What are we trying to accomplish, really? Inauthentic decisions, and the like
I have to get a haircut today.. No I don't "have to". I can let it grow long and never cut it again, but I am used to short hair and get anxiety when it gets to a certain length that it is too long. This is annoying task that I inauthentically put as a priority. I choose today, as there is a deal this day of the week. The parking is hard in that area though. This is something I must contend with though since I chose this day, and this place based on some rough inauthentic priority of where I will go for this haircut. I have to wash my clothes if I do not want to wear already-worn clothes for the next week. This is another task that I inauthentically put as a priority. I get anxiety of the possibility of wearing dirty, possibly smelly clothes in public where this is usually deemed unacceptable (unless in the spheres of homelessness, alternative living? etc.). I choose this particular brand of detergent because it smells good, but I perceive it to be a good brand, and the price is moderate. I go to work and generally get certain tasks done, usually so other tasks can later get done, etc. Much of this is repetitive, some of it may take a bit more "creativity" of varying degrees. If this sounds boring and very procedural, that is because it is. If the decisions seem to be somewhat arbitrary and could be a different way, that is because they could have, but, like everyone, I choose a rough guideline, one that I prioritize based on a need for structure and a heuristic for decisions throughout my life. It could have been any guideline, but I chose the ones I did. In Sartre's philosophy, this would be inauthentic, as I am using a guideline, and using it to limit my options, my behavior, my choices, wittingly, as the limitless options are too much, and it is easiest to follow self-regulated guidelines than constantly change at will.
I have hobbies, musical tastes, exercise, people I can hang out with. I can read about some innovation, area of knowledge, escapist literature, or successful business endeavor done at other work-places (universities, companies, entrepreneurs). This goes on for the next 40+ years or so apparently. I am supposed to find this along with awe-inspiring sunsets, the mysteries of the ancients, the dance of the Bushmen, the works of Renaissance, scientists, innovation, eternal recurrence optimism, and general "progress" as a reason the that the human project is great and should continue. I just don't see it that way. It seems to me to be a lot of repetition, procedural drudgery, and instrumentality. We anchor ourselves to some set of guidelines.. inauthentically choosing whatever modus operandi seems appropriate for that time.. Some might be going through the motions.. doing the same things.. some might be in some new-fangled "self-help" high where they are constantly "improving".. it's all inauthentic guidelines to fence in the "liquid fray" (pace Zapffe) of our angst. We don't know where to go, what to do, we find meaning in what others think makes a meaningful life.. at least that's what we tell ourselves (um, it's these friends, finding a mate, making a family, having a house to put my family, travel, gatherings, and this workout regimen you see!!! That's what I was told at least!!).
We are "condemned to be free" yet we inauthentically choose guidelines that help us with the procedural drudgery and mix it in with enough stimulation to get by. Does this lead to the conclusion that this general pattern of procedure and stimulation must be passed on and maintained? I am not sure. I do not see why this should be. What are we passing this on for?
I have hobbies, musical tastes, exercise, people I can hang out with. I can read about some innovation, area of knowledge, escapist literature, or successful business endeavor done at other work-places (universities, companies, entrepreneurs). This goes on for the next 40+ years or so apparently. I am supposed to find this along with awe-inspiring sunsets, the mysteries of the ancients, the dance of the Bushmen, the works of Renaissance, scientists, innovation, eternal recurrence optimism, and general "progress" as a reason the that the human project is great and should continue. I just don't see it that way. It seems to me to be a lot of repetition, procedural drudgery, and instrumentality. We anchor ourselves to some set of guidelines.. inauthentically choosing whatever modus operandi seems appropriate for that time.. Some might be going through the motions.. doing the same things.. some might be in some new-fangled "self-help" high where they are constantly "improving".. it's all inauthentic guidelines to fence in the "liquid fray" (pace Zapffe) of our angst. We don't know where to go, what to do, we find meaning in what others think makes a meaningful life.. at least that's what we tell ourselves (um, it's these friends, finding a mate, making a family, having a house to put my family, travel, gatherings, and this workout regimen you see!!! That's what I was told at least!!).
We are "condemned to be free" yet we inauthentically choose guidelines that help us with the procedural drudgery and mix it in with enough stimulation to get by. Does this lead to the conclusion that this general pattern of procedure and stimulation must be passed on and maintained? I am not sure. I do not see why this should be. What are we passing this on for?
Comments (84)
Practically, some things are selected against because of the need for an income so that you have shelter, food, etc. But really, there is a wide variety of ways that you can acquire that stuff.
You do not need to have so much anxiety. You do not need to feel that your life is pointless drudgery.
And what we should be passing on is the encouragement and ability to be able to live in radically different ways.
Your experience does not match the regular human experience. A person generally shoves their clothes in the washing machine, puts in the cleaning liquid, turns it on and goes through the motion without another thought. They don't agonise about it, they don't even think about it. They do it without any thought.
I go take a haircut. Big deal. I don't even think about it. I'm too busy thinking about some philosophical question that interests me, or some business deal I have to do, or how to plan my day to squeeze in the necessary physical exercise or martial arts workout. I'm glad I get to kick back while some guy or girl messes with my hair.
Listen to Professor Trump. Most people think he's an idiot, but he's not that much of an idiot actually:
You know, just being alive quite often is enough for me. Don't have to do something special, but just feel yourself in your body, everything going well man. No problems.
So just do your duty in the world. Why? Well do you want to be a snitch? If you don't, then do your duty. Serve your community, serve God, grow in knowledge, teach others. If you find the right woman maybe you'll have kids. Otherwise you won't. What's the big deal. Stop fretting about it. Maybe I'll never get married. Think I care? Nah - not gonna waste the rest of my days just because of that.
I'm 68 and my life hasn't been the way you're talking about I am deeply pessimisitic about all sorts of things but I've lived a fairly adventurous life. I read Sartre as a young man and that influenced me, but that doesn't especially matter. Except that to me, in Sartreian terms, if you recognise what you're doing as inauthentic then to carry on drudgedly doing it, you are anti-Sartreian: you accept inauthenticity. I don't. I refuse it. I'm very different from Agustino for instance but I admire his adventurousness too, I feel that spark which I think I still have. I'm in love with a fine woman, as I have been at several moments in my life, I'm fending off ill-health touch wood (speaking as a non-superstitious atheist, thank God), I have enough money to get by on, I'm studying philosophy, and hey - last night I was a bass in a pop choir of 70 singers, mostly women, we sang six old pop songs in beautiful a capella harmony after several months of tough rehearsals and it was marvellous! Sometimes you take existential leaps and that happens: but you work at it after the leap, because joy and even simple pleasures don't just turn up at the door. Sometimes of course you take existential leaps and you wind up drunk with the equipment for suicide all prepared in a dark place. So I've been to rehab too, in my time, but what the fuck. No-one with a good mind is pre-programmed to a dreary predictable life. Me I need to go to the same supermarket every week and to have old friends to whom I don't have to make complex explanations, safe habits so that I can safely take the occasional leap when an abyss of possibility beckons.
