/lit/ - Literature

>>5137741

books don't cure shit.

Still, read sci-fi.

babby's first existential crisis

Read Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Decide whether you will commit suicide, and if not, read some Nietzsche and convince yourself you will become the Ubermensch.

You're just a late developer

Dickens

>>5137741
No author pretends to have the answers, but Tolstoy tries to give you the tools necessary to deal with it yourself. In my opinion he's the most satisfactory salve to existential crises

>>5137755
Wrong, I had my first existential crisis at 14. I talked to teachers, the clergy man, doctors, and everyone else inbetween on what's the meaning or purpose of life but I found none.

I find existential crisis tend to be a sporadic, repeating thing, I get them once every 2-4 years.

>>5137861
Then just wait 2 years

>>5137861
get laid and run a marathon

>>5137741
sartre and camus

>>5137889

that's not a fucking response


>>5137861

Read... The Myth of Sisyphus, Meditations, Bhagavad Gita, Gilgamesh, Genesis, uhh....

Nietzsche (zarathustra), hmmm....

Existentialism. If you're having an existential crisis, at least read some summaries of Sartre, if not his works (which are DENSE)

Steppenwolf

>reading in response to an existential crisis
Do so if you want, but I found the teachings of Kanye West to be most satisfying: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvImAiU04Ag

Basically he believes life is a dreamworld anyway so fuck it and do whatever you want. Making sense of it doesn't change he fact that it's meaningless.

>>5137741
>implying teenage angst has an expiry date

>>5137861
>first existential crisis
>talked to the clergy man

The Little Prince, by Antoine de St Exupery.

>>5137931
loser loner who ends up meeting a dominatrix.
- "I see that you like to obey. You probably haven't obeyed in a long time".
he finds meaning in pleasing her.

Some interesting thoughts (looking for a middle ground between extremes, art as a middle ground between thought and action), but the book ends in a long metaphor, the theater, quite unclear.

Nobody understands it, so the readers who liked the book try to give possible interpretations of the final metaphor.
Hesse said they are all pretty far-fetched.

>>5137861
Perhaps that's just because of hormones/sleep deprivation/changes of environnment/other physical causes.

Or perhaps you should simply stop searching for a meaning of life as is life was meant for something.

Camus, Sartre, maybe some Epicurus, and Tolstoy.

>>5137760
This.

babbys first etc

>>5137741
Phenomenology of the Spirit my Hegel.

That's not angst, OP, welcome to reality. You have duties now that your part of the colony of humans, just be grateful your carbon atoms weren't materialized into those of a sewer rat and try to impact reality in a positive way.

>>5137741
>Life is just a big joke/troll by god to have a good few laughs and everyone who dies watches us and laughs with god and the others who have died
>mfw

">tfw you realize that life is one big distraction until death, people pandering to meaningless political causes, wasting time watching anime or sports, or parents who live through the kids."

is a thought than is thought and experienced by you. All thoughts about life could only ever be your own thoughts so literally the cure is to think positive things about 'life' rather than negative ones

neither way of thinking (positive or negative) is the "objective truth" or more right than the other one, they're just thoughts that you think and experience. If you don't like it (i.e. it makes angst) then just realise you're actually the one thinking the angst-inducing thoughts and stop thinking.

>>5139571
i swear i've seen this posted somewhere else

A better thing to ask would be: why is suicide such a taboo?

>>5139579
Because it's cowardice and thus not virtuous. But don't worry, our modern society is devoid of virtue so you can go on without it being much.

>>5139579
because your mom doesn't want you to kill yourself

>>5137741
You cant cure an existencial crysis caused by logic by logic, thats the main paradox of existencialists and others.
Roll your boulder and be proud of it.

>>5139603
>You cant cure an existencial crysis caused by logic by logic, thats the main paradox of existencialists and others.
Yes you can:

Live life, enjoy life, even if its a big fat lie with no meaning, because it's better to live a meaningless and fake existence filled with joy than not live one at all.

>>5139579
Because committing suicide is saying no to the alleged value of life against the status quo of breeders and optimists. Most people aren't ready nor capable to face this, so it gets sweeped under the rug along with all other taboos.

>>5139607
>than not live one at all
How do you infer this?

>>5139607
>better to live meaningless fake existence filled with joy than not live one at all
Thats not logical at all.

>>5139620

As a previous poster said, you aren't going to logic your way out of an existential crisis. At best you'll hit a very bitter stalemate with yourself.

>>5139620
why does it have to be?
we are talking about life here remember not maths

>>5139620
Logic: Joy is good

Why do we talk about existential crisis' as if they're bad? Once you realize life's meaningless, if you can learn to cope with it, it's like everything's suddenly in stress-free-easymode.

>>5137741
you're a sociopath. Stawp.

Hundreds of thousand of people all doing shit, "muh triggers"

>>5137760
But once you're ubermench, is it time to an hero before time or others weaken you? So many questions...

Consider seppuku. It'll teach you something before you die. And if you Survive, I guess you learned the last lesson you'll ever need.

>>5141515
This only works until you take the next step:
Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really “out there” cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately—imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet what other way is there to live? Without the ever-clanking machinery of emotion, everything would come to a standstill. There would be nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know. The alternatives are clear: to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives, or as individuals who know what is known to the depressive. How advantageous that we are not coerced into choosing one or the other, neither choice being excellent. One look at human existence is proof enough that our species will not be released from the stranglehold of emotionalism that anchors it to hallucinations. That may be no way to live, but to opt for depression would be to opt out of existence as we consciously know it.