(Part 2) Best essays according to redditors
We found 608 Reddit comments discussing the best essays. We ranked the 306 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Here's some further reading!
The best and most academically accepted translation of the Dao De Jing
Here, A.C. Graham is an intensely clever and erudite Sinologist - Disupters is definitely a "classic" in the literature of early Eastern philosophy.
Great book on a lesser known section of the Zhuangzi, which Roth shows to be the origin of meditative practice in Daoism. Roth is also my Prof!
A great translation by the same A.C. Graham of most of the chapters of the Zhuangzi. The Zhuangzi, different from the Laozi, uses narratives and short essays in deeply stratified, humorous, and incredibly profound ways well ahead of its time.
Source: I've been studying contemplative practices, cultural anthropology, and Chinese philosophy for most of my undergrad
It’s a Penguin Classic, originally published in 1963. This is a newer printing but definitely an out-of-print title.
https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-Lao-Tzu/dp/014044131X
Existentialism and Human Emotions, by Sartre, is only 96 pages and quite an easy read. {ISBN-13: 978-0806509020} Existentialism and the Philosophical Tradition, [Raymond], gives a broad selection of thinkers throughout history, but it is pricey. {ISBN-13: 978-0132957755} Another approach would be texts that are not strictly philosophical yet present some existential points such as: The Plague, The Stranger, and The Rebel, all by Camus, Nausea by Sartre, Notes From Underground, by Dostoevsky, or Waiting For Godot by Beckett
I would particularly recommend the novella My Work Is Not Yet Done, perhaps his single finest story, and his non-fiction account of the absolute horror of reality, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, despite the crummy cover.
Thomas Ligotti - The Conspiracy Against the Human Race is probably the one I can recommend the most.
There's also Better Never to Have Been - David Benatar.
If you think one of them is too expensive tell me.
You could also Studies in Pessimism - Arthur Schopenhauer.
At last I can recommend this article from Richard Dawkins going into why nature pretty much sucks.
The Ray Comfort 150th Anniversary edition is 298 pages with a 50 page forward. The one put out by the NYU Press is 512 pages.
I recently discovered Wally Lamb and I was surprised I hadn't heard of him before. The two novels that I'm recommending deal with losses. They are what I would describe as "heavy" and deal with very real and raw human emotions.
I know this much is true and
The hour I first believed
Thanks for the response. I'll give a sparce reading list, as I find it pretty extensive.
Zizek:
Zizek has plenty of essays and talks floating around as well, but these books are probably the best--the first and second are the most sustained, the third is a lengthy essay making use of theological resources. The fourth contains essays by Eagleton, Vattimo, and Badiou. The fifth is one where he dialogues with theologians about St. Paul. The sixth is a debate with a theologian about theology. The final is a great collection of people all across the board, mostly Marxists, dealing with theology.
Vattimo:
Eagleton:
Eagleton also specializes in short and helpful articles.
Badiou:
Misc. Authors too extensive to list:
Secondary Literature:
Hopefully someone comes by and expands this list. I've gotta get back to work.
Rand's collection called The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution has an essay titled "The Anti-Industrial Revolution", which addresses environmentalism.
Note: The book is also sold under the title The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. I am not sure whether there is a difference other than the titles themselves.
My Asian Religions professor liked to use original texts only in her syllabi. Her reasoning was along the lines of: "why would you read someone else's interpretation when you could read the texts themselves and draw your own conclusions?" I tend to agree with that line of logic (I do understand that books such as the one mentioned can provide a good primer, but you've already that, why not move into the "meat" of the matter?). So, my suggestion would be:
And that should cover a broad range of the "philosophical" side of Taoism. As for the alchemies and the more, shall we say, "eccentric" branches, well, that's a whole different animal. Personally, I haven't delved too much into that side, since there is such an overwhelming amount of texts and practices and schools and etc. However, The Secret of the Golden Flower and Yellow Court Classic are two "big" ones. I'd start there and branch out accordingly.
For the record, that's Ray Comfort's bastardized version of Origin of Species that was passed out for free on several US and Canadian university campuses last year. It gets my goat that I keep finding copies popping up for sale in used bookstores for $5.
for a great overview of plate tectonics, how the process was first discovered, and the history of geology as a whole, check out basin and range by john mcphee. fantastic book.
one of my favorite quotes:
> "If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: the summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone."
