/lit/ - Literature

>>12611023
Go go Enlightenment ha kanagi pikachu

>>12611023
Sage

The United States and Western Europe are the epicenter of cultural deformation in the world. The therapeutic managerial ideology that emerged from these societies has loosened all restraint and morality. The despotic states of the east had at the least some sense of duty and obligation to authority and tradition. The consequences for western culture are incalculable.

Our new priests are pretty lame.
At least the old class of priests promised eternal life and gave us the foundations for some banging literary masterpieces. These new ones seem obsessed with turning us into anglo-approved deaf, dumb, and blind blobs mainlining dopamine while suspended in some sort of hyper-computer goo where we do nothing but compile algorithmically suggested amazon wishlists and connect to the World Wide Web so that every other living thing can see the shriveled remains of our genitals.
This whole cult of science being the most awesome thing ever really is something that could only appeal to boomers (the consumeristic cuck-husks that they are) and the most s ( ) yified of zoomers.
Put the pinker dork down and go read Moby Dick.

>>12611023
You think people will look back at us a few hundred years from now and realize that 1950-2000 were the high watermark of Western Civilization? The best times before it all collapsed into meaningless shit

Yeah...except that all of the most fundamental aspects of the fate of the whole world are in crisis and heading for ultimate disaster. oh, and people are more miserable now than ever. aside from all that, the standards he uses to judge improvement are retarded.

"As for your colleague’s claim that the “overall material standard
of living seems to be increasing,” the way that works is that the technoindustrial
system simply defines the term “high standard of living” to mean
the kind of living that the system itself provides, and the system then “discovers”
that the standard of living is high and increasing. But to me and
to many, many other people a high material standard of living consists not
in cars, television sets, computers, or fancy houses, but in open spaces,
forests, wild plants and animals, and clear-flowing streams. As measured
by that criterion our material standard of living is falling rapidly." -Kaczynski, Technological Slavery

>>12611023
>"Just eat the creampie." -Stephen "Sphincter Boinker" Pinker

>>12611060
this. wow. refreshingly said.

What types of scenes or subjects inspire Stephen Pinker to literally whisper to himself in unabashed satisfaction and confidence, "Enlightenment Now"?

if you want to sell books just support the status quo and tell the poor how lucky they are to own refrigerators.

>>12611110
lolololol

>>12611098
I have a theory that self-help books, just as any other commercial product, has three main target audiences: poor, middle and upper class, and the exceedingly rich.

Poor people buy the trashiest self-help out there: Deepak Chopra, Televangelist shit, Oprah-recommended stuff, absolute bottom of the barrel guides. The middle and upper class are nutters for these "how to be more productive" memes, so they go deep into "lifehack" literature, lifestyle magazines, healthy living and stuff.

What Pinker did was he untapped the uber rich market for self help books. It's no wonder Bill Gates thought this was his favorite book of the year. Pinker has been able to compile, through his lunatic ramblings, a chain of letters that enables the rich to sign, think about their lives and validate their choices. In other words: he releases them from guilt.

>>12611117
this. lololol

>>12611113
>>12611123
based and redpilled lololol

>>12611023
Yeah, except globalists are very selective about which science actually counts. There is research into the drawbacks of our population density, the failures of 'multiculturalism', dysgenics, negative IQ trends, negative effects of screen-time, negative demographic/societal consequences of feminism, etc. There's plenty of science which leads to critical observations of where we're headed, but it's underfunded or dismissed as 'racist', 'sexist' or whatever-ist.

Science can absolutely transform our lives for the better, it's not the enemy. Don't surrender science to reckless neoliberals.

>>12611154
Yeah, bro. It's not the Empire of Technic that is making everyone depressed as fuck, it's these neoliberais. Let's accept this truth, once and for all: industrialisation was a mistake.

>>12611147
pinker stinker. and just look at that hair...certainly going for the Isaac Newton look. cunt is trying SO HARD to look smart. Instead he looks like cat-lady

>>12611165
this.

>>12611154
You're totally wrong about this. the development of society can never be subject to rational control. Any basic review of history, as well as an understanding of complex systems in general, confirm this. Science marches on blindly, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists, and the corporations and governments that fund the research.

>just imagine the slum is like Coachella

>>12611165
Buddy, there's no way for luddites to prevail. Any group which is capable of and embraces technology will effortlessly dominate and outcompete the others. We have to come to terms with technology and develop a modern wisdom. If western men will grow their balls back, this epoch can be a valley instead of a cliff.

