/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14764731]

>only passion is reading
>aphantasia
it's over isn't it

[Anonymous No.14764760]

>>14764731
Is aphantasia real, or just a misunderstanding because people tend to exaggerate the power of imagination? I can think of objects in a very vague way, but I don’t generally feel like I am “seeing” them.

[Anonymous No.14764788]

Practice imagining things. It's a skill that can be developed. Do it outside of reading. Just when you're sitting on the bus or something. Try to imagine something as vividly as possible. It will take some practice.
>>14764760
It's possible to get to levels of visualization that are VERY vivid. Sometimes my imagination feels more vivid and real than real life, in a way.

[Anonymous No.14764796]

>>14764788
This.

You can cure aphantasia with a little regular effort. Weed helps

[Anonymous No.14764806]

>>14764796
>Weed helps
Yeah, I was going to suggest OP try some drugs just to "jumpstart" things, but I figured my post would get shit on by all the nerds. Frankly, I think he can manage without the drugs, but that might help if he's getting desperate.

[Anonymous No.14765617]

>>14764796
>>14764806
What drugs aside from weed help?

[Anonymous No.14765626]

>>14765617

You know which ones

[Anonymous No.14765635]

>>14764760
It's real and you have it.

[Anonymous No.14765644]

>>14764731
How exactly does aphantasia ruin the reading experience?

[Anonymous No.14765658]

>>14764760

There are different degrees of imaginative vividness, I know that I sometimes can recreate images in my head that are extremely vivid

[Anonymous No.14765698]

>>14764731
I've got a pretty vivid imagination yet I never use it when I read. I mean sure some images inadvertently pop up in the mind but I never make any conscious effect to visualize what the characters look like or the architecture surrounding them. I mean, for what purpose? If I want a movie I'll watch a movie. Literature is great precisely because it happens in your mind, bypassing sights and sounds, I enjoy the thought purified. I also believe that the greatest literary passages disregard the visuals and noises, often aggressively. Time and space get bent, inverted, thoughts become thick as molasses, air heavier than steel, words deadlier than bullets. A great writer wouldn't be trying to give you the props for a tidy little stage play inside your mind, otherwise we must admit the most superior of literary forms to be a movie script.

[Anonymous No.14767220]

>>14765644
I can't visualize any of the scenes. It's just a bunch of words on a page.

[Anonymous No.14767463]

I can't imagine having this. Sorry. Glad I can see with my mental eye and produce pictures and such.

[Anonymous No.14767479]

>>14767463
>I can't imagine having this
anon...

[Anonymous No.14767517]

>>14764731
Honestly, I think I only can visualise things vividly because the horrible state of my childhood. My dad was a drunk and I stayed in my room playing with lego making up stories about them. Later I started checking out books from the library and reading them, but they never had anything that really interested me.

There is definitely a price to be paid for every skill, and you can probably still pay it if you practice visualizing things.

I definitely lost out on a lot of other skills that probably won't even be discovered until it's too late for me to practice them. Learn it while your brain is still soft.

[Anonymous No.14767535]

>>14765698
I completely get this. I hate reading Stephen King because he's always going on about the scenery and I'm like "I've already pictured this in my mind, why are you trying to change that?" I ean his stories are good and all but I just hate how he goes on and on and on about something that I've already imagined. He is definitely a screenplay writer and not a true writer, unless you have aphantasia.

[Anonymous No.14767607]

>>14765626
Doing acid in Mecca seems like an INCREDIBLY bad time.

[Anonymous No.14767659]

>>14764731
I didn't know what aphantasia was until now.

I'm pretty sure i have it. I don't visualize things. I can still read fine.

>>14764796
>>14764806
Weed didn't make me imagine with imagery.
Acid didn't make me imagine with imagery.

The only time i can visualize imagery is when I dream.

I can imagine, say, like, there is this guy, and he hurts his hand on a stove. I imagine it more empathetically though, like how i would feel if i burned my hand. I don't see a guy, or a stove. This world of forms that plato describes is foreign to me. There are no forms. I think of a table and i don't see a table. I don't see anything. I just kind of have the concept of a table - a raised surface on which objects rest - in my head. I think of a circle and i don't see a circle. I know what a circle is, an object/ curve on a 2d plane for which all points on the curve are an equal distant from the center, but i don't see it.

