The most important books I've ever read

These aren't necessarily the best books I've ever read, but the most important as far as shaping my world view.

Walden
I can't even count how many times I've read this book and it never gets old. The best part is that you can open to any page and find something compelling in the third line of the second paragraph.

My favorite section is when he talks about a man living in a house not too far from the pond whom Thoreau would often visit. When asked what he would change about the world the man paused, laughed, and said he thinks it's fine the way it is.

Thoreau was struck by the man's simplicity, unable to decide if he was a fool or a genius. Sometimes that line is thin. (FYI, the title of this blog is a line from Thoreau).

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
The barefoot running movement started here. Not just a great story about this reculsive Mexican tribe that dominates ultra marathon running, it provides great research into what makes us human and why technological progress can stifle our natural abilities.

The Story of B
Tribalism is a hell of a drug.

Sex at Dawn
This draws on themes of my previous two selections by looking to our tribal instincts to explain modern pathologies (although this work goes back even further, looking at chimps and bonobos). While there have been criticisms regarding the authors' cherry-picking of evidence, they make a pretty compelling case that humans evolved to be polyamorous creatures and pair bonding is against our nature.

Antifragile
I'm pretty sure anything else I read by Nassim Taleb will make this list eventually, Antifragile was just the first I got my hands on. A brilliant guy who takes a simple concept (natural systems are strengthened by volatility, not harmed) and applies it to numerous instances. And pulls it off.

The Righteous Mind
Probably the book I recommend the most to anyone who ever has a political opinion about anything. Haidt's research shows why people believe they way they do when it comes to politics and uses that research to humanize our political opponents. This should really be required reading at all colleges.

The Three Languages of Politics
Might be jumping the gun here because I just read it, but like The Righteous Mind it really helps you understand how different groups of people see the world. Like Haidt, the author isn't trying to say one language (he uses the term "axis") is correct. Rather he preaches the importance of being able to view the world through all three lens (oppressor vs. oppressed, civilization vs. barbarism, coercion vs. liberty) to better understand why people think they way they do. This should shape the way we approach political discussions.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Philosophy writing that is at once cerebral and accessible. If nothing else, it allows you to crawl around the mind of a literal genius. You see how such a simple concept (what does "quality" actually mean?) can drive a man to madness and watch him beautifully crawl his way back to clarity and happiness.

A plea for a more inclusive intersectionality

Leonard Pitts once wrote a column about the Don Imus/Rutgers women's basketball/"nappy headed hoes" controversy that I still think about to this day. Pitts posed the question: Why can Imus get away with making fun of Oprah but not the Rutgers women's basketball players?

He said that the unwritten rule in our society is that you cannot bully. A nationally-syndicated radio host is in a position to bully a group of college female ballers. But when you're Oprah Winfrey, who the hell is Don Imus? He's the dust you brush off your shoulder as you think about your next billion dollar industry to conquor.

I think about this when I think about intersectionality, which I understand as essentially the layers of victims of oppression. The top of this layer is white men, the ultimate beneficiaries of privilege. However, the above example places a black woman in a more privileged position than a white man. How can this be?

I think we're starting to bump up against the flaws of intersectionality, which is that it does not include class, namely the poor. (I realize many definitions include class but I only hear the term deployed in reference to race or gender discrimination.) The broad brush of "white, straight, native-born men" necessarily includes high school dropouts, with no old money, living on welfare. This groups earns a fraction of a penny for every dollar Oprah makes. That's not a wage gap you hear a lot about.

These are bleak times for being in the bottom 20 percent, regardless of race or gender.

For intersectionality to truly be inclusive, it has to include poor people. Even if that means identifying a certain class of white men as victims of systemic classism.

The politicians we deserve

We get the politicians we deserve.

They are not supposed to be role models for us. We are supposed to be role models for them. The bickering, mudslinging, and refusal to compromise is a reflection of how Americans deal with each other. We keep awarding the partisans with reelection. They won't change to a conciliatory tone until we do.