/lit/ - Literature

>>4980895
wtf is today's zeitgeist anyway

>>4980895
>zeitgeist
We read history to avoid making juvenile generalisations like you just did.

one should live in the here and now, though shouldn't look past the knowledge of antiquity, and please don't call me an intellectual lest I vomit

Today's zeitgeists are tomorrow's schmeigeists.

>Picture of pretty girl.
>Post urging you to stop doing something.
>/tv/

>>4980905
>girl

>>4980895
More importantly, why does she defile her eyebrows like that? Why don't women understand what looks good and what doesn't?

>>4980901
Θρᾷκας Ἕλληνες ἡγοῦνται, τοὺς ἐς Ἴλιον μετὰ Ῥήσου στρατεύσαντας, Ῥήσου νυκτὸς ὑπὸ Διομήδους ἀναιρεθέντος ὃν τρόπον Ὅμηρος ἐν τοῖς ἔπεσι φράζει, φεύγοντας ἐπὶ τοῦ Πόντου τὸ στόμα, ᾗ στενώτατός ἐστιν ἐς Θρᾴκην ὁ διάπλους, οἱ μὲν οὐκ ἐπιτυχόντας πλοίων τῇδε καταμεῖναι καὶ τῆς γῆς κρατῆσαι Βεβρυκίας λεγομένης, οἱ δὲ περάσαντας ὑπὲρ τὸ Βυζάντιον ἐς τὴν Θρᾳκῶν τῶν Βιθυνῶν λεγομένων παρὰ Βιθύαν ποταμὸν οἰκῆσαι, καὶ λιμῷ πιεσθέντας ἐς Βεβρυκίαν αὖθις ἐπανελθεῖν, καὶ Βιθυνίαν ἀντὶ Βεβρυκίας, ἀπὸ τοῦ ποταμοῦ παρ' ὃν ᾤκουν, ὀνομάσαι, ἢ καὶ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῖς ἀλόγως σὺν χρόνῳ παρατραπῆναι, οὐκ ἐς πολὺ τῆς Βιθυνίας παρὰ τὴν Βεβρυκίαν διαφερούσης. Ὧδε μὲν ἔνιοι νομίζουσιν, ἕτεροι δὲ Βίθυν ἄρξαι πρῶτον αὐτῶν, παῖδα Διός τε καὶ Θρᾴκης, οὓς ἐπωνύμους ἑκατέρᾳ γῇ γενέσθαι.

>>4980907
idk man i think she looks p. cute

>>4980895
Today's zeitgeist is maximum shit.

Culturally, we're living in a second Dark Ages.

>>4980907
>tfw beauty is subjective and your ideas of what constitutes it aren't necessarily everyone else's

>>4980916
I agree but shouldn't you be aware of it if you want to achieve things in today's society?

>>4980907
You now realise that girls don't care what do YOU think looks good.

>>4980919
>now
I knew this my whole life.

>>4980906
Yes.

>>4980912
No, that's retarded. Fuck you.

>>4980895
the philosophy of antiquity is easier to learn because we live in a world far more focused on intellectual pursuits than those authors did, this makes their writings actually accessible to the layman of today.

99.999% of people on lit don't have the mental faculties that would be needed to follow actual cutting-edge philosophical research, e.g., the latest papers in prestigious phil journals

>>4980895
>implying modern society isn't too overflowed with information to have a defined zeitgeist
>implying studying the past is detrimental to your understanding of the present instead of beneficial

from my terribly philosophically ignorant point of view... today's conflict is this: the US/NATO is surrounding and getting closer and closer to both China and Russia from east and west sides, so kinda validating "the end of the history" and the "victory of capitalism". not that russia or china represent any other ideology IRL...
I kinda agree with OP, you people should also worry about the current world, or you'll end looking like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si20PF_ep6I
the problem with this is that if you want to do something, the society ends going back to the shaky 70's...

>>4980895
Because we want to.

