/lit/ - Literature

Read Lasch too and you will reach the final boss of blackpills.

>>17876965
It actually is, but a Caesar will rise before the downfall

>>17876965
I on the other hand, gleefully await the inevitable collapse.

>>17876976
based

>>17876965
You should check out The Age of Entitlement

>>17876976
based

>>17876965
>book that heavily criticizes capitalism and liberalism
>laudatory quote on the cover from a capitalistic liberal newspaper
Every fucking time. Americans should be gassed and exterminated in death camps.

>>17880085
That’s the nature of the system. It’s not like you can avoid it from happening, everything in liberal society is a commodity, even a book criticizing liberal society

>>17880102
>That’s the nature of the system
No you fucking retard, that only happens in Jewish America. In Europe there are independent publishing houses that do not put any stupid memey quote on their covers. That is pure burgerpunk.

>>17876965
>the clock is ticking for us every day
Yes, you're going to die, society is going to collapse, the planet will be swallowed by the Sun, which will itself burn out
Get over yourselves you fucking crybabies
Liberalism and the Great Game always fit hand in glove

>>17876965
>the clock is ticking for us every day
For what?

>>17880085
Well even if David Brooks works for the NYT, he still speaks for himself.

Besides, the book only criticizes capitalism and liberalism to the extent that these produce consequences that is anathema to Deneen's Catholic Traditionalism, which you may or may not agree with, but Deneen isn't a communist who is against private property, money or markets, so I don't see how anything the NYT says can be held against him.

>>17880138
The NYT is certainly not a traditionalist Catholic newspapper

>>17880150
No, but heavily criticizing capitalism/liberalism doesn't mean you have to tell liberal outlet that praises your book to fuck off.

>>17880113
America runs the world and America is the seat of liberalism, Europe is just America Lite and doesn’t fucking matter

>>17880168
Huge simplification, bro.

>>17880113
Europe is mega cucked and worse than America in every single respect.

>>17880168
Brainlet right wing take. Yuropeean Union is liberalism in overdrive by comparrison. Less tight borders, more immigrants, more tax, less freedom of hate speech, noguns, more environmentalism laws, national healthcare. We've got a small minority of niggers that are dwindling in growth probably getting integrated into "white" people. And mexicans that want to exterminate themselves.

>>17880168
>America runs the world

Not for long desu. Your country is basically in a pre-civil war condition right now. The U.S will undoubtedly have another civil war in my lifetime and it will destabilize world geopolitics.

>>17880168
get nuked amerishit

>>17880219
The EU is not liberalism in overdrive. It’s pretty standard and refined. American liberalism is in overdrive, because if it’s not the government throwing 24/7 psyops while they let corporations rape the world under the pretext of freedom, it’s their culture of Progressivism that exists solely to more “inclusive” of people in the liberal dystopia we’re in. Most Americans would take an EU government over America’s government any day, even “leftists” just want basic welfare policies that every other country already has

>>17880237
>Most Americans would take an EU government over America’s government any day
Not even Europeans want European governments. The UK, Germany and France are all authoritarian shitholes that have governments that act in opposition to the nation they're supposed to be representative of. The European state is a bureaucratic apparatus disconnected from the people that established it to administrate their country and acts only to enrich minority stakeholders at the cost of culture and values of the host people I fail to see why that would be appealing to Americans.

>>17880237
Yeah but every developed country on earth has their news psyops. They serve to divide the morons. Regardless Europe is by textbook definition infinitely more neo-liberal than we are. No country that can buy a gun at a grocery store while heiling hitler in the parking lot without getting arrested can say they're more liberal than ones that can't.

>>17880278
>The UK, Germany and France are all authoritarian shitholes that have governments that act in opposition to the nation they're supposed to be representative of.

This is literally a feature of liberalism per definition anon. Liberalism is always just popular with a very small segment of rich city-dwellers which means they and their public and private friends have to marshal an authoritarian police state and propaganda appartus to get everyone else to comply.

