Black Skin Privilege and the American Dream


David Horowitz - 2013
    Weatherman was a fringe group most of whose ideas were rejected by the dominant culture. But unfortunately their views on race were not. In succeeding decades the idea of "white skin privilege" became the new default position for racial crusaders and race hustlers alike who believed that white skin privilege was alive and well in our society -- not because white Americans were actively racist, but because they enjoyed the invisible privileges and prerogatives that go along with their skin color. In this searing pamphlet on the racial realities of contemporary America, David Horowitz and John Perazzo show that in fact the most insidious bias in our culture today is black skin privilege. Black skin privilege means the press will fail to report an epidemic of race riots targeting whites for beatings, shooting and other violence in major American cities over the last several years. Black skin privilege means that whites -- as in the case of the Duke lacrosse players -- will be presumed guilty of racial crimes when they are clearly innocent and then never accorded an apology by those who have stigmatized them. Black skin privilege has created an optical illusion in the liberal culture that white on black attacks are commonplace events when in fact there are five times as many black attacks on whites as the reverse. (As Horowitz and Perazzo note, in 2010, blacks committed more than 25 times the number of acts of interracial violence than whites did.) Black skin privilege exists in the affirmative action programs of our system of higher education and in our culture, where a black racist like Al Sharpton could be regarded by the national media as a civil rights leader and then hired as a TV anchor by NBC. This pamphlet gives the statistics and hard numbers the mainstream media conceal. It also probes the double standards and double talk that has come to dominate the way America talks when it talks about race.

Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation


Jonathan Lear - 2006
    “When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground,” he said, “and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.” It is precisely this point that of a people faced with the end of their way of life that prompts the philosophical and ethical inquiry pursued in Radical Hope. In Jonathan Lear’s view, Plenty Coups’ story raises a profound ethical question that transcends his time and challenges us all: how should one face the possibility that one’s culture might collapse? This is a vulnerability that affects us all insofar as we are all inhabitants of a civilization, and civilizations are themselves vulnerable to historical forces. How should we live with this vulnerability? Can we make any sense of facing up to such a challenge courageously? Using the available anthropology and history of the Indian tribes during their confinement to reservations, and drawing on philosophy and psychoanalytic theory, Lear explores the story of the Crow Nation at an impasse as it bears upon these questions and these questions as they bear upon our own place in the world. His book is a deeply revealing, and deeply moving, philosophical inquiry into a peculiar vulnerability that goes to the heart of the human condition.

How Dawkins Got Pwned


Mencius Moldbug - 2016
    The worst part: you could be infected, too.

Bushido: The Soul of Japan. A Classic Essay on Samurai Ethics


Inazō Nitobe - 1900
    The Way of the Warrior presents a remarkably faithful mirror of many of the characteristics and habits of modern Japanese civilization, as it represents a tradition that enjoyed great power and prestige for centuries. This work was written to provide practical and moral instruction for warriors, and to outline the parameters of personal, social, and professional conduct characteristic of Bushido, or Way of the Warrior, the Japanese chivalric tradition.Personal responsibilities, family relationships, public duties, education, finances and ethics are treated in this text from the perspective of the spirit of Japanese gentlemen. Even the forms of political incompetence and corruption that Japan currently struggles with are accurately described in this more than 400-year-old book; So deep did the feudal and military modes of government that generated them take their roots in Japanese society. This manual is therefore an essential resource for anyone who wishes to understand Japan and the Japanese people in a realistic way.

The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope


Andrew Delbanco - 1999
    A spiritual history ranging from the first English settlements to the present day, the book is also a lively, deeply learned meditation on hope.Andrew Delbanco tells of the stringent God of Protestant Christianity, who exerted immense force over the language, institutions, and customs of the culture for nearly 200 years. He describes the falling away of this God and the rise of the idea of a sacred nation-state. And, finally, he speaks of our own moment, when symbols of nationalism are in decline, leaving us with nothing to satisfy the longing for transcendence once sustained by God and nation.From the Christian story that expressed the earliest Puritan yearnings to New Age spirituality, apocalyptic environmentalism, and the multicultural search for ancestral roots that divert our own, The Real American Dream evokes the tidal rhythm of American history. It shows how Americans have organized their days and ordered their lives--and ultimately created a culture--to make sense of the pain, desire, pleasure, and fear that are the stuff of human experience. In a time of cultural crisis, when the old stories seem to be faltering, this book offers a lesson in the painstaking remaking of the American dream.

