/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18039993]

ITT: Quintessential midwit books

[Anonymous No.18039994]

[Anonymous No.18040002]

Anything that's not dr suess

[Anonymous No.18040011]

[Anonymous No.18040015]

[Anonymous No.18040057]

>baby’s first door stopper

[Anonymous No.18040062]

>>18039993
I haven't read this book but can someone tell me how he explains the fact that Europeans made geography their bitch?

[Anonymous No.18040100]

Everything by that bald jew, NYT best sellers, Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, booker prize winners, contemporary YA, 99% of fantasy, Bill Bryson, dark academia, Jane Austen, Bronte sisters, woolf anddd that about covers it I think?

[Anonymous No.18040109]

[Anonymous No.18040111]

Evola, C.S. Lewis, Chesterton, Ed Feser and Guenon.

Basically anything involving reactionary politics or religious apologetics

[Anonymous No.18040122]

>>18040109
>included in most high school literary courses around the world
Try again, pinko.

[Anonymous No.18040130]

>>18040122
So are hundreds of anti racism books, your point?

[Anonymous No.18040137]

>>18039993
Marxism & anything that has to do with Austrian Econ

[Anonymous No.18040139]

>>18040111
Why would this be midwit ?
So Aquinas ? St Augustine? St John Chrysostom ?

[Anonymous No.18040148]

>>18040130
>anti racism books
>around the world
Most of the world doesn’t give two shits about yankee identity politics. Keep trying.

[Anonymous No.18040154]

>>18040148
>Most of the world doesn’t give two shits about yankee identity politics.
Holy cope

[Anonymous No.18040167]

>>18040122
nigga it's a good book, only midwits ever talk about it though

[Anonymous No.18040174]

>>18040148
There are posters outside my apartment talking about George Floyd and about an anti-racism day that occurred because of it.
I live in Finland.

You severely underestimate the spread of ideology that occurs due to the internet.

[Anonymous No.18040175]

>>18040154
Go outside, interact with other people, read the news, just please break free of your bubble before you burn or bomb something.

[Anonymous No.18040180]

>>18040175
>Gets disproved
>nno you never go outside
I assume you’re insinuating I’m pol, I’m not, and I sent this message from outside.

[Anonymous No.18040191]

>>18040154
Canada doesn't count. It's just a poorer New Zealand. Really you can probably write off the entire anglosphere as functionally being territories of the United States that limit free travel to and from the fatherland.

[Anonymous No.18040195]

>>18040137
Can't into economics. Cope harder.

[Anonymous No.18040196]

>>18040148
Last summer and likely this summer completely debunks this

[Anonymous No.18040201]

>>18040191
Poorer United States, my bad.

[Anonymous No.18040207]

>>18040195
I never said that they’re wrong just that midwits are obsessed with them

[Anonymous No.18040217]

>>18040111
>everything I don't like is midwit
Is a midwit take itself, anon

[Anonymous No.18040264]

>>18040174
>>18040196
I see where you’re coming from but they are not the majority; they are just the loudest and have the media machine on their side.

[Anonymous No.18040284]

>>18040062
I haven't read it either, but I think is main argument is that geography favored white Europeans immensely to the point that they could control the world like they did.

[Anonymous No.18040285]

>>18040264
Their numbers grow with each passing year. Soon all the West will resemble the US of today.

[Anonymous No.18040292]

>>18040264
Some pretty fucking big rallies in most major euro cities... you know the places that actually matter. But hey if your little town in norway didnt care thats cool I guess

[Anonymous No.18040302]

[Anonymous No.18040336]

>>18039993
>>18039994
>>18040011
this, so much this. le hecking numale books. take my upvotes fellow R*dditors
>inb4 who hurt you

[Anonymous No.18040363]

>>18039993
>everything by pinker
>everything by harris
>everything by peterson
>most things by orwell
>everything by murakami
>new york times bestsellers
>rupi kaur
>anti racism stuff
>every single book with a lazily censored swearword in the title
>e michael jones
>the alchemist

[Anonymous No.18040378]

>>18040062
I'll give you the gist of it.

1. Euroasian crops and farm animals are supposedly good and(easily?) domesticable, others aren't
2. The communication network on east-west axis, especially when it comes to spread the crops is easier than north-south that would happen in Americas
3. This means that Euroasian civilisations have a heads up over the rest.

Now the problem is that this still didn't fit to his entire purpose - showing that western Europe in particular was very privileged to become the powerhouse of the world. If you discounted the rest of the book, these things alone would suggest Egypt as potential global powerhouse, which it wasn't since at least the 16th century(and arguably it wasn't throughout huge part of pre-modern period either) So he figured out other factors that as opposed to the crops, animals and communication routes are harder to verify by just the nature of them. They're more complex though.

