Thread by @eriktorenberg

Here are some of the most interesting books that changed my mind in 2020:

Thread👇

Peter Turchin tries to quantify history in "secular cycles" using demographic data.

TLDR: As population expands, wages go down, which increases inequality (& too many elites), which increases social unrest.

The idea is his theory can predict violence:

https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg/status/1286743286091116544?s=20

Heinrich's book on WIERD cultures is the best account of the industrial revolution I've read.

Once WEIRD-ness gets going, it eats everything in sight, and completely reorders power, norms, and social structures.

amazon.com/WEIRDest-Peopl…

"The Courage To Be Disliked" is Adlerian psychology meets stoicism, written by a Japanese classics professor who studied Greek philosophy.

The book is a fascinating fusion of the three, and a strong counterpoint to Freud and current therapy culture.

https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg/status/1254898822351687680?s=20

Inventing The Individual shows how Christianity set the stage for consciousness, agency, & moral equality

The church was corrupt, but God is within you, so go inwards so you can better serve God

Later we dropped the "serve god" but kept the other parts.

amazon.com/Inventing-Indi…

Faced with the post-Darwin necessity to invent new values, we ended up with the exact same values in new clothes.

Which explains why people act against their own interests: In the religious frame, demanding sacrifice makes a religion *more* attractive.

amazon.com/Anxious-Age-Po…

Charles Taylor traces how we became a secular society.

Darwin, Nietzsche, and Marx stripped the world of its cosmic meaning through natural selection, metaphysics, & economics respectively.

We could no longer trust external authority, so we went inwards
amazon.com/Secular-Age-Ch…

Therapy replaced religion, and psychology institutionalized the rise of "your truth"

The purpose of inner-life used to be to serve society—now the purpose of society is to serve self-actualization.

The inner-self was the sinner/liar, now it's the Oracle
amazon.com/Therapeutic-Tu…

The Hegelian desire for recognition leads to identitarianism.

"I must not tailor my psychological needs to the nature of society, for that would create anxiety and make me inauthentic."

Gov't now played a role in serving needs for recognition.

amazon.com/Identity-Deman…

Institutions ceased to be places for the *formation* of individuals

Instead they become platforms for *performance* where individuals are allowed to be their authentic selves precisely because they are able to give expression to who they are on the inside
amazon.com/Rise-Triumph-M…

This idea of authenticity was novel

When Socrates said "Know thyself", he didn't mean it like we mean it today, where you should get in touch with your true self and self-actualize.

“Know thyself" really meant "know thy place"

amazon.com/Being-Authenti…

While it’s obvious the great things individualism has provided, for many, the single-minded quest for authenticity has turned out to be a disappointment, an endless hamster wheel

When we look for the "real me" in isolation, there is often no there there
amazon.com/Authenticity-H…

In a world of empathy-based ethics, the moral sense is ultimately the aesthetic sense. And that means that when the sacred order collapses, morality is simply a matter of taste, not truth.

There are no morals anymore, it's all taste/aesthetics/~vibes~.

amazon.com/After-Virtue-S…

The irony is that "self esteem" was a concept from Ayn Rand's camp

It's something Nietzsche would say, but meaning the opposite: feeling good about yourself even when you have no reason to.

Nietzsche meant fully realizing one's full creative potential.
amazon.com/Nietzsche-Nazi…

Post-modernism combines our new Descartes-ism "I feel, therefore it's true" with the power principle: knowledge is a function of power ("who holds power, makes truth") and that the person or group who has less power thus has a moral claim to truth.

amazon.com/dp/B08BGCM5QZ/…

Virtually everyone who was elite and cool in the 1930s in the West was a communist.

It's interesting tracking what it took to shock Western intellectuals out of communism: Spanish Civil War, Stalin/Hitler pact, and 1989

amazon.com/GOD-THAT-FAILE…

Caldwell's main reason for the culture wars is that we have two irreconcilable constitutions, and our country is split over which constitution they subscribe to, the one of 1789 or 1964

It's an interesting take but it assumes history starts in the 1960s
amazon.com/Age-Entitlemen…

The Spanish Civil War might be a good analogue for where we are today, where all the radical ideas on the left and the right were fresh, and there was massive infighting on both sides, even more hatred towards the in-group adjacent than the out-group

amazon.com/Homage-Catalon…

But we won't have a civil war.

Both sides will LARP fighting incipient communism & fascism respectively.

The civil war takes place mostly on Twitter, giving us the drama of a war without the body count.

Reality is up for grabs:

https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg/status/1302876120107212800?s=20

amazon.com/History-Has-Be…

Why does the right always lose (their candidates win, but the underlying issues go increasingly left)

For the same reason there are no epic movies stigmatizing the Russian Revolution, Mao, Pol Pot, or Castro:

The Whigs dominate culture and write history.
amazon.com/Small-Men-Wron…

Burnham in 1963 predicted that liberalism could not defend it self from far leftism, since that was its logical endpoint

Once you concede care/fairness as most important, you're never going far enough.

You’re a Trotskyite in 1932, utterly vilified.

amazon.com/Suicide-West-M…

Rauche tries to defend liberalism in his book, "Kindly Inquisitors" by saying that liberalism is all about conflict resolution

Markets determine who has economic resources, democracy determines who has political power, and science determines who has truth

https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg/status/1282563385746354176?s=20

Foreign Policy:

Mearsheimer traces how, post-cold war, the U.S moved from an Offensive Realism strategy (protect U.S interests at all costs) to a Liberal Hegemony strategy (promote liberal democracies globally at all costs)

We got high on our own supply

https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg/status/1263571972744572928?s=20

On Higher Education:

Colleges are charging too much, acting like a monopoly, and aren’t setting students up for success in the job market.

In the last half century, costs have tripled, 40% of students drop out; and 3% of GDP is spent on colleges.

eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/the-higher-e…

Zadie Smith's "On Beauty" is an amazing novel.

"It's been too long. We're family. But Howard couldn't do this when he was sixteen and he couldn't do it now. He just did not believe, as his father did, that time is how you spend your love."

amazon.com/Beauty-Novel-Z…

For reference, here's my 2019 version:

https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg/status/1209990096402796544?s=20

I'm interested in any and all book recommendations for 2021.