Hello Nina!  I had dinner at a friend's this weekend with Rabbi Fisdel -- I love the way he combines complete down-to-earthiness with high theological experience.  He was the manager of an army surplus store in Chicago which was across the street from the law firm I worked in during the 80s; I used to wander into it from time to time.  We have pretty different theological perspectives, I think.  I told the story at dinner how the most wonderful discovery for me was "Anatman," the Buddhist teaching that we don't in fact have an "Atman," the Hindu word for "soul."  The Buddhists teach long, delicate introspection during meditation to look for one's inmost soul -- the final, last discovery on this quest is that we don't have one.  We're just a hodge-podge, an agglomeration of ingredients of the whole rest of the universe.  At first this seems deflating, but actually it's inspiring and wonderful -- we don't have to worry what will happen to our souls when we die (there's no such thing), and we lose every vestige of individuality and can merge with the whole universe.  Rabbi Fisdel seemed sceptical about this idea.  I was amazed that such a subversive, radical, "modern" idea could form the core of Buddhism, such an ancient and venerable tradition.  I have the same reaction when I read Maimonides.  Take care, Sidney

The Mating Mind

Hello Diego!  I've been wondering how the semester has been going for you.  Are the trees at their most colorful now?  I always miss the East during this time.
 I'm reading a very delightful book called "The Mating Mind" by Geoffrey Miller.  It's an argument, easy to make, that the human mind developed through Sexual Selection -- by people choosing mates who they found witty and intelligent over thousands of years.  He's witty himself and quite funny.  His metaphor for the mind is not a blank slate, a computer, or a hydraulic system under pressure (Freud), but an Entertainment System.  Just like peacocks' tails have grown to be extravagant to advertise overall fitness even with a handicap, so our minds are given to extravagant fantasy and wasteful artistic activities to advertise to the opposite sex our fitness.  It seems a sensible blending of psychology and biology.

Balzac

Hello Peter!  I hope Alex wasn't too disappointed when the Yankees lost the series to the Tigers.  Was Alex Rodriguez, the fellow who struck out twice, one of his heroes?  I've started a Pilates program in the hope of holding myself up more straight -- I do feel "aligned" a little more upright than before.  I've finally gotten a hold from my parents of Francis Fukuyama's book on the Origins of Political Order, which I'm just starting.  Otherwise it's been a long biography of Honore de Balzac -- his family was just as difficult as the characters he protrays in his novels, and accounts for some of his cynicism about society.  He tried writing high-flown plays in Alexandrine couplets, which no one liked, until he got a job producing trashy romances under pseudonyms.  These taught him the rudiments of novel-writing, and then he became a success.  Take care, Sidney

=