THE CHAOS THEORY

“Kafka on the Shore” by Haruki Murakami

How do you enthusiastically describe one of the weirdest stories ever written, but without spoiling any details?

You know a book is special when the mood of the book spilled over to your real life unconsciously. That’s how it felt for me during the 4 days I’m reading this book. It was as if I live in a dream state filled with omens, where nothing is concrete and time is none existent, where life is actually a metaphor.

This strange feeling is derived from the incredible story about a boy that gave himself the nickname Kafka, who ran away from home at the age of 15 and travelled to a faraway town of Takamatsu in the Shikoku island. No friends, no family, just himself in an unfamiliar place. The boy had no clue why he chose Takamatsu of all places, a small town miles away from his home in Tokyo. But as the story progresses, we will see that it was exactly where he is supposed to be.

It is a story filled with wonder and contemplation, with cluelessness and doubts, with sophisticated conversations about the meaning of life, of love and lost, of dealing with pain, and the existentialist question of who we are and what our purpose in life is.

These themes are portrayed through the strongest of characters in the book, a dumb simpleton, a crazy artist, a meticulous androgyny, a grieving soul, and more; all wrapped in a highly intriguing narrative with riddles that makes it hard to predict what will come next.

Two narratives, in fact, where from the beginning the book tells two separate stories intermittently between the chapters with one story in odd chapters and the other in even chapters: one is about a young boy looking ahead and the other is about an old man looking behind, both of whom will never meet with each other, but with a significant crossover of their stories in few chapters before they brilliantly went to their separate paths again.

Moreover, this book is also a projection of Murakami’s vast knowledge on literature. You see, for a 15 year-old Kafka is a stand up guy that can take care of himself, he’s pretty disciplined about his health and his fitness, but the number one thing that is most appealing about him is his love for reading books. In fact, the first thing he seeks when arriving at Takamatsu was the fabled private library, the Komura Memorial Library. And through his conversation with the highly knowledgeable librarian (that he eventually befriended) we get to learn about Murakami’s interpretation of the works of Natsume Soseki, the Tale of Genji, lessons from the Egyptian mythology, Shakespeare, Beethoven, and many more, including lessons from a trial of an ex Nazi officer, and of course the worldview of Franz Kafka that becomes the existentialist basis of this book.

Through all of this, the book shows the ability to dive deep into complicated topics without losing the easy-to-read narrative of the main story, where the breezy narrative is strong enough to withstand even several plot twists, which is a signature style of Murakami’s.

Hence, if this is a movie, this would probably be a Tim Burton movie, with all the out-of-the-world imaginations and symbolisms that don’t always make sense. It has everything, from a gripping beginning, to a sophisticated middle, and with bizarre twists at the last few chapters; all of which shows that “Kafka on the Shore” is one big modern-day Greek tragedy, as clearly explained by Oshima. It’s messy, it’s grotesque, it’s hella confusing at times with several things never explained, and with unexpected violence and taboo-breaking acts that will make your heart pound and your mind goes WTF?!

Brilliant, just brilliant!

“Transcending the Levels of Consciousness: The Stairway to Enlightenment” by David R. Hawkins, M.D., PhD

This book sits right at the border between spiritual mumbo jumbo and science. It is presented as a thesis of a serious research that dived deep into the science of consciousness, by a researcher who is a psychiatrist, a clinician, and then a self-proclaimed spiritual teacher even though he is openly an agnostic.

That’s right, it is one of those books where the author simultaneously talking about spirituality but berating religion that introduced the spirituality.

In this book Dr. Hawkins addresses the many different levels of consciousness, where he heavily uses a numbered scale that looks impressive at first, but then become questionable due to the fact that he never explained where he got the numbers from. This makes the numbers and figures highly subjective.

Here’s an example, using a scale of 1-1000 (with 1 as the lowest and 1000 as the highest level, while 200 marks the benchmark level for attaining consciousness): “The calibrated consciousness level of humans evolved slowly. At the time of the birth of the Buddha, the collective consciousness of all of mankind calibrated at 90. It then rose to 100 by the time of the birth of Jesus Christ and slowly evolved over the last two millennia to 190, where it stayed for many centuries, until the late 1980s. Then, at about the time of the Harmonic Convergence in the late 1980s, it suddenly jumped from 190 to 204-205, where it stayed until November 2003, when again, it suddenly jumped from 205 to its current level of 207. At the present time, approximately seventy-eight percent of all humanity calibrates below consciousness level 200, although that figure is only forty-nine percent in America. The significance is that the consciousness level of close to eighty percent of the world’s population is still below 200 and therefore dominated by primitive animal instincts, motivations, and behaviors (as reflected in the nightly news).”

So, first of all how can he quantify the COLLECTIVE consciousness of ALL mankind during the time of the Buddha? Then how can he measure the growth to 100 by the time of Jesus Christ as if it’s like a stock price movement that we can monitor on a screen, and to 204-205 in a very specific date November 2003 (that he never care to explain – spoiler alert: after further research, it was a Harmonic Concordance event in New York that he of course attended)? And what is the methodology behind his conclusion that the consciousness level of 80% of the world population is still below 200? He even presented a table with the level of consciousness of animals, again without explaining how he got the numbers from.

Which brings us to the next question, if Dr. Hawkins did not write this book using the scientific approach (with the sequence of: thesis, data gathering, findings or the interpretation of data, and then conclusion), and instead he jumps right to conclusion using the made up data that magically appears without explanation, why did he has to present his thesis as science? I suspect, to give credibility to his bland spiritual teachings.

