/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17994951]

Anyone that makes /lit/ seethe so uncontrollably must be based. Read Spengler and sperg out over collapse all you want; you know that deep down what you want and need is less war, social democracy, an HD TV, and take out Thai food.

[Anonymous No.17995035]

>>17994951
>"Even for wealthy Western urbanites, who always had the run of the palaces of culture, access to arts and letters has expanded tremendously. When I was a student, a movie buff had to wait years for a classic film to be shown at a local repertory theater or on late-night television, if it was shown at all; today it can be streamed on demand...Cheap hi-fi headphones and, soon, cardboard virtual-reality glasses enhance the aesthetic experience well beyond the tinny speakers and muddy black-and-white reproduction of my youth."
>"But are we any happier? If we have a shred of cosmic gratitude, we ought to be...He or she can spend that leisure time reading on the Web, listening to music on a smartphone, streaming movie son high-definition TV, Skyping with friends and relatives, or dining on Thai food instead of Spam fritters."
>"Also, people single out freedom as component of a meaningful life, whether or not it leads to a happy life. Like Frank Sinatra, they may have regrets, they may take blows, but they do it their way."

>We can consume more readily and with less effort, therefore we are happier.
>The gratuitous democratisation of high culture via technology, i.e. rendering it too a product, has improved life and somehow culture itself.
>by the way, to quote Frank Sinatra ...

Who is convinced by this bugman trash?

[Anonymous No.17995042]

>>17995035
>"Epithets aside, the idea that the world is better than it was and can get b better still fell out of fashion among the clerisy long ago. In 'The Idea of Decline in Western History', Arthur Herman shows that the prophets of doom are the all-stars in the liberal arts curriculum (he names Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Sartre, Fanon, Foucault, Said and also Cornel West for some inexplicable reason) ... Yes, it's not just those who intellectualize for a living who think that the world is going to hell in a handcart. It's ordinary people when the switch into intellectualizing mode. Psychologists have long known that people tend to see their own lives through rose-colored glasses: they think they're less likely than the average person to become the victim of a divorce ... But change the question from the people's (sic) lives to their society, and they transform from Pollyanna to Eyeore,. Public opinion researchers call it the Optimism Gap."

>thoughtful criticism of the consequences of Enlightenment rationality is bad, mkay?
>Thinking makes you turn from Pollyanna to Eyeore, just like how Thanos is happy with himself but wants to wipe out the universe. If you're happy with yourself, why be unhappy about other things, bro?
>Ignore those dumb thinkers, let's get empirical and listen to American public opinion pollsters.

[Anonymous No.17995110]

the world doesn't care about what you want and need
the problem with him is also not this, but how he's completely sure that we're thriving as species with no slowdowns and regresses in the future, just because we didn't have World Wars for a few couple of decades.
His predictions are trash and are based on incorrect reading of statistics. He has no knowledge of distinction between correlation and causation.

Sorry, there's no room to meme him as based.

[Anonymous No.17995223]

>>17995042
He doesn't say that we're happier. He is smart enough to leave that for you to decide.
>>17995042
What started out as thoughtful criticism has turned into a self-referential toilet of shit. You want to study the smell and texture of the shit, Pinker says you should just flush it and get on with your life.

[Anonymous No.17995228]

>>17994951
Same school as Peterson, yet disagrees with him about dominance hierarchies. Discarded.

[Anonymous No.17995290]

>>17995110
>the world doesn't care about what you want and need
what is "the world"? you're just bloviating here because how do you account for when wants and needs line up across demographics?

>His predictions are trash and are based on incorrect reading of statistics.
>he says this with no statistical basis of his own

[Anonymous No.17995818]

ass

[Anonymous No.17995834]

>>17994951
Why watch TV when you could read a book, why order Thai food when you can make your own food, why abandon war when its exciting. Ever been to a large protest?

[Anonymous No.17995859]

>>17995035
>>The gratuitous democratisation of high culture via technology, i.e. rendering it too a product, has improved life and somehow culture itself.

There is not democratization of high culture, because high culture is not democratic. When you put online millions of old volumes of literature, only a small select view will benefit.

The rest of society will just get addicted to porn, anime, soap opera's. vidya, never developing their tastes, because they can just jump to the next big thing.

