/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20893077]

I only consume. I read and never write. The notes I take are direct quotations, not original ideas or systematizations. I read without understanding, only gaining pleasure and ecstasy if certain words are written in certain pleasurable combinations, or if a passage quotation reminds me of another similar quotation from another book. Therefore, I do not read to acquire concepts, only to recollect and hyperlink. Furthermore, the only value judgements I make are "based" and "cringe" neither of which I have a defined criteria for. I should be rather practicing mechanical skills like arithmetic and studying for my courses like the automaton I am, but instead I "read" complex philosophy without putting the effort to actually understand it. I am a shut-in who neither acquires experience, nor applies what he has "learned", so I am wholly unjustified in "reading" philosophy. In final, I should, with what I have memorized, be able to give up 'reading' books and sit down in front of an empty whiteboard and think about and develop and systematize an ontology from scratch and actually think once about the world with my own mind, but when I tried to do that (only once) I fell into a week-long hedonistic depression and made no progress. I returned immediately to my reading routine. I do not ask for your absolution.

[Anonymous No.20893081]

>>20893077
>I read and never write.
But then... who was post?????????

[Anonymous No.20893099]

>>20893081
This is an exception.

[Anonymous No.20893169]

Seriously, how does one reverse back this process? I've read tons of books already and yet, I know absolutely nothing about anything and I can't remember most of what I read. That's depressing. Is there a manual that teaches people how to read stuff deeply? I know Mortimer Adler's one and that's it. Sorry for shitty english

[Anonymous No.20893173]

>>20893169
The general ideas behind that post (i.e. my pseudery) were present in the back of my mind for about a year as a closeted anxiety. What prompted its expression and at least temporarily motivated a confrontation, not implying it will work the same with you, was reading Sertillange's The Intellectual Life (mentioned in the same camp with Adler) and the very related book "The Wellsprings" (Les Sources) by Pére Gratry of which The Intellectual Life is somewhat based upon. Both are manuals of learning, sometimes extremely practical, othertimes idealistically motivational (Les Sources moreso), absurdly superb, and easy to get into. Les Sources is on libgen, Sertillanges on Archive. I wouldn't hesitate to download both immediately (NOW) and read their prefaces which are both very well written. Then skim their contents and jump into a couple sections if you don't have the time to invest entirely. Don't let the Catholicism discourage you.

Something that struck me hard was the assertion of both author's that a majority of a thinking man's "intellectual time" should be spent not even reading, but writing and praying or doing both at literally the same time. Both books stress how your objective is not to clutter your mind reading but to actually think and produce and gain a systematized unity of understanding, Truth, which you do not INVENT but SUBMIT to.
I didn't personally gain much from reading Adler's book, but that's just me.

[Anonymous No.20893180]

>>20893077
Why would you write when there are already millions of books
Why would you paint when there are already millions of paintings
Why would you sculpt when there are already a million statues
Why would you sing when there are already a million songs
Why would you exist when there are already a billion lives

[Anonymous No.20893183]

I hate most literature from after the 1950s and avoid most of it because of this. I despise the flavor of modernism and its derivatives as a whole, I am incredibly skeptical of every single author commonly shilled on /lit/ because most of them are shilled either for some intellectual posture larp, because they’re popular as supposed to be good or because they relate to the lowest part of the average edgy coomer, I fully admit that literature, most literature, is terrible, that literature has the highest quality art but also by having such a high ceiling has also the lowest floor, most tv shows and songs are better art pieces, most books, being garbage, are better adapted due to the garbage being removed to some degree.

There is no art experience worse than a bad poem, non more forgettable than an average poem. I have almost no interest in contemporary literature whatsoever, I despise any poetry or prose based on eroticism, religious literature of all religions is far superior to the vast majority of non religious lit, Chinese lit is strictly superior to Japanese, Golgol is better than Dostoyevsky, there is not a single black author I can point to who I consider worth reading.

[Anonymous No.20893188]

you remind me of this.
>Zarathustra encounters a voluntary beggar, who was once rich, but who became sick of rich people and so chose to be poor. He found the poor just as nauseating as the rich, however, and so he has come to sit among cows, hoping to learn from them how to chew the cud. Zarathustra invites him to go to his cave.
>Each of the men Zarathustra encounters has something of the spirit of the overman for which Zarathustra longs, but each one also falls short in some important respect. Kaufmann is astute in noting that each of the characters also represents a kind of caricature of Nietzsche himself.
>The voluntary beggar, like the kings, has been made nauseous by the pretenses and prejudices of common society. His desire to learn to "chew the cud" represents his interest in learning how to think carefully over matters, and to re-think them continually. Nietzsche often criticized his age for reading and thinking too quickly, and for not taking in anything important. However, like a cow, this beggar can only ruminate, and does not have a creative spirit.
You don't have creative spirit. You can only "chew the chud" which is something not everyone can say. But not an fulfilling end in itself.

[Anonymous No.20893189]

>>20893180
Not an unfair point.

[Anonymous No.20893196]

>>20893180
You make a good point, but can you expand on it or attempt to give an answer?

