[vvdcect]

Do checkout "Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?", It's a concise book that talks about capitalism and its effects on culture and public thought. I haven't read lost futures yet but I found this really good video discussing Mark's idea by Cuck Philosophy called "Hauntology, Lost Futures and 80s Nostalgia" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVg

[pizza]

Reading Capitalist Realism really helped pull me out of a depressive rut, tbh. Highly recommended, and it really is short, something like 80 pages. The part where he talks about how on the surface, the students in his classroom appear to be hedonically satisfied, but then he introduces the term “depressive hedonism”, really stuck with me.

edit: another part that really stuck with me was how there is a modern tendency to privatize the burden of stress; consider how mental illness is the individual's burden so it must be handled at the individual level, etc etc. Fisher wrote an article in the Guardian about this, "Why mental health is a political issue" in 2012 - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/16/mental...

[kmf]

Capitalist Realism is an incredible read. Since discovering him just a couple years ago, his ideas and his work have impacted me probably more than any other cultural/political theorist has. His death was a real loss, but his work is more vital than ever. Can’t recommend his work enough, and I’m excited to have seen his name pop up a couple times on HN over the last few days.

[Barrin92]

One thing that recently made me immediately recall the book was a story I read about "fake influencers", that is people who go on holidays, but pretend to be paid social media influencers to prop up their own instagram channels and whatnot to appear successful.

This seemed so absurd to me that I had to think of the Soviet joke about the workers "pretending to work while the bosses pretend to pay". And it struck me as sad but also funny that we are entering a stage of economic development, that for an increasing number of workers, looks more like a giant collective inside joke than actual meaningful or genuine labour.

[claudiawerner]

Of course recommended reading on capitalism's effects on culture and thought are the works of Adorno and Horkheimer, and Marcuse - who seems to have fallen a little out of favor but his work is as important as it was in the 60s.

[vvdcect]

Do you have any recommendations on what books I should pick up? , I've only read about the authors you mentioned on https://plato.stanford.edu and also through some philosophy podcasts..

[claudiawerner]

"One Dimensional Man" by Marcuse certainly, "Escape From Freedom" by Erich Fromm and for more contemporary review, Mark Fisher of course. You also can't miss Guy Debord (his Society of the Spectacle) and, although I haven't read him yet, Henri Lefebvre's "Critique of Everyday Life" is looking promising from what I've seen so far. I'd suggest browsing the Verso catalogue for old (republished) and new books, almost all of them center around cultural critique of capitalism[0].

[0] https://www.versobooks.com/series_collections/5-radical-thin...

[vvdcect]

Thank you.

[lukewrites]

Thanks for recommending this, I picked up a copy and love it so far.

[vvdcect]

You're welcome, I'm so happy that you bought it. If you liked the book, do checkout that youtube link I shared as well.

[trophycase]

Indeed one of the best and easiest to read pieces of Postmodern philosophy. Also a great YT channel, been subbed for a while.