/lit/ - Literature

>>12004418
again, Bataille matters because in the 1930s, it was Hegel-derived socialism - on either the extreme left or extreme right perspectives - that were fucking everything up. and Bataille channeled his own brand of awesome sorcery in order to find the common aspect that they both shared, namely, the Sun. and later on Baudrillard went to him for inspiration, and Land too, which they found, and then some. Bataille is an absolute megaboss for this reason.

but the question is, *is this required today?* my feeling would be, no, it isn't. it will work, in the way atomic weapons "work." but the use of the largest possible weapon is mutually destructive. there is no limited or tactical use of them in a world of exchange and reciprocity, at least one that even remotely resembles the world we have today. i know, blah blah, We Can Use Them Safely...no, we can't. and even their proliferation leads to the possibility that they will be used by terrorists, which in turn require us to take ever-more interventionist roles in the Middle East, and so on. that mutually assured destruction - Cold War style or modern State/Terrorism style - is a legit phenomenon is for me not really up for discussion. War Be Crazy, yo. that is how it works.

and so Bataille matters, for reasons that go way, way beyond Land. the question is all about how we think about things in 2018 and beyond in terms that don't repeat the past, or if they do, at least in a way not so fucking stupid.

>>12004422
i mean Taleb is pretty based. Antifragile is a legit good book. Sowell obv. it's not even like Mises is wrong, either, it's just that he can be just as blinkered as Marxist economists. *there are structural blind spots in both Marxist economics and Austrian economics which none can see in themselves, but which are perfectly obvious to the other side.* what makes Land unique is that he's looked at things from *both* sides, which is what we also must do. no matter *how* fucking crazy things wind up looking.

David Landes is good too, both The Wealth and Poverty of Nations and Prometheus Unbound. he gets it.