/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14148636]

>I refuse.
>no matter how bad things are or get.
>I absolutely refuse to give into pessimism/defeatism

/lit/ what are some books to help reaffirm my beliefs?

[Anonymous No.14148645]

>>14148636
Thomas A. Harris M.D. - I’m Ok, You’re Ok

[Anonymous No.14148650]

>>14148636
>what are some books to help reaffirm my beliefs?
Ah yes, the question that lies at the start of all quests for truth.

[Anonymous No.14148670]

>>14148636
I don't need books. Depressed people have literal psychological illness. It's like taking sociopath/psychopath people's lack of empathy or moral drive as epistemologically validating the unreality of morality. Same goes for the depressed types. Their depression doesn't count epistemologically for anything. If human consciousness was designed to be truth-tracking (and if you trust your senses, you must think it is), then you have to look at healthy minds, not diseased minds. You don't get your epistemology from people with motion blindness, face blindness, or actual visual blindness. Just shut them out. If you suffer from depression yourself, learn to trust the psychology of normal people the way a few sociopaths learn to do the same, and convince themselves not to become amoral murderers.

[Anonymous No.14148677]

cope

[Anonymous No.14148680]

Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.14148686]

>>14148677
I bet that guy gets way more pussy than (You), incel

[Anonymous No.14148689]

Read biographies of important people. When I read one I always fired up and get shit done. I recommend African Kaiser and The Prophet trilogy.

[Anonymous No.14148691]

>>14148670
>everything mentally ill people say is wrong because im normal and theyre sick!!!1

[Anonymous No.14148693]

>>14148686
Have you ever heard of "bad conscience" perhaps? Of a man who takes pleasure in punishing himself because he believes he is to blame for everything, that it purifies him, betters him?

[Anonymous No.14148696]

>>14148680
there's a reason this guy ended where he ended

[Anonymous No.14148709]

>>14148636
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

[Anonymous No.14148752]

>>14148691
>everything mentally ill people say is actually right
I'm not saying we can know/have certainty that anyone is right. But if we're going to pretend that consciousness generally tracks truth through the senses, reason, etc, it's going to do that only when things are properly working. How will you define properly working? Surely not in terms of exceptions to the rule. Don't be foolish anon. Nobody but schizos thinks schizos are right for example.

[Anonymous No.14148777]

>>14148696
with blackjack and hookers?

[Anonymous No.14148795]

The Bible.

[Anonymous No.14148804]

>>14148650
Maybe op isn't at all worried about the truth and just want to live a good life

[Anonymous No.14148813]

>>14148696
You mean sick from brain cancer? Read Ecce Homo. Nietzsche stares into the abyss and says "we can overcome." It is the most optimistic move of thought possible. Do not read the bible. It stares into the same abyss and says "there must something more! This isn't good enough!" This thinking is the essence of nihilism.

[Anonymous No.14148821]

>>14148650
It can only reaffirm if they're convincing otherwise it's just indulgent faith

[Anonymous No.14148823]

>>14148813
the Bible literally says that God dies on a cross. Get on this level Neetsh-bois.

[Anonymous No.14148856]

>>14148636
Gabriel Marcel

[Anonymous No.14148861]

>>14148804
Orienting yourself towards truth *is* how you live a good life.

[Anonymous No.14148870]

>>14148813
i read it, and i consider it literature for teenage ubermensch

[Anonymous No.14148872]

>>14148650
What is the proper way?

[Anonymous No.14148886]

>>14148636
You don't need books for that. Its written in your DNA. Just follow your programming, puppet.

[Anonymous No.14148910]

>>14148872
I don't know what a proper way would be. But if you want to affirm your faith in something you should challenge it's strength with opposition. If you can fairly and honestly consider things you don't necessarily wish to believe and hold to your current opinion you will be better for it. If you only want to build up a feeling you have about believing something you want to believe then you will only ever have that insecure fleeting feeling. There is nothing weaker and more intellectually bankrupt than fear of thinking or feeling something you don't want to think or feel.

Running away from pessimistic ideas or thoughts is as silly as running towards them. It's as equally silly to latch onto optimism like a life preserver as it would be to reject all positive thoughts out of principle. Trying to think something because of the feeling it gives you is just bobbing up and down in an ocean of confusion.

