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  • 6 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: October 21st, 2023
  • cliff_smiff@alien.topBtoBooks•Something I Don't Get About the Invocation of the MusesEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    You should check out Awakening From the Meaning Crisis by John Vervaeke. He argues there is an important spiritual part of being and knowing, that is partly or totally lacking in many people nowadays. And no that does not mean sky fairies. Even though you think people think sky fairies. It sounds to me like you would learn something from the series. I found it extremely humbling. He explains it way better than I ever could.

    Even if spirits are totally a figment of the imagination, would that make them (or their impact) any less real? If you don’t believe in them, if you are Educated and know they are not there, then they’re not there. Maybe they even abandon you, who knows. You might suffer the consequences of that and not even know it. If you believe they are there, that could have a very real effect on your life. So then, aren’t they there, in a sense? It’s hard to explain. These are my undeveloped ideas, you should just listen to Vervaeke, not me.

  • cliff_smiff@alien.topBtoBooks•Unintelligent Characters?English
    1·
    1 year ago

    Hmm, maybe try to read writers/characters that you disagree with politically.

    A lot of humorous characters can be dumb as shit, in some ways at least. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are dumb in different ways, and thank god they have each other. Ignatius from A Confederacy of Dunces is dumb. Ebeneezer Cooke from The Sot Weed Factor is naive in the extreme. These characters are well-read, eloquent, and intelligent in one way, but their own inflexible worldviews and belief in their own intelligence make them essentially unable to function in the real world.

    Brown Dog by Jim Harrison is an interesting character. In a conventional sense he is unintelligent. He’s a hillbilly who scrapes by in life. If he happens to get some money, he’s basically guaranteed to blow it within a day. He does some extremely stupid (and entertaining) things. But, he has this deep sort of folksy, humane wisdom, and you almost get the sense that he needs to be conventionally dumb in order to have it.

    There are some very dumb characters in Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy. Harrogate is mind-numbingly stupid. The narrator, Suttree, is presented as very intelligent, but you could probably interrogate the aptness of that perspective as well.