why book reviews, politics, sociology, and everything else is interminable to me

i am going to review the human war, by noah cicero

the human war, by noah cicero

i want to review it

but i don't know how to review a book

how do you review a book if you don't want to have preconceptions or exclude any information that exists

not having preconceptions and not excluding information that exists means i can't say 'good,' 'bad,' 'important,' 'problem'

i don't want to exclude any information if it exists, in the universe

you can't use the words 'important,' 'good,' 'bad,' or 'best' without having context

in the universe, the context is the universe

the universe has things in it that i don't know about

and i don't know how far it goes

therefore there is no context

context is impossible if you do not exclude information

even if you have context it is still strange to use the words 'good,' 'bad,' etc.

if i were reviewing a book and the context was a house then i'd have excluded everything outside the house

and if in the house were a hamster and a bear and the book was pro-bear

then i could say, 'this book is good for bears'

i still couldn't say, 'this book is good'

i couldn't unless i added 'for bears'

(humans always assume 'for humans'

people dislike george bush because, in the view of these people, bush is causing pain and suffering for humans

but what about dolphins, rocks, and, like, the sun, or the oort cloud

here is where people think i'm immature

it's immature to not have preconception

i agree

children have less preconceptions

as a child i protected my stuffed animals and put band-aids on them)

if the book were about scorpions then i could say 'this book is not important to the bear or the hamster because it is about scorpions'

i couldn't just say, 'this book isn't important'

i think what i want to say is that when a book is reviewed the universe is almost always reduced to 'earth,' 'the blogosphere,' or something like, 'the americas,' or 'the human race,' or else 'the human race plus all animals' or 'the human race plus all animals that look cute'

also

when a book is reviewed the reviewer shows that the reviewer is delusional, has delusions, thinks in contexts that exclude a lot of information, and has many preconceptions

and usually all i hear all the time is how 'art' is against 'excluding information,' 'easy answers,' 'narrow-mindedness'

reviewing a book is like being a publicly owned company

a publicly owned company must make more profits each year

that is it's goal

(both these things deny information, give a context, and deny meaninglessness; both have goals, and therefore both can use the words 'good,' 'bad,' and 'important')

the person who reviews a book has a goal, supposedly

you can't say 'good' or 'important' unless you have a goal

this is obvious

who can argue with that

no one can

this is inescapable

to have a 'goal'

for most people their 'goal' is to be happy or to avoid pain and suffering

if you don't have a 'goal' anymore then i don't know what happens

people sometimes temporary don't have a 'goal'

this happens to me a lot

i want to say one more thing

people who hate capitalism

if you hate capitalism then maybe you shouldn't buy things from any company that is publicly owned

these companies must make more profits each year, and a lot more, like 20% more, and profits, not gross sales, or else they are fucked; if amazon does not make more profits this year than last year their stock price will go down

they can't just make the same amount each year, they must keep making more

what does this do to people

this kind of thinking

there is no end to it

it can't be satisfied

and it's not focused on humans

it's focused on abstractions, like 'value,' 'profits,' etc.

so if you hate capitalism or talk about how you hate materialism or anything like that then if you want to stop all that then you should just only spend money from places that are not publicly owned

'democrats' and 'conservatives' both support the system that will maintain the existence of publically owned companies, i think

so if you are voting democrat next time instead of conservative, think about what you are really voting for

but

still

this has context

(what i just typed above)

it has the context of your life and the lives of other human beings who are not happy with civilization

this excludes the information that there are hamsters, dolphins, moose, happy businessmen, thousands of happy middle-class families buying amazon stock and making a lot of money; alien people on other planets, rocks, moss; live moss, atoms; and germs; and abstractions (is it too immature too assume that ideas deserve rights, that ideas have feelings?)

it even excludes the idea of 'time'

'time' is supposedly infinite, it will go on forever

and sometime that goes on forever has already happened, pretty much

no one knows what effect george bush has on people who are alive 10,000 years from now

the same with say john kerry, or ralph nader

voting for ralph nader could mean that 100,000,000,000 people will suffer horrible pain 10,000,000 years from now when 100,000,000,000,000 exist in the world

while voting for george bush could mean that 100,000,000,000 people will not suffer in the future because there will be no people

you can move those names and numbers around

(and all those people exist; time is just a preconception, probably; so they already exist, they're there, in the future, walking around, blogging; our actions effect them)

no one knows

no one knows what to do in the world to not cause pain and suffering

(fernando pessoa talks about this; he says this is why he is never kind or mean, as how does he know that giving money to a person is kind, or if being friendly to someone will actually be 'good' for the world, to anyone; he simply exists, trying very hard not to influence anything in the world)

but even that excludes information

it excludes the knowledge of 'cause and effect'

'cause and effect' is the opposite of 'free will,' sort of

so there's the question of

how can it be that humans are conscious but also do not have free will

even that question excludes information

if you don't exclude information you are not dead and you are not alive

you are enlightened

and you are something that can't be explained with words

and this is impossible, probably

typing about it excludes information

thinking is a preconception

this is what book reviewing is like

book reviewing sustains a kind of reality that though is not very truthful will keep you going, keep you busy and meaningful, until you die

if you are a book reviewer you will not fear the horrible meaninglessness of life

people create distractions

if you go to school everything you learn will be a preconception that will help distract you until you die

if you read david foster wallace you will have many distractions to think about

politics, sociology

those are two major distractions, two major delusions

this post is also a major distraction, philosophy

maybe it isn't a distraction, maybe it's engaging with what i'm typing about

i don't know

it's too hard to think

i just know that book reviewers usually cannot function if they feel the horrible meaninglessness of life

because when you feel it you know that nothing matters, that 'good' or 'bad do not exist, etc.

but i just want to read stories and poems by people who fear the horrible meaninglessness of life

and if a book reviewer reads a book that fears the horrible meaninglessness of life then something strange might happen; the book reviewer might change

but probably not

the book reviewer will probably just say, 'this book is not life-affirming'

or, 'this book is narcisistic, solipsistic, cynical, immature'

(i have never understood 95% of what anyone says; i have never understood the word 'cynical,' have always thought that it obvious that people act in service of themselves, even selflessness is in service of the self, to get away from guilt or discomfort, etc.)

the book reviewer will say something about 'angst' and maybe 'catcher in the rye' or 'teenagers'

or they might ignore the passages on the horrible meaninglessness of life and talk about how minimalism has destroyed america

now people reading this post will want me to give them answers

'you complain so much but you just sit there complaining'

yeah, that's about right

i have no answers

answers are preconceptions

facts are also preconceptions

but answers are preconceptions gotten from facts

'once-removed' preconceptions

i just have all these observations

i could easily refute every sentence i typed here with another sentence

and then do another sentence refuting both sentences

here is the review for noah cicero's the human war:

i liked it

it had humans petting other humans

it had a thing about a dolphin

here was my blurb for it:

"Noah Cicero's The Human War talks about meaninglessness, the stupidity of human beings, the worthlessness and dumbassedness of human beings; while reading it I felt happy, excited, and motivated; after reading it it was 3 a.m. and I wanted to go to the library to email Noah so I went outside and it was snowing and I got to the train and I sat in the train for thirty-minutes and it did not move so I went back to my room and went to sleep."