My Top Book Picks within Western thought
The best Western books for understanding life and relationships
First things first, I am spinning up my paid substack content! My first series of posts, (of which 4 are up) is a quasi - review of "Being and Time," one of the most difficult books of modern western philosophy. I saw quasi-review, because I am not going to cover every aspect of the book, but rather take select small pieces of each chapter and look at their application in the real world, or whatever "real" means these days.
My posts are going to be a lot easier to understand than "Being and Time" and be a lot more fun than non-juicy explanations.
However, the rest of this post are some of my top picks for other books that have been very influential in my thinking.
Full shill disclosure, if you are going to get one of these, buy it from a link from this page so I get affiliate $.
Reviews
1. Non Violent Communication, Language of Life talks about the problems of communication or "miscommunication" present in every day life. Miscommunication is common and is likely becoming more common. Understanding this and understanding both some good patterns and anti-patterns is a great idea for the sake of working on one's relationships and self-understanding. A big revelation for me reading it was the confrontational nature of word "should." For some people, this is easy to see, since they might understand that it's easier to talk about shared goals rather than abstract obligations that don't seem anchored to anything. However, for me at the time that was a revelation. I personally find their positive advice about *what* to do not as useful, however, their advice of "what not to do," or what communication anti-patterns to avoid is extremely useful. Also, the awareness of the possibility of miscommunication is a very useful understanding simply by itself.
Of course, while this is a great book this does not mean that advice from it is always well applied. It's worth remembering to actually have the best interests of both people in mind. The idea is not to start accusing each other of the communication being violent, but rather actually aim to understand what is happening
Several key takeaways from the book:
a) The importance of actually being specific in one's claims and not "over-generalizing." "You didn't do laundry on Thursday" is a lot more specific than "you never do laundry," which brings out the debate about the meaning of "never."
b) It's ok and productive to talk about feelings. Some people don't consider talking about feelings even an "option," but it can has the chance to bring people closer together.
c) You are responsible for your own feelings. This one is probably the most surprising one to people reading the first time. It's not productive to blame one's feelings about the situation on the other person. Yes, they did something and you have a reaction to it. However, it is your choice to have that reaction and not another. Again this might seem counter-intuitive to some natural ideas of "I am mad and it's your fault," and is a little tricky to express carefully. However this is an important mental step towards a more mature relationship of oneself with one's feelings.
Also, the general idea of "feelings-ownership" brings us nicely to...
2. In Over Our Heads is the originator of the concept of "Kegan levels" and is one of those books which you are going to finish and say "I really wish I read this earlier." The concept is two fold:
a) this describes the blueprint of mental development from childhood to different stages of adulthood, centering on the development between the "communal" to "systematic" stages in aspects of work, relationships, parenting and self-understanding.
b) Many adults, especially young adults have trouble handling life due to novel amounts of mental complexity placed on them by the modern world. One gets overwhelmed by the overlapping sets of responsibilities of family, work and other societal attention drains.
The movement from "communal" (Kegan 3) to "systematic" (Kegan 4) stages and thus ability to "meet the demands" of the modern world sounds simple in theory. One needs a consistent and principled prioritization of relationships according to a rational system. However this requires an identification of the self as an plausible author of value, as a well as a capable arbitrator of said rational system. Without this, one is bound to go through life not really feeling like an "adult" at all or being constantly pulled into different directions. Now this book is sort of the ultimate self-help book where each chapter (parenting, work, therapy) could easily have been it's own book or even a series of books. However since "In Over Our Heads" is able to find abstractions and mental attitudes that cut across the tasks, it is able to give advice on a number of them.
One word of caution for the would-be readers. Before reading the book, but after hearing about it many people think of themselves as having a high level or think that some sort of “intellectual realization” is an advancement in level, without understanding what the levels even are. After reading it, most people, including me, got very excited to systematize their entire understanding of the world into Kegan levels as well as talk about this to others. While some excitement is understandable, there are strong cultural memes against viewing adults as non-equally capable in some way. So one is bound to meet with some resistance. Kegan himself talks about hatemail he receives in the introduction. So, while it’s a great book to help oneself make sense of the world, it’s not always the best party topic, though it depends on what kinds of parties one is attending.
Now the first two books are sort of what I would consider the more "essential modern world survival guide." However, given that we are entering a more complex post-modern world, even a Kegan 4 level of mental complexity might not be inadequate, especially for people wishing to lead groups or develop complex technology.
3. So enter Things Hidden Since the Foundations of the World. While this is supposed to be a "Western thought" review, I'll bring in an important Buddhist concept. Ever since I learned Buddhism, the First Noble Truth, or "the root of suffering is desire," never sat well with me. Desire seemed vital to survival and I didn't really feel like there was an explanation of which desires were more or less ok.
However, Things Hidden puts a deeply clarifying perspective on this question, by tracing the root of a lot of suffering to "mimetic desire." Or the kind of desire that is about wanting things *only because others want them*. Just like 10 kids would have trouble dividing 10 slightly different toys among themselves, since one child wanting a toy makes it instantly more desirable for another, so the rest of society has trouble for pretty much the same reason. There are somewhat fewer fights about the specific physical objects, but significantly more fights over the "ownership" of responsibility. Corporate management fights are the same views of people stressing out over trying to exert control over some area not because of value to the customer, but simply because someone else wants that area.
Things Hidden is tricky not because of the theories being that complex, but rather because large parts of you don't want them to be true. Ideas such as scapegoating or conflict arising from mimetic desire are not Hidden somewhere far away, they are Hidden in plain sight. It is exceptionally rare that one would encounter a Grand Theory of human behavior that cuts across time, along with lots of supporting evidence for it. Thing Hidden is such a Grand Theory, it's implications as well as some really interesting predictions about the future movements that seek abolishion of culture as such. For a book written in the 70’s this is a pretty solid prediciton. In between the grand theoretic ideas and cross-cultural examples, there are many short, but poinent tidbits about the mimetic origins of mental illness and the societal processes that create it.
The book also contains a very strong secular argument for the importance of Christianity and Jesus as a key enabling force of Western Civilization, being able to offer a non-judgemental theory of “science of religion.”
"Things Hidden" is also Peter Thiel's favorite book and one he credits with shaping some of his key decisions.
The list of books is very much in the order of complexity. "In Over Our Heads" was the most complex book i have read up to that point (2016) and it seemed to be so by far. Then I finished "Things Hidden" a couple years later which was whole level above "In Over Our Heads," yet still a quite a bit simpler than "Being and Time." If you aren't sure what kinds of level of complexity you can handle, then get "In Over Our Heads," as each chapter in the book is a bit trickier to understand than the previous one.
Happy reading and leveling up!