Curious what books people are reading at the moment. Since RTO hit with a vengeance, I've been having to spend far more of my day commuting. So I use audiobooks to keep up with my "reading." I finished Neil Howe's, The Fourth Turning is Here Now, and now I'm listening/reading to Hampton Sides' Korean War book, On Desperate Ground regarding the Chosin Reservoir battle. What's everyone else reading?
Anything particular worth looking into?
Notes from a Nervous Planet - by Matt Haig
I like him and his books but this one isn’t as sharp as the rest and doesn’t offer me many insights personally
To The White Sea by James Dickey is excellent. Needs to be a movie one day.
Nothing Left by Evan Barker.
Guardian Angel: My Journey from Leftism to Sanity by Melanie Phillips.
Bitcoin is for Everyone by Natalie Brunell.
Sorry about the RTO.
How did you like The Fourth Turning is Here? It's high on the list of books I've been meaning to start.
I'm very slowly reading Meditations.
So it's a bit dry and academic, but if you can bull through that, it was a pretty good book. It leans heavily on a lot of history and pointing out specific patterns by generation from one century to the next. Then, in the second part, it makes predictions how things will play out for generations going forward from the early 2020s to the 2030s. Some of it has already been spot on since the book is slightly dated.
Fourth turnings are usually associated with some major world shaping event. Did they predict any specific events to watch out for?
I will say that while internal dynamics push a system to the edge, it takes an big external threat or risk to put it over the edge and trigger the fundamental paradigm change. Then there is acceptance and movement into the new cycle with the next generation cycle building new. So, an example of this would be, say World War 1 and 2. The elements were already in place in many countries for change, but the external threat became overwhelming causing everyone to stop thinking about themselves and the greater issue going on.
I can certainly handle dry and academic. Did you find the historical pattern convincing?
I think there's an argument there. Some is predictable, some is pushing the envelope with assumptions. I think enough lines up, however, that the categories of future assumptions are plausible. Much depends on how things play out in the next two to three years specifically.