Why, "You're not doing it right" is revealing
If much of life is about "getting it right", then there is something inherently wrong with it. The minute someone has complaints about life not being fulfilling, the immediate response is to suggest a new hobby, club, group, sport, etc. as if just getting into a routine of non-work activities is the answer to the lack at the heart of things. The assumption here is that to live modern life properly and in balance, one has to "get it right". The fact that we are born to hone in on "getting it right" is troubling. It is also not recognizing that there may not be a "getting it right". There is simply enduring and coping. Again, troubling.
Comments (83)
Nobody wants to endure or cope with a situation, hence the above.
You're just restarting your favorite "woe is me, the world is terrible" discussion. Which is fine, but you always just say the same thing over and over and don't listen when other people say their experience of life is not the same as yours.
Not really. The point is that if one has to endure or cope with a situation, then that's not a personal problem.
I don't see anything new here that you haven't covered before. What's new?
Yes. Then everything changes, as it often does. A new day dawns. One may or not remember previous thoughts or feel former passions. And it starts over again, building on foundation of many yesterdays, trying to find the thread.
That is how, phenomenologically, it is. First, there is deprivation of the good, presence of the bad. Then come our management efforts, the shifting-of-the-burden. The question is whether or not any future positive experiences gives sense to this negative structure. Does it make sense to give a burden to someone who does not have it, for future great pleasures they do not have the desire to experience?
It seems to me that we are always-already immersed in suffering, and positive experiences typically are always "just up ahead". The grass is always greener on the other side. Of course, there is also the possibility that what we call "good" are shadows, or caricatures, of Goodness. It may be that I simply have not been given the opportunity to behold this ultimate good. Unfortunately, I see very little reason to believe this good is an actuality. It would have to be divine and I don't see why we should believe the divine exists. The way we approach existence, as creatures of a greater power, is by putting our trust in God and waiting for the final revelation that will make it all "make sense". It is a call for mercy - why do you do this to me, God? Why have you created me?
Existence is furthermore absurd given the vast majority of people who never exist and to whom we do not shed a tear for. Existence is not "better than" not-existing, we do not pity the non-existent. This is because pity would be inappropriate: pity makes sense in the intra-worldly setting, where people already exist and have aims and are always-already suffering. Life is a drama, and it may be worth playing your part and trying to make a good production. But is it worth starting the drama?
Now something I have thought about before is whether it is a contradiction to say it is never better to exist but once you exist it is now better to continue to exist. The desire to exist is a desire which cannot be frustrated. If you exist, it is satisfied. If you cease to exist, you cease to have the desire to exist and thus it cannot be frustrated. All reasons-for-existing come from existence within. Therefore there cannot be reasons to have reasons to exist. A reason to exist comes from existence, but it is existence that we are asking about so these reasons for existing must also be put into question.
Suggesting someone take up a hobby is not about getting life "right." It's gentle way of suggesting that you're wasting your precious time on this planet by worrying about how unfulfilled you are.
My suggestion would actually be to join some volunteer program so you can go out and do something for others/think about others for a change and quit all this unproductive navel-gazing.
Thought experiment- what if everyone existed in order to help everyone else with no focus on the self? That would literally make the point of helping other people absurd. The actual "fulfilled" part of life must be more than the mechanism to become adjusted enough to life to be fulfilled in the first place. In other words, you are helping the other person so they in turn can be fulfilled.
But if this kept going so you just help people so they can help people, etc. it doesn't make sense. You have to look beyond mere cliches for what we are talking here. For the record, I'm not against helping others, I'm just saying that taking this to an absurd level, it makes no sense as a basis in and of itself.
You're missing my main point: you're too self-obsessed and that's what's bringing you down. You're clearly stuck in a rut of overthinking the futility of your own existence. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Blah Blah.
If it is a cliche, it is one of those cliches that exist for a reason. We're a social species. Helping others makes us feel good and makes those we're helping feel good. Win-win. Who cares if there isn't some objective purpose to it for the universe which is by default indifferent to our individual joys and woes? It matters to us. Here. Now.
