You do have a basic understanding of how human language works, don't you?
>>24988998You have no clue what a premise and a conclusion are.>only insofar as your lot can continue to shame people into not propagating it, because linguists are descriptivists and descriptivism is cuckoldry which will fold to usage.Very confused writing. Literally making two contradictory claims at once. As I said, you can't even make up your mind what it is you are asserting, let alone make actual arguments for your claims. Read https://www.juristpanel.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/A-Rulebook-for-Arguments_compressed.pdf as your first book ever in critical thinking/logic, and then keep reading critical thinking/logic/trivium books.https://youtu.be/vgqpuQ4QnlE
>>24989026I mean, nta, but >>24987848 becomes clear if you assume that by 'descriptivism' he means 'prescriptivism'. And I can't but delight in the irony of correcting him on this front, given the point he's making (if I'm understanding him correctly, though perhaps I'm not).
>>24989026>You have no clue what a premise and a conclusion are.I do, in fact, actually.>Very confused writing.There is nothing confused nor confusing about it.>Literally making two contradictory claims at once.There are no contradictions in what I wrote.>As I said, you can't even make up your mind what it is you are assertingNo, you are simply too stupid to understand what I am asserting.>let alone make actual arguments for your claimsI wrote what I wrote how I intended to write it. Anything more is a (You) problem.>Read https://www.juristpanel.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/A-Rulebook-for-Arguments_compressed.pdfNo.>as your first book ever in critical thinking/logicSounds like no matter how many such books *you* read, *you* will never understand those concepts yourself.Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>24989616Too proud to learn anything. Many such cases.
>>24989026NTA but thanks anon. The only education I got on this was a list of fallacies in an introductory legal studies course back in the day. Luv u. Appreciate u
Crocodile Tears edition.OLD: >>24978375
Have a dream: I wandered with a crowd, sometimes among family, sometimes friends, then alone, you know how it is, but usually I was surrounded by Koreans. Frankly I could not have known this if not for the cheating that happens so often in dreams, where you simply "know" without knowing why. "They aren't real Koreans," said a Korean man in plain English. I agreed, the language was made up. It sounded like Huss and Hessu, they murmured while wandering dim halls all throughout the aquarium. So many that I myself felt like a fish traveling strange currents, but I had my handy map, though I forgot most of it when I woke up.There are only two points I can distinctly picture. The terrarium section and the flatfish stairway. Go left: A big pit like a kidney, stuffed with trees and glass. I was told that it was a 'human exhibit' but apparently that was a joke, because there were no humans inside, only monkeys. Disagreeable little bastards. Elephant noses, flaring asses. They flung their shit at me, me of all people! And it sailed over the glass as I ran. Someone mentioned I could strip down and head into the exhibit if I wanted to stay. I said no, thank you, and looked for an exit. There is no exit but on the right: The flatfish stairway. There are two paths. One is simply stairs, easy enough. There are no wheelchairs in dreams you know. But I was determined to climb the center passage, which the Non-Koreans staggered up like sinners climbing out of Hell. A series of semicircle craters, each harder to scale than the last. Very blue, very grey. Dreamlike, which meant it was invariably harder than it looks. I very nearly made it, but at the top I caught a glimpse of the flatfish room. This was no nightmare but I 'knew' I was supposed to be afraid. The flatfish is a white-skinned ray about the size of a pickup truck. Under its wings it has a semi-human face and black eyes. It consumes twice its weight in sand every day, says the cheating voice. I leave. Top left: A macaroni tube tunnel, stretched thin and housing only two attractions. The map is deliciously blank, marked only by triple ???s and another ???. "Taboo Hallway" is what they call it, and it has something worse than a flatfish. I woke up, incensed. The lighting had been nice, the Non-Koreans were agreeably alien, and I knew I had seen so much more than I remembered. Worst of all, I will never see the flatfish bite sand.
>>24985980Do you have any form of note-taking system? Whenever I read a non-fiction book, I forget any details except for the main conclusions, and I want to change that in some way.
