/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22765946]

I've realised that when I read, it's usually grim, mean, about conflict, some fucked up part of history (which is all of history), or just sadness.. When I listen to music, it's usually morose. When I watch movies or television, it's often violent.
Are there nice, friendly, optimistic books out there for a normal average guy? Preferably fiction, but I don't mind reading something about the joy of gardening or something. I recently read a book about the luthiers art and I want to keep that positive momentum going.
I need to invite some goodness into my life. Perhaps you can too?

>tldr - songs that feel like this to read? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-op5cj6uknE

[Anonymous No.22765953]

>>22765946
That should be "books that feel like this to read." Sorry lads

[Anonymous No.22765977]

>>22765946
sounds like the royalty free filler soundtrack to a WEG, try that perhaps big guy

[Anonymous No.22766004]

For me it's Anne of Green Gables (the first book, haven't read the rest).
Everything else I've read and all the media I've consumed is dark gloomy shit.

[Anonymous No.22766026]

You are getting mentally buckbroken by Jewish demoralization.

Read The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh, children's books, pastoral poetry, Emerson and nature essays, metaphysics, spirituality, epic fantasy like Wheel of Time, basically anything life affirming and positive.
Listen to classical, shoegaze and ambient for a straight month to cleanse the negative frequencies out from your mind. Try to avoid music with lyrics entirely because lyrics are just propaganda designed to influence your mind on how to interpret the emotions from the music rather than organically letting your brain discover it for itself.
Don't watch movies or TV at all. It's all trash, all of it. Drama inherently deals with conflict, and conflict is usually violent and pessimistic.
I'm the smartest person on this midwit shithole. I highly recommend listening to me.

[Anonymous No.22766078]

Thanks anon great advice.
Is the wheel of time really that healthy?

[Anonymous No.22766092]

>>22766078
It's just a personal favorite and example. A lot of fantasy applies to this, LOTR too obviously. Even Brandon Sanderson, despite being an almost objectively bad writer, writes pretty good escapist fantasy. Mistborn is quite comfy.

[Anonymous No.22766093]

>>22766026
>Spirituality/metaphysics on the same league as children's lit.
It's so fucking over.

[Anonymous No.22766106]

>>22766093
Children's lit has more profound esoteric truths than whatever gay postmodern continental philosophy you read.

[Anonymous No.22766113]

>>22766106
To me the post reads more more like and admission that both of spirituality and kidlit are comfort tales that don't have any bearing on reality.
What esoteric truths can you find in Winnie the Pooh? To be fair, only kidlit I've read is Le Petit Prince and it is really poignant, not at all a happy go lucky read.

[Anonymous No.22766127]

>>22766113
Winnie the Pooh is an idealized utopia where there is no violence, no conflict, no backstabbing, narcissism, jealousy or any of the ape emotions we have.
When Christopher Robin sets foot in the Hundred Acre Wood, he leaves the material world and its corruption behind and enters a world of friendship and eating honey all day. This is the eternal quest of humanity, to return to the garden. Most children's literature understands this on a subconscious level, and which is why it is philosophically superior to base materialist """"serious"""" literature that /lit/ loves to chin stroke so much over and think they are intelligent for reading, and then have the audacity to wonder why they are depressed and on 6 different pills.

[Anonymous No.22766136]

>>22766127}
>This is the eternal quest of humanity, to return to the garden.
Unironically how do I see this as a real "quest" instead of a coping mechanism?

[Anonymous No.22766137]

>>22765946
I have a beautiful and good soul, so I enjoy grim, mean, conflicted, fucked up literature because it provides stimulating psychological depth. It doesn't affect me negatively, it can't, it's like sewage washing off a gold coin.

[Anonymous No.22766148]

>>22766127
Isn't pooh a little more human than that though? Rabbit is anally retentive, trigger is clumsy, eeyore is depressed and suffers from ennui. These elements humanise them despite the idyllic surroundings. What matters is that these flaws are almost always overridden by the power of mutual love, care and friendship. I'm going to watch old Pooh episodes now, thanks anon

[Anonymous No.22766157]

>>22766136
Channel your depression (if you have it) into making active changes in the state of reality, whether your own reality or the universe at large. Learn more, read more, try to be more discerning in what you read. Don't read a book just because "it's a classic" and don't give a book 300 pages if you aren't enjoying it. It's OK to stop on page 20 if you are bored.
My full belief can't be summed up in a post, and basically you have to experience certain things for yourself. Like I would say God (an abstract creator, not the Judeo-Christian god) almost certainly exists. Can I justify that logically? Of course not, but this positivity is something that becomes manifest through the active positive steps you take in your life.

To get a positive mindset despite everything going to shit around you is something that takes superhuman will power, but the fact you want to try is already a great first step.