Here’s more consciousness (or calibration) levels according to Dr. Hawkins, on a same scale of 1-1000: Bacteria 1, fish 20, reptiles 40, birds 105, wolves 190, deer 205 (is he telling us that the consciousness of 80% of world population is lower than a deer?), cats 240, family cat 245, cat’s purr 500 (no idea why), and a whole bunch of others. Meanwhile, Homo Sapiens 600,000 years ago was 80-85, the allegory of Adam and Eve calibrates at 70, Socrates’ statement calibrates at 700, megalomaniac leaders such as Hitler and Napoleon were in the 400s at first and then crashed, Yasser Arafat went from 440 to 65 because “peace would be the greatest threat possible” (sure, not biased at all), while he actually said skeptics have consciousness level below 200 (implying that we shouldn’t question his methods).

Moreover, according to Dr. Hawkins the consciousness level of Karl Marx is 130, Thomas Aquinas 460, Galileo 485, Aristotle 498, Newton 499, Marcus Aurelius 445, Shakespeare 465, Darwin 450, Einstein 449, Lao Tzu 610, Mahatma Gandhi in his 700s, Mother Teresa 710, the Buddha 1000 (of course), he even labelled the consciousness level of God, but at infinity level (I swear it’s like my kid assigning power levels to his imaginary play, with Gen-Z lingo of plus aura or minus aura). And Dr. Hawkins’s own teachings? From other sources outside this book, we can find that his books calibrate from 850-999.5 ranges! More than the level of Catholicism 510, the energy level of Christmas 535, Kabbalah 605, Ramayana 810, and far exceeded any other 20th century spiritual guru.

To be fair, there are some good psychological textbook contents in the book, especially when Dr. Hawkins refer to Freudian theories, while if we strip away the calibration levels of the various emotions from greed, fear, anger, all the way to love; his arguments actually make psychological sense. But when he does that, he uses unnecessarily big words to describe something simple. And then afterwards he often proceeded to write something factually absurd, such as his argument that a kamikaze pilot is suicidal in nature (yes the end goal is death, but it’s not performed by a depressed person but rather by a person with a sacrifice mission to destroy the enemy. More Patriotism, less “act of despair”).

He also criticizes “organized [Western] religion” quite often, but ironically using very weak examples to make his points, which shows the shallow depth of his understanding of religion (they all do, even Sam Harris, nay, especially Sam Harris). And not to mention his gross corruption of the sacred teachings of the [Eastern] Vedic spirituality, where he weirdly tried to blend his cliche interpretation of spirituality with his version of subjective science.

“Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld” by T. J. English

This is an incredibly violent history of jazz music and its tight relationship with the criminal underworld.

It is the story of a turbulent and harsh era in America, where according to the statistics by Tuskegee Institute between 1882 and 1912 there were 2329 instances of lynching of black people; horrors that created the tales of hardship that became the basis of the soul of jazz music.

As the author T. J. English wrote right at the beginning of the introduction, “[t]here is a reason that “Strange Fruit” still stands as the seminal jazz song. Written by Abel Meeropol in 1937 and sung so memorably by Billie Holiday two years later, it beckons from the great beyond, elliptical and haunting. The song is both a ballad and a primal scream, an aching tone poem that carries with it the deep, heart-wrenching emotionalism of the blues, as well as the lucid, steely observationalism of someone who has been a witness to history. In form and content, it is a brutal diagnosis of the human condition in B-flat minor. That this song speaks for jazz at the core of its being is no accident.”

This partly explains why jazz music has this sad vibe to it, and a relatively somber tone.

English then continues, ““Strange Fruit” finds its power in the perverse metaphoric imagery of “Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees . . .” Blood on the leaves, blood at the root. It is a song about lynching. And it is a song about America.”

It is in this kind of environment that the story of jazz began, in part 1 of the book, with Louis Armstrong as one of the main vantage points. It is when jazz musicians in New Orleans were given their first big breaks at venues owned by the mobsters, such as in whorehouses, clubs, honky-tonks, speakeasies, etc. That’s right, you cannot separate the history of jazz from the history of the mobsters, because their respective existance depend on each others.

As English elaborates, “[y]ou cannot understand America without knowing the history of jazz—or the mob. Taken together, they are part of the country’s origin story, symphonically intertwined, like an orchestral extravaganza by Ellington, with harmonic complexity, rich tonal shadings, dissonance, syncopation, and all the other elements that make a piece of music resonate in the imagination and remain timeless. Through the striving of numerous musicians, club owners, record label executives, and gangsters chronicled in this book, the contrapuntal groove between jazz and the underworld emerges as the heartbeat—and the backbeat—to the American Dream.”

Indeed, jazz is not a rigid music that is carefully created in conservatories or academies. But it is a freedom music with free-flowing improvs that mostly developed at night and became associated with vice – whorehouses, drinking, gambling, and artful carousing – which makes it the music of the people.

And this world fits both jazz musicians and mobsters, where during the age of segregation, mob-owned whorehouses and clubs became the safe space for all to mingle and interact, regardless of skin colour. As English remarks, “[t]he average Black musician had less to fear from an Italian mafioso inside a club than he did from the average white cracker out on the street. The early twentieth-century musician had less to fear from a gangster than he did from a policeman. For people in the jazz world, the bordello and the honky-tonk were a source of refuge from a society where, among other threats and indignities, lynching was an ongoing nightmare, and had been for generations.”

The book then elaborates on this in a massive scale; by telling the legends and stories of a cast of characters along the revolution of the music, through the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War 2 era, all the way to the 1950s and 60s. First in Kansas City where jazz first branched out from New Orleans, then to Chicago and New York, before it spread everywhere to the likes of St. Louis, Pittsburg, Denver, all the way to the west coast in Southern California, and eventually Las Vegas, even to Cuba (which would gave birth to Latin Jazz).

