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  • A Degenerate’s review and summary of On Character by Stanley McCrystal (retired four-star Army general) by Robert Davis

    This book is a collection of short essays and reflections by Stanley McChrystal that largely revolve around the idea of character. Each chapter is about two to five pages long and covers topics such as marriage, grandchildren, death, Afghanistan, and leadership lessons drawn from his life. Nearly all of the stories encourage the reader to think about character—what kind of person we want to be, the choices we make, and how we want to be remembered after we are gone. My interpretation of McChrystal’s definition of character is essentially the choices we make, our sense of right and wrong, and how we act on those beliefs.

    Was this a good book? Yes, it was a good read. I enjoy military-related reading to an extent, and I also believe McChrystal was one of the most dedicated, intelligent, and driven soldiers and leaders of his time. From this book, his other works, and my own experience in the military, I could feel how deeply involved he was in driving the war in Afghanistan and counterterrorism efforts—pushing everyone to execute the mission. I found those moments interesting, and since I enjoy philosophy, I also appreciated the more reflective chapters. One thing I would warn readers about is his writing style: his sentences are very compact and efficient. Because of this, I found it difficult to read as quickly as I normally do. His concise writing makes the book shorter, which may have been intentional.

    Some takeaways from the book:

    I think McChrystal played a significant role in the overworking of the military force, which contributed to burnout, divorce rates, and retention issues. He mentioned implementing daily Video Teleconferences (VTCs), as well as daily situational reports. He also described being stateside in a command role and deciding, after conducting battlefield circulation in the Middle East, that he needed to move his entire staff overseas to better command and control operations. All of these decisions make sense when trying to accomplish the mission as effectively as possible—except when the conflict lasts for 20 years. At that point, the long-term human cost becomes hard to ignore.

    One chapter I especially liked focused on living life without constantly looking in the rearview mirror. Throughout the book, it is clear that McChrystal’s identity was being a soldier—it was what he ate, slept, and breathed for over 30 years. Then, after making an offhand comment about President Obama to a magazine journalist, he was essentially fired and forced to retire. This shook him deeply. Eventually, he came to the realization that he needed to live more like how his wife drives—without constantly checking the rearview mirror. Instead of dwelling on the past, you need to move forward with your life. I think it’s important to reflect on what you’ve learned, but then continue moving ahead.

    I also liked his chapter on what your job means to you. McChrystal’s view is that it can be beneficial for your job to be your identity. He felt content with his life and how much he dedicated to the military, and he experienced tremendous success, which likely reinforced that mindset. He contrasts this view with the newer generation, which often values work-life balance and sees a job mainly as a way to make money while finding fulfillment elsewhere. I think it’s possible to have strong character while aligning with either perspective. McChrystal was clearly passionate about being a soldier, and while he didn’t make much money early on as a junior officer, his dedication eventually paid off. Today, as a retired general, he likely does very well financially. I think newer generations could experience similar success, but it takes time—either to break into a field you’re passionate about or to build the necessary qualifications.

    In conclusion, the book presents a tension between two ideas: valuing great character so you are remembered and respected by others, and believing that you shouldn’t worry about what people think of you. Which one is right? I think they go hand in hand. A person with strong character often speaks up for what they believe is right and, as a result, is generally respected and liked. We want meaningful relationships and to enjoy life with others. Our character is revealed through how we live our lives and the priorities we demonstrate through our actions. People can have different priorities without being better or worse than one another—they are simply choosing to live for different purposes. Some want to enjoy life, some want to advance humanity, and others focus on service. Ultimately, what we choose to value and act upon is what defines our character.

  • A Degenerate’s review and summary of Magic Pill, How the New Weight Loss Drugs Will Change Your Life – and the World by Johann Hari

    Author of this Review: Robert Davis

    Bottom Line:
    The author goes on a research journey about Ozempic and has been taking it for several years. He struggles with the pros and cons of the drug and ultimately suggests that people should really just diet and exercise. However, he places a lot of the blame on the food industry and the lack of government regulation—especially junk food advertising, junk food in school lunches, and a general lack of nutrition education.