The same thing happens in the U.S too except in the U.S the state is weaker, so this repression is done by private individuals and private corporations instead. Do you think it's a coincidence that people get cancelled and fired from their jobs for the tiniest perceived political infraction? It's not. It's a form of ideological repression, e.g either comply to this liberal-capitalist regime or be unemployed and starve to death.

>>17876993
I think this sort of thinking about "meritocracy" has aged very poorly. Asian countries are much more meritocratic than the US and the US has far more irresponsible elites. Delusional American left-liberals who have ruled for decades now genuinely believe in moral obligations to uphold Our Ideals, which leads to things like relaxing standards in the military because of sexism concerns, mass affirmative action, etc.

>>17880474
Well the U.S has been a liberal democracy for 220 years whereas China has been barely individualistic at all for the last 30. Give it a couple of more generations and the wealthy elite in china will also turn into a bunch of narcissists.

>>17876965
>"predict" something with an infinite time frame

jesus will come any day now

>>17880552
The US isn't individualistic and never has been. From day one people have noted how Democracy turns everyone into conformists.

>>17880474
>Asian countries are meritocratic

biggest advantage they have is they don't bother with human "rights"

>>17880584
>Asian countries are meritocratic
More so than the US.

>>17880593
do you anything to back that up?

>>17880566
Jesus is always coming and going

>>17880581
That’s the purpose of individualism. Liberalism uses the idea of individual autonomy to placate the population and integrate them into the technocratic state. That’s the entire purpose of progressivism and identity politics today: they begin with the assumption of “being yourself” and “embracing your unique freedom” but later gets homogenized into social movements that function to augment the liberal system and diversity its outreach. It’s still Liberalism and it’s still democracy, it just turns out that they’re all fake bullshit used to deceive you

>>17876965
>and now I think the clock is ticking for us every day
Oh sweaty, forget the clock - time has already run out

>/lit/ splitting hairs over semantics

modern "philosopy" is a joke

>science uses tried and tested maths to forecast precist events that they admit has limitations
>philosophers asspull priors to predict vague possible futures. they rewrite definitions everytime they get it wrong

why bother?

>>17876965
I believe liberalism will continue on in one form or the other.
Reactionaries need to be suppressed more and science needs more emphasis in public institutions tho

You cannot dwell on the past.
The geniuses of the past reactionaries always reference? They were at the forefront of their time and culture, expanding what it encompassed.
An insular culture is a dead culture. It is a dead end.
>>17876993
This is really weak, imo
Why would some cloistered inbred king from medieval times have more obligation to lower classes or to exercise power responsibly than someone who achieved high status on his own and proved his own merit?

>>17880581
Well I mean individualistic in the sense that individiual people have to engage in higher education and corrupt networking at universities to not be poor for the rest for their life.

>>17880608
>thinks philosophy has ever been different than this

>>17880601
>That’s the entire purpose of progressivism and identity politics today: they begin with the assumption of “being yourself” and “embracing your unique freedom” but later gets homogenized into social movements that function to augment the liberal system and diversity its outreach.
Not really, "progressive" identity politics requires us to acknowledge the existence of a historically constituted victim-subject and calls us to acknowledge our sins against them and vow to Do Better. Under Individualism we would simply be allowed to ignore this matter or not care, but in our society ultimately nominal concern for victims supersedes individuality. Our society does everything Trads call for but under a different moral theory (as opposed to your favorite Christian denomination).

>>17880584
They’re still industrializing, basically. Human rights always takes a backseat during these periods of growth.

But this asks an interesting question:
Can a nation industrialize while respecting human rights?

>>17880629
>Why would some cloistered inbred king from medieval times have more obligation to lower classes or to exercise power responsibly than someone who achieved high status on his own and proved his own merit?

Why do you think the choice is binary between two equally shit systems you fucking brainlet? Critiquing contemporary meritocracy doesn't make you into a reactionary who pines for the society of yesteryear.

>>17880635
What, China has had an exam system for the civil service for centures... the US declared civil service exams racist under the Nixon administration.

>>17880661
I didn’t imply any such thing, I’m simply comparing liberalism with one of the systems (feudalism) reactionaries like to pine for.

