61–70 of 185 posts
Bukowski's style gave me a permission that I didn't know I was looking for. It was raw and accessible. It showed me that prose and poetry didn't need to be buried in metaphor and riddles.
That extends to much of life: let's get on with it. Sometimes it's fine to drop ceremony and adornment--especially if it's not genuine.
It gave me a plausible alternative to Nihilism.
-It led me down the path to the realization that advertising in almost all of its current forms is unequivocally evil and has no credible moral justification in our current society. I have been running adblocking software on all of my devices (and that of my family's) and feel mildly disgusted every time I see an ad in the street or on the rare occasions I watch television.
-It opened my eyes on the fact that corporations having more power than governments is a huge deal, especially at times where government is often equivocated to 'lazy bureaucrats' and opposed to private companies' supposed 'efficiency' (but for whom?).
-It made me realize that environmentalists are not just some rambling, soft-natured and out-of-touch hippies but simply ringing the bell about how we are going to be royally screwed if we don't radically change our current consumption habits.
But the most shocking thing about that book is that it was written in 1952. There was no targeted advertising and tracking, no concerns about global warming, no oil peak. Critics at the time said it was witty and light-hearted, but far too much of a caricature to be taken seriously. Reading the thing more than 60 years later gives the whole experience a sour pang of irony.
The war of art, by Steven pressfield
That part _changed_ me. Ironically I've now forgotten the exact life lesson.
Read it first when I was 16, at the recommendation of my literature teacher in high school. For the past... - darn, this was long ago! - ...more than 20 years, I've read it at least once a year, and intend to do that for as long as I can read.
That book changed me, like nothing else since.
A description of how love (romantic love, brotherly love, love for God, love for oneself) has to be actively practiced much like any other discipline and what the consequences are for individuals living in a society that by and large does not hold this belief. As a younger person who often gets frustrated with how easy it is to get caught up in his own narcissism and materialism, this book helped me better understand myself and what my core drives are moreso than anything else I’ve encountered to date. Only like 120 pages to boot.
Truly a mind-expanding book, which can help remove a lot of contraints on ones’ thinking.
Dandelion Wine