It's a goody. See what you think of this
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Myth-Sisyphus-Penguin-Great-Ideas/dp/0141023996
Camus was getting at the same idea I think.
Kaufmann's translation of TSZ is contained in full in his 'The Portable Nietzsche' Kindle edition here:
https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Nietzsche-Library-ebook/dp/B001R9DI3Y/ref=sr_1_6_twi_kin_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543604107&sr=8-6&keywords=walter+kaufmann
The book also contains several other Nietzsche works, well worth owning in my opinion.
Overly simplified response, borrowed from Nabokov: Joyce's supposed achievements in Ulysses are entirely stylistic [as you rightly say] and considered novel, but anything supposedly 'new' and worthwhile about Ulysses had already been achieved by Flaubert in Madame Bovary.
I encourage everyone to read the compiled Lectures on Literature: http://www.amazon.com/Lectures-Literature-Vladimir-Nabokov/dp/0156027755
Nabokov's smarm is second-to-none and his masterful language makes it hard to disagree with him. But it's fun to try.
Thank you for replying and answering my questions. As a non-childbearing woman myself, let me recommend you some books I've read to help me with understanding our place in this world.
Motherhood: A Novel, by Shelia Heti
Selfish, Shallow, and Self Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids by Meghan Daum
The M Word: Conversations About Motherhood by Kerry Clare
I thought this was a good take on the topic, but never finished it, pretty miserable. https://www.amazon.com.au/Conspiracy-Against-Human-Thomas-Ligotti/dp/0143133144
All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays by George Orwell
One of my faves:
>“All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”
― George Orwell, All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
Ok. Here are four books you might find interesting.
Practicing New Criticism
How Fiction Works
Is There a Text in the Class?
The Anxiety of Influence
A broader piece of advice: buy a Norton Critical Edition of a work you like and check out the essays at the back. If you like a particular theorist, check out their other work.
Have you heard of Peter Hitchens perhaps? The brother of the infamous Atheist Christopher. You might find his work intriguing regarding religion.
Book only I'm afraid, no internet sources that I know of. Allow me to link you up - that first book seems like a joke, but believe me, it's the real deal;
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Winnie-Pooh-Pooh-Piglet-Wisdom/dp/0416199259/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1499789804&sr=8-2&keywords=the+tao+of+pooh
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tao-Ching-Classics-Lao-Tzu/dp/014044131X/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1499789824&sr=1-14&keywords=the+tao+te+ching
Lodge 49 S01E07 The Solemn Duty of the Squire
The Alchemical Magnum Opus says it has seven phases …but then says Fermentation has two sub phases, which sounds like it ups it to eight to me.
This is the Putrefaction sub phase of Fermentation, where impurities are shed by vermin and rot feeding on them, like how the grape rots in the vat. This rot looks bad and smell awful as the impurities are expelled, but will eventually leave behind purified clear wine, which will then be Fermentation’s Spiritization (as in wine spirits) phase. And for personal development, the rot will first consume our bad habits and limitations as we shed them, making way for new inspiration in a man from higher spheres. Except who is that man? Avery the Alchemist, or Jocelyn the Emissary and bookkeeper? Jocelyn’s French origin name means “of the Goth tribe”, the guys who sacked Rome, so Jocelyn is not here to build things (nor does he think much of the lodge building after sleeping in a dirty post-lube sex bed surrounded by mice, cockroaches, and old Reader’s Digest books). This Fermentation phase where rot is a necessary part of personal transformation is also known as the “Dark night of the soul”.
Alchemists believe fermentation is improved by adding the Sun and the Moon. Is Blaise the Sun and Avery the Moon, their lying together increasing the putrefaction? (and calling out all sorts of vermin?)
Spagyric is just another word for "alchemical", and the herb Dud drinks dissolved in water isn't written on the outside envelope; it's just an infinity sign, a triangle, Solomon's seal, and a fourth symbol. Decknamen means "code name". To keep their ciphers from being easily broken, alchemists would use lists of 24 possible names each for iron, copper, tin, lead, mercury, and sal-ammoniac, rotating between the words.
Bunco Night happens on the third Friday of each month, making Jocelyn's day going through lodge records Friday July 18, 2003. Dud gets kicked out of Ernie's place Saturday, the same day Liz has a dinner date. Ernie and Dud are reunited, and Ernie finds Gary, most likely on Monday July 21st 2003, exactly one month after Dud's awkward speech when he first entered the lodge.
