Tag: philosophy

nonfiction

Book Review: Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back by Mark O’Connell

Stephanie1 Comment

Sometimes a book ends up on our TBR and sits there for long enough that we forget how it ended up there in the first place (or, you know, pandemic stress just erased all that information from our brains for more important information, like, “Where did I leave my mask?” Sigh). That’s Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back by Mark O’Connell (Doubleday Books, 2020). I don’t remember how it ended up on my TBR anymore, and my library no longer had it available as an ebook, but interlibrary loan saved the day when it was up next on my TBR!

Mark O’Connell found himself obsessed with the end of the world as we know it. What would happen? How would humanity react? Would it be an asteroid or climate change or something we hadn’t yet considered? He didn’t become a prepper himself, but he began to dive into the industries that have sprung up to accommodate the fears of people who are ready to begin planning for worst-case scenarios, and Notes from an Apocalypse is the result.

In this book, Mr. O’Connell visits a community of survival bunkers in middle-of-nowhere, South Dakota. He travels to New Zealand, where rich Americans have bought up property to ride out a disaster. He investigates the prepper industry, that hotbed of American consumerism (also good for men whose wives are away and who don’t know how to cook, with those MRE-type meal packets…), and he examines the ultra-rich’s obsession with Mars colonization for when we ruin this planet too much to continue living on it. And maybe it’s exposure therapy, but in the end, he becomes a little more comfortable with not knowing what comes next.

This ended up being a really interesting book! I hadn’t given much thought to these industries in the past, so I really appreciated Mr. O’Connell putting in that thinking for me. He’s spot-on in his observations of the intersection of (toxic) masculinity and the prepper community. I hadn’t known anything about the ultra-rich (like Peter Thiel) flocking to New Zealand to buy up land (so much so that it seems New Zealand changed the laws about this; they’ve always been a difficult country to immigrate to anyway, but I’m glad they’re doing what they can to protect their land from greedy Americans), so I’m glad I’m better informed about this. And the community of underground survivalist bunkers in North Dakota? SO weird, and fascinating to learn about. (Leave me out. I’d rather the apocalypse come for me than to spend time cooped up in with the kind of people that can afford those things. Ugh.)

Notes from an Apocalypse turned out to be a quick but fascinating read, and I can already tell it’s going to be one that I think of frequently in the future. I’d love to see an updated version or another book by Mr. O’Connell about the intersection of these industries and the people who flock to them and the COVID-19 pandemic. Because we all know that the people who have spent their time planning for the worst-case scenario were the first to deny the seriousness of this pandemic…

Visit Mark O’Connell’s website here.

nonfiction

Book Review: Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine by Eric Weiner

StephanieLeave a comment

It was an episode of the podcast Judaism Unbound that clued me in to the existence of Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine by Eric Weiner (Twelve, 2011). You may be aware of Eric Weiner’s other books, including The Geography of Bliss (which I read and enjoyed years ago) and The Geography of Genius. I knew about those books and had heard of them in various places; I had never heard of this one before, and I leapt out of bed to tap the Want-to-Read button on Goodreads. I’m always interested in what a widespread spiritual search looks like, and Eric Weiner doesn’t disappoint here.

After a nurse asks him if he’s found his god yet during a hospital trip, Eric Weiner realizes…no, he hasn’t. He’s not even sure what God means. Surely someone out there has this all figured out, right? Plenty of people out there seem happy with where they’ve ended up, spiritually speaking. He makes out a list of places he finds acceptable to look, and off he trots in search of the Divine and what speaks deeply to him of it.

From Kabbalah to Buddhism, from Taoism to the group known as Raëlians, Eric Weiner travels the globe, looking for the sect to which he feels he can connect with the sacred, for a place that feels like home and an endpoint to his spiritual search. Along the way, he’s excited, weirded out, forced to examine what he thinks and feels and knows about what makes something holy. Maybe it’s more than what he previously believed, and maybe it’s not a one-size-fits-all situation, but along the way, he learns that everyone’s ‘god-shaped hole’ looks a little different…and that’s okay.

Combination travelogue and religious seeker’s journal, Man Seeks God is a fun look at some well-known and some more (or incredibly!) obscure religious groups spread far and wide throughout the world. From China to Vegas, from Israel to Nepal, you learn almost as much about the places Mr. Weiner travels to as you do about the religious sect he’s learning about in that place. And that, to me, wasn’t a bad thing. I enjoy travel memoirs, and since we can’t go anywhere these days, this was an interesting literary field trip to learn about things I hadn’t much touched on since the year I took a college Comparative Religions class (seriously the most fascinating class I’ve ever taken). The Raëlians were pretty far out, but not the most unique group I’ve ever learned about (I wish I could remember the name of the American group that wore these burqa-like coverings and wandered in a field for one of their rituals. I had never seen anything like this before and watched it over and over again!). Mr. Weiner goes into each sect with an open mind- probably far more open than I would have been able to; I’m not sure I could get down with the Raëlians, to be honest- but he writes about his experiences in a fun and funny way, all the while being as respectful as possible of the different paths and beliefs…even when most of them prove that they’re not for him.

I enjoyed this. I enjoy Mr. Weiner’s humorous-and-slightly-self-deprecating-but-still-somewhat-serious style and the look into religions that definitely aren’t for me but are still enjoyable to read about. Even when they were something he outright rejected, it was still pretty fascinating to read about the people these practices did work for. My brain doesn’t quite work in a way where Buddhism or Taoism fits me well, but reading about the teachers that Mr. Weiner learned from helped me understand these paths better. And I can’t say I knew too much about the Raëlians before this (just enough to wonder, “They’re into aliens, right?” when I saw whom the chapter covered), but now at least I’m better informed (won’t be signing up, though. Still not my thing. If it’s your thing? Party on!).

Fun fact: as I was writing up this review, I noticed Eric Weiner’s latest book on Goodreads, The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers. I’d never heard of this book before, but thought it sounded interesting, as philosophy is a subject I’ve always thought I should read more about. About twenty minutes after that, I was scrolling through my Facebook feed while eating dinner (I’m the only person in the house who wants to eat dinner at the table; alas, I have been outvoted) and found someone from a podcast group had posted a picture of books in a library display. In that display? The Socrates Express. I love when this stuff happens.

Visit Eric Weiner’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.