Is antinatalism just secular buddhism? Both try to end the cycle of rebirth and suffering, it's just that the former does so in a scientifically sound way without pajeet magical baggage.
>>21842364Kerouac's interpretation of Buddhism was explicitly antinatalist.
Antinatalism shares some similarities, but it falls short because Buddhism is about transcendending this reality, not merely rejecting it.
>>21843101Is Schopenhauer a good read for people intrigued by Buddhism but put off by the supernatural stuff?
>>21842364Believers in the cosmic wheel wouldn't agree that dying out as humans ceasing to be would help break the cycle. In fact it makes things much worse since being born as a human is a really excellent opportunity to process old bad karmas and pursue enlightenment, which is way harder as a wild animal or a demon. Even if you were to blow up the earth, that would just create way more bad karmas and reduce the number of available vessels to work it off. Big mistake. You won't be finding much common ground with them.
>>21843158Schopenhauer is strange in that regard. He is an irrationalist who believed in magic but remained an atheist. In some ways he was a materialist, but had sympathy for mystics.
Which philosophers qualify as nihilistic? It's often used as an insult but who owns up to it?Not looking for mopey pessimists but actual nihilism.
>>21843829Note that determinism isn't a barrier to reflexive freedom, it is a prerequisite. Liebnitz developed the Principle of Sufficient Reason to defend free will. If one thing does not entail another in our world, how could freedom be possible? It'd be like being "free" to press buttons in a game, but the button does something different every time, unpredictably. Arbitrariness isn't freedomMost philosophers, sadly, end here. But the obvious problem is that someone with negative freedom in a free state that gives them rights, who has reflexive freedom of reason and has self-actualized their authentic desires can clearly have aims that conflict with another such person. Purely reflective freedom is subjective, but there is nothing to bridge it with the objective world. From whence objective morality?Here Hegel is the only one brave enough to attempt a solution. He proposes social freedom, the sublation of negative freedom by reflexive, to give us something more realistic for a social animal.In social freedom, institutions protect rights, negative freedom.People come to recognize their self, the route to having their needs both fulfilled and objectified in the external world, in the other. Marriage is a key example. Through mutual recognition of another, we come to identify our needs and wants with another's, as when my desire is to see my wife get what she desires.Hegel, an avid analyst of Adam Smith, then generalizes this to the market. In market contracts, we implicitly recognize one another. When we trade, we grant that one person has a right to some thing, a product, labor, ideas, etc., while they recognize that we have a right to what we are trading to them. In markets, our needs are met when the economy does well, that is, through other's self-interested pursuit of their interests.Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>21843848So, on this view, we can have a compatibilist view of freedom. Freedom is not an ability, but a state. It is when the free will wills itself, when the will has as its object its own freedom. Further, it exists when the society the individual lives in has developed this capability for all people and is set up rationally such that the desires of the citizens synch up with their duties. If this is the case then a person chooses to do that which they do, freedom.A crucial note here is that, to be free, one needs institutions. We are social animals, we don't live alone. We need to be safe from the predation of others and oppression to be free. We need education and personal development to be free, our ability to be rational must be grown organically through a process of self-development.Such a society doesn't just appear on the seen. It has to be created by historical processes.As >>21843379 noted, freer societies outcompete more autocratic ones in technological and economic development. In turn, this helps them outcompete them in war. States evolve and face selection pressures. Slowly, over time, they move towards greater freedom, as those that do not do so are selected against as they fail to compete.This is Hegel's teleology stripped of its metaphysics and grounded in empirical political science and economics.
>>21843871>freer societies outcompete more autocratic ones in technological and economic developmentWhat about China?Also what even is a free society? The word to me seems vacuous and stripped of meaning today. We can recognize it by comparison to more strictly controlled societies like North Korea.But outside of an extreme example like North Korea, I'm uncertain how one would even knowif you truly live in a free society or not.Even in an ostensibly free society like the U.S you are free to critique the powerful, but functionally if you begin to tangibly threaten the powerful in any way all your rights go out the window.
