/lit/ - Literature

>>4824747
>what sort of philosophical stance is this?
I'm not sure if it's a particular "philosophical" stance, but maybe just that of an intelligent, rational being. I do like what the tumblr "blog" (to use the term loosely) had to say; but i don't understand why they feel the need to use such crude language in saying it (it really seems to hurt their credentials and gives off the feeling of an insecure adolescent). Not to mention the fact that I'm conservative and I hold this very same position. I don't understand how/why it would be called "STFU, Conservatives."

>>4824759
I don't think you know what "trolling" is, anon.

>>4755974
agreed. all those nietshy fanboys genuinely creep me the fuck out. angsty, anal weirdos that got stuck halfway through puberty.

>all this pessimism

looks like someone forgot to eat their Will to Power bar this morning

My question up front: is it plausible to teach oneself finance and economics, read the news, etc., and just make money playing the stock market?

I'm studying Madame Bovary in college right now, and my prof plays this little number:

Here's what our culture teaches us: get a job, get married, have 2.5 children, a raised ranch, a golden retriever, and a goldfish, work for 40 years, die. That's a pretty shitty story, and one of the major reasons Flaubert wrote MB was to get us to question this "master narrative." Later, the modernists develop this idea through perspectivism (ex A Little Cloud--Chandler sees living in Paris as the answer to his troubles, Gallaher is back in Dublin, wishing for Chandler's life), and the Beats actually give it a whirl. If you wanted, you could hollow out a tree and live in the woods. You could join a rainforest tribe or a Shaolin Temple, but no one does, because they're afraid, afraid to leave.

Been thinking about this stuff a lot lately, but the same ideas have been circling around and around in my head and I haven't been able to reach much of a satisfactory conclusion. Hell, I could research how to survive in the wilderness and be done with this society of slavery--Eating Cheap by Benson features "the ridge runner," a man who lived off the land without money for 13 years. Imagine not having to work for the rest of your life. Of course, looking at it this way is very romantic: in reality, such a life will have lots of extreme discomfort and danger, much more so than the master narrative offers. It seems freedom is the price of comfortability.

And I know rejecting the master narrative doesn't have to be that extreme. Talked with another tenured prof of mine who's been teaching 20 years and he said if he could have redesigned his life he would have worked 5-10 years on Wall Street to become financially independent, and then take it from there. I like this idea very much, but I have some serious problems with it. I totally wasted the last 10 years of my life playing videogames. That's one eighth of my life, gone. I don't want that to happen again. 5 years is a long time. That's 250 weeks of getting up at 6am, traffic, 8-12 hours of heart-crippling stress, some tv, bed. Every day. I haven't really looked into whether it's even possible to become financially independent in such a short time, and the thought of the above doubled or tripled tastes rather sour. Not to mention throwing my youth away for the desk.

Like everyone, I'm a romantic too. For example, I have a single snapshot in my mind of a tribe dancing and singing around a fire, I yearn for that. Kind of a philosophical idolatry: mistaking the signs for what they signify. I don't think homelessness or Wall Street is for me. Really, here's my question: is it plausible to teach myself finance and economics, read the news, etc., and just make money playing the stock market?

How flawed is my thinking?

What are some good books about Power and all it's intricacies? Such as what it is, how to wield it, all its different forms, etc. I've read Nietzsche and Machiavelli, but surely there must be more recent philosophical and sociological works on this topic.

Reading through wiki I found this which is quite interesting but I can't find the actual book anywhere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Raven%27s_five_bases_of_power

Also has anyone read "The 48 laws of power"? It seems one of those self help business books, I'm not sure how much substance it contains. What do you guys think?