[Anonymous No.20893216]

many people are like that, myself included at times. one strategy i've tried is to larp with the instilled values of whatever I've read most recently. after i read smil's growth, i objected to anyone extrapolating infinite growth using a finite set of points, developed strong opinions on china's reported gdp growth rates, temporarily became an consumption-minded environmentalist, etc. now that i've finished foucault's discipline and punish, i'll try to subject myself to measurement, and through a distillation of medicine into psychology into criminology, characterize (in my head) people I know solely by their faults and deviances.

even if the conclusions and ideas are wrong, erudition is meant to be taken away from books and at least attempted in real life. also, if i'm missing points from those books, there's more that i got out of them than what i wrote above, but feel free to mention.

[Anonymous No.20893219]

Tonight, I met with some old friends in Seoul. We had met 2 years ago and gotten quite close in the span of three months, doing a lot of activities in the underground music scene and making art together. At this point in life I was an aspiring music producer, while they were working towards careers in media art, and we were united in the pursuit of our artistic dreams. After I returned to the states to live with my parents, we fell out of touch, like I always do with everyone. I became a boring student, reading books and solving problems week in week out, coasting along with good grades m but never realizing this distinct lack in my life. In retrospect it feels as if I've been asleep these past 2 years; meeting my friends (who have persisted on with their creative ambitions) again tonight has really accentuated these feelings. Maybe it's because I was in bumfuck community college (graduated this past Spring) where there aren't many social opportunities, but I don't think I'll ever find friends like them again. The pathetic thing is that I didn't even make the effort to stay in touch—these negative feelings, about the compromising person I've become, the relationships I've neglected, all come down to me, and it's upon me to learn from all this. I know I should relish in this sense of responsibility, but at the moment it only serves to pull this blanket of melancholy over me.

[Anonymous No.20893237]

>>20893077
You're describing me. You just fucking described me. Top to the motherfucking bottom. But I believe I am doing the necessary effort to leave this state of psychological inertia.

>Banking model of education (Portuguese: modelo bancário de educação) is a term used by Paulo Freire to describe and critique the traditional education system.[1][2] The name refers to the metaphor of students as containers into which educators must put knowledge. Freire argued that this model reinforces a lack of critical thinking and knowledge ownership in students, which in turn reinforces oppression, in contrast to Freire's understanding of knowledge as the result of a human, creative process.
Just remembered this. Hey, look, so sometimes, it's rare though, I can actually use a fitting concept to describe a situation. (Or at least I think it's fitting.)
I was never able to reproduce in value of significance what I had learned and I lack critical thinking most of the time when talking about anything that is slightly not mundane.

[Anonymous No.20893241]

>>20893237
Infornographic education. You know what might help? maybe its the kind of spirit St. Jerome writes about in his letters, when he mentions the hebrews restricting study of the beginning part of Ezekiel to anyone under 30. Not reading things you aren't ready to take seriously. Like the intro to the Cloud of Unknowing telling any reader whose not serious to gtfo. I'm still retreating into that inertia you speak of. It's time for me to stop thinking like a child. The innocence as a subjective observer is over. Something else that made me see this is my disillusionment of the so-called "neutrality" of science. Involved and wholistic and unified knowledge that demands responsibility, not some pseud-bug who watches things from a distance.

[Anonymous No.20893492]

>>20893169
Read Hegel and/or Marx

[Anonymous No.20893534]

>>20893077
I hate threads like this and I fucking hate you
>waaaaa look how unimpressive and unremarkable I am! My life is a greek tragedy in three acts! Attention, the sole drug I desire!
Fuck off faggot bitch nigga if I ever find your house I'll burn it down. Then I'll rape your entire family. Pets included. Bitch.

[Anonymous No.20893559]

>>20893077
>the only value judgements I make are "based" and "cringe" neither of which I have a defined criteria for
Extremely fucking based

[Anonymous No.20893719]

>>20893077
I do not understand your sarcastic tone, if you really are as you describe yourself, you are a person with a very vehement religious spirit. If you are aware of your actions, you are not a simple consumer fool, you are a being that tends towards contemplation. Wanting to write or create is the biggest swindle of capitalist civilization. Art does not save us from being mortal, that is the lie of the artists' guild. Art in the 21st century is not timeless, it is just another economic activity. Taking notes and wanting to remember everything that is read is a demeaning activity that reduces us humans to a machine that only has the objective of increasing utility. The mechanical man must be eliminated. You don't have to take notes, you don't have to memorize, you don't have to use a calendar and you don't have to set goals. Just enjoy your activities in the moment and the false idea of a self will slowly fade away to give way to the wholesome presence of the cosmic energy of observation.

[Anonymous No.20893731]

>>20893719
I agree that most people seem to want to do things so that they become objectively valuable. By they I mean themselves, the people. When they do (read or whatever) something, they do it for others, so that they can impress or have some sort of utility based on status. This is why most academics are absolute shit at producing actual philosophy, and why science needs people that actually think in order for paradigm shifts to occur.

[Anonymous No.20894682]

>>20893077
Congrats, you consoom philosophy like 99% of its readers. They grab a nice bag of memes and throw them around, like Schopis le pessimism, Hegels le dialectics, nietzsches le ubermensch... nobody is making a diligent study of it just for fun, only if they have aligned their careers with it and have a status/position to defend. If you ever worked any job at all, you should know the difference between doing things as a hobby and doing them professionally. Same thing with philosophy

[Anonymous No.20895169]

>>20894682
I think you are being too pessimistic.