Category: Knowledge

On Rereading

by James Wallace Harris, 10/2/23

This week I started rereading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, a novel first published in 1961. I was shocked by how much I disliked it. In my memory it was a terrific book. Back in 1970 I went to see Catch-22 the movie when it came out. I was so impressed I went to a bookstore, bought the book, went home, read it, and then went back to see the film again. For over fifty years I’ve thought of Catch-22 as a classic.

This week I listened to two hours of the novel before giving up. I can’t believe I ever loved that book. It’s sort of like how I feel when I catch Gilligan’s Island on TV, I can’t believe that in the eighth grade it was my favorite television show. Whenever I see a clip of Gilligan’s Island now, I assume I must have been brain damaged as a kid. I wondered the same thing when listening to Catch-22.

Maybe I’ve just lost my sense of humor. I loved Saturday Night Live when it came out back in 1975, but I’ve found it painful to watch for decades now. I’ve come to realize that I truly dislike lame satire. Heller appeared to take one absurdist point-of-view and stretched it out over a 21-hour audiobook. It felt like hearing a Who’s on First routine that never ended.

I came to the book expecting to find philosophical insight into WWII, and it just wasn’t there. Catch-22 is considered an anti-war classic, but I didn’t feel that in 2023. The film version of M.A.S.H. also came out in 1970. That was the height of the Vietnam War. Both stories felt like anti-war brilliance in 1970, but insane in 2023. Fifty-three years later, and after many other wars, such silliness no longer seems appropriate.

Obviously, I’ve changed over the decades, but I think there’s something else that’s changed. Postmodernism has crashed and burned. Postmodernism took us down a wrong path, and it’s time to retrace our steps.

I still reread my childhood favorite book, Have Space Suit-Will Travel which came out in 1958. It continues to work. It seems to be a genuine touchstone to my past. I find great insight into who I was as a kid and who I wanted to be when I grew up. To me, it was a science fiction version of Great Expectations — including the cynicism I give it in retrospect.

I also read an abridged version of Great Expectations in high school and have reread the full novel since. It seems to grow in maturity, especially as I read more about Charles Dickens. As a teenage boy I identified with Pip and his frustration with Estella. But as an old man, I figure Pip was a stand-in for the older 1858 Dickens, and Estella and Miss Havisham were stand-ins for Ellen Turan and her mother. The depth of Great Expectations grows with every rereading.

This morning I watched a video about rereading books by Anthony Vicino called “You Should Read These 12 Books Every Year.” Vicino is one of those people who want to get ahead in life quickly by reading self-help books. Because he wanted to succeed quickly, and many successful CEOs read fifty-two books a year, Vicino decided to read one hundred books in a year and get ahead twice as fast. What Vicino learned was to read fewer books. And rereading was the secret to success.

I’ve been thinking I need to do more rereading. This video made me wonder what twelve books I would reread every year. Would they be fiction or nonfiction? And would they be modern or postmodern? I’m starting to think we all took a wrong turn around 1960, at least in fiction. The trouble is since 1960 nonfiction has been overwhelming us with expanding knowledge that we need. Art and philosophy couldn’t handle that explosion of information and we got postmodernism.

I need to do a lot of rereading, and rethinking. What books will be ruined by my maturity and what books will reveal their own deeper maturity?

JWH

Hitting a Cognitive Barrier

by James W. Harris, 9/24/23

I crashed into a cognitive barrier trying to write my reactions to The Trouble with Harry and To Catch a Thief, two Alfred Hitchcock movies from 1955. After two drafts I realized I wasn’t getting where I wanted to go. I know I don’t want to write movie reviews — the perfect place to find them is Rotten Tomatoes. Nor did I want to describe a film — just go to Wikipedia or IMDB. I wanted to write an essay that captured what I got out of watching those films at age 71.

Time is running out, so I need to make the most of every experience. That involves understanding myself at a deeper cognitive level. One I’m finding harder to reach as I age. On the other hand, aging is giving me more wisdom. The cognitive barrier is being able to express what I’m learning by getting older. But aging is also wearing down my brain. What one hand giveth, another takes away.

Writing is thinking outside of the head. Thoughts are generated inside the head from emotional reactions. Thoughts are fleeting. Thoughts are like cream stirred into coffee, creating little patterns that quickly dissipate. Writing is about capturing that initial pattern and making sense of it by showing how it relates to the memories of millions of past patterns.

Very few people can describe exactly how they feel, and few of those people can explain why they feel the way they do. There are rare individuals that can compose their thoughts inside their heads and eloquently convey the results in speech. Most of us need to think outside our minds via writing and editing.

