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/lit/ - Literature

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2435520 No.2435520 [Reply] [Original]

Why do we study literature?

I'm having a hard time answering this question adequately, and it's making me want to kill myself.

Every answer I can come up with is self-serving or pointless, and the more I think about it the more I hate myself as a human being for choosing to study it.

Is there ANY legitimate reason to study literature, or are we just being brainless hedonists masturbating en masse?

>> No.2435521

because it's there.

>> No.2435524

Selfish reasons =/= bad reasons

>> No.2435526
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2435526

We study because there is nothing else to do in life but what we want.

>> No.2435527

>>2435524

How can you justify that?

>> No.2435529

I wouldn't study literature as a career. Well, maybe as a second one, just for fun.

>> No.2435531

Because it is beautiful.

>> No.2435535
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2435535

>>2435527

Because in the end, nothing you do matters. Everyone suffers, eveyone dies. And you are here for such a short time.

Why not make yourself happy?

>> No.2435536

>>2435527
I don't believe there is any particular way I ought to be spending my time, so I choose to spend it on literature. Simple as that.

>> No.2435537

>>2435527
Not him, but I don't.

Should I pretend to care about things bigger than myself? Because that is what it would be: pretending. It sounds Cynical or Objectivist or something, but I don't think I am any different from most people, past or present.

>> No.2435538

>>2435536

Why choose it?

>> No.2435539

>>2435527
Why do you feel the need to?

>> No.2435540

>>2435537

So we really are just worthless pieces of shit.

Fuck.

>> No.2435542

>>2435538
It interests me.

>> No.2435543

>>2435539

Because I'd prefer not to think of myself a childish, selfish, worthless asshole.

>> No.2435545

>>2435540
Why? Under what definition, under what standard do you call 'us' worthless? Should I be a humanitarian? Should I volunteer to fight AIDS in Guatemala? Is this my purpose?

>> No.2435546

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return#Friedrich_Nietzsche
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amor_fati
http://www.pitt.edu/~wbcurry/nietzsche/nuber.html

YOU'VE GOT ONE LIFE TO LIVE NIGGER, OR POSSIBL INFINITE, MIGHT AS WELL SPEND IT CULTIVATING YOURSELF AND STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE

AFTER YOU DO IT FOR A WHILE IT BECOMES A FUN GAME

>> No.2435547

>>2435543
There's no need to feel that doing something for yourself makes you childish and worthless.

>> No.2435549

>>2435540
Some of us work towards making time to waste, others work toward making wastes of time. I can't think of any passion or profession that doesn't fit into one of these.

>> No.2435550

>>2435547

How do you see it, then? Sitting in a room masturbating for 60 years sounds pretty worthless to me.

>> No.2435559

>>2435550
As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity. For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool.

Ecclesiastes 2:16

>> No.2435561

Do you think that, when we hit eighty we will look back on our lives, lives dedicated to making money, or studying literature, studying anything, being private, being personal, fucking, not fucking, settling down, recycling, not recycling, lives that never touch a life outside of our own, that we will look back on all that and feel any better or worse than someone who dedicated their lives to others?

I don't think so. Will we feel guilty for that? I don't think so. Should we? I do not think so.

So go about your life fighting crime or injustice or inequality or whatever. But don't ever pretend you are a better person than I am.

>> No.2435562

>>2435550
It's a really big room and your cum can get into other people's heads and make thoughtbabies.

>> No.2435564

>>2435550
"Sitting in a room masturbating for 60 years" isn't really doing something for yourself, it's pursuing pleasure.
Literature satisfies a deeper need.

>> No.2435566

>>2435561

I'm not a better person than you. I think I'm one of the worst people alive.

>> No.2435569

Because.

Nigger. There's no reason to do anything but to do it. You do something because you want to, one way or the other, unless puts a pipebomb in your rectum.

Even the most important things have no true reason. Why do we eat? To get hungry the next day. Why do we survive, one way or the other? To prolong death, but death is comming anyways. The battle is already lost and we do it just because.
Welcome to life is pointless, but it's fun to do it.

>> No.2435572

>>2435569
>unless someone* puts a pipebomb..

I fucked up being edgy. Oh the irony.

>> No.2435573

>>2435569
Take this guy for example. English is his second language and he will be mocked for his poor grammar, but he pushes on anyway. What a soldier. What a little battler.

>> No.2435576

>>2435561
What if I know I'm not better or worse than you objectively speaking, but I think I am based on my own standards?

>> No.2435577

>>2435573
Camus would be proud.

>> No.2435578

>>2435573
I'll speak english poorly until the day I die.

>hellyeahmotherfucker.jpg

>> No.2435580

>>2435576
Then follow your standards, and I'll follow mine. Thinking yourself better than most of the people around you is one of the keys to happiness.

>> No.2435585

Art is what sets man above animals. The wanting, needing to express oneself is the one thing that primal instinct does not dictate in man.

Also for some odd reason the JFK Rice speech came into my head when I read the first line. The fuck.

>> No.2435586

Maybe it's some type of pursuit for ascendance. We feel the need to advance our brains, rather than the physical strengths we've used for generations, to achieve something beyond the lame techniques that have been our reason for survival. Evolution, in a sense.

Or not.

>> No.2435589

>>2435586

Stop romanticizing evolution. Reading books isn't evolution. Evolution is that feeling when you want to fuck someone.

>> No.2435596

>>2435589
That's the Wille zum Leben, not evolution.