Deep Thoughts

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
26. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
27. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen
28. Different Seasons, Stephen King
29. Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
30. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I was reading through Siddhartha I actually found myself wanting something a little more serious. I suppose Emerson fits that bill; I'm sure in a week or so I'll be wanting something silly and fluffy instead.

Emerson is apparently referred to as a "transcendentalist" (whatever the hell that means); a champion of the sort of individualism which has come to be associated with the American spirit, which was then taken to its extreme by Ayn Rand and others.

One of the interesting things about Buddhism is that on the surface, it seems like a communal religion: love for all your fellow beings, for the plants and the rocks and the waves and all that hippy jazz. But when you find out more about it, you find that it reaches that level of community through a similar sort of individualism to that espoused by Emerson; that is, every thing, every creature, has their own potential, has something of the Buddha within them, and that's why you love them, because they are all Buddhas, all of them seeking their path. Obviously, Emerson doesn't quite put it that way, but the intent is similar. I read a passage recently talking about how everything is becoming, everything is evolving, even rocks; that perhaps copper is simply metal on its way to becoming something else, and when it's done being copper (though it may take millions or billions of years), it'll turn into silver, or gold, or whatever the next step on its path is.

I mean, it's a nice thought, and it would be wonderful if it were true, but it seems to me that there are many people who are not seeking at all, or who don't even know there's something they should be seeking, or are seeking the wrong thing. And what can you do? You cannot walk their path for them, you can't even make them see what they're missing. Life is difficult, and life is unfair. That is the way of things. I suppose that's why religions were created in the first place; though, of course, actual divine inspiration is entirely possible, and maybe when I die I'll show up and whatever god it happens to be will be all, "Ha-ha, don't you look fuckin stupid now."