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Jonathan Swift has the most lasting influence. Not just for the Gulliver's Travels novel but his satires and political activism in general. A dramatist named John Gay had the most theatrical notoriety of the time. Gay had wild success with a satire of Handel's Rinaldo titled The Beggar's Opera. It was a satire that equated highway robbers with the nobility and was hugely popular both in England and in pre-revolutionary America. George Washington called it his favorite play; it was performed over 50 times in America and over 80 times during Gay's lifetime in England. There is a BBC performance of it on youtube and the text is on Gutenberg.

From a literary standpoint William Blake and Alexander Pope were probably the most relevant of the age in terms of original poetical talent. Blake was certainly the more politically revolutionary of the two in his personal beliefs, but the criticism in his poetry is subtle. There's a book length criticism of him from the 1950s that is still the canonical examination of the times from his perspective, titled Blake: Prophet Against Empire.

In addition to being a novelist, Henry Fielding founded London's first police force and was a magistrate. Most of his letters were assumed lost but batches were found in the early 1900s and 1970s, A memoir based on the early letters is on Gutenberg

If there is one figure that a large number of these surviving literary figures of the day were against, it was the first prime minister, Robert Walpole. Walpole was seen as corrupt in the press of the time, mostly because of his interest in the South Sea Company (a joint venture with Spain involving slaves and colonial goods from the Americas). Walpole invested in the company early in his life and cashed out before the value of shares in the company crashed, which happened while he was in office. It was England's first big financial scandal involving laypeople as investors, afaik. Pope and Gay in particular lost money in the same investments. Gay was bankrupted by the loss, and satirized Walpole constantly thereafter.

A LOT of what we know about these people is from Swift's letters to and from them, which were largely preserved, and Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets (available on Gutenberg). Swift was in constant correspondence with the others mentioned above over a period of decades, and we still have a lot of those letters today. Johnson is the first example of what we would call a literary critic today.

There's a relatively new collection, The Practice of Satire in England, 1658–1770 from 2013 that I have not read but seems to be well reviewed. Available here if you have university subscription access.

I don't think this era is as popular as others for many reasons. Most obviously in America, because it's overshadowed by our own revolution. In Europe it's overshadowed by the French revolution. Comparatively, England was relatively peaceful at the time. But peace and a monarch friendly to the arts and literature makes for an abundance of critics, too. It's fascinating to me that England went through the same issues as America and France without a large scale revolution, particularly considering how lax Charles II was in terms of censorship compared to his predecessors and how much social/political criticism was floating around in the presses.

I suppose I'd recommend he listen to Alan Watts talking about Jung, or an audiobook or something.

But if he refuses to read anything Jung wrote, then what's the use?

Memories, Dreams, Reflections is probably the most accessible volume Jung wrote (he dictated it to one of his best students, who edited it and compiled it). It's an autobiography of sorts, but it includes a lot of thoughtful summaries of his best and most weighty ideas. It's also more colorful and entertaining than his scholarly works.

After that, I'd go with On the Nature of the Psyche and The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious for an absolute minimum baseline understanding of Jung's core ideas. Some people recommend Man and His Symbols but that's really more of a collection of 'Jungian' essays, which is interesting if you already know his work because you can see how his students developed it/ simplified it in their own practices, but isn't the best place to get Jung's ideas directly (although the first essay is his, I think).

Sadly, if your friend has the kind of disposition implied by a refusal to read primary texts and a willingness to swallow JP's snake oil, even if he managed to get through one or all of these volumes it's unlikely he would ever have the subtlety and intellectual endurance needed to actually understand what Jung meant by 'archetypes,' let alone his overall approach to psychology.

It obviously isn't Marxism, but the history of Christian communism dates back about as long as Christianity has existed. This book has a lot of good info, including anthropological evidence of early Christians attempting to build communism. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0725G8NDZ

Modern Christian leftists may or may not be Marxists, but they often take a lot from Marx. And you can in fact be both a Christian and a Marxist.

Acts 2:44-45

>And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.

