterday’s PageADay Book Lover’s Calendar. (Note that the 1st sentence below contradicts Wikipedia's comment regarding the rise of Hitler.)

 A dramatic account of the World War I peace accord that planted the seeds for World War II. Woodrow Wilson emerges as a fascinating, broken figure, and the greedy, shortsighted angling of certain key negotiators will keep you turning the pages. Even readers who think they know the story will find Margaret MacMillan’s clear-eyed narrative both enlightening and hair-raising.

PARIS 1919: SIX MONTHS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, by Margaret MacMillan (2001; Random House, 2003)

This book provides a critical review of actions taken during the Great Depression from 1929 to 1940, and it reflects of whether theses actions helped or hurt the prospects for economic recovery. Viewing that era from today’s perspective can provide plenty of things to criticize. However, we today are the beneficiaries of many of the actions taken then.

 

Shalaes portrays both Herbert Hoover and Roosevelt (and most other politicians of the time) as not understanding economics and taking actions are resulted in making conditions worse. Hoover signed the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariff bill and raised taxes to balance the budget. Roosevelt vacillated between public works spending, anti-big-business rhetoric and raising taxes to balance the budget; all the which demonstrated a total “lack of faith in the marketplace.” “From 1929 to 1940, from Hoover to Roosevelt, government intervention helped to make the Depression Great.”

 

Obviously, the New Deal public works programs provided employment and infused money into a collapsing and deflationary economy. Also, many important foundations of our modern economy began during Roosevelt’s administration: Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the modern Federal Reserve and more. Roosevelt also pursued a more open trade policy and undid most of the protectionism begun under Hoover.

 

However, Shlaes indicates that the aggressive expansion of government run enterprises (e.g. T.V.A.) provided uncertainty and fear from government competition in the minds of business investors. This together with monetary policies that limited money supply crippled possible economic growth from the private sector and caused a recession within the depression from 1937 to 1940.

 

Furthermore, the heavy hand of government bureaucrats began to tarnish the reputation of the New Deal programs. One of the most absurd (from today’s perspective) cases highlighted by this book was the Schechters “sick chicken” case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Schechters were kosher chicken merchants in New York City who had been found guilty of discounting the cost of their chickens which was a violation of federal rules that were intended to prevent deflation. The Supreme Court found for the Schechters and basically determined that the National Recovery Administration was unconstitutional.

 

Other victims of Roosevelt’s centralization campaign included some wealthy individuals, many of whom were hounded by prosecutors for tax avoidance. Also, privately owned electrical utilities were subjected to alleged unfair competition from subsidized public utilities.

 

Shalaes provides a sympathetic description of Wendell Willkie who was the 1940 Republican presidential nominee. I got the impression that Shalaes would have voted for him. Willkie promised to scale back the New Deal and allow the free market to fill the void. As it turned out, big government deficit spending for World War II is what ended the Great Depression.

 

The term “forgotten man” in the book's title is given multiple meanings through the course of this book. Roosevelt referred to “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.” But the phrase had a very different origin. In the late 19th century, the philosopher William Graham Sumner had used it to describe the average citizen “coerced,” as Shlaes writes, “into funding dubious social projects.”

 

It occurred to me that the term “forgotten man” could also refer the the fact that this book also highlights the work of many different individuals who have been forgotten in people’s memories. One example is Bill Wilson who founded Alcoholics Anonymous and “taught Americans that the solution to their troubles lay not with a federal program but within a new sort of entity — the self-help community,” as Shlaes puts it. The book also features several of the early New Deal leaders who were self styled progressives who had expressed admiration for Communist rhetoric back in the 1920s. Their admiration was toned down by the 1930s when Stalin's ruthless rule became apparent.

 

I am bothered by the fact that many of today’s political conservatives have claimed that this book supports their opposition to Obama’s policies. I read this book as an illustration of how an overblown emphasis on balancing the budget and limiting money to prevent inflation can cause economic disaster. It appears that lessons of history can support contrary positions.

