Have books actually made an intellectual impact on you?

Have books actually made an intellectual impact on you?

It feels like 90% of college kids who go on a mission to learn from classic literature begin a pompous nihilist and remain a pompous nihilist

t.brainlet who doesn't read

I started as a pompous nihilist. Now im a regular nihilist who doesnt dwell on it very much. Quality of life has risen.

thanx books

np buddy

went from pompous nihilist to faithful existentialist

Christian existentialist a la Kierkegaard or some stupid shit like a Camus YOLOer?

former
im not a poof

Yes.

I went from /pol/ack to full-blown Nietzschean.

Wasn't hard as there was surprisingly little difference. The latter simply cut out the former's bullshit about Christianity/etc.

Siddhartha full on changed how I dealt with problems

the ones that gain anything convert to some form of Christianity. After this, their personal development truly starts.

This.

Basically you kind of have to go through Christianity like the West did.

No, I was a pompous nihilist, and now I don't really have any firm beliefs, but I unashamedly yearn to believe that there's a transcendent standard of worth and beauty in literature and other art, and of philosophising, because otherwise I'm just wasting my entire life reading books and introspecting when it has an equal lack of value as YOLO normalfag hedonists drinking and fucking every weekend

There doesn't have to be a transcendent standard of value dummy. In purely practical terms, reading is more sustainable over the course of your lifetime, because if you drink to excess and have random unprotected sex it's detrimental to your health.

Nihilism is dumb when you can be an absurd hero and strive for a personal meaning that ultimately doesn't exist as an act of spite against the universe

Camus is so fucking stupid I can't stand it

Not really. It's just improbable to always be in a mindset of spite and anger, so while nice in theroy, you're bound to suffer anyway again and again no matter how much you think your revolt agains meaningless will cure you from existential angst. there is no solution or escape really

I was a pompous nihilist before I read camus. Now I'm slightly less pretentious and addicted to cigarettes

The content of this thread is very poor

Well at least now everyone knows how cool you are

Camus is easily the worst philosopher I've ever read. He gives no reason to confront the world, no actor (fate is as much a spook as God) to rebel against by continuing to exist, he requests irony when it's unnecessary and destructive, his argument for the absence of inherent meaning in life is literally "the stars don't care about you also you are impermanent", and spite as a motivator is completely inimical to the prosaic nature of ordinary life and responsibility. He's a fucking retard.

Is her face CGI?

Camus is just what happens when you're a nihilist but also attractive

His philosophy is the philosophy of trying to get laid, trying to impress people who have never read philosophy, trying to string together aphorisms to sound cool.

I'm now a populist nihilist. MAGA.

You are all just Narcissists

you must be one of those childish idiots who make kpop threads on /mu/

You are clearly much too superior a specimen for this place

who doesn't like pomp? that's like not liking fancy cake or pinatas. keep your abject nihilism user, i'll be whipping my awesome cape over here.

only the academic, like this crit theory book i read. fiction hasnt dont shit for me, its why i hate it. i dont need to analyze opinions hidden in novels, and most novels that dont hide it are too fucking bland. i want something to irrationally move me to change my life. but thats not happening soon.

TLP, is that you?

I was essentially an atheist sciencefag until I read Plato. The Theory of Forms affected me immensely, and put me on the path to God.

I wouldnt necessarily consider myself a Christian yet, and im still rather Nietzchean in many respects, but im evolving.

I went to college as an pompous nihilist and came out as a medieval scholastic peasant, utterly paralysed by the fear of God and nearly illiterate

Its gotten so bad I have to go to church just to be able to appreciate the art of storytelling again. Did I do it right?

>this utter nonsense
you're well on your way to becoming a hegelian and probable stirnerist.

are you making your own clothes yet?

I'm leaning towards Evola desu

>hegelian
I'd take the offence.

It's French philosophy. Dressing up shallow or half baked ideas in flowery language to achieve fame is the name of the game. The main thing separating Camus from the Derridas and Irigarays that followed is Camus was a much better writer.

>not being a hard voluntaryist who doesn't lose sleep over personal values because they ultimately dont and shouldnt have any effect on others

Take the ancap pill, dumblords

>inb4 "w-w-what about the roads, oy vey its anudda road-ah"

Roads are for dumb people like you.

If by 'clothes' you mean potato sack, then yes

Hölderlin sums up the reason why most "college kids" behave in that way pretty accurately in the preface to Hyperion. Whether it is by merely smelling a flower, or by ripping it out just to study it, you will not understand what a flower is. The emotional and intellectual aspect of understanding need to coincide with each other or form a dialectic relationship in order for whatever new knowledge you gain to have an impact on your life.

And since you started the thread with a smug anime gif of all things, I don't feel bad at all about admitting that Umineko No Naku Koro Ni did just that for me. Best piece of Metafiction I've read since the Neverending Story.

if you fall for the historicism meme and think of art as a consumable you'll never stop being a pseud. art is a manifestation of human mind and soul, and so long as it skillfully lights upon fundamental truths it can endure forever.

