/lit/ - Literature

it really is the final blackpill you can take. there's no moving forward after this. it's just it. its the end.

50% brutal 50% Freudian cringe

Does he deal with Epicurus in this book?

>>17275525
>By approaching the problem of succession or self-perpetuation in its fully dualistic nature, Rank was able to understand the deeper meanings of Greek homosexuality:

>"Seen in this light, boy-love, which, as Plato tells us, aimed perpetually at the improvement and perfection of the beloved youth, appears definitely as… a spiritual perfecting in the other person, who becomes transferred into the worthy successor of oneself here on earth; and that, not on the basis of the biological procreation of one’s body, but in the sense of the spiritual immortality-symbolism in the pupil, the younger."45

>In other words, the Greek sought to impress his inner self, his spirit or soul, upon the beloved youth. This spiritual friendship was designed to produce a son in whom one’s soul would survive:

>"In boy-love, man fertilized both spiritually and otherwise the living image of his own soul, which seemed materialized in an ego as idealized and as much like his own body as was possible."

>>17275512
For the 50% brutal part people should just read The Last Messiah.

>>17275906
>>17275364
Any more brutal non-fiction like The Denial of Death and The Last Messiah?

>>17275914
Any book by Cioran
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

This is really the end point of pessimism. What else could be more brutal than Zapffe and Cioran?

Page 127, chapter 7 is when it starts fucking you like the bitch you are. Everything before that is him arguing with a dead man.

>>17275749
So, gays just want to make mindbabies?

>>17275952
Thanks, I'll check these out.

The Freudian stuff is boring as fuck and wrong (lmaoing at feet being the most "disgusting" and uncomfortable part of the body) but he drops some extremely fucking dark quotes and pills. I'll always see the world as a nightmare spectacular until I die thanks to this book.

I'm gonna read this then come back here to shit on you weak souled, deluded fools for thinking this is the truth.

>>17276130
yeah sure anon we believe in you

>>17276109
>dark quotes and pills
post some of them

Just read the Wikipedia synopsis and it all sounds kind-of obvious and played out. What are the major black pills he drops?

>>17276190
The only one that sticked to me the most is:
>What are we to make of creation in which routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types - biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one’s own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses residue. Everyone reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him. The mosquitoes bloating themselves on blood, the maggots, the killer-bees attacking with a fury and a demonism, sharks continuing to tear and swallow while their own innards are being torn out - not to mention the daily dismemberment and slaughter in “natural” accidents of all types: an earthquake buries alive 70 thousand bodies in Peru, a tidal wave washes over a quarter of a million in the Indian Ocean. Creation is a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all creatures. The soberest conclusion that we could make about what has actually been taking place on the planet about three billion years is that it is being turned into a vast pit of fertilizer. But the sun distracts our attention, always baking the blood dry, making things grow over it, and with its warmth giving the hope that comes with the organism’s comfort and expansiveness

The rest of blackpills is that every religion, ideology and hobby is just a cope for the fear of death that is innate in all of us. We do what we do because it helps us feel that there's more to life than what there really is. "Heroism" of any kind is the way in which we can feel immortal in one way or another.
>The real world is simply too terrible to admit. It tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will someday decay and die. Culture changes all of this,makes man seem important,vital to the universe, immortal in some ways
>What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consiousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax, which is why one type of cultural man rebels openly against the idea of God. What kind of deity would crate such a complex and fancy worm food?

>>17276130
Same anon, I'm going to finish up with the courage to be disliked then read this Freudian garbage. Psychology is an absolute meme next to philosophy.

>>17276130
Lmao go for it, All I can say is we warned you

satanic book
I felt the devils hand on my shoulder while I read this

>>17276744
Satanic reply, I felt the devils hand on my shoulder while I read this

>>17276753
Satanic reply, I felt the devils hand on my shoulder while I read this

>>17276240
t. me, age 15

>>17276240
>Another piece of drivel trying hard to obscure its naturalistic fallacy
this is just BAM with a differentl colored pill

>>17276240
>The real world is simply too terrible to admit. It tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will someday decay and die. Culture changes all of this,makes man seem important,vital to the universe, immortal in some ways

Totally backwards.

>>17276240
I don't know why people are so moved by that book, I thought these things are obvious to everyone.