The cast of characters are, on the musical side: Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Prima, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, Harry Belafonte, to name a few; including Frank Sinatra as the primary vantage point in the story in part 2, and cameos from the likes of Stan Getz, Ella Fitzgerald, Quincy Jones, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, and Charles Mingus.

On the criminal underworld side: Al Capone, Legs Diamond, Owney Madden, Bugsy Siegel, Frank Costello, Johnny D’Angelo, Mickey Cohen, the Gallo brothers, Vinnie the Chin, Tommy Eboli, and many, many more. The book also covers the stories of notorious club owners and talent managers, such as Jules Podell, Morris Levy, and Joe Glaser, all of whom walked the blurry line between legitimate capitalism of the upperworld and the criminal underworld.

However, the interracial tollerance in the New Orleans days did not last long. Especially in the 1950s and 60s when racism became more blatant and mob violence increasingly got more brutal. And along with the evolution of the music, came new waves of problems: While in the old days if people wanted to hear a musician sings they needed to go to the club where the singer performs, in the 50s and 60s this arrangement gradually changed with the invention of vinyl records and jukebox. And thus the mobsters also got increasingly involved in the nasty battle to control the records, the distribution channels, and even the jukeboxes. And this book shows how this was brutally executed.

The book ended with a bit of a sour note, where by the late 1960s and 1970s the popularity of jazz music started to dwindle. And as its profitability declined, the mob also slowly left the industry in seach of other fish to fry. And by the 1980s, during the major prosecutions for mobsters, there was no longer a relationship with the jazz world. And so jazz – the real jazz as we originally know it – was never the same again.

All in all, this is one of the most impressive histories of a music genre ever written, narrated in a clear and concise manner despite the complicated multi-decades affairs that mimick the complexity of jazz chords and improvs. If only every music genre have this kind of biography. I really enjoyed reading it so much, while listening to the old jazz tunes from every single one of those eras.

“Notes From the Underground” by Fyodor Dostoevsky

This is a book that many considered as the first existentialist novel. The book is written in a first-person account by an unnamed narrator, a very minor clerk in the Civil Service who hated his mediocre job and only works in order to eat, who then decided to retire early after a distant relative passed away and leave him 6000 Ruble in the will.

And thus the narrator begins to live a life of inactivity and contemplation, writing in this rants or musings about his life and general observations, often in a bitter, cynical, and sometimes witty tones. It is a writing, as the fictitious narrator claims, only intended for himself and not to be shared with anyone else.

Perhaps the beauty of this book is that it’s not narrated by a saint with moral high ground, but an isolating (hence, “underground”) loser full of intoxicating spite, who has a humiliating social encounter with old schoolmates, and a weird pursue towards a prostitute half his age whom he both attracted to and repelled by. I.e. a broken angry man with a lot of complications.

It is through this unique vantage point that we can see an honest criticism about society, the dilemma between hating everyone he meets and the bitterness of being an outcast, a dilemma between yearning for a sense of connection to the world and at the same time wanting for total detachment and free-will from society.

Indeed, the book is a brilliant criticism of contemporary philosophies on rationalism and free-will, where Dostoevsky actually wrote it in response to Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s novel “What Is to Be Done” that argued a utopian society can be constructed on natural laws of rational self-interest, that if such society is constructed humanity will no longer have the problem of evilness.

In this anti-thesis, Dostoevsky then argued that in asserting free-will people actually often act against self-interest, that people are willing to exercise free-will even if it goes against their best interest hence people will do things that aren’t aligned with those laws of nature (aka rebellion); which is demonstrated in part 2 of the book where the narrator gets into several conflicts. The narrator ultimately suggests that we can choose happiness (in the form of self-interest) or freedom (free-will) as our goal, but not both. This is why utopia never realised.

Funny how perspectives from 1864 can be so relatable even today in 2024, especially Part 1 of the book where Dostoevsky wrote down his core arguments, before illustrating it in the examples in part 2.

In a sheer coincidence I’m reading this book at the age of 41, just one year over the age of the narrator at 40, or 2 years younger than Dostoevsky when he wrote this book at 43. And I’m glad that I only begin to read it in my 40s because I’m at that age where I can really relate with his observations, just as I started to feel how unequal the world is and how there’s just so much bullshit going on; with my tolerance towards the cheaters, the liars, the backstabbers of the world is wearing thin; while still enjoying the connections with society as a whole.

“Nuking the Moon: And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board” by Vince Houghton

This is a hilarious book about things that never happened. It is about those weird inventions that were almost created by America’s first intelligence agency (Office of Strategic Services (1942-1945)), its successor the CIA, as well as the bizarre operations ideas by the military, all during the fight against the Axis forces in World War 2 and the proceeding Cold War.

Yes, intelligence weapons. We’re talking about James Bond’s Q type of gadgets and military grade weaponries that have the invention of U-2 and SR-71 spy planes among the rare success stories (relative to the sheer amount of ideas), with “rare” as the key word here.

““Outcome history” is the traditional way of viewing historical events,” the author Vince Houghton remarks, “but it leaves much to be desired. It has severe limitations, primarily because its lessons are predicated on things that cannot be accurately quantified: fate, luck, misfortune, whatever you want to call it.”

Houghton then elaborates, “if the D-Day invasion of Normandy had failed because of a freak weather system, or a lucky shot from a German soldier that took out a key American leader on the beach (or any number of other misfortunate scenarios), would we think any less of Eisenhower’s plan? Using outcome-based history: yes. And therein lies the problem. Intent can be a very powerful tool for historians.”

Hence, the fresh approach of this book that uses not the outcome of history, not the alternate version of history, but the intent of what could have happened but never did. And the list of intent is long (like long, long). And reading it is like having a wild journey into the wacky and bizarre that will make us think “what the hell were they thinking?”

