The Auron MacIntyre Show - December 07, 2022


Top 9 Reads Of 2022 ｜ 12⧸7⧸22


Episode Stats

Length

28 minutes

Words per Minute

170.74136

Word Count

4,891

Sentence Count

272

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

Vilfredo Pareto is one of the key figures in the school of political theory that is called Italian Elite Theory. It s the root of neo-reactionary political theory, and he was featured heavily in James Burnham s The Machiavellians.


Transcript

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00:00:30.320 Hey, everybody. Believe it or not, 2022 is already drawing to a close,
00:00:35.980 which means it's time for my annual Top Reads video.
00:00:40.120 I get asked for book recommendations all the time.
00:00:43.060 People want lists of what I've been reading, what I've latched on to,
00:00:46.380 what have been the most interesting books that I've read throughout the year.
00:00:50.500 And so now, as is tradition, we'll be going ahead and looking at the top nine books that I read this year,
00:00:57.740 what I thought about them, and why I think they might be interesting for you.
00:01:01.560 Number one.
00:01:03.420 Society and the Mind.
00:01:05.380 Vilfredo Pareto.
00:01:07.160 So Vilfredo Pareto is one of the key figures in the school of political theory that is called Italian Elite Theory.
00:01:15.680 It's the school of political theory that is also kind of the root, the basis of neo-reactionary political theory.
00:01:23.860 Pareto was featured heavily in James Burnham's very influential book, The Machiavellians.
00:01:30.060 And so I think it's pretty safe to say that if you want to understand these different strands of political thought,
00:01:36.600 Pareto is a key figure, and Society and the Mind is the work that generally contains a lot of these insights.
00:01:44.780 Now, I do want to go ahead and warn you at the outset that Pareto is a very challenging read for a lot of reasons.
00:01:52.840 First, Society and the Mind is spread over four huge volumes.
00:01:57.960 I think it's over 2,000 pages.
00:02:01.160 And so I highly recommend, if you are interested in reading this, picking up the abridged version,
00:02:07.780 which is retitled A Compendium of General Sociology.
00:02:12.100 This more condensed version still weighs in at over 500 pages, but it was approved by the author,
00:02:19.480 and it does have most of the key insights that you really are looking for here.
00:02:24.760 The other exciting thing about Pareto is that he tends to write in formal logic.
00:02:30.440 He just kind of drops these equations into his work as he's going.
00:02:35.240 So that can be pretty daunting for a lot of people.
00:02:38.720 Again, if you want to grasp some of those key insights,
00:02:42.780 just picking up The Machiavellians by James Burnham and reading the chapters on Pareto
00:02:48.500 will give you many of the most important takeaways.
00:02:51.820 But I don't want to warn you off reading this volume.
00:02:54.520 It is actually very insightful.
00:02:56.980 There's a lot of things that Burnham can't cover in just the few pages that he dedicates to Pareto.
00:03:02.520 And so if you really do want to dig in here, there's a lot of rewarding stuff.
00:03:06.060 I just want to give you that warning, that heads up at the very beginning,
00:03:09.980 that this is not some breezy beach read.
00:03:12.720 If you pick this up, you're really dedicating yourself to some serious scholarship here.
00:03:16.940 So just make sure you understand that before you go all in.
00:03:20.400 This can also be a difficult volume to acquire.
00:03:24.140 They finally did a reprint here recently.
00:03:27.120 You can find it on Amazon, but it is not cheap at all.
00:03:31.360 You can also get it through interlibrary loan,
00:03:33.900 which is something I would suggest if you're looking to save the money.
00:03:37.320 It might take you a week or so to get it in,
00:03:40.160 but it does make it far more affordable to go ahead and get a hold of
00:03:43.360 an otherwise difficult to acquire volume.
00:03:45.880 Okay, so all that said, why are we reading this?
00:03:49.380 Why does it matter?
00:03:50.520 Why is it worth the effort?
00:03:52.380 So the thing about Pareto is that his sociological system is very interesting.
00:03:58.080 It's very different.