There are two kinds of people - the one which gets consumed by these facts and gets changed by it, and the other one which is just people thinking "jeez stop being an existentialist pessmist faggot and start living like a normal person."

IMO both are right - one is just preoccupied with sentience, and the other one with just living.

>>17276233
read a book you mongoloid

>>17277027
How so? No really, this fucking book has convinced me culture is just a cope to make us feel less like living corpses.

>>17277049

Culture is simply too terrible to admit. It tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will someday decay and die. The real world changes all of this, makes man seem important, vital to the universe, immortal in some ways

>>17277084
You know the book doesn't just drop that quote without any context right? It goes into detail of how culture creates values and goals and promotes a heroism that can only be found in symbolic things while the world itself is just animals and laws without higher consciousness.
I think I get what you're getting at, but the real world can only make you feel vital and important when seen through an ideological or symbolical lens, cause just by itself the world is just chaos and we're a part of it.

>>17277106
>we're a part of it.

This is what I mean. Pure culture.

>>17277028
>jeez stop being an existentialist pessmist faggot and start living like a normal person.
a.k.a. the denial of death

>>17277084
>It tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will someday decay and die.

That's quite the opposite of culture. Culture is what's invented to cope with death: it gives people meaning. Religion is culture, for example.

>>17277296

Only because it tells people ridiculous shit in the first place like "you're on a ball floating through space".

>>17277367
How does the earth being flat even work as a coping mechanism? What difference does it make? How is a lfat earth less ridiculous than a spherical earth?

>>17277367
We're not floating tho ?

>>17275364
>>17275489
>>17275512
>>17275525
>>17275749
>>17275906
>>17275914
>>17275952
>>17275957
>>17275967
>>17276012
>>17276109
>>17276130
>>17276179
>>17276190
>>17276233
>>17276240
>Ernest Becker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Jewish immigrant parents. Serving in the infantry during World War II, he would help liberate a Nazi concentration camp.

>>17277457
So was Spinoza. so were the writers of the Old Testament.

>>17277457
Based. No wonder the book is so good.

fugg blackpilled again

>>17275952
>So, rather than only destroying our own kind, Hartmann thought that, as intelligent beings, we are obligated to find a way to eliminate suffering, permanently and universally. He believed that it is up to humanity to “annihilate” the universe: it is our duty, he wrote, to “cause the whole kosmos to disappear”.

watch Rocco and his brothers. Read Descartes. Have confidence.

>>17277457
>Serving in the infantry during World War II, he would help liberate a Nazi concentration camp.
Wow what a horrible person!

>>17278127
Holy, so effing based!

>>17278127
such empty words from this coping faggot who even misinterpreted Schopenhauer.
philosophers like him are absolutely pathetic. the pessimists who actually believed in pessimism never had any kids.

>>17278127
> Rather that exterminating all love in the universe, we should strive to tear apart the atoms themselves. To bring about total death to this universe. Heat-Death is not enough, we run the risk of a cyclical universe. We must destroy life, atoms, and insure that no being ever lives again.
- Waylon Gaylord, Ruminations on Rumination

>>17275364
More like fucking gay and jewish so it's the worst.of both worlds. Also Freud was a fucking moron. Fuck jews. That is all

>>17276240
>fear of death that is innate in all of us
Not true. Many primitive cultures don't really have a fear of death, even without these "coping" beliefs. Stop posting this Freudian nonsense.

Read the wiki synopsis and seemed stupid. One step above self help. Pass

is there any purpose on making yourself conscious about your own mortality?

>>17278905
posturing as an intellectual scooby doo villain e.g. nick land or coping with certain death

>>17276240
> The natural world is gross and gorey, the food chain and bloody entrails are so awful it makes me want to kill myself; And natural disasters kill massive amounts of people in 3rd world countries. The conclusion to draw from this is that we only have hope because of the sun, this makes hope drivel as we should reject all forms of aid

> Mainstream culture is simply too terrible to admit. It tells man that he is an insignificant meaningless animal in a godless ball. Philosophy changes all of this, makes man seem important, vital to the places he lives in, meaningful in some ways

> What does it mean to be a self-unaware schizo? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one cannot find his meaning. This is the terror: to be unable to deal with genuinity, to have shallow philosophy, lack of consciousness of his own midwit, deep inner edge, an excruciating inner yearning for meaninglessness and self-indulgence and with all this yet to engage with his opposition in good faith. It seems like a hoax, which is why culture actively rebels against the idea of God. What kind of deity would create such a neurotic schizo?

