Autodidactism

[Anonymous No.17904007]

I never went to university. Do i nonetheless have a chance of becoming a renowned thinker?

[Anonymous No.17904086]

>>17904007
If your goal is to become a thinker, not going to university is a good thing. If your goal is to become renown, being a thinker is a bad thing.

Why have you already set your sights on becoming a well-known intellectual if you aren't already involved in the sphere of ideas? If you were involved, you would understand the necessary politics, and what sort of ideas could get you popularity. But since you're asking this question, it comes across as someone asking if they could become a famous musician despite never listening to music before.

[Anonymous No.17904195]

If you care about fame more than your subject: not a chance.

[Anonymous No.17904348]

>>17904007

>>17904086
>>17904195
They put it beautifully. If you seek solely fame then you will become a fashion guzzler, spewing whatever is currently mainstream as it is with many of today's useful idiots. You will most likely not become famous, most likely some kind of a local faggot.

College/University is not a requirement for being a thinker or a modern philosopher. You however need to be either extremely astute to your age and place, or highly intertwined with your fellow thinkers. It has personally occurred to me over time however that most people like you do not want to manifest new ideas, but simply be listened to. A pathological excrement for being ignored most of their lives. Either for being beyond stupid and uninteresting, or simply ugly to look at which makes listening quite a bore.

[Anonymous No.17904401]

>>17904007
If you are born wealthy, sure.
I mean really rich.

[Anonymous No.17904425]

>>17904086
>>17904195
>>17904348
thank you for waking me from my stupor. there is no hope left. I have to accept that I'm mediocre. pray for me bros, i might not be able to take it and may off myself

[Anonymous No.17904457]

>>17904425
If you think being a normal citizen is some how worth killing yourself then you are truly beyond saving.

But in any case, if you are still alive by the time you see this comment read Catul's poems. They ought to cheer you up and make you see that being a normal man in the world can offer many light moments and love is often a greener feeling than fame.

[Anonymous No.17904586]

>>17904457
you misunderstood. if i could be a normal citizen i'd be content. I'm unable to be even that, so my hope was that I could somehow become renowned in wacky fringe circles but i realize that that's a pipe dream too. Normalcy is honestly even more of an unrealistic prospect than becoming renowned

I appreciate the Catul recommedation though, so thank you, anon, for that. I'm a moody motherfucker so maybe that'll cheer me up

[Anonymous No.17904602]

>>17904007
There was a guy in France who became a proeminent philosopher despite his bank robber past and spending time in jail, but he did get an education through correspondence courses

[Anonymous No.17904688]

>>17904586
you can become renowned in fringe circles but it requires work, and a lot of it. Do not get side tracked by thinking that only mainstream ideas hold the possibility of being expanded.

For example I have for a year or two dedicated a lot of my time to researching an event called the Dyatlov Pass mystery and I quite often got recognized by some of my peers who were looking into it.

Possibilities are in the millions to become someone but it will not come for free. Struggle and gratefulness for the struggle are your best friends. Do not allow yourself to be demoralised that it is impossible. This is their game to keep you down, rise above.

And no problem, Catul got me trough some hard times as well. Remember brother, suffering is what makes your achivements wort noting and reading about.

[Anonymous No.17904726]

No, sorry. Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, etc. None of them even got Liberal Arts degrees, so I don't know why anyone takes them seriously.

[Anonymous No.17904861]

>>17904007
What does /lit/ think of Yudkowsky?

[Anonymous No.17904872]

>>17904726
Not to spoil your nice little anti-academic narrative but they weren't autodidacts either. Socrates was taught by a professional and probably usually-paid itinerant sophist, Plato was in turn taught by said Socrates, and went on to found the Academy, which though it didn't hand out degrees still had coursework and lectures, and Aristotle got his learning there. None of these people were autodidacts, all of them learned from existing philosophers. Obviously the lineage stops somewhere but that's true even today with the academic philosophers, everyone traces back to Thales who had no teacher. Point is, you're better off learning from trained philosophers than on your own. For one, you have a living breathing human person with expertise to raise ideas to, hear feedback from, and fine-tune a curriculum for a topic or topics offered for you to take. Autodidacts have it much harder, they can definitely make it far even today, but the vast majority don't. To act like you're just being screwed over to insignificance and actually "just as good" as anyone else is a dazzling mixture of resentment (which is bad, go read Nietzsche) and being a midwit who probably never gets critiqued by people at least as smart if not smarter than you. It's true that academia is rigid and narrow-focused and all of that sucks, but by God the autodidact midwits who think they're the hot shit are infinitely more stupid and the majority of you 4channers aren't even as smart as THEM (that is, the autodidacts) and you guys admit it with your many threads either demonstrating your ignorance, or your many other threads whining about how low your IQ is and whether there's still chance for you to Make It, such as OP in this shameful thread itself. Don't deceive yourself with these circlejerk pats on the back. Be honest with yourself. None of you are just refusing to go to academia out of some principled reason. I know a few people who have, but all of them managed to do well in academia and could prosper if they tried, and they wouldn't deny anything I've said. I'm closer to their mindset, I stick with academia hoping to change it from within, I'll drop out if I and when I feel it's necessary, but til then I keep going with my PhD work. Most of you couldn't make it in academia even if you tried because you're just not very smart. Just fucking admit it and live a more honest life, stop being resentful of people with some measure of success (not much usually), know thyself, and move on. If you want to try the autodidact life seriously, godpseed, but show us you actually can, don't just whine about the others without showing something for yourself.

