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/lit/ - Literature

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1645641 No.1645641 [Reply] [Original]

Has a book ever radically changed how you view the world?

This one did for me. Inb4 babbys first philosophical literature

>> No.1645654

Dorian Gray changed my world. Now everything is a bit more purple.

>> No.1645659

Fromm is insanely good.

>> No.1645663

>>1645641

Babbys first philosophical literature.

>> No.1645670

Not directly, no. I suppose 1984 might fall most into this category as I read it when I was relatively young, but in general the answer is still no.

I get most of my 'profound' moments from just sitting and thinking and/or having a question posed to me.

>> No.1645672

It's a mix between the stories by Sade, the Antichrist by Nietzsche and The Bible, when I flirted with Christianism last year. It really changed my perspective to look at the two extremes of life.

>> No.1645674

>>1645670
>I get most of my 'profound' moments from just sitting and thinking

I dunno if you're just spinning your wheels here but unless something external challenges your worldview you won't grow in your understanding, regardless of how many stoner moments you have.

>> No.1645688

>>1645674
But our worldviews get challenged almost every minute we're out in public.

You have to live in a cage of a room and never leave to only be informed by your own self and your own self alone.

>> No.1645695

i'll interpret 'radically' as permanent..so no.
books are usually like 'songs' to me...i'll read a book, think its the best thing i've ever read...then some time later..i'll encounter something else which i'll like more and forget the older shit

>> No.1645705

On the Origin of Species.

>> No.1645710

Its a fictional book

But Dune

I know it sounds weird but it really change my perception of reality

>> No.1645713

The Society of Spectacle by Guy Debord
and
The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vanegiem

>> No.1645725

Time after time OP
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The Gnostic Gospels
The Te of Piglet
Book of Leviathan
Thomas Paine and the Promise of America

>> No.1645756

B.F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity. This book is a radical challenge to how think of cause and effect. It looks at how both language and and science are set up to take for granted that Subjects initiate action. Skinner instead takes the idea that environment prompts behavior. His arguments are flawed in places, but its still got a lot of weight.

Jean Baudrillard's For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign is a pretty amazing blast out of marxism into linguistics and psychology. It's an impressive idea, which Baudrillard later abandoned. Not sure what you really do with it, but its an interesting way of making exchange more than an economic idea.

Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle. "The spectacle is not a collection of images, rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images". Kind of says it all, an increasingly important thinker in our heyday of "social" media.

The Coming Insurection by The Invisible Committee. A group of French anarchists describing what they see as the collapse of society. Frightening and alienating, this book really made me question how much solidarity exists between Americans and Europeans, and really gave me insight into how my American Expierence is quite different than a French one.

Roland Barthes' Mythologies. A great introduction into semiotics and the sciences of communication. It really broaden my idea of how we communicate and the limitlessness of forms of communication.

>> No.1645766

OP here, I'm definitely going to read Society of Spectacle, seems right up my alley

>> No.1645776

BIOLOGY 8th.

A giant book about biology. Very interesting.

>> No.1645871

>>1645713

what were you views before reading and how do you see the world after reading those books you pretentious fuck

>> No.1645889

The Selfish Gene. Changed the way I see people and society, I feel like we're a lot more similar to a colony of insects than we would like to think. It doesn't depress me, I just feel like I can see the world a lot more clearly since I read it.

>> No.1645893

Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet is the closest thing I have to a religious text

>> No.1645896

>>1645893

what kind of perspective did it give you that you did not have before?

>> No.1645903
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1645903

You hear the one about the situationist mafiosi? He made an offer they couldn't understand.

>> No.1645908

>>1645903
Scintillating.

>> No.1645917

>>1645903
lmao
did you come up with that

>> No.1645920

Theodor Adorno and Max Hokrheimer-The Culture Industry as Mass deception.

Holy fuck op, read the shit out of this. You'll be glad.

>> No.1645921

>>1645917
lolno older than internets

>> No.1645926

>>1645896
Several. I'm flipping through it and I hardly know what to pick; I don't want to clog up this thread going on about it. If I were to pick just one line, it would be "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." It may seem hokey but at the time it was the first thing that really made apparent to me that our perceptions of good and bad experiences are highly dependent on each other.

>> No.1645948

>>1645926

Have a copy on my dresser right now. Lovely book, and a lot of substance for its very few pages.

>> No.1645950

I wouldn't say 'radically changed', but Waiting for Godot really influenced my personal philosophy.

>> No.1645951

1984, Clockwork Orange and American Psycho. But I think that it was just the point that I was reading them for the first time - all within 6 months around the age of 15-16.

>> No.1645955

To the people listing 1984.. why? The only message in 1984 is 'totalitarianism is bad', which should've been obvious from the get go. The imagery is absolutely disturbing, sure, but that's not life changing...

>> No.1645958

>>1645955

>'totalitarianism is bad', which should've been obvious from the get go

lol

>> No.1645959

>>1645955
>>1645955
>The only message in 1984 is 'totalitarianism is bad'

no.

>> No.1645960

Crash. Makes me feel that feel whenever I'm driving.

>> No.1645988
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1645988

This one did it for me. I was such a zombie before it. This and the Tao are the only two books I've been rereading for years.

Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse