/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21231152]

Books that will help me stop being a NPC

[Anonymous No.21231173]

The Encyclopedia of The Cat

[Anonymous No.21231219]

>>21231152
Nietzsche, and
Ellul

Realize that everyone who has something to lose especially rich and middle class people, organizations, institutions and people who work for the system, are merely acting in their self-interest with everything they are offering you to consume (media, books, ads, education, shows, movies, news etc.). They can't afford to be honest.

[Anonymous No.21231223]

>>21231152
Do cats really read?

[Anonymous No.21231238]

[Anonymous No.21231267]

>>21231223
Yes
>>21231152
Why are you an NPC?

[OP No.21231279]

>>21231267
Society

[Anonymous No.21231285]

>>21231152
The Abolition of Man.
Dont ask what it's anout, just read it.
And please dont get filtered by the first couple chapters.

[Anonymous No.21231286]

>>21231279
No, I mean why do you believe you are an NPC

[OP No.21231423]

Incapable of thinking outside the prevailing paradigms

[OP No.21231427]

>>21231286
Incapable of thinking outside the prevailing paradigms

[Anonymous No.21231467]

>>21231223
My cat even reads to me.

[Anonymous No.21232321]

>>21231152
Nietzsche

[Anonymous No.21232325]

>>21231152
The Holy Bible

[Anonymous No.21233223]

>>21231427
Learn Nietzsche's method of deconstruction then apply it yourself. It may take some time.

[Anonymous No.21233232]

>>21231152

[Anonymous No.21233422]

>>21231152
Why would you want tos top being an npc? It's literally the greatest thing I could possibly imagine. Ignorance really is bliss, and I'm not enjoying life.

[Anonymous No.21233427]

>>21233422
>I'm not enjoying life
subtle narcissism

[Anonymous No.21233455]

>>21231219
>Ellul
Stop spamming that seething propagandized machine primarily read by NPCs

[Anonymous No.21233490]

>>21231152
Anything you're actually interested in. Definitely not Neitzsche.

[Anonymous No.21233506]

>>21233490
>just continue to read those mangas, cheap fantasy fiction bro... def dont read anything those chuds recommend

[Anonymous No.21233511]

>>21231152
my diary desu

[Anonymous No.21233560]

Gravity's Rainbow

[Anonymous No.21233854]

>>21233511
This anon's diary

[Anonymous No.21235018]

>>21231173
fpbp

[Anonymous No.21235022]

>>21231152
plato's complete works

[Anonymous No.21235048]

>>21231152
If you're retarded, no book can help
If not, the Bible

[Anonymous No.21235523]

>>21231152
the one and only answer

[Anonymous No.21235578]

>>21231152
Unironically Moby Dick

[Anonymous No.21235630]

unironically work at a mcdonalds for a few months and save as much as you can and then take a long vacation with it just practicing having interactions with people who will forget you exist in 2 days

[Anonymous No.21235678]

>>21233506
If you can't see how the Japanese craft fiction with good heroic role models and great Western values like treasuring your friends, family and community and defending them, and reinforcing your own Aristotlean virtues, please insert yourself into an operational wood chipper posthaste.

[Anonymous No.21235693]

>>21231152
you'll never not be an NPC. All you can do is be a sort of rogue NPC ...like an android that stopped getting updates desperately trying to fix itself.

>t. 'aware' NPC

[Anonymous No.21235741]

>>21231152
Charles Luk’s “Ch’an and Zen Teaching” (Vols. I - III)

(Some will automatically respond, “But Zen and other Far Eastern teachings are not about not being an NPC; they in fact are about turning you into a dull NPC who automatically obeys everything in the teachings, becoming a quietist, flat, dull, carbon-copy replica of other Orientals.” This is utterly false!)

P.D. Ouspensky’s “In Search of the Miraculous”

The recommendation of Plato’s complete works is also a very good one.

You could also pick up some Idries Shah books, such as “The Sufis”, “The Way of the Sufi”, “A Perfumed Scorpion”, “Learning How to Learn”, “Knowing How to Know”, “The Commanding Self”, and his collections of Sufi teaching stories like “Teachings of the Dervishes,” “The Magic Monastery,” the Mulla Nasrudin corpus, and so forth.

You could also throw in some of Robert Anton Wilson’s best nonfiction works, like “Cosmic Trigger,” “Prometheus Rising,” “The New Inquisition,” and “Quantum Psychology.”

