Anon reads a depressing book

Comments

• benignintervention@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I had that experience with David Foster Wallace and his commencement address. The first half was exciting intellectually and by the last half I realized it was a cry for help

  source

  • Wav_function@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone.

    :(

    source

    • Sylence@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      For me it was a combination of gaining true self-acceptance, recognising that there was the possibility of personal joy and fulfillment despite humanity being irredeemably lost, and starting to work toward long term goals.

      Everyone’s experience will be different, but by focusing on myself I found that I became someone who was never alone because I found a rich group of people who shared similar interests and cared about me. If you’re feeling stuck in your own head I would genuinely recommend seeking professional help and think about trying Psilocybin as the mental shifts can be more profound than you might imagine. At least they were for me.

      source
    • benignintervention@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      With another ten years of hindsight, it’s pretty apparent

      source
• booly@sh.itjust.works ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.

  source
• captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I’m fortunate that the author with my pessimism is Pratchett. Humans, a bunch of terrible little assholes that I love and treasure

  source

  • Dasus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Idk I wouldn’t call Sir Pratchett as much a pessimist as I would an absurdist.

    GNU Sir Terry Pratchett

    source
  • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    acknowledging complexity is not in itself pessimism. it often makes uncut pessimism very difficult.

    source
• emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Music also. Cant begin to count all the great songs that have really resonated with me and then find out the artist overdosed or blew their brains out.

  source
• Meltdown@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I too have read David Foster Wallace/Ernest Hemingway/Virginia Woolf

  source
• Sooooooooooooomebody@lemmus.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I, too, have read Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher

  source

  • dumpsterac1d@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Immediately thought of this

    source
• finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  So there is this guy Christopher Johnson McCandless, AKA “Alexander Supertramp” and he wanted to survive amongst nature and spent like his entire life prepping to be able to do it. He was inspired by a bunch of authors who wrote about survivalism and the frontier. Him and Carl McCunn were both well read and educated.

  They both stepped into the Canadian Wilderness, at different times and different places, and both died alone with their journals, no one to call to for help in their time of need. McCandless was a 67 lbs fresh corpse when they found him, he ate some “alpine nut” purple flower legumes with antimetabolites and started to feel too weak to forage. McCunn shot himself, simple as.

  Mental Illness apparently expresses itself in very strange ways for some people. Avoid isolationism if you want to live.

  source

  • DesolateMood@lemm.ee ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Is McCandless the one from the book Into the Wild? Iirc he had a pretty sweet scholarship lined up, but fucked off without telling anyone so he could “live off the land” in Alaska

    source

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      And importantly DIDN’T BRING A MAP.

      source
• fossphi@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Anybody got any recommendations for more stuff like that? Something like this which I read quite recently was No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. It’s a bit less philosophical than most other books like this (stuff like The Stranger by Camus) but still a very gripping book.

  I never thought I’d be asked for book suggestions on a greentext community, but why the hell not

  source

  • hector@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse was eye-opening and I remember reading as a profound experience. I know this sounds ridiculous but this book was the feeling you get when someone on a forum has the exact problem as you and explore it in depth.

    source

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Herman Hesse is drastically underrated in general IMO. so many great books. I enjoyed Siddharta and Glasperlenspiel (both in german).

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• tetris11@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  > read a book
  > author already dead

  why do I even bother?

  source

  • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Because a book is the prime method of conveying ideas way after you’re dead?

    source

    • tetris11@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      naah

      source
• Matriks404@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Enjoy the life. The rest is optional.

  source
• ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Same but physics and the author was Ludwig Von Boltzmann.

  source
• some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  If the book was successful, the author probably has more money than the anon. It’s looking bleak, anon.

  source