Reviews of the books I've read

I swear I have read this book before. I mean, how could I not have read this book before? It is the vanguard of cyberpunk from which so many following books expand.

Yet, when I started reading this book, I was puzzled that it didn't seem familiar.

How could I not have read this book? I am no longer sure I had, to be honest. Case is a hustler, stole from his employer, was blacklisted. He's hired by Armitage and Molly, and takes on a project where they break into some high security place (digital and physical) to steal something. The book is about that mission.

Reading Neuromancer now, 30+ years after its initial publication is an odd experience, given that many of the terms and concepts Gibson describes are just common place. While avant-garde when published, so much has been become modern technologies, maybe inspired by the book? Unsure, but likely.

I really like Gibson's style of writing, similar to Kay's style of show-don't-tell. Of course, I like the book. Of course, it's recommended.

‘How you doing , Dixie?’
‘I’m dead, Case. Got enough time in on this Hosaka to figure that one.’
‘How’s it feel?’
‘It doesn’t.’
‘Bother you?’
‘What bothers me is, nothin’ does.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Had me this buddy in the Russian camp, Siberia, his thumb was frostbit. Medics came by and they cut it off. Month later he’s tossin’ all night. Elroy, I said, what’s eatin’ you? Goddam thumb’s itchin’, he says. So I told him, scratch it. McCoy, he says, it’s the other goddam thumb.’ When the construct laughed, it came through as something else, not laughter, but a stab of cold down Case’s spine. ‘Do me a favor, boy.’
‘What’s that, Dix?’
‘This scam of yours, when it’s over, you erase this goddam thing.’
Chapter 8 somewhere

“Doesn’t hurt?” The bright eyes met his. “Of course it does. That’s part of it, isn’t it?”
Page 108

"I try to plan, in your sense of the word, but that isn't my basic mode, really. I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans, you see..."
Page 118

The Finn grinned. “It doesn’t much matter. You gotta hate somebody before this is over.” He turned and headed for the back of the shop.
Page 166

“And the Yak, they can afford to move so fucking slow, man, they'll wait years and years. Give you a whole life, just so you'll have more to lose when they come and take it away. Patient like a spider. Zen spiders.

"I didn't know that then. Or if I did, I figured it didn't apply to us. Like when you're young, you figure you're unique. I was young."
Page something

"How do you cry, Molly? I see your eyes are walled away. I'm curious." His eyes were red-rimmed, his forehead gleaming with sweat. He was very pale. Sick, Case decided. Or drugs.
"I don't cry, much."
"But how would you cry if someone made you cry?"
"I spit," she said. "The ducts are routed back into my mouth."
"They you've already learned an important lesson, for one so young... That is the way to handle tears."
Page 177

I've had this book on my shelf for a great number of years. I'm pretty sure I bought it some time when I was reading Scalzi's Old Man's War, as people made comparisons between the Forever War and Old Man's War, hey, likely because they both had war and distorted times as theme elements.

The Forever War is an author-described commentary on the Vietnam War, where on the lowest level, none of the soldiers know why they are fighting. There was an interstellar ship that disappeared, and boom, now the entire planet is at war with the other race. The other race is somewhat baffling, in that none of their actions are smart in terms of war.

I can understand the comparisons of Old Man's War to the Forever War, even as I think they are both great science fiction books from the perspective (nominally) of the soldier. Haldeman's Mandella is less witty and less self-aware than Scalzi's Perry, likely because the latter is actually an old man, with a lifetime of experience before he entered the military, while Mandella is a two-tour, everyone-f'ing-died, seasoned vet by the time he's 25. Yet, we are still cheering for Mandella as his world just completely messed up.

I haven't and won't read the sequels, Forever Free and Forever Peace, as I feel the story is self-contained and ends well. While I have to say, "Wow, after all the shit that happened in your world, you end up in a sufficiently happy place, life just doesn't work out that way," I'm okay with this book's ending being relatively happy.

All those reams of theory crammed in my brain; there was plenty of tactical advince about envelopment and encirclemnet, but from the wrong point of view. If you were the one who was being encircled, you didn't have may options. Sit tight and fight. Respond quickly to enemy concentrations of force, but stay flexible so the enemy can't employ a diversionaly force to divert stregth from some predictable section of your perimeter. Make full use of air and space support, always good advice. Keep your head down and your chin up and pray for the cavalry. Hold your position and don't contemplate Dienbienphu, the Alamo, the Battle of Hastings.

