/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5287784]

Anyone else gets depressed as fuck studying history?

We can be truly horrible to each other sometimes.

[Anonymous No.5287789]

Reading about WWI really depresses me

[Anonymous No.5287793]

Things get less grim when you remember that eternal life awaits all those who perish.

[Anonymous No.5287801]

It makes me depressed that I missed out on committing atrocities against those beneath me and getting away with it

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5287809]

>>5287784
Even when the authors are going for the exciting/heroic angle, I pull myself out of it and think about all those lost lives. Too late for them...

[Anonymous No.5287811]

>>5287789
WW1 is can be funny, because the middle and lowers classes were carried away by a fabricated wave of patriotism that the socialists warned them against and then millions of them ended up butchered for nothing LOL!

Oh wait, not "nothing", they were butchered so their children could be butchered again by a similar mentality years later LOL! oh those silly ppl

[Anonymous No.5287815]

How can you remember that which you never knew?

[Anonymous No.5287817]

No need to look to history to get depressed #ferguson

[Anonymous No.5287821]

>>5287784
Sometimes.
Other times I read bad shit and think, at least thats not happening now.

[Anonymous No.5287822]

>>5287801
You missed out capitalism?

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5287827]

>>5287815
The facsimiles suffices.

[Anonymous No.5287831]

>>5287827
>facsimiles
I keep procrastinating looking that up on the dictionary.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5287859]

>>5287831
Copy, reproduction, duplicate, photocopy, replica, likeness, fax

[Anonymous No.5287899]

I remember thinking about the waste of lives when I first watched Saving Private Ryan back when that first came out.

All of those soldiers pouring out of the landing craft at the beginning and just getting mowed down. Just like that, a bunch of dudes are dead. Nothing most of them could have done about it either.

I hope I lose my virginity before I die. Also do the things I want to do. See the world, perhaps? I must stop procrastinating.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5287919]

>>5287899
>I hope I lose my virginity before I die. Also do the things I want to do. See the world, perhaps
>...secure a safe world where these kinds of atrocities can't happen anymore...

[Anonymous No.5287930]

>>5287919
Nah, fuck that.

[Anonymous No.5287934]

>>5287919
#rekt

Seriously tho, sweaty balls cover the earth and smother it's potential.

[Anonymous No.5287958]

>>5287919
I have a crush on your Butterfly, please don't mock me. :(

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5287969]

>>5287958
No "rekt" intended. It's not just for you. Feeling a bit depressed about myself included.

And don't crush too hard, 'kay?

[Anonymous No.5287979]

>>5287969
Okay. I understand your post now.

I'll try not to crush too hard.

*le blushing face*

[Anonymous No.5287997]

>tfw feel manly as fuck studying history
>tfw humanity is manly as fuck
>tfw modern tumblr social justice garbage fades away when you realize only Napoleons matter

[Anonymous No.5288000]

>>5287784
Nah, history gives me hope. All empires fall, and this era will end.

It's the news that makes me depressed.

[Anonymous No.5288011]

>>5287979
god, people who kiss tripfag ass are even more disgusting than tripfags

[Anonymous No.5288016]

>>5288000
what a fucking waste of space

[Anonymous No.5288023]

Not a bit of those feelings here, OP
History is my escapism

[Anonymous No.5288029]

>>5287997
That slice when modern society revolves entirely around trying to prevent the rise of such great men and all that other badass shit

[Anonymous No.5288032]

>>5288016
how so?

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5288033]

>>5287997
>Manly=murderous+maniacal
Not really, padré

[Anonymous No.5288035]

>>5287997
Imagine how much of a shitfit Tumblr would have if one of them would pick up Thucydides and read the Melian Dialogue.

[Anonymous No.5288038]

>>5288032
>this era will end
>but the news makes me depressed

pretentious fuckwad detected

[Anonymous No.5288042]

>>5288038
um ok.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5288051]

>>5288038
>pretentious
>Inigo Montoya quote.jpg

[Anonymous No.5288071]

>>5288042
>>5288051

it's true. if you can see the man pulling the strings why would the mundanity of the news make you depressed? If you understand the undercurrent of the world, irrelevant shit like the news wouldn't faze you.