This is an inspired statement.
Having ruled out suicide for a number of reasons, all that is left for me for now is to get by and endure. It's still difficult for me to accept but nothing really 'needs to get done', aside from the trivial things in everyday life and at work that needs to get done that allows me, and hopefully others too, to live with a little less hassle and suffering in the foreseeable future. And also, to kill some time. It's gets fun sometimes during good and lean times but it also gets really really depressing and hopeless when trying to meet expectations and deadlines.
If you are going through the routine of your life day in and day out for the sake of others and doing things solely because of convention and orthodoxy then yes I think this way of living would fall under inauthentic. Heads up a lot of the times we are trapped by our own thinking and particular outlook.
To be authentic is to be true to yourself and it involves a certain degree of egotism because it means to be self-serving to your desires and preferences (or not being if that is what you choose). Where you feel passion there you will find authenticity.
Auntie Mame (in the musical by that name) says "Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death."
You, schop, are kind of the "anti-mame". "Life is a starvation diet and why are those poor suckers waiting for a banquet?" But they also served who tended the bucket of dirty gray slush to dump on the party, and you do your job well.
You don't have to believe everything Sartre said. I've noticed that John Paul had the highly inauthentic behavior of always looking his same mousey self--smoking, nicotine-stained fingers, ugly hair, rumpled clothing, palpable stale clothing and body odor, writing consistently depressing books, and hanging around with that woman, Simone.
I'll grant you that our lives contain inauthentic elements, though I would raise the bar for consideration way above getting one's haircut at the same place all the time and having to do laundry regularly. (And, in any case, you do freely choose to get your hair cut and do your laundry, right?) Let's worry about major inauthenticity.
The labor of everyday life (the 9-5 job) is loaded with inauthenticity with far more consequence than getting your hair cut short once or twice a month. Politics is infested with inauthenticities, as is religious endeavor, artistic enterprises, and lots of other stuff. We might be capable of authentically and freely choosing each and every options in our lives, but a necessary part of being human is limiting the occasions when deliberation is required. Habits are part of successful and authentic life. Habits enable us to use our limited resources to make important decisions when they arise.
So you make very many inauthentic decisions...
Do you make any authentic ones?
It seems to me that if we spend the necessary time trying to come up with an authentic answer to "when to poop?" then we're going to be incurring an opportunity cost when it comes to the authenticity of other possible decisions. (the time we spend on this decision is time not spent on another).
If you mean to derive value from authenticity, then submitting to the inauthenticity of everyday life is what enables us to arrive at a situation where we are free enough to actually make these authentic decisions (I.E: the choice to work and the decisions involved in work might be inauthentic, but some decisions about what you then spend that money on might not be, decisions which would be unavailable without the drudgery of work).
Personally, I can derive value from even from inauthentic decisions. I absolutely love tacos, and I choose to eat them whenever possible on principle; they make me happy, and that's why I continue in that inauthentic pattern. I can't speak for the human experiment, but the taco train to me is absolutely worth maintaining and passing on!
Not only that, but most *big* things are the result of very long hours spent at honing something - whether that's a skill, a trade, a relationship, etc. That requires habit - otherwise you'll never put in the energy, each and every day, to get it done.
Why dangerous? >:O
Just being wry.
I appreciate the encouragement and positive message. How about passing on the whole project to a new person? Why do they "need" to go through the procedure?
Yes, you bring up a good point about habits. We must circumscribe our daily lives with certain ways of thinking or habits. The options become narrowed, as a bewildering set of possibilities is hard to maintain; familiarity becomes useful to fill in the gaps and make it easier.
But my larger point was that we can't but help but fall into these habits. Following our own choices within the world (even while recognizing the facticity of our surroundings) is not an option. We need guideposts that help us navigate how to get through the day and make us feel that we "did" the right thing to get by. We can mostly all agree that this is needed to survive easily in a social world.
But attached to this truism is the secondary questionof what are we trying to accomplish, really. By procreating more people, we are knowingly admitting that we want them to follow these procedures. I also recognized that within the procedures/patterns we maintain to get by, we seek out some stimulation:
It seems to me to be a lot of repetition, procedural drudgery, and instrumentality. We anchor ourselves to some set of guidelines.. inauthentically choosing whatever modus operandi seems appropriate for that time.. Some might be going through the motions.. doing the same things.. some might be in some new-fangled "self-help" high where they are constantly "improving"..
We don't know where to go, what to do, we find meaning in what others think makes a meaningful life.. at least that's what we tell ourselves (um, it's these friends, finding a mate, making a family, having a house to put my family, travel, gatherings, and this workout regimen you see!!! That's what I was told at least!!).
Then the ultimate question from this was:
"Does this lead to the conclusion that this general pattern of procedure and stimulation must be passed on and maintained? I am not sure. I do not see why this should be. What are we passing this on for?"
In other words, why pass on the procedures to the next generation? They too, inevitably will be consigned to mainly habits of that they perceive will get them through the day/week/month; guidelines that circumscribe the vague angst. But why is it important for more procedures to be carried out and experienced by more people?
Inevitably someone's going to say "balance" is the answer. It's a word that sounds like a panacea. You see, the "cool" trip you went on was the aberration from the procedure of daily life, and thus worth the procedure, and THUS worth procreating new people (or so is the implication). Of course even that is simply part of the procedure.. procedure/release-valve of travel which itself is a procedure.
Then, there are those who say to live like a sociopath, gallivanting around doing odd jobs, living the rebels life, ya know.. like they think they are in a movie about the typical rebel without a cause.. oh wait, that trope too is a procedure, just a different one! It's also usually not sustainable.
Other knee-jerk answers from the Western world -
Flow moments (getting lost in a hard puzzle, being completely involved in a task, working out that sodoku and crossword puzzle!)
Relationships- That laughter with friends and finding someone else to follow procedures with. That makes the procedures worth it for the next generation!
Turn on, tune in, and drop out- become an ascetic. Following an ascetic procedure is supposed to bring these psychological states at some point or during the process perhaps. Thus we can procreate so someone can achieve these states.
Anyways, the difference between the answers normally provided and what I seem to be trying to get at, is that these answers all entail the idea that embracing the procedures are good in and of itself..
I imagine zombies saying "more procedures.." What is this trying to accomplish? No, every day can't be a utopian-awesome-gestalt of free-flowing-ecstatic-enlightenment. I never said it did.
Generally society will promote having more people, and thus more procedure. The general tendency that procreation is good because we have procedure followed by release-valve, stimulation seems like a milktoast answer at best.
Also, I like your puns!
Just questioning why we want more procedures for more people. As for being authentic.. perhaps as I am not doing it out of some angsty feeling that this is what I should be doing, it is? Or perhaps just another release-valve until more procedure?
Autistic version of an answer nobody has given.
There's a pretty enormous gap in these positions that you should acknowledge if you want to move past this broken record phase of argumentation:
1) Procreation is always good (basically nobody takes this position)
2) Procreation is not always bad (try to deal with this one)
For example, I have procedures on how I choose and how I prepare my meals because I can't eat the same food everytime but I also can't let any food spoil. Following procedures is dealing with constraints.
Quoting schopenhauer1
If a procedure proved helpful, why not pass it on and maintain it? Seems to be the reasonable thing to do.
Quoting schopenhauer1
For the continuity of that which works.
You seem to claim that the necessity of following procedures is proof that living is drudgery, and I agree but I don't think living is the point in life but nourishing and cherishing what is of value to the particular individual. For some that's family, for others, love itself, it can even be the impossible dream.
I don't think it's a "we" issue at heart. Most of the time I am glad to have been born. My consciousness of my freedom and my value-for-myself emerged with difficultly from the usual confusion of childhood and young adulthood. It sucks that this consciousness is so fragile. Give me 1000 years down here. Give me 100,000 years down here. That's the attitude I have when I am fascinated. At the moment, theoretical computer science is blowing my mind. It's the coolest shit I've ever seen. I wish I had read some of these books as a teenager. But better late than never.
I might also add that pessimism/nihilism also opens up (the possibility of) a radical sense of self-possession. "Ultimate futility" (our certain eventual erasure) urges us toward authenticity. Who wants to waste the entire "ride" faking it? As for procedural drudgery, that's not a given. It's possible (as I know from experience) to work at a passion until (at least maybe) someone will pay you for it. Some work really is creative. Of course lots of us are going to be stuck with drudgery, and maybe (I'll entertain the possibility) only the luckier among us will be able to "self-realize" sufficiently to be able to sincerely affirm life (to really be glad more often than not that they were born). And maybe it's part of being lucky that one doesn't get entangled in a sickly pity that can't be happy because not everyone else knows how to be happy. I see crazies and losers all the time on my commute to work. If I could fix them without sacrificing myself, I would. Why not? But most broken people seem to me to be unfixable. They identify with their disease. They are victim-heroes or hero-victims. Their affliction is simultaneously their inflexible point of honor. You can't fix them without snuffing out what they experience as their divine spark. So they aren't even broken in an absolute way, but only relative to my distaste for evasions of freedom and responsibility --and socioeconomically, but that's relative too.
I don't have kids, but that's largely because I've missed the window. If I had established myself economically earlier, I would have. If I somehow come into enough money sooner rather than later, I might do so even now. It's a question of $ for me. My "nihilism" doesn't dissuade me. Only my readiness to protect and nurture potential children in this strange society is the issue. I think others have kids (if they make the conscious more or less informed decision and don't just find themselves knocked up) because (1) they find life worth living and (2) they expect to be able to guide the development of their children so that these children will also find life worth living (to be a net good.)
So, much of the antinatalism besides being against creating more harm (even in the self-evaluation of "net good" of life), is that it is way to evaluate the goals of life itself. Themes that keep popping up are that we do not know why more life is actually good or necessary.
What's funny is I'm just asking us to question what we are trying to do as a species who can self-reflect on why we want to continue life it all. The issues of why we think life is worth it and is supposed to be lived out by future people is the real goal. The philosophy of procreation just happens to be the best way to put the issues square and center. Why is it good to have more people is really asking "What are we trying to accomplish by having more people?".
Well, it is probably not getting haircuts and filling out forms, though the procedural stuff is much of life (sometimes a very large percentage). What is it about life that needs to be carried out so much by the next generation? What are we trying to do as a species? We know there's all this running around to get some sort of satisfaction, but why is that preferable?
I can hear anecdotes all day about how someone had this great experience, but just like the evening news that provides a heart-warming last segment, it's only a segment, and the news has to make decisions on what to edit, what to present, how to construct the narrative a certain way. How am I to know people do not just do that on a philosophy forum? Anecdotes can be like these segments, edited to make a whole life seem a certain way.
It seems to me like your rationalising. 'Most folks', said Abe Lincoln, 'are about as happy as they want to be'. I have always found that a very hard saying.
So what are we trying to accomplish and is it worth creating more people to accomplish it?
Nothing.
I think most people are sympathetic to the notion that life sucks. But, sure, it's a topic that can attract defensiveness. It's a visceral topic. However, try to also recognize your own defensiveness in these discussions. Being a broken record and refusing to engage what your opponents are actually saying can draw hostility too.
Also note that some measure of hostility may be appropriate when someone doggedly demonstrates these 2 things simultaneously:
1) a fundamental misunderstanding of how others experience life and make important decisions
and
2) that they nevertheless feel somehow suited to direct an overarching strategic existential agenda for our species.
They're separate questions. The urge to procreate is a biological drive, actually the fundamental biological drive.
I subscribe to a Buddhist philosophy, which identifies the cause of suffering (dukkha) and the way to the end of suffering. I suppose it sounds glib when you say it in a few words, but there animating principle is that every individual does indeed have the capacity and potential for the liberation from suffering. But that idea of 'moksha' or liberation is barely present in Western culture at all. So to adapt to that requires adopting a different attitude - a different philosophy, in fact.
Some people are strong and others weak. Some of the weak talk as if they are strong and some of the strong conceal their strength strategically among those who would resent it or be humiliated by it. As I see it, we tend to act purposefully. So I read even the rhetoric of purposelessness as the scratching of an itch, a variation of the usual heroic role-play. The pessimist faces the terrible truth. The non-pessimist is a coward and a sentimentalist. This is the basic structure of conspiracy theory. It's a product that tends to appeal to those who are already relatively passive in worldly terms (working a dead end job if they have a job at all) that justifies/encourages passivity. "Why bother, dude? It's all just ripples in the nothingness." I agree that it is in one particular sense just ripples in the nothingness. My real problem with the position is that it's just not impressive or challenging enough.
