My books tell the tale of who I was — and who I’m steadily becoming

By David McElroy · November 9, 2018

When I bought this house three and a half years ago, I knew I’d have some issues related to its age. It was built in 1928, which lends it some charm, but it comes with problems, such as old floors that aren’t quite level. That sort of thing.

I have hundreds and hundreds of books. When I first started unpacking the boxes to put them onto my book shelves a few years ago, I discovered that the weight of the books combined with the slight warps in the floors meant the massive shelves weren’t stable.

Because I was afraid they might fall over and hit one of the cats, I left the books in boxes until I could get around to having someone come in to anchor the shelves to the walls for stability.

Somehow, I’ve never gotten around to doing that. The book boxes have remained the cats’ favorite playground and I’ve gotten accustomed to digging into boxes to find books I need. (One day, I’ll fix the shelves. Honest.)

Tonight, I went looking for a book and I had to empty several boxes in the search. As I looked at the stacks, something struck me.

There are a lot of these books which I wouldn’t buy now. I realized that I had been a radically different person when I bought them — and I suddenly realized that these books tell a lot of truth about who I’ve been and who I’m becoming.

I don’t get rid of books, at least not intentionally. (I lost some in the last move, and I’ll never know what happened to them. That’s a depressing tale.) This means that I have books going back to my college years — and I’ve continued to collect books in all the periods since then.

Over the years, I’ve organized my shelves mostly by subject. I’ve thought seriously of organizing them by the Library of Congress system or the simpler Dewey Decimal system. I realized tonight that I need to arrange them chronologically — because they tell quite a bit of my story.

A couple of decades ago, I was reading a lot of theology, both the serious kind (dense intellectual books by Francis Schaeffer, for instance) and the more popular kind (lightweight volumes by Charles Colson, for another example). As I looked at some of those books — and realized that I had no desire to open them again — it occurred to me that I have no interest in reading theology anymore.

Why? Is it because I know everything there is to know? Is it because I have everything figured out? No, it’s nothing like that. It’s simply because I read enough to come to peace with the fact that I wasn’t going to find what I was looking for in those books.

I realized that I was never going to figure out the truth about God by reading about the experiences of Charles Finney or the arguments of Jonathan Edwards. I’m glad I read all those things, but I finally realized that any smart person could build a systematic theology on the foundation of what other people had told him to believe. I wasn’t going to find truth there. I could only find other people’s perceptions of truth.

My older books are very heavy on political theory and economics as well. The earlier examples of those are almost comically partisan and I can’t believe they ever interested me. As I grew, I bought more serious works and confronted tough ideas. But I find that most of what really interests me about political theory was voiced by the 19th century abolitionist Lysander Spooner and most of what interests me about economics was written by those of the Austrian school.

I don’t really need more convincing that human beings deserve to be free and that government intervention in economies hurts everyone, so I never read those sorts of books now.

So what dominates my more recent purchases? They’re mostly things about personal transformation. I have a lot about psychology. There’s quite a bit about personality and its development. I have more books about child development and how children learn than I remembered.

As I considered the changes in what I buy and read, something occurred to me. I like the person I am now better than the person I was a couple of decades ago.

I’m glad I know a lot of the facts and theories and history that I studied heavily when I was younger. I was clearly interested in exploring everything about the world out there. I wanted to understand the world around me, a place which frequently didn’t make sense.

But the books I choose now represent a turn inward. They represent my need to understand myself better — and in understanding myself better, to connect with someone and become a deeper and greater person than I could have ever been before.

When I was young, I obviously explored the world around me. It seemed alien and I wanted to understand it. As I matured, I turned to a far tougher quest — the desire to understand the human heart and mind and soul, starting with myself.

I guess I knew all this. I suppose I was conscious of the ways in which I’ve changed. But seeing it through my books tonight made me feel it in a way that I hadn’t really understood before.

Suddenly, I realize — again — that a person’s library tells who he is and who he’s been. I have the urge to arrange these books and use them to explain myself — once I find someone who’s interested in understanding who I am, of course.

Note: I can’t leave this behind without begging you to read a few books that have meant a lot to me. Ray Bradbury’s brilliant short novel “Fahrenheit 451” was written in the 1950s, but it will teach you a lot about modern culture and why we’re disconnected from one another. “The Lucifer Principle,” by Howard Bloom, will force you to re-examine many of your assumptions about the world. It’s hard to explain it, but it had a huge impact on me. About 10 years ago, I had my understanding of the world turned upside down by a very simple book of psychology called “Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me),” by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. It’s a simple book that explains how cognitive dissonance makes it almost impossible for most people to reject what they already believe when they face new facts that contradict their existing beliefs. It will help you understand why people do some of the insane things they do. (I have to stop now before I beg you to read dozens of books.)

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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