We’re talking about projects, missions, operations, and technology that they were seriously thinking about, but they’re either too risky, too expensive, too dangerous, way ahead of their time, or simply too dumb.

Inventions and operations such as: acoustic kitty, synthetic goat poop, cat suicide bomber, bat missiles, sun gun, giant inflatable balloon that looks like an omen in Shintoism, a chicken utilized as a thermoregulated weapon, an idea to create artificial tsunami, an operation involving digging a tunnel near the Soviet embassy, or covert air bases using not giant ships but floating icebergs.

It is also about the staggering 638 times the CIA tried (and failed) to assassinate Fidel Castro, plan to spike Hitler’s food with female hormones to make “his mustache fall out and his voice turn soprano”, a device they called Dyna-Soar (yeah I know, dinosaur), another one called the Ballistic Missile Boost Intercepts Project (or BaMBI), and many, many more, including the most bizarre idea of them all that becomes the title of the book, the plan to nuke the moon (with a contribution by Carl Sagan. Yes, THAT Carl Sagan).

And you know what the messed up part is? They’re all true stories!

Perhaps the most unsuspecting part of the book is where Houghton actually explains the science and technicality of the devices and operations, while also providing the full historical context for the intent of usage of the devices. Which makes this book not only highly amusing, but also very informative.

He is, after all, the historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, who earned a PhD in Diplomatic and Military History from the University of Maryland. And it shows in the quality of the book, a mix of expertise and madness that made me learn a lot and laugh a lot along the way. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book.

“Wahyu Yang Hilang Negeri Yang Guncang” by Ong Hok Ham

This is an excellent book on Indonesian history, broken down into 70 angles from 70 different articles that the author Ong Hok Ham wrote for Tempo magazine, in the span of 26 years from 1976 to 2002.

The articles consist of Ong’s signature blend of wide range of knowledge, skepticism, and wit, as well as his ability to make dull subjects into exciting stories that will make the reading experience truly enjoyable.

They tell the tales of sorcery for leaders, how some sultans are treated like a deity, the structures and customs of Javanese kingdoms, Jayabaya prophecies, the difference between agrarian kingdom and coastal kingdom, who are those “priayi” (or nobility class) really are, the complicated succession plans in different kingdoms (and the Dutch’s involvements), how the Dutch created the Chinese capitalist class in Hindia, on taxation, and a lot more in between, including the clearest ever explanation about the geopolitics of World War 1.

Moreover, although the 70 articles were stand-alone writings, the editor of the book has somehow brilliantly managed to organized them up into a connected flow under several major themes: 1. The concept and myth of power 2. Corruption and bureaucracy among those in power 3. Economy 4. Political changes and violence 5. Military and war 6. Indonesian nationalism 7. Other countries’ affairs 8. Social changes and other matters.

Overall, it is one of the most complete historical accounts of Indonesia, simply due to the format of article that allows Ong the freedom away from the usual structure of beginning-till-now narrative that most historical books are tied to. And instead, he was able to build a big picture view of Indonesia, from covering multiple topics and analyze them one by one.

“Influence” by Robert Cialdini

I first learned about this book from none other than Charlie Munger (it’s his favourite book), which prompted me to start listening to few podcast interviews with Dr. Robert Cialdini to get the sense of who he is and what this magnum opus of his is all about. Suffice to say that I was intrigued and instantly bought this book.

That was 7 years ago. Life flashes by, and I somehow “never had the time” to read this book, although I had time to read literally hundreds others. But I guess I wasn’t ready to read this book back then, no matter how much I wanted to. But my God it was worth the wait.

This is a very scientific book, which evolves around Dr. Cialdini’s profession as an experimental social psychologist specializing on the psychology of compliance. It serves to answer “which psychological principles influence the tendency to comply with a request.”

And in what I suspect interested Charlie Munger the most is that Dr. Cialdini broaden the scope of this “investigation” into the business world, where he interviewed and closely observed compliance professionals, in sales, advertising, public relations and even charity organization, to make his findings not just limited in the proximity of university testing but directly applicable in the market place.

And the result? “Although there are thousands of different tactics that compliance practitioners employ to produce yes,” Dr. Cialdini remarks, “the majority fall within six basic categories. Each of these categories is governed by a fundamental psychological principle that directs human behavior and, in so doing, gives the tactics their power.”

The 6 categories are: reciprocation, consistency, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity (note: in the updated version of the book the principles are changed into 7: the original reciprocation, consistency, social proof, authority, scarcity; and he edited liking into unity and sympathy. But for this review I will stick with the original 6 because I read the earlier version of the book).

Dr. Cialdini then provides a lot of intriguing stories that highlight these 6 categories in real life action – from the inner workings of a religious cult, to the social approval of using pre-recorded laughter at a sit-com, how to rig a horse race bet using fake social validation, to the methods used to indoctrinate a prisoner of war, and many more – and explains them using psychological experiments (and not those cliche psychological anecdotes like the Marshmallow Test) with an equally incredible elaboration on the findings.

The result is a well-rounded in-depth analysis over these 6 categories that made my head hurts when reading this book (in a good way).