I don't think we are assigned a duty to realize ourselves (make something impressive of ourselves) but I do think we are born with an itch to do so. Maybe self-realization is just a fancy version of a horse scratching its ass on a tree. So what? But those fascinated by this game of self-creation (by a science or art or sport, etc.) are also fascinated by others equally passionate and at least on the way to being impressive. I don't feel the need to justify a preference for those are always working to improve themselves. It's a blind "stupid" impulse to be stronger, swifter, cleverer, more beautiful, etc. That's one of the things I like about Schopenhauer, his notion of the blindness of the life force. Nietzsche applied this idea to his critique of Socrates and the obsession with demanding and presenting rationalizations for what is largely instinctive. The "sickly" man whose instincts are out of harmony reaches for a fully explicit "system" and counts himself wiser than those who either never felt the need or (more likely) learn to transcend the need for full explicitness and "universal" reason-mongering.
Call me evil, but I just stopped bothering to pretend that I was looking for a solution for other people's problems. Maybe I'd feel guiltier (and maybe not) if I tend think these solvers of other people's problems weren't also working on their own. "Brother's keeper" is a purpose. We actually have a lot in common. I just think I've further "subjectivized" my reading of pessimism/nihilism. In my view this purifies and transforms it. To claim universal validity for this kind of "-ism" is still too "needy." It's not proud enough, this X-ism-as-universal-truth. It's still a salesman, an evangelist, however grim its message. We can drop the "scientific" pose and accept that we are voicing a fundamentally "irrational" position. To recognize a duty toward truth is already to "betray" "nihilism" and play at universal religion that won't confess itself as such. To me that's the truly interesting leap...the abandonment of the universal pretense. Not every human is my brother. Not every human is "worthy" or "capable," etc. I'd be silly to be expect my stronger thoughts to even register or make sense to those without a certain "irrational" sense of their own value and dignity. These are some things that aren't worth telling to those that have to be told in the first place. Instead we have one member of a type making the gut-level type-specific intuitions more and more explicit. We write for younger versions of ourselves, perhaps, since we can't travel back in time to apply the 20-20 hindsight in person, etc.
That seems really preachy and a bit patronising. I should add, I'm not a member of any specific Buddhist organisation or formal affiliation. I use the ideas in Buddhism, and have also maintained a Buddhist form of meditation, but my approach is overall syncretist and self-directed. I'm a member of a school with one person in it.
Quoting visit0r
It's well worth reading Bertrand Russell's A Free Man's Worship. It was published around the turn of the 20th C and expressed a bleak vision of man as 'the outcome of the accidental collocation of atoms' in light of the discoveries of 19th c science. The point that struck me is that Buddhist philosophy has always taught the impermanence of life, yet Buddhism doesn't see that as grounds for nihilism.
I think it should be noted that "it's all just ripples in the nothingness, dude" was my voicing of a position that I was criticizing and not my own position. As I see it, life can be sufficiently fascinating on the local level so that "ultimate futility" can be abstractly true and yet not terribly relevant. We tend to get absorbed in our projects so that this futility is as "invisible" as our deaths, most of the time. Death is perhaps the real issue. To truly believe in one's death is almost to be forced to open the concept of the self outward toward the shared "divine predicates." Death threatens to interrupt all of our projects, including our project of accumulating or possessing knowledge and becoming or remaining a sage. But perhaps we comfort ourselves with the thought that knowledge and its attendant ecstasy is constantly being rekindled in new vessels even as its old vessels are constantly being ruined by time. The divine passes through us. This "divine" or these divine predicates might also be described as that which is highest in human experience, just as gods typically take the form of elevated and perfected humans. Perhaps I can tie all of this together by suggesting that the nihilist is wise at least in his tearing of the divine predicates away from any particular subject that stands at distance from him. The predicates thereby become intimate, accessible. "God" is "just" us at our best.
Sure, I got that, and I was commenting on that particular meme, which a lot of people give voice to. And, very much resonate with those ideas. My definition of the spiritual quest is 'to realise an identity as something not subject to death'. (That was inspired by Alan Watts' book The Supreme Identity, which I think was one of his better books.)
Quoting visit0r
I don't go along with that. Nietzsche, as is well-known, predicted the advent of nihilism in Western culture, and I think he was right in that (albeit not in his proposed antidote of the Ubermensch and the wiil-to-power.) But I think nihilism is very widespread, almost commonplace, in today's world. it doesn't have to be anything dramatic - it can be just a shrug, a 'whatever'. But it's basically rooted in the intuition that the cosmos is just dumb stuff, and we're (what did Hawkings say?) 'biochemical scum'.
Quoting visit0r
Quoting Wayfarer
And at what cost?
Having to bother other people and add to their problems and suffering, directly or indirectly...
Consuming resources that other people could have used instead...
Are these costs acceptable to pursue nothing in particular or satisfy one's fascination or biological drive?
My training in engineering prompts me to weigh in the costs and benefits. It just seems to me that paying for one's personal happiness with these costs is not a fair bargain.
It also adds to their blessings.
Quoting OglopTo
What else are you gonna do with them?
Quoting OglopTo
Right. I'm also an engineer by training, clearly we're not making the same assessment.
Haha, I see. Maybe we're putting different weights on suffering vs. blessings and different risk valuations.
The question then would be, is there a correct way of weighing the costs and benefits? I have a feeling though that in the end, it's another one of those unanswerable questions out there: the only answers that we can arrive at are highly subjective that depends on one's experiences and perceptions. :(
It's simple. Don't engage in risky things. Be patient. Build your resources and your life slowly. Only have children when you can afford to completely take care of them. Etc. Nobody said you should be an idiot and max out your risk.
The biological drive to procreate rarely takes cost into consideration. It is the driving force of nature itself. I think it is very close in meaning to Schopenhauer's 'will'.
Because it promotes spiritual strength, that's why.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, but biology isn't the only reason why you'd want to have children.
Sure, but no matter how risk-averse or prepared one is, there is 99.9999% certainty that one's offspring will experience pain/suffering. And for people who put significant weight on suffering more than the 'blessings' or 'joy' it could bring to other people, it may not be worth the costs.
Also, there's the issue of using other people for one's own gains or as a means to one's happiness, which I find somehow wrong.
(Y) [Now that you mention it, I think we had a similar conversation before. Though I'm starting to notice that you refrain from giving your personal stance and inclinations regarding this matter. :)]
So what? Suffering is a part of life. It is good to taste of the fountain of suffering. Only when it hurts can you finally encounter your own will, and look at your own face, perhaps for the very first time. It is through overcoming adversity - through not yielding - that the human soul remarks itself. Being close to your loved ones when they suffer, and being there to guide them, that is of the essence.
