Lord of the flies
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2026
95 points (96.1% liked)
Ask Lemmy
41396 readers
1126 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
8) No Bots.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
The terms of service for the warranty on my first car after the first time I tried to use it.
The Dispossessed
This was the one I came to mention lol.
You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.
Also from the introduction/short story The Day Before The Revolution:
My novel The Dispossessed is about a small worldful of people who call themselves Odonians. The name is taken from the founder of their society, Odo, who lived several generations before the time of the novel, and who therefore doesn’t get into the action — except implicitly, in that all the action started with her.
Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with; not the social-Darwinist economic “libertarianism” of the far right; but anarchism. as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism’s principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.
There was a book which I picked up from my high-school library and it really did a number on the younger me. "Green Rage" was a book written by Chris Manes in the early 90s about radical environmentalism and it gave me a new perspective on things I had not been aware of at the time. While I never actually got directly involved with any environmentalist groups, I did start to better appreciate how our Capitalist system's need extract value at any cost from natural resources would have disastrous consequences.
Fast forward 35 years and I can't honestly say if the author's more dire predictions haven't come to pass since you simply can't trust corporate media to give unvarnished truth about anything. But I have seen and experienced things with my own eyes that give them credence. The fact that the title for this book came to mind immediately when I read this post/prompt says something about it's impact I think.
Island - Aldous Huxley
Less radicalized and more just opened my thinking about how society could be and how imperial forces and people's desires get in the way constantly. More of a 'this is why utopia can't happen' vs Brave New World's 'look at this dystopia'
Ape and Essence did it for me when it came to watching societies crumble and fade. Watch someone dig scrap metal from 30 years ago out of a dump one time and you'll wonder what's even fiction and what's real life anymore.
A People's History of the United States
The Jungle
Came here to make sure this was listed.
Mother Night, Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein (it does have some anti-lbgtq messaging, but if I recall correctly it's a single paragraph and Heinlein has known biases. The term "grok" came from this book; I'm not the only one who despises how it's been co-opted by Musk)
Makes Me Wanna Holler - Nathan McCall
The Emperor's New Mind - Roger Penrose (especially pertinent with the hype/propaganda coming from oligarchs surrounding AGI/ASI/the singularity)
The Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan
The irony being that Musk doesn't seem to grok the meaning of the word grok.
Stolen Continents
These books opened my eyes.
From Freedom to Slavery: Rebirth of Tyranny in America by Gerry Spence
https://archive.org/details/fromfreedomtosl000spen/mode/1up
Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You & Your World
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/62558.Quantum_Psychology
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man
Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13542853-trust-me-i-m-lying
- The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism
- The Divide: Global Inequality From Conquest To Free Markets
- Anarchism And Its Aspirations / Anarchy Works
- The ABCs Of Socialism / Socialism ... Seriously: A Brief Guide To Surviving The 21st Century
- Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science And Gambles With Your Future
- The Search For A Nonviolent Future (Michael N. Nagler)
- Feminism For The 99%
- Currently reading "Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion With Radical Islam" And "Devil's Game: How The United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam"
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord.
Benjamin Blümchen audio story series. Mayor and most business men are corrupt, main character regularly engages in political action like organizing protests for animal rights and another major character is a female journalist.
It's insidious because they're popular children's stories featuring a talking elephant as main character. Back before everyone lived on TikTok, even conservative parents bought it for their children. And I think even if you don't quite remember most of it when you get older, stories like these really do influence how you see the world.
Other than that, reading newspapers did most of the work (of course that only works if it's not all full-on fascist propaganda).
Is it in english?
It's originally in German, IDK if there's a translation. Maybe the TV Shows/Movies got translations or at least subtitles? Though they don't seem to be that well-received.
When things fall apart - Pema Chodron.
punk as f*uck
if you speak(/read) german and consider yourself vaguely punk i recommend it. if you know any (cis male) german speaking punks, please slap their face with this book (they either understand and accept it or don't, in which case they desperately need to read this book).
it showcases the german punk scene from a flinta* perspective, highlighting how sexism and abuse didn't stop people who actually stood for something better and why it took a long long time for the scene to improve.
isbn 978-3-95575-187-6 , i'm sure your local book dealer is able to order it for you.
- Capital by Karl Marx
- The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee
- Workers Councils by Anton Pannekoek
- The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin
- The ABC of Communist Anarchism by Alexander Berkman
Can't believe this is the only mention of Conquest of Bread and Capital here. They are what turned my intuition of "the we've structured society seems unfair" into at least some basic understanding of the reality around me.
Although I think for most people (myself included) radicalization mostly comes from lived experiences rather than anything you read.
Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Related: he quotes Marinetti’s 1909 “Manifesto of Futurism” which is still frighteningly relevant.
Learning Perl, 2nd edition
Perl doesn't radicalise anyone, but it might turn them into a funny character.
Check out Evasion and Days of War, Nights of Love by Crimethinc. That's how I got my start