But pseudo-intellectuals say shit like "the news makes me sad because it's so dumb!" to seem superior to all the "normals" without seeing irony of their fallacious superiority

[Anonymous No.5288075]

>>5287784
>We can be truly horrible to each other sometimes.
Nah, that is just reaching the absolute. It's all allowed on the altar of blood.

[Anonymous No.5288089]

>>5288071
You're reading too much into what I said. I find the news depressing because people are dying right now/human misery etc. Sure shit will get better, but that's not at this moment. The tragedies of the past don't affect me as much as the current ones, perhaps because there is a sense of duty or still being able to do something about it. I never said anything about feeling superior to anyone.

[Anonymous No.5288094]

>>5288071
>irrelevant shit like the news

yo montoya, c'mere

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5288097]

>>5288071
>it's true. if you can see the man pulling the strings why would the mundanity of the news make you depressed?

>If you understand the undercurrent of the world, irrelevant shit like the news wouldn't faze you.

>But pseudo-intellectuals say shit like "the news makes me sad because it's so dumb!" to seem superior to all the "normals" without seeing irony of their fallacious superiority

What are you even trying to say?
You seem to know the media is biased towards the powers-that-be, but you think those who realize this lord it over the people who don't know it yet?

[Anonymous No.5288101]

>>5287997
>you realize only Napoleons matter
this

[Anonymous No.5288105]

>>5288101
>>5287997
Indoctrination has been successful.

[Anonymous No.5288129]

>>5288089
so you get sad at modern tragedies not really "news" in general, totally acceptable

>>5288094
I meant the presentation and media organizations that give us the news not the fact that current events are happening

>>5288097
some of them definitely do, people read who read al jazeera, eat "organic foods, and the like, nothing wrong with any of that but some people make it their identity and shove it in your face that they are "making a difference" when not actually making much a real difference at all.

[Mademoiselle !2ryFggO9U. No.5288132]

History depresses me, but what almost depresses me more is what we choose to study for history... It's upsetting that the evildoers are remembered for generations while the do-gooders are rare and unknown, if not entirely forgotten. The implication—that evil makes you famous—has driven so many people to cruelty... It's heartbreaking.

[Anonymous No.5288136]

>>5288129
...and how exactly do most people learn of said tragedies? News.

[Anonymous No.5288146]

>>5288136
but news is more than just a report of what shitty things happened, if you said "the modern day tragedies are what make me depressed" their would have been no confusion or maybe I'm just retarded

[Anonymous No.5288166]

>>5287997
The chief charm of the past is that we know we'll never live it again.

[Anonymous No.5288184]

>>5288132
And when the do-gooders use the same method as the ruling elites to achieve a new order of fairness and prosperity, history portrays him as a villain.

[Anonymous No.5288186]

I get sad about people who read about history and look down on the people and actions of the past.
They act like we're so much better, and would never be able to do the things they read about.

[Anonymous No.5288190]

Reading Chinese history is sad...

[Anonymous No.5288210]

>>5288190
What did you expect out of some despotic barbarians?

[Anonymous No.5288219]

>>5288186
It's even sadder to think there are people in this day and age who read history and fall for the same tools of monarchist and nationalist "muh blood and honour" propaganda that previous generations have fallen for.

History, if read correctly, is a manual about how not to screw things up again. If read shallowly, is a tale about historical badasses and the cool shit they did.

[Anonymous No.5288237]

>>5288210
Despotic barbarians? No you seemed to be mistaken. The Huns would be despotic barbarians, they killed millions of people in one conquest. Pol Pot would be a despotic barbarian, he made skull pyramids. Christians are not despotic barbarians. Christians paved the way for the enlightenment and for other huge European advances in technology to be made.

[Anonymous No.5288242]

>>5288237
he said "chinese"

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5288252]

>>5288219
>History, if read correctly, is a manual about how not to screw things up again.
That's how I've always taken it.

>>5288184
Which Robespierre bio or history book do you recommend?

[Anonymous No.5288266]

>>5288252
The only Robespierre bio I know and read was Scurr's Fatal Purity and I'm not aware of any other that seems worth the time

Pic related seems like a riot tho

[Anonymous No.5288277]

>>5288237
I was replying to a post about asians.