    My opinion on whether this is a good book:
    Yes, it is a good book. It was entertaining to read, with informative sections, funny tidbits, and memorable anecdotal stories that help readers remember the underlying points. Is this an authoritative book on Ozempic and weight-loss drugs? Mostly no. The author comes from a biased perspective shaped by how he grew up, and he admits that he doesn’t really know how to cook and that 99% of his meals come from microwavable food (which is bananas to me). That said, he includes enough anecdotes and hard numbers to give readers a solid starting point to do their own research and make an informed decision about taking weight-loss drugs like Ozempic.

    Is being overweight bad for you?
    Shocker—the author says yes. He talks to a handful of doctors and comes away with the conclusion that it’s very hard to deny that obesity increases the likelihood of serious health issues like cancer, dementia, and heart attacks. I think he smartly confronts the short-lived fat-acceptance movement. One of the founders of that movement was verbally abused as an obese child, which is clearly not okay. She shared a story about being told by an adult to eat pudding at the school lunch table until she threw up, along with other disturbing things her parents did. The movement originally started as “let’s not just kick the crap out of obese people,” because shame doesn’t always lead to weight loss. But over time, it turned into a clown show where some people claimed it’s actually healthy to be fat and tried to use research to prove it. Much of that research was debunked. The author ultimately lands on the idea that obesity isn’t healthy, people shouldn’t be shamed for it, but obese individuals also shouldn’t see concern for their health as a personal attack.

    What does Ozempic do?
    It basically makes you feel full. You eat much less, and even people with very large appetites will stop eating when taking it at the right dosage. It’s a GLP-1 receptor blocker (or something like that—I don’t remember the exact science). People tend to lose weight quickly, though side effects can include nausea and lightheadedness. Overall, the side effects don’t seem too bad compared to the benefits.

    What’s the problem?
    There’s no long-term solution. You have to keep taking the drug indefinitely, potentially until you die, and we don’t yet know the long-term effects. The author brings up a past weight-loss drug that, after several years, ended up killing some people. This serves as a warning not to repeat history.

    What about diet and exercise?
    The author points out that diet fads like keto, Weight Watchers, and others usually aren’t long-term solutions, and many people regain the weight after a few years. The same goes for exercise—people start a New Year’s workout plan and quit a month or two in. He does a good job of calling out gimmicks like “seven-minute abs” and the carnivore diet, but I think he does a disservice to people who have successfully used diet and exercise to maintain good health.

    Is there a better solution?
    The author is very into Japan. They have one of the lowest obesity rates in the world, and he suggests that almost no one there uses Ozempic. He visits a school where kids eat healthy food and help cook and serve it. He talks to a chef who explains that Japanese people eat in a triangular pattern—taking bites from each part of the meal to slow down eating and feel fuller. He portrays Japan as having a culture centered on healthy fish, vegetables, rice, regular exercise, and even sports participation among people in their 80s and 90s. It’s a compelling example, and governments and food regulators around the world could learn from Japan’s approach to food, exercise, and longevity. That said, Japan’s suicide rate is fairly high, so maybe we shouldn’t copy everything.

    Psychological factors:
    Sometimes people are overweight for psychological reasons. The author tells the story of an obese woman in a study who lost over 400 pounds, going from 400+ lbs to 130 lbs, only to gain it all back. It turned out she had been sexually abused, and being overweight was her way of protecting herself. This situation happens more often than people realize. Weight loss can be a mental battle, and therapy may be necessary. The author also reflects on his own childhood: his mother loved the microwave because it freed her from cooking, while his father—a chef—believed fresh food was the only answer. His parents fought constantly over this. As a child, he was shamed into eating his father’s fresh meals while being secretly given junk food by his mother. As a result, he subconsciously associates healthy food with shame and junk food with love.

    Conclusion:

    It seems that there are a handful of factors that contirbute to a person’s weight. Stress, Childhood upbrining, your environment, your job, nutritional/exercise education, your countries culture, etc. These factors make up a different percentage for everyone, and it takes some internal reflection and external reflection to determine what are the biggest factors for you. My opinion on Ozembic is that it can be a good restart for some people, and allow them to beleive they can drop the weight, but people should get off of it once they reach their desired wieght with a plan and habit on how to keep it off.

