>At age 18, he went on a whaling voyage for about 18 months.
>At age 22, he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands and lived among the natives for a short period before being captured by a tribe. He was later rescued by a passing whaler.
>At age 27, in 1846, he was able to purchase a farmhouse in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and dedicate himself to writing.
>At age 31, he published "Moby-Dick."
That's quite a, dare I say it, based early life section.
And that's why we don't have any Melvilles because no one does epic shit like that anymore.
>be me
>hop freight train couple hours after final day of high school, spend next 2 and a half years hoping on and off freight trains
>decide to drive from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego
>end up stranded in jungle, guys on donkeys sporting assault rifles give us a lift, some excitement and lots of gun fire
>really bro, just scaring away some animals, go back to sleep
>abandon trip, get job fishing in Ecuador
>buy dinky sailboat with paycheck
>head north and through Panama canal
>shipwrecked somewhere in Central America
>end up in Rio with malaria
>get job crewing boat to St Helena
>captain gets arrested in St Helena so stranded
>crew another boat to Senegal
>repeat for next decade, see all 7 continents and get arrested in all but one
>get published at 35
I think I am doing all right
>get published at 35
link your work
>if you don't dox yourself you are lying
Has that ever worked?
The shipwreck was a little melodramatic, just meant I got wet and had to walk about 10 miles, garboard popped off and boat went down shortly after the canal. Loosing a garboard really sinks a boat fast. The decade I spent crewing is probably the most banal part of the story, hang about a marina for awhile and you will meet many people with much the same story. Make friends while you are there and start sailing and you can do the same thing. Crewing on sailboats is an easy job to get and it will take you all over the world, just need some sailing experience and be able to follow orders.
link it homosexual.
you wont because this is all fake.
somewhere in Central America
>>end up in Rio with malaria
>>get job crewing boat to St Helena
gets arrested in St Helena so stranded
>>crew another boat to Senegal
for next decade, see all 7 continents and get arrested in all but one
>>get published at 35
I believed it up until this point. That is so cap, Junior. I just pulled your IP. I've got it right here.
civilization has peaked, everyone has reached max laziness, no one wants to take any risks because there's so much comfort to be lost. the only reason these based frickin dudes did what they did was because there was nothing to lose when you're broke as frick and your only career options are farming, farming or farming
Literally how can I do anything anymore ? Everything feels so sectioned off. People are stuck inside. Everything is infuse with technology. Evrythings so rigid and beaurocatic. If I acted to be a sailor I'd have to go to school for 4v years
I would tell you to find some less consequential rule and break it in order to get into an adventure. But then I remember that tinge of anxiety that doing my taxes gives me...
what a waste of good digits
Its so fricking frustrating man. Ive looked into this. Its insane how many options weve lost in only the past 30 years.
FRICK why does EVERYTHING have to be written down and archived and everyone is demanding years of investment for the most bullshit entry level jobs. How do they even have employees for some of these things
Just lie man. If they don't hire you just go somewhere else until they believe it. About 90% of jobs are fricking trained over the course of a few weeks to months. College is bullshit. Real shit though, like sailing, while it can be taught, you have to find someone willing to teach it without going to school or the military to learn.
Good post. eveyrthing requires degrees and papers that you cant just show up and go off on an adventure for some pay.
Every job requires a college degree and 5 years of experience now. There's too much bureaucracy.
>And that's why we don't have any Melvilles because no one does epic shit like that anymore.
Exactly. Now it's all boomerlennials whining about their scapegoats from the comfort of their own sheltered, suburban homes. IQfy is full of this shit.
>Why are women so X, bros?
>TFW NO GF. Books for this feel, bros?
>What books can help me GET women, bros?
>I need to post coomerbait pics because reasons, bros.
On and on it goes. Same shit like on Reddit:
>White people, man. Why is everything so white?
>I don't get men, sisters. Why are moids so....
Etc, etc.
Melville actually LIVED life. So did all the great authors of the past. They didn't just sit around with their thumbs up their asses whining about how (insert group here) was mean. They didn't just consoom (someone else's work) and then write glorified fanfiction.
You don't, people still do though. Vollmann has done crazier shit and he's still alive.
>You don't
Yes, because I am a loser.
>Vollmann has done crazier shit and he's still alive.
Born in 1959, had done his craziest shit by the mid-1980s.
Everyone is poor now.
So how do you think would-be writers have an interesting life today? Even Cormac had an exciting life by contemporary standards and all he did was briefly live in a shack with no running water before he meandered around the Southwest for a decade. It just seems like life today for pretty much everyone is just working and going to school and if you want to do anything remotely interesting, you have to get specialized schooling or training. The only real exceptions I can think of are the army and maybe the foreign service. Am I wrong?
M
>Am I wrong?
Yeah. The world is more exciting than it has ever been. There are dudes making livings conning millions, shooting insane machine guns in shithole countries with their own little fiefs, prostitutes and pimps and artists and eccentric chefs and biologists who secretly work for the feds. But it's not easy to do and never was.
Silly optimists. The world is much smaller now, and there is not even the culture anywhere to appraise crazy events as truly significant, if you could get to them through the countless official protocals.
>if you could get to them through the countless official protocals.
This is the problem with your thinking. You want there to be some easy world of adventure like a video game. It was never like that. You could go out and start some shit right now if you were clever enough.
And you would get nothing from it. That's what you don't understand, you think your fantasy video game imagination is what the real world is like.
>You think he just woke up on day, walked onto a boat and went whaling for 18 months?
Frankly yes. It was a realistic job open to his place and time.
>And you would get nothing from it.
YOU wouldn't get anything from it. Shouldn't project yourself onto the entire human race tho
Why are you here rather than off on a sociopathic quest.
>ur... a sociopath!
Here comes the moralizing from the "being weak and obedient is le good" crowd. I thought this was the board for readers.
Sociopath isn't necessarily a morally loaded term. Defrauding people like Anna Sorokin did is sociopathic doesn't make it not based.
Is it sociopathic to defraud or destroy one's enemies?
I think anon was getting at something else. If it's so easy to do, why are you wasting time shitposting? You posted a con artist like it was some crazy shit. She's simply an attractive female. Of course she can convince people to do things and lie, it's almost 0 effort for them. Anyway, post some of your absurd feats anon. I think you're just talking out of your ass.
>If it's so easy to do, why are you wasting time shitposting?
see:
>I don't have what it takes to pull something like this off myself but I'm not blind to the fact that the world is full of PCs who do things like this and NPCs who think it's not even possible.