Here are some of the most important quotes from the book:

1. A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.
2. Retail clothiers are a good example. Suppose a man enters a fashionable men’s store and says that he wants to buy a three-piece suit and a sweater. If you were the salesperson, which would you show him first to make him likely to spend the most money? Clothing stores instruct their sales personnel to sell the costly item first. Common sense might suggest the reverse: If a man has just spent a lot of money to purchase a suit, he may be reluctant to spend very much more on the purchase of a sweater. But the clothiers know better. They behave in accordance with what the contrast principle would suggest: Sell the suit first, because when it comes time to look at sweaters, even expensive ones, their prices will not seem as high in comparison.
3. One thing I quickly noticed was that whenever Phil began showing a new set of customers potential buys, he would start with a couple of undesirable houses. I asked him about it, and he laughed. They were what he called “setup” properties. The company maintained a run-down house or two on its lists at inflated prices. These houses were not intended to be sold to customers but to be shown to them, so that the genuine properties in the company’s inventory would benefit from the comparison.
4. Automobile dealers use the contrast principle by waiting until the price for a new car has been negotiated before suggesting one option after another that might be added.
5. While small in scope, this study nicely shows the action of one of the most potent of the weapons of influence around us—the rule for reciprocation. The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us.
6. Despite the enormous needs prevailing in Ethiopia, the money was being sent because Mexico had sent aid to Ethiopia in 1935, when it was invaded by Italy. So informed, I remained awed, but I was no longer puzzled. The need to reciprocate had transcended great cultural differences, long distances, acute famine, and immediate self-interest. Quite simply, a half century later, against all countervailing forces, obligation triumphed.
7. People we might ordinarily dislike—unsavory or unwelcome sales operators, disagreeable acquaintances, representatives of strange or unpopular organizations—can greatly increase the chance that we will do what they wish merely by providing us with a small favor prior to their requests.
8. Political analysts were amazed at Lyndon Johnson’s ability to get so many of his programs through Congress during his early administration. Even members of congress who were thought to be strongly opposed to the proposals were voting for them. Close examination by political scientists has found the cause to be not so much Johnson’s political savvy as the large score of favors he had been able to provide to other legislators during his many years of power in the House and Senate. As President, he was able to produce a truly remarkable amount of legislation in a short time by calling in those favors.
9. It is interesting that this same process may account for the problems Jimmy Carter had in getting his programs through Congress during his early administration, despite heavy Democratic majorities in both House and Senate. Carter came to the presidency from outside the Capitol Hill establishment. He campaigned on his outside-Washington identity, saying that he was indebted to no one there. Much of his legislative difficulty upon arriving may be traced to the fact that no one there was indebted to him.
10. The beauty of the free sample, however, is that it is also a gift and, as such, can engage the reciprocity rule.
11. A highly effective variation on this marketing procedure is illustrated in the case, cited by Vance Packard in The Hidden Persuaders, of the Indiana supermarket operator who sold an astounding one thousand pounds of cheese in a few hours one day by putting out the cheese and inviting customers to cut off slivers for themselves as free samples.
12. The frightened captive with only a piece of bread in his hand then performed what may have been the most important act of his life. He gave his enemy some of the bread. So affected was the German by this gift that he could not complete his mission. He turned from his benefactor and recrossed the no-man’s-land empty-handed to face the wrath of his superiors.
13. There is another aspect of the rule, besides its power, that allows this phenomenon to occur. Another person can trigger a feeling of indebtedness by doing us an uninvited favor.
14. A person who violates the reciprocity rule by accepting without attempting to return the good acts of others is actively disliked by the social group.
15. Another consequence of the rule, however, is an obligation to make a concession to someone who has made a concession to us.
16. The percentage of successful door-to-door sales increases impressively when the sales operator is able to mention the name of a familiar person who “recommended” the sales visit.
17. If I want you to lend me five dollars, I can make it seem like a smaller request by first asking you to lend me ten dollars. One of the beauties of this tactic is that by first requesting ten dollars and then retreating to five dollars, I will have simultaneously engaged the force of the reciprocity rule and the contrast principle. Not only will my five-dollar request be viewed as a concession to be reciprocated, it will also look to you like a smaller request than if I had just asked for it straightaway.
18. A person who feels responsible for the terms of a contract will be more likely to live up to that contract.
19. It is essential to recognize that the requester who invokes the reciprocation rule (or any other weapon of influence) to gain our compliance is not the real opponent. Such a requester has chosen to become a jujitsu warrior who aligns himself with the sweeping power of reciprocation and then merely releases that power by providing a first favor or concession. The real opponent is the rule.
20. Perhaps we can avoid a confrontation with the rule by refusing to allow the requester to commission its force against us in the first place.
21. The rule says that favors are to be met with favors; it does not require that tricks be met with favors.
22. Psychologists have long understood the power of the consistency principle to direct human action. Prominent theorists such as Leon Festinger, Fritz Hieder, and Theodore Newcomb have viewed the desire for consistency as a central motivator of our behavior. But is this tendency to be consistent really strong enough to compel us to do what we ordinarily would not want to do? There is no question about it.
23. The drive to be (and look) consistent constitutes a highly potent weapon of social influence, often causing us to act in ways that are clearly contrary to our own best interests.
24. In these incidents, before taking his stroll, the accomplice would simply ask the subject to please “watch my things,” which each of them agreed to do. Now, propelled by the rule for consistency, nineteen of the twenty subjects became virtual vigilantes, running after and stopping the thief, demanding an explanation, and often restraining the thief physically or snatching the radio away.
25. But because it is so typically in our best interests to be consistent, we easily fall into the habit of being automatically so, even in situations where it is not the sensible way to be. When it occurs unthinkingly, consistency can be disastrous. Nonetheless, even blind consistency has its attractions.
26. First, like most other forms of automatic responding, it offers a shortcut through the density of modern life. Once we have made up our minds about an issue, stubborn consistency allows us a very appealing luxury: We really don’t have to think hard about the issue anymore. We don’t have to sift through the blizzard of information we encounter every day to identify relevant facts; we don’t have to expend the mental energy to weigh the pros and cons; we don’t have to make any further tough decisions.
27. The allure of such a luxury is not to be minimized. It allows us a convenient, relatively effortless, and efficient method for dealing with complex daily environments that make severe demands on our mental energies and capacities. It is not hard to understand, then, why automatic consistency is a difficult reaction to curb. It offers us a way to evade the rigors of continuing thought.
28. There is a second, more perverse attraction of mechanical consistency as well. Sometimes it is not the effort of hard, cognitive work that makes us shirk thoughtful activity, but the harsh consequences of that activity. Sometimes it is the cursedly clear and unwelcome set of answers provided by straight thinking that makes us mental slackers. There are certain disturbing things we simply would rather not realize.
29. If, as it appears, automatic consistency functions as a shield against thought, it should not be surprising that such consistency can also be exploited by those who would prefer that we not think too much in response to their requests for our compliance.
30. “No psychic powers; I just happen to know how several of the big toy companies jack up their January and February sales. They start prior to Christmas with attractive TV ads for certain special toys. The kids, naturally, want what they see and extract Christmas promises for these items from their parents. Now here’s where the genius of the companies’ plan comes in: They undersupply the stores with the toys they’ve gotten the parents to promise. Most parents find those things sold out and are forced to substitute other toys of equal value. The toy manufacturers, of course, make a point of supplying the stores with plenty of these substitutes. Then, after Christmas, the companies start running the ads again for the other, special toys. That juices up the kids to want those toys more than ever. They go running to their parents whining, ‘You promised, you promised,’ and the adults go trudging off to the store to live up dutifully to their words.”
31. For instance, prisoners were frequently asked to make statements so mildly anti-American or pro-Communist as to seem inconsequential (“The United States is not perfect.” “In a Communist country, unemployment is not a problem.”). But once these minor requests were complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to related yet more substantive requests. A man who had just agreed with his Chinese interrogator that the United States is not perfect might then be asked to indicate some of the ways in which he thought this was the case. Once he had so explained himself, he might be asked to make a list of these “problems with America” and to sign his name to it. Later he might be asked to read his list in a discussion group with other prisoners. “After all, it’s what you really believe, isn’t it?” Still later he might be asked to write an essay expanding on his list and discussing these problems in greater detail.