[Anonymous No.17904873]

>>17904861
Which work of his would you recommend reading so one can get a good sense of which ideas is he working on?

[Anonymous No.17904879]

I didn't really learn shit at university.

[Anonymous No.17904946]

>>17904602
Bernard Stiegler. To my knowledge he only started reading philosophy in jail in his mod twenties, but like you said he did end up going through academia. Still became a hugely important intellectual even with the relatively late start.

[Anonymous No.17904961]

>>17904872
I didn't read your post

[Anonymous No.17904978]

I don’t see why not. My favorite fiction author went to University but didn’t graduate. I only wish I could say the same.

[Anonymous No.17904991]

>>17904007
Yes, but you have to be intelligent in the first place.

[Anonymous No.17905052]

>>17904425
Before I tell you my thoughts, I should offer a disclaimer that I’m 19, so a bit lacking in life experience. That being said — would you be happy if you were able to write something genuinely beautiful, even if it wasn’t read much in your lifetime? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting people to read your work, and know its you who wrote it; writing is, after all, a form of communcation. Nothing wrong with wanting to get your ideas out there. But if your motives for writing are narcissstic, I think you should try to check that impulse in yourself (and it can be checked, making room for your more fulfilling motivations). Lastly, if something like this drives you to consider suicide, there may be something greater going on—talking with a therapist could be helpful.

[Anonymous No.17905074]

>>17904961
Pat yourself on the back, it's all you've got to be proud about.

[Anonymous No.17905085]

>>17905074
Thanks I will

[Anonymous No.17905109]

>>17904007
Actually yes, the key is to make sure your works are left in physical writing. Post world war three all digital records will be destroyed along with most nations. If your work is lucky enough to have survived then you will become as a new Plato. In a thousand years there will be multiples of sects following your every word and some you didn't write.

[Anonymous No.17905144]

>>17904872
Project more PhDingus. One hundred years from now my threads will be compiled in a tome of early internet folk movements. Your publications won't even have that much longlasting impact.

[Anonymous No.17905171]

>>17905144
Even my threads on this board actually get referenced by other anons when a certain topic gets brought up, so I highly doubt yours will be remembered even above mine. You don't fucking know me. You can assume I'm working on little minutiae like the rest of them but you'd be wrong. If I left academia right now and published all I've already got you'd make me one of your idols like all the ones you've already got. You don't know my views.

[Anonymous No.17905217]

>>17905052
kek

[Anonymous No.17905242]

>>17905171
I can smell you from here

[Anonymous No.17905260]

>>17905171
>If I left academia right now and published all I've already got you'd make me one of your idols
Fuck man, I had only meant to tease but you bit that bait like I'm a master angler. I thought you mocking the self-importance of this board, but you are the most delusional of them all.

[Anonymous No.17905263]

If you have an extraordinary amount of time, discipline, and humility, you might be able to reach a certain level of competence, but there’s always a limit. You don’t want to turn out like Yud, do you?

[Anonymous No.17905267]

>>17904348
poor schoppy...

[Anonymous No.17905299]

>>17904007
guy debord dropped out uni

[Anonymous No.17905331]

>>17905260
No I'm not delusional I just don't give a fuck if I make you cringe because you think it's impossible. Because at the end of the day I'm not trying to connect my name to these posts. If you hear from me you won't know it was me, and if you don't, you don't. I don't care about that.

[Anonymous No.17905345]

>>17905331
If any of this were true, you simply wouldn't be on /lit/ at all

[Anonymous No.17905347]

>>17905171
A little hint on "all I've already got"?