>>21843915China moved from a command economy to a market one under Deng explicitly because they thought doing so would boost economic growth."Free," is certainly something that is difficult to define. To be free, someone must be safe in their country, free from endemic crime or corruption, free to pursue their goals in the market, etc. They must also be educated and developed.In general, people wouldn't choose to be less happy, so we can look at happiness to a certain degree. There isn't going to be a perfect empirical definition you can fit into a data set. You're talking about a long term pattern of development in chaotic, dynamical systems. But clearly a random person in a top preformer for empirical metrics, say Denmark, has a better chance of being able to live the type of life they would choose to live than someone in Mexico or Egypt.Hegel makes a good point about wealth inequality. Aside from great inequality corrupting markets, as the very wealthy gain the ability to buy influence with the state and manipulate markets, it also tends to cause the rich to degenerate into a rabble no less so than the poor. The rich come to think everything can be bought. The very rich are not generally not part of a "corporation," a civic trade society in which they externalize their identity (something like the American Bar Association). Instead, they come to see themselves as the independent source of all their wealth, ignoring the centuries of accumulated knowledge civilization runs on, the fact that with no military their country wouldn't stay independent long and that their wealth could be pillaged, etc. In this, they come to see their wealth generating activities as the sole source of worthwhile activity and their identity is not externalized in any external relations (i.e. patriotism, etc.) aside from this. This rings very true in my experience.
>>21843170Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, Spinoza, Descartes, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Schopenhauer. All the British as well.The non-nihilists are Kant by a hair and Nietzsche
you have to pick a book that most closely resembles the hit tv show 'Succession', what book do you choose?
>>21844435The writing of that scene was masterful, I wish the whole show could be so dense. But no, of course they only pull it out to demonstrate Roman's intellect, then it's back to lame "accessible" dialogue.
>>21844435qrd? what is he *really* saying?
>>21844424dark, smart, smooth, esoteric, witty, dense, modern, tongue-in-cheek highbrowI feel like someone's gonna instinctively say American Psycho but it's not quite that
>>21844456forsyte saga, maybe.
>>21844413Same. At first I was like, yo I'm vibing with this guy, but then I was like hold up, he is an actual fascist.>>21844454He's a fascist and is talking against immigrants. Those are the people with a boombox coming in a truck to invade "his garden" he's talking about. He also says "people trust those who look like them". You may miss it on a first watch, but you definitely pick it up the second time.
Fagles translation:No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man — some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive — than rule down here over all the breathless dead!Emily Wilson translation:Odysseus, you must not comfort me for death. I would prefer to be a workman, hired by a poor man on a peasant farm, than rule as king of all the dead. Who decided to let a woman translate the Odyssey? Why has she sucked all life and poetry from it?
>>21843629I had a premonition of this post. It probably doesn't mean anything, but just in case, thought you should know.
>>21842711Learn Greek, read the original. If you spent an hour a day, you could be competent in a year or two. After that, if you want life and poetry in a translation, read Stanley Lombardo's version. The attempts at "faithful" English adaptations are futile.
>>21844237>Spend an hour each day for a whole year to learn a language for the sole purpose of reading one bookYou really are fucking autistic if you think I'm doing that. Should I do the same for russian to appreciate Dostoevsky? Do I have to learn 7 or 8 languages just to be able to read a few books?
>>21844403don't take lazy bait you fool
>>21844432
>finally get agent>think things will finally get better for me>wrong>agent sends manuscript out to publishers>publishers take months to reply to anything sent to them>majority of the editors (and agents in the industry) are all hyper-liberal Twitter posting people who aim to find works from underrepresented people yet all their offices are full of white women and men with a few occasional black women sprinkled here and there>the inflated egos of some of the editors shines like the sun in their rejection emails>because the industry is so shit and people get paid peanuts and do overtime nonstop most editors keep leaving to find greener pastures and so the response times increase because the industry is so fucking small >rejection after rejection from various editors with some bs entitled message to my agent about why they rejected it >almost all rejections are because "it wasn't right for them" or they didn't like some small minor thing that could be edited >gotten to a point where you have to wait about 4 months after sending a manuscript for a response from an editor because the whole shitty industry is so backlogged and unorganised >can sense my agent getting uppity and frustrated with me in their messages and about editor responses What a joke. I honestly feel like killing myself some days. It's so bad I'm even posting about it here and I never come to /lit/
Embrace the dark side and ghost write for bill o reilly or something
I’m interested in learning about Buddhism as it is practiced in east Asia. Whenever I look for info on Buddhism, it’s pretty strictly “here’s what Buddha himself taught” or “here’s how you can learn to meditate.” I’m not interested in that. Think of it as an anthropological interest. What should I read?
>>21843816Typically it’s used to refer to the two contexts of an identity/non-duality between a spiritual or ineffable Absolute and one’s own self/being, and also the second notion of an ultimate reality or a conception of reality that is without multiplicity/duality; sometimes both contexts are used, as in Advaita Vedanta, or solely the former context is used, as in Vishishtadvaita. Saying that a prasangika position, which ostensibly entails having no position, is ‘non-duality’ makes little sense, since to deny or affirm duality is taking a stance; Gelugs don’t interpret Nagarjuna to mean this however and they instead believe he is taking a definite position viz. endeavoring to expose the emptiness of everything. However, even this position of Gelugs does not involve saying that multiplicity is inherently false or illusory, only that it’s relative like everything else, reality is still characterized and made up of multiplicity as much as anything else in this ‘non-duality’. Dualistic non-dualism. Now, of course there is no hard rule about what is and isn’t non-duality, but this looks like a case of appropriating the aesthetics of non-dualism (for understandable reasons) to make a basic point about relativism.
