I want to understand how society works

it doesn't work at all
it's all the same old shit
we're born to die

If you want to understand the present you gotta read history.

Alright, so where do I start?
Is rereading my high school textbooks a bad idea, considering how biased they tend to be? I need some really entry level books, because I don't remember shit.

It depends on what you want to understand.

Nobody actually understands society, don't worry.

I want to understand who actually runs the world without getting too deep into silly conspiracy theories, I want to know pros and cons of different ideologies, I want to understand economy and capitalism, and I want to be able to tell whether things that are considered a problem nowadays (such as racism, sexism, homophobia etc) are actually problems or just distractions from some real problems that I'm actually unaware of.
Also I want to know what will happen with society once the working class is no longer needed because robots will be able to do the job just fine.

They spend a lot of money to obscure what's actually happening, so don't watch mainstream media.
The Stone/Kuznick book is a good start

For history I like Eric Hobsbawm
For progressivism Chris Hedges, Thomas Frank,
For far left anarchism Chomsky, Bookchin, Proudhon, Stirner, Kropotkin

It sounds like you should take an intro to Poly Sci. and economics. Why do you want to learn about society though?

The user above has it right. The moneyed elites run things (poorly. It's just a cash grab, a drive-by) Again, the Stone/Kuznick book and the Hobsbawm books give a good rundown of the revolutionary period

>he thinks the world is 'run'
Abandon your meta-narratives user

Thanks a lot, user
I just feel very dumb for not understanding things that are happening in the world.
Also, I'm afraid that I'll become one of these brainwashed ideologues (like alt-right and modern liberals)

For politics you could read Francis Fukuyama's Political Order and Political Decay

If you want to go way back in history you could read his The Origins of Political Order

For economics, you might want one of Mankiw's textbooks. If you want something more prose focused though more "ideological", you could read Sowell's Basic Economics. Maybe some other user could recommend a more Keynesian or lefty text (for the sake of intellectual honesty).

A lot of the other things you talk about will require thinking and observation on your part.

If you ask me, the focus on racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. is a distraction from bigger problems. I am also skeptical of the idea that automation will kill jobs considering that we have been through some very dramatic changes in technology and labor before and we still have a reasonable level of employment. The market is extremely complicated and has causal pathways leading in all directions.

The key to not becoming brainwashed by ideologies is to recognize that everything has its pros and cons, and to recognize the fact that the world is a complex and nuanced place. Don't expect anyone particular person or ideology to have all the answers.

Thanks, user. Should I start with politics or economy first?

A fair question

I'm not really sure it matters, but going by the books I've recommended, it might make more sense to start with economics because it has some implications for what makes a good government in Fukuyama's eyes.

Yeah, I guess it is better to start with economy, considering money plays a huge role in politics.

Read some Robert Michels and Vilfredo Pareto to get a grasp on how things actually work in politics instead of some idealized model of how they're *supposed* to work.

Read history. Start with the fucking greeks.

Read history. Read the works of the founding fathers of the nations you are concerned with. Read up on economics, the prevailing belief systems of the parties in question, and general philosophy.

Just remember that every conflict is about money or theology. Typically the former masquerading as the latter. War is expensive, and convincing other people to die for you is hard. There has to be a profit motive, and you need to vilify the enemy to get your people behind you. Religion is the easiest tool for that, followed by jingoism.

Get a job that has customer interaction.

You should watch some Jordan Peterson videos related to the topic. He'll help you not be a slave to ideology(like you said earlier), and you'll learn about the current political climate as well

The only people that talk politics with a service person are extreme to one political view or another, and they're probably getting their views fed to them by mainstream media. If you want to understand how the world really works, these are the last people you should be talking to. Read books. Read opposing view points.

Oddly enough, Professor Peterson is one of the most ideological men I've ever encountered.

I'M FROM BUENOS AIRES AND I SAY KILL EM ALL

You mean with his talk of gulags because of bill c-16?

>Open thread expecting Socialist/Communist retards to insist upon Marx/etc
>Ctrl+f Marx
>0 results

Today was a good day on Veeky Forums

I think reading some socialist and communist work is important for a broad understanding, but it won't give you any kind of picture on why a world event is actually happening.

Peterson's mythological world view is a pretty good antidote to ideology.

Although, I think his solution to the political problem, of a continual dialogue between left and right, is wrong.

It's based in his view that a successful society knows when to apply different values, but that leaves out knowing how to apply technical knowledge from economic science or political science.

You can see this view exhibited in his diagnosis of the failures of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, where he claims that those societies were predicated on the wrong values. But they could also be considered economic or structural failures.

How?

Yes, he appeals to people of particular ideological bents because of the issues he is fighting at the moment. But he doesn't fit very easily into a conservative right-wing box with his concerns regarding inequality, the working class, and the environment.