>>17277106
>but the real world can only make you feel vital and important when seen through an ideological or symbolical lens,
> cause just by itself the world is just chaos and we're a part of it.
Pessimism is an ideological lens

>>17276109
>>17276240
>>17278952
BTW the Freudian stuff is boring only to teen edgelords that love "dark blackpills" like this book.

>>17277388
>How does the earth being flat even work as a coping mechanism? What difference does it make? How is a lfat earth less ridiculous than a spherical earth?
t. no abstract comprehension not a surprise from materialist nihilists
he meant that culture is also what leads us to view ourselves as meaningless and insignificant, it's not any more "natural" than viewing ourselves as significant or meaningful
Nihilism is thus not exempt from being a culture, just by virtue of its' assertion of meaninglessness

>>17277457
How are the jews so much more superior to everyone else? I' srarting to think they really are the chosen people

>>17278759
Which ones? Pretty much every culture has invented some story as to what happens to the after death as a cope

>>17275364
>>17275489
Oh noes, we gonna die MOMMY!
What's wrong with you fucking babies?

>>17279023
yeah, people are only logically nihilistic. so in that regard they are very similar to everyone else

>>17279105
your denial is so deep, it's like listening to a child. you haven't even begun to face your mortality, being too ignorant to even concieve of it

>>17279598
> accepting your mortality = not being able to face or conceive it

Accusing a living man of being in “denial” of death is like accusing a sleeping man of denying his wakefulness.

So some schizo thinks that just because everyone else isn't a pussy terrified of death like him that means everyone is in denial? Kek

>>17279716
so deep

>>17279743
>some schizo
Pulitzer Prize winner

>>17279636
> implying that you know that which you obviously do not know, and that you have accepted and overcome a thing which you do not know that you do not know
hubris. childishness. immaturity

>>17276776
Satanic reply, I felt the devils hand on my shoulder while I read this

>>17279743
You’re literally proving his point right now actually. Copeulus maximus.

>>17275364
>pseud who was retroactively refuted by Plato

>>17280055
the way the argument is set up you literally can't refute it, anything you say can be interpreted as cope.

>>17275364
This book is one of the most Faustian things ever written. Spengler was absolutely right. Only in the rotten winter of civilization could such a work be written and be taken seriously.

>>17279853
>Pulitzer Prize winner
That right there certifies it as utterly banal normie shit

what if you revolt against it like camus? Is that cope too?

>>17279853
>hubris. childishness. immaturity

> oh, look at me, these intellectually inferior people, living their lives having accepted death, they're not mature and humble like me who constantly complains about it

>>17280092
Elaborate, anon

I'm interested

>>17280082
Cope

>>17280117
Yes. Everything everyone does besides die... is cope.

>>17280117
The act of revolt is literally the cope the book is talking about.

>>17280082
so it's like a proto white fragility? interesting

I genuinely think this book should be banned. I don't see a reason that anyone should read this, and in fact, in many ways I think it is an affront to humanity. This book is pure evil and it radiates nothing but dread.

>>17280340
it won the pulitzer prize, it's clearly not that edgy

>>17280353
No, rather ,it won the pulitzer prize BECAUSE of its' edginess
This shit is GOLD for pseud midwits who want to feel superior and self righteous, due to their pessimism

Can anyone refute this book?

And why does everyone hate Freud?

>>17280618
>Can anyone refute this book?
Trying to "refute" this book is much like arguing with a child who covers their ears and says "lalalalala", but replace every "la" with cope

>>17280614
You haven’t read the book. Being pessimistic is also a cope, everything is a cope to try and ignore the reality of death. Death is scary because it isn’t sad or happy, it just is what it is. The only way we can think of death is by attaching our own coping mechanisms, whether it be being optimistic about it or pessimistic. At least that’s the way I took it. But shit I’m just one person.

>>17276240
Why are these things bad? He uses poetic language to describe eating but why is one animalnl eating another bad if life just is? Sounds like this guy believes in some kind of higher good like a psued otherwise he might as well write this part like a biology textbook as it has no emotional weight from his own perspective.

>>17280639
$100 says you haven’t read it.

