Anyone here feel as though thy have any sort of purpose/meaning/direction to their life?
If so, how's that? And what books to read for this?
A book likely won't give you that. I've found mine with age and experience. How old are you man?
>>7812480
23. A book won't give it I know but maybe a pointer or a new perspective to change the baseline feeling a bit
I thought I had found God last time I read VALIS, if that helps, but I had been up for a few days and altitude was involved.
the only purpose I've ever been able to maintain has been to just be true to what I believe is right deep down, regardless of where it takes me. Closest thing to god. ALAN WWAAAAAATTTTTTTSSSSSSSS YÒOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
>>7812494
Same guy who asked your age, I've taken a bit of everything I've read and moved forward with it. From Don Quixote to McCarthy there's a bit of knowledge in damn near everything written. Speaking of McCarthy, Suttree has a good message to take forward in life but it's probably his best so if you haven't ready any of his other works hit those first.
I'm lucky enough that I do, and I escaped a pretty shitty fucking life because of it.
Just individuate the fuck out of yourself. Imagine that you have all these murky, inchoate potentials and trajectories and hints of things deep inside you, and that they will only ever amount to something coherent and great if you manage to develop them all to ridiculous levels, with each successive level being exponentially harder than the last, and each being an insidious piece of shit that tries to convince you it's the final plateau, the promised land, and you're finally all done.
Also, bombard your mind with as much fodder as possible. The sick joke of intellectual development is that it kicks in unevenly, once it hits critical mass(es), never linearly with a sense of gradual progress. Always bottlenecks followed by explosions. It takes years of thankless, random rambling around in literature and philosophy and whatever the fuck else (math, music, who knows, depends on you) before things will gel, and then suddenly everything will seem to gel all at once. Once you hit that point, if you're lucky, you'll have more of an idea of how the whole process works, so that you can start it up again, undergo another several years of immersion, transcend yourself again, etc. But again, the real trick is how easy it is to assume you've reached your final form.
Once you self-transcend a few times, you will finally notice you have momentum. Then possibilities start to seem limitless.
Mystical, irrational beliefs also help. It's hard to devote your life to the minutiae of some subject(s) unless you feel like you're hedgehogging your way down to the gooey godhead at the centre.
Also helps to be innately talented. Talent is like free food on the road to paradise. The talentless won't ever die of starvation, but they sure feel the starvation itself. Talented people are born lucky, with a pack full of snacks (validation) to get them through. Seems like a great deal, but whereas the talentless mostly end up giving up because of how difficult the path is, most of the talented usually end up finding some stump to sit on and eat from the infinite cake gourd until they're dead or whatever. Really really brilliant people are often blinded by their own brilliance because it's so easy, it's like a superatomic zero-point fuel core at the centre of a rickety steam engine robot. Everything came so easily to Nabokov because of his brain and his synesthesia that he just jerked off to butterflies and prose until he died. There's a thing I can't remember about the road to gnosis being steadier and straighter when you actually have to find a rhythm and plod through it, actually understand the road, rather than just bounding along because you were born with superman genes.
Sorry for the rambling post I'm drunk.
>>7812463
You need to have tremendous willpower and sense of self-delusion to force one particular narrative on yourself at all times to be honest. If you relax just a single moment it will vanish into thin air and you'll be back in sandboxmode with the rest of us.
>>7812525
Who would you double down on pretending to be a person? The disillusion will be twice as hard when you're inevitable confronted with its untruth.
>>7812525
In actual, real life, applicable terms, how have you done this?
Not in total if that's too hard, but at least some examples? Often I see things like this written and then when it comes to the lived life of the person who claims they are like this, they fuck around and do nothing just like everyone else who's base feeling is 'i dunno, just get by'
>>7812595
I was a borderline insane dropout with no friends, no life experience, an alcohol problem, and tons of other problems. I basically didn't exist except as a goblin in my mom's basement. I had to struggle to prove to the government that I existed and was a citizen of my own country. I decided I loved an academic subject, so I worked hard to educate myself (in it and in a lot of other things) and climb the ladder, basically from community college to a good university, continued working hard, got to Ivy PhD eventually.