Seek truth and be unafraid of it. It will not likely conform to any preconceived notions of positivity or negativity. For me it starts with setting aside this notion of self and that I perceive as good or bad, positive or negative, and how those notions effect me and make me feel. Setting myself aside from that and those feelings all together is a good first step. Then read and think, and be unafraid. The truth or at least glancing flashes of it are somewhere beyond that place.

[Anonymous No.14148929]

>>14148804
I think that's a great goal. I sounded a bit unfairly sarcastic. I can remember can time when I was desperate to grasp onto anything positive and optimistic because life seemed so painful and horrible that it was all I could do to survive. I was just not so gently suggesting that going all the way down a road of optimistic dogma will make you just as blind as the darkness of pessimism. I have been to that extreme too. It's not any closer to truth and if a person ultimately seeks truth then they will have to accept seeing and thinking and feeling and knowing things they don't like or want to believe to be true, or at least consider them.

But I get it, OP may be just trying to survive and keep the terrible waters of life from drowning him. And towards that goal I wish him the best.

[Anonymous No.14149200]

>>14148929
How does a severely depressed and anxious person go about looking for the truth? And I mean a very personal version of the truth.

[Anonymous No.14149223]

>>14148856
appreciate the reminder. also: Ernst Bloch.

[Anonymous No.14149241]

>>14148693
Literally insane poster.

[Anonymous No.14149252]

>>14148636
Youth without god

[Anonymous No.14149255]

>>14148752
Some of the greatest geniuses have been mentally ill, hell, even 'crazy'. What makes you think because you have a normal, mid wit view of the world that you are right? You think you are more enlightened than Michelangelo or Picasso?

[Anonymous No.14149299]

>>14148910
Yes, yes, we've done all that, but we still think life sucks. Now what ?

[Anonymous No.14149305]

>>14149200

i'd highly recommended Jung's red book

it's the one thing that's helped me stay somewhat on course because it so heavily understands madness & I'd appreciate any recs for more books written from the mouth of madness that make a shift toward the affirming

[Anonymous No.14149306]

[Anonymous No.14149307]

>>14148636
I found Seneca good for this

[Anonymous No.14149338]

>>14148910
>notion of self and that I perceive as good or bad, positive or negative, and how those notions effect me and make me feel.

So the opposite of truth? Truth is love, You are saying not to be loving. The ultimate self is real, your identity is not.

[Anonymous No.14149363]

>>14148636
schopenhauer
cioran
celine
wataru tsurumi

[Anonymous No.14149398]

spinoza and nietzsche are absolutely your best philosophers with regards to this, their whole project culminates in a view that affirms life only, which affirms joy, and desecrates anything that separates us from this life. much of their work is specifically on how we can, as you say, never give into pessimism despite how bad things can get

[Anonymous No.14149400]

>>14149306
Based

[Anonymous No.14149450]

>>14148636
whenever I get upset, I go and watch Donald Trump montages from 2016. Not that I really support him or anything, but it was fun watching the unlikeliest of underdogs triumph again and again despite insurmountable odds, threading the needle in ways I didn’t think were possible. I used to hate Trump until he ran for office—I consider his quixotic and arduous attempt to throw a wrench into the corporate liberal establishment to be his penance for a lifetime of puerile decadence and vanity.

man, these past few years have passed so quickly and uneventfully.

[Anonymous No.14149822]

>>14149307
I know only little bit of Seneca, but what quotes of read seem really worthwhile. Thanks for the recommendation.

[Anonymous No.14150257]

>>14148872
>what are some books that talk about my beliefs from different perspectives
change your beliefs based on what you read about them

[CalvinoShill No.14150263]

>>14148636
Marcovaldo

[Anonymous No.14150287]

The Gospel

[Anonymous No.14150401]