This is a memoir of life with a schizophrenic mother. This is not a situation one would wish for, and I as a reader was sufficiently uncomfortable with the story during the early pages that I considered bailing out and not finishing it. But when I pondered the decision it occurred to me that if I read the book perhaps I could learn a bit about schizophrenia, and maybe I would develop an appreciation for the trials endured by family members and loved ones when schizophrenia occurs.

 

This is also a memoir about the author striving to reclaim lost memories after traumatic brain injury in a car accident (which followed a previous concussion caused by slipping on a sidewalk). Her struggle for memories was tinged with pain since they included a troubled childhood with an ill mother and dysfunctional extended family.

After escaping their home environment via college scholarships the author and her sister found it necessary to change their names and move to addresses unknown in order to avoid their mother's demented harassment. This drastic step which led to seventeen years of separation was made necessary when they were unable to have their mother legally institutionalized.

 

The style of writing reveals a mind of an artist which at times enters into contemplative circles of thought. The book’s title and structure are built around a metaphor based on the story of the sixth-century B.C. Greek poet Simonides, who was attending a party at a palace and stepped outside just before the building collapsed. He was able to identify the mangled bodies recovered from the ruins based upon his memory of where the guests had been standing.

 

The author in writing this book is thus rebuilding an imaginary palace in which she can place her memoires for safe keeping. It’s a beautiful metaphor for describing the author’s struggle to reconstruct a life on the rubble of a catastrophically ruined family and her striving against the cognitive limitations caused by her brain injury.

The seventeen year separation comes to an end when the author and her sister learn that their mother is terminally ill. They are present when she dies and thus are able to have a bit of closure to their estrangement.

 

In the end the author asks the question that some readers are probably wondering, did she shirk her duty as a daughter by leaving her mother? Is it a daughter’s responsibility to forsake her own career to be her mother’s caretaker? The whole situation was made difficult by the fact that the legal system found that their mother was not sufficiently impaired to be involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.

 

The book is filled with quotations written by their mother in her journal during the years of homelessness and separation from her daughters. The writing in the journals could be judged as curiously creative if a reader didn’t know about the schizophrenia. The book ends with the question of whether their mother would have been happier being institutionalized.

 

It’s a complicated question. Their mother had sufficient grasp on reality to miraculously survive her homelessness into her 80s, but yet she was obviously incapable of properly taking care of herself. How would her journals have read if she had been institutionalized? Would she have had a journal? Or would she have been so drugged as to not feel the need to journal?

This is the best defense of public schools I've come across. Americans who have not read this book are probably insufficiently informed to vote wisely in local and state elections.

 

Contrary to what one might conclude from media reports, levels of educational achievement and graduation rates in the United States have been consistently rising over the years. Surprise! Achievement scores are now “at their highest point ever recorded.” Achievement has been going up for all racial groups, but the gaps between the groups persist. (It is interesting to note that current age 9 average math score for blacks is now equal to what the age 9 math score was for whites in 1982, but the gap continues because scores for whites have gone up.) LINK to NAEP Report

 

But supporters of charter and on-line schools point out that many other countries have higher levels of educational achievement, and their proposed solutions are needed to catch up. It’s interesting to note that these other countries achieve their educational success without the use of charter schools, virtual on-line schools, and punitive threats of firing teachers and closing schools.

 

Ravitch provides a comparative look at Finland which consistently scores high on educational achievement tests. She shows that they obtain their success by respecting their teachers as professionals, and their students don’t take standardized tests until it's time to enter college. How does Finland do it? There is one very significant difference between Finland and the United States. Finland has a much smaller percentage of students living in poverty (3%) compared to the United States (20%). It just so happens that the family wealth/poverty level is a significant indicator of probable academic success. No charter or virtual on-line school has been able to overcome the effects of poverty and segregation for their average achievement scores when they’re required to accept the same students as public schools.

 

Some promoters of charter schools criticize public schools for using poverty is an excuse. But experience has shown that charters are quick to use it as an excuse when they fail to perform any better. In case you think on-line computer classes are the answer you need to read this article.

 

 

Ravitch doesn't have much good to say about standarized tests, "No Child Left Behind" or "Race to the Top." She has plenty of criticism for both Democrats and Republicans. And she very critically lays into some of the well-known private-sector leaders and political officials — among them Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Bill Gates, Wendy Kopp and Michelle Rhee. The scary thing about the private for-profit charter school chains is that they are now a formidable political lobby group with lots of campaign contributions for friendly politicians. They're not going away anytime soon.

