/lit/ - Literature

>>4708422
My honest findings are that normative hedonism is self-defeating because a concious effort to constantly maximise pleasure will live you feeling empty and anxious. To use a well known saccharine quote:

“Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder...”

Even something as simple as enjoying a beer with the concious, calculated intention to enjoy its pleasures backfires. Pleasure and happiness are always in need of some degree of forgetfulness, a lack of analysis, a spontaneity. Therefore going through life like Aristippus the Elder or Bion of Borysthenes or some happy go lucky Daoist sage/rogue hybrid is much more fruitful. This "right" way to live can't really be approached systematically, since it's the very systematism and rationality that causes it to back fire.

I think that's where storytelling excels. You can have these characters of effortless joy and show how they frolic through life instead of having to approach things theoretically. You can learn by holistic example instead of dissecting everything until there are only dead, separate elements.

>>4242080
Loving is like burning ants with your magnifying glass. The greater you make the burning point, the less hot is is.

I prefer to burn one bitch to the ground instead of a sort of lukewarm turd holding contest of multitude.

>>3812833
I think the realisation with Stirner thoroughly understood is that one doesn't need to be lead anywhere. Stirner frees you of your chains, how you frolic is up to you.

The 19th century debtor has chains and so does the contemporary Levant dweller, but whether they merely have actual chains of force or also additional chains of thought always makes an enormous difference. One is always more free without the spooks.

I actually really enjoy being a jaded, vile dismissive cunt a lot of the time. It makes me rather happy. Often I adopt opinions merely to make the conversation interesting and sophist my way to victory, reaping ideological havoc and destruction as much as possible. It's just a pleasant activity to slander, well, anything basically. That doesn't mean I don't love life or that I don't like people, I actually really do. It means that I love doing away with flowery decorations of life, with coping mechanisms that debase it. I find life and people more bearable through a cynical lens than through a filtered clusterfuck of enhanced colours. When Diogenes was asked why one should be a Cynic he responded "So as not to deceive oneself." Granted his Cynicism was very different from that of our times, but the happy slandering remains a part of it.

There are probably two types of cynical people today: Idealists in mourning and sledgehammer sophists who feel free at last when they've taken down the last of obligatory limitations. Schopenhauers and Stirners, perhaps.

>>3552998
I tried prolonged periods of having my ex over, got into shit throwing contests rather quickly. Most women can't into minimalism for shit. Or frugalism for that matter. Or any form of spartan living or austerity or Ordnung, Gründlichtkeit und Pünktlichkeit . Which leads to all kinds of horrible expensive filthy mess lying about fucking with my ataraxia. I guess I won't ever attempt such a thing ever again unless I meet a Hipparchia tier woman.

>>3421161
>how does e.g. 7 year old kid realise such things as manipulating others to like him by being good and well mannered
That's what school is for. It's education in social relations more than anything else.

You want to read The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracián. You do not want to ignore this recommendation.

In the end though, being a cold hearted calculating bastard will backfire because you will get that inner chill that will ruin all the good fun. The trick is being a jolly trickster, a warm hearted rogue, taking a bit and not always fairly but paradoxically being sort of a sincere nice guy at the same time. This sounds vague and shitty but it's true.