Maybe that's what you need to learn. Stop looking to tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Learn to take some satisfaction in the moment. A nice glass of merlot. A good book. A dinner with a friend. Tomorrow you could get hit by a bus or fall down the stairs and be paralyzed for life, or dead, or be one of those conscious coma people.
Until it doesn't.
Yes! The honing process itself, the not already having but always striving is insightful in itself as to perhaps a lightpost into the nature of things. Sure, we live in an anthropic world where everything seems to be attuned or become-to-be from our consciousness, but perhaps it is just we are scrounging here for a balance from a depth of restless, weary, absurdly repetitious, lacking. By "absurdly repetitious" we don't mean that we are "literally" doing the same thing over and over- it is one step removed from the actual acts themselves. It is as if we know we must conjure the moves to occupy us before we make them. But this conjuring is old hat..
Yes, you hit the mark yet again. This is the heart of what I'm trying to say right here. The deprivation that is above and before the good- the structural aspect.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Yep, a non-spiritual term would simply be Hope. The always somewhere-next-beyond..
Quoting darthbarracuda
Yes.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Good point. Existence only matters to the existing.
Perhaps similar theme, but hitting it at different acute angles.
If much of [art] is about "getting it right", then there is something inherently wrong with [art]. The minute someone has complaints about [creating art]not being fulfilling, the immediate response is to suggest a new [style, approach, theme, subject] as if just getting into a [new approach] is the answer to the [absence of aesthetic pleasure]. The assumption here is that to [do art] properly and in balance, one has to [actually broach the stuff that's hard to broach]. The fact that we are born to hone in on [real art] is troubling. It is also not recognizing that there may not be [real art]. There is simply enduring and coping [with the fact our art isn't meaningful]. Again, troubling.
You can also do the same thing with mastery and a craft. You live, and are cared for (or not),but there's a moment (adolescence) where you're called upon to do more. There's a higher pleasure, which is something more than pleasure, in heeding this call.
There's a sublime pleasure in talking, mutually, to people who have met this challenge. It wouldn't exist without that challenge. That's how it is.
We're not owed anything. And if that is metaphysically troubling, consider what metaphysics you have that makes that troubling.
Nice! :cool:
My first thought when I casually glanced at the title of this thread was that it was going to discuss mainstream moral philosophy. In most (analytic) moral phil journal articles, the term "getting it right" is used constantly as though that casual phrasing is itself unobjectionable; I guess the underlying idea being something like: despite our theoretical differences, obviously we all agree that moral agents aim to "get it right"!
So to those who question the purpose of the thread, I mean, it's out of context, but it's definitely given me a new perspective to chew on. Just as rewords the OP in terms of aesthetics, I guess I purposefully misread it in terms of ethics. And I wonder if it points to some sort of interesting meta-ethical complaint I might bring up next time I'm set to review a relevant article.
Besides being a bit romantic-y for my taste, this seems just a wee bit condescending (any time adolescent is thrown around we are really trying to cast aspersions of regressive infantile behavior on the interlocutor- which to those in agreement with the stone-thrower is quite appropriate "humph humph post haste banish the thumb-sucker from a place in the big people's table!", puffs the smoke from the adult pipe and wax on about the higher callings of the true adult/sage etc. etc.).
Now let's do the same trick to your texts:
Quoting csalisbury
So can we talk without the hidden condescension?
If you feel that same hard-won camaraderie with other pessimists, then good. Not a problem with that. Only you seem to want to convince others too? Or maybe I'm misreading the OP.
guilty as charged. And I stand by it
I don't think so. The sentiments schopenhauer1 and darthbarracuda have been professing are contrary to the modern day mentality, but not immature or infantile. I hope we can learn to respect their opinions instead of resorting to claiming they are just adolescent bickering or angst.
I'm not putting you in the hot seat. Just that schopenhauer1 felt like your post was condescending, which it might actually not be due to the implicit reference to treating the whole issue as a matter of taste (of art). Is that correct?
