/lit/ - Literature

>>18764702
https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-books-reading-list

Google shit that you don't know. How is this hard? If you have an internet connection you have no excuse.
Real education you're fucked on in the modern day, but a decent general education is pretty easy to attain by yourself.
Don't read textbooks, they're a scam.

>>18764702
>miscalleneous knowledge everyone should have
That's subjective. Who determines what everyone should know?

>there's so many things to know, how do you even start?
What do you mean?
After you learn something, you know more than you knew before. It's the same process whether you're a Jeopardy champion or a high school dropout.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

>>18764761
so basically reading wikipedia articles?

>>18764793
>so basically reading wikipedia articles?
How would you know which Wikipedia articles to read? And then how would you know which sections matter and which don't?

What exactly is the goal here?

>>18764793
Unironically yes

>>18764702
You must look for introductory textbooks from university presses. Oxford Press has a series called Very Short Introductions for example.
There also publishers specialised in introductory books like Dorling Kindersley for several subjects and Taschen for art.

>>18764793
no, wikipedia is not an accurate source. it is currated by brainwashed faggots seeking to rewrite history

>>18764761
Google has gone to absolute shit nowadays though. It's a lot harder to find valuable content. And it doesn't help that Google has been skewing results for a few years now, favoring content which stands in line with their beliefs and outright hiding stuff which does not.
It's valuable to get stuff recommended by people who know they're talking about, who act in good faith, instead of that biased AI.

>>18764702
yeah its called popular media

>>18764702
If you have to ask the question, you're too dumb to have one. It ain't hard bro, just read shit lmao.

>>18764702
Unironically, start with "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler. After that, you'll know what to read.

>>18764761
"Just Google stuff" is not a good answer. There's an almost infinite amount of stuff out there on any topic, no matter how obscure and specialized. So if you don't have a basic framework of the relative importance of different topics, you can easily disappear down a rabbit-hole of esoterica.

>>18764702
Start top-down. Make yourself a simple list of broad topics. Use a school syllabus or the Dewey Decimal system or something if you're really stuck, but honestly, it shouldn't be too hard to get it basically right. Philosophy, history, geography, mathematics, physics, etc.

Once you do that, subdivide each basic topic. You'll very quickly see, if you want a decent overall picture you can't spend very long on any one thing. That's where autodidacts tend to go wrong (see above). They Google A and that takes them to B and that takes them to C and before long they're spending their whole life learning about one particular expansion set in Magic The Gathering, or Byzantine jurisprudence, or how to field-strip the AK47 or something.

If you're only going to spend, say, 40 hours total learning history, how many hours can you devote to the American Civil War? If you're only going to spend 20 hours on Renaissance art, you can't burn it all on Leonardo. etc.

go outside and experience something. talk to people

>>18767609
that way I'll learn more about rap music but I won't get a general education