Now we know why Liz thought Dud’s restraining order was “the best kind”. It’s purged from his record after three years. Her high school prank was a felony, which stays on her record for life if she was 18 or older when it happened. However there are legal ways to clear a criminal record, and with good behavior it would be easy to expunge her record several years after the fact. CA has also passed the Fair Chance Act restricting employers from using criminal background checks …in 2017, making it a bit late for 2003 era Liz.
Liz has yet to remove the broken mirror or throw out the skeleton of her coffee table. Most people would have dumped them and replaced them with something from Ikea already.
"Me? Yes, YOU!" by Janet Price (complete with obligatory Steve Jobs black turtleneck) has some interesting subtitles: "Eclipse the Darkness, Live Your Paradox" and "Chthonic Strategies for Abolishing Failure and Establishing Dominance". The promoters have now added the cover to Twitter. that adds "CEO of Omni Capital Partners|Food Service West, recruiter, and motivator."
The Lynx play drunken (fermenting?) softball with the Signal Hill Mud Men. Signal Hill is an odd city that is entirely surrounded by Long Beach, but was incorporated by the residents to avoid Long Beach oil taxes, which was important since Signal Hill Petroleum is still producing over a million gallons of oil annually. That's a lot of pump dragons! Unfortunately the cost per barrel in 2003 has dipped.
Overly competitive Scott slides into home to steal a run ...while the catcher ignores the ball and steals himself another beer from the Lynx keg. They're on the same field, playing two different games.
Grand Lodges most definitely do not own and can not sell the buildings of their member lodges out from under their members. Ownership brings too much liability in being sued any time anyone in the world slips of a sidewalk at a member lodge. Instead lodge buildings are owned by the local fraternal Hall Association, and Grand Lodges grant charters to their member lodges, generally for a $200 or so initial fee to start, after which the chartered lodge pays an annual per capita (or “per head”) fee to the Grand Lodge for every member. For 2013, the Elks “per cap” fee was $16 per member , so with slightly under a million members their Grand Lodge annual budget is slightly under $16 million per year. Most of the fraternities have annual “per caps” of $35 or less per member to their Grand Lodge. There is a whole annual battle between every Grand Lodge and its member lodges about paying the per capita fee, mostly from members being tardy in paying their lodge dues but Grand Lodge wanting to be paid at the beginning of the new fiscal year.
A Grand Lodge can choose to suspend the charter of a lodge, but that doesn’t sell the building, it just means the lodge can’t be opened to members of the fraternity. This loss of income to the lodge Tavern and lost rental fees is generally enough to get the local lodge officers to fix the problem.
Why is having a $300,000 mortgage a big deal? All they need to do is refinance the loan. Problem solved. Banks practically leap at you to get you to refinance with them.
Dud could have started paying off his car loan with his $450. Instead he redeems Ernie's flat screen TV trying to do his friend a favor. Some people feel that Dud could have bought Ernie a new flat screen for less than the $900 Burt charged him, but in 2003 the new flat screen technology was all priced above $2000.
Could Larry have mortgaged the lodge on his own? Real lodges have all sorts of legal protections and procedural checks and balances precisely against this kind of thing happening, but the largest one is a motion would need to be made and approved at the monthly business meeting and recorded by the Secretary (or "Scribe" for the Lynx, which is Connie) for it to be a legal motion. Since it wasn’t, the Chinese Banks can only sue Larry’s estate for the money based on his forgery –which doesn’t have much left.
To make sure the quorum requirement is met, most lodges bribe their members with a meal before the business meeting. An ideal business meeting is short, and consists of presenting and reviewing the bills against the lodge and quickly voting to pay the bills without controversy. The real risk to lodges is embezzling by the employees and the Treasurer, but that isn’t interesting, it’s just a sad story told many times over.
Eugine Mar/Corporate’s reading stack is: Das Kapital, a book similar to Connie’s proposed story series on unemployment written in the 1930s called The Road to Wigan Pier, and a book about Harwood Fitz Merrill written by “George Howland” that probably comes close to The Afghan Diaries of Captain George Felix Howland. But given their position on his desk to impress visitors, it is unlikely that Eugine has even cracked the cover of his copy of Das Kapital, otherwise he know this particular edition, while it has a pretty cover, is entirely written in German.
The equations on the white board are basic physics projectile equations related to the trebuchets (not catapults) they are building. Since they're using them indoors, the trebuchet's projectile parabola path's apogee has to stay below the ceiling height if they want maximum horizontal distance.
