CaptainTrouble
Well-Known Member
I like books and I always like to hear what people recommend but I'm afraid too many people read books and then take nothing away from the book. To me, a book is only good if reading the book made a significant change in how you went about your life. I can think of a few books that meet this criteria for me yet I've read hundreds of books. I want to hear which books changed something about how you went about your life (some sort of ACTIONS in how you changed) and what exactly it changed. A useful book is one that grows a person not just reinforces what they already know or think.
My book recommendation list:
- Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. When I read this book and learned about his view on temperance along with his specific take on anger (where if you don't get angry enough at certain things then you're slavish and not a good person not just to yourself but others you should be angry for) I realized I was too used to being raised in the believe that it was better to control your emotions rather than show them. I had at the time received some feedback in life regarding my lack of showing certain emotions and reading this book made me make a concerted effort to display certain emotions more and have more temperance as Aristotle describes. I was always teetering in this way but the book was the final push I needed to breakthrough my previous views of certain emotions always being bad to display.
- Bronze Age Mindset by Bronze Age Pervert. Yes, I realize he's jewish with terrible takes on X but his book still holds in many areas. He wouldn't be the first jew to write something accurate. The big take away for me from this book was the realigning that life wasn't about living as long as possible but living "gloriously". An ancient Greek concept I'm sure I could have better learned from a different book but still, reading this resonated with me significantly and I read it at the start of COVID which made it resonate with me even more. The things people wanted to do to society just to live longer were abysmal so this book's concept of life really stuck out for me. In my life, it made me take more risks. These days, people who get to know me often say I am fearless but I wasn't always. I just have a much different attitude on life and just like in the previous book, I was already headed in that direction but this book helped push me over the edge and I realigned my actions going forward to be more about doing what in my mind was "glorious" for me and less about minimizing risk to live a long life. A long life as a slave is worse than a short life as a rebel as far as I am concerned.
- After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre. First, do not read this book if you aren't a heavy reader. It's not an easy read at all. It's a philosophy book written by a philosopher so if you know anything about the way philosophers write, it's almost a requisite in the subject to write in a manner no one but other philosophers can understand. Still, it had a profound impact on how I viewed discourse with other people and ended up changing how I converse with others. I used to spend a lot of energy trying to convince others why their views was wrong and why they should change their views. This book gave me great insight into why this doesn't work and it's because their fundamental moral values are different than my own, thus even if everything I'm saying is correct, it won't resonate with the other person because their idea of morality is different than my own and we're busy discussing everything except these fundamental moral issues that are central to understanding whether something is right or wrong. I argue with people way less than I used to and when I do I change the way I go about it to get straight to the point. Do you believe discriminating against people because of race is bad? Yes or no. If they answer yes then I know all my facts about racial differences won't matter, it is this fundamental value and belief I must challenge to get anywhere in the discussion so that's how I go about my discussions now. I don't waste my time arguing facts, I focus on challenging their morality. What they think is good must be called out as evil and what they think is evil must be called out as good.
Those are probably the 3 most impactful with regard to changes in my actions/behaviors going forward after reading them.
A couple worthy mentions.
The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in The Quest for the Spirit by Julius Evola. Prior to reading this book I considered most spiritual and esoteric things to be pretty garbage. After reading this book I did a complete 180 on both those subjects. Evola really did a great job in this book connecting both spiritual and esoteric things to the real world that both are based in. He did it in such a positive manner in this book for me that I had a newfound respect for either and realized my previous take on both spiritual and esoteric things was a blind spot in my knowledge of reality and my framework for understanding reality. I realized the reason I thought spirituality and esoteric things were garbage is because my exposure to them were from garbage sources. Some nose ring leftist chick who loves astrology or thinks everyone's spirit is all connected so we're all equal is not who one should be getting an understanding of their from but it was all my exposure had mostly been from. After reading this book I became a lot more open to either subject and realized most esoteric things is often just an explanation of something real in our reality that some people might miss. This book essentially led me to a specific conclusion of mine that has impacted actions/behaviors in my life: that religion is downstream of race. We all have our religious bibles imprinted in us already and it's our genetics. Even without a written Bible, we'd all come to the optimal religion for us eventually anyhow because our spirit that determines that is a product of our nature which is our genetics. This has actually led me to discount all structured religion and religious institutions based on ancient texts. I do not believe they are optimal for us and their doctrines are often not just suboptimal but often detrimental to us. This was later reinforced again to me when I read all the Ancient Greek stories and realized many of the taught lessons in these stories are superior to that which is taught in most organized religions today. I spend less of my time discussion/arguing religion or trying to find a religion to associate with now.
Erectus Walks Among Us by Richard D. Fuerle. This was the book that finally made me racist. Like in the other books, I was already heading in that direction but the fact this author, who wasn't even a trained scientist, wrote this book before DNA testing became available to verify any of his assertions but now DNA testing proved much of what he said right, I was forced to conclude that he was right. He must have observed these things, gathered the info and then presented his conclusion based on observation. Since he got it right and DNA testing proved him right, well, it turns out differences in races is very real. Up to this point, I was trained on the we're all equal but different environmental factors influence how people develop. This proved that wrong to me and ever since then I've been a staunch racist. I've joined groups I never would have joined were I not racist, I've changed how I associate with others because I see race now and understand the realities of associating with different races.