To be fair, I brought up the teen/kid thing as a way we can both take that option off the table and move forward. At first you were conveying that that wasn't the thrust of your argument, then you doubled down that it was, and now you are back to saying that it wasn't the thrust of your argument. For the sake of charity I'm going to take your original and third response that indeed you were trying to say something more than "schopenhauer1's philosophy is simply teen angst" etc. and that you were trying to convey, as you put it, "a full-throated counter-response".
So what of the fact that we are always at a deprivation- that we are always having to hone in? I said on another thread a counter to your counter (most important parts in bold): It seems that at heart, humans are a bit sado-masochistic. We justify struggle because it gives some sort of meaning. To quote Nietzsche on this sentiment:
To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities — I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not — that one endures.
Thus, when justifying why we continue the "Human Project" despite obviously experiencing struggles and the sub-par tediousness of repetitive acts in daily routines/work, we often cite that it is the initial deficit in our attitude/habits/skills that is necessary for us to learn to grow new attitudes/habits/skills. Thus it is rightful for humans to be born to experience deficits so that they can learn and grow. The goal is perhaps to either:
a) settle into life's repetitive routines punctuated by moments of "true" delight and then retroactively call this settling "happiness" (because, happiness is supposed to be a sense of fulfillment or some such). This is in some way a compensation or transactional outlook.
b) attain some maximum level of achievement from all the growth learned through the deficit-overcoming (no pain, no gain). This is in some way a "life is a process" outlook.
This "common sense" wisdom of deficits being good due to its leading to growth (or at least compensated by happy moments later on), like many things justifying life's inherent "goodness" for the human animal, is simply circular reasoning in the light of the counterfactual of never being born. Why put someone in a deficit (or to put a positive spin on it, "learning opportunities") to overcome in the first place? This question proves it is a retroactive coping mechanism to justify the inherent negative nature of the human experience.It can never be justified why putting someone in a position that they need to experience deficits or struggles is necessary for that person in the first place (i.e. prior to birth), ergo giving someone the "privilege" and "opportunity" to overcome deficits makes no sense.
The bigger underlying philosophical claim here is that suffering and harm cannot be subsumed in retroactive "carpet-sweeping". Struggle is negative, being at a deficit is negative. Growth may be positive, but at the behest of an underlying negative. Mushrooms may be edible and tasty, but they still come from shit. Actually, even this seems off. In the light of the counterfactual of never being born, the achievement of anything and experiencing "growth" has no underlying benefit in and of itself, but merely as a necessary means to get by once born.
But, truly, all I have to say, here, I already said in my first response. It wasn't meant to be condescending. I understand what you're saying, but all I would want to say, I already did in that post. I mean you've already said this ^ before.
Good question. It's not necessarily the outcome of of antinatalism. There is no way that all human suffering will be prevented by mass voluntary non-procreation. However, I don't look at it from a big pie perspective, but simply see it that even one less person is born, it's one whole life that didn't have to go through the unnecessary, harmful, gauntlet. Antinatalism (considering the value of being born) more than suicide even, is a platform to evaluate the nature of what it means to exist as the human animal.
However, the bigger issue that antinatalism connects with philosophical pessimism is through the aesthetic understanding of (for a lack of a better term) "the nature of things" as humans in the world. It is a sort of therapy, a consoling. We see each other as fellow-sufferers. To quote Dylan (Bob):
My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me
Most importantly, if we agree on what is the case, we can talk within the same context about what to do. However, if you are still talking in terms of "Humans need to be born to do X" as if it is necessary. If you are still talking as if there is no structural suffering, then we cannot even have a dialogue. In a way I am trying to get to some points of agreement, taking any angle I can to get us there. The knee-jerk reaction of many in the community is to fight that view and thus instead of moving forward, perhaps developing ideas further, it is just a constant defense, which though I participate in for the sake of presenting the view clearly, I do not always want to be in this mode of defensive dialectic.
and theres sequels, right? there wouldnt be sequels if oedipus was cioran. it would be peverse. "the tragedy of being born oedipus."