Which lead down the rabbit hole of Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Wow. "After several days the French artillery commander, Charles Piroth, unable to respond with any effective counterbattery fire, committed suicide." There's a history lesson for one to learn.

"I've seen your psych profile," he said.

...

"What, it says I won't make a good officer? I told them that from the beginning. I'm no leader."

"Right in a way, wrong in a way. Want to know what that profile says?"

...

"I don't suppose it has any big surprises." But I was a little curious. What animal isn't fascinated by a mirror?

"No, it says you're a pacifist. A failed one at that, which gives you a mild neurosis. Which you handle by transferring the burden of guilt to the army."

The fresh beer was so cold it hurt my teeth. "No surprises yet."

"And as far as being a leader, you do have a certain potential. But it would be along the lines of a teacher or a minister; you would have to lead from empathy, compassion. You ahve the desire to impose your ideas on other people, but not your will. Which means, you're right, you'll make one hell of a bad officer unless you shape up."

We ticked off the things that bothered us: violence, high cost of living, too many people everywhere. I'd have added homolife, but Marygay said I just didn't appreciate the social dynamic that had led to it; it had been inevitable. The only thing she said she had against it was that it took so many of the prettiest men out of circulation.

And the main thing that was wrong was that everything seemed to have gotten just a little worse, or at best remained the same. You would have predicted that at least a few facets of everyday life would improve markedly in twenty-two years. Her father contended the War was behind it all: any person who showed a shred of talent was sucked up by UNEF; the very best fell to the Elite Conscription Act and wound up being cannon fodder.

It was hard not to agree with him. Wars in the past often accelerated social reform, provided technological benefits, even sparked artistic activity. This one, however, seemed tailor-made to provide none of these positive by-products. Such improvements as had been made on late-twentieth-century technology were—like tachyon bombs and warships two kilometers long—at best, interesting developments of things that only required the synergy of money and existing engineering techniques. Social reform? The world was technically under martial law. As for art, I'm not sure I know good from bad. But artists to some extent have to reflect the temper of the times. Paintings and sculpture were full of torture and dark brooding; movies seemed static and plotless; music was dominated by nostalgic revivals of earlier forms; architecture was mainly concerned with finding someplace to put everybody; literature was damn near incomprehensible. Most people seemed to spend most of their time trying to find ways to outwit the government, trying to scrounge a few extra K'S or ration tickets without putting their lives in too much danger.

And in the past, people whose country was at war were constantly in contact with the war. The newspapers would be full of reports, veterans would return from the front; sometimes the front would move right into town, invaders marching down Main Street or bombs whistling through the night air-but always the sense of either working toward victory or at least delaying defeat. The enemy was a tangible thing, a propagandist's monster whom you could understand, whom you could hate.

But this war … the enemy was a curious organism only vaguely understood, more often the subject of cartoons than nightmares. The main effect of the war on the home front was economic, unemotional, more taxes but more jobs as well. After twenty-two years, only twenty-seven returned veterans; not enough to make a decent parade. The most important fact about the war to most people was that if it ended suddenly, Earth's economy would collapse.

I read this book on Cal's recommendation. It was on his list of recently read and recommended books, so I picked it up, and read it relatively soon afterward (how unusual for me). It is a science fiction dystopian novel where the world is run by robots and privacy norms keep everyone isolated from everyone else.

The book opens with the last of the Make9 robots climbing to the top of a skyscraper, wanting to jump off, commit suicide, and being unable to do so. We then discover his world where robots run everything, and the world is deteriorating, because no one knows how to do anything, make anything, or, hell, even read.

We discover later that there are no children, to later discover why there are no children, having to do with the opening scene, actually.

I struggled with this book in the beginning, mostly because the implementation of the dystopia seemed wrong. When the future was everyone watching television and taking drugs (pot maybe to mellow everyone out?), I was like, "Television? Uh..." The book was published in 1980, so, okay, no Internet in this future. But a few other nuances about taking privacy to extremes felt completely off, too.

Eventually, I realized that while the details were wrong, the book was a commentary about the dangers of human isolation. Once I realized that, I was able to let go of the frustration with the details and just read the book.