A lot of my motivation was based on spite and desperation to escape poverty for the first 3 years, but after that it clicked, and I'm happy it did. I empathise with people who are in the spite or pre-spite phase, because they won't even get to see the light at the end of the tunnel until they walk like three miles into it. But then it's okay. Well either that or you just go nuts after a while.
Individuation is the thing. It's like your own formal cause, buried up your ass.
>>7812574
Whatever I was before, it was less of a person.
>>7812523
I'm interested in the message you found in Suttree. It's one of my favorite books.
I see Suttree as an easy-going man, somewhat simple in his tastes and humble. He can roll with anybody and isn't afraid to care about people. Curious and contemplative. His outlook is stoic, not positive or negative, but nostalgia- and melancholy-tinged.
Though he abandons a situation when it gets bad, and it often gets bad. He runs away from a lot of things.
He's practically identical in those aspects like Nicholson's character in Five Easy Pieces. Probably why both works resonate so strongly with me.
>>7812625
>Whatever I was before, it was less of a person.
Personhood is an arbitrary narrative at best, persons literally only exists as part of stories we make up. Why cling to it so tightly?
Overcoming personhood is more worthwhile than strengthening the illusion.
>>7812463
Almost any book regardless of genre will do. You just gotta pay attention and think about what you've read.
Like >>7812525 said you gotta build up momentum in my opinion. Single big successes amidst a ton of failures aren't worth shit, you're better off in the long run with multiple homeopathic doses of success most of the time. Keeps you confident. Keeps you going forward even when you don't feel like it.
What is going on in your life?
>>7812625
How old were you when you started unfucking your shit up?
>>7812660
Unless you are some sort of super-monk, you live via your own story and to dismiss as arbitrary doesn't do any good. The same way that if you recognise you have 'no self' you still act as though you have a self. Either you meditate for the rest of your life or you accept that this is the case. To pretend like it barely matters is a much bigger self illusion.
So your story matters, humans evolved a near infinite capacity to story stories, which is why all the memory techniques that the best memory guys in the world use involve stories.
Your memories and self perceptions will never be completely accurate but they will always be a huge chunk of what your are, what you do and how you feel, regardless of whether you like it or not.
Investing time in making it how you want it is worth doing and you can't 'uncling' to it in any non-superficial way unless, again, you go down the Buddha route
>>7812671
absolutely nothing. Porn + 4chan. As for what matters/is worth doing other than keeping myself anxiety free and numb, I do not know. Nothing seems to have any foundation which can't be knocked over so I'm just on non-thinking mode
>>7812660
I don't know, man, ego death in my experience was a) a living nightmare and b) unsustainable when you have to think about getting a real job.
>>7812679
Early 20s was when I really started making outwardly visible progress, but I started doing my self-education stuff in mid-late teens.
>>7812684
Yeah, in terms of philosophy of self/personhood I always think of that Geertz quote, "we are the story we tell ourselves about ourselves," but applied more to narrativity. I think Ricoeur has something on that but I can't even remember specifically.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/16009861/ref=zg_b_bs_16009861_1
>>7812708
ebin
>>7812714
Not even trolling. Read some popular books on theology. You don't have to agree with them, but they are insightful.
>>7812684
You can accept that you have to use some form of self-image without dedicating your entire life to that self-image though. Even a monk will respond when you call his name, but getting carried away with it and getting into trouble because Barry's precious honour or quitting not being able to fit into Carl's arbitrary narrative is another thing. A narrative can serve you to a degree, but in a lot of cases people end up serving their narratives.
In other words, people get thoroughly spooked.
>>7812707
>I don't know, man, ego death in my experience was a) a living nightmare and b) unsustainable when you have to think about getting a real job.
Was it brought about as part of a drug induced psychosis by any chance? That might have something to do with it.
