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.

Meritocracy vs. Marketocracy

The larger we grow as a population, the more we become distanced from celebrities, brands, and politicians; the more we move away from a meritocracy and into a marketocracy. The winners are not based on merit but on who can be marketed to a mass audience.

I like the idea of cutting off government funded social assistance programs, returning that money to the tax payer, and allowing them to donate to charities that provide those services instead. I like that idea ... in theory.

The problem is that donations don't go to the greatest need but to non profits with the best marketing team. Consider the chart below. Breast cancer is the fourth biggest disease killer in the US but it receives the most donations for research. Heart disease is the biggest killer and only gets the third most donations.

Quick: what do Dan Brown, JK Rowling, and John Grisham have in common? They all wrote the year's best selling novel at some point in the last 20 years. What else do they have in common? None of their books are assigned reading to college students. Marketing, not merit, determines their success.

People liked the idea of Donald Trump as president because he was a successful business person. But his wealth pales in comparison to the much more successful Warren Buffet. But Buffet could never be president because he isn't he showman that Trump is.

The Case for Moderation

There has never been a better time in America to be a moderate.

Political polarization is ever-increasing. Look at the growing rate of landslide victories by county for the last seven presidential elections. In nearly 2/3s of our country, the victory margin for Trump or Clinton wasn't even close.

Centrists, who are often mischaracterized as wishy washy, are more concerned with truth than being right. They are bound by pragmatism rather than ideology.

The untold story here is that the middle is shrinking. And now that their size is decreasing, their influence is growing. It is getting harder to convince liberals or conservatives to vote for the opposition––rank and file has become the norm. The only place left to turn is the middle. We are the ones who get to decide elections.

The old maxim "campaign in poetry, govern in prose" has been rendered obsolete so far in the Trump presidency. He's still all talk. And his supporters love him for it. If this trend continues, politicians won't have to create much policy to please their base, as long as they continue to attack their opposition in clever, bite-sized tweets.

That means politicians will be forced to woo moderates. And we won't be swayed by anything less than action.

We are all Katniss Everdeen ... or are we?

At the end of the final Hunger Games movie, Jennifer Lawrence's character Katniss Everdeen fires an arrow into the chest of Alma Coin, Julianne Moore's character, killing her. It is an important part of the story line, one in which Katniss breaks the cycle of despotic rulers plaguing the country. Although guards take her to a cell after the kill, she is soon released and spends her the rest of her days raising a family in the country with her lover.

We are with Kitness as she makes many difficult choices throughout the story and are shown how well-calibrated her moral compass is. We never question her killing of Coin.

Quick recap on that assassination: President Snow—a serial murderer, liar, and sworn enemy of Katniss—tells her that Coin is evil, will rule like he did, and is the reason Katniss' sister is dead. She believes him, kills Coin, and is released without even a trial. She had no authority to kill Coin and completely acted on her own.

She is the hero of the story.

Let's be honest, Katniss makes a very authoritarian decision here, essentially saying: "In the face of evil and corruption, I need to take it upon myself to kill a leader for the good of the country, to protect it."

How many Americans have had that same thought and replaced Julianne Moore with Trump or Obama? It wouldn't be the first time a leader was shot by a citizen.

Here's what is scary: we are all the heroes or heroines of our own story. But we all see ourselves as Katniss and never as Lee Harvey Oswald. We're always righteous and never deluded or misinformed.

That's the thing about crazy people. They don't think they're crazy. They think their violence is justified.

So when we decide it's okay to punch Neo Nazi Richard Spencer in the face, how do we know we're any different than Jared Loughner?

The Antifragility of the New England Patriots

I've been reading Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb lately and have become transfixed with his ideas. It's difficult to summarize the book because the ideas are so grand in scope, but one of the examples he talks about is building an investment portfolio that is protected from Black Swan events.

He recommends the barbell strategy, which he says will protect you from risks of volatility while still allowing you to benefit from its rewards, thus making it antifragile. Like any investment strategy, the idea is that you don't put all your eggs in one basket, you diversify, expecting that some of your investments will fail.

I think about these ideas when I think about this weekend's match up between the New England Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Not as much as how these teams match up with each other, but rather how they are built to last a season.

Pittsburgh has arguably the best running back and best receiver in the game, along with a top-notch quarterback. But should one of them suffer an injury, does anyone really think they would still find success?

The Patriots, on the other hand, have the best quarterback and the best tight end. Without them? Tom Brady missed 4 games and the team went 3-1. The team hasn't lost a game since losing Rob Gronkowski to injury in early December. The Patriots may not be antifragile (strengthened by volatility) but their coach/GM Bill Belichick manages this team like an investment portfolio more so than any other GM.

Belichick never chases big free agents, cuts/trades guys a year too soon rather than too late, is careful about whom he extends long contracts to, and favors quantity over quality when it comes to drafting (i.e., two second round picks is better than one first round pick). Why? He expects Black Swan events and builds a team immune to such scenarios. That is why they can withstand a Gronk injury or Brady suspension.

With Martellus Bennett and Jimmy Garappolo, the Patriots are protected from volatility. With huge contracts given out to Brock Osweiler and Derrell Revis, their respective teams are harmed by volatility in the form of sucking and old age. Players are investments and smart GMs better diversify their portfolio.