>>4980895

Because /lit/ is primarily composed of people who very rarely ever venture outside of their parents' homes.

>>4980916
there never was a first dark age to begin with

>>4980918
If you lived in the ghetto, would you wish to partake in gang culture, or would you rather try to elevate yourself above it in the hopes that one day you'd make it out of the ghetto to a place worth living in?

Same thing with culture.

>>4981032
>If you lived in the ghetto, would you wish to partake in gang culture
Hell yeah, I'd be cruising with my homies, blasting some fools, dope dealing, gangbanging, I'd do it all. Me and my crew would be straight up gangstas, hombre, knowwhatimsayin?

>>4981050
look can you get me some lsd?

>>4981050
Have fun being poor and living in and out of jail until youre killed before you turn 30

>>4980895
Intellectuals are escapists with different shades of egos. We have replaced God and the afterlife with funding and tenor. I actually liked them more when they preached than when they lectured.

>>4981050
>tfw not an inner city gang member

>>4981095
Amor fati, muthfacka

Why are you such an autistic faggot you make this topic every day?

>>4981098
Yup spot on

>>4981098
*tenure, excuse me

Is there a coherent modern zeitgeist? It seems like there are far too many different things going on for there to be one. There probably never was one in the past, it's just a construction built from the few works that managed to stand the test of time. Just do whatever yo.

you get a greater appreciation of the zeitgeist if you can determine what makes it different to the past

>>4981160
This really. Its a pretty obvious confirmation bias to assume that there is a singular theme or mode of thinking at play at any one time.

For me I just like to make sure the novel I'm bout to invest a significant amount of time and thought into is not utter horse shit. So I read the books considered "essential" that have been critically acclaimed.

you can't really asses where you're going without knowing where you re, and knowing where you where help you to do this.

Also, shoulders of giants and all that jazz.

>>4981032
False dichotomy. cf: Black Panthers.

I read precisely to miss today's zeitgeist. I haven't missed it as much as I've liked.

>>4980940
>cutting-edge philosophical research

It's newer so it must be better!

>>4981262

>asses

because much of modern art is based on art from the past, whether it be direct allusions or subtle inspiration. you won't understand a great portion of post-modern lit, as an example, without being familiar with the canon

>>4981016

non-sequitur much?

>>4981865
>Aristotle lives in primitive time, watches rocks roll around in a field
>Modern world has the fucking Large Hadron Collider
nope, better go to Aristotle if you wanna know how the world works!

>2014
>still not standing on the shoulders of giants
If you aren't standing on their shoulders, you're buried under their corpses

>>4980912

Well shit son

>>4981900

>dose euphemisms

>>4980895
>but completely miss today's zeitgeist while doing that?

Too far down the rabbit hole to care now, dude.

>>4981919

I don't necessarily disagree but I'm not sure I catch your full meaning.

Are you suggesting that what philosophical material we have so far accumulated can easily occupy all our thinking without adding anything else to the list? Am I warm or way off base?

>>4980940
>99.999% of people on lit don't have the mental faculties that would be needed to follow actual cutting-edge philosophical research, e.g., the latest papers in prestigious phil journals

its got way more to do with the depth of specialization than you think these days that makes it hard
suppose youre at the top of one area of say neuroscience youre still miles away from the the other researcher in what is misleading called a closely related area
now try to add what is learned in both areas as an expert with others and try to complete that field and then translate those findings into accessible information for the masses "philosophy"
its impossible theres just too much today

>>4981210
This

>>4981931

I think that eventually if our descendants are still anything we'd call 'human' we will mythologize and have a coherent philosophy containing all the findings of neuroscience. It's bound to happen eventually, and it will probably take a long convoluted time to go beyond groan inducing, but it must happen I think.

>>4981949
well once we reach that point humans that try will have either have to abandon their attempts as being futile or will have to act on the belief that the findings of other humans are correct without ever being able to confirm them themselves
eventually if science is to continue it is going to have to rely on a belief of truth
its going to be religion all over again

>>4981028
This.

