Can we get a thread on /fringe/ intellectuals/philosophers/thinkers? I'm looking for works that are controversial, politically subversive, occultist, mystical, or just plain wacky. Wanna see how far down the rabbit hole I can go without resorting to Alex Jones-tier conspiratards or the literally insane.
So far my reading list includes Robert Anton Wilson, Wilhelm Reich, Carl Jung, Aliester Crowley, Nick Land, Arthur Koestler, and last but not least, WS Burroughs. Any other /fringe/ figures I should be reading? Fiction or non-fiction welcome.
How about Trofim Lysenko? I see he actually wrote stuff. He was a crazy kind of Soviet biologist.
Asher Myers
>Burroughs
Great but not fringe
Cameron Brooks
Thanks! I'll have to look into these
You don't think the idea of language as an extraterrestrial virus / system of control or the implicit subversion in his cut-up novels qualifies as fringe?
Christopher Bell
Read Erich von Däniken, he speaks the truth.
Evan Martinez
Ludovici A.M. is probably the most controversial 'intellectual' I've ever read because of his antisemitism, racial views and 'sexism'.
Mencken is similar but more mainstream.
Matthew Reyes
>In 1905, he published his book Theozoölogie oder die Kunde von den Sodoms-Äfflingen und dem Götter-Elektron[2] ("Theozoology") in which he advocated sterilization of the sick and the "lower races" as well as forced labour for "castrated chandals", and glorified the "Aryan race" as "Gottmenschen" ("god-men"). Lanz justified his esoteric racial ideology by attempting to give it a Biblical foundation; according to him, Eve, whom he described as initially being divine, involved herself with a demon and gave birth to the "lower races" in the process. Furthermore, he claimed that this led to blonde women being attracted primarily to "dark men", something that only could be stopped by "racial demixing" so that the "Aryan-Christian master humans" could "once again rule the dark-skinned beastmen" and ultimately achieve divinity. A copy of this book was sent to Swedish poet August Strindberg, from whom Lanz received an enthusiastic reply in which he was described as a "prophetic voice".
Andrew Lee
I have to say OP, I myself avoid this kind of stuff as the plague but it could actually make you a more interesting person. I will see if I can contribute some more.
David Lewis
Check out Fredric Jameson's recent (2016) essay in which he argues for universal conscription as a path to communist utopia. his brand of Marxism is no longer widely in favor (meaning it is invested in culture but not in identity)
Oliver Morgan
Genesis P-Orridge - Thee Psychick Bible
Xavier Campbell
Why do you avoid it?
Wyatt Lopez
>on the night on April 1, 1876, Mainländer hanged himself in his residence in Offenbach, using a pile of copies of The Philosophy of Redemption (which had arrived the previous day from his publisher) as a platform.
Jack Young
Reporting.
Michael Roberts
Poor guy.
Jace King
I think "avoid" is too big of a word. I think my mind outdid my writing. Carl Jung spooks me, since he has a bad name in psychology. I am otherwise very interested in ideologies.
I wanted to say Herbert Spencer but I am very unsure. He doesn't seem as controversial as I thought and I might actually read him myself.
Is anarcho-primitivism good enough? You could read Derrick Jensen and maybe Lierre Keith.
The latter is also a radical feminist, maybe you could look at very radical feminists too.
Maybe some crazy theologian, whatever religion it is?
I did enjoy reading Aztec philosophy by James Maffie. The Aztecs had some crazy ideas too, namely that they believed they were in the last age of humans and that teotl, the energy of the universe, and thus their reign, could only be prolonged by spilling the blood of brave enemy warriors.
Juan Garcia
he's free now user
Christopher Flores
I definitely understand reticence toward such material. I've always had a fascination with extremity, and think there is genuine wisdom to be found therein. However I also have concerns about the potential negative consequences; knowledge can be dangerous, I think, and I worry that it can degrade my mental health, render me totally out of touch with the rest of humanity, or something similarly frightening.
But I also think it's important to challenge yourself, and expose yourself to uncomfortable ideas and material.
I take some comfort in knowing I can still appreciate thoroughly un/fringe/ material as well; I enjoy the perversity of Ballard alongside the sentimentality of Dickens, and the nihilist aggression of Big Black or Acid Bath alongside the emotionally-resonant pop craftsmanship of They Might Be Giants or the exultant triumph of Bach. I guess I just want to achieve the right balance, and not teeter to close to one side or the other.
Anyway I appreciate all the recs itt. I've read some Zerzan, speaking of anarcho-primitivism. Namely his material in the Apocalypse Culture essay collection. Feral House publishing in general seem to excel at fringe material.