I recently rewatched Blue is the Warmest Color, having read La Princesse de Cleves and La Vie de Marianne since the first time I saw it (both texts are mentioned early on in the film, and provide the substrate for the development of the main character). Their incorporation is kind of shallow, although I suspect that the director and whoever wrote the script are a bit like the people you describe; however they are waking up to the folly of the world around them. w/r/t the literary references, it's mostly just the idea of a fated (star-crossed) encounter for the first, and the story 'never ending' for the second.

I think the film works on a lot of levels (perhaps unintentionally), but all of the characters are idiots. The deepest pontification in the whole film is the contrast between the secular 'what is natural is vice' and the catholic 'what is vice is unnatural.' Either that or when the gallery owner gets in a debate over whether or not women and men view and produce art in different ways (discussed in terms of the orgasm). The camera is probably the entity that mostly closely conveys the authorial intent.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film is the comparison drawn (by the camera) between the two protests in the film. The crowd in the first, marching against the privatization of public schools, is portrayed as insipid- what does a 17 year old high school student know about that? The revolutionary lyrics of the music played are laughable, given that they face no opposition and only use it as an excuse to dance, drink, and do nothing. The next protest is a pride parade, and in its similar portrayal (cinematographically) I'd assume that the director is trying to show us that it's equally vacuous. I think it contributes to a larger question he's asking a question throughout the film: where can someone find meaning anywhere? In art? In sex? In expression of identity? I think his heart is crying out, telling him that we can't create new meaning for ourselves, but he fails to recognize it and reject nihilism. He gives us a glimpse of the depravity of contemporary culture, most adequately portrayed by the AIDS patient old man at the gay bar who subscribed to the "all you need is love" mantra. He makes a pass at a younger homosexual immediately after reassuring our 17 year old protagonist of that fact and is flatly rebuffed.

The 'smart' character in the film is a dyke girl from beaux-arts who is obviously aware of classical art. She takes her underageb& gf (the main character) to go see an exhibit of classical statues, but she's permanently hung up on hacks like Sartre and believes in inventing her own morality. Despite her permissive attitude she is immensely stubborn and thinks anything less than a 100% subscription to her way of seeing things is wholesale betrayal. She is likely the most close-minded character in the entire film, which hilariously backhands what I'd assume is the films' target audience. I think that the director wants the audience to revile her, because she's tremendously manipulative of and abusive towards her poor gf, a submissive housewife type whose only aspiration in life is to have children. She is the embodiment of contemporary 'culture.' She sees herself as "beyond fads" while simultaneously dying her hair blue and being a generic lesbian art student.

I think the larger (if unintended) commentary on art and culture is that the only character who sees any legitimate way to be fulfilled is the classic Veeky Forums qt, but she's deceived and misled all along by nihilists and charlatans. There is something pure and noble in her soul that we don't see in any of the other hedonistic or new age-idealistic characters, like the boy she dated at the beginning of the film who only wanted sex and said he'd never read a book in his life besides Les Liasons Dangereuses (with help from a professor), or her pseud dyke gf. In a cast full of depressing cucks and gays and vapid young adults, she is a shining star cast down from her heights by the builders of the tower of Babel as an affront to God.

Do you find that when you talk, people just nod and gaze through you with glazed eyes going "yeah, sure, uh-huh, fine, yeah, okay"?

That's because they're not listening.

I read you reply and really thought about it, and considered for a moment, "what if people arent listening to what im saying?" i quickly burshed this thought off as absurd, because im trying so hard to enrich the lives of others they have to recognize and respect my efforts. Peoples eyes glaze over often, yes, but when you are being subjected to the sublime truths of the universe though one sense, what need have you for the others?

For example, I went to see a concert the other day, Dvorak's fifth. Absolutely beautiful, you must see it if you get the chance (in fact, I am listening to it as I write this post). Anyways, I was so caught up in the rapture of the experience that I started convulsing. My eyes closed, and apparently I started drooling. The girl I had brought with me was overwhelmed, and in fact she was terrified, thinking that I had had a seizure! In any case, after that misconception had cleared, and I came down from my artistic reverie, I understood the effect which I have just described to you. No doubt as you read this post, filled as it is with such essential truths, you find that you cannot taste the residual flavor in your mouth from the last meal you ate that was such a strong presence before.

Nodding is a sign of active listening, so its always encouraging to see others nod along as I speak. I find that often when I talk about my latest novel (which is soon to be published by the way), people become especially engaged. I don't know whether it's because they're happy for me or they're particularly interested in the contents, but it warms my heart either way.

In any case, I wish you luck with your continued literary endeavors!

Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy made me understand the importance of organized religion and spirituality. They didn't have an immediate impact though. It's taken years to digest the layers of meaning in those works and come to a point where I can be intellectually honest in my rejection of nihilism.

I thought it was a well-considered review, bud. This is a place for people who don't mind reading.

Fuck off, retard. It was a well-considered post whether you agree with its contents or not. I enjoyed reading and it raised the quality of the board.