Entry 1766 — The New York Review of Books
When I got an offer of four free issues of The New York Review of Books, I accepted it, remembering that it occasionally had good stuff in it in spite of being a standardly totalitarian leftist rag. It has a particularly interesting review in its 19 March issue by H. Allen Orr of a book on altruism that I want to discuss at length eventually but am too screwed up physically right now to. (I was deteriorating, by the way, but suddenly seem a bit better for some reason–an Excedrin besides a hydrocodone? Or is the prednisone finally kicking in? Not that I’m not still pretty screwed up, but not agonizingly, the was I was yesterday, and early today.)
Anyway, duty-bound to write something here, I brought up the NYRB because the Orr review had what I think a near-perfect example of the way a great many liberals automatically think. After quoting something from the book under review, Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others, by David Sloan Wilson, about “how well,religions, economics and everyday social units, such as city neighborhoods function to improve the welfare of their members,” Orr writes, “Importantly,in each of these cases, we’re confronted with the potentially conflicting goals of groups (say, to save the planet) and individuals (say, to maximize profits by dumping toxic waste).”
The NYRB has continued sending me issues even after I wrote, “cancel,” on the statement I got after receiving one or two of my freebies. I figured they might be going to charge me for a year’s subscription even though I’d rejected it. More likely, they figure the more free issues they send me, the more chance I will break down and become a subscriber–which I’ve now decided to do.
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