One thing I realized after I started reading, is that these authors (and maybe readers?) know a lot more about history, philosophy, other books/stories, etc. than I do.
It's got me to wondering, what did a good education used to look like? What curriculum would I have to study to start to get all these references without looking them up?
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No idea what a good education used to look like, frankly not sure what a good one looks like now but the question is relativistic in nature I suppose. Looking them up may seem boring and time consuming now but the further you go the more you will realize that there is significant overlap in reference drawing, so by doing it now you will likely do significantly less later.
Well it's not just so I don't have to look them up. It's because I want to get in the headspace of these people better. Many of these references are really interesting and I never knew about them until accidentally discovering them in the books. I want to be able to think like these people used to think.
This is certainly to be encouraged in most cases, and you may end up learning more than you initially could have within the limits of the original book. In some cases the reference itself may be more related to the original thought process it was born of rather than the current thought process it is being used in. I do not necessarily have a preferred method that I can offer, usually if I encounter something I try to look it up if I am unfamiliar with it, the actual transcript if possible or the argument if not possible. Depending on author there may be an explication of both provided, some do this and some do not. Greek references are the most numerous I encounter, and by a far and away margin, just having some familiarity with Greek texts will likely give you an excellent starting point in all honesty.
Any essential greek texts you'd recommend anon? I see the "start with the greeks" reading list posted here sometimes but I'm not sure if it's just a meme or not.
Illiad, homie, Illiad
Probably depends on what you are reading, you can't go wrong with Homer, Plato, some Presocratics, Aristotle, and the playwrights: Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, and Euripedes.
Start with the Greeks.
Get a time machine and go back to public school before we let Black folk into them.
Public schools were always shit anon. The Prussians invented the system because they wanted to make the poles obedient to the state. In that sense it’s still working as originally intended
>N-N-Black folkSSS!!!!
Black folk and israelites. That's the answer you brainless /misc/tards have for everything, and that's why you're incapable of accomplishing anything.
>curriculum
There's no curriculum. Just think about all the time you've spent playing videogames and browsing social media. Now imagine if you used that time to read books instead. That's how most people actually learned things back then.
a smelly beady anglo made that list
>made by NEET
I don't think he (the maker of the chart) actually read a single one of these
>Lenin
lel
Spend 4 years getting a standard 2 year business degree and fill up your schedule with humanities and some pseudo scientific bullshit of a professor who is batshit but brings in good money so the school is behind him.
I don't want to go into debt. I'd rather just learn it on my own.
Find a college that is cheap or one that went tuition free
i think most references are either from the bible, from greek/roman myths, or from shakespeare. if you are reading russian literature, it's pushkin
there were a handful of times i saw technical language from science and music thrown into novels too. kundera even printed some measures in his books
Well, you can use the St. John's College list an anon was posting as well as the Western Canon list by Harold Bloom. Additionally you can look at required or suggested reading from colleges like Boston College or Balliol at Oxford—sometimes they have lists. I used to go to Rice University's website and look for courses which sounded interesting, then look up what textbook they were using and look for a used copy to order.
And I should add, the most important thing to read is the Bible, both spiritually and for reference in all the arts, followed by the Greeks and Romans.
Thank you!
Sure, buddy.
Am I the only one who isn't annoyed when reading a word or reference in a book? Most of the times I just keep reading if it isn't relevant to the main topic itself.
Getting caught up with the culture you're engrossed in is always easy. You read the books but the ideas are also floating around you in every interaction you have, that thing that guy said to you suddenly clicks when you read the thing etc.
When the culture is taken over by teachers who spent their lives reading modern critiques of traditions they never experienced in the first place the whole thing becomes rather pointless. Kids raised in that environment aren't even indirectly exposed to the older traditions so when they do try to get into them they seem completely alien.
The Bible is an extreme example where it seems like the culture today is actively trying to cause confusion. To get into it even just as a historical curiosity is way harder than it should be, the ideas that are floating around today will actively hinder your ability to read.
I don't get your point though. Sure, core values were different in other eras and places, but those values still exist in our society. Honour might not be as valued today as it was in the Middle Ages, but it still exists as a graspable idea until this day. When I read the Bible, I perfectly understand the motives of the characters and their actions even if the societies they lived in were entirely different than ours.
I'm not talking about values specifically but they are an example of something people tend to grasp based on context instead of needing to be explicitly told what the local values and norms are. The information is just floating around, expressed in how everyone speaks and acts. When you read the explicit reasoning, the books that inform the culture you then connect them to the culture. Even names, boats are named after mythical characters etc. If you never read about the minotaur you still recognize the reference if you played D&D or saw Stranger Things.
You're talking about relating to people in the Bible as people, that's the widest possible point of reference not relating to any of the deeper points or to how the Bible advanced the way of thinking that was previously dominant. The built up academic/cultural context for the actual scribes who wrote it was huge, even the most dedicated scholars today can only pierce parts of it.
The dominant context for the Bible today is dismissive and dishonest like the atheist present it, apparently based on conscious anti-theist propaganda started by commies. We have to break through all that to even start reading.
Yeah sure, but I mean the general society of the Biblical times shines through the mighty names and places. Focus on genealogy and ancestry, brutal family fights, theological disagreements that end bloody. A sort of bias in favour of the protagonists of the story and that in the end, their side always wins. A preference for second-borns to first-borns, who end up punished or servants to the second-borns. Hunting animals was valued. Sacrificing animals to the Gods was valued. Courage was valued. Marriage was done within the kin. Marriage outside of the kin was not seen in good light.
The Bible offers more than enough data to construct a solid idea of what the society of the ancient Semites more or less looked like, even if we can't precisely locate the location, time and ethnicity of this culture.
based take
Just read widely about history, philosophy, religion and keep reading novels. Your knowledge will build as you keep reading. Trust the process.
>authors know a lot more
They didn't solely rely on the knowledge of subjects that they themselves possessed at the time they were writing. They became knowledgeable on the subjects as they began to write about them. The author may have had a germ of an idea and researched it then composed the story using details and references from the research.
At the very least they had to read up on the subjects to fine tune their grasp on the matter.