WHO IS WATCHING THE WATCHERS?

Frank Pasquale, The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press 2015) ("For too long, we have assumed that the core aim of financial regulation is disclosure. When every consumer understands the consequences of his actions, we like to believe, and when every investor has the same key data about a security as its seller, the financial playing filed will finally be leveled. And in some cases, sunlight truly is the 'best disinfectant.' But not always. 'Truth' is all too apt to be told slant. And when that happens too many times, just is unwarranted." Id. at 212. From the book jacket: "Every day, corporations are connecting the dots about our personal behavior--silently scrutinizing clues left behind by our work habits and Internet use. The data compiled and portraits created are incredibly detailed, to the point of being invasive. But who connects the dots about what firms are doing with this information? The Black Box Society argues that we all need to be able to do so--and to set limits on how big data affects our lives." "Hidden algorithms can make (or ruin) reputations, decide the destiny of entrepreneurs, or even devastate an entire economy. Shrouded in secrecy and complexity, decisions at major Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms were long assumed to be neutral and technical. But leaks, whistleblowers, and legal disputes have shed new light on automated judgment. Self-serving and reckless behavior is surprisingly common, and easy to hide in code protected by legal and real secrecy. Even after billions of dollars of fines have been levied, underfunded regulators may have only scratched the surface of this troubling behavior." "Frank Pasquade exposes how powerful interests abuse secrecy for profit and explains ways to rein them in. Demanding transparency is only the first step. An intelligible society would assure that key decisions of its most important firms are fair, nondiscriminatory, and open to criticism. Silicon Valley and Wall Street need to accept as much accountability as they impose on others." I don't think what Pasquale proposes will achieve the desired results. The economic benefits to Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms is so huge that they will take increasing drastic steps to evade regulations. Combined with the popular anti-big-government sentiment currently and cyclically in vogue, it is doubtful the government could ever really sustained a meaningful effort to constraint them.). 

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH'S COMPLICITY

David I. Kertzer, The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (New York: Random House, 2014) (From the "Author's Note": "The Vatican played a central role both in making the Fascist regime possible and in keeping it in power. Italian Catholic Action worked closely with the Fascist authorities to increase the repressive reach of the police. Far from opposing the treatment of Jews as second-class citizens, the Church provided Mussolini with his most potent arguments for adopting just such harsh measures against them. As shown here, the Vatican made a secret deal with Mussolini to refrain from any criticism of Italy's infamous anti-Semitic 'racial laws' in exchange for better treatment of Catholic organizations. This fact is largely unknown in Italy, and despite all the evidence presented in this book, I have no doubt many will deny it." Id. at 405.).

LIFE IS MADE OF HOLES

Helen Macdonald, H Is for Hawk (New York: Grove Press, 2014) ("There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of the space where the memories are." Id. at 171.).

LOVING TO LEARN IS A CHALLENGE

Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of a Liberal Education (New York & London: Norton, 2015) ("[O]ne can always read a book to get basic information about a particular topic, or simply use Google. The crucial challenge is to learn how to read critically, analyze data, and formulate idea--and most of all to enjoy the intellectual adventure enough to be able to do them easily and often." "Loving to learn is a greater challenge today than it used to be. I've watched my children grow up surrounded by an amazing cornucopia of entertainment available instantly on their computers, tablets, and phones. Perhaps soon these pleasures will be hardwired into their brains. The richness, variety, and allure of today's games, television shows, and videos are dazzling. Many are amazingly creative, and some are intellectually challenging--there are smart video games out there. But all are designed to get children enraptured and, eventually, addicted. The all-consuming power of modern entertainment can turn something that demands active and sustained engagement, like reading and writing, into a chore." Id. at 61-62. I was disappointed with this book as a defense of liberal education. Still, at least it is a defense).

SUGGESTED FICTION

Tessa Bridal, The Tree of Red Stars: A Novel (Minneapolis, Mn: Milkweed Editions, 1997).

Rhidian Brook, The Aftermath: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2013).

Peter Carey, Amnesia: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2015) ( See Lawrence Osborne, "Hackers Down Under," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/22/2015.).

John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014).

Rana Dasgupta, Solo (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010).

Rana Dasgupta, Tokyo Cancelled (New York: Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, 2005).

G. V. Desani, All About H. Hatter, with an introduction by Anthony Burgess (New York: New York Review Books, 2007).

Louise Erdrich, The Antelope Wife: A Novel (New York: HarperCollins, 1998).

