What Our Biggest Best-Sellers Tell Us About a Nation’s Soul | Hacker News Reader

What Our Biggest Best-Sellers Tell Us About a Nation’s Soul

newyorker.com

30 pointssamclemens22 comments

The 'everything is problematic' critique genre is so boring and tedious and sterile. There's literally no possible original observation left to make. You can write about any element of US history and say it was evil, racist, etc. It was all bad! Unbelievably predictable.

The extremely frustrating thing about this current instantiation of the postmodern critical approach is that EVERYTHING is problematic. By it's own logic, by the only logic that makes any of these arguments stand... the whole point is that ALL "structures" and "narratives" (in other words "ideas") are problematic -- by their very nature, in a multitude of ways. Problematic doesn't mean "immoral", it means "not the objective, absolute truth."

So -- Yes, virtually any element of US history is problematic. So is every concept from every culture/nation that came before it.

And even if we recede to this newspeak version of "problematic" as meaning "immoral" (in one way or another)... it's a completely facile exercise to see that every human society has struggled and/or been oppressed throughout history. So the unerring tendency for the current wave of critical postmodern-inspired social rhetoric to focus on one set of targets rings extremely hollow. "US History is problematic" (and awful and deeply shameful and requires this raft of policy prescriptions I like, etc)... but god forbid you try to discuss extant social structures or historical conflicts in Africa.

A lot of people are talking about social structures and conflicts in Africa, I think. The time where it's inappropriate is when used as a deflection from discussing one's own current situation and its historical roots. That's disingenuous and also frustrating.

Just an internet stranger's opinion, but I also think it might be worth engaging with some of these ideas a little more before writing them off, since it sounds like you share a position I once had - annoyed by 'problematic' stuff everywhere, for instance - and furthermore share an apparent misunderstanding of postmodernism with the Jordan Peterson crowd. But you can take a critical eye to the power structures and ways of thinking of the past, and their implications for our social structures today, without screeching or hysteria. At least be open to it :)

> The time where it's inappropriate is when used as a deflection from discussing one's own current situation and its historical roots.

One man's deflection is another man's context.

I agree, but the interesting question is why. And related, how. How is it that so many people have the time to write this stuff?

I think the answer is pretty simple, actually: there is demand for writing that attacks the reader, and validates the reader's feelings of self-loathing. Ultimately its a form of narcissism, but of the negative sort. "I am the root of all the problems of the world," the reader wishes to be convinced of this, and given arguments to make the connection. It is a dangerous sort of narcissism too because its explicitly cloaked in the guise of compassion and guilt and shame. "Virtue signaling" is a part of it, but I think it goes much deeper, and is absurd in a way that few commentators have touched - except, maybe, for the latter seasons of South Park.

It's a pity because there are good things to analyze and do at the systemic level to make life better for everyone. Particularly at the physical structural level, like designing cities for people and not cars, for sustainability and not financier profits. And there are good things to do at the personal level, like help a stranger in need, or recognize the real pain a thoughtless word may cause. But, because of the cognitive distortions that come with narcissism, these are also distorted, misused, and weaponized into a powerful tool of passive aggression.

Perhaps a simple approach would be to challenge such people to do 10 things for every 1 thing they say.

Is "wow, people say lots of things in the past were racially motivated" really supposed to be a compelling counter-argument to "here is something that was evil, here is why the effects of it still are being felt today"?

Commit enough fouls in a basketball game and they aren't supposed to stop calling fouls on you because it's tedious to blow the whistle every time! ... though... there are teams that have employed exactly this strategy, so maybe it's an even better metaphor than it seems on the face of it!

More like calling fouls on a basketball game that happened 100 years ago.

Ah, there's the problem with the metaphor! In real life, the game never really ends. Actions reverberate. 100 years is about the time between the civil war and the civil rights movement, obviously not enough time to wash away all the sins by time alone.

If you want to say we should start over and start a new game - maybe reset all the property and wealth in the country - sure, then maybe we would have less reason to talk about the current one.

How far back do things need to be for sins to be forgivable? Or if not forgivable, at least judged in context, and not through a very specific contemporary ideological perspective?

I think this is the more immediate question: do you agree with the claims that there have been a lot of racist acts in American history, that some of them continue today, and that even many of the past ones still have impacts today?

Because there's a big difference between "I find this tiring that people keep talking about it, we already know" - in which case we should be talking about what we can do, instead - and "I disagree with these claims, but instead of trying to disprove them, I'm going to try to discredit them by complaining that I've heard it before."

It sounds like the latter - questions like "how far back do things need to be" sounds like a disagreement that the effects continue. In which case: be straightforward! Just come out and disagree directly! Because the answer to a question like that is obviously situational, and depends on how much impact the sin had and continues to have.

I can simultaneously believe in present injustice, and the pointlessness of flogging 19th century self-help books. There is no inconsistency, and I am not a reactionary for believing so. Nice strawman though.

> How far back do things need to be for sins to be forgivable?

I would have hoped "before I was born" to be far enough back, but evidently it isn't.

At the very least, we need to be talking about past sins, not merely obsolete implementations of continuing ones.

What is required for a transgression to be forgiven? Under what theories of justice does the answer to this change?

When the rules were different...

Isn't the NY times best seller list not a real reflection anymore? Don't publisher buy their own books to get them to the top etc.?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Best_Sell...

> although everyone knows what it means to be a dog or a honeybee, no one really knows what it means to be a human being.

We can finally let Thomas Nagel know what it is like to be a bat.

^^^ Underrated comment of the day. Once I was going to write a short story from the perspective of a dog that lived with Daniel Dennet, but thought nobody would get it, which was the story.

I don't know what the biggest best-sellers say, but it says a lot to me that, even in 2021, even in New Yorker, the writer isn't beyond feeling somewhat uneasy with the idea of sex, and feeling it's smart to add awkward humpr like:

"At least a hundred million inquiring minds have read “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex."

Is that an attempt at humor? It seems like just a statement of fact.

The number is a fact yes. The "inquiring minds" seems to me to imply some humor/sarcasm as to their wanting to know more about the subject. It's subtle, but it's not a neutral sentence.

That feels like a stretch to me, and if I do try to read something into it, I'd read what you just said into it, not what you said originally: it's a jab at the people who felt the need to read the book, not the author being uncomfortable with the topic. It's a book aimed by title at those who are uncomfortable with the topic, after all.

But my reading is still that it's probably a much more non-malicious wordplay connection to the the "but were afraid to ask" part of the book's title.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com