[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 78 KB, 449x600, mystery.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12614173 No.12614173 [Reply] [Original]

Books that have had a major positive influence on the way you see the world or interact with people?

>> No.12614235

Better Never to Have Been

>> No.12614245

>>12614173
Lolita

>> No.12614251

James Joyce - Ulysses

>> No.12614259

>>12614173
Finnegan's Wake

>> No.12614288

Sickness unto death

>> No.12614301

The Bible

>> No.12614332

Prometheus Rising helped me appreciate the fact that everyone's model of reality is unique, and that conversation is a process of learning what's what in the other person's personal representation. It really brought home the idea that "there are no boring people" (I think it was Joyce who said that one). I can talk to all kinds of people I never would have approached before and learn some more of the infinite number of angles to concepts in ethics, politics, art, etc.

Prometheus also introduced me to the rabbit hole of Eastern spirituality through the lens of Western philosophy, which has slowly been twisting my own world-as-representation for the better

>> No.12614345

>>12614173
Blake cured my fedora atheism by showing me Christianity could actually be inspiring, liberating, and empathetic, not just the domain of sleazy televangelists and their ilk

>> No.12614359

>>12614332
That was a good book. I think it's in that one he talks about "what the thinker thinks, the prover proves". I don't remember all the details about it but the just was how things and inventions and stuff are all imagined first, and then done. You see a lot of this with sci-fi movies and books...the futuristic stuff portrayed is commonplace in 20 years or so. It's this more than anything that terrifies me about AI. It sounds stupid, but situations like the Terminator movies(sans time travel) may very well come to pass.

>> No.12614440

>>12614345
Take the next step and check out Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy!
>>12614359
Sure, Wilson makes a few wacko over-optimistic future predictions here and there, it was the 70s and I can forgive him. They're largely irrelevant to the book as a whole. The meat of it is a breakdown of the way our personal models of reality are developed and an examination of the degree of control we have over this process.

>> No.12614697

>>12614440
The juxtaposition of Leary's 8 circuit model and the Eastern enlightenment model was interesting. It can get freaky diving into the "degree of control you have over it". Not for the weak kneed or easily shaken. It's called chapel perilous for a reason for sure

>> No.12614731

>>12614173
that image is pretty funny.