/lit/ - Literature

Pretty much all of them, in tiny increments.

Not any one book really but Buddhist philosophy did that for me. It's made me see almost everything in a different light and I'm a much more at peace than I used to be. I'm thinking of also looking into Taoism.

>I don't understand how someone can truly be committed to an idea/lifestyle (e.g. Nihilism, Christianity, Buddhism) when you have the internet to numb your mind and make you addicted
This is a problem that I have. I haven't really full committed to anything and I think it's because of fear.

>>7295896
>It's made me see almost everything in a different light and I'm a much more at peace than I used to be.

Do you meditate as well? If you have, how long did it take to feel a tangible effect?

>>7295849
Practice mindfulness OP. Practice being alone and being okay with it, and set aside time to avoid over-stimulation from trivial shit like internet. You are free and in no danger. Appreciate what you find beautiful for its beauty rather than its message.

You'll find yourself naturally drawn to what your soul cares about.

>>7295849
Stirner got me over the tendency to attempt to commit to a particular ideology, which I'm very grateful for.

>>7295849
Spinoza's Ethics, for the most part

>>7295915
>Practice being alone and being okay with it

It just feels unnatural to be away from my laptop and the internet. Like I'm wasting time sitting around or reading when I could on be posting on /lit/.

>>7295896
>This is a problem that I have. I haven't really full committed to anything and I think it's because of fear.
Could also simply be a symptom of the extreme pluralism of the internet age.

It was a lot easier to be consistent if you only had one religion or philosophy to commit to and knew nothing about the rest. Contemporary ideological commitment is almost like roleplaying.

Most of tamora pierces works have influenced me greatly, I now train with a bow staff in full plate for seven hours a day.

>>7295908
>>7295915
Lie down and give this a listen, he explains his (buddhist) outlook in a historical/religious context. It takes some attention but stick with the whole thing and you will probably learn something even if practice itself doesn't appeal to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX8PqznN0ao

>>7295849
just reading about authors i look up to and seeing how they destroyed themselves with drugs, smoking, etc helped convince me to avoid all that shit, which in turn keeps me very happy

Dostoevsky has infiltrated my thought more than I ever imagined, particularly Notes from Underground.

>>7295937
Perfectly normal paranoia, everyone in the universe gets that. Just begin to see things in terms of worthiness to your person. Do you grow more from reading, learning, practising something or from 4chan?

Nihilism doesn't require you to stay away from numbness and addiction, it just requires the understanding that nothing you do is meaningful.

>the wire is out
>book left in rain
ughhh

>>7295855
I'd have to agree with this. Though my drinking has gotten "better" from reading Hemingway, Thompson and Bukowski.

>>7295987
>Do you grow more from reading, learning, practising something or from 4chan?

I don't really do anything that makes me 'grow', I just browse /lit/ to kill time, same thing with reading and pretty everything else.

>>7295849

"Seven Storey Mountain" by Thomas Merton introduced me to contemplative Christianity and the notion of God as glorious, almighty and beautiful. It was also the first conversion I had read about which was not evangelical in nature: intellectually motivated, steady, slow, disciplined, painful, illuminating, perfecting.

"Death of the Liberal Class" by Chris Hedges was the first book I read on politics voluntarily and it acted as a kind of introduction to lefty politics, which I've since taken and run with.


I was in exactly your position a few years ago OP. I strongly felt I needed to get into reading but knew I had never been a "reader." I grabbed a couple books I thought were important and, to my surprise, I have learned how to be a "reader."

But yeah, this fucking internet thing eh?

>>7295995
>Though my drinking has gotten "better" from reading Hemingway, Thompson and Bukowski.
You mean that you moderated your drinking upon realising how it destroyed these sad lads?

>>7295937
Grab a hammer and destroy your laptop.
Problem solved.

Analects of Confucius, Karl Marx's Manuscripts of 1844.

>>7295996
Are you a man with thoughts and hopes or farm animal that needs to be topped up with his daily round entertainment-meal like an empty shell? Stop killing time, even if it means being bored. Kill your time by contemplating your life and what it consists of, even if it frightens you to find how sad you are.