First was the idea that such a future powerhouse-thanks-to-geography has to be in certain distance from the nomadic groups that could potentially raid them. I think back then there were some theories on why this pattern of steppe hordes moving out of central asia/mongolia was repeating itself over and over again throughout history and they've had the idea of a demographic pump, where the population of pastoral populations in the region would cyclically shoot way, way past the sustainability threshold of it and then they would start fighting with each other and eventually tie a giant confederation that marched either south to China or west. Diamond follows this idea, which basically turns the asian steppe into as sort of geographic pressure - get too much of it(be located too close), you get regularly destroyed by steppe hordes passing through. Be too far away - you have less pressure to develop military technology. Gotta be in the "golden middle"
Second big factor was the complexity of coastlines, which supposedly allow smaller polities as well as the coves etc. give hiding places for all sorts of dissidents the former leads to wars that stimulate technology, the latter allows for various heretics to hide but keep chugging along(I guess belief in their importance is where Jared the jew shows the most).

The whole book I think will be incomprehensible to anyone by 2050 unless he is knee deep in the moods within western academia at the time when it was being written and even today there are leftists(who drive the academic thought) that dislike some of the things Diamond does on theoretical basis(beyond just the silly thing of him daring to assume you can compare different civilisations by their advancement).

>>18040148
The burger politics, especially burger liberal political stuff are a de Jouvenal style, patronage lobby outside of the US as well. You have black lives matter in motherfucking Poland and US embassy in Ulan Bator has a picture in their twitter banner of their employees holding fag rag.

[Anonymous No.18040386]

>>18040011
Books like this, the author comes up with the title first.

[Anonymous No.18040395]

>>18040057
Holy based

[Anonymous No.18040406]

[Anonymous No.18040449]

>>18040363
>>e michael jones
Damn why? His books are good.

[Anonymous No.18040458]

>>18039993
>>18039994
>>18040011
>>18040015
good thread

[Anonymous No.18040463]

>>18039993
>>18039994
>>18040011
>>18040406
should I actually read these to form an opinion or should I just read the summaries? what if I had to argue with someone who thinks they're good, I would have to explain why these are midwit books

[Anonymous No.18040470]

>>18040463
Literal bugman books not worth it at all.

[Anonymous No.18040480]

>>18040463
The Selfish Gene is entirely unlike Guns, Germs, Steel, Enlightenment Now, and Homo Deus. You have to descend into Lysenko-tier obfuscation to actually take issue with most of what is in that book.

[Anonymous No.18040509]

>>18040480
well that sounds pretty retarded

[Anonymous No.18040528]

>>18040378
As for why people shit on it here we can go on about many errors but I think the main problem is that he doesn't really "debunk" any other idea of historical development even though that's what's Diamond thought it did.
Spengler would agree with large parts of it, just not the materialism, social-darwinists can easily integrate it, even if you believe that let's say English are the people chosen by the God, you can reconcile it with Jared Diamond. Easy - God just led the Anglo-Saxons to Britain in just the right time where they would naturally grow as the power to be reckoned with due to material conditions as attributed by Diamond. Wow Jared, you anglo-supremacist!
There was this historian - I think Victor Hanson that kind of as a response(probably prompted by the Hoover Institute, since I've mentioned Jouvenel) to Diamond, wrote a book where he tries to explain it as a sort of result of historical-cultural legacy and traditions - like the focus on using heavy infantry in open battles or capitalism. I think he just wanted to get paid for a book and he wrote about a bunch of things he was familiar with, while not thinking much about the thesis which sure can still be perfectly integrated with Diamond's.

Now obviously I think that fundamentally Diamond is wrong, while his idea(especially the communication networks) could make sense, he outright dismisses the fact that eastern US has extremely expansive river system, he doesn't really notice that the incas managed to build a civilisation and an empire in the worst place possible while no such things happened in much "better" regions of the continent etc.
>>18040480
The Selfish Gene does ignore group selection and has the "fighting the selfish genes" idea which is just silly.

[Anonymous No.18040542]

>>18040480
Memetics is a contested field. Some classify it as pseduoscience

[Anonymous No.18040547]

>>18040528
>The Selfish Gene does ignore group selection
the effect of group selection in comparison to gene selection is minuscule. The real issue is the gene vs organism thing, which is quite complicated, but ultimately the gene-centric view is basically tautologically correct and can't seriously be denied because it is unambiguously the only thing that is actually making copies of itself.