>>17280659
everything is a cope for everything

>>17276240
Doesn't DeMaistre have an almost identical quote to the top one? He doesn't seem very original.

>>17280659
>>17280681
following that logic

>>17280659
Is a child playing with toys coping with death? I don't understand this "everything is cope" the human being does a lot of things not out of fear of death but just because we do as biological creatures.

>>17280689
Children aren't aware of their mortality

>>17280701
So then not every action done by a human is a death cope is it?

>>17280659
>Being pessimistic is also a cope
If believing life is awful is a "cope" then this definition of the word "cope" is meaningless, as it applies to literally everything

>>17280705
Becker is referring to healthy adults, of course

I don't understand your point

>>17280713
/lit/ BTFO

>>17280717
>Becker is referring to healthy adults, of course
>I don't understand your point
The point is retarded because by Becker's logic, whenever we develop biological immortality we will stop ever doing anything, since it is all "coping with death"

>>17280717
My point is if a child with no conception of death does the same things as their older counterparts but on a smaller scale then I think an argument can be made that not everything we do is "cope" even as adults aware of death.

>>17280659
That's fucking retarded and basically just jewish nihilism. What a stupid self defeating way to see the world

>>17280728
We're never going to be immortal

That's a pipedream, literally. Is this how you cope?

>>17280746
Do you think if we ever did reach that no one would do anything though?

>>17280750
we actually might not do anything because then you could procrastinate forever. steve jobs talks about this in that interview where he says death is nature's greatest invention

>>17280746
>We're never going to be immortal
>That's a pipedream, literally. Is this how you cope?
How likely it is is irrelevant to the argument
Your argument is shit because it relies on everything humans do being a "cope with death", but this is easily refuted by the fact unaware children still choose to live life to their best extent, and that you imply no one would be motivated to do anything if death was not inevitable even tho most would tell you that's retarded and they'd still live

so suppose everything is a cope? ok. now will i carry on exactly as before. thanks for wasting everyone's time.

>>17280761
Procrastinate by doing other things though, that would imply there are poroductive things and non productive meaning not every action done is a cope.

>>17280761
That's still a retarded point because it's not universal, even you indirectly concede, not everyone would procrastinate forever if they weren't worried about death, implying there are other motivators

>>17276240
Reads like something I would've written in my phones notes when I was 14


Am I a genius or is Ernest Becker basic as fuck?

>>17276240
I like how he words all of these things as if they are objectively bad contradicting his nihilistic conception of labelling everything cope and rendered meaningless by death

Really makes you think why he pursued a career and chose to write this book if supposedly the more awareness of death the worse

>>17280822
Nihilism is the ultimate psued position. You become a walking contridiction if you don't instantly kill yourself or more accuratly a coward.

>>17280767
Based

Nothing wrong with knowing you're coping as long as it's in a healthy way

>>17280832
that is more pessimism than nihilism

>>17280832
>You become a walking contridiction if you don't instantly kill yourself or more accuratly a coward.

Why does /lit/ use the same pseud "he didn't kill himself lmao" argument for every pessimist/nihilist or "blackpilled" author?

I know I'm coping and I'm fine with it. I'm sure they are too. Also, many of these people lack the courage to kill themselves, which is biologically natural. That doesn't invalidate their argument.

>>17280863
It does actually you're just too stupid to understand why.

>>17280863
> Why does /lit/ use the same pseud "he didn't kill himself lmao" argument for every pessimist/nihilist or "blackpilled" author?

Because it's valid and they can't refute it
If life and suffering is so inconceivably awful then kill yourself with an ecstasy overdose you pussy

>>17280867
What's wrong with knowing life is meaningless but coping? Are these people contradicting themselves by not committing suicide en masse?

>>17280863
>which is biologically natural

woah hold up wait a minute, are you saying humans are governed by biological drives that aren't rational?

>>17280887
>What's wrong with knowing life is meaningless but coping? Are these people contradicting themselves by not committing suicide en masse?
It doesn't refure regular nihilism, but does for pessimistic nihilism where life is affirmed to not be just meaningless but also an atrocity, at which point there is no excuse but cowardice for not mass suiciding

>>17280887
Its a cope alright but it's a cope with the meanigfulness of life. Better to shirk responsibility only the the point it would directly effect you (ie suicide) am I right coward?

