Currently Reading

So, I'm currently reading From Baghdad with Love by Lt. Col. Jay Kopelman with Melinda Roth. I received this book as a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law and I'm really enjoying it. It is a story about a stray puppy named Lava that lives with members of the First Battalion, Third Marines during their tour in Iraq. It is easy to read compared to the last two books that I have read so I look forward to a few days of pleasant reading.

The last book that I completed was 1984 by George Orwell. I chose to read this book because it came up in a recent discussion and I wanted to revisit the subject addressed in the anti-Utopian novel. No doubt, I could write pages of commentary on the parallels between the world described by Orwell and modern times, but it would be a heavy subject to post here. I would like to recommend to everyone that you read this novel and think critically about where our society is headed.

I will include one of my own ideas, though. The grossest and most disturbing point made in the book is the dehumanization of mankind by the government. This is not my biggest fear. I do not fear the government because democracy protects us, to some extent, from government-backed oppression. My biggest fear is mentioned in the Afterword of 1984 which was composed by Erich Fromm. My biggest fear is corporate dehumanization. What I mean by corporate dehumanization is the power that corporations have over our freedom to think and the chance that this will lead to a loss of humanity for the sake of corporate domination. Fromm describes it using the example of a person who works for a big company that claims that its product is better than all its competitors' products. This person does not concern himself with determining whether it is a true fact that the product is the best, rather he concerns himself with convincing us, the customers, that his company's product is the best. This type of thinking is called "mobile truth." And, I can see its ugly head appearing today in the large corporate media upon which we depend for our daily news. No one disputes that Fox, CNN and NBC are competing against each other for viewers/readers. And, no one disputes that these news organizations target the content of their news dispatches to specific demographics while maintaining that they are "fair and balanced" or "the most trusted source for news." It is clear that O'Reilly, Hannity and Colmes, Olberman, etc. are exercising "mobile truth-telling" and all the while the consumers, you and I, are at a loss for the true truth. My fear is that truth will be lost in the battle for the "trust" of the consumer. The battle for trust will lead us to instilling "faith" in our news sources. And, faith will lead us to war...war in America, to determine who possesses the truth. There is hope, however. The embodiment of hope, to me, comes in the form of modern information sharing technologies, specifically, internet web sites like YouTube and the entire blogosphere of which you are partaking by reading my blog. As long as individuals have the ability to share information, we will all have access to the truth.
Cheers!

Recently completed:
1984
by Eric Blair (George Orwell)
The Naked and the Dead
by Norman Mailer
My War: Killing Time in Iraq
by Colby Buzzell
No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam
by Reza Azlan
Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War
by Anthony Shadid
The Places in Between
by Rory Stewart