While the details don't survive the test of time, the commentary does. If you're a fan of social commentary in the form of science-fiction dystopia, this is a book to read.

"You ought to memorize your life, the way I am doing. You ought to dictate your whole story into a recorder. I could write it down for you, and teach you how to read it."

He looked back toward me and his face now seemed very old and sad.

"I have no need to, Mary. I can't forget my life. I have no means of forgetting. That was left out."

"My god," I said. "That must be awful."

"Yes, it is," he said. "It is awful."

Sometimes Bob (the Make9 robot) is more human than any human I have ever known.

This is book 8 of the Alex Verus series.

The latest in the Alex Verus series, I have to say, I am really delighted that Jacka doesn't make us wait two years between books. Nor does he wait so long that re-reading the previous book is necessary to remember where one is in Verus' life saga.

As with previous books, the book is action packed. There is small bit of Verus' wallowing in "I have caused all of this anguish on my friends" guilt, but much of it is followed with the realization that, "Hey, my friends are adults, they can make their own choices," which, let's be honest, makes life much better. That whole respect thing.

We see the return of Drakh, along with his various compatriots and expected manueverings. We also see the various parts of Verus' life fold back in on itself, with different parts of previous books woven into the current plot. I really like when that happends. Jordan did that a lot with the Wheel of Time series; and I'm discovering how much Butcher has done that with my recent rereadings of the Dresden series. It's like a beautiful long con being exposed.

Of course the book is full of action. I keep expecting Jacka to pull a Martin and kill off a main character or something. He nearly does, but, well, won't the series be a shock when he does (Jacka, god, man, please don't). The la-la-la-the-hero-will-survive aspects make the series a fun read, of COURSE Verus will pull through. Except he doesn't in the way we expect. Which is great, of course.

I'll keep reading, I'm totally enjoying the series. Especially the unexpected nuggets of truth that just pop out.

There are four basic responses to a threat. Fight, flee, deceive, submit.
Page 36

Those are all important, but they’re reactive. I deal with them, but once I’ve dealt with them, then all that does is make the problem go away. It doesn’t make things any better.” “And what would make things better?”
Page 66

You said I had three options.” “Align yourself with a greater power,” Arachne said. “Become a greater power. Or die.” I nodded.
Page 67

“First and foremost is self-knowledge. Understanding who you are and what you can do. Recognising when you are being influenced. Knowing when to walk away.”
Page 71

“You told me that you woke up one morning and couldn’t think of any reason to get out of bed,” I said. “And you decided that you needed to find someone who could help. Because if you didn’t change something, then one day you’d just stop getting out of bed altogether.”
Page 82

“Then what do you want to do?” Luna shrugged helplessly. “Okay,” I said. “Then the first thing you’re going to have to do is answer that question.” “How?”
Page 83

“Most important is aggression and willingness to hurt the other person. Second most important is willingness to be hurt yourself. Third would be skill and knowledge, fourth would be strength and power.”
Page 114

“Because everyone’s got their limits,” I said at last. “The one thing they just won’t do.”
Page 118

Probably my biggest surprise in the five months I’d spent working for Morden had been coming to realise that he wasn’t actually a bad boss. He was ruthless with any challenges to his authority, but as long as I didn’t do that, he was fairly easygoing. He didn’t threaten or bully, or give me pointless tasks just for the sake of it. Oddest of all, he actually seemed willing to listen. He’d rarely change his plans based on my input, but he did pay attention, and if I didn’t understand what he was doing, then he’d take the time to fill me in.
Page 136

When you’re surrounded week in, week out by people constantly lumping you in with a particular group, it’s hard not to start thinking of that group as “your side” and the others as “their side.”
Page 136

“If you write down someone’s life, do they live forever?”
Page 192

Now that I look back on the whole thing, I wonder if there was anything I could have done. Maybe there was, but it’s a lot easier to see warning signs in hindsight.
Page 209

“The powerful and the great can be as petty as anyone else,”
Page 235

They would have had to genuinely care for the jinn they were dealing with. Inner nature isn’t so malleable.”
Page 239

“If you’re competent, then violence is your first option and last resort.”
Page 245

