That thing nobody understands about you. That book that explains it. Match me up.
Martin Buber: I and Thou
It’s a masterpiece of philosophy, and honestly accounts for maybe 3/4ths of my worldview.
Every single comment shown in my profile.
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camut. Absurdism/it philosophically examines whether one should commit suicide.
I started reading The Myth of Sisyphus because I’m interested in absurdism but haven’t read much other philosophy apart from some of the classic Stoic books. I found it very dense and hard to get through the first parts with references to philosophers I hadn’t read, does it get easier to read?
The anarchist-faq will get you most of the way there, and the K-On manga will fill in the gaps.
DSM-V
💀
Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle might not explain it, but could add valuable context.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series and the John Dies at the End series
both 10/10s mixing gut wrenching existentialism and laugh out loud comedy
tbh I probably wouldn’t say I’m into comedy writing in general but those two and Terry Pratchett are the only writers to ever make me bust out laughing in response to words on a page
I’ve lost count of the number of times and number of formats in which i’ve consumed The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and i’ve loved it every time.
“They’re not rocks Marie!!”
…ok, maybe some of them are, but they’re really cool!
Anything by Douglas Adams, Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, music history textbooks, Samurai Jack slash fiction, public restroom graffiti, HVAC technical manuals, and the comment sections on porn sites.
- The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain
- Thinking in Systems: A Primer, by Donella H. Meadows and Diana Wright
- Getting to Where You Are, by Steven Harrison
- Journey Without Goal, by Chögyam Trungpa
listen to all jethro tull till you can recognize every song and figure out the two bad albums.
Adorno’s Negative Dialectics
Maybe these don’t explain me, but they hit hard at forming my views of my fellow apes:
American politics
How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind
Which is also explained, among a shitload of other behavior, in
So MUCH of what we see around us is explained in those two articles. I’ve had responses that neither is a complete view, not all behavior, bla, bla, bla. Yeah, I know. But if you want to understand humans, especially why so many seem bugfuck evil, there’s a lot of bang for the buck in there. (Be patient with the Monkeysphere article, old and the formatting is hosed, but I trust you’ll get it.)
All volumes of the Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers. My brain is mostly just useless trivia.
