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Books that discuss self-control in today's world
furion1025
Member UncommonPosts: 45
Folks,
I've recently been trying to find a book on how to basically zone out and remain calm in today's world, where:
1. A band of children poke an innocent kittens eyes in the most gruesome way and laugh.
2. Shark fins get cut off for "soup" and they are thrown away to die.
3. People who torture and skin dogs alive and then actually eat them.
4. Where you defend yourself on the street and you get charged with an assault.
5. Where you get 20 years in prison for having marijuana (I'm from Lithuania) while someone who is 19 years old, drives a fucking BMW (duh) and smashes into a mother and her daughter while they're crossing the street, ripping them to pieces and gets 2 years and free weekends (This story is true)
6. I could go on, but you get the gist.
Are there any recent books that deal with these topics I mentioned? I mean on self-control and how to zone out (Please don't give me the "go-and-change-everything" routine. It's not going to work. If you think you can change the world, please think it through again). Because honestly, sometimes one just wishes the world would end, because human race deserves it so much.
This was a bit of a rant, excuse me.
Cheers,
I've recently been trying to find a book on how to basically zone out and remain calm in today's world, where:
1. A band of children poke an innocent kittens eyes in the most gruesome way and laugh.
2. Shark fins get cut off for "soup" and they are thrown away to die.
3. People who torture and skin dogs alive and then actually eat them.
4. Where you defend yourself on the street and you get charged with an assault.
5. Where you get 20 years in prison for having marijuana (I'm from Lithuania) while someone who is 19 years old, drives a fucking BMW (duh) and smashes into a mother and her daughter while they're crossing the street, ripping them to pieces and gets 2 years and free weekends (This story is true)
6. I could go on, but you get the gist.
Are there any recent books that deal with these topics I mentioned? I mean on self-control and how to zone out (Please don't give me the "go-and-change-everything" routine. It's not going to work. If you think you can change the world, please think it through again). Because honestly, sometimes one just wishes the world would end, because human race deserves it so much.
This was a bit of a rant, excuse me.
Cheers,
Comments
1) Revert to being ignorant.
This may seem illogical but once you've come to the realisation that you are basically powerless in the face of global trends in stupidity, why torture yourself by constantly reading about it? I've had many friends that have done this, essentially they stop watching the news, stop reading newspapers, massively cut down on social networking etc.
By doing this, they cut out a lot of the negative information they are receiving about the world (which they are powerless to alter anyway) and also free up a lot of spare time. This helps them focus on "living in the now" and appreciating what they do have in their lives and if they get angry about something, its usually about something close to them and often they can help.
2) Meditation
Hit and miss on this one, but meditating can be a good way to help control your emotions and thus be less upset by the stupidity in the world.
3) Change in attitude
This is the hardest one. Just learn to not care. Recognise that life is not special, that there are no rules and there are no morals or ethics, only those we impose on ourselves. So, kids torturing a kitten. Is it horrific? Yes. Are the kids fucked up? Yes. Does it matter? NO! There are billions of cats and billions of humans on this planet, the lives for 1 cat and a few kids are pathetically insignificant and we shouldn't give a shit.
By taking this approach, you begin to tune out all the insignificant shit in this world and you can just focus on larger issues that actually matter.
If you prefer a novel, there's always Neuromancer:
Waking to a voice that was music, the platinum terminal piping melodically, endlessly, speaking of numbered Swiss accounts, of payment to be made to Zion via a Bahamian orbital bank, of passports and passages, and of deep and basic changes to be effected in the memory of Turing.
Turing. He remembered stenciled flesh beneath a projected sky, spun beyond an iron railing. He remembered Desiderata Street.
And the voice sang on, piping him back into the dark, but it was his own darkness, pulse and blood, the one where he'd always slept, behind his eyes and no other's.
And he woke again, thinking he dreamed, to a wide white smile framed with gold incisors, Aerol strapping him into a g-web in Babylon Rocker.
And then the long pulse of Zion dub.
(Chapter 23)
It's poetry. Disguised as narrative.
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James is heady, but is a series of lectures pretty much on exactly what you are asking about:
This sense of the world's presence, appealing as it does to our peculiar individual temperament, makes us either strenuous or careless, devout or blasphemous, gloomy or exultant, about life at large; and our reaction, involuntary and inarticulate and often half unconscious as it is, is the completest of all our answers to the question, "What is the character of this universe in which we dwell?"
Good luck, and keep digging. You may be surprised at what you find.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Basically clicking away text windows ruins every MMO, try to have fun instead of rushing things. Without story and lore all there is left is a bunch of mechanics.
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Nothing has changed. Similiar things have been happening since humans started to exist.
People have been doing bad things to each other now and in the past, that will never change.
Also, now with the internet and 24 hour news, you hear about everything that happens anywhere on the planet. When I was young network news only lasted 15 min on TV and newspapers mostly carried local happenings.
That is life.