Is it an insane thought of mine to have this desire to become a scholar and contribute to the mythological canon of Greek theology? I honestly feel like there is esoteric knowledge of particular myths that I am privy to that needs to be expressed in some fashion.
I hope it's not some form of latent insanity or my drug abuse that's making me feel like I have the power to resurrect ancient lost knowledge of Greek theological thought
No, but I can absolutely guarantee you that if you actually do the work of background reading, you'll go through like sixty five stages of meta-realization that you were incredibly naive and knew nothing, and there is a whole world out there that has already explicitly articulated much or all of what you vaguely felt you wanted to say
I know because I had/have similar things and that tends to be what happens
>>7625857
Not to say you should give up on the dream
>The fact is, you get great art only from mutilated egos. Only mutilated egos are obsessive enough.
>Men's egotism, so disgusting in the talentless, is the source of their greatness as a sex. ... intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species.
cool op, so were'd you learn your ancient greek and latin?
>>7625857
What are your experiences with this line of thinking?
>>7625866
From my extremely spiritual best friend, who in his pursuits in studying the Bible learned both Hebrew and Greek. I admittedly only understand Greek in a very cursory way, but he's provided me with enough resources to effectively discern the true meaning of the language.
>>7625868
I was convinced I would contribute something amazing so I went to university, and had a shitload of successive paradigm shifts, of orders of magnitude each time so that even how naive I was 6 months ago is pretty embarrassing, but how naive I was when I started is like geometrically more fucking embarrassing.
Now I think I'm finally cresting the point where I'm not going to have any more "oh woops, my top secret brilliant idea is an afterthought everyone had a century ago" moments. It's not even like that, it's just like realising that you didn't even know the rules of the game and you were trying to come up with master strategies, and then every new bit of rules you learn is game-changing so you have to revise everything.
I still have my drive and the deranged sense that I have original insights to poop out, but still. It took a long time to get here. Like four years and two degrees worth of time. And I'm arguably just more insane now, because now that I have actually reached some level of expertise, I'm just at that point where it's equally plausible that I've built a defensive sphere of "I've read more than you on this topic, so clearly I know that my batshit harebrained idea is good and your estimation of it is bad." I have the same esoteric prophet delusion as you.
I will say though, if you are 100% sure of a) your deranged fixation on your chosen subject, and b) your deranged fixation on glory, it's good fuel for surpassing mediocre intellectual jobbers who never feel that drive. You just want to be sure it won't cut out from under you during paradigm shift #8, which is roughly the one where you realise there aren't 14 potential mega-authors who already wrote on your thingie that you therefore have to read, but 257, and they each had 21 mid-level importance influences, and so on.
>>7625880
Definitely see if you can learn Attic Greek as a litmus test.
Get Hansen & Quinn's Greek: An Intensive Course off of libgen.
>>7625890
This is genuinely insightful and I thank you for it. I'm very curious though, what was the hidden knowledge that you felt you were privy to?
>>7625893
It's intimidating, but I'll put it in my notes of things I currently need to do
>>7625880
I'm the only one among my friends who studies the Bible seriously. You're lucky to have a patrician friend like that, OP!
>>7625840
go for it my friend, i would read your theses
>>7625898
Just a weird historical hermeneutics thing that has become broader and more phenomenological as I've de-retarded myself, but still have infinitely long ways to go.
Definitely stick with your dreams though. I honestly can't tell you how good it feels to hit some plateau where you discover a new group of authors or entire school of thought and you can tell every single thing they wrote is going to enhance your ideas qualitatively. It's like seeing a boss drop three uniques in Diablo 2.
>>7625917
It's a pretty daunting language but if you master it precociously early you can at least guarantee yourselves scholarships out the asshole if you want to go the academic route. Latin might be a better first choice. Also check out G.S. Kirk and E.R. Dodds or something I dunno.
>>7625893
Mastronarde's Introduction to Attic Greek is the best there is. It's the way I am learning it.
>>7627497
I got this a few weeks ago. It's been okay so far, is it actually going to take me far enough to read the classics?
