/lit/ - Literature

I’m not against work entirely. I understand things need to get done in order to enjoy the luxuries society provides. But 40 hours a week takes up so much of your time. We really don’t need to be working that many hours (or more) every week to live, especially when the jobs that are necessary to society get paid less than the bullshit jobs that exist throughout the corporate world. If everyone is too busy working 40-80 hours week, they lack the time to do things for the benefit of their character like physical exercise, reading, self reflection, cooking healthy meals, participating in local politics for the greater good, address issues that plague family/community/society, etc.

This might very well be my hottest and most controversial take yet, precisely because it aims to defend the very nature of sin itself: That the possibility of its existence is necessary.

I also want to preface this by saying that this answer will only make sense to those who are faithful, because there is also a fundamental value difference: The faithful judge things from the point of view of heaven, whereas the non-faithful by definition, can only judge things from the point of view of earth. That is, the non-faithful can only justify things to the extend it advances his own materialism and arguably hedonism, that is the extent of his vision.

Anyway, get this. So if man is inherently good, and he does good things, then good things have no inherent meaning. You are just doing what you inherently do. Should you get a medal for breathing and blinking? No. That's just what you do. There is no real meaning behind it. This is why the fact that original sin exists is in a way, good and bad: Good because it introduces the idea, the difference between good and evil, bad because now, mankind HAS to start evil.

And that's why man is a fallen thing. Because if we are inherently sinful, then that makes good things significant: You are going against the grain, you did good when you are by nature, bad. This is why a lot of good things seem so counter-intuitive: Eating too much is bad, fasting is good. Sex with everyone and everything bad, sex after marriage and for children is good. Why, when the former just feels so good, and the latter well, just kinda sucks.

Because it's supposed to suck. By doing the things that are hard, you are overcoming an inherently sinful nature, you are exercising a will against materialist power, you are valuing heaven higher than earth. And that, I think, is what's so significant about it: You then earn eternal life for exercising a level of consciousness most simply aren't capable of, because you did the hard thing.

People just doing whatever's easy of course won't earn heaven. Neither will those that get too attached to earth. What sense would it make? They will die, they cannot bring their treasures with them. And on their passing, if their soul is fundamentally lacking, that is, it has a poor level of consciousness, or rather mocks it, or acted against it, or gravely offended its creator -- then the only thing that makes sense to do is to cast it into the fire and be destroyed, leaving it outside forever weeping and gnashing its teeth.

Simply because being bad is easy and feels good. Doing good is hard and feels bad at times. This is why sin and the devil is necessary: So that the virtuous and just can be seen with clarity, like the contrast between light and darkness.

This actually explains the whole fascist femboy thing now that you mention it
>Women are retarded and gullible, and subconsciously desire to have a strong, masculine force dictating their lives
>Femboys also tend to be retarded and gullible, and also tend to subconsciously desire a strong, masculine force dictating their lives

5,5k in 3 days so far for the second draft - which is basically a rewriting of it all. It's much easier to write when you already know what's going to happen. Now I see the importance of outlining.

>start putting chocolate milk in my coffee

>>22201652
>reading this
>niggers are smashing alcohol bottles in the alleyway outside

>>21954141
>spirituality is literally niggerism

>>21891268
>gf was reading this right before she broke up with me

>chad fucks beta bux

>All is vanity with God:
What else do you need if you have God? He who is infinite and inexhaustible. Everything else is under the shadow of death and decay.

>All is vanity without God
Everything becomes a void. Everything is futile, diseased, decaying and dying. Brushing your teeth and writing big novels become equally absurd and meaningless gestures. Yet we still bother to leave the bed every morning.

>>21330946
As masks are the sign that there are faces, words are the sign that there are things. And these things are the sign of the incomprehensible.
Marcel Schwob, The King in the Golden Mask and Other Stories

WHAT THE FUCK I THINK I FINALLY UNDERSTAND IDEALISM

>I have seen a garbage collector sniffing the flowers and touching the sunset rays.
Everything is so fragile and ephemeral. This immense pleasure and movements of beauty, It all slips out of your hand and there's nothing you can do about it. How many times people have said these exact same words. Change is so goddamn vulgar and cruel that sometimes I get a tremendous urge to scream. Your suffering always feels fresh to you no matter how little. The wisdom that you gain from it feels eternal. We all act as if we're the center of universe and we are but this is a source of deep rooted solipsism and narcissism that is so prevalent in 21st century. If you zoom out and don't consider yourself as the most significant than this multiplicity of Being can leave you in the state of utter paralysis with any copes. Disappointment, sickness, dissatisfaction is all that we truly have.

There is nothing to this life except pain, dissatisfaction, disappointment, sickness and death. Yet we still leave the bed every morning. This big shitshow and its wretched glow, good goddamn I am nostalgic for the time before time.

>>20967258

The death of Apian (2.353-57) has an obvious eucharistic resonance. Patterns of action, submerged liturgical texts and hymns, and the Latin subtext together reveal that resonance to be a thorough example of allegorical evocation, couched in the traditional presentation of Catholic sacramental language and practice. Most obviously, the possibility of union and cosmic restoration depends on an execution: this is Calvary. Before Severian can eat the sacrifice, he is first covered in Apian's blood, recalling absolution. Severian acknowledges his treason and Apian's claim on his loyalty, signifying agnoscens as the patristic etymology for St. Peter the apostle. (50) Having already expressed his love and wept in contrition for his lack of love and false convictions, Severian is then washed in the blood of the victim immediately before consuming. Here, the discipline of receiving sacraments in a state of grace is vividly enacted.

In this scene more than any other, it matters that New Sun claims to be a translation with a problem of future language (1.211). In Augustine's Sermon 272 given to neophytes on the Eucharist he said, "Estote quod videtis, et accipite quod estis." (51) Estote as the present tense of edo, edesse means to eat. As the future tense of sum, esse means to become. The mechanism of autarchal succession enacts Augustine's wordplay: to become or eat "what you discern, and receive what you are." That Wolfe does not show the actual event is strategy rather than literary reticence, because he makes the reader blind, ignarus. Augustine's "quod videtis" interrogates the reader: does the reader see the hidden texts? Does the reader recognize Augustine's words and the interpretive tradition that distinguish the Eucharist from cannibalism? Will the reader be ignarus and see the agnotio of Agia, or will recognition, agnoscens, reveal the sacrifice in St. Peter's Church? Concealing the action forces Augustine's "quod videtis" and invites the reader to participate in the enacted liturgy: "Ecce Agnus Dei." The Eucharist is the source of the saint's deification and Augustine's "receive what you are" applies equally to the Eucharist and the identity of New Sun. Every reader who accepts the text's invitation is potentially a New Sun, a saint. Wolfe builds into his work the four marks of the Church because its center and purpose is the same. The reader who discovers New Sun's meaning to be holy, catholic, and apostolic participates in its unity. That participatory relationship between reader and text requires the Latin subtext. The reader who interprets Apian's death correctly takes the body from the spike in an ex-cruciation, correctly sees the transitus and translates it.

>>20770653

>>19030995
>Fascism is a reaction to communism, capitalism is a reaction to Fascism

>>18891060
>that's like playing oblivion and not jumping everywhere because you don't want the npcs to think you're weird
I will never mistake a normalfag for human again

>all religions on the planet have implanted the idea of "light = good" into the collective unconscious
>the light is actually what makes you come back here
>you need to seek out the darkness
>this goes against 99% of people's programming

>>18485103