Philosophy that has changed your life

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Several times a paragraph, sentence or a few particularly brilliant descriptive words have completely opened my mind to new ways of understanding or thinking about things. Has it happened to you?

― Scaredy cat (Natola), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 02:46 (twenty-two years ago)

search: name: mark s

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 02:49 (twenty-two years ago)

dave q

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 02:51 (twenty-two years ago)

(actual answer: none at all)

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 02:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Ayn Rand's life and work!

Now I know that my avarice is rational and objectively and universally morally correct, and that's made my life so much easier.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 02:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Albert Camus.

― Millar (Millar), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 03:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Discipline and Punish.

― anthony easton (anthony), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 03:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Anthony stole my answer...

― Ally (mlescaut), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 03:20 (twenty-two years ago)

the best advice for writing and living is on the back of cans of Barbasol shaving cream: "To avoid irritation, use gentle strokes with a sharp razor."

okay maybe it's just me then

― Neudonym, Wednesday, 23 July 2003 03:26 (twenty-two years ago)

"Do not to others what you would not have them do to you" - Confucious
"Do unto others what you would have them do unto you" - Jesus

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 03:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Neudonym, that's fuckin' brilliant! Did you just make that up?

― Scaredy cat (Natola), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 03:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh gosh, I think I actually have my life philosophy on a fridge magnet.

Hang on...

"We do not remember days, we remember moments." Cesare Pavese.

Mind you, there's a Super Grover right next to it.

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 03:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Orbit, St. Paul, I believe said something similar and equally true: "The things I would not, I do; the things I would, I do not."

― Scaredy cat (Natola), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 03:30 (twenty-two years ago)

E.M. Cioran

― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 03:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh, Jesus. I mean: Jesus. "Be as sly as snakes and simple as doves." And the mustard seed bit. And render unto Caesar. Those are all good. Those can all crack your head a bit.

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 03:32 (twenty-two years ago)

that Paul quote needs a context for those who don't know; outside of it, it seems to take opposite meaning. anyway, yeah i'm a boring idiot and actually took the thread seriously.

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 03:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, thanks Orbit, I was hoping for serious answers.

― Scaredy cat (Natola), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 03:35 (twenty-two years ago)

For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
Matthew 19:25

― anthony easton (anthony), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:00 (twenty-two years ago)

The actual current quote (reading this off my can of Barbasol "Cool Menthol": "Use gentle strokes with a sharp razor to avoid irritation." They used to phrase it the other way (more or less), which was better.

When I was a pretentious middle-schooler I put the following haiku on a 3"x5" index card and hung it on my wall until I went to college:

My storehouse having
Burnt down, nothing obscures the
Light of the bright moon

I'm pretty sure it's Basho who wrote that. I wish I could have learned from it, instead of just displaying it like a trophy.

― Neudonym, Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:02 (twenty-two years ago)

In StarCraft, old Blizzard game right, they had this spaceship captain. When you clicked on him and told him to do stuff he would say things in this goofy sexyman Euro-accent. I wrote down three choice quotes with a fat sharpie on a 5x7 card and stuck it on my dorm room door:

Set a course.
Take it slow.
Make it happen.

Those of you who've played hours of this game will be familiar, I'm sure. Didn't do much to change my life at the time, but it's a fine mantra nonetheless, in that stupid self-help sort of way. Especially with the accent.

― Millar (Millar), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:16 (twenty-two years ago)

The Tao Te Ching. It straddles my desire for a point to the chaos of the universe, with my repulsion of organised religion, in a really neat way.

― Trayce (trayce), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Erm, I can't remember who it was by but I've alway's liked the line; 'if you don't like elevator music, start writing elevator music'

― Nellie (nellskies), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:34 (twenty-two years ago)

I and Thou

― Prude (Prude), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Pull over! 16th century grammar police: I and Thee

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:40 (twenty-two years ago)

The point is not to interpret the world, but to change it.

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Dude, it's I and Thou. That's what it's known by, at least.

― Prude (Prude), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:41 (twenty-two years ago)

*ssshhhhh* it was a joke.....
Thou = direct object
Three = indirect object

I have no idea what "I and Thou" refers to or who wrote it ;-)

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:43 (twenty-two years ago)

and that's Dude-ette!

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:43 (twenty-two years ago)

"I don't kid myself and you don't have to either" - R. Xgau (which isn't to say that I don't)

I and Thou

I have this in the other room; need to read it some day.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:44 (twenty-two years ago)

thee not three oh time to go to bed. bye....

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh... I knew that. ;^)
It's a work on ethical philosophy by Martin Buber. Some of it's pretty impenetrable, but it accumulates into something really fascinating.

