Current Reading

Some current reading and secondhand book purchases.

Recent secondhand book purchases:

1. The Change Masters: Corporate Entrepreneurs At Work by Rosabeth Moss Kanter (London: Unwin, 1983). When Kim Maree & I worked with the compassionate Professor Arthur Art. D Shulman at Melbourne’s Victoria University, Kanter's book was one that he would often mention to me in terms of the research culture change that our Research Facilitation Unit was trying to implement. The Change Masters is the classic study of change management in early 1980s corporate United States.

2. Overview of Buddhist Tantra: General Presentation of the Classes of Tantra, Captivating the Minds of the Fortunate Ones by Panchen Sonam Dragpa (Dharamasala, India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1996). Dragpba covers a range of Buddhist Tantra schools, with an emphasis on the Mahayana. There are chapters on Action, Performance, Yoga and Highest Yoga Tantra. This is an introductory overview of the pedagogical (learning) content of Buddhist Tantra and a guide to its cultural transmission in Teacher-Student lineages, including what some of the vows and commitments of the Tantric Path are.

Some other recent reading:

3. Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal With Change In Your Work and In Your Life by Dr Spencer Johnson MD (London: Vermilion, 1998). A few years ago a clinical psychologist suggested this book to me. It is written for a broad audience. Johnson's parable addresses the decision fatigue and the cognitive dissonance (Leon Festinger) that people feel during organisational restructures and management by objectives driven change. This is Kanter (MBA managerial elites) for the masses (Gustav Le Bon's The Crowd).

4. Navigating The New International Disorder: Australia In World Affairs 2011-2015 edited by Mark Beeson and Shahar Hameiri (South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2017). A now historical snapshot of how Australia as a middle power has attempted to articulate its own diplomatic and foreign affairs oriented vision of a rules-based international order. I particularly liked the chapters by Nick Bisley (on the evolving international order); Andrew Walter (the post-Global Financial Crisis or Great Recession environment); Jacqui True (advancing her now very impactful research program on gender and foreign policy, and on women and security); and Michael Wesley (an elite insider's view of the policy process at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, with awareness of consultative and interagency dynamics). This edited monograph is an initiative of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. Hameiri has been professionally very supportive in the personal context of Australian International Political Economy Network workshops.

5. Born To Crime: The Genetic Causes of Criminal Behavior by Lawrence Taylor (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1984). This book is from the genetics and the biosocial criminology period during the 1980s in the United States in which biological psychiatry, biological neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology influenced lawmakers. The chapter The Programmed Assassin (pp. 123-137) goes beyond post-JFK assassination oriented conspiracy theories and 1970s political thrillers to examine the multilevel causal pathways into becoming a political assassin or what today might be called incel and lone wolf terrorists.

The case study is John W. Hinckley Jr who attempted - and failed - to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, due to being infatuated and obsessed with the actress Jodi Foster. Much of the chapter deals with DSM-III era definitions and debates on schizophrenia and being prone in stressor related situations to potential (interpersonal) violence. One of the key observations that Taylor makes is the lifespan impact of when Hinckley Jr had finished high school and had left his family of origin, and drifted in high school. Here is the key section from page 125:

"Yet sometime after his graduation from high school, he began unaccountably to change. He spent seven interrupted years at Texas Tech, yet apparently made no friends. The few people who knew of him recall him as "an expressionless blank." Said one, "I only saw him with another human being one time." Eventually, he dropped out and went to California, flirted with the Hollywood subculture and then returned to Texas Tech where he suddenly joined the American Nazi party; he was kicked out because, as a party member said, "When somebody comes to us and starts advocating shooting people, it's a natural reaction: the guy's either a nut or a federal agent."

"Looking back at the young man's life, a friend of the family observed, "Something happened to that boy in the last six to eight years to break him from the family tradition and family lifestyle. What did happen?""

Criminology and terrorism studies researchers now have some idea of Hinckley Jr's pathway into violence, and also the causal, operative role of delusional, disordered, fixated, and obsessive beliefs (all failures of reality-testing and what the psychologist Roy F. Baumeister might note as also being illustrative of a flawed Self concept, due to psychological enmeshment schemas).

Hinckley Jr was released from prison in June 2022. The recent documentary Hinckley: I Shot The President (2024) is available on the DocPlay streaming service. I have not seen it yet. Here is the trailer:

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend.