The Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard, himself a resident of Sweden...

Someone pays for your unemployment retard

I'd say it's because teenagers are at the start of forming their identity. It's the time when we feel abandoned by society and the time when we try to find our group through ideology. Those who still can't fit in society can have existential issues even later in life if they didn't make peace with the existential dread before.

I think he is just wrong.
people who used to care about philosophy were priest, aristocrats, aet. people who didnt have to have jobs. Nowadays is academia. Poor people/masses had never worry about philosophy (in a deeper, more righteous way)

Of course he'd want to diminish philosophical concerns. He's an artist, a fraud, a third removed imitator of things. He's trying to shill his own shitty philosphy, which in this day and age Just means he's trying to sell books. This is Plato Book X, Republic type stuff folks cmon.

>mentions STEM
whats up with Veeky Forums today? Do i need to go give Veeky Forums a talking again, or are the /pol/ poster projecting

Most people keep running into the wall of nihilism and then just give up and stick their head in the sand.

They never really 'solve' their angsty phase, they just give it the silent treatment from there on out and attempt to mock anything that reminds them of it.

Writing 6 books about deer dairy isn’t adolescent?

Academia cares about administration issues and virtue signalling, it's no longer the place where people care about philosophy.

The internet is that place now.

About the level of insight to be expected from someone who also put this middlebrow atrocity

>But the stars twinkle above our heads, the sun shines, the grass grows and the earth, yes, the earth, it swallows all life and eradicates all vestige of it, spews out new life in a cascade of limbs and eyes, leaves and nails, hair and tails, cheeks and fur and guts, and swallows it up again. And what we never really comprehend, or don't want to comprehend, is that this happens outside us, that we ourselves have no part in it, that we are only that which grows and dies, as blind as the waves in the sea are blind."

on paper.

I-I actually liked it.

it doesnt seem like he aimed for a particularly abstract or intellectualized commentary on anything with that, it's just flowery prose

You may stick your head in the sand or up your own ass, but the end result is the same.

He's not wrong.

Fight or perish like a dog.

you can do neither and just stay in a staring contest with the void for life though

it's ultimately the best option because you don't get these 'my life is a lie' fallbacks like normies do

Very patrician.

wie ein Hund

render this same sentiment in hi-brow

That not even “flowery,” you dunce

Most people these days instinctively avoid anything that hurts, so they avoid thinking about the big questions.

Teenagers still think about those things, but only because the suffering validates their sense of self-importance. As soon as they grow up, unless they have some inordinate "love of wisdom", they will give up the search just like everyone else.

Acedia is a hell of a drug.

How does suffering validate self-importance?

a gramme is better than a damn :-)

>younggins are privileged

the youth of centuries passed believed they were going to heaven when they died

Enough of Veeky Forums are insecure enough that they get riled, whenever STEM fields get mentioned. Similar to people posting "white bois can't compare" threads on /b/, /gif/, and /pol/.

nailed it

How do you "solve" it?

religion

Either because an omnipotent creator is the only valid source of objective values, or you just take the nihilism for what it is and accept its consequences.

Most people don't want to make this choice and go with a rickety half baked hybrid where they pretend liberalism is written in the skies but act highly flustered when you ask them why.

What brand/model are those glasses?

...

I recently read an essay he wrote for The Paris Review and it was hot garbage.

>reads DFW once

Even if the idea is not groundbreaking, the prose sounds good

This is completely fine, especially in norwegian

>the earth, yes, the earth
What did he mean by this?

How can I be religious?

I just can't seem to give a shit about it. I've read the bible, attended church, etc.

Seems pretty philosophically flawed. How are we not a part of that process?

Knausgård is a fucking hack who writes on the level of a 14 year old Livejournal blogger who's too impressed with himself. I don't know if the translations make it more palatable, but his books are full of cringy, empty bullshit and would likely have been completely ignored if he hadn't given them that attention-whorey "edgy" title.

Not that guy, but for me there were three things (was an atheist until about 26 years old):

1. I sought out people who knew their shit. By that I mean I read the church fathers and the saints. There is a lot of value in them alone, but it also has the added benefit of helping you read the bible.

The little church experience I had as a child was boring. I grew out of it because the reading of the bible in modern Protestantism is flat and 2-dimensional. They don't understand types and basically ignore the OT except when they want to give a lame life application message about persistence or something dumb like that.

2. I prayed the 15-decade rosary every day for a month. It's highly possible I like memed myself into religious belief or something. But it definitely changed me.

3. I went to a lot of different churches. Sought out Traditionalist Catholic churches, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, Continuing Anglican churches, even heretics like the JWs. I started to see the fruits of those churches that taught right.

