/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21417953]

What book should I read if I am 25 and have no perspective or insight as to why my life from cradle to present has been an emotionally/financially/intellectually impoverished, illiterate, ignorant, squalid, pathetic, empty maze of failure?

[Anonymous No.21417958]

there's no book, the answer is within you. not in some hippie dippie religious kind of way, but in the sense that you (like most) are probably limiting yourself as to what you consider realistic and possible. if any random woman can survive by dressing provocatively while serving men alcohol at a random bar, what makes you think you lack opportunity?

[Anonymous No.21417981]

>>21417953
That's called being "low-class." Research what makes people "upper-class." Start adopting the mental and behavioral patterns of upper-class people. Try to make your descendants a higher class than yourself.

[Anonymous No.21418007]

>>21417981
This is good advice. You have to have the courage to aim high and be more, and learn to notice the crabs in the bucket when you're in the bucket with them. And when you make it out of the bucket, you turn around and you pull them out, not in.

[Anonymous No.21418019]

Read the classics.

[Anonymous No.21418054]

>>21417953
Nietzsche

[Anonymous No.21418068]

>>21417953
I wrote this for people like you
It’s not complete, more a collection of notes and ideas

It’s still a summation of everything i know so far and deem to be important

Philosophy, meaning, suffering, evolution, absolution
Down to the minutiae of life

https://docs.google.com/file/d/1YZ2VhS-8wIiKG-PXkprBpPnGv1J7fRRr/edit?usp=docslist_api&filetype=msword

[Anonymous No.21418106]

>>21417953
Unironically, The Bible. I recommend a regimen of the book of Proverbs. Read one each day, on months with 30 days, read two the last day. Repeat forever. It's okay if you're inconsistent, though it is obviously preferable to be consistent, so long as you return to it. Read the whole Bible. Study it, but at least start with Proverbs. Meditate on them and shape your life by them. Your life will get better. Aside from that there's a lot of material anyone could list - financial advice depends on where you live to a degree, but basic personal finance is a good place to start.

Its probably more important to start ridding your life of bad and empty habits and replacing them with meaningful ones. Don't smoke weed, don't watch porn, don't masturbate, don't spend excessive time watching tv or playing games, etc.,.

The only real answer to ridding your heart of those feelings and truly starting the turnaround is Christ, but if you'll at least give the pragmatism of Proverbs a go, you'll be off to a good start.

[Anonymous No.21418114]

>>21418068
This comes across as exceptionally pretentious schizism.

[Anonymous No.21418117]

>>21418068
This is an interesting project, but practically impenetrable. Not only that, but you go to such detail in some topics that it can't possibly be useful given how particular it is. If I were you, I'd Read Marcus Aurelius' meditations and see if you are able to collate your notes into something more like what is presented there.

[Anonymous No.21418177]

>>21418117
The point is breadth
Life isn’t summed up in a few paragraphs and sentences

>>21418114
Yeah, there’s little structure and I’m an insane midwit. Nothing else makes as much sense though

[Anonymous No.21419174]

>>21417953
Bumping for good recommendations. I'm 26 and in similar boat. I've done a lot in my life, but at the same time, my inferiority complex and lack of belief in myself has hampered me and held me back from reaching my true potential. I've been mentally fucked for the last 4 ywars now.

[Anonymous No.21419237]

Read Plato to know how to critically think
Read Aristotle to know how to speak
Read any classic you can get your hands on, there is a reason they have been around for hundreds of years.
Watch a Shakespeare play and then read it out loud to yourself. This is the order to understand the theater.
Read Kafka to know that the world is against you, but that it can be extremely amusing.
Read Sherlock Holmes to know that every murder and mystery has been done a thousand times to death.
Read Graeber's 5000 years of debt to understand the historical nature of money.
Read Bernays Propaganda to see the origins of the new world's downfall.
Read Manufacturing Consent to know the updated version of propaganda.
Read Capital so you can be part of the .01% that actually has, be you hate it or love it.
Read your local penal code and Procedure code so you know how to not break the law.
Read your country's constitution so you know the foundations of your 'society'
Read a people's history of the US to know that the only war is the class war
Read a history book on WW2 to know that there IS other war besides the class war.
Read the Three Musketeers because it's just some swashbuckling fun.
Read Moby Dick because it's beautiful.
Read Catch 22 because it's funny.
Read the Call of Cthulhu so you can know literary horror without wasting too much of your time.
Read how to read a book so you know how to read a book
Read Make it stick so you can remember what you read.
Read every textbook you can get your hands on.
Read how-to books on any and everything.

