/lit/ - Literature

"This world of ours cannot be saved in our measure of time. Had it been possible it would have been saved a long time ago by prophets and teachers who have been sent. Those who look for the world to be saved by a single teacher in a given time are shirking their own responsibility. They wait and hope of a second coming with no effort on their part, indulging in the disease of tomorrow."

Why haven't I heard of this guy?

>>10700093
The finicky thing about depression (which I'm guessing is the case due to your excessive sleeping and lack of motivation) is the nature of feelings being really easy to forget about. I don't remember how it "felt" to be depressed, it doesn't have direct, material properties I can identify; all I know is that I scarcely did much, and it was very difficult to think about anything, though my state I validated by digging through abstraction until I posited statements like "nothing matters", "life is reductive" etc. What's consequential of this memory gap is that it will lead to the lack of empathy we can see in the thread. It's hard to comprehend on terms of streams of consciousness. No one enjoys being a depressed teenager, if there are others that once were such, then they may be projecting that disdain atm

What is important isn't where you're projecting but why. The source of why you do anything surely corresponds to the whole. I don't know what all that is but it takes a long time, it takes a certain quality and quantity of thinking, answering "the why" is hard, but it's fulfilling.
I would invite you to consider for future purposes, in the following order of best to worst:

0. Stop denial. It's common to see frustration from intellectually minded people to admit they don't know something, or identifying the source of their resentment. Try reading about your "shadow" if you can swallow Jung. Also, you can consider an idea without accepting it.

1. Psychologist. I'm very skeptical of meds but that's my experience.

2. Do not EVER go to rehab if you can take a wilderness therapy course instead. Rehab clinics are absolute garbage

3. This: >>10700049 I'd start with Robert Solomon: Existentialism, at least the introduction. Gives a short summary of a wide array of philosophers without all the brick-layered dredge

4. Lament to your parents. If the family is dysfunctional, don't bother.

5. >>10700079 ehh

>>10341083
>The tropical city-state of Celocombo gripped by an enigmatic epidemic called the Moth Plague
>Incurable as far as anyone knows, and its method of transmission is likewise mysterious
>City is quarantined, and for one year is left to its fate as the plague takes its course
>Novel follows four different characters who have the lives they had previously known stolen from them:
>A sacred prostitute who loses her faith
>A merchant impressed into debt slavery
>A noblewoman trapped in a loveless marriage, bearing the child a man who rejects her
>A trainee of the Order of the Ritualists (basically religious and magical order who wield ancestor magic and convene with spirits to guide the city) who must come to terms with his newfound responsibilities after the Hierophant of the Order dies of plague
>All must deal with the rebellion of the mercenary army, who, having gone months without pay and sequestered in a doomed city, seize control of the government and the Silk Matrons, who alone in all the world keep the secrets of the precious Celocombo moonsilk
>The city becomes a character unto itself as its successive layers unravel and reform
>Examines the Platonic idea of the city and the will to power, along with free will vs. determinism, death, panta rhei/impermenance, etc.
>If a city is destroyed and rebuilt with new parts, can it still be called the same city? Similarly, if a man is destroyed and rebuilt with a new purpose, is he the same man? Or does the silt of past lives, like ancient ruins and buried foundations, continue to weigh upon him? Can we ever really remake ourselves or be remade?
>Not a quote or anything but one of the ideas
>Title is "The Plague Year"

Not even close to starting but I have the entire structure, plot, and characters mapped out. Just scared to begin ;_;

>>10179640
Most people believe God out of fear of burning in a lake. It's kind of an obligation at that point. Who the fuck in their right mind says that you have to burn in a fucking lake eternally, all because of one thing you think differently? Literally nothing changes when you go from believing in God, to not believing. Not a SINGLE FUCKING THING, and you're supposed to believe that this tiny shift in ideology that has no impact on day to day habits is supposed to be the difference between eternal bliss and eternal agony? You people are fucking hacks, worse than anti-semites honestly

I revised it. Maybe it's more clear

Non-duality puts forth the proposition that all is eternally one. It breaks the relations of space, time, and causality after assuming a truth that which is unknowable. How can we know any quality or lack of qualities of that which we don’t know we don’t know about reality exists? Non-duality presents itself as the true world; unknowable, and therefore unable to scrutinize; how can you scrutinize or discuss this unknown? This unknowing the unknown is changed from being non-existent, to a concept in which all we know about it is that we don’t know about it, except that it is implied to exist. We can not theorize this nature of reality exists. As it appears as nothing substantial, this nothingness is in turn made with reference to nothing, it assumes this nothing has a construct composed of “nothingness”.

The nature of rational thought changes insofar this claim stands, because one can argue outside the realm of the theoretical perspective as any perspective can equate to be nothing, or have the substratum of nothing.

Theoretical perspectives are able to be scrutinized, and do not apply as a construct, or assume to know its originating substratum, for anything beyond the individual it originates from. To add the universality of non-dual principles to theoretical perspective is to reduce perspective to allowing it not to differentiate as on the same plane of the non-dual realm. All perspective becomes contradictorily objective and equivalent on the same level of abstraction if rising from the substratum which is the non-dual nature of reality, and therefore becomes estranged from being able to connect to anything derisive of rational.

Would /lit/ read the novel that I'm writing?

It's set in a single tropical city-state and is about a mysterious plague (called the Moth Plague) which descends upon the aforementioned city-state for the duration of exactly one year. Its causes are unknown, and only a very rough understanding of its symptoms are able to be ascertained. Likewise, the reader is never told, although certain clues are scattered throughout the narrative.

The story is told from 6 differing points of view (so far have a temple prostitute, merchant who is impressed into slavery, an acolyte of the Ritualists, and a mercenary with the Iguana Corps), which serve to elucidate different aspects of the city's culture and social hierarchy as well as facilitate the plot. Each will eventually intertwine in key places. The point I guess is to create a polyphonic effect of different interlocking stories that carry similar themes (like Cloud Atlas in a way), and serve to deliver the principal theme of man vs. an uncaring nature, death/loss, etc. At least those are my (very lofty) ambitions.

Influences include Virinconium, City of Saints and Madmen, BotNS and LS, One Hundred Years of Solitude and other magical realist fiction. World flavor is heavily inspired by Hindu, Yoruba, and Chinese mythologies.

I've been cultivating this idea for forever and I think that it could work out very well if I strike the right balance between worldbuilding and character driven narrative. But I don't know. Any critiques or suggestions?

>>7822204
Yeah, I'm not gonna lie it began as a worldbuilding project and became a novel. I don't want to break the cardinal rule of having the worldbuilding drive the story rather than the story drive the worldbuilding, so I really want to build strong character driven narratives as well as an interesting world. Studying One Hundred Years of Solitude and the Count of Monte Cristo to see how those authors handled a "megapolyphonic" work, that is, a work with a multiplicity of interlocking storylines, to build my own. I don't want it to be one of those "muh worldbuilding" books (*cough* Malazan *cough*) but something unique and atmospheric and different with strong characters.

>>7822241
This would be a good idea and I might implement it if I can; however, the Ritualists close the city off to incoming and outgoing traffic early on to quarantine it. The Moth Plague strikes indiscriminate of place as well, since a lot of the wealthy escaped outside the city but still died. That's part of the mystery, it's totally unclear how it's transmitted or where it comes from. Part of the reason the Iguana Corps (the mercenaries) revolt is because they too are trapped in the plague-infested city and basically say "fuck you, I didn't sign up for this shit" to their employers and go on a kill spree