00:03:59.500 He has an approach that strips away the narratives of causality.
00:04:04.700 He takes an approach that really,
00:04:06.920 instead of looking about what people say about their actions
00:04:10.400 and their actual rhetoric around and justification for their ideologies.
00:04:16.120 Instead, he looks at what they do.
00:04:18.280 He looks at their actual functions and actions in society.
00:04:21.860 And from that, he then draws his conclusions on why these things exist in society,
00:04:28.100 why society is set up this way,
00:04:30.220 why these forces act internally in any given civilization.
00:04:34.040 He really sees ideology as a post-hoc rationalization for why people take the actions that they do.
00:04:42.820 And that leads him to some very interesting conclusions that inform a lot of this Machiavellian analysis,
00:04:49.340 this Italian elite theory of power.
00:04:52.300 So for Pareto, the driving social forces in society kind of come from what he calls residues.
00:04:59.320 These are kind of personality types or, again, social forces that are recurring in every society.
00:05:05.920 They might develop differently.
00:05:07.800 They might manifest slightly differently in any given culture,
00:05:11.560 but they are always present.
00:05:13.420 They're always a force inside any given society.
00:05:17.080 And so he sees these as kind of the motivating factors.
00:05:20.440 It doesn't really matter what the ideology is that's layered on top of the action of these residues.
00:05:25.140 The residues are the actual recurring cause of these forces.
00:05:29.980 He also sees these different derivations on these residues that can cause different outcomes.
00:05:36.120 Again, it's a lot to get into, but for our purposes, the key ones,
00:05:40.500 the ones that we're going to focus on a lot are the ones you've heard me talk about before.
00:05:44.820 They're the type 1 and the type 2 derivations,
00:05:47.880 the ones that Machiavelli would have described as the foxes and the lions.
00:05:52.100 And so a good chunk of Italian elite theory and neoreactionary theory
00:05:57.160 come from Pareto's analysis of the interaction between these two residues.
00:06:04.140 Also, this is where he gets into things like the circulation of elites
00:06:08.620 and what it takes for that kind of process to occur.
00:06:11.960 Again, there's just way too much to go over here,
00:06:14.800 but like I said, this is a foundational text.
00:06:17.980 It's very complicated.
00:06:19.340 It's very long.
00:06:20.420 It can be challenging to get a hold of and read,
00:06:23.140 but if you really want to understand this stuff
00:06:25.300 and you want the primary sources about it,
00:06:28.240 then this is certainly a volume that's going to be worth your time.
00:06:32.360 Number two, The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt.
00:06:36.660 So I'm obviously pretty late to the game on this book.
00:06:40.000 I've heard of Haidt's work many times.
00:06:42.060 In fact, I've heard him speak many times all over the place,
00:06:45.320 podcasts, discussions, debates, all this stuff.
00:06:47.820 But I had never actually got around to reading The Righteous Mind.
00:06:52.500 So I was familiar with the concept in theory,
00:06:55.900 but I hadn't actually gone in depth with what he had written on the subject.
00:06:59.820 So for those who are unfamiliar,
00:07:02.440 kind of the key point of The Righteous Mind is that,
00:07:06.140 again, people really tend to have a post hoc rationalization
00:07:11.620 for moral opinions that they formed before they even really had the facts around
00:07:17.000 or logic around any given issue.
00:07:19.640 Basically, we all have different moral taste buds,
00:07:22.620 a moral palette, which we apply to any given issue.
00:07:26.340 And it is the key determiner of our approach or understanding
00:07:30.720 when it comes to the morality of any given topic.
00:07:33.780 Haidt is constantly using this idea of the elephant and the rider.
00:07:39.160 Your moral palette is the elephant.
00:07:42.080 It's what's actually leading your actions.
00:07:45.000 And the rider is your logic on top of the elephant,
00:07:48.520 which is kind of providing moral justification,
00:07:51.800 pretending that it's what drove your decision,
00:07:54.500 when in actuality, it's the elephant who's kind of going wherever it wants.
