How Existential Questions are Discounted- WARNING: Adult Material

Adult Material (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform):

Whenever someone brings up the idea of questioning whether existence itself should be continued for future people, a common response is that it is a juvenile topic

Instead, the fully functioning adult is too immersed in the details of the world. The more detail regarding a particular matter (whether at work or entertainment), means the the less likely "larger" existential questions arise.

Working out the exact 'recipe', or proportions of each ingredient is a science in itself. It is called concrete mix design. A good mix designer will start with the properties that are desired in the mix, then take many factors into account, and work out a detailed mix design. A site engineer will often order a different type of mix for a different purpose. For example, if he is casting a thin concrete wall in a hard-to-reach area, he will ask for a mix that is more flowable than stiff. This will allow the liquid concrete to flow by gravity into every corner of the formwork. For most construction applications, however, a standard mix is used.

?Common examples of standard mixes are M20, M30, M40 concrete, where the number refers to the strength of the concrete in n/mm2 or newtons per square millimeter. Therefore M30 concrete will have a compressive strength of 30 n/mm2. A standard mix may also specify the maximum aggregate size. Aggregates are the stone chips used in concrete. If an engineer specifies M30 / 20 concrete, he wants M30 concrete with a maximum aggregate size of 20mm. He does NOT want concrete with a strength of between 20-30 n/mm2, which is a common misinterpretation in some parts of the world.

So the structure is actually a connected frame of members, each of which are firmly connected to each other. In engineering parlance, these connections are called moment connections, which means that the two members are firmly connected to each other. There are other types of connections, including hinged connections, which are used in steel structures, but concrete frame structures have moment connections in 99.9% of cases. This frame becomes very strong, and must resist the various loads that act on a building during its life.

These loads include:
Dead Loads: the downwards force on the building coming from the weight of the building itself, including the structural elements, walls, facades, and the like.
Live Loads: the downwards force on the building coming from the expected weight of the occupants and their possessions, including furniture, books, and so on. Normally these loads are specified in building codes and structural engineers must design buildings to carry these or greater loads. These loads will vary with the use of the space, for example, whether it is residential, office, industrial to name a few. It is common for codes to require live loads for residential to be a minimum of about 200 kg/m2, offices to be 250 kg/m2, and industrial to be 1000 kg/m2, which is the same as 1T/m2. These live loads are sometimes called imposed loads.
Dynamic Loads: these occur commonly in bridges and similar infrastructure, and are the loads created by traffic, including braking and accelerating loads.
Wind Loads: This is a very important design factor, especially for tall buildings, or buildings with large surface area. Buildings are designed not to resist the everyday wind conditions, but extreme conditions that may occur once every 100 years or so. These are called design windspeeds, and are specified in building codes. A building can commonly be required to resist a wind force of 150 kg/m2, which can be a very significant force when multiplied by the surface area of the building.
etc. etc.

This is meant to disparage the inquirer by making them think that their question is not worthy for serious consideration

How are we to know that these are just effective deceptions or misdirections that sophisticated societies have used to disarm the existential question-asker from engaging in questions that would lead to despair?

It could be a useful meme that has effectively shifted people's questions away from existence itself so that they forget it as a topic of legitimacy and focus on details so that society can keep on moving forward without leading to feelings of angst.

Whenever someone brings up the idea of questioning whether existence itself should be continued for future people, a common response is that it is a juvenile topic

Whenever someone brings up the idea of questioning whether existence itself should be continued for future people, a common response is that it is a juvenile topic. This is meant to disparage the inquirer by making them think that their question is not worthy for serious consideration.

How are we to know that these are just effective deceptions or misdirections that sophisticated societies have used to disarm the existential question-asker from engaging in questions that would lead to despair? It could be a useful meme that has effectively shifted people's questions away from existence itself so that they forget it as a topic of legitimacy and focus on details so that society can keep on moving forward without leading to feelings of angst.

Whenever someone brings up the idea of questioning whether existence itself should be continued for future people, a common response is that it is a juvenile topic.

This is meant to disparage the inquirer by making them think that their question is not worthy for serious consideration. These are things that youth ask who are not initiated into society's "real" problems. Thus, anyone who retains this line of questioning must never have progressed beyond this stage of their life- or so the implication is supposed to be. Instead, the fully functioning adult is too immersed in the details of the world. The more detail regarding a particular matter (whether at work or entertainment), means the the less likely "larger" existential questions arise.