― Prude (Prude), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Are you saying you were profoundly influenced by Robert Christgau? Ok, now I really *am* going to bed.

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Heh. And apologies for the gender mix-up there, Orbit.

― Prude (Prude), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:47 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.constitution.org/ari/ethic_00.htm

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:48 (twenty-two years ago)

That's a basic one. Also:

Don't shit where you eat.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Re: Don't shit where you eat.
An anthropolgist told me a story about her fieldwork in rural Africa, where the tribe was *horrified* to hear that American houses had toilets INSIDE, for that very reason.
*grabs pillow*

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 04:51 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.ebaynham.com/Merchant2/graphics/disg_lg.gif

― Dada, Wednesday, 23 July 2003 05:09 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.idiotech.com/img/philosophy.jpg

― Prude (Prude), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 06:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Millar, I feel your Starcraft reference. I'll credit you if I do an electro track that samples it.

The most eye-opening things for me philosophically were:

Lacan's mirror stage essay.
Laura Mulvey's, 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'
Donna Haraway's, 'The Cyborg Manifesto'

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 06:26 (twenty-two years ago)

do morrissey lyrics count?

― lolita corpus (lolitacorpus), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 06:36 (twenty-two years ago)

As the flipside to Foucault, Michel de Certeau The Practice of Everyday Life - seemed to explain my entire mindset during adolescence, esp. being more or less institutionalized by High School, and so on...

― Michael Dieter, Wednesday, 23 July 2003 06:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Luke 6 : 20-49

― Sommermute (Wintermute), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 07:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Nausea by Sartre and Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 07:28 (twenty-two years ago)

That pre-eminent questions of the time become non-sensical at a later date.

― Alan (Alan), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 07:37 (twenty-two years ago)

WHO STAYS? YOU DECIDE!

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 07:39 (twenty-two years ago)

''The point is not to interpret the world, but to change it.''

I like that one as well.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 07:40 (twenty-two years ago)

back of matchbox - 'keep dry and away from children'
best advice ever

― joni, Wednesday, 23 July 2003 07:41 (twenty-two years ago)

WHO STAYS? YOU DECIDE!
A perfect example of the above

― Alan (Alan), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 07:42 (twenty-two years ago)

'don't eat yellow snow'

― luna (luna.c), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 07:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I went through a rather intensive period of reading lots and lots of Richard Rorty earlier this year and, while I'm not sure I would say it "changed my life", it certainly helped me think around a few problems I was having.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 07:58 (twenty-two years ago)

"There's no difference between fate and free will. Here I am; put here, come here. No difference. Same thing."

And to be honest the entirety of the Invisibles.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 08:39 (twenty-two years ago)

i would like to add learning from las vegas by venturi.

― anthony easton (anthony), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 08:44 (twenty-two years ago)

I have a habit of taping fortune cookie fortunes all over the place. The ones taped to my desk:

Relax and enjoy yourself.
Smile! A smile will make you loved forever.
To achieve a great goal, one must begin with a small achievement.

I taped one that says "You will soon be changing your career" to one of my friend's desks and it freaked him out.

― Ally (mlescaut), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 12:44 (twenty-two years ago)

the weather constitutes all necessary philosophy.

the correct answer to any philosophical question is 'fuck off'.

― cameron, Wednesday, 23 July 2003 12:54 (twenty-two years ago)

"Do or do not, there is no try." I bet you think I'm kidding.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 12:57 (twenty-two years ago)

marcus aurelius' meditations

― angela (angela), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 12:58 (twenty-two years ago)

"The bliss of freedom gained in humour is the essence of Falstaff. His humour is not directed only or chiefly against obvious absurdities; he is the enemy of everything that would interfere with his ease, and therefore of anything serious, and especially of everything respectable and moral. For these things impose limits and obligations, and make us the subjects of old father antic the law, and the categorical imperative, and our station and its duties, and conscience, and reputation, and other people's opinions, and all sorts of nuisances. I say he is therefore their enemy; but I do him wrong; to say that he is their enemy implies that he regards them as serious and recognises their power, when in truth he refuses to recognize them at all. They are to him absurd; and to reduce a thing ad absurdum is to reduce it to nothing and to walk about free and rejoicing. This is what Falstaff does with all the would-be serious things of life....These are the wonderful achievements which he performs, not with the sourness of a cynic, but with the gaiety of a boy. And therefore, we laud him, we praise him, for he offends none but the virtuous, and denies that life is real or life is earnest, and delivers us from the oppression of such nightmares, and lifts us into the atmosphere of perfect freedom." - A. C. Bradley

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 13:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Rorty is actually one of the few modern theorists/philosophers I'd like to read more by, I felt a very strong connection to Contingency, Irony and Solidarity on a variety of levels. And of course I'd like to read Josh Kortbein's eventual masterwork. :-)

Nickalicious, my friend, I know you aren't kidding at all, you wise young man.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 13:51 (twenty-two years ago)

cameron just provided the title to josh's book!