00:07:58.640 And the logic, the rider is just kind of trying to look important
00:08:02.360 in the middle of this whole thing.
00:08:03.780 Now, it was very interesting to have, by coincidence,
00:08:08.100 read this book right after reading Pareto,
00:08:11.280 who makes very similar assertions about motivations
00:08:14.900 and post hoc rationalizations of people,
00:08:18.520 kind of the ideological explanation after the fact
00:08:21.840 to justify positions that were already going to be taken,
00:08:24.780 that were already kind of determined by other innate factors.
00:08:28.100 I would be very interested to know if Jonathan Haidt had any level of familiarity
00:08:33.120 with Vilfredo Pareto,
00:08:35.340 or if they both kind of came to this conclusion from two different angles separately.
00:08:40.920 Either way, it's not a one-to-one.
00:08:42.860 There are very different explanations and motivations involved in both of these books,
00:08:47.300 so you can't just say that they're both describing exactly the same thing,
00:08:50.640 but it is a very interesting overlap nonetheless.
00:08:52.960 One thing that I also found interesting about Haidt's book
00:08:57.080 is kind of his conclusions at the end.
00:08:59.320 He goes on and on from many different pages
00:09:01.680 explaining why different people from different backgrounds
00:09:05.420 are kind of destined to have particular moral opinions
00:09:09.000 and how they can't really see morality any other way.
00:09:13.840 It's a post hoc rationalization for a decision that's already made
00:09:17.780 before they even encounter the issue.
00:09:20.700 But then his conclusion at the end is just kind of this general liberal approach of,
00:09:27.260 well, you know, now that we better understand
00:09:29.820 why people come to these moral conclusions,
00:09:32.640 hopefully it will give us more tolerance when we're discussing these issues
00:09:37.400 and trying to come to some kind of general moral consensus,
00:09:41.700 even though pretty much everything he talked about for all of the preceding pages
00:09:46.040 kind of explains why people aren't able to see from each other's viewpoints
00:09:50.960 and why a moral consensus is really unlikely to be reached from these different parties.
00:09:56.600 But I guess given his privacy kind of has to wrap it up in this style,
00:10:00.940 so I'm not going to hold that much against him.
00:10:03.340 In general, the book is pretty well thought out, very illuminating.
00:10:07.520 And like I said, if you are exploring the works of people like Pareto,
00:10:11.240 this does happen to dovetail pretty well.
00:10:14.560 Again, it takes a very similar approach to the idea of how humans gain their opinions
00:10:21.000 and why they take the actions that they do.
00:10:23.720 So make sure to check it out.
00:10:25.560 Number three, Discourses on Livvy, Niccolo Machiavelli.
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00:11:00.020 When it comes to reading Machiavelli,
00:11:02.520 The Prince is the place that most people start
00:11:04.760 and also the place that most people end.
00:11:07.460 And that's totally understandable.
00:11:09.500 The Prince has a lot of Machiavelli's most important ideas.
00:11:13.640 It's a very short work, very easy to read.
00:11:16.780 It has a lot of his most famous quotes in it.
00:11:19.200 Totally understandable.
00:11:20.820 But if you really want to get a far deeper perspective
00:11:23.840 on the way that Machiavelli thought about politics,
00:11:27.580 you really can't do any better than discourses on Livy.
00:11:32.060 It is, to be fair, a more difficult read.
00:11:34.960 Not because the words are more difficult,
00:11:37.780 the passages are more difficult,
00:11:39.280 or significantly more complex than The Prince.
00:11:42.180 But because the way it is structured,
00:11:45.060 the way Machiavelli structures this,
00:11:46.840 is he pulls different historical vignettes out of Livy.
00:11:51.460 And he then provides commentary around those historical events
00:11:56.420 that illuminate different aspects of politics
00:11:59.720 and military leadership, statesmanship, those kind of things.
00:12:03.620 So this means if you want to get everything out of what Machiavelli is saying,
00:12:09.300 you have to have a pretty decent understanding of Roman history.
00:12:13.060 I mean, it doesn't need to be encyclopedic.