I don't have Sorokin's skills. My own life isn't some epic adventure but it's definitely unusual and suitable to me. You are just living in a mental cage. There has never been more opportunity in the world when so much information is at your fingertips on the internet.
>defrauded a few rich pricks out of money to party like a spoiled brat before sitting in prison for years is the same as being a conquistador or 19th century whaler
cmon anon... this andrew tate level shit
To be fair he never said it was easy, it's just doubtful he lives by his own ideals either.
>Of course she can convince people to do things and lie, it's almost 0 effort for them
damn somebody should let women know it's so easy so they can all have perfect lives.
To be fair, anon said she was attractive. I wouldn't agree but that allocates points to Charisma.
Women are catered to in (first world) society, it has never been easier for them to do what they want than it is in 2024. You can post your caricatures all you like, but this is not up for debate.
There's a huge gulf between "women have some advantages" (men do too) and "any woman can pull off being a con artist." lolno
Women already are con artists by nature. It's incredibly easy for them to do, they're made for it. It's a survival trait. Makeup to appear attractive, clothes frauding to cover their gut, plastic surgery, bra stuffing, etc. That's just the physical aspect too. Women lie just as easily as they breathe, it's almost natural for them. When questioned about such things, even when the proof is right in front of them, they might say some asinine shit like "it was real to me" or "it was MY truth". Also, I got trips, so you're wrong.
this is embarrassing, even by IQfy standards
Wow a real live girl on IQfy. Can we have sex?
I can smell girlpost a mile away.
>tfw 35
No argument. Submit to my trips, and the truth. I don't know what's embarrassing about calling a spade as such.
Ah. almost had a hat trick there.
I might have missed the satanic trips but it doesn't make you any less wrong.
post breasts or GTFO
because i am a loser just like the rest of you anons
Alright, if you're satisfied LARPing in a video game world then go ahead. You must be honest with yourself, with your era. You have to go looking for bare nature, a soil fertile for heroic culture, which would not be something you could know beforehand. Anything you know now would only be a dishonest LARP, and you would make a fool of yourself. Go to South America surrounded by trash and human-apes, congratulations, you're now in a shithole which is already seen from afar by any civilised eye.
I believe in the human spirit, that is why I allow no fraudulence or imposter to represent it.
>goes on a trip
>"hold up a moment... this isn't glorious and romantic like my old stories, there are brown people! where are the sword fights and daring mountebanks?! where are the sailing ships?
mental cage.
Way to misinterpret what was said moron. A native tribe in the middle of nowhere is the complete opposite of modern savages walking around in t-shirts. You simply cannot see the world for what it is.
What's even your point? You want to go hang out with savage tribes? Why? You are saying you would be a cool adventurer but it's not worth it because the world is too gay. If you actually had it in you you'd realize that the secret is to be the change you want to see in the world.
>You are saying you would be a cool adventurer
No, I'm not saying that. We're simply talking about the state of the world and you have to admit the technological world-dominion of technology has ruined everything. Not literally everything of course, but that's the determinative force in the modern world and you have to be honest about it.
who the frick cares. there is a world and you in it. will you live, or cry like a baby?
Well it's an important fact, but I agree with your sentiment.
But I do agree with your last statement, I just don't think it's a matter of projecting whatever silly fantasies you have onto the world. The potential has to be in the world too. You have to search for it, just as much as you have to have it in you.
You think it's easy to be a whaler? You think he just woke up on day, walked onto a boat and went whaling for 18 months?
No obviously he had to go to trade school for four years, get a certificate, then build his resume and a network on LinkedIn.
Yes
That’s basically how these jobs were forever. They just needed strong, relatively healthy bodies. Nowadays the only jobs that work like that are paying illegal Mexicans $4/hr. and they look at you like you have five heads if you want the job.
The only people that get to do interesting shit for a living are military special operations, diplomats, spooks, and rich people. Basically, you need to be rich or have a license to do anything undersigned by the government. Everyone else is prevented by governments or the economy from doing basically anything. Ernest Shackleton’s expedition was made up mostly of random Joes with no real education or anything. You couldn’t come close to an expedition today without a PhD or at least a Master’s degree.
I just don’t see that at all. The numbers don’t even seem to back any of this up.
Obviously, the question is about doing things that are at least marginally respectable. It should go without saying that criminality still exists, but Melville wasn’t a criminal, he wasn’t some scumbag pimp. We don’t look at Melville and think he had an interesting life because he was an eccentric drug dealer or something. You didn’t remotely answer the question.
I also used the examples of artists and chefs. But the truth is "exciting" lives pretty much always disregard the law in some way even if they're just crimes with no victims. "Law" keeps the worker bees in line.
This chick meme'd her way into a life of luxury by faking it. Why can't you be like Anna? Skill issue. And no balls. She just scammed rich homosexuals and had a good time. I don't have what it takes to pull something like this off myself but I'm not blind to the fact that the world is full of PCs who do things like this and NPCs who think it's not even possible.
If you want a cool thinker and writer somewhat like this, as much as one can be in the modern day, there’s Peter Lamborn Wilson (AKA Hakim Bey). He could certainly be lambasted by some as a total and complete degenerate, but he was still a fantastic stylist, writer, thinker, and pretty inspiring in urging those who are up to it to live lives like this in pursuit of their art/spirituality/revolutionary impulses. He fused a deep knowledge of the Western literary and philosophical traditions with some Eastern and Mid-Eastern ones (particularly Sufism and Tantra, which he directly interacted with and studied in the Middle East and India), along with the then counterculture and psychedelic-inspired mysticism (like Timothy Leary’s League for Spiritual Discovery (L.S.D., get it?) and Robert Anton Wilson et al.’s Discordian stuff and general thought). He urged living a life outside of the law if one could (warning of how “everything truly fun that’s not offered to you by a mega-corporation is going to be made illegal, if it isn’t already, so get it while the getting’s good”). Took a lot of LSD in its heyday, smoked tons of hashish in India and thereabouts with Tantrikas like one of his gurus Ganesh Baba (not a ‘New Age’ or Westernized invention, cannabis has been regarded as one of the sacred plants of Shiva for some millennia and there really are Shaivites and Tantrikas who smoke and ingest it heavily), and was a huge traveler generally. A tribute to him:
https://brooklynrail.org/2022/10/in-memoriam/A-Tribute-to-Peter-Lamborn-Wilson
And also a defense in one respect, as anyone who knows about him or even glances at his Wikipedia page is going to inevitably bring this up:
>The sexual abuse of spiritual power, from ancient times to New Age cults, is a topic Wilson examines in Shower of Stars, and he clearly states this is a manifestation of the authoritarian nature of priestly power. In Scandal he examines historical traditions of pederasty in yoga—and any serious student of yoga knows such a thing exists. He does not condone such things, he shines a light on them.
> There is no question that Peter regretted things he had written, when he explored topics that NAMBLA was pushing into the public sphere. (…) Peter and I discussed the dilemma frequently: “I thought that subject was the last taboo to be exposed as part of the liberation of body, mind, and word which began with the Beats. I made a mistake, I was wrong. But I never actually did anything. I never hurt anyone.” One should consider that not one person ever accused him of anything, and it is doubtful that he ever even had an intimate relationship with anyone.
Bey also presciently criticizing a possible NWO conspiracy (of creating a cashless society for entire surveillance of all financial transactions):
> Our last conversation was a lengthy one over the phone a few days before he died. I was in Greece. We discussed a plan that was in the news, for the eurozone to go entirely cashless in a few years. He said this would be the apotheosis of money as the ultimate instrument of control, once combined with technocracy—a marriage of two black arts. He saw the captains of cyberspace as modern-day highway men who brought the roads right into people's homes so they could rob them there.
I don’t know why I wrote all this.
i found him while reading about the order of the nine angles. they have the same spirit but are also unhinged morons/a fed honeypot or something.
I guess I can see how you see that, but I just find him way too good a writer, too honest, sincere, and eccentric in his beliefs, as well as well-read and well-spoken, to see him as a possible fed or compromised intelligence asset. It’s just the sheer love of beauty of language, of the arts, poetry, and culture generally, as well as a love of thought/philosophy and its history, as well as sharing details of his search for spiritual truth and the wisdom he brought back from it in an entirely way-too-detailed, knowledgeable, and sincere a way for it just to be a lark. It just feels impractical that a federal agent/psyop would spend that much time and effort on this, or that one who spoke and wrote seriously and sincerely on such topics would agree to work as a federal agent putting out (possible) psy-op literature.
The same reason I can’t quite believe conspiracy theories like, say, about Frank Zappa being a CIA agent, or compromised by intelligence agencies/military somehow, because his father was in the defense industry and worked on chemical warfare at Edgewood Arsenal for the U.S. Army. It’s an intriguing fact, sure, but I don’t see how someone composes and releases a 21-minute instrumental that’s a fantastic piece of jazz-fusion like “Big Swifty” at the behest of an intelligence agency or the military-industrial complex.
The Order of Nine Angles, though, yes, I’ve heard of them, and wouldn’t be surprised if they were indeed some military/intelligence-agency project gone awry (or perhaps it went exactly right and as intended) of running a cult, brainwashing its members, and using the cult to entrap people in a roundabout way; or, at minimum, even if it didn’t start like that and was sincerely founded based on the O9A’s beliefs, was later infiltrated and then compromised by such possible feds.
I see how you feel, I still think Bey/Lamborn Wilson is a really interesting thinker and writer who lived an interesting life, but I see how it can be taken as different for its focus on “spiritual journey”-stuff from facts like these writers going on whaling cruises as manual laborers, working as journalists in different countries, including in wars as well as by serving and fighting in such wars, etc.
You might be somewhat right, but it also may be a matter of complex societal/civilizational and historical forces. Wars like World War I and II involved most EVERYBODY of such and such major fighters/players in them. Hence why they are historically credited with being some of the first modern and most well-known, influential “total wars” — where the lines between civilians and combatants is blurred or erased, and where even all/close-to-all citizens are affected by it directly (e.g. as with rationing in wartime countries and Great Britain’s experience of civilians in their towns being attacked by fighter jets and firebombed/rockets rained down on by Germany).
I’ve encountered spiritual journey types that have led interesting lives, but when I asked this question, I wasn’t thinking about this sort of person. In my mind, these are a different category of pursuits than Melville joining a crew, or Hemingway going to Cuba, or Dostoevsky being lined up by the Tsar’s forces to be executed, or Celine going to Africa. It just feels like when you read the biographies of notable novelists, it very often seems like things were just happening around them, there were places to go, things to do, people to meet. Life seems like it was very dynamic. Whereas now, I’ve basically never even heard of a writer who’s life wasn’t like going to school, going to work maybe moving somewhere but not really doing anything notable there, just moving to be in the place. It does often feel like nothing really ever happens now.
(Continued)
Today, the major wars of the West have been the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars (besides auxiliary pseudo-wars of the War on Terror, on/in nations war wasn’t officially declared like Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc., with things like drone-strikes, use of special forces, and possible U.S.-backed coups or meddling with the government of such nations). But the thing about this is it didn’t DIRECTLY seem to involve as many citizens in it, having all or more of them with the chance to see/experience different stuff. They didn’t even institute an overt, legally-punishable draft after 9/11 like with the Vietnam War (maybe precisely because they WERE afraid of such an incident like the Vietnam War with massive anti-war protests across campuses and the country and draft-dodgers). They mobilized what troops they had, and put out good P.R. (public relations)/propaganda to encourage what healthy youth they could to enlist in the military and fight in this wars out of patriotism (besides what other incentives they might get as fulfilling the desire for revenge, glory among one’s compatriots, and financial incentives of joining the military).
So such big events self-selected for those already drawn to the military, and that might be a different cross-section of the general population than that of “great writers who lived extremely interesting lives” that we’re selecting for here.
It’s also a matter of perspective and the relativity of what we find interesting or not. In the upcoming years/decades, we’ll have (and already have, however young they are) people born without ever having witnessed or consciously lived through 9/11 and the COVID pandemic. Maybe to them, WE’LL be the ones with fascinating lives for having gone through such tremendous (or at least tremendously influential on the world) events.
Reading his book on Angels right now
That’s just your particular and highly idiosyncratic notion of exciting you degenerate.
her life story would be great for an author.
>couple of 100k
Thats so small time tho, what can you even do with that
Wrong, life could be more entertaining than any other period on earth. Unfortunately, he was right (pbuh)
Not just him, but also a load of other much more articulate fellows.
I'm uncle tedpilled. Who else should I read?
It's because people have lost the right to be forgotten.