>>4981927
I could always try to add to the "zeitgeist"
I, in fact, want very much to change the world into a better place, but I'm not stressing out over it. The setup of this world is pretty strongly against my altering it.
I am mulling over writing about about someone who is successful at this.
So I'm reading for fun and learning and research

Bounded rationality comes into play.

idk what the zeitgeist is though
I know what the music zeitgeist is doe
I read TinyMixTapes

>>4980895
I have a folder full of every picture of this girl on the internet. I thought I could come to /lit/ to get away from my obsession. Fuck you OP.

>>4982102
>I, in fact, want very much to change the world into a better place
Judging from your posts I hope you never manage to make the world what you consider to be a better place. Just write a novel or something please.

>>4982149
What if my novel is successful in changing the world?

Curious. How do you judge my posts? What in the world in my head are you so sour on?

>>4982142
can you please share... at least a name but better some pics. thanks anon

>>4982167
I don't dislike you, I just think you are very idealistic. Which always spells doom imho o_0.

>>4982168
A few. But I don't want you to end up like me, anon.

>>4982192
is that her? red hair please, cause that looks awful

>>4982192
Her online handle is "Minami Nyan".

>>4982198
If you insist, picky anon. Most of her pictures are dark hair though.

>>4982207

>>4982200
thanks for the name, anon. already lost interest tho, shes not that great

>>4982234
Yeah, well, that's just like, your opinion, man.

>>4982240
umm... well, yeah of course it is.

anyway, now that i just derailed the thread i will try to answer op: cause the present stands on the past, so, in order to look for a justification to today's state of things, one possibility is looking to the past.

>>4982175
It's all going on without me anyway, but my ideal is that the people will get what they want. And they'll figure out just how to get it in balance, even if it kills us trying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYFGTf3M3Sc

>>4980912
Translate it, weebs.

>>4982240
this is bullshit

>>4982299
It is?

>>4982306
Yeah. wtf. How did I manage to be so lucky and unlucky at once?
>human
>born 20 years after we figured out everything was fake
>first world comfort from cradle to grave
>can't connect to other people

fuck me

>>4982316
It's okay, anon. There's a purpose out there for everyone, you just have to find it!

>>4980895
>work very hard
If you mean reading novels and philosophy, it's not working very hard, it's reading what you're interested in.
I actually do work to learn about past times, studying history, and it's because history is the novel of humanity. And therefore it's interesting.

>>4982167
Man I loved Daisies

NEWSPAPERS!

So... any online newspapers worth reading? I'm a fucking huge fan of the International New York Times... To the point I find difficult to find other newspapers appealing.
Any suggestions?
I also read Der Spiegel from time to time.

Zeitgeist is a Gespenst.
We read contemporary and old books.
Shut this shit down.
Fuck you and your shitty threads,
you were definitely not okay today.

>>4982919
Why did you post Lain?

>>4982941
Favourite anime of all time. I don't have a folder for posting in imageboards, so I post the first thing I find that is SFW.
I answered your question, now tell me, which newspapers do you read (online)! If any.

>>4982941
I guess you were saying why did I post and image. Post with images are more noticeable; that's all.

Because modernity is shallow and insipid.

>>4981900
>If you aren't standing on their shoulders, you're buried under their corpses

damn...

How do I into western canon of philosophy? There has to be some flowchart.

Like science, one tries to start understanding something from the basic level. Most people start reading the past philosophical ideologies to help them understand how the current philosophical ideologies were derived. But they lose focus and get lost in them past philosophical ideologies are quite interesting and one needs complete dedication to fully understand them. Nowadays, the base for philosophy is science. You need some basic understanding of science or you need some knowledge of a particular religion like Buddhism. And they're still developing, the kinks are being straightened out and most people trying to get into philosophy don't want to get into some half baked ideology. Most want to read to calm their mind and it helps provide them a pillar to lean on when they can't answer certain metaphysical questions. Nowadays Philosophy is dissolving, there's too much information due to post modernisms stress on giving everyone's subjective opinions credibility it's not possible to form a particular ideology without contradicting someone. Nowadays philosophy has become a career, it's become a way for people to make money and promote their thoughts, their main aim to sell it, not answer questions. This zeitgeist, philosophically is all about collective social psychology and marketing philosophy to the masses. Just my humble opinion

>>4980940

links to said cutting-edge journals plz?