>wants to write>doesn't read contemporary literaturethese folks are annoying
>>24990004For a second, I thought the non Koreans were climbing a flat fish stairway and there was only one passage upI never dreamt a flat fish I remember, but I had a dream about swimming backstroke with a rabbit in a lake filled with lily pads, and I was like, I didn't know rabbits could do backstroke, and then I looked under the water and the rabbit was laying on a very shallow bit of the lake/river and only pretending to do backstroke I don't know why a rabbit would pretend to do backstroke either
>>24990004>>24990029Sounds like a dream someone with gender dysphoria would have.
>Civilizations may last for centuries and be extremely eventful; Imperial Rome is a prime example.>…>But autumn ends, and a civilization becomes a culture gone frozen in its brains and heart, and its finale is anything but grand. We are now far into what the Chinese called the period of contending states, and the collapse of Caesarism.>In such a period, politics becomes an arena of competing generals and plutocrats, under a dummy ruler chosen for low intelligence and complete moral plasticity, who amuses himself and keeps the masses distracted from their troubles with bread, circuses, and brushfire-wars. (This is the time of all times when a culture should unite — and the time when such a thing has become impossible.) Technology flourishes (the late Romans were first-class engineers) but science disintegrates into a welter of competing, grandiosely trivial hypotheses which supersede each other almost weekly and veer more and more markedly toward the occult.>Among the masses there arises a “second religiousness” in which nobody actually believes; an attempt is made to buttress this by syncretism, the wrenching out of context of religious forms from other cultures, such as the Indian, without the faintest hope of knowing what they mean. This process, too, leads inevitably towards a revival of the occult, and here science and religion overlap, to the benefit of neither. Economic inequity, instability and wretchedness become endemic on a hitherto unprecedented scale; the highest buildings ever erected by the Classical culture were the tenements of the Imperial Roman slums, crammed to bursting point with freed and runaway slaves, bankrupts, and deposed petty kings and other political refugees.When will cesaerism start in europe?
>>24987182You know how “psychics” and “fortune tellers” really just say very general things that are applicable to almost anyone
>>24987925>And from the summarizing excerpts, I would dispute his interpretationsWhy?
>>24987994Its a matter of being incorrect you absolute nigger
>>24988106I would say Blish misappraises what Caesarism is. His characterization of ' an arena of competing generals and plutocrats, under a dummy ruler chosen for low intelligence and complete moral plasticity, who amuses himself and keeps the masses distracted from their troubles with bread, circuses, and brushfire-wars. ' is a synthesis entirely his own, I do not recall Spengler ever questioning the agency of the rulers, on the contrary he asserts their real power over such covert dealings. What I am trying to say is that this is a much more apt description of the democratic epoch than anything later than that. Likewise, I do not believe Spengler ever characterized the Second religiousness as a dishonest religiosity. In my reading, he actually reinforces how primally real the weary soul's return to the womb is. Now, he does speak of a false, consciously enjoyed religion for the civilized man. But that comes expressly before the second religiousness, it is a facet of megalopolitan civilized life, not of the second religiousness. Of course, the second religiousness, wrench exotic and archaic motifs from the world. That is correct. The rational sciences do dissolve into mystic gibberish, however this is science melting back into religion (Spengler expressly speaks of how the sciences and religion spring forth from the same seed and mirror eachother in every culture).The next section > Economic inequity, instability and wretchedness become endemic on a hitherto unprecedented scale; the highest buildings ever erected by the Classical culture were the tenements of the Imperial Roman slums, crammed to bursting point with freed and runaway slaves, bankrupts, and deposed petty kings and other political refugees.is of a deeply socialist bent. He is not necessarily wrong here, but it is deeply unimportant. And also it is also a vastly more fitting description of the Roman Republic than imperial Rome. Funnily enough the highest insulae ever built were during the late republic because Augustus restricted their height. The true urban staple of Imperial Rome was a decline in organizational complexity and a severe population reduction. This went into the Fellaheen stage where the petrified Apollonian civilization was smashed by germanic barbarians in the North and consumed by the Magians in the South.
