Donald Clegg: Summer reading can be considered as ‘focal practice’

It’s time for summer reading again, and I’d like to use my motley list to illustrate a larger point: namely, an introduction to the “good life” and the “person of excellence.”

Philosophy professor Albert Borgmann makes a distinction between tools that put us at a distance from meaningful activities, and the actual practice of said pursuits – what he calls “focal practices” or “focal things.”

Let’s say you’re watching the Food Network while eating a microwave pizza. You’re totally into a technological event, eating industrial food “cooked” for you by a device, watching someone else’s experience through another gizmo.

Now, suppose instead that you’re in your own kitchen, showing one of your kids how to make pizza dough. The dough would be the thing and what you’re doing with it is the practice.

Focal practices require time and commitment, or, as Borgmann would say, have a “high threshold.” The food channel and bad pizza are “low threshold” – technologically aided experiences, activities that are easy to engage in, indeed, are all too often the norm.

Borgmann is not an enemy of technology per se, but is highly critical of its impingement upon focal practices, and he utilizes our Western classical tradition to sketch out the various excellences required to live a good life. Cultural historian Morris Berman nicely sums up Borgmann’s thesis, so I’ll let him do the talking for a bit:

“He or she is a world citizen – that is, someone who knows a fair amount about the world (science and history, in particular).

“He or she seeks both physical valor and intellectual refinement.

“He or she is accomplished in music and versed in the arts.

“He or she is charitable – i.e., aware that real strength lies not in material force, but in the power to give, forgive, help and heal.

Berman naturally asks how we stand up to these ideals, and the answer – that we’re “not a nation devoted to the pursuit of excellence” – is pretty obvious.

Hold on, though, it’s worse than that. Berman concludes, “The overwhelming majority of Americans are simply not interested in the life of the mind, and in a participatory sense not terribly interested in the life of the body. What else is left?”

Indeed.

Get active. Get engaged. Call your Congress-critter. Read something good.

My little list includes books I’ve just finished, have in progress, or anticipate cracking very shortly. I’m mostly just listing them by author and title, since I’m only out to see how they might, or might not, relate to Borgmann’s proposition, not to give individual reviews.

Here goes: Sci-fi by the best in the business, Joe Haldeman, with “Camouflage” and “Guardian.” John Varley, right on his heels, sometimes better, with “Red Thunder” (a real romp) and “Mammoth” (just started).

In food country, “Gastronaut,” a waste; “Eat This Book,” helium-light fun; and “The Nasty Bits,” another worthwhile Anthony Bourdain follow-up to “Kitchen Confidential.”

Getting more real, Dr. Justin Frank’s “Bush on the Couch,” a peek inside the Decider’s head. (Ouch.) Stephen Kinzer’s “Overthrow,” a look at the last 14 governments we’ve done in over the past century or so, prior to Afghanistan and Iraq. “What Every American Should Know About Who’s Really Running the World,” a good one-volume curative for those who still believe the good old U S of A is after Democracy, Freedom, and all that is Good. (We’re not. Not our leaders, anyway.)

Moving onward, I just reread E.F. Schumacher’s classic, “A Guide For the Perplexed,” and am into “A History of the End of the World,” an account of the origins and misuse of the Book of Revelations. Also in progress: Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” (pretty much self-explanatory) and integral psychologist Ken Wilber’s synthesis of science and religion, “The Marriage of Sense and Soul.”

I’m looking forward to hashing out what’s going on in the various debates between relativists, realists, social constructionists, etc. in philosopher Simon Blackburn’s “Truth.”

And I promised myself that sometime this 50th year, I’d see how much I can relearn, if not in actual practice, at least history, philosophy and pertinence to other fields of knowledge, of my algebra and calculus. So I’ve got on tap “Unknown Quantity, A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra” and “A Tour of the Calculus.”

There you have it. This list’s a real mutt, and I don’t know what it says about excellence of any type, but it does speak to curiosity, at least.

Let’s see, we have politics, religion, philosophy, science, history, mathematics, food and, not least, fun fiction. It should be a good summer.