Has any book legitimately changed your life?

Stop trying to find something external to fix your pathetic life. Or just read stoic literature

>>9177756
>Stop trying to find something external to fix your pathetic life.
That is legitimately good advice, anon. But how do I do that?

Heidegger & Aquinas.

>>9177648
Changed it? no. Informed it? yes.

>>9177787
factually plebian

>>9177792
Informing is indisputably changing

I think Stoner is what finally convinced me to become an English major.

So I wouldn't recommend it.

>>9177793
Incorrect. Everything changes your life, all the time. Therefore, 'changing your life' is a tautology. When you talk about changing your life, you're really just talking about the course of your life at a given moment. So change? No. That's a rhetorical sleight of hand. Certain books inform the direction of my life in different ways, however. Asking how a thing has changed my life is pretty idiotic.

>>9177787
Why Aquinas?

>>9177801
So unless you're going to define "change" in your post, please answer "every book I have even looked at changed my life"

>>9177819
Go to bed, Gorgias.

>>9177822
Define "to"

The only book that honestly changed my life was Atlas Shrugged.

I'm no longer an objectivist, but that was the only one that seriously changed my perspective and altered my life in any meaningful way.

>>9177826
to, (preposition):
>a. In a direction toward so as to reach: went to the city.
>b. Towards: turned to me.

as in "go toward bed" in the colloquial sense--whereby it is suggested you stop posting rhetorically on /lit/ and instead retire to sleep for the night, to collect yourself and hopefully post less insubstantial content tomorrow.

>>9177832
What made you change your mind?

>>9177843
Intense religious awakening.

I still like the philosophy and enjoy Ayn's works. But she made it very clear that to believe in God and to be an Objectivist are incompatible, so I'd rather not disrespect her philosophy by describing myself outside of the limits she set.

>>9177903
What made you believe in God?

>>9177930
Grace, love & nature

>>9177934
Those conditions seem necessary but not sufficient to form a believe in God. There must be something more.

>>9177934
this is not me

>>9177930
My belief in God came from a multiple year journey in which I was being called to Him. That journey culminated with a personal event in which I feel God solidified to me through personal revelation his existence.

>>9177949
Sometimes I'm overcome by a desire to pray and read the Bible. Usually accompanied by a feeling of complete... brokenness and foundness, if that even makes sense. All I feel at that moment is love, for myself and for all of humanity. I can see all my folly, but it doesn't matter, I don't matter, there's only love. I'm pretty sure I'm just insane, but I was wondering if that's what a religious experience is like.

>>9177794
Were you enticed by the qt love affair he had on the side?

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we can't recommend you anything. something that stuck with me might just seem futil in your eyes or you can't see it's merit. it all depends on your personal level of development. it only takes one phrase that hits you at te right moment to change your mindset. but finding those is like gold washing. you just have to keep on reading in hope to find your next step. and that could be EVERYWHERE. could be the stoics, could be fiction, could be an article in a magazine... the chase is half the fun, anon

>>9177956
To someone such as myself, yes, I'd say that is a religious experience. What you are feeling, what you are taking within yourself as an empty vessel is the closest you will ever get to an understanding of Grace: that which we are unworthy of and incapable of being worthy of, God the benevolent and all forgiving father.

I'd recommend reading Paul's letters, Psalms and Proverbs, and researching the theological concept of Grace because I think that's what you are in tune with, what you are opening yourself to understanding. It was one of the first things I understood, or tried to understand, as I felt the pull of God calling me home.

Keep praying. Keep reading. Keep your heart open to God.

Music is important to me, so some listening you might find welcoming or soothing in your thoughts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf_glkmbNbQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FASG0h6-5XQ

>>9177978
Thanks for being sincere with me. I'll save your post and look into that stuff. I've read a good chunk of the Bible before but not the Pauline epistles for some reason

>>9177995
don't waste your time gods not real

>>9177999
Well, that's what's always got me in the past. I question along the lines of "no matter how strong my experiences are, I can't rationally take that as evidence of the objective existence of a metaphysical being" but sometimes I wonder if there's not more to life than rationality, if maybe it's worth having faith in the seemingly irrational in exchange for peace and contentment.