Louise Erdrich, Baptism of Desire: Poems (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).

Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year (New York: HarperCollins, 1995).

Louise Erdrich, Four Souls: A Novel (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).

Louise Erdrich, Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).

Louise Erdrich, The Master Butchers Singing Club: A Novel (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).

Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum (New York: HarperCollins, 2005).

Louise Erdrich, The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories (New York: HarperCollins, 2009).

Louise Erdrich, Shadow Tag: A Novel (New York: Harper/HarperCollins, 2009).

Richard Ford, Let Me Be Frank With You: A Frank Bascombe Book (New York: Ecco, 2014) (See Jonathan Miles, "Storm Damage," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 11/16/2014.).

Margaret Forster, The Unknown Bridesmaid (New York: Europa Editions, 2014).

Lev Grossman, The Magician King: A Novel (The Magician Trilogy) (New York: Viking, 2011).

Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land: A Novel (The Magician Trilogy) (New York: Viking, 2014).

Lev Grossman, The Magicians: A Novel  (The Magician Trilogy) (New York: Viking, 2009).

Seth Kantner, Ordinary Wolves: A Novel (Minneapolis, Mn: Milkweed Editions, 2004) ("The woman wasn't Dawna but so easily could have been. She'd been struck by one person and racially insulted by another. I was old acquaintances with that pain raining down. What is it with lucky people? I tried to concentrate on how to convince this white stranger how truly amazing Eskimos were. How truly amazing arctic landscape was all by itself without Prudhoe, roads, and cases of Budweiser. Where would I start? With words? Or my knife? Suddenly it was so elementary. I leaned his way and stuck my fingers as far down my throat as it would go. The shifter and stereo got the second round." Id. at 233.).

A. L. Kennedy, Looking For the Possible Dance (New York: Vintage 2005).

A. L. Kennedy, Now That You're Back (New York: Vintage, 1995)

Laila Lalami, The Moor's Account: A Novel (New York: Pantheon, 2014) (Until Senor Albania had arrived at the promises and threats, I had not known that this speech was meant for the Indians. Nor could I understand why it was given here, on this beach, if its intended recipients had already fled their village. How strange, I remember thinking, how utterly strange were the ways of the Castilians--just by saying that something was so, they believed that it was. I know now that these conquerors, like many others before them, and no doubt like others after, gave speeches not to voice truth, but to create it." Id. at 10.).

Jonathan Lethem, Dissident Gardens: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2013).

Claire Messud, The Hunters: Two Novellas (New York: A Harvest Book/Harcourt, 2001).

Claire Messud, The Last Life (New York: A Harvest Book/Harcourt, 1999).

Claire Messud, When the World Was Steady: A Novel New York: Granta Books, 1994).

N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classic, 2000.

Nicole Mones, A Cup of Light: A Novel (New York: Delta Trade Paperbacks, 2002).

Nicole Mones, The Last Chinese Chef: A Novel (New York: A Mariner Book/Houghton Mifflin, 2007).

Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation: A Novel (New York: Delacorte Press, 1998).

Susan Power, The Grass Dancer (New York: Berkley Books, 1995).

Susan Power, Roofwalker (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2005).

Will Self, Shark (New York: Grove Press, 2014) (From the bookjacket: "Shark continues Self's exploration of the complex relationship between human psychopathology and technological progress and weaves together multiple narratives across several decades of the twentieth century to produce a fiendish tapestry depicting the state we're entwined in." Also See<ark Athitakis, "Infested Waters," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 12/28/2014.).

Khushwant Singh, Train To Pakistan: A Novel, with an Introduction by Arthur Lall (New York: grove Press, 1956, 1981) ("India is constipated with a lot of humbug. Take religion. For the Hindu, it means little besides caste and cow-protection. For the Muslim, circumcision and kosher meat. For the Sikh, long hair and hatred of the Muslim. For the Christian, Hinduism with sola topee. For the Parsi, fire-worship and feeding vultures. Ethics, which should be the kernel of a religious code, has been carefully removed. Take philosophy, about which there is so much hoo-ha. It is just muddleheadedness masquerading as mysticism. And Yoga, particularly Yoga, that excellent earner of dollars! Stand on your head. Sit cross-legged and tickle your navel with your nose. Have perfect control over the senses. Make women come till they cry 'Enough!' and you can say 'Next, please' without opening your eyes. And all the mumbo-jumbo of reincarnation. Man into ox into ape into beetle into eight million four hundred thousand kinds of animate things. Proof? We do not go into for such pedestrian pastimes as proof! That is Western. We are of the mysterious East. No proof, just faith. No reason; just faith. Thought, which should be the sine qua non of a philosophical code, is dispensed with. We climb to sublime heights in the wings of fancy. We do the rope trick in all spheres of creative life. As long as the world credulously believes in our capacity to make a rope rise skyward and a little boy climb it till he is out of view, so long will our brand of humbug thrive." Id. at 171.).