>>24989324Maybew I'm the one misunderstanding idk.
PBUH?
>>24988952>You effectively experience eternity from the perspective of God himself knowing all thingsThere is no body or interaction with other people in eternity by the way. Just like in Advaita, for the liberated jiva in Vishishtadvaita all emotions, agency, volition, willpower, memory etc dissolve with the death of the physical + subtle body and the jiva only continues onwards as impersonal awareness comprised solely of knowledge/bliss, without any of the conditions that characterized embodiment being present ever again.As awareness that is devoid of agency or a body through which to interact with souls, there is no interaction with souls in eternity, whenever you see them on earth is the last time you will ever interact with another living person. There is no love between souls in eternity, they don't even have love for God as love is a mental mode which is absent in impersonal awareness that doesn't possess a locus for mental modes.As omniscient, you have knowledge of all things include all peoples, events etc included in your total global omniscience, but as the discriminative/thinking faculty is intellect and not the Atman, in eternity you completely lack the freedom to focus mental attention or knowledge on any person, place or thing or to even have thoughts in general, even your omniscient knowledge is totally unchanging and not subject to your control in any way. You are completely incapable of knowing or perceiving any particular thing in distinctive mode to the exclusion of all others. All of eternity, past present and future is contained in one timeless and immutable disclosure of knowledge which leaves you unable to focus on particular things at your leisure. This is actually phenomenologically-speaking extremely similar to the Advaita account of post-death liberation, where your Atma abides as self-luminous completely-free unconditioned Awareness that is Bliss itself and totally non-dual, undifferentiated, a unlimited and inexhaustible fullness of Being, Light and Joy. The Advaitin account does not say you have distinctive knowledge of all particular places, events and things in distinctive mode, but if you incapable of focusing on specific things in distinctive mode because you lack an intellect and are made only of knowledge and bliss like Ramanuja says then the primary aspect of the experience really boils down to consisting of bliss with the knowledge of all things contained principally in this, as you cannot escape or deviate from immutable bliss to focus on any one thing, or even have thoughts about something. Thus, Vishishtadvaita is almost a way of teaching Advaita-style non-dual (which are really Upanishadic) teachings about the soul and post-death liberation but smuggling them in under a metaphysics that makes it more amenable to normie and naive-realist assumptions about plurality, causation, duality etc so it's not too much of a red-pill for them to swallow and they end up going crazy or misunderstanding it.
>>24988846>The Neoplatonic explication in their view leads to unity being located at the very top of the hierarchy or beyond being whereas for Ibn Arabi and Qunawi this is backwards since the Unity of Being is the reality of all that is and the gradation is within the manifestations and determinations of this one reality that makes up everything.This distinction and the Akbari endorsement of the latter model is coincidentally one of the major reasons why Ibn Arabi and Qunawai teach an unambiguously non-dualistic ontology whereas Neoplatonic ontology is rather more ambiguous in terms of categorization and at rare times can even seem to approach dualism, although there never ceases to be a faction of academics and authors who take a more monistic reading.
Wow, I did not know that Qunawi was based.
>>24989773Are you completely incapable of grasping the simple notion that affirming the preservation of a human body in a post-mortem state does not preclude a metaphysical doctrine from being thoroughly non-dualist metaphysically or ontologically? Are you only capable of thinking about metaphysics in relation to what it says about the human body with all value and meaning being dependent on that?Because it sure seems that way. Non-duality refers to the overall ontological structure of a metaphysics and not simply to the relation between God and soul, which can be explained in numerous ways while still involving a non-dual ontology.