[Anonymous No.5288297]

>>5288237
What.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5288304]

>>5288266
Oh god. I'll skip that forward. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.5288368]

>>5287979
>*le blushing face*

[Anonymous No.5288378]

>>5287784
Everytime I read something about war I try and imagine the thousands getting straight up slaughtered. It's one thing to die a trained soldier, but reading on eastern warfare, they'd run into a village, have everyone strip naked so they could still use/sell their clothes, and just butcher them by the tens of thousands. All of them, men, women and children. For no reason. I try to envision what it must have been like to stand in a line, naked, seeing your whole family die, knowing you're next.
But it's never mentioned in any of the books.

[Anonymous No.5288408]

>>5288237
>>5288210
You're both autistic.

[Anonymous No.5288558]

>>5288184
Robespierre was a villain.

[Anonymous No.5288608]

>>5288023

Same here - I can commiserate or have empathy with a group ("Oh, how awful that must of been", etc.) but because it remains in the past and there's nothing I can do about it personally, they start to become fictional tales sort of in my head

I just readed Anabasis by Xenophon and it amazes me that people are much the same now as they were then, more than 2000 years ago

2000 years ago! Can you imagine?

[Anonymous No.5288610]

>>5288608

>readed

oh dear, time to cut my fingers off

[Anonymous No.5288619]

>>5288132
>evildoers vs do-gooders

grow up. napoleon was evil? julius caesar?

>>5288184
>And when the do-gooders use the same method as the ruling elites to achieve a new order of fairness and prosperity, history portrays him as a villain.

history doesn't always portray anyone as good or bad, you're projecting that onto the text, likely with modern values.

[Anonymous No.5288625]

no i think it's fascinating that people could think doing horrible shit is ok

[Anonymous No.5288645]

>>5288625
>>>/reddit/

[Anonymous No.5288649]

>>5288645

>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.5288651]

>>5288645
for you

[Anonymous No.5288696]

>>5288625
>>>/reddit/

[Anonymous No.5290102]

>>5287997
>mfw most of /lit/ actually believes this now

I'm becoming a /pol/fag, at least they aren't all idiots who've rejected the concept of morality

[Anonymous No.5290264]

>>5287784

It can be pretty funny.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5290275]

>>5290102
What? No, they all buy into that (the post ref.) AND your concept of morality.
That's why we call them out as /pol/tards sometimes.

[Anonymous No.5290288]

>>5290102

This post is literally the opposite of the truth.

Are you some sort of retard, m8?

[Anonymous No.5290321]

>>5290102
>at least they aren't all idiots who've rejected the concept of morality

[Anonymous No.5290400]

>>5290102

[Anonymous No.5290411]

>>5287784
>Anyone else gets depressed as fuck studying history?
I come that way

>We can be truly horrible to each other sometimes.
Importing the western liberal enlightenment subject much?

>>5288033
Sometimes youŕe a little bit less than an arsehole. Try some Wallerstein. And the great wave.

>>5288132
Sounds like you're reading morality plays, not history.

There's a sad lack of real historical inquiry in this thread. I'd suggest we all go read Hammond & Hammond's first edition of the village labourer.

[Anonymous No.5290435]

Seeing as all the great men are in the past, I find history extremely uplifting

Of course most of it is shit and not worth learning about, but that's because history is mostly the same people doing the same things for the same reasons

[Anonymous No.5290443]

>>5287997

this this this

[Anonymous No.5290580]

>>5290275
>>5290288
>>5290321
>>5290400

I thought amorality equals degeneracy though

[Anonymous No.5290639]

>>5288038
>posting on /lit/
>calling other people pretentious

[Anonymous No.5290663]

>>5288186
for me that's the reason that reading history is so depressing though. finding out that the supposedly great men who made the world what it is today actually had no real control over anything and then they died just like we all will.

