Books for people who have realized that they want to be unhappy and not just another unthinking animal who seeks happiness/pleasure in any of its form? I feel like many people who have forsworn happiness have claimed to be forswearing a vulgar kind of happiness in favor of some kind of stoic joy, but I don't really buy into that nor do I want to merely flee from discomforting or unappealing environments and sheltering myself in isolation or company to cope with an unagreeable and mundane existence.
>>25281672So tell me what it is about unhappiness that appeals to you
>>25281673I'd say that it is appealing either in itself or because it is correlated with pain.
>>25281672Schopenhauer
>>25281675Do you derive a pleasure from it
>>25281677No. I find it hard to imagine.
Read Houellebecq. L'extension du domaine de la lutte for example. It's not heavy intellectual reading but it's a light depiction of the lives of men who gave up
>>25281672>>25281673To me, being unhappy feels like being human. And all the ways of "being happy" of the contemporary age are either hedonistic or consumerist. >Do not love the world or the things in the world.If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.16For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh andthe desires of the eyes and pride of life[a]—is not from the Father but is from the world.17Andthe world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
>>25281739Christianity seems so retarded when anons like you wear it as a fashion accessory.>And David danced before the Lord with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet. And as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal Saul's daughter looked through a window, and saw king David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart.>Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
>>25282439What did he even possibly say for you to think that of him
>>25281672The Bible.
>>25281672anything by celine
The Life of the Servant Henry Suso (c.1295–1366)“He was in his youth of a temperament full of fire and life; and when this began to make itself felt, it was very grievous to him; and he sought by many devices how he might bring his body into subjection. He wore for a long time a hair shirt and an iron chain, until the blood ran from him, so that he was obliged to leave them off. He secretly caused an undergarment to be made for him; and in the undergarment he had strips of leather fixed, into which a hundred and fifty brass nails, pointed and filed sharp, were driven, and the points of the nails were always turned towards the flesh. He had this garment made very tight, and so arranged as to go round him and fasten in front, in order that it might fit the closer to his body, and the pointed nails might be driven into his flesh; and it was high enough to reach upwards to his navel. In this he used to sleep at night. Now in summer, when it was hot, and he was very tired and ill from his journeyings, or when he held the office of lecturer, he would sometimes, as he lay thus in bonds, and oppressed with toil, and tormented also by noxious insects, cry aloud and give way to fretfulness, and twist round and round in agony, as a worm does when run through with a pointed needle (...)
>>25283092and yet cannot die. The nights in winter were never so long, nor was the summer so hot, as to make him leave off this exercise. On the contrary, he devised something farther— two leathern loops into which he put his hands, and fastened one on each side his throat, and made the fastenings so secure that even if his cell had been [pg 308] on fire about him, he could not have helped himself. This he continued until his hands and arms had become almost tremulous with the strain, and then he devised something else: two leather gloves; and he caused a brazier to fit them all over with sharp-pointed brass tacks, and he used to put them on at night, in order that if he should try while asleep to throw off the hair undergarment, or relieve himself from the gnawings of the vile insects, the tacks might then stick into his body. And so it came to pass. If ever he sought to help himself with his hands in his sleep, he drove the sharp tacks into his breast, and tore himself, so that his flesh festered. When after many weeks the wounds had healed, he tore himself again and made fresh wounds. “He continued this tormenting exercise for about sixteen years. At the end of this time, when his blood was now chilled, and the fire of his temperament destroyed, there appeared to him in a vision on Whitsunday, a messenger from heaven, who told him that God required this of him no longer. Whereupon he discontinued it, and threw all these things away into a running stream.” Suso then tells how, to emulate the sorrows of his crucified Lord, he made himself a cross with thirty protruding iron needles and nails. This he bore on his bare back between his shoulders day and night. “The first time that he stretched out this cross upon his back his tender frame was struck with terror at it, and blunted the sharp nails slightly against a stone. But soon, repenting of this womanly cowardice, he pointed them all again with a file, and placed once more the cross upon him. It made his back, where the bones are, bloody and seared. Whenever he sat down or stood up, it was as if a hedgehog-skin were on him. If any one touched him unawares, or pushed against his clothes, it tore him.”