Just the general sentiment or trend that I have noticed on these forums of using psychology as a weaponized means to prove a point in many of these discussions about human nature and such matters. Such discussions have no end and only fester resentment and anger over disagreements which in some sense are unavoidable since there's no real authority on the matter.
I’m not sure if that’s aimed at my posts. I’m most interested in human existence qua existence- so I’m line with certain existential elements which will inevitably touch upon phenomenogy and the anthropic point of view whether that brings in elements of evolution, biology, psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Also related and most poignent is the human’s experiences as they relate to suffering. Is existence structurally negative for the human? Again, there will be many phenomenological angles to explore that issue and mine certain ideas that can be intuited from this kind of rationalizing about the human condition. One can perhaps dig deeper than the ologies and try to mine what is at the heart of human nature and existence in general. Schopenhauer for example totalizedba Will at the root of all contingencies and manifestations. He identified a general lack in the human condition. There was structurally a negative aspect before contingent harms factored in, or perhaps form a basis for many contingent harms.
Well, I agree. So what to do?
Suicide? If being alive involves being embodied within this locus of perpetual needs, wants, desires and pains, why not just bring this endless striving to a halt? But, if your consciousness ceases, it's not like you could determine whether or not you're better off than before. Any sort of solution to the 'structural negativity' of your conscious experience can only be found within that experience. But, we agree that the negativity is structural - there is no solution. A headache isn't solved by guillotine (although the blade is always for when the pain gets intolerable).
So, what to do? It then becomes a question not of how to solve the structure of life, but of how to cope with it. And I think it comes back to the standard advice you denigrate in the opening post - get a hobby, find some love, try to laugh, get yourself absorbed into the world, look forward to things, structure your time - find whatever works for you (it seems like what works for you is spending your time writing and debating with others about the structural negativity of human existence :wink: ).
Personally, I really try not to dwell on it, as it leads to some pretty dark places. Is eating a meal made all the better knowing it doesn't solve your predicament as being a human with perpetual caloric needs/hunger? I think a meal is made better eaten in laughter/conversation among people you care about.
What do you think about coping with the 'negative structure' of human existence with a sort of ironic (?) mirth/comedy/sense of humor?
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Quoting schopenhauer1
I'm not sure if this issue can be addressed via philosophy. Much of the jargon we're using in this thread, "coping", "enduring", and so on are borrowed from the field of psychology. I'm wary of philosophers or anyone who claims to have an astute understanding of human psychology based on some false sense of authority, who then goes on to make sweeping generalizations about the true nature of man. That's not to denigrate or demean your feelings about the issue, though.
I hope that made more sense.
Yes, exactly. There's a perversion of the tragic whereby the pseudo-tragic eats itself and is revealed in the results of its own incontinemce. There's just no philosophical sustenance to be found. So, my major objection to philosophical pessimism of the type presented here is this negative excess. It's kitsch—the self-indulgent explication of the tragic that destroys its value by transforming it into just another mental commodity to be toyed with and ideologically weaponized, and that paradoxically reduces the subject as messenger of the "unpalatable truth" to precisely the kind of meaningless and impotent force that was supposed to be the origin of its angst.
So, you get a self-stroking, self-fulfilling, and self-serving form of angst that revels in its own odour while its observers can only continue to comment on the bad smell. The unpalatable truth then turns out ironically to be the degraded subject of the ideology himself who misses the entirely obvious point that should be accessible to any person capable of basic linguistic abstraction from lived experience that the structural negatives of life are precisely the elements that make possible an orientation within which life as recognizably human, as having value, can subsist.
I don't view this as troubling. For one it does seem there are people who do not feel this way. All the better for them.
But for those of us who view life as full of suffering, I don't see that as a troubling conclusion.
It's just the way it is.
We would need to care about suffering in order for us to believe that it were important.
But if life is absurd then we need not be attached to such notions. We can grow from enduring, to coping, to non-attachment, to joy. Where once we were a Donkey attached to the notion of life, and then we were a lion rebelling with declarations of the absurd, we can become a baby -- innocent and creative.