 

Ravitch acknowledges that her previous books were criticized for being long on criticism and short on suggestions of ways to improve the American educational system. She says the solution is simple. Just look at what wealthy private schools and public schools in the wealthy suburbs are doing. Their test scores compare well with international comparisons. In order to duplicate in all schools what they are doing will require providing good prenatal care. Then there should be vastly expanded prekindergarten programs, more comprehensive medical and mental health provisions, smaller classes, and diagnostic testing that, unlike a standardized exam, show us where a child needs specific help. Ravitch says we should honor the teaching profession by strengthening the profession with higher entry standards. She doesn't think that answer is in recruiting "enthusiastic amateurs" who teach short term and move on to other professions.

 

She describes stick-and-carrot incentives such as merit pay as "the idea that never works and never dies." She says such incentives undermine the spirit of collaboration by pitting teachers against each other. She also deplores humiliating practices such as publishing teachers' names beside students' test scores. She tells of one teacher publicly humiliated as the "worst teacher in New York" when all teacher scores were published. After news reporters circled her house hounding her for interviews it was revealed that she taught a class of English language learners who moved on to regular classes when they were able. It's obvious not all students are equally teachable. Tying pay to student performance will provide a strong disincentive for teaching disadvantaged students, or teaching students who are already at the high end of achievement levels with little room for improvement.

 

This "Children as Blueberries" story is reference by this book. If you haven't heard the story it's worth reading.

 

I hope this book is a best seller and widely read. I hope it puts a nail into the coffin of the for profit privatization movement in education. I hope it also increases the willingness of voters to support spending on public schools, and providing the other services and changes that Ravitch recommends to equalize access to good education.

This is a classic of the mystery book genre. I recall checking it out of the library while in grade school, but while listening to the audio of it this time I found no parts of the plot that conjured up any old memories. So I'm doubtful now that I ever finished reading it when I was a kid.

The mystery to be solved in this book is embedded within the lowland English moors filled with dangerous quicksand bogs, and local legend claims that the moors are also haunted by a mysterious and supernatural black hound. I guess that provides the “dark and stormy night” ambiance required to instill the spirit of mystery in the mind of the reader. 

The reader knows that detective Holmes isn’t going to accept the apparent supernatural cause in the murder mystery, and later when an escaped convict enters the plot it’s pretty clear that it is another red herring. 

Sure enough, Holmes figures it out with Watson reporting the wisdom of his detective friend. Their relationship reminds me of Socrates and Plato.

This is a novel set within the historical events in the Mediterranean from 1569 through 1571, beginning with the arsenal fire of Venice, moving on to the household of rich Jewish trader Joseph Nasi in Constantinople, from there on to the Ottoman invasion of Cyprus, on to the massacre following the surrender of Famagusta, then to the naval Battle of Lepanto, and thence back to Constantinople for a description of the consequences of the war.

 

The story follows a fiction character Emmanuele De Zante through all these events. Emmanuele is half Jewish by his mother, but he has been able to live most of his life as a good Catholic in Venice where he has risen in government ranks as a trusted spy catcher and agent. But he is forced to flee to the Ottomans (enemies of Venice) when his true identity is discovered because of his missing a short piece of skin.

 

At this time in history the Ottoman Empire seems much more open to religious tolerance than the inquisition filled Spanish and Italian lands. Interestingly, there is a thriving Jewish community in Constantinople filled with refugees driven from Spain, Portugal and the Italian Peninsula. Some of these refugees are quite wealthy and includes individuals such as Joseph Nasi who helps finance the Ottoman military forces in the conquest of Cyprus.

 

According to this book’s story Joseph Nasi was planning to be King of Cyprus and intended to set up a kingdom that would serve as a Jewish homeland and would be tolerant of other religions. After the successful invasion he was allowed to keep his titles, but little power came with them. So his dream wasn’t achieved, but it is a historical fact that the Jewish community on Cyprus continued to thrive under Ottoman rule.