>>7812748
What do you live by that isn't your narrative in some sense?
I have no idea how people motivate themselves.
I'm 26 and a complete failure as a human, I have aspirations of course, get myself in shape (im not fat just unhealthy) try to become a filmmaker or write.
I just have 0 willpower, the worst part is I feel kind of content to just sit around, browse the net and play Dark Souls all day.
>>7812688
>absolutely nothing. Porn + 4chan.
This is pretty much me. No school, no job. I went to community college with the intention of then going to uni. I did very well, graduated, and developed an urge for academia, but then for one reason or another I never applied to uni. I ended up working some dead-end jobs for a bit and now I've been unemployed for over a year. I severely regret not following through on my initial goal.
>>7812525
This guy gets it. To put it in other words, life is cyclical. If things go right, they'll go by this: desire to change > working towards success > success > receiving further diminishing returns on success.
Most people get their shit fucked up on the last step. Instead of getting a new desire for change, they stay on what's worked in the past even though the variables have changed. This will lead to a decline relative to their period of growth and eventually bring them back to the first stage, accomplishing nothing.
To visualize this, consider a circle. You can't go higher on a circle in 2 dimensional space obviously, you just end up where you started. If you view a circle in 3 dimensional space, or a helix, you still have the cyclical nature of a circle, but are able to transcend. Even in a the bust part of a cycle, you are still better off than when you were in the previous boom cycle. So even when you have the illusion of no progress, as long as you don't allow yourself to regress, you're still above where you were earlier.
As for reading material, just about everything. Every book has the author's version of the truth in it. You just have to find authors that are similar to you, then find authors that are completely different. This leads to synthesization.
>>7812775
Would you expect someone who doesn't even lift to go to the gym and be able to squat 4pl8s?
Then how can you go from a NEET to a successful filmmaker without further deriving the steps it takes to go from a NEET to a filmmaker?
>>7812777
this is good minus the circle bs. i.e the first two lines.
ty, good insight
>>7812800
I'm aware of the steps but that's not the problem, my problem is 0 willpower. It's like my own dreams don't interest me enough to pursue them.
>>7812766
Well, you can attempt to 'live' without 'living by' something. You can try to diminish the narrative. You can get pretty good at turning it off for periods of time.
It's possible to cut onions without concerning yourself with 'being John cutting onions'.
Learning to let go of the habit of perpetual narrative can be a pleasant experience and life can get pretty unproblematic like that, since a tremendous amount of our problems are problems within the narrative rather than 'life itself'.
>>7812802
>he doesn't visualize everything
Not gonna make it.
>>7812809
Only way then is to artificially create willpower.
Go film people at a homeless shelter. You could probably get them to do and say some interesting things. Even if you don't actually produce anything from it, it beats sitting on 4chan wishing that you really wished you were a filmmaker.
>>7812809
I had this to and now i've slipped back into it. I think the way to change this is to get rid of your comforts. i.e. the things you do which you 'know' to be wrong. So for me it was porn and internet and tv. When I got rid of it, I had to change habits to something better, which at the time was reading.
Eventually this new thing becomes the automatic baseline and it's no longer much about will, it's habit.
I could feel this working and I was changing. Unfortunately one day I was stressed, drove to where I left my laptop and jerked off for 6 hours straight. And now I'm back to being a useless fag. But it does work so long as you follow the steps
>>7812463
Thomas Bernhard- Extinciton
Thomas Bernhard- Frost
Jose Rizal- Noli Me Tangere
Joseph Conrad- Youth
Cervantes- Don Quixote
>>7812809
Have you considered that the 'you have to passionately pursue dreams' narrative isn't universally applicable and maybe even bullshit altogether?
It's just a meme that is populair in Western societies because celebrities and such love to parrot it, but there's nothing inherently compelling about it.
>>7812809
Get an ex-girlfriend whose new boyfriend you secretly feel jealous of and vow to make her fucking regret dumping you the next time you meet.Worked for me.