Every now and then you wind up in a situation that calls for violence, and when that happens, you need to know what you’re doing. But even if you live an especially dangerous life—which, to be fair, Luna and I do—all of those times put together are going to average to less than twenty-four hours per year. The other ninety-nine-point-something percent of the time you’re going to spend doing something else. And if you try to solve problems with violence when you don’t need to, it really doesn’t take long before you turn into the kind of person other people are worried about protecting against.
Page 245

Everything changes. Pick any constant about your life and wait long enough, and it’ll be different. We all know that, but for some reason, it’s a hard lesson to remember. I suppose it’s because to do anything, we have to assume that things won’t change—you can’t make plans without assuming a certain degree of permanence. And for the most part, that assumption turns out to be true. Until it isn’t.
Page 248

But one of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve grown older is that while everything changes, the change usually isn’t obvious. Sometimes that’s because the change is so slow and gradual. A pair of shoes wears out, a person ages, the tree outside your window grows; every day it’s different, but in such tiny increments that you never notice.
Page 248

When you know what’s relevant and what you can ignore, then everything is obvious, but it’s not so obvious when you’re caught up in surviving from day to day. At least until life reaches out and smacks you over the head.
Page 249

The city’s a busy place, and if you wait for people to notice your problems, you’ll be waiting a long time. You want to fix your life, you have to do it yourself.
Page 253

Okay.

Wow.

This book.

Highly recommended.

Unsurprising, given that it is a bestseller, but I hadn't heard of it before, and, well, it likely wouldn't have caught my attention at all except that Kris has been talking a lot about his desire for a sheep farm and Ryan Holiday recommended it in his last book newsletter. The serendipity of the two occurences caused me to pick up the book and I am very glad I did.

On the surface, Rebanks tells us about a year in the life of sheep farmer. Under the surface, he tells us about the world that has existed for centuries, about the world where boredom created by modern society doesn't exist, about the world where a community exists because the only way to survive is with that community intact, about the world that exists not the world that has been romanticized into a rom-com.

And Rebanks shows us what a life where you know who you are and where you want to be and what you want to do can be like.

I remember hiking at dusk one evening with Kevin, college-roommate-Lisa's boyfriend, to Sturtevant Falls, where we were planning on camping at the bottom (totally illegal, by the way). We were talking about a mutual friend who commented he didn't want to hear about the plight of some tribe somewhere because if he knew too much about them, he'd want to dedicate his life to helping them. My reaction was, "WOW, if that's the outcome, I would WANT to hear about them, imagine having something you're willing to dedicate your entire life to! That's something worth having!" Kevin's reaction to my reaction was, "I KNOW! I think the same."

My reaction to Rebanks story is much the same. I am sad that I don't have that all-consuming love to return to, that guides me, that challenges me, and that keeps me going. Modern life, or maybe just human life, is kinda sucky in that way. Very very few people have that passion (and not in the over-used cliche use of the term). I am envious, but also in awe and wonderment of him.

Highly recommended, this book.

Hell, let me buy you a copy.

Quotes from the book. I actually used up 1% of the publisher allowed export of the book with these. So many good things in it.

This is book two of the Orthogonal series.

Okay, this book continues the Orthogonal series, following the Clockwork Rocket. The premise of the last book was that the world the heroine, Yalda, lived in was threatened by emmient destruction by hurtling stars invading their solar system, so they launched a mountain top to relativistic speeds so that time will slow for the occupants of the mountain and they will have time for intellectual pursuits. The expectation is that the people in said mountain will advance beyond the linear years of the homeworld, and return with technology needed to save it.

Great. With you there. This book continues where we are three generations into the flight. While Egan delightfully continues with the exploration of advancements in physics, mirroring much of our discovery of physics in the twentieth century, Egan also explores some of the cultural issues an isolated society with restricted resources might encounter.

And there is where I become emotionally invested in the book.

The characters of the book are shapeshifting amoeba-like sentient beings whose natural form is six limbs and four eyes. They give birth by the mother splitting into four parts, two girls and two boys, one of each of which are bonded into pairs that continue the cycle.

Okay, fine. Except that if a woman of this species doesn't want the cycle to continue, if she wants to delay fission, she has two options: take a drug holden, or starve herself. And here is where the commentary starts. That the male of the species could starve himself and not trigger the fission is considered and discarded. That a woman of the species has a right to choose not to split (and hence immediately die) isn't allowed, she is only borrowing the flesh of her mother to give to her daughter.

You might be able to see where this would catch my attention just a bit.

