Category Archives: Life

How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer

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This is a disappointing book with a misleading title. There is too much globalization and not enough soccer. Certainly, none of it amounts to a theory of globalization. Every chapter but the last is a typical magazine article, in which the author visits a new city (Glasgow, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, etc.), provides a history lesson and interviews some locals. There are exaggerations and questionable observations.

In the last chapter, Foer expounds on America’s attitudes toward soccer. The book feels dated, despite having been published in 2004. Anyway, soccer doesn’t explain the world. The world — its history, economics and politics, as well as human psychology — explains soccer.  (6/28/11)

What We’re Up Against, Part 2

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It’s good to be skeptical about the results of public opinion polls, especially if it’s only a single poll reporting a result.

On the other hand, if this is true, it explains a lot. Personally, I can’t believe that 18% of Democrats believe this. Maybe they’re worried about the Tea Party taking over?

From a Fairleigh Dickinson University Public Mind poll released today:

“Supporters and opponents of gun control have very different fundamental beliefs about the role of guns in American society. Overall, the poll finds that 29 percent of Americans think that an armed revolution in order to protect liberties might be necessary in the next few years, with another five percent unsure. However, these beliefs are conditional on party. Just 18 percent of Democrats think an armed revolution may be necessary, as opposed to 44 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of independents.”

http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2013/guncontrol/

The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee by Sarah Silverman

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Sarah Silverman is very funny. This book is funny too, sometimes. It’s her autobiography, which details her youthful bedwetting, what it was like to grow up Jewish in New Hampshire, her life as a stand-up comic, and her experiences being on TV. Comedy and philosophy have a lot in common and she is frequently philosophical.

But the book isn’t as funny as I expected, and she spends too much time justifying herself and complimenting the people she knows. If all the people who worked on her TV show were as brilliantly funny as she says, it would have been a much better show.

She also offers good advice, such as the idea that we should Make It A Treat, that is, don’t overindulge in the most enjoyable things in life. Keep them relatively rare and special. (7/1/10)

Lust by Simon Blackburn

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This is one of a series on the Seven Deadly Sins, but may differ from other books in the series, since the author defends what is supposed to be sinful. Blackburn defines “lust” as “the enthusiastic desire, the desire that infuses the body, for sexual activity and its pleasures for their own sake”.

He endorses Hobbes’s explanation of this pleasure: “LUST…is a sensual pleasure, but not only that; there is in it also a delight of the mind: for it consisteth of two appetites together, to please, and to be pleased; and the delight men take in delighting, is not sensual, but a pleasure or joy of the mind”.

Blackburn contrasts this view with that of Aristophanes: sexual desire is “the hopeless attempt to regain a total unity, a fusion of self and other”. Dryden translates Lucretius on the impossibility of attaining this goal: “They grip, they squeeze, their humid tongues they dart; As each would force their way to t’other’s heart; In vain, they only cruise about the coast; For bodies cannot pierce, nor be in bodies lost”.

On the other hand, a Hobbesian unity is attainable between sexual partners sometimes, much like musicians who create a unified performance.

This is a playful but serious book. Blackburn concludes that “lust best flourishes when it is unencumbered by bad philosophy and ideology, by falsities, by controls, by distortions, by corruptions and perversions and suspicions, which prevent its freedom of flow”. (3/22/10)

Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit by Jonathan Foa Dienstag

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A history of philosophical pessimism, concentrating on Leopardi, Camus, Schopenhauer, Freud, Nietzsche and Cervantes. Philosophical pessimism results from consideration of the human condition, stuck in time, with everything eventually disappearing. The author says philosophical pessimism can be life-affirming, at least for Nietzsche and Cervantes.  (1/14/10)