Suggestion #61 in Dr. Carlson’s Don’t sweat the small stuff…and it’s all small stuff is: “Read articles and books with entirely different points of view from your own and try to learn something.”
So, I’m looking for ideas. What is your favorite book (or article, in a pinch) whose viewpoint differs from your own?
I would start with myself, but I’m afraid I fall into the trap of mostly reading things that serve to confirm my preexisting views. I’m hoping some of the responses elicited here may help me rectify that.
I can’t think of any books, but there’s an article by Jesse Bering called “Never Say Die: Why We Can’t Imagine Death”. The author thinks that death is the end, that’s it, oblivion, and I don’t. It’s still an interesting, intelligent article.
While I am agnostic at best and for all practical purposes an atheist, I love reading religious texts and often the theological fine points as well, for religions current and dead (i.e., ancient Roman/Greek/Egyptian/Near Eastern religious traditions and the amazing syncretism that went on between them). I’ve read the entire Bible, several Gnostic “Lost Books”, most of the Qu’ran, the Tao Te Ching, various Buddhist tracts, the Ramayana, debates between Martin Luther and Erasmus regarding Free Will, much of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, writings of Blaise Pascal and Descartes (as well as Empiricists like Mill or Hume). In the NYC Subway I’ve enjoyed plenty of religious material as well, usually from the Jehovah’s Witnesses (handing out “The Watchtower”) and the Jews For Jesus, and once a copy of a book given to me by the Unification Church (“The Moonies”).
I nearly stepped inside a Scientology recruiting center once to get my “free reading”, but after reading about how they hound you afterwards decided it wasn’t worth proving to myself that I was proof against whatever brainwashing techniques they had in store for me. (Plus, I could be wrong – they’ve had a lot of practice.)
Why? Because some of the most beautiful and dramatic scenes in human expression come from religious texts. All religions start from some deeply transformational experience. In every one there is some spark of insight that is worth appreciating.
In response to Robardin, I am in compete agreement with you on religious texts being fascinating reads. It is so interesting to read how and why people are brought around to believing what they do, especially as they believe in things other than what I believe.
Now, my personal suggestion to the original question would have to be the Wheel of TIme series by Robert Jordan. Some of the themes presented in there are controversial and do not adhere to my viewpoint, but I quickly became addicted.
One theorist I love to hate: Mary Daly. She’s outrageous and impossible and yet I like the way she thinks and have been known to borrow from some of her ideas while rejecting the overall context of what she’s doing with it.
Dune. I really can’t stand Frank Herbert’s attitude problem with women in power. And I always wanted the Sardarkar to gang-rape Jessica and Chani in every orifice then throw them to the Sandworms (who then promptly throw-up). That said the book is beautifully written and the speculative aspects of a far future quite interesting.
I’ll go with the entire output of James Ellroy. By his own admission he’s a police-crazed nut who likes authority way too much, but his books sure are fun to me.
I think that The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, is an impressive and intelligent book, even though I disagree entirely with the author’s mish-mash of new-agey thinking and middle school-level feminism.
Perhaps not overarching viewpoints, but often I read philosophers’ works or hardboiled detective novels where it becomes pretty clear that the concept of women as human beings has never occurred to the author. But I still occasionally enjoy the work. or gain some insight from it.
I assume P.G. Wodehouse believed that one’s social class was a fixed and immutable attribute, and that society was better off that way, but I don’t actually know that for sure. Does that count?