The Philosophy of History by G. W. F. Hegel

Perry Anderson's American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers is a good primer on the state of the world today, and it's full of references to other works if you want to dig deeper.

There's no need to talk about politics. You can learn a lot about people just by interacting with them. Their appearance, their demeanor, their choice of words, their concerns, offhand remarks, etc. can reveal a lot. This kind of information doesn't get into book. Politics is ultimately based on self-interest. Once you've learned what makes a person tick, then you can infer from it their political views.

How does society works? Society is just a collection of smaller building blocks, which are themselves made of smaller building blocks. Each is level just a more complicated version of the previous level. A company is like a small version of society, having its own culture, politics, conflicts, and problems. A country is just a larger version of this. This why I said getting a job would help you learn about society because you're effectively interacting with it.

Books can have a lot of information, but they're missing the information that you can only get through personal, direct experience. Despite the freedom of expression in modern democratic countries, authors are still restricted in what they can write. How many authors actually publish their real, personal experiences? Most don't because there are always things you can't say without stirring up controversy. Reading books complement but can never substitute what you could only experience in the real world.

>Perry Anderson
Stop

>Politics is ultimately based on self-interest.

Hardly. It's mostly determined by historical and psychological factors.

Those in the know act in self-interest, but the suckers act based on identity.

So you're an ethical egoist?

I don't really know, since I'm still trying to find out exactly where idenitity and self-interest converge, diverge and complement each other.

here:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=4OEDw8cWZ-I

Really helped me rethink the role of tradition in life desu

Francis Fukuyama is a neoliberal/neocolonialist's hack. I advice ignoring him.

Economics is a hopelessly byzantine waste of time, imo.

Beware of right-wing trolls ITT, OP.

Oh, for fuck's sake, I know you're an ancommie but Fukuyama's warning of the danger of megalothymia to liberal democracy in The End of History is pretty prescient. His books about how institutions develop and decay is decent too.

Also, you'll never get anywhere with your talk about revolution - that train has already gone. Mild-mannered middle class people don't want to rip the pillars of civilization from the ground anymore to create a new world, they're fighting to preserve the rights they have left against a rapacious oligarchy that has completely captured "democracy" in the US, and since national cohesion is at an all time low, there's little chance that the people will ever manage to wrestle democracy back.

And this isn't the 90s - Fukuyama is quite distant from neoliberal/neocolonialism. The Origins of Political Order and Political Order ans Political Decay are some of the most intellectually honest texts written.

>Economics is a hopelessly byzantine waste of time, imo.

It is not, and this is why your ideology will fail time and time again because it fails to take into account the most basic laws of economics.

It doesn't
or
Carl Jung, but there were already recommendations

The Bell Curve - Charles Murray
Basic Economics - Thomas Sowell
The Bible

>Fukuyama is quite distant from neoliberal/neocolonialism.
Mmkay. I haven't read him much, so I have a bias against him built up from periphery sources.

The rabbit hole of economics and capitalism is tons of pseudo-science and orthodoxy.
I support the resource based economy. Thoughts or do you know any books on that?

>ancommie
Anarchist. The commune has never existed, so I can't rightly claim to be one.

Most people don't read history. Even if they read history, they tend to apply their personal biases to it, so history is irrelevant..

Psychological factors ultimate involve self-interest. A lazy, poor person on welfare is likely going to support policies that would give him more "gib me dats". A person with no skills would likely be against elitism and demand equality. A rich person running a business would likely not support raising the minimum wage. A scientist/engineer would more likely support intellectual elitism.

As far as I'm concerned, someone who calls economics a pseudo-science is no better than a conservatard who calls climate science phony.

There's a reason capitalism is orthodox among economists. It's for the same reason that building bridges following physics, chemistry, etc. is orthodox among engineers.

> It's for the same reason that building bridges following physics, chemistry, etc. is orthodox among engineers.

For the same reasons as religion. Scientific breakthroughs were made by scientists who went against the grain.

>Most people don't read history. Even if they read history, they tend to apply their personal biases to it, so history is irrelevant..

I mean history in the sense that history has shaped society and leaked its ways into people's minds.

>Psychological factors ultimate involve self-interest. A lazy, poor person on welfare is likely going to support policies that would give him more "gib me dats". A person with no skills would likely be against elitism and demand equality. A rich person running a business would likely not support raising the minimum wage. A scientist/engineer would more likely support intellectual elitism.

Not necessarily. People act ultimately based on a framework of value, whether that's political, religious, philosophical, cultural or all of those. "Self-interest", as a value, may have a place somewhere in there, but it's not usually at the top.

True enough, but I'm sitting here waiting for an anarchist economist to revolutionize economics.

I guess we can wait. And wait. Just like we might wait and wait for the revolution.

You're not the same user I was talking to, are you? Geez man.

Liberal-capitalism has been a pox to humanity and is proving to be our undoing. If some class, community or individual doesn't step in to play hero(es) we are headed to extinction.