Well, that's because it usually is a juvenile inquiry :-O

The focus on specialization has to do with the effects of industrialization and maximising the efficiency of individual workers. That's why everyone has to do a fixed thing repeatedly. So obviously all work ends up being very detailed, and not broad ranged.

Juvenile in the sense of a tyrant who holds to the power to destroy folks in genocidal acts of war or commit political blunders with grave consequences?

And if they claim to have good reasons for believing that it is, what then?

How are we to know that these are just effective deceptions or misdirections that sophisticated societies have used to disarm the existential question-asker from engaging in questions that would lead to despair?
— schopenhauer1

How are we to know that they're not?

Or it could not be. Making these apparently rhetorical statements doesn't relieve you of the burden of having to justify them.

I'm uncertain how the existence of future people can be continued.

Population control wouldn't be a juvenile topic, I beleive, but I don't think that entails acceptance of the view that reproduction, in itself, is in all cases immoral.

The question of whether we should reproduce is clearly related to whether life is good on the whole.

"We" filthy life-affirmers can frame the youthful excesses of existential angst as the pain of a second weaning -- of learning to live without the breast-milk of some authoritative justification of life. Hence "juvenile." Or we may frame such excess or life-negativity in terms of an erotic frigidity. Allured by life's voluptuous charms enough to ignore her yellow or even red teeth, it's hard not see a rejection of her in terms of a lack of lust. Is the anti-natalist fully switched-on?

The anti-natalist needs the world as a stage on which to perform his rejection of the world. Of course Schopenhauer lived to a ripe old age with his prostitutes and his books. He slept by a pair of pistols, ready to kill anyone trying to snatch his precious life or property away from him.

Where are these dullards who have never contemplated whether life is worth living? You may find some conservatives with a God narrative, but that's not even the rule anymore. "Society" keeps moving forward because most humans individually decide that the game is worth the candle.

The anti-natalist can call them shallow or irrational and they can understand anti-natalism as squeamishness, erotic frigidity, etc., or, in general, as a personal problem/decision vainly projected outward as a universal truth. But then anti-natalism is one voice among so many others condemning life as guilty, ugly, sinful. Both sides can talk about rational justifications, but it's more plausible that some gut-level decisions or just semi-fixed emotional tonalities are involved.

If you don't want children that is fine, and no one is going to attempt to force you to procreate.

There is no 'calculus' for the worth of life; each person is a unique 'barometer'; it really comes down to individual affect.

It is simply a jumping off point for an aesthetic picture, not simply an ethical credo.

But when the very act of doing anything is related to being in the first place rather than intra-wordly affairs of specific goals and questions is the larger issue going on.

So are you saying it is? What's your claim that it is or is not?

Sure, but like all "aesthetic pictures" it is subjective, and there are no resources within it with which to form an argument that could be compelling in an intersubjective context.

Can you explain a bit more; it's not clear to me what you're trying to say here.

Don't shift this onto me! This is precisely what I was asking you!

Say you. Nah nah nah pooh pooh

Whenever someone brings up the idea of questioning whether existence itself should be continued for future people, a common response is that it is a juvenile topic. This is meant to disparage the inquirer by making them think that their question is not worthy for serious consideration. These are things that youth ask who are not initiated into society's "real" problems. Thus, anyone who retains this line of questioning must never have progressed beyond this stage of their life- or so the implication is supposed to be. Instead, the fully functioning adult is too immersed in the details of the world. The more detail regarding a particular matter (whether at work or entertainment), means the the less likely "larger" existential questions arise.

How are we to know that these are just effective deceptions or misdirections that sophisticated societies have used to disarm the existential question-asker from engaging in questions that would lead to despair? It could be a useful meme that has effectively shifted people's questions away from existence itself so that they forget it as a topic of legitimacy and focus on details so that society can keep on moving forward without leading to feelings of angst.

As I said earlier: Funny, how existential thinking is juvenile but religious belief is considered just cultivating a deep longing. I see the two as very related but one without the trappings of metaphysical restraints.

For others, life is worth living and worth bringing in others to share it. Whose to say that you are right and they are wrong and that you get to determine their choices in having kids or not? Doesn't it really come down to the kind of life each individual lives with some having more suffering than others, and where some individuals are incapable of coping with reality? There is no objective rule or law that says life really is or isn't worth living. It is up to the individual. So I don't see a point in continuing this conversation, or why you keep bringing it up. If you have made that decision, then good for you. It is obvious that others disagree.

No, it's not so much the question that's juvenile. It's the attitude or thoght process associated with reaching a negative conclusion. Is it juvenile to angrily exclaim, "I didn't ask to be born!", when being scolded by a parent? I've seen that here disguised as something more sophisticated.

