/lit/ - Literature

No longer human, pretty much everything by Dazai

>>17742061
A few years ago there was a 45 year old Japanese woman who came to my city of Yellowknife, Canada. She wandered off and died in the wilderness north of thre city. I remember hiking along the trails, wondering if I would find her.

>>17742107
Forgot to say, it was a suicide.

>>17742071
I've only read No Longer Human. Dazai was clearly depressed, so I don't think it really fits the theme.

>>17742061
mishima

>>17742107
How's life in the Knife?

>>17742159
Lonely. Hasn't been any tourism for many months.

>>17742107
you could have saved her

metal as fuck anon
seppuku

>>17742292
You're right anon, if I had met her I would have given her such good dick she would have realized life was worth living again.

>>17742141
I know, my recc was sincere

Good idea OP, I will also do this.

>But it had come to seem that there was no distinguishing between pain of the spirit and pain of the flesh. What was the difference between humiliation and a swollen prostate? Between the pangs of sorrow and pneumonia? Senility was a proper ailment of both the spirit and the flesh, and the fact that senility was an incurable disease meant that existence was an incurable disease. It was a disease unrelated to existentialist theories, the flesh itself being the disease, latent death.

>If the cause of decay was illness, then the fundamental cause of that, the flesh, was illness too. The essence of the flesh was decay. It had its spot in time to give evidence of destruction and decay.

>Why did people first become aware of that fact only as old age came on? Why, when it buzzed faintly past the ear in the brief noontide of the flesh, did they note it only to forget it? Why did the healthy young athlete, in the shower after his exertions, watching the drops of water hit his shining flesh like hail, not see that the high tide of life itself was the cruelest of ills, a dark, amber-colored lump?

— Mishima Yukio, The Decay of the Angel (1971)

>>17742061

Why aren't you scared of what happens after death? I'm so fucking scared, I've had existential anxiety since I was 10, and have cried too many times over this.

>>17742292
in some sort of time machine

>>17743509
i know it's a reddit tier response but really, you know what it was like before you were born? that's what it's like after you die. live a life that is meaningful, try to do things that leave an impression on the world, pass on knowledge and insight and thus allow a part of yourself to survive your corporeal demise.

>>17743522
That doesn't make sense to me though. We don't know there was nothing before we were born, we just don't remember there being anything before we were born. Lack of evidence doesn't imply nonexistence.

It also makes no sense to me why there's an infinitesimally small period in the span of the universe during which my consciousness begins and ceases to exist. What's the point? Why did I begin in the head of some creature that only lives for a few decades to begin with? And why am I gone for an eternity after? Existence as an idea makes no fucking sense whatsoever. I can't possibly experience everything I need to in less than a hundred years time. I don't want to believe this is it.

>>17742061
>The Sound of Insects

>>17743522
That really is a reddit response.
If the root of the fear of death is losing everything you have in this world, then you had everything to gain by being born into this world and everything to lose by leaving it. It's being aware of the impending change, crossroads, and transition for the worse that brings about the fear. The ways to deny this fear is to ignore it, lie to yourself (which requires repeating the same lie to others, which is what you're doing), or lose all material attachments to this world.
There is no hope, only cope.
If you can't cope, you can't even rope.

>>17743625
Do you get existential anxiety/dread, anon?

>>17743676
of course

>>17742061
kek i hope they rescue you half dead

>>17742061
>So I've decided I'm going to commit suicide
Same. How are you gonna go out?

>>17743708
Wanna make a suicide pact frendo?

>>17743896
Did you stop reading after the first sentence?

>>17743522
>after you die
>it's like before you were born
>it's like... before you were born

>>17742061

>No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai
>Kokoro, Natsume Soseki

I'd prefer the second one tho, it fits

>>17742061
You are more depressed than you realize

hello? yes, cleanup on aisle 5, we've got another athiest

CUH-CRINGE

>>17743522
The high IQ answer is continuity of consciousness, but nothing more.

Before-birth / after-death = non-experience (worst case atheist/materialist case), experience of non-experience is contradictory, ergo there is no experience after death or before birth. We "experience" right now, and as we cannot experience non-experience (as we just established, it is entirely contradictory), there is only experience left, eternally. Fully understanding the reality of this (I convinced myself of it, I'm not sure of any other philosophies that teach the same thing; maybe Nietzsche's eternal return, but this has other meanings) leads to a calm acceptance of existence and death. It leads me, however, to being discontent, to want to find out if there is something more than just this endless cycle.

>>17744120
What would making a suicide pact entail?

>>17744142
Yes

>>17744919
>rgo there is no experience after death or before birth
There is no experience of non-experience*

>>17744921
I dunno maybe we could just start with self-harm or something and work our way up from there.

I-I'm a bit nervous; I've never made a suicide pact with anyone before...

>>17742061
Be easy on yourself man. Use an exit bag

>>17744152
You turn into semen

>>17742061
I can kind of sympathize with your mindset although I’m not quite there yet. I have mental hurdles about you know like being a wise old man to kids or grandkids or something. Mishima’s essay on James Dean and William T Vollmann have been influences for me. Just consider it seriously and not casually I guess.

>>17744893
I know you meant this as a clever post but you pretty much showed yourself how religion is just a pure cope

When I start to feel my memory going bad or my body growing feeble, I will probably go to a national forest with my AR and wander off the trail in a random direction. I would leave a note at my house so that no one would waste resources on a missing person search. This is, of course, contingent on all of my immediate family being gone by then. One thing I know for sure is I'll never let myself end up in a nursing home.

>>17742061
The Fire Within/Will o' the Wisp, by Drieu la Rochelle

>>17743513
Know all your enemies

>>17743061
this is great stuff

>>17742107
Reminds me of this. Good movie too

>>17744897
brehs...

Joy Williams' The Quick and the Dead. Much to do with the alienation/denaturalization of death today. Nursing home inmates who dream to be driven "into the desert, into the sun-steeped scene of a bigger, darker world." Children sabotaging taxidermy museums in order to "[distinguish] between life and death... which is more than anyone else in this place does", etc etc. The Changeling is a good one too, not so directly relevant, but good reading if you wish to be transformed by the living world in some way.

>>17742061
Epictetus' stoic writings talk about the open door policy, look into that. Seneca talks about suicide as well and how to make it noble