The Problem
I work with a lot of Chuds.
These Chuds are educated, successful, and totally unaware of the world they live in. They consume the slop media that is fed to them, barely read the news and hold very conservative with a small c views. There is a concept in engineering called the “happy path engineering” which is where an engineer accounts for only the things that that ideally happen. The have lived, to varying degrees, the happy path. Had two parents in stable and well paying jobs, did well in school, then well in university, then their parents helped them after uni get set up in a ciy where they got their first job. Later with a small personal loan or inheritance they get on the property ladder. And because they worked hard and did what society expected of them they think everything is fine and the system works. They don’t see where it fails they don’t see the bits of the system that are shored up by their family and generation wealth because when they need it, it is always there. I see how it happens, you go to a nice southern town like Cheltenham everything is clean, neat and tidy the people are healthy and vital it would be very eay to think that we live in a well functioning society and the government is doing its job. The problematic parts of society are ghettoised and out of sight and mind. Often these people have just not interrogated their own ideologies, STEM above all else they worship at the altar of logic, but fundamentally they are sheltered in their bubble of middle class privilege. I want to collate a reading list that will actually get them to antagonise their own ideology, I don’t think you can do it with fiction (see the illiterate responses to Andor season 2) so I haven’t found it yet but I have made a start of maybe some books in there that will be great on the journey.
Capitalist Realism - Mark Fisher
Don’t get me wrong this is a brilliant foundation critique of neoliberalism. It is modern, readable and surprisingly funny but about fifty pages in it says post modernism about six times on one page, Fisher was an academic and it shows it talks to you as an equal and quite frankly the people who I want to read and consume this book are not equals.
The Invisible Doctrine - George Monbiot
It is good, but it is a bit preachy I think if someone is open to engaging with the ideas on the same level then it would be an effective educator. But again it isn’t going to drive you to the ideas if you don’t already have them another good expose of the inadequacies of Neoliberalism.
Race Class and Gender - Angela Davis
This is the book. But it is a rough read. The history of black women in the US is not an easy read and the confrontation you have to do to your own beliefs is swift and profound. If you had someone captive and the means to force them to read this then I think it does the lions share of the work required to confront the real horrors of neoliberalism and your own place in it.
Debt: The First 5000 Years - David Graeber
markets are founded and usually maintained by systematic state violence
— David Graeber
This book really hits the very foundation of modern injustice right at a high level. Taking a look at the foundation abstraction of labour Graeber explores the role of debt as a tool of systems and that oppress and coerce in order to maintain control. Very well written incredibly compelling and give hope of a post money future by exploring the pre-money past.
This is obviously not a comprehensive list and my search is not over yet. I think there is such a gap in education causing the rise of anti-intellectualism and the insistence that things are simple is an absolute scourge that causes dis-trust in once reliable institutions. Things are complex. Things that you encounter every day are deep areas of study. When working as a software engineer on road signage I implemented algorithms that were first referenced in the eighteen hundreds from Victorian studies on carts moving through a city. So much of our current societal troubles do already have solutions just the political will to implement them is lacking. The answer is almost never infrastructure for self driving cars, it is extend train networks and increase service capacity. It is not cut disability and social safety nets, it is tax the wealthy so we can all live in a better society. People refuse to honestly engage with academic works on climate change and resilient futurism but it has been consistently calling for the same solutions for the best part of half a century and instead we dive deeper into a ideologically bankrupt neoliberal nightmare future of inequality, fear, and racism.