>>12611192
lololololololololol

>>12611194
Luddism is more dangerous than you seem to think

>>12611194
This is true. It's regrettable, I wish we didn't have industrialization as well - but we have to deal with reality. It is here, and here to stay. What we need is to use it to our advantage

>>12611023
>You're living in the best of times

>the best of times

>best

>>12611194
>>12611203
>there's no way for luddites to prevail
not true. the modern techno-industrial system is highly complex and tightly coupled. And disruption in one area can bring the whole system down. After it has collapsed, it's very unlikely that it will ever be able to be restarted for a number of reasons (this was the opinion of the astronomer Fred Hoyle).

>>12611203
>use it to our advantage
nonsense. not possible. the development of society is beyond rational control.

>>12611178
Well, that's sort of my point. It's a tool... It's only terrible if the people controlling it are corrupt and unwise. I'll concede that the material comfort it produces makes people docile, but this is something we have to deal with. Science is too powerful to be buried.

>>12611217
But you can use it to your personal advantage

>>12611200
more like

>>12611224
no it's not just a tool. it implies and determines specific sets of social arrangements.

And no, it's not only terrible if the people are "corrupt and unwise" the affects of technologies use and its impacts are totally beyond prediction and control whether done "wisely" or with good intentions or not. The affects of technology expand and interact in the complex web of the biosphere and human society in ways that are impossible to predict and control.

>>12611213
Similar to the Bronze Age collapse

>>12611242
exactly. only more long lasting and likely permanent.

I want to shoot a rocket at the satellites in space to destroy the world by breaking the pivot of the globalist world.
Who wants to help me do this?

>>12611194
Yes, but which technologies? Might they be something more resilient and anachronistic compared to something more contemporary and specialized and therefore dependent on something more fragile or fickle, as so many highly efficient just-in-time six sigma systems are optimized to become.

>>12611263
you dont want to see the night sky illuminated by orbital advertisements for medical scooters and mail order geriatric toileting tools?

>>12611217
it may be beyond any one individual's rational faculties to accurately model and thereafter control, but that doesn't mean it's not rational overall.
>>12611194
i've seen it argued on a marxist rag somewhere the luddites were more of a labor uprising, and it was capitalist propaganda from the time that made their name forever synonymous with technophobia.
>>12611224
how to into a wise and uncorrupt elite? should /lit/ anons be reading arxiv every day and coming up with clever hacks to accomplish this instead of frittering away their intellect on mental masturbation?

>>12611276
lol

>>12611240
Well then, you can't predict it either. We don't know the future. Perhaps being able to share ideas in ways such as this will lead to a generation of humans who are much more selective about technological and societal changes. If we take your determinism argument to its logical conclusion, then no one is really in control in a meta-sense. Just the fact that we're arguing about this is a good sign.

Now if you're right, we're fucked anyways. You will not able to put technology down, that I can gaurantee.

>>12611294
>You will not able to put technology down, that I can gaurantee.
I disagree. The current world-system is moving into a stage where it is highly unstable. It is also tightly coupled and complex. It's ripe for a revolution against technology. Similar in form to all the world's great revolutions (russian, french etc.) only this time without any illusion to create a "better world" but simply to destroy the techno-industrial system to preserve the biosphere and human freedom.

Stinker is a pop culture meme. the only people who will be reading him 20 years from now are die hard fanboys who will spend all day swearing at walls and pissing themselves.

>>12611283
>how to into a wise and uncorrupt elite?

I admit I'm not sure. The masses are too dumb for it to be grassroots imo. They will respond to serious declines in material needs, but will quickly resume their decline once things are 'good enough'. I think it would take a somewhat authoritarian and visionary political/intellectual movement to take over during crisis, and performatively demonstrate the desireability of their policies. I know that sounds all too familiar and dangerous, but realistically I don't see how else it could happen. I just don't believe in the capacity of average people to change course (or to know what the new course should be) until they're forced to.

>>12611194
Luddites don't really have any natural restrictions on them, do they? They don't have to abstain from all technology, only find a way to survive under some different regime. The original Luddites destroyed a new type of textile machine that was judged too disruptive. Its hard to say what the obvious equivalent would be in this day and age, although you could do worse than the ghastly cellars of private data that help the powerful run the world today. It should be acknowledged that the very day after you destroy a machine learning golden calf, you may have to construct something similar of your own. We should seek mastery of technology. But in the midst of apocalyptic weather or changes in Earth's habitable zones, to some extent it will be the people who can align with the new nature best, rather than those who can administer and even repair several layers of a solar cell farm, who are better set to survive.

