[HN Gopher] What Our Biggest Best-Sellers Tell Us About a Nation...
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What Our Biggest Best-Sellers Tell Us About a Nation's Soul
Author : samclemens
Score : 23 points
Date : 2021-06-02 15:52 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| pram wrote:
| The 'everything is problematic' critique genre is so boring and
| tedious and sterile. There's literally no possible original
| observation left to make. You can write about any element of US
| history and say it was evil, racist, etc. It was all bad!
| Unbelievably predictable.
| javajosh wrote:
| I agree, but the interesting question is why. And related, how.
| How is it that so many people have the _time_ to write this
| stuff?
|
| I think the answer is pretty simple, actually: there is
| _demand_ for writing that attacks the reader, and validates the
| reader 's feelings of self-loathing. Ultimately its a form of
| narcissism, but of the negative sort. "I am the root of all the
| problems of the world," the reader wishes to be convinced of
| this, and given arguments to make the connection. It is a
| dangerous sort of narcissism too because its explicitly cloaked
| in the guise of compassion and guilt and shame. "Virtue
| signaling" is a part of it, but I think it goes much deeper,
| and is absurd in a way that few commentators have touched -
| except, maybe, for the latter seasons of South Park.
|
| It's a pity because there are good things to analyze and do at
| the systemic level to make life better for everyone.
| Particularly at the physical structural level, like designing
| cities for people and not cars, for sustainability and not
| financier profits. And there are good things to do at the
| personal level, like help a stranger in need, or recognize the
| real pain a thoughtless word may cause. But, because of the
| cognitive distortions that come with narcissism, these are also
| distorted, misused, and weaponized into a powerful tool of
| passive aggression.
|
| Perhaps a simple approach would be to challenge such people to
| _do_ 10 things for every 1 thing they say.
| elefanten wrote:
| The extremely frustrating thing about this current
| instantiation of the postmodern critical approach is that
| EVERYTHING is problematic. By it's own logic, by the only logic
| that makes any of these arguments stand... the whole point is
| that ALL "structures" and "narratives" (in other words "ideas")
| are problematic -- by their very nature, in a multitude of
| ways. Problematic doesn't mean "immoral", it means "not the
| objective, absolute truth."
|
| So -- Yes, virtually any element of US history is problematic.
| So is every concept from every culture/nation that came before
| it.
|
| And even if we recede to this newspeak version of "problematic"
| as meaning "immoral" (in one way or another)... it's a
| completely facile exercise to see that every human society has
| struggled and/or been oppressed throughout history. So the
| unerring tendency for the current wave of critical postmodern-
| inspired social rhetoric to focus on one set of targets rings
| extremely hollow. "US History is problematic" (and awful and
| deeply shameful and requires this raft of policy prescriptions
| I like, etc)... but god forbid you try to discuss extant social
| structures or historical conflicts in Africa.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| A lot of people are talking about social structures and
| conflicts in Africa, I think. The time where it's
| inappropriate is when used as a deflection from discussing
| one's own current situation and its historical roots. That's
| disingenuous and also frustrating.
|
| Just an internet stranger's opinion, but I also think it
| might be worth engaging with some of these ideas a little
| more before writing them off, since it sounds like you share
| a position I once had - annoyed by 'problematic' stuff
| everywhere, for instance - and furthermore share an apparent
| misunderstanding of postmodernism with the Jordan Peterson
| crowd. But you can take a critical eye to the power
| structures and ways of thinking of the past, and their
| implications for our social structures today, without
| screeching or hysteria. At least be open to it :)
| MikeUt wrote:
| > The time where it's inappropriate is when used as a
| deflection from discussing one's own current situation and
| its historical roots.
|
| One man's deflection is another man's context.
| majormajor wrote:
| Is "wow, people say lots of things in the past were racially
| motivated" really supposed to be a compelling counter-argument
| to "here is something that was evil, here is why the effects of
| it still are being felt today"?
