Hey everyone. I recently completed a fantastic book that changed my perspective on this beautiful planet Earth. It's called, "Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think". I'm sometimes pessimistic about society, it's hard not to be when the media portrays that this world is crumbling, but this book showed me the beauty of truth behind what's really going on. I won't spoil it in case you decide to pick it up.


But, the real question I want to ask is, what books can you recommend me that will improve my perspective on the world, and on societies throughout this world? It could be anything from fiction to nonfiction, and if you'd like, you could discuss your favorite books as well, although, I'm not directly interested in reading them unless they will change my perspective on things.

Thanks for the suggestion, might pick that up.

Also one of the best books I've read is Terence McKenna's "True Hallucinations". It's just a phenomenal work that suggests theories that, if proven true, will change entirely how humans exist in this world.

Cannot recommend it enough.

Hi,

At the moment, I don't have any particular book recommendations. But, if you haven't already, be sure to check out the Book Bin sticky from the Music/Art/Literature section. Lots of gems buried in that thread!

Happy hunting!

https://terebess.hu/english/tao/wu.html
This one is spot on.
Best translation I've ever seen.

TGO, I had no idea that thread existed, thanks.

Godel Escher Bach. Or any other book by hofstadter.
Quite technical though.

*Born to Win: Transactional Analysis with Gestalt Experiments. 3$ https://www.abebooks.com...=snippet-_-srp1-_-title1

Scripts People Live by Claude Steiner.5$ https://www.abebooks.com...;cm_sp=mbc-_-ISBN-_-used

Those two are transactional analysis psychology.

*The Memoirs of Casanova will shake things up...its very long but so insightful its ridiculous. Giacomo was in many ways the ultimate optimist...also a bonafied pyscho, but those were psychotic times in Italy...free audiobook; https://librivox.org/mem...l-1-by-giacomo-casanova/

Mastery or The Laws of Human Nature or 33 Strategies of war (the latter is all about being one with Athena, analyzing and disecting the realistic, strategic zen mindset through historical snipets) by Robert Greene. Free audiobooks; https://m.youtube.com/re...robert+greene+audiobooks

how i found freedom in an unfree world; harry browne

I thought Strabo's Geography might be awesome in this vein.

https://ia800102.us.arch...01%20Geography%201-2.pdf

Plato’s Symposium is a pretty optimistic one. He articulated a vision that went beyond the classic tragic outlook of the culture that came before him, wherein encounters with the divine would destroy the human because human partiality could not contain the total perspective of the gods, and the comedy wherein the human was integrated in the lower secularity. In Plato’s vision the human found integration in knowing the gods, and thereby found integration in the world.

Some excellent books:

NON-FICTION

-The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World - David Abram

-Being aware of Being aware - Rupert Spira

-Selections from Science and Sanity: An introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics - Alfred Korzybski

-Modern Man in search of a Soul - Carl Jung

-The Idea of the World: A Multi-Disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality - Bernardo Kastrup

-The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the True Nature of Self, Mind, and Consciousness - Peter Ralston

FICTION

-Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevski

-The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevski

-Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - David Foster Wallace

-Oblivion - David Foster Wallace

-The Sotweed Factor - John Barth

-Ask the Dust - John Fante

-Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery - Grant Morrison

-Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre

-The Sailor who fell from Grace with the Sea - Yukio Mishima

-The Sellout - Paul Beatty

And if you are raising kids:

-Hunt, Gather, Parent - Michaeleen Doucleff