Ali Smith, How to Be Both: A Novel (New York: Pantheon, 2014).

Jerry Spinelli, Milkweed: A Novel (New York: Ember/Random House, 2011).

Emily St. John Mandel, The Lola Quartet: A Novel (Lakewood, CO: Unbridled Books, 2012).

Emily St. John Mandel, The Singer's Gunt: A Novel (Lakewood, CO: Unbridled Books, 2010).

Paul Theroux, Mr. Bones: Twenty Stories (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) (See Francine Prose, 'Dissecting Civility," New York Times Book Review, Sunday, 10/19/2014.).

James Welch, The Heartsong of Charging Elk: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2000).

James Welch, Winter in the Blood : A Novel (New York: Penguin Books, 1974).

JOHN STUART MILL

Friedrich A. von Hayek, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek: Volume 16, Hayek on Mill: The Mill-Taylor Friendship and Related Writings, edited by Sandra J. Peart (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2015).

John Stuart Mill, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006).
Volume I: Autobiography and Literary Essays, edited by John M. Robson & Jack Stillinger (From Autobiography: "Generally society, as now carried on in England, is so insipid an affair, even to the persons who make it what is, that it is kept up for any reason rather than the pleasure it affords. All serious discussion on matters on which opinions differ, being considered ill bred, and the national deficiency in liveliness and sociability have prevented the cultivation of the art of talking agreeably on trifles, in which the French of the last century so much excelled, the sole attraction of what is called society to those who are not at the top of the tree, is the hope of being aided to climb a little higher in it; while to those who are already at the top, it is chiefly a compliance with custom, and with the supposed requirements of their station. To a person of any but a common order in thought or feeling, such society, unless he has personal objects to serve by it, must be supremely unattractive: and most people, in the present day, of any really high class intellect, make their contact with it so slight, and at such long intervals, as to be almost considered as retiring from it altogether. Those persons of any mental superiority who do otherwise, are, almost without exception, greatly deteriorated by it. Not to mention loss of time, the tone of their feelings is lowered: they become less earnest about those of their opinions respecting which they must remain silent in the society they frequent: they come to look upon their most elevated objects as unpractical, or, at least, too remote from realization to be more than a vision, or a theory; and if, more fortunate than most, they retain their higher principles unimpaired, yet with respect to the persons and affairs of their own day they insensibly adopt the modes of feeling and judgment in which they can hope for sympathy from the company they keep. A person of high intellect should never go unintellectual society unless he can enter it as an apostle; yet he is the only person with high objects, who can safely enter it at all. Persons even of intellectual aspirations had much better, if they can, make their habitual associates of at least their equals, and as far as possible, their superiors, in knowledge, intellect, and elevation of sentiment. Moreover, if the  character is formed, and the mind made up, on the few cardinal points of human opinion, agreement of conviction and feeling on these, has been felt in all times to be an essential requisite of anything worthy the name of friendship, in a really earnest mind,. All these circumstances united, made the number very small of those whose society, and still more whose intimacy, I now voluntarily sought." Id. at 1, 235-237. From "Writings of Alfred de Vigny": "It may be worth while to employ a moment in considering what are the general features which, in an age of revolutions, may be expected to distinguish a Royalist or Conservative from a Liberal or Radical poet or imaginative writer. [] There is room in the world for poets of both these kinds; and the greatest all always partake of the nature of both. A comprehensive and catholic mind and heart will doubtless feel and exhibit all these different sympathies, each in its due proportion and degree; but what that due proportion may happen to be, is part of the larger question which every one has to ask himself at such periods, viz., whether it were for the good of humanity at the particular era, that Conservative or Radical feeling should most predominate? For there is a perpetual antagonism between these two; and until human affairs are much better ordered than they are likely to be for some time to come, each will require to be, in a greater or lesser degree, tempered by the other: nor until the ordinance of law and of opinion are so framed as to give full scope to all individuality not positively noxious, and to restrain all that is noxious, will the two classes of sympathies ever be entirely reconciled." Id. at 465, 467-469.).

