Rising Up and Rising Down
Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means
by William T. Vollmann · first published 2004
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Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means Author: William T. Vollmann It's a 7 volume set, but has a one volume abridged version which is one of the more fascinating and thought-provoking…
on “Ask HN: Books with a high signal to noise ratio?” ↗William Vollmann's Rising Up & Rising Down is worth your time. If you're inclined towards philosophy of science or epistemology, I'd also recommend R Nozick's Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World.
on “Ask HN: What book are you reading right now?” ↗This is an interesting list. I strongly recommend _The Good Earth_ which is one of the best books I have ever read. In the non-fiction category, I would nominate _Rising Up and Rising Down_[1] by William T. Vollmann. There is a single, abridged volume. It's a grand, sweeping, beautiful and fascinating work. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Up_and_Rising_Down
on “Brutality of Life Reading List” ↗…specifically: _Racing The Beam_ (study of the atari 2600 platform) _The Future was Here_ (study of the amiga platform) Best books I've read in the last five years: _Debt: The First 5000 Years_ _Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means_ (william vollman)
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in 2012” ↗…justification of violence or it's utility, I recommend William T. Vollmann's exhaustive, intricate attempt to establish a framework for understanding the motivations, morals, and ethics of violence in his work Rising Up and Rising Down: Some thoughts on Violence, Freedom & Urgent Means. To give some idea of what the text is like, here's a little bit of it from a section called "Where Do My Rights End?": Justified Choices of the…
on “Son, as soon as someone puts their hands on you...” ↗…enable drug cartels to exist in the first place must be worse than the leaders of any individual drug cartel? Any kind of serious analysis of who's more right would end up being a work at the scale of Rising Up and Rising Down, that's probably best avoided. If we oversimplify cartels into innocent businessmen just looking to sell drugs, with governments being the ones that introduced violence into the equation in their effort…
on “Mexican Forces Kill Nation's Most-Wanted Cartel Boss” ↗