Because humans never change and you can learn a lot from the mistakes of the past

Also today's Zeigeist is a shit youtube comment in the grand scheme of thing

We're trying to justify the awful present

>>4982240
is she like half-japanese?

>>4980895
>but completely miss today's zeitgeist while doing tha
they do not

>>4980895
if there was an american zeitgeist right now, a big part of it would be stupid fawning nostalgia

so

i think they're doing what they're supposed to

>>4980896
I would characterise it as surrender from fear and placation.

>>4983643
There are Asians in Russia.

>>4983665
i didn't know she lived in russia, sry

>>4980895
>intellectuals (including many /lit/ posters)

Does not compute.

>>4980900
Didn't you just make one?

>>4980905
>pretty

Because you are choosing which intellectuals count and which don't.
Also, because /lit/ has an userbase bellow 30 and it's pretty hard to understand both present, past and potential future when you have been more or less 10 years out of HS, and maybe even less out of another teaching institution that forced you a certain path before you could freely do whatever you felt right.

>>4983673
Shut the fuck up.

>>4983665
She's not Asian.
>>4983677
She's pretty but she seems like a bitch.

>>4983686
But there's definitely something Asian to her appearance. And if she weren't a bitch I wouldn't love her so.

>>4983693
Ask me how I know you're single and fail repeatedly in the relationship department.

>>4983696
>implying he's ever been in a relationship

>>4983700
That would be "failing repeatedly", yes.

>>4983696
I'm in a long-term relationship that's making me very happy. I can do that and obsess over a girl I'll never meet on the internet too, right?

>>4983708
>I can do that and obsess over a girl I'll never meet on the internet too, right?

No.

Liar.

>>4983708
Prove it.

>>4983710
Anon, you're hurting me with your lack of trust.

>>4983715
Tell us about your long-term relationship.

>>4983721
What about it?

>>4983727
How it came to be, what your relationship is like, what she's like, etc.

>>4980895
So reading old books is not part of today's zeitgeist? How can you deny that the specificity of today's zeitgeist lies in the fact that the culture of all ages is simultaneously and easily available?

>>4983734
She's a girl a year or so younger than me who I met through a mutual friend. We started dating after about a month of being casual sex partners, initiated by me one morning after I'd slept on her couch. She's very shy and awkward and comes from a moral, Catholic background, with an abusive father she doesn't see any more. We don't get to see each other much at the moment because I've been away studying in Japan, but when we do things just slot into how they used to be. She's a lot less shy around me and I'm trying to help her be more confident in herself.

And on the side I collect photographs of this chick.

>>4983748
Why are you studying in Japan?

>>4983748
How old is she? How long have you been together? What does she do?

>>4983896
A scholarship I won, to learn Japanese there. I stayed in Tokyo for six months, it was fun. Now I'm waiting for my own course to resume in September, and until then staying with my family in Switzerland, hence why we don't see each other much right now.
>>4983910
Four years now. She's a literature student (ha) and she's twenty one as of this January.

>>4983934
Post her pic.

>>4983934
Would you leave her for that girl if it were possible?

>>4983934
What's your own course that you're studying?

>>4983990
She doesn't actually let me take them of her. And anyway, I'm not so dumb as to do that just to prove a point to some anon.
>>4984000
The part of me that's sometimes a good person says that I wouldn't, because I love her. But I've already cheated on her once, while away (she knows about it, and due to a lack of confidence didn't raise any fuss). Basically I'm kind of a shitty boyfriend.

