Posted on 01/11/2024 6:40:37 AM PST by Chickensoup
I am listening to a remarkable concise well written book: TEN BOOKS THAT SCREWED UP THE WORLD. Recommended!
You've heard of the "Great Books"? These are their evil opposites. From Machiavelli's The Prince to Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto to Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, these "influential" books have led to war, genocide, totalitarian oppression, family breakdown, and disastrous social experiments. And yet these authors' bad ideas are still popular and pervasive--in fact, they might influence your own thinking without your realizing it. Here with the antidote is Professor Benjamin Wiker. In his scintillating new book, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World (And 5 Others That Didn't Help), he seizes each of these evil books by its malignant heart and exposes it to the light of day. In this witty, learned, and provocative expos???, you'll learn: * Why Machiavelli's The Prince was the inspiration for a long list of tyrannies (Stalin had it on his nightstand) * How Descartes' Discourse on Method "proved" God's existence only by making Him a creation of our own ego * How Hobbes' Leviathan led to the belief that we have a "right" to whatever we want * Why Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto could win the award for the most malicious book ever written * How Darwin's The Descent of Man proves he intended "survival of the fittest" to be applied to human society * How Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil issued the call for a world ruled solely by the "will to power" * How Hitler's Mein Kampf was a kind of "spiritualized Darwinism" that accounts for his genocidal anti-Semitism * How the pansexual paradise described in Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa turned out to be a creation of her own sexual confusions and aspirations * Why Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was simply autobiography masquerading as science Witty, shocking, and instructive, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World offers a quick education on the worst ideas in human history--and how we can avoid them in the future. Read Less
Howard Zinn’s LYING BOOK has RUINED MANY PEOPLE!
Then there is Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. It got DDT banned and many have died because of it.
bfl
Fits my definition.
I suggest you take a look at the post you first made to me. Then look at the reply I made (#2) to which you were supposedly responding. You asked me if I know how to form paragraphs. My post (#2) was one line. No paragraphs were needed.
Looks to me like you were bitching about the original post (#1), which indeed needed formatting into paragraphs. You replied to the wrong person. So you didn't get that right either.
I'm done with your stupidity.
Agreed.
However this is not Every Book that Screwed up the world. Just 10 Foundational books and 5 honorable mentions
( Unfortunately some judge decided Internet Archive can't operate as a lending library for contemporary books. But they have it.)
That’s true but the people who lost their farms or who lost family members probably think it screwed up their worlds.
I just searched “millions died DDT” and found articles that say millions have died because of the ban. One article estimated that worldwide more than 2,700 people die every day.
No I wouldn’t choose that book. I read the whole thing. He did not endorse permissiveness. At all.
He did endorse feeding a hungry baby instead of putting it on a strict feeding timetable as previous generations did.
And now look at our epidemic of obesity and other Me Generation issues...
He wasn’t me generation. Spock was late 50s to late 60s childrearing.
His ideas influenced the parents who raised the Me Generation. That is the point.
What is the ME generation ?
…
The "Me" generation is a term referring to Baby Boomers in the United States and the self-involved qualities associated with this generation. The 1970s was dubbed the "Me decade" by writer Tom Wolfe; Christopher Lasch wrote about the rise of a culture of narcissism among younger Baby Boomers. The phrase became popular at a time when "self-realization" and "self-fulfillment" were becoming cultural aspirations to which young people supposedly ascribed higher importance than social responsibility.Origins
The cultural change in the United States during the 1970s that was experienced by the Baby Boomers, upon when the majority of them became of age, is complex. The 1960s are remembered as a time of political protests, and radical experimentation with new cultural experiences (the Sexual Revolution, happenings, mainstream awareness of Eastern religions ), which were practiced by older Boomers. The Civil Rights Movement, gave rebellious young people serious goals. Cultural experimentation was justified as being directed toward spiritual or intellectual enlightenment. The mid to late 1970s, in contrast, was a time of increased economic crisis and disillusionment with idealistic politics among the young, particularly after the resignation of Richard Nixon and the end of the Vietnam War. Unapologetic hedonism became acceptable among the young...[emphases mine]
Not really.
First let’s define our terms
Me generation can refer to boomers or millenials
“The term “Me generation” has persisted over the decades and is connected to Baby Boomers.[10] Some writers, however, have also named the Millennials, upon maturing in the 2010s, as “The Me Generation” or “Generation Me”,[11] noted that narcissism is a symptom of youth in most generations. The 1970s was also an era of rising unemployment among the young, continuing erosion of faith in conventional social institutions, and political and ideological aimlessness. This was the environment that popularized Punk rock among America’s disaffected youth. By 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected president, Baby Boomers increasingly adopted conservative political and cultural priorities.”
....
Spock encouraged feeding schedules of infants that were more in norm with breastfeeding. Feeding the infant when it was hungry which is more in line with infant growth patterns than the previously adhered to every 4 hour newborn schedules and let the baby cry it out between scheduled feedings.
Spock was a “liberal” politically in the 60s and 70s and supported the anti Vietnam War movement. You may criticize him for his politics but his parenting advice was conservative middle of the road common sense.
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