I have been very unhappy and depressed for years, and during those times felt like a failed outlier. "Negative expressions" are very unpopular. Perhaps I now have a brain tumor which is causing me to feel much happier and contented these days. Tumor or not, I agree that there is good reason to hold that the conditions of life are really quite unsatisfactory. Our hunter-gatherer brains now labor over mostly inconsequential tasks in gray cubicles for long hours, or are chronically unemployed and smoke dope to get through the day, find entertainment through the cable box, and so on.
Your threads have a monochrome leitmotiv, but that is not a great fault. Perhaps your threads would benefit from more novel approaches to the problem of life having no inherent meaning.
If life is absurd (unreasonable, illogical, preposterous, ridiculous, ludicrous, farcical, idiotic, stupid, foolish, insane, unreasonable, irrational, illogical, nonsensical, pointless, senseless...--but no joke) then there must be many angles from which to attack the bourgeois delusions about a purposeful universe, meaningful life, potential for happiness, and so on, not to mention other worldly schemes that make this world a processing mill for the hereafter.
Finding fresh approaches won't make your threads popular. The scintillating, positive-minded intelligences here will attack your views just the same, but a novel approach might drive a larger dose of cold rain under their shingles to spoil the faux perfection of their painted ceilings.
I stumbled across this article through Scientific American and had to think of you:
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/health-fitness/mental-health/the-science-behind-5-classic-happiness-clich-s
Quoting Bitter Crank
:lol:
I do like rain, even when it's cold. But I'm also pretty good at carpentry, metaphorically as well as literally, so bring it on :)
Through, not IN Scientific American. The 5 quick and dirty tips are clichés, indeed. Such 'tips' are effective for people who are already happy-minded. Lots of people are, and in itself expecting to be happy isn't a fault. Schopenhauer isn't "happy minded" and not being "happy minded" isn't a fault either. But one can not flip a switch and reverse poles.
What Schopenhauer wants is not different than what most of us want when we post a thread or a comment: validation that our views can be taken seriously. I have been guilty of countering Schop's posts with negative responses, or self-help advice. I've probably suggested he should see a psychiatrist. What Schopenhauer1 is saying is not an SOS disguised as philosophy. It's unsettling philosophy because it undermines basic assumptions that are common in our culture: Life is good. Life is worth living. Our desire for children is good. Our children will be glad they were born. The future is full of opportunities. And so on.
One can question thee basic assumptions. In an over-crowded world, one heading for ecological catastrophe in the not-distant future, are you sure adding several more people to a consumption-intense society is a good thing? It's questionable. As your children and grand children live into the economical disaster, are you sure they will be grateful to you for bearing them into a world you knew was falling apart? Are you sure the future is full of great opportunities? Life may be good, but maybe the way we live isn't so good.
As Bob Dylan says,
It's a hard rain that going to fall.
Child in back seat of minivan: Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
Parent: Almost! Are you excited?
——
Scenario number two:
Child in back seat: Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
Parent: No. Not really. We are far away. In fact, where we are going is a shallow substitute for what you really want. Something I cannot give you, even if I knew what on Earth it was in the first place. Sorry... I really am very sorry... to have to tell you this. You have no idea how much.
——
And I write that without judgment of the parent in either scenario. For I am both of them, and the child too. The question that pops into my mind is whether this predicament is general/existential or particular/cultural. In other words, were we born in a dead-end situation, or have we worked ourselves into a corner?
But that is a play/art and this is philosophy. So we are getting right at it straight on. Sure, we can make poems and stories about tragedy using all the allegory, alliteration, allusion, and all the rest, but that is what makes art different than mere philosophy. Here we are using the avenue of propositions, observations, evaluations, logic, dialectic, discovering ideas of first principles, etc. etc. I don't see why being so blatant makes that bad. I will agree it might be less interesting, but I never claimed to be doing art (though perhaps your world view is that everything is art).
Yes I generally agree with this. Suicide is often about the ideation, but can never be experienced.