 

The reason I was interested in this book is because it is billed as a sequel to the novel Q, a novel about the Reformation. I wanted to know what became of the militant Anabaptist character in the novel Q. (Proto-Communist revolutionary 300 years prior to Karl Marx is better description.) He had managed to be present at every bloody confrontation of the era including the Battle of Frankenhausen where he served beside Thomas Müntzer on the side of the revolting peasants. From there he moved on to the Münster Rebellion, managed to escape alive to find refuge in the low country (Holland and Friesland), and then escaped to Italy where he preached seditious sermons to peasants and connived with the Pope selection process. This character used so many names in the novel Q that I wasn’t sure I’d recognized him in this book. But sure enough, he shows up this time as an old man who has spent a life time fighting for liberty for oppressed poor people everywhere. His latest conflict with the authorities was a rebellion in Yemen against the Ottomans. In this book he functions as an old man known by all the pirates and underworld types whose cooperation was required for some of the plot's activities.

 

This book as well as Q were written by committee, not a single person. From the narrative I have concluded that the committee is made up of horny male anarchists.

I selected this novel as part of a effort to look for books that may be of interest to a book group focused on "Boomer Generation" themes. This book qualifies because its heroine named Hildy is a 60-year-old divorcee who is a long time resident of a fictional town on Boston's North Shore. She has been the town's most successful real estate agent for decades which gives her a unique insight into the non-public psychology of many of the town's residents.

 

'I can walk through a house once and know more about its occupants than a psychiatrist could after a year of sessions. .... "Alcoholics, hoarders, binge eaters, addicts, sexual deviants, philanderers, depressives ­ you name it, I can see it all in the worn edges of their nests." '

 

The first person narrative by Hildy includes descriptions of various town residents confirming her thorough knowledge of the intimate goings-on in the neighborhood. However, as the book's story progresses we also learn that our heroine has her own non-public problems to deal with. She recounts how a couple years previous friends and family staged an intervention and sent her off to a "detox" camp to cure her alcoholism. She learned from this experience to only drink alone and secretly. She rationalizes that she's not an alcoholic now because she's limits her drinks to wine.

 

The town's social structure and economy are experiencing problematic change as well. The small town charm has attracted the attention of wealthy Boston folks seeking weekend retreats thus driving up real estate prices beyond the range of local "townies." Local businesses are being replaced by national chains. Even Hildy's business is threatened by her former assistant who is now an agent for Sotheby's real estate franchise.

 

It is within this setting that the book's story develops a plot packed with small-town intrigues: extramarital affairs, feuding mothers, a missing special needs child and psychic powers that trace back to the Salem witch trials, to name a few. But the book’s real strength lies in its evocation of Hildy’s inner world -- a portrait of the queen of denial.

 

The overall tone of the story is a bit gossipy in style with its tattling about the seamier side of a small New England village. But the plot evolves into a climax toward the end that makes the book worthwhile reading.

 

So am I going to recommend this book for a "Boomer Generation" book group? Well, I'll probably suggest it for consideration. Since it provides a look at the darker side of human foibles, relationship issues and maladapted psychology it lacks the subtle humor and charming elegance of the novel Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (another book the group recently discussed). However, this book has the potential for initiating conversations about problems faced by people in their daily lives.

I was hopeful this book might provide me with some sociological tools and rhetorical tricks to clear away the views of those who disagree with my positions on politics and religion. Of course this book does not deliver on this unrealistic hope. What the book does provide instead is an explanation why not everybody agrees with my definition of morality. This knowledge does not make disagreements go away, so the best I can hope for after reading this book is to comprehend the intuitive motivations of both myself and others, and then comprehend why those motivations can lead to morals that steer reasoning to opposite conclusions.

 

The author, Jonathan Haidt, is a psychologist who has specialized on the nature of morals. This book could have been more accurately titled "The Moral Mind." The book is divided into three parts. The main point of the first part is what Haidt calls the first principle of moral psychology: Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. The second part of the book explores the second principle of moral psychology: There's more to morality than harm and fairness. The third part presented the principle that morality binds and blinds.

