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malumbra's review against another edition
3.0
Surprisingly funny and decent philosophy book, but ending was hippie bullshit.
sofadoo99's review against another edition
4.0
Spoiler
What a fascinating combination of Philosophy, Religions/Spirituality, and humor. The Beginning was a bit dense for my current intellectual level but I found the ideas and connections inspiring and quite insightful.The book started down a journey of logic, then explored mysticism and Judaism as other forms of explaining contradiction in language and life. he then blends logic and mysticism with comedy that relies on timing and the flexibility of reality within a moment. Kaplan concludes the book with explore the meaning of existence and the Limitlessness of it.
Logic explored how life can't be contradictory, you either have one or the other and for acceptions, there are explanations, a paradox shouldn't exist.
- Faith - " If the reason I believe in God is that I would like to, and not because he exists, then I don't believe in Him. I have to believe that the reason I believe in him is that he exists."
- "Therapy, education, and paradigm shifts don't promise just to give us what we want, they promise to change what we want and reorient our priorities."
-Santa is a way of preserving all parts of life we value that are not about rational choice.
Mysticism is the next section of the book where we explore Buddhist ideology and embrace ideas of duality, that all of life is in fact a paradox, it is and it is not. This stance is one that less is more and that life is ineffable and trying to define or explain it destroys the essence of what it truly means.
- "So as mystics we don't try to avoid self-contradiction as we do in logic. We come to an understanding that reality is self-contradicting."---- reality is coincidences and opposites
Then we explored comedy as a remedy to the contradiction between logic and mysticism. While for logic time limits the ability to have paradox and in mysticism time has little role for its existence is futile. In comedy, timing is what allows for seemingly unanswerable questions to be answered. It explored how laughter (under a particular theory) is a product of a redirection of other emotions, feeling something unexpected, resolving a tight emotion...
-"logic and mysticism in their own way invite us to step outside of laughter, but comedy walks us from a state of tension to a release of laughter. ...it heals an internal split without denying either side of the split."
- we lie to ourselves and others by acting like we don't care about IQ tests or we read classics for fun to act as if they are casual but we boast some intellectual property.
-"Like logic and unlike mysticism, comedy is antiauthoritarian. It points out contradictions and gives us tools for criticizing them. But compared to logic, comedy encourages us to take a compassionate and forgiving approach to our limitations."
- In our emotional lives, we are trying to overcome the paradox between safety and danger.
Next, he talks about "life" and this explores the religious piece under Judaism, mainly, the Ari.
- we are a pilot and a boat but it is hard to distinguish where one begins and the other ends.
-"if the pilot has the goals of life, and the boat is the beliefs about what is true, then we tell one kind of story."
- Weber thinks we have gone through three modern culture changes; polytheism - multiple Gods, which gives the possibility of many different simultaneous realities - "we lived in an atmosphere that was alive with myth...in the pond, the clouds..., monotheism - accomplished 'disenchantment' of the world, kicking out the myths for a single God, and science or atheism - we destroy all myths, leaving materialism.
- explored the left and right hemispheres of the brain; left= logic, either things exist or they don't, since it has never run into Santa it concludes that he doesn't exist. right= abstract doesn't assert existence, thought, emotion,
- The Tree of Life: = alive- we get it on a non-conceptual level, we understand birth and growth, =fractal self-similarity - it keeps building off itself getting smaller and smaller - it's infinite, unified and unlimited unit, = dynamic interrelationship - we can relate to the left and right hemispheres of our brain
- our defining feature as humans is that we can ask "what am I"
mynameiskate's review against another edition
3.0
This book wasn't what I expected. I was sucked in by the Kindle sample and bought it immediately after reading that. The sample chapter is interesting, but I didn't find the rest of the book that way. It's essentially a very long philosophy lesson culminating in an ambiguous (slightly lame IMNSHO) Buddhist joke. It could have been a lot shorter. I found the writing a little laborious - I expected it to be a little lighter.
Note .. I didn't find the book difficult to read, so if you want a bit of a dive into various ontological theories (with a bit of Natural Theology thrown in for good measure), this is as good a book as any. But I definitely expected something different.
Note .. I didn't find the book difficult to read, so if you want a bit of a dive into various ontological theories (with a bit of Natural Theology thrown in for good measure), this is as good a book as any. But I definitely expected something different.
yetanotherbrian's review
4.0
I expected this to be a funny, easy read, but it's actually a profound and sophisticated examination into whatever force or idea or belief you hold but cannot prove exists. Full of insightful arguments and questions, plus some jokes.
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