I liked this book better than the first of the series. I liked the characters better, was more outraged at the injustice that happened in the book, and was overall more invested in this book. I'll read the third book to see how the story ends. I know this series is recommended by a lot of science fiction readers, but the science is a turn-off for some. One can skip the science parts and still enjoy the book, if that matters.

I picked this book up on BenCody's recommendation. I had it in my inbox for I don't know how many months (quite possibly a year), before I started reading it.

Entertainingly enough, Cal recommended it to me as I was about half way through. "What was it about again? I read it years ago." "Vampires in space?" "??? OH, yeah!"

Except, it wasn't really about vampires in space. Vampires are a small part of the book, mostly there to give plausibility to plot, but also to add a number of critical plot twists. I probably shouldn't have mentioned the vampire part, because that wasn't anywhere near the interesting part of the book, where we begin to ponder what it is that makes us human, to ponder what exists in the gaps of our perception, to ponder where the self ends when there are multiple selves, and wow, just what defines the self.

The end of the book was all O_O.

That the main character's name is Siri, and the book came out before the Siri of talking fame, cracked me up. The book is available under a generous Creative Commons license. Said license did what I believe it should do, it rewarded the author: I bought the book, even though I could read it for free. I want to support the author. A book I recommend.

You needed someone real at your side, someone to hold on to, someone to share your airspace along with your fear and hope and uncertainty.
Page 27

I am not an entirely new breed. My roots reach back to the dawn of civilization but those precursors served a different function, a less honorable one. They only greased the wheels of social stability; they would sugarcoat unpleasant truths, or inflate imaginary bogeymen for political expedience. They were vital enough in their way. Not even the most heavily-armed police state can exert brute force on all of its citizens all of the time. Meme management is so much subtler; the rose-tinted refraction of perceived reality, the contagious fear of threatening alternatives. There have always been those tasked with the rotation of informational topologies, but throughout most of history they had little to do with increasing its clarity.
Page 35

I'm just fatalistically cheerful. We all come into the story halfway through, we all catch up as best we can, and we're all gonna die before it ends.
Page 104

Humans didn't really fight over skin tone or ideology; those were just handy cues for kin-selection purposes. Ultimately it always came down to bloodlines and limited resources.
Page 107

There was a model of the world, and we didn't look outward at all; our conscious selves saw only the simulation in our heads, an interpretation of reality, endlessly refreshed by input from the senses. What happens when those senses go dark, but the model—thrown off-kilter by some trauma or tumor—fails to refresh? How long do we stare in at that obsolete rendering, recycling and massaging the same old data in a desperate, subconscious act of utterly honest denial? How long before it dawns on us that the world we see no longer reflects the world we inhabit, that we are blind.
Page 160

It had been my mistake, all along. I'd been so focused on modelling other systems that I'd forgotten about the one doing the modelling. Bad eyes are only one bane of clear vision: bad assumptions can be just as blinding...
Page 234

Walt Longmire, Book 12

Well, this one, too, didn't take me long to read. For some reason I do not understand, I felt like reading five books this week. This means either I'm prioritizing reading well, or I'm working to escape something. Given I've been reading Meditations, too, I'm not escaping, so there's that.

I've also been "watching" (ne, listening) to the Longmire television series and hate, hate, hate what they've done with the Longmire character. He is such an ass in the show And Branch? Stupid rewrite.

ANYWAY. This book.

Loved it. Still enjoying the wit (so many laughs out loud), cultural references (love these, and the rabbit holes of Wikipedia that I go down), and history lessons in these books, with this book being no exception. This time, I wrote down most of the references, because I'm doing that lately. This book is about how Standing Bear goes to race in a vertical-mountain motorbike race near and during Sturgis, and Walt walks into a crime to be solved, even though everyone warns him away. The mystery was well unrolled, making the surrounding character development interesting.

Again, if you're a Longmire fan, keep reading, this is one of the good ones. If you haven't tried the Longmire books yeet, read one of the earlier books to see if you like them. Well, read one of the good ones at least.

Now, on to the extracted quotes and history lessons!

“He’s calling it the Pequod; even ordered up decals to put the name on the side. Now where did he get that name from?”
page 70

Pequod is the name of Moby Dick's Captain Ahab's ship.