|
| Commit enough fouls in a basketball game and they aren't
| supposed to stop calling fouls on you because it's tedious to
| blow the whistle every time! ... though... there are teams that
| have employed exactly this strategy, so maybe it's an even
| better metaphor than it seems on the face of it!
| pram wrote:
| More like calling fouls on a basketball game that happened
| 100 years ago.
| kbelder wrote:
| When the rules were different...
| majormajor wrote:
| Ah, there's the problem with the metaphor! In real life,
| the game never really ends. Actions reverberate. 100 years
| is about the time between the civil war and the civil
| rights movement, obviously not enough time to wash away all
| the sins by time alone.
|
| If you want to say we should start over and start a new
| game - maybe reset all the property and wealth in the
| country - sure, then maybe we would have less reason to
| talk about the current one.
| pram wrote:
| How far back do things need to be for sins to be
| forgivable? Or if not forgivable, at least judged in
| context, and not through a very specific contemporary
| ideological perspective?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > How far back do things need to be for sins to be
| forgivable?
|
| I would have hoped "before I was born" to be far enough
| back, but evidently it isn't.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| At the very least, we need to be talking about _past_
| sins, not merely obsolete implementations of continuing
| ones.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| What is required for a transgression to be forgiven?
| Under what theories of justice does the answer to this
| change?
| majormajor wrote:
| I think this is the more immediate question: do you agree
| with the claims that there have been a lot of racist acts
| in American history, that some of them continue today,
| and that even many of the past ones still have impacts
| today?
|
| Because there's a big difference between "I find this
| tiring that people keep talking about it, we already
| know" - in which case we should be talking about what we
| can do, instead - and "I disagree with these claims, but
| instead of trying to disprove them, I'm going to try to
| discredit them by complaining that I've heard it before."
|
| It sounds like the latter - questions like "how far back
| do things need to be" sounds like a disagreement that the
| effects continue. In which case: be straightforward! Just
| come out and disagree directly! Because the answer to a
| question like that is obviously situational, and depends
| on how much impact the sin had and continues to have.
| pram wrote:
| I can simultaneously believe in present injustice, and
| the pointlessness of flogging 19th century self-help
| books. There is no inconsistency, and I am not a
| reactionary for believing so. Nice strawman though.
| sschueller wrote:
| Isn't the NY times best seller list not a real reflection
| anymore? Don't publisher buy their own books to get them to the
| top etc.?
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Best_Sell...
| aaron-santos wrote:
| > although everyone knows what it means to be a dog or a
| honeybee, no one really knows what it means to be a human being.
|
| We can finally let Thomas Nagel know what it is like to be a bat.
| motohagiography wrote:
| ^^^ Underrated comment of the day. Once I was going to write a
| short story from the perspective of a dog that lived with
| Daniel Dennet, but thought nobody would get it, which was the
| story.
| coldtea wrote:
| I don't know what the biggest best-sellers say, but it says a lot
| to me that, even in 2021, even in New Yorker, the writer isn't
| beyond feeling somewhat uneasy with the idea of sex, and feeling
| it's smart to add awkward humpr like:
|
| "At least a hundred million inquiring minds have read "Everything
| You Always Wanted to Know About Sex."
| majormajor wrote:
| Is that an attempt at humor? It seems like just a statement of
| fact.
| coldtea wrote:
| The number is a fact yes. The "inquiring minds" seems to me
| to imply some humor/sarcasm as to their wanting to know more
| about the subject. It's subtle, but it's not a neutral
| sentence.
| majormajor wrote:
| That feels like a stretch to me, and if I do try to read
| something into it, I'd read what you just said into it, not
| what you said originally: it's a jab at the people who felt
| the need to read the book, not the author being
| uncomfortable with the topic. It's a book aimed by title at
| those who are uncomfortable with the topic, after all.
|
| But my reading is still that it's probably a much more non-
| malicious wordplay connection to the the "but were afraid
| to ask" part of the book's title.
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(page generated 2021-06-04 23:02 UTC)