Well, this is not an "in the moment" exclamation because somebody didn't let me do something I wanted to. That would be juvenile in a sense, but the topic of why we continue to exist and allowing for serious consideration of why we bring future people into the world, is actually a very relevant and serious topic.

A specific person may not be identified, but the counterfactual of not procreating is no future person will exist where there could have been. Not sure why you think this is an abuse of language to think in future tenses and potential consequences from actions. Too literal perhaps?

He will just respond by saying that creating human life and continuing to live once alive are separate issues. He will say that suicide is difficult to perform because we're hardwired for living and even immoral because it causes suffering for friends and family.

Why is this one off limits but others not? Again, this is another way to shut down any thought on it before it enters the world of debate to begin with.

It would seem to me to that what is being claimed (once the nonexistent people are out of the picture) is that people shouldn't have children, ever. Of course, that statement will require justification

Would it be--because if people have children, there will be more people? Why, though, would that be a bad thing--something which shouldn't take place? Because it's a bad thing to be a person? I don't know.

This is (admittedly) about antinatalism (not procreating future people).

Whenever someone brings up the idea of questioning whether existence itself should be continued for future people, a common response is that it is a juvenile topic.

It's clearly not off limits. We're discussing it here and now, while Benatar and others have published books and articles on it in the academy. My concern is that you seem to think that anyone who has bothered to think about this topic must come to the same conclusion as you have.

As you know, I've cooled on anti-natalism, so if my responses are perceived to be of a similar temperature, it's mostly because I don't like the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, implication that I and others who come to a different conclusion haven't seriously thought about the topic.

All issues are wrapped up in existential ones of what the hell we are doing here in the first place.

Edit: I know I'm missing some details in terms of logics; still, how does this stand as an overall argument?

P3: If all people who desire reduced suffering in the world (including antinatalists) were to no longer exist, then the world would become fully populated by people that increase suffering in the world—this either due to lack of care or due to willful intent.

Aren't you? Anti-natalism seems uninterested in other people, it just seems to want to tell the majority of other people that in one fundamental respect they are mistaken in how they value life, procreation and sexual pleasure: it feels more of a lecture than an analysis. Surely if you want to spread the word, you need to enquire a little more into how other people are? That's certainly how politics is done, for instance: tramping round streets, knocking on doors, listening to people's concerns, explaining your views to them.

I am well familiar with all the kinds of arguments you cited from other threads. the problem is, none of them are compelling to anyone who doesn't empathize with your feeling about life.

I agree with your statement as quoted above; and the fact that we can't "know what the hell we are doing here in the first place", in the kind of shareable discursive sense you are demanding, is the very fact that makes the value of life incalculable in any intersubjective unbiased way.

This is a bit suspect to me for several reasons. 1) You are assuming future people will reduce suffering in the same way as the parents. Offspring may be nothing like their parents. 2) Using future people in order to decrease some overall suffering seems to not be in the spirit of the moral stance to not use people for a means to an ends. You create a life with suffering in order to reduce some total suffering.

Not quite sure what you mean by "switched-on". I agree that that age group may be the most existential, but that may be for circumstantial reasons. Funny, how existential thinking is juvenile but religious belief is considered just cultivating a deep longing. I see the two as very related but one without the trappings of metaphysical restraints.

But what is wrong with this? I don't see the contradiction in living life yet rejecting the premises of life itself. Indeed, life is presented to humans as it is already structured, and people can evaluate and analyze the structure and their place in it. If that is "needing the world as a stage", again, what is wrong with that? Suicide is not the only answer to existential questioning.

I never said anyone was dullards, just that some people disarm others by throwing the term "juvenile" around to dissuade them from the line of questioning. I am not so sure about individuals "deciding" that the came is worth the candle. Many go through the motions without deciding anything.

The point is to grapple with it and keep it at the forefront of thought continually. I think the generic "wisdom" is to think about it for a bit and move on, but it is the core of the issue as our very motivations are the core of what we do, think, plan, etc. Survival/boredom, and absurdity are all wrapped in our very existence as self-reflecting beings.

So the same can be said about arguments on the limits of ethics- abortion, eating animals or animal by-products, assisted suicide, etc. These are things which are also argued about, but somehow are considered legitimate topics of consideration, why would procreation not also be in this category of a legitimate moral argument as the other things mentioned? Why is this one off limits but others not? Again, this is another way to shut down any thought on it before it enters the world of debate to begin with.