>>24987402>but this is not the same as actually participating in a living esoteric tradition for many reasons.>In the East on the other hand, you have something like a dozen schools of thought that are all each on their own as metaphysically deep as Neoplatonism, all with their own vast body of literature that in many cases is just as vast as the total Platonic corpus if not larger, while at the same time having a way more advanced understanding and description of the nature of consciousness compared to any pre-modern western school of philosophy or metaphysics, AND on top of all this you can be personally initiated into a many centuries old tradition of teacher-to-student transmission of transformative spiritual realization.what are the spiritual implications of not being able to participate in any of this?
Has /lit/ read any self-help books? What were they? Did they help?
i bought the peterson book. it was shit.
>>24989982They're probably all mediocre enough that an LLM summary of all the best could get you 99% of all ideas, without any loss. it's not like they'd contain any literary beauty or witty phrases
There will be a /lit/ meetup in New York tomorrow. If you're interested email nycliterature45 at gmail and I'll give you the place and time.
>>24989702I can't make it.
>>24989791What's your excuse bozo, you're going into labor?
Hey I'm readin' here
>>24989702>ny cliterature
>>24989878I'm in the Rockies.
>increases your creativity x25
>>24989526Tesla and Da Vinci, appearently.
>>24989533>appearentlyspat my screen, ty anon
>>24989497Ah yes. Augmented reality.
>>24989533>TeslaHe was literally shizo. >>24989520On the second week you die/go to asylum for next year or maybe forever
>>24989847People have done this for extended periods.
How come the rate of readership keeps declining but Barnes and Noble just keeps getting more popular over time
>>24982379Your country just isn't entertaining enough i guess. We used to have side show circuses where you used to put you in cages and gawk at you but I guess we grew out of that as all mature societies do. You, on the other hand are still stuck in that mentality.
>>24982655Nigger this board is social media you are literally the same
>>24982788I was at Wal Mart and a chopped Hispanic women saw me,put her phone in her back pocket to record me and walked in front of me before stopping at at the exist and reviewing her footage. I made sure to scowl and shake my head.
>>24982373I prefer the dionysian homeless circle jerk myself but to each their own.
>>24982309Forbes:Barnes & Noble opened over 60 stores in 2025 with plans to open the same number in 2026. According to sources, the combined (privately-held) companies generated approximately $400 million in profits on roughly $3 billion in sales last year.“The reason Barnes & Noble has rebounded from a very difficult period in just a few years has to do with James Daunt,” Bradley Graham, co-owner of Politics and Prose bookstores in Washington, D.C. told the WSJ. “He came with a philosophy of letting bookstores reflect their local communities.”A difficult period it’s been. Bookstore sales in the U.S. have declined 8% over the last five years, from $8.6 billion in 2019 to $7.9 billion in 2024, according to the Census Bureau’s Annual Retail Trade Survey.Upon his arrival at Barnes & Noble, Daunt recognized that it had lost its way by taking its eye off books and expanding into too many unrelated categories, such as games, toys, gifts, home décor, CDs and DVDs.While Barnes & Noble, as all other bookstores, has long arranged book displays by genres, it has done away with centralized management of store layouts and merchandising. Like the best independent bookstores, local stores have control over book selection and displays, encouraging greater customer engagement and discovery.Rather than dictating what and how to sell, Daunt relies on the local team. “It’s about how you take all of this huge number of books and arrange them and display them in a manner which really engages with your local community,” he shared with PBS News.Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
So the One is absolutely simple yet has the power to overflow itself and generate the Indefinite Dyad/Nous, just because? This power doesn't violate it's absolute simplicity? And then the Forms of the Nous don't formally exist in the One, but somehow eminently. They begin to exist formally and distinct when the Nous reflects back on the One, but the Nous is ultimately perceiving and reflecting back the Forms that exist eminently in the One. This seems like a cop out to me. Nothing comes from nothing, but Plotinus wants the One to have all the forms yet free of the consequences that his axioms would imply (ie multiplicity, which is bad and evil). Aristotle was more honest to say that God/the One is thinking. Even if this introduces some kind of multiplicity, Plotinus thinks he gets to avoid that by having the Forms exist, but not really, in the One.