You could read these in any order or pick and choose and will probably get something out of it at least a little close to what you’re asking for.

(Some may also automatically be going, “These are too strange, dissonant, kooky, far-out, and irreconcilable from each other. You can’t study them all and make anything coherent out of them. They are nothing alike, and potentially heretical and impossibly blasphemous.” This is also silly, as reading and studying a well-thought-out philosophy does not necessarily mean dogmatically “converting” to it wholesale, and one of the best methods of provoking the awakening of the higher intellect is through the absorption of massive discontinuities from the settled cognitive system, which provokes and up-ends the normal fixed paradigms, hopefully leading to what one might call a “paradigm shift”, or even a full-blown “reality shift”comprised of multiple paradigm shifts or coming about from repeated paradigm shifting.)

[Anonymous No.21235812]

Blindsight by Peter Watts

[Anonymous No.21235815]

>>21231152

Technological Slavery.

[Anonymous No.21235834]

>>21235048
>>21235523
>The books that billions of people blindly follow will keep you from being an NPC
Nice joke

[Anonymous No.21235864]

>>21235834
The Quran is a radical anti NPC book in all its glory.

[Anonymous No.21235880]

>>21231152
I like being an NPC, I know God exists and created the world, and the world is based, and I have only to try to bask in the light of God(doing so makes the world especially based) until I die and whatever happens then happens. This is a kino situation to be in. The world is exceptionally kino.

[Anonymous No.21235892]

>>21231152
There are a lot of non-serious and lazy answers in here. I'm not entirely sure what is meant by NPC, I don't keep up with the changing slurs, but I'm assuming it has basically replaced "normie."

In that case, try:
>The Bible ((absolutely essential - anyone who tells you otherwise is an NPC - they don't even know how little they understand about Western Art (nevermind life or the world))
>Irrational Man; William Barret
>The Owl of Minerva; various philosophers on philosophy
>The Problems of Philosophy; Bertrand Russell
>Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy; Bertrand Russell
>Theogony; Hesiod
>Republic; Plato
>Meno; Plato
>Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, & Phaedo (The Death of Socrates); Plato
>Parmenides; Plato
>Rhetoric; Aristotle
>Poetics; Aristotle
>Logic: A Very Short Introduction; Graham Priest
>Six Easy Pieces; Richard Feynman
>Six Not So Easy Pieces; Richard Feynman
>Basic Mathematics; Serge Lang
>A History of Pi; Beckmann
>A History of Greek Mathematics (Vols. I & II); Sir Thomas Heath
>3.1416 and All That; P.Davis & W.Chinn

Beyond that point, you would have a so much freedom of exploration within literature, literary criticism, philosophy, and most anything else really. I would recommend symbolist poetry - it will stretch your ability to think analytically. In addition to reading, I think film analysis is very helpful for developing power of perception and reasoning. Classical music is also important. It is a piece of the story of the history of art, and was a powerful force in shaping the art of every time in which it played a part. What I cannot recommend, but wish I could, is good works on art criticism and the history of art. Perhaps other anons can add some.

[Anonymous No.21235897]

>>21235892
Woops. Forgot one:
>Anatomy of Criticism; Northrop Frye

[Anonymous No.21235926]

>>21231427
Decline of the West ASAP

[Anonymous No.21235953]

>>21231152
If you have to ask, you aren't an NPC

[Anonymous No.21236053]

>>21235741
This will literally turn him into an NPC. These aren't even the sort of occult books which would clue him in to anything going on in the world. Sad.

[Anonymous No.21236083]

>>21235834
They don't understand nor follow shit.

[Anonymous No.21236188]

>>21231152
>Books that will help me stop being a NPC
AD&D 2e Player's MANUAL

[Anonymous No.21236230]

>>21231152
>Das Kapital

>Prometheus Rising by RAW

>Nietzsche:
Antichrist
Twilight
Gay Science
Ecce Homo
Geneology
Zarathustra

>Get an understanding of Freud and Lacan
(Just watch videos)

>The Black Books
and
>Psychopath's Bible by Christopher S. Hyatt

You now have my worldview

[Anonymous No.21236608]

>>21236230
npc

[Anonymous No.21236656]

>>21231219
Can you really go against the system?

[Anonymous No.21236673]

>>21235892
>>21235897
By far the best answer in the thread. I should really start working on my mathematics, it feels like such a huge piece in the puzzle I am missing.

