“How in the world did we get ourselves into this mess?” Have you been asking yourself this question a lot the past couple of weeks? You’re not alone. During this time, quite fortuitously, I’ve been reading a book that I think is giving me the straight answer. The book is “10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn’t Help” by Benjamin Wiker. Reading this, especially with Obama’s words still ringing in my ears was truly eerie and chilling. It sums up fifteen books that have cumulatively helped create the poisonous culture and atmosphere that made it possible for the unthinkable to happen. Re-reading the alluring logic of Mein Kampf was especially unnerving.
I don’t want to give too much away, but I can say this much: although at the time each of these books seemed to make sense, looking back, we can now see these books were replete with Pseudo-science and outright fantasy, but it was very base motives and vice that really impelled their logic and themes. Here are the books:
- The Prince Machiavelli
- Discourse on Method Descartes
- Leviathan Hobbes
- Discourse on Inequality – Rousseau
- The Manifesto of the Communist Party – Marx & Engels
- Utilitarianism – John Stuart Mill
- The Descent of Man – Darwin
- Beyond Good & Evil – Nietzsche
- The State & Revolution – Lenin
- The Pivot of Civilization – Sanger
- Mein Kampf – Hitler
- The Future of an Illusion – Freud
- Coming of Age in Samoa – Margaret Mead
- Sexual Behavior in the Human Male – Kinsey
- Dishonorable Mention: Feminine Mystique – Friedan
We should say his problem with Darwin has nothing to do with the theory of evolution per se as discussed elsewhere, but the radical eugenics espoused in Descent. Many have tried to foist off crude “Social Darwinism” on Spenser and absolve Darwin, but it’s clear Darwin espoused “Social Darwinism” most himself and had a profound effect on both Sanger and Hitler. Also, the point is not that Freud did not have some valid insights, but that his background blinded him significantly in his anti-God diatribe, Illusion. In short, the point is not that everything in every book or author is bad, but that a discernible pattern of errors has led us to where we are today: with an ‘education’ system that does not educate and a culture of death and dehumanization.
For anyone becoming even slightly curious as to ‘how we got here’, this would be a great place to start. Let’s keep spreading not only knowledge but wisdom as much and as far as we can.
How can you leave off the “noble” Koran? I would nominate it as first among equals.
Harold Robbin’s life works probably merits an honorable mention.
I like Machiavelli.
Nothing by Gore Vidal or Chomsky?
How did All I really needed to know I learned in Kindergarden not make the list?
Yeah, the Holy Cow Ran should be on the list.
But, without these books, we never would have had Al Gore’s books!!11! Oh noes!
mlajoie2,
Mein Kampf, Obama. Yes, I see the connection.
You have got to kidding me, but unfortunately I know you’re not.
Whadda you think, burn them, right?
You might read them first, just to know what you’re burning. How many of them have you read? It might promote your education more to put down Wiker and read some of those books. You don’t need Wiker to pre-chew them for you.
BTW, you forgot Martin Luther’s tract “The Jews and Their Lies”
Starboard,
The Bible will give the Koran a run for its money in causing war, persecution, and bloodshed.
People full of hate will always find something to justify their hatred.
What about Silent Spring?
The Bridges of Madison County
Atlas Shrugged
Saul Alinsky’s “Rules For Radicals” should be #16 on the list.
“… I’ve been reading … [“10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn’t Help” ] that I think is giving me the straight answer. … I don’t want to give too much away”
SG: Ruin ‘The End’, will it … !?
Snerd
@Dave Noble:
Dave,
I don’t think Obama is Hitler and I don’t believe in burning books. I have actually read quite a few of these as I was a Philosophy Minor and a History Major (Emphasis Intellectual History) and I think they SHOULD be read – with open eyes. One of the best experiences I’ve ever had is reading the “Communist Manifesto”. It was eye-opening.
Blaming the Bible or any of these books, for that matter, is too simplistic. As Shakespeare said, “The fault lies in ourselves, Horatio, not in our stars.” People will twist holy books any way they can. With the books above, they don’t have to do quite so much twisting!
My main point is the culture that has been formed. There is a pattern and a direction that I recognize in what has been happening. Most of us no longer have the background that an education used to give us. The thought that has arisen from these books are a poor substitute for some of the classic knowledge we have abandoned.