>>21842815>im pretty sure it is well known that the buddha's sangha have long been deadwell, you're wrong about that,you should check out your sources, the fact that buddhadharma changed and adpted doesn'0t mean that the iniciatic chain was broken,if that was the case then the iniciatic tradition wouldn't be possible since all tardictions changed and adapt to their times, not only that, a lot of monks still study and practice early buddhist doctrines,and monks in thailand and myanmar have lineages that go back to the buddha
>>21843787>Non-dualism in the Gelug school just means that there is an absence of findable true existence, in other words it’s just basic anti-foundationalist relativism, which has little to do with non-dualism as typically understood.wrong, non-dualism started with madhyamaka buddhism, so the base of non-dualist philosophies are more aligned with mahayana buddhism than vedantaalso non-substantialist buddhism don't equal relativism, on the contrary the obectivity of their ontology comes from the pratikiasamutpada, the opposite of relativism
>>21843942>Typicallytypically as in "the vedanta view", non-dualism goes beyond vedanta and was created and articulated by buddhist first, mainly the yogacara and MadHyamaka schools, then apropiated by advaita
>>21838605>the pre-Buddhist Upanishads talk about non-dualism,not really, in the upanishad the word is used in a vague sense, buddhist created a context and philosophical system in which the word has a real functional meaning, since they actually analize the gnoseological implicationof a subject/object dichotomy and created a theory of the mind that goes beyond such dichotomy, you can't have real non-dualism in a metaphysical system with brahman and maya, all hindu non.dualist can do is to say that this evident "dualism" is just an illusion, without really explaining how that's the case and never adressing the myriads of contradiciton such a theory creates
Give me examples of novels that (like Moby Dick) include a lot of different styles in itself. For example it has narration from the main character, then a chapter from the author explaining stuff about whales, and then suddenly it had four chapters that were the inner monologue of four characters and then a chapter written like a play. I'm looking for something like that.
Absalom, Absalom!
Thanks for the recommendations, you guys!
>>21843345wardine be cry
Maybe you’d find entertainment in this op https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercises_in_Style
>>21843345Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau is possibly the most extreme and pure realization of this concept
What books would you recommend for an abused child?I am a 23 year old living at home and I have just begun to realise that my parents abused me and continue to do so. I need some escapist literature basically
>>21843840>abusedwhat do you mean by this?
>>21843854emotional, physical, sexual
>>21843840https://archive.org/details/pdfy-maIfVwkWLxVuMfPP/mode/1up
https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=54C22AD49E76D61701FF966E11F1A959this book saved my life
>>21844440I'm gifted and I still can't figure out why my spoon makes lightning in the microwave. Hopefully some light this will shed.
Do people actually enjoy reading classic books? Or do they like them simply because they are "classics"?
>>21844060There is often a contextualizing event or work that bridges the gap. For some, it's revisiting Tolkien as an adult. For me it was looping through eastern philosophy and mythology back around into the West. For big c Classics, at least.
The best definition of a "classic" I've ever come across is, "a book you return to over and over again." So, if you have a book YOU like and you return to over and over again, it is a classic, for you, in your own personal reader's cannon. But there are some books we, as a group or society, return to over and over again, and these are classics. Usually there is some reason. That a book is a classic is not enough, in my opinion. If I say "this book is a classic" and all you retards read it and says its shit and no one comes back to it, well, it's not a classic, and so it dies and is forgotten. There really does have to be something there for people to take away from.
>>21844104The old Mark Twain definition of a classic is "a book that everyone wants to have read, but no one wants to read." I'm sure he'd get a kick out of Huck Finn becoming a classic.
>>21844104are copypastas classics?
>>21844093Iliad I guess is my bridge. Carried me through to reading tons of other things (Odyssey, aeneid, argonautica, beowulf, Le morte de Arthur, etc) I'm thinking of reading it again at some point. I'm tempted to read some of the books I loved when I first started reading again (Caves of Steel, starship troopers) but I worry I wouldn't enjoy them like I did. Of the iliad though, I have no doubt I would enjoy it again if I picked it back up.
What did I think about it? Was Sorel a fool? Is it just a mere romantic novel?
>>>>2184289421842407>Is it just a mere romantic novel?Yeah it isn't just a mere romantic novel, if you took the romance out of the book you would still have a decent story albeit gimped. There's alot going on in the book.I enjoyed the book alot, I would give it a 9/10 because the plot line with the aristocrats revolt and journey to london ultimately don't matter in the end and it should.