>>17880664
>China has had an exam system for the civil service for centures

Yeah, an exam system where the goal was to write Confucian poems about irrigation and how the Emperor was the physical manifestation of the sky, you brainlet.

This isn't the same as an exam at a university that exists for a person to become a member of a hypercapitalist economy.

>>17880650
I don’t agree. The whole point is that liberalism is breaking down and imploding over guilt of its past sins. Individualism is promoted in mass culture today but only for those designated victims and minorities so that liberalism can liberate as many people and lifestyles into the market as possible. It’s still individualism, but only for abstract minority groups, and it’s used as propaganda anyways to just indoctrinate people into pushing this system forward. It’s basically just the system going “Straight white are free and equal, but we missed a spot! We need liberty for the BIPOC trans sex workers!”

>>17880664
What kind of service are you referring to?
There are numerous certificates you need in the US to be employed in certain government jobs.

I was looking at a government job for the state in California yesterday, in fact, and realized I didn’t qualify because I haven’t passed some test I never heard of.

>>17880678
Yeah but Lasch is critiquing meritocracy as existing under a individualistic system, at least in a feudal society everyone recognized their place and what the place meant, the aristocrats had in other words, a form of noblesse oblige, and even if that noblesse oblige didn't amount to much in practice, today the elites don't help anyone if it doesn't mean their own career or status enhancement, if they even acknowledge being elites at all, since elite denial is another unique feature of liberalism.

>>17880727
We have noblesse oblige today, it’s called philanthropy.
And in fact, the government incentivizes practices like donation to charity with tax write-offs.
>today the elites don't help anyone if it doesn't mean their own career or status enhancement
But isn’t that what aristocrats under a feudal system were doing with their noblesse oblige? That was what was expected of them and their position.
I don’t see the difference.
>elite denial is another unique feature of liberalism
Flaunting your status is often seen as being in poor taste, although there are exceptions like with America’s previous president or the rockstar image of excess.

>>17880208
I don't remember my PM kneeling for George Floyd.
Some Euro parties say stuff that would cause a literal riot in the rainbow coloured modern U.S

>>17880688
China didn't have a hypercapitalist economy hundreds of years ago, but the civil service was probably the best path to wealth at the time, and I'm pretty sure anyone could sit for it in principle.

>Yeah, an exam system where the goal was to write Confucian poems about irrigation and how the Emperor was the physical manifestation of the sky, you brainlet.
In the US people write "College Essays" about their experiences working towards Social Justice lel. Of course no one actually reads those and just looks at the surname of the applicant to see if their family has donated to the university recently.

>>17880702
the US had a civil service exam for most government jobs that was abolished due to concerns about it violating the Civil Rights Act under Nixon who wanted to be seen as good on race issues.

>>17880691
>Individualism is promoted in mass culture today but only for those designated victims and minorities so that liberalism can liberate as many people and lifestyles into the market as possible.
Those designated victims and minorities already have jobs and buy and sell things, you know? The vast majority of them entered the US as cheap laborers in the first place. Furthermore, in non-Western countries, foreign groups are "integrated into the market" without victimary rhetoric. This entire line of argument basically presupposes a Marxist conception of society where if we could just overcome "liberal propaganda" we could have a hecking spunky and organic Communism (but where we're still concerned about victims of course!)

>“Straight white are free and equal, but we missed a spot! We need liberty for the BIPOC trans sex workers!”
The Civil Rights Regime explicitly subordinates liberty to equality.

>>17880777
the US only has riots in the summer of an election year.

>>17880787
>the US only has riots in the summer of an election year.
Cope.
Are there any standing Columbus statues in the entire U.S or did they all get torn down by a brown horde?

>>17880702
Actually the minimum qualifications at government jobs are even stricter than for the private sector, from what I understand.

Like, if you don’t have exactly the “minimum 3 years experience as junior administrator” then there is no hope for you to be administrator, etc.
Modern bureaucracies are VERY procedural like how a military is regimented.

>>17880759
>it’s called philanthropy.

But even philanthropy now is just the elites moving money around to other elites. We don't live in the Andrew Carnegie era where billionaires build libraries anymore.