As to (1), true, things are not deterministically set—either biologically or behaviorally. Yet just as the kids’ phenotypes are on average a mixture of the parents’ phenotypes, so too can be argued for the kids’ behaviors, including their sense of ethics, when both parents have been around. What I’m upholding is that the kid’s behavior will not itself be random but will be in great part learned from the parent(s)’ behavior. So if the parents desire less suffering in the world, given that they are good parents by common sense standards, so too will their children. Exceptions could of course occur. But this argument is about average outcomes.

As to (2), I very much acknowledge that this position is hard knocks. All the same, if one cares about suffering in the world among humans and lives one’s life thus, then the absence of this person to humanity only increases the suffering in humanity relative to this person’s being otherwise present—this for reasons aforementioned. E.g. where this person would smile at a homeless kid, a non-caring person would not show any kindness toward the same homeless kid; and without the caring person the same homeless kid would receive less compassion and would therefore experience greater suffering. Do you deem this overall reasoning valid or erroneous?

I’ll try to address “the people as means toward ends” issue after this one issue is first addressed—since the former issue is contingent upon the latter issue being valid as here expressed.

It seems to me that the ultimate question you are asking is: Should schopenhauer1 have the right to prevent others from having kids simply because his life is full of suffering? Well, should you? I consider the question of rights and who has more rights than someone else a question with an objective answer that doesn't have to do with ethics. Who has more rights than anyone else? My answer is no one. We all have equal rights, which means you don't have the right to tell me how to live my life, nor do you have the right to prevent others from having a life, because yours is bad.

What does prevent it is preventing birth.

Well, according to one argument, it's because there will be more pain and suffering. We therefore have a duty not to procreate to prevent this needless pain and suffering. The underlying premise here is that negative utilitarianism is true.

People suffer, some way or another. Therefore, there should be no more people. There are people, now. That is their misfortune; ideally, they shouldn't be alive, but it's wrong to kill them (and end their suffering).

Is this anti-natalism?

Since you all missed my point about how it is not as much about the ethical credo as it is a jumping off point about contemplating existential questions

I don't know what this means. But let me take a stab at it. The first part about an "ethical credo" might mean that you don't think anti-natalism is a normative stance. My reply would be that it clearly is, so that to ignore the tasks of arguing in favor of it and defending it from criticism is to engage in special pleading: "listen to what I say, but don't make me defend myself."

By "contemplating existential questions," you might have in mind the kind of rhetorical questions you asked in the OP. But if that's the case, you're not requesting to explore genuine questions, because rhetorical questions answer themselves. This would mean that "contemplating existential questions" can only lead to a certain set of conclusions: those you hold to.

Please clarify if you'd like.

You don't like the topic.

I do, though. It's just we're not really discussing it, and I don't understand the desire to avoid actually having an argument. I say let's have one, instead of these bizarre, cryptic little dances around the topic.

So it is a bit insulting and I can only fathom you are trying to simply get me to stop posting about the topic

I get that it is hard to remember what was said in the past, so I advise to may read from our last discussion if you are going to call the question of absurdity and structural suffering simply rhetorical. I don't know how it can be when rhetorical usually means it is not meant to have a definitive answer, when I in fact do provide some ideas and answers. If others don't see it the same way, then I argue my point by describing more clearly what I am talking about. It is hard to convey certain concepts like absurdity into words, but I try to paint a picture. If people still don't get it, or understand it, so be it, but I do like to hear other's opinions on the matter as it is important, as far as I see it.

I still don't understand the intent behind these threads, seeing as they all turn out the same.

I am not saying we should force the prevention of procreation. It is simply an argument that one can agree or disagree with. I liken it to vegans who advocate for their cause but do not ram it down people's throats or force it into law or anything like that.

Also, as I've stated earlier, I don't see the issues of procreation simply as an ethical credo but as a way to understand what we are doing here in the first place. So it is more of a jumping off point for seeing a certain aesthetic understanding of the human condition. What are we doing here day after day after day?

I already stated the usual suspects of what people use to justify why existence is in a way "necessary" or "justified" for a new human, but really human existence is a lot of needs and wants (for survival and boredom's sake) in a cultural context. There is an instrumental nature to existence, an absurd repetitiousness, and the need to overcome burdens and challenges seems a bit trite and pat to be an appropriate answer for why people need to be born to experience the challenges in the first place. Something needs to exist to overcome challenges to feel good for overcoming them when nothing needed to exist at all, though glib-sounding, still has to be grappled with. I believe the answer to that conundrum is trickier than most people believe at first reflexive response.