32. The tactic of starting with a little request in order to gain eventual compliance with related larger requests has a name: the foot-in-the-door technique.
33. What may occur is a change in the person’s feelings about getting involved or taking action. Once he has agreed to a request, his attitude may change, he may become, in his own eyes, the kind of person who does this sort of thing, who agrees to requests made by strangers, who takes action on things he believes in, who cooperates with good causes.
34. What the Freedman and Fraser findings tell us, then, is to be very careful about agreeing to trivial requests. Such an agreement can not only increase our compliance with very similar, much larger requests, it can also make us more willing to perform a variety of larger favors that are only remotely connected to the little one we did earlier.
35. Notice that all of the foot-in-the-door experts seem to be excited about the same thing: You can use small commitments to manipulate a person’s self-image; you can use them to turn citizens into “public servants,” prospects into “customers,” prisoners into “collaborators.” And once you’ve got a man’s self-image where you want it, he should comply naturally with a whole range of your requests that are consistent with this view of himself.
36. A second advantage of a written testament is that it can be shown to other people. Of course, that means it can be used to persuade those people. It can persuade them to change their own attitudes in the direction of the statement. But more important for the purpose of commitment, it can persuade them that the author genuinely believes what was written.
37. People have a natural tendency to think that a statement reflects the true attitude of the person who made it. What is surprising is that they continue to think so even when they know that the person did not freely choose to make the statement.
38. Even though they had committed themselves under the most anonymous of circumstances, the act of writing down their first judgments caused them to resist the influence of contradictory new data and to remain consistent with the preliminary choices.
39. Now the harassments, the exertions, even the beatings of initiation rituals begin to make sense. The Thonga tribesman watching, with tears in his eyes, his ten-year-old son tremble through a night on the cold ground of the “yard of mysteries,” the college sophomore punctuating his Hell Night paddling of his fraternity “little brother” with bursts of nervous laughter—these are not acts of sadism. They are acts of group survival. They function, oddly enough, to spur future society members to find the group more attractive and worthwhile. As long as it is the case that people like and believe in what they have struggled to get, these groups will continue to arrange effortful and troublesome initiation rites. The loyalty and dedication of those who emerge will increase to a great degree the chances of group cohesiveness and survival.
40. Indeed, one study of fifty-four tribal cultures found that those with the most dramatic and stringent initiation ceremonies were those with the greatest group solidarity.
41. It appears that commitments are most effective in changing a person’s self-image and future behavior when they are active, public, and effortful.
42. Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures. A large reward is one such external pressure. It may get us to perform a certain action, but it won’t get us to accept inner responsibility for the act. Consequently, we won’t feel committed to it. The same is true of a strong threat; it may motivate immediate compliance, but it is unlikely to produce long-term commitment.
43. All this has important implications for rearing children. It suggests that we should never heavily bribe or threaten our children to do the things we want them truly to believe in. Such pressures will probably produce temporary compliance with our wishes. However, if we want more than just that, if we want the children to believe in the correctness of what they have done, if we want them to continue to perform the desired behavior when we are not present to apply those outside pressures, then we must somehow arrange for them to accept inner responsibility for the actions we want them to take.
44. No matter which variety of lowballing is used, the sequence is the same: An advantage is offered that induces a favorable purchase decision; then, sometime after the decision has been made but before the bargain is sealed, the original purchase advantage is deftly removed.
45. As a general guiding principle, more information is always better than less information.
46. The first sort of signal is easy to recognize. It occurs right in the pit of our stomachs when we realize we are trapped into complying with a request we know we don’t want to perform.
47. The reason this tactic worked so effectively is because once small commitments have been made (in this case, giving a kiss), people tend to add justifications to support the commitment and then are willing to commit themselves further.
48. The introduction of laugh tracks into their comic programming will increase the humorous and appreciative responses of an audience, even—and especially—when the material is of poor quality.
49. To discover why canned laughter is so effective, we first need to understand the nature of yet another potent weapon of influence: the principle of social proof. It states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct.
50. Usually, when a lot of people are doing something, it is the right thing to do. This feature of the principle of social proof is simultaneously its major strength and its major weakness.
51. Bartenders often “salt” their tip jars with a few dollar bills at the beginning of the evening to simulate tips left by prior customers and thereby to give the impression that tipping with folding money is proper barroom behavior. Church ushers sometimes salt collection baskets for the same reason and with the same positive effect on proceeds.
52. Advertisers love to inform us when a product is the “fastest-growing” or “largest-selling” because they don’t have to convince us directly that the product is good, they need only say that many others think so, which seems proof enough.
53. Sales and motivation consultant Cavett Robert captures the principle nicely in his advice to sales trainees: “Since 95 percent of the people are imitators and only 5 percent initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer.”
54. The principle of social proof says so: The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct.
55. In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct.
56. We will use the actions of others to decide on proper behavior for ourselves, especially when we view those others as similar to ourselves.
57. We most prefer to say yes to the requests of someone we know and like. What might be startling to note, however, is that this simple rule is used in hundreds of ways by total strangers to get us to comply with their requests.
58. By providing the hostess with a percentage of the take, the Tupperware Home Parties Corporation arranges for its customers to buy from and for a friend rather than an unknown salesperson. In this way, the attraction, the warmth, the security, and the obligation of friendship are brought to bear on the sales setting.
59. For twelve years straight, he won the title as the “number one car salesman”; he averaged more than five cars and trucks sold every day he worked; and he has been called the world’s “greatest car salesman” by the Guinness Book of World Records. For all his success, the formula he employed was surprisingly simple. It consisted of offering people just two things: a fair price and someone they liked to buy from. “And that’s it,” he claimed in an interview. “Finding the salesman they like, plus the price; put them both together, and you get a deal.”
60. One researcher who examined the sales records of insurance companies found that customers were more likely to buy insurance when the salesperson was like them in such areas as age, religion, politics, and cigarette-smoking habits.
61. Joe understands an important fact about human nature: We are phenomenal suckers for flattery. Although there are limits to our gullibility—especially when we can be sure that the flatterer is trying to manipulate us—we tend, as a rule, to believe praise and to like those who provide it, oftentimes when it is clearly false.
62. A fact that is as true today as it was in the time of ancient Persia, or, for that matter, in the time of Shakespeare, who captured the essence of it with one vivid line. “The nature of bad news,” he said, “infects the teller.”
63. There is a natural human tendency to dislike a person who brings us unpleasant information, even when that person did not cause the bad news. The simple association with it is enough to stimulate our dislike.
64. It is possible to attach this pleasant feeling, this positive attitude, to anything (political statements being only an example) that is closely associated with good food.
65. If it is true that, to make ourselves look good, we try to bask in the reflected glory of the successes we are even remotely associated with, a provocative implication emerges: We will be most likely to use this approach when we feel that we don’t look so good. Whenever our public image is damaged, we will experience an increased desire to restore that image by trumpeting our ties to successful others.
66. According to Milgram, the real culprit in the experiments was his subject’s inability to defy the wishes of the boss of the study—the lab-coated researcher who urged and, if need be, directed the subjects to perform their duties, despite the emotional and physical mayhem they were causing.
67. In half of the instances, the requester—a young man—was dressed in normal street clothes; the rest of the time, he was dressed in a security guard’s uniform. Regardless of the type of request, many more people obeyed the requester when he wore the guard costume.
68. The idea of potential loss plays a large role in human decision making. In fact, people seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value.
69. whenever free choice is limited or threatened, the need to retain our freedoms makes us desire them (as well as the goods and services associated with them) significantly more than previously. So when increasing scarcity—or anything else—interferes with our prior access to some item, we will react against the interference by wanting and trying to possess the item more than before.