>>17277457
>Springfield, Mass

springfield is a major coomer town. they have a huge porno district with adult bookstores, strip clubs, and tons of pervs on the prowl. when i was a teenager, sometimes i would go over there to smoke weed with at my friend's house, and when i'd head home late at night and be waiting at the bus station, i would always get hit on by gay boomer pedos, right in front of other people too. super sleazy town. maybe, like time's square, it's been cleaned up since, but boy, that place used to be a coomer's paradise

>>17280880
>>17280888
>woah hold up wait a minute, are you saying humans are governed by biological drives that aren't rational?

Yeah so we agree on that. Does our biological programming render us incapable of making arguments in favor of nihilism/pessimism or any kind of abstract thought that questions the value of living? Not an anti-natalist or Liggotti fag by the way. I just find these criticisms reductive and shallow.

>>17280920
>Yeah so we agree on that. Does our biological programming render us incapable of making arguments in favor of nihilism/pessimism or any kind of abstract thought that questions the value of living? Not an anti-natalist or Liggotti fag by the way. I just find these criticisms reductive and shallow.
They're not reductive and shallow, they're just simple and aim for the jugular, because they work
The pessimistic nihilist has no option but to concede that he is either a coward who is far more irrational than his peers, or a hypocrite who does find value in living

>>17280867
Biological functions (i.e fear) are stronger than beliefs retard.

Let's say your extremely concerned with your health, you're strongly against eating for pleasure and you're disgusted by unhealthy foods. And I presented you with the most delicious, nicest smelling, most appetizing meal you had ever eaten, but it was extremely unhealthy, along with a plate of extremely nutritious and healthy food that looked, smelled, and tasted like a log of human shit, which one would you eat? You'd pick according to your beliefs and chow down the log of shit no matter how much your body and mind resist it right?

>>17280934
>Biological functions (i.e fear) are stronger than beliefs retard.

buddhism has entered the chat

>>17280937
So are you gonna suck down that log or what?

>>17280737
It’s empowering because you no longer have to try and make everything you do absolutely meaningful, you can just enjoy the small moments and not make everything a grandiose dream. Such as pouring a cup of tea, or feeling the breeze. When you know everything is cope and death comes regardless if you accepted it or not, you have a chance at momentary freedom before you return to the place from you once came.

>>17280934
>Biological functions (i.e fear) are stronger than beliefs retard.
False
Or the belief of pessimism would not override the biological function of seeking reproduction
And there would be 0 instances of suicide or more rarely, sacrificing your life
You're just weak willed and irrational or a hypocrite, face it

>>17280947
i didn't need to read however many pages of angsty teen level shit to enjoy a cup of coffee

>>17280920
If you think abtract thought stands outside of biology and stands higher than it (which you must to think life is "bad") then you've now got a claim that would involve meaning. If you think its also just a product of biology then why does it matter and why does it have a "good" or "bad" tacked onto it? In which case your biology telling you not to kill yourself is ultimately "correct" but some how we humans can still get passed that and self terminate meaning its not absolute.

Now I would see this as meaning there's more to life then biology but for the nihilist the very act of overcoming that drive for self preservation doesn't make much sense from a purely meterial point of view yet they have to admit its possible which means them not doing it either makes them a coward or disingenuous recognizing that both from an abstract AND biological point of view death isn't preferable to life.

>>17280954
Why are you on a board that’s literally about literature if you don’t want to read?

>>17280961
i don't have to read every piece of drivel some chud spams on here

>>17280964
You are specifically on a topic thread about this book. Also the book isn’t angsty or pessimistic, it’s purely educational. Doesn’t hold an opinion, just gives facts.

>>17280948
I don't think I'm a nihilist I just think the nihilist suicide argument is completely retarded. I don't believe in intrinsic meaning but I believe in personal meaning, which is to say nothing actually matters but some things matter to me. Don't know if that makes me a nihilist or not but I don't think it does

>>17280942
depends. can i season it?

>>17280934
>no one has ever commited suicide
>good and bad are real only when it comes to choosing to kill myself
Getting mixed signals here mr nihilist.

>>17280970
so what? everything is a cope. ok, down. just saved my self reading how every many pages of angsty teen level drivel, btw you already gave away how overwrought the prose is with that lame demaistre ripoff passage about fertilizer or whatever

>>17280977
Only if you're currently holding seasoning on your person

>>17280978
I didn't say it was always the case, some people are able to through with it, I've been extremely suicidal before but my fear of the void has stopped me. I'm not a nihilist either.