Acts 4:32-37

>Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.

^ Communism

Derrida:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtLMNcpgYEs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvAwoUvXNzU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s8SSilNSXw

I'd urge you to actively avoid any other videos attempting to explain him.

Books: This is extremely simple, clear, and accurate, which is very high praise when it comes to Derrida. Also look up "Deconstruction in a Nutshell", and his interview with Julia Kristeva in "Positions". This is really good and in-depth but difficult. For something by Derrida himself, everyone starts with "Structure Sign & Play". "Différance", "The Ends of Man" and "Signature Event Context" are also good, albeit difficult, as is all of his work.

For Foucault I find Stanford, Wikipedia, pretty much any lectures on youtube about him, PartiallyExaminedLife, to be fine before you jump straight into Discipline and Punish. It's difficult though. Or you could get The Foucault Reader by Paul Rabinow which collects a lot of his writings from various works as well as interviews, the latter obviously being a lot more accessible.

There are some great books and articles on this subject. I think that you should avoid the 1950s onwards, because that would be like confirmation for Peterson fans.

For the gay identity that the books that I recommend are:

https://www.amazon.com/Gay-New-York-Culture-1890-1940/dp/0465026214/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522048690&sr=8-1&keywords=gay+new+york
https://www.amazon.com/Gay-Berlin-Birthplace-Modern-Identity/product-reviews/0307473139/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_hist_1?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&reviewerType=all_reviews#reviews-filter-bar
https://www.amazon.com/Homintern-Culture-Liberated-Modern-World/dp/0300218036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522048869&sr=8-1&keywords=Homintern


A free source that is full of primary sources.
http://rictornorton.co.uk

Concerning Nietzsche versus Peterson: Nietzsche is an anti-realist about value [see Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality, 2nd Ed, section on metaethics, anti-realism about value, pages 119-121], whereas Peterson is a value realist who believes that “transcendent values genuinely exist; that they are in fact the most tangible realities of being.” This is a direct quote from Peterson's Patreon. In contrast, Leiter writes that "Nietzsche’s central argument for anti-realism about value is explanatory: moral facts don’t figure in the “best explanation” of experience, and so are not real constituents of the objective world. Moral values, in short, can be “explained away” [p 120, ibid].

Matt Lewis' previous claim to fame was writing defences of Sarah Palin's brilliance and (get ready for it) editing an anthology of her brilliant political philosophy.

It's really quite nice to see reactionaries and 4chan idiots being quite consistent in confusing yesterday's Fox News manure pile for a feeding trough lately.

It looks like this is the intended final product.

The author seems to have written a biography of James Mattis who is popular with Incels and Marines and of course

>He has been interviewed about the book on “The Story with Martha MacCallum” and “Fox and Friends” on the Fox News Network.



has various connections with Fox News. His creativity is apparently spent on a very alt-right friendly blog with titles that may well cause your eyes to roll back so far your optic nerves will be severed.

>Quit Your Whining

>Progressives Punked for Social Justice

>Black Lies Matter

>The Death of Free Speech: The West Veils Itself

Well that's pretty much the whole point of his channel; he most definitely has a rather specific ax to grind. Coffin, a sort of self-styled pop political theorist, is interested in the ways in which the capitalist marketplace/marketing shapes and informs our identities and our worldviews - and obviously from a critical leftist stance. That's who he is and what he does.

So, uh, here's some fun supplementary reading for everybody.

>Internalized misogyny is very much a thing, unfortunately. It's very possible for a woman to conclude that if patriarchy is the only game in town, she's going to play to win.

Right-Wing Women, by Andrea Dworkin

>This is part of why we need to remember--and to reiterate to anyone else who doesn't get it--that what feminism stands against isn't men, it's patriarchy. Men are not universally evil, and women are not universally good. But a system that creates and reinforces inequalities between them definitely deserves destroying.

"Patriarchy, the System: An It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us" by Allan G. Johnson

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684824299/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_c2DtDbW5C5ZWA

Hello dear Lobster, before I answer some of your questions, I will link a thread from this subreddit that might answer your questions in greater details.