[Anonymous No.21236711]

>>21236230
Insufferable faggot detected
>>21231152
PROGRESS AND POVERTY

[None of your business No.21236735]

>ITT: npc who didn't start with the greeks and think they know shit about the world
You all should at least not be so shameless about it.

[Anonymous No.21236778]

Zhuangzi, in particular the concept of ziran, (intuition, discarding learning and spontaneity)

and a book with fragments of Diogenes the cynic, in particular defacing the currency by ignoring convention and doing things accoridng to nature

A good grasp of the five modes of skepticism and suspension of judgement from sextus empiticus would also help

[Anonymous No.21236793]

>>21231219
This. If you really want to stop being an NPC, you've already taken the first step in realizing that you are an NPC. I should also say that there is no "not being an NPC" as everyone is an NPC, it's just those who are aware of the urge to conform are better able to control it.
The 'easiest' way is to simply drop out of the herd and be on your own with your thoughts for a long time. Let go of attachments that tether you to the 'the game'.
If you think critically in this period of solace about who you are, why you do the things you do, why you like the things you like (if you even like them at all) and why you believe what you believe (if you ever believed them at all) you will slowly start to know yourself. But be forewarned that madness is the gift you will receive, if you succeed, and the form this madness takes may not be pleasant.
Not being an NPC is simply knowing who you are, separate from everyone else and their influence. The influence of the herd never goes away, but you can find strength in your internal certainty of self to resist this influence when it is not in your interest and is being used against you.

[Anonymous No.21236795]

You're all NPCs because I'm not in control over you, I'm only in control of myself. I am the only actual playable character in this world and there's nothing you can do to convince me otherwise. "Cogito, ergo sum" as a dead NPC once wrote in this game's lore.

[Anonymous No.21237179]

>>21231152

[Anonymous No.21237195]

>>21236795
Jokes on you, I scripted you to say this. You will never be aware.

[Anonymous No.21237204]

>>21231152
Rationality: AI to Zombies
It's crazy how much it wakes you up to notice things

[Anonymous No.21237209]

You can try The Death of Ivan Ilyich or Being and time.

[Anonymous No.21237214]

>>21235678
>a 2000 year old vampire, who looks like a 5 year old girl, must be scantily clad for "Western values"
kys weeb

[Anonymous No.21237234]

>>21237204
Notice what things?

[Anonymous No.21238169]

>>21235892
what a good fucking post anon . Best list in the entirety of /lit/ for broadening your horizons.

[Anonymous No.21238174]

>>21233455
kek, shut the fuck up nigger.
Ellul is absolutely based.

[Anonymous No.21238176]

sometimes i wonder whether ignorance is not bliss, and if it would not have been better to just have been another NPC going through life like everyone else.

are NPCs at least happy? i hope they are.

[Anonymous No.21238194]

>>21238176
Well, are you?

[Anonymous No.21238195]

>>21231285
good rec

[Anonymous No.21238196]

>>21238194
i cant remember the last time i felt genuinely happy and content

[Anonymous No.21238240]

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
Meditations on the Tarot by Anonymous

[Anonymous No.21238255]

>>21231152
the ones (you) pick

[Anonymous No.21238321]

>>21231152
The Holy Bible

[Anonymous No.21238375]

>>21231152
I recommend Schopenhauers World as Will and Representation, and Parerga and Paralipomena. These aren’t the best philosophy books at all, and contain many issues, but I recommend them solely for you to know what it’s like to step into the mind of someone who is not an NPC whatsoever and who’s very articulate. You’ll find his miscellaneous commentaries on women, art, genius, writing, etc to be eye opening.

[Anonymous No.21238561]

>>21231219
>Ellul
any particular recs?

[Anonymous No.21238779]

>>21236656
>Can you really go against all the systems of control?
No, its impossible ultimately. But you can be reluctant and delay as much as possible, sometimes even do something good for someone else. And you can also learn to enjoy life and be a man still. The better you understand the system the more you can exploit it for yourself or delay it for the benefit of others.

When Hitler said "through our actions we can fight back the worst enemy of mankind for another 1000 years", he wasn't talking specifically about the jews. He was referencing something that happened in Germany 1000 years ago - the establishment or progress of a new system of control - But its debatable if their reactive actions against the systems in place had a positive long term effect.

Usually when we act self-less or against the system someone else is able to exploit us, or we hurt ourselves. Its self-destructive - not always the wrong choice but usually its best to act in our self-interest, unfortunately that's also good for the progress of the system.

>>21238561
>Ellul?
The Technological Society