Comment on talking to my dad about depression
rumba@lemmy.zip 4 days agoMan, you and I have seriously different takes on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance :)
I’m fully on board with self reliance and DIY, but that guy was constantly insufferable to his family and friends just to try to make the point :)
I was reading it and it just annoyed me so I moved over to the audiobook as I often do if I feel I have a bad take on a read, it just made it worse :)
redhorsejacket@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Could very well be. Similarly to Walden, I read it for school, and did not much care for it. One of the few concrete points I remember being discussed was a comparison between a character that rides a rickety old bike, but knows how to keep it running, and the character who rides a new bike, but relies on mechanics when things do inevitably break on it. That sort of rumination on a man who can fix things being happier than a man who can’t is basically the entire premise of Walden.
Furthermore, in refreshing my memory of what subjects Prisig touched upon, I see/vaguely remember his attempts to reconcile rational empiricism with intuitive understanding, which is also very Thoreau.
However, as I’ve said, I didn’t particularly enjoy my brush with either text, and it’s been 15+ years since I last looked through either. So, it’s entirely possible that they are actually philosophical polar opposites and my C- in Philosophy 101 was well earned.
rumba@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
I didn’t doubt that’s where Prisig was going with it. He just made the character so uninviting, conceited, and self centered that the message itself seemed to get lost. It felt like I was watching a movie where I hated the main character.
redhorsejacket@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yes, I also really struggled with his writing style. I