>>7812814
The terms 'living' and 'living by' are too arbitrary for this conversation to go anywhere t b h.
Just because you don't say you are John cutting onions doesn't mean you're not John cutting onions.
And as for that difference I don't think it's much developed. You could have a person who wants his narrative to be someone who's in the moment and does things with full concentration i.e. cutting onions
>>7812841
>getting hung up on a grill
swerve lad
>>7812625
>I decided I loved an academic subject, so I worked hard to educate myself (in it and in a lot of other things) and climb the ladder, basically from community college to a good university, continued working hard, got to Ivy PhD eventually.
I stopped at the community college part. It's been two years since then. Is it still too late to continue?
>>7812815
IT may be an alright guide post but as for being accurate or useful when trying to implement the steps with accuracy complexity and the nuance required for it then the circle shit'll become pretty meaningless and no doubt have a number of times where it feels flimsy and doesn't map onto experience very well. At least to me
>>7812860
Then that part of my post wasn't for you, was it?
>>7812826
>>7812830
Yeah, I know what I need to do, it's just doing it. I guess my starting point will be less internet and actually reading and writing.
>>7812840
I have considered it. I have wondered if I'm just one of those people who "exists" and can be content with a basic life. I don't always hate my position.
>>7812864
yeh, which is essentially what i said and am saying
>>7812847
>The terms 'living' and 'living by' are too arbitrary for this conversation to go anywhere t b h.
Not at all. You 'live by' some creed or mission statement for example, otherwise you just 'live'. One involves a narrative, the other does not necessarily. Flowers supposedly live without narratives and assigned identities, to name an example. A lot of 'higher' lifeforms seem to do so as well.
>Just because you don't say you are John cutting onions doesn't mean you're not John cutting onions.
The thought only exists for as long as it is entertained. The moment you stop being self-aware in the context of this narrative 'John' disappears. When you 'lose yourself' (which is an apt phrase) in the onion cutting 'you' disappear. You stop the conceptual differentiation that is needed to isolate you from the whole in the first place. You're seem to assume conceptual duality is something that is present even without a person doing the conceptualising, as if the Mont Blanc literally is the Mont Blanc even if people didn't call it the Mont Blanc. Language is fine and useful, but we are at a risk to get so caught up in it that we start confusing the language for reality to the degree that we consider the language more real, which leads to all kind of problems.
>And as for that difference I don't think it's much developed. You could have a person who wants his narrative to be someone who's in the moment and does things with full concentration i.e. cutting onions
Yet when he is in the moment there is no longer a narrative, which I think is a very important difference.
>>7812867
>I have considered it. I have wondered if I'm just one of those people who "exists" and can be content with a basic life. I don't always hate my position.
They make it harder than ever on you though, there are billions being spent on convincing you to be a unique snowflake and that you must individualise yourself at all costs, preferably with a large range of consumer choices which really define you and show how special you are.
>>7812463
This is a common trait shared by many people suffering from schizophrenia
A lot of the time people suffering from these delusions feel that they have magical powers or that they've been selectively chosen to do something great
Don't worry OP. You're not alone!
>>7812888
we're assuming you're not a flower. Why take it out of context to prove a non-point?
There's still narrative when you are in the moment, you just don't keep reminding yourself of it. For example, if there was no awareness to John that he was cutting onions to (for example) make a meal, to then eat then he wouldn't be doing it.
Take another example. Athletes often go into flow state when training but if, say, a UFC fighter didn't have some awareness of the reasons (narrative) he is fighting: money, to be a champion, to dismantle his opponent, then the action'd break down.
Again, you don't have to keep telling yourself over and over what you're doing for it to fit into a wider picture/narrative.
>>7812895
Yeah I know but I could probably handle it. Just means not being around people much since they're obsessed with being interesting. I prefer being on my own...
I'm going to go think.
Just be yourself.
>>7812912
>we're assuming you're not a flower. Why take it out of context to prove a non-point?
