Books

I'm listening to Geddy Lee's autobiography My Effin' Life, and in the 3rd chapter he tells his parents story during the Holocaust, coming from Warsaw Poland to Toronto Canada. What a gut wrenching story. I've read Primo Levi, and other Holocaust memoirs and novels. This chapter can be among them. His mother even had Josef Mengele take blood from her every day, she almost died from the effort.

I love Rush, saw them live in Madison on the Signals tour, 1982 or maybe 83. 

I'm reading Cultish, which is about cults and how they use language. 

That got me watching Wild Wild Country, a 6 part documentary on Bhagwan Rajneesh. What an amazing documentary, and what a kind book to try and treat this topic sensitively. 

The next section was on Jonestown and I watched this short video to remind me.

Here’s a quote I liked:

“Thought-terminating clichés are by no means exclusive to "cults." Ironically, calling someone "brainwashed" can even serve as a semantic stop sign. You can't engage in a dialogue with someone who says, "That person is brain-washed" or "You're in a cult." It's just not effective. I know this because every time I witness it happen on social media, the argument comes to a standstill. Once these phrases are invoked, they choke the conversation, leaving no hope of figuring out what's behind the drastic rift in belief.” (P.84)

I'm reading Walter F. Otto's book Dionysos: Mythos und Kultus, translated into English, in which he tries to give it as sympathetic reading of a cult in a positive sense.

I'm reading Stonehouse (Shiwu 1272–1352) poems. He's a hermit in the mountains. I love his poems, along with Cold Mountain (Hanshan 577–654?).