God, Medicine, and Suffering


Stanley Hauerwas - 1990
    Drawing heavily on stories of ill and dying children to illustrate and clarify his discussion of theological-philosophical issues, Hauerwas explores why we so fervently seek explanations for suffering and evil, and he shows how modern medicine has become a god to which we look (in vain) for deliverance from the evils of disease and mortality.

Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture


Christian Smith - 2003
    Despite the vast differences in humanity between cultures and across history, no matter how differently people narrate their lives and histories, there remains an underlying structure of human personhood that helps to order human culture, history, and narration. Drawing on important recent insights in moral philosophy, epistemology, and narrative studies, Smith argues that humans are animals who have an inescapable moral and spiritual dimension. They cannot avoid a fundamental moral orientation in life and this, says Smith, has profound consequences for how sociology must study human beings.

Science, Faith and Society


Michael Polanyi - 1964
    On its appearance in 1946 the book quickly became the focus of controversy.Polanyi aims to show that science must be understood as a community of inquirers held together by a common faith; science, he argues, is not the use of "scientific method" but rather consists in a discipline imposed by scientists on themselves in the interests of discovering an objective, impersonal truth. That such truth exists and can be found is part of the scientists' faith. Polanyi maintains that both authoritarianism and scepticism, attacking this faith, are attacking science itself.

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy


Cathy O'Neil - 2016
    Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives--where we go to school, whether we can get a job or a loan, how much we pay for health insurance--are being made not by humans, but by machines. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules.But as mathematician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil reveals, the mathematical models being used today are unregulated and uncontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination--propping up the lucky, punishing the downtrodden, and undermining our democracy in the process.

Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth


Michel Foucault - 1997
    His work has affected the teaching of any number of disciplines and remains, twenty years after his death, critically important. This newly available edition is drawn from the complete collection of all of Foucault's courses, articles, and interviews, and brings his most important work to a new generation of readers.Ethics (edited by Paul Rabinow) contains the summaries of Foucault's renowned courses at the Collège de France, paired with key writings and interviews on friendship, sexuality, and the care of the self and others.

HOW THE 1 PERCENT PROVIDES THE STANDARD OF LIVING OF THE 99 PERCENT


George Reisman - 2015
    As they see matters, wealth in the form of means of production and wealth in the form of consumers’ goods are essentially indistinguishable. For all practical purposes, they have no awareness of the existence of capital and of its importance. Thus, capitalists are generally depicted as fat men, whose girth allegedly signifies an excessive consumption of food and of wealth in general, while their alleged victims, the wage earners, are typically depicted as substantially underweight, allegedly signifying their inability to consume, thanks to the allegedly starvation wages paid by the capitalists.The truth is that in a capitalist economic system, the wealth of the capitalists is not only overwhelmingly in the form of means of production, such as factory buildings, machinery, farms, mines, stores, warehouses, and means of transportation and communication, but all of this wealth is employed in producing for the market, where its benefit is made available to everyone in the economic system who is able to afford to buy its products.Consider. Whoever can afford to buy an automobile benefits from the existence of the automobile factory and its equipment where that car was made. He also benefits from the existence of all the other automobile factories, whose existence and competition served to reduce the price he had to pay for his automobile. He benefits from the existence of the steel mill that provided the steel for his car, and from the iron mine that provided the iron ore needed for the production of that steel, and, of course, from the existence of all the other steel mills and iron mines whose existence and competition served to hold down the prices of the steel and iron ore that contributed to the production of his car.And, thanks to the great magnitude of wealth employed as capital, the demand for labor, of which capital is the foundation, is great enough and thus wages are high enough that virtually everyone is able to afford to a substantial degree most of the products of the economic system. For the capital of the capitalists is the foundation both of the supply of products that everyone buys and of the demand for the labor that all wage earners sell. More capital—a greater amount of wealth in the possession of the capitalists—means a both a larger and better supply of products for wage earners to buy and a greater demand for the labor that wage earners sell. Everyone, wage earners and capitalists alike, benefits from the wealth of the capitalists, because, as I say, that wealth is the foundation of the supply of the products that everyone buys and of the demand for the labor that all wage earners sell. More capital in the hands of the capitalists always means a more abundant, better quality of goods and services offered for sale and a larger demand for labor. The further effect is lower prices and higher wages, and thus a higher standard of living for wage earners.Furthermore, the combination of the profit motive and competition operates continually to improve the products offered in the market and the efficiency with which they are produced, thus steadily further improving the standard of living of everyone.In the alleged conflict between the so-called 99 percent and the so-called 1 percent, the program of the 99 percent is to seize as far as possible the wealth of the 1 percent and consume it. To the extent that it is enacted, the effect of this program can only be to impoverish everyone, and the 99 percent to a far greater extent than the 1 percent. To the extent that the 1 percent loses its mansions, luxury cars, and champagne and caviar, 99 times as many people lose their houses, run-of-the mill cars, and steak and hamburger.