>>14149255
>because you have a normal, mid wit view
You don't know how 'non-normal' my views are, actually, but that's irrelevant. By normal I meant neurotypical, and I'm talking about certain facets of epistemology only.
>You think you are more enlightened than Michelangelo or Picasso?
They're not enlightened dude. They're making art, they're not epistemologists. Of course crazy people can make art. I'm talking about epistemology. You don't rely on the blind's failure to see visible things to conclude there are no visible things. You don't rely on those with motion blindness to conclude motion doesn't exist. You don't rely on those with schizophrenia to conclude the world is exactly like they say. You don't rely on those with psychopathy and sociopathy to conclude that being a manipulative, malicious person, even an abuser and murderer, is totally okay to do. So why rely on apathetic depressed people to conclude there is no meaning, when neurotypical people by default are probably okay being humanists? That's what this is about. Without depressed people this whole existentialist and/or nihilist doomer freakout about the meaning of life wouldn't fucking arise. You'd just find value in contemplation and honing skills and flourishing as a person morally, civically, aesthetically, and that's all there'd be to it, because healthy humans generally go in that direction after they think about this stuff hard enough. By contrast, it's hard to find "meaning" when you have a death drive and feel yourself empty of feeling all the time. But you have to realize that you aren't neurotypical, rather diseased, so your beliefs are likelier to be systematically falsidical, and you can't go around telling happy neurotypical people that life really "lacks" meaning just cause you're a pathological life-has-no-meaning doomer. If either evolution or God created neurotypical brains with functioning sense organs and proper reasoning and intuitive faculties for a reason, it's for the purpose of tracking truth. So you shouldn't rely on abnormalities for your epistemology. You don't get the point of anything I'm saying.

[Anonymous No.14150411]

[Anonymous No.14150432]

>>14148636
I'm sorry for you anon. Just don't start threads about extreme disillusionment when you wake up. Protip: life sucks and then you die

[Anonymous No.14150436]

>>14149338
You are part of a fabric of existence. I think love is important and stems from selflessness. Only when you set aside your self and live for something beyond your self (ultimate or any other form) do you start to see a universe that extends further than your own mind.

[Anonymous No.14150438]

>>14150432
Based and truth seeking pilled, these faggots cannot understand that no book will ever save them

[Anonymous No.14150482]

>>14149299
Our lives are just tiny blips of a flash of existence. It's surely not too much to ask and expect that a mind committed to dispassionate search for truth can keep searching the endless universe both inside and outside of ones self. Im roughly halfway through life and I haven't scratched the surface. There is plenty that sucks and plenty that is awesome. There is so much of both that both terms Become kind of meaningless. We can't weight the entirety of existence and determine that there is slightly more sucky than awesome. Just accept everything is as it is. Change the things you can change if you want to. Or don't. Create or destroy. Be happy or sad. These are all within your powers. There is nothing to be upset about, or overly joyed either. We are just bubbles floating by on the stream. Ultimately we are just tiny parts of a huge endless timeless system and there's nothing that can be done about it but to play your part. And that part is up to you. The sparrow will fly where it pleases, the lion will eat what creature it can catch and you will think and write and experience what you will. We are just humans barely surpassing the apes smearing thier own feces on the rocks and being quite pleased by that. Does it all suck. Maybe. Why would it matter. The sun will explode and humans will move to other stars, or go extinct. It's all really inconsequential. To me it doesn't suck because we can all then choose what's important and what we like. There are no wrong answers then.

[Anonymous No.14150669]

>>14148636
The Iliad
The Odyssey

[Anonymous No.14150784]

Reading philosophical texts with the intention of bettering your life is paradoxically the most cancerous thing you can do to yourself. Maybe with the exception of Camus because he's based as fuck.

I took phil classes for two years in uni and the constant over-thinking of what is ultimately useless information crumbled my soul and confidence.

The happiest periods of my life were before and after I studied philosophy to try to fix my problems. I learned what really matters is getting life experience and solidifying a routine - it doesn't even have to be that strict.

After I stepped back from philosophical studies I became much happier. Simple life = happy life.

[Anonymous No.14150960]

>>14150784
>I took phil classes for two years in uni and the constant over-thinking of what is ultimately useless information crumbled my soul and confidence
You're just not cut out for it. Just like I'd be miserable doing STEM.

[Anonymous No.14151198]

>>14148636
give up
https://youtu.be/LmBevsfjakY?t=57

[Anonymous No.14151206]

>>14148636
Is this the bloomer pledge?

[Anonymous No.14151282]

>>14150784
>I took phil classes for two years in uni and the constant over-thinking of what is ultimately useless information crumbled my soul and confidence.
This is supposed to happen; pain heightens one's consciousness. Don’t choose the comfortable life, Anon: choose the path that will contort and break your body, and hope that it does not kill you in the process.

