Kyle Roth

The main text below is my summary of the points in the book, and I’ve put my commentary in sidenotes. If you want a Marxist, postmodern response to these ideas from the devil himself, check out Jordan Peterson & the meaning of life by Philosophy Tube. Reason and moral purpose come from Athens and Jerusalem, and without those things the West would not be where it is today. Socialism means taking handouts from the nanny state, and while our society continues to function with capitalism bearing the weight of socialist programs, it’s in the process of crumbling.

This book made me cringe pretty often. I’ll leave exclamation points (!) on particularly cringe-worthy ideas, just so you can see how based I am. This book functions on the idea that if we accept a new set of words: poverty mindset, abundance mindset, etc, we’ll become wealthy. Zero-sum mindset: any critique of “success”, including environmental devastation Scarcity/poverty mindset: saving your way to wealth, judging or being jealous of those who have things, being too safe or too risky with your money, avoiding the risk of seeking your dreams, any ideas that make you make bad decisions If more people live with an abundance mindset, we will all experience less hardship.

Really fantastic book. Here is a quote that was extremely key for me: Understand your base of power as a parent. By base of power, I mean the element in the parent-child relationship that makes it possible for parents to set limits on children’s misbehavior, something all kids want and need. For some parents, the base of power is threats, humiliation, or spanking. Others, who are overly permissive, may feel they have no base of power at all.

There is controversy around some of the claims made in this book, so I don’t take any single point of evidence extremely seriously. But the person who critiqued the book also has some weird ideas about sleep,For instance, he believes that we evolved in a sleep-deprived environment so sleep deprivation must be healthier for us. so in the end I think I probably side with the sleep scientist for most issues except when he seems extreme.

This book was a good one for quotable critique of modern capitalism. Here are some good ones: These elites believe and promote the idea that social change should be pursued principally through the free market and voluntary action, not public life and the law and the reform of the systems that people share in common; that it should be supervised by the winners of capitalism and their allies, and not be antagonistic to their needs; and that the biggest beneficiaries of the status quo should play a leading role in the status quo’s reform.