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BairnONessie t1_j5twqzv wrote

Reply to comment by scolfin in The People Who Don’t Read Books by scolfin

It must be too late cause I'm not making head, nor tail, of anything you wrote...

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scolfin OP t1_j5u02aq wrote

Basically, he's writing how books are the only worthwhile form of the humanities in a respected journal of thought with a strong history of literary, philosophical, and analytical output.

The second part is that he seems oddly hostile toward the idea that altruism should be judged by what it does for the world, which may be because it very much discounts the benefit of a monastic lifestyle of self-sacrifice, which is how academics often see themselves.

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Quiet-Tone13 t1_j6baufb wrote

>Basically, he's writing how books are the only worthwhile form of the humanities

This is very much not what he writes. His argument is about how Kanye, SBF, and McElwee's complete dismissal of the value of books is connected to a larger cultural trend of anti-intellectualism. He thinks that this anti-intellectualism is linked to other trends (egoism, effective altruism) that are potentially harmful.

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