>>24989743I could attempt to guess how Plotinus would answer some of those questions, but it wouldn't be as good as someone who has read him closely who will likely come along and do so before long, and I don't even fully agree with Plotinus' viewpoint anyway even though my appraisal is more positive than not, so I'm not really inclined to steelman it when someone more familiar with it is going to come along.
>>24989733Plato only mogs Aristotle in the sense that he inb4'd him by formulating the Third Man Argument himself. Aristotle actually gets into the nitty-gritty of metaphysics in a way that Plato rarely ever accomplishes, save for a few instances like Parmenides, Sophist, and Philebus, and actually takes a decisive and systematic approach in contrast to Plato. Plato asked timeless questions, but nobody gave a better answer than Aristotle. >>24989751Your analogy falls flat against the key part of the problem: the simplicity of the One. Simple means no parts, no material, no constituents, etc. So, what could be "filtered" out of the One? There was nothing within the One to filter out except unity. Except now we're supposed to expect all this other garbage to fall out? But if something cannot come from nothing, and only something can come from something, then there is no way to explain the sudden multiplicity of forms.
Most of OP's and some other anons(as inept as OP) questions are already answered by using any search engine to find many scholarly articles on Plotinus and half of them are resolved by consulting a philosophical lexicon before getting invested in specifics. What a shame. Low effort questions goes nowhere.
>>24989981You could say this for any post on /lit/. You're angry that you have no response.
>>24990007All of OP's points were addressed by the first reply but the terminology used is seemingly foreign to the Aristotelians that can't recognize synonymous terms in Plato and in Plotinus that esoterically addresses the core issue within a Platonic paradigm against Aristotle, some, even pre-emptively of later questions after that post.
A good 95% of independent bookstores aren't actually for people who read, they're for tourists and rich "shop local" liberals who like the "cozy aesthetic", and they mostly sell trash that you could get on Amazon for 50% cheaper. I hope Bezos puts them all out of business. Fuck you and fuck your locally owned chunguscore Instagram bookstore. Let only the true, used bookstores owned by some 90 year old who clearly doesn't want you there survive.
I work at a libtard progressive book store (failed at life) but I make an effort to maintain the best used literature (and philosophy history etc) collection within a hundred miles. Mulatto MFAromans subsidize our ability to let more obscure stuff languish on the shelves waiting for a reader
>>24986590>buying books from independent bookstoresCringe>buying books from AmazonCringe>borrowing books from public librariesBasedWhy support overpriced libtard hugbox businesses or big evil corporations when you could just get your books for free and support an institution that actually does some public good?
>>24989386>public libraries Good luck finding anything published before obama's first term
>>24986590>Rightoids use amazon because it's easier>Liberals use garbage local businesses to make themselves feel like they are making a difference >Leftists use amazon because it's easier
>>24989395>>24989386The amount of "culling" that libraries do on a normal basis is tantamount to the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
Reading Austen and the Brontës won’t give you an immediate "hookup" advantage, but it will significantly improve your romantic competence. Here is the breakdown:>Emotional Intelligence: These authors provide a blueprint for how women think and feel. Understanding these nuances makes you a much more effective communicator.>The "Darcy" Archetype: Austen’s Mr. Darcy is the gold standard for many. He proves that being a man of character, who listens and admits when he’s wrong, is more attractive than being a "bad boy.">Superior Banter: Reading Austen helps you move past boring small talk into witty, challenging, and playful conversation—a major "green flag.">Cultural Signaling: Carrying a Brontë novel is a massive "status signal." It suggests you are patient, intellectual, and comfortable enough in your masculinity to value female-centric stories.The Bottom Line: It won't work like a magic spell, but it transforms you into a man who is higher-value and more interesting to talk to.
>>24989255>just opinions and not backed by any data or scientific research. Theyre literally backed by data. Its what the AI told me.
>>24989293Why are more people not freaking out about this? This is the kind of shit that really makes you believe in the Illuminati.
