What novel helped you find real enlightenment or at least put you on the correct path?

I went down a path of extreme skepticism first. i had a hard time thinking anything was true or valuable, and perhaps relativism was right.

now I am much more confident in my views and small understandings. I have a clearer sense of values. Other competing idelogies don't bother me.

the one thing that sucks about studying philosophy in the first place is it's impossible to consume media or talk to another person without seeing their blatant idealogy they are communicating that they are largely oblivious to.

>the one thing that sucks about studying philosophy in the first place is it's impossible to consume media or talk to another person without seeing their blatant idealogy they are communicating that they are largely oblivious to.

The way I see it, if that's the case, then the 'person' you are talking to is also that ideology.
For instance, if you were talking to a 'perfect avatar' of an ideology - a direct isomorphism between that ideology and a human person, you might as well be talking to the ideology itself.
I believe this is partly why people can seem more or less 'real' - it is indeed the case that you could be talking to a delightful knowledgeable individual one moment and then what seems to be an extension of an ideology the next.

For me, enlightenment is, in a way, seeing Ideas as Persons themselves - and taking delight in witnessing the increasing self-consciousness of persons and abstract systems we normally think of as inert, external objects.

Attached: 1566580308395.jpg (3872x2592, 3.52M)

You'll never be enlightened as long as you remain a flesh slave, gratifying yourself to whatever comes across your plate next. Fueling your own fire, destroying any greater attributes you may have had. Turn back before its too late.

are incels enlightenned beings?

I disagree. few people understand an ideology well enough to embody it. they just combine bits and pieces of contradictory things without understanding their full context or ramifications.

the only people I know of that fit that description are extremely religious idealogues. they combine their religion with a moral absolutist system with a complementary career

Enlightenment is a myth

No, their state is involuntary meaning they still look at and lust after such pleasures and act upon themselves (autoeroticism).

> remain a flesh slave

I will never gonna make it :(

I counter that it is precisely because they do not understand the ideology in its completeness as an ideology, that they can embody it. I do not mean understanding a metaphysical system, and choosing to act it out or instantiate it in reality - I am referring to the inversion, of such a system being acted out through you, without your cognizance of it. I believe this also explains how such people are often oblivious to the internal contradictions of the ideology - if they were aware, that ideology would have to deny its own existence as 'whole truth' or abstract itself into a more complicated system.

I do agree with you about religious actors - it is one of the things compelling and long-lasting enough to derive for itself roles that converge the pragmatic career, social, intellectual, and spiritual modes of being. In this way I would say it is more 'self-aware' than many other ideas.

Perhaps imagery that would better convey what I mean is to see people as 'slaves to their ideologies' - what I truly do mean here is that, when someone is acting out an idea, with no knowledge of how or why - no understanding of the relationship between themselves and the idea, and no understanding of the idea as an idea, then they really are just extensions of that idea - and so when you interact with them, you are really moreso interacting with that idea, than the person. Similarly to how, if we were to talk, I might look into your eyes and speak, but I am not speaking to your eyeballs, neither am I speaking to the mouth that responds to my words.

Huh?

That's what they want you to think.

Attached: 1560777217089.jpg (2400x1011, 678K)

based
the closest we can come to enlightenment is realizing that we as humans aren't capable of it

Tao Te Ching
Opening the Dragon Gate

>the closest we can come to enlightenment is realizing that we as humans aren't capable of it

But still pursuing it anyways.

You have to finish with that. Enlightenment may be infinitely far away, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth the pursuit.

what is freedom? and what is there in freedom that is better than flesh pleasures?

Attached: 9782724280425-es.jpg (324x500, 42K)

based
i think see where you coming from, so you think that the actor writes his own scrip which he simultaneously acts upon kinda like "embodiment of ideology"?

The pale king
East of eden

So, part of the problem is that, when getting at a finalized object, the process to that object is inalienable from it - so in order to understand what I mean, I must necessarily construct a process to that understanding, and you must necessarily go through a process of understanding.

To put it in that language, I think it's something like the progression from, being a pure Character - merely a product of the script, and unknowingly ascribing your will to the script, to being an Actor, preoccupied with their existence as an actor, they may have a desire to 'play the character well' but they deny the character 'exists', to the Actor that understands themselves as an actor, and a conduit for a character. With this understanding, for the first time does the Actor see the contingencies that bind them in their role as Actor, but they also gain the ability to influence the Character, and thereby the Script - this is also the transcendental value of an actor.

The Character is no longer constrained by the script, since the Actor can intervene at that level, likewise the Actor is no longer constrained by the Script, since they 'retroactively' influence the Character that is a part of the Script.
Consider for instance our view of a 'great actor' - they are someone that is not just an extension of the producer/writer/script/capitalism/society - they are someone who comes to understand the Character they play well, and give them new dimensions of life that come directly from the Will of the actor - whether this is through ad-libbing lines, or body language, or a certain look in the eye. Likewise, when the Actor is acknowledged by great through this process, they free themselves from their contingencies as an Actor - they get more say in the works they play in, in both Character portrayal and other things ("Hey Samuel L Jackson wants blues to play in this scene instead of whatever we have right now"), and indeed this gives them power to influence not just the Script, and the Set, but to negate themselves as an Actor - for instance by retiring, or taking their millions after each movie and pay for their sister's health care, thus establishing their existence as 'A Good Brother'.

So, in a sense, although I know this sounds banal - "The way we free ourselves from being a slave to other Ideologies is by giving ourselves willingly and fully to our own Ideology"

Thoroughly misleading posts, BAD!

>implying there is a correct path
>implying I would be treading it if it existed
>implying I would get there through books

You need to both read more and stop giving so much credit to books.

Is pursuing "enlightenment" or "Nirvana" the ultimate Wild Goose Chase?

>Plato instead of Aristotle

Attached: 1560889212728s.jpg (250x206, 5K)

>Semen retention

What is with you pseudointellectual cucks and the hatred for cumming?

Demian

t. cumbrain

Crime and Punishment

You’re the one who keeps bringing it up
You’re the one with the self control problem

Attached: F354490A-FEDC-46DD-8CDE-D46D332A4EC3.jpg (600x450, 26K)

>he can’t control himself from controlling himself
Enlightened cumbrain here.

Yep. And let's add
>implying that any "enlightened" person would ever post on Yea Forums

Attached: 037f3fd32bfe5c1299c19fbec5a54292.jpg (968x803, 183K)

Before enlightenment: chop wood. After enlightenment: chop wood.

A treatise of human nature.

Ya the science, math, politics, psychology and metaphysics are outdated in areas, but Hume is the only thinker that is comfortable wallowing in the absolute poverty of human knowledge.

> but Hume is the only thinker that is comfortable wallowing in the absolute poverty of human knowledge.
That's the case for many religious thinkers, including Blaise Pascal and Pierre-Daniel Huet. Not to mention a big chunk of Buddhist thought.

>berg
dropped

It was through a novel but I wasn't looking for enlightenment (whatever that really means) while reading it. The main character had blind trust in his "best" friend but only ended up being betrayed without knowing it and remained fooled till the end. After finishing the story, I had an AHA moment.

Plato is the bible brainlet