[Anonymous No.14767769]

>>14767479

[Anonymous No.14767779]

>>14764731
Cant you train it?
After years of using 3 modelling software I can see any 3d object any direction material or lighting in my mind well enough that i could free hand sketch it. But I couldn't do that when I was little.
same goes for posing of figures, hands, facial expression etc...

[Anonymous No.14767832]

>>14767659
>but i don't see it.
Anon...

How do you not see any generic table that you've witnessed throughout life? How do you not remember a table, any table that you've seen and substitute it in? I mean, you know what a table looks like, right?

[Anonymous No.14767895]

I can reason out images when I close my eyes, but I only ever see them involuntarily (sudden random images or dreams). For example, I went to a random noun generator, saw the word 'civilian', and immediately closed my mind and tried to picture the word. I imagined seeing a kind of caution-sign silhouette of a man, with blue pants and an orange shirt, but the image was very vague and probably just conformed to the first image that I had previously seen that my brain registered.

Considering how 95% of /pol/ claims to be able to see extremely vivid images in their head on command, I'd bet that it's just schizo delusions wanting to believe they have some kind of special power.

[Anonymous No.14767945]

>>14767607
pussy

[Anonymous No.14767950]

>>14767659
Practice at imagining things. It's a skill that can be developed. A lot of Buddhist and Hindu groups even have visusalization training as a huge part of their spiritual systems

[Anonymous No.14768120]

How come imagination is so weak compared to echoic memory while vision is vastly superior to sound? I have entire playlists in my head, I can think in any voice I want, I remember whole speeches, yet the images I think about appear fuzzy and unstable

[Anonymous No.14768192]

>>14768120
This probably varies a lot. Personally, I can remember melodies very well but voices, lyrics, and speeches barely at all.

[Anonymous No.14768214]

>>14768120
Because in order to remember sound, you have to process it at the precise moment you hear it. Sound only exists at the present and is rapidly dissipated into nothing. Vision, on the other hand, can be reflective. You can stare at an object for as long as you want, and if you ever forget some aspect of the object, you can always just stare at it some more. Until about 150 years ago, sounds were not even recordable; only replicable, at best. Objects are their own records, until they are altered or destroyed.

[Anonymous No.14768309]

>>14768214
Makes sense. I guess simple issue of information load also plays the role. If our eyes could record images with perfect clarity our brains would melt from the overload, analogous to computer video files taking much more processing power and hard memory to carry than audio files.

[Anonymous No.14768370]

>>14764760
>people tend to exaggerate the power of imagination
No there is no exaggeration. Find some exercise for imagination.

[Anonymous No.14768452]

>>14768120
>>14768192
>tfw compose my own music
>can't even remember my own melodies

At least I can recognize them, I guess my processing of music is more subconscious than conscious.
You hear composers saying how they first come up with most of their work in their head, then they write it down - I can do that more or less when planning a book, but the process of making always changes and develops what's in my head.
I guess painters have this most pronounced, where the work takes them somewhere, not the other way around. I guess working in a DAW is more like painting than old-school composition.

[Anonymous No.14769312]

>>14764760
>>14764731
Aphantasia is a stupid meme.
of the few studies done on "aphantasia" all of them required on the participants feedback to describe "how vivid" their visualization was, which can range from A to Z, because everyone is going to interpret "clarity of the image" different be it regarding the wording alone or regarding the actual "visualization". people are going to have different standards for what they would consider "see" and "not seeing"
someone who thinks "see" is meant almost literally will think he is a stupid npc who cannot visualize, while someone who has a very loose definition of "see" thinks he is a visualizing genius
before we can come to any conclusion we shouldnt rely on popscience and "personal experiences" from TedTalks

[Anonymous No.14769323]

>>14764796
>Weed helps
It doesn't. if anything weed has dulled my imagination over time

[Anonymous No.14769340]

>>14764731
you don't need to visualize a story to enjoy reading at all. Sometimes if something seems particularly cool/weird/interesting i'll take a pause to imagine it, but mostly i just enjoy following plot threads.

[Anonymous No.14769363]

>>14769312
>someone who thinks "see" is meant almost literally
But it is meant literally, anon... aphantasia is not a disability, there are plenty of people living perfectly fine lives with it. There is no need to be ashamed, realize your own limits - you don't have to be perfect.

[Anonymous No.14769378]

>>14769363
literally as in literally literally? If there is no apple in front of your eye, you dont LITERALLY see the apple. that is my point.