Even when we feel our written words are clear, readers seldom find clarity. Communicating with words is difficult at best and often impossible. What we think we’re expressing can often take a different path to each reader like those spaghetti strings we see in hurricane reports. I might believe I’m writing about Jacksonville, while some readers think I’m writing about Bermuda while others Miami and Charleston.

I enjoyed The Trouble with Harry better than all the other Hitchcock films we’ve watched this month, including Rebecca, Notorious, To Catch a Thief, and Strangers on a Train, films most critics admire a great deal more. However, I thought The Trouble with Harry had many flaws, but then Hitchcock is a flawed filmmaker.

How can I admire a movie that doesn’t measure well against the best movies I’ve seen over a lifetime? This gets into complexity and even multiplexity. I need to relate several reactions that contradict each other. The three films I admired and enjoyed the most this month have been The Trouble with Harry, Twelve O’Clock High, and Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell. All three were feel-good movies to me, but they each made me feel good in a unique way. Is the word “feel-good” even useful? Many moviegoers might interpret the term “feel-good” so differently that these three movies would not fit their definition.

Should I even use the term? Shouldn’t I just describe exactly what I felt? Will that be clearer?

In my second draft I had a breakthrough. I realized to understand how I react to films I’d need to understand what I expected from them. But my expectations have changed widely over the years. And will my readers have the same expectations? It was then I realized that what I’m expecting from movies at 71 is different from my younger self. Even describing my own emotional experiences is a moving target. But explaining why that’s so hits another cognitive barrier.

I need to think about that.

Putting everything into words precisely is so difficult. Should I even try? I believe most people don’t because all they value is personal experience. Why tell anyone about our perceptions when they have their own?

Do you see why writing that essay became such a black hole?

JWH

Thinking Outside of Our Heads

by James Wallace Harris

I believe recent developments in artificial intelligence prove that many of the creative processes we thought came from conscious actions come from unconscious mechanisms in our minds. What we are learning is computer techniques used to generate prose or images are like unconscious processes in the human brain.

The older I get, the more I believe that most of my thinking comes from my subconscious. The more I pay attention to both dreams and my waking thoughts, the more I realize that I’m very rarely making conscious decisions.

I might think “I am going to walk across the street and visit Paul,” but I have no idea how to make my body walk anywhere. But then, I’ve always assumed muscle actions were automatic. It was mental actions I believed were conscious actions. I used to believe “I am writing this essay,” but I no longer believe that. This has led me to ask:

Just what activities do we perform with our conscious minds?

Before the advent of writing, we did all our thinking inside our heads. Homer had to memorize the Iliad to recite it. Prehistory was oral. How much of thought then was conscious or unconscious? Have you ever read The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes? I know his theories have lots of problems, but they do imagine what I’m thinking about.

How often have you worried over a problem, say a math problem, or a programming problem, and gave up, but then later, usually after a nap or sleep, the solution came to you? That’s the classic view of unconscious thinking. But even when we’re thinking we’re solving a calculus problem is it really being done at a conscious level? Are you consciously recalling all your math lessons over a lifetime to solve the problem?

How often when working on a Wordle or Crossword does the word magically come to you? But sometimes, we are aware of the steps involved.

In recent years I’ve developed a theory that when we work with pen and paper, or word processor or spreadsheet, or any tool outside our body, we’re closer to thinking consciously. Sure, our unconscious minds are helping us, but making a list is more willful than just trying to remember what we need at the store.

Writing an essay is more willful than woolgathering in the La-Z-Boy. Authoring a book is far more willful still. Engineering a submarine by a vast team of people is an even more conscious effort. Sure, it involves a collective of unconscious activity too, but a vast amount documentation must be worked out consciously.

I’ve written before about this idea. See “Thinking Outside Your Head.” That’s where I reviewed different techniques and applications we use to think outside of our heads.

Many people want to deny the recent successes with AI because they want to believe machines can’t do what we do. That humans are special. If you scroll through the images at Midjourney Showcase, it’s almost impossible to deny that some of the images are stunningly beautiful. Some people will claim they are just stolen from human creativity. I don’t think that’s true.

I think AI developers have found ways to train computer programs to act like the human mind. That these programs have stumbled upon the same tricks that the brain evolved. Many great writers and artists often talk about their Muse. I think that’s just a recognition of their unconscious minds at work. What those creative people have learned is how to work consciously with the unconscious.

What some creative people are doing now is consciously working with two unconscious minds – their own and an AI. There is still a conscious component, the act of working with tools outside of our head. Where the action is, is that vague territory between the unconscious mind and the conscious one.

