Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads.
Here are this week’s recommendations:
The Jordan Peterson row proves it: you can’t judge a book by its cover quotes (Emily Bootle / The i)
“A philosophy of the meaning of life … the most lucid and touching prose Peterson has written,” wrote James Marriott of The Times. “Genuinely enlightening and often poignant … Here is a father figure who takes his audience seriously. And here is a grander narrative about truth, being, order and chaos that stretches back to the dawn of human consciousness.” That’s some praise from Johanna Thomas-Corr, writing in the New Statesman.
At least it would be, if those latter two critics had actually written those sentences in isolation, or if they represented the overall conclusion of their reviews. But well-placed ellipses and lack of context are doing a lot of heavy lifting. Thomas-Corr described the book in the same paragraph as “a lumpy soup of bromides”, while the “enlightening and poignant” comment was a throwaway caveat in a piece that ripped the book to shreds.
Boy Problems: The manosphere promises to fix young men’s lives. Instead, it’s making them miserable. (Eamon Whalen / Mother Jones)
Like many resentful young men, Mark came to a concrete worldview: The advances of women in society had been a mistake. Their empowerment took something directly from him. In fact, women were at the root of his, and all men’s, problems.
That is how Mark recalls the experience of “taking the red pill,” a phrase borrowed from The Matrix films that implies a sudden mental awakening—a realization of how the world truly exists. It is now common internet jargon to describe right-wing radicalization, but it was popularized by the manosphere.
“I’ve been asked, ‘what makes you feel unsafe?’ And I struggle not to yell, ‘everything!’” (button poetry)
@buttonpoetry “I’ve been asked, ‘what makes you feel unsafe?’ And I struggle not to yell, ‘everything!’” #buttonpoetry #spokenword #poetrytok #fyp #poetrylover #poetryslam #booktok #booktokfyp #dariussimpson #scoutbostley ♬ original sound – Button Poetry
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Image: Mo Eid