Subsequently, this book is now in my personal hall of fame for understanding human behaviour, alongside the likes of Thinking Fast and Slow (on decision making), Quiet (to understand about the introvert-extrovert spectrum), Never Split the Difference (on negotiating), Win Every Argument (on debating), Triggers (on, well, triggers), and of course all Robert Greene’s books (on power play, strategy, mastery, warfare, seduction, and human nature).

Special mention to that reader’s note from the parent of a college coed (chapter 1), whose daughter use the contrasting effect to make her bad grades seems pale in comparison to the made up disastrous story that she preceded before telling her college results, which involve fire, meeting an undesirable guy, and getting pregnant. Sharon may be failing chemistry, but she indeed get an A in psychology.

“Short Stories in Japanese: New Penguin Parallel Text” edited by Michael Emmerich

Right from the introduction, editor Michael Emmerich provides his impressive knowledge about the history of Japanese literature and mentions about the “different ways of constructing sentences, different ways of representing dialogue and thought, all kinds of grammatical patterns, and lots of vocabulary.”

He then proceeded to present us with his selection of Japanese short stories to illustrate these points, 8 stories to be exact, written by some of the best in Japanese literature that encapsulate the unorthodox writing styles. The authors are: Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, Masayo Koike, Yūko Tsushima, Hiromo Kawakami, Kazushige Abe, Shinji Ishii, and Sueko Yoshida.