[Anonymous No.17996177]

>>17994951
Literally who?

[Anonymous No.17996406]

>>17995110
>correlation and causation.
MEME

ALSO, CHECK MY TRIPS

[Anonymous No.17996461]

>>17994951
Literally the only thing he's wrong about are the role of labour movements in churning out better working conditions, and that it's not really possible to accurately measure violence in agrarian and medieval societies. Also that he rapes kids.

Other than that he's correct about everything, it's just marxist spergs and convervatards who can't fathom the notion that "the best so far in history" doesn't necessarily mean "good" or "we lack problems".

[Anonymous No.17996486]

>>17994951
Kys

[Anonymous No.17996495]

>>17994951
Refuted by basically any philosophy. Even a libshit like Rousseau refutes him.

[Anonymous No.17996577]

The stupidest thing I've read from this guy is that he classifies things like commerce & technological development as factors exogenous to immediate attitudes, despite the fact that these things are the very result of consciousness evolving within history. Rationalist ahistoricist libtardism will only get you so far; in Pinker's case, onto the Lolita Express.

[Anonymous No.17996600]

The only argument someone like him has for why things get "better" is that poor people now have access to a cheap cellphone while they starve.

[Anonymous No.17996620]

>>17996600
Also that they live longer lives, more of them go to school, they have more personal wealth, they have smaller families, suffer less crime and are less persecuted.

BUT OHHHH THE DARKNESS OF MY HEART THE END IS NEAR NOOOOOOO

[Anonymous No.17996638]

>>17996620
The guy is literally a wealthy overclass pedo, of course he's going to say that contemporary society is the best society there's ever been, but that doesn't make him right.

[Anonymous No.17996650]

>>17996638
Name a better society.

[Anonymous No.17996654]

>>17994951
Western progress is so good it makes you want to kill yourself.

[Anonymous No.17996655]

>>17996650
t. feudal lord in the year 1500 talking to a peasant.

[Anonymous No.17996662]

>>17994951
actual cringe desu

[Anonymous No.17996663]

>>17996654
/thread

[Anonymous No.17996670]

>>17994951
I could use take out thai

[Anonymous No.17996694]

>>17996654
>you are not depressed because life is shit, you have an organic, empirical and pyshical illness
and somehow psychs get away with this. people believe what they want to believe i suppose.

[Anonymous No.17996778]

>>17996694
You need to fix yourself relative to your environment, not the other way around obviously.

[Anonymous No.17996796]

>>17996778
Sounds like you're trying to fix other Men, your environment, relative to yourself

[Anonymous No.17996810]

>>17996655
In 500 years society will be even better (assuming global warning won't fuck us). Again, just because it's the best so far doesn't mean it's great.

[Anonymous No.17996818]

>>17996778
what you say, as long as i understand, is contradictory with the huxley image.

[Anonymous No.17996824]

>>17994951
Is there anything more embarrassing than the nu-atheists and I love science types? Remember when they were calling themselves the four horsemen of virginity or something? Pink and Peterson and Shapiro are basically the spiritual successors of these dweebs, they impress no-one in any respect except embarrassment by proxy.

[Anonymous No.17996828]

>>17996810
In 500 years 5 guys will literally own everything on the planet and everyone will be literal slaves, but people like you will say "Come on, this is the best society ever!" because you can watch VR-porn while high on synthetic drugs.

[Anonymous No.17996829]

>>17995834
> abandon war when its exciting

Go fight a junkie right now to prove your point

[Anonymous No.17996903]

>>17994951
These seem like arguments that are a part of the ideosphere, it is about the idea of separating the many from the few and suggesting that the activities of the many are the highest expression of humanity. Of course, we all know that the many watch football and the few read books.

my sense is that this is just moronic garbage instead of some thing designed to support the exposure of the many to principles That allow them access to the knowledge of the few.

In general, materialism and modernism are convinced that the be-all and end-all of human experience is telling idiots what to do. They have completely forgotten about finding those of the many who will become the few and developing them to this end.

[Anonymous No.17996915]

>>17996810
>In 500 years society will be even better
This is what Pinkerites actually believe

[Anonymous No.17996926]

>>17996915
It could be, I hope it will be, but optimism is cowardice