 

Part One

 

This author weaves together a history of moral psychology and the author’s own story to create a sense of movement from rationalism to intuitionism. The author throws in historical anecdotes, quotations from the ancients, and praise of a few visionaries. The author then set up metaphors (such as the rider and the elephant) that recur throughout the book. He then discusses the evidence to “tune up” the reader’s intuitions about moral psychology.

 

The message here is that value judgments are seldom products of rational deliberation. We are hardwired by evolution to function first with our emotional brain at an intuitive level, and what follows may claim to be rational reasoning that explains our judgment but is actually rationalization of quick intuitive decisions. The inherited human brain is also social in nature and must exhibit behavior that is compliant with a person’s social environment (i.e. group or tribe). This explains why people don’t necessarily vote for their own self interests. Instead they vote in compliance with the values and belief system of the group they most closely associate with.

 

Part Two

 

The main point of this section of the book is that conservatives base their morality on six types of considerations or value judgments: care/harm, liberty/oppression, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. Liberals base their morality on three areas: care/harm, liberty/oppression, and fairness/cheating. Haidt says this give conservatives an advantage when campaigning for votes because they can appeal to their supporters in six ways and liberals can appeal to only three.

 

Part Three

 

Haidt in this section drives home the point that the tendency for humans to form morals has been ingrained into humans by evolution. Humans are products of multilevel selection, which made us both selfish and groupish. Haidt describes it as being 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee. He suggests that religion played a crucial role in our evolutionary history--our religious minds co-evolved with our religious practices to create ever larger moral communities, particularly after the advent of agriculture.

 

Quotations of Interest to Me

 

I was surprised to learn from the following quotation that conservatives understand liberals better than liberals understand conservatives. After the following quotation in the book Haidt explains the reasons for the lack of understanding on the part of liberals.

 

"In a study I did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, we tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the moral Foundations Questionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a "typical liberal" would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a "typical conservative" would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other. More important, it allowed us to asses how accurate they were by comparing people's expectations about "typical" partisans to the actual responses from partisans of the left and the right. Who was best able to pretend to be the other?

The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as "very liberal." The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. When faced with questions such as "One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" or Justice is the most important requirement for a society," liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree."

 

The following quotation is not really part of the main focus of this book, but I found it interesting because it illuminates an irony about many Christians who emphasize "correct belief" (i.e. orthodoxy) whereas modern polling shows "correct belief" not to be a reliable predictor of neighborliness and good citizenship. Haidt is quoting from Putnam and Campbell's 2010 book, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.

 

"Why are religious people better neighbors and citizens? To find out, Putnam and Campbell included on one of their surveys a long list of questions about religious beliefs (e.g., "Do you believe in hell? Do you agree that we will all be called before God to answer for our sins?") as well as questions about religious practices (e.g., "How often do you read holy scriptures? How often do you pray?) These beliefs and practices turned out to matter very little. Whether you believe in hell, whether you pray daily, whether you are a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Mormon ... none of these things correlated with generosity. The only thing that was reliable and powerfully associated with the moral benefits of religion was how enmeshed people were in relationships with their co-religionists. It's the friendships and groups activities, carried out within a moral matrix that emphasizes selflessness. That's what brings out the best in people.

Putnam and Campbell reject the New Atheist emphasis on belief and reach a conclusion straight out of Durkheim: "It is religious belongingness that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing."

 

The following is Haidt's definition of moral systems:

 

"Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technology, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to oppress or regulate self interest and make cooperative societies possible"

 

This definition makes morals dependent on the social environment. There is no one single definition of morality that is true in all cultures.

 

Some Links of Interest

 

The following links came from the Book's Website.
Here is a pdf file of Chapter 9, the chapter on multi-level selection.
Here is a pdf file with all figures and images from all chapters
Here is a pdf file will all of the references (the bibliography)
Here is a pdf file with all of the end notes.
You can read the introduction to the book here, and you can read a condensed version of Ch. 12 (on politics and polarization) at Reason Magazine.
Here is a summary/outline of the book, with interesting comments and links, from Jan C. Hardenbergh.
Here is the out take from ch. 6 on Virtue Ethics, as referred to in Haidt's NYT Stone essay.