>>25283098Suso next tells of his penitences by means of striking this cross and forcing the nails deeper into the flesh, and likewise of his self-scourgings,— a dreadful story,— and then goes on as follows: “At this same period the Servitor procured an old castaway door, and he used to lie upon it at night without any bedclothes to make him comfortable, except that he took off [pg 309] his shoes and wrapped a thick cloak round him. He thus secured for himself a most miserable bed; for hard pea-stalks lay in humps under his head, the cross with the sharp nails stuck into his back, his arms were locked fast in bonds, the horsehair undergarment was round his loins, and the cloak too was heavy and the door hard. Thus he lay in wretchedness, afraid to stir, just like a log, and he would send up many a sigh to God. “In winter he suffered very much from the frost. If he stretched out his feet they lay bare on the floor and froze, if he gathered them up the blood became all on fire in his legs, and this was great pain. His feet were full of sores, his legs dropsical, his knees bloody and seared, his loins covered with scars from the horsehair, his body wasted, his mouth parched with intense thirst, and his hands tremulous from weakness. Amid these torments he spent his nights and days; and he endured them all out of the greatness of the love which he bore in his heart to the Divine and Eternal Wisdom, our Lord Jesus Christ, whose agonizing sufferings he sought to imitate. After a time he gave up this penitential exercise of the door, and instead of it he took up his abode in a very small cell, and used the bench, which was so narrow and short that he could not stretch himself upon it, as his bed. In this hole, or upon the door, he lay at night in his usual bonds, for about eight years. It was also his custom, during the space of twenty-five years, provided he was staying in the convent, never to go after compline in winter into any warm room, or to the convent stove to warm himself, no matter how cold it might be, unless he was obliged to do so for other reasons. Throughout all these years he never took a bath, either a water or a sweating bath; and this he did in order to mortify his comfort-seeking body. He practiced during a long time such rigid poverty that he would neither receive nor touch a penny, either with leave or without it. For a considerable time he strove to attain such a high degree of purity that he would neither scratch nor touch any part of his body, save only his hands and feet.”
>>25282439Christianity seems so retarded when you bring up its hedonistic streak.
>>25283092>>25283098>>25283098Cool. My turn.“Knowledge has its seasons. The blossom was to Hator, the fruit is to me. Hator also was a brooder—but now his followers do not brood. In Sant all is icy selfishness, a living death. They hate pleasure, and this hatred is the greatest pleasure to them.”“But in what way have they fallen off from Hator’s doctrines?”“For him, in his sullen purity of nature, all the world was a snare, a limed twig. Knowing that pleasure was everywhere, a fierce, mocking enemy, crouching and waiting at every corner of the road of life, in order to kill with its sweet sting the naked grandeur of the soul, he shielded himself behind pain. This also his followers do, but they do not do it for the sake of the soul, but for the sake of vanity and pride.”
>>25282439Judaism celebrates life while Christianity celebrates death
>>25283092Thank God this ridiculous culture of self-mortification died out. Christians learned all the wrong lessons from the orientals.
>>25283335Hi jidf
>>25283335lmao
>>25283580Hi Paki
>>25281672Infinite Jest was written for people like you who think the logical reaction to pleasure seeking is embracing unhappiness.
>>25281672a man called oveyou man not like the way it ends but it's a fully fleshed out depiction of the kind of life you describe
>>25283351To be fair to Henry, he did all this only to end up saying that it's just a distraction from the love of God. At least he could also say that he tried it.
>>25283604Infinite Jest, and any DFW, is appropriate (especially knowing he killed himself despite his optimistic pieces). Salinger and Vonnegut cover similar ground for me. Both had philosophies that sought redemption as a form of coping, but it's clear from their lives and work that those methods were inconsistent. Salinger relied on zen and writing for an audience to keep them going, but he depicts characters who struggle with this form of faith and often lose. Vonnegut is an absurdist, but his work argues against the optimistic sides of existentialism (Galapagos is basically the ideas of Dostvoesky's Underground and Ligotti's Conspiracy over a long arc of humanity--both also good reads).Flannery O'Connor's work is very religious and based on Catholic grace, but from my atheistic perspective I found it quite enjoyable as the chance of redemption is removed, leaving only twisted and grotesque people left. Not as easy to understand though.