  • A degenerate’s book review of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

    I thought this book was amazing. I listened to it on Audible, twice. I don’t do that ever. The book is about a Jewish (doesn’t believe in God), gay, vegetarian author (he mentions it a couple of times) who is a historian, and he takes some pretty mind-blowing things about the history of humankind to explain how the world is today and gives a forecast for the future which, spoiler alert, he thinks will implode from technology or something. He admits that he is a technophobe, and I agree that he is pretty much just pessimistic about technology and the future.

    If you were religious before this book, you probably will have a couple of questions for yourself after reading it. Yuval brings up a lot of things in history that don’t seem to jive with what the Bible (haven’t read it myself) or other religious texts say about how we all came to be. Below are a handful of the specific items that Yuval talks about that were enlightening to me about how we came to be here, along with some of the items he brings up about modern history.

    There were multiple human species. In the Bible, there is the story of Adam and Eve and that is how humans were created. I think most people probably don’t think that’s how it really went down, especially since we’ve found cavemen and whatnot. But Yuval goes into great detail that it’s been pretty clearly discovered that there were multiple sapien (it means human) species around the world, and the Homo sapiens that you see today were the winners. There were Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Homo erectus, and a couple of other ones that I can’t remember right now. And the crazy part is that we can take DNA tests now and see how much Neanderthal DNA we have. How come we haven’t heard about all the other humans in the Bible? You’ve got some explaining to do, Jesus!

    There were multiple men across the world who swore off sex to organize communities/countries. I thought priests were not able to have sex with women because they love to have sex with children. Just kidding, I thought it was just a rule and I never thought about why it was. Yuval points out that not only priests swore off sex, but so did the eunuchs in China, as well as monks, nuns, yogis, and medieval Perfecti. These men, at their time, were also leaders in their communities attempting to further or advance their groups of people. Yuval says this is why humans were able to advance so much faster than other animals like monkeys. In a flock of chimps, the alpha male has sex with all the women and all the other dudes are pissed, and they have a pecking order. This makes it very, very slow for chimps to do anything organized together, like make a language or houses. Yuval says that even politicians today kind of mimic this effort, where they all tend to be men who are married with kids and a dog and a white picket fence. That person is in power and poses no threat to your women.

    God must either not exist or be evil. I don’t particularly agree 100% with this logic, but Yuval takes a moment to basically say if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present, then why are there so many terrible things in the world, like murder, hernias, and the New York Jets? So Yuval basically says either God is all-powerful, seeing, and knowing and is evil—that is why there are so many Jets fans—or that God does not exist. I think this is merely an interesting thought on the whole “God is everywhere” idea, but I think some people will say, “Well, we can’t really know what God’s intentions are.”

    We think we know what God wants, and then say we can’t know what God wants. And to continue on from the last point, Yuval says he sees it everywhere: that people constantly live and act on conflicting and opposing ideas. Religious people will say that God wants us to not be gay, or God wants us to be a good neighbor, but then when really bad things happen, the same people say no one can really know God’s desires. Now I try to find these hypocrisies in our everyday lives. Like Republicans like the death penalty but not abortion, and vice versa for Democrats. Or that really religious people who worship Jesus will join the military and shoot someone in another country, even though Jesus would have never done that. Even as really smart human beings, we have a really hard time realizing that we are completely out of our minds.

    Human rights don’t exist. A tree exists physically in the world, but human rights are an idea that people came up with, and sometimes people are super serious that they are very, very real. Yuval points out, I think in a convincing way, that humans have imagination and we create things like human rights, countries, religions, money, etc. They don’t really exist; humans made those things up and we choose to believe in how those things work.

    The Agricultural Revolution was not a good idea. It’s pretty agreed upon that humans used to be nomads, traveling in a band and hunting. But then one day, we decided to plant food and farm. That is the Agricultural Revolution. But Yuval says that we really, really messed up by everyone doing that. As nomads, we just had to work like 6 hours a week to get some food, and then we could chill for a long time. But when we did farming, we had to work like every day almost and had to bend over at the waist and get slipped discs (Yuval actually brings that point up). But in exchange for our freedom and time, we get peace of mind knowing that we will have food to eat and not be all panicked about food like the nomads likely were.

    I think that is long enough of a review. There are more very interesting ideas in the book. I think this is Yuval’s best book, and honestly, I didn’t really like the other books.

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