Cultural constants is a misleading term. There is a significant amount of research that shows some “constants” aren’t constants at all and they appear sometimes exclusively in Europe (I will add links after Edit). Jung’s theory of archetypes are not something you can prove and are unfalsifiable. Jung makes the same mistakes as Freud did when trying to be “scientific”. A good philosophical book about some of the fallacies of that sort, check out Karl Popper’s book- Logic of Scientific Discovery.

Now about hierarchy. Well it’s hard to prove that a specific organization of society is innate, especially hierarchies. Even the societies of same species of monkeys vary dramatically. Check out Robert Sapolsky’s popular book “Behave”. Humans differ from animals, because they can question wether some form of organization is just. Hierarchy is inevitable, since it arises due to labor division. Those who try to minimize the hierarchy, try to minimize the artificial hierarchy, based on domination. Like slavery and etc... Or perhaps some people like me try to minimize the authoritarian nature of a workplace. Get workers more involved and etc...

Dr. Peterson tends to use research so it suits him. For instance take his views on Gödel. Any mathematician or someone who is remotely in touch with Computation will tell you how wrong he is to attribute Gödel’s theorems to his [Peterson’s] ethical theories. Peterson commits this fallacy quite a lot. And some articles illustrate them very well.

Some links [Edit 1];

https://www.reddit.com/r/enoughpetersonspam/comments/bbjwnr/i_dont_like_peterson_but_was_he_right_about_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

[Edit 2]

People on this subreddit arguing against Peterson’s various claims.

[Edit 3]

lobsters and hierarchies

I am studying Biology. For scientists, especially those studying Neurophysiology the “Lobster argument” is ridiculous.

[Edit 4]

Check out Mark R.Gundry’s critique of Jungian archetypes here

No personal attack is meant here, but this comment is a good example of not really engaging with the material.

Automation is one of Marx's core subjects. He goes on endlessly about capital:labour ratios in manufacturing (ie, investment in automation), and his mathematical treatment of those ratios leads him to his famous and flawed "declining rate of profit" theory of economic crises.

In the unpublished-in-his-lifetime Fragment on Machines in the Grundrisse he briefly projects these trends forwards to a time of full automation.

> once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an automatic system of machinery (system of machinery: the automatic one is merely its most complete, most adequate form, and alone transforms machinery into a system), set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself

...

> The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it.

More recent Marxist thinkers have argued that what Marx missed here was that the "general intellect" could be privatised as Intellectual Property. This is all explored in-depth in the very accessible Postcapitalism by Paul Mason.

It's quite reasonable to disagree with these ideas, many people do, but it is impossible to argue that Marx/Marxism have nothing to say about automation. Arguably, Marx was the first political economist to explore automation with real rigour and depth.

Post-Marxists, the dreaded postmodernist SJWs like Hardt & Negri, agree with you and disagree with Marxists. They argue that the proletariat or working class is no longer a "revolutionary subject", ie a class of people primed to transform society, for much the same reasons as you do.

Again, I don't mind people disagreeing with all of that (I lean closer to Marx than Negri myself), but it is unquestionably relevant and important to engage with properly if you want a deep and intellectually honest debate.

It's disgusting that the Left can admit they have some things in common with Stalin and the USSR, but the Right are too immature to admit they are like Hitler sometimes. Hell, the biggest conservative movie (Big Lie) in recent history was about how the Nazis were big left wing progressives who hated the white privilege. Why can't conservatives admit this, but liberals can? They say the left calls anyone they don't like Nazis? Then why does the right always call liberals Nazis?

