📚 Book Excerpt --- We Can Stop the First Great Extermination by George Monbiot

🙏 Acknowledgement This essay by George Monbiot, a columnist for The Guardian, is part of his book This Can’t Be Happening, a collection of his writings on environmental issues. We are grateful to Monbiot for allowing us to translate it to Chinese and republish his essay here. We Can Stop the First Great Extermination George Monbiot October 2019 The Launch of Animal Rebellion, Smithfield Market, London I have spent my life learning and unlearning. We cannot navigate the world in which we live without unlearning some of its deepest myths. ...

November 27, 2024 · 7 min · Xing Shi Cai
Refuse plastic!

No More Plastic: A Journey Towards Sustainability

On April 21, 2024, I organized a book club to discuss the book No. More. Plastic. by Martin Dorey. To prepare for the event, I spent quite some time drafting a slide deck. Now I have translated the slides into Chinese. You can download the slides here: English Version Chinese Version Summary of My Slides A Book Recommendation Martin Dorey, an author, surfer, swimmer, cyclist, and environmentalist, wrote the book “No More Plastic.” He was inspired to take action after discovering an area knee-deep in plastic bottles during his move to a quiet beach in 2009. His book aims to raise awareness about the plastic pollution crisis. ...

May 31, 2024 · 3 min · Xing Shi Cai

Books That Got Me Interested in Math

I always feel that I became a mathematician accidentally. But in retrospect, since I was a kid, I did read serial books about mathematics and mathematicians and has always been drawn to a career and life in mathematics. Below are the books which ignore my interest. Nature’s Numbers: The Unreal Reality Of Mathematics Nature’s Numbers This book by Ian Stewart has some interesting facts about the nature of mathematics. It has been decades since I read it, but I still remember that I was awe-filled when I learned form the book that Fibonacci sequences appear the arrangement of a pine cone. ...

October 17, 2023 · 1 min · Xing Shi Cai
Why Buddhism is True

What Stoicism can learn from Buddhism?

Having recently read through Robert Wright’s book ‘Why Buddhism is True,’ I was impressed by Buddhism’s intricate comprehension of human psychology. While the book doesn’t directly set Buddhism against Stoicism, my previous exposure to Stoic made me see how the two philosophies could complement each other. Stoicism, particularly its modern interpretations, claims that achieving eudaimonia - the good life - implies “living according to one’s nature.” Stoics define our nature as being “social and rational.” This, in my perspective, is more readily comprehensible than the similar but more intricate concept nirvana presented in Buddhism. ...

July 15, 2023 · 2 min · Xing Shi Cai

A Book About Difficult Parents

The Sixth Tone is an English news website covering stories in China. A DKU (Duke Kunshan University) student just won a writing contest organized by them with an essay titled Moxa, Receipt, Money, and Generations. It is a candid and touching account on how her father’s obsession with moxa damaged their family. This makes me think that perhaps many of our students also similar family issues. If you are in such a situation, reading the memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls might be helpful. ...

August 28, 2022 · 2 min · Xing Shi Cai

On Procrastination

I procrastinate, a lot. And when I think about all the things I could have done had I not procrastinated so much, e.g., all the papers I could have written, I am really regretful 😢. One of the books which I found very helpful is How to Beat Procrastination by Nils Salzgeber. Here are some tips from the book and some of my own thoughts. Hope it help you to not to have the same regret which I have. ...

December 30, 2021 · 3 min · Xing Shi Cai

Eat Sleep Sit

When I read the book Strangers Drowning, I was very much impressed by the work of Ittetsu Nemoto, a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk, who dedicated his life to helping suicidal people. The book also briefly described his four-year extremely harsh ascetic training in an especially strict monastery. My interest was aroused. “Why does someone willingly go through such unimaginable hardship willingly?” This is why I picked up Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan’s Most Rigorous Zen Temple by Kaoru Nonomura. At the age of 30, Nonomura left everything behind and enrolled in Eiheiji, one of the most rigorous Zen monasteries in Japan to train as a monk. The book is his memory of his time at Eiheiji. ...

July 31, 2021 · 10 min · Xing Shi Cai

Why modern Stoics should read some Peter Singer

I’d like to thank Dr. Gregory Sadler for helpful comments on this post. Who is Peter Singer? Peter Singer at The College of New Jersey, Oct 2009. Bbsrock, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. I consider myself a follower of Stoicism philosophy. In recent years, I have read attentively ancient Roman Stoics as well as modern Stoic writers. Their inspiring words have helped me tremendously in dealing with everyday challenges. However, many of my questions about how to live a good do not have answers in either classic or modern Stoic literature. Take, for example, what would be an ideal political system? As modern Stoic writer Massimo Pigliucci pointed out, the ancient Stoics do not have a consensus. Moreover, the world we are living in today is vastly more complicated than in ancient Rome. To live a virtuous life in our time, we must go beyond Stoicism and educate ourselves about how this world works. ...

July 22, 2021 · 14 min · Xing Shi Cai

On Virtue Ethics by Rosalind Hursthouse -- Chapter 11 Objectivity

A summary of Chapter 11 Objectivity Virtue ethics rejects the sort moral objectivity which Kant aspires to. The naturalism describe in the last three chapters also rejects the type of objectivity based on empirical facts accessible from a neutral point of view. However, it also does not assume our standard list of virtues is correct without need of validation. This is the type of objectivity naturalism can offer. But the study of objectivity should also give an account of ethical disagreement. ...

July 20, 2021 · 8 min · Xing Shi Cai

On Virtue Ethics by Rosalind Hursthouse -- Chapter 10 Naturalism for Rational Animals

A summary of Chapter 10 Naturalism for Rational Animals. What Difference Does Our Rationality Make? Unlike animals, it is primarily our actions from reason that we are ethically good or bad human beings. In ethical naturalism, rationality makes a big difference. And adding rationality does not need to add the fifth end to the four other describe in the previous chapter. What characteristics do human have? Comparing to animals, it is hard to summarize. We enjoy and suffer from so many different things. So it seems that naturalism cannot work for humans. ...

July 19, 2021 · 4 min · Xing Shi Cai