Getting deep into reading books and writing has unironically made me unable function in normal society. I wouldn't wish the "literary" life on my worst enemy. To start, novel writing itself is a horribly lonely, boring endeavor, and completely thankless in modern society. There are moments of fulfillment, but for the most part, it is an exercise in masochistic self-torture. You will be spending years on end alone in your own thoughts, in a constant state of self-doubt, all the while the whole world is telling you that you are wasting your time. Beyond that -- while the act of reading is fun and engaging, the "well read" person is truly alone in the world. Once you read the canon, you will see just how retarded 99% of people are, and you can never unsee this. How can you be a complete person if you haven’t read Shakespeare? Tolstoy? Dostoevsky? Don Quixote? I’m not even being ironic by saying this. Most people don’t read, and among those who read, it will mostly be young adult fiction or other contemporary slop. You start to realize how dull and ugly most people’s inner lives truly are. I remember at one point I used to get along with people. I would make friends relatively easily, take an interest in girls, even woo a few of them. But after falling too deep in the literature rabbit hole, I’ve realized that most of these people are just fundamentally dead inside. They spend their lives watching TV, scrolling social media, never thinking deeply about a single aspect of their existence. How can you say that you have truly thought about your life if you’ve never written a novel? The gulf between the experience of the “literary” person and the average person is unfathomably vast. These “people” read Malcolm Gladwell and think he is profound. Their worldviews and philosophical outlooks are shaped by YouTubers, Twitch streamers, and self-help podcasts. It becomes near impossible to relate to them in any meaningful way. And I don’t even say this in a particularly self-congratulatory way. Yeah sure, there is the element of feeling superior to people because you have taken the “red pill” and realize that everyone else are essentially unthinking sheep. But really it is a sad, depressing existence. Here you are, with all your “self-awareness” and “fascinating inner life,” and you are alone. In the end, no one gives a shit. If I could, I would MK-Ultra myself and stick to retarded hobbies like sports or computer science. But at this point it is far too late for me.
>>24825457Damn, that nigger is freaky looking. No wonder Kafka was so fucked up. Dude looked like Beavis the Vampire, and had arms that hung down almost to his ankles with weird little lobster-claw hands that only had four fingers on each hand. I'd be writing about fuckin giant cockroaches and shit too if I looked like that, god damn.
Gotta be 18 to post here
If you spend enough time on this site you end up the same way. At least books and the canon are good
The only thing that motivates me to keep going is the hope that I might encounter someone else IRL who understands this feeling
Ah. Next you'll realize that not only does god exist, the only way to approach him is through Jesus Christ. Eventually you'll come to understand how repulsive your sins are to the eyes of the lord, and hell will grip you, as you turn back to literature with the futile hope it will be able to comfort you to be among these dead. Finally, you'll come to grips with the notion, nay, the fact that literature is a cage designed by satan to hold your soul in the material realm, and further, that language is a set of manacles which restrain you.After it's all said and done, you'll be well prepared to leave this place far behind. Death will come and you will greet him, like so many others before.
>>24825561you're setting yourself up. you'll meet them, and you still won't be able to enjoy it. there will always be a wrinkle in the rug.
>>24825567You’re probably right. But at least then the last box will have been checked and I will be certain about what life really is
To fix all this, you must immerse yourself in love, kindness, patience, and humility. Spend your time away from all forms of art, go and volunteer at an old folks home or a food bank, spend time looking past the superficial differences of acquired experience, and try to discover the meaning of loving someone as you wish to be loved. Would you want someone to look at you, feel about you the way you feel about someone who hasn't read King Lear? If your best friend had smirked at your ignorance and dismissed you, is that what the heights of elevated intellect afford you? Coldness and misanthropy? I ask you, what the fuck is the use, the point of such a thing?Resist it. If you have a drop of agency in that body of yours, resist the sensation that you are superior to *anyone*, accept the limicolous state of everyone, start from square 1 and try your best to help people who are suffering.Gosh, if you did that, you might.. haha, you might even feel some fulfillment, some unity with god and your fellow man. Imagine! No, better to pray at the altar of treacherous literature, right? Haha
>>24825577This.>>24825457Desire wisdom, the Self
>>24825577Immerse yourself in the textural details of my scrotum. If you’re gonna preach then choose a religion whose morality isn’t grounded on punishment and reward
>>24825585Ok bro. Whatever you say.
>>24825457>Shakespeare? Tolstoy? Dostoevsky? [Cervantes]?All of those writers had a deep compassion and sense of respect for their fellow man. I'd argue that's an even bigger requirement for being a truly great writer than being smart or well-read. Get off your high horse.
>>24825587Alright I admit I was being a tool. I think that you’re right and that your advice extends beyond any one particular religion or philosophy. Still, I think art can be really useful for developing compassion as well. In great literature the suffering of the human race and the need for salvation stand out most clearly.
