/lit/ - Literature

>read first section of the republic
>literally already at least 10 sections where it would be dismissed wholesale if it didn't have the thick fog of pretension (caused by others) and cultural worship around it

I expected a joke but not something this dumb.

Of course I expect a lot of BS literary critiques that attempt to justify every aspect of it.

>go to Google
>type "universities are"
>see the suggestions

Let the lit butthurt commence

>you could be reading the most famous works of the western canon right now but you freely choose to read my shitpost instead

True story. Today I bought a book and then went on the underground to go home and there was honest to god a group of jailbaits on there. The contrast between the meek, irrelevant, desperately idealistic ugly beta nerd with the hedonistic, unthinking, worshipped by society, jailbaits (more baity than jaily, but only just) was palpable. Books are powerless these days, idealistically and as entertainment. I may as well have been wearing a fedora.

Is there anything more cringe worthy than hearing some critiquer talk about a basic topic in that overly puffed up way they talk about obscure philisophy? It's like they're revealing that they're dumb as fuck.

You see it with economics, sometimes on lit.

>It is clear that the recycling of surplus capital caused by the exploitation of labour trivially proves the necessity of a grand committee to mathematically fix commodity prices immanently for the stability of the system within itself..."

And when Zizek talks about Bill Gates extracting rent. LMAO, no one knows what the fuck he's on about. That is such specious reasonng it barely exists

Imagine a guy who has played chess with his family and a few friends all his life, and always wins, versus an amateur chess player who plays online and in tournaments. The former knows his family aren't great at chess, but often he thinks he's above average. The latter knows that he is really awful in the grand scheme of amateurs chess, but he can still beat the first guy 9 times out of 10. If they meet, and agree to play chess, watch out!

In reading books there is no real goal, but there is a similar dynamic. Let's say I'm doing a college interview and the applicant says he loves reading, reading is really important to him. Okay, good, this is a chance for me to learn something about how he thinks, his preparation for university-level work, the richness of his ideas - so I ask him what books have affected him the most. He saysMaximum Ride, because he really wishes he could fly. This is a potentially embarrassing moment - from his perspective he's the biggest bookworm he knows, but from my perspective he's not reading at grade level. To me, he comes across as somewhat pretentious. I don't think he's objectively pretentious - it's just an unavoidable clash of worldviews.

>humanities degree at non Oxbridge UK university
>about 2 to 4 essays in a 12 week term
>group discussions involving tonnes of uninterested undergrads who go to yoonay for the top bants innit
>surrounded by future HR, marketing, primary school teachers

>humanities degree at Oxbridge
>10 essays in an 8 week term
>constant feedback and criticism from tutors
>very small discussion groups that involve an expert in the field
>surrounded by future politicians, scholars, literally any prestigious job

How do you live with yourself if you're in the first group?

>humanities degree at non Oxbridge UK university
>about 2 to 4 essays in a 12 week term
>group discussions involving tonnes of uninterested undergrads who go to yoonay for the top bants innit
>surrounded by future HR, marketing, primary school teachers

>humanities degree at Oxbridge
>10 essays in an 8 week term
>constant feedback and criticism from tutors
>very small discussion groups that involve an expert in the field
>surrounded by future politicians, scholars, literally any prestigious job

How do you live with yourself if you're in the first group?

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/

What do you think of this? According to this, I'm an under performing Loser, which is better than being a high performing Loser or Clueless.

I'll make up a concept right now called concept-1. Imagine I asked you what concept-1's true meaning was. Imagine I asked you what concept-1 said I should do when herding goats in Rwanda and I have a cold. And similarly for a hundred other situations. Imagine I claimed that the investigation to find the true definition of concept-1 would require many more years. You'd think I was stupid. Maybe you'd point out that I just invented the term, so I should just define concept-1. You'd say that the "solutions" to the scenarios would have to be arbitrarily defined.

Now imagine the same thing but instead of concept-1 we look at "morality". Why is the investigation taken any more seriously?

> This misrepresentation of science is a direct descendant of the reaction, in the Romantic movement, against the birth of science and empiricism more than 200 years ago; it's exactly the same paranoid fantasy as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, only not as well written. We say descendant, but of course, the humanities haven't really moved forward at all, except to invent cultural relativism, which exists largely as a pooh-pooh reaction against science. And humanities graduates in the media, who suspect themselves to be intellectuals, desperately need to reinforce the idea that science is nonsense: because they've denied themselves access to the most significant developments in the history of western thought for 200 years, and secretly, deep down, they're angry with themselves over that.

https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2005/sep/08/badscience.research