I'm starting a luftmensch support group. Share your tales of woe, embarrasment, and humor!

Luftmensch being a person who basically lives way too much inside their head, caring more for abstractions and ideas than the actual ... world. (funny there's no proper English antonym for materialism I can think of). My story: I've lived my entire life inside my head. Ideas, imagination, total airiness man. What's it led to? A genuinely lame relationship and sex life, no particularly exciting adventures, and a lot of absolutely useless knowledge of dead languages that maybe impresses .000001% of girls. My job skills involved bullshitting my way through the written word, as opposed to any actual useful skill.

I think the ultimate luftmenschian text is Huysmans _A Rebours_.

These days I've come to terms that the world is a good thing. Friends, sex, grubbiness, and doing stupid things are all great. Living with absolute silence in your head is something I haven't experienced since I was a kid, and it's truly enjoyable.

Any other poor souls out there? I would be shocked if there were others like this on a messageboard dedicated to obscure cultural detritus.

Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't have put a Yiddish word in the title. I forget not everyone's from the NYC area.

dude have like a billion aspie threads already

I forget not everyone's from the NYC area.

Worst sock ever. At least get some variation.

haha, I guess they serve the same practical purpose. Autism is the opposite of living inside your head, though: what makes autism autism is an unexplainable absence of an inner life (screw the drama queens, it's one of the only scientifically verifiable aspects of autism).

you're spouting a lot of bullshit here re: huysmans and autism

http://socializedintrovert.blogspot.com/

^^^ maybe has some tips 4 u

burt i say this with 100% honesty and seriousness:

http://global.sotozen-net.or.jp/img/how_to_do_zazen/htdzazen01.jpg

Yeah, I totally need that shit. I've been shopping around for some good starter texsts, actually. Any recommendations?

and I feel this has nothing to do with autism. I mean, were Keats or Novalis autistic? Huysmans I think is the ultimate luftmensch in that in his works the protagonist prefers imagination, ideal, and culture over actual experience or useful pursuits. Academia is the natural home for this, and some cultures prefer this approach towards life, such as France.

I guess the confusion here means ...... no on this thread. ERRRRR>

what makes autism autism is an unexplainable absence of an inner life

somebody forgot to tell amanda baggs that, her inner life appears to be somewhat richer than yours

http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?page_id=2

Autism has become a pseudo-disease self-diagnosed like ADHD in the 90s. Can a condition exist without verifiable evidence that it even exists? If you don't need evidence and something untestable can exist, then ... any theoretical disease you personally come up with now is just as valid as autism in all these people.

My solution to my problems is calling my friends more often and enjoying worldly things. The same could be said of any other person I was thinking of with this thread... a proper smack upside the head by a friend or family usually works, too.

It's too bad about the way this thread is going because I never heard the word luftmensch before, and I just looked it up, and it's such a wonderful word.

Impractical, pie-in-the-sky, dreamer... yup, I'm feeling that. I'm not a total waster, I'm just a luftmensch.

However, 90% of the rest of this thread is just total bullshit.

I'm not the one who brought up that aspie shit. I wanted to talk about, say, loving Theocritus's usage of Aeolic meter in his Idylls because 1) it's beautiful and emotionally stirring and 2) reminds you of the concepts of pastiche developed in the 20th century, and how ancient culture and contemporary culture can be so similar... like things really haven't changed with human beings.

Yes, I was supposed to do a Ph.D... too bad academia doesn't exist in the US anymore.

But yeah, luftmensch is an awesome word. I think it should be more common, because we don't really have any proper antonyms for "materialism" in our Anglo-Saxon culture.

I've often wondered if I'm afflicted with Peyronie's, but I do stay in my head too often. I was discussing with my therapist today how it is an improvement that my anxiety about employment has diminished from a worst case scenario to more of an ordinary case scenario.

I regret that I have but one suggest ban to give

Suggest ban me all you like, but what the fuck have you contributed?

one suggest ban, duh

Burt, you remind me of a NYC Jewish friend of mine. Actually, you remind me of him so much that if I didn't know he didn't post to ILX, I'd think you were him.