[Anonymous No.5290669]

those who know history are also doomed to repeat it

[Anonymous No.5290763]

>>5290580
You're right
these guys are just confused so they throw bitter hate at /pol/

[Anonymous No.5290769]

>>5288237
Huns also paved the world's largest and influential teade route between the West and the East

The Huns were badass and made Russia badass

[Anonymous No.5290800]

>>5288129
>backtracking and strawmanning with the force of 1000 suns

[Anonymous No.5290808]

>>5287811
>by a fabricated wave of patriotism that the socialists warned them against
The far left has its history with nationalism as well, though. I think Rosa Luxemburg was one of the few people at the time who were highly critical of it

[Anonymous No.5290855]

>>5290663
>actually had no real control over anything

>and a great body of men moved eastward from the west and a great body of men moved westwards from the east...
>these things happened simply because they had to happen

Tolstoy please go.

[Anonymous No.5290860]

I did it as a degree and no.

I mean it did get depressing studying the holocaust and going to the concentration camps in Poland (not that auschwitz toursit trap shit either).

I hate holocaust history. It's too political and you can't be the least bit revisionist without being called a denier or anti-Semite.

[Anonymous No.5290874]

>>5288378

I imagine the brutality during the earlier civilisations to be so much more horrific. We think of WWI and II as being mechanical, industrialised, and the sheer scale of it but the raw humanity and expression of those early civilizations around the fertile crescent and Egypt - even if the scale of warfare and was so very much smaller the idea of killing this group then cutting off the testicles to claim as trophies, or decorating the walls with the skins of the fallen is so sickening. There were no 'gentlemanly' ways around those times - that took thousands of years to develop and countless philosophies and ways of thinking to foster it.

[Anonymous No.5290878]

>>5290860
Have you read Nolte and Finkelstein?

You might feel your frustrations vindicated by reading scholars who faced them head-on and had very controversial careers because of it

Or you might get even more annoyed at reading how many people are called anti-semites for exposing fraudulent holocaust memoirs.

[Anonymous No.5290881]

>>5290669

I think people who repeat history whether they are aware of it or not really don't give a fuck. They live in the here and now and seek what they want - carpe diem! and it is those very same people who make history.

[Anonymous No.5290886]

>>5290878
>>5290860
My personal favourite passage, as an addendum:
http://library.flawlesslogic.com/h_lit.htm

>There's more. Israel Gutman is a director of Yad Vashem and a Holocaust lecturer at Hebrew University. He is also a former inmate of Auschwitz. According to Gutman, "it's not that important" whether Fragments is a fraud. "Wilkomirski has written a story which he has experienced deeply; that's for sure.... He is not a fake. He is someone who lives this story very deeply in his soul. The pain is authentic." So it doesn't matter whether he spent the war in a concentration camp or a Swiss chalet; Wilkomirski is not a fake if his "pain is authentic": thus speaks an Auschwitz survivor turned Holocaust expert. The others deserve contempt; Gutman, just pity.

[Anonymous No.5290895]

>>5288184
Pretty sure all the innocent people who were murdered would have considered him and the others involved villains.

[Anonymous No.5290900]

>Implying you have to go back farther than yesterday's newspaper

[Anonymous No.5290902]

>>5287811
Nearly everyone was pro-war at the onset of WWI. This mindset even had a name in France- The Sacred Union. But indeed this war wasn't the most strategically brilliant ideas of the Europeans powers.

[Anonymous No.5290904]

>>5287831
literally "made in the likeness of"

[Anonymous No.5290915]

>>5287997
That's a rather fun way of putting it because Napoleon was a romantic adventure in a modernizing land. Hardcore industrialization and culture of efficiency, that's what matters now and that's what do the jod. Genius never outlasts relentless but efficient mediocrity.

[Anonymous No.5290943]

>>5290411
>people like to have they testicules chopped off because they don't sahre the same value as Enlightenment

Regardless of how you like at it, the past is full of shit sick. Of course that's if you focus on the very sick shit, but there's plenty to focus on.

[Anonymous No.5290950]

>sometimes
you mean most of the time. true kindness is a anomally

[Anonymous No.5290971]

>>5290950
True kindness is a contemptible value anyway. Few great men would have placed any importance in kindness prior to the 20th century. Idolization of kindness leads to the cultural degeneration, self-hatred, and suicidal mass immigration policies of our present day.