00:12:15.380 You don't have to be an expert.
00:12:16.800 But if you're completely unfamiliar with Roman history,
00:12:20.480 then a lot of this might not make sense to you.
00:12:22.820 I mean, you can still pull some of the insights,
00:12:25.220 some of the nuggets out of there,
00:12:26.520 but you really will be missing some pretty important context.
00:12:29.820 So you kind of need to do some research.
00:12:31.800 You kind of have to have a certain level of backstory filled in for you
00:12:36.220 before all of this will kind of make a lot of sense.
00:12:39.600 That said, if the historical knowledge isn't a barrier for you,
00:12:43.000 this is very much worth a read.
00:12:44.560 Machiavelli gets far more in-depth on his advice when it comes to politics.
00:12:49.660 He lays out some lessons that I think still ring very true many centuries later.
00:12:55.280 And interestingly, he also gets into his preference for a Republican form of government,
00:13:00.720 something that might surprise many people.
00:13:03.480 It, of course, isn't perfect.
00:13:05.080 Some of this is dated.
00:13:06.420 Some of it is just flat out wrong.
00:13:08.200 But it's all very interesting.
00:13:09.600 And it fleshes out your understanding, again,
00:13:12.160 of Machiavelli's theories surrounding politics and statecraft.
00:13:16.740 And each lesson is wrapped around a particular historical event
00:13:20.640 that provides context and a specific illustration,
00:13:24.580 which I think is very helpful.
00:13:26.540 Number four, Leviathan and its Enemies, Samuel T. Francis.
00:13:31.660 There is no book that I spent more time with in 2022
00:13:36.600 than Leviathan and its Enemies.
00:13:39.040 Again, just to get out of the way,
00:13:41.020 Leviathan and its Enemies is a sprawling tome.
00:13:44.120 It's over like 700 pages.
00:13:46.500 And I believe it was published after Francis' death.
00:13:50.580 It didn't have a proper editing process.
00:13:53.240 And unfortunately, you can tell,
00:13:55.440 this book probably could have been trimmed by at least 100, maybe 150 pages.
00:14:00.300 There's a decent amount of repetition here.
00:14:02.380 It really would have appreciated a good editor.
00:14:05.560 But that said, the book is still just a masterpiece of political theory.
00:14:10.740 James Burnham's Managerial Revolution
00:14:13.420 was one of the most important books about politics written
00:14:18.140 in the last, you know, 100 some odd years.
00:14:21.320 But it was certainly dated.
00:14:23.520 It was certainly incomplete.
00:14:25.380 It was desperate for someone to kind of pick it up,
00:14:28.020 dust it off, bring it into the modern day,
00:14:31.560 and apply its lessons to the world around us.
00:14:35.260 And that's exactly what Leviathan and its Enemies does.
00:14:39.200 It delves deeply into Burnham's theory
00:14:41.640 and it updates it for a more modern audience.
00:14:45.480 It corrects many of the mistakes that Burnham made,
00:14:48.680 updates many of the shortcomings,
00:14:50.840 and also gives us a very interesting explanation
00:14:54.220 as to why this process went the way that it did
00:14:58.420 in the years between the original publication of Burnham's book
00:15:02.760 and then, of course, Leviathan and its Enemies.
00:15:05.560 Francis does a really good job of looking at kind of classic capitalism,
00:15:11.640 the thing that we think of as the economic and social engine of the United States.
00:15:17.420 And he talks about how it transitions into this more managerial capitalism,
00:15:22.840 why that looked different in America than it did in other countries.
00:15:27.180 And he also does a really good job of explaining
00:15:30.240 why kind of progressive radicals originally viewed managerialism as an enemy,
00:15:36.300 but why today it is treated more as an ally.
00:15:39.780 He explains that process, why that initial tension took place,
00:15:42.880 and why it's resolving itself in the way it is now in our current day.
