David Hunter > Recent Status Updates

This one fares a bit better than An Inquiry into the Origins of Inequality so far. It is not full of long, rambling, imaginary hypothetical situations used to justify his points...There seems to be something funny going on in his conception of a contract. He posits that everyone alienates themselves of all rights and properties, and puts these in the trust of the government, which then secures their property rights.

Maybe his ideas don't sound stupid in French? I'm not sure why anyone would listen to this guy or continue to talk about his ideas as if they mattered...

This opens with an almost psychoanalytical analysis of Plato's philosophy. I'm not sure that we should attempt to reduce or deduce one's philosophy as merely a reaction to what one experiences, but his presentation of the problems with the totalitarianism inherent in Plato's politics is compelling.

I've just gotten to the point where he has finished talking about the appearance of language. As someone with a BA and MA in linguistics, it is more amusing than anything else to hear someone completely BS their way through how language appeared.

Although, to give him credit, we still don't have really good theories about how it developed and evolved.

I cannot say again how cool this book is. It meshes very well with David Graeber's analysis of Debt and value; and agrees with much of what Douglas Rushkoff has written about the rise of corporatism.

This is a truly fantastic book! I wish I had discovered this earlier. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand exactly where we are and how we got here.