Time for Knausgaard to get BTFO by an infinitely better Scandanavian writer:

. . . This despair, as I have said, is the commonest,
it is so common that only thereby can one explain the rather common
opinion in common intercourse that despair is something belonging to
youth, which appears only in youthful years, but is not to be found in
the settled man who has come to the age of maturity and the years of
wisdom. This is a desperate error, or rather a desperate mistake, which
overlooks (yes, and what is worse, it overlooks the fact that what it
overlooks is pretty nearly the best thing that can be said of a man,
since far worse often occurs) -- it overlooks the fact that the majority
of men do never really manage in their whole life to be more than they
were in childhood and youth, namely, immediacy with the addition of
a little dose of self-reflection. No, despair verily is not something which
appears only in the young, something out of which one grows as a
matter of course -- "as one grows out of illusion." But neither is
illusion something one grows out of, though people are foolish enough
to think so. On the contrary, one encounters grown men and women
and aged persons who have as much childish illusion as any youth.
People overlook the fact that illusion has essentially two forms: that of
hope, and that of recollection. But just because the older person is
under illusion, he has also an entirely onesided conception of what
illusion is, thinking that it is only the illusion of hope. And this is
natural. The older man is not plagued by the illusion of hope, but he is
on the other hand by the whimsical idea of looking down at the
illusion of youth from a supposedly superior standpoint which is free
from illusion. The youth is under illusion, he hopes for the
extraordinary from life and from himself. By way of compensation one
often finds in an older man illusion with respect to the recollections of
his youth. An elderly woman who has now supposedly given up all
illusions is often found to be as fantastic in her illusion as any young
girl, with respect to how she remembers herself as a girl, how happy
she once was, how beautiful, etc. This "fuimus"[we have been] which is
so often heard from old people is fully as great an illusion as the
futuristic illusion of the youth. They both of them are lying or
poetizing.

But far more desperate than this is the mistake that despair belongs
only to youth. In the main it is a great folly, and precisely it is a lack of
sense as to what spirit is, and moreover it is failure to appreciate that
man is spirit, not merely an animal, when one supposes that it might
be such an easy matter to acquire faith and wisdom which come with
the years as a matter of course, like teeth and a beard and such like.
No, whatever it may be that a man as a matter of course comes to, and
whatever it may be that comes to a man as a matter of course -- one
thing it is not, namely, faith and wisdom. But the thing is this: with
the years man does not, spiritually understood, come to anything; on
the other hand, it is very easy with the years to go from something.
And with the years one perhaps goes from the bit of passion, feeling,
imagination, the bit of inwardness, which one had, and goes as a
matter of course (for such things go as a matter of course) under
triviality’s definition of understanding of life. This . . . improved
condition, which true enough has come about with the years, he now
in despair regards as a good, he readily assures himself (and in a certain
satirical sense there is nothing more sure) that it now never could occur
to him to despair -- no, he has assured himself against this, yet he is in
despair, spiritually in despair. Why I wonder did Socrates love youths --
unless it was because he knew men!

[...]

But if no change occurs, he helps himself in another way. He swings
away entirely from the inward direction which is the path he ought to
have followed in order to become truly a self. The whole problem of
the self in a deeper sense becomes a sort of blind door in the
background of his soul behind which there is nothing. He accepts what
in his language he calls his self, that is to say, whatever abilities,
talents, etc. may have been given him; all this he accepts, yet with the
outward direction toward what is called life, the real, the active life; he
treats with great precaution the bit of self-reflection which he has in
himself, he is afraid that this thing in the background might again
emerge. So little by little he succeeds in forgetting it; in the course of
years he finds it almost ludicrous, especially when he is in good
company with other capable and active men who have a sense and
capacity for real life. Charmant! He has now, as they say in romances,
been happily married for a number of years, is an active and
enterprising man, a father and a citizen, perhaps even a great man; at
home in his own house the servants speak of him as "himself"; in the
city he is among the honoratiores; his bearing suggests "respect of
persons," or that he is to be respected as a person, to all appearance he
is to be regarded as a person. In Christendom he is a Christian (quite in
the same sense in which in paganism he would have been a pagan, and
in England an Englishman), one of the cultured Christians. The
question of immortality has often been in his mind, more than once he
has asked the parson whether there really was such an immortality,
whether one would really recognize oneself again -- which indeed
must have for him a very singular interest, since he has no self.

Also the other problem I face with it is I'm a tranny.

I look at the gay christian ministers like what the fuck it says not to do that, how can you call yourself christian? It would feel fake to try to say I'm religious.

you're messed up but God can fix anyone.
it's not hypocritical to be religious if you are not holy, only if you stop trying to be holy or start pretending that you are.

What is a mature issue then, according to him?

Redpill:
>teens need it to function
>adults did it out of boredom

>t. le angsty grey ciggie man

Calling him out for being the pretentious hack he is

I will certainly continue to call him this

It's complicated.

