Sum is a fun book about what happens in the Afterlife written by a neuroscientist . It’s 40 short pieces of speculative writing. It’s fiction, but there are no characters, instead you insert your own life and identity into the parameters described so the book is different for every one. Each one is creative and playful and funny and offers clever opportunities to reflect on your own life and identity.
Sum suggests an afterlife where you relive your life in different orders or from different points of view. It suggests afterlives where the underlying codes of reality are revealed in different ways. It presents novel ideas of heaven and hell or the creator or gods or our relationships with them. It is written with a patriarchal monotheistic baseline point of view but suggests different iterations of a creator/createe relationship that feel refreshingly naughty. Most iterations suggest that the creator is not interested in our prayers and does not do a lot of judgement but presents the Gods as scientists or doctors or amateur magicians with their own insecurities and loneliness. Some do not include a creator and are very fractal in the way they present infinity and eternity. Some offer ways to be everyone at once or to meet all of yourselves, weather from different ages or from different possible lives and all center on the satisfaction from the unraveling of a profound reveal. It’s an unchallenging way to do some self reflection and check in on how you feel about your life choices and what you think life is.
I always recommend Biocentrism by Robert Lanza. I should reread it so I remember exactly why I think it’s so important that you read it. It’s about the nature of consciousness and it uses the classic sexy physics demonstration, the double slit theory (that proves that matter behaves differently when it is observed) with entangled particles to illustrate that all matter in the universe existed only in a state of possibility until it snapped into existence when consciousness became aware of it. Maybe that was a spoiler.
I enjoy reading physics that’s just beyond my understanding. This book consistently stayed on the edge of what I already understood and what I’d never dreamed of. Except the part about Einstein’s theories of time, that was pretty challenging, but it was explained clearly enough that I was able to use the concept in conversation with an astrophysicist a year after reading. I don’t remember the concept now. Something like: since light moves like this, then time must all happen at once. Yes I will put it on my reread pile… there are a lot of good books on that pile.
I was very happy to find Beyond Biocentrism, the second book in the series about the physics of consciousness, or rather, the effects of consciousness on physics. When I read their first, Biocentrism, I thought it was the best book ever, but it was possibly the first non mycology non-fiction book I’d read. Now that I’ve read a lot if science books I was excited to find out how the writing would compare, and excited that this one would include a chapter on plant perception and a chapter on the illusion of death!
Beyond Biocentrism stood up as a very good read. It was only slowish because I had to stop a few times on each page to ponder and re-evaluate my understanding of reality. I enjoyed following the book’s logic. The first book in the series convinced me that all mater snapped into existence retroactively after consciousness observed it. This time around I disagreed with a lot of the logic, but disagreeing lead me to develop my own materialist beliefs and fleshing out what I think time and perspective is.
I was entertained by the constant anthropomorphic language and metaphor that you’d think a scientist who is talking about the relationship between consciousness and matter would cut out rather than repeatedly, euphemistically and unnecessarily saying that mater knows this and understands that. I enjoy marking up a book with pencil to correct the metaphoric intention that English can leave in science writing, but this time my copy was a library book.
The chapter on plant intelligence was not as fascinating as it could have been. They began by discrediting it, then referenced some science fiction films and then declared it real. I wish they’d talked more about the experiments that have studied plant perception and plant intelligence by the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology and the adversity faced by the Plant Signaling and Behavior Society. If you want to know more read Brilliant Green by Stefano Mancuso and Thus Spoke the Plant by Monica Gagliano.
I don’t think they offered a great argument against the existence of death, but they set the stage and invited us in to manifest our own. Most memorably by asking when consciousness entered our body. To me it seems like it didn’t, it was just already there when our brains grew around it and created the illusion of a separation between self and everything else and the illusion of time and space, which leads us to think that when our brains stop working that our consciousness will go back to being one with the universe. But on the other hand I believe that emotions are chemical and produced by the material of living bodies and that when we die all that get’s mixed back up into the world in an unconscious way.
The appendix at the end was a bit contradictory, that all matter and time exists only in our minds and that our minds exist not in our brains but where ever we direct our attention. I wish that page had been included in the main text rather than an aside on the last page as it was unsatisfying, but all in all I will recommend this book to anyone curious about physics and consciousness and I’m looking forward to reading the next one.
Vultures have fancy antibiotics inside them that kill the bacteria that rots meat. They can eat bacteria that would kill most other animals. Being full of pathogenic bacteria makes Vultures inedible to most other animals. They have no predators and therefore have a very high survival rate for a bird. They can live to be 60 years old. They don’t start laying eggs until they are 6 and then they only lay 1 egg every 2 years.
I’ve been reading about decomposition and Tibetan sky burials, where human remains are fed to Vultures. If a body is put out and the Vultures don’t take it, it’s assumed that the person had a bad life and will have a bad rebirth. This is happening more and more lately because people make biocide. What? Why would we do that? Why do we even have a word for that? People put out poison that kills anything that comes across it, because humans hate rats and mice and anything non-human. Those things die and the Vultures come to clean it up and recycle the nutrients back into the system like they always do, but the rat poison kills them so they’re not around help us be reborn into good humans.
Stirring the Mud by Barbara Hurd Review by Alexis Williams
This book is gooey and soupy and dreamy. The author dons hip waders to squish out metaphor and opaque imagery. It’s scientifically informed poetry. It’s about liminality, emptiness, spirituality, unknowing, death, decay, preservation and human relationships with wildness. It showcases Tamarack, Ghost Pipes, Pitcher Plants, Lady Slippers, Duck Weed, swamp gas, Bog Beacons and mud. This book was written for me.
Life Everlasting by Bernd Heinrich Reviewed by Alexis Williams
Life Everlasting: The animal way of death is a book about wild death that should be called Decomposition: Ecological recyclers. It’s not only about animals, it talks about plants and fungi and protists and bacteria. It looks at a long list of fascinating organisms that facilitate decomposition. (with out ever using the word saprophyte)
It is a beautiful look at the mechanics and behaviors that guide nutrients through ecology. There were some details that I found obscene and plan to redact with black marker, but I give this full marks for being exciting and weird and smart and interested in all the right stuff: Dung Beetles, Vultures, mushrooms, he even explains how caterpillars turn into moths. The whole way through he manages to be insightful rather than yucky.
The Biophilium 