/lit/ - Literature

Life today in a modern industrial society has an air of rigidness about it. Everywhere you go, you run up against barriers and rules. Speed limits, parking restrictions, decorum, social rules (unwritten but bearing on the mind), myriad exacting laws. All of them supposedly designed for the collective benefit of everyone. But no individual feels like everyone, each individual feels like you. So you end up being oppressed by the collective rules designed to protect you. This is called the "system".

There is nothing "wrong" with you brother.

You are merely suffering from the collective malaise of having all that we are supposed to want. Supposedly, human existence today is the best it has ever been. The 'facts' bear this out. Life expectancy today for the average person is higher than it's ever been, right?

And yet you long for the hunt. The risk. The hunter gatherer life, buried deep somewhere in your hypothalamus, longs for that time when your own ingenuity resulted in food for your group. When you could exploit your human genius for real and direct gain...feeding yourself and your tribe. Going to the office/cubicle today gains you money to obtain these things. But it does not offer the thrill of the hunt. The risk. The adrenaline rush of the successful raid on the enemy camp, the high of the perfect kill.

Homo sapiens sapiens is not a very old species in relative terms. But it is a cunning one and the greatest force this planet has ever seen. But, the amount of time we successfully gathered as hunters (2 million years) is far longer and evolutionary significant in comparison to the existence of human civilisation (8 thousand years). Yet, all cogent information tells you you are better off today than anyone in human history.

And yet, on a quiet walk outside the city, you stare at the moon through leafy glade and can almost touch the truth of a different life. A life you were designed for but no longer is.

There is nothing wrong with you brother, that is not wrong with all of us.

Disregard those corporate entities who tell you your problem is solvable through the use of their 'drug'.

If you need to alter your consciousness self medicate with whiskey or weed. Do not touch the shit the "experts" have formulated to suppress the spirit.

>implying anomie

deep man

anymore?

That was fucking underwhelming.

Incidentally, if anyone ever desires the thrill-of-the-hunt, the thrill of personal physical exertion and hardship, join the military. Even training scenarios give you enough of that Fight-Club shit to make you feel fulfilled and complete.

>>1626587
>That was fucking underwhelming.

cool criticism bro

That was pretty cool. I was actually just reading the comic and thinking about how fucking morbid culture is becoming lately and then I read your post, which is sort of related I guess, although I was hoping it would be more of a criticism on the comic and the attitude it portrays and possibly unwittingly parodies.

why does this remind me of 1984.

>>1626597

You want some elaboration, then?

Initially, it needs to be said that Fight Club has already put this whole body of thought out into popular culture far more eloquently than you did just then. I quite like Fight Club, although I don't really adore it, and works like this little bit of /lit/ are evidently derivative.

Moving on, if it's all so intolerable that you're moved to post multi-post diatribes on an internet imageboard, why don't you take up some kind of primitivism? Join a commune, or (better yet!) move to Somalia and enjoy a world where you have to fight for your daily bread.

The truly ridiculous part of this line of thought is that it's always put out by exactly the kind of people it features - upper-middle-class professional whiteboys who've never suffered physical hardship in their lives. However, you're not condemned to live the life you currently live. If you really truly hated "The System" so much you could easily find some hardship, by (for instance) selling all of your shit and hiking around the country, or by joining the military as an infantryman, or moving to a rural area and taking work doing seasonal fruitpicking; good, hard, physical, honest work which will bring you back to your roots.

Instead, you sit here on the internet whining about how high your life-expectancy is and how easily you can feed yourself.

Don't kid yourself; you're not making a personal sacrifice of integrity in order to raise the consciousness of other trapped souls - all valid consciousness-raising in this area has already been done.

You're just whining to seem edgy.

>>1626619

Well played, sir.

i think men 1. have the need to prove themselves. for the most part, love showing their best in sports and stuff, almost have a need to impress others.

2. want sex and more sex

>>1626666
2. is really just part of 1.

And then I read this post which was intended to stir my mind on an intellectual level but instead i went to go masturbate to pictures of my girlfriend on facebook.

>>1626676
You have to go to Facebook to obtain photos of your girlfriend?

She's your girlfriend and all you are able to do is fap to her Facebook photos?

You really suck at this whole lying thing.

>>1626680
I thought it was an alright lie.

no one's ever happy

>>1626619

cool criticism bro

>You have a woman.
and for that matter.
>You have a 'decent' job.
and
>You have your own place.

I like you OP. Just saying that I agree with the majority of your perspective. Definitely have that malaise, very much there when you don't get satisfaction from fulfilling society's standards for success.