>>17880787
>In the US people write "College Essays" about their experiences working towards Social Justice lel.

Yeah and I agree with you that this is definitely analogous to the Chinese exams in some way.

>>17880787
>the US had a civil service exam for most government jobs that was abolished due to concerns about it violating the Civil Rights Act under Nixon who wanted to be seen as good on race issues.
Yeah, that was just one general exam.
Now they base it on your background, education, and work experience as a bare minimum standard.

But even for something like the postal service or forest ranger, you need to pass their own specific examination.
Forest ranger you have to have a college degree too.

>>17880793
2020 was an election year

>>17880858
It was only recently reinstated a few years ago and I'd bet that the current exams are a joke compared to the previous one, similar to how the SAT has been made easier at least 2 times (maybe 3 now) because blacks can't score highly enough.

>>17880886
>2020 was an election year
Oh so then what happened in the U.S is no big deal.
I don't remember any elections in Europe making politicians kneel and people tearing down statues outside of the UK, which is Anglo anyway

>>17880796
there's not really a substantial difference, the wealthy in the US have a tendency to attach themselves to a great moral crusade in any time period, and black equality has been the great moral crusade of the post-war US.

>>17880886
I don’t think the SAT has changed that much in that way. From what I understand, the math sections are actually more difficult in some sense.

>>17880474
"Left-liberals", and the like, dislike meritocracy because it showcases the stark reality that, no, not humans are equal; and the outcomes of meritocracy don't reflect the idealistic future they want, but will never come.

>>17880899
>it's no big deal
I'm just saying these sorts of things mostly happen in election years, not that they're irrelevant. Curiously, a lot of race riots in US history have happened in the summer of an election year... nothing to see here, I suspect!

>>17880914
Basically they have tried to reduce the g-loading (in the sense of g=general intelligence) of the SAT by removing things like analogies (sometime around the 80s, iirc) then further reformed it again a few years ago when they added the "essay" section and did some other stuff I forgot about. Then a few years ago the essay was removed again and it became like a generic post-highschool knowledge test.

>>17880787
> This entire line of argument basically presupposes a Marxist conception of society

It’s not at all? I’m picking up where Liberalism left off in 1991. It has the dominant hegemony and now that it’s at the top, there’s no more enemies to fight other than itself. So it’s tearing itself apart with slave morality and victimization to democratize the lower minorities into a utopian globe of diversity and freedom. Progressivism is a natural evolution of the system, it doesn’t come from Marxism as the right wing claims, it’s the system in a mode of desperation and anxiety over its own existence. The rhetoric directly comes from American culture and spreads to the rest of the world through social media. It’s just an extension of liberal hegemony. Most of the world’s youth is progressive today, especially after 2020.

>>17880919
>Curiously, a lot of race riots in US history have happened in the summer of an election year... nothing to see here, I suspect!
If you didn’t notice this in 2020, you’re kind of oblivious to the nature of politics.
Which probably isn’t a bad thing either unless you have a stake in it.

>>17880918
Obviously, but the response isn't to abandon the idea of human equality, but to reject merit as even a coherent concept, and just declare it to be a form of racism, which is how you get things like recent Gates Foundation-funded materials telling teachers that asking students to show their work in math class constitutes a manifestation of white supremacy culture.

>>17880941
I was being sarcastic, mate - it's obvious that race riots (or egalitarian riots more broadly) in the US have always been get-out-the-vote operations, whether in 1968 or 2020.

>>17880904
>there's not really a substantial difference

You don't think there's a substantial difference between billionaires building hospitals and libraries that benefit poor people, and billionaires creating sinecures for unemployed liberal arts majors so they don't start destabilizing society?

>>17880929
I’ve searched around for evidence of this, and I haven’t seen anything to substantiate it.
I’m just going off things I’ve read about it in my brief research on the history of the SAT.

All the commentary I’ve seen seems to indicate that the math section really hasn’t been changed whatsoever, except for dropping geometry, calculators for one section, and including more data analysis-type things like analyzing graphs.