The church doesn't preach gay pride (obviously), but it also doesn't preach gay shame. The correct Christian understanding is that we aren't any of our labels. There are no gay people and straight people. There are just people. Otherwise, we'd all be defined by our sexual failings.

But you're right that those ministers shouldn't be doing that. But their greatest sin isn't their actions, but what they preach. They usually preach that homosexuality is okay by God.

Being simply a "tranny", however, is not hypocrisy. Christianity teaches that all have sinned and fallen short. It's literally a part of the religion that we are going to fail to live up to what we know to be right.

And all sin is sin. St. Paul singles out sexual sin really because of its temporal consequences. Because it has such negative effects on our soul and because it attaches itself to our person and causes us to develop a passion for it. But the sin itself is a sin like anything. If you struggle and repent, you will always be welcomed into the church. And loved.

Well part of it is an understand of what "transgender" is which depends on who you ask. And whether acting on it is unforgivable (According to god?) and whether it's seen as better to live in misery for your whole life than commit that sin (if it is a sin?).

In my mind, well I can't stop feeling this way. There is no way to get rid of it that we know of, only real option is hormones and possibly transition to living as other gender. Would it be against god's will to take hormones? What about live as other gender? What about romantic/sexual partners?

I didn't continue that. Does god judge by chromosomes? Is it considered homosexuality by god for a passing transwoman to be with a man?

I don't know it just seems like you could complicate it in so many ways that it's just like well I should just not think about it and try to be happy.

It would be sin because it's against your nature, which God gave to you and which is a good thing, and which you need to live in accordance with to be happy and to please God. That your mind is at variance with your nature is not necessarily a sin but it is a disorder. Anyway, there are sins of malice (due to evil will) and sins of frailty (due to weak will); the latter are much more easily forgiven. We live in very messed up times so whatever sin you matter have in this matter may in great part be a matter of frailty rather than malice; nevertheless you should not abandon yourself to your disorders and pray rather that God will heal you.

I mean this is where it gets hard because there is no known cure for being transgender, only "cure" is hormones which is just palliative care. It's not a real cure, but it's the best you can hope for to make your life more tolerable.

My "nature" is to want to be a girl, why I want this, I don't know. It's not something you get corrupted with, like, as far as I can remember there is no other me that has been replaced by this. This is my nature as far as I know.

what knausgaard would say about this?

Well there is nature in the strict sense of your essential being - what you are in fact. But human beings also have learned habits, preferences, desires which form an acquired nature or "second nature". The point is to bring your second nature in line with your primary nature - which is the general struggle of mankind and the spiritual life.

>I only read mature philosophy for mature philosophers such as myself

this is saying like a critique or like an affirmation of her own pov?.

You should try not to be a tranny.

>but where are the adjectives? how can it be good if there aren't any adjectives?
brainlet

>Struggle seems childish to people who have given up

The absolute state of Sweden

Notice how a good portion of the retards itt can't even read and mistook a ascertainment for an accusation.
Truly the most intellectual board of the 4channel

You're never going to find a final solution unless you decide to crawl back into the womb of mother church, but grappling with the ultimate riddle of existence is a pretty good way of life desu.

What is it with Veeky Forums and making completely unsubstantiated claims

I think he might be projecting

So most of the people you know get out of the angsty teen phase by actually finding satisfying answers and alternatives to nihilism?

Different user. A pragmatist could respond with 'they decided to grow up. It doesn't matter whether they understand what that entails, as long as they act it out and it gives them the meaning they want'.

I'm not a pragmatist though, and I don't think this kind of thinly veiled ignorance is enough to shield most people from the creeping feeling that they're, in some strange way they can not describe or account for, not alive at all.

not that guy, but I think that actions can precede ideas in situations like this. They try living a regular life and then they find that it is meaningful enough to keep them distracted from constant existential dread. That or the new type of life requires too much effort and attention to be worried about that. And I bet that the issue of nihilism would come back up whenever the person has extended periods of uninterrupted downtime like teenagers do.

pragmatism really is the perfect distillation of the american volksgeist desu

Very few people are given a meaningful chance to escape nihilism, and those that manage do so in their teenage years. The rest of us just deal with it.

Sounds reasonable enough, that's probably why so many of them die as soon as they retire and see that the void is still there waiting for them.

>virtue signalling
calling out virtue signaling=virtue signaling itself. back t0 /pol/, you troll.

it's a valid concept even though your boogiemen use it too, user

with the lack of context OP give us. is wrong saying is an ascertainment or an accusation.

>no consequences
Wow such consequences

Don't listen to this guy

continue on living, trying to do useful things with your time instead. it kind of takes care of itself except for perpetual man children.

>pick up my struggle yesterday
>excited to find out about this "modern classic" of literature
>2 pages in
>tfw a six volume book is in PRESENT TENSE
fucken dropped