Cruel Optimism
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Narrated by:
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Amanda McKibbin
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By:
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Lauren Berlant
About this listen
A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the social-democratic promise of the postwar period in the United States and Europe has retracted.
People have remained attached to unachievable fantasies of the good life - with its promises of upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and durable intimacy - despite evidence that liberal-capitalist societies can no longer be counted on to provide opportunities for individuals to make their lives “add up to something”.
Arguing that the historical present is perceived affectively before it is understood in any other way, Berlant traces affective and aesthetic responses to the dramas of adjustment that unfold amid talk of precarity, contingency, and crisis. She suggests that our stretched-out present is characterized by new modes of temporality, and she explains why trauma theory - with its focus on reactions to the exceptional event that shatters the ordinary - is not useful for understanding the ways that people adjust over time, once crisis itself has become ordinary. Cruel Optimism is a remarkable affective history of the present.
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- Unabridged
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In this beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned collection of essays, Ayn Rand throws new light on the nature of art and its purpose in human life. Once again, she demonstrates her bold originality and her refusal to let conventional ideas define her sense of the truth. Rand eloquently asserts that one cannot create art without infusing it with one's own value judgments and personal philosophy - even an attempt to withhold moral overtones only results in a deterministic or naturalistic message.
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Essential AYN
- By Mica on 07-15-08
By: Ayn Rand
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Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
- How to Finally, Really Grow Up
- By: James Hollis PhD
- Narrated by: Gary Galone
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
What does it really mean to be a grown-up in today's world? We assume that once we "get it together" with the right job, marry the right person, have children, and buy a home, all is settled and well. But adulthood presents varying levels of growth and is rarely the respite of stability we expected. Turbulent emotional shifts can take place anywhere between the ages of 35 and 70 when we question the choices we've made, realize our limitations, and feel stuck - commonly known as the "midlife crisis".
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The great bait and switch.
- By real. on 12-14-19
By: James Hollis PhD
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Irrationality
- A History of the Dark Side of Reason
- By: Justin E. H. Smith
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal”. But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today - from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump - Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite.
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A good brain workout
- By ThomasC on 04-09-19
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Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
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Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
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How Much is Enough?
- Money and the Good Life
- By: Edward Skidelsky
- Narrated by: Clay Teunis
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
What constitutes the good life? What is the true value of money? Why do we work such long hours merely to acquire greater wealth? These are some of the questions that many asked themselves when the financial system crashed in 2008. This book tackles such questions head-on.The authors begin with the great economist John Maynard Keynes. In 1930 Keynes predicted that, within a century, per capita income would steadily rise, people’s basic needs would be met, and no one would have to work more than fifteen hours a week.
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Not what I expected at all!
- By Chi on 05-22-23
By: Edward Skidelsky
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The Courage to Create
- By: Rollo May
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
What if imagination and art are not, as many of us might think, the frosting on life but the fountainhead of human experience? What if our logic and science derive from art forms rather than the other way around? In this trenchant volume, Rollo May helps all of us find those creative impulses that, once liberated, offer new possibilities for achievement. A renowned therapist and inspiring guide, Dr. May draws on his experience to show how we can break out of old patterns in our lives.
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May takes on the Creative Act
- By Lowball on 01-16-19
By: Rollo May
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The News
- A User's Manual
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
The news is everywhere. We can’t stop constantly checking it on our computer screens, but what is this doing to our minds? We are never really taught how to make sense of the torrent of news we face every day, writes Alain de Botton (author of the best-selling The Architecture of Happiness), but this has a huge impact on our sense of what matters and of how we should lead our lives.
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Quit the news
- By Bett Bollhoefer on 05-16-15
By: Alain de Botton
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On Our Best Behavior
- The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good
- By: Elise Loehnen
- Narrated by: Elise Loehnen
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
We congratulate ourselves when we resist the donut in the office breakroom. We celebrate our restraint when we hold back from sending an email in anger. We feel virtuous when we wake up at dawn to get a jump on the day. We put others’ needs ahead of our own and believe this makes us exemplary. In On Our Best Behavior, journalist Elise Loehnen explains that these impulses—often lauded as unselfish, distinctly feminine instincts—are actually ingrained in us by a culture that reaps the benefits, via an extraordinarily effective collection of mores known as the Seven Deadly Sins.
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Autobiography in Disguise
- By Lindsey on 06-11-23
By: Elise Loehnen
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The Master and His Emissary
- The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
- By: Iain McGilchrist
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 27 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain - the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the "rational" side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master.
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The Master and His Emissary
- By Michael on 11-07-20
By: Iain McGilchrist
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A Secular Age
- By: Charles Taylor
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 42 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? Almost everyone would agree that we - in the West, at least - largely do. And clearly the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly in the last few centuries. In what will be a defining book for our time, Charles Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean - of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others.
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Needs Guest Narrators for French and German
- By Norman on 06-13-15
By: Charles Taylor
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A Time to Build
- From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream
- By: Yuval Levin
- Narrated by: Ford Enlow
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics is polarized and bitterly divided. Culture wars rage on campus, in the media, social media, and other arenas of our common life. And for too many Americans, alienation can descend into despair, weakening families and communities and even driving an explosion of opioid abuse. Left and right alike have responded with populist anger at our institutions, and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cleaning house, draining swamps. But, as Yuval Levin argues, this is a misguided prescription.
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Incisive and Illuminating
- By Jakob on 01-26-23
By: Yuval Levin
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What listeners say about Cruel Optimism
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- Mia
- 05-25-24
The writers voice is so charismatic
The writing style of this is so effortless good that she’s able to kinda just review various media (unknown to me) and break down the story alongside her interpretation.
A cross between an acquaintance ranting and your professor having fun.
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- aaron elnecave
- 03-29-22
horrible narrator
horrible horrible horrible horrible robotic narrator, but its a shame since whats written its so good.
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- Karen Pittelman
- 09-07-23
Terrible narration
I don’t usually mind an almost robotic style—I’d rather that then a narrator who overdoes it. But this is read in such a flat tone and bizarre rhythm that the text becomes difficult to comprehend. The sentences lose all their meaning. I switched to using my screen reader with a pdf of the book—which really is a robot voice!—and it was instantly easier to follow.
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