/lit/ - Literature

>>9902636
Cool Memories has some nice stuff. Pic related.

But yeah, similar to America, it's a book of short aphorisms. It'd never be considered an important book, but if you like B, then it's worth a read.

>>9899820
I seem to recall some flippant comments about Americans being weed addicts. I don't get the impression he had much personal experience with drug culture.

>>9897210
>Them being 'self help' doesn't preclude them being lectures. Arguably philosophy SHOULD be about how to most optimally function, and abstracting to a degree where that purpose is lost sight of is frivolous.

That's certainly an argument that can be made, but its a limited definition. Nothing wrong with being frivolous either!

Not all philosophy is aimed at the individual, or even 'the social body'. Some of it is purely historical, and has no bearing on 'the today'.Philosophy can be purely speculative, about futures that may or may never come to pass. Philosophy can be purely passive observation, with no 'plan' to be implemented. The idea that philosophy must be 'useful' is just a utilitarian demand.

Now, Psychology does have such demands. It has to serve the mental health of the individual. Peterson is a psychologist primarily, so I doesn't surprise me that he'd take a utilitarian view of things.

Here's some nice philosophy from Baudrillard. Nothing you can 'do' with it. It isn't useful

Dogs on the Luggage Carousel, Flight and the Promiscuity of Death.

Dogs on a Luggage Carousel, Death and Flying from Impossible Exchange

>>9307131
he's a bit of a nihilist. He certainly doesn't yearn for an earlier era. He does portray society in a pretty negative light, but takes a bit of perverse pleasure in it.

here is a nice bit about Baggage Claims and Death. I think this is in "Cool Memories"

>>9177322
Baudrillard of course

>>9173876
>>9174282
>>9174282

Baudrillard is definately worth reading. System of Objects is good, but its still effectively a structuralist work, expanding marxist terms into semiotic terms. It informs later works by Baudrillard, but as one of his earliest pieces of writing, it doesn't reflect his later positions.

The Perfect Crime is dense, probably not a good place to start, but I'd consider it his magnum opus on the topic of Simulation.

America and Cool Memories are his aphoristic works, little clever quips and observations. There is some genius stuff in it though, like this bit about baggage claims, flying and death (pic related).

I actually think the best introduction to Baudrillard, if you find the aphoristic stuff too trivial and opportunistic, is to check out Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomenon. It's by far my favorite book I've ever read. Along with Society of the Spectacle and the Medium is the Massage by Mcluhan, I can't think of works that better describe our society. I suppose Critique of Cynical Reason by Sloterdjik and The Sublime Object of Ideology by Zizek could make that list, but they're both really bloated, not particularly well written.

>>8233829
Baudrillard

>>8177857
the Imaginary shouldn't be thought of as just misconceptions. It's also where lacan puts fantasy.

Another anon mentioned Baudrillard. "Simulation and Simulacra" is often thought of as his most important work, but there are some other works that you should check out as a film maker.

"The Perfect Crime" is a good read, all about the duplication of the real and it's replacement by this double.

"The Transparency of Evil" is an easier read, very topical and timely. Seemingly random musings on Michael Jackson, pornography, nuclear weapons, transgender issues, cancer, lots of other stuff. "Cool Memories" is a very similar book. pic related.

Jean Baudrillard, pic related, one of his longer routines from "Cool Memories"

Here is another of my favorites from "The Transparency of Evil":

“Consider Michael Jackson, for example. Michael Jackson is a solitary mutant, a precursor of a hybridization that is perfect because it is universal — the race to end all races. Today’s young people have no problem with a miscegenated society: they already inhabit such a universe, and Michael Jackson foreshadows what they see as an ideal future. Add to this the fact that Michael has had his face lifted, his hair straightened, his skin lightened — in short, he has been reconstructed with the greatest attention to detail. This is what makes him such an innocent and pure child — the artificial hermaphrodite of the fable, better able even than Christ to reign over the world and reconcile its contradictions; better than a child-god because he is a child-prosthesis, an embryo of all those dreamt-of mutations that will deliver us from race and from sex.”

Also, William Burroughs isn't really an aphorist, but I like him for a similar reason as Baudrillard. He breaks the narrative to just muse on some strange topic. A lot of "Did I ever tell you about..."