Lost In The Books... But Really Feeling Enlightened

I have been reading a lot lately!  No really... I read when I first wake up in the morning, read while eating my lunch at work and read when I get home from work, right up until I go to sleep at night.  What has been keeping my attention you ask?

The first of the books is "The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" by Matt Ridley.  This book was suggested by a friend and he had said that it would "blow my mind" and it basically has...  it's quite an interesting read and really sets out to answer the question "Why Sex?". Why is that the method that we use and why do we partake in this as a pastime more than mainly to procreate?  It's a really interesting book and it pulls from a ton of different research done by various scientists across all species in an effort to understand more about why we do what we do...
 

In the first part of the book he talks about genes and that the primary goal of the two sexes are to exploit each other to procreate.  He calls out studies that show that it's about gene survival and passing on to future generations.  He notes that sex is just our way of gene blending.  Each of our cells is made up of 150,000 genes (pairs of 75,000) spelled out on 23 ribbons of chromosomes.  At the point of conception, a man can choose to take all 75,000 from our mother or 75,000 from our father to pass along, but usually it's a mixture of the two and each sperm will contain that 75,000 genes to be passed along. The woman's egg will also contain 75,000 genes made up from what her parents passed on to her.  The two will come together to make a full 150,000 (pairs of 75,000).  Meaning that we have an equal amount of our parents genes and their parents genes that have been passed along to us.  There are many other things that will happen along the way, but it goes far too deep into what I want to get into here.  The interesting point to me was genetic make up of our cells, and how this may affect the characteristics that evolve through us as we grow. 

Enter the next book, "The Biology of Belief" where Bruce Lipton puts out the idea that cells and outer influences on them, including our positive or negative feelings can change the way they evolve and well... you've got yourself a couple of very interesting reads and a bunch of questions to research deeper to understand more about the inner workings of the human body, mind and spirit!

So these books and several others have been keeping my attention and have left me scratching my head a bit as well.  Both give some interesting insight on "love" that I'll have to follow up on, research and post my thoughts on as a follow up post to my "Is Love Real?" post.

I've been wishing that I had more time to post about some of the creative aspects of what's been going on in my life, but for now reading is taking up the majority of my time outside of work.  I'm ok with this though, as I feel like I've been learning so much about how people "work".  It's been great!

I've also picked up a couple books suggested by our CEO as good reads and I'm making my way through "The World Is Flat", but I must admit, reading this 3 years after it was written / updated is kind of like trying to teach someone how to draw after they graduated with their Masters in Art.   :)

On with the learning... bring on the books!