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What book(s) has changed your life? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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What clicked and made you have a different mindset? How long did it take to start changing and how long was the transformation? Did it last or is it an ongoing back and forth between your old self? I want to know your transformation and success.

Any kind of change, big or small. Anything from weight loss, world view, personality shift, major life change, single change like stopped smoking or drinking soda to starting exercising or going back to school. I want to hear how people's life were a bit or a lot better through reading and your progress.

TIA ๐Ÿ™

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[โ€“] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

Illuminatus is the most potent and interesting paradigm-shifting book I've ever read. It's like an epistemological shotgun blast, guerilla ontology indeed. Anything by R. A. Wilson is advisable, but this one really shakes you loose of your preconceptions and opens the door to new perspectives.

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Illuminatus! is the political weirdness of the post-JFK-assassination period; extrapolated into a psychedelic occult fantasy; as interpreted by two white male porno writers; who were on some combination of weed, acid, plastic nude martinis, and coke for most of it.

    It is very much a product of a specific time period and social situation.

    I've probably re-read it more than any other book.

    Wilson went on to write some good stuff, and some utter bullshit, and he's very clear on the fact that he's not telling you which part is the good stuff and which part is the utter bullshit.

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    I've probably re-read it more than any other book.

    I definitely have.

    Honestly I don't think he wrote any utter bullshit, as such. Anything that could be described as such, was basically intended as such, with the explicit purpose of making you a specific kind of confused. In that sense, the bullshit itself was deeply profound, in a sense.

    Everything is true, and false, and meaningless. I think really grokking that, which requires the intermingling of nonsensical-sounding profundity with profound-sounding nonsense, underlies an elusive sort of dynamic enlightenment.

    But what the fuck do I know?

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    Some people need to hear that everything is a little bit bullshit.

    Some people need to hear that some things are a lot more bullshit than others.

    RAW was a lot better at the first than the second.

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 3 years ago

    Some people huff their own farts, metaphysically speaking.

    The second is a pit stop on the way the the first, which itself is a pit stop to yet higher realizations. Some people need to figure things out for themselves, they just haven't started asking the right questions yet. RAW excelled at assaulting you with more questions than you were really prepared to answer, and giving you the opportunity to try to figure out what he was really trying to say, without ever really giving you a solid answer. That's why re-reads are so satisfying: every time you read it, you've changed enough to dramatically redefine which parts are bullshit.

    If you need to be told which things are more bullshit than others, you're not quite there yet. But it can still get you there, with enough iterations.

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