Post: #851

Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski

After re-reading his manifesto (about which I posted earlier) I decided to buy this collection to see what else the man had to say. I was not disappointed. The book contains a revised version of the manifesto (though mostly for punctuation, spelling, etc - minimal, inconsequential changes to the arguments therefore), as well as a few articles, letters and at the end a short interview.

The articles expand on certain topics already dealt with in the manifesto, and include criticisms of 'green' movements for their leftism, the leftist bias of many anthropologists when presenting the way of life of hunter gatherers, considerations of where the system is vulnerable, what he considers morality, his conception of freedom and his suggestions for plans of action (which, in his view, must be revolutionary - one of his well labored points is how reform is ultimately not possible).

Some parts are pretty funny given his situation (he is imprisoned for life in a max security prison). Here's some examples:

«Nor should anything in this article be interpreted as recommending illegal activity of any kind. I am a prisioner, and if I were to encourage illegal activity this article would not even be allowed to leave prison» (Hit it Where it Hurts, p.249)

«You have to go behind the fist and strike at the most sensitive and vital organs of the system. By legal means, of course, such as peaceful protests» (Hit it Where it Hurts, p.251)

«The rest of Hit it Where it Hurts is omitted, because it is considered unsuitable for inclusion in this book» (Hit it Where it Hurts, p.253)

This last one is the only case where they omitted something, so one has to wonder what tactics he was suggesting that thet thought would not be ok to publish - even though he repeats several times across the book the mantra of 'legal means' with doubtful sincerity. I have never read a book written by a prisoner before so it was still pretty funny to read this stuff.

Some excerpts are funny in themselves:

«Usually, gathering edible roots in the wilderness is not like pulling carrots out of the soft, cultivated soil of a garden. More typically the ground is hard, or covered with tough sod that you have to hack through in order to get at the roots. I wish I could take certain anarchoprimitivists out in the mountains, show them where the edible roots grow, and invite them to get their dinner by digging for it. By the time they had enough yampa roots or camas bulbs for a halfway square meal, their blistered hands would disabuse them of any idea that primitives didn’t have to work for a living.» (The Truth about Primitive Life, p. 132)

The letters are easily the least interesting of the book, given that they are less focused, but they still contain lots of nuggets of truth and insight, of special note is his relentless demolition of everything leftist thrown at him in the letters (such as the importance of fighting against racist, homophobic, sexist or considering democracy a great system). He truly is an original thinker in this regard, and I do hope he is able to influence at least a few of the leftists he corresponds with.

Lastly, the interview, while short, focuses on his life in the wild and is pretty interesting. You can really see his love of nature and the beauty of living a simple life in the wild.

While his 'enemy' is the industrial-technological system as a whole, I think the neomasculine sphere can find a lot of interesting and important points on his critiques of the current system which we fight - it is especially of importance for traditionalists. Being on myself, I agreed with a very large part of his assessment - on societal progress and his definition of freedom as 'autonomy' from large organizations. I mostly disagreed with his views on morality, but that was to be expected as he is an atheist - although I still enjoyed reading his view. He is a very good writer and interesting thinker.

For these reasons I consider that this book is well worth the time and price and recommend it wholeheartedly, especially to whoever has not considered the problems that technology poses and how they integrate with the larger picture of neomasculinity.

4/5

Post: #852

Just finished ‘Positioning, the battle for your mind - al rise and jack trout.

One of the marketing classics and spot on in terms of what it teaches about the concert of owning your position in the mind of your customer. I read the updated version where they have notes on where they were with their original predictions (it’s an old book)

A bit repetitive in some aspects, especially that concerning ‘line extension’ but food for thought in terms of how to market ones business.

Post: #853

America's Deadliest Export: Democracy - The Truth about US Foreign Policy and Everything Else by William Blum

This book is a series of chapters that are composed of bits and pieces of Blum's newsletters that critique US foreign policy. It cover the George W. Bush terms and Obama's first term, and mentions some past episodes of US foreign policy. He also discusses social and economic issues as well but that largely is not the focus of the book.