[Anonymous No.17905364]

>>17905331
I can tell from the character of your post that you aren't as intelligent as you think you are. If you really didn't care what people thought of you on this board, you wouldn't have responded in the first place.

[Anonymous No.17905520]

Eric Hoffer wrote some amazing books despite being blind as a child and I believe not even going to high school.

[Anonymous No.17905538]

>>17905345
That's just not true. I do what I want.
>>17905364
You people need to stop this whole "I CAN TELL YOU'RE THIS WAY FROM YOUR CHARACTER FAULTS." It's faulty reasoning.

[Anonymous No.17905597]

>>17905538
But that's literally all you've been doing. Putting down other posters by psychoanalysing them in order to convince yourself that you aren't cut from the same as those sorts of creatures. It does not belie a healthy conscience, your anxiety is on display. Whatever your real talent or lack may be, the image of yourself a hollow one built out of thin glass.

[Anonymous No.17905603]

Renowned among whom? Trannies? The few wealthy people who still affect reading literature and philosophy as a hobby, but exclusively read pop lit and pop phil, and watch CNN 10x more than they read? Whose approval are you looking for here? Do you want to be the poet laureate of the administration with the tranny health minister? Or win the Nobel Prize in competition with confessional poets with names like "Adekwami Garcia-Ruiz Chang" who come from upper class families in New York and Los Angeles and attend private schools but exclusively write about their suffering as a demisexual person of colour? Or are you looking for acceptance from the academic system that currently employs mostly people like Adekwami to write anthropological studies of the "lived experience" of people like Adekwami? Or the acceptance of the scientific community that currently serves globalist interests in Silicon Valley and Davos? Or do you want to be famous on twitter with the aging celebrities and metrosexual zoomers, so you can go on podcasts and "debate" other twitter people?

What's the point of being "renowned" in Babylon? Just focus on doing something objectively true, good, and important. Like resisting Babylon.

[Anonymous No.17905749]

>>17905597
My dearest anon, if you feel it doesn't apply to you, why are you defensive? The difference is I spoke very broadly. I think it's really frankly weird that some people feel sweeping generalizations about /lit/ posters must be about themselves. When I see those, I never identify under those generalizations, and I think they're usually on to something, if anything. You tell me, do you feel I was talking about you?

[Anonymous No.17905806]

>>17905749
I'm a narcissistic paranoiac, of course I think it's about me. And it's true too! I'm an egoist who thinks far too highly of himself and lets the height of his ambition stop him from ever taking the first step. What I cannot stand is being told things I already know as if they were novel, and what I don't understand is if you are as brilliant as you say you are then what do you have to gain from posting on this board? One so confident in his abilities surely has no need to distinguish himself against such whelps as we, even less learn from the experience.

[Anonymous No.17905851]

>>17905806
I just hope people become better by getting told they commit certain kinds of mistakes.

[Anonymous No.17905998]

>>17904007
>Do i nonetheless have a chance of becoming a renowned thinker?
No. Homeschooling/selfstudy is for quacks.
If you have not mastered your field, whatever it is, in early youth, you will never make any kind of meaningful impact on anything.
>>17904086
>>17904195
>>17904348
>>17904457
>>17904726
Keep jacking off, losers
>>17904879
Which makes you a moron, and says nothing about University

[Anonymous No.17906022]

>>17905603
based. grow a garden

[Anonymous No.17906267]

>>17904991
well people have told me I'm intelligent my whole life but after never seeing any of that supposed intelligence bear fruits, I've come to the conclusion that everyone was just memeing to fuck with me.
>>17905052
I'd love to write something truly good, even if not many people read it. I'd even be happy if i knew it would happen after my death. The issue I think is this: I'm very sceptical of my works ever being read at all, and if that's the case, it would all have been for nothing. That thought seems very defeating. If no one ever reads it and I'm the only one to engage with my thoughts, why shouldn't they just remain thoughts as opposed to writings, you know? I get how my post could come across as narcissistic but that really wasn't my intention. As for therapy, who knows. I've been told I could benefit from therapy just about as often as I've been told I'm intelligent so you're probably very correct about that too. I appreciate your input though anon, and I'm just 24 myself so I don't have much on you in terms of life experience.
>>17905109
Not sure if you're memeing but this is actually not the worst advice I've heard. Thank you anon.
>>17905299
I did not know that and I love Debord. That's reassuring anon. thank you.
>>17905520
Thank you. I'll check him out. Never heard of him.
>>17905603
I just want people to read my work and appreciate it. Maybe renowned wasn't the right word. Notorious would satisfy me just as well. I just want people to read my work. The point is that if my thoughts are never read by anyone, they could just as easily have remained inside my head.