This reads like abuse, because it is. I guess I get to thank an abusive ex-friend for inoculating me against this particular kind of anti-thought. If the author expresses contempt and hate for the reader, I'm inclined to believe them and steer clear.
There's a blatant attempt to undermine your ability to take your own thoughts seriously here, and it's apparent in the passage where the author accuses literally everybody of not having desires (at least not of the sort he thinks are good) and only being interested in "status" (which is subtly being shifted around with "identity" or "self-image", but not the same thing). Boy, when you redefine words like that, you can make anything mean anything!
This book is weaponized gaslighting. The fact that Scott wrote an interesting review and drew useful insights is pretty much separate from that.
This reads like abuse, because it is. I guess I get to thank an abusive ex-friend for inoculating me against this particular kind of anti-thought. If the author expresses contempt and hate for the reader, I'm inclined to believe them and steer clear.
There's a blatant attempt to undermine your ability to take your own thoughts seriously here, and it's apparent in the passage where the author accuses literally everybody of not having desires (at least not of the sort he thinks are good) and only being interested in "status" (which is subtly being shifted around with "identity" or "self-image", but not the same thing). Boy, when you redefine words like that, you can make anything mean anything!
This book is weaponized gaslighting. The fact that Scott wrote an interesting review and drew useful insights is pretty much separate from that.