Tuesday Title: The Catcher in the Rye

Once, a banned book. Is that catchy enough for you to dash and grab a copy? Aside from that, this book has been taught in many high schools and continues to influence people of all ages. I would say that this book is life changing, though it may not be for everyone. Honestly, some people will hate the main character (Holden Caulfield) with all his sarcasm and cynicism, yet he also has redeeming selfless qualities along with (depending on your personality preference) an entertaining set of catch-phrases and colloquialisms. I recommend this book because even if you don’t like Holden, there will be times that you can relate with him and think about the world critically with him. He makes you feel like you’re not the only human alive. He reassures you that every person has a flaw here and there and may even be a very disagreeable person; yet at the end of the day, even the most annoying or least enjoyable person can be missed. I found this story to be a page-turner with subtle profound moments sprinkled in the mist of Holden’s horsing around. More significantly, if you ever feel lonely or hopeless, I think this is an amazing read for precisely those moments.

Further description from Amazon:

“Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with “cynical adolescent.” Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he’s been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins,

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.”

His constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies (the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the eternal teenage experience of alienation.”

Post submitted by: Christina Trieu

Thursday Take-Off: What is your life success model?

 

Think about the moments when hardwork and perseverance led to success in your life. Reflect on the philosophy, ideas, values, or advice that you applied to each of your pursuits.

How do you define success in life? What steps did you take to achieve success in your life?

Post submitted by: Miqi Cos

Tuesday Title: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

         Set in a near-future U.S.A. whose economy is collapsing as a result of the mysterious disappearance of leading innovators and industrialists, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life-from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy…to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction…to the philosopher who becomes a pirate…to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad…to the lowest track worker in her train tunnels.

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller.

Read more of this review on Amazon

Post submitted by: Miqi Cos

The Way to True Happiness: Chapters 1-2 of Zen and the Art of Happiness

In the midst of our busy schedules, elusive career plans, and fleeting relationships, we can’t help but wonder: what is the secret to happiness?

Chris Prentiss in Zen and the Art of Happiness explores the challenges hindering us from achieving happiness, and gives the readers useful steps to unlock the secret to living a happy life. In the first chapter, “The Way”, the author presents new ways of thinking about happiness. He urges readers not to dispel seemingly simplistic advice, but to give these thoughts a chance to be verified. He then introduces two questions for readers to answer:

1. Would I want this to be true: “Every event that befalls me is absolutely the best possible event that could occur”?
2. Will I give that a chance to be true?

Instead of negatively (and instinctively) reacting to certain life occurrences, we should adopt a new perspective: every event that befalls you is absolutely the best possible event that could occur—that there is no other event imaginable that could benefit you to any greater degree. Essentially, this type of optimistic thinking will ultimately bring happiness into everything we do. Practicing this new form of thinking requires a Zen approach to life. Zen is a philosophy that promotes experiencing life in the present, in the “here” and “now”. It requires three main things from our minds: concentration, calmness, and simplicity. Applying Zen into our lives will guide us towards enlightenment, which is the key to true happiness. The process of enlightenment, and of happiness, means knowing that everything in the Universe is created from and is part of the same energy, and knowing in what way we relate to it all.

The second chapter of the book, “We are the authors of every next moment,” combines the philosophy of Zen to introduce a practical approach to achieving happiness. In this chapter, the author attributes the state of our happiness to our personal philosophies. A personal philosophy is simply an individual’s own perspective in life, and his/her approach to living. Our way of reacting to life events is essentially what can hinder or further our happiness in life.

“We are the ones who invest seemingly bad happenings with the power to seem bad at the time they occur and to continue to seem bad afterwards.”

As you believe, so it is for you. We should not search for hidden meanings behind every bad thing that happens to us; instead, we need to realize our personal agency in the situation and direct our reaction towards a positive light.

The art of happiness has always been an elusive and insatiable desire in my life. It seems naïve to assume that we are living a happy life, yet the very act of questioning the presence of happiness in itself is counterproductive to achieving happiness. In my experience, happiness has been hard to achieve only because the expectation of disappointment has become a safety net. After an unfortunate event or a bad day, why is it easier for us to surrender to disappointment rather than positive acceptance?

Zen and enlightenment could just be the path to happiness, but I argue that happiness is too personal and unique to each of us that it will take more than these philosophies for us to attain satisfaction. The most important takeaway from Prentiss’ book is to live an empowered life; to know that our life circumstances may be beyond our control, but in the end, as the poet William Ernest Henley states: “We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our soul.”

Post by: Miqi Cos

Tuesday Title: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Whether you are a self-proclaimed bookworm, a bookstore rookie, or a curious intellectual, if you have been craving a thought provoking piece of literature, look no further than Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance!

Here’s an excellent review from www.amazon.com by Gary Larson:

“This book is famous because it fills a perfect niche in that it introduces some very complicated philosophical questions in a form that the common reader will find interesting. Pirsig is attempting to create a practical philosophy and sets the book against the background of actual experience to make the questions he ponders real for the reader.

Probably no book has ever been more successful in interesting people in philosophy in the first place. So why are people who are interested in the subject eager to send them away because it disagrees with something they read in some banal tone?

Bottom line, if you ran across this book at your local bookshop or had it recommended to you by a friend, you must read it. It is an awesomely thought inspiring book and asks questions you never thought to ask or at least didn’t know how to put your finger on. It’s both a good novel and a great introduction to philosophy for people who have an interest in greater questions but not all the time to pursue them. I don’t think you should worry about the fact that someone with a Masters Degree in Philosophy, or an equivalent knowledge, is bothered by the book. Also, I wouldn’t be thrown by the title. The book isn’t trying to sell you a newsletter or convert you to any church (despite the use of the phrase “The Church of Reason”) and is only using a bit of Zen philosophy as a grounding for its premise.

Pirsig’s premise is that we live in a world of both the “Classical” and “Romantic” or, as I’ll simplify it, “function” and “form”, respectively. Pirsig sees the problems in our world as the result of an overemphasis on form, when function is more essential. However, pure “function” has problems of its own. For example, our bodily organs carry out the function of allowing us to live, but one doesn’t really desire for our skin to be translucent so we can watch these functions. In fact, we would have a revulsion to such a thing. Therefore, we have a combination of both of “form” and “function”; our organs work very well without our having to see them. This is the desirable state. This desirable state is called “Quality”. Good “function” seems to bring about its own desirable “form”. May the decorative towel be damned. That’s grossly oversimplified, but there it is. “

One of the most profound quotations I gained from this book: “we take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.” Just a little teaser to intrigue your philosophical whims!

Post by: Miqi Cos

Thursday Take-Off: Good, good?

What is meant when we say “that is good” or “that is bad”? When we make moral judgments, what do we mean and what do we mean for others to understand by our words? For example, when I say, “You wrongly took that money” am I simply expressing my personal disapproval towards your acquiring them money? Or, am I outwardly expressing a moral fact that you understand fully because we are in the same moral culture? Are ethics natural facts of the universe that have the same truth value as health? When a doctor says “your arm is broken” is she saying something true that is true in the same sense as “you are morally wrong”?

Posted by: Tiffany