>>7295937
I have this problem severely. The only real way to prevent laptop use that I've found effective for any amount of time is to:

1. Have a plan as to what you're going to do during the day and at what time

2. Not write off the day if you don't do 1 of the things i.e. if you ignore even half of the planned things don't just write off the day, do the rest

3. Most crucially, make it impossible to get the laptop without extreme effort. There will be moments of weakness and times where you feel so shit that you want to wank yourself into numbness and the only realistic way of not succumbing to it at first is to not have it be possible.

After this, the habit of being stronger feels more like you and when it becomes your identity not to dick about on the laptop, then having it is not such a problem.

I know this from partial experience and the reason I'm back here is because I conned myself into getting the laptop back and I'm much less happy than I was when I didn't.

>>7296038
Boredom is the source of all creativity tbh.

OP should also go for long solitary walks.

>>7296038
It's really hard to think like that though because, even with all these grand theories about consciousness and man, at the end of the day I'm a fragile meat computer like all the other 7 billion people on the planet and can die any day,any moment, no matter how much I try to think differently.

>>7295896
>Not any one book really but Buddhist philosophy did that for me. It's made me see almost everything in a different light and I'm a much more at peace than I used to be. I'm thinking of also looking into Taoism.
> I'm thinking of also looking into Taoism.
you don't really understand the true Dhamma, do you

The Book of Mozi, Crime and Punishment, The Fixer, Cannibals and Kings, The Three Kingdoms, Marsh Outlaws, Starship Troopers, Open World, and The Federalist Papers.

>>7296059
You aren't though. From the big bang to me making this post the universe has contrived to arrange you out of the mess of primordial energy many billions of years ago. But you aren't even separate from it, your entire sense of self is just an elaborate survival tool evolved to function with other humans. But you are literally the universe manifesting itself /at itself/ over 4chan. Think how preposterous that is. And you are getting all cute about dying and not being special.

>>7296070
Nope.

>>7296012
calm down tyler

>>7296102
>The Federalist Papers.
Why? Not being facetious, genuinely curious.

Laozi and Zhuangzi.

>>7295849
I agreed with Wittgenstein about the vast majority of things and now I can't stop analyzing others' statements for vacuous language, or looking at how a particular abstraction has no grounding in concrete reality so reasoning based on it is useless (which is a fucking pervasive mindset). I'm essentially living the therapeutic method from PI.
It sounds like a trifle but it essentially renders anything not observational or descriptive useless, which is a broader effect than you might think
Oddly enough it's made me a lot more attentive to aesthetics, so I walk through the prairie or take the train to the museum far far more than I used to

>>7296981
>or looking at how a particular abstraction has no grounding in concrete reality so reasoning based on it is useless (which is a fucking pervasive mindset).
but this lack of grounding is alright. treat your mind as a factory of abstractions as a sixth sense.

>>7296482

I feel like it gives me politically valid rhetoric. There's a special happiness involved with telling my peers that the founding fathers would utterly devastate their and their role model's arguments. Most of what is on the forefront of political discourse today is the same old recycled bullshit from centuries past.

>In the Ottoman or Turkish empire, the sovereign, though in other respects absolute master of the lives and fortunes of his subjects, has no right to impose a new tax. The consequence is that he permits the bashaws or governors of provinces to pillage the people without mercy; and, in turn, squeezes out of them the sums of which he stands in need, to satisfy his own exigencies and those of the state.

The targets of the above passage should be self evident. When the federal government is weak, it only opens the door for local potentates to fill the power vacuum. Better the tyrant a thousand miles away, than the tyrant on your doorstep.

I feel like a modern day Clarence Darrow, citing bible passages in order to demonstrate the opposition does not even understand their own foundations, if indeed anything at all.

It's also the greatest work attributed to Alexander Hamilton, and demonstrates his belligerent and outspoken style. His memoirs were burned, his papers fed to hogs, but his anonymously published letters belong to the world. When I read pieces written anonymously, I wonder who among us is the next Hamilton.