Honestly, I thought this book sucked.

The main flaw of this book is that he automatically assumes that any US military intervention is wrong. Granted, there are at least some, perhaps even most, US military interventions that were wrong. However, at no point does he state a standard by which US military interventions are justified or non justified. If a foreign government decides to oppress and kill it's own citizens, is intervention justified? What if a Stalinist/Fascist political party is running for office and has a good chance of winning, is intervention justified then? Should the United States intervened earlier to stop the Nazis? There are good arguments for either position. Unfortunately, he doesn't make any of them. He doesn't try to convince the reader that such intervention is wrong. Supposedly, we are just supposed to instinctively side with his position.

Secondly, he is an apologist for socialist and communist regimes. Socialism was responsible for the deaths of 100 million people during the past century. You’d never know that however from Blum’s book. He never writes a single critique about any of these regimes and, in fact, justifies the decisions of the Soviet Union and Cuba as being necessary to fight against US agression. He seems upset that Pinochet was never punished for his crimes and that Castro was unfairly targeted by the United States. But Pinochet killed 3,000 people in comparison to Castro who killed 140,000. Why does Blum condemn Pinochet while making excuses for Castro? If "right wing" dictators killed less people than communist ones (and they did) then how was the United States wrong for supporting "right wing" dictators? He absolves communist and socialist dictators from agency and essentially argues that their actions were justified as a response to the United States.

Blum assumes that socialists experiments would have worked if not for US intervention. While ignoring arguments from economists from Hayek and Mises that even under ideal circumstances, socialism would never work. While using trite Leftist cliches such as profit over people ignoring that businesses can only make profits by serving people (unless Blum thinks businesses make profits by customers just giving them money for no reason).

He makes critiques of capitalism and supports every leftist cause under the sun in this book. It would been have been better for him to focus on unjust intervention than by exposing his ignorance of economics, weak arguments for abortion or long debunked “overpopulation” myths.

I suppose that if you are a member of the left and looking for a book to reinforce what you already believe, this is a good book to read. But, since this book apologizes for horrific socialist and communist regimes and does not provide a moral argument against interventionism, I don’t see this book winning over many people who do not already share his world view

Post: #854

Ego is the Enemy - Ryan Holiday

I was going to read this book anyways but I bought it after going through a rough patch recently when my Ego got massively hit from all angles so I figured it was a good time to pick this up.

Most of the book was stories of ego in all it's forms from people from past and present -- I was selfishly looking for a bit more but there were a couple chapters that really spoke to me and made the book totally worth it.

Good short read, I like all of Ryan's books because they can speak to pretty much anyone.

Post: #855

Post: #856

Art of the Deal by Donald Trump.
Amazing book on how he grew up, why he became the way he is right now, his philosophies...

I was able to understand why his political stances are the way it is from this book.
In addition, I was able to figure out what kind of deals he made to make his money. It's pretty accurate.
He was very, very street smart and somewhat book smart. He is an massive action-taker and this book is a must-read if you want to go into real estate.

Post: #857

Almost done with "Manipulated Man" by Esther Vilar.

What a gem...I thought I knew all the Red Pill philosophies, but it's very interesting to hear it from a female, German author in the 1970s....

I don't want to spoil too much, but the title is a good indicator of what you will find.
It is basically how man become slaves to woman as they just sit around home and do easy work meanwhile they are outside working their ass off to climb the corporate ladder...

This book was written 50 years ago, so some of the things that she is saying is outdated, but it's a very short read and I would recommended it to many others.

Post: #858

Just finished Craig Rays biography of Springbok coach, Jake White who won the Rugby World Cup in 2007. Its called In Black and White, the Jake White Story. Worth a read.

Post: #859

I recently read Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard. Of course it is dated now since it was written back in 1997, but it still provides some interesting insight into the way some of the globalist elites think and view the world.