​

Hitler attacked Jews, gypsies, Marxists, and many other groups. Did he attack the Marxists for their privileges? Why did Hitler attack the Marxists and gypsies? Did Hitler do it because they had too many privileges? Hitler attacked disabled people and gay people too. Maybe the reasons that Hitler attacked these groups were the same reasons he attacked the Jews. If you attack someone with power/privileges, does that automatically make you a Nazi? In that case, anyone who questions status quo power relationships is a Nazi. Myths. The truth is that Hitler loved hierarchies and authority. Small wonder that Jordan B. Peterson has accidentally sounded like an actual Nazi on no less than three occasions. Remember how he got to be a huge super star on Saudi Arabian television for saying that women should be banned for make-up because

​

Anyone who attacks anyone in a position of privilige is a Nazi?

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Honestly, just read Mein Kampf and a collection of his speeches. Hitler bragged about Christianity alot. Stalin was almost the opposite. Soviets banned religion.

​

Not only that, the biggest supporters of Hitler in the USA were all huge Christians. Elizabeth Dilling, who had tens of millions of followers in the 1930s and 1940s, was a huge Christian. Dilling was the Tomi Lahren of her day. She attended Nazi meetings in Germany. She wrote about how the atheist communists in the USSR were hurting traditional values with particular disdain for sexual liberty.

Heinz Spanknöbel was not only one of Hitler's biggest supporters in the USA, but also an ordained minister. People are saying that Hitler loved to take away "privileges" to "make everyone equal". These people honestly believe that Hitler was an atheist "sjw" who wanted to "make everyone equal". Sure, Hitler would have loved affirmative action. Not. Hitler loved hierarchies and authority, which are the opposite of what the so called, "SJWs" want. If Hitler wanted to "make everyone equal" he would have attacked German men. Hitler rarely attacked Christianity. If Hitler would have been anything like these "SJeWs", he would have attacked white Christians. Hitler would have attacked German people for having too many privileges.

​

​

https://www.amazon.com/Savage-Messiah-Peterson-Western-Civilization/dp/1250251427 It even has it's own Amazon page.

'Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.' - Tom Lehrer

Robert Sapolsky's new book Behave shits on Peterson's new book. Robert's book is probably the best book I've bought in my entire life. Seriously, I open it and learn something new everyday. If Robert and Jordan ever "debated" I guarantee that Robert would make Jordan look like Kathy Newman.

Cleaning one's room has much better (non-cultic) gurus and advocates anyways.

For instance, instead of ending up with your windows lined with newspaper and your ceilings with Soviet era propaganda like JBP, why not just read Marie Kondo, whose book has been famous long before him?

> I just don't understand how someone could even think to analyze handshakes to this degree.
>
> How empty does your head have to be to think that a simple greeting gesture is so meaningful?

Same thing for those body language "experts" they wheel out on American TV. How bored do you have to be to care? How dull do you have to be to think there are people with expertise in this? How deluded do you need to be to think that you can do this with any level of accuracy, or that what you're doing actually matters?

Clearest example I have for this (outside of like all middle management positions): https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber-ebook/dp/B075RWG7YM/

Yep. It's the Amazon link OP posted:

https://www.amazon.com/Savage-Messiah-Peterson-Western-Civilization/dp/1250251427

The author also shared that on his LinkedIn:

https://linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6532737911174033408

If you still have any doubts, look at his twitter feed - https://twitter.com/jimproser

>Google is beyond a monopoly. It is a left-wing totalitarian organization.

>Leftist droogs continue to attack our children’s mental health.

>Collusion hoax, immigration hoax ( no problem at the border), economy hoax ( it’s Obama’s economic recovery), now the green new global warming hoax. #walkaway

>The Palestinians have received more economic aid than Japan did after World War II, yet still live in abject poverty. Why is that?

And a cherry on top:

>Here it is - this is what everyone is REALLY fighting about and it's not Donald Trump. He's just the representative of the real target - Western civilization.

With a link to

https://www.prageru.com/video/dangerous-people-are-teaching-your-kids/

Edit - one more:

>Want to help me research my new book for St. Martin's Press called SAVAGE MESSIAH; HOW DR. JORDAN PETERSON IS SAVING WESTERN CIVILIZATION? If you are a classic open-minded... https://www.indeedjobs.com/jimprosercom/_…

https://twitter.com/jimproser/status/1092490148414218241