>>12611385
Short of nuclear war, nothing truly apocalyptic is going to happen any time soon. All this collapse shit is wishful thinking. If things get really bad, the powerful will ease just enough to keep us stumbling along.

>>12611060
you put it very well

Nassim Taleb loves shutting on him on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/969212699824590848

>>12611023
These are all unsubstantial assertions that are fallacious and outright wrong.
>self-evident
Begging the question. Nice ideology.
>We're at the peak of progress.
What goes up must come down.

Who the fuck's even got time to think about all the shit going wrong in the world today lol

If this is what you voluntarily spend your time doing without getting paid for it, you're part of the problem.

>>12611385
It's very interesting how specialized people in our society are becoming. We are very leisured, affluent and in our little silos day to day, whether it is ideological, informational, or professional. We utilize communication technology, but I'd wager we know less about many things, especially history, and more about particular things in a very autistic manner without context. Historically, most people could not read and societal regress was very possible if certain classes such as clergy died due to famine, plague or other events. In sum, loss of information, wisdom and expertise is very real. Couple our high technology, moral regress and calls for governmental centralization and you have the recipe for catastrophe. Gonna be spicy!

>>12611568
Yes, goy. Only do things for money. The only thing that matters is what other people pay you to do.

>>12611589
>Only do things for money.
You said it, not me. You aren't producing value to anyone by becoming a miserable pseud.

>>12611023
https://youtu.be/fbuTSzXKgIA

>>12611589
Politics is for faggots and women.

>>12611593
>i think it's bad for society for people to think about what's bad for society

>>12611659
That's unironically true though, pseud. It's poor strategy to have the lower ranks worry about the top level strategy.

>>12611568
This. Only Incels obsess over the apocalypse. Please self report yourselves.

>>12611401
Food systems pretty precarious. We might have shored up energy solutions just in time to starve

>>12611060
pastă acquired

>>12611192
Where do they test physiological reactions to rape under controlled circumstances?

Pinker is right. Materially and measurably we're excelling but spiritually we're stunted. Only a revival in culture can save us.

>>12611676
yet here you are, shilling on /lit/ for free.

my ex literally refused to use a computer or cell phone, it was not worth it imo. Although she did have a plentiful book collection

>>12611721
>shilling
This word truly is meaningless at this point

>>12611726
back to your cubicle wagie, you have nothing to say about anything as you have already conceded you're content with the elites doing all the thinking for you.

>>12611750
But you aren't thinking. You're mindlessly pillaging the literary works of elites to justify your pathetic lowly existence. Universal literacy was a fucking mistake and pseuds like you are proof.

>>12611767
have the elites signed off on this take or are you exactly as much of an insecure, self-aggrandizing hypocrite as you sound?

>>12611023
Ass

>>12611725
give me her postal address pls

>>12611240
>impossible to predict and control.
If it is impossible to predict and control why do primitivist morons on /lit/ say it is only they who understand the causality behind technology? The current far right fascination with Ted is the dumbest stuff since Moldbug.

>>12611023
>Take your soma and be content, goy

>>12611767
Today's """"elites"""" are themselves mediocre, semiliterate mouthbreathers with no understanding of the world or the past beyond what is immediate to them. Case in point, Pinker. In such a circumstance it is no wonder that others will outmatch them in literacy and independent thought without the adequate stature that comes with it.

>>12611023
Reminder that the Enlightenment was the greatest misstep in human history and responsible for the greatest misery that has ever and will ever exist.

>>12611676
cringe

>>12613019
yeah it's a sorry state of affairs when neckbeards on the asshole of the internet can handily outclass the whole intelligentsia. not sure what that seething drone's deal is, possibly trying radical acceptance for his own sense of total impotence.

the best of times was the 90’s

if you didn’t know how to profit off and monopolise early internet domination you were a fucking idiot

my uncle was a stoner uni dropout bumming around in India and even he made a decent career for himself through internet boom

bitcoin things like that sure there’s going to be more small niche booms. but the internet boom will never be matched

>>12613179
If we're not there yet, we've certainly lurched closer to a world where universities are just businesses and are no longer distinguished or prestigious

>>12611701
It’s probably anecdotal. Ethical guidelines are strict, so many an ambitious scientist go rogue.