Building trebuchets is fun. Building them big became a trend after Survival Research Lab’s 1989 performance piece Illusions of Shameless Abundance had one large enough to hurl a burning piano, and the really big ones continue to pop up at Burning Man from year to year. Here former Orbis staff are going all Makers Faire to hurl obsolete PC towers for their game Death From Above. Given they’re drinking Blind Fox beer, their aim is probably not very good. If it were the current year, they'd instead be networking the scrap PCs into a server farm to mine for the cryptocurrency that Blase won't accept.
I'm not sure I've mentioned it here yet (the others I probably have) but I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb is one of my favorite books. It's long and heavy, but worth it- I've read it several times.
Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News was a really cool book, the author has a great way with words and it's less Trump-related than you might think.
I also like Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, and classics like Wuthering Heights and A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. John Steinbeck is my favorite author and East Of Eden is my favorite book.
The Idea of Communism
Don't know if it's available as e-book. Personally I still like dead trees.
Ah, I see. Then this book may be right up your alley, along with Alain Badiou's The Communist Hypothesis.
David Harvey, Andrew Kliman and Richard D. Wolff are all contemporary Marxian economists, albeit with conflicting views, that are all definitely worth checking out.
Miguel de Unamuno "Tragic Sense of Life"
Paulo Freire "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"
John Ruskin "Unto This Last"
William Morris "News From Nowhere"
Marge Piercy "Woman on the Edge of Time"
Aristotle "Nicomachean Ethics"
Tommaso Campanella "City of the Sun" / Michel de Montaigne "Of Cannibals"
Habermas "Philosophical Discourse of Modernity"
Soren Kierkegaard "Either/Or"
Kafka "The Castle"
Lewis Carroll "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There"
Of each, I would do as the King says: start at the beginning, and go on until you reach the end: then stop.
No problem brother. I forgot to link a book that you might be interested in... Camus' Lyrical and Critical Essays. It's a thin book but very dense and almost requires repeated readings. These are essays that he wrote early in his career before he had fully fleshed out his ideas on philosophy and absurdism but they offer a kind of joyful hope in spite of (or because of) an ultimately meaningless universe.
edit: forgot to add that he shows off a serious talent for the written word... there are some very beautiful passages in there.
Yeah, really. That gif wasn't funny. The Hurrollercoaster is still funnier. By the way, have you ever read The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne? You seem like the kind of redditor who would enjoy the fuck out of that shit. We bros?
Honestly, I'm far more into sociology and philosophy than economics so most of my suggestions will be based on those!
I couldn't recommend Camus' The Rebel or
The Myth Of Sisyphous
Ooooh or Jean-Paul Sartre's (or as you may know him: one of the leftists who tried to abolish the age of consent) The Wall or
Existenialism Is A Humanism
These are the kinds of works that inform my worldview more than any other, and I believe them to be great jumping off points into abusrdism and existentialism respectively (though Existenialism Is A Humanism could also be replaced by a much stronger work of his, Being and Nothingness )
I'm reading this version at the moment, which I think is the same O'Brien translation? It does throw you in the deep end from the get-go, and it definitely started off way over my head- but I thought that was more just because I don't read much literature (maybe one book per year). I will say that some chapters are much easier to digest than others, but also if I'm not in the right mindset it's just in one ear & out the other. If I've re-read the same paragraph more than 3 times & still don't understand it, I just move past it...
Good to hear his other works are easier to understand in comparison though, maybe I should've chosen a different one to start with!
The best book I have ever read about writing poetry is Richard Hugo's The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing. I honestly cannot recommend it highly enough.
Here are some choice quotes from the book.
I happen to have two different translations of this very book right next to me.
On this amazon listing for the book, it lists the translator right next to the author near the top of the page "Thomas Common (Translator) "
I found Walter Kauffman on amazon, and you can get his translation of "TSZ" through The Portable Nietzsche right there on Amazon in paperback, kindle or library binding formats.
Enjoy! As I have.
I was just referencing orwell's book of the same title
I mean, if I'm allowed to enter
Both sharks and vaginas have a substance called Squalane. Squalane exists in shark livers and is also a natural vaginal lubricant.
Thanks for the kind words! :-)
I read Daum's book "Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids". Don't judge the book by it's cover or the title. It's actually a very thoughtful and thought-provoking read. I found it to be an accessible book, full of personal testimonies. It goes beyond the myopic views about starting a family.
