Weekly Non-Fiction Reading List 7.11.22
I finished four fantastic books this week, and I realized that three out of the four are critiques of capitalism. I guess that gives you a good idea of where my head’s been at recently. There’s also a fantastic book evolutionary psych book on morality. Enjoy!
Each of the links to the books are affiliate links, so if you use my link to purchase any of these books, some comes back to support what I do (and it also helps fund my reading habit).
Thorstein Veblen and Institutionalism: Social Institutions Gain New Significance in Economics by Dr. William Peterson
I’ve been super interested in social and status signaling lately, and Veblem always comes up, so I’ve wanted to learn more about him. I grabbed a copy of his popular book Theory of the Leisure Class but haven’t read it yet. This is a short book discussing Veblen’s views on institutionalism, and it’s pretty interesting. It’s super short, but it gives you a mini biography of Veblen and what was going on during this time.
The book dives into Veblen’s thoughts on how institutions influence customs, habits, morals and laws. He has quite a few criticisms of capitalism, and it’s crazy seeing how he saw how much worse inequality was going to get. This is a great book that introduces the reader to some of his ideas, and I can’t wait to read more.
The Sickness Is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself by Richard Wolff
I don’t think that I’ve ever loved a book so much that had me pissed off from cover to cover. Richard Wolff is one of my new favorite people, and I was introduced to him through a podcast. He’s an economist who is a fierce critic of capitalism. This book is a collection of essays and other pieces of content Wolff made during the first year of the pandemic, and it showcases how the wealthy took advantage of the system while so many people were struggling to survive.
The stories in this book will make you want to kick something (preferably inanimate) due to how many messed up things were going on as well as the hypocrisy from people who love capitalism. The corporate welfare during this time was out of control, and the people taking the money are the same people that tell us to just work hard and not accept handouts. Even if you disagree with Wolff’s solutions, I don’t think many can argue with the fact that most of what he discusses is pretty messed up.
Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley by Carolyn Chen
This book quickly became one of my favorites of 2022. I’ve been really interested in sociology, and Carolyn Chen killed it with this book discussing how work has become the new religion. She specifically focuses on tech companies in Silicon Valley, but what she discusses is widespread, especially as so many of us work from home. Basically Carolyn shows how although there are more atheists, we’re making work our new religion. Work is what’s giving us meaning and purpose in life, and we make it a big part of our identity. Most importantly, she explains how companies are capitalizing on this.
I think my favorite part of the book is that Chen doesn’t really say whether this is a good or bad thing. I almost wanted her to give more opinions when discussing this, but I’m glad she didn’t because it makes the reader ask important questions. For example, if we’re learning to take care of our mental health at work or finding meaning through what we do, is that bad? What if the motives of our employer is simply to make us happier at work so we work harder to make them money? Are we being manipulated and exploited, or would it be better if we took the risk to find meaning and purpose elsewhere? What if we didn’t find the same benefits outside of work and just isolated more?
I could go on forever about this book and the interesting topics. The one place where Carolyn Chen has some criticisms and points to some vocal critics is toward the end of the book when she discusses the co-opting of meditation and Buddhism. As someone who was once a huge fan of how widespread mindfulness had become but learned the problems with it from McMindfulness by Ron Purser, I’m still torn on the topic. One thing for sure is that employers could be doing a better job with all of these things from mindfulness to bringing in self-help speakers and cultivating certain types of workplace culture.
Anywho, go get this book. It’s important, and I don’t think many people realize what’s going on. Whether the manipulation of workers for profit is good or bad because we may benefit, it’s still a manipulation that we need to be aware of.
A Better Ape: The Evolution of the Moral Mind and How It Made Us Human by Victor Kumar and Richmond Campbell
My dear sweet reader who is reading this review, I’m so sad. I’m going to explain how this book started so great, then ended terribly but is still a must-read book and one of my favs of 2022. Sit back, and enjoy.
I have been so bored with books lately. It’s rare to find anyone bringing anything new to conversations. I love evolutionary psychology, moral psychology and philosophy, so I was excited to read this book but also skeptical. From the start, Kumar and Campbell blew my damned mind. I couldn’t put the book down. They brought so many fresh ideas to the table, and it was really interesting. They challenged other theories about how we evolved, and they actually made me not hate learning about a few topics.
This book is so detailed and covers so many different topics. It starts by discussing how we evolved as individuals, and then it moves into how we evolved as groups. They have great theories that’s rooted in research and make you challenge some previous ideas about how morality evolved. Then, they bring it to the last few hundred years, and it ties in perfectly.
But, that’s where I wish it ended.
My main and only real complaint about this book is that the last few chapters were not needed at all. That’s just a personal pet peeve of mine. Books are a big time commitment, so I don’t like wasting time. It’s possible that I’m missing something, but the last few chapters just didn’t seem necessary. In the final chapters, they land in modern times and discuss important topics like racism, sexism, and more. The problem is that they didn’t really tie it into everything the book was about. They just discuss the problems, and it’s honestly stuff that I could have easily got from other books on social issues.
In my opinion, if they just took these final chapters, made them one chapter, and did a better job relating current social issues with their theories, it’d be the perfect book. Unfortunately, I found myself just wanting the book to end. Still, I’d say it’s in my top 10 favorite books of the year, and I highly recommend it. The value provided in the first 80% of the book is more than worth the read. And if you do end up reading it, maybe you can let me know if I’m wrong about the final chapters.
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