I'm sorry, anon, in a way I understand your perspective but you're simply wrong. THE major issue with modern society is people feel trapped. Sure, there are people who can/could do that today, but for the average and relatively normal and well adjusted, or even the high born and curious intellectual explorers, that is simply no longer an option to be able to do without "burning it all down." Your history, prospects, reputation, potentially your family's reputation, etc. In the old days, people could go and reinvent themselves, get lost for a while, try new things, fail, do crazy shit, or just generally explore and make a story or two and then they still had the option of coming back to their lives and having almost no one know about any of it beyond the stories they told them. Similarly, when they were out elsewhere they could be and pretend to be other people, try on new histories for themselves, etc., and the people they encountered often had either had no fricking clue or just really had to believe them. Sure, there were ways to find out in the near history but not many did, especially for just some wild nights here or there. And better yet, when they went out and did and learned and experienced a little bit of the crazy, they could often come home to their families and maybe have Christmas and New Year's and get grounded again with people who really know them from birth. Rest and relax. And then go back out to the crazy. Not anymore. The modern world has lost this devastatingly beautiful part of life. And this is a serious, serious, serious problem for the modern man, and thus the world.
back in the day your problems would be "oh frick i'm a slave/subsistence farmer/guy stuck in bumfrick ohio who can't read." if you're the type of who says what you're saying today, then centuries ago you'd be saying
>wow the modern world sucks, we need to RETVRN to the era of soul like ancient rome, those guys in antiquity had the right idea. not like this godless hell full of [things i don't like]
that's what centuries of goyslave ideology will do to a culture. this b***h of an earth has always been full of things to complain about. you gotta be the change you want to see like i said. let's take the example of sorokin again. people are saying she's a sociopath because she trolled those people, but who the frick said she was there to be friends? you gotta take what you want, and often "taking" means getting your hands dirty. there are people in the world you don't like. go frick with them/get rich off them and make the world a better place somehow. you refuse to embrace your own power.
also i'm not even saying commit crimes. there are perfectly legal ways to frick over your enemies and take what's yours. so what's the hold up?
i don't know if you're being intentionally obtuse or what, but you're responding with level 101 tier arguments when we've moved way beyond that. i'm talking about the world prior to the widespread use of cameras and technology, namely the cell phone. Never before 2007 or so have humans had the ability to have had every word, deed, mistake, decision, whatever be able to be broadcast around the world almost as instantly as they do it. Again, some will not care and others will not have the foresight to think about what they're doing, but most will pause and hesitate. In the old days, people could go out and LIVE and not worry that, while they went to take a piss in the bushes at a dive bar off the highway, someone just filmed them doing a line of blow out of a hooker's butthole while he shouted I am a golden god(!), and, in the time it took him to zip up and walk back inside, the video of him doing that already has 100k likes and climbing faster and faster until someone in the comments realizes "oh shit that's johnny whatshisnuts, the heir to the whatshisnuts corporation fortune" and next thing you know the stock has tanked and the shareholders want whatshisnuts out and now the boy's out his entire inheritance when not 20 or so years ago, it would have just been a fricking wild night with his friends on a road trip out to see dave matthews play red rocks. This is but one example but this is what I mean by trapped, anon. This is the modern world. This is why kids are anxious drones who never want to leave their houses. This is why they're borderline tee-totalers and, quite frankly, boring fricking losers. This is why they're not fricking. This It's a serious, serious, serious problem.
>w-what if somebody uploads bad things about me on the internet?!
nobody with that dawg in them thinks this way. who gives a shit, it's not even that big of a risk. go do something.
>nobody with that dawg in them thinks this way. who gives a shit, it's not even that big of a risk. go do something.
AGAIN I'M NOT SAYING YOU'RE WRONG I'M SAYING THE REALITY OF THE MODERN ERA IS FAR DIFFERENT THAN THE EASE WITH WHICH YOU DON'T PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH FROM BEHIND YOUR KEYBOARD. For frick's sake, anon. The people of the past did many of those things BECAUSE they could be forgotten, is what I'm saying. Not because they were just crazy fricking dawgs and didn't care about their reputations. For frick's sake, fricking morons everywhere, I swear to God.
You are being a b***h, simple as. The man in this picture makes a living from being an infamous butthole. Obviously this prick should be in jail but he has more courage in his left nut than your entire body. If your argument is today it's too hard because of shit like geofencing and the internet's permanency, you are still wrong. The numbers simply do not match up. The vast majority of people pre-internet or pre-modern were limited so hard by the constraints of their draconian societies and economic situations that for all intents and purposes most of them were cucked far harder than people living in liberal democracies today.
Also I literally do practice what I preach which is living the life I want to live. Like I already said multiple times, I'm not some kind of daring rogue or adventurer, I'm doing my own thing but I recognize that there are so many possibilities to get shit done in a big and risky way if you want to go that route. My dispute is simply against this idea that there are no modern adventurers. There are. Always will be. You can look up videos of absolutely crazy feats all over the world from China to Finland right now. Those people don't have your cuckolded worldview.
Yeah if you’re white trash that was never going to do anything you might not think this way but for people who actually matter to history of literature or politics or who make some contribution to something, they are almost hyper-aware of their reputation and how easily it can be sabotaged by a smart phone.
I think you’re still missing the point though. Yes, being socially policed by technology 24/7 is a real thing, but the possibility for certain dynamic modes of life are just not even there. You don’t have to go back to referencing Julius Caesar living in a world where it was realistically possible to be captured by pirates and subsequently crucify them, or just decided to spend too long in Asia on your diplomatic mission. You can point out that when Rafael Sabitini wrote Captain Blood, it was only slightly fantastical to imagine an English doctor being conscripted into a war by local forces come to town and that sending into motion a series of events that would see the doctor shipped off to Caribbean whereupon he’d ultimately join a pirate crew. When Ezra Pound just decided that he’d had enough of America, he just got in a boat and was able to secure a place for living in England, no questions asked really. When Harry Crosby moved to France to purchase a castle and hung out in Paris with writers like Hemingway, all of this was very doable and possible. There was the possibility for a certain spontaneity and dynamism in life before the Second World War, that abruptly stopped during the war, and then slowly enclosed after the war. By the time of the 21st century, people were sound locked down by legal barriers, paperwork barriers, economic barriers, barriers of specialization, and frankly, just nothing to do and nowhere to go. And the issue here is not that certain organic modes of life which happened in the past are not possible anymore. It’s that none of them are possible anymore. We have no colonies. Foreigners don’t need us to do things. Adventures require highly specialized skills and education and highly technological. At home, people literally live on the internet. They do business on the internet. They conduct politics via the internet. The stay at home lifestyle has become not only normal, but mandated, so mandated in fact that we recently got literally locked down in our homes in some places for as long as 3 years. We are living in the most inert and inorganic and unlively times that have ever existed on this planet and so if you’re a young man and the question is, “what do you do to have a interesting life even if you don’t care about the digital panopticon watching your every move?” you just scratch your head. There’s straight up nothing to do. For 20 years, you could head to the Bay Area and I guess get rich by starting a tech company and now even that is off the table.
