My self-actualization reading list

I am pretty much done with another set of books that I had grouped together.

The title is questionable. Even when I knew that I would bunch them together, I was thinking of them more visually, as the spot in the spreadsheet where I had listed them. Then I could think, "Yeah, those." I knew what I meant.

It is partially that they served different purposes too, with the connection between them being somewhat random, except in that they are part of my desire to fix the world. (I'm not sure if it's obvious, but that is my general goal.)

Things did not work out quite the way I thought they would, which I will get into more in a different post, but this will be about what books I decided to read and why I thought they would be helpful.

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st century, by Steven Pinker

When I read about this it was described as a style guide written by a cognitive scientist instead of a English scholar, which seemed promising. I wanted to read it because in addition to seeing how important writing and other forms of self-expression are, I have also seen that many people seen unable to describe the most basic things. Someone will be falling apart, and want to talk, but then when you ask them what is going on, or why they feel that way, they don't seem to have the tools to describe it. That is not just an impediment to communication, but also to self-comprehension. I hoped this book might give some helpful hints for getting past that, but it didn't. To be fair, that's not the book it was trying to be.

On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, by Dave Grossman

I saw an interview with Grossman while looking for something else, and thought it was fascinating so wanted to read one of his books. I chose this one largely because the library had it, but it is his most frequently cited so that worked out well.

In the interview he was talking about how the military and police have gotten around our natural aversion to killing other people by adapting their training, demonstrating that historically the majority of soldiers did not kill. With adjustments to training that has changed, rising upward noticeably in Korea and then more sharply for Vietnam and beyond, but we have not taken into account the cost of breaking down that resistance. Given my concerns about police brutality and mental health in general, and how we treat each other, this fit in well with the reading.

Peaceful Measures: Canada's Way Out of the War on Drugs by Bruce K Alexander

I'd been wanting to read something of Alexander's ever since reading about the Rat Park experiment, but old Canadian academic writing can be difficult to find. I finally got this one, and it was great. It is very academic - to bring people around who don't want all the fine details, Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari is a better option - but I like having more information, and some new things about addiction clicked for me while reading this. Obviously this is about fixing the world too.

I will say that when you read this, some of your stereotypes about how nice Canadians are get damaged. Of course, they may have learned that from us.

"A Theory of Human Motivation" by A. H. Maslow

I think deciding to include this is where I eventually started thinking of it as being about self-actualization, though it's really not. Anyway, I had certainly seen Maslow's hierarchy of needs referred to many times, and wanted to refer to the original. This was a pamphlet of a 1943 paper for Psychological Review. He refers to prior work though, so there is probably something more definitive out there. This is what I could find.

I'm not sure there were any real breakthroughs with it, but what he wrote made sense, and this is finally something by Maslow himself and not someone referring to Maslow.

Mission creep is a constant with me. There were a couple of books that I read that I did not specifically intend to be part of this list, but happened to go well with it. Those include The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, by Richard G. Wilkindon and Kate E. Pickett, and The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, by David J. Morris.

Also, there was one that I felt did need to be included.

Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village by Sarah Erdman

I wasn't sure why it felt so important, but having recently finished it, perhaps there are some important lessons there. It is a Peace Corps memoir. Her time in the village starts with good intentions but without being sure what to do and how to help. There is an early focus on AIDS that gets no traction, but it comes back after she has done other things. Still, things do get done, and it takes patience. Then, as it closes and she returns home, civil war presents a threat of undermining. So perhaps the lessons are patience, hope, and a reminder that some things are beyond your control, though not a reason not to try.

On a final note, I just want to point out that I would not be done with these books yet if I had not taken some vacation last month. Some of the things that we saw on that vacation may influence some of my thoughts as well.