My book recommendation list:
- Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. When I read this book and learned about his view on temperance along with his specific take on anger (where if you don't get angry enough at certain things then you're slavish and not a good person not just to yourself but others you should be angry for) I realized I was too used to being raised in the believe that it was better to control your emotions rather than show them. I had at the time received some feedback in life regarding my lack of showing certain emotions and reading this book made me make a concerted effort to display certain emotions more and have more temperance as Aristotle describes. I was always teetering in this way but the book was the final push I needed to breakthrough my previous views of certain emotions always being bad to display.
- Bronze Age Mindset by Bronze Age Pervert. Yes, I realize he's jewish with terrible takes on X but his book still holds in many areas. He wouldn't be the first jew to write something accurate. The big take away for me from this book was the realigning that life wasn't about living as long as possible but living "gloriously". An ancient Greek concept I'm sure I could have better learned from a different book but still, reading this resonated with me significantly and I read it at the start of COVID which made it resonate with me even more. The things people wanted to do to society just to live longer were abysmal so this book's concept of life really stuck out for me. In my life, it made me take more risks. These days, people who get to know me often say I am fearless but I wasn't always. I just have a much different attitude on life and just like in the previous book, I was already headed in that direction but this book helped push me over the edge and I realigned my actions going forward to be more about doing what in my mind was "glorious" for me and less about minimizing risk to live a long life. A long life as a slave is worse than a short life as a rebel as far as I am concerned.
- After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre. First, do not read this book if you aren't a heavy reader. It's not an easy read at all. It's a philosophy book written by a philosopher so if you know anything about the way philosophers write, it's almost a requisite in the subject to write in a manner no one but other philosophers can understand. Still, it had a profound impact on how I viewed discourse with other people and ended up changing how I converse with others. I used to spend a lot of energy trying to convince others why their views was wrong and why they should change their views. This book gave me great insight into why this doesn't work and it's because their fundamental moral values are different than my own, thus even if everything I'm saying is correct, it won't resonate with the other person because their idea of morality is different than my own and we're busy discussing everything except these fundamental moral issues that are central to understanding whether something is right or wrong. I argue with people way less than I used to and when I do I change the way I go about it to get straight to the point. Do you believe discriminating against people because of race is bad? Yes or no. If they answer yes then I know all my facts about racial differences won't matter, it is this fundamental value and belief I must challenge to get anywhere in the discussion so that's how I go about my discussions now. I don't waste my time arguing facts, I focus on challenging their morality. What they think is good must be called out as evil and what they think is evil must be called out as good.
Those are probably the 3 most impactful with regard to changes in my actions/behaviors going forward after reading them.
A couple worthy mentions.
The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in The Quest for the Spirit by Julius Evola. Prior to reading this book I considered most spiritual and esoteric things to be pretty garbage. After reading this book I did a complete 180 on both those subjects. Evola really did a great job in this book connecting both spiritual and esoteric things to the real world that both are based in. He did it in such a positive manner in this book for me that I had a newfound respect for either and realized my previous take on both spiritual and esoteric things was a blind spot in my knowledge of reality and my framework for understanding reality. I realized the reason I thought spirituality and esoteric things were garbage is because my exposure to them were from garbage sources. Some nose ring leftist chick who loves astrology or thinks everyone's spirit is all connected so we're all equal is not who one should be getting an understanding of their from but it was all my exposure had mostly been from. After reading this book I became a lot more open to either subject and realized most esoteric things is often just an explanation of something real in our reality that some people might miss. This book essentially led me to a specific conclusion of mine that has impacted actions/behaviors in my life: that religion is downstream of race. We all have our religious bibles imprinted in us already and it's our genetics. Even without a written Bible, we'd all come to the optimal religion for us eventually anyhow because our spirit that determines that is a product of our nature which is our genetics. This has actually led me to discount all structured religion and religious institutions based on ancient texts. I do not believe they are optimal for us and their doctrines are often not just suboptimal but often detrimental to us. This was later reinforced again to me when I read all the Ancient Greek stories and realized many of the taught lessons in these stories are superior to that which is taught in most organized religions today. I spend less of my time discussion/arguing religion or trying to find a religion to associate with now.
Erectus Walks Among Us by Richard D. Fuerle. This was the book that finally made me racist. Like in the other books, I was already heading in that direction but the fact this author, who wasn't even a trained scientist, wrote this book before DNA testing became available to verify any of his assertions but now DNA testing proved much of what he said right, I was forced to conclude that he was right. He must have observed these things, gathered the info and then presented his conclusion based on observation. Since he got it right and DNA testing proved him right, well, it turns out differences in races is very real. Up to this point, I was trained on the we're all equal but different environmental factors influence how people develop. This proved that wrong to me and ever since then I've been a staunch racist. I've joined groups I never would have joined were I not racist, I've changed how I associate with others because I see race now and understand the realities of associating with different races.
Upvote
3
