Frank Peter > Recent Status Updates

The cover reads 'Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump', but as Robin points out in his preface, the structure of the book is 'episodic rather than strictly historical.' So this is not a book about the history and development of conservatism from the French Revolution to the present, which I was hoping to read, but a collection of essays about some episodes and protagonists in this history, which disappoi

Chomsky's greatest hits compiled I suppose? Nothing new (and honestly, for me, quite tedious) for those of us familiar with his work, but maybe ideal for his younger fans? Robinson is such a terrible writer though 😄

Halfway. So far, so great.

Chapter 1 'on numbers' was hard to read & with little payoff, although to be fair I skipped about the last 3rd of it. Like the mad ramblings of a math teacher during a nervous breakdown. His main point was that math is not universal, but relative to culture, like the styles of music. Greeks had a conception of numbers still rooted in physics & finite; our conception is abstract & infinite.

Made me think of quitting

Intro done. So far so not-really-fascist, although I can see where the Blut und Boden stuff would come in, as S. emphasizes 'cultures/civilizations' are rooted in time & place. No universality.

At the same time that's also what makes it 'culturally relativistic'. In fact S. is explicit in saying 'the West' should *not* be seen as better or higher than the other cultures/civilizations he discusses. No absolutes.

Chapter 4 - "Triumphs of Fertility" - is an investigation of the fates of Egyptian and Chinese. How were these languages so durable and resilient in the face of immigration and invasion? And why did Egyptian ultimately succumb to Arabic? In the conclusion Ostler states he even thinks Chinese might perish like Egyptian, as the ties to its ancient emperor system are now cut. (I'm not sure about that one though.)

Chapter 3 - "The Desert Blooms" - is good. Covers the languages of the so-called Near East. (Not excluding Egyptian entirely but the next chapter will focus on that.) Starts of course with Sumerian but focuses mainly on the three Semitic languages that have dominated Western Asia since the days of Sumer: Akkadian, Aramaic, and Arabic. Also discussed at some length are Hebrew, Phoenician/Punic, Turkic, and Persian.

Chapter 2 - "What It Takes to Be a World Language" - still an introductory lecture on the 'principles of wine-tasting' while my hands were starting to shake from severe alcohol-deficiency yesterday.

Chapter 1 ["Themistocles' Carpet"] was still (after a preface and prologue) selling the idea of 'language history', but I was already sold or I wouldn't have ordered the book. Get going already, I thought.

Snyder leaves this (last) line of p. 217 untranslated:

心臓じゃない。髪こそが命の源なのだ。
(It's not my heart, but rather my hair that is the source of my life.)
(would be p.168 in translation)

But it's quite helpful, as it emphasizes why, on the next page, Naoki completely loses his mind and thinks he has become a zombie after he finds his hair has been cut. Could Snyder have simply missed this line? Or did he deem it superfluous?

On page 116 Mizuki explains why she hates the nickname 'Mizuho' so much (and therefore why she hates Yoshiteru-sensei even more than she would have if he hadn't reintroduced the nickname 'Mizuho'): because Ayako (the girl-bully who came up with it when they were both in primary school) meant it as an insult, it's short for: Mizuki-aho (Mizuki-idiot).

This is left out from Snyder's translation (p. 92).

'おしゃれして合う' is translated as 'to dress up smartly and meet', but - especially in the sentence in question - it would make much more sense to me if it were something like 'to laugh/joke/share jokes together'.

Am I wrong? We'll never know.

At page 70 I starting to get bummed out by the severely acedemese text, the theoreticalness & abstractness.

The introduction to the paperback, written in 1985, was a lot more readable for us humans than the (1957) main text so far. I'm afraid Bellah only learned to write in the meantime, making this book interesting subject-wise, and no doubt very insightful, but hardly engaging.

Hoping it'll improve ...

Bit bummed out by the theoreticalness & level of abstractness of the severely academese languagle. Use a fukken example, man!

I

Just started in this but I'm already pretty convinced (after 2.5 years of kanji learning + 1.5 year hanzi learning before that, but in the most inefficient way possible) that this would have been the way to go - at least for me (but likely for most people).

One thing I DO like about Emmerich's notes (compared to Ashby's) is that he usually provides (extra) example sentences for the new words/phrases/constructions he 'splains.

One story in, I think I can say I prefer Janet Ashby's approach in the essay sibling of this book.

Emmerich doesn't translate parts he thinks don't need translation (usually because he already translated those words/expressions in an earlier part) but what if u chop up a story over multiple DAYS? Then u forgot those translations, and have to go back and search the damn thing!

Also he's a little wordy in the notes.

Finally at the Zoroastrians!

I actually thought this book was going to be on Zoroastrianism and its influence on other traditions, that's why I borrowed it, but the first 3 chapters were on the cosmic-chaotic views of Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Vedic Indians.

Appreciate learning more about those traditions too though (a little dry though it was) it's just that I thought it was going to *star* Zarathustra c.s.

Chptr on wonders of Song Dyn. Neo-C'ism was first 'weak' one. Liked it as an intro to Neo-C. thought, but pretending it on par with 20th cent. science, and that Song era philosophers were Einsteins & Bohrs avant la lettres, is silly. Deepak Chopra-like, New Age-like, or ... Fritjof Capra of the 1970s-like?

+, why is Neo-C'ism Lent's chosen 'way'? Why wouldn't Taoism or Shintoism work, or Spinozism or Einsteinism?

Wow, this book really ties the room together!

And with 'room' I mean the additions to my 'read' & 'to-read' lists of the last 2 years: it almost seems written especially for me!

Psychology, neuroscience, consciousness, (intellectual) history, philosophy, religion, China, Asia, 'the West', east-west connections, archeology—so far basically every page has fascinated me. At this point I wish it had thousands of pages!

So far so good. It's very similar to & basically in agreement with Harari's Sapiens (in which 'stories' are a driving force in history since the 'cognitive revolution'; though Lent goes a little deeper into the science behind the 'cognitive' stuff), but Lent doesn't seem to be aware of the book. Harari's book is mentioned in the foreword by Capra only.

Harari expresses these ideas more elegantly; Lent more deeply.

DNF'd somewhere around here, after poor Freddy Lounds realized he was fired as Graham's pet. Nothing against the book (although it could have been better paced maybe) I just want to spend my reading time more on things more helpful on my way to become the world's most obnoxious know-it-all.

DNF'd here.

While not incorrect, the subtitle could have been more precise:
"China in *very specific, individual* western minds"

I guess I was hoping for the 'wider' image of China and its impact on the West, how much of a role it played in the Enlightenment e.g., and not just 'what Voltaire wrote about China'.

It's a fine book, just not what I was looking for.

'The Ancestor' = Bi Feiyu (b.1964)

Would like to read more by this author. So far the best story. Bit grim though.

O Xiangxue, Tie Ning (b. 1957).

Romantic tale about a mountain village of 10 households where every night at 7pm a train stops for exactly 1 minute. Xiangxue is a girl of 17 who, along with her friends, meets the train every night to trade. By accident, she is taken away to the neighboring village, and has to walk back.

Values are similar as in 'Dog': Xiangxue is simple (innocent), sincere, & hard-working.