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submitted 4 days ago by ZeffSyde@lemmy.world to c/books@lemmy.ml

A life time ago I lost a friend to Objectivist philosophy. Not wanting to lose said friend, I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to try and figure out why he was acting like an asshole all of a sudden.

I took a couple points of psychic damage in the process, but at least I can stand my own when offering counter arguments against their edgy philosophies.

What are some other works that it would be handy to be knowledgeable of the next time a philosophical edge lord tries to quote me into a corner?

I'm looking to be more well informed in conversation.

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[-] CarlMarks@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 4 days ago

I recommend doing the opposite. Read good texts and widely so that you can recognize the flaws in others' rationales and school them when they try to pretend thst the Lexicon of one capitalist weirdo is somehow respectable. Some of this is philosophy but I would say that history and media criticism are even more important. Many arguments about "human nature" or how things should be vs. how they are are clouded by false histories and being unable to recognize manipulative thought processes.

Reading, say, Mein Kampf to learn about "the enemy" is of little value. "The enemy" didn't become who they are because Hitler wrote a convincing book and you won't argue them out of a position because you call them out when they quote it incorrectly or something. To understand Nazis you have to place them in their historical and political context. Who funded them? What was their class composition? Who opposed them and how? What were they a reaction to? And in modern times, who do they now appeal to? Are the mainstream cultural elements that overlap witg Naziism? Not just Trumpers, but mainstream liberals and "apoliticals"?

I would recommend starting with authors like David Graeber, Michael Parenti, Mike Davis, Michael Zinn, or Malcolm Harris for easier political-historical reads. To dive deeper you can read the texts they reference. And FAIR.org and the Citations Needes podcast for media criticism.

this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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