>>21842407>>21842756>>21842781OP committed the classic blunder of forgetting to read the book before posting about it! Many such cases!
>>21843194I wonder what compels people to post nothing and ask for other's opinions. Why not post an actual opinion yourself?
>>21843093>>21842894There are plenty of characters that add nothing to the plot like that Fouque guy and the end is rushed at best
>>21843768Fouque is there primarily to point out that there was always a respectable out for Julien. At any point before the very end he could've dipped and had a very profitable and respectable life free of all the social insanity. But just as he finds the constant small slights of his benefactors demeaning, he does the same to Fouque. He considers himself a man of the people, a little bourgoeis, but just how the nobles see themselves as superior to Julien. He sees himself as superior to Fouque. And he relies on him like a servant just like M. Renal or M. de la Mole does to him, forcing him to join in on conspiracies and using him as a courier. And just like how Renal's status is enhanced by bringing Julien into his service, so is Juliens at the monastery when Fouque delivers the cattle to be slaughtered. It's the same inversion of power you see in the novel multiple times, a higher person being granted accolades for the work of a lower person, and not reciprocating that favor unless forced to. Fouque just happened to be too sincere and genuine to engage in that social manipulation like Julien does.
I am currently torn between pursuing a graduate degree program in the humanities that I logically know is a huge opportunity cost with no monetary benefit and no future job or investing in an actual profitable career. I know that academia is in decline and full of “woke” mediocrities working for minimum wage but I can’t shake the image of the possibility of some great life of the mind. I really want a deep understanding of ancient history and want the skills and status of being a highly educated man. However, I also would like to have you know a house or a family. So is it possible for a person to learn such things on their own or do you really need to bounce ideas of colleagues and professors in academia in order to get a true grasp on the material. Can’t I read the primary and secondary sources and talk to people online about such things to get a respectable understanding of the topic? What do you say /lit/ is going to grade school still essential for mastery of a subject?
>>21844423Yes you can do it on your own, provided you aren't susceptible to the distractions and timewasters that 99% of internet users are.No school is not essential.
>>21844442I am in school right now for the classics and should end up with working knowledge of both Greek and Latin. My only paranoia is maybe grad students get some special teaching or experience I would miss out on. Like could I learn to master Plato on my own or does somebody have to teach you some high level hermeneutical techniques?
"I counsel you, Loddfafnir,if you'll take my advice,you'll profit if you learn it,it'll do you good if you remember it:If you have a friend,and you trust him,go and visit him often.Weeds and high grasswill grow on a paththat nobody travels."Havamal 119You're maintaining your relationships, right Anon? Don't forget about family and friends.
>>21844349I'm a hermit, OP. I communicate more with /lit/ users than with real people.
>>21844356The internet is only going to get faker and gayer as time goes on, you should work on establishing IRL ties.
is this a good edition of the poetic edda? im gonna read this shit soon. which translation is seen as canonical?
>>21844414I have no idea, I would reach out to the Asatru Folk Assembly and ask them.
>>21844414I prefer the Bellows and Holland translation but this one is okay. I am not sure any English translations are considered canonical, but the Bellows one is a bit dated. It is interesting to read however because it is likely the version that Tolkien had read when coming up with LOTR and the influences are much more notable
What do you think was the best part? Most popular seems to be Archimboldi and Fate.
>>21841943The geometry textbook getting torn apart by the desert is on your nose but I liked it
>>21843631kys
>>21843671May Allah bless your balls
>>21839076>. And the sentences are easy to read, often quite short, simple syntax.Wow, I was wrong here, I'm now reading Critics after Fate and the syntax is way more complicated with lots of long sentences. What the fuck, why does he change the prose style so much.
>>21843030It really is a bit pulpy. Particularly that part "You've punched a guy in a house so now please take my attractive daughter and go live with her in the United States, based black man"
Where the fuck can I get a hardcover of this now that their site was shoahed ? Nobody even bothered to pirate the epub of this version.
>>21841832Probably.
>>21841808>(((Spengler)))
>>21841808I remember buying the Anaconda hardcover for five bucks a couple years ago. You should easily find the book if you go for another edition
>>21843571I wanted the shitty Arktos notes since I heard this is a chore to get through.
yeah they got fucked by a distributor or something.i hope they rebuild.
I have a question, /lit/. What was the absolute worst book you've ever read? I don't mean slightly disappointed by; I mean like zero redeeming qualities at all in your opinion.
>>21844296Wuthering heights
>>21844296Der Untergeher
>>21844296wasp factory
>>21844296Neuromancer
>>21844296The Tanakh.