[Anonymous No.5291184]

Its depressing to read about the iconoclasm period of the roman empire, so much war and death over a theological dispute, it made the empire weak. Helped its enemies.

[Anonymous No.5291203]

>>5290943
It isn't just the past. You live in a genocidal society which racially applies the rule of law and which illegally imprisons individuals without recourse to the courts.

I'm pretty sure that out of all those societies you live in the one which systematically threatens men with extra-judicial rape for crimes of conscience and speech.

You live in a pre-enlightenment society.

Enjoy.

[Anonymous No.5291209]

>>5290971
Where did we end up assuming "don't be cruel" has an unspoken imperative to "then be kind" anyway?

[Anonymous No.5291223]

>>5287811


http://radishmag.wordpress.com/2014/07/31/arab-spring/

[Anonymous No.5291239]

>>5291209
Being unkind, especially extremely unkind, can cause emotional scarring. That's because emotional pain and actual pain are processed the same way in the brain.

[Anonymous No.5291242]

>>5291239
Rule 5: Toughen the fuck up, cunt.

[Anonymous No.5291249]

>>5291242
>What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
has been shown to be patently false. It should be:
>What doesn't scar you makes you stronger

[Anonymous No.5291252]

>>5291209


thats what happens when you try to do ethics with categorical imperatives.

[Anonymous No.5291254]

>>5291249
>>What doesn't kill you
Who exactly said I wasn't going to kill you?

[Anonymous No.5291256]

>>5287811
>WW1 is can be funny,


"Ferdinand was known for being quite a character. On a visit to German Emperor Wilhelm II, his second cousin once removed, in 1909, Ferdinand was leaning out of a window of the New Palace in Potsdam when the Emperor came up behind him and slapped him on the bottom. Ferdinand was affronted by the gesture and the Emperor apologised. Ferdinand however exacted his revenge by awarding a valuable arms contract he had intended to give to the Krupp's factory in Essen to French arms manufacturer Schneider-Creusot.[5] "

[Anonymous No.5291258]

>>5291252


ps dont do it.

[Anonymous No.5291338]

>>5291256
rekt

[Anonymous No.5291344]

>>5287784
>you will never spread glorious socialism to the third world

[Anonymous No.5291347]

>>5291344
>substitutionalism

[Anonymous No.5291354]

>>5290902
>But indeed this war wasn't the most strategically brilliant ideas of the European Powers
That's quite an understatement. Analyzing The Casus Belli and what lead up to it can be like studying a Farce.

[Anonymous No.5291949]

>>5291256
hahahahahhahahahhahaha loooooool

[Anonymous No.5291997]

>>5287784
try Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine". Truly heartbreaking. Not trying to be edgy but seriously, the US government is the devil.

[Anonymous No.5292553]

>>5291209
It's the same black and white fallacy that defines good and evil.

[Anonymous No.5292570]

>>5287784
Yea I most recently started looking at WW2. Just realizing that it happened less than a century ago makes me want to keep up with humanity's progess as well.

[Anonymous No.5292948]

I guess in the same way that doctors get used to seeing fucked up people all the time, reading history kind of forces you to be desensitized to people doing awful things to each other.

But some things are just so creatively fucked up that it bothers me, like pic related. I mean rape, torture, murder etc obviously happen in wars.

But making dads bite their son's dick off is just something else. Otherwise normal people were put into a situation where they ended up thinking it was ok to make a kid chew his father's
penis off. No thank you

Gulag Archipelago was also genuinely disturbing. Reading this stuff combined with thinking about my job prospects does not help my mental health. Oh well

[Anonymous No.5293062]

>>5291344
>>5291223

[Anonymous No.5293870]

>>5291997
Even Naomi Klein herself has repudiated that dumb book.

[Anonymous No.5293883]

>>5293870
where? and it doesn't matter if she did. the value is in the work itself not the author's opinion of it

[Anonymous No.5293897]

>>5293883
Start with the Greeks, kid. Shallow contemporary "thinkers" like Naomi Klein have nothing to teach anybody worth anything.

[Anonymous No.5293900]

>>5291256
>tfw no qt royal pi to slap on the ass

[Anonymous No.5294597]

>>5287793
This made me a bit happy thanks anon