{"id":18771,"date":"2022-05-02T13:16:07","date_gmt":"2022-05-02T17:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=18771"},"modified":"2022-05-02T13:16:31","modified_gmt":"2022-05-02T17:16:31","slug":"improving-my-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/02\/improving-my-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving My Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching Joe Biden turn into a mumbling moron with stuffed artichokes for brains has reminded me that for us older folks it\u2019s use it or lose it.\u00a0 So, I\u2019ve initiated a cultural renaissance right here in Dunwich.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got three very different reading projects going on.\u00a0 They are:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Northmen: The Viking Saga, AD 793-1241, by John Haywood<\/li>\n
  2. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin, by S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard<\/li>\n
  3. The Bounty Trilogy: The Complete Series: Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea & Pitcairn’s Island, by James Norman Hall (Author), Charles Nordhoff (Author)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The Kierkegaard book on \u201cAnxiety\u201d is the most questionable project.\u00a0 I took some courses in philosophy as an undergraduate and found them to be highly annoying.\u00a0 They seem to spend so much time and effort splitting hairs that by the end, all of the audience has walked away in boredom.\u00a0 And they employ so much specialized jargon that the notes for the vocabulary sometimes outweighs the text itself.\u00a0 But I want to give this guy the benefit of the doubt.\u00a0 He claims he wants to make philosophy more about what we need to do as human beings and less about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.\u00a0 I figure the least I can do is slog through the argument.<\/p>\n

    The Bounty trilogy is just a book I\u2019ve always meant to read and now have finally gotten around to.\u00a0 And so far, it\u2019s a good one.\u00a0 I\u2019m finding that the 1930\u2019s Charles Laughton movie is pretty close to the text.\u00a0 It\u2019s an exciting adventure story that has the added advantage of having actually happened.\u00a0 It is a fictionalized account but it is based on the documents left by the protagonists and by their descendants.\u00a0 Other than the myriad of parts of a sailing ship that I don\u2019t know the names of the book is a fast read.\u00a0 I\u2019ll have a review of this when I finish.<\/p>\n

    The Northmen book is something I\u2019ve been interested in learning more about for a while.\u00a0 I was writing a sci-fi\/ fantasy story that used Valhalla as a plot element and I just kept running into aspects of Norse mythology and history that I wasn\u2019t up on.\u00a0 This book looked to be a way to fill in some gaps and also provide me with some information I\u2019ve always been interested in.\u00a0 The Scandinavians had a very large impact on several different aspects of European and by extension world history.\u00a0 I feel like I should know a lot more about their origins before I start introducing them and their culture into my stories.\u00a0 I\u2019ve just gotten started with the book but already I\u2019ve learned a bit about the origins of the Goths, Burgundians and Vandals that I didn\u2019t already know.<\/p>\n

    As I said yesterday, our whole lives shouldn\u2019t be railing against the progs.\u00a0 As the ZMan says, a negative identity does not provide a basis for a viable society.\u00a0 We must pursue the actions and goals that have intrinsic value.\u00a0 If we are claiming that the Left is trying to destroy our way of life by denying us the opportunity to do things that we value then shouldn\u2019t we be doing everything we can to do these things?\u00a0 Otherwise, it\u2019s all just cant and posturing.<\/p>\n

    So, stretch your mind and learn something new.\u00a0 Then figure a way to make some of it relevant to your life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Watching Joe Biden turn into a mumbling moron with stuffed artichokes for brains has reminded me that for us older folks it\u2019s use it or<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,818,237],"tags":[37,757,3632,1394],"class_list":["post-18771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-ocf","category-reviews","tag-book","tag-mutiny-on-the-bounty","tag-norsemen","tag-soren-kierkegaard"],"yoast_head":"\nImproving My Mind - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/02\/improving-my-mind\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Improving My Mind - 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