People want to tell everything instead of telling the best 15 words. They want to learn everything instead of the best 15 words. In this thread, instead post the best 15-words from a book you've read recently (or anything else). It has to stand on its own. It's not a summary, the whole value needs to be contained in those words.
- It doesn't need to cover everything in the book, it's just the best 15 words.
- It doesn't need to be a quote, it's just the best 15 words.
- It doesn't have to be 15 words long, it's just the best "15" words.
- It doesn't have to be precisely true, it's just the best 15 words.
- It doesn't have to be the main 15 words, it just has to be the best 15 words.
- It doesn't have to be the author's 15 words, it just has to be the best 15 words.
- Edit: It shouldn't just be a neat quote--the point of the exercise is to struggle to move from a book down to 15 words.
I'll start in the comments below.
(Voted by the Schelling study group as the best exercise of the meeting.)
HUGE SPOILER: Technically, historical materialism and economic determinism was first... yup, a core Marxist idea.
Would anyone care to dispute the object-level claim I made, or are people just spree-downvoting?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_determinism
Wikipedia seems to be pretty unambiguious about Marx being the first notable theorist here. It's not about "neutrality", there just isn't any evidence that this claim is mistaken.