The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, Book 32 of 2022

This very popular book was published in the late 1970s.  It became a national bestseller in 1984 after the author went on TV and radio talking about how he came to write the book. Fifty years later, we live in a world with fewer readers, but the book promotional tour is part of being an author.  Every author does it.

I started to read this book in the 1990s.  I don't remember why, but I dropped it after 30 pages. It sat on my shelf for a couple of decades, then in the big clean up I did at age 65, it was gone.  This year I talked about the book with my friend Cliff, got a copy and tired again.  

It's funny to think I finished the book now and dropped in 25 years ago. I still agree with his central premises:  we have to accept suffering and death to live a happy life.  Peck is right.  But 25 years ago, I embraced suffering as a potential good. Now I accept suffering as part of life--and hope I do not have to do too much of it.  Death is now the same--I am not looking for it, but accept it as the most definite part of my physical future.

I enjoyed the book. His case studies are interesting. I would recommend it to anyone. Next I will read his book People of the Lie. After explaining why it is difficult to lead a good life in The Road Less Traveled, Peck discusses the existence of evil in his next book.  From ordinary assholes to extraordinary tyrants and sociopaths, Peck has a lot to work with on the topic of evil. 

First 31 books of 2022:

Cochrane by David Cordingly 

QED by Richard Feynman

Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis

Reflections on the Psalms by  C.S. Lewis

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

Can We See the World Through Someone Else's Eyes?

 

"I want to see the world through your eyes!" says a friend, a lover, a caregiver, a well-meaning person who truly wants the experience of seeing life through the eyes of another.  

Every person is infinitely complex. One of the ways I comprehend the existence of God in the universe is the complexity of every person I know. The more I know about anything infinite, the more I know that I don't know.  

To some degree, I know my children. I share many experiences with each of my children. The more things I share with them, the more I know that they were and are growing and changing in a world about which I know nothing: school, friends, jobs, teams, their own reading, learning, triumphs, losses and loves.  

For months now I have been working next to refugees and immigrants from Ukraine. Some have told me parts of their stories, but even as a veteran, I will never know (I hope) the vast pain they feel of fleeing their country because a tyrant invaded.  

Then I had a moment of clarity that told me for sure, I would never see the world through someone else's eyes.  Recently I visited the Musee des Arts et Metiers in Paris: a museum displaying French technology over the past half millennium.  

To say the museum is vast just begins to describe it. 

Three thousand permanent exhibits, many working models in glass cases, cover six thousand square meters of floor space (roughly an American football field with end zones) in in the Abbaye de Saint-Martin-des-Champs. It has half again as much space for storage. 

Long hallways are lined with models of ships, steam engines, bridges, buildings, towers, factory production equipment, tools, scientific measuring devices, satellites, rotary telephones, floppy disk computers, switchboards, cars, aircraft, Foucault's pendulum and much more.   

I walked through all of this museum in an afternoon, glancing at some things, lingering over others. 

I started down a long hallway near the end of the exhibit area. I had found some connection with all of the exhibits, at least some understanding of the use or operation of many of the objects.  

Then I saw a black inverted-V shaped object 50 yards away and connections with that particular thing started flooding into my mind.  I was looking at a V-10 Renault engine, one of the RS series of engines that first entered Formula 1 racing in 1989 and continued with updates until 2013.  I knew immediately that this engine powered the Williams F1 race car that won five world driving championships between 1992 and 1996. A later version of this engine powered the Red Bull car that Sebastian Vettel drove to four titles from 2010 to 2013. In between, it powered Fernando Alonso to both of his titles in 2005-6.  

Renault RS3 V-10

The first title for the engine in 1992 was the one and only title for my favorite driver, Nigel Mansell.  My youngest son is named for Mansell.  The Renault RS3 V-10 powered Mansell to the world championship.

Nigel Mansell in his Red 5 Williams in 1987

The Renault V-10 was the engine of the 1990s, powering four more champions in the five years following Mansell's title. 

In 2005, Fernando Alonso won the first of his two world championships with RS25 V-10, the last year of the V-10 engine in Formula 1.  The next year Alonso took the title with the new V-8 version of the engine.  Along with the new V-8 configuration, Renault introduced pneumatic intake and exhaust valves. The V-8 Renault could rev to 20,500 rpm.  No other race car engine has ever revved like RS26.  