A Man for All Seasons

by Robert Bolt

it's a play about Thomas More

>>7296629
How does that help me?

I feel like I understand what the passage is saying and I can relate to the feeling and situation that is described, but I don't think it's very helpful.

There is no "and therefor the archer keeps x in mind" or "always remind yourself of x" at the end, there is no help.

Tzu just states a fact and I'm left feeling helpless, I know shit is wrong, I don't know how to fix it and he's is just being smug and pointing out bad things instead of helping make them not bad

>>7299260
The archer only fails because he wants not to fail. When he does things without an aim to win, failure cannot come in to being, because he's cannot winning either. In the end, what he's supposed to do is the same in all three cases; but he forgets he's just playing a game, and so he treats the situation differently.

To attain an ultimate victory you only need to give up. Then everything will be yours and you'll possess nothing.

I hate Western Buddhists so much. You're all so full of shit it's just unbelievable.

>>7295849
Metro 2033.
It didn't change my way of thinking, but it made me like books with philosophical themes. After reading it, I started reading Nieztche, Dostoievsky, Proust, etc.

Now, I have my own way of thinking. It's a mix of utilitarism and nihilism, I call it "not-giving-a-fuck-but-also-thinking-about-future"

>>7299757

psychoanalysis and anti-capitalism

>>7299260

>Tzu just states a fact and I'm left feeling helpless, I know shit is wrong, I don't know how to fix it and he's is just being smug and pointing out bad things instead of helping make them not bad

Pick up meditation.

Literally the best thing anyone can do for their mind in terms of effort/benefit ratio.

>>7299757

I love you tho :^)

>>7299757
Why do you hate 'Western Buddhists', people who have actually read the philosophy and adopted it on its merits. You realise that most of the people you would probably call 'legit Buddhists' read: people in Asia
have no real idea what Buddhism means cause they're just brought up around it. Look at the Buddhists in Myanmar committing genocide against Rohingyas for instance. Your post shows incredible naivety.

>"The Internet to numb your mind"

I like having a pocket sized copy of the worlds knowledge in my hands. Stop jacking off to anime, kid. It's making you goofy and antisocial

>>7299260

With Zhuangzi the answer to the various dilemmas of consciousness is always "stop giving a shit". If the need to win drains you of power, stop needing to win. Remind yourself that archery is just a game and a prize of gold is nothing at all. Why are you fantasizing and speculating about prizes and goals when the situation you are actually in is right there and demands your being present? The moral of the story, which Zhuangzi (why call him "Tzu"? it's just a title not his name) states in the voice of Confucius, is that "he who looks too hard at the outside gets clumsy on the inside". He's urging you to be here now and not complicate matters by thinking of consequences.

>>7299952
>calling other people naive
>thinks people commit genocide because of misunderstanding religion
l e l

>>7296162
Can mankind develop a kind of evolutionary confirmation bias from your approach to existence?

>>7299952
This goes for every religion tbh. Converts tend to be really serious and dedicated about it. You kind of have to be to make such a commitment. People born into religions, especially in modern times, tend to be lukewarm going through the motions minimal effort types.

>>7299757
zizek pls stay

>>7300026
Are Zhuangzi,Confucius and Lao Tzu's works well known and easy to find? This sounds pretty interesting so I might have a look at my library for them because I'm a poorfag and I can only afford books now and then.

>>7295855
This is the only right answer. It's also why I know I will never produce anything.

>>7300132
Yes.

Invest in an e-reader. It's about the price of six books and will give you uncountable amounts of books for free.

>>7296038
Did you just finish The Pale King or what?

>>7300148
Go to a fucking library

>>7300132

Maybe you should break in to the library and steal yourself a copy of Zhuangzi

>If one is to guard and take precautions against thieves who rifle trunks, ransack bags, and break open boxes, then he must bind with cords and ropes and make fast with locks and hasps. This the ordinary world calls wisdom. But if a great thief comes along, he will shoulder the boxes, hoist up the trunks, sling the bags over his back, and dash off, only worrying that the cords and ropes, the locks and hasps are not fastened tightly enough. In that case, the man who earlier was called wise was in fact only piling up goods for the benefit of a great thief.