Really helped me to put things in perspective.
The Wrong Side and the Right Side
*Realized theres a lot of typos in this transcription. I'd recommend getting This for further readings, including the aforementioned essay.
Camus' Lyrical and Critical Essays:
http://www.amazon.com/Lyrical-Critical-Essays-Albert-Camus/dp/0394708520
'The Wind at Djemila' and 'The Desert' are two stunning essays.
Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell are two writers who could also offer a different perspective on mortality and life (although they are not strictly 'philosophical' writers).
You can grab the audiobook in Frame translation, the narration is quite nice.
I've done some research into the best translation and the consensus seems to be that Screech is the most "accessible and modern" http://www.amazon.com/Michel-Montaigne-Complete-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140446044/
Although the best book on Montaigne is http://www.amazon.com/How-Live-Montaigne-Question-Attempts/dp/1590514831 which I found thanks to Farnam Street and I would recommend reading it alongside the original.
You can also enjoy listening to audio lectures through things like The Great Courses or the Modern Scholar series from Recorded Books.
I have listened to a lot of professors break down works of literature, talk about genre, discuss authors, etc., just by borrowing CDs from the library or through Audible. I listen on my way to work.
In fact, (just as an aside) I really enjoyed a particular professor's work through the Modern Scholar series, and this past summer (after saving money a long time, lol) I took a trip through Scholarly Sojourns that was led by the professor. (A tour Anglo-Saxon Britain) He has courses on Grammar, Rhetoric, Poetry, Oral Tradition, Viking Sagas, Tolkien, Science Fiction, Fantasy Literature... Michael Drout is his name.
You can also take free online classes in tons of different areas, including literature from places like Coursera. I happen to have saved in my bookmarks (in the "learn" folder, lol) this little list of 60 free online literature courses...there are courses from lesser known schools, all the way up to UC Berkeley, Oxford, and Yale.
I think that, yes, you should continue to read on your own. Read novels, read for fun, read the classics. Read hard stuff. Read easy stuff and think critically about ALL of it. But expose yourself to teachers and the influence of others to help you build your toolbox and expand your comfort zone. There's some good lit-crit out there that you can read to help guide you. I enjoyed reading through Nabokov's Lectures on Literature.
There is so much out there for the self-taught learner. We live in a GREAT age, if you're motivated, you can learn anything you want from your back garden, how frigging exciting is that?!...but it can be hard to know where to start.
I recently read an article in Psychology Today about autodidacts and what makes the self-taught learner successful. Maybe you'll find it helpful or enlightening, some how.
Hope you find something helpful here :)
If anyone is interested, Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee is a pretty good book. It talks about moving freight by train, truck and, barge and those moving it.
It's a problem, but it doesn't have a solution, at least not in the proper sense.
Unfortunately this is a complex question despite how simply it can be worded. If you asked: What would it take to make a Dyson Sphere, you get papers on papers of the different technologies that require this level of tech. We can generally simplify these things down to sentences, "you need X and Y and Z." But with questions like this, you're talking about a natural force, humans, and trying to act against their nature, which doesn't work. Humans can't actually go agaisnt their nature, sure, to some degree we can repress ourselves, but anyone in psychology will tell you the same story, it rebounds, and hard.
Just as an experiment, try believing that something you think is absolutely immoral is moral. You can't. It's a part of you. This part is what is known as your personality, or the way you interoperate and solve problems. There can be change, radical events in people's lives can result in radical shifts in views, but only within a certain limitation. Personality is at least 50%, if not more, based in your genes, it's hard coded, you can't change it without changing the hardware. We do find solutions to problems as we get older and make additions, but you can't change the base structure you're working with. Think of it like having a car, you can put new kinds of fuel in it, you can give it new paint, but you can't really change it's handling or how fast it can go without changing the physical nature of the car.
Why is all this relevant? It's because the problem isn't just humans not having jobs, it's humans not having a purpose. This is devastating for people. Purpose is a part of that naturally built structure because we're made to solve problems that matter. Solving trivial problems, without actually going anywhere, will lead to depression, people will develop chronic pain on their own, they can develop other forms of symptoms and even get sick. Most people do not think about this aspect, and only think about money, how will people feed themselves. This is because we have that as a problem, we're programed to view the world through the problems that are present and change, slowly, what new problems are as they present themselves or show themselves through humanities unique ability to imagine the future.
