Reviews and Comments

The book I've been looking for all my life (really)

I began this book over a year ago, but today is a good day to take it up again.

As an anarchist systems thinker I have to say I don't appreciate how they clearly and emphatically imply that social systems are necessarily hierarchical. They draw a false dichotomy between community and systems. Systems are not diametrically opposed to communities. Systems are just repeating and interrelated behavior patterns plus the other resources that support those behavior patterns. Communities have systems, sometimes named, sometimes unrealized, sometimes designed, sometimes appreciated, and sometimes dysfunctional. Systems are a way to match complicated dynamics with declarative semantics so it can be acknowledged and manipulated, instantiated, moderated, or ended. Hierarchical organizations are just one type of a huge range of human systems.

I am committed to at least taking in everything published by #Graeber eventually

In ch 6, Chen takes aim at the pathology mindset (and ingrained dysfunction) of the medical industry. Chen, then, moves on to eugenics. This is one of those chapters I want to be played on popular radio.

Excellent life story of an (apparently 🤷🏻) influential figure in ethnobotany. Everything Quave says checks out wrt the corruption and failures of the medical industry from my amateur bio-literate mind. Her life-long quest to shine light on the immense depth of plant chemistry for the good of humanity is inspiring, and I am grateful for her work and the context this book elucidates.

necessary reading if I'm going to develop an #ArtificialExecutive

Although I somehow expected to get more out of the book that I could use as a father of two young kids, I did learn a lot about Rogers' life and associations, and some of the interesting tangential happenings in Pittsburgh. Also, the big takeaway was to encourage and engage the kids in unstructured creative play. Although I already was aware of the reasons, the importance of doing so is worth taking time to consider.

I think my expectations were too high. I learned some interesting things about Mr Rogers, and some of his prescient genius was excavated, but I didn't take away much that I didn't already know. Perhaps because I have already been through a shelf of parenting and education books.

Excellent book, except for defining "high conflict" as a term for a specific kind of conflict. Ripley is now a journalist I will follow, and conflict studies is now a very interesting field to me.

Good journalistic history of psychedelics. Highly relatable. Approached from a modern perspective, walking the tightrope psychedelics walk between science and the metaphysics of subjective experience, including religious experience, consciousness expansion, and the nature of reality, without losing the audience. Though it's been a few years since it was published, How to Change Your Mind was well worth my ten hours (not that my audio book player is on 1x speed, actually).

Seemed like a prerequisite to another book, and, halfway through, now, I am not regretting getting into the history of psychedelics, the revival of the science (as of 2018), the reasons for the conflicts in culture and scientific methods, and more. I really appreciate Michael Pollan's balanced approach, exploring all the different perspectives without disparaging any group nor individual.

Geronimus is highly quotable, very thorough, and her insights are critically important for the medical community, public health, government policy, and progressive culture. I learned a lot, and I only got halfway through. Maybe I will finish it, but if the length of the book is at all daunting to you, know that every chapter is worth it, and even if you follow my lead and stop halfway through, I still recommend the first half of the book wholeheartedly.