All Things Books III

[Joanne]

[Joanne]

[Joanne]

[nightstar]

[Joanne]

[Eliso]

Glorious Venice

[Joanne]

It's for animals today....

[Joanne]

[Joanne]

[Joanne]

@Inga canim, any relation to the artist here?

[Eliso]

[Joanne]

Movie recommendation: Pieces of a woman

I'm not sure if you can watch it elsewhere than Netflix, but I highly recommend it.

And some music from the movie, written by Howard Shore

[Eliso]

Ancient dice from Greece

[Joanne]

[Joanne]

Mosaics...

[Eliso]

A humble monk and a monk with humour!

[nightstar]

Movie recommendation: Pieces of a woman

I'm not sure if you can watch it elsewhere than Netflix, but I highly recommend it.

would you please give a glimpse of it? a small spoiler seems that she lost her baby after birth, but why?

[nightstar]

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel
most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner
voice which says, “This is the real me,” and when you have found
that attitude, follow it.

—WILLIAM JAMES

[nightstar]

[Joanne]

seems that she lost her baby after birth, but why?

They've decided, her and her husband, to give birth at home, her doctor couldn't come on time and a nurse was sent to help her give birth, but labour was not an easy one, the baby was born alive but died a few minutes after. Her family forced her to accuse the nurse of not doing her job well so they could get money, or so she believed, she got depressed and she was finally able to "built" some bridges....the rest is there to watch.

[Joanne]

[Eliso]

When you can't figure out the answer in a legit question

[Joanne]

[Eliso]

[nightstar]

Hi dear Book loving friends

Birthday of our Dear Alana is near

Thank you dear Alana millions of times. I missed you everyday.

Every spiritual or wise word that I read, it reminds you. How you were full of life, hope and kindness.

When I heard that Tuba is going to join Engin's show I remembered you.

Yesterday while watching inauguration of Biden I was thinking of you. How you would be happy to see that Trump left anyway.

You had a great impact in my life. You are in my heart and I will always remember you

[nightstar]

Dears I'm about to finish The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

Near the End of the book he wrote about Ernest Becker who was studying anthropology in 1960. He had radical ideas in his PhD thesis. So he couldn't finish his education and was fired.

The following lines are from Mark's book:

Becker changed jobs four times in six years. And before he could get fired from the fifth, he got colon cancer. The prognosis was grim. He spent the next few years bedridden and had little hope of surviving. So Becker decided to write a book.

This book would be about death. Becker died in 1974. His book The Denial of Death, would win the Pulitzer
Prize and become one of the most influential intellectual works of the twentieth century, shaking up the fields of psychology and anthropology, while making profound philosophical claims that are still influential today.

The Denial of Death essentially makes two points:

1. Humans are unique in that we’re the only animals that can conceptualize
and think about ourselves abstractly. Dogs don’t sit around and worry
about their career. Cats don’t think about their past mistakes or wonder
what would have happened if they’d done something differently. Monkeys
don’t argue over future possibilities.

As humans, we’re blessed with the ability to imagine ourselves in
hypothetical situations, to contemplate both the past and the
future, to imagine other realities or situations where things might be
different. And it’s because of this unique mental ability, Becker says,
that we all, at some point, become aware of the inevitability of our own
death. Because we’re able to conceptualize alternate versions of
reality, we are also the only animal capable of imagining a reality without ourselves in it.
This realization causes what Becker calls “death terror,” a deep
existential anxiety that underlies everything we think or do.


2. Becker’s second point starts with the premise that we essentially have two
“selves.” The first self is the physical self—the one that eats, sleeps, snores, and poops.
The second self is our conceptual self— our identity, or how we see ourselves.
Becker’s argument is this: We are all aware on some level that our physical self will eventually die, that
this death is inevitable, and that its inevitability—on some unconscious level—scares the crap out of us.

Therefore, in order to compensate for our fear of the inevitable loss of
our physical self, we try to construct a conceptual self that will live for ever.
This is why people try so hard to put their names on buildings, on statues, on spines of books.
It’s why we feel compelled to spend so much time giving ourselves to others,
especially to children, in the hopes that our influence—our conceptual
self—will last way beyond our physical self. That we will be
remembered and revered and idolized long after our physical self
ceases to exist.

Becker called such efforts our “immortality projects,” projects that
allow our conceptual self to live on way past the point of our physical
death. All of human civilization, he says, is basically a result of immortality projects:
the cities and governments and structures and authorities in place today were all
immortality projects of men and women who came before us. They
are the remnants of conceptual selves that ceased to die. Names like
Jesus, Muhammad, Napoleon, and Shakespeare are just as powerful
today as when those men lived, if not more so. And that’s the whole point.
Whether it be through mastering an art form, conquering a new land,
gaining great riches, or simply having a large and loving family that
will live on for generations, all the meaning in our life is shaped by
this innate desire to never truly die.

Religion, politics, sports, art, and technological innovation are the result of
people’s immortality projects. Becker argues that wars and revolutions and
mass murder occur when one group of people’s immortality projects rub up
against another group’s. Centuries of oppression and the bloodshed of
millions have been justified as the defense of one group’s immortality
project against another’s.

But, when our immortality projects fail, when the meaning is lost, when the
prospect of our conceptual self outliving our physical self no longer seems possible or likely, death terror—that
horrible, depressing anxiety—creeps back into our mind. Trauma can cause this, as can shame and social ridicule.
As can, as Becker points out, mental illness.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, our immortality projects are our values.
They are the barometers of meaning and worth in our life. And when our values
fail, so do we, psychologically speaking.

What Becker is saying, in essence, is that we’re all driven by fear to give way
too many fucks about something, because giving a fudge about something is the only
thing that distracts us from the reality and inevitability of our own death.

And to truly not give a single fudge is to achieve a quasi-spiritual state of embracing the impermanence of one’s
own existence. In that state, one is far less likely to get caught up in various
forms of entitlement.

[nightstar]

[nightstar]

[Joanne]

Hello ATBs!
I hope everyone's safe and doing fine.

[Joanne]

Beautiful people from around the world...