Deb Nance

The old world is gone, and the new world is here. Dex, stirred by the desire to hear crickets, leaves his job and becomes a tea monk, and he is good at his job. Still, though, he is not satisfied, wandering place to place, serving tea to comfort others, and one day he leaves that job, too, and heads into the wilderness. And there he meets what he'd never thought to ever see—a robot. Robots were first built to work for humans, but somewhere along the way robots sought liberation from that work and humans set them free. This robot, Mosscap, has sought out a human to make first contact, and it is to Dex that he directs his questions. Dex, too, wants something from Mosscap, guidance into finding an old hermitage in the wilderness.

And so Dex and Mosscap set out for the hermitage together, talking, reflecting, questioning.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a soothing little story, hopeful, and optimistic, offering a picture of a future for those of us who feel stuck in our desperately-imperfect, intractable world.

I like to be right. And if I can't be right, then I can at least be loud. And long-winded.

This can be toxic in our world today. Many people who disagree with my views carry guns.

I need this book. I learned tons of things from this book. I need to write down notes from this book and try them out. (Perhaps on Saturday when my family gathers for lunch? I don't think anyone in my family would draw a gun on me.) I might even read this book again.

Notes:

David Smith, in his lecture, “Civil Conversation in an Angry Age,” suggests we ask two questions that allow us to look at our opinions a second time. One is, “Are you willing to believe that you could be wrong about something?” The other one is, “Which do you value more, the truth or your own beliefs?”People can't know what they have never experienced.

Elizabeth G. Saunders says that when you feel like you win online, you have rarely changed anyone's mind. “Instead,” she says, “you stand as the triumphant king of a lonely land smoldering with the ashes of people you have decimated with your words, who are less likely than ever to listen to your side again.”To question our conclusions across perspectives, we have to get curious. We direct our curiosity at the mystery of who we are, the gaps between what we know and what we wish we knew, keeping people at the center of our conversations, rather than their opinions or our assumptions. Once we are there, we look for paths people walked to get to their perspectives, the different conclusions they draw about the world.”

Here's another great statement to make: “Let me think out loud for a bit.”The experience of being listened to is extremely rare in life. The key is to stay with one crucial question: “What do you mean?”

It's important to acknowledge and be honest about the attachments that influence you.A simple invitation to speak for someone who is holding back: “Any thoughts on this one?”

“Are you stuck with someone who is talking too much? At the next pause...ask if you can offer your experience with the topic.”“Every tough issue that divides us...puts some fundamentally good values into tension with one another.”

“What good solutions might we find if current constraints weren't an issue?”How do you approach opinions flexibly enough to boost your creativity? Share current thinking on an issue. Change the question. Listen longer. Acknowledge agreement. Untie thought knots. Hit reset. Acknowledge good points. Offer, “I don't know.”

Three moments of positivity for every moment of negativity.“How did you come to believe X?”

Explain yourself with story.Instead of commenting on someone else's opinion, pose a question.

Great question: “What's your most generous interpretation of why they disagree with you?”In the middle of a discussion, switch from the dance floor to the balcony.

Can a reader say I liked The Castle? Loved it? If one does, what does that say about the reader?

I think all would agree that The Castle has one of the oddest plots ever written. A man comes to a castle, wants to work there, and has to find ways to get the attention of the people in the castle. He never does much of anything in the story except try to gain entry to the castle and he never successfully does that.

It's the feeling of the book that is so close to the bone; it's a story of the feelings of modern life. Kafka captures the anxiety and the dread and the confusion and the anomie of day-to-day life in the world, and he does it in a way that makes the reader feel all the anxiety and the dread and the confusion and the anomie.

It's brilliant and terrifying. I'm glad I read it. I'm glad I'm done with it.

Jamie Zeppa is at loose ends. Almost impulsively, she decides to move to Bhutan and teach.

She almost as quickly regrets her decision. No convenience foods here. Minimal toilet facilities. Great poverty. Friends are all far, far away.

Zeppa wants to go home to Canada.

But she doesn't. And, as time goes on, she gradually comes to regard Bhutan as her home. Its simplicities delight her. The kindnesses of Bhutan's people overwhelm her. And she loves her new life.

A very satisfying moving-and-starting-over tale.

I like Barbara's books, but she, an extreme liberal, does exactly what the extreme conservatives do: She tells little scary stories out of context to promote her own agenda. Is our land really such a scary and terrible place? I don't think so. What are her suggestions for making things better? She rarely proposes solutions, and, if she does, they are generally a single sentence at the end of her diatribe. Is it useful for people to read books like this? Not if it hardens us to the world and makes dialogue with others more difficult, I think.