Books: How Democracies Die, The Phoenix Project, Walden

After reading “Digital Minimalism”, I immediately decided to implement what Cal Newport suggests - take a one-month break from social media.

I have already been using “Stay Free” on my phone for more than a year, so I already knew how much time I spend on it, on average. It always seems insane to me. When it gets more than 3 hours for a specific day I can’t but feel guilty and unproductive. For the whole of February I tried to avoid Facebook, Instagram, etc. I was not very successful, but at least I learned a few things & I brought this “semi-addiction” under control.

I tried to replace the time spent scrolling on my phone with reading books, cooking more, working out, going for walks, going out more, and sometimes just sitting idle and relaxing by doing nothing but thinking.

I read 3 books and one book/comic.

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How Democracies Die

This is a book by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. It mostly focuses on explaining what’s been happening in USA politics the last few decades, by providing some historical examples from other countries.

I was really intrigued by the history of Chile, especially reading (and afterwards searching for more information on the Internet) about Alberto Fujimori.

In the book, various concepts, that most people already know or believe in in the back of their minds, are explained such as various soft and unwritten gatekeeping rules of American politics. The political system is analyzed here and there, and that is also interesting to me since it’s very different than the one in Greece.

I will note here the “4 key indicators of authoritarian behavior”, that the authors explain.

1. Rejection of (or weak commitment to) the democratic rules of the [ political ] game.
2. Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents.
3. Toleration or encouragement of violence.
4. Readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media.

If you observe these behaviors in a government, even two of them, then they are most probably heading to the direction of being total authoritarian. Rings any bells fellow Greek people? The economic crisis, the refugee crisis, the pandemic, and now the incoming energy crisis will surely lead to more examples of this, all over Europe.

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The Phoenix Project - A Novel About IT, DevOps and Helping Your Business Win

I would only write two things about this book, and add one reflection.

Firstly, it’s an absolute must-read for every IT or DevOps person out there. Must. Read.

Secondly, it’s a very captivating read, but afterwards one should really think about it, and read it once more.

I have started reading it again immediately, but consuming it more slowly, just to really think about what’s happening in the story, and what would I do in Bill’s place. Very, very educational. I can’t but wonder which character I mostly match with, and how can I adopt characteristics from other characters.

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Walden

An all-time classic by Henry David Thoreau, describing his thoughts and experiences of his 2-year squatting on a field near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts.

Some of the quotes I have bookmarked:

“There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon”

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.”

“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that wa not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to dive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

“Men paid him wages for work, and so helped to feed and clothe him; but he never exchanged opinions with them. He was so simply and naturally humble - if he can be called humble who never aspires - that humility was no distinct quality in him, nor could he conceive of it.”

“I had some guests from those not reckoned commonly among the town’s poor, but who should be - who are among the world’s poor, at any rate - guests who appeal, not to your hospitality, but to your hospitalality; who earnestly wish to be helped, and preface their appeal with the information that they are resolved, for one thing, never to help themselves.”

“Finally, there were the self-styled reformers, the greatest bores of all, who thought that I was for ever singing, -

This is the house that I build; This is the man that lives in the house that I built;' but they did not know that the third line was, - ‘These are the folks that worry the man That lives in the house that I built.'”

“Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her. The birds with their plumage and their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside. Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth.”

“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.”

“f one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

“Give me a hammer, and let me feel for the furrowing. Do not depend on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction, - a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.”

The world of Edena

I also read this book/comic by Jean Gireaud (Moebius) that I bought in a comicshop in Utrecht. I did not enjoy it much.