This book provides a scholarly analysis of Amish romance novels, a genre that not many of my Goodreads.com friends are familiar with based upon the reviews I see posted. I don't read many of these novels, so why would I want to read a book like this? One thing I have in common with this author is being Mennonite with a family tree full of Amish ancestors. With this ancestral tie I may be exhibiting a defensive curiosity about how my Amish cousins are being characterized by the world of literature. The author Valerie Weaver-Zercher describes it thus:

"I may also view Amish fiction with a misplaced sense of custodianship. Now that so many people, mostly non-Anabaptists, are writing about my ecclesial cousins, criticism from a Mennonite like me may reflect a knee-jerk mistrust of outsider writing about "my" people." (p247)

This book provides a description of the history and nature of the genre as well as the motivations and types of readers who drive its sales. The thoroughly footnoted book is based upon research of related books and articles as well as interviews with authors, publishers and readers.

The only books I’ve read (except for this) from this genre are Bevery Lewis’ “Heritage of Lancaster County” trilogy originally published in 1997. That satisfied my curiosity, and I didn’t think about it much until recently when I was in a Christian store (they don’t call them book stores anymore) and discovered a whole isle devoted exclusively to books that had front covers showing a young woman wearing a prayer covering (bonnet in the common vernacular).  I was blown away by the volume and variety of books offered within that genre.  According to the Los Angeles Review of Books, a new Amish romance novel hit the market every four days in 2012. The Wall Street Journal reports that the genre's top three authors have sold more than 24 million books.  Most of this growth in popularity has been within the past five years.

The bulk of these sales are to white evangelical Christian women. They like the books for their "clean read" (no explicit sex), the devotional religious language (relationship with God concerns), and the emphasis on the simple life. You don't have to fit this demographic to enjoy the stories, so all types of people can be found who read them.

So this raises the question of how accurately the books describe Amish life. Regarding the descriptions of their work, family and community life, people who are knowledgeable on the subject can find plenty of little errors that most readers wouldn't care about. One example of this that I found humorous was the answer given by Linda Byler (the only widely read author who is actually Amish herself) to the question as to how accurate the picture on the cover of one of her novels was.

" 'Well, the cape? Oh my, it's pitiful how they put that on.' She points out some error in how the model's Halsduch is draped, some false angle or scrunched-up lay of the fabric. I can't quite follow her explanation, and she acknowledges that it would seem a minor detail to an English person like me." (p195)

The above quote reminds me of the how bizarre the use of the term "English" to refer to anybody who isn't Amish must be to most readers. It's a term I grew up with, but it must surely lead to confusion for some readers of this book. The author early in the book provides a footnote that clearly explains the meaning of the word as used in this book. But I'm sure there are some who will miss that footnote and wonder why there are so many English in Lancaster County. The Amish speak Pennsylvania German in their homes, so it's logical for them to refer to those who don't as English (i.e. speakers of English).

Continuing with the subject of accuracy, the book raises the question of whether it is proper for Christian evangelicals to superimpose their theology onto stories about the Amish community which they may or may not agree with it. The book doesn't provide a final judgment on that question. It's interesting to note that very few of the Amish romances acknowledge the traditional pacifism practiced by the Amish. Nor do they mention that Amish grade schools don't have an American flag inside. Nor do the books mention that the Amish students do not recite the pledge of allegiance. I guess those would be inconvenient truths for the conservative evangelicals.

Amish novels also give the impression that all Amish children attend small rural schools run by the Amish themselves whereas the truth is that over half of Amish children attend public schools. The books give the impression that all Amish men work on their farms. The truth is today that over half of Amish men have full time non-farm jobs.

One parallel between the typical evangelical reader and the Amish world depicted by the books that I hadn’t considered before reading this book is fact that many evangelical reader’s have experienced rigid Fundamentalist rules in their past in ways similar to the fictional depiction of Amish who are chafing under the judgment of their rigid Ordnung. In reality the Amish Ordnung isn't as sinister as many novels suggest.

Another thought I had was that the popularity among conservative Christian evangelicals for home schooling their children in order to protect them from exposure to the outside world must surely have something in common with the desire of the Amish to live lives separate from the world. The reason for their plain dress is to show that separateness.