Yeah, I totally need that shit. I've been shopping around for some good starter texsts, actually. Any recommendations?

― burt_stanton, Wednesday, January 21, 2009 5:57 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

If you're looking for heady (and if I know burt_stanton then burt_stanton is looking for heady) I would suggest Moon in A Dewdrop: Writings of Master Dogen. Dude wrote heavy shit a long ass time ago. In this vein you might also dig A Heart to Heart Chat on Buddhism with Old Master Gudo a series of talks by my teacher's teacher about the abovementioned Master Dogen.

Also if you want less heady real down to earth type of shit that's simple but has great depth I might suggest Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind Beginner's Mind or Charlotte Beck's Everyday Zen. If you can put up with Brad Warner's annoying tendency to cling to his own adolescence via a "I AM SO PUNK RAWK LOL" attitude his book Sit Down and Shut Up is really incredible in its straightforwardness about a path that's often been understood as really esoteric. Finally there's a priest out of Arizona who's really otm imo and he's putting out a book this summer called Kill Your Self which promises to be quite good given what work of his I've read already.

If I had to recommend one I'd say Moon in a Dewdrop as I think Dogen's opaqueness is pretty much up your alley, but I'd suggest one of the "earthier" books as a supplement to really impress upon you that Zen practice is something you do, not something you think or believe about the world.

Thich Nhat Hanh's Zen Keys is really nice in that it lays out Buddhist thinking in the terms of Western Philosophy. Actual words like "ontology" and not a lot of "the reflection of the moon is reality itself" bs.

Really short too, like 150 pages I think. You might dig that.

Zen Keys is really nice in that it lays out Zen Buddhist thinking

http://www.boeddhistischeboeken.nl/images/2043.jpg
^^^ also awesome btw and now i will stfu sorry for hijackin yr thread burt

This reminds me of a non-English saying (I wish I could remember where from) which describes people like this: "You have a light head, and a heavy arse." ie live all your life in your head, and never get of your bum and do anything.

Well, that pretty much captures it.

Thanks for the recs, Hoos, I'll pick those up in between mulling over the UCC. I'm down with UCC, you know me.

Reminds me of the 60s - didn't people used to say, with sincerity, things like:

" That dude's on a total head trip, man".

But anyway, don't knock ideas...playing with concepts is great, and if can you get paid for doing it - even better.

hey burt stanton big fan here--

more threads like this one please: seinfeldbass.wav

Noted. I actually saw that happen when I was walking away from the grocery store ... some poor schlub held out his arms wide open to probably his ex or something and said, "If you want to be with me, say something. If you don't, just walk away." Then she turned around and walked in the opposite direction, leaving the poor bastard just standing there. I thought to myself, "this shit really happens in real life?"

(my own tales of unrequited love are too pathetic to memorialize with amateur bassists playing the Seinfeld theme)

Autism has become a pseudo-disease self-diagnosed like ADHD in the 90s. Can a condition exist without verifiable evidence that it even exists? If you don't need evidence and something untestable can exist, then ... any theoretical disease you personally come up with now is just as valid as autism in all these people.

I tried to parse this nonsense three or four times but then I realised I was being trolled.

I'm still in love with this word "luftmensch" (obviously).

I love the idea of the concept, and fully admit that it's probably totally apt for myself.

However, it still troubles me that too often this whole mindset (as described by Stanton and reinforced by his usual anti-hipster rants) is symptomatic of a general disability of being unable to engage with other human beings as actual emotional entities in their own right, rather than projections of one's own needs, wants and wills - as opposed to some actual anti-materialistic stance.

(I don't except myself from any of this, either, it would be totally hypocritical to say otherwise.)

I'm having trouble putting this feeling into words, as I often do.

is a light-headed woman a luftfroy? or a luftyenta? luftshikse?

...

I reject your materialistic gendered worldview.

I had luftwaffles for breakfast

ilx poster burt_stanton i wish you'd write a novel about youth culture as it is lived you have such keen observations into the human condition esp. things like hipsters and hipster jeans and hipster diseases like autism it would probably be better than 99.999999999% of all other books, most likely.