But not having children in and of itself - just for the reason of preventing suffering (NOT talking here about spiritual reasons, so obviously I'm excluding monks) - is nothing but a coward's way out. You who hold the goblet of suffering in your hands, and out of fear and trembling cannot bear to bring it to your own lips and sip it in a single gulp, as if it were nothing - you are cowardly. FEAR rules you. The fear of not being able to overcome that suffering, to take it into you and transform it through an inner alchemy into fuel and food for your soul. You fear responsibility and doing wrong, and therefore neither can you do right.
God has thrown man into hell to show him that not even the fires of hell can consume his soul - otherwise he'd never have known the steel that he's made out of.
Sounds like you know what we are trying to accomplish, really.. You think more people should be brought into this world to experience the mix of pain and pleasure that is life. Why is this something that should take place? Why throw more actors on the stage? Does the stage need more actors or do you simply not like the idea of no actors on the stage?
Why NOT? :s
It's like asking me why get out of bed. Why the hell not? What did Professor Trump say? Should I sit home and watch TV and spend my whole life like that, or go to the office and play the game I love to play?
Quoting schopenhauer1
The stage needs neither more, nor less, nor the same number of actors. The idea of a stage with no actors is incoherent. The outer world is a manifestation of the inner world, and just as the inner pulses with unending and never-dying life, so will the outward. What use if you stop multiplying? Human like species will appear on a myriad of other worlds across the Universe, and even in other Universes. The dance knows no beginning and no end. Pff - one puny species stops having children. The Universe doesn't give a damn. For every child you do not have, the universe will spit out a hundred more while laughing in your face! Man is like fodder for the gods, a plaything. Nothing you can do ultimately matters to it. It shall go on, with or without your approval. You desperately shout why, and it laughs asking you why not?
What did God tell Job? Who are you to dare question my Supremacy, my infinite wisdom, my decisions, and my creation? Where were you when I made the Heavens and the Earth? You are a nobody, no one asked you for your opinion. So go back and accept your burdens with faith in Me - I know better than you can ever know.
Well, you can say it that way. A gentler way of putting it is that I empathize with the suffering that my hypothetical offspring will inevitably suffer. I'll try to endure all the suffering that will come to me personally but I cannot willfully subject another person to the same fate -- to suffer to realize himself, his suffering to feed his soul and the souls of other people, to repeat the cycle for generations to come?
I have the power not to subject one more person to suffering by not having kids. You can say that it's just another scapegoat to shy away from additional commitment and responsibility, to feel good for doing nothing. This is also partly true because why bother paying the cost (at other people's expense at that) if the benefits don't measure up to it?
And don't you make bank on your suffering? Every time you suffer, isn't the dough hitting your cash register? Aren't you learning how to deal with the pain, how to overcome it, how to transform it? Isn't suffering its own reward? Hasn't God more than provided you with what you need? The largest benefits are the direct result of suffering. Suffering and benefit are tied like cause and effect.
As the boulder rolls down the mountain we must imagine Sisyphus happy. Why?
The reward and the suffering are not two different things - they are one. So there is no question of the suffering being worth it. It's not even a question. You don't exchange suffering for a reward. The suffering is the reward.
Poor Job, tragic hero.
I asked this question, I'm going to wait for anyone to answer it.
And I answer back, "Not in my own backyard."
Quoting Agustino My brain may need to reconfigure before I get this. May take some time. Haha.
That's a loaded question.
I think Camus wanted to say that regardless of fate, man creates his own values. Sisyphus is happy because he is his own man regardless of his fate.
Well people who are "defensive" about the good of putting more people in the world usually fall into one of two camps.
Camp 1) Life does not contain that much suffering in the first place. This, I just think is plain wrong. Either the person is lying to make a point on an internet forum where its easy to spout off whatever you want and no one would know the better, or they are cherry-picking (choosing a few anecdotes/how they feel a the exact time they are posting), denying that OTHER people (including future people) can/would feel suffering and have a much different experience. This view to me seems disingenuous or simply not thinking it through beyond what is right in front of the person's face. I really do not have much to say to this except that if life is always great (again, seems to be disingenuous and tenuous), it may not be so for others. I would love to really know what's going on in that person's life outside the post itself to validate.. (not really.. but you know just rhetorically speaking of course).
Camp 2) Life has suffering but we have to allow future people to deal with it. I am more sympathetic to this view.. This seems to be Agustino's view for example. At least this one ADMITS there is suffering but tries to justify it. I still think this is not justified due to the fact that no one needs to go through any particular event. We are not the universe/god's willing servants to throw more people onto the stage, for what reason we do not know other than "experience" itself is deemed good. The only thing I can think is that people have a lot of existential angst (another source of very subtle diffuse suffering that humans face).. and children/family becomes an instant form of something to get caught up with.. of course.. that is even giving people the benefit of planning it out.. of course, most people are just thrown in the world with no real thought.
How so?
Quoting Cavacava
I partly agree with you, but I don't think this is everything. Remember when Camus said that the struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart?
When we analyse the symbols used...
The boulder represents your dreams. Everything you treasure. That picture you hold in your mind that you equate with success.
You toil to get the boulder up the mountain. You suffer.
And then you succeed. You reach the top. But nothing happens at the top, and the boulder falls back down.
What is the struggle to the top?
The journey.
The goal, the aim - they are merely useful for facilitating the journey, but they are not the reward - they are not goods in themselves.
Sisyphus is happy because he has not lost anything when the boulder fell down.
But he has gained.
What? The struggle. The suffering.
They are enough to fill a man's heart.
Once one gives up the goal as the source of one's joy, and finds joy in the struggle and the pain itself, then suddenly the curse of the Gods becomes the reward of the Gods.
Love the process, not the end result. The process is the reward because that's when you encounter your own self, that's when you build character, that's when you acquire what neither rust nor moth can corrupt.
The loss is visible, but the gain remains invisible - except in Sisyphus's smile.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, I don't try to justify it, I'm saying that it needs no justification whatsoever. It's as simple as that. It exists. It doesn't need to be justified. Putting people into the world doesn't need justification. Neither does suffering.
My interpretation: Life is the struggle, the boulder, we push because we have to push to survive just as Sisyphus has no choice but to push the boulder up the hill. All the pain, the suffering, the love, the joy, the happiness, and the sadness of life are experienced, valued by men who have the power, the joy of shouting de capo. Beyond Good and Evil 56:
Well, I'm with you in that I find anyone in camp 1 suspect. Suffering is a fundamental part of life. I tend to view suffering in two basic categories:
1) Suffering as currency
There is an unavoidable baseline of suffering. The more you try to avoid it, the more ubiquitous it becomes (e.g. boredom, restlessness). If you fall into the habit of avoidance, this can becomes quite pernicious. Avoidance is the wrong strategy. This baseline suffering is biological currency that can be exchanged for pleasure. Meet it head on with physical exercise, strategically directed toil, and to do good for others if you have anything left to burn. That's how you cash it out.