[Anonymous No.21419247]

>>21417953
This the 'I want to die' thread?

Good god, it's been worse of late. I hate my parents for birthing me so much. Even if there is a heaven and I've a ticket quite secure (each as likely as the other) it isn't worth the squeeze in the slightest. Fucking kill me. I just wish I could've been born into some sinecured ivory tower academic position where I could know where each day's bread is coming from as far into the future as any can see. But no: this.

[Anonymous No.21419300]

>>21419237
I've read literally all the named works here and still want to kms and recall the fact each and every day.

So tired of this BS. It's so pathetically faggy and girly but I just want someone to come and save me from this nonsense, even if the only praxis he has is a fucking knife.

[Anonymous No.21419313]

>>21418068
As someone who also sees the problems of the world as rigid processes I must develop theories and solutions for, I see this as an impressive amount of work so far. Like you said this is unfinished, but I can see this being a truly useful tool for people once edited and developed fully. Nice work.
t. stupid 24 year old

[Anonymous No.21419367]

From youth I've been very independent, having lost faith in family and friends to help me with my suffering. I recognize now that this is not an unfair injustice towards me personally, but simply the nature of reality and almost everyone around me.
My main source of hope comes from my confidence that I can independently "solve" each of the problems that bring my misery, such as loneliness, helplessness, survival, etc. The only problem is that while I take care of this suffering animal, I am also that animal myself at the same time. Once I am overwhelmed with emotions or pain or am taken down with illness, I can no longer be that rigid problem solver for myself, and I am reminded that I probably can't do this alone.
Perhaps one of the highest priorities on this list is the need for cooperation and friends. We could all easily address our suffering if we banded together. However the steps to that cooperation impede us, the very human variables of leadership, hierarchy, respect, integrity, so on. Morale wise, we must uplift each other and have faith that our brethren can grow and handle these demons.
We cannot escape being being members of the human species as long as we live. We must learn to play the game by its rules.

[Anonymous No.21419419]

>>21419300
It's your world, we're just posting in it.

[Anonymous No.21419454]

Good book for you: Why We Do What We Do, to understand how motivation works and why it's sometimes so hard.

Otherwise:
> read the classics
There are lists here.
> Don't try to read only hard texts
It doesn't work unless you're already a stockholmized college bookworm.
> Novels and fiction are important
They give you new ways to think and extend your brain. This includes things like Homer, Thucydides, Lucretius, Boetius (very hard though) as well as modern works anons mentioned here.


>>21417981
Good advice. Also don't buy books written by people who explain to you how rich and famous they got writing that book. If you're 25 you may have already made that mistake, but nowadays there's z-lib and stuff.

>>21419237
Start with the presocratics, it will spare you a lot of reading and the texts are short. Also Klaus Popper.
The economy books here are good but extremely long. It's not my field though, so I don't have any good recommendations for original works. I'd rather recommend every man's economy books, like Freakonomics, Nudge.

>>21419300
No book will change your life. We are hardly our own masters. The only way to really change your life is to radically change your social environment: how you sleep, how you get stimulation and dopamine, etc, but mostly the interactions you have with people, their quantity, kind, and quality. It becomes harder with age.

If you're an autist though, culture gives you at least something to talk about and the opportunity to learn from people.

[Anonymous No.21419508]

>>21417953
Get your shit together.

[Anonymous No.21419642]

>>21419508
Mind giving a 10-step guide on how to do that?