[Anonymous No.14151542]

>>14148636
If those are truly your beliefs, they will reaffirm themselves.

[Anonymous No.14151573]

>>14148636
jordam pertesom...

[Anonymous No.14151760]

>>14148693
you mean jesus

[Anonymous No.14151794]

a person who comes back home exhausted by futile work that barely maintains him and crushed by life's endless disappointments and punishments isn't going to create a universal system that is compatible with what a dude who's been dead for 2000 years said. also you don't tell an exhausted person to "go get it" or to work harder or to have a stronger will because no matter how disciplined and optimistic you are, you will eventually come to the conclusion that it's all futile and believe me, nothing is more crushing than the disappointment when the belief that things could get better if you tried gets crushed by actually trying and meeting failures and limits.
>tl;dr
read aesthetics, aphorisms, poetry, very personal works and everything fueled by human irrationality

[Anonymous No.14151824]

>>14150401
>Without depressed people this whole existentialist and/or nihilist doomer freakout about the meaning of life wouldn't fucking arise.
someone have a big problem here to understand human thought and i think is not unhappy people. neurotypical healthy people, like you call it, understand too much the lack of meaning of life and they run away like rabbits of that kind of thoughts. and they run away only because they understand it perfectly, not because they dont. is because that thoughts undermine their false notion of happy life they think they should had, only for that, and for the same reason people like you say all this rationalized barriers about neurotypical disfunction if you think too much in the lack of intrinsic meaning in life. you are so disingenuous you appear stupid. neither "depressive" neither "happy neurotypical people" is the ultimate response to nothing. your notion of depressive people like the ones who arise a problem like the lack of intrinsic meaning of life is scary and ignorant and stupid.
>if you are happy you dont think about the lack of meaning of life. you should treat all negative thoughs like a disease.
basically you are full of shit.

[Anonymous No.14152007]

>>14148709

This has been bad advice for eighteen hundred years.

[Anonymous No.14152031]

>>14148861

Pseud advice.

Orienting oneself towards love is the best way forward. Love for yourself, love for your fellow man, and love for your world,

Without loving your friends how will you ever learn to fight your enemies?

[Anonymous No.14152062]

>>14151824
I don't know if you realize that depressed people don't want to feel that way. Their death drive isn't contributing to their well being. They're literally suffering. And they're not the majority of the human race; their numbers grow the same way other conditions proliferate, when out of compassion we try to keep people from dying off or killing themselves. Wanting to kill yourself isn't some conclusion that just falls out from logical reasoning, it emerges largely through mostly-implastic emotions which can even be medicated. Stop justifying your own suicide dude. If you find joy in telling yourself meaning isn't real, realize you're a sadist, not merely depressive. Depression isn't enjoyable and I'm pretty sure anyone with it would rather lack it, unless they let it turn them into nihilists.

[Anonymous No.14152075]

>>14148670
Epistemology is not based on feelings.
>I don't need books.
And yet here you are on /lit/.

People like you are the most dangerous. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Anyone who avoids reason in favor of 'good feelings' should be avoided.

[Anonymous No.14152096]

>>14150401
>They're not enlightened dude. They're making art, they're not epistemologists.
A significant percentage of historically great thinkers and leaders are mentally ill loners. For example, Napoleon was exiled from his country of birth for being too autistic and hummed loudly when he was angry despite being tone deaf.

[Anonymous No.14152128]

>>14152031
>love for your fellow man
>learn to fight your enemies
>Preaching about love
>Not loving your enemies as yourself
>Calling other people pseud

Well then.

[Anonymous No.14152141]

defeatism is the opposite of life

[Anonymous No.14152142]

>>14152128

>Forgive them father; they know not what they do
Love without justice is anemic. Those who seek to harm others need to be stopped by with violence if necessary.