>>1626619
>all valid consciousness-raising in this area has already been done.

oh you

>>1626619

Interesting thread OP I enjoyed it and share similar thoughts as to the state of first world techno-culture.

OP if you find you are personally dissatisfied you should try finding a passion for something outside of work and pursuing it. Excel in something and achieve technical proficiency, and produce something. Also, be disciplined and patient. You can work some olde-world traditional values into your life if you try. Like patience, respect to nature and the passage of time, meditating. Also do things that scare you.

>>1626619
Let's put it this way. Only once a person reaches these goals of affluence and physical comfort, can one actually realize that they are not all that they have lived up to be. You complain that these people have never suffered hardship. But perhaps those that have not reach these standards set by society are simply too distracted with meeting them, and therefore cannot know how shallow they are.

time to dump some fight club gifs and motivationals

whelp, might as well quit my job at the ice cream factory

ever heard of the social contract

>>1626748
cute post hoc fairy tale

OP is socially determined; therefore the shit he is spouting is socially determined; therefore he reaffirms the very system he rails against and strengthens it

>>1626754
>the very system he rails
I suppose that's a bit misleading because what's really happening is simply that the system is hiccuping; there isn't any subject to rail against it

>>1626754
Is everyone not socially determined to some extent? By that logic, isn't everything that's ever been said been socially determined?

>>1626764
Yes. So there is that whole bullshit debate about whether you can ever "get outside the system/ideology" that keeps the marxists and feminists and queer theorists and assorted scum of the earth awake at night

>>1626764
>Is everyone not socially determined to some extent?
>>>/v/

>>1626587

MIlitary?

Ahahahahahahaha.

>>1626619
>compares a few paragraphs to entire book

>whines about whining

>contributes nothing

>>1626772

>taught from birth to label people with the slightest different from yourself as "abnormal" and "not worth my time"
>this keeps people from working together to create change, since all people will naturally have slight differences and all are taught to ostracize others
>1% of humans with wealth & power dictate every aspect of your life and you can't even acknowledge it because you're too terrified to even consider it
>every adult knows these things to be true, deep down, but refuse to admit it or fight to change it because that would make them "too different"
>yfw?

TLDR: you are a slave right now, and that's not some angsty hyperbole, we mean it in the most literal sense. you have nothing.

It's a rare person that can actually come to this (and deeper) and truly accept it, not in an ironic, gen-x "hur hur we are the damned" way, but in a true acceptance of observable and provable systems operating all around you. But acceptance is just the first step! Take heart! Let us cling together.

> in the most literal sense. you have nothing.

in a metaphorical sense you mean

there's plenty of stuff that I have

air in my lungs for example. some food in my stomach.

>>1626809

I realize I am a slave. I dont like the whole collectivist jive you segue into though.

>UR A SLAVE UR A SLAVE
>CONSUMERISM GOVERNMENT/CORPORATE ELITES INTERNET CONTROL MEANINGLESS LIFE SELF-MEDICATE NATURE
>RAT RACE RAT TRAP 9-5 SUCKX

Our only hope is to wait for the apocalypse. Why do you think people want that 2012 thing to happen so much?

There's a compromise between security and adventure, OP. Our brains may crave adrenaline and novel experiences but generally speaking our bodies/genes "want" to remain safe, and that's why most of us remain inert in a relatively predictable but sometimes stifling environment.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of things about the human fear of risk-taking that irritates me too. And I do think modern culture is alienating and that carries with it problems of its own. But if you consider that almost every person has some sort of discontent in their lives (whether they're wealthy teens whose parents won't buy them that second car, or poor farmers worrying that they won't produce enough crop to get by for the next season) I wonder if a "return to our roots" is really the panacea we need. It carries pros and cons with it, the same as our current situation.

Also, the rich kid can downgrade and backpack around the country to get in touch with the meaning of life -- hobos don't have the option of becoming suddenly wealthy in order to see how the other half lives. I enjoy having choices.

>>1626837
every failure dreams of the end days when their worth is the same as all others

it won't come for you

>>1626843
You make a good point anon.

You are a dirty hippie. Congratulations.

You don't need to read anything other than Bukowski to understand Bukowski. You can also read his books in any order, although it might be best to read in chronological order.

If you want to link Bukowski to the history of literature then you might want to look at Hemingway, Fante, D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller or Norman Mailer, but thesee are extras and aren't at all required.

>>1627491
Wasn't Bukowski the /r9k/ of authors?

>>1627491

oh you

>>1627519
Only when you don't understand him.