Gavin Morris
It's like I'm reading the retarded son of /pol/, /r9k/ and /x/
Eli Watson
Strindberg thought he was great, for whatever that's worth.
Jace Collins
Oh, didn't realise that was included in the quote.
Andrew Gray
He was a ironic shitposter giving some poor dolt an (You)
Hudson Nelson
>assuming nonexistence is even a possibility
>not realizing the cycle exists because there is no possible alternative state
Colton Rivera
Wrong, we're all a bacterial colony in God's colon.
Screencap this post.
Blake Jackson
>a >an
wew
Samuel Diaz
Antonin Artaud - madmen and probably one of the few who inspired later french intellectual thought Tony Duvert - gay and pedophile who as well was great writer and in some sense philosopher. Pierre Guyotat - probably most controversial contemporary french writer. read wiki oh, i get bored and lacked english so i'll stop
Dominic Long
Yeats to be perfectly honest. I'm reading A Vision (1937 version) and it is absolutely an absolutely brilliant symbolic/metaphysical system of psychology, but also quite bizarre and at times simply technical nonsense. And he is far the greater man of letters than any of the ones you listed. Those others are curiosities; Yeats is for all times, as strange as he was.
Michael Jones
Start with the Greeks (by following either chart), then read Plotinus' Enneads, the Chaldean Oracles and the Corpus Hermeticum BEFORE you get into esotericism and the occult! It's also worth looking into Kabbalah.
Camden Kelly
Ragnar Redbeard Pentti Linkola Jacques Ellul
Lincoln King
Hakim bey - T.A.Z Robert Anton Wilson- Prometheus Rising
Brody Lewis
>Corpus Hermeticum
What's the point in getting into the occult and esotericism if all their good parts are just the dumbing down and aglomeration of other philosophies and religions? Just get into Buddhism and Hinduism and you get all it has to offer without getting in contact with people with Schizotypal Personality Disorder (which is actually a fucking plague in those circles)
Wyatt Smith
...
Gabriel Anderson
bumping this thread because i'm looking for similar recs without the exception of >Alex Jones-tier conspiratards or the literally insane
also read Pynchon if you ain't already. he's not exactly "fringe" but I'd probably consider him more out there than Burroughs and RAW
Bentley Nguyen
I've only read The Tower; what beautiful use of language!
> controversial, politically subversive, occultist, mystical, or just plain wacky
L.Ron Hubbard is huge in this area and well worth reading about
Charles Phillips
...
Nolan Lopez
Otto Weininger
Nathaniel Brown
I want to be in the screencap.
Mason Fisher
got some names, ill give some names
more well known, bataille, bergson, samuel delaney, adorno
less known, oscar kiss maerth (the beginning was the end), helmuth plessner, and gustav meyrink
it'd be cool to do this with positive-minded writers and thinkers as opposed to the usual group of abjection seekers (which I cherish as well) - a preliminary list would include isabelle eberhardt, clarice lispector, alphonso lingis, novalis, and the aforementioned bergson
Owen Thomas
Might want to read some Seth books. About an entity who spoke through a woman for a large portion of her life during sessions, and gave life advice / insight into the nature of reality.
Also Robert Monroe wrote three books about his Out Of Body experiences. If you're interested in having OBE you likely can, I've just started focusing some of my time on it occasionally and have had two brief experiences.
Also there are books on Tibetan Dream yoga, which I haven't read but I think help you wake up to your true self in the dream world - this lucidity likely informs your waking life experience as well. Stephen LeBerge also writes about lucid dreaming but from a more scientific/empirical perspective.
I personally want my dream/sleeping life to be as vivid as possible without disrupting the sleep process because I think it adds a lot of value to your life as a human.
Julian Kelly
teillhard de chardin as well!
Isaiah Myers
As is typical of Veeky Forums pretense, you just want to read fashionable (left) wackos for personal amusement while at the same time rejecting certain popular right wackos out-of-hand (you do not reject them all, as you've mentioned Land).
Instead, simply actually listen to the Alex Jones radio program, user. You know that you really want to (for the same reason as your initial prompt - simple entertainment/curiosity), or else you wouldn't have name-dropped him to begin with.
Digest the equivalent of 5-10 hours of Jones' content, over a few days, or week. Give him a chance to set the hook. If you can come away after extended exposure and still say "nah that's crap", then you'll speak from a position of knowledge, and have an anecdote or two to show for it.
After all, he's full of shit - what have you got to lose apart from the time? You're interested in this type of nonsense anyway, so you may as well try some of the other nonsense.
