I'm trying to read more because despite my unintelligence I would say I am a pretty curious person when it comes to certain topics. My main issue is that I struggle a lot with reading comprehension and me being stupid doesn't helpHow doomed am I?
>>25348148Just keep reading and stop worrying brother, your comprehension will improve.
it's the 80s everyone is dumbi'll be taking it with blood thanks
>>25348148You may indeed be retarded but I suspect your issue is more with attention and distraction. Try sitting and staring at the wall for a few minutes, doing absolutely nothing, before attempting to read.
>>25348150Thank you Anon, fingers crossed
>>25348370Good idea, I will give it a shot. Out of curiosity, if it turns out that I am indeed retarded, what should I do? Keep reading books despite the challenges that come with it or should I focus on something else?
>>25348150Do this, OP
>>25348148Realizing how retarded you seem to be and not being able yet to form your own opinions already means you have more critical thinking skills than at least 80-90% of humanity. Low IQ, high IQ, doesn't matter. Being able to think for yourself does. Keep reading and don't ignore yourself when you don't understand shit or have questions. To "actually" read a book and understand it can take a lot of work. Most pull away from that because it's too scary or too hard and they just want others to tell them what to think. You're entering the thunderdome now fren, get psyched.
>>25348421I mean if you qualify for Medicare and SSI and shit then just sit back and enjoy life, read if it's fun for you. Maybe go to church more. We're all retarded on some level.
>>25349477Thank you Anon, for better or for worse even as a child I did ask myself all sort of questions about life and also some other abstract terms so it's something I cant't really help so might as well follow my nature and read more about things I'm interested inI don't believe I was born this dumb, I might have brain damage actually, I did hit myself a lot in the head with tree branches years ago in one of my previous jobsOut of curiosity, do I come across as retarded based on my replies?
>>25349507Good point, I did go to Church quite often but I had to move to another city and I couldn’t bring myself to go to another one but it's actually a good idea, thank you
>>25348148>I struggle a lot with reading comprehension and me being stupidYour picrel. Proceed slowly and deliberately. Annotate a running commentary in the fewest words possible at the top margin; leave the bottom margin for future corrections. Take a page, and reduce it to the shortest statement capturing it. We are all that retarded beginning, or entering the new and unfamiliar.
>>25348150This guy is right, follow this path OP
Keep on reading. Don't be afraid of reading literature you don't understand - eventually you'll reread them with more knowledge. Even if you would not - a sense of mystery and weird will do you good by providing you with more unusual ways of looking at things thus stimulating your imagination and giving you more approaches to everything.Most literature incorporates ideas from earlier literature - so reading everything is important and eventual rereading will almost always will keep unveiling more ideas you had previously skipped.When you're ready - try going with greeks, being one of the earliest literature pieces in western civilisation they tend to affect almost every other book directly or indirectly. Plato is a bit obnoxious, some foundation ideas of his logic can be somewhat questionable, some of his logical conclusions are actually fallacies, but it still helps to know, what other people had used as their ideas' foundations later.Also read about autism and adhd, just in case - if anything you might learn about certain things of perception and communication you had never suspected to exist, no matter if you're autistic or not - and this knowledge allows to make much more sense of everything else, especially as there were quite a lot of autists amidst scientists and philosophers, but far from all of them, so learning, what they (and you) don't see, will help you to understand better.
>>25349570Thank you Anon, that's very kind of you. Good advice. I did start taking notes with the book I'm currently reading, I do tend to overthink sentences a lot though and I struggle with abstract concepts but hopefully that will improve with time>>25349572I will, thank you Anon. Love the skinnypig btw
>>25349706Good point. I used to read more when I was younger but it was mostly Stephen King or Charles Bukowski. I want to eventually be able to read and understand authors like Kierkegaard or Dostoyevski, from what I've heard I really like their ideas and their view of the world, I think that's the beauty of philosophy and literature, that despite how lonely and bleak the world sometimes is, there are people out there who feel or felt the same way we do and therefore we can feel less lonely and more understood as a resultI'm also interested in the ancient greeks but it's another thing I have to work my way up towards because as of now I'm struggling with even books that would be considered simple