>>24989293That was a weird year too. The other finalists were Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, which was technically published a decade before in a magazine but only published as a book that year, and The Pale King, which was basically a posthumously released draft of an unfinished book. I haven't read The Pale King yet but I have read Swamplandia! and Train Dreams and I feel Russell was robbed. Literally their one job is to award a prize, and they were too chicken to make a decision. I think Swamplandia! deserved it but literally ANY decision would have been better than no decision.
>>24989235>Carrying a Brontë novel I recommend this one
>>24989235When people talk about "reading female authors" they aren't talking about Austen and Brontë.
/lit/ memes
Made this one thinking of you /lit/
The book I have enjoyed the most this year has been The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In it, the author seeks to describe what it means for an individual to accept or reject the responsibilities that arise in their life.Specifically, it describes two lifestyles. On the one hand, there is a life that accepts responsibility. This life is more grounded, connected to the earth, and experiences life in its fullness, since many of its actions have an impact on the world—to the point that the weight of those actions can end up crushing the individual to the ground. On the other hand, a life of lightness enjoys its own existence by avoiding any responsibility in order to focus on oneself, even though this life ultimately feels a sense of unease when realizing that all its actions end up being insignificant in the face of the world.In summary, the idea that responsibilities make us more or less connected to the world around us has surprised me greatly.What book have you enjoyed the most this year?
>>24984475I read Julius Caeser this year as well
>>24984715Comedy is the root of frivolousness. Meaningless laughter. Gooning is less meaningless than reading or watching q comedy.
Sadly, I haven't read fiction since high school, and now only listen to audiobooks, and only while driving, and only science and history, listened to Pandora's Lab 3 times last year, and Titan by Ron Chernow twice, and 1927 by Bill Bryson maybe 4 times
>>24984219FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP
>>24984129El sueño de un hombre ridículo mentioned! Can I see your cover?
Disprove Thomas Aquinas on the existence of God.
>>24987548To clarify in the spirit of serious discussion, I personally don't believe the demiurge is malign nor do I believe the material world to be a conspiratorial prison.
>>24977963Dawkins did
>>24980082We can't ever know what justice is. See: Euthyphro.
>>24977965If there was no bad we wouldn't even know what good is
>>24977963You can’t because his framework is unfalsifiable. Either accept it as belief and dogmatic truth. Or don’t. Either way, he missed the mark and only realized his approach was retarded near the end of his life. Mysticism is beyond normal logic and shows mankind higher truths which are unprovable in this realm.
Why do you put faith in metaphysical claims that can't be empirically tested? Are you just a science-ignorant caveman?
>>24989818Yes the other anon has already pointed this out and earlier an anon wanted to know why Guenon was so interested in Hinduism only to then convert to Islam. Hegel addressed this in the Hindu world, all parameters of reason, morality and subjectivity are eventually exhausted. Annihilation is the end result of a continuous and unbroken life of idea. You assimilate the epitome paradox, or you turn into a desolate spirit reduced in body and mind who finds existence miserable and concocts another dream world until some other escape presents itself.>there was likely more to it but I don't recall it. >assimilate the paradox and become an advanced animal with no identity or start working on a new cope. >Hinduism is a highly advanced spiritual system. They don't need Guenons telling them how the religion works.
>>24979365This is an entirely correct and valid argument. Though I do have to ask, not to argue, but just to learn. How can one tell authentic intuitions or realizations apart from self-serving illusory ones? I presume that you believe some experiences are truthful (or genuine) and some are not because, like with all things, some experiences are mutually exclusive.
>>24989902Well, not just self-serving illusory ones. But also harmful delusions, and misunderstood experiences.
>>24979365The most pseud post I have seen in a while here.
>>24979312We obviously need to accept and interrogate a bunch of metaphysical claims and assumptions to get off the ground and to even begin engaging in 'science,' but I see a pretty far distance between that basic claim and a lot of the vast and out there metaphysical projects and the strong fixation on intuition. Sure, it's fun, but recent memes like pansychism seem uselessly premature imo