The fighting the selfish gene thing is indeed ridiculous. It is funny though that he gets accused of biological reductivism when he went out of his way to insert exactly the opposite in the form of 'we can fight it because humans are special'.

[Anonymous No.18040550]

>>18040542
Memetics is obviously ridiculous but he basically just brought it up as a thought experiment in the last chapter, it's not what the book is about at all.

[Anonymous No.18040555]

>>18040302
*blocks your path*

[Anonymous No.18040561]

>>18040302
high IQ take on midwittery

[Anonymous No.18040575]

>>18040463
>Argue
Don't waste your time, dude. Just read what you like and build a framework that you find useful and interesting.

[Anonymous No.18040578]

Books written by midwits, written for midwits, or read by midwits?

[Anonymous No.18040579]

>>18040550
Given the system presented in the book, memetics could be a legit field. Dawkins is a fairly rationalist thinker. If the selfish gene hypothesis is true, memetics seems like a plasuable field. the problem is the science in the book being philosophically ungrounded. Plenty of Biologists are questioning Darwin's natural selection itself. It's a philosophical problem, really.

[Anonymous No.18040581]

>>18040555
I've read it. I think I know why Tolkien himself worked on it basically until he couldn't - where he does borrow some ideas in the works that were published during his lifetime he managed to obfuscate references or inspirations from various classical and medieval texts. Silmarillion is just outright copycat at times.
Then I see Tolkien fans talking about how 1. it's hard to read(what?) 2. it's so weird and unique and I'm kind of at loss.

[Anonymous No.18040584]

>>18040561
seconded. the book isn't midwit, but it certainly attracts midwits

[Anonymous No.18040600]

>>18040579
>If the selfish gene hypothesis is true, memetics seems like a plasuable field.
Dawkins points out himself in that chapter why the analogy doesn't actually carry over, memes don't near-perfectly replicate themselves in the same way as genes do.

I think it can be a useful sociological heuristic, especially the 'memeplex' idea, but you have to remember it's not actually literal.

[Anonymous No.18040603]

>>18040378
>>18040528
nice post anon thanks

[Anonymous No.18040623]

>>18040600
Someone tell Dan Dennett

[Anonymous No.18041645]

>>18040167
>implying midwits ever actually read any orwell book

[Anonymous No.18042818]

>>18040011
The problem with these kind of books is that they always follow the same path.
First book is all right and in a large part based on facts and some good ideas but the author throws here and there his opinions in which are stupid. There are just a few tho so fine.
After he became popular the second book is more and more opinions so it is kind of bad but here and there there are some interesting things.
The third books just becomes full opinions and speculation and is not worth reading at all.
Why do these people think their opinions are the reason people read it. It is always really biased and often just wrong. Same thing was the case with peter zeihan and the absent superpower. It just becomes worse and worse.
And then you have the people who act like Sapiens actually was groundbreaking and changed their lifes like how stupid must you be.

[Anonymous No.18043059]

>>18040122
>high school literary courses
yes, for midwits, thats exactly what he is saying

[Anonymous No.18043076]

>>18040302
>nooo you cant just enjoy some fun causal fiction that celebrates the history and various traditions of your people, that means you are a midwit
i just dont get it, you post things like this and it just makes you look like a turbo autist tryhard that is likely a midwit

[Anonymous No.18043171]

>>18039993

[Anonymous No.18043184]

>>18043171
You post that as a joke but I feel legitimately sorry for the person who owns that stack. It looks like they've gone through some crap.

[Anonymous No.18043192]

>>18040154
I live in Amsterdam, there is almost always someone on Dam square holding a sign saying "As long as systematic racism exists someone will stand here" (there isn't always someone there, I imagine the internal angst when one of them wants to call it a day and there's no replacement).

And they have been there since those demonstrations in the pic.

People love judging you guys.

[Anonymous No.18043338]

>>18040148
The media is constantly ranting about racism and politician cocksuckers are enacting new hate speech laws and my unimportant eastern european country has like grand total of 4 black people currently living here
We even had george floyd protests last year

[Anonymous No.18043348]

>>18043184
I was just thinking that. Whoever owns that stack must be an absolutely broken man. Probably an alcoholic. For sure a complete shell of a man.

[Anonymous No.18043357]

>>18040057
>manlet needs a step-up to reach the top of his bookcase

[Anonymous No.18043362]

>>18039993
>>18039994
>>18040011
>>18040111
Based.

[Anonymous No.18043377]

>>18040011
Sapiens I thought was decent. Homo Deus was literally all speculation and Harari's own ideology without any facts to back it up. It felt masturbatory