Books for Understanding 2021? | Doug Wilson

doug you were asked for an understanding 2019 starter pack and at that time i think you recommended idols for destruction ideas have consequences no place for truth politics of guilt and pity and intellectual schizophrenia um so at that time 2019 or when you gave that everything was normal yeah exactly none of us knew the half of what was coming down the pike so do you have an updated recommendation list for now yeah i think all those books are still good books to read for the crazier things get the more relevant those those books would get i would add two books and obviously there are hundreds of books that you could read to help you understand the times but if you if you wanted a starter kit i would add two books to that list uh one of them would be carl truman's uh the rise and triumph of the modern self um it's just a magnificent history a magnificent intellectual history that explains why some of the nonsensical things that non-christians are saying to one another seem to make sense to them it's it's just a very if you want uh map uh with an x on it that says you are here that's a great book um the right it's a you know like some of these other books it's not it's not a coloring book it's you know it's a uh it's rigorous but i think accessible and it's just a very good book so that's one the other is a very short book but i've i and i just read it for the first time this summer and i've already read it three times but it's a very short book and it's called uh the basic laws of human stupidity i'm glad you're spending a lot of time on this yes i'm studying it um it's by an uh an italian guy named sepol i'm not sure i'm saying that right c-i-p-o-l-l-a uh chipola sapola wrote it in english back in the 70s and they did a limited edition print run for friends like your christmas card list or whatever it was just a limited edition and then later in the 80s i think uh they somebody overseas talked him into translating it into italian and other languages and it became a runaway bestseller over overseas like 500 000 cop you know just big big seller and then just recently they re-released it in english and uh nassim nicholas taleb anti-fragile guy wrote the forward to it and uh it's it's the kind of book that you're reading and you think that oh what a funny send up you know like a like a make fun of business corporate meetings kind of book um but then the taleb points this out in the forward you on the upper left-hand corner you're thinking oh a good satire in the lower hand corner you're saying wait this is actually this is actually there's meat here there's something going on uh it really is a um a fantastic book and explains explains a lot i had someone i mentioned it different places and someone wrote into my blog and asked so chipola divides the human race into four um uh quadrants uh like an x-axis and a y-axis um and he says they are the intelligent people they're the stupid people there are the bandits and there are the helpless nah and someone wrote in said doesn't that map on to the bible talking about the wise and the uh the simple and the wicked and the uh fool and it actually does it actually does zapola defines a uh the stupid person as someone who harms uh someone else or others someone or others without himself gaining any benefit or possibly even being hurt himself okay okay someone who harms someone else but benefits if someone takes your wallet with 100 bucks in it he's a bandit okay right if someone takes your wallet and throws the money in the river and gets arrested he hurt you and hurt he hurt you and hurt himself and nobody's that was just stupid it was no rhyme or reason to it so um and the bandit is someone we understand because there's a plan or there's some sort of rationale to it but when the stupider on the rampage there is no plan you can't protect you can't protect yourself because there's no plan the helpless are the people who get taken advantage of by the stupid and by the um by the bandits and the intelligent are those who you know see what's coming who who act in a way to benefit themselves and others the bandit benefits himself but not others the stupid person doesn't benefit himself it doesn't benefit benefit anyone else and um the helpless benefits others and hurt himself right so that's his that's his basic breakdown the the book is you you you toggle back and forth like teleb does is this a satire no this is i can um i could actually improve my life by paying attention to some of these um things um i'll just give you the first two laws the first first law is the number of stupid people involved in any given venture is always larger than you think right however many stupid people you think are going on around here it's more than that right that's law number one law number two is uh that uh a per a person's stupidity is unrelated to any of the other characteristics of that person okay so um in in other words if you if you uh polled a group of nobel prize winners you're going to find a certain number of stupid people among the nobel prize winners and that number is going to be larger than you thought i'll see the first law or you could you could um take a shot blue-collar workers plumbers you're going to get the the um the ratio of stupid people is not related to levels of education or age or sex or country you know um and and when he breaks this out it it's the sort of thing you're saying i think that there's something here some people stupid people do an awful lot of damage and i'm thinking of this year 2020 and 2021 as a as a case in point there were a lot more stupid people than we were a lot more stupid people in positions of decision-making authority a lot more stupid people than we thought because the things that are being done make no sense whatever yeah all right thank you

Channel: Canon Press

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Keywords: canon press, canon press interview, doug wilson, douglas wilson, moscow idaho, pastor doug wilson, christ church, pastor, politics, podcast, theology, blog and mablog, ask doug, moscow, bible, christian worldview, christian, book, books, recommendations, 2021

Id: anFb79aIGB0

Length: 7min 25sec (445 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021