>>24825603It's fine, I get it, I'm basically struggling with the same things you are, all the time. A tip from my perspective is that knowing the answer doesn't give you anything but the way out. The work still must be done, and having no excuse for your failures is doubly crushing. I agree that literature and art as a whole can be a vehicle out of the sort of brutish ignorance that lets you be truly cruel without remorse, sure, but eventually it can flip and do what it has done to you, all empathy and sympathy it can give it can take away. It's why I suggest a more consistent foundational act for your empathy and sympathy. If you can look on your fellow man at his most wretched and still find something to love, to forgive, you're on thre right track. Setting aside salvation, it's just not worth it if it makes you miserable, and if nothing else, helping others who are suffering is always a better use of time than basically anything else you can do.I have spent at least two decades of my forsaken life believing I was hot shit and a genius, and that literature gave me a view no one else had, or very few. It only drove me further and further away from others, and made me more and more hateful towards them and myself. I just recognize it. Maybe you can do something about it before it consumes you like it has me.
>>24825603As an aside, regarding Jesus, It's just that he's the only guy who seemed to care about the poor and the sick, and didn't pretend we can just meditate our way out of our troubles, but that we actually genuinely need help. He also seemed to attack such timeless things, at such a perfect historical juncture, it's just hard for me to ignore it. I get it if that doesn't appeal or convince, just trying to give a bit of context to my reasoning there. I don't care much for religions either, but I love Jesus. I completely understand resisting him, and certainly the punishment/reward concept, but it's not as though it would be the first uncomfortable truth about reality I had to swallow.
>>24825457If you were so wise then you'd understand that there is a spiritual reality and that one is called to be a light unto the world, not a prideful nigger.Not all persons have the necessary conditions to reach your prideful dilettante state. Some are not smart enough, or lack will, natural interest/sympathy with learning, or the time, resources, pointers/instruction, etc.You probably didn't have the natural dignity to intuit everything that you've read, you depend on the condition that those who did and came before you wrote things down, etc.So have some humility. Plus, those "rude" peoples might have something to teach you in their own way.But again you're just a prideful dilettante and a coward and a weak man.
>>24825457just play golf weekly
>>24825457I think we all have a deep desire to find people that we can relate to. Sadly, I walk outside and all I see are monkeys. I try to enjoy it as much as possible, smart people should be able to find value in subpar situations and adapt. So anyways, the monkeys can be pretty fun sometimes, and once in a while a monkey will share a profound thought out loud, which can be impressive to witness. Yeah, a lot of us can feel alone in this existence, but I'd rather be an enlightened and euphoric scholar than a monkey. It could be worse.
>>24825626I hear you anon. There’s plenty to be found in the eastern religions regarding humility and charity and lovingkindness, but those traditions do tend to put more emphasis on meditation and philosophical insight, unlike Jesus. Certainly the sermon on the mount stands alone. Both traditions inspire me.As you said, all of this theory is worthless without practice, and I know I am still absolutely benighted and will probably continue in my selfish and ignorant ways. But conversations like this make me want to be better.
>>24825457The relationships one cultivates with their fellow human beings are the closest thing to a concrete meaning, or purpose, to be found in life as a whole; it's this sense of community between human beings, both at the individual and universal level, which defines virtue and transgression at heart. An excess of intelligence that alienates you from your peers is more of a hindrance than an asset, bragging rights aside, and the accolades or prestige it may get is but a hollow consolation prize in comparison to friends, confidants, loves. I desperately wish I could relate to my peers and feel a deep sense of inferiority, even outright humiliation, when I find myself coming up against the vapidity of an acquaintance in my efforts to find companionship or love or anything, really. Or maybe vapidity is the wrong word? Like I've just never met someone else who analyzes novels for sport or takes an interest in history or just... thinks about things to the extent that I do. I don't think I'm more capable as a thinker, I just apply my lightly above average powers of cognition to stuff that most of the people around me don't. I'm nerdy. Boring. Weird. I suppose the other issue with people like this is that they oftentimes lose sight of themselves in their isolation, since we instinctively define ourselves in relation to our peers.
>>24825698Don't lose hope, you're not alone. I have had some really sublime moments, pockets here and there before I fucked them up in my special way. I meet fresh discouragement with every passing day, but when I walk the right path, there is no doubt that each step is a meaningful one. So, just focus on those steps, and don't give up before you even start.I believe in ya.
>>24825701I’ve met so many people who are far cleverer than me but who devote their whole intellect to work, or, trading stocks, or speculating about politics, i.e. only where some kind of self-interest is at play. I wonder what conditions have to be in place in order for a person to enjoy thought and contemplation for their own sakes. Seems like intelligence doesn’t even have much to do with it. Lonely world.