>>17280982
I didn’t write that passage, also the fear you hold is showing. It’s okay to be too afraid to read something. Some books shouldn’t be read by certain people. Can do more damage than good.

>>17280999
Unholy Trips, checkem

>>17280999
ok dude, everything is a cope, now what?

>>17281007
Based dyslexic anon

>>17281009
Now you read the book.

>>17281021
nah, that's ok

>>17280996
then maybe, but i'd need to see some seriously convincing evidence that some memester wasn't simply trying to make me eat a log of poo for fun.

>>17281033
Then don’t read it.

>>17281033
Lol cope

>>17281046
trying to get people to read some book is a cope

>>17281040
Fuck you I'm reading it.

the only reason i would consider reading the shit is cuz the author is from springfield, and very few famous people came out of there, so that alone gives it mild personal interest

>>17281055
No don’t. I don’t want you to.

how does it compare to this?

>>17281052
Yes thats the point lmao

>>17281087
but then what's the point?

>>17281090
Accept cope and be based.

>>17281158
actually now i'm feeling inspired to do an "immortality project" lmao if it was supposed to demoralize me didn't work

Did people really not know they were going to die before this book?

>>17281176
It’s literally not supposed to demoralize you at all. It demoralizes people who can’t handle the information the book gives.

>>17281185
that's what's so annoying about it, like did these guys never chow a bag of shrooms and contemplate death before?

>>17281188
who? the people that weren't aware that they were going to die? well i'll make sure to keep up on a shelf where no five year old can accidentally read it

I don't understand how a denial of death is any different than a sex drive. I always thought this dude was overrated. Seems like he just synthesized a bunch of viewpoints in a format that can easily be digested and won an award for it. He says the same things as Freud, but just uses some wordplay to make it seem different. Sophistry.

>>17277496
Exactly. All meaningless, obscuritarian tripe. If the writer's a Jew and his name's not Kafka, I'm not reading it. I've been burned too many times to waste any more time on them.

>>17281202
also the idea that schizophrenia is just a cope for death is pseudo scientific as hell, oh wait, this guy a freudian so that's par for the course

>>17281086
> Take Norman Brown’s Life Against Death: rarely does a work of this brilliance appear. Rarely does a book so full of closely reasoned argument, of very threatening argument, achieve such popularity; but like most other foundation-shaking messages, this one is popular for all the wrong reasons. It is prized not for its shattering revelations on death and anality, but for its wholly non-sequitur conclusions: for its plea for the unrepressed life, the resurrection of the body as the seat of primary pleasure, the abolition of shame and guilt. Brown concludes that mankind can only transcend the terrible toll that the fear of death takes if it lives the body fully and does not allow any unlived life to poison existence, to sap pleasure, and to leave a residue of regret. If mankind would do this, says Brown, then the fear of death will not longer drive it to folly, waste, and destruction; men will have their apotheosis in eternity by living fully in the now of experience.6 The enemy of mankind is basic repression, the denial of throbbing physical life and the spectre of death. The prophetic message is for the wholly unrepressed life, which would bring into birth a new man. A few lines of Brown’s own words give us his key message:

>"If we can imagine an unrepressed man—a man strong enough to live and therefore strong enough to die, and therefore what no man has ever been, an individual—such a man [would have]… overcome guilt and anxiety…. In such a man would be fulfilled on earth the mystic hope of Christianity, the resurrection of the body, in a form, as Luther said, free from death and filth…. With such a transfigured body the human soul can be reconciled, and the human ego become once more what it was designed to be in the first place, a body-ego and the surface of a body…. The human ego would have to become strong enough to die; and strong enough to set aside guilt…. [F]ull psychoanalytic consciousness would be strong enough to cancel the debt [of guilt] by deriving it from infantile fantasy.7"

