Nina
I wish I had read this book when I was a little younger. The descriptions of the Caucasuses make this book fantastic for Slavophile in me - experiencing Russia as the Southern, confusing place of my childhood, that is not at all a European country. Parts of Act II appear to be the literary predecessor to Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, except our protagonist here is a bit more philosophically consistent and not so pathetically pitiful.
Truly exposing the hollow, artificial “profundity” of the superfluous man. A must read after Fathers & Sons.
I'm currently ill, so I'm looking for books that will talk about how the mind and the body interact bilaterally. If I can remind myself of how I can use my mind in this situation, it will give me a sense of agency.
Been recommended a few times by Gabor Mate and Peter Ferris. Recommended for CPTSD. I can see how this could tie into some Rabbinic videos I've been watching too
I picked this book up because Dr Andrew Hubermann recommended it.
I'm currently halfway through, and tbh, sorely disappointed.
Any book with SCIENCE in the title will have to do better than the formula of “personal, non-verifiable anecdotal story about how using X protocol revolutionised the life of a patient who had Y chronic condition”.
The science of breathing has the relevant clinical literature to support it, and the author does not need to resort to rhetorical fabrications to make this case compellingly. I understand that some degree of this is inevitable in a book geared toward the general reader, and I'm likely not the intended target audience.
Masterpiece, masterpiece, masterpiece.
I dove into Fathers & Sons after dabbling in some of Turgenev's other short stories. Wow.
It is interesting to read this book after Dostoevsky's “Demons”. Fathers & Sons is a more compelling, lucid and moving version of the former. With this, Turgenev has firmly won me over to his side in the Dostoevsky vs Turgenev brawl.
His depiction of the female cast is stunning in its understated soulfulness and accuracy, similar to Tolstoy's.
The danger of nihilism, the legitimate grievances that underlie the mindset of those who succumb to nihilism, and the unbearable inertia that underlies both the lifestyle that conforms to tradition versus the lifestyle that breaks away from its entirety - Fathers & Sons is a pitiful, inspiring train-wreck of the Russian psyche that you cannot tear yourself away from.
If somebody with the author's credentials didn't write this book, I would have likely not bothered to finish it. A lot of unhelpful throwing of phrases like “inflammation”, “neurotoxicity”, “toxins” “lymphatic drainage” without explaining WHAT these concepts are and why they are relevant. This is all the more necessary, given how these are phrases that new-age, scientific self-help guides have unhelpfully misused. Anything that wishes to distinguish itself from this credibly must describe why the concepts they are invoking are relevant.
Moreover, data was extrapolated from clinical trials in a way that was not convincing and clumsy.
Again, that is not to say the data in the book is not correct - it is - and the book is helpful as an overview of what does work. But the problem is that I know this works due to my reading, not the book itself.
Eh... I think this book has a lot of valuable wisdom behind it, but for me, I do not find this style of writing personally effective. (Yes, I really am ‘its not you, its me'-ing to a book). The writing style was the literary equivalent of a young man in the gym hyping himself up in the mirror. It is good advice though, and if the style is one you resonate with, I imagine it could be an invaluable thing to read.
Parts of this book that I love, and parts that I detest. Not sure where it places it as a whole.
As a whole, I would avoid reading, and would recommend Nathaniel Branden isntead.
The parts I like: It is to look at things at their core, to realise that any outward manifestation is only meaningful only insofar as it is a genuine expression of inwards. So when you celebrate those things - you can enjoy your achievements, and that's not a paradox, that's not vanity. Because you're enjoying that you have acted in accordance with your own essence. And this is what helps you withstand the consequences when they are negative, too. But all these quick “tools” - behavioural tactics - ultimately are doomed to failure, insofar as this expression isn't the downstream manifestation of this inner source.
Problems:
This book was written on the train of the sneering Viktor Frankl Western Buddhism thing
Alongside it not being supported by the neuroscience (can expand on this later).
Is that it doesn't give any weight to the role of suffering
We didn't evolve to suffer and feel sadness for no reason. These aren't just parts of ourselves that we should try to meditate ourselves out of. We are not just these plain people who can subjectively ascribe any meaning to our experiences. Moreover, nor should we want to do so. We were not given pain so that we can simply look for some meditative tool to avoid it. No, instead we have to experience the pain, lean it into it.
Its more focused on explaining WHY sleep is so important but doesn't really focus on how we help to fix it. So you're left feeling depressed that you're going to get dementia.
Science fiction was often an arena for the utopian blueprint of future society, and this carried on through the soviets to today. Eg: Chernyshevky's infamous “what is to be done” (which Lenin drew his communist ideas). Socialism was perceived as the sociological equivalent of Darwinism - and as Isiah Berlin argues, the logical endpoint of an application of enlightenment thinking. The Soviet view of human nature is that humans are wholly shaped by their environment - the idea of something so nebulous and ineffable as a “soul” is preposterous (I can go into this a whole lot more - soviet architecture was the reflection of Stalin's attempt to create a new type of human.)
Dostoevsky's science fiction tale, where the vision of salvation through scientific and material progress advanced by Chernyshevskt is dispelled in a dream of tulips on a perfect twin of earth: the cosmic paradise breaks down into a society of masters and slaves (ominously prophetic). The narrator wakes from his dream to see the only salvation lies through the Christian love of neighbours (how very Dostoevsky).
Not actually enjoying this book as much as I thought I woudl, given Sapolsky's brilliant lectures. He is able to make flippant, “trite” comments - an ability that you only gain once you are so excruciatingly familiar with your subject matter. But sometimes, I feel parts of it are too “dumbed down”. Or the flippant jokes can catch me off guard.
Often seen as a rebuke against Tolstoy. But, as Donald Rayfield writes, “Chekhov does not debunk Tolstoy, but strip his ideas of sacrimony.”
Tolstoy (who is my favourite Russian author, may I add) occasionally falls into the cliche (which he did not start, and indeed, still occurs to this very day) of this romanticisation of the working class / poorer people. The idea is that through their simpler lives, that they have tapped into a wisdom of the human spirit that even the most learned person could learn from. You see this today, in the fetishization of indigenous cultures, too. But sorry, back to Chekhov... first, the depiction of Tolstoy as this romanticist of the serfs isn't entirely accurate, but I don't have time to go into it here.
The hero is Misail, who a slow, passive and tolerant protagonist (tolerant against all but philistine deadness, and his search for an alternative way of life). He persists, in solitude, not in some rural Eden of saved humanity. He accepts the consequences of his choice.
Chekhov wrote to his friend Dr Orlov in 1899 “I have no faith in the intelligentsia. I have faith in individuals, I see salvation in individuals here and there, all over Russia, for they're the ones who matter, though they are few.
Some think that Chekhov's refusal to force these contradictions into a resolution is a cop out - a vacuum, that leaves him vulnerable to accusations of moral relativism. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Loving this so far. Recommended by the guy who wrote the other book that you love - on OCD and quantum physics.
Figes is the best Russian historian I've read. Not only is he an excellent historian, but he just gets Russia, in such a way that it surprises me he is not Russian himself. I don't think its a coincidence that so many of the best Russian historians are Jewish.
