Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What book changed your life?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 539 posts

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#501

Post by silent_cal »

tomjen3 wrote: post #432
Double_a_92 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm also slightly confused by those comments. I tried reading it from start to end, and it wasn't that enjoyable. It was mostly lost listings of names about peoples grand grand parents... and things that didn't really fit what was say two sentences ago. Am I missing the "proper" way of reading it? But if there is, that would eventually just leave to cherry picking...

I tried the same, gave up after Lot's daughters got their father drunk and raped him.

p0d's comment is right - much of the Old Testament is an illustration of fallen human nature. It's a stumbling walk towards redemption. The characters of the OT do not always act heroically. In fact the point is largely that they do not - that they need to be saved somehow. How that happens is described in the New Testament.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#502

Post by starrygordon »

roeles wrote: post #422
ISL wrote: post #57

The Tao Te Ching has given me more contemplative moments per page than anything else I've read.

Yes, very much this. I listened to the Stephen Mitchell audiobook during a week of patiently sanding something down. That was the seed for a slow but radical change of perspective on life.

The Book of Changes (also known as the I Ching or Yi Jing, depending on your favorite Romanization). Explaining what it is would be too lengthy here; it is better to start with a précis like the Wikipedia article, and then (I would say) to the introduction to the Wilhelm-Baynes translation by C.G. Jung. One can actually employ the divination rituals, which often yield "answers" which are often strangely relevant and sometimes shocking. I came to the Book of Changes via another book, _Psyche and Symbol_, by Jung, which I found very difficult. At the time I was 17 or 18 (so, late 1950s) and "we" were all going through an End-of-History moment when all relevant, important facts were supposed to be known and everyone was supposed to be well-balanced and rational. (This is so remote from contemporary cultures that I guess you had to be there to understand it.) It was "the old folks' home in the college" as the prophet Zimmerman put it, dry and asphyxiating. I wanted to break out of that. Jung's preface to the Book of Changes was included in _Psyche and Symbol_ and instead of being confused with his rather dense mythographies elsewhere, the part about the Book of Changes was very clear and included a description of the material practice. So I ordered the book (actually, in those days, two volumes from the Bollingen Foundation and far from a mass-media or hip item) and started using it immediately. Its style was not at all like the Bible, the Qur'an, or most of the other spiritual works of fame; I suppose some of it resembles the Daode Jing (Tao Te Ching) but since one works actively with it -- it requires interpretation -- the experience of using it is unlike that of any other books I know. It certainly changed by life by changing the perspectives from which I looked upon things. I had sort of escaped into a wider and stranger world. (Curiously, I later became a computer programmer, using from time to time the binary arithmetic supposedly invented by Leibniz under the inspiration of the Book of Changes, although this may be in the area of legend.) There are quite a few editions of the book online, some of them bilingual in case you can read ancient Chinese or you like the décor; but an investigation of the characters and their etymology may also be relevant.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#503

Post by leobg »

skilled wrote: post #39

I think the only book I can recall having a direct impact on my conscious awareness was The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle[0]. The book is very easy to read and quite enjoyable with everything that it includes. I definitely recommend to check it out. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Now-Guide-Spiritual-Enlightenme...

Same here. First time I tried to read it, I literally smashed it angrily in the floor. But I came back to it a while later. And then it clicked. I read many more books by “E.T.” after that, and also loved his audio lectures (audiobooks, YouTube, Eckhart Tolle TV). That was a while back, though. Ten years or so.

Those who enjoy Eckhart will probably also enjoy Osho. His talks had a similar effect on me. With Osho, it is helpful that he is no longer around. So it’s easier to look past the cultish aspects of his person.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#504

Post by tasty_freeze »

silent_cal wrote: post #499
tasty_freeze wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nihilism then?”. The Bible unabashedly says “yes, if you don’t have God” I am not trying to argue theology here, just giving another perspective. I was raised an an observant Catholic household, and I went every week from ages 5-19 and missed only a few times due to illness. But I never believed, I just don't have a spiritual bone in my body. None of what you quoted from Solomon about the impermanence of our materi…

I think you're not driving far enough to the conclusion of what you're saying. If there is no afterlife, then eventually there will be nobody left in the world, in which case nothing that anyone had ever done or said would have really mattered.

I completely disagree. Scan this thread for my thought experiment about the pill that wipes your memory back to the state it was 30 days ago. I haven't overlooked the point you are making.

> If there is no afterlife, then eventually there will be nobody left in the world,

Whether or not there is an afterlife, it is inevitable that the earth will become uninhabitable. It seems far more likely that humans will die off before that becomes a problem.