I'm clarifying my perspective, not proving points. I'm just trying to show that the distinction between living and living by is not arbitrary. In order to do so I named a thing of which I would be sure you would intuitively agree that it lives while also not 'living by' anything.
>There's still narrative when you are in the moment, you just don't keep reminding yourself of it. For example, if there was no awareness to John that he was cutting onions to (for example) make a meal, to then eat then he wouldn't be doing it.
I would say the narrative was temporarily suspended, and therefore non-existent for the time being. Otherwise you'd have to argue that you are always thinking of a polar bear in the background for the polar bear to resurface again after the last time you thought about it, and every other thing you could be reminded off would be present right now. But they aren't, they are not demonstrably there in the meanwhile, they just pop into your conciousness. Before you read this post there was no polar bear in your conciousness, just like there was no John in John's conciousness while he lost himself in the cutting of onions.
>Take another example. Athletes often go into flow state when training but if, say, a UFC fighter didn't have some awareness of the reasons (narrative) he is fighting: money, to be a champion, to dismantle his opponent, then the action'd break down.
I'd very much disagree. When a fighter focuses he especially loses himself in the activity. If anything all the motivations fall away. In that moment he is doing what he does with all his attention, with no room left for thought about paychecks, providing for his family or the next stop. Those things only appear again later. If anything being aware of the narrative inhibits functioning. That's why fighters train until it comes natural to them. That's why soldiers are drilled extensively. The goal is not to think, not to be a self-concious commenter to the thing happening but to act wholeheartedly without distraction.
>>7812965
You took 'living' to a different context. The word living can have many uses, in the context we have been using it, we've not been relating it to the type of 'living' plants do at all. It's just going off the point of the discussion to mention it. It' taking it to a different context of meaning which we're not discussing here. Also you could say a plant 'lives by' the sun and the rain and growth and so on and it'd make some sense. It is arbitrary in that case too. It lives by certain structures and constraints of it's plant 'being'.. whatever that might be.
Again, it's this distinction between saying out loud why you're doing something and knowing it on some level that you are not focussing on because you have another task which requires all current conscious attention available.
The question, again, is about narrative of life. It doesn't matter if he's got no attention on bills or his family when fighting,it's not about what he's consciously doing in that moment. It is part of a narrative because it is done for reasons. Reasons which don't always have to be on his mind as he does it but he has to be aware of in his being on some level otherwise he wouldn't do it.
>>7812463
Recently yeah. And it's the shit. Thanks for asking. After being homeless and pissing away my teenaged and young adult years, I quit tripping three years ago, replaced it by drinking more. Quit doing that two years ago, and replaced it by doubling the amount of cigarettes I smoked, then quit that a year ago. Well by that point I spent all my spare time hiding in literature. And so since everyone i'd ever known was part of the non-reading drug scenes, I no longer had friends. After I got bored with fiction, I read nonfiction, and after I realized everyone everywhere is full of shit and trying to keep at bay the nagging realization that nobody has any idea what's going on, I decided to stand reading science and math textbooks. I thought about killing myself a lot. No friends and no direction at all. Then I went and decided to take my sats and start looking at college programs, lo and behold, i've already read my way through several bachelor's degrees. I start community college this summer. should be easy. Suddenly life's not so bleak and I can chill out and try to start making friends again.
Sorry about the long bio post but I keep seeing "My life is so hard" threads and I feel compelled to tell people to chill. It's fine.
>>7813032
Sounds cool, i'm impressed. Though I don't think that makes you qualified to tell people that it's fine and going to be for them
>>7813038
If they quit whining and bust ass, it will be fine.