Essentially, Brzezinski describes the United States as the first truly global empire as opposed to the past well known empires, which he discusses, including the Roman, Han, Mongol, and European empires of Spain, France, and Britain. All of them were on the Eurasian continent. He stated that Eurasia is the most important continent to control due to its large population and economy (see Mackinder's Heartland theory), with America's position as a non-Eurasian power exerting control over Eurasia not being permanent, and that therefore it should be America's goal to manipulate countries on it like chess pieces in a way that allows it to control what goes on in Eurasia and prevent any single country from becoming too powerful.

He also wrote that the end of the Soviet Union gave the US a unique opportunity to use its uncontested power to create a "balance of power" on the continent and integrate the major countries there into a security alliance framework that would bind them to the US and preventing any major rival from rising. Brzezinski envisioned that such an organization would include the US, Europe (which he advocates for a political unification of), China, Japan, India, Russia, and potentially Iran and Turkey.

Brzezinski frequently uses terms like "American democracy" and promoting American values, including "democracy" and "human rights", although given who he is these are likely euphemisms for the globalist ruling elite and maintaining their power. He even practically says as much by describing the United States as essentially a multicultural, transnational empire, which according to Brzezinski is key to America being able to become the first truly global power.

Grand Chessboard spends time going over the geopolitical details region by region and what the US policy in this area should be. He classifies key countries in Eurasia as either geostrategic players, those that can exert power beyond their borders in a way that can significantly affect globalist interests, or pivots, countries that are not particularly powerful on their own but influence other countries near them because of geography or economics. As of 1997, the players in his view are China, Russia, France, Germany, and to a lesser degree, Iran and Turkey. The pivots are Ukraine, Azerbaijan, South Korea, Turkey, and Iran.

This is just a brief overview and he goes into much more detail, I may make a thread reviewing it more depth.

Post: #860

I read "The Flinch" by Julien Smith, a 30 page ebook on overcoming fear or overcoming what he labels "the flinch". A feeling known to all of us, in which a moment of stalling, hesitation or contemplation before taking action stops us from carrying out our intentions. He elaborates how this is natural human behavior that can be observed in children too. The playgrounds are flooded with what tend to be two kinds of children. On the one hand, those who take risks, experience pain and pleasure / excitement and ultimately learn from their mistakes. And on the other hand, those we prefer to wait and observe what the others are doing in order to avoid getting hurt or avoid whatever danger it is they associate with possible mistakes made on the playground.

Those same behavioral patterns can be seen in adults. Whether it be before an important phone call, a job interview, approaching a girl etc. The tightness you feel in your chest, the rationalization as to why what you're about to do might not be a good idea, might not be necessary etc. These are natural defense mechanisms perpetuated by mankind due to evolutionary processes. However, by now, most of those defense mechanisms only serve to inhibit us and not to protect us from life-threatening danger.

We can learn to overcome the flinch by challenging ourselves on a more or less daily basis, which will make us accustomed to that feeling. This can be done by taking a cold shower, talking to strangers or any other seemingly "unnecessary" action that brings about those feelings.

Post: #861

Just finished Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution by Alistair McGrath. The book is divided into three sections with the first giving a brief outline of the history of Protestantism, the second on the nature of Protestantism in general such as it's beliefs, it's treatment to the Bible, and how it's changed and been changed by the societies it's been found in, and the last section is on Pentecostalism.

The book gives a broad and general treatment on all of these subjects, a few paragraphs is given to one subject such as Protestantism's reaction to science before another subject is immediately tackled. There was many times where I would be reading on a topic and hoping the author would dive in more but he would then move on. His goal seemed to have been to hit as many topics as possible which means depth had to be sacrificed.

The section on Pentecostalism had lots of information that I hadn't encountered before. I always assumed it was a fringe movement since it wasn't something I encountered regularly until recently but it's actual a huge movement world-wide, especially in the global south. I also had no idea that there was multiple Pentecostal revivals that sprung up world wide at around the beginning of the 20th century independently of each other; I always thought it was something the started off in the United States and spread world-wide from there.

