version

Well-known member
Does it work as the gateway it's sometimes intended as or does it just leave people sated with a poor grasp of a given subject? Is Alain de Botton a charlatan?
 

version

Well-known member
Is Alain de Botton a charlatan?

The shit he's flogging through his "School of Life" shop...

😂

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DannyL

Wild Horses
I have a couple of the "How to..." books and tbh they're really good. They really pack a lot in a short space. But they feel like starting points, not the whole mile.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I should say, I am a bit of a sucker for pop psychology/science books, though.

With science particularly I feel like I will never have a good grasp of what's actually going on. So give it to me simple so I'm at least somewhat aware.
 

version

Well-known member
He turns every philosopher (or novelist, painter, etc.) into a lifestyle guru, which is toe-curling.

Yeah, repackaging this stuff as self-help and business strategies is tacky in the extreme. Guys on Wall St. with an unread copy of The Art of War in their desk.
 

luka

Well-known member
Tbf nietzsche sort of is self help. Kpunk presented Spinoza as self help. Deleuze is self help it's not all disinterested exercises of pure abstract logic
 

version

Well-known member
True, but there's self-help and "self-help" and I'm referring to the latter. You could read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations or you could read some business guy's book of repetitive anecdotes and buzzwords called something like "Stiff Upper Lip: How to Triumph in the face of Adversity in Business and in Life".
 

version

Well-known member
I guess if it works, it works, but the trend seems to be that people just end up with stacks and stacks of self-help books they can't remember much of.
 

luka

Well-known member
Yeah yeah course. I was being provocative. It's not self help per se. But it is often concerned with our lives how we should think them and live them. I've got no interest in or aptitude for logic puzzles so this is the only bit I'm interested in.
 

version

Well-known member
That Matthew Walker book on sleep was what triggered the thread. I was looking at all the Guardian quotes on the cover about how "life changing" it was, the Bill Gates endorsement on Goodreads etc and becoming increasingly apprehensive. A science book published by Penguin with a load of bland quotes from journalists and business-types.
 

luka

Well-known member
Anyway as far as the question goes I'd far rather misunderstand and mangle a primary source than get a trite summary from a guide for idiots.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Some of these philosophers I think we're "supposed" to know about. We're supposed to know who Nietzsche was, for example, even if that boils down to "God is dead" and "Ubermensch".

But the truth is 99% of us don't have the time or will to read either Nietzsche or the philosophers Nietzsche was battling against or influenced by. We're condemned to be dilettantes. Only a very small group of people have read and understood Nietzsche, and to do that they probably have had to read a lot of other philosophers, not least Hegel (I tried to read some Hegel once - never again).

We desire, then, these cultural mediators. If it also then promises us that it's going to improve our daily lives then all the better. We can feel cleverer than the bozo reading a business book. We know who Nietzsche is.

(As always I may be mainly projecting my own neuroses onto everyone else.)
 

version

Well-known member
I definitely suffer from that snobbishness toward The Guardian - despite reading some of their reporting myself - that you were on about with Mark, although not to the point that I'd read The Times out of spite. I just see anything with a Guardian, New York Times etc endorsement and roll my eyes. It reminds me of my aunt who's always reading whatever's currently being billed as the book you have to read by them.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I dipped my frontal lobes in Heidegger when I was a student, and I found it very interesting and even exciting - but it was also such hard work. I knew that if I wanted to really get to grips with this stuff I'd have to spend most of my time in the library.
 

luka

Well-known member
Which most of us are too time poor too indisciplined too stupid to do. And we have other priorities.
 

luka

Well-known member
I guess one of the key questions is whether it's better to be uninformed or misinformed.

What I keep using ted talks as a shorthand for is the notion that there are shortcuts to being informed. This is a delusional belief monetised by ted talks. Pure wishful thinking. A scam.
 

version

Well-known member
Have you ever seen that alt-right comedian who blagged his way into a TED Talk and just chatted shit for the whole thing?
 
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