I want to be open to what you have to say. It sounded like you were assuming a lot about me. I hope you might give me the benefit of the doubt. No hard feelings.
How can you leave off the “noble” Koran?
Wiker is religious and his principal bone to pick is not with competing religious works, but with various kinds of materialist philosophies which propose to make religion obsolete. He’s certainly fighting on a lot of fronts here – broadly I’d say you have books on eugenics, communism, utilitarianism, and sexual psychology, together with Nietzsche who is a little hard to classify.
Meade, Kinsey and to a lesser extent Freud are all easy targets who fabricated many of their results to suit their own ideas.
I like his list of utilitarian books as a sketch of the history of ideas – Machiavelli, then Hobbes and finally Mill, followed by the split into two competing schools of thought: the eugenicists who thought to remake man, and the communists who wanted to remake society. Identifying Rousseau as a precursor to the Communists is insightful.
It’s interesting that Meade, Kinsey and Friedan even make the list, in my opinion – these are people who are largely unknown outside the US and I would say that their role in the shaping history is slight compared to the others. But after all I haven’t read what Wiker has to say on the topic.
@bbartlog:
Wow!
You’ve actually caught on to a whole lot of what he is saying without reading it! How great to have a student of philosphy comment. It made my day. Thanks for taking the time.
I think you would be interested in how he weaves Nietzsche into the flow of ideas – I think he makes a good case for how he does.
So many of these thinkers were in large part doing a good job at SELF analysis and projecting their chaotic visions onto the world. Maybe philosophy can be pretty ‘ivory tower’, but the results of what they have done to our culture are all too real.
joie2: “… Blaming the Bible or any of these books, for that matter, is too simplistic. As Shakespeare said, “The fault lies in ourselves, Horatio, not in our stars” … ”
SG: I am glad to see Will did not buy into all the ‘Celebrity’ and ‘Hollywood’ “stars” crap either ….!
joie2: “… People will twist holy books any way they can. With the books above, they don’t have to do quite so much twisting!”
SG: Hermeneutic ‘accuracy’ ‘twisting’ towards absolutism … Surely the context into which these books spoke is where the value of their concepts really apply? Surely the ‘I think, therefore I am’, speaks to freeing the individual from Church Authority and the current Social Consciousness of the time, in spite of the problematic Dualism introduced?
joie2: “… My main point is the culture that has been formed. There is a pattern and a direction that I recognize in what has been happening. Most of us no longer have the background that an education used to give us. The thought that has arisen from these books are a poor substitute for some of the classic knowledge we have abandoned.”
SG: Well … what for example? And how would we how what the ‘abandon classic knowledge’ was, but for books!?
Hopefully you aren’t going to go on about the “Culture Warz” stuff …. talk about exploiting the “Most of us no longer have the background that an education used to give us”, problem.
Snerd
joie2: “… So many of these thinkers were in large part doing a good job at SELF analysis and projecting their chaotic visions onto the world.”
SG: Interesting stuff … However, I am not sure I grasp all of your ideas. What do you mean by ‘projecting their chaotic visions’? What form of thought is NOT projection, in your opinion and what is the criterion for establishing Non-Projected Thought?
joie2: “… Maybe philosophy can be pretty ‘ivory tower’, but the results of what they have done to our culture are all too real.”
SG: Maybe I am off on a different tangent here, but is there culture without concepts and thought? Is there culture outside of what people ‘think’, outside of concepts, upon which these ‘ivory tower’ philosophies act?
Snerd
mlajoie2,
Thank you for your gracious response to my deliberately provocative post. It is to your credit.
I didn’t really think you advocated burning books. But if certain books can be said to have led to a debased and destructive culture (a premise with which I disagree), wouldn’t the world be better off without them? If on the other hand, as I believe, we all benefit from a free marketplace of ideas, why subscribe to Mr. Wiker’s calculatedly low-brow assertion that certain books “screwed up the world?”
Nor do I believe you that think Obama is Hitler. But then why link him in even the most tangential way to Hitler?
Ideas do have consequences. On the other hand, is your post to blame for Starboard’s bigoted characterization of the holy book of 1.3 billion human beings? I think not. Starboard is responsible for his own positions.
No hard feelings, my friend. There never were, nor should there be.