Nostalgia for the Absolute


George Steiner - 1974
    He argues that Western culture's moral and emotional emptiness stems from the decay of formal religion. He examines the alternate mythologies (Marxism, etc.) and fads of irrationality (astrology, the occult). Steiner argues that this decay and the failure of the mythologies have created a nostalgia for the absolute that is growing and leading us to a massive clash between truth and human survival.Ultimately he suggests that we can only reduce the impact of this collision course if we continue, as disinterestedly as possible, to ask questions and seek answers in the face of our increasingly complex world.

Being Dad: Father as a Picture of God's Grace


Scott Keith - 2015
    Dr. Keith brings his experience with family, students, great mentors, and friends to bear on a subject that is crying out for attention. Equally, he brings his Christian faith, a scholarly eye for detail, and an ear for story along on the journey and works with the reader to navigate a path to a better country where the Father blesses His children and is honored.

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny


Kate Manne - 2017
    What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with sexism, and why is it prone to persist--or increase--even when sexist gender roles are waning? This book is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics, by the moral philosopher and writer Kate Manne. It argues that misogyny should not be understood primarily in terms of the hatred or hostility some men feel toward women generally. Rather, it's primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the "bad" women who challenge male dominance. And it's compatible with rewarding "the good ones," and singling out other women to serve as warnings to those who are out of order. It's also common for women to serve as scapegoats, be burned as witches, and treated as pariahs.Manne examines recent and current events such as the Isla Vista killings by Elliot Rodger, the case of the convicted serial rapist Daniel Holtzclaw, who preyed on African-American women as a police officer in Oklahoma City, Rush Limbaugh's diatribe against Sandra Fluke, and the "misogyny speech" of Julia Gillard, then Prime Minister of Australia, which went viral on YouTube. The book shows how these events, among others, set the stage for the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Not only was the misogyny leveled against Hillary Clinton predictable in both quantity and quality, Manne argues it was predictable that many people would be prepared to forgive and forget Donald Trump's history of sexual assault and harassment. For this, Manne argues, is misogyny's oft-overlooked and equally pernicious underbelly: exonerating or showing "himpathy" for the comparatively privileged men who dominate, threaten, and silence women.

The Burnout Society


Byung-Chul Han - 2010
    Rather than improving life, multitasking, "user-friendly" technology, and the culture of convenience are producing disorders that range from depression to attention deficit disorder to borderline personality disorder. Byung-Chul Han interprets the spreading malaise as an inability to manage negative experiences in an age characterized by excessive positivity and the universal availability of people and goods. Stress and exhaustion are not just personal experiences, but social and historical phenomena as well. Denouncing a world in which every against-the-grain response can lead to further disempowerment, he draws on literature, philosophy, and the social and natural sciences to explore the stakes of sacrificing intermittent intellectual reflection for constant neural connection.