2) Suffering as tragedy
This is the gratuitous suffering that I'm sure we mostly agree about. This is where you find the horrors of life that give the antinatalist position any bite at all. Statistically, it's virtually inevitable that life involves some of this. It's possible to get luck or unlucky here and, on one extreme end of the spectrum, it's hard to make the case that such an unlucky life is worthwhile. That's a fuzzy line to draw and folks draw it in different places. Where you draw the line, along with your sensitivity to risk, should guide certain moral decisions like whether to have kids. Having kids is a very serious gambit. Using your own subjective threshold and risk aversion to make this decision for others is the big mis-step of antinatalism. It's simply uncompelling to them.
Survival is much easier. Most people struggle with affairs that involve more than just survival - the achievement of pleasure, etc.
Quoting Cavacava
Nietzsche had it wrong. He fell in the camp that tried to justify life. That's the wrong camp. The right camp is the camp that doesn't need to justify life at all - the camp for which the justification of life is a non-question. Some deny life, others affirm it - but to be a true man, neither deny nor affirm.
I find less and less to admire in Nietzsche, a man profoundly sick - tormented - by an obsession of justifying life - affirming it he called it. Pah! Whosoever is bothered enough to affirm life is already sick. The cure from pessimism and the life-denying attitude isn't the affirmation of life. It's the rendering of the question useless. How?
By realising how little you matter. By letting go of egoic desire. Buddha, whom Nietzsche mocked, was unperturbed. For him there was no need to justify life in the first place. The Stoics had it right too. Don't desire what you can't have, and you have conquered Fortune.
I don't call an association of people a burden. If we didn't associate with other people, we would have a much harder time.
Quoting OglopTo
Absolutely! Because it's not the event of reaching the top that matters, but the process of getting there. Over and over.
3) Suffering as Rewarding in and of itself
What about this one?
I didn't say causing suffering is rewarding, so don't strawman.
How do you view it then when you ask favors of other people, demanding some or much of their time that they'd rather spend on something else?
How do you feel that your consumption of material goods is possibly result of the exploitation of people?
I have a feeling that you'd say that this is simply the natural order of things; that I should trust on the ability of people to fend for themselves; that they can rise above the suffering inherent in the system; and eventually perpetuate the system for another iteration, because why not? Nothing in particular and the universe doesn't care anyways.
Quoting Agustino
How about the people who succumbed to despair (and disrepair) and failed to rise above their suffering? Where's the suffering-reward or cost-benefit duality in that? Are they simply collateral damage for other people to self-realize?
Actually Nietzsche spoke admiringly of the Buddha, although in my view his interpretation was incorrect. He described Buddhism as the 'sigh of an exhausted civilization' and described Nirvana as total non-existence, which is an understandable error but an error nonetheless.
Furthermore the entire point of the Buddhist teaching is that there is indeed 'an end to suffering'. The 'extinction' that Nirvana refers to, can be interpreted as the extinction of the sense of 'I and mine', a relinquishment or letting go of one's ego. And that is not too far removed in spirit from the Christian principle 'he who looses his life for My sake'...Of course the ego will do anything in its power to avoid that, but that is what the meaning is.
Because we must image it like that! I mean it contains the assumption that there's an obligation to answer in a certain way and so it restricts the answers to the questioner's agenda.
In other words, I don't imagine Sisyphus being happy when he needs to restart doing the same job he just finished, yet I was almost tricked into doing just that by the question's presupposition that I must.
I don't think Sisyphus is miserable just because his efforts produce no results, but also because they are not valued by anyone. As I understand, Camus proposes that is Sisyphus who values his own struggle but how can he? Isn't it senseless? Unless, I guess, it's not the struggle that he values but what it allows him to do, like breathing helping one meditate.
This would be similar to what I said before:
Quoting Noblosh
Hey we agree on something.
Quoting Roke
A part of this is the procedural inauthentic decisions I discussed in the OP. There is a certain repetitiveness to things. Much of life is repetitive procedural acts of habits to maintain some avenue of established living. I would consider this nothing much different than sleep-walking. Don't get me wrong, I recognize the necessity of it for survival and maintenance of one's comfort. However, I would not give short thrift to this idea, as much of the "currency" you discuss is not as abundant as you might at first think. The absurd instrumentality of it is telling you something. The angst is telling you something.
Also, this is not a binary sort of suffering but a spectrum. It's not that you are bored or you're not, but you experience certain kinds of boredom- some more profound than others. It's not that you experience things as pristinely good, but it's good surrounded by not as good, or dull, or frustrating, or annoying, or etc. etc. It's much more of a kaleidoscope of experiences and less of a light switch- suffering torturous pain/not suffering. You don't need to be tortured and some saintly martyr, living through pain, to be suffering. Sometimes the subtle is all it takes.
This leads us to what we are trying to accomplish. When you have a child, most likely it will fall into the procedures of its cultural milieu. Much of it's life will be first developing habits (tweaking every so often for obvious reasons) and then executing them. I am not saying that this should not happen- it is a necessity, just that much of our life is just that, repetitive actions to get by. What this also leads to is that we do not really know why Sisyphus needs to keep rolling the rock. I mean waking up every day is hilariously absurd.. We go to sleep, repeat our patterns, find nuggets of amusement or engagement to a mild degree to keep our angsty minds entertained and repeat. What are we trying to accomplish except experience itself? Just the insatiable need to experience and see others experience? Again, the absurd is telling you something, the angst is telling you something.
Now, in our free time we have chances for "flow" experiences (the stuff you were talking about.. funny how exercise is the best you can think of :D). We also have chances for forming strong relationships. Also on top is learning, music, art, accomplishment, and contributing to some grand project. Down the list a bit is sensual pleasures and entertainments of a whole variety. So one can say that this is the heart of what is supposed to make existence worth it. Right?
Given the option of giving a new person the "opportunity" for the worth it moments knowing that much of their life is just following procedures, and that much of the worth-it experiences are at a cost of a kaleidoscope of not as worth-it spectrum experiences, contingent harms of a host of varieties, knowing that there are chances for suffering-as-tragedy as you call it, knowing that each day is absurdly repetitive, NOT being born costs NOTHING and leads to no bad for any future particular person, knowing that no one needs to exist in the first place. We are just too self-reflective to be "in the moment" at all times.. Instead we are acutely existentially aware of the absurdity. We want the procedures to absurdly continue. It's that angst that you may feel even after accomplishment.. that "what is it really all for" feeling... I'm following this to its logical conclusion. Again, the absurd is telling you something, the angst is telling you something.