Quoting Inyenzi
Indeed I do. I agree, this is essentially the common sense advice. However, the point was that it is always a lack, of a something that is not there to be reached. Something missing. This touches on the structural negativity you acknowledged.
Quoting Inyenzi
Sure, the same friends that you were lacking to begin with, and may cause contingent frustrations later on, just to be made up with, etc. But of course this may be a small (and some people say trivial aspect), but it really imbues any most familiar situation or unfamiliar.
Quoting Inyenzi
Yes, that would be Sisyphus laughing as he roles the rock up the hill. That would be Cioran's aphorisms of dark humor. I'm not against it, I just don't think it justifies it nor is it really maintained in the face of some real problems. It doesn't absolve the problems, but as you said, it helps cope, if at all.
Absolutely, this is the trend I see as well.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I will think about this some more.
Wait, but the post of yours I was responding to was specifically about aesthetic understanding and had a Bob Dylan quote at its center.
Well-put, especially the last part.
SA had the link to this article... Which, you may notice, itself links to peer-reviewed psychological studies in academic journals. Point is, there's science to back up positive thinking.
I'm not at all against toying with the idea of existentialist dread (which is all this is), and I appreciate Sartre and Kafka and Kundera as much as anyone. My main reasons for thinking Shop just needs to get out of his own head more are the way he repeatedly insists on this view, has at times insisted that's how life is for everyone, and not only makes numerous threads on the same issue, but also works it into seemimgly every conversation. It's like an obsession.
However, I do think existential dread has severe limitations. One being accusing anyone who is happy of merely being deluded and seeing the world in a one-sided manner... But the thing is that a saying like making lemonade from lemons is about recognizing that sometimes life has sucky parts, hence the lemons. Not everything is great.
I'm not advocating for a simplistic happiness a la Byron Katie (a guru who is a favorite of my mothers', and whose books she sends me every Christmas).
But some moments of unhappiness don't cancel out all the moments of actual happiness and to say that they do is, imo, the simplistic view.
It's also wrong to declare all striving in this world as a struggle, or to claim that all struggle is negative. Not all means to ends are enjoyable in and of themselves, but a lot of them are. Food is good and cooking the food is fun. Being with loved ones is just enjoyable per se (most of the time).
And, no, I can't guarantee happiness for any of my offspring. But I can offer them all the foundations for one, including doing my best to create a sustainable future. Also, the estimates of when global catastrophe should hit seem to ballpark my kid's kids' kids. So that's not realy a reason for me to avoid having my one son.
Even Dylan wasn't all glum all the time:
Can't you feel that sun a-shinin'?
Ground hog runnin' by the country stream
This must be the day that all of my dreams come true
So happy just to be alive
Underneath the sky of blue
On this new morning, new morning
On this new morning with you.
I'm not an anti-natalist, even if the world is going to hell.
Some people I used to hang around with painted themselves into a corner of high dudgeon, though with Marxism instead of Schopenhauer. They became really unpleasant to be around because their view of everything was so uniformly negative, sour. They had lost the sort of joie d'vivre revolutionaries really needs must have.
I'm not hot on existential dread either. I'm happily old enough now that death isn't that far away and life seems, therefore, quite pleasant.
Quoting NKBJ
Truth is told. What is good is good, what is bad is bad. We don't live in an average of the two.
Quoting NKBJ
Most of the strivers I know don't seem to be suffering much from the struggle, 'der Kampf'.
The problem of absurdity might be too translucent for many people to grasp; perhaps you may have to "feel" it. The absurdity of living every day is enough, for me, to not start life anew. There is no justification for life, yet we live it nonetheless. It isn't just that we live it in "bad faith" in Sartrean fashion- taking on roles without freely doing so, but it is the fact that there are no "good faith" moves to move to. Freely knowing one's entrapment doesn't negate the entrapment and the entailment of one's own being. If you've ever shit in the woods and had to dig your own hole, that might be the closest thing I can think of in regards to life's absurdity par excellence.
"Part of the royal art where the true gold is made" is how Jung described the "coping mechanism" of Sublimation.