>>12611283
>i've seen it argued on a marxist rag somewhere the luddites were more of a labor uprising, and it was capitalist propaganda from the time that made their name forever synonymous with technophobia.
>The large-scale destruction of machinery which occurred in the English manufacturing districts during the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century, largely as a result of the employment of the power-loom, and known as the Luddite movement, gave the anti-Jacobin government, composed of such people as Sidmouth and Castlereagh, a pretext for the most violent and reactionary measures. It took both time and experience before the workers learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and therefore to transfer their attacks from the material instruments of production to the form of society which utilizes those instruments.

That's how marx desibes the luddite movement

Does anyone here think that ordinary civilians can rail back against scientism? What can we do to purge this devil from our societies, and usher in a new paradigm? If a random civilian publishes a book with dismantlings of many dominant scientific narratives, would it have any ultimate effect on society? How do we, the people, usher out this decrepit paradigm and usher in a new one?

>>12611060
Mein Gott! Pure Scientism!

>>12611023
>The Panopticon gives you candy now!

>>12611060
Lel people actually believe this

>>12613348
vile

>>12611023
Man, white people age really badly. The problem with all Pinker says is that it relies on generalities and completely ignores the individual. Okay, its great that unemployment is at an all time low. But that doesn't mean shit if I'M unemployed. It doesn't mean shit if disease is at an all-time low if I'M sick.

Lot of doubters here, maybe one of you could prove him wrong:
https://youtu.be/t6JFr7QIkLE

>>12611023
Jews control America

>>12611786
Are you really asking whether civilization's elites have ever expressed disdain toward the notion of extending education and rights to the masses? And how do I sound insecure and hypocritical? What have I claimed about myself that makes you think this?

If you look at the discussions had on here, /his/, /pol/, and other social media sites and small forums, and don't think these places are filled with 99% pseuds who would have lived much better lives had they just never even encountered books in general outside of the most basic YA stuff, you have no right to even comment. The amount of wretched stupidity pervading the internet is astounding and it comes from morons who have a bloated sense of self-worth gained by reading the works of individuals far more talented and intelligent than themselves.

>>12613019
This is precisely the result of what I'm talking about. People like Pinker, Harris, Peterson, etc. are just celebrities, and the postmodern philosophers in the 20th century were only a step away from being celebrities as well (although the latter were still far more literate than the former). The "elite" today are just the wealthy; but the wealthy in the past were never immediately part of the elite of history, hence why there were millions of wealthy people in the past who never made it in the history books. Today, things are different, because the possibility of an established aristocracy outside of wealth and celebrity statuses is over; people who don't deserve to enter the history books will end up entering them.

>>12613348
>>12613299
Are these real?

"“If adults commit adultery, do infants commit infantry? If olive oil is made from olives, what do they make baby oil from? I a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian consume? A writer is someone who writes, and a stinger is something that stings. But fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce, hammers don't ham, humdingers don't humding, ushers don't ush, and haberdashers do not haberdash...If the plural of tooth is teeth, shouldn't the plural of booth be beeth? One goose, two geese-so one moose, two meese? If people ring a bell today and rang a bell yesterday, why don't we say that they flang a ball? If they wrote a letter, perhaps they also bote their tongue.”"

>>12611058
Not what the data shows.

>>12611098

>>12613299
wtf i love pinker now

>>12611058
>The despotic states of the east had at the least some sense of duty and obligation to authority and tradition.
yeah I'd love to have my organs removed for the good of the state

>>12611208
Anon: I really, really, really like this image

>>12613445
The biggest lie ever spread by white people. Stop using jews as your scapegoats.

>>12613547
Turn on the news and start looking up names, ctrl f "Jew." Tone starts from the top and Jews own the media.

>>12613557
No, Don Lemon isn't a jew.

>>12611060
>These new ones seem obsessed with turning us into anglo-approved
You've got your foreign minority wrong.

>>12613570

>>12611208
>It was the best of times, it was the better of times, it was the age of logic, it was the age of facts, it was the epoch of progress, it was the epoch of uplifting, it was the season of change, it was the season of optimism, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter thaw of welfare.

I don't get why people are so critical of him and his books.

While it's true that it's clearly marketed to middle class liberal insecurity, most of the facts of the book are accurate.

I would also argue that Enlightenment values actually are worth something, as in the words of Gandhi: "Sounds like great ideas, we should try them some time.".

>>12613597
Based.

Too many here are defending their feelings, instead of trusting what the data shows.

