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Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests
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Complaint can be a powerful political tool. Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King both used it to drive social change. So why do we moan about increasingly trivial things - like the weather or public transport? Do Brits complain less than Americans? Do men and women complain about different things? What is the best way to complain? From Adam and Eve to the Iraq War, Baggin
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Start your review of Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests
Horrid, idiotic defense of neo-conservative policy disguised as a philosophical inquiry into protest. I have liked all Julian Baggini's other books, but here he stepped out of the realm of philosophical abstraction which he can speak of intelligibly into the world of politics where he is no more intelligent than an average Fox news watching moron. I should have taken this book from the library and burnt it in my campfire.
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Baggini is a philosopher by training and his expertise in this discipline is evident within his carefully planned and executed examination of "complaints". Those who have read his earlier works (The Pig Who Wants To Be Eaten among the very best) will appreciate and enjoy the difference between Baggini's disciplined, detailed, and exact examination of a topic compared with the shallow and superficial pop-psychology offerings that we have come to expect in the vast majority of books examining simi
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An interesting read. Not about complaining as such, but about the ethics of complaint. What makes a complaint worthwhile? Is there any point in moaning about the weather? Is whinging about how hot our soup is legitimate when people are dying from cholera in Zimbabwe? Do people complain more as they get older? (Apparently not, although that's one of my complaints about old people....).
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Meh.
Brief (130 pages) yet unfocused and makes many unsubstantiated claims that seem a little dubious. The argumentation is far from convincing. The prose style is clear but tends to ramble at times. This started off well and I have heard good things about the author's other works but this was uninspiring. The author claims that you shouldn't complain about things you can't change, so expect to see nothing but 5-star reviews here given that advice.
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Docked a star for the ill-advised pseudoscientific survey which was a complete waste of space. I could complain more but would it be worthwhile?
I didn't mind this book at all.
I find the following points interesting:
* To be a Stoic, it's important to accept the imperfection of the world and not to complain about them but rather describe them
* Religion fosters a slave morality
* The meek would have no world to inherit if the more petulant did not set about building one that would last
* The West has progressed in to a Grievance culture and moral responsibility has been replaced with legal responsibility
* Freedom is tightly linked to respons ...more
I find the following points interesting:
* To be a Stoic, it's important to accept the imperfection of the world and not to complain about them but rather describe them
* Religion fosters a slave morality
* The meek would have no world to inherit if the more petulant did not set about building one that would last
* The West has progressed in to a Grievance culture and moral responsibility has been replaced with legal responsibility
* Freedom is tightly linked to respons ...more
Enjoyed the audio book. Even better a bit thought provoking in I like the idea that those who make the most noise be the ones who deserve to be listened to, on the basis the lesser noise makes may care less about an issue
Not what I expected, but not bad either. An almost philosophical treatise on the topic of complaint.
historical, social, spiritual; reads like an insightful though entertaining non-fiction, self-help
was ok
Decent enough effort to talk about the pros and cons with complaining. Not terribly exciting but can make one think how and why we complain about stuff. Still, worth a read!
Tassonomico e presuntuoso per lo più. Qualche considerazione interessante verso la fine, ma niente di esaltante.
Just superb. Reasoned and thorough, a discussion of the culture of complaint that avoids cheap arguments and makes an intellectual case for dissent.
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Julian Baggini is a British philosopher and the author of several books about philosophy written for a general audience. He is the author of The Pig that Wants to be Eaten and 99 other thought experiments (2005) and is co-founder and editor of The Philosophers' Magazine. He was awarded his Ph.D. in 1996 from University College London for a thesis on the philosophy of personal identity. In addition
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