Volume II: Principles of Political Economywith Some of heir Applications to Social Philosophy, Books I-II, introduction by V. W. Bladen, textual editor J. M. Robson ("But to make the comparison applicable, we must compare Communism at its best, with the regime of individual property, not as it is, but as it might be. The principle of private property has never yet had a fair trial in any country; and less so, perhaps, in this country than in some others. The social arrangements of modern Europe commenced from a distribution of property which was the result, not of just partition, or acquisition by industry, but of conquest and violence: and notwithstanding what industry has been doing for many centuries to modify the work of force, the system still retains many and large traces of its origin. The laws of property have never yet conformed to the principles on which the justification of private property rests. They have made property of things which never ought to be property, and absolute property where only a qualified property ought to exist. They have not held the balance fairly between human beings, but have heaped impediments upon some, to give advantage to others; they have purposely fostered inequalities, and prevented all from starting fair in the race. That all should indeed start on perfectly equal terms, is inconsistent with any law of private property; but if as much pains as has been taken to aggravate the inequality of chances arising from the natural working of the principle, had been taken to temper that inequality by every means not subversive of the principle itself; if the tendency of legislation had been to favour the diffusion, instead of the concentration of wealth--to encourage the subdivision of the large masses, instead of striving to keep them together; the principle of individual property would have been found to have no necessary connexion with the physical and social evils which almost all Socialist writers assume to be inseparable from it." Id. at 207-208.).

Volume III: Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, Books III-V, Appendices, introduction by V. W. Bladen, textual editor J. M. Robson.

Volume IV: Essays on Economics and Society 1824-1845, introduction by Lord Robbins, textual editor J. M. Robson (From "Corporation and Church Property": "Subject to the restrictions which we shall hereafter suggest, the control of the founder, over the disposition of the property, should, in point of degree, be absolute. But to what extent should it reach in point of time? For how long should this unlimited power of the founder continue?" "To this question the answer is in principle obvious, that it is not easy to conceive how it can ever have been missed by any unsophisticated and earnest inquirer. The sacredness of the founder's assignment should continue during his own life, and for such longer period as the foresight of a prudent man may be presumed to reach, and no further. We do not pretend to fix the exact term of years; perhaps there is no necessity for its being accurately fixed; but it evidently should be only a moderate one. For such a period, it conduces to the ends for which foundations ought to exists, and for which alone they can ever rationally have been intended, that they should remain undisturbed." "All beyond this is to make the dead, judges of the exigencies of the living; to erect, not merely the ends, but the means, not merely the speculative opinions, but the practical expedients, of a gone-by age, into an irrevocable law for the present. The wisdom of our ancestors was mostly a poor wisdom enough, but this is not even following the wisdom of our ancestors; for our ancestors did not bind themselves never to alter what they had once established. Under the guise of fulfilling a bequest, this is making a dead man's intentions for a single day, a rule for subsequent centuries, when we know not whether he himself would have made it a rule, even for the morrow." [fn. "It is as if one who was an infant when his mother died, should dress himself all his life in a frock and petticoats, because his mother clothed hi in them when he was a baby."] "There is no fact in history which posterity will find it more difficult to understand, than that the idea of perpetuity, and that of any of the contrivances of man, should have been coupled together in any sane mind: that it has been believed, nay, clung to as 'sacred' truth, and has formed part of the creed of whole nations, that s signification of the will of a man, ages ago, could impose upon all mankind now and for ever an obligation of obeying him:--that, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was not permitted to question this doctrine without opprobrium; though for hundreds of years before a solemn condemnation of this very absurdity had been incorporated in the laws, and familiar to every judge by whom, during all that period, they have been administered." Id. at 193, 198-199.).

Volume V: Essays on Economics and Society 1850-1879, introduction by Lord Robbins, & textual editor J. M. Robson.

Volume VII: A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Books I-III, editor of the text J. M. Robson, & introduction by R. F. McRae.

Volume VIII: A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Books IV-VI, Appendices, editor of the text J. M. Robson, & introduction by R. F. McRae.

