Is there a term that describes giving undue importance or revolutionary pretense to a single trivial aspect of modern life?
Some examples: "the Twitter Revolution", the whole anonymous legion hacktivist angle, "Fedora shaming as discursive activism", the idea that Shia LaBeouf is an avant garde artist, 3D printers being our key to a post-scarcity society and their users being the new revolutionary class, etc.
You've probably seen this shit thousands of times. I understand it has to do with clickbait and narcissism, but that alone doesn't really cut it for me. It's too much of a coherent way of thinking, I think it deserves its own ism.
Any articles on the subject would also be appreciated.
picture very relevant
sry for bad engels
>>7737997
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/
Only somewhat related but OP made me think of this.
>>7737997
I agree with you, there should be a word for this phenomenon, but one has to look out with that, as this phenomenon is loosely related to the throwing around of -isms, so you could get lost in a feedback loop
Shia LaBeouf has done legitimately interesting stuff but other than that yeah I agree this shit is ridiculous
Someone on here gave me a well-known list of novels, but I can't remember the name of it, and Google isn't helping. It separated books by country, time period, and year.
read the fucking sticky
>>7737972
that's incredibly vague.
>>7737989
I should add that it didn't have a name like "100 Greatest Books" or something like that, it was a little more creative I think. Also, if I remember correctly, it was sold as a physical copy, but it was either available online, or was posted by somebody online.
High school fag here who just finished Aym Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" to get a feel for more coveted literature out there. Some of the shit in that book flew clean over my head so I'll be rereading tonight.
What else is there that's along the same line as, "This is an important achievement of literature therefore you must read!!"
Did I fall for the Ayn Rand meme surprise?
>>7737947
>reading
lrn2osmosis, pleb
>Rand
>>7737951
No idea who she was before someone demanded I read it for "literary purposes." I guess with it, I've opened the gateway for greater works?
So, I'm getting started on reading Dune right now. I'll post snippets as I progress. Everyone is invited to this caravan. Especially the loveable trolls and spec fic haters.
Greentexting to quote is slightly cumbersome, so I'll be using another convention to quote. Be warned, there may be spoilers ahead, which I may fail to enclose in shrouding tags.
「DUNE
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the
balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To
begin your study of the life of Muad‘Dib, then, take care that you first
place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor,
Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Muad’Dib
in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he
was bom on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the
planet known as Dune, is forever his place.
-from “Manual of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan」
>>7737943
Dune seems like one of those books i could read in a day. I'm saving it for my simple winter years when I'm constantly shitting myself.
>>7737950
It is, having a rather restrained vocabulary--disregarding Arabic-influenced terms that are subconsciously to be slowly absorbed. But I'm trying to savor the experience, as one of my closest friends is strongly influenced by it.
Chances are, this thread may take upwards of a moon cycle to conclude. Unfortunately, I have to work to make a living.
>Inside Paul's mind
「Paul sensed his own tensions, decided to practice one of the mind-body
lessons his mother had taught him. Three quick breaths triggered the
responses: he fell into the floating awareness ... focusing the consciousness
... aortal dilation ... avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness ...
to be conscious by choice ... blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload
regions ... one does not obtain food-safety-freedom by instinct alone ...
animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the
idea that its victims may become extinct ... the animal destroys and does not
produce ... animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the
perceptual ... the human requires a background grid through which to see his
universe ... focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid ... bodily
integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of
cell needs ... all things/cells/beings are impermanent ... strive for flow-
permanence within....」
「“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings
total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and
through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its
path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. ”」
I think it's amusing that fear is described as little death, since the French for "little death" is slang for orgasm.
The witch repeatedly exclaims "Kull Wahad!". I just checked up other interpretations of the phrase as meaning "I am profoundly stirred!", but derivation-wise, I feel its a contraction of a phrase from the Quran: "Qul huwa Allahu ahad" (God is the one and only). As religious phrases tend to meme to meaninglessness
I started this thread since Dune seems to have a strong but understated presence on the internet. But almost nobody I know seem to have read it.
>Rite of passage/It's My Hand in a Box
His world emptied of everything except that hand immersed in agony, the
ancient face inches away staring at him.
His lips were so dry he had difficulty separating them.
The burning! The burning!
He thought he could feel skin curling black on that agonized hand, the
flesh crisping and dropping away until only charred bones remained.
It stopped!
As though a switch had been turned off, the pain stopped.
>Sand people
“You did that to my mother once?”
“Ever sift sand through a screen?” she asked.
The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher
awareness: Sand through a screen. He nodded.
“We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans.”
>These aren't the droids you're looking for
“ ‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind,’ ” Paul
quoted.
“Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible,” she said.
what translation of iliad/odyssey is the most patrician?
Fagles.
>>7737930
Lattimore
pope. contrarians are gonna come and tell you he's not faithful/it's a rework/it's not good/whatever but it's the best poetically by far. trying to get literal/strict meanings and translations of ancient greek is a fruitless endeavour anyway so you might as well just get the most lyrically profound one.
Is this any good? I loved Eyes Wide Shut.
read it and find out
>>7737981
Hmm, ok
>>7737927
I wouldn't bother. there's a whole strand of abstract modernist "dream" literature which is all pretty much the same. Read a minimum of the important texts and then stop.
Do you think it's more important to read an enormous variety of authors or go deep into a couple that you like?
Former
>>7737899
read the variety, then delve after you have a wider scope.
Read a variety of authors in your teen and early twenties. Go deep into the ones you like afterwards.
Has anyone read this? How was it?
>>7737876
>A Novel
>>7737876
Pretty strange. Seems more like extended poetry than anything else, but thats because I dont really know wtf is going on. Naked Lunch is superior
>>7737876
It's like Burroughs was a Jew from Mile End in Montreal. No lyin' it's that good!
What are some epic nonfiction book? Not really philosophy since that's another beast, but what are you favorite nonfiction books.
Best biography about this bad boy?
Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie.
I just finished The Odyssey and Taras Bulba. What should I read now: V by Pynchon (my second Pinecone after Lot 49 which was pretty enjoyable) or Tristram Shandy?
make your own decisions you dumb faggot
>>7737934
I agree
start with the greeks
Admit it, it's better than Ulysses.
Incredible that it took until 75 years after his death for Joyce's true masterpiece to be discovered.
I'm sort of breaking out of beginner spanish right now. I'm about a year in. I can hold a simple conversation, but I'm self-teaching and there are definitely gaps in my knowledge.
For those of you who are bilingual:
Any advice on fairly recent(so I don't have to worry about archaic words and expressions) spanish novels that won't be impossible?
I of course want to have to look things up. I want to be challenged. I don't want a kids book or anything. But I also need something reasonable, so keep in mind that I'm a recently started self-taught spanish speaker.
Oh, and I'd prefer to avoid fantasy and other such things.
la muerte de artemio cruz
platero y yo
las batallas en el desierto
pedro y el capitan
Try anything by Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, or Cortázar
Lorca's plays are pretty accessible.
I'm looking to better understans fringw political beliefs. What's the best 'get off my lawn' book?
>>7737769
Genesis.
Crippled America
The world we see is smaller than the world that is, and the world that is smaller than the world that could be.
Our only vessel into this potential are books.
Yet books are even smaller world unto the World
>>7737755