>>7813043
You sound like one of those cunts who made it as a pop singer and then goes 'if you WORK HARD ENOUGH everyone can make it as a pop singer trust me I know I worked hard and it happened for me that means it can work that way for billions of people because life isn't a game of chairs, there's unlimited room for everyone everywhere even though everything is a constant competition tee hee :)'
>>7813100
*musical chairs desu
>>7813100
I see where you're coming from, but it's not comparable to popstardom. I'm just on my way to functional adulthood. I didn't say "Just try and all your wildest dreams will come true." I said, "Bust ass and it will be fine"
>>7813132
what if you bust ass and while doing so get hit by a truck
>>7813137
Sue the driver, sue the company for whom you were busting ass, file for disability, food stamps. Hospitals have to get you in stable condition whether or not you give them your information. Did you break your legs? Work a desk job. Did you break your arms? Nobody's ever going to expect shit from you again. Did you die? Then you're at peace. It's still fine. Are you homeless? Visit the library. Too depressed to read? Quit whining. Read. Too poor to provide for yourself? Then you qualify for the pell grant. Community college is free. Marijuana is cheap. It's fine. You'd just have to let go of these modernized concepts of standard living.
>>7813163
Sounds like you've tasted success for yourself and haven't a clue t b h
>>7813132
So according to your logic, everything anyone ever lacks is hard works and hard works will fix all your problems.
So if a person does have problems and his life isn't fine, he must not be 'busting ass' enough. Thereby reducing all misfortune to laziness.
It legitimises the windfalls of the successful as just and trivialises the hardships of the unsuccessful as them being merely bad people.
You don't see any flaws in this type of thinking that is pretty much one step away from saying 'if good things happen to you god loves you and if bad things happen to you god hates you so the world is just and fair just as it is'?
>>7812463
Helping others is the only purpose in life
>>7813173
I lived in a hammock and under a bridge from age 16-23. I had my life savings stolen three times during that. I did nothing but drugs and working shitty jobs during that time. My mom left me at a car dealership when I was seven. When she got me back, she spent most of her time trying to get rid of me. Which is why I was homeless at 16. It was that or military school.
I've since gotten over addiction, paid all my court debts, and gotten into college.
It sounds like you haven't a clue buddy. I'm not saying it isn't hard. I'm saying keep trying and quit bitching.
>>7813179
I didn't say all misfortune is due to laziness. But the solutions to your misfortunes are never laziness. This really isn't groundbreaking stuff here.
>>7813181
I hear this a lot and it's meant to be some sort of motivation or solace, but it always reminds me of what a meaningless circlejerk everything is. If my only purpose is helping the next guy out and his purpose is helping me out then we're both perpetuating the existence of otherwise useless cunts.
>>7813185
If busting ass WILL make everything fine then the only cause of things not being fine is a lack of busting ass. Which is quite literally saying, if things are not fine you are not working hard enough.
>>7813183
Yeh, and i'm saying that just working hard doesn't necessarily makes things alright which anyone with an open mind would agree with
>>7813194
*Haven't been working hard or haven't been working long enough
fix'd. k?
>>7813194
Do you not like your life?
Change something.
Do you like your life now?
Try something else.
What the fuck are you not getting you ridiculous autistic cunt. I said nothing that implied that people's shitty situations are their own doing, only that the answer is to take action. And if it doesn't work, try again rather than dwelling in it or taking the easy way out by suicide
>>7813202
Please go spread the word at pediatric cancer wards, those kids are dying while they could be busting ass! They could have been fine all along!
You should have stopped drinking sooner, family.
>>7813221
What you are not getting is that there are many situations in life in which things will never be 'fine' no matter how hard people try to make it fine, and all the platitudes in the world won't change that.
>>7812964
Become who you are
>>7812521
Alan is underrated as fuck.
Psychotherapy East and West helped me not be depressed quite a bit
He always said that self improvement is a circular problem, that the only person you can be is yourself so you should stop trying to be what you are not and just "be"
Maybe the thinking is that if you want to be a certain way, you either will be that way or you will not, and attempting to be something you're not creates dissonance.
But I just find it hard to believe that all attempts at self improvement are in vein. Can't a person overcome their lesser traits, though? Isn't true change a process that takes time and sustained effort?