00:15:47.820 Francis also does an excellent job of explaining the incentives of the managers,
00:15:53.300 why they tend to transform organizations the way they do,
00:15:57.940 why their solutions are required to kind of be the way they are,
00:16:02.020 why they require the breakdown of tradition,
00:16:04.280 the breakdown of identity,
00:16:05.580 and why they ultimately lead to globalization,
00:16:08.780 why we're creating a global managerial class
00:16:11.820 kind of at the end of this process.
00:16:13.880 Like I said, this is a really excellent book.
00:16:15.880 It explains our times very well.
00:16:18.200 And this belongs in any kind of Italian elite theory canon
00:16:22.580 or neo-reactionary canon,
00:16:24.080 whatever you want to call this body of thought.
00:16:26.520 Leviathan and its enemies is absolutely an essential part of it.
00:16:30.860 It's probably the most important update on that theory
00:16:33.760 until you get to Curtis Yarvin,
00:16:36.300 and I really highly recommend it.
00:16:38.760 Number five, Blood Meridian.
00:16:40.820 Question, Cormac McCarthy.
00:16:43.340 The first Cormac McCarthy book I read was The Road.
00:16:46.600 I had seen the movie like a lot of people,
00:16:49.220 but I had never really gotten deeply into Cormac McCarthy.
00:16:51.780 I'd heard his name many times, highly recommended,
00:16:54.380 but I'd never just gotten around to reading any of his stuff,
00:16:57.560 and I really enjoyed The Road,
00:16:59.140 so I definitely wanted to make an effort to read more of his stuff this year.
00:17:02.800 And of course, if you talk to people about this author,
00:17:05.340 the one thing you hear every time is,
00:17:07.200 Blood Meridian, man.
00:17:08.300 You've got to read Blood Meridian so good.
00:17:10.720 It's the real American novel, you know.
00:17:12.880 It's the true American novel in every sense of the word.
00:17:15.700 And so with that kind of high recommendation,
00:17:18.320 you usually expect, okay, this is very hyped up.
00:17:21.420 There's going to be some level of disappointment.
00:17:23.180 It's not going to live up to this.
00:17:24.680 But I've got to say, in a lot of ways, this one did.
00:17:27.160 I really enjoyed this book.
00:17:28.820 I thought it was very interesting.
00:17:31.140 It took me a while to get fully invested,
00:17:33.660 but once I was in, I was completely hooked.
00:17:36.500 It's a very unique novel.
00:17:39.240 McCarthy's style is famously very sparse and harsh,
00:17:43.200 which of course is really great for this kind of story,
00:17:47.520 this harsh, rough, untamed story of the West,
00:17:51.280 revealing a lot of very dark and sinister things
00:17:54.700 about human nature,
00:17:56.720 presenting a very isolating experience in certain areas
00:18:00.880 when the characters are battling through
00:18:02.940 the difficulty of nature,
00:18:05.020 that very harsh and untamed environment
00:18:07.240 that is a key part of the West,
00:18:09.580 and then also the very graphic battle scenes
00:18:12.380 when they happen.
00:18:13.640 But again, just kind of the economic use of language.
00:18:16.740 It's very captivating.
00:18:18.100 It paints a very interesting picture,
00:18:20.240 very appropriate for this setting.
00:18:22.560 And of course, The Judge,
00:18:23.940 I'm not going to spoil anything for you,
00:18:25.680 but this character is just monstrous
00:18:28.100 in a very interesting, very compelling way.
00:18:31.720 It's a very unique character
00:18:33.140 that you'll always remember
00:18:34.600 when you think back to this book.
00:18:36.640 So just a lot to recommend this.
00:18:38.600 Again, one of those novels that it had hyped up for me
00:18:41.180 many different times,
00:18:42.440 and I was very pleasantly surprised to find out
00:18:44.980 that it did live up to the hype.
00:18:46.280 Number six,
00:18:49.020 Generative Principles of Political Constitutions,
00:18:52.740 Joseph de Maistre.
00:18:54.320 Joseph de Maistre is one of my favorite political thinkers,
00:18:57.760 and I've recommended some of his other works
00:18:59.640 to you in the past.