Post: #862

I've posted before about my love of Wilbur Smith novels. Don't make the same mistake I made of thinking that just because he's been an astonishingly successful author for literally decades that he and his books are too 'old' or something to entertain. It's the very opposite I can assure you. You'll find more sex, violence, adventure and general red-pill wisdom in one of his books than you'll find in a dozen modern soyboy author's offerings. As he himself says, with no hint of irony; 'Real men read my books'.

I'm nearly finished his latest book, an autobiography (at last! he's 85) entitled; 'On Leopard Rock: A Life of Adventures'. I'm finding it absolutely fascinating and highly recommend it.

A good way to illustrate how good it is, as ever, is to look at the views of those who aren't as keen. Read this short review by some prick on the internet, particularly the bits I've emboldened to see why this is such a cracking read for today's men;



'The adventurous autobiography of one of the world’s most prolific and popular novelists.

South African novelist Smith (The Tiger’s Prey, 2017, etc.) has sold more than 120 million copies of his books, primarily adventure novels charged with family drama. Some of his work has been shadowed by accusations of racism and misogyny, charges the author seems to simultaneously deny and own up to in this otherwise breezy autobiography. In this chronicle of his life’s exploits, he narrates with the swagger of his heroes Hemingway and H. Rider Haggard. The book is replete with tales of hunting, flying, fishing, and near-death experiences like drinking with Lee Marvin, a star of the 1976 adaptation of Shout at the Devil (1968). The narrative is structured thematically with chapters like “This Hero’s Life,” “The High-Flying Life,” and so on, interlaced with anecdotes about his research and writing process. Smith’s depictions of the realities of apartheid-era Africa can be compelling, but his determined machismo sometimes sours the overall account. “I think one of the worst inventions of our century is political correctness,” writes the author. “It has forced a generation of men to keep their masculinity under wraps, made them too timid to admit their true views about the world.” Worse is his cantankerous scorn of the young: “We are spoiling whole generations of people now. You don’t have to work, you can claim benefits; if you want to write obscenities on the walls and go on the soccer field and swear your head off, you’re a hero.” Fans will appreciate the origins and inspirations of his popular characters, and Smith retains a mischievous sense of humor, but it’s a surprisingly unexciting (to a mangina like you maybe! - Richard Turpin) memoir sporadically laced with notions best left behind.

A good read for his fans; a relic from another age for the rest of us (get fucked, dickhead! - Richard Turpin).'

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-revie...pard-rock/

Post: #863

(06-12-2018 07:41 AM)Richard Turpin Wrote:  I've posted before about my love of Wilbur Smith novels.

Which one do you recommend as a first to read? "Eagle in the Sky" maybe as it's a stand alone?

Post: #864

(06-12-2018 10:59 AM)Sandstorm Wrote:  

(06-12-2018 07:41 AM)Richard Turpin Wrote:  I've posted before about my love of Wilbur Smith novels.

Which one do you recommend as a first to read? "Eagle in the Sky" maybe as it's a stand alone?

Yeah, being a standalone story, it should give you a taste for his writing and you'd know after reading it whether you wanted more of the same, or not.

That would be a fine start, but if you get the chance I'd try and read them in the order that he himself wrote them; starting with 'When the Lion Feeds'. This book introduces the Courtney family, who play a part in many of his subsequent novels.

I'm going to re-read them all from the beginning, once I'm fully up to date with his latest books, I haven't read the last 2 or 3. I've been warned that his newer ones are 'jointly authored' (he is 85!) and may have suffered because of it, but I'll make my own mind on that one.

Post: #865

I finished Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson last week. I find his view interesting despite his politics and massive drug use. He was the creator of Gonzo Journalism and often wrote himself into his characters. Honestly, he was one of the biggest trolls in journalism. I would be curious to see what he would think of Obama and Trump if he didn't put his head in front of a shotgun and pulled the trigger back in 2005.

Post: #866

The Shining: Stephen King.

One of the few cases where the movie is better than the book.

Don't fet me wrong, I thought this book was OK. I felt it could've been 100 pages shorter, the characters were a little one dimensional and I was disappointed that all the iconic scenes from the film never actually appear in the original book.

That being said, there were a few really intense scenes in this book that were a joy to read. Can't say I recommend this one though.

Post: #867

(07-03-2018 06:01 AM)Bizet Wrote:  The Shining: Stephen King.

One of the few cases where the movie is better than the book.

Don't fet me wrong, I thought this book was OK. I felt it could've been 100 pages shorter, the characters were a little one dimensional and I was disappointed that all the iconic scenes from the film never actually appear in the original book.

That being said, there were a few really intense scenes in this book that were a joy to read. Can't say I recommend this one though.

Yeah, imagine if the topiary animals came to life and started attacking Jack Nicholson. Movie would have been laughed out of circulation.

Post: #868

I recently read Adjustment Day by Chuck Palahniuk. Holy fuck is CP red-pilled. This is the true spiritual successor to Fight Club. I think most of the guys here who enjoy fiction should read it.

The premise: Socio-historical factors have led to large numbers of young men being seen as disposable. The US is now gearing up for WWIII for the purpose of thinning out the herd of young men. The young men realize what's up and rise up, killing the politicians and the journalists and the leftist professors. Then they carve up the US into Caucasia, Blacktopia, and Gaysia. It's the most bang-on, prescient social satire I've seen in a long time. Fucking dangerous and brilliant.

Post: #869

Just finished Chinua Achebes No longer at ease. It was okay.

Post: #870

The Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber. In the book, Weber advances the thesis that the Calvinist idea of predestination led to the creation of the work ethic we see in Protestant Western European nations. Adherents of denominations that preached predestination needed to ease the anxiety they had about whether they were a part of the elect or of the damned and the way they did this was by laboring in business and accumulating wealth which they believed were signs of God's favor.

Post: #871

"Call of Cthulhu". The story, not the game.

It's an impressively imaginative story, with lots of small details woven into the narrative that reappear again and again in Lovecraft's work (and in a lot of derivative and homage works as well). Not quite as well-structured as the later "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", but far more creative and engaging than much of mainstream SF/F nowadays.

In a nutshell: a man going through the papers of his recently-deceased uncle, an anthropology professor, discovers a locked box containing a collection of strange news clippings and an unearthly bas-relief sculpture. He digs into the matter, and discovers that his uncle had pieced together the existence of a death cult hell-bent on reawakening a race of ancient god-like monsters currently trapped in death-like sleep in the deep parts of the Earth, something possible once every umpteen years when the stars align and their sunken island city rises from the ocean. Which it did a few years previously, at which time the cult was thwarted in its efforts only by the chance intervention of a Norwegian merchant ship crew that stumbled across the island in question.

It's one of those stories you'd love to see made into a movie - until you realize that there is really no way to present the material that would even come close to doing it justice. Much of what makes the Cthulhu character work is the intentionally vague descriptions that create an air of mystery about him. If you actually showed him on screen, it couldn't help but be a letdown: "Wut? Really? A bunch of Norwegian sailors died instantly of fright over that thing?" The "Alien" approach of only showing shadows and close-ups of the monster to build suspense for a reveal at the very end (which is actually how the story plays out) wouldn't work well, either, for the same reason. It's just not possible to make a movie monster terrifying enough.

(On the other hand, "At the Mountains of Madness" is ideal for a movie. Guillermo del Toro needs to stop screwing around with interspecies romances and get busy with the interspecies mayhem and terror.)

Post: #872

@Wutang. I find the whole protestant work ethic hard to believe. Whats the opposite, Catholic complacency?

Post: #873

@PrideMale.

Check out 'Things fall apart' by Chinua Achebe. One of the greatest literary works ever made.

Post: #874

Manufacturing Consent, by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman

Did Not Finish, mainly because you get pretty much all you need to know out of the introduction and first chapter. After that it's basically painting-the-target-around-the-arrow through a number of 1980s-1990s political news stories. As well, Chomsky is a socialist dick, which was my main emotional reason for putting the book down, but we'll get to that.