     Volume X: Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, editor of text J. M. Robson, introduction by F. E. L. Priestley, & 'Essay on Mill's Utilitarianism' by D. P. Dryer (From Three Essays on Religion (1874), "Nature": "In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature's every day performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognized by human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives; and in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow-creatures. If, by an arbitrary reservation, we refuse to account anything murder but what abridges a certain term supposed to be allotted to human life, nature also does this to all but a small percentage of lives, and does it in all the modes, violent or insidious, in which the worst human beings take the lives of one another. Nature impales men, breaks them as if on a wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the first christian martyr starves then with hunger, freezes then with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed. All this, Nature does with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the best and the noblest indifferently with the meanest and worst; upon those who are engaged in the highest and worthiest enterprises, and often as the direct consequence of the noblest acts; and it might almost be imagined as a punishment for them. She mows down those on whose existence hangs the well-being of a whole people, perhaps the prospects of the human race for generations to come, with as little compunction as those whose death is a relief to themselves, or a blessing to those under their noxious influence. Such are Nature's dealings with life. Even when she does not intend to kill, she inflicts the same tortures in apparent wantonness. In the clumsy provision which she has made for that perpetual renewal of animal life, rendered necessary by the prompt termination she puts to it in every individual instance, no human being ever comes into the world but another human being is literally stretched on the rack for hours or days, not unfrequently issuing in death. Next to taking life (equal to it according to a high authority) is taking the means by which we live; and nature does this too on the highest scale and with the most callous indifference. A single hurricane destroys the hopes of a season; a flight of locusts, or an inundation, desolates a district; a trifling chemical change in an edible root, starves a million people. The waves of the sea, like banditti seize and appropriate the wealth of the rich and the little all of the poor with the same accompaniments of stripping, wounding, and killing as their human antitypes. Everything in short, which the worst men commit either against life of property is perpetrated on a larger scale by natural agents. Nature has Noyades more fatal than those of Carrier; her explosions of fire damp are as destructive as human artillery; her plague and cholera far surpass the poison cups of the Borgias. Even the love of 'order' which is thought to be a following of the ways of nature, is in fact a contradiction of them. All which people are accustomed to deprecate as 'disorder' and its consequences, is precisely a counterpart of nature's ways. Anarchy and the Reign of Terror are overmatched in injustice, ruin, and death, by a hurricane and a pestilence." Id. at 369, 372, 385-386.).

SCIENCE AND SPIRIT; OUTER AND INNNER: AND MISUNDERSTANDING BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

Richard Wilhelm, The Secret of the Golden Flower, translated and Explained by Richard Wilhem, with a Foreword and  Commentary by C. G. Jung; and part of the Chinese meditation text The Book of Consciousness and Life, with a Foreword by Salome Wilhelm; translated form the German by Cary F. Baynes (New York: A Harvest/HBJ Book; A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1931, 1962) (From Cary F. Baynes, "Translator's Preface": "The relation of the West to Eastern thought is a highly paradoxical and confusing one. One the one side, as Jug points out, the East creeps in among us by the back door of the unconscious and strongly influences us in perverted forms, and on the other we repel it with violent prejudice as concerned with a fine-spun metaphysics that is poisonous to the scientific mind/" "If anyone is in doubt as thaw far the East influence us in secret ways, let him but briefly investigate the fields covered to-day by what is called 'occult thought'. Millions of people are included in these movements and Eastern ideas dominate all of them. Since there is nowhere any sign of a psychological understanding of the phenomena on which they are based, they undergo a complete twisting and are a real menace in our world." "A partial realization of what is going on in this direction, together with the Westerner's naive ignorance and mistrust of the world of inner experience, build up the prejudice against the reality of eastern wisdom. When the wisdom of the Chinese is laid before a Westerner, he is likely to ask with a special lift of the brows why such profound wisdom did not save China from its present horrors. Of course, he does not stop to think that the Chinese asks with an equal skepticism why the much-boasted scientific knowledge of the West, not to mention its equally boasted Christian ethics, did not save it from a World War. But as a matter of fact, present conditions in China do not invalidate Chinese wisdom, nor did the Great War prove the futility of science. In both cases we are dealing with the negative sides of principles under which East and West live, and it had not yet been given, either to individuals or to nations, to manage the vices of their virtues. Mastery of the inner world, with a relative contempt for the outer, must inevitably lead to great catastrophes. Mastery of the outer world, to the exclusion of the inner, delivers us over to the demonic forces of the latter and keeps us barbaric despite all outward forms of culture. The solution cannot be found either in deriding Eastern spirituality as impotent or by mistrusting science as a destroyer of humanity. We have to see that the spirit must lean on science as its guide in the world of reality, and that science must turn to the spirit for the meaning of life." Id. at vii-viii.).