There are variations of the stereotypical novel described above. The author interviewed at least one author who had her books carry the message that the Amish are a cult with un-Christian practices and beliefs. There are also Amish murder mysteries and even Amish vampire novels.

I thought the book covered the subject of Amish romance novels with complete thoroughness. Nevertheless, at the end of the book the author suggests areas for possible future research and writing.

A case could be made that the misery and suffering endured by those serving in combatant roles by European soldiers of WWI were the most extreme of any war in history. (I explicitly limit this generalization to soldiers from European countries because they were in the trenches for four full years whereas American soldiers were engaged in active combat for less than a year.)

This novel is therefore particularly poignant because it provides a psychological study of the consequences of war by telling the story of a British anthropologist serving in the role of a psychiatrist in a mental hospital during WWI who has the duty of rehabilitating mental casualties so that they will be able to return to military service. This setting provides a setting for numerous conversations between doctor and patients during which horrendous memories are being extracted in an effort to facilitate recovery from various types of mental breaks.

Most of the book follows the methods of a Mr. Rivers who uses talk therapy methods we would feel comfortable with today. However, late in the book the book's story visits the practice of Dr. Yealland who's methods would be considered brutal and barbaric to today's standards.

I was surprised to learn from the Author's Notes at the end of the book that all the main characters in the book, both doctors and patients, were based on actual historical characters. Even one of the scenes in the book where a patient makes modifications to the poems of another patient is based on handwritten marks by that character in an actual early draft of poems later published. After learning how closely it follows actual historical records I changed my classification of the book to historical fiction.

Any human society that is mobilized for war by definition is sick; organizing for mass murder can't be good. Therefore this book utilizes a unique handle for exploring the consequences of war on the human mind. It is perhaps a more effective way of explaining the stresses of war than writing about action at the front.

This book is first in a trilogy that continues with The Eye in the Door and culminates in The Ghost Road (winner of the 1995 Booker Prize).

Some quotations that caught my attention:

'I don't know what I am. But I do know I wouldn't want a f-faith that couldn't face the facts.' (p83)

'. . . if I were going to call myself a Christian, I'd have to call myself a pacifist as well. I don't think it's possible to c-call youself a C-Christian and . . . and j-just leave out the awkward bits.' (p83)

British society was very class conscious so it is ironic that all classes were forced to share the same trenches.

"One of the paradoxes of the war -- one of the many -- was that this most brutal of conflicts should set up a relationship between officers and men that was . . . domestic. Caring. As Layard would undoubtedly have said, maternal. And that was the only trick the war had played. Mobilization. The Great Adventure. They'd been mobilized into holes in the ground so constricted they could hardly move. And the Great Adventure -- the real life equivalent of all the adventure stories they'd devoured as boys -- consisted of crouching in a dugout, waiting to be killed. (p107)

I found the following observation interesting because it relates war time mental breakdowns among men with those experiences by women during peace time:

"Pilots, though they did indeed break down, did so less frequently and usually less severely than the men who manned observation balloons. They, floating helplessly above the battlefields, unable either to avoid attack or to defend themselves effectively against it, showed the highest incidence of breakdown of any service. Even including infantry officers. This reinforced Rivers’s view that it was prolonged strain, immobility and helplessness that did the damage, and not the sudden shocks or bizarre horrors that the patients themselves were inclined to point to as the explanation for their condition. that would help to account for the greater prevalence of anxiety neuroses and hysterical disorders in women in peacetime, since their relatively more confined lives gave them fewer opportunities of reacting to stress in active and constructive ways. Any explanation of war neurosis must account for the fact that this apparently intensely masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the same disorders that women suffered from in peace."(p222)

Some of the psychiatric treatment methods used a hundred years ago are more painful to read about than the battle experiences. It's pretty well summarized by the following quote where a doctor is summarizing his philosophy of treatment:

". . . The last thing these patients need is a sympathetic audience."(p228)

Thus treatment methods include electrical shock and cigarette burns applied to the tongue.

Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman.