>>24825457I think you're more in your head then than in reality. Also it seems to me that you are grandiose in your "literacy". Bro. You care so much about ideas but ideas are not life itself. And dont forget, there are likely always "bigger fish" out there. Maybe your seeking literature in that way is also an expression of an underlying personality disorder. Since you are talking about masochism, maybe you are a masochistic covert narcissist? I dont know.>But really it is a sad, depressing existence. Thats why I suspect you having deeper issues.
trying to fill the loneliness with philosophy and spirituality is like trying to reason your way out of hunger and thirst and is about as effective
>>24825736The worst is when you intimate to someone one of your innermost thoughts, the ideas you play around with in private but remain confined to your inner life, and they give you that look of stunned incomprehension, like you're an ostrich who just said the n word. Or just refuse to engage.
>>24825764You're not the only one that had good ideas. I could truth bomb you with good ideas.
>>24825775Fire away fren
>>24825778Assuming you are OP.You mean like fire at you? I get it since you are a cerebral masochistic covert narcissist. You secretly like to be degraded all because your childhood was traumatic and your mother figure insufficient. There is an empty schizoid core that falsifies your reality testing. Your public self is a false self while your empty schizoid core self part falsifies your reality in a slow moving psychosis. When it matters, it is exceedingly hard for you to succeed, you self sabotage. Being degraded creates feeling loved in you. Since your mother was pathological, that made you pathological, most likely your whole family is pathological.Your grandiosity is direcrlted at ideas and the self replicate and fight inside your mind, all in an effort to escape your empty schizoid core, your traumatic childhood. Your history is one of masochistic self sabotage because you confuse pain and degradation with love.
>>24825778More things: Yes, you are a born writer/philosopher, especially if you heal your narcissism, which will give you a phase of psychosis followed by mania and depression, paranoia and the neurosis towards slowly healing. I know because I healed, as opposed to you who is still stuck. Grandiosity and harshness are two sides of the same coin btw.
>>24825797Your analysis is fairly accurate, I will admit. Like I was verbally abused in my childhood and there definitely is a kind of emptiness within that is better described as an absence of vitality, or will, than the positive presence of some oppressive sadness. The grandiosity is there too. This expectation, in spite of everything, that I will become something far greater than what I am, that this period of misery is nothing more than a sentence in the early life segment of my wikipedia article. It sounds so painful to reconcile myself with the reality that this is all I am. It's like getting rid of a malignant tumor that would kill me if surgically removed.
Holy shit what a bunch of faggots
>>24825826It can not be removed, it is part of you frozen in time, dissociated, full of pain and shame, stuck in childhood or even baby-hood. Its where you lost your agency and whole self. If you want your agency back you need to see that part of yourself or the self sabotage continues.Also, the psychosis, if you get that far, will be a partial psychosis, affecting only your empty schizoid core and it will be amazing. Better than any mushroom tip and the like. You will also experience peak creativity. It was really nice. Life changing.While you are still a masochist you can self supply by self degrading in harmless ways. You will see whats best
>>24825826Also if Im nice to you, Im making you hate me. So take it like that: You are fucked up if you hate me for being nice to you. That means that you are shit
>>24825457>novel writing itself is a horribly lonely, boring endeavorWrong. You need a Muse to produce art.
>>24825524Ok Mr. 19. What is your solution to OPs problem?
>>24826072Grow up
>>24825577I think I'm gonna go see if I can volunteer at the local soup kitchen. Thanks anon.
>>24825457What an absolute midwit take on life
weird, i usually get this insufferably misanthropist whenever i surf through brainrotting social media and pornography for hours and days on end. literature and art in general make me happy and content, and instill in me a desire to connect with my surroundings and my fellow man, or at least try to
>>24825628Youre as prideful as he is
>>24825457You've fallen victim to your own solipsism, I'd recommend to wait for your brain to fully develop, patience is water to dilute the bitter time.
>>24825457you've read dosto yet fail to notice you're embracing one of the worst aspects of the underground man: feeling he's too good for others because he's too "literary" while he's just a lonely aspie. keep smelling your own farts. maybe your nose will fall off.
>>24826073So none then. Someone comes to you with a problem and you hand wave him away. Why even comment?
>>24826695This anon>>24826456Is correct.
>>24826695Because it's not a problem. It's the writhing of an arrogant teenager. There is no shortage of brilliant authors who teach how to deal with the divide between types of men. Hell, some of those authors listed even address it. Go to gif if you wanna jerk yourself off
oh my god, this is a 17 year old tier take. even i wasnt this retardedly elitist at that age.
>>24826764We all start somewhere lad
>>24826770i guess that's fair. just dont ever let this guy think his opinions should matter or have any significance, until he learns to think outside himself.
