The Philosophers Pupil is a personal favorite

The Sea, The Sea is fantastic of course, but I actually started with The Bell and almost find myself preferring it. It’s shorter too, which makes it a good entry into an unknown author.

I’ve been binge reading her. In addition to these, The Unicorn is wonderful

I’ve only read Under the Net, and to my great disappointment I found it pretty terrible. A few shallow bits of Wittgenstein strewn into a boring and poorly written story. I really wanted to like this but it was a struggle to finish. I kept telling myself this is going to pay off, but it never did.

So if your doing it to make yourself fell good its for the wrong reason. The humility aspect is an eye opener like learning another language admitting we know nothing.

It’s her most famous work and in some ways a difficult read, but “The Sea, The Sea” got me started. Also enjoyed “The Bell” and “Under The Net” for her distinctive narrative voice. I feel like I write smarter when reading Murdoch (Philip Roth has a similar effect on me). The way they rationalize things is just so damn logical

Not just her fiction. In particular The Sovereignty of Good, and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals are both gems.

If I understand the author of this blog correctly, their reading of Murdoch leads to the following observations:

1. Being good to the other is a matter of identifying, disabling and removing one's own ego in the relationship.
2. In the relationship with an inanimate object, the object itself loses nothing if you fail to disable your ego. The loss is yours, probably due to epistemic vices resulting from your ego deflecting correct reflection regarding the object.
3. In the case of an animate object, a person, animal or group, the harm imposed by the involvement of your ego is felt by them.
4. The last assumes that without the ego, the remainder of your desire is to benefit the other. This would assume learning correctly what they need and desire and then spending the energy to implement the benefit. Your ego would lead to both epistemic vices in learning about the person and to decision making that would be influenced by your own needs rather than theirs.

I know nothing about her, which book do you recommend to start with?

Such an underrated author, not many besides her and Camus can communicate their philosophy so clearly through fiction

True.

100% that’s exactly what private ownership is, an abstraction. What does it mean to own something? How can someone claim to own the land, or the food that grows on the land, or the things that were made by someone else’s labor? People in our society are raised to take these questions for granted, like the laws of physics, when in reality it is just an ideology.

its a shame that in a such a small scale scenario the problem would never even develop (gonna have a hell of a time convincing those 10 people that you somehow dont have all the food once they all start talking) yet once you hit a large enough population you have enough abstraction that the man with 90% of everything can just convince half the population that other half have taken it all.

people decry China's media as being controlled and dominated but how is US media being owned by 3 people who are wealthier than entire nations any better?

this, cant have people realise its a lack of being willing to share thats the problem, its different people!

the promotion of hyper-individualism is the entire problem here, that only you matter and the rest are just in your lifes way as obstacles to overcome or use.

the fact that you are heavily encouraged to screw over pretty much anyone in your path and minimize any and all social and financial obligations coupled with media worship of the people that do is destroying us.

>he whole point of democracy is that we can't have a sole political stance that everyone agrees on, it's inevitable that different groups will form each with it's own opinion on which is the optimal path forward for society.

tell that to people who support one of the majors.

from what ive seen Democracy seems to devolve into 2 barely different parties who do everything they can to prevent other parties from ever gaining power and their supporters are rabid and believe anyone who opposes their party is the enemy.

its why ive never had a 'side' none of them represent me or even close to it (i have no interest in social issues, want poverty eradicated by redistributing wealth via a return to keynesianism and the eventual replacement of the current capitalist model with something new not something as old as electricty. too bad none of those are a priority for anyone)

>Humans definitely have the "my team vs your team" mentality. Studies show that having a rival or hatred towards another group (political party, sports team, etc) it actually stimulates the same parts of the brain one would have when they achieve something purposeful in their lives.

urgh i have noticed this.

try pointing out that on economic issues both parties in most western nations are near-identical (pro-corporate neo-liberals) and you see it immediately.

and? short term thinking plagues humanity, from election cycles to 70% people eating enough to be overweight to drug dealers killing their customers by cutting products (hell major corporation do it ffs, just slower)

these people are just humans in the end, they want more money tomorrow and so do their investors (not to mention half will be dead by the time it gets bad anyway).

they are not uniquely smart or skilled, every society in human history has had a class like this and every single time they have chosen short term profit (be that financial or power/control based) to the point of destroying the society they are in.

what is happening now is what happened to every major society in history, those with power have enough to run us into the ground trying to get more and so they will.

class solidarity.

no conspiracy needed at all. like how most people on welfare vote for higher payments and most of the middle class vote for tax cuts most of the wealthy 'donate' to both parties for favorable treatment (where do you think Trump got his billion or Biden got his 950 million for their respective campaigns?)

taken in aggregate it means that as a class the wealthy do indeed form what is effectively a single bloc on certain issues ie lower taxes, more corporate rights and power, more subsidies, access to captive markets like healthcare, energy, housing etc.

the easiest way to make more money as a billionaire is not innovation or invention its bribing both parties for favorable treatment (its why the list of the people who own 50% of global wealth gets shorter every year, they fight each other but they tag-team the people).

there is no conspiracy, these people are not friends or a cabal they just have massive power and influence and at that level the easiest ways to get more happen to be pretty much the same.

It's actually not a good take to suggest that in discussing Nazism you can invalidate someone's comparison by saying "but there are no death caps".

It's ridiculous really. It reduces such a broad systemic evil into a single point and makes drawing any parallels impossible because it's not 1941 in eastern Europe.

Bryson, Kayleigh

This title does a couple things that irk me.. It seems to lay at our feet that tribalism is something automatically negative and that it is somehow our greatest obstacle... as though the training wheels that we've used throughout history and evolution are somehow the only thing holding us back from solving all of our problems. Tribalism, if you like, is a kind of team-work. Our greatest danger, i would say, is our tendency to believe anything that is palatable and upholds what we already believe.

I think it's exactly our departure from our tribal instincts that's causing a majority of our issues

Well to be fair, when Neitzsche said God is dead, he wasn’t celebrating the fact. It’s more like he was going “oh shit what are we going to do now?” And yeah, a lot of us are in that position

Josiah Royce said the moral purpose of society is to create and foster strong individuals and at the same time, the moral purpose of individuals is to create a strong society. We are sadly getting worse all the time on both sides.

Yes! I tend to psycho analyze myself in third person as it helps me to eliminate bias that might be missed otherwise