This time sucks. Through tech, we’ve made life a lot more like death than like any historical model of life.
>Yeah if you’re white trash that was never going to do anything you might not think this way but for people who actually matter to history of literature or politics or who make some contribution to something, they are almost hyper-aware of their reputation and how easily it can be sabotaged by a smart phone.
Or you could just figure out how to do what you want to do, whatever it is, at any time, which was the point. If you want to torch your reputation on purpose/become a heel then you can, but you specifically can't because you're worried about those things. Which is fine but no need to be a condescending fricking homosexual. You absolutely do not matter re: literature, history, or anything either.
And you could do that but it’s not spontaneous. Many times what you want to do requires a lot of schooling, a lot of money, and a lot of time. I can’t just become a sailor today. I have to go to an academy for years and then get a job, and once I get it, the job is far more secure and thus boring than it used to be. Idk why this is so hard to accept. 200 years of a progressive political regime and we’ve successfully pacified and sterilized basically every aspect of life.
Not the anon you're talking to, but.
Twenty years ago I was in a bad way and did a whole bunch of shit that would have come back to bite me in the ass if I did said shit nowadays. All of it, including all the negative stuff felt like an adventure and I have very fond memories of the time. Back in the days I just didn't care. The reason I'm replying to you rather than just posting this is because in the past five or so years I've found myself thinking the way you do. This thread caught my eye mostly because I want to see someone reply to a person with my current safety-oriented mindset and completely refute it. What you described in your post is what you fear and what keeps you civil. Of course I find what you're saying relatable. By now I've also become a responsible person with things to lose, caught in my own safety nets and fears.
Unless you can completely give up on the society from which you reap the benefit of a comfy but regrettably uneventful lifestyle, you can't really get into an adventure. In general it's to your detriment when you're being nice to somebody only because you hope they might give you something.
People keep talking about how being a slave in olden times must have been much tougher than anything happening right now, but they're totally missing the point of what being a slave entails. Slaves who didn't run off were comfortable in their situation. They got fed and had a roof over their heads. Few would leave that behind for the sake of "freedom". Just as few would quit their mind-numbing job nowadays. Comfort is the mental prison.
Here's one thing you can do. Get some good military/survival training. When you're feeling confident enough in your survival skills sell everything you have, blow it on your worst vices, then live on the street for a while. This is an excellent way to "ruin your life" but it's exactly the fear of that that's keeping you away from "living your life" like, say, your D&D character would.
>People keep talking about how being a slave in olden times must have been much tougher than anything happening right now, but they're totally missing the point of what being a slave entails. Slaves who didn't run off were comfortable in their situation. They got fed and had a roof over their heads. Few would leave that behind for the sake of "freedom". Just as few would quit their mind-numbing job nowadays. Comfort is the mental prison.
This is an excellent point. People don't realize that in classical antiquity, landowning farmers would often work alongside their slaves, and slaves were guaranteed food and shelter. It's almost less egalitarian nowadays.
Consider, for example, The Thirty Nine steps, a book I just read that exemplifies things that cannot possibly happen in the modern era
Hannay manages to very easily sun away from London by putting on a milkman's hat and walking to the station, where he goes off to Scotland.
There, he meets several people who treat him with a stereotypical country hospitality and help him in almost every step of the way, despite not knowing him nor the fact that he is being chased by the police
Had this happened in the modern world, Hannay would most likely have been given over to the authorities the second one the road worker recognizes his face from the man being wanted for murder as it is being broadcasted in the BBC.
Like other anons mentioned, the connectivity of the modern world makes it impossible to make yourself unknown. Many of Sherlock's stories involve either Americans with a dark past which is unknown to anyone else, or a man who "made himself rich" in the mines of Australia or South Africa, when in reality he was a highwayman there.
It's now nigh impossible to have a "double life". You can't run from the government anymore, unless you go to a muslim shithole, where even there some CIA undercover agent might find and recognize you
I work with kids and I agree with your conclusions, though I have no fricking clue what to do with them. I can't really advise my students to not have phones and such or to just delete social media. I'm kind of a pariah in my generation for doing that(and some other stuff) but in theirs it's social suicide.
Oversocialisation is what I would name the issue much like Ted already did though it has progressed so much since he wrote of it.
Good post. I am harassed by the "tyranny of consistency" myself. Always the same person. Unable to escape the gravitational pull of prior life events, locations and people. Constantly daydreaming of joining the Foreign Legion or staging my own death. Just to hit the reset. Show up in a new city as a new person. Go through an adventure or two and have them live on in my memories and stories only. But no. These days such nomadism is very difficult. Everything, including your life, seems to be under surveillance by someone, so you're held to it. Everything tracked and recorded, nothing is just there for the moment. I hate that there is photographic evidence of just about every pointless period of my life. I wish I could send it all up in flames.
This suffocating world is the "hot house" BAP was talking about I guess.
Anyway. What am I even trying to say?
>It just seems like life today for pretty much everyone is just working and going to school
That's how it's always been, emphasis on "working."
There are jobs that don't need any of that stuff and apartments that don't need proof of income or credit, the issue is that you people don't want them. To be fair, they are not good jobs or apartments usually. But you guys have such a narrow focus. It's like you're only looking at the "socially acceptable" options and complaining that they're top regulated. That regulation is what makes them socially acceptable. You think whaling was a respectable career? You think the guy who skips town every so often is someone you want to be?
First of all, no, there are not jobs like that. It’s literally illegal to hire for jobs like that. So to the degree they exist, they exist illegal. And you neglected to mention tjat where they exist they pay $3/hr. because the workers are Venezuelan illegals.
You guys have such feeble imaginations. If it's not your typical good American job it's slave labor for immigrants. It's illegal but that's not the point. And you seem to have the wrong impression about whaling as a job. The crew was not paid well, the work was hard, and the "adventure" consisted of being on a boat. You guys can't even figure out how to find an apartment that doesn't need a W2, you certainly wouldn't have been living a life of grand adventure 150 years ago.
You’re a moron and a fraud at that. I spent 5 years working ranches, worked in the oilfield, and did all sorts of work. You haven’t done any of this shit and you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
Fricking idiot. Show me where these jobs are
They don't exist
Ah, the good old "you wouldn't survive a second in scenario X from book Y or historic period Z".