Let's get the good parts out first:

If you've been hanging around the manosphere for a while, and in particular if you've been following anything the mainstream media has been doing to Donald Trump over the past two years or so, you've gotten a pretty intuitive education in what this book tells you.

In essence, Chomsky's central argument - that the mainstream media's daily servings are explained/explainable via a Propaganda Model - is a pretty solid lens through which to view what passes for news on your TV stations every day. At the very least, that propaganda model is stated pretty clearly in this book and it's good to review the fundamentals of how that model works. Wikipedia has a solid enough article on the model which you could read without having to dredge your way through Chomsky's book, though if you need convincing, I'd encourage you to read the intro and first chapter at least. The criticism of the model that exists is pretty weak counterpunching at least.

Basically, all mainstream media is essentially corrupt, and self-censors as effectively if not more effectively than if the government was in the newsrooms with blackout markers. The media, without exception, serves the elite primarily because of its nature as
(1) corporatised;
(2) dependent on advertising and therefore consumerism;
(3) dependent on government and large institutions for a constant feed of shit.

The phrase "controlled opposition" is applicable to the odd article criticising the government or the elite that is published. These are ways of convincing you that the media is "objective", when in reality it isn't, and hasn't been since at least the 1900s or so. Only the nature of the elite controlling it has changed. That's why the model remains useful, and also why Chomsky's attitude in it proves unintentionally hilarious.

Now, let's talk about the bad:

(1) The book tries to cloak itself in pseudo-scientific form. It "proposes" a "model" of how media can be expected to behave, as though we were conducting some form of controlled experiment. This is intellectual dishonesty, mainly because the "experiments" that Chomsky conducts on whether one form of article got into the media or not depend heavily on his personal viewpoint of what is objectivity. If you've been around this site a while, you'll already know that most social science is bogus, and this book tries to act like social science. That is, when you're reading this screed, be very, very aware of intellectual fallacies and in particular the way Chomsky tries to portray his viewpoint as objective and that of the media as biased.

(2) Chomsky's a socialist. Always has been. Therefore the entire book is tainted with his prevailing bias that the Left always gets hard done by in the media and the Right is always in control. He basically is still fighting the good fight against Ronald Reagan. This compromises his vision, though doesn't invalidate it entirely; as said, I regard the "model" as painting a bullseye around an arrow after it's hit a wall, but it doesn't change the fact there is a wall there to begin with.

As a result, the book becomes unintentionally hilarious and outdated as Chomsky proclaims the conservative Right is the elite and is in control of the media. I very much doubt this is the case anymore; the workings of the media during the entire Clinton administration somehow magically avoids any scrutiny, despite the book having been written in 1988 and then "updated" 20 years later in 2008. If the Right was in control of the media, it sure as hell is not anymore. What Chomsky does make a powerful point on, though, is that corporate interests control the media, in vast majority to political interests, and it is the corporate interests that continue, immortal as no political party can ever be.

The Left is never criticised, or if criticised, is softballed. In the case of the killing of Oscar Romero and other Catholic Church officials, Chomsky advocates via Romero's letters that the Left was merely "defending itself" from the police and government forces. Whether the situation might be a bit more nuanced than that never enters his mind.

In particular -- and it's a useful barometer for whether a pundit has done his homework or not -- Chomsky fails my personal test of research, because he runs the same tired old argument that Agent Orange killed people in Vietnam. It didn't. So go ahead and read it if you need some fine-tuning of your intuition that the media is out to screw you always and everywhere, but you could get much the same out of Wikipedia.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #875

^^ I thought it was a great book. Don't really care if Chomsky is a socialist, I don't think it took anything away from his argument. Also, I don't remember him ever saying "the Right" controls the media? His argument is more that it's a self-serving, highly narrow political spectrum through which opinions can be expressed. The book is not about Left vs. Right. You missed the point.