Cameron Harris
weak post
Alex Jones is just boring is all. everything he blames on Globalists. he's not far out or crazy enough. the fun of reading fringe writers is reading extremism and original if idiotic thinking
Alex Jones is a moderate conservative who wears the "libertarian" and "conspiracy theorist" badges as a marketing stunt
if you think rewrapping everything the left does under the label of a new world order is "fringe" you're way off
Adam Reyes
Adolf Hitler
Owen Wood
>The Aztecs had some crazy ideas too, namely that they believed they were in the last age of humans Really makes you think about Hegel and the people he influenced.
Jordan Gonzalez
>Instead, simply actually listen to the Alex Jones radio program, user. You know that you really want to (for the same reason as your initial prompt - simple entertainment/curiosity), or else you wouldn't have name-dropped him to begin with.
damn user you got him good.
but seriously you aren't the effortless armchair profiler that you'd like to think you are.
Nathaniel Collins
And here's where the both of you fail, although the former post does an abler job of dismissing Jones.
Even if one of you should chance to be the OP, the following is still clearly true (which puts the lie to the latter's conceit): in the event that the OP has not spent time listening to Alex Jones memery, then he clearly wants to, /by the very simple fact that he has said "oh no, not THAT one! That one's GROSS!"/ The OP has all at once acknowledged and registered some emotion over Jones, and therefore of /course/ the OP has some interest in Jones, even if perversely, ironically, etc. But this goes directly to his purported interests. But this is the one I like to imagine, and the other must be stated for consistency and honesty.
The less exciting but obvious possibility is that the OP has in fact done the above exercise (maybe the OP is also , for example) and honestly dismissed Jones on his (that is, the OP's) own initiative. In that case, the OP would be to be lauded for actually engaging with the content.
Gabriel Reed
Stirner, cause no one knows who the fuck he is except for this board and /leftypol/
Charles Parker
not really. pretty much anyone interested in anarchist thought or continental philosophy beyond undergrad level knows of him too.
Jose Nelson
I hasten to add that a reader of Veeky Forums should /read the text/ of the OP, and /read between the lines./
What does the OP really say? "I'd like to read some batshit crazies, weirdos, and batshit crazy weirdos for fun! Recommend me some stuff!"
In paragraph one, /the very first person that the OP indicates by name, before he mentions anyone else/, is Jones. This primary placement indicates that Jones is very much on the OP's mind for the type of thing that he's interested in, even if he does in fact personally reject Jones from a position of knowledge,as I've suggested.
It takes a whole other paragraph (that the two paragraphs are both tiny does not alter the importance of this point) for the OP to suggest other authors as those that he is more positively interested in. But they do come second.
>Mitchell Heisman, the man who shot himself September 18, 2010 in Harvard Yard, killed himself as ”Experimental Elimination of Self-Preservation,” according to an extensive suicide note he has published online. The note, found at the domain suicidenote.info/ , is over 1,905 pages long, and divided into complicated subsections. In its totality, the document sketches Heisman’s dense, heavily-cited social, political, and ethical philosophy, and promotes his book, heretofore unpublished.
>[Savitri Devi] was a proponent of Hinduism and Nazism, synthesizing the two, proclaiming Adolf Hitler to have been sent by Providence, much like an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu. She believed Hitler was a sacrifice for humanity which would lead to the end of the Kali Yuga induced by who she felt were the powers of evil, the Jews.[4] Her writings have influenced neo-Nazism and Nazi occultism.
Austin James
/thread
Seriously, this man ties together a good majority of the previous authors mentioned in this thread. He lampoons Hubbard and his relation to Crowley, wrote VALIS and might even be considered to have outdone Robert Anton Wilson in the Wacky/Occult departments. Not to mention that the man made way for a lot of the lingo used on /pol/ like Redpilled, and other Matrix concepts. He also predicted the use of home computers/Internet. We a owe a large part of cyberculture to the man.
If you are going to read anyone from the fashionable left, at least make it someone who has a very wide influence. (The Matrix, Blade Runner, Total Recall, etc.) "1)Those who agree with you are insane 2)Those who do not agree with you are in power." -PKD
Elijah Gonzalez
I've engaged with Jones, actually (though admittedly it's been several years), and while I found him fun, I excluded the likes of him and the "literally insane" because I think reading them fulfills a different function than the likes of what I'm looking for itt. Basically, hits the nail right on its head.
And I don't know why you assume I'm only interested in lefties; I've appreciated every recommendation I've received thus far, including those whose work involves eugenics. That's not really a leftie ideal, is it?
Connor Murphy
>Nick Land
Now that's fringe af. Carl Jung isn't though.
You should really read Evola and Spengler.
