5 books that have influenced my world view

By no means is this list exhaustive or even definitive and are listed in no particular order:

• Stolen Continents, by Ronald Wright - For me, this is the Rashomon of Books but better, because it’s not an imagined story, it’s a bunch of real events. What this book taught me is that perspective is everything. Everything. You always have to consider the source of information - and the potential motive - if you want to have any chance at getting to your truth. That is, the truth from your perspective. There is no "the truth" except for the driest of dry facts.

• A Short history of Progress, also by Ronald Wright - Yeah this guy has had some influence on me. This book told me two things. First, that there is no such thing as progress without a clearly defined objective or end point. Everything else is merely change. The second thing that it told me is that I live in a global society that is on the downside. It consumes more resources than it produces with ever more of those resources concentrated among the elite. In the past, over and over again, these have been two sure signs of imminent collapse. Imminent on a different scale than a mere lifetime. Will collapse come my lifetime? No one knows the future.

• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley - Scariest book I’ve ever read. Most people think of fascism as the “hard coercion” exemplified by Orwell’s 1984 but I see the “soft coercion” of the BNW every day. For a book written in the 1930’s there are just too many elements that are too similar to the modern world for me. I’m not saying that we are living in the BNW today but based on the time line of the book we’re on track to get there. It only got worse when I listened to a lecture by Huxley from the 1970's about how the science of psychology had determined that "soft coercion" was quantifiably much more effective than "hard coercion". More flies with honey...

• The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff - I’ve read more than a few books on religion and philosophy but this one is by far the most brilliant. The characters of the hundred acre wood were well known to me and to see Taoist philosophy explained through their actions from the original stories was great. It made me a fan of the adventure that is the river of life. Which is to say this book gave me my framework for interpreting the universe I live in. (The key is to not get bogged down in the details.)

• Hearts of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad - This is a different kind of river, the book being better than any of the movie adaptations of the theme. I would have to say that this work of fiction more than any other resonates with what I have seen as human nature. Social distance matters more than anyone wants to admit.