Nexus And Thinking: Initial Results

 I was able to get through all of the books that I took with me on my trip last week, with the exception of Atlas Shrugged, which I am still chugging along on (it is a re-read, but clocking in at 1069 pages, it is by far not a "consumed in an afternoon" event).  By the time I am done, that will be 2148 pages in a little under two weeks.  Once upon at time, this was not at all unusual - at the moment, I cannot remember the last time I gave myself the luxury of reading so much.

The books, as you may recall, were:

A Christian Manifesto, Pollution and The Death of Man, The Great Evangelical Disaster, How Should We Then Live? - Francis Schaeffer

The One Straw Revolution - Masanobu Fukuoka

Micro-Eco Farming - Barbara Berst Adams

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

It is an interesting mix, intellectually speaking:  Schaeffer, the Christian apologist and social thinker; Rand, the atheist and Objectivist; Fukuoka, originally a biologist who surrendered modern life to live on his family farm and practice "do nothing" farming; and Adams, who moved to a small farm in Washington state and created a life for herself and her family.  All, in their own way, spiritual (even Rand, even if it the spirit of "the best that is within us").

I do not always get my selection of books right when I travel - sometimes they are so disparate in interest and subject that I gyrate wildly from Stoic philosophy to sheep to 10th century Byzantine history - but for some reason, this was the precisely right mix for cogitation.

All of them, in different venues, pinpointing the issues of aspects of the larger Western Civilization.  All of them, in different ways, proposing resolutions to those problems.

To be honest, realizing that thread between them all surprised me.

I do not know that I should be surprised by that, though.  Schaeffer and Rand both deal with the outcome of societies based on then arising trends at the time of their publication, trends which have manifested themselves in full today.  And Fukuoka and Adams are two sides of the same coin: one (Fukuoka) published in the 1970's when the concept of ecological sound farming was really appearing in the U.S.; Adams writing 30 years later, of how that had manifested itself in practice.

This gave me a great deal to ponder and think about - things which, of course, need a lot more in place than an introductory "What I Read This Summer" sort of post. But maybe, at a higher level, I can at least pick out two general observations

1)  Good books continue to be relevant - The most "recent" of the books I read was from almost 20 years ago (Berst Adams). Fukuoka was even farther back (almost 50 years ago), Schaeffer between 40 and 60 years ago, and Rand almost a staggering 70 years ago.  Yet each of the books is not "out of date" - whereas I am pretty sure, based on the titles that we see for current events now, most of the current event books written at the same time are also now of historical interest only, not able to inform the future. (Hint:  Read good books.)

2) I probably do not read nearly as much as I should - As I posted above, this was a great many pages of books which were not just entertaining (although they are), but have the sort of thought in them that requires underlining (sometimes on top of my previous underlines) and thought and, hopefully, application.  I do not prioritize this as much as I should, which is a shame.  It makes my thinking, my writing, and my actions more meaningful.