THE TSUREZUREGUSA

Kenko, Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko, translated from the Japanese by Donald Keene, with a foreword by Wm.Theodore De Bary (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1967) ("The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known." Id. at 12. "A certain hermit once said, 'There is one thing that even I, who have no worldly entanglements, would be sorry to give up, the beauty of the sky.' I can understand why he should have felt that way." Id. at 22. "What a foolish thing it is to be governed by a desire for fame and profit and to fret away one's whole life without a moment of peace.Great wealth's no guarantee of security. . . It is an exceedingly stupid man who will torment himself for the sake of worldly gain. " "To leave behind a reputation that will not perish through long ages to come is certainly to be desired, but can one say that men of high rank and position are necessarily superior? . . . There are also many learned and good men who by their own choice remain in humble positions and end their days without ever having encountered good fortune. A feverish craving for high rank and position is second in foolishness only to seeking wealth. . . The truly enlightened man has no learning, no virtue, no accomplishments, no fame. Who knows of him, who will report his glory? It is not that he conceals his virtue or pretends to be stupid; it is because form the outset he is  able distinctions between wise and foolish, between profit and loss." Id. at 35-36. "A craving for novelty in everything and a fondness for eccentric opinions are the marks of people of superficial knowledge." Id. at 99. "It is best not to change something if changing it will not do any good." Id. at 107. "As a rule, people who take pleasure in killing living creatures or making one creature fight another, are themselves akin to beasts of prey. . . . A man who can look on sentient creatures without feeling compassion is no human being." Id. at 108. "If you wish to be superior to others, you had best devote yourself to your studies and trust that the knowledge you gain will exceed theirs; if you pursue learning you will know better than to take pride in your wisdom or to compete with your friends. Only the strength that comes with learning can enable a man to refuse high office and reject material gain." Id. at 110. I purchased a used copy of this book. When I began reading, I found the following brief handwritten note addressed to the original owner: "T..., a gift. Read it when American  materialism, hedonism, or general insensitivity overwhelm you. Do not read straight through." L...").

LAW: STRENGTH, JUSTICE, MUSES

Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian and Reflections on the Composition of Memoirs of Hadrian, translated from the French by Grace Frick in collaboration with the author (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1951) ("I should say outright that I have little faith in laws. If too severe, they are broken, and with good reason. If too complicated, human ingenuity finds means to slip easily between the meshes of this trailing but fragile net. Respect for ancient laws answers to what is deepest rooted in human piety, but it serves also to pillow the inertia of judges. The oldest codes are a part of that very savagery which they were striving to correct; even the most venerable among them are the product of force. Most of out punitive laws fail, perhaps happily, to reach the greater part of the culprits; our civil laws will never be supple enough to fit the immense and changing diversity of facts. Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when they presume to anticipate custom. And nevertheless from that mass of outworn routines and perilous innovations a few useful formulas have emerged here and there, just as they have in medicine. The Greek philosophers have taught us to know something more of the nature of man; our best jurists have worked for generations along the lines of common sense. I have myself effected a few of those partial reforms which are the only reforms that endure. Any law too often subject to infraction is bad; it is the duty of the legislator to repeal or to change it, lest the contempt into which that rash ruling has fallen should extend to other, more just legislation. I proposed as my aim a prudent avoidance of superfluous decrees, and the firm promulgation, instead, of a small group of well-weighed decisions. The time seemed to have come to evaluate anew all the ancient prescriptions in the interest of mankind." Id. at 113. "Adrian of Nicomedia, one of the best minds of our times, likes to recall to me the beautiful lines of ancient) expander, defining in three words the Spartan ideal (that perfect mode of life to which Lacedaemon aspired without ever attaining it): Strength, Justice, the Muses. Strengths the basis, discipline without which there is no beauty, and firmness without which there is no justice. Justice was the balance of the parts, that while so harmoniously composed which no excess should be permitted to endanger. Strength and Justice together were but one instrument, well tuned, in the hands of the Muses. All forms of dire poverty and brutality were things to forbid as insults to the fair body of mankind, every injustice a false note to avoid in the harmony of the spheres." Id. at 134-135.).