[Anonymous No.14152194]

>>14152075
>Epistemology is not based on feelings
It's a very standard view in contemporary epistemology that we have a truth-tracking belief-forming apparatus. It's called reliabilism. Another way to put it is: we have justified beliefs most of the time, and justification is generally truth-tracking. You're misrepresenting serious academic work, work you'd know if you read books yourself.
>misquote about books
I don't need books to tell me why life has meaning, is my point. It just seems very obviously meaningful to me. I don't need religion or anything. I love living and I give myself ends to pursue. I'm pretty sure I know literature on contemporary epistemology better than you. You out yourself as a mega-pseud when you totally misunderstand and misrepresent my point and say such things as
>Anyone who avoids reason in favor of 'good feelings' should be avoided
Which is stupid, because there is no opposition between reason and data of experience, they're not antonyms at all. Reason is the method of deriving further inferences from prior premises, and this is an empty apparatus without content coming from somewhere. Whatever you take this "somewhere" to be, whether you be a radical sense-data-only empiricist, or a broad-tent a-priori-everywhere rationalist, you would be a fool to think reason derives content from itself. Unless you're a Hegelian but even Hegel's got a very specific thing in mind which I respect at least. People on this site are so fucking dumb when they think they're smarter than they actually are.

[Anonymous No.14152207]

>>14152062
>when out of compassion we try to keep people from dying off or killing themselves.
you dont do it out of compassion but because is epistemogical wrong, dont you said that?.. dont be hypocrite. well, all yoor posts stinks to hypocrisy anyway. but... i only said that you and people like you understand perfectly the lack of meaning of life and you are censoring it because a well known fear and a lack of a definitive answer. and rationalizing it by saying you are censoring it because is an epystemologic error is stupid and hysterical. just that. i didnt say nothing about suffering or justifying suicide. you are justifying dont letting people commit suicide in any case. or justifying dont let them have negative thoughts that could open a suicidal thought. i didnt say nothing about that.
my thesis is that lack of meaning of life should be an open and free position not an evil thought to fight.

[Anonymous No.14152243]

>>14152207
Anon I'm going to be nice and assume you are ESL and also not a troll because your spelling is atrocious. I'll grant your thesis. It's an open and free position you can hold if you want. Namely, that life has no meaning. I just think it's false and my point is that we wouldn't really be convinced life has no meaning and that suicide is worth it without pathology fucking us over. But by all means people can argue about this stuff. It just tends to be that depressed people act like everyone else is, like you said, "afraid" of the supposed fact of nihilism. No we're not afraid. I have a happy life and these days it sounds like nobody online does, everyone is depressed and projects that depression on to others. If you're happy and find meaning in your life, they act like snobs to you and treat you as insincere. In fact I'm being as sincere as I can be, this is my integrity, but the other side cannot comprehend that. My point is they can't, because it's pathological on their end.

[Anonymous No.14152260]

>>14152207
>cumbrain degenerate shit
>life has no meaning

Every time.

[Anonymous No.14152280]

>>14151824

Who's the one on the top right?

[Anonymous No.14152335]

>>14152243
>>14152243

my english is atrocious. sorry.
you have the same problem.
pathologize thoughts is the same (actually worst) that saying you are insincere if you are happy.
the two have the same problem. you dont understand depressed people and depressed people dont understand you.
your defensive thoughts with the existential mess looks like a rational shield against a possible dispensing of suffering, thoughts that can go deep enough and reach the lack of meaning of your own happiness. your own reluctance to think deeply about the real meaning behind your happines. but maybe not. in that case i suggest dont be defensive about thoughts you dont understand precisely because you have a solid happy life and happy thoughts and you are proselytising about it. dont go with the pretense that you perfeclty know it and patologize them because your position is different. you want them to feel and think like you, in a sense.

>>14152280
bald pessoa.

[Anonymous No.14153290]

>>14150401
Alright, so your point is that the 'depressed' world view makes no sense in the epistemelogical basis?

[Anonymous No.14153333]

>>14152007
why is it bad advice

[Anonymous No.14153352]

>>14153333
marcus aurelius literally had a hand in the fall of the roman empire by breaking tradition and giving the succession to his son

[Anonymous No.14153358]

>>14153352
that's not related to the advice within the meditations

[Anonymous No.14153427]

>>14153358
the meditations is about living a good life. the actions he took led to the bad life of millions. he should have known, being an emperor. his life and his thoughts are one.

a better ruler would have had a shitty philosophy, probably (Caesar, Trajan)

[Anonymous No.14153523]

>>14153427
perhaps, but if you read it today and take the words as personal advice for your own life, i'd say much of it holds true or is at least sound

[Anonymous No.14153637]

>>14148870
Teenage Übermenschen are still Übermenschen.