[Anonymous No.22766162]

>>22766148
Have a nice time! :)

[Anonymous No.22766163]

>>22766157
Your post reminds me of this speech given by McKenna
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5GUvaitm_c

[Anonymous No.22766176]

>>22766163
Yeah I don't know much about his philosophy but that's just how I see it.
It may seem like woo woo to some people, but if you want good things to happen, all you have to do is just convince yourself that they WILL happen and eventually the universe conspires with you and makes it happen, like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's like how Arnold Schwarzenegger said he woke up every day, looked in the mirror and said "I'm going to be the best bodybuilder of all time, then move to America and be a movie star." Then he did it, because his sheer will bent reality so much that it worked in his favor. Again, people think this is woo woo schizo stuff, but I think there is legitimately something happening with this mindset and we don't fully understand it yet.

[Anonymous No.22766351]

>>22765946
Tolkein
Assassins Apprentice
Little Women

[Anonymous No.22766624]

>>22766176
This is a concept largely tackled within post-modernism. Hyper-reality and the inability to discern images and fiction as fantasy. But it goes both ways. What we take in will interact with us and shape us, and what we put out will interact and shape the rest of the whole.

[Anonymous No.22766643]

>>22765946
It's a fairly quick read with a lot of pictures. It's out of print but I think you can get old copies pretty cheap from resellers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUE_vdAyt0Y

[Anonymous No.22766692]

>listening to music while reading

[Anonymous No.22766722]

>>22766692
I wouldn't expect a frogposter to appreciate quality ambient/minimalist music as background sound while reading
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yM5mKnkaUA

[Anonymous No.22766800]

>>22765946
The moomin series is glorious. First novel or two feel very much like books for children but they become much more universal starting with finn family moomintroll. Whimsical, beautiful and philosophical there's something about these characters that really sticks out among all world fiction, they're quite wonderful. Maybe it's because author tove janson based most of them off the fascinating people around her in real life. You will get more truth about how to live a good life from these books than near anything aimed at adults. If I could compare them to anything it would be like a studio Ghibli movie, similar reverence for nature, but with a more slice of life focus and better characters.

[Anonymous No.22767470]

>>22766800
Lovely post

[Anonymous No.22767546]

>>22766157
Really cozy post anon! I've felt similar things for a pretty long while and the closest I've found to articulating it in any readable way have been the writings of Frithjof Schuon and the later followers of Guenon. Regardless, I hope you have a pleasant day :)

[Anonymous No.22767669]

>>22766026
Life-affirming is only one half of the story, however. Life needs to be balanced between Eros and Thanatos. Emerson and pastoral poetry are wonderful but it's very much wrong to eschew the negative sides of life entirely, and I'm sure Emerson would agree. Nature itself is sometimes "red in tooth and claw". Shakespeare, virtually considered the voice of Nature, is both Midsummer Night's Dream and King Lear, the Sonnets and Titus Andronicus. Pessimism and optimism should go hand in hand.
>>22766176
I think what you're saying is useful to the extent it's very important to discover what you really want out of life, which is very much half of the battle. But I don't personally believe such goals as Arnold Schwarzenegger's were are very meaningful or noble. He also approached them in a very rigid way, but personally I believe the most important achievements in life are discovered rather than imposed, creatively received from the universe rather than forced upon it. Take Einstein for example: you're not likely to develop the theory of relativity by saying to yourself "I'm going to develop a new scientific theory" to yourself each morning because new discoveries are always unimaginable until they occur. Anyway, I definitely agree there might be a place for the manifestation of dreams into reality like you say but at least please make those dreams less inane than "bodybuilder movie star".

[Anonymous No.22767723]

>>22766176
Isn’t this just what that book the secret says?

[Anonymous No.22767825]

>>22765946
Three Men on a Boat. A light-hearted comedy about three men and a dog having a boating holiday, mixed in with the author's affectionate descriptions of the countryside in which the story is set. 150 years old but the comedy is still chuckle-worthy.

[Anonymous No.22767941]

>>22767669
I get what you are saying about the duality, but pessimism is borne out of unnatural states. Because all conflict is derived from human-made problems, and are thus inherently unnatural by definition. Stories like Lear and Titus are only possible because we are out of balance with nature.

I think that if we didn't live in such a bleak, depressing, dystopian time that pessimistic and negative art would be fine in moderation, to remind people what they should be trying to avoid. But we don't need morality tales in the current year. People are confronted with clown world all day every day. We are at a point in history where escapism is the answer. The tone of the literature must be inversely proportional to the actual state of things, and since we live in a disgusting materialistic society and literally everyone has lost the plot and forgotten the truly important things in life, the literature must be as extreme in the other direction as possible, i.e. heroic and uplifting, wholesome, showing the life you COULD be having. This effects mass consciousness and would bring about some actual tangible change, which is exactly why negative grimdark shit is pushed, to keep people down and make sure that people don't get empowered. Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, stuff that brainwashes people into thinking that the evil side of humanity is the natural state of things and to just accept it. That's why we need positive and optimistic stuff now more than ever. And of course at the time in history when we need it the most is the time that it's being suppressed.