THE POET'S EXERCISE

John Williams, Augustus, introduction by Daniel Mendelsohn (New York: New York Review Books, 1971, 2015) ("Do they know that before us lies a road at the end of which is either death or greatness? The two words go around in my head, around and around, until it seems they are the same." Id. at 25. "And then Marcella said petulantly and somewhat sleepily, 'Oh, let's not talk of unpleasant things.' Jullus turned to her. 'We are not, my dear wife. We are talking of the world, and of things that have happened in it.'" Id. at at 250. "The poet contemplates the chaos of experience, the confusion of accident, and the incomprehensible realms of possibility--which is to say the world in which we all so intimately live few of us take the trouble to examine it. The fruits of that contemplation are the discovery, or invention , of some small principle of harmony and order that may be isolated from that disorder which obscures it, and the subjection of that discovery to those poetic laws which at last make it possible. No general ever more carefully exercises his troops in their intricate formations than does the poet dispose his words to the rigorous necessity of meter; not consul more shrewdly aligns this faction against that in order to achieve his end than the poet who balances one line with another in order to display his truth; and no Emperor ever so carefully organizes the disparate parts of the world that he rules so that they will constitute a whole than does the poet dispose the details of his poem so that another world, perhaps more real than the one that we so precariously inhabit, will spin in the universe of men's minds." Id. at 285.).

HAYEK ON LAWYERS IN A DEMOCRACY

Friedrich A. von Hayek, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek: Volume 15, The Market and Other Orders), edited by Bruce Caldwell (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2014) (From "The Political Ideal of the Rule of Law, Lecture I: Freedom and the Rule of Law: A History Survey (National Bank of Egypt, Fiftieth Anniversary Commemoration Lectures)": ("The lawyer who regards himself merely as the executive of the popular will frequently will have to work out consequences of a democratic decision which, though unquestionably implied by it, were far from being present to the minds of those who made it. Yet the fact that certain consequence follow from a decision is often taken as evidence that these consequences were wanted. The lawyer who is nothing but a lawyer cannot but draw those conclusions. Perhaps it is right that the lawyer, as the servant of the democratic will, should concern himself exclusively with what in fact is the law. But then, with all dues respect, it must be said that the law which guards our liberty is too important a matter to be left entirely in the hands of the lawyers. It is perhaps easy to explain why today the discussion of the law is almost entirely conducted among the people whose professional concern is what the law is rather than what it ought to be, but it is certainly unfortunate. Such a situation becomes decidedly dangerous when it is combined with a tendency, so often found among contemporary legal theorists, to treat the fact that a law has been passed as proof that it was necessary--because, as we are often told, chaos would otherwise have arisen--and to treat the actual development as evidence that it was inevitable or desirable. Though their professional concerns may explain this attitude of many lawyers, they are certainly speaking beyond their book in thus defending the development of which they were the instrument. A democracy, if it is to achieve its aspirations, probably needs, even more urgently than any other kind of political order, systematic criticism of the total result which its separate acts jointly produce." Id. at 121, 126-127.).

SUBURBAN LIBERALS ABANDON WORKERS

Lily Geismer, Don't Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) ("This book counters [the] conventional narratives of exceptionalism and decline by examining the liberal residents who lived and worked along the high-tech corridor of the Route 128 highway outside Boston. Dispelling the widely held view that the rise of the New Right and the Reagan revolution led to the demise of liberalism, Don't Blame Us demonstrates the reorientation of modern liberalism and the Democratic Party away from their roots in the labor union halls of northern cities, and toward white-collar suburbanites in the postindustrial metropolitan periphery. The individualist, meritocratic, suburban-centered priorities of liberal, knowledge-oriented professionals embody the rise of postwar metropolitan growth, inequality, and economic restructuring, and contributed directly to the transformation of liberalism itself. The stories of the political activism by residents in the Route 128 area link these larger processes to local politics, reinforcing the key role of the suburbs in shaping party politics, public policy, and structural and racial inequality. The grassroots mobilization for the liberal causes of civil rights, environmentalism, peace, and feminism simultaneously challenges the scholarly assessments that have focus primarily on the reactionary, republican, and Sunbelt-centered dimensions of suburban politics. Connecting political culture and activism in the Boston suburbs to larger national political developments, Don't Blame Us shows that liberal did not prioritize 'posteconomic issues' such as race, gender, foreign policy, and environmentalism, and become less responsive to the economy and workers in the 1970s and 1980s. Rather. in supporting these issues, liberalism and the national Democratic Party increasingly came to reflect the materialist concerns of suburban knowledge workers reather than autoworkers." Id. at 1. In short, seeing the suburban-red against the urban-blue.).