Euripides produced Medea along with the lost plays Philoctetes, Dictys and the satyr play Theristai, earning him last place at the City Dionysia festival for that year. In spite of its last place in the contest, this is the only one of the plays from that year that have survived.

I read this play because a book group I belong to discussed it. We were lucky to have in our group a person who had taught a college class on Classical Greek and Roman literature. So our group learned a lot more than anticipated.

We didn’t know it at the time, but Dickens’ phrase, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” could be applied to the period of time following the dot-com bust and preceding 9/11. This novel is an exploration of life in New York City about six months prior to 9/11 and then about six months after. It's a reminder of how that moment of disillusionment caused by the evaporation of the dot-com dream suddenly turned into the innocent golden age of the past once 9/11 occurred.

The book is also a reminder of the collective paranoia that bounced around after 9/11. Conspiracies were seen everywhere. Truthers who continue to seek conspiracies will want to read this novel for inspiration, but I suspect they will be disappointed. This novel doesn’t have a Clancy novel ending with a clear victory for freedom and the American way. The ending is instead a bit reflective of life’s realities with no definitive conclusion and with the daily grind of life continuing.

This novel's story follows the activities of a Jewish Mother (two young children) who runs her own private detective agency in New York City. She receives an assignment to investiage a mysterious company that seems to be prospering among the wreckage of failed dot-com companies. There are also hints of secret government funding and the involvement of Arab speakers. (This is where truthers begin to salivate.)

I have been an admirer of Pynchon’s writing since 1997 when I listened to an audio edition of Mason & Dixon. It has been my intent since to listen to another book of his, but I never got around to it until this year when this book was published.

Indeed, his writing skills are on display in this book, but Pynchon is not exactly kind to the reader. Reading his prose is similar to groping one’s way through a fog of words. It has prompted the development of an ON-LINE WIKI for the purposes of deciphering Pynchon’s writing. It provides annotations of Pynchon’s books that are tailored to be spoiler free. I didn’t make use of this wiki so presumably I missed much of the depth of meanings found in this book. But there’s something to be said for allowing the story to flow naturally.

The following are example quotes from the book that caught my attention.

A demonstration of Pynchon's contorted humor:

“Maxine notices this one party out on a remote curve of the bar, drinking you’d say relentlessly what will prove to be Jägermeister and 151, through a Day-Glo straw out of a 20-ounce convenience-store cup. . . . Sure enough it’s him, Eric Jeffrey Outfield, übergeek, looking, except for the bare upper lip and a newly acquired soul patch, just like his ID photo. He is wearing cargo pants in a camo print whose color scheme is intended for some combat zone very remote, if not off-planet, and a T-shirt announcing, in Helvetica, <'P'>REAL GEEKS USE COMMAND PROMPTS<'/P'>, accessorized with a Batbelt clanking like a charm bracelet with remotes for TV, stereo and air conditioner, plus laser pointer, pager, bottle opener, wire stripper, voltmeter, magnifier, all so tiny that one legitimately wonders how functional they can be.”(p 222)

The following quotation could serve as a soliloquy about that moment in history, the end of the summer of 2001 which was the last summer before 9/11. It can also serve as an example of Pynchon's challenging prose. This quotation is describing the collective mood of people returning home after a late night party. The cyber speak portion reflects the left over trauma from the dot com bust, and if you look for it there are hints of ominous future happenings:

"... the crowds drifting slowly out into the little legendary streets, the highs beginning to dissipate out into the casting off of vails before the luminosity of dawn ... Which of them could see ahead? Among the microclimates of binary, tracking earthwide everywhere through dark fiber and twisted pairs and nowadays wirelessly through spaces private and public, anywhere among cybersweatshop needles, flashing and never still, in that unquiet vastly stitched and unstitched tapestry they have all sat growing crippled in the service of, in the day imminent, a procedure waiting execution, about to be revealed, a search result with no instructions on how to look for it." (p312)

This LA Times review contains (in the 4th paragraph) an interesting division of Pynchon novels between "then" and "now."
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-thomas-pynchon-20130915,0,399058.story

The trailer for this book seems to be making a big splash.
People can't seem to see any connection to the book.
LINK to NYT article about the trailer.