Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature by Angus FletcherMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have not read Wonderworks since May 25th, 2022. I asked myself why I was putting it off. I realized that the underlying idea that most of what we do is driven by how we feel is a little bit depressing. It is like I am a puppet on biochemical strings, endorphins, adrenaline, oxytocin, dopamine. On the other hand I have enhanced awareness of how my body feels and how it is affected by my thoughts, food, and exercise. Intellectually I have known about this for a long time, but I am becoming aware of it at a deeper, more direct level than before.
For years I have puzzled over the difference between awareness, attention and knowing. In summary, awareness is direct perception of what is happening in my body. It is wordless, knowledge that does not come through ideas or perception. I found this discussion and distinction in Mortimer Adler’s theory of language presented in his small book “Some Questions about Language” page 99 in chapter 4, question number six. I found that going to any one section of this book and trying to read it for a quick answer to my questions is incomprehensible without first studying the intellectual scaffold of all the preceding pages. I had to be very patient to get to page 99 and I found that I could not read this book in anything but short doses each day. Almost as difficult as studying my mathematics books.
So back to Wonderworks, I immediately see that what I get from books I also get from my own thoughts and memories. In a sense every thought or memory is a potential story and produces its own feeling in me. I was surprised to recognize that the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is to find thoughts and possibilities that inspire me to get up and get things done, until this new awareness I just thought it was a result of habit and my good character, ;).
What it really is, is using my imagination to manage my body chemistry to excite myself into action. What a great tool that I didn’t even know I was using automatically. If anyone had asked me prior to starting to read Wonderworks, I would have said that I can call on my imagination to manage my feelings, but I don’t do it except on rare occasions when I feel in need of a little extra grit or happiness. Now I see it happens all the time, I am a continuous flow of feelings driven by my behavior and diet. But I am more than this in a way that I can’t yet describe yet.
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