Also Ernst Jünger might be considered 'fringe' by some, and he's absolutely brilliant.
Really, no Gurdjieff? I've even seen a pasta memetioning him and his disciple Ouspensky a couple of times so he can't be entirely unheard of here.
Jose Cruz
...
Connor Hughes
>Carl Jung. He is nowadays. But you could add Freud and Lacan to it too. Here is a somewhat controversial evolutionary psychologist: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kanazawa
Jace Torres
Good list for the most part, but Jung is one of the biggest names in his field. That'd be like calling Shakespeare a fringe playwright.
Gavin Stewart
Land is canon tbqh
Cooper Gray
Principia Discordia
Levi Campbell
I tried reading some of his stuff but I didn't make it very far. I have read lizard music and watched holy mountain which are both based on a book by one of his follower but I didn't take much from them. Did buy a karakul hat. Convince me to pick him back up.
William Ortiz
What is the occult anyways? I suspect it's just some magic bullshit.
Gavin Sullivan
This lad is trying to warn us but we're not going to listen.
Carson Powell
>Arthur Koestler
Very interesting person. An extremely intelligent idiot. Wrote mostly absolute drivel or propaganda, but one very great novel, and lived a life worth Michael Scammell's MASSIVE biography. Apparently he raped Simone de Beauvoir. Take a look at him on wikipedia.
Jordan Reed
>Apparently he raped Simone de Beauvoir.
Just when I thought you couldn't possibly impress me any more, Koestler, you've gone and done it again.
Cooper White
reposting this meme
Kevin Ross
The idea of language as a system of control and its deconstruction as a mean of liberation is a base concept of (post-)structuralism. That's not fringe. Look for example at this structuralist film classic:
The deconstruction of the word "destroy" through repetition is a similar strategy as the one proposed by Borroughs.
Austin Turner
with all the young girls she raped she had it coming desu
Christopher Long
seems legit to me brown pill should include Autobiography of a Yogi
Kayden Perry
it could be that the goal is existence we want to realise the formless state as existent so we strive for that God wants to exist so he makes the world happen works in both directions
James Harris
stirner is a meme
Daniel Evans
your life is a meme
Kayden Rogers
you're right, actually
Mason Hill
>"In The Thirteenth Tribe (1976) Koestler advanced a theory that Ashkenazi Jews are descended, not from the Israelites of antiquity, but from the Khazars, a Turkic people in the Caucasus that converted to Judaism in the 8th century and was later forced westwards. Koestler argued that a proof that Ashkenazi Jews have no biological connection to biblical Jews would remove the racial basis of European anti-Semitism."
Paul Wexler lmfao... the biggest self-hating kike linguist there is.
He also tries to argue that Hebrew is an inherently slavic language, against the consensus of every modern Jewish and Goysiche linguistics expert.
I would take what he says with a grain of salt. He is bent on pushing an agenda of European/non-semitic origin for Jews. This flies directly in the face of Y-DNA analysis of Jewish genetics.
Jack Long
not if god is acausal and prior to existence
William Myers
not the guy who you are replying to but William S. Burroughs is not in any textbooks for his theories regarding psychology, ontology, history, biology, physics or religion, all of which he has written extensively about. He is definitely fringe. There are parts in Junky about how heroin extends life in the same way you can infinite starve a worm and regenerate it, and sitting in metal boxes that suck life energy from the atmosphere and restore people.
Brayden Cooper
>sitting in metal boxes that suck life energy from the atmosphere and restore people.
that's wilhelm reich's orgone accumulator you're talking about
James Bell
Yes dude. It is. And this pathetic idiotism fueled student riots in Paris in '68.
Unbelievable. I get that people want to have a bit of magic in their lives, but can we keep that related to love and emotion? And not to weird pseudo-scientific theories that can be abused by profit seekers and charlatans?
Josiah King
everything that 'is' exists
Jonathan Jones
he looks like 'normies reeeee' the person
Ian Miller
How do you know they're charlatans?
Isaiah Flores
Because Reich is a Jew and Jews are deceitful liars.
>Yes Goyim... you need to restore your life energy... buy my $5000 orgone accumulator manufactured by my friend Shlomo Horowitzteinbergmanblatt
Sebastian Ward
I'm not talking about Reich in particular, but all the /fringe/, mystics, etc
Easton Phillips
unless 'is' and 'is not' mean the same
Parker Ortiz
Anyone got a good guide/chart for where to start with Aleister Crowley?
Asher Butler
His views aren't radical, they're pretty standard outside the US
Alexander Collins
t. White man with dreads
We have our own esotericism in the west, it's just as good, fucking use it and stop pretending to be Asian