The top comment so far on this thread, made by u/Charles07v, ignores these problems entirely. Comments like these forget that humans are limited. Machines that simulate muscle and mind, and can do jobs better than humans, will replace humans. We are not special, we are just very advanced, there's a difference. We have the capability through collective knowledge, see the first paragraph with the Dyson Sphere, to layer tech to make ever more complicated tools and systems. Eventually we will find something that can replace us, to where we won't be needed, and there is nothing that can stop that from happening.
>I’m sure there were people panicking over the rise of automobiles over horse carts too.
>>And electricity, and oil from the ground, and the printing press, etc...
And then Chernobyl happened. Nagasaki, plastics were invented, green house gases. Examples like this laid out by both u/qdobaisbetter and u/jeffreyhamby are comments made from the result of not experiencing the problem. For most people, we do not think of not having anything to do because there is nothing to be done, but there is nothing to do because we don't want to. We can always choose to get something done, get a new job, work towards making more, get a better education, and it amounts to something: the collective knowledge and effort of humanity. But in a world where these things don't matter, where your effort is drops of water in the vastness of the universe, it brings up a new problem. Songs like Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine" and even the saying "just a cog in a machine" highlight some peoples anxiety with this, we, in part, are already seeing the symptoms of this. Effort to contribute to society, meaningfully, is becoming harder and harder because of how much you have to know to even get started, or how specialized the jobs are becoming.
We can't expect humans to take the problem seriously until they experience it. And practically speaking there is no solution. We cannot prevent progress, even if it means horrible conditions.
But why libertarianism? The framework going into this problem will determine how our future is laid out, just as Christianity laid out the foundations for our modern democratic republic. Libertarianism ensures that any authoritarian solution would be limited, and maybe brilliant minds who engage in this problem, experiencing the symptoms the problem is causing, can find a proper solution. Do not dismiss this, it is real, and we are woefully under prepared for the transition to a post scarcity society.
Think that is bad, the more I see stupid shit like that the more I'm starting to think that maybe Ayn Rand was correct when she wrote those many essays that make up the 'Return of the Primitive'
Realistic fiction, since I've done a lot of fantasy in this thread. I'm a big fan of Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone will probably make you cry, and no book has ever spoken to me like I Know This Much is True.
I'd recommend that you take time to investigate a few resources. These objections have been addressed, and there are very good reasons to believe that the God of the Bible is indeed moral.
I take issue with your concept that God created Hell. Although this sounds like semantics, I think it is important to note that God didn't create Hell, but rather, he created the opportunity for people to go to Hell by creating free creatures. Read Jerry Walls's article about Hell in this book. Also, I would recommend reading C. S. Lewis's chapter about Hell in The Problem of Pain and The Great Divorce to understand the nature of Hell.
As for the alleged evils of God in the Old Testament, I recommend Paul Copan's Is God a Moral Monster?
Lastly, the statement "I find it hard to believe your God is morally good" is one of the most ironic statements I have ever read. Morality needs God to exist. Without a higher being, how can there be a higher standard? Read the first part of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity for a look at the Moral Argument for God's existence.
Orwell wrote a lot of literary criticism.
I know I am late to the party but I figured I'd ask anyway.
I love all forms of transportation infrastructure. One of my favorite non-fiction books is Uncommon Carriers (except that boring part about canoes). Are there any other good resources where I can get a good narrative description of what your life is like?
And, if you read that book, what did you think of it?
I agree with this! Russian literature has been my main focus for years and I bought Nabokov's Lectures on Russian Literature to see what he had to say about my favorite authors. It was so mindblowing that I ended up buying his Lectures on Literature, which covers a wide variety of proper literature, and since I didn't want spoilers, I just worked my way through most of them. It widened my scope a lot and I felt more safe to just enjoy and experience the novels because I knew I'd get a proper analysis immediately afterwards.
In the longer-term, reading both of those books and the books they were about, significantly improved my ability to understand literature.
> liberals give far less to charity than those who want tax cuts
I acknowledge that that is true. Everyone who gives generously to charity is admirable, including people who want tax cuts. Nevertheless, this doesn't change the fact that taxing everyone to pay for programs increases spending on the poor compared to relying on charity.
> in many cases the increased taxes are used to fund programs that create more poverty. Programs like The War on Drugs...
That is also true. Sometimes people are wrong about what programs will work. When that happens we should reform the bad programs. With respect to the War on Drugs, I'd guess that the main remaining stronghold of support for long prison sentences and lots of police powers is among a subset of people who also want tax cuts.