>you guys can't even into [paperwork], how do you expect to be good at [stuff more fun than paperwork]?
>T-the past?! Don't you know? No one can ever last one second in the past without getting totally murderized! Especially not (you)! I can tell from just the way you type on anonymous image boards... Don't even try...
>You'd be the first to be brutally killed in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Anyone reading this wouldn't survive it.
The type of person to post this kind of shit usually has a low opinion of himself which he then projects onto others. You're not a realist, you're just a pain to be around.
It has nothing to do with social respectability. Whaling was a VIABLE job that included some adventure. Picking vegetables on a massive corporate farm for $3/hr. is not a viable job and contains no adventure whatsoever.
>the issue is that you people don't want them
Go frick yourself. I do want them. They don't exist
I could easily fill a novel with the crazy shit I've seen or been around. The problem is I don't think that anyone would read it, much less care. As such I do not write.
Is this book worth reading? It's one of those ones I never got around to reading. I'm worried about dedicating a lot of my time reading it due to its size. Once I start a book, unless it's complete and total shit, I feel a strong urge to finish it.
No. You are not allowed to check out the first page.
At what age was his butt plundered by Native Americans?
>At age 22, he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands and lived among the natives for a short period before being captured by a tribe.
Ah, okay. At 22.
We had a good thread about this last month. Might as well just link that.
>100 years ago
>want to go see the world?
>just hop on a ship and go
>today
>can't leave the country without surrendering your bio data and fingerprints to the gubernment for a passport, so that you can be tracked down and retrieved wherever you go
The ship is still there. You just can't see it.
You used to be able to show up and secure an apartment if you had a bit of cash. Nowadays, you’d need about $5k to $10k per month to secure a short term lease or AirBnB and for a 12 month lease or longer, you won’t even get considered unless you provide proof of income and credit history.
And then on top of that your proof of income is heavily biased toward a W2 rather than being self-employed, and then in order to be an employee anywhere to make enough money to actually lease out a small apartment for yourself you need 16 years of education, and then even after you lease the apartment for 12 months you need to find a new job to be employed at because if you ever have a gap in your employment history it becomes exponentially harder to find another job, and then
>use to be able to skip town and just make up a new name and start doing work for the local shops or bars and getting a place to rent
>now everywhere needs your full name, your SSN, months of rent up front, references, qualifications to stock shelves
Reposting my thoughts from a similar thread
Personally I feel that the modern life has nothing interesting to write of, and anachronistic novels are rarely praised.
I'll make a extreme overgeneralization by saying most authors are praised for a story they make that is either contemporary or about something they know from experience. Consider what makes Moby Dick so historically praised. All the WHALE FACTS are from someone who knows about what he talks about. Melville himself sailed several times the way Ishmael did, (though I do not know if he ever went to a whaling trip)
Back then you could be 16 and join the Grand Armeé to Russia, and die of frostbite over there. Life was in general less protective about itself.
Nowadays, at least in theory, society is more protective of the youth and "sanitized". Everything is standard and the same everywhere. This is further reinforced with the internet which connects the world into a sense of "homogeneity" and that there's nothing special in the world.
At least that's what I think as a Zoomer myself
war and peace was written by someone born decades after the napoleonic wars
…and who fought in the Crimean War and then spent years hanging out in Paris and Europe with aristocrats and artists you dolt.
and what about gravity's rainbow or 1984? did dante actually go to hell? you'll come up with a lame excuse for each one to the point where you wonder what exactly counts as the criteria becomes so large everything does... except in the 21st century according to you
All those authors researched heavily about the subjects they talked about. That's another thing this generation lacks. They are content with extreme oversimplifications on a subject and pretend that they know about it, without caring for a more detailed explanation
You on the other hand, are autistic, which means that your brain doesn't accept such overgeneralizations, such as the comment that "many authors write about what they know or experienced", and thus now endeavour in proving me wrong because there are exceptions to this rule.
>Ad hominem instead of trying to refute my points
gg ez no re
And I never thought I would have to prove I am a zoomer but here I am kek.
Ayo life's not bussing fr fr no cap. its mid asf tbh
There. Have I convinced you?
You don't realise how juvenile your attempt at a mini-thesis for the degeneration of literature is. Literally degrading into generation wars lol try actually reading a book.
Not an Argument
yes we all know how historically the masses were never content with "oversimplifications on a subject"
>All those authors researched heavily about the subjects they talked about. That's another thing this generation lacks. They are content with extreme oversimplifications on a subject and pretend that they know about it, without caring for a more detailed explanation
Because nowadays it's all terminally online (insert group here) whining about terminally online (insert group here) and then both of them cope and seethe hard when it turns out that (insert group here) isn't actually as bad as the internet tells them they are. Nobody wants to do research when they "already know" about (insert thing here) and how X it is because Y is big bad meanie, blah blah blah. It's the millennialization of society. Picrel.
>Because nowadays it's all terminally online (insert group here) whining about terminally online (insert group here) and then both of them cope and seethe hard when it turns out that (insert group here) isn't actually as bad as the internet tells them they are.
>but it's da muhleeneeaaals
Impressive lack of self awareness.
I’ve never read gravity’s rainbow but the biography of the author of 1984 should make it quite clear why this isn’t some refutation…
>Despite this, George Orwell did not have any first-hand knowledge of living in a totalitarian state. He paid just one visit to Germany (in 1945, at the end of the Second World War) and he never visited the Soviet Union.
>did dante actually go to hell?
Yes
I got something like this told to me in the other thread
>Why do you think that fiction must necessarily be about modern life?
So I'll give you the same response
Because most books are from inspired from either of following
Personal experiences,
which the author decides to take inspiration from to invent a story.
Some examples of writers who took from their own lives are Melville and Moby Dick, Joseph Conrad, all of Hemingway,
Experiences of others,
whom the author heard and got inspired. Melville also is here as he surely got inspired by the Essex. Joyce's Dubliners most likely is also composed in a similar fashion. Kafka's work as a government official probably mindbroke him and turned him into a writer of the bureaucratic absurd. It is well known Conan Doyle was inspired by several individuals he knew to write Sherlock
A subject one has researched much over
War and Peace comes to mind as despite not being a direct experience, Tolstoy studied enough to write a convincing epic. Cervantes knew enough of chivalric novels to the point he decided to satirize them brutally
Why can't zoomers write about either of these?