Don't you want to be a great thief?

>>7300288
Is there a lit approved translation of Zhuangzi?

I'd also like to read Mencius. I've already read the Arthur Waley translation of the Analects.

>>7295849
The World as Will and Representation really was eye opening to me. I am a slow reader and it took me forever, but it was so worth it. I feel like as much as it influence me I didn't fully grasp everything there, and I want to read it again and also study the influences and followers of Schopenhauer.

Anyone have suggestions for philosophers that are a good counterpoint to this guy?

>>7300334

I really like Ziporyn's, but unfortunately it only does selected passages from the Outer Chapters and not the whole text. Watson's is also pretty good but does a lot less to explain all the allusions/puns/general whackadoo Chinese bullshit

>>7300132

http://ctext.org/analects

It has everything, in Chinese and English. You can also use http://www.purpleculture.net/chinese-pinyin-converter/ to really get a better understanding.

You can read just the English captions, but it is strongly recommended to brush up on Classical Chinese.

>>7300425
thanks fam

>>7295849

>>7300266
Your average library is nothing compared to what you can find online.

>>7300066
This. I'll never understand why in some countries newborn babies have their parent's religion stated as their own religions in identification documents and such.

>>7301693
just like I will never understand why the child has at least one nationality imposed on him as son as he is born.

>>7301730
That's completely unrelated. The baby's nationality guarantees that they have a right to live in the country now and in the future, a right to free education until the age of 18, and other benefits the state provides for its citizens. In other words it's a necessity. A religion determined by others at birth is not.

In addition to that the nationality of a person is not determined by their beliefs, while religion is.

>>7299739
>>7299821
>>7300026
I think it's fairly obvious that in the passage he's telling me I shouldn't give a shit, but he doesn't provide any advice on how to actually do that.

"Things would be better if you didn't care"
oh gee old wise chinaman, that's so incredibly helpful, my life has been transformed!

Things would be better if I was rich
Things would be better if I was all knowing
Things would be better if they were better

At least Epictetus tries to tell you about how you shouldn't care about things that are beyond your control because you can't influence them and it's only your reaction, not the thing itself that's giving and so on and so forth

chinks are hacks

>>7301805
>>In addition to that the nationality of a person is not determined by their beliefs, while religion is.
you are truly joking.

>>7301805
>In other words it's a necessity.
laws are human conventions, which anything you want but a necessity.

>>7301832
Why don't you read the book instead of throwing a tantrum about a single passage not satisfying your every need?

>>7301856
>you are truly joking
I should have specified, I meant the nationality you're born with. Of course, someone can still become a naturalised citizen of another country, but newborn babies either have the nationality of their parents, or the nationality of the countries they're born in.

You can also believe the Muhamad was a prophet of God and still be American. You can't believe he was a prophet of God and still be considered a Christian.

>laws are human conventions, which anything you want but a necessity
You're right. But citizenship is still important for a person to live a comfortable modern life with all the amenities associated with it that I already mentioned.

>>7301832
>I would stop wanting lots of things if I had all these things everyone told me I should want, I swear! I'm doing this for myself, I can stop any time!
Also nigga, you're on the internet age, I'd say you're closer to be all knowing than most of humanity's been.

>>7301832
+1 for epictetus, most useful philosopher of all time

>>7295896
I am also afraid to commit to anything I don't think it's a fear of commitment more so a fear of failure I have can't fail if I don't try syndrome. Or even more complex I'll put something off to cushion my ego when I finally do it and it turns out bad, that way I don't have to reason that it is me that is the issue rather then the procrastination. It is almost astonishing the things people will unconsciously do in order to shield themselves from failure and disappointment.

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

>>7295955
Nice, I really enjoyed listening to it.

>>7301805
You idiot that's citizenship, not nationally. Nationally doesn't impact ones rights in any western country at all. Reading something as stupid as this is truly painful.