Well, what does it mean to advocate if not to make others believe as you do?

That's ironic. The very thing that you want to eliminate would be the answer to your question of "What are we doing here day after day after day?

We are here to procreate, and I don't mean that in simply passing down one's own genes. We are all here - even those that don't have any kids themselves - to ensure the next generation can run things in our absence and then pass the torch down to each following generation. We all share genes from the same gene pool and each do our own job in ensuring in some way that the next generation is able to keep things running (childless teachers and coaches, couples who can't have kids that adopt, gays that adopt, etc.).

I don't get that part that's underlined. I can't attempt to answer a point that I don't understand.

I am interested, hence a forum rather than a journal. So why put more people into the world? What is gained? Are you familiar with my position? It is not all just contingent suffering (the usual harms people think about when discussing suffering). The idea is perhaps too subtle to be effective, I agree. Relationships, pleasure, being absorbed in physical/mental activities, aesthetics, learning, and achievement (or some variation thereof) seem to be the considerations that people choose. Then a defense of suffering based on some variation of Nietzsche's idea of "suffering makes life interesting" as this makes everyone's life its own unique "work of art". Ideas of absurdity, structural, or contingent suffering are not considered and the relative goodness of relationships, pleasure, being absorbed in physical/mental activities, aesthetics, learning, and achievement are never examined as to whether individuals need to carry these experiences out qua individuals who live and have the opportunities for these positive experiences.

I don't see why the human project needs to be carried forth. It is absurd in the grandest sense.

But these others things are just as significant. For instance, you reduce human motivations to a flight from pain and boredom. Of course these are actual and important motivations among others. But is human desire in general negative? When a young man has a crush on a young woman, for instance, is this unsatisfied desire only pain? Or does it not light up the world with a sweet anguish?

It is absurd in the grandest sense.

Why did the young man have a crush to begin with? Perhaps a sense of longing for something pleasurable and a companion. Why a companion? Loneliness is not desired? Why? Boredom. Loneliness is one step away from boredom in my opinion. Boredom rules the non-survival aspects of our motivations (and discomfort). The positive joy of anything is at root, riding a wave of secondary goals that sprang forth from a general angst of not falling into a state of boredom. Keep yourself entertained long enough to not even give yourself a chance to see the root of the cause.

But wait ... This very presumption of an obtainable peace for Will through the obtainment of nonbeing all of a sudden makes the very absurdity of brute being no longer absurd: for it now has an escape from its predicament of brute being, a tangible salvation, and, thereby, a potential purpose worthy of pursuit. This same exit clause then renders the very absurdity of brute being null and void.

Hey, you know why many of us don’t like addressing this topic, why it’s so taboo, in other words: it can easily result for too many in the conclusion that suicide is the only exist. I get that’s not what you’re saying. Then again, there’s now a worry in me that some kid somewhere will become the next 007 villain by living his life trying to bioengineer that enzyme I was talking about.

All the same, we may not fully agree on all of this. Like others, still hoping we can at least find some common ground. The absurdity of being is. What are we going to do about it is the issue that we may still find disagreements on.

The difference perhaps is that I'll confess my own "myth" is ultimately groundless. I don't pretend to prove it in terms of objective or pre-established criteria. Personality is a risk.Your last line paints me as someone hiding from an important truth, yet this important truth grounds the necessity-for-you of what amounts to mass suicide (anti-natalism). Is it not equally plausible that you're "stuck on" a seductive idea? That rather than having the idea the idea has you? I've been "had" by the idea myself. In my most nauseated moments I have wished out of pity and disgust for the whole species to be wiped out. In retrospect I was thinking and judging from a narrowness of experience and thought.

In my view, all this cause-seeking is secondary to the "raw experience" of desire itself. My first-person experience of desire is an "absorption" in the object (her face in the room or in my imagination.) All conceptual talk falls away and is scattered like dead leaves in that bittersweet anguish. I want her to look at me or talk to me in a certain way. Life is narrowed down to only this in a moment of intense desire.

Such terms only apply to goals and how they are either helped or hindered by certain situations. Minds are the only things in the universe with goals and to project those goals onto the rest of the universe is a mistake and creates this confusion that you are experiencing.

This is why you can't find an objective answer to your question. It is a subjective answer, which is what I've been trying to tell you since I joined this discussion. Only YOU can determine if YOUR life is still worth living. There is no objective answer out in the universe that determines whether or not yours or anyone else's life is worth living, or why we live in the first place. The universe has no goals and therefore no purpose. It just does what it does and we are along for the ride. It is your choice whether or not it is "good", "bad", "right" or "wrong".

