#5

When I started reading this book, after Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse #5 which I read as a young person learning how fucked up the world is, I had a feeling of almost Adamsian lightness of talking about heavy social things. Oh how wrong I was!

So to those who want to venture into this book, a fair warning: expect soul-crushing stuff after every corner. Reading the book is like wandering the caves of Mercury.

The story is very layered and has some twists, so don't be too arrogant if you think you see where it's going. What's more, please think the book through from back to front after you complete it.

There is only one positive character in the book, but I felt so much compassion to another one, and another one later. Which, as I recover from the book hangover[1], I find slightly distressing, but it's a testament to genius of Vonnegut.

Traditionally, I finish my non-specific reviews with a quote:

That's the worst thing you can do, Unk — remembering back," said Brackman. "That's what they put you in the hospital for in the first place — on account of you remembered too much.

[1]: www.cantonpl.org/blogs/post/book-hangovers-and-you/

Enough Adlerian psychology has filtered into the American mainstream that parts of this book just feel like generic self-help, but the core ideas are powerful and coherent. The main ideas (below, probably missed some) seem sensible to me -- although # 5 ignores e.g. health problems.

Some precepts: 1. Don't think about etiology, think about teleology. In other words, don't look into your past for causes of your problems -- think about your goals, both the ones you've consciously voiced and the ones you haven't acknowledged to yourself yet. 2. Etiology is deterministic, teleology is in your control. If you believe that your traumatic childhood caused your current behavior, you must believe that you cannot climb out of it. On the other hand, if you take a teleological approach, you can just change your goals. 3. If you have a problem, it is because it serves some future-oriented goal you have. 4. It is only courage holding you back. The courage to change your goals and to be disliked. 5. All problems are interpersonal relationship problems. 6. All interpersonal relationship problems arise from inadequate separation of tasks. In any relationship, some tasks properly belong to each person, and if you interfere or come to care about other people's tasks, it will lead to problems for you and in the relationship. You can be there to help another person with their tasks, but you cannot care about it for them, or do it for them. The paradigmatic examples here are "it is their task to decide whether or not they like you, so don't worry about it", and "a parent cannot study for a child, they can only be there to help." 8. There are three kinds of "life tasks" corresponding to three areas of interpersonal relationships: work, friends, love. 9. Strive for only horizontal relationships -- those characterized by a proper separation of tasks and "thanks" rather than "praise". 10. The point of life is social good feeling from embeddedness in communities of various sizes, up to and including the universe and all animate and inanimate objects within it.