To Have or to Be? - Still at 161 (library book)

I was shaken twice while reading this book. 

The first time was when Fromm says that we repress the truth. We build up all kinds of stories in our head to make life tolerable. We put those stories in place to deny the truth. Said differently, we live a lie. 

The second time was his observation that the Greek Heroic Ideal (the one who dominates and defeats his opponents, takes their stuff, and wins) has defeated the Heroic Ideal personified by Jesus, the powerless man who fights back and resists the might of an Empire. 

Striving has always been a central part of my life. I never thought to question it. I always felt justified to do whatever it took to pursue the next big opportunity. I pursued my own idea of the Heroic and told myself all kinds of stories and lies to reassure myself that I was justified in my choices and actions. I was aware of this dynamic long before I read To Have or To Be?, but the straight-forward simplicity of these two ideas were so focused and sharp and close to my own experience, they hit me right in the intellectual solar plexus. 

I'm very areligious. My wife calls me an atheist, which is factually accurate, but I'm not offended by the idea of religion or the church. The concepts and practices of Christianity just don't make me feel anything. Fromm has this idea that religion is just the animating concept. It's the fundamental thing that we pursue in our life. I long held the kind of achievement oriented, outcome focused pursuing kind of life that he calls the Having orientation. I never considered another approach, at least not up until the last couple of years.

Ambition and I are on very good terms, but my ambition has never been strong enough to burn up my identity and desire to live my life on my own terms. As much as I thought I wanted to be a big important person at work, I could never take the steps necessary to fall into the established track for progression up the corporate ladder. Well, that's not entirely true. I tried, but other people were selected over me. What is true was that I fought against and resisted that track. I actively went against my best interests when I decided to stick with my analytical role rather than switch to design. It was an early step towards doing what is best for me and my family rather than what is best for my career. 

Fromm bemoans the overwhelming presence of otherness in our lives. Our lives in modern America suburbia are not shaped by our individual wants, our community, or the people we impact and who impact us. Market forces and the needs of extensive bureaucracies color and shape what we pursue and what we think is really important. We strive to win, we strive for more. We see the fabulous life lived by everybody else and bemoan the sorry sadness of our own mundane movie. Fromm points out how this is not the only way to live. You can live in a way that emphasizes what really matters and impacts  you rather than fulfilling your socially defined role as a consumer of all things both physical, moral, and spiritual. There are plenty of writers doing their thing right now that are basically promoting the same message. Don't listen to what else is going on around you. Find your space and fill it. Let the haters hate. 

Fromm's focus is not on the individual living their life, but on social forces that shape that life. His ambition is much more grand than popular bloggers (and authors). He wants to reshape society in an effort to save mankind from itself. He loses points for some of his utopian proposals, but at least he has the guts to propose something big and audacious. 

Where do I stand?

Where do I stand indeed. A very deep and potentially profound question that I will dodge for the moment to deal with the much more mundane matter of my effort to achieve Bookshelf Zero. (The list of things I would like to achieve, beyond Book Shelf Zero, is longer than my list of books to read (not that I've actually written such a list).) Not quite where I expected. I've finished 4 books since The Redbreast. Only 1 of them (Undermajordomo Minor) is a book that I own. I ventured into Erich Fromm (two books, both from the library) and a book about emotions (How Emotions are Made, which has recast so much of the way I look at the world, my life, my relationships, basically all of humanity) while trying to wade through Ulysses. I've set Ulysses aside for the moment as I race the New Year to finish a couple of owned books.

The real race is to see if I can finish The Fifties by the end of the year. This is a book that I would probably continually skip over if I hadn't embarked on this little quest. The story of how I acquired this book is my personal archetype. Hey, that looks interesting and it's cheap! Buy it! So $1.99 or $0.99 later, I have this file sitting in the cloud provoking me every time I go through my library. It's a long book. The print version is over 800 pages. Typical reading time is over 18 hours. How many other books could I read in that same period of time? And we arrive at my constant conflict. Long books take so long. I'd rather race through something shorter than wade through these tomes. Nevertheless, I'm wading. It's not an unpleasant undertaking. The book is basically a series of mini-histories of enduring people and institutions of the 50's. Presidential politics has a big role (Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon makes an appearance as Ike's VP), but pop culture figures are given the same level of attention. Elvis and The Beat Generation get their own chapters. The rise of TV is documented, and movies get their share of attention. McDonald's, Holiday Inn, and GM are big parts of the story. I'm in the Civil Rights Era right now. The stories are told well. There isn't a grand narrative being constructed or a general theory being proposed. it's just the story of a decade.

