Suggested Readings

A few recommendations by Figs in Winter for your reading pleasure

Stoicism and beauty, image from Stoicism for Humans by Brittany Polat

“I would prefer not to”: The mystery behind literature’s most famous act of refusal. “I would prefer not to.” Those words, printed in white capital letters on a black T-shirt, are worn by a man surrounded by crates full of books in Zuccotti Park, downtown Manhattan. It is late October 2011, and the man doesn’t know it yet, but in three weeks’ time, the books in his crates will be seized by the NYPD and destroyed.

The slogan on the man’s T-shirt comes from Herman Melville’s 1853 short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” The words are spoken by Bartleby, a lawyer’s copyist, who has become, in the words of The New Republic, the “patron saint of civil disobedience.”

In Melville’s fable, Bartleby works diligently for a New York lawyer until one day, for no discernible reason, he stops and instead responds to his employer’s every request with the phrase: “I would prefer not to.” Bartleby remains at his desk, and the lawyer’s every attempt to get him to work proves unsuccessful. Eventually, the lawyer tells Bartleby to pack up and leave the office. “I would prefer not to,” is the reply. … (Big Think)

There’s an ancient solution to our modern crisis of attention. About 2,000 years ago, the Roman philosopher Seneca warned of a crisis of attention. The problem wasn’t caused by smartphones or TikTok; it was because papyrus had become more widely available. As a result, scrolls became plentiful and wealthy readers had access to more texts than ever before.

Seneca observed that the minds of those who read too many scrolls too quickly became restless and unsteady. This kind of mind was less able, he noted, to “stay in one place and spend time with itself.”

The lesson then was no less true than it is now, in our perpetually distracted, screen-addled, multitasking age. When we allow ideas to come and go in rapid succession, we keep our minds too busy and wear them out. Nothing sticks. “One who is everywhere is nowhere,” Seneca cautioned. … (New York Times)

Death by AI. Last year, the New York Times eulogized a dead kitty in a front-page article.

At Delirium, a dive bar in San Francisco’s Mission District, the décor is dark, the drinks are strong, and the emotions are raw. The punk rockers and old-school city natives here look tough, but they are in mourning.

Kit Kat used to bar-hop along the block, slinking into Delirium for company and chin rubs. Everybody knew the bodega cat, affectionately calling him the Mayor of 16th Street. Kit Kat was their “dawg,” the guys hanging out on the corner said.

But shortly before midnight on Oct. 27, the tabby was run over just outside the bar and left for dead. The culprit?

A robot taxi.

A couple of weeks later, the Times returned with a second article revisiting the community reaction and featuring a video of a Waymo taxi running over Kit Kat.

The death of Kit Kat was awful, but what’s worse are those rare cases when driverless cars kill people. Or when new technologies have other tragic consequences, as in the stories of AI “therapists” that allegedly encourage teens to commit suicide, or at least don’t work hard enough to stop them from killing themselves. Or in cases where people die due to mistaken AI-generated medical diagnoses. … (Small Potatoes)

Natural beauty: exploring Shaftesbury’s ideas on nature, virtue, and beauty. One of the most interesting (and currently under-appreciated thinkers) of the early modern period was Anthony Ashley Cooper, better known as the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1670-1713). He was so important to philosophy in the 18th century that the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment—David Hume, Francis Hutcheson and Adam Smith, among others—all had to grapple with Shaftesbury, either to criticize or be inspired by his work. Hume, now considered by far the greater philosopher, credited him as one of the “philosophers in England, who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing.” Eighteenth-century German thinkers, from Leibniz to Goethe, were especially influenced by his thoughts on nature and beauty. Leibniz went so far as to call his work “beyond Plato and Descartes,” while Herder called him “the beloved Plato of Europe.” … (Stoicism for Humans by Brittany Polat)

Where do we find answers? “There is a scroll buried deep in the woods,” the sage says, “but to get there is hard.”

You’re sitting in the tavern with all your adventuring friends: Aristo the Archer, Thomas the Cleric, René the Tinker, and Bertrand the Magician. You lean in and listen closely.

“First, you must meet with the Scholarch of the Academy, and he will teach you the Geometric Path. After several years, you will set out to cross the Bridge of Contemplation and abide in thought for a time. Once you are ready, enter the woods. There are creatures within that you must defeat. The LinkedIn Gargoyle will tempt you with a career. The Incubus of Invalid Syllogisms will pretend to be your friend. And finally, hardest of all, the Dragon of Relativity will roar with the voice of a thousand peoples. Overcome all these, and you will find the scroll — the Scroll of Truth. In there, you will find the answer to everything you seek.”

For thousands of years in the Western tradition, this is how philosophers have viewed truth. It’s often called Truth with a capital T — abstracted, perfect, and pure. It’s the single correct answer and the only path, where all others lead to darkness. It’s in Plato’s World of Forms, Aquinas’s Divine Intellect, Descartes’s Meditations, and Russell’s Logical Atomism. It’s in the somewhat short-lived efforts of Leibniz and Frege to create a logical language — beyond and better than our day-to-day languages. The way we talk and live is so messy. So imprecise. … (Mini Philosophy by Jonny Thomson)