>>12613566
Don Lemon isn't the premier anchor on CNN.

>>12613634
Agreed. I think there's a lot of non-whites here and they simply don't have the IQ to compete with the rest of us.

>>12613634
>people ahould use data based on statistical averages to decide if they are personaly happy with how things are

>>12611098
us state department payola

>>12613299
>>12613693
also big pharma payola

>>12613666
>>12613677
What did these digits mean?

>>12613677
But anon, it's not about being happy, it's just about acknowledging what the evidence says.

If violence as a whole statistically is going down all across the world for example, this is a good thing regardless of whether you care or not.

>>12613677
Dubs of based

>>12613453
Your aristocratic high elitism is long dead, not even the Saudis are openly against universal literacy, and such an attitude is now the sole province of a small handful of online weirdos with no power and who may have read Nietzsche. It's hypocritical because you're preaching blind obsequiousness to the narrative while being rather peculiar yourself. If you're such a stellar true intellect, what is a better way to handle the pseud problem other than ineffectual whining trying to shame them into getting a job?

>>12613455
basically

>>12611058
Enjoy your conspiracy theories and neet schizo lifestyle while western civilization is busy being objectively the most sucessfull civilization in the history of mankind

>>12613570
wasp elites the anglosphere over have been reduced to apologists for their more cosmopolitan pay masters and will have to be brought to heel alongside them

>>12611023
>You're living in the best of times
And yet
>Science has made every other type of knowledge redundant
Even worse
>We're at the peak of progress
How the fuck are these the best of times
I'd rather believe in God and raise a family while not knowing what goes on outside my country unless it affects me

>>12613329
Anyone..?

>>12613862
>muh gdp

>>12613862
In the midst of decay.

The outcome of utopian Pinker's world is pic related.

>>12613907
I like to believe it's already beginning to refute itself in a grand IRL reductio ad absurdum but it still takes certain eyes to see it.

America peaked from 1950-2000

Its been in terminal decline since 2001 due to multiculturalism, mass immigration, managerial neoliberlism, capitalism, identity politics, monopolization, privaitization, endless war, an out of touch elite of rootless cosmopolitans, and a cultural rot that encourages greed, selfishness, and hyper individualism.

America is no longer racially and culturally homogeneous. Its insides are rotting from neoliberlism which decays everything from humans themselves to public infrastructure.
All the factories where outsourced or automated to china and the third world.
We are currently going through what is called the sixth mass extinction event, climate change will not be and can not be prevented. Possibly, humanity itself will die off.


In the end, through all the philosophers and thinkers, the theologians, and intellectuals.
One man was always right

Good ol shoopy

>>12613921
Not what the data shows.

>>12613911
Is this ironic? How tf does car loan misconduct reflect the state of society as a whole? Im trying to keep an open mind here but this is as unconvincing as it gets

>>12613911
Not what the data shows.

>>12613921
pop culture references are not an argument

>>12613973
>>12613974
How is delinquency anything other than immorality?

>>12613329
Not going to happen. Our only hope is for a Monsanto supervirus to wipe out the majority of humanity and for enough people to be immune that there won't be long-lasting effects.
Or basically the same case with a world/nuclear war.

>>12613987
Fuck off ancap.
If taxation is theft then wage extraction is rape.

>>12613987
People have always been immoral. In the past that immorality expressed itself in murdering babies, now it's holding on to your car rental for longer then you should. How's that NOT an improvement?

>>12613939
Anything us civilians can do to accelerate it?

>>12613998
I agree that it's wrong for employers to steal surplus value, but people with bad credit are objectively inferior.

>>12614000
>How's that NOT an improvement?
It's getting worse in aggregate.

>>12611060
Based

>>12614000
So we've been domesticated and just passive aggressively torment eachother psychologically now? Is that why mental illness is constantly on the rise?

>>12614016
These aren't debts. They are promises to pay.
And currently the Western world has over 500 trillion promises to pay.
That's a GOOD thing.

>>12613985
Yet Texhnolyze provides an interesting critique of modern civilization. Pinker is right when he states that general levels of violence are lower than ever before but once this struggle is ended, what will we do afterwards? The cultural stagnation and lost of vitality of West is evident, if this doesn't change we will experience a slow death until nature or technology itself wipe us out.

>>12614056
Sorry I don't subscribe to Judeo-Christianity. In my worldview what you think is depraved.

>>12614014
There's clever people working on it. Keep reading, formulate a plan then act.