[Anonymous No.14769411]

>>14769378
If I were to eat a real apple right now, it would just be a pale imitation of what I'm imagining. Real apple is dirty, covered with pesticides, the taste would be off - imperfection upon imperfection. Looking at it is just remembering the real thing inside my head.

My idea of an apple doesn't have any of that, it is far superior, and complete. I see it, I smell it, I can touch it, spin it around, skin it, cut it in half, spray a faint mist from it's peel. There is no end to the experience.

[Anonymous No.14769435]

>>14769411

[Anonymous No.14769448]

>>14769411
The point is you arent literally seeing it like a hallucination. To "see" means different things to people. Some people wouldnt consider imaginative visualization as "seeing" at all. Also your "idea" of an apple is inferior because it cant do the only thing an apple is actually useful for, sustenance.

[Anonymous No.14769499]

>>14765617
Try choline and huperzine a for supplements as well, they boost memory which is connected to visualization

[Anonymous No.14769513]

>have incredible dreams with complex plots, original settings, and witty writing
>wake up
>mind switches to depressed wagie mode

[Anonymous No.14769550]

>>14769513
I have it the exact opposite :^)

[Anonymous No.14769589]

>>14769550
in your dreams you're a depressed wagie?

[Anonymous No.14769889]

>>14767895
>probably just conformed to the first image that I had previously seen that my brain registered
That's exactly what visualization is. It's the tying of your visual memory to thought and the set of assets is based on what you have seen. With extra concerted effort you can add clarity to a visual image and objects you are more familiar with will be clearer. Something as vague as civilian I would expect a low resolution image from. It's not a word used in speech. The word person conjures up a clearer mental image for me than civilian despite the two being mostly interchangeable. You can also construct new things out of the visual database, but I argue the asset set is still formed by what has previously been seen.

[Anonymous No.14769981]

>>14769312
>>14769312
My mother has self induced aphantasia from childhood abuse. I know it isn't full blown, because she can visualize when planning to teach lessons but nothing else. Visualization triggers a panic response in her. If you ask her to visualize a pencil being dropped from a table and hitting the floor because of gravity, she can't do it. Her reasoning is that the pencil might float or rise up instead of hit the floor. She can't visualize the expected outcome because even something as constant as gravity might be wrong in the next instant. For what it's worth she is very religious.

She's a meticulous planner. She keeps a detailed planner and takes more notes on everything than anyone I have ever met. She has a horrible sense of direction, because she doesn't visually map her surroundings. She cannot retrace her steps well and she cannot project an avatar of herself into familiar spaces.

Oftentimes she dreams of vividly performing mundane tasks. I theorize it is because of all the visualization she is suppressing in her waking life finding an outlet for expression. Her waking life is lived almost entirely in the present. It makes no sense to her to visualize the future and she rarely reflects on the past.

When she plans lessons for her students she can visualize the room, what activities are planned, where she will be, where each of the kids are likely to be, what objects they will use and how, etc. She attributes her ability to visualize like that to god.

[Anonymous No.14769989]

>>14769981
> Her reasoning is that the pencil might float or rise up instead of hit the floor
that sounds like an imagination unleashed to me.

[Anonymous No.14769999]

>>14769411
>spray a faint mist from its peel
Faggot exaggerator detected. Apples have a waxy thin peel. You can't spray a mist from an apple peel. It is not an orange. Update your visual memory banks, you're delusional.

[Anonymous No.14770018]

>>14769989
She doesn't "see" any result. She just spouts off left brained refutations as a means of avoiding the visualization process.

[Anonymous No.14770063]

>>14767945
>t. never had a bad trip in public
lsd is no joke man, you have to handle yourself for 8+ hours and this dude is taking 2 tabs at once

[Anonymous No.14770066]

>>14770063
>he thinks 2 tabs is a lot

[Anonymous No.14770081]

>>14770063
O tell me, great frog. What revelations came to you while you tripped.

[Anonymous No.14770093]

>>14770066
>brags about being good at handling drugs
This is you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZUYWb1PtFU

[Anonymous No.14770095]

>>14770081
Dissociation is an inverse revelation in and out of itself.

[Anonymous No.14770161]

>>14770093
>oh no not 40% vodka
literally every normie does this at least every NYE

[Anonymous No.14770438]

>>14770063
>two tabs at once
>two