"Better than the Andrea Doria.”
page 70

Andrea Doria is an Italian ship that sank in 1956, killing 46 people.

He crossed back and sat, reaching a hand out to Dog, who pulled back a lip, giving his interpretation of the night of the long knives.
page 73

Night of the Long Knives was a Nazi Germany purge from June 30 to July 2, 1934, where the Nazi regime carried out a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate Hitler's absolute hold on power in Germany.

Was not expecting that reference in a Longmire book, but it fits with parts of the book.

“Not all fair maidens are worthy of rescue, Walt.”
page 76

Sometimes it was like that, I suppose; some people become so important in your life that they’re almost like a trademark, but then they’re gone. Sometimes they might reappear, but they’re nothing at all like what you’ve assembled in your mind since their departure; sometimes you can’t even stand them anymore, because they break up the legend and nothing dies harder than a good, personal legend.
page 76

“Then don’t you get involved.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Planning has nothing to do with it.”
page 78

Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with Lola. Maybe it was just what happens when you finally get something you want and it turns out not to be what you wanted after all. You spend most of the time in life running after things that aren’t that important, and the pursuit becomes more desirable than the prize.
page 100

Friedkin film.
page 110

William Friedkin is the director of The French Connection and The Exorcist.

"'There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.’”
page 158

Quoting Conan Doyle.

... let slip the Dog of War.
page 175

This one is a play on words. "Dog" is the name of Longmire's dog, where "dogs of war" is a quote from Shakesspeare's Julius Caesar, "Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war".

“One of the disadvantages of operating in the contemporary American West is that not all the bad guys have handlebar mustaches.”
page 182

We stared at each other. “Look, I know she hurt your feelings, but do you really think she’s involved in the criminal element of this investigation?” His dark eyes went back to the table. “Why not? What, other than her gender, leads you to believe that she is in any way innocent?”
page 201

This one stopped me because it explicitly calls out Longmire's bias. We all have biases, but how often are they called out, much less accepted?

“You care.”
“Yep, I do.”
“It is one of your most annoying traits. ... Don't change.”
page 202

Herodotus’s The Histories... “I taught world history at Black Hills State.”
“‘Men trust their ears less than their eyes.’”
page 236

Yep, need to add The Histories to my list of books to read. Assuming I can get a "good" translation.

... the fourth estate ...
page 247

The media.

... his trophy tied to the headlight a la Marlon Brando in The Wild One.
page 311

Adding watching this movie to my to-do list.

I f'ing love this book. If I could, I would have this as required reading for every school-aged kid (not just this country, every country). Well, no, I'd have it required reading for everyone, not just kids. Yeah. That.

I read this book a number of years ago after having it recommended to me by Tom Croucher. He had a stack of them at his place, and would hand them out when someone asked him for recommendations for books on how to meditate. I read the book, enjoyed it, practiced a bit, but wasn't nearly the student of the process that Tom is. Not then, likely not yet.

But when the student is ready, the teacher arrives. I've been more than a bit lost these last few years. I had the luck of being at the right place at the right time to help a friend through a rough patch, and he's returned the favor, reminding me that I will change only when I choose to change. And so, I picked up this book again.

Love this book. Highly recommended.

As is my way recently, parts of the book that caught my attention. This was hard, as pretty much the whole book had my engrossed attention.

It allows you to blow aside the illusions and free yourself from all the polite little lies you tell yourself all the time. What is there is there. You are who you are, and lying to yourself about your own weaknesses and motivations only binds you tighter to them.
MISCONCEPTION 7: MEDITATION IS RUNNING AWAY FROM REALITY. Page 25 · Location 424

Somewhere in this process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pellmell down the hill, utterly out of control and helpless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way, and you just never noticed. You are also no crazier than everybody else around you. The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation; they have not. So they still feel relatively comfortable. That does not mean that they are better off. Ignorance may be bliss, but it does not lead to liberation.
What to Do with Your Mind, Page 75 · Location 1080

You must remember that you practice loving friendliness for the purification of your own mind, just as you practice meditation for your own attainment of peace and liberation from pain and suffering.
UNIVERSAL LOVING FRIENDLINESS > Page 93 · Location 1335

We humans are very odd beings. We like the taste of certain poisons, and we stubbornly continue to eat them even while they are killing us.
Dealing with Distractions II, Page 135 · Location 1903

Related: sugar.