My feeling is that life is pointless and absurd, and every day I newly commit to life all the same,

I can't imagine arriving at a philosophical position where I have a right to judge other people's valuations any more than in the service of affable conversations that may mean little, 'phatic communion' is a nice little phrase for such talk that I just found in a very old Malinowski essay that I like - Other people will go on being Other, but maybe our talk will make things a bit clearer to each other

My feeling is that life is pointless and absurd, and every day I newly commit to life all the same,
— mcdoodle

Besides not eating/maintaining your body or outright suicide, is there any other way?

Certainly creating other people is presuming a right to think for another, and now there is a new person who was affected by your act.

That's fine, but in the end, my pre-established criteria does not lead to another life which passes on the issue. Rather, I let dead dogs lie. The existential situation rests on me alone to deal with.

I agree we can get caught up by something, but the root of it is a restlessness that needs to be relieved. Perhaps boredom is too narrow a word. I have used restlessness in the past, and may employ that again here. I don't deny pleasure exists and humor and other forces that we are positively driven towards based on our preferences. However, there is root restlessness at the bottom of the need for these preferences. We don't like to be at the level of restlessness, but rather in the midst of this or that pursuit/thought/goal.

site:The starting point of Kojève’s Master-Slave dialectic is the suicide of the Master. The Master in embracing death dislodges his attachment to the world. Whatever his triumphs, the Master is already dead and has already exited the stage of history. The world already belongs to the Slave. The only Freedom is death, thus the Free Master is already dead. It is the absolute freedom of suicide “which obviously distinguishes man from animal”. (IRH 248) The animal is a thing and thus determined entirely by natural laws. Man is free and autonomous precisely to the extent that he is not a thing. It is man’s power to embrace the nothingness, to be the nothing that makes him genuinely human. Contra Carnap, Kojève reveals that there is nothing more philosophically meaningful than Heidegger’s “nothing which itself nothings”. Man is the no-thing that nothings. In death the purely negative nature of man is revealed. Man is not a part of nature; he is a problem and question to nature.

Man creates himself as Man by the choices he makes with the limited amount of time he has. Death is the end of Time.

And in contrast to “natural,” purely biological death, the death that is Man is a “violent” death, at the same time conscious of itself and voluntary. Human death, the death of man and consequently all his truly human existence- is therefore, if we prefer, a suicide.” (IDH 151) Kojève intentionally uses the Christian language of incarnation, to express the manner in which Christianity is implicitly Atheism, the worship of Death itself. The Christian doctrine of Incarnation is the worship of God as Man’s mortality. The truth of Christianity is that it finds the Godhead, in a Man who voluntarily takes upon himself mortality. Christ as the Incarnation of God, is an allegory for the Truth of Man as the Incarnation of Death.

I think you are misinterpreting what I'm saying. What is it about the human experience that a new person has has to be born to experience it? A parent usually does not have an absurdist reason but some actual reason, however garbled or misconstrued. Well, if the basis of life is surviving and dealing with restlessness, it becomes absurd to put more people in that situation in the first place. Why is it necessary for a new person to survive and deal with restlessness when no person needs to be born at all? Somehow experience itself is cherished, which then still begs the question, and so on.

Who decided that no person needs to be born at all?

Would anyone care if there was no anyone there?

But even if survival wasn't a thing, as we agreed upon, the underlying restlessness is there keeping us unsatisfied and doing, doing, doing. Always becoming and not being. We can't be, we must become until death- the final not be for our little socially-constructed selves that once existed and had to do all that doing! So why do we need to create more socially-constructed selves to view the world and run around restlessly? There is none. It is creating more doing socially-constructed selves for the sake of it. This is aggressive absurdity that has to be enacted through incarnation of yet another individual who has to take the mantle of living an aggressively absurd life of instrumental doing. I'm not sure if this is making sense.

A question that allows for self-delusion. There is no one not to care or to care if there isn't anyone around in the first place. All caring (and not caring) takes place within life.

Kierkegaard in the above quote seems to signal that the view you hold - that idleness is the root of all evil - is a particularly modern view, one that "we" as a society are accustomed to hold. This is because we associate and cannot differentiate idleness from boredom. So, much like you, we feel that we need to work - to do something, by work I don't mean necessarily earn a living - because otherwise we get bored. Is it possible to escape from boredom completely?

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