Let me tell you this, is NOT having future people that terrible? Other than this pops a bubble in people's ideal life with a family (and possibly using other people as a means to this end), what harm does it do to not have a child? It does no harm. No one needs to experience anything. No one needs to accomplish anything. Now that we, the already-born are here, sure we want to see the worth-it moments maximized. But, as the already-born, would you say that much of human life is worth-it moments? I'm sorry but it is not designed that way. We are supposed to develop habits to sleep-walk through most of it.. the worth it moments get entangled with frustrations and annoyances anyways, and there are chances for great suffering for the unfortunate. In Schopenhaurean terms, we are striving-but-for-nothing.. Manifestations of the general Will that is insatiable. Agustino's point is that we cannot stop it.. No doubt.. this was Nietzsche's point too.. But neither do we need to embrace it as they are saying. We may not ever be able to deny it either and live like an ascetic as Schopenhauer prescribed. This may be impossible from the start. However, we may at least just recognize it for what it is. I prefer Schopenhauer's method as its a rebellion and not being complicit more than we already are. One less person spared the absurdity. Again, it's that "angst" at the end of all things.. I'm following it to its conclusion.. bearing out the fruit of what its really telling you.. The absurd, repetitive, never satisfied feeling.
You completely missed my point. Exercise is not the good stuff of life, it's one of the proper ways to "spend suffering". I consider the endorphins (short term) and increased fitness (long term) to be the general payoffs for that. But, importantly, I also suggest that the suffering aspect of exercise, should you forgo it, will rather sneakily present itself in some other way regardless. That full spectrum of boredom, among other things, is what happens when you try to avoid suffering instead of spending it.
Arguments will not convince you. Experience might. I'm really just making a general recommendation as to how you might go about gaining this insight that many antinatalist opponents (believe they) have. If laundry detergent choices are part of your suffering, your overall strategy could use some work.
Wow, you completely missed the point of my last post and thus I have nothing more to say unless you want to address what I have brought up and not distill it down to laundry detergent so you can make rhetorical points. This is smug and uncharitable and you know it. Very troll-like too.
For example, I may program and code, with a cup of coffee next to me and earbuds in, listening to some sort of space ambient music or science-fiction music. It really pulls me out of "reality" and into a different one, the world of the what-if. What if I was on a space-faring vessel, exploring some distant star cluster, away from the political bullshit on Earth, the impending environmental disaster, the rampant suffering and decay? I think people live in this world of the what-if more than actual "reality". They spend more time dreaming than acting, because dreaming doesn't come with limitations. People take drugs to escape reality. They browse social media to escape their responsibilities.
I think, even if we can formulate a coherent philosophical pessimism that denounces "life", phenomenal existence, or whatever, we'll all have "good" days, where the world seems a bit more welcoming than usual. We get seduced into loving the world even if there's that little whisper in the back of our minds reminding us of the antelope being eaten alive in the savanna, the inevitable heat death of the universe or the fact that I didn't study for my exam this coming Wednesday. And I guess I would say that this is just who we are, it's in our nature to do this. It reminds me of Werner Herzog's brief bit about the harmony of the universe, and how he loves the forest even against his better judgment.
Probably a generic rule of thumb of the cosmos would be that it cannot satisfy everyone. For every state of affairs, there's always going to be someone for whom it doesn't quite live up to expectations or requirements. The affirmative attitude marginalizes these people, making it seem as though it is their fault that they find existence to be faulty.
Part of the Heideggerian care structure is the world, which is defined as the system of purposes and meanings that organizes our activities and our identities and within which things make sense to us. There are ready-at-hand entities (equipment), that have a reference towards-which (work), which is for-the-sake-of-which (a possibility of Dasein's Being), or for-Others, etc. The angst, the anxiety, comes from the moments when we ask for what sake do we ourselves exist and do all the things we do. It's a void of meaninglessness in which the nothing "nihilates" our contextual meaning, our world. Nothing matters anymore, it's all just very ephemeral and pointless.
which is a consequence of a deep cognitive flaw....
I think it is indisputable that Nature seems to give rise to endless forms. It has a kind of exuberance or fecundity about it, whereby endless forms arise, and as we now know, evolve and die out.
It seems 'western Man' has become so alienated from nature that she is no longer alive to that creative nature which has given rise to her in the first place. So cut off, like a stagnant pond separated from the river, is occupied with algal blooms and organic matter until it becomes a bog and dies. That is the fate of the 'individual' when the very cultural roots which gave rise to the idea of the person in the first place are cut off.
Precisely. To live is to be "guilty." A world without exploitation is a world with defecation (an impossible dream, life being what it is.) And of course we prefer to keep scarce resources to ourselves, where I include our loved ones as part of these selves. I don't deny that the safe and well-fed person will probably feel generous toward strangers, but there's plenty of self-righteous, sentimental posing to be had on this issue, too.
As others have argued, the desire for perfect innocence is a desire for the grave. I wrestled with that desire intensely once and came out much freer and fiercer on the other side. Life is war. I prefer this war in its sublimated manifestations. I fight for a life of love, creativity, pleasure. This might require moments of hatred, destruction, and pain. Sometimes the ugly has to step in for a moment to maintain the usually beautiful.
As they say, nature is violent in its indifference.
Sharing a quote/speech I encountered earlier this week because, why not? :)
The Story of My Life
By Clarence Darrow
I am inclined to believe that the most satisfactory part of life is the time spent in sleep, when one is utterly oblivious to existence; next best is when one is so absorbed in activities that one is altogether unmindful of self.
I am satisfied that no one with a moderate amount of intelligence can tolerate life, if he looks it squarely in the face, without welcoming whatever soothes and solaces, and makes one forget.
Nothing is so cruel, so wanton, so unfeeling as Nature; she moves with the weight of a glacier carrying everything before her. In the eyes of Nature, neither man nor any of the other animals mean anything whatever. The rock-ribbed mountains, the tempestuous sea, the scorching desert, the myriad weeds and insects and wild beasts that infest the earth, and the noblest man, are all one. Each and all are helpless against the cruelty and immutability of the resistless processes of Nature.