00:19:01.180 I think in some ways,
00:19:02.680 de Maistre gets passed over
00:19:04.320 because a lot of the stuff that he elucidates
00:19:07.140 weirdly also got wrapped up into Carl Schmitt,
00:19:10.980 and because Schmitt is very concise
00:19:12.900 and much more modern,
00:19:14.280 a lot of people kind of go directly to Schmitt
00:19:16.520 and they forget about de Maistre,
00:19:18.060 but I really think he's essential reading.
00:19:20.340 Now, Generative Principles of Political Constitutions
00:19:23.100 is really more of an extended essay
00:19:25.100 than it is a book in its own right,
00:19:27.560 and you can usually pick it up
00:19:29.180 as part of a collection
00:19:30.380 with some of his other works.
00:19:32.160 You can also usually find it free on the internet,
00:19:35.120 but if you're looking for a physical copy,
00:19:37.260 Imperium Press has a great collection.
00:19:39.060 You can go ahead and check it out in there.
00:19:40.520 So one of the interesting things
00:19:42.280 about de Maistre in this essay
00:19:44.300 is that, as you can imagine from the title,
00:19:47.120 he's discussing where political constitutions come from,
00:19:50.780 why they get written, how they get written,
00:19:52.900 what the origins of their contents are,
00:19:55.020 and he brings up something
00:19:56.020 that I think should be pretty obvious,
00:19:58.460 but we seem to have forgotten over the years.
00:20:01.880 See, in America, we have this idea that,
00:20:05.140 well, the first thing you do
00:20:06.300 is you codify the principles of your country
00:20:09.380 into a written constitution,
00:20:11.300 and then from there,
00:20:12.900 the country kind of shapes itself around it.
00:20:15.280 Our order of operations is that,
00:20:17.100 you know, you put these separation of powers
00:20:19.060 and these rights and all of these things
00:20:21.240 that are built into the constitution first,
00:20:23.900 and then the government's required to follow it
00:20:25.820 and the character of the people
00:20:27.080 and the government kind of emerge
00:20:28.820 around this written document.
00:20:30.740 But de Maistre says, actually,
00:20:32.180 this is exactly the opposite way the process works.
00:20:35.460 What he says is that political constitutions
00:20:37.920 are really just the codification of values
00:20:40.740 that already exist organically inside a society.
00:20:44.720 De Maistre asserts that all constitutions
00:20:47.480 are theological in their nature and their origins,
00:20:51.460 which is something that is kind of harsh on modern ears,
00:20:54.380 but is something that is echoed
00:20:56.100 in the works of someone like Carl Schmitt.
00:20:58.680 De Maistre says that it is the character of the people
00:21:01.360 which is imbued in them by God
00:21:03.800 that will determine the nature of their governments
00:21:06.680 and will therefore determine the type of constitution
00:21:10.220 that they generate.
00:21:11.780 He makes it clear that the written articles
00:21:14.120 of a constitution are not what give it its strength.
00:21:17.120 In fact, he says the strength of a constitution
00:21:18.920 is inversely proportionate
00:21:20.620 to its number of written articles,
00:21:22.580 and that instead it is the willingness of the people
00:21:25.820 to perpetuate their values
00:21:28.000 and protect their values and their culture
00:21:30.080 that actually gives a constitution its strength.
00:21:33.500 It's not the written words on paper,
00:21:35.800 but it is the nature and the culture
00:21:38.060 and the tradition of the people that they carry forward
00:21:41.680 which actually gives a constitution its value.
00:21:45.220 I can and have gone on ad nauseum
00:21:47.940 about this subject elsewhere,
00:21:49.620 so I'm not going to belabor the point here.
00:21:52.260 Make sure you read this.
00:21:53.420 It's short.
00:21:54.160 It's relatively easy to understand.
00:21:56.060 You can probably grab it online if you want.
00:21:58.060 Make sure to check it out.
00:21:58.940 Number seven, man and technique, Oswald Spangler.
00:22:04.060 Oswald Spangler is somebody
00:22:05.440 who has had a profound impact on my thinking.