Capitalism is a spook, scientific facts are not.

>being so much of a coward you don't even give your detractors an answer
As expected of scum like you.

But I suppose you aren't willing to let scientific facts that support capitalism under the heading of "scientific facts".

Right then.

>capitalism
>spook
If by capitalism you mean laissez-faire markets, you'd be wrong - it cannot even be said to be an economic system, it's more akin to a social experiment, which began in 18th century England with the enclosures and was implemented in force during the Victorian era. It is massively disruptive of all natural social relations, so much that no people would ever agree to it - only the iron hand of a centralized government is capable of implementing the systems that make humans act akin to rational economic actors and not ask the state or their peers to alleviate their distress.

Market is traded goods, "free market" is a religion and cannot exist with something like a state to enforce.

Okay Ayncap, help us get the training wheels off and end the state, fight the fascists in your ranks with us and lets do a little science experiment *after* people learn to live in a resource based economy

Crap
>a religion and cannot exist withOUT something like a state to enforce.

Machiavelli, Debord, Baudrillard

>>Perry Anderson
>Stop

I've yet to read a good challenge to his arguments. Do you have one? Otherwise I ain't gonna stop.

Joseph Heath's Economnics Without Illusions will probably do. It's written by a left intellectual too.

>is, after all, nothing more than
That sounds like defeatism to me.

Jacques Ellul's book on propaganda is pretty much the greatest piece written on the phenomenon ever. A single paragraph from it contains more insight than any book written by French sophists like Sartre or Bataille.

Ok, I just downloaded it. Looks liberal, not left, but I'll give it a try.

And Anderson's book isn't about economics per se, but the US's use of economics to ruthlessly maintain global primacy.

Could you be anymore douche

Hearth's "Why Canada is as Close to Utopia as it Gets" hasn't aged well.

Catch 22

Read "crystallising public opinion" and "propaganda" by Edward Bernays.

But the study of an individual won't be able to give as much insight on society as a whole. Social phenomena will be needed at one point because this individual is born into a construct. Society is an individual on itself

Christopher Lasch-The Culture of Narcissism ;The Minimal Self

Unironically this and .

Everyone should be conversant in Jung's analysis of the conscious and collective unconscious that make the individual and the symbols/drama that work upon it.

Bernays is a good starting point for understanding the symbol-saturated world we live in. Also good: Baudrillard's Simulacra & Simulation, or Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, or Barthes' Mythologies. They describe very well the desolation of late capitalism, but do not offer a solution to 21st century mind control.

This user's comment is correct in that a society's norms and failures of the state are expressed in a zeitgeist, but that is mutable and the individual can escape. Understanding the psychology of man (and his structures) is essential - and I would say this is OP's ultimate goal.

For what it's worth user, you don't sound like you're 'not a smart person' at all.

If you're focused on understanding current affairs and you want some historical background, a general history book dealing with the 20th century would help a lot.

Since you're also interested in economics, pic related should be down your lane. It's written for a general audience, and the writer is an economist pointing out problems with free market capitalism. As with anything read it critically, but it's very interesting.

Read Das kapital by kal marx and The god delusion by richard dawkins.

>The Bell Curve

Also, The origin of totalitarianism by hannah arendt and Guns of august by barbara tuchman

Start off just asking why people do things and act a certain way, come up with your own rationalizations and beliefs and if you think about it enough eventually you can polish it down into a semicohesive understanding of people and what they do. It also doesn't hurt to read (this is a Veeky Forums thread after all) some of the people mentioned here, always important though is to make sure you don't just take what they're stating as fact, you should deeply consider and analyze each part of what you read and decide for yourself if it is true or a possible explanation.

If you need more:
Sapiens: a brief history of humankind by yuval noah harari

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty

Imagined communities by benedict anderson

The invention of tradition by Eric Hobsbawn

Theories of International Politics and Zombies by Daniel Drezner

Dipomacy by Henry Kissinger

World order by Henry Kissinger

The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations by Steve Smith

This.

OP, I got you. The book is called Critical Path, by Buckminster Fuller.

This will give you the perfect overview of anthropological history through the major world wars and the establishment of global law and capitalism, into the current situation of material and political consumerism gone haywire. Plus it somehow manages to even be hopeful. Do it!

Wallerstein - Unthinking the Social Sciences

marx

No wonder Freud and Jung never got along.

If you want an education just get a bachelor of arts

Michel Foucault

David Icke

Fuck off. The cancerous influence of the French postwar intellectuals, infected with the ideas of archreactionaries like nietzsche and heidegger, is a fourth of the reason why the Left is so utterly fucked and useless nowadays.

outdated, far too historical

Im obviously on to something if you have to be that vulgar.

...

>If you think it's THAT'S bad, it must be good.
Exactly the type of insanity he was talking about.

This. It has shaped so much of general understand of history it can't be dodged. It is also the easiest of Hegel;s works.