/lit/ - Literature

>>14700090
To think like a man is to think seriously, and to take thinking seriously. This book inspired a commitment to serious and careful thinking when I was a teenager. Carl Sagan was agnostic but religious as fuck, his spirituality was the holy pursuit of understanding and discovery of the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLigBYhdUDs
There's many other intellectual role-models of extremely high quality that have successfully inspired the same determined commitment to knowledge in others, but Carl Sagan was one who touched me through a love of astronomy.

>>14328970
Commitment to the pursuit of understanding in all of one's engagements is the good life. It is to follow the simple rule to "know thyself," and thus to know thy world and one's relationships with it.

There's absolutely a spiritual aspect to science in the driving motivation behind it: the simple will to know and discover. It is also present in philosophy and art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLigBYhdUDs

>>14263820
During my teenage years I had an obsession for amateur astronomy that helped me grow into a healthy adult by impressing upon me what I must describe as a religious commitment to the values of intellectual discipline that are behind science. The most valuable commitment it inspired was a commitment towards self-honesty and self-criticism; scientific skepticism first and foremost starts with one's own ideas and perceptions of the world. Becoming familiar and understanding the night sky on such a depth gave me a tremendous sense of demonstrated agency during the critical period where I was becoming an adult and learning such agency.

A whole host of other amateur sciences can offer the same experience: geology, biology, meterology, computer science, physics, engineering. If you're bored shitless with the world and are sick of all the fake shit that makes you angry, consider pursuing any amateur science that appeals to you in particular. In such an engagement you will find meaningful, authentic connections with the world around you in a direct and tangible way. Perhaps experiencing such a thing will lead you towards more general fulfillment in your life. Why not try, if one doesn't have anything better to do?

>>14027118
You need to think in very concrete, real terms. Over time as individuals we grow and change, hopefully for the better. This is an evolutionary process. What is needed for this process is causal efficacy (the ability to form effective habits in interacting with reality) but also divergence from established routine, and in terms of individuality daydreaming or "imagining" is an essential part of conducting simulated experiments to mutate existing routines.

The point is also that self-awareness is a skill that is variable within humans and can be trained, i.e. one can "learn how to learn." This ability is present in both the scientist and the artist, the only difference is domain of application.

Imagination and skepticism. We are animals of art and science.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLigBYhdUDs

I am an artist by trade, but it was scientific thinkers who helped honed my creative ability to a razor's edge. What is the scientist doing? Science. What is the artist doing? art. Look at what you are doing, and think about what you are doing, and you are doing both with your own life.

Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition?

In the words of Dr. Sagan, a divided tribal community would have made "enormous evolutionary sense"... millions of years ago, when we were hunters and gatherers. This is no longer the case. The problem inherent with humanity is that science and technology are propelling us forward at an exponential rate, but not much has changed with us. Were still those same humans from millions of years ago.

Has anyone ever read pic related? What are your opinions on science and it's role in our fragile future as a species, where this cold, unemotional and rational force is providing us with more and more means to either save or destroy ourselves?

This isn't a political thread, but the recent events in the USA in Charlottesville just highlights the situation we humans have contended with for so long. Why can't we educate, help, and bring one another up to a sense of confidence and understanding?

I am lost, /lit/. In my own country. Science may be a candle in the dark, but what good is it if we all collectively insist on keeping our eyes shut.

Thoughts on the text? The situation we face, together?