The reading section tests less for vocabulary and instead focuses on evidence-based reading comprehension, which isn’t a bad thing, imo

The writing section is scored separately and doesn’t affect the number score.

>>17880966
We don't have to abandon human equality, of course; and I do reject the clear notion by those persons that, when meritocracy shows reality differs from their idealism, is to throw it away.

The lowering of standards is worrisome; even more worrisome is how often those standards shift. It doesn't even hold itself accountable.

>>17880966
>I was being sarcastic, mate
I got that. I wasn’t criticizing you. I’m saying if some hypothetical person who watches politics didn’t notice this, then they’re not really turned on to the how politics is really conducted.

>>17880474
I read that China had a peculiar version of slow bureaucratic meritocracy(essentially intergenerational class mobility) for centuries, might even have been millennia, my knowledge of China is abysmal, just remember reading about their gigantic government system where people could slowly ascend from peasants to high status(not like royals though of course) and back down again based on their performance, I think mostly economic performance. Anyone who had studied chinese history want to confirm this for me

>>17881029
Anybody’s kid can be a fuck-up. Even the best parent in the world can have a fuck-up for a kid.

You going to keep some genius digging ditches because his grandfather was a drunk abusive failure?

>>17876976
this kinda sounds like the... human... condition?

>>17880127
This. The cycle is all-encompassing. If this really is an issue beyond politics then you dont need to fucking worry about it.

>>17881045
Not sure if you meant to reply to my post because I don't see the relation to what I said. I think some form of social mobility is necessary for society to function, there has to be at least some meritocratic assignation of function, but I'm not sure about the degree to which such mobility should exist, because of concerns of instability arising from competition for power.

>>17881579
Yes, I did meant to reply to your post. I was critiquing intergenerational meritocracy, which you brought up.
To me, it doesn’t really make sense because children can behave vastly different from their parents.
That right away shows it’s not a very accurate gauge of anything.
>I'm not sure about the degree to which such mobility should exist, because of concerns of instability arising from competition for power.
There’s that anyway. The difference in modern society is that we solve such disputes with less bloodshed.

>>17881546
Don't universalise your own grotesque personal traits

>>17881639
I guess it would be “familial meritocracy.”

But you don’t want to suffer a shitty life just because your uncle is a methhead schizo. I know I wouldn’t anyway.
And we already have a version of this anyway, it’s called nepotism and inherited wealth.

Poor families often remain poor and rich families often remain rich for a reason.
Do we really need to compound what is widely regarded as a problem already?

>>17876987
Maybe, but I think whatever Caesar comes along will also be COMP'd and it will all be part of the big plan.

>>17881639
>>17881769
I don't think anyone reasonable would want to deny a child the opportunity to use their talents and effort to make a better life for themselves. This is however not the same question as which class of society will administer government, and how entry to this class is determined.

>>17880787
>civil service exam

We still have those in the public sector. It's during the interview and actual hiring process that discrimination occurs; i.e. if you're a woman or a nog you get preferential hiring.

>>17881793
I don’t think it’s any different.
What makes government administration special?

Think of the large bureaucracy it takes to run a modern government. Most of that is average people.
You can’t just have an elite group of families do all the work of a modern government, that’s not how it works.

>>17880168
so this is the power of american education

>>17880168
very based, all the seething this post generated proves that it is right

>>17881835
Government administration needs to be as mundane as possible. And I mean this up to the very top.
The less controversial decisions the government has to make, the better for everyone.

It should not be a glamorous thing where people are enamored at the prospect of living as some sort of god on Earth by being at the top of government... or making their way into history books or whatever it is they crave.

Men are especially susceptible to this.

>>17880474
Eh, up to a point. In Japan, the pre-war aristocracy largely came back to power, and in China the princelings are still on the top of the food chain. In that sense, it proves rather than disproves the argument.

>>17880278
>The UK, Germany and France
>all authoritarian shitholes
Hi r3ddit

>>17882084
Both countries are more economically powerful than they’ve ever been and also have more social mobility than ever in their histories.

Obviously there’s some kind of correlation.

