Seeking books/films/essays to inspire existential resolution
November 24, 2024 1:42 PM Subscribe
I am looking for books, films, or essays to enjoy which wrestle with the
problem of making meaning in post-industrial life. Most days, I feel like I work to pay rent and I pay rent so I can go to work. Life contains little else. I need some inspiration to find meaning in life and develop some goals/ambitions.
I am open to basically any kind of media -- personal memoir, creative fiction, journalism, academic philosophy, poetry, etc. I have access to a large library, so I can get my hands on anything. I am not afraid to tackle a difficult piece and read with a dictionary by my side.
An example of something similar to what I'm looking for would be "The Trial" by Franz Kafka, or "Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse. But these are both rather old books that don't particularly reflect the situation of someone living in 2024. I also enjoy leftist non-fiction, but the classic stuff is outdated and feels irrelevant. So far, my favorite source of inspiration I've found is documentaries by Werner Herzog, but I think I've seen all of them by now.
To be clear, I am not asking for specific advice on how to resolve existential questions. Rather, I'm looking for a book/film/essay that might guide me towards resolving some questions on my own.
I am open to basically any kind of media -- personal memoir, creative fiction, journalism, academic philosophy, poetry, etc. I have access to a large library, so I can get my hands on anything. I am not afraid to tackle a difficult piece and read with a dictionary by my side.
An example of something similar to what I'm looking for would be "The Trial" by Franz Kafka, or "Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse. But these are both rather old books that don't particularly reflect the situation of someone living in 2024. I also enjoy leftist non-fiction, but the classic stuff is outdated and feels irrelevant. So far, my favorite source of inspiration I've found is documentaries by Werner Herzog, but I think I've seen all of them by now.
To be clear, I am not asking for specific advice on how to resolve existential questions. Rather, I'm looking for a book/film/essay that might guide me towards resolving some questions on my own.
Best answer: Your mention of leftist non-fiction makes me think you are the prime audience for Martin Hägglund’s much discussed recent book, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom. It is addressed exactly to the problem you mention. The author has done several good podcast interviews talking about the book which you can easily find, if you want a sense of it before deciding whether to obtain the book.
posted by demonic winged headgear at 2:20 PM on November 24 [3 favorites]
posted by demonic winged headgear at 2:20 PM on November 24 [3 favorites]
Not sure if this fits, but Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl is a short memoir that I've always found helpful with wrestling these types of thoughts.
posted by j810c at 3:22 PM on November 24 [2 favorites]
posted by j810c at 3:22 PM on November 24 [2 favorites]
an aesthetic education in the era of globalization [g]
posted by HearHere at 3:39 PM on November 24 [1 favorite]
posted by HearHere at 3:39 PM on November 24 [1 favorite]
Ikiru, the film by Akira Kurosawa. A Japanese bureaucrat discovers he has cancer and goes on a bit of a "what now" soul-searching - and confuses everyone around him by deciding to follow up on this long-buried request from the women in one neighborhood to drain a cess pool and build a playground. (That's an EXTREMELY simplistic description.)
(If you rather, there was an English remake two years ago starting Bill Nighy.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:18 PM on November 24 [3 favorites]
(If you rather, there was an English remake two years ago starting Bill Nighy.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:18 PM on November 24 [3 favorites]
Although you might not agree with the author, you might enjoy the work of Hasan Spiker, a Muslim philosopher who grew up in the UK, especially these two books:
* The Metacritique of Kant and the Possibility of Metaphysics (Abu Dhabi: Tabah Research, 2022).
"Kant himself held that his conclusions were merely the impartial result of an examination of the 'instrument' by means of which that metaphysics claims to have established its conclusions, human cognition itself. Yet did Kant see the implied need to subject his own critical philosophy to such a test, since it equally presupposes 'human cognition'?"
* Hierarchy and Freedom: An examination of some classical metaphysical and post-Enlightenment accounts of human autonomy (Cambridge: New Andalus, 2023).
"This short work is about the relationship between a decisive feature of Enlightenment thought, individual self-determination or 'autonomy', and one of the most far-reaching and widely held principles of the prior 'premodern' philosophical orthodoxy, namely that reality possesses an intrinsically hierarchical structure."
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 1:05 AM on November 25 [1 favorite]
* The Metacritique of Kant and the Possibility of Metaphysics (Abu Dhabi: Tabah Research, 2022).
"Kant himself held that his conclusions were merely the impartial result of an examination of the 'instrument' by means of which that metaphysics claims to have established its conclusions, human cognition itself. Yet did Kant see the implied need to subject his own critical philosophy to such a test, since it equally presupposes 'human cognition'?"