I think that, all told, including programs that don't work and programs that have bad consequences, the poor are better off with tax-funded government programs than without. I don't have slam-dunk evidence, but there are two mental models I have that inform my opinion here. First, think back to when there was genuinely small government in the West: this is the world of poverty that Dickens (and Orwell in an underrated book) wrote about, where you were totally f*ked if you were poor. Second, think of Western Europe now: they have unproductive workers just like we do (and also screwed up labor laws that keep unemployment too high), but they don't have the terrible health, infant mortality, and other poverty-associated outcomes we do. (We're a great country, but we should score better on these measures given how rich we are.) They accomplish this by taxing people and paying for transportation, education, and housing for people. Even if you don't want to go full-Sweden (I sure don't), this is at least evidence that tax-funded antipoverty programs are better for fighting poverty than tax cuts are.
> I'd like to see some data that backs up your claim that people don't increase giving when they have more available to give.
I don't believe that is true and I never said it. I think if you cut people's taxes by $10 they will give some amount that is greater than zero and lower than $10 to charity. My wild guess is $5 for rich people and $2 for most people. I'm too lazy to look up actual numbers, so I'm happy to be educated here. But if we freed up the money for that tax cut by cutting spending on social programs by $10, you get a net* result of lower spending on the poor (including both government and private charity spending). That's all I'm saying.
https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-against-Human-Race-Contrivance/dp/0143133144
The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus. The discourse on the limits of our understanding and our freedom in futility really helped me with my depression in a very practical sense.
Never justified on a moral scale. It is rather hard to explain in forum context without going into lengthy philosophical discussions. I would just recommend reading 'The Rebel' by Albert Camus.
EDITED TO ADD ACTUAL HELP:
I would highly recommend How Fiction Works by James Wood.
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> tips ... more deeply
FTFY.
If you're interested in writing poetry, I recommend picking up The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo.
Botany of Desire
One River
Silent Spring
Basin and Range or most anything by John McPhee
Cadillac Desert
> I think the modern literary novel has to be dull and vague to survive the critics who will pounce on anything that gives them a firm basis for criticism.
... like "having a plot", which James Woods regards as "juvenile".
Thanks! I just wish I could say there were more good things on the list.
And thanks for the Patton recommendation, I'll check that out.
I do recommend anything by John McPhee in the strongest possible terms. It's all non-fiction, and always interesting and often very funny, and about a tremendous range of topics.
Like fishing? Read The Founding Fish, which is all about the American Shad, and I mentioned before.
Like boats? Looking For a Ship is about the merchant marine.
Planes, trains, and automobiles (and more boats)? Uncommon Carriers deals with all of them, and why almost all lobster eaten in the US comes from Kentucky.
Care for tales about why New Orleans is doomed, pissing on lava , and debris flows in LA? The Control of Nature covers those.
Fruit? How about Oranges?
Geology? The Annals of the Former World is a compilation of several shorter books more or less following I-80 across the US.
Sports? Tennis (and basketball to a lesser extent). He's also written about lacrosse in various magazines.
...And a ton of other stuff, ranging from bears to farmers markets to nuclear energy to lifting body airplanes to Switzerland.
"Basin and Range" by John McPhee. John McPhee is a very interesting writer. This is his journey from Jersey to the block fault mountains in the West. He accompanies a geologist, who stops at every interesting road cut and explains the deep geological history in each. They drink beer too.
http://www.amazon.com/Basin-Range-John-McPhee/dp/0374516901
here: https://www.amazon.com/Triggering-Town-Lectures-Essays-Writing/dp/039333872X
You really don't want this edition:
https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Species-150th-Anniversary/dp/0882709194
Physics major here! I loved my writing seminar (Alienation and the Modern Identity), and I found it extremely beneficial. If you have time, read some Nietzsche; I especially liked ON THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS. The Walter Kaufmann translations are good: https://smile.amazon.com/Writings-Nietzsche-Modern-Library-Classics-ebook/dp/B004KABEBU/ and https://smile.amazon.com/Portable-Nietzsche-Library-ebook/dp/B001R9DI3Y/
Here's evidence: http://imgur.com/a/igOtq
It's part of an essay she wrote in 1965 about the UC Berkeley Riots that happened during the previous year.
The essay, titled The Cash-In: The Student "Rebellion" has been published, along with others, in a collection titled The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
Well, read instead of whining