>>17881835
>What makes government administration special?
The survival of the nation depends on it.
>large bureaucracy it takes to run a modern government
This is the result of an incredibly dysfunctional, chaotic, and secretive state. Most bureaucracy is a kind of sick welfare vote bank system that creates a million petty and unaccountable tyrannies. Like some schizophrenic deterritorialization of fief and lord but the lord is a robot produced by obscure party machinations. These people are not actually the state though, the state is a set of financial elites that go around manipulating the economies of countries to extort their political systems into compliance.

>>17882278
>The survival of the nation depends on it.
The survival of the nation depends on a lot of things. This isn’t unique to government administration.
The survival of the nation also depends on its industries. Should a single cabal of families manage those as well?
Most these industries are publicly owned and traded, and shareholders don’t care about family dynasties in a business.
That’s why the Chik-fil-A founder told his family never to make the company public.
But this is not possible most the time.
>This is the result of an incredibly dysfunctional, chaotic, and secretive state.
That’s every country on Earth now except failed states.
They’re too complex otherwise.
>the state is a set of financial elites that go around manipulating the economies of countries to extort their political systems into compliance.
That might be part of its soft power sometimes, but we were talking about administrators.

>>17876965
Not so fast.

>>17882176
All of France came out on the weekend, every weekend, for over a year to tell Macron to gtfo.
You can’t use your epin meme magic word to make that go away.

>>17883848
France riots every other weekend lel, it never amounts to anything.

>>17876976
Pol tier pseudo-intellectual gibberish, the book.

>>17883865
>Take this fart-post!

>>17882176
Guess again faggot

>>17876987
Yeah Caesar will be some mixed race programmer tranny though. I don’t know why everyone expects a based and redpilled chad who will GTK.

>>17880219
>mexicans that want to exterminate themselves.
Eh? Do you mean that relationships are common between whites and Mexicans?

>>17883586
Cringe

>>17876993
the term "meritocracy" was actually coined by a satirical essay making exactly this point. the fact that people use the word unironically is the irony of ironies

>>17880150
you should take a step back and appreciate the situation we're in wherein the liberal establishment paper of note is agreeing with a traditionalist catholic's right wing critique of late capitalism

>>17880237
the EU is literally an "optimized" version of the american federal system purpose-designed to absorb entire nations

I honestly cant tell if democracy is going to fail any day now or if liberal democracy hell is going to endure until there's nothing left resembling the society that built it and what is there is too primitive to maintain it

>>17886152
>nothing left resembling the society that built it and what is there is too primitive to maintain it
Memes aside, technological stagnation does not seem to be likely anytime soon. If this thing comes down, it'll be because of internal fractures.

>>17886152
democracy has already died two deaths, one at the beginning of the public relations era and the second with the reagan/thatcher neoliberal reaction forcing the removal of economics from the political sphere. what's interesting about now is that our politic crisis is actually one of a level of politics itself that is carefully quarantined from having any effect on the ownership structure

>>17886257
>a level of politics itself that is carefully quarantined from having any effect on the ownership structure
Is this not a good thing
It ensures stability and that all the shrieks and chaos caused by liberals or the far-right never damages anything important

>>17886109
He mentions this in that chapter.

>>17886289
its great if you want to maintain the current power structure and like the way society as a while is

>>17884129
Cope harder pierre, half of those rioters will vote for his party next cycle

>>17886365
thats one of the funny parts of democracy; the government can abuse the shit out of its people but come election season you know damn well people will be out in droves voting for the people who abused them because you cant let THOSE people win. its probably easier to change the power structure of a fascist or monarchist government than it is to do so in a democracy, but the entire reason we are told democracy is good is because its supposed to be the opposite

democracy is such a trite meme

>>17886365
>>17886462
Won’t matter since not voting isn’t a candidate.
In the US the ballots are stuffed anyway. See what I meant about this not being democracy?

Also, in Europe, that many people come out to show you a no confidence vote, you’re supposed to step down.

>>17886538
>that wasn't REAL democracy

>>17886564
Representative republics that rig voter results on the reg. Of course not.

>>17886568
a representative democracy is still a democracy