>>7813224
>>7813237
Okay, fine, but I'm talking about the last thirty "My girlfriend just dumped me" or "Why is life so pointless" or "I should just kill myself"s I just had to deal with today. Of course life sometimes takes a big runny shit on your head and there's nothing you can do about it, but at the start of this conversation, I established who I was talking about. here>>7813032
>>7813274
Making a point to "Just be" is trying to achieve a state of being which you previously weren't. Alan effectively said nothing.
>>7813274
Of course self-improvement isn't in vain. The term self-improvement has just become associated with bs. Having said that Alan Watts says very little, he just says nice nothings. Like Deepak Chopra
>>7813277
I agree that not being a whiny cunt helps a lot, but spreading unwarranted and unrealistic optimism ultimately creates more whiny cunts by virtue of disappointment. That being made clear my autism is satisfied.
There is still the legitimate question if whiny cunts can stop being whiny cunts though. Sure, sometimes it happens, but because some seem to magically transform doesn't mean it's within the capabilities of every whiny cunt to stop being one. Maybe some people are doomed/hardwired to be whiny cunts forever, and all the advice in the world won't help them get over it. Maybe their attitude of helplessness itself is the thing they can't be helped with, just like some people's cancer just simply can't be cured.
>>7813274
Think of alan more as a thought-provoker than a teacher. He'll throw language at the dynamic of self consciousness and you can use it as a catalyst to look inward, but he's got nothing to teach other than empty feelgoods.
>>7813307
Maybe. My hangup is just as much what they're whining about. I rather enjoyed a few years of dumpster pizza and mosquitoes in my face. Felt like freedom. So so much of what people whine about just makes me want to tell them to shut the fuck up. I forget that some people have seen worse times.
>>7813325
People can suffer more in nicer conditions than others. It's not the event it's the response
>>7813336
But so much of the response is just buying into a cultural delusion like the situation is so terrible. No?
>>7813309
>>7813302
>>7813294
I see where you guys are coming from.
He does help you feel more at ease with who you are and how you are now and to be more present in your life, which is a good thing. Like I said at one point it helped with depression and pointing out certain absurdities in life
But yeah, no real direction or commentary on achievement or change or ambition.
Does anyone have any recommendations on existential philosophy or lit?
>>7813349
People generally don't opt-into their surrounding culture voluntarily.
>>7813360
someone is going to tell you to start with the greeks. I'll tell you to stick with the watered down hippie literature. It won't sort out the ideological backgrounds for you on a timeline, but it will show you just how interchangeable so much of ideology is, and let you think on it for yourself, and it'll make it so much more interesting. Terence mckenna and Carl jung were two of my favorites
>>7813360
>no real direction or commentary on achievement or change or ambition.
>Does anyone have any recommendations on existential philosophy or lit?
You pretty much summed up all philosophy, bruv.
That said, unironically start with the Greeks. This podcast is a great place to start:
http://historyofphilosophy.net/
>>7813360
Start with existential psychiatrists like Carl Rogers and Rollo May. It's like self-help with substance which draws upon actual philosophical ideas. A
>>7813399
Not really into self help anymore, I just subscribe to, and enjoy exploring, the idea that we are only in charge of our own lives and are responsible for giving our lives meaning and what freedom really is, etc. I will check it out in good faith tho
>>7813374
>>7813373
Pic related
>>7813360
Carl sagan. Not an existentialist or a philosopher. But that dude can definitely give you a sense of size and scale.
>>7813431
It's closer to Kierkegaard than it is to Dale Carnegie
>>7812707
>d I always think of that Geertz quote, "we are the story we tell ourselves about ourselves,"
Geertz never said that. Some shitty pop writer Scott Turow did, according to Google.
>>7812525
This has to one of the most psychotic things I've ever read. You're a person pretending to be a person?
>>7813444
Nah, it's him. Just filtered through the culture. That quote has become so famous it's basically a cliche.
www.rochester.edu/college/psc/clarke/214/Geertz72.pdf p. 82
>>7813632
>www.rochester.edu/college/psc/clarke/214/Geertz72.pdf p. 82
>page not found
thanks, dildo