>>7295849
I was impacted by Wolfe, Dostoevsky, Dante and Plato the most. But I think there probably were many other than did to a lesser degree.

>>7300362
>tfw people say it's an easy read for a philosophy book
>tfw it takes me for ever to read and understand a paragraph, especially when it's several pages long

bump

I live kind of like Diogenes with less angst and more pushing myself to travel from a backpack and rely on myself for most peace of mind. Takes having ultimate respect for yourself and the absurdities of tjhe machine.

>>7300362
>Anyone have suggestions for philosophers that are a good counterpoint to this guy?
nietzsche, of course.

>>7308966
Closer to an expansion than a counterpoint

So many deluded christfags in here.

>>7308984
I'd say part of both. He maintains the same worldview to a degree but with radically different ethical implications.

>>7295855
This. My view on life is a convenient mix of absurdism/egoism/stoicism/idealism/skepticism and it works wonders for my general mood; I feel almost as if nothing can absolutely shock or upset me - whilst still being totally enthralled in the day to day motions of life and passionate about my future. Of course, it will always develop and change but it's an incredibly rewarding feelings to believe that you hold some level of explored justification behind your values.

Probably Ursula le guin when I was a kid, earthsea instilled a certain way of looking at the world, I buzzed out on the struggle against ones own arrogance, the true speech thing, the anthropological eye with which she describes her imaginary world. Also tove jansson, the later moomin books are lovely low key psychological masterpieces. I still rate both of these women higher than most of the haute lit I've read since.

Dostoyevsky influenced me for the worse when I was an angsty teen and early 20een.

Patrick white, Joseph Conrad and yukio Mishima really influenced the way I experience the world in a way that's difficult to describe, but they're atmospheric, allusive writers that capture the secret language I also see in my surroundings.

Samuel butler had the most influence on how I try to live and relate to society, though not quite so harsh on my family as he and probably much more of a hypocrite.

Probably significant that most of the writers I mentioned were gay... I don't seem to be gay but I do have a feminine streak that is an indelible part of who I am, also difficult to describe - Mishima goes into this though, ask him

>>7309066
I should also mention T E Lawrence and Richard Burton in the same vein

>>7307358
Diogenes was basically the opposite of angsty. He was also well travelled.

>>7295915
The real me is bad. He hates people and wants to destroy them. I have to control his actions before he gets us in trouble....

The only way to my mind to do this is begin by ridding yourself of things you 'know' to be bad. Things which you feel shit about for doing. Cold turkey probably less effective than scaling back gradually. Once this has become your norm, growing to expand your meanings and life tastes will 1. Be a requirement as you have time with nothing to waste it on and 2. Come from a less muddied consciousness so that you can actually feel some confidence in your choices.

The beginning of growth is scaling back that which you know to be wrong action. Remember this

>>7309066
Could you elaborate on the
>Dostoyevsky influenced me for the worse when I was an angsty teen and early 20een.

I am an early 20een and I'm reading Dostoyevsky for the first time. What will befall me?

>>7309066
most men are slightly faggy

>>7301805
if you dont want to go to school
that child ("you") gets fucking sent to Juvenile detention

>>7301832
asians seem to worship conformity as a virtue
tenants like "have no desire" fit into that

Would you stop bumping this shit thread. We get it, you're shit at life, get over it.

>>7309066
you seem like someone i'd get along with. i love that you mentioned t e lawrence. love your whole post.

>>7311204
wish more of them could embrace it. would make it easier to get along with them.

>>7311303
This thread is one of the few interesting ones on here right now.

>>7311389
this thread is plebs rummaging around in the dark asking how to live their life on a board where only fucking idiots go.

This is like if /r/getmotivated

literal AIDS my friend

>>7311443
xDDDDDD
CHUCKLED HEARTEDLY MEIN FRIENDO!1

>>7311477
I can understand why you'd ignore it and pretend I'm memeing because you don't like being insulted but there's the truth for you. Read it again.