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.

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@mlajoie2:
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 . 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).
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.

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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

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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

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Sne(R)d G(R)onk,

How long will it be befo(R)e you stop you(R) childish stupidity?

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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@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.

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