Are you shocked by how little people read even about subjects they are interested in? It's gotten to the point where when something comes up in conversation I just feel silly referencing a book about the topic and asking if they have read it because they haven't and it makes them insecure and I don't want anyone to feel inferior to me
No, because I assume they’re just pretending to be interested to humor me or keep the conversation going.
Is this too heavy on psychoanalysis?
The worst chapters on Revolt were the ones using psychoanalysis.
It is a little heavy on the Freudian stuff, especially in the beginning, but even if you extirpate it all you're still left with something compelling, cogent, and profound. Especially the sections on socialization of reproduction and the decline of play. Using Lasch's framework, it's pretty easy to see why cancer like social media, video games, and media proper are not only seductive but also are effecting catastrophic consequences.
I'm ambivalent of the psychoanalysis stuff but not outright hostile. There's probably something to be said about it's apparently magic ability to explain things across time and space in a way that sounds compelling and tracks with common sense if it's not just barnum effect. Especially considering the state of the psychological discipline today.
Its ok, gets a little boring in the middle
Read Heavenly City after Revolt instead
Actually read Beautiful Losers, since MARs = yeomen
If you want to think about Freudian psychodynamics intuitively without getting too invested in Freudian narratives, then rethink Freud in Platonic terms. e.g. "pleasure principle" as eros, "thanatos drive" as thumos, and "reality principle" as logos. Boom. Now you have a psyche-ology that is divorced from modernism, ready to be restructured at will.
In my experience, intelligent people tend to read books on topics they're interested in. But they might not always have read a specific book; it depends on the field. If someone says he's really into bridge (the card game) but he hasn't read The Expert Game or Why You Lose At Bridge or Adventures In Card Play, he's not serious. But with crosswords it's different; I don't think there are any "must-read" books for crosswords. You might read Ximenes or Azed or something but it's not obligatory.
So give us an example of what you're talking about.
I was talking about "walkable cities" with someone and I referenced The Human Scale by Kirkpatrick Sale
which is literally where this idea came from and he had no idea what it was
Dude probably just watched a bunch of youtube videos and his new favourite word is "stroad"
>Dude probably just watched a bunch of youtube videos and his new favourite word is "stroad"
The history of “roads” is basically a history of “stroads”.
Also, bicyclists who insist on “bike lanes” seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that roads or streets with bike lanes are just as shitty as streets with three or more lanes for cars.
I just did a quick search for the term "walkable cities" and this book didn't exactly jump out at me. So I dunno. Maybe it's a book one should have read but maybe not.
You were probably talking to a moron but the underlying argument that you need to read about a movement from the source to contemporary writers to "understand how it evolved" and "have a conversation" about it only serves social ends i.e. gate-keeping and flexing.
Of course, if they get insecure because they don't know about the source material then they fall into the same line of thinking and it's fair game.
I agree with the sentiment and I value walkable cities too, but you don't need to read this book to have a good understanding of what a walkable city is or why they are good. If you really think otherwise you're just a pretentious American.
>I was talking about "walkable cities" with someone and I referenced The Human Scale by Kirkpatrick Sale
>which is literally where this idea came from and he had no idea what it was
There are plenty of books in the world, and the vast majority of the books aren’t Plato’s ‘Republic’, or ‘Leviathan’ , or ‘The Wealth of Nations’( which underwent many changes from edition to edition).
Also,
Most people don’t read books like they are doctoral students, were you’re basically expected to read everything possible of the specific subject of your dissertation, plus know all the facts surrounding your dissertation.
The Life and death of Great American Cities (1961) is basically about this idea
>In my experience, intelligent people tend to read books on topics they're interested in
What you really mean:
>I am intelligent and I read books on topics I'm interested in. Therefore, in order to be smart, others must also read books on topics they're interested in. Otherwise they're not smart.
Be honest.
Everyone gets taught in highschool that the road to mastery and expertise is to seek the wider consensus and reconcile it with your own observations (and then execute on your ideas to validate hypotheses, but that's where the intellectual falls short). Everybody knows the path to a greater understanding of the world, most people just aren't serious about it or don't see the benefit.
I'm autistic so my entire life is structured around 24/7 deep dives into topics or authors that interest me for several months, and whenever I complete one of these deep dives into something, I am almost never able to communicate with any of the people who claim to base their entire lives around that thing. I recently read nothing but Marx, Engels, and related Marxist authors of the First International for several months and within the first week I already knew "too much" to talk to my Marxist friends and their friends, people I've watched go to Marxist reading circles every night for 5 years. I figured that a few months of reading about a topic would be roughly enough to allow me to have intelligent conversations with people who have been into that topic for years and have a natural affinity for it, but I always blow past their level of comfortable knowledge within that first week, two weeks tops.
This is not an isolated incident. I have no idea what normies and normie "non-normies" whose primary hobby/life activity ostensibly revolves around books are actually doing with their time, but it doesn't seem to be reading the books. Especially women, my god. The women read as little as the men do, but they are much more shameless about claiming to read. At least the men will be more or less honest about what they've actually read, once push comes to shove. It's almost like the women do not understand the difference between claiming to read and reading, or that you can't just listen to a podcast on something once and then integrate it into your personality forever. Only the most extreme and over-socialized hipster men come close to being as "all surface" as the average woman. I stopped even trying to talk to women about their own alleged interests on dates a long time ago.
There's a weirder aspect to it too, and I'm not sure I can fully prove this, but: Whenever I get really into something, naturally I start at the beginning, at page 1 of the standard general overview or the most obvious starter text. Within the first few days, I've already seen all the inside jokes and memes that everybody references about that thing. It's a similar feeling to getting a used or library book, and the first 50 pages are covered in tryhard annotations, then fewer for the next 50 pages, then nothing for the remaining 500 pages of the book.
In those moments I feel close to a genuine revelation that pseuds and frauds are way more common than even IQfy in all its cynicism can imagine, and that non-pseud actual readers of books are incredibly rare.
Be honest, do you have a job?
NTA but I have a job and still think people struggle to develop interests. Many adults turn cooking and cars and exercising into hobbies, but don't understand they could have the same level of investment in literally anything.
No, because no one reads here