>>9177995
It's my pleasure, brother. I'd also recommend Isaiah and Jeremiah as they helped me put to words a lot of things I was feeling but couldn't express. Read, listen, pray, keep your heart open, and God will find a way to wrap his arms around you, however you let him.

>And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.

Zarathoustra.

>>9177648

Books only change my perspective.

I make a decision on whether or not I am going to change my life with my new view of the world.

Reading Hesse as an adolescent did

>>9178004
>If I pretend hard enough to myself, I can maybe eventually be delivered from my mortal coils not by a real god, but by my self manufactured ignorance.

Faith in ignorance. Honestly seems like not that bad of a resort if rationality comes up short in your later years.

Too bad it didn't change your Æutism

>>9177648
Stranger by Albert camus made me suicidal

A book I didn't particularly like changed my life. It ended up being an AIDS story, and it briefly touched on the idea that not only is youth wasted on the young but health is wasted on the healthy. It talked about how much joy we would get out of our own physicality if we didn't take it for granted.

It made me feel guilty for spending my youth out of shape and never finding out what my body was capable of. All previous attempts to stop being a fat mess came about just because I didn't like how I looked, but my vanity was no match for my gluttony and laziness. The more vague but powerful motivation of exploring my body's limits got me to enjoy exercise for the first time and I managed to get my shit together.

>>9177763
Either become religious or settle for stoicism

>>9178529
Read his Myth of Sisyphus. Idk if it will change your mind but I did at least find some comfort knowing that others were as cynical as I was and able to find a reason to live

>>9178150
I have his complete works back at home. Which books do you recommend?

New Testament
The Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Way (both the above and this one written by bsp Kallistos Ware)
The Mountain of Silence
Mere Christianity.

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Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

I can't describe it.

The first time I read it, at least 70% of it went over my head.

Having given it time and effort, however, I truly believe it excels both the Bible and practically any other work.

>>9177947
Yes, a pathetic need to be handed a meaning for your life, instead of finding your own.

>>9178013
I'm not aligned with any faith, grew up very secular and am a pessimist by nature. Yet I love reading philosophers who wrote about religion. The most interesting book I have come across was Athens and Jerusalem by Lev Shestov. It describes the ultimatly futile efforts of medieval religious scholars to combine the Revelation and the ancient Greek philosophies but still affirms why it is that people need faith. If nothing else, the English translation (I think there is only one) was beautifully written.

>>9177648
Moby Dick

Made me get up and go write.

De Docta Ignorantia and Chuang Tzu

>>9177787
which Heidegger. you read any analytic Thomism?

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RD Laing's Divided Self and Politics of Experience did the most to explain my experience of mental illness to me and put me on a path out of the state I was in at the time. Might have killed myself if I didn't read it, which is quite a cliche thing to say, but it really did change entirely the way I thought about my mental experience of the world


So I don't think its exaggeration when people say something changed their life. But I think its mostly to do with books giving you frameworks for how to make sense of the world. (thinking also of marxism in particular)

>>9177648
Starship Troopers convinced me to join the military. Best decision I ever made.

>>9177648
literally every book i read
because i think abt it
thought leads to action
actions which constitute my life

>>9179763
>>9178067
I read 3 other Nietzsche books, and I enjoyed them a lot. They actually made me feel a lot better about life, but I didn't change my actions in any way. I can't get into this one. Is it really any better than Beyond Good and Evil? I feel like he's just wandering around saying the same stuff but with a religious spin. What's special about this book?

>>9181214
No never read anal thom.
>which Heidegger
his body of work..? but mostly being and time i'm not very special

>>9183094
I find it highly dubious that you've read his entire body of work. What of his have you spent the most time with?

The Sorrows of Young Werther
Martin Eden
The Red and the Black

The Phenomenology of Spirit.