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 13:53 (twenty-two years ago)

"Always be kind to strangers, for thereby you might entertain angels unawares."

That's in the bible somewhere, or something like it. I've always taken that approach, and I've defintely met some angels that way.

― thoth (Jake Proudlock), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 21:57 (twenty-two years ago)

"Walk not perverted, walk with religious language." -- Perverted by Language, The Fall

― daria g (daria g), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 22:57 (twenty-two years ago)

I read Schumacher's 'A Guide For The Perplexed' when I was 18 or so and it had a huge effect on me but now I can't remember a single thing about it.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 23:08 (twenty-two years ago)

E.M. Cioran
-- ryan (augustuscaesar2...), July 23rd, 2003.

Seconded.

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Thursday, 24 July 2003 01:44 (twenty-two years ago)

"you may not be able to change the world, but you can embarass the guilty."

and i read something that said that "should" needs to be eliminated from yr vocabulary. either you want to do it, or you don't. don't say you "should" do anything. this small thing has helped me tremendously.

― praying mantis (praying mantis), Thursday, 24 July 2003 14:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Was that a Star Wars novelisation?

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 24 July 2003 14:11 (twenty-two years ago)

eleven years pass...

Accept defeat and the world takes it easier on you

― calstars, Saturday, 9 August 2014 17:20 (eleven years ago)

I need to check up on it again, but I remember John Barth's The Floating Opera having some amazing insights towards the end. I can't remember the wording, but it's along the lines of:

Just because something isn't true doesn't mean you shouldn't believe it.
Just because something is unachievable doesn't mean you shouldn't strive for it.

It's my own paraphrasing, but it's something that I live by.

― Frederik B, Saturday, 9 August 2014 19:19 (eleven years ago)

"Everything is relative to the observer"

everything

― Brian Eno's Mother (Latham Green), Saturday, 9 August 2014 20:32 (eleven years ago)

there's loads i could say here but i dunno that anything ever has shifted my being more than the fifth part of spinoza's ethics.

― Merdeyeux, Sunday, 10 August 2014 03:25 (eleven years ago)

Emerson, mostly "Experience"

― ryan, Sunday, 10 August 2014 03:41 (eleven years ago)

Yes! I read that one again last week. It came as a great refresher after a few disappointing hours with Beyond Good and Evil.

― jmm, Sunday, 10 August 2014 04:14 (eleven years ago)

The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a succession of moods or objects. Gladly we would anchor, but the anchorage is quicksand. This onward trick of nature is too strong for us: Pero si muove. When, at night, I look at the moon and stars, I seem stationary, and they to hurry. Our love of the real draws us to permanence, but health of body consists in circulation, and sanity of mind in variety or facility of association. We need change of objects. Dedication to one thought is quickly odious. We house with the insane, and must humor them; then conversation dies out. Once I took such delight in Montaigne, that I thought I should not need any other book; before that, in Shakspeare; then in Plutarch; then in Plotinus; at one time in Bacon; afterwards in Goethe; even in Bettine; but now I turn the pages of either of them languidly, whilst I still cherish their genius. So with pictures; each will bear an emphasis of attention once, which it cannot retain, though we fain would continue to be pleased in that manner. How strongly I have felt of pictures, that when you have seen one well, you must take your leave of it; you shall never see it again. I have had good lessons from pictures, which I have since seen without emotion or remark. A deduction must be made from the opinion, which even the wise express of a new book or occurrence. Their opinion gives me tidings of their mood, and some vague guess at the new fact but is nowise to be trusted as the lasting relation between that intellect and that thing. The child asks, 'Mamma, why don't I like the story as well as when you told it me yesterday?' Alas, child, it is even so with the oldest cherubim of knowledge. But will it answer thy question to say, Because thou wert born to a whole, and this story is a particular? The reason of the pain this discovery causes us (and we make it late in respect to works of art and intellect), is the plaint of tragedy which murmurs from it in regard to persons, to friendship and love.

― jmm, Sunday, 10 August 2014 04:15 (eleven years ago)

if you can suck your own dick everyone should know about it

― linda cardellini (zachlyon), Sunday, 10 August 2014 04:40 (eleven years ago)

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