00:22:08.080 I really can't recommend his stuff highly enough,
00:22:11.060 but his key work, Decline of the West, is massive.
00:22:15.120 It's very intimidating.
00:22:16.420 It's 1,000 plus pages over two volumes,
00:22:19.160 so I don't blame anybody from shying away from it.
00:22:21.760 If you're looking for something
00:22:22.960 that will allow you to get a taste of Spangler's thinking
00:22:26.240 without making that big 1,000 page commitment,
00:22:28.700 man and technique is kind of the way for you to go.
00:22:31.760 Man and technique is really a pamphlet.
00:22:34.920 It's like 70-something pages,
00:22:37.140 but again, it gives you a taste of that thought process
00:22:40.560 that you're going to see when you read Spangler's larger work.
00:22:44.780 This pamphlet centers around the idea
00:22:47.260 that man generates these techniques
00:22:50.220 that in many ways separate him from nature
00:22:53.100 and set him along a certain path.
00:22:54.920 This line of thinking leads Spangler
00:22:57.320 to make some very interesting and accurate predictions
00:23:00.060 about the way that men in post-industrial revolution societies
00:23:05.020 will eventually arrive at a rationalist
00:23:08.200 and materialistic version of religion.
00:23:11.260 He also talks in a very interesting way
00:23:13.860 about how the creation of machines and complex mechanisms
00:23:18.080 don't in the end save human beings' labor,
00:23:21.500 but instead transform the nature of their labor
00:23:24.720 from one of kind of subsistence,
00:23:26.800 one making it to the next day, feeding themselves,
00:23:29.360 and instead warps their labor around
00:23:31.480 the continuation, the perpetuation,
00:23:34.320 the maintenance of these complex machines
00:23:37.120 that they have created.
00:23:38.340 The day-to-day lives of the average human
00:23:41.660 will become more and more artificial
00:23:43.360 because more and more of their labor and their time
00:23:46.760 is wrapped around the maintenance and continuation
00:23:50.120 of these increasingly abstract systems.
00:23:54.220 He also, in a very interesting way,
00:23:56.080 predicts globalization because he says
00:23:58.140 as these abstract societies become more and more complex,
00:24:02.680 there will really become only two types of nations.
00:24:06.000 There'll be those that are capable of building
00:24:08.180 these complex machines, these intricate systems,
00:24:11.940 and those that will necessarily be pulled under their sway
00:24:15.480 because those nations cannot themselves produce those things,
00:24:18.840 but they do provide labor and resources for that.
00:24:21.600 So he says kind of you will have these nations
00:24:23.600 that swallow up all the other ones
00:24:25.560 as they expand the region and they try to increase
00:24:28.120 the complexity of the systems that they're building.
00:24:30.580 Again, the whole thing is not very long.
00:24:32.480 He doesn't completely answer every question
00:24:34.260 because it's really a short pamphlet,
00:24:36.000 more than anything else.
00:24:37.340 But again, if you want something
00:24:38.460 that's going to whet your appetite
00:24:40.140 and give you a sample of what you'll get
00:24:42.140 if you make that deep dive
00:24:43.360 into something like Decline of the West,
00:24:45.220 this is a great place to start.
00:24:46.940 Number eight, Lives, Plutarch.
00:24:50.480 There's not a whole lot to say here.
00:24:52.600 Plutarch's Lives is a classic work.
00:24:55.180 It takes these different bite-sized biographies
00:24:59.020 of great men throughout both Greek and Roman history,
00:25:03.340 talks about their great deeds,
00:25:04.980 talks about lessons you can learn from them,
00:25:07.600 including, of course, their tragic mistakes.
00:25:10.320 You can get different mixes of these.
00:25:12.120 Sometimes you can get the complete Greek lives
00:25:14.040 or you can get the complete Roman lives.
00:25:15.960 Some collections will have the entirety of them.
00:25:18.200 Some of them will only have certain selections.
00:25:20.540 There's many different ways you can go from this.
00:25:22.200 And this is the kind of thing
00:25:23.040 that you can pick up at like a used bookstore.