Whichever way man may look upon the earth, he is oppressed with the suffering incident to life. It would almost seem as though the earth had been created with malignity and hatred. If we look at what we are pleased to call the lower animals, we behold a universal carnage. We speak of the seemingly peaceful woods, but we need only look beneath the surface to be horrified by the misery of that underworld. Hidden in the grass and watching for its prey is the crawling snake which swiftly darts upon the toad or mouse and gradually swallows it alive; the hapless animal is crushed by the jaws and covered with slime, to be slowly digested in furnishing a meal. The snake knows nothing about sin or pain inflicted upon another; he automatically grabs insects and mice and frogs to preserve his life. The spider carefully weaves his web to catch the unwary fly, winds him into the fatal net until paralyzed and helpless, then drinks his blood and leaves him an empty shell. The hawk swoops down and snatches a chicken and carries it to its nest to feed its young. The wolf pounces on the lamb and tears it to shreds. The cat watches at the hole of the mouse until the mouse cautiously comes out, then with seeming fiendish glee he plays with it until tired of the game, then crunches it to death in his jaws. The beasts of the jungle roam by day and night to find their prey; the lion is endowed with strength of limb and fang to destroy and devour almost any animal that it can surprise or overtake. There is no place in the woods or air or sea where all life is not a carnage of death in terror and agony. Each animal is a hunter, and in turn is hunted, by day and night. No landscape is so beautiful or day so balmy but the cry of suffering and sacrifice rends the air. When night settles down over the earth the slaughter is not abated. Some creatures see best at night, and the outcry of the dying and terrified is always on the wind. Almost all animals meet death by violence and through the most agonizing pain. With the whole animal creation there is nothing like a peaceful death. Nowhere in nature is there the slightest evidence of kindness, of consideration, or a feeling for the suffering and the weak, except in the narrow circle of brief family life.
Man furnishes no exception to the rule. He seems to add the treachery and deceit that the other animals in the main do not practice, to all the other cruelties that move his life. Man has made himself master of the animal world and he uses his power to serve only his own ends. Man, at least, kills helpless animals for the pleasure of killing, alone.
For man himself there is little joy. Every child that is born upon the earth arrives through the agony of the mother. From childhood on, the life is full of pain and disappointment and sorrow. From beginning to end it is the prey of disease and misery; not a child is born that is not subject to disease. Parents, family, friends, and acquaintances, one after another die, and leave us bereft. The noble and the ignoble life meets the same fate. Nature knows nothing about right and wrong, good and evil, pleasure and pain; she simply acts. She creates a beautiful woman, and places a cancer on her cheek. She may create an idealist, and kill him with a germ. She creates a fine mind, and then burdens it with a deformed body. And she will create a fine body, apparently for no use whatever. She may destroy the most wonderful life when its work has just commenced. She may scatter tubercular germs broadcast throughout the world. She seemingly works with no method, plan or purpose. She knows no mercy nor goodness. Nothing is so cruel and abandoned as Nature. To call her tender or charitable is a travesty upon words and a stultification of intellect. No one can suggest these obvious facts without being told that he is not competent to judge Nature and the God behind Nature. If we must not judge God as evil, then we cannot judge God as good. In all the other affairs of life, man never hesitates to classify and judge, but when it comes to passing on life, and the responsibility of life, he is told that it must be good, although the opinion beggars reason and intelligence and is a denial of both.
Intellectually, I am satisfied that life is a serious burden, which no thinking, humane person would wantonly inflict on some one else.
It's funny, I wonder if anyone else experiences that phenomena of having that feeling of anticipation around 11am on Saturday where they are most full of ideas and connections.. then to have it fade completely by 4pm that very same day.. as a sham and illusory.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Escaping reality is a very large part of getting by for most. Drugs, getting lost in music, etc. For many, getting lost in video games and sports are time-sucking but escapist in its own way. On the other end of the spectrum, perhaps logic puzzles and math are an escape? Is entertainment itself just an escape or do you think it has to be a certain kind of day dreaming that is particularly escapist? For example, listening to music and being carried away to a more ideal world. If you think about it, it is the experience of the present time itself that we usually can't stand. We are always trying to get caught in some way to escape the present. We get caught up in our own thought-fantasies, we look for flow activities to increase alpha-wave concentration, we plan for future events that we anticipate. We meditate and try to achieve some sort of calm. We try to sleep. The usual mode of being does not seem as comfortable though. In fact, to achieve peace, we must simply learn to sleep-walk efficiently..
This brings up Platonic Idealism in general. The idea that the world of ideas, imagination, is much greater than the physical realm of "shadows on the wall". However, this may be truly Platonic Irrealism as mostly it is the fantasies playing out, not "Real" ideas that are causing the shadows we are contemplating.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Yes we need to get caught up in something. If we get stuck on our own existence- broken tool-mode, we cannot handle it for too long it seems. Does that sound about right?
I've had that impulse at times.. If life is absurd, why not try to be absurdly good? Bring as much joy as possible to others, help them out as much as you can, etc. It's still an interesting idea.. However, somehow this also plays into the nihilistic burden and angst as well. You are helping others in order to help others in order to help others, etc.. it's like walk on a path with the same scene for miles and miles and miles..It's all absurdly repetitious. Besides this, there are the realities of adversity that simply bring one right back into self-interested mode.. Maybe one can train to get over this and just help again, but it's a constant battle. Either way, it all becomes enveloped in the absurd repetitious nature of life.
On the other hand, the task of philosophy as such is to attain a state of equilibrium, harmony, emotional balance, and so on - the traditional ethics. That is a rather different matter to effecting social change, although it can be related. But in my case, I have pursued that through meditation and study of the philosophical traditions associated with that. I suppose, to extrapolate from that, that if more people pursued such an understanding, then it would have a ripple effect, in that many of the compulsions, neuroses, and obsessions that often generate social problems would be dissipated by such a way of life.
I suppose the problem you discount is humans are always at a disequilibrium. We have the ability to self-reflect- to bring things to a a meta-level. Even if you blame civilization and not our cognition for this ability, it's there nonetheless, and it is not going away. We are aware of the absurdity of repetition.. Where some see great comfort in cycles, I see great despair. We must get caught up in meditation because the regular mode of living is not satisfying. We must get caught up in projects the mere present does not seem to be as desirable. Schopenhauer's Will is a metaphor for that striving that is without real goal or end.
And the possibility you reflexively discount, it seems to me, is that you don't have to be. I think what you're referring to is a meta-cognitive deficiency, it's not something intrinsic to life itself. It's a form of maladjustment, to put it bluntly.
Schopenhauer sought transcendence of the ordinary condition in the aesthetic sense - but also recognised the renunciation of the will, which he associated with asceticism. He was not entirely mistaken in that, indeed I think of Schopenhauer as a great philosopher. But I think temperamentally he lacked what we now know as 'EQ'. Also I think he lacked any exposure to people who really exemplified the kind of renunciate spirit that he professed to admire.
Buddhists are very well aware of the trap of trying to escape from reality by spacing out or pursuing some special experience. Indeed one of Buddhist author Pema Chodron's books is called 'The Wisdom of No Escape' which is about that very point. The first thing a Buddhist meditation teacher ought to say is 'nothing to see here'. And that 'nothing' is precisely what you then sit with.