>>17281467
>What is one to say about such an eloquent program when it flies in the face of everything we know about man and most of what Brown himself has written about human character in the preceding almost 300 pages? These few lines contain fallacies so obvious that one is shocked that a thinker of Brown’s power could even let them linger in his mind, much less put them down as reasoned arguments. Once again and always we are back to basic things that we have not shouted loud enough from the rooftops or printed in big-enough block letters: guilt is not a result of infantile fantasy but of self-conscious adult reality. There is no strength that can overcome guilt unless it be the strength of a god; and there is no way to overcome creature anxiety unless one is a god and not a creature. The child denies the reality of his world as miracle and as terror; that’s all there is to it. Wherever we turn we meet this basic fact that we must repeat one final time: guilt is a function of real over-
whelmingness, the stark majesty of the objects in the child’s world. If we, as adults, are well dulled and armored against all this, we have only to read poets such as Thomas Traherne, Sylvia Plath, or R. L. Stevenson, who haven’t blunted their receptors to raw experience:

>"As I go on in this life, day by day, I become more of a bewildered child; I cannot get used to this world, to procreation, to heredity, to sight, to hearing; the commonest things are a burthen. The prim, obliterated, polite surface of life, and the broad, bawdy, and orgiastic—or maenadic—foundations, form a spectacle to which no habit reconciles me.8"

>Brown’s whole vision of some future man falls flat on the one failure to understand guilt.9 It does not derive from “infantile fantasy” but from reality.
>In other words—and this too is crucial enough to bear stressing one final time—the child “represses himself.” He takes over the control of his own body as a reaction to the totality of experience, not only to his own desires.

>>17281202
>>17281208
>I LOOOOOVEEE SCEINCE

>>17281551
>I LOVE PSUEDO-SCIENTIFIC MYSTICISM

>>17281650
>t. mortally terrified schizo who lost his sense of inner reality and outer reality long ago

Every adult who is against suffering must be murdered. How can a person get so retarded he tries eliminating suffering, does one even need to make arguments for why suffering is absolutely essential? And this Becker guy is even more fucking annoying due to how this sly Jew writes like an effeminate 15 year old boy. Every adult who likes Becker will die childless, thank Lashari, or have offspring who die childless, you dysfunctional subhumans.

>>17281696
I have an alternative solution for the people who aren't against suffering

>“Bring every man to the agony of life's last moments by whip, fire, or injections, and through terrible torture he will undergo the great purification afforded by a vision of death. Then free him and let him run in a fright until he falls exhausted. I warrant you that the effect is incomparably greater than any obtained through normal means. If I could, I would drive the entire world to agony to achieve a radical purification of life; I would set a fire burning insidiously at the roots of life, not to destroy them but to give them a new and different sap, a new heat. The fire I would set to the world would not bring ruin but cosmic transfiguration. In this way life would adjust to higher temperatures and would cease to be an environment propitious to mediocrity. And maybe in this dream, death too would cease to be immanent in life.”
-Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

>>17281467
>>17281492

i think brown has a point though, some depression surely comes from a failing immortality project, but, i'm sorry, depression also comes from not hammering enough prime punani or fulfilling any other sexual desire, so brown finds one aspect of depression, becker another, it's almost like the whole human experience can't just put explained with one grand narrative...at least the failing immortality project you can do something about, but we can't go back to college and fuck that chick in calc 2 who clearly wanted the dee

>>17278127
i know that feel bro

>>17275749
that sounds pretty gay

>>17278759
>Many primitive cultures don't really have a fear of death

*citation needed

>>17281666
no u

>>17280822
>Really makes you think why he pursued a career and chose to write this book if supposedly the more awareness of death the worse

To infect the goyim with anti-natalism.

>>17280919
Just sounds like you turned down a good time

>>17280767
The effectiveness of one cope can be superior to another and once you realise that it is all a cope you suffer less.

>>17283196
absolutely. it's become a common scenario while fapping.

Every argument against this book is built into the book. Anything you can say can be responded with the contents of the book. Its literally irrefutable.

>>17283954
doesn't that kind of make it lame in a way though? like if someone published a book saying water is wet, do we have to praise it for being irrefutable? who gives a shit

>>17275364
Im reading it now and I think it's a really good breakdown of how the Ego/Manas forms and what it's like, but after researching Buddhist conceptions of consciousness and how to deal with it all this psychoanalysis stuff feels pretty surface level, just the Ego analysing the Ego in symbol games.
But this is definitely the one that gets it right compared to most psychology theories.

>>17283954
Nothing you perceive is real, including both death and this book. My position is irrefutable.

i'd be more likely to read it if it hadn't won a pulitzer, pulitzer shit is always cringe

>>17278717
underrated