JWH

What I Learned Cataloging My Books, Ebooks, and Audiobooks on Goodreads

by James Wallace Harris, 3/21/23

I learned several things this week while entering over fifteen hundred books into my Goodreads database. The books I added were mainly acquired since I retired in 2013. One insight that impressed me the most was I was specializing in a limited number of topics. On one hand, I was disappointed by my narrow range of interests, but on the other hand, I was annoyed at myself for being scattered in my intellectual pursuits. You can’t get good at something if you try to get good at too many things.

If I judged my reading as a leisure activity it wouldn’t matter what I read. However, if I judged my reading as an education, then I was majoring in too many subjects. But here’s the kicker to this revelation. Before I started cataloging my books I assumed I was reading for fun and randomly exploring any subject that caught my fancy. It was only as I entered all the titles into the database did I realize that I have been specializing in several areas. And my immediate impulse was to read deeper into those topics and to go out and buy more books on those subjects.

Why was I chasing so many subjects when I’ve always wanted to be a master of one? Why would I want to do that? Yet, focusing on one would mean ignoring many things I want to know more about. That thought has started me to do a lot of naval gazing this week.

My original goal was to put all my books into my Goodreads database so I’ll know what I own to keep from buying duplicates when I’m at the used bookstore. So far I’ve found a shopping bag of duplicates which I gave to my buddy Mike. I entered all my books into Goodreads many years ago but didn’t update the database when I bought books or gave them away, so my Goodreads database was badly out of date. I had been putting this task off for years because I couldn’t figure out which books to add or delete from the system to catch up again.

My solution was to create a “shelf” called “2023 inventory” and reenter all my books linking them to that shelf. Then delete all the books in the system that wasn’t in the 2023 inventory.

After entering 1,506 books, which were all the physical books in the house, I had 3,159 total books in the database. That implied I could have given away 1,653 books, but then I realized that some of those might be Kindle or Audible books I own. Now I must go down the list of 3,159 books, and if they aren’t in the 2023 inventory, see if they are in my Kindle or Audible libraries. If they aren’t, I can delete them.

Doing all this librarian work has been rewarding in several ways. The work is revealing how my reading has shifted away from physical books to ebooks and audiobooks. This process has also revealed other insights about myself. For certain titles, and subjects I tend to buy both the audiobook and the ebook edition because that’s how I like to study them. And for some titles, I have the ebook, audiobook, and physical book. If I really like the book and subject, or if it’s fiction, and I really enjoy the story, I like getting into the book through all three formats.

I can spot my favorite authors because with some writers I’ve collected their books in all three formats. That also reflects a consolidation of interests, focus, and specialization.

When I used to go to parties I noticed that people tend to talk about things they loved most. The most interesting people were the ones who could expound deeply on a subject. Like most people, I just chatted about what little I knew about a zillion subjects.

I eventually observed that some people like to specialize and that some people even feel they are experts on their favorite subjects. It’s even fun to see two fans of the same subject argue over who knows more. I see from my data entry the subjects I’ve unintentionally tried to master. What’s funny is I seldom meet people interested in the subjects I’m interested in. Which is why I seldom talked much at parties. (This blog is my way of nattering about what I like.)

Thinking about people who know a lot about a little has led me to ask why I’d want to specialize in certain topics anyway? It’s not like I’m at a university trying to pass courses and get a major. I never go to parties anymore. I think it’s like my urge to catalog my books, which is a kind of anal pursuit, I also want to organize what I know.

There is a certain satisfaction in getting the biggest picture on the tiniest of topics. There is also satisfaction in collecting everything of a certain type. For example, I like westerns, so I collected my favorite western movies on DVDs. Then I started buying books about movie westerns. But after that, I started buying books about the history of the American West. I’ve done the same thing for classic rock and jazz music. While cataloging my books I realize I was gathering novels written in England between the wars, and books about their authors. That interest is also reflected in the TV shows I’m watching. Susan and I have recently watched all of Downton Abbey, Upstairs, Downstairs, and we’re currently going through the seven seasons of the first television version of All Creatures Great and Small.

The upshot of all these cataloging revelations is I want to focus more on my best subjects. And abandon some lesser interests to put more time into my majors. After I finish this project I could write my tombstone epitaph – “Here lies Jim Harris, this is what he liked to read:” I mean, isn’t what we focus on one of the best descriptions of our personality?

I only have nine bookcases. And they are all full. I don’t want to buy more bookcases. Nine’s my limit. I feel that’s also an analogy for my brain. It can only hold so much, so if I want to get better at one subject I have to forget about another.

