Please share books that affected your worldview or changed your thoughts.
For me, it’s A People’s History of the World by Chris Harman. I studied business and work in finance, and before reading it, I never questioned the idea that capitalism was just the natural way of things. This book made me realize that capitalism is man made. It had a beginning and it can have an end. Wealth and poverty are not just inevitable, they are created by human decisions. That perspective really shook me.
Do you have a book that had a similar impact on you?
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Atlas Shrugged… But not in the way most people would think. I was raised very conservative. Growing up people always talked about how great of an author Ayn Rand was. But when I finally read some of her books, they made me sick. It kind of opened my eyes to how the political beliefs I was given as child clashed with my own personal values.
It’s a funny thing, I was never politically aligned with Rand to begin with, but I really enjoyed Atlas Shrugged as a science fiction book. The dystopia led by incompetent and ideologically empty boobs was an interesting take. From the way Rand portrayed her characters and presented the ideas of her opponents made me think she might have been autistic. Her politics made me think she was insane. It’s a fun book.
I thought it was a terrible book, even regardless of her wild-ass philosophy. Her characters were flat, and their dialogue was not remotely realistic. The book was overly long and said the same thing a thousand different ways to hammer home her point. I similarly didn’t enjoy Catch 22, since he made the same joke over and over again (kind of the point, I know, but I just didn’t enjoy the repetition). I did enjoy Fountainhead, though. I thought it was a much better book.
Hey, I don’t even disagree with that criticism. And maybe I’ll check out The Fountainhead later.
I read Fountainhead and really enjoyed it. I started to think I might be interested in her philosophy. I had an older coworker when I was an intern who was VERY into Ayn Rand and Objectivism, and we were having conversations about the philosophy.
Then I read Atlas Shrugged. Holy shit did I hate it. That book made it quite clear how stupid and unrealistic her philosophy was, and also made me rethink my opinion of that coworker who was really into her.
Blackshirts and Reds made the biggest difference on me regarding how I view Socialist states, also called AES, in that it helped me see them in a more sympathetic light and debunked a lot of Red Scare mythology.
As far as personal thought process is concerned, the big 3 works that made a big impact on me are Socialism: Utopian and Scientific for outlining the why of Marxism, Elementary Principles of Philosophy for clearly and simply explaining what Dialectical and Historical Materialism are and how they came to be, and Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, for explaining the primary obstacle in the way of Socialism worldwide.
Honorary mention to Capital, I am not finished with it yet but at the midpoint, it has helped flesh out parts of Marx’s Law of Value that are only briefly touched on in works like Wage Labor and Capital and Wages, Price and Profit.
Jakarta Method
Blackshirts and Reds
The Bible after really reading it book by book at church camp of all places. It made me question my faith and sent me on a journey of reading and study of a lot of different religions to end up believing in none of them but fascinated by all of them as a social phenomenon.
I used to be a semi-devout christian, but at 15 I started reading the bible while on a basically mandatory bible camp of sorts. So the bible changed that.
Hope I don’t get flak for this one, but:
Jurassic Park. Of everything in this book only one thing really stuck with me. The park was overrun with dinos because the computer counted the ones it meeded to, then just stopped counting. It found its target of, say, 2 raptors. I didnt need to keep count of the others because it located its expected two. Good enough.
I’m on mobile so its a little hard to write out my thoughts and find accurate quotes and notes, but I think you’ll get what I’m saying.
That’s the earliest idea of a confirmational bias I can remeber when I was much younger, and I think helped me with critical thinking moving on.
1984
I know it’s a typical answer. But there’s a reason for that.
That book will put the fear of fascism in you in a way that even actual history doesn’t. That book caused me to take historic examples of fascism more seriously and personally.
Apparently not enough of my fellow Americans have read it.
frantz fanon’s the wretched of the earth, and caio prado júnior’s the colonial background of modern brazil.
Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
While it was overly dramatic and questionably factual, it opened my eyes to how foreign governments are manipulated by the US to benefit corporations. I don’t know how much it “changed” my views, but it definitely changed how I saw the world and how I interpreted specific news stories.
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. ― Pablo Picasso
Sophie’s world by Josvein Gaarder and unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera.
Read these in my late teen rebellious age, made me introspective and really emo (read: pretentious and annoying) and gave me a philosophical lens and human psychological lens in my relationships with others and with the world.
May not be typically mind-blowing books as they are, but coming in that time in my life, it shaped my world view.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Awesome book on how our brains balance intuition and critical thinking. I think it should be a required read, especially in today’s fast-paced social media dominated society.
The Hunger Games turned out to be an accurate representation of the modern world.
I can’t remember the name or figure out what to search to find it, but there was a book I picked up in early high school that really changed the way I think about protests.
Most of the main characters were LGBT, which was incredibly refreshing to me, and were actively being oppressed by their school staff and local police force. It was the first time I’d ever heard about zip-tie handcuffs and tear gas being used against peaceful protesters. It wasn’t the most well written book but demonstrated all types of discrimination and oppression that I’d never even thought about before at that point in my life
Edit: Anger is a Gift was the name of it