There needn't be an emphasis on "getting it right."
What's it all for, ultimately, other than itself?
There are things you like. If you convince yourself otherwise, then, you're definitely getting it wrong--about an obvious fact about yourself.
You spend too much time worrying about it, instead of just doing things that you like. Alright, you like bemoaning life, but you're deceiving yourself if you convince yourself that that's all that you like.
And even "simply enduring and coping" isn't without likeable aspects.
You've adopted unmitigated pessimism as an un-questioned doctrine. Doctrinal assumptions need to be questioned.
Can't you let go of doctrine?
Michael Ossipoff
I'm glad I can help! Though, I'm not trying to sour your view on humanity- individual people can do that on their own :). But, if it is consoling to hear something you might suspect, that might be a good thing though.
On another note, I think that there are two main views when it comes to pessimism. The positive psychology view (the common one) is that pessimism is in the software- it is simply bad programming or a bug (in other words, it is simply bad habits/attitudes/lifestyle). The structural pessimists will say that it is in the very programming of life- it is in the the binary code itself.
The structural suffering can be found in:
1) The individual's wants/desires vs. the realities of the social/physical world.
2) The need for more need and wants (deprivation at almost all times)
3) The absurdity of the repetitiveness of survival, maintenance, and entertainment
4) Encountering of contingent harm (though it comes in various quantities and kinds that are probabilistic)
Yes, there are also similarities in Zapffe and Schopenhauer's view of art.
This doesn't address the structural suffering. I'm sorry but it doesn't. I do appreciate your sincerity and passion.
So are there unstated assumptions here that themselves can be questioned?
Which part of the above quotes of what I said sounded passionate? :D
But I admit that what I post is sincere, and I realize that that isn't generally the case with other posters here.
The "structural suffering" is doctrinal suffering. It's your conceptual suffering about your conceptual doctrinal notion of life. Is it the same as that "Existential angst" that we hear about? I suppose that a person can make himself miserable if he tries. But you wouldn't do it if you didn't like it. You've adopted it as a philosophy of life, right?
No one can dissuade you from something you like.
Speaking of sincerity, it sounds as if you're being blatantly insincere with yourself. Maybe you already know that, but maybe not.
I addressed the matters that seemed relevant. I can't say what's relevant within the doctrine that you're working from. But if the structural suffering that you speak of isn't being understood, then maybe you can clarify and explain it better.
You were earlier saying that someone is trying to force you to entertain yourself.
I did address your "instrumentality" comments. I agreed that instrumentality is a lousy, self-deceived way to live, and it's no surprise that it's making you unhappy. So ditch it.
You said that I'm sincere. I hope that you're not, and that what you're saying is just a schtick.
Michael Ossipoff
Well, sorry but there is structural suffering, whether you call it "doctrinal" or not. There are things built into the system that are of a negative quality. This can be distilled by observation and rationalization- something we humans possess. That you don't see or understand it is fine, it still controls your life nonetheless. The abstraction into principles doesn't cause the suffering, it simply explains it (without trying to explain it away or justify it). This actually falls into exactly what I've mentioned earlier about people who cannot understand it. I'll give you two quotes that fit your perplexity:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting schopenhauer1
Also, the "honing" game that I speak of in the OP is troubling, as I stated. The fact is that there is a deficit in the first place. There is this overcoming that "needs" to take place, and is inescapable. There is the bearing of one's own being. There is the deprivation from the beginning, the individual's ego vs. the reality. This is deemed "good" simply because people don't want to face what is going on- that indeed it is of a negative quality. We are always at a deficit. That is the structural part. In a contingent way, some people will have the fortune or ability to play the game better than others. So we have the structural suffering of a deficit in the first place, and a contingent suffering of those with circumstantial differences in how to overcome them. Even the fact that some people need better honing techniques and help than others is troubling in itself.