If I want to buy more books I have to get rid of existing books to make room for the new ones on the shelves. This tends to distill my collection even further into specialized subjects. It also means I cull crappy books for better books.

But there is something else to consider. I’m getting older. I’m running out of time. My mental abilities are declining, which limits how much information I can process. And my physical abilities are declining, which also influences my book collecting. I can imagine a future where I can only handle six bookcases, or even three, and maybe down to just one.

I put every book I own onto a Rubbermaid rolling cart one shelf at a time to take them to my computer to enter their data. That physically wore me out. I’m thinking of getting rid of the heavy coffee table books in my collection just because in the near future I won’t be able to handle their weight. And there’s another reason I need to start shrinking my collection. If I should die I don’t want to burden my wife with having to get rid of a couple of tons of books. And if I ever need to move to a retirement apartment or assisted living I wouldn’t want to deal with all of them either.

This week of cataloging my books has reminded me of which subjects I’ve studied over the last forty years, which subjects are my favorite topics, and that I want to thin out my collection.

Currently, Goodreads says I have a total of 3,150 books but I haven’t finished entering all my Kindle and Audible books. Amazon says I have 1,608 Kindle books and 1,544 Audible titles, however, many are already in Goodreads. I’ve just got to figure out which ones aren’t. Luckily, Kindle and Audible books don’t weigh much, or take up much space.

I’ve always wanted to make a list of everything I own because I assume it would tell me a lot about myself. This Goodreads list is a good start toward that.

JWH

Can Fiction Educate As Well As Nonfiction?

by James Wallace Harris, 11/2/22

I turn 71 this month, and getting older is getting harder. Being old is nothing like I imagined. That’s a problem for me because I like to be prepared, and being prepared requires anticipating the possibilities.

Last year I read The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life by Katy Butler. It’s a useful handbook giving tips about healthcare for the elderly, plus Butler relates plenty of stories about people she met who were going through a variety of issues as they approached death. I learned a lot from her book. People tend to decide between two paths toward the end of life. Some want to take advantage of everything medicine has to offer, and others prefer to take a gentler path, choosing less aggressive medical procedures, or even refusing treatment. One of the best lessons of the book is doctors will go to extremes to keep you alive unless you learn to say no. And for me, the important part of The Art of Dying Well is learning when to say no, and how to decide what you want before you lose control of your situation.

When I read Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout this week, I was surprised by how it inadvertently taught many of the same lessons. Although it’s called a novel, it’s a collection of thirteen interrelated short stories, and often those fictional stories were like the case studies in Butler’s book. Olive is in her late sixties at the beginning of the book, and seventy-four at the end. I was particularly horrified by the final accounts of Olive’s husband, Henry.

Olive Kitteridge is a book that offers a series of intense emotional impacts. And most of them made me think about how I will deal with a particular issue if it should happen to me. Henry’s fate is the hardest to contemplate. One day he and Olive are going to the grocery store and when he steps out of the car, he falls to the ground. He’s had a sudden stroke that leaves him blind, unable to walk or talk, and probably has left him deaf. He’s put in a nursing home where he needs to be cared for like a small child. To me, that’s scarier than anything Stephen King ever imagined. And how do you prepare for something like that?

It would help to have all the proper legal paperwork ready. And it would help if others knew your wants. That’s covered in the Butler book, but it’s covered in more detail in Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life by Louise Aronson. Aronson is a doctor who eventually got into geriatric medicine. Her book is heavier than The Art of Dying Well, with more clinical details. It has a tremendous wealth of information, but I found Aronson’s structure for her book somewhat disappointing. Elderhood has a clearly laid out structure but Aronson doesn’t always stick to it.

Both nonfiction books are excellent handbooks for anticipating getting older, especially for the medical and legal details. But the novel, Olive Kitteridge, was also excellent for the same purpose, but in a different way. I guess it’s a handbook for philosophically preparing for our last years. Some of its most important lessons were about communication, or more precisely, the lack of communication.

Much of the novel is about waiting until it’s too late to express our true selves. One of the strongest reasons why people want an afterlife is so they can meet up with dead loved ones. Is that because we really want to tell them something? Or that we really want to ask them something? I know that’s true for me.

I loved reading Olive Kitteridge enough that I’m going to read more Elizabeth Strout books and have already started on Olive, Again – a sequel with additional short stories about Olive Kitteridge and the people she knew. I’m also keeping The Art of Dying Well and Elderhood to reread again and again as I get older.

JWH