>Personal experiences
Most of their lives has been spent in either school or social media in the off time. No kid goes to play into an abandoned island like Tom Sawyer
>Experiences of others
Zoomers usually stay with other fellow zoomers, don't try to socialize outside their age range and thus share the same experiences as with anyone else.
>A subject one has researched much over
If you do this you are called autistic and shunned for not being normal. All hobbies are superficial now, there is no sincerity in anything
Now that I mention it, it may be the lack or sincerity or passion in general as well
Literature is a good placeholder for experiences beyond one's monotonous life.
Think about how the audience for most books didn't live extraordinary lives either. Books have always been a source of escapism, and will always remain for us.
As for anything to do your life more interesting, I cannot say from experience. I'm just 19 and learning how to dull the misery of working 9-5 with no prospects for much better unless i lrn2code or find something else that gives me more freedom with my time
I don't wanna sound like a doomer, but I genuinely don't know. I just try to find joy in the small things, like buying myself a new book, or buying an ice cream as a reward for surviving the week.
Contemplating all the would'ves, should'ves, could'ves certainly doesn't help. But neither does liquor
>Do you think there are exceptions or solutions?
Exceptions certainly, solutions? That's harder
this post is so mindlessly out of touch. Not sure if its some neet millennial obsessed with hating zoomers or some blackpilled zoomer.
>If you do this you are called autistic and shunned for not being normal. All hobbies are superficial now, there is no sincerity in anything
yep its some aging millennial very sad
>yep its some aging millennial very sad
It's always an aging millennial, and then like
, they pretend to be zoomers because zoomers totally know what imageboards are (no cap!). He even thought just posting the lingo alone = "There. Have I convinced you?" because millennials innately know their generation is worthless. They whined for decades about how boomers stereotyped them, and then regurgitated every single boomer argument just to attack zoomers. Thus, deep down, the millennials knew the boomers were right all along, because why else would this happen?
is a perfect example of this kinda person. Practically a living embodiment of picrel.
>terminally online autist still obsessing about groups
?
>the boomers were right all along
The unhypothetical first principal of all knowledge.
I'm literally a zoomer
Also what is your post even trying to say
Since you’re 19, consider enrolling in university abroad and studying something interesting like classics, or a foreign language. It might not read as very exciting, but it’s something to opt out of the monotony. I studied economics, which is boring, but I had the opportunity to go study abroad for graduate school. I didn’t do that and I regret it.
I think you’re right. Do you think there are exceptions or solutions? I had a friend who became a Green Beret in his 20s. I know he’s had some wild adventures, but obviously, very few people will ever be able to become a Green Beret. So are there any practical exceptions or solutions?
I mean, I personally regret not being more into literature when I was younger and being willing to like move to New York or something and live as a bohemian poet living in poverty. It’s not that it wasn’t possible. It just never even occurred to me. At that time this wasn’t really a thing you can do or should do. There was no upside. In retrospect, I wish I had done it only for the romantic biography to look back on.
>Typee
Solid
>Omoo
Meh
>Mardi
Dogshit
>Redburn
Just ok
>White Jacket
Informative, somewhat entertaining, not fiction
>Moby-Dick
Would be a masterpiece if it was about twenty-five or so chapters instead of a hundred and thirty-four. Ironically, way too much bloat and blubber. As it is, possibly the single most overrated work of literature in American History.
>The Confidence-Man
Unreadable dogshit
>The Piazza Tales
Fantastic, the only thing from Melville I would consider as being firmly "good"
>Billy Budd
Decent
Grim.
So which part of his life do the homosexual fantasies and curiosities occur?
Melville was a a typical New England liberal homosexual writing about "muh noble savage" and how his enlightened humanist views were superior to his puritan ancestors. It's because of people like him that America is a rtootless cosmopolitan shithole drowing in browns asking for gibs.
Okay, millennial. YWNAH.
The frick are you on about?
>The frick are you on about?
You will never own a home. YWNAH.
Well, someone's gotta shake it up a bit. Better than the usual scapegoats you all come up with.
You forgot a letter, moron.
It's interesting how those beliefs and obnoxious personality traits gave New Englanders such tremendous power but also doomed them in the long run. Kind of like how Islam both carried Arabs to greatness yet also condemned them to stagnation.
The closest you can get to adventurous life as a young American today is joining the army and getting deployed or living out of a truck or van as a vagabond and moving across the U.S. Alternatively, you could change locations and jobs every few years, but you’ll have no prospects whatsoever in your 30s.
His life is probably only surpassed by Byron's life.
Explorers of IQfy, the excitement you seek is in the "shitholes" of the world. Nothing but your sense of security stops you from going to South America, South-East Asia and Africa to experience less restrained life.
That’s BS. I’ve been to these places. Life in Latin America is almost indistinguishable from New York or the American Southwest. The truth is that nothing happens in the world anymore. We’re a lot less free than we’ve ever been because we’re bound up with legal restrictions, licenses, and financial hurdles, and at the same time, the pervasive use of technology has deprived life of that organic, beating pulse that it used to have. Consider just how much more mundane computers have made the already mundane office life. Now, there’s no reason to see clients, to keep file rooms, just to walk past a hundred faces to see a coworker in another room. All those interactions and physical actions. Gone. Consider just how much it’s changed travel. Traveling from one city to another used to be a whole adventure. It involved procuring supplies, frequent stops, lots of interactions. Now it involves purchasing a ticket online and showing up to be herded into the tube like cattle, impersonal, not adventurous, just something like a teleportation from A to B. This is the reality of the modern world, and it doesn’t matter if you’re living in North America, South America, Asia, or wherever.
>The truth is that nothing happens in the world anymore
I just cannot imagine what kind of pathetic jaded bastard you would have to be to really believe this
Obviously I am jaded but I’m jaded precisely because this is obviously true imo. The only people that have done anything remotely remarkable in their life at all for like 80 years or more have only started a business. That’s it. You literally can’t point to a single writer, politician, anyone for whom this isn’t the case.
>Life in Latin America is almost indistinguishable from New York or the American Southwest.
He's right though
Its true. I want to go out there and do shit.
>Now it involves purchasing a ticket online and showing up to be herded into the tube like cattle, impersonal, not adventurous, just something like a teleportation from A to B.
If you choose so. You can also do it like Ilya Bondarev (check youtube) and buy a motorcycle in Mexico where you travelled to via freight trains from the northern border, and start driving south with it. You have the mundane options, true. Does it mean you have to choose them?
Thats not the point. Thats not an adventure. You're not fricking getting it at all. Thats tourism. It doesnt matter how risky how dangerous or how low budget it is. Its still fricking tourism. Its LARP. You're completely unwilling to understand what the problem here is.