Then there is the absurd idea of repetition. Not repetition of actions, but the fact that we are surviving, maintaining, entertaining is a hard concept to wrap around as to the structural negativity here. Again, I used the analogy to digging a hole to shit in it. To enlarge this, we are supporting a superstructure that has no reason for itself, and that provides a big problem. The happiness game does not do away with this fact.
An interesting phenomenon related to this idea of absurdity is that though life itself is absurd, we still feel the power of commitments and responsibility. That's concerning as though life has this absurd non-justifiying aspect, responsibility and commitments add salt to the wound as we are preserving the very superstructure unnecessarily through these mechanisms. We have responsibilities to work and family for example. Sometimes this extends to friends, government, and other social obligations. Of course nothing is technically an obligation or commitment, but through common sense understanding of living in a society, it becomes a de facto truism. Thus, the absurdity is further mocked by our attachments to obligations which just reinforces the absurdity. This is not a consolation, as one cannot be free once the absurdity is recognized, but must trudge on the same anyways. This goes back to when I saidthere are no "good faith" moves to move to. Freely knowing one's entrapment doesn't negate the entrapment and the entailment of one's own being.
There’s much to say about this, because there are many answers to each of the various arguments.
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There are probably many people who have the life-view that you describe, but who don’t articulate it.
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No doubt about it, you describe a genuinely unhappy way of living. But it isn’t necessary to live like that.
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You insist that that unhappy situation is in the nature of life itself, and is in the nature of how things are. Do you realize what a strong claim that is? You’d need to support that assumption.
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You’re making an assumption, and all assumptions are subject to question.
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You spoke of “absurdity”. Much to say about that, and this will just be a brief comment here. Often, people call something “absurd”, merely because they don’t understand it.
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For one thing, you’d need to be specific about what you mean by “absurd”. “Unexplained”?
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You feel that our being in a life is “absurd”, by which maybe you mean “unexplained”. Others have explanations for it. I claim that it’s explainable, and I’ve suggested an explanation.
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In any case, you might want to at least consider that there might be an explanation.
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But you have an implacable, not-subject-to-question assumption that it’s bad. Don’t you perceive something questionable about that?
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Sure, life is precarious. Life is full of striving. What fraction of hatched fish, tadpoles, insects and spiders survive to adulthood? I don’t know, but it’s a small fraction. Of course the problem isn’t limited to those animals either. Death and loss are part of life.
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But responding to that by rejecting life is, for one thing, just unrealistic, because, like it or not, you’re in a life.
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Surely it’s clear to you that rejection and complaining, by itself, isn’t productive. Look for the reason for being in a life, if you want to, but just calling it “absurd” (explanation-less and reason-less) is unsupported. You’re starting from an unsupported conclusion as a first premise.
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Your all-encompassing pessimism calls for some justification. Where does it come from? How do you justify it?
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You’ve better clarified what you mean by “structural”. You’re talking about societal-structure. Of course societal-structure is bad. Personally, I regard it as quite hopeless. But then you seem to want to instead apply that to “how thing are”, in some more general sense, as opposed to merely the societal situation. Where’s the support or justification for that leap?
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When I was a kid, of course my life, and that of kids in general, was governed by a system that of course was created and run by adults, in school, family, societal background in general. There’s the obvious question: “Whom was that for??” Nominally, the control and governing of the kids was for them, Nonsense. It certainly wasn’t for me. It was farsical, and it was absurd.
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But that’s about a system made and run by people. It’s not about Reality, or how-things-are, in some sense more general than societal.
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You’re jumping to broad philosophical conclusions about a problem that’s only a matter of a bad societal system and an unhappy individual lifestyle.
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(I wrote a 1st version of this reply, and, seemingly it got deleted, and I wrote a 2nd version, and then found that the 1st version was still there after-all. So I combined the 2 versions, deleting the dupicated parts. I mention this in case there remain undeleted duplications.)
.I agree that you're prematurely dismissing what others say.
You're describing a life-perspective that undeniably causes unhappiness, but you're making it into an unquestioned alleged description of how things really are. They aren't.
You don't agree with this, but the problem isn't with life, or Reality. It's with your attitude toward life..
But we find