Steven > Recent Status Updates

I found this novel through a review from The London Review of Books. I love Holocaust literature, not because I find it pleasant, but because it's almost too horrific to be true. It was true though--The Nazis were experts in creating ghastly moral quandaries for every day people, and novels such as this one ask important questions about morality and how far each of us are willing to go for our beliefs.

We're FINALLY getting to the good stuff starting with this chapter. Not that the other stuff wasn't good. But it was preliminary.

I think I'm mostly going to be skimming through the rest of this volume. There are good points for sure, but much of it is common knowledge for people who already know how to be a good person. Of course, we should all be training in the perfections whether or not we are meditators, but if you listen to your guru like your life depends on it, reading this volume is probably optional for most meditation practitioners

I haven't even gotten that far into this book and I already have a problem with some of its premises. The more I read Western philosophy, the more I'm convinced that it's a silly exercise in listening to academics blow hot air up my ass. They manage to use so many words in order to say absolutely nothing, and this book has already managed to do some of that. I'm going to give it a chance for a limited time.

I don't know, I think Dworkin is an excellent critical analyst, but critical theory is just not my cup of tea. To the extent that intercourse is defined by social meaning, I agree that it can be all the things that Dworkin says it is. On the other hand, it feels like she's rambling a lot about her personal interpretation of sex, which is fine, but I don't know if it's widely applicable as a social remedy to misogyny

I had a hard time understanding this previous chapter, maybe because I'm listening to it as an audiobook. But this is also one of the main criticisms that I have of critical theorists in general--Their analysis often borders on solipsism to the point where it's hard to determine what they're even talking about

A lot of this volume is spent by Tsongkhapa proving his case for why, exactly, method is necessary for enlightenment rather than just wisdom. I understand why he is doing it (because it's an important debate in Buddhism), but I already agree with him, so it's a bit dry for me personally. Looking forward to his explanation for how to put the method into practice

On to volume two! Volume one is the hinayana, volume two is the mahayana, and volume three is a guide to mahayana meditation.

This book is (in)famous for suggesting that most, if not all, heterosexual intercourse in our patriarchal society amounts to rape. As a gay man, I'm sympathetic to this view, even though I personally know straight men who do not fit into Andrew Dworkin's maxim. Those men are few and far between--In our Trumpist society, Dworkin's work is a scathing criticism of the status quo

Some of the ways that this author is presenting evidence in this book are bothering me. She mentions that she's a critical theorist, which is not a school of philosophy that I particularly like, and she also mentions that she likes Habermas, who is a philosopher that I disagree with in some pretty major ways.

I saw this audiobook on Spotify and thought it would be interesting, especially since I get strong emotions when talking about politics. They're not as intense as some people's emotions, but I do find that I have trouble convincing others of my positions when we are talking in person. Maybe this book will help!