Seeing Like a State by James C Scott (I’ve read most of it, I liked it)
Bullshit Jobs, The Dawn of Everything, most books by David Graeber (I’ve read and liked long extracts of his work)
The End: Hitler’s Germany 1944–45 by Sir Ian Kershaw (I’ve read all of it and found it very valuable as a complete picture of a society melting down)
Open Letters by Vaclav Havel (I’ve read a lot of it, I like it a lot. He was the first president of Czechoslovakia and a famous communist dissident and his writing sketches out both what he finds soul-destroying about that system and what he thinks are the principles of good societies)
System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life by Robert Jervis (I’m reading this now, very good case studies about non-obvious phenomena in international relations)
Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the fight to expose its toxic secrets by Jeff Horwitz (Very good book about how social media platforms like Facebook shape and are shaped by modern civilisation, I read all of it)
All of these books to various degrees tackle the things you are describing from a holistic perspective. Hope this helps.
thanks for the recommendations, I’ll add these to my reading list!
I’m also curious if there is a location or social cluster or something where there are a lot of people who read stuff like this and talk about it productively and come up with new ideas. (again, other than the rationalist/ratadj/bay area community—I’m stipulating this because I think the ratsphere and bay area as a whole are a bubble with a lot of other correlated beliefs)
Some books you might like to read:
Seeing Like a State by James C Scott (I’ve read most of it, I liked it)
Bullshit Jobs, The Dawn of Everything, most books by David Graeber (I’ve read and liked long extracts of his work)
The End: Hitler’s Germany 1944–45 by Sir Ian Kershaw (I’ve read all of it and found it very valuable as a complete picture of a society melting down)
Open Letters by Vaclav Havel (I’ve read a lot of it, I like it a lot. He was the first president of Czechoslovakia and a famous communist dissident and his writing sketches out both what he finds soul-destroying about that system and what he thinks are the principles of good societies)
System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life by Robert Jervis (I’m reading this now, very good case studies about non-obvious phenomena in international relations)
Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the fight to expose its toxic secrets by Jeff Horwitz (Very good book about how social media platforms like Facebook shape and are shaped by modern civilisation, I read all of it)
All of these books to various degrees tackle the things you are describing from a holistic perspective. Hope this helps.
thanks for the recommendations, I’ll add these to my reading list!
I’m also curious if there is a location or social cluster or something where there are a lot of people who read stuff like this and talk about it productively and come up with new ideas. (again, other than the rationalist/ratadj/bay area community—I’m stipulating this because I think the ratsphere and bay area as a whole are a bubble with a lot of other correlated beliefs)