Rev limiters followed. Then from 2010-2013 Sebastian Vettel drove a Renault-powered Red Bull car to four consecutive world championships.  

I watched all or part of every Formula race from 1984 when ESPN began covering every race until now.  The history of the Renault engine was alive in my mind as I approached the 350-pound lump of metal in a glass case.  

Later I told my son about this moment. I said seeing that engine was like seeing him in a crowd at a soccer game. I would see a thousand faces, but when I saw his face, I would remember things from his whole life.  In the museum, I saw more than a thousand objects, but that one flooded me with memories.  

And yet, there is so much more to know about the Renault Formula 1 engines, about my son Nigel and about everyone I love and care about.  Between zero and one lies an infinite number of numbers.  

Can I see the world through someone else's eyes?

Maybe for a moment.  

Maybe not.  

When I described all I knew about that engine, I did not even begin to try to describe the emotions I associated with some of those races.  I cheered myself hoarse when Mansell took the title in 1992.  In 2007 my son Nigel and I began following and cheering for a rookie driver named Lewis Hamilton.  In 2008 he won the closest title fight in Formula 1 history--the first of seven world championships.  Which meant Nigel and I were cheering against the dominant Renault engines of Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull from 2010-2013.  

Can I see the world through someone else's eyes?

Maybe for a moment? 

I think not.

Courage, Like All of Life, is Non-Linear

Sir Lewis Hamilton, 7-time Formula 1 World Champion

Courage, like so much of life, is non-linear.  Lewis Hamilton has won more races than any driver in the history of the Formula 1 World Championship. Several times in his 15-year career he has had crashes that shredded and splintered his 1100-pound arrow shaped car at speeds well above 100mph.  Most recently his title rival, Max Verstappen, caused a crash that end with with Verstappen's car on top of Hamilton's car. 

After every crash, Hamilton was back in the car the next week, racing at speeds over 200mph into corners with 5-g side loads. 

But Hamilton is very afraid of spiders.  Very afraid. 

In this month's cover story in Vanity Fair magazine about Hamilton, he tells the interviewer that during the race each year in Australia, he insists on a high floor in the hotel, to make extra sure no big Australian spiders are in his room.  Hamilton says he watched the movie Arachnophobia as a child and has been afraid of spiders ever since.  

All of us are complex accumulations of genetics, experience, motives and attitudes so there should be nothing surprising that a person who is very brave in one situation is afraid in another.  And yet, that ideal of the Medieval Knight says the brave person should be afraid of nothing. It lingers in our imaginations.

My Dad was a boxer. He wasn't afraid of facing another man and fighting with his fists. His last fight was in a warehouse with a 30-year-old truck driver who took a swing at him. Dad was 62 years old. He knocked the younger man out.  Yet Dad was afraid of doctors and hospitals.  I lost every fist fight I was in and love hosptials.

Recently, I was talking to a friend about his recent trip to several countries in Europe.  He had a seven-hour layover in Helsinki and decided to go and see the city.  

I could never do that. Ride the Alps and Pyrenees and hills in Israel above 50mph on descents--awesome.  Leave the airport and have to pass back through security and customs?  Not me. I would be worried the moment I left the security area. 

Riding across Paris in traffic is pure excitement. I don't imagine what could go wrong.  But dealing with bureaucracy, I can't easily imagine things going right. 

Is it years in the Army that makes me distrust bureaucracy? I don't know.  Nothing in my childhood could have done it.  Until I flew to Basic training at 18 years old, I had never been in an airplane.  Our family never traveled further from Boston that a couple of trips to Cleveland, Ohio. 

On the other hand, I have a fear of needles that is physical and deep. I don't look at needles when I get IVs and blood drawn. But that fear is straight out of childhood.  In the basement of our home was this horrible torture device.

Vintage Singer Sewing Machine and Terror Device

One day, I was alone in the basement and stepped on the treadle of this terrifying machine, got the wheel spinning fast then (I have no idea why) slid the first finger of my five-year-old right hand into the path of that needle.  I screamed. So when my guts tighten up for a routine blood draw, I know where it comes from.  

I walked to my most recent bone-repair surgery feeling really happy. I was going to see old friends who had treated me before.  And walked home just as happy.  But I did not look at the needles during my stay the hospital.