Reading Antifragile by Nassim Taleb was eye-opening for me. I turn to the concepts of the book whenever I feel unsure about a decision or opinion.
I have a version of The More Than Complete Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy that’s genuine leather bonded with gold leaf page edges and builtin bookmark. It’s on display on a special shelf. Everyone who visits thinks it’s a bible, and in a way it is as it does have a lot of good advice about life, the universe and everything.
Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.
Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer. Amen.
Hitchhikers guide. 42 for the win always know where your towel is and don’t panic
The bible
I came here to say that. Sorry about the abuse you’re about to take. But we deserve it apparently. Sins of the fathers or “people like us” or something, I guess.
You literally only said “The Bible” and I already saw some frothing.
Have you bashed out any newborn babies’ brains on a rock today?
Chill.
The day has barely begun. Gotta go to the morning stoning first. Pushy people like you make us regular baby brain bashers look like weirdos.
Sorry. So at what point do we lust after our lovers, whose genitals are like those of donkeys and whose emission are like that of a horse?
I forgive you for posting that.
I forgive you for saying the bible.
We are not the same.
Walkaway by Cory Doctorow. I was interested in anarchism in my college years, but turned away from it because of what I perceived as the strongman problem. What happens when the psychopaths come for what you have?
Walkaway solved that. In a post scarcity society, you walk away. Let them have your shit. You can build new shit, better shit, avoiding the mistakes you made and making grander mistakes forever into the future.
This book brought me back into the fold. It was transformative, and in a really big way
In a post scarcity society, you walk away. Let them have your shit. You can build new shit, better shit
How do you do that if they take all your 3d printers (the technology which sustains the post-scarcity world in this novel)?
How could they possibly take all of anything in a POST-scarcity society?
Post-scarcity society still has to be backed by something. In the novel, it’s 3d printers. If you have more 3d printers than others, you can use it to produce weapons to capture even more 3d printers from other people, making them scarce, and thus introducing scarcity again.
You wouldn’t have post scarcity society in anarchism, though. And if that has been achieved before, it would be what they attack first.
You should read the book. Might just change your mind
I really should, that is true. I’ll put it on the list. I’ve read most of Doctorow’s older books already.
Including Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom? 'Cause Walkaway is the prequel
Probably the Gateless Gate, the Eiichi Shimomissé translation. I’m actually a Discordian, but I find the Principia best for introduction. It devotes a lot of space to silly rules you’re supposed to violate and other introductory concepts and practices. And Illuminatus! is plagued by a masculine confidence and aggression that both the writers and Hagbard were aware of and tried to minimize. The Gateless Gate is, to me, much better for staying deep in the untethered state of pure Discordian existence. It talks a little much of patriarchs, but it’s not thematically essential. And it isn’t rooted in and doesn’t reference modern western theology and philosophy like the Principia because it was never intended to stand in contrast to or lead people out of modern western theology. Both the Principia and Illuminatus! reference it in some way because secular zen is important to the development of Discordianism. Maybe no book has ever changed my life as much as Illuminatus! but the Mumonkan is one of my primary tools for staying rooted in this way of being. It’s with me all the time. One of the first things I do when I get a new phone is make sure my Mumonkan made it over or go download it again. I read it whenever I’m feeling lost or confused and uncertain about a decision or life change. It always leads me back to me.
Mumonkan!
The Art of UNIX Programming by ESR
Not saying this book is 100% correct and perfect, but most parts of it is still relevant and refreshingly insightful even after 20 years. I sure learned a lot about great engineering and generally how to approch and tackle difficult problems from it.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
When I was in my 20s, definitely Principia Discordia.
Now… maybe Brecht’s Threepenny Opera?
Or Zamyatin’s We.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy, by Tolkien
I return to it ever couple of years, always in bad times and often in good times too. Everyone is trying to do the best they can, contributing what they can. Only few characters are at all malicious. Emotions are deep and powerful, portrayed lightly. The whole story is a great collaboration where wildly different people overcome their differences to reach a single, all-encompassing goal.
Shigley’s Mechanical Engineering Design 10th edition
Sigh… kind of wish it wasn’t.
Why? Shigley’s is awesome. I still refer to my heavily tabbed copy at work on occasion.
I agree that its a fantastic resource. But the only times that book gets opened is when I’m about to make my brain hurt bigly and it makes me regret choosing mechanical eng just a liiiiiitle bit.
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“Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the word. It must be given freely. In abundance.”
Still my favourite quote from the series.
Dune.
De Rerum Natura + The Gospel of Thomas
Not a combination I would have ever expected, but once I realized the latter was building its ideas on top of the former’s atomism and evolutionary thinking, the combo suddenly clicked and I was looking at philosophical ideas not only aligned with where I’d been at previously, but advancing my thinking significantly.
Probably some of the most intriguing ideas from antiquity I’ve ever seen, and much more advanced than I’d have envisioned I’d find.
Kahlil Gibrain - The Prophet
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. As the stone of the fruit must break so that it’s heart may stand in the sun, so must you feel pain…It is the bitter potion by which the physician inside you heals your sick self. Trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility.
First heard that in The Boondocks. Lol
Love this quote, but struggling to look the book up. Do you by chance mean “The Prophet” by the same author? There’s a painting by his cousin (with the same name) called “The Prince” so I could totally see the names getting confused.
If it’s really The Prince, can you link it? I just love this quote a lot
Bit of a typo there, good catch. Edited!
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
from Dale Carnegie. It’s cheers up on bad days and gives helpful tipps and story (to think about it) for the live.