You're supposed to also make the adventures while you're doing that and in a new place, it's going to be a different life. God you're NGMI if you need to be handheld like this.
No thats not an adventure...you're not getting it at all.
What is the problem? I really don't see what you all are getting at anymore. Isn't danger and chance what you want? If train hopping is tourism then whaling is just a job.
Actually I would make it, I just know that none of you little b***hes would
>life is basically the same. You’re just kind of existing and waiting to die
And that has always been the case, for those who choose to see it that way. Maybe the modern world is sick, if it has produced so many disgustingly passive and pathetic people. You dumb frickers would have lived and died on the family farm. And even if that sounds preferable to you than whatever you have now, it's still not an adventure. Adventure stories were popular because they described something exotic and alluring.
To a fricking moron maybe
its not about danger and chance its about an actual adventure
Theres no real option to not just exist and wait to die. Like what else are you supposed to do? I dont see traveling the world and eating food as something significantly better than just staying inside all day. I just dont. I dont see it as an adventure. I dont see going camping in the woods as something significantly better either. Its just past times. You are just waiting around to die. Its not really that meaningful to me.
>its about an actual adventure
What does this mean though? What makes getting on a boat for a few months to maybe see a whale an adventure, but not riding a motorcycle through cartel country or something. Give me a non-whaling example of an adventure.
Whales are the biggest animal. It's not even close. The biggest animal you're going to see in cartel country is probably a cow or the biggest wild animal is maybe a hog. That's like 2% the size of a whale and even if there is a pack of them it's much less, and compared to a pack of whales forget it. There's no comparison so don't even bother.
>you guys fell for it
Whaling is a shit job, Melville is just a good writer. You want to know what it was like to go whaling? Join the military. You'll be trapped for four years with societal rejects who couldn't hack it anywhere else. You'll spend 95% of your time doing shitty rote tasks like stacking boxes and cleaning your gun. You'll eat shit food. Nothing will happen for months on end. Your pay will be shit. You'll have zero rights. You'll have to do everything some insane guy tells you to do. You'll be surrounded by brown people (you didn't think whaling, a profession for rejects, would be full of white people, did you anon? Even Melville tells you it isn't).
Anyways, that's what whaling was like. They would go months on end without seeing a whale. Just fricking tying knots and scrubbing the deck every day. Some guy on the mast staring at the horizon waiting for nothing. You can do that job! The military will put you on guard in a tower staring at the horizon waiting for nothing to come. You can romanticize staring at the heat waves in the desert all you want.
One day you'd see a whale, chase it down for a few hours, almost die doing it, and then... spend the next few weeks doing rote bullshit tasks to break it down into blubber while it's putrefying carcass makes the entire ship smell like death. What a great adventure.
If you join the military and war breaks out, then you get your "adventure".
>b-b-but that's dangerous!
And whaling wasn't? You've read Moby Dick anon. What happens to most the characters? Do they go home to tell all their friends about their epic adventure scrubbing decks for 3 years? Or do they go insane, lose limbs, die of disease, and drown?
>he thinks its about whaling
Come on man.
>it sucks!
Yes that is the point
I know it's the point. I'm pointing it out for all the morons in this thread who are whining about how there's no more adventure in the world.
There isn't though.
You misread the thread
Melville was a flaming queen. All that whaling did him no good.
The military isn't the same thing at all though. We want freedom anon. The military is the opposite of that.
Reminds me of The Tartar Steppe
Good read but I think you're kinda missing the point. Sure, there are endless hours of drudgery to get through before you get to the life-affirming action and risk. Just like in literal war, which is basically vast stretches of boredom and then brief adrenaline and terror. Jünger wrote about this.
But the point is that after all that nonsense and sitting around, you at least have a chance (not a guarantee) of something amazing happening.
A chance to prove yourself and to find out who you really are.
Yes, you might die. Or you might not getting anything from the experience. So it's a chance.
But one thing is for sure: if you stay home and never leave the nest and put yourself out there, you are pretty much GUARANTEED that nothing ever happens and you will never be challenged. Does this make sense?
There’s nowhere to go if you leave the nest. That’s the issue. Anon pointed out that everything is basically just tourism. There’s no call to action anywhere, no reason to go anywhere. Whether you leave the home and go to New York or Rio or some countryside or whatever, life is basically the same. You’re just kind of existing and waiting to die, and if you’ve got some money you can break up that monotony with tourism, but that’s all. Nothing really interesting or exciting or suspenseful or risky happens anywhere to anyone. There is no quest, no call to action.
Many people would still rather do that than their modern slop wage jobs. It's that bad. I'd rather do this than be a service industry wagie.
>If you join the military and war breaks out, then you get your "adventure".
You can just join when the war starts.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. The military is nothing like Melville’s biography describes. There’s absolutely zero chance you get shipwrecked or whatever. Being in the military is like working an airport or something.
>spend your 20s dicking around and being a slave
>buy a farmhouse at 27 to become a writer
And we think boomers had it easy lmao
The amount of anons throughout the thread who were sold on whaling is very telling of the current state of affairs.
Yes, whaling might be hard and not pay well, yes it involves being stuck on a boat, but to them it sounds better than their current respective jobs... I'm glad you find your office job fulfilling but some don't.
The answer is neither whaling nor in an office job.
The problem is that circumstances nowadays make whaling sound like an improvement.
Well those old boats were shitty, enjoy getting assraped by your crewmates/captain if you have a cute boy pussy. A lot of people would probably still pick a modern equivalent of such a low level job than all the serious bullshit you have to put up with as a whaler. Sailing was notoriously hellish. But if you can find the right employer and circumstances it could turn out a lot better than being a McWagie today plus you're at least out in the sun and on the waves. Hopefully you don't get scurvy or other diseases and aren't on a ship that has weird rules about food where you'll end up half-starved and not allowed any booze.
How about throwing bacon at fat people on the streets while yelling man the harpoons and calling it whaling updated, could be equally dangerous and rewarding
Are there actually any good writers who were completely anti-social and lived cripplingly neurotic and sheltered lives? Even Lovecraft went out of his house, had a circle of literary friends and was married for a while.
>Nietzsche
Hence the mere mention of his name sends a particular crowd on the internet into a frenzy.
He was friends with Wagner.
>He was
He WAS. But then he decided that Wagner and his music was degenerate.
He was a bit of a queen wasn't he. Both of them actually.
True. Nietzsche first book was about art, and we all know art-gays like drama in their life akin to women