Diary

The book I was reading, though interesting in some respects, was not exactly captivating, and it didn't inspire me to read it frequently enough to finish it in a reasonable amount of time. Furthermore, it concerned life in 17th century England, and I've been overdosed on English intellectual history recently, with Thomas Malthus, G.H. Lewes, Charles Darwin, William Morris and Bertrand Russell. I am also getting tired of biographies, because, even though they can be better than novels, they tend to be written for entertainment, and the analytical scope of the authors can be quite limited. Whenever someone famous dies, there is usually a flurry of hagiographic biographies, and it can take a century for a thoughtful, thoroughly-researched biography to appear. Then, as I've said repeatedly, the profit motive, which seeks wide audiences, tends to result in low-quality work. You can even see the same sort of thing happening now, with all the books on Donald Trump, who is still alive. In his case too it would be better to wait a few decades to get an authoritative account after all the pertinent facts have been determined. By then it should be well-established how dysfunctional and destructive he was and what a colossal mistake it was that he was elected. In the meantime, dozens of hastily-written books will at best haphazardly document some of his recent behavior. I mention this only as an example of how the publishing industry works, and I probably wouldn't read a definitive Trump biography, because he has already demonstrated that he is nothing more than an ignorant, corrupt opportunist – with significant psychiatric issues.

As an alternative, I'm going to try to read some more poetry. That can be frustrating too, but when I find a poem that I like, I think about it often and enjoy the process. For me, the artistry in a good poem encapsulates a thought or feeling that is usually not expressed in daily life, and it creates an intangible bond between the author and the reader that in some ways can be better than what you experience with close friends. That can be a rare form of intimacy. Of course, for me, pursuing this takes far more effort than picking up a book of poems and reading it, because, as you will have noticed, so little of what I read seems satisfactory. If all goes well, I may resume my "Poem of the Day" posts, and perhaps I will comment on some poems too. Generally, I prefer 20th century American poems, so that's what I'll be reading. It may just be my imagination or cultural acclimation, but I have never been able to get excited about poems that aren't of American origin. This is unusual, because otherwise I find little to like in the American arts, with the exception of music.

I am still following the progress of the pandemic, since it seems persistent. Although this is a regrettable situation, I am hoping that in the end it will become a valuable lesson to the whiny Americans who have been complaining about nothing for years and choose to engage in irrational behavior because it makes them feel better. One would have expected them to grow up by now, but it increasingly looks as if more of them will die because they prefer to dismiss facts and live in an alternate reality. The irony is that many of them are science-deniers and anti-Darwinists, and their deaths would be a good example of natural selection at work: the smarter people will survive. Still, the extent of the pandemic is a warning to everyone, because it is bringing chaos to parts of the world and laying bare the weaknesses of governments everywhere. On the other hand, catastrophic events, such as the Great Depression and World War II, were followed by periods of self-discipline and reason, so the outlook may improve in the years to come.

As I've mentioned, the Internet is opening up a Pandora's box of bad ideas that are increasingly disruptive to society. I think that the Internet bypasses traditional methods of socialization, and that people are unwittingly being influenced by commercial entities which, in a psychological sense, disguise themselves as communities and co-opt the traditional process in which our hunter-gatherer ancestors became assimilated with their tribes.