Top products from r/stupidpol

We found 25 product mentions on r/stupidpol. We ranked the 56 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top comments that mention products on r/stupidpol:

u/mariposadenaath · 5 pointsr/stupidpol

> Of the many social and technological problems early humans would have encountered, I can imagine few which would not have involved deference to individuals with cultural prestige or privileged relationship to social norms, therefore the recognition of a right of certain individuals to command or decide in certain situations.

This here may be the problem, because it does not conform to what has been studied and observed or described by people who lived in our closest analogues to the types of societies that humans lived in for literally thousands of years. I really recommend reading this book, its very interesting, has pictures even lol, and is a super fun read with very little technical language. I think you may be very surprised to read the details of just how power/prestige worked in these societies. As well as the stories of how hierarchy (of the kind we think of as normal) evolved in different circumstances and how it came to dominate and was also resisted.

https://www.amazon.com/Creation-Inequality-Prehistoric-Ancestors-Monarchy/dp/0674064690

Even if from the outside it might look like a special person 'decided' something and then others obey, expressing power of a sort, that is not how it plays out or is experienced. Above all, it is most important that power NOT be seen to be exercised by a special person. It is a social game that we might say lies to itself about what is happening, but playing the game is what is interesting, how it works and why it is essential. Even if we could make the argument that some individuals in the group do have more decision making power or influence, it is important in the group that this is not evident in a way that exposes the powerful as powerful. Not because people are deluded, but because everyone understands the need to play the game and why they play it. Nothing is more important than the group and minimizing conflict within the group. Nothing is more harmful in the group than special people who think they deserve a bit extra based on a natural or earned ability/prestige.

You also state that the mechanisms of envy don't target authority figures, and I'm not sure where you would get such an idea when in fact it is usually the opposite in societies that are 'fierce egalitarian' in structure. It is precisely the management of envy among the group for those individuals who are smarter, better looking, better hunters, better gatherers, better story tellers, and in other ways unequal to their peers that matters for the group. Nobody is more aware of this than those talented people themselves, they must practice huge amounts of social intelligence to navigate the pitfalls presented by their 'superiority' in the eyes of their society. Boasting is probably among the greatest sins in these societies, and nobody knows the risks more than those who might feel they have reason to boast. Again, the two books I recommended are really fascinating in regards to these questions.

u/jsingal · 12 pointsr/stupidpol

I've actually only read Exiting the Vampire Castle, and I (not surprisingly) find it really powerful, and not just because of the, well, context. I haven't read much Zizek and Adorno, to be honest. Once in awhile I try to dip into Zizek and it just doesn't work for me. He did a thing on trans issues, for example, which wasn't just offensive but that sort of offensive you get when you're trying to write in a clever and look-how-smart-I-am-way about a subject where you REALLY don't have any genuine knowledge. (I'm lobbing one over the plate with that remark, aren't I?)

As for the question about the U.S., it's really interesting, isn't it? We've always been an insanely individualistic people, and I think the absence of a strong left, lately, makes those impulses even stronger. I can't recommend "Age of Fracture" by the Princeton historian Daniel T. Rodgers enough on this stuff. From early on;

>Across the multiple fronts of ideational battle, from the speeches of presidents to books of social and cultural theory, conceptions of human nature that in the post-World War II era had been thick with context, social circumstance, institutions, and history gave way to conceptions of human nature that stressed choice, agency, performance, and desire. Strong metaphors of society were supplanted by weaker ones. Imagined collectivities shrank; notions of structure and power thinned out. Viewed by its acts of mind, the last quarter of the century was an era of disaggregation, a great age of fracture.

Could anyone sum it up better than that? And while Rodgers believes that 9/11 temporarily slowed down or partially reversed this trend (which doesn't mean he supports, like, the foreign-policy response to it, of course), he thinks it then continued apace.

u/niryasi · 5 pointsr/stupidpol

Good catch. From Totem and Taboo, published in 1918

u/commulan · 9 pointsr/stupidpol

Yes, it is. Read this book on the identity politics of differentiation within medicine.

u/5MinutePlan · 5 pointsr/stupidpol

Or Intellectuals & Society by Sowell

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Edit: I realize that this comment is likely to get downvoted. But I really think that we on the left should start engaging more with the ideas of Hayek and Sowell, and I'm not the only one

u/thebloodisfoul · 28 pointsr/stupidpol

lol jesus fucking christ, everyone understands that aipac is shorthand for a constellation of pro-israel lobbying groups and donors. go read the israel lobby if you're seriously this dense

u/Agreeable_Ocelot · 7 pointsr/stupidpol

The author is Temple Grandin - she has written a number of books circling the area of autism. I believe this is the one I am thinking of.

u/weopity77 · 3 pointsr/stupidpol

maybe you should read what the guy who 'discovered' critical race theory wrote, or remain forever ignorant - whatever

https://www.amazon.com/Faces-At-Bottom-Well-Permanence/dp/0465068146

u/PaXMeTOB · 4 pointsr/stupidpol

I disagree. Its a historical example which disproves Trip's claim that previous generations didn't care about flirting or sexual harassment. Historians are generally in agreement that lynchings were based in sexual fears of black men's 'bestial desires', and served to reinforce the notion that white women were inviolate. This is a decent book which addresses the subject.