JUST AN EDDY IN THE STREAM OF IMMEMORIAL LIFE"

Frederic Gros, A Philosophy of Walking, translated from the French by John Howe (London & New York: Verso, 2014) ("What I mean is that by walking you are not going to meet yourself. By walking you escape from the very idea of identity, the temptation to be someone, to have a name and a history. Being someone is all very well for smart parties where everyone is telling their story, it's all very well for psychologists' consulting rooms. But isn't being someone also a social obligation which trails in its wake--for one has to be faithful to the self-portrait--a stupid and burdensome fiction? The freedom in walking lies in not being anyone; for the walking body has no history, it is just an eddy in the stream of immemorial life." Id. at 6-7. Also see Lauren Elkin, "Best Food Forward," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 12/21/2014.).

I DON'T WANT TO BUY THE WORLD A COKE!

Bartow J. Elmore, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (New York & London: Norton, 2014) ("Today, Coke continues to work hard to promote itself as a global citizen capable of building infrastructure that benefits the public at large. But to claim it prudent to nominate our most profitable corporations to be providers of public services in the years ahead would be to ignore history. Proponents of limited government consistently maintain that private industry should take over certain tasks, such as municipal waterworks, that are now being provided by the state. They contend that businesses could run these systems more efficiently and reduce costs to the public. But the chronicle of Citizen Coke's ascendancy offered in this book shows that some of the most profitable businesses of our time have been successful precisely because they have not invested in expensive infrastructural projects. Coke and other profitable low-value consumer goods companies were not the engineers of their destinies but rather businesses dependent upon scaffolding provided by others, and they were far more often the beneficiaries of state support programs than the material developers of technological systems that benefited the public at large. In short, Coke always needed more than it could provide. It was a consumer more than a producer, a company adept at repackaging public resources into private products for profit." Id. at 300-301. From the book jacket: "The costs shed by Coke have fallen on the public at large. Its annual use of many billions of gallons of water has strained an increasingly scarce global resource. Its copious servings of high-fructose corn syrup have threatened public health. Citizen Coke became a giant in a world of abundance. In a world of scarcity it is a strain on resources and all who depend on them." Also see Beth Macy, "The World Buys a Coke," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 1/4/2015.).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: WOMEN, ECOLOGY AND SCIENCE

Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1980) ("The ancient identity of nature as a nurturing mother links women's history with the history of the environment and ecological change. The female earth was central to the organic cosmology that was undermined by the Scientific revolution and the rise of a market-oriented culture in the early modern Europe. The ecology movement has reawakened interest in the values and concepts associated historically with the premodern organic world. The ecology model and its associated ethics makes possible a fresh an critical interpretation of the rise of modern science in the crucial period when our cosmos ceased to be viewed as an organism and became instead a machine." "Both the women's movement* and the ecology movement are sharply critical of the costs of competition, aggression, and domination arising from the market economy's modus operandi in nature and society. Ecology has been a subversive science in its criticism of the consequences of uncontrolled growth associated with capitalism, technology, and progress--concepts that over the last two hundred years have been treated with reverence in Western culture. The vision of the ecology movement has been to restore the balance of  nature disrupted by industrialization and overpopulation. It has emphasized the need to live with the cycles of nature, as opposed to the exploitative, linear mentality of forward progress. It focuses on the costs of progress, the limits to growth, the deficiencies of technological decision making, and the urgency of the conservation and recycling of natural resources. Similarly, the women's movement has exposed the costs for all human beings of competition in the marketplace, the loss of meaningful productive economic roles for women in early capitalist society, and the view of both women and nature as psychological and recreational resources for the harried entrepreneur-husband." "It is not the purpose of this analysis to reinstate nature as the mother of humankind but to advocate that women reassume the role of nurturer dictated by that historical identity. Both need to be liberated from the anthropomorphic and stereotypic labels that degrade the serious underlying issues. [] Nor an I asserting the existence of female perceptions or receptive behavior. My intent is instead to examine the values associated with the images of women and nature as they relate to the formation of our modern world and their implications for our lives today." Id. at xvi-xvii. *Obviously, since the book is dated 1980 it may not quite apply to the current wave (for example, the 'Lean-In" wave) of the women's movement.).