/lit/ - Literature

determine and develop your own taste before contaminating your mind with trash, having an understanding of history is good for this, be narrow-minded and intolerant, discard books you dislike before reading them

People want the power to uncover profound, contrarian meanings to novels, poems, political/historical events, films, TV shows, and entire philosophies without having to do the work necessary for understanding these things. Instead of remaining in semi-ignorance during the years while you are developing your aesthetic sense and worldview by doing a tremendous amount of research and using your judgment to develop non-conceptual modes of understanding, it is easier to filter these various events and types of media through an easy-to-understand, pseudo-scientific system that uses obscure terminology and concepts. With these obscure terms and concepts, you not only have to not think for yourself but you can delude yourself into thinking that you hold the skeleton key to existence and you, and only you, are euphoric because you are enlightened by your own intelligence.

>>7132520
>But do you not have any notion of self-improvement or sacrifice?
I got the question from reading Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty. He wants to separate self-improvement and self-creation when it expands to improving and creating a society with no restrictions on the extent of cruelty required to meet the ends. Hold on, I have another screen shot if I can find the pdf.

Buddhism is one cure for ressentiment, an obstacle to the higher, aesthetic mode of existence. Swatting gnats is exhausting, particularly if you are already exhausted. Power preservation. Aquila non captat muscas.

>>6978355
Realized moonlit walks are a luxury since some people live in areas with high crime rates. Early in the morning tends to be safer since black people aren't awake yet.

>>6879647
spawn various men who come close to exemplifying the ideal of the Übermensch*

For politics, read someone boring like Rorty. Check out his book Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Stick mostly to Americans and the British. George Orwell would also be good. Oh, and John N. Gray.

Start here though: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/human/chapter2.html

>>5960812
If there is to be a popular atheism 101 book for people who do not instinctually realize that God is a "delusion," how would you guys change it? Where did Dawkins go wrong exactly? What do you expect from a book like this?

>>5865471
You are not cool because you developed the ability to channel your uncooless into a hat hide it away in your closet.