>>4984032
>(she knows about it, and due to a lack of confidence didn't raise any fuss)
What? How'd she find out? What'd she do though?

>>4984032
see>>4984005
And what are your favorite works of literature?

>>4984044
I told her the day afterwards. It upset her, but all she did was ask me to not do it again. Generally I try not to, but (and this isn't an excuse) the problem is her shyness and dependency can be stifling sometimes. Hence why I have a boner for a girl who'd probably not look at me twice.

>>4984052
History. And Gravity's Rainbow, Moby-Dick, The Sound and the Fury. A lot of pretentious guff.

>>4981912
aphorisms is the word you wanted. go back to grade school

>>4984070
What do you study?

>>4984090
Law. I tease her about her degree and she gets flustered with me talking about mine.

Anyway, I've derailed enough of this thread, and I've gotta be off, I'm keeping someone waiting. Hope someone gets a decent short story out of my neurotic relationship with a Russian girl I'll never meet.

>>4984105
I am coming up with a story of her cuckolding you.

>>4984070
>Gravitys Rainbow

>>4984105
Do you speak weeb?

>>4983160

>>4980895
Because there is no such thing as a "zeitgeist." It is something that people establish retroactively, trying to force an essentially random chaos of meaningless past events and ideas into a specific form so they can justify the present.

why do you keep saying that the present is terrible?

It's bad, but compare it to living 100 or even 50 years ago, is the best time we can live. Before you would probably have been born poor without any comfort and work yourself to the ends of your days. Hunger, diseases, war, no free time, no access to education.

What about history and it's constants? History often repeats it self, so by studying the past you can, to some extend, have a clearer foresight.

>>4983202
Seconding this.

>>4984400
>tfw you will never stand with your Aryan brothers, cheering "Sieg Heil!" as your Fuhrer speaks with god-like conviction
>tfw you and your Kameraden will never storm into Soviet Russia, bedding with Ukrainian peasant girls and slaughtering Communist scum by the thousands
>tfw you will never see The Thousand Year Reich in all its glory
>tfw you will never throw molotovs into the business establishments of filthy Juden cockroaches
>tfw you will never feel the recoil of your K98 as you drop a Russian conscript in glorious battle
>tfw you will never return home from the Ostfront victorious, to make love to your strong, loyal, Aryan wife
>tfw you will never raise your beautiful Aryan children in The Thousand Year Reich
>tfw you will never get to shake hands with Hitler, as he awards you The Iron Cross 1st Class for valor and bravery in service of The Fatherland
>tfw none of that will ever happen and we live in a world run by the Jews

FUCK the present.

>>4985666

>666

Stop being such faggots and recommend some kewl neswpeipers, plaese.

>>4980895
Because we fear of the future, so we live in the past.

>>4985666
>aryan
>bedding with slavic ukraine scum

you dun fucked up
to the gas chamber you go

Knowing where you come from helps when figuring out where to go

>>4982136
das cool mane they're on point most of the time I know a dude who writes for them

>>4980895
Understanding the past helps us predict the future.

>>4986149
Go away, you with your reasonable attitude and your mature opinions

B..but I spend most of my time reflecting on the psychological complexities of the common contemporary pleb.

>>4985666
Nazi romanticism, the last bastion of retromodernist classical beauty in this god forsaken postmodernity

>>4986996
>the last bastion of retromodernist classical beauty
Maybe that's why people aren't interested in the classics.
Switch tactics already

>>4980895
>>4980932
>>4982142
>>4982192
>>4982200
>>4982207
>>4982231
>>4982234
>>4982240
>>4982321
>>4983665
>>4983677
>>4983693
>>4983708
>>4983715
>>4983727
>>4983748
>>4983934
>>4984032
>>4984070
>>4984105
>girl
>female
>has vagina

>>4984400
arguably our parents generation may have had it better because housing, economy etc but it'll probably pick up again for us