Halberstam is doing his part to trace the roots of 60's discontent in the supposed tranquility of the 50's. He makes it very clear who was dissatisfied with the status quo and who accepted the way things were and did what they could to work within that system. As I've gotten older and broken away from the foundations of my youth, I look back and marvel at how little I questioned, challenged, or in any way took a critical look at the expectations that I inherited as a white male with above average stature who was able to get good grades. It's not that I feel guilt for being a square. It just makes me wonder why I was so eager to embrace the expectations and norms of suburbia. Twenty-five years of living have distorted my view of who I was as a teenager driving his Volvo sedan around a crappy New Mexico town and suburban DC, but I remember subordinating what I wanted and liked to submit myself to the judgement and appraisal of achievement society. This wasn't a struggle. I just passively accepted the opportunities that were presenting themselves. I was eager to build my sense of who I was from the raw material provided by conventional culture. I wanted approval and pursued with vigor and passion. I sought the agglomeration of institutional social capital to build an identity. I would have been the young engineer eager to join GM back in the 50's. Looking back at history knowing how things will turn out, the view that has accumulated around this figures and institutions, and knowing how I think about contemporary culture is an interesting lens through which to explore my own history. I look back to figure out the best way to move forward. I live a largely conventional life, but the terms of that life are not simply accepted. There is choice and purpose in the warp of my life.

The purpose of buying The Left Hand of Darkness is still clear to me a year after picking it up from B&N (a store that is doing everything in its power to forfeit my business right as I transition back into a book buying year). I wanted to get something that looked like a quick but still interesting read. Ursula K Le Guin has her share of books in the best of SF lists. I hadn't read any of her stuff. I could check out one of her more highly acclaimed novels while giving myself a little nitro boost towards reducing my books to read pile. This is a book I will finish this year. I'm just a day or two away from wrapping it up. I will read more of her work. This book is literature that's fun to read.

So I will end the year having read 25 books for sure with a good chance at 26. Four of those books were borrowed so they do nothing towards getting me closer to Book Shelf Zero. My to be read list is 160 books long at the moment. It will end up being 159 or 160 when calendars roll over to 2018. That's pretty good progress over one year (I started the year with 180 books to be read.) I would really like to get it to 158 so I can buy a book without going back up to 160. No books will be bought if buying that book will put me into a different decade. Once I'm under 160, I'm not going to get back up to that number. The same thing goes for 150, 140, 130, all the way down to 0. That's the first of my new book buying rules. No book buying if I'm sitting at XX9 (or X9 or 9). I also have to read two books to every one that I buy. This is a rule that kicks in after I buy my first book of the year. I want to be able to buy books again, but I'm not going to go crazy and undo all the work I've done this year. Two steps forward, one step back is net progress. It's slower progress, but it's still moving in the right direction. If I had that rule this year and I had bought a book for every two read, I would have reduced my to be read pile by 10.

My goals for next year will be similar to this year. Thirty sounds like the right target number. I missed it this year, but I could have made it had I skipped Ulysses. As the point of this whole endeavor is to read books like Ulysses, I'm not going to give myself grief for falling a few books short of my goal. It's not like I missed it by 20 or more. I may revive the read a Dickens work goal (did I have that one this year too? I have no idea.). I want to finish the Mistborn trilogy. (If those books were as good as the Stormlight Archives I would have finished them years ago. I'm steadily making my way through the third book in the Archives on Audible. His other stuff pales beside these books.) I would like to finally read one of the many philosophy books I own. I'm getting back to Flashman (I think that's what I'm reading after I finish these other two books that I'm reading.. while maybe working in a few pages of Ulysses here and there). I have a pretty scary pile of books to get through. I'm getting light on fun books. I don't really have to pick something to challenge myself this year. I set up plenty of challenges over the last 20 years. It's time to keep digging and seeing what all the fuss is about.