> in which case nothing that anyone had ever done or said would have really mattered

Like the old joke about fish not being aware of water, I think people who have spent their entire lives in a Christian mindset forget that the novel thing Jesus was offering was an afterlife. Many cultures and religions believe a person simply stops existing when they die (including Judaism), yet the people without a belief in the afterlife still seem to care if they are happy or miserable.

Let me try another tack along the lines of the thought experiment I stated elsewhere in the thread. Christians believe in a personal soul that outlives the body it is tied to. I'm sure some Christians might think that some animals have souls as well, but I'll go out on a limb and say most don't believe, say, a beetle, has a soul. If you came across me torturing beetles with salt, or fire, or pulling their legs off, you'd rightfully think I'm a horrible person. Why would it matter? After all, the beetle has no soul and will be dead in a few months anyway. It is because even though the pain is temporary, it is very real while the beetle lives through it.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#505

Post by karkehan »

"The World Jones Made" by Philip K. Dick. Like much of his work it feels depressing and melancholy, however there is one paragraph, just one, that turns the story on its head. It is so thoroughly provocative and mind-bending that it made me re-evaluate my perspective on reality. A very Philip K. Dick thing to do.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#508

Post by chevill »

tpoacher wrote: post #204
agumonkey wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I tried reading the bible, maybe some pages are to be skipped, I couldn't keep after 5 ... too many "don't have sex with your cousin's wife unless her father owned a goat" logic.

Not a bible expert, but the old testament in particular has books that are effectively 'legal' (rather than theological) in nature. The kind of thing you quote here is likely from that kind of book (and typically the kind of thing quoted in TV shows needing to show how 'silly are the things Christians believe in'). If you put it in that context, then it's not that much sillier than stuff like "Owning a pet lobster in…

>it's not that much sillier than stuff like "Owning a pet lobster in Maine is illegal when that lobster is pregnant" kind of laws. (true law btw)

I agree about the old testament, but this is only silly when taken out of context. Long before I got into network security I worked in the Maine Lobster industry shoveling bait (which is half-rotten fish mixed with salt, lobsters love it!) into buckets and weighing/storing lobsters at a fisherman's co-op.

An important part of conservation revolves around people putting fertile female lobsters back in the ocean when they are inadvertently caught. Maine puts a lot more effort into conserving them than the surrounding states/countries do (who frequently get caught poaching in Maine waters and keeping lobsters that would be illegal to keep even if they were allowed to fish in Maine.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#509

Post by chevill »

geocrasher wrote: post #95

First and foremost: The Bible. Not the watered down "everybody goes to heaven" theology that most people subscribe to, but rather an evidence based approach that uses the Bible to interpret itself as it was designed to do. Secondarily, this book saved my life in the sense that it helped me understand my depression, a clinical depression so deep that my psychologist had never seen such a thing previously: Get Out of Y…

>but rather an evidence based approach that uses the Bible to interpret itself as it was designed to do.

Can you elaborate on this? I'd be interested to hear more about your approach.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#510

Post by chevill »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #370
tasty_freeze wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nihilism then?”. The Bible unabashedly says “yes, if you don’t have God” I am not trying to argue theology here, just giving another perspective. I was raised an an observant Catholic household, and I went every week from ages 5-19 and missed only a few times due to illness. But I never believed, I just don't have a spiritual bone in my body. None of what you quoted from Solomon about the impermanence of our materi…

> It is a colossal failure of imagination to think that without God people must believe nothing matters. I haven't ever talked to an unbeliever who believes nothing matters, though I've heard of nihilist philosophers. I suspect non-philosophers who believe in nihilism usually have something from which they're trying to escape; they're not being honest with themselves. Of course each moment matters - it's a time of li…

>I suppose for those who consciously or subconsciously know they're guilty of sin, the idea of annihilation is far preferable to facing judgment for their sins in the past, so I can see how atheism would be an attractive option, ultimate meaninglessness notwithstanding. But Christianity is primarily about what to do with that guilt -- that God's son Jesus paid the price for your sin and mine, and he offers forgiveness to those who will trust him and call on his name. (And I'm sure you've heard that before.)

  Your comment and a lot of others seem to presuppose that atheists don't genuinely not believe in God, there must be some sort of rejection of a God that exists or some conscious/unconscious attempt to avoid taking responsibility for something.

  My not being a Christian is really simple. It has nothing to do with my ideas on the bible or morality in general. nothing to do with whether or not I'm a sinner (I agree with you and Christianity that everyone falls very short of moral perfection), it has nothing to do with my personal happiness or making it easier for me to sleep at night.

  I simply don't believe that supernatural events exist. Nothing I have heard, discussed, read, watched or experienced in my life has convinced me that supernatural things happen in a general sense or that the specific supernatural things that are essential to believing in Christianity have happened.
Post reply on HN