Cats, Empires, and Magical Realism: What I Read in January

Check out my January reading notes from books by Lanier, Dalio, Marquez, Peterson, and and Hopkins.

Preface: I’m on a 6-month social media fast, but as I said, I’m going to make a few book review videos because, frankly, it’s just easier to talk it out. For purposes of my 6-month experiment, this video is set to private, meaning it’s not discoverable by the YouTube algorithm. Only subscribers to this newsletter can view it. Sure, Jaron Lanier wouldn’t approve (see below), but we all have different philosophies of use for social media, and that’s okay, so long as we use the platforms mindfully.

This month I read 5 books (thanks, COVID):

• 10 Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Right Now, Jaron Lanier

• Principles for Dealing With the Changing World Order, Ray Dalio

• On Living Well, Eugene Peterson

• 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

• The Gospel in Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by Ellsberg

Monthly subscribers will also receive my personal reading notes, which I’m keeping on every book I read in 2022. The practice of keeping personal reading notes in a database is new, and it’s grown from my desire to make better use of the themes and wisdom from the books I read. Below, I’m providing the initial notes for Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Right Now. (To read the full notes, and the notes for all of my January reads, become a monthly subscriber.)

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Right Now, Jaron Lanier

Lanier’s argument is simple. Be more like a cat.

In this book, Lanier argues that social media has created a sort of Pavlovian experience, a algorithmic-based system that manipulates our more dog-like desire for rewards through a series of psychological bells, whistles, and rewards. In a society increasingly manipulated by social media, he asks a poignant question: “How can you remain autonomous in a world where you are under constant surveillance and are constantly prodded by algorithms run by some of the richest corporations in history, which have no way of making money except by being paid to manipulate your behavior?” This kind of autonomy, Lanier argues, is impossible if we remain plugged into the social media matrix.