* Hierarchy and Freedom: An examination of some classical metaphysical and post-Enlightenment accounts of human autonomy (Cambridge: New Andalus, 2023).
"This short work is about the relationship between a decisive feature of Enlightenment thought, individual self-determination or 'autonomy', and one of the most far-reaching and widely held principles of the prior 'premodern' philosophical orthodoxy, namely that reality possesses an intrinsically hierarchical structure."
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 1:05 AM on November 25 [1 favorite]
Camus' Myth of Sispyphus is an evergreen suggestion. I'm not revealing any secrets to say that its message is a good baseline for what I'd consider the shared themes of the published thinking on this from antiquity to our times (i.e., you have to imagine Sisyphus happy with his endless, pointless task of pushing that boulder uphill because that's the kind of psychological framing that responds to or is required of the circumstances we find ourselves born into).
Arendt's The Human Condition could be a good follow-up.
Thinking about your prompt, I suggest that it's useful to supplement philosophy (whether on its own or packaged in fiction) with some current evidence-based input that's putting a growing, changing scientific understanding of the mind into the recipes we're all cooking from when we respond to these thoughts. Steven Hayes' A Liberated Mind is accessible and informative in a practical sense for anyone whose thoughts drift in this direction. Drawing attention to how we use language to interact with thoughts and thinking, this is one book in a family of related books that I put at the center of the bookshelf in my efforts to consider these questions. I wish I'd been exposed to this information earlier in my life, and I'm glad it's out there and developing.
Melvin Konner's Tangled Wing, Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit is much (much) denser but fuller, and yet still in the spirit of leaning on scientific inquiry as a source of material that can supplement deep thinking about our existence.
David Bromwich's essays, like in Moral Imagination , might fit here, however loosely. It's a useful read, too, in that I often think that (unsolicited example of how I resolve some of these questions some of the time) I'm imagining life or experiencing life as an endless, sisyphean series of essays made up of my experiences, thoughts, feelings, memories, associations, and everything else I have. And I think of myself as happy with this task.
If you have suggestions of your own, I'd love to hear 'em!
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 3:23 AM on November 25
Arendt's The Human Condition could be a good follow-up.
Thinking about your prompt, I suggest that it's useful to supplement philosophy (whether on its own or packaged in fiction) with some current evidence-based input that's putting a growing, changing scientific understanding of the mind into the recipes we're all cooking from when we respond to these thoughts. Steven Hayes' A Liberated Mind is accessible and informative in a practical sense for anyone whose thoughts drift in this direction. Drawing attention to how we use language to interact with thoughts and thinking, this is one book in a family of related books that I put at the center of the bookshelf in my efforts to consider these questions. I wish I'd been exposed to this information earlier in my life, and I'm glad it's out there and developing.
Melvin Konner's Tangled Wing, Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit is much (much) denser but fuller, and yet still in the spirit of leaning on scientific inquiry as a source of material that can supplement deep thinking about our existence.
David Bromwich's essays, like in Moral Imagination , might fit here, however loosely. It's a useful read, too, in that I often think that (unsolicited example of how I resolve some of these questions some of the time) I'm imagining life or experiencing life as an endless, sisyphean series of essays made up of my experiences, thoughts, feelings, memories, associations, and everything else I have. And I think of myself as happy with this task.
If you have suggestions of your own, I'd love to hear 'em!
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 3:23 AM on November 25
Some ideas: "My Dinner with Andre," Comrade by Jodi Dean, Andreas Malm's work, The Message by Coates. Also, please share what worked for you or helped.
posted by history is a weapon at 4:40 AM on November 25 [2 favorites]
posted by history is a weapon at 4:40 AM on November 25 [2 favorites]
Perfect Days is on my watch list currently. I am anticipating watching it soon. May fit your bill.
posted by zerobyproxy at 10:07 AM on November 25
posted by zerobyproxy at 10:07 AM on November 25
Response by poster: I did some digging of my own and came out with "The Soul of a New Machine" as my next read in this adventure. I found this book particularly fitting because it follows a team of circuit designers wrangling with the question of "Why do we do work?", and I am a circuit designer myself, so it's a perfect match.
I also marked demonic winged headgear's answer as best, not because it's the only good answer, but because their suggestion of "This Life" seems like a nearly perfect match for what I am looking for.
Thank you very much to everyone who responded!
posted by gunwalefunnel at 9:28 AM on November 27
I also marked demonic winged headgear's answer as best, not because it's the only good answer, but because their suggestion of "This Life" seems like a nearly perfect match for what I am looking for.
Thank you very much to everyone who responded!
posted by gunwalefunnel at 9:28 AM on November 27
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posted by phunniemee at 2:07 PM on November 24 [1 favorite]