Nobel Dave: “… we all benefit from a free marketplace of ideas, why subscribe to Mr. Wiker’s calculatedly low-brow assertion that certain books “screwed up the world?” …”
SG: Free marketplace of ideas … cleaver! It implicitly draws out the ‘f(R)ee-de(R)egulated-financial-market-but-(R)egulated-cultu(R)e’ folks … errr …. idea, for me.
And the idea that certain books screwed up culture, first requires an ‘idea’ of an existing ‘Good’ culture, which was somehow disconnected from the ‘context’ outta which his Letterman-list of ‘Bad’ books grew. A pretty nonviable ‘cultu(R)al’ concept, really.
Snerd
Sne(R)d G(R)onk,
How long will it be befo(R)e you stop you(R) childish stupidity?
Darwin was not was is known known as a ‘social Darwinist’ and I am much surprised by its inclusion. It has been two decades since I read it; but as a biologist explaining how man emerged, without knowing much in the way of how brains develop and without any knowledge of genetics it is not at all bad. It is clear that he was an upper middle class Englishman writing in the manner that was common in discussing ‘class’ at that time. As far as killer books:-
The little red book- Mao
Koran – Satan
The Manifesto of the Communist Party – Marx & Engels
The State & Revolution – Lenin
Mein Kampf – Hitler
c(R)aig: “… Sne(R)d G(R)onk, How long will it be befo(R)e you stop you(R) childish stupidity?”
SG: Well c(R)aig, if you got the point, wouldn’t it read … Sner(D) Gronk, How long will it be before you stop your chil(D)ish stupi(D)ity?”
It’s gettin’ pretty bad, we I have to “(R)ight” your lines for you …!
Snerd
@mlajoie2:
. I’ve only read about five of these books anyway, most of the rest I know only by general reputation (and a couple I don’t know much about at all).
Thanks for the kind words. I was pleased to see someone putting JS Mill in the crosshairs (so to speak) since I had always thought the utilitarians were wrong and yet very influential at the same time; in fact their whole way of looking at things pervades modern thought. The Catholic Church and to a lesser extent a school of thought that believes in natural rights (e.g. someone like Nozick, or I guess Rand though I can’t take her seriously) are really the only competitors in the market of ideas that I can think of, and both of them are very much in eclipse. JS Mill did the business of human rights a grave disservice by trying to justify things like freedom of speech on utilitarian grounds, which is more or less setting such rights on a foundation of sand.
Anyway the rest of my thoughts were largely speculation, but after all it’s kind of an interesting puzzle to be presented with a list of books and a claim that these things go together somehow – you just need to figure out how
Kudos to Wiker (and you) for trying to strike at the root. Too many people feel like the main thing wrong with Communism is that it didn’t work, and forget (or indeed never knew) the reasons we would have to oppose it even if it could deliver on its promises.
Re “It’s interesting that Mead, Kinsey and Friedan even make the list, in my opinion – these are people who are largely unknown outside the US and I would say that their role in the shaping history is slight compared to the others”
You have a major point there. Trends towards atheism have gone massively further in Europe, East Asia, Canada and New Zealand than in the United States, and by that logic alone Wiker’s focus needs to be on authors who are as well-known as possible in those nations, rather than those chiefly known in the United States.
This is particularly true for Kinsey. Contrary to what many of both his supporters and his detractors claim, Kinsey in no way invented the idea of “free love” or the legitimacy of extramarital sexuality. Havelock Ellis – old enough to have been Kinsey’s father – advocated free love in the 1900s and the Weimar Republic attempted to practice it in the 1920s before Kinsey even began his research and at the same time Mead did hers. Given that Wiker says the books he includes were meant to be in “pamphlet” form, including Havelock Ellis’ “The Psychology of Sex” or something by Fromm or Wilhelm Reich would be more consistent than having “Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male”, which I coudl never understand.
As for Friedan, there would logically be little point including her had he looked at “The Second Sex” by Simone de Beauvoir, which came out fourteen years before the Feminine Mystique. As for atheism, Bertrand Russell’s “Why I Am Not A Christian” would have been better known in Europe, Canada and New Zealand and Michelet’s “La Socière” gave notions of a prehistoric matriarchy that scholars now view as impossible but which had major influence on radical feminism during the 1970s.