00:25:25.080 You'll find like one of these
00:25:26.160 Harvard Cadence Classic Editions
00:25:27.960 that you can pick up on the cheap.
00:25:29.180 And like I said, because these things are very small
00:25:32.540 and consumable, each one of these chapters
00:25:34.820 is, you know, maybe 20 or 30 pages.
00:25:37.960 It makes it the perfect thing to be able to pick up
00:25:40.320 and put down and, you know, just go where you left off
00:25:43.220 and not have to worry about remembering the storyline
00:25:45.560 or, you know, all the big ideas or something like that.
00:25:48.400 Makes it very easy for you to kind of brush up
00:25:50.780 on your history in small chunks.
00:25:53.520 So if you're trying to work up to having
00:25:55.500 the historical background necessary to read
00:25:57.760 something like Discourses on Livy,
00:25:59.800 this isn't a bad place to start.
00:26:01.820 Number nine, No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy.
00:26:06.300 Yes, this is my second entry from McCarthy on the list.
00:26:09.960 But like I said, I really enjoyed The Road
00:26:12.260 and I wanted to dedicate myself
00:26:13.900 to reading more of the guy's back catalog.
00:26:16.760 I know this one isn't going to be any kind of hidden gem
00:26:19.160 or groundbreaking recommendation.
00:26:21.020 It was made into a major award-winning movie
00:26:24.120 by giant Hollywood directors.
00:26:27.060 But if it helps, I still actually haven't seen the movie,
00:26:30.140 which is weird because, again, I do like Cormac McCarthy
00:26:33.020 and I like the Coen brothers,
00:26:35.720 so you'd think I would have gotten around to seeing this one,
00:26:37.920 but it just never happened.
00:26:39.180 I'll certainly have to do that now, I guess.
00:26:41.860 This book is a little more accessible.
00:26:45.080 It's more contemporary, set closer to our current time,
00:26:49.320 and it also isn't quite as brutal.
00:26:51.920 Well, it's still brutal, but I don't know how to say this properly.
00:26:55.520 It's more filled in.
00:26:56.740 It's not as sparse.
00:26:58.040 The storyline is not quite as alien.
00:27:00.760 And so I think it's something that's a little more approachable
00:27:02.920 for people who haven't read anything from McCarthy yet,
00:27:05.920 which is why something like this probably got turned into a movie
00:27:09.040 way before something like Blood Meridian.
00:27:11.700 So it's not exactly bubble gum,
00:27:13.580 but it is a little closer to a beach read
00:27:15.840 than some of McCarthy's other stuff.
00:27:17.780 I enjoyed it, and I think it's a good place to start
00:27:20.740 if you're somebody who enjoys Westerns in general,
00:27:23.380 but maybe needs something a little more modern
00:27:25.920 and a little more accessible.
00:27:28.560 Well, thanks for watching, guys.
00:27:30.360 This has been my top nine reads for 2022.
00:27:34.780 Let me know what you think about these picks
00:27:36.680 down below in the comments,
00:27:38.120 and if you guys have any suggestions,
00:27:40.100 any great books that you've read throughout the year,
00:27:42.360 make sure to tell me down there as well.
00:27:44.460 If you enjoyed this video, make sure you click like,
00:27:47.120 and I've got all my previous reading recommendations
00:27:50.460 and a playlist, which you can check out.
00:27:52.720 Also, if this is your first time at the channel,
00:27:55.240 make sure you click subscribe.
00:27:56.880 As many of you know, I've recently joined The Blaze here,
00:27:59.980 and I really appreciate all your support and congratulations.
00:28:02.960 It's been kind of overwhelming.
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00:28:06.600 on their different outlets.
00:28:08.040 I'm already writing articles there,
00:28:09.560 so you can check out theblaze.com for that,
00:28:12.100 and you're going to see me show up
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00:28:24.900 on all kinds of different places.
00:28:26.940 And as usual, I've got all my links below
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00:28:32.260 so you can follow me on all those different channels as well.
00:28:35.340 Thanks for watching, guys, and as always,
00:28:37.680 I'll talk to you next time.