As Emmerich remarks, “[a] trip to the gym affects more than just particular muscles, of course: it makes you feel good all over. It makes your whole body work. And that’s what this book tries to do as well.” “In fact,” Emmerich continues, “I would go so far as to say that the main point of this volume is to help you build up your overall health, strength, and endurance as an English-speaking student of Japanese or a Japanese-speaking student of English.”

This is shown by the organization of the book, where it is written in two languages, English on the left side and Japanese on the right side, which could indeed be very handy for those English-speaker who want to learn Japanese, and vice versa.

Emmerich then elaborates, “[b]y the time you arrive at the end of this collection, you will undoubtedly have picked up lots of new words and grammar, but more important, you will have had the opportunity to practice getting along on your own as a reader, without relying on detailed notes, simply using the translations to figure out why the original means what it does, and how it means it, or vice versa.”

Now I’m not planning to learn Japanese Kanji letters anytime soon, but the English side of the book is enough to teach me one or two things about Japanese literature, not to mention plenty of fresh new writing styles.

And in the end of the day I came for the stories, and these 8 stories by 8 authors did not disappoint one bit. Every single one of them contributed to the overall uniqueness of the book, and they show the fresh vantage points of life in the Japanese society. Especially the story of the weird creature and the war-time prostitute, not to mention the shortest story by Haruki Murakami that blew me away right from the beginning of the book. Great selection of stories, they perfectly fulfill my new obsession of Japanese literature.

“Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service” by Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal

I began to read this book on 31 July 2024, just after Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran. While Israel chose not to comment on the huge historical moment, all fingers still pointed towards Mossad, some to condemn and some to support.

So my immediate reaction was, I got to read more about this notoriously efficient spy agency! As proven yet again by the effectiveness of killing an enemy leader in a different hostile enemy territory, by planted the bomb 2 months in advance. I mean, that took some diligent planning, organizing, and execution.

Now, I’m not in any shape or form a Zionist supporter. In fact I fervently against the land grab colonialism, the brutal apartheid regime, and the horrific genocide taking place in Gaza (which are big topics for other books). But I thought I can learn a lot about Israel by looking from the inside, through their perspectives.

And what better way to see their inner-workings than a book about its most prized weapon, the intelligence agency, which glorifies all of its crimes? A 2012 book at that, which shows the mentality of untouchability from any accountability, and an air of cocky confidence that their Hasbara PR machine will whitewash their wrongdoings into heroic tales. You know, the usual stuff.

Hence, the juicy details in this tell-all book that name names (the main author – a former Knesset member – interviewed plenty of Israeli leaders and Mossad agents), and re-create 21 true stories that are broken down into 21 chapters, complete with all the dangers, the rescue missions, the failed disaster, the hunting down enemies, the legendary characters showing their admittedly impressive methodologies, and most importantly the book shows Israel’s atrocities all over Europe, Latin America, North America, Africa, and of course the Middle East.

It is everything that you imagine a spy novel would look like, with all the fighting, the bomb plotting, the honey trap, the double agent, Trojan Horse virus, and much more, which makes this book a gripping read.

That is, of course, until I remember that all of these events really did occur in real life and the authors had the audacity to brag about Mossad’s crimes and reveal how they can get away with their sh*t. In details. This, makes the book an ever better one, a reference for future evidence that the authors gift-wrapped to the world and for the international courts to see in the future. Excellent work.

“Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse

I first read this book in September 2017, after I learned about it from the many guests in the Tim Ferriss Show, who said that this is their favourite book.

So naturally, I just got to read it! But only to quickly found out that I didn’t like it at all. Initially because it was not the story of Siddhartha Gautama that I familiar with, an annoying occurrence that quite a lot of people in the review section are experiencing and something that kept confusing me after about 1/4 of the book when young Siddhartha indeed crossed path with the REAL Siddhartha Gautama.

But I read on, with the hope that this fiction narrative could become better as I go along. That did not happen, and I finished the book feeling disliking it even more, although to be fair I didn’t like reading fiction back then.

Now, 7 years later, I have since developed an appetite for reading fiction and I thought I should give the book a second try. You know that phrase when the student is ready, the teacher will appear? Or when you’re ready, the book will finally make sense?

Yeah, that doesn’t happen either this time around. At this 2nd attempt, this 1922 novel is still too hippie dippie for my taste. While I love reading about mythology, religion, and spirituality, this book kinda miss the mark for its spirituality. Heck, it doesn’t even explain about Buddhism, but rather suspiciously have what it appears to be Christian messages wrapped under Hindu elements.

Now, I’m very aware of the popularity of this book, and the spiritual impact that it has over many people. Which is good for them, and I don’t want to argue anything here. Different people matched with different books, and I might also grown into liking it someday.

But at the moment, after reading authors such as Joseph Campbell, Karen Armstrong, and Paramahansa Yogananda, this book just feels light in comparison for me. If we contrast it with other authors on Buddhism – such as Sogyal Rinpoche, Joseph Goldstein, and Haemin Sunim – this book looks elementary in comparison. And you could actually come out better informed spiritually if reading books by Sadhguru or Jay Shetty, even though they only use Hindu lessons in a secular way.

Moreover, the narrative itself is not strong enough to be a good regular story, with no real depth in the characters and no concrete lessons to be learned other than this one quote that represents the essence of the book: “Knowledge can be transferred, but not wisdom. It can be found and lived, and it is possible to be carried by it. Miracles can be performed with it, but it can’t be expressed and taught with words.”

Indeed, the book attempts to show through its story that experience is the best way to gain wisdom, and Siddhartha’s wisdom was intended to look like something aquired after a long up-and-down journey. But unfortunately, it was expressed through a pretty dull story-telling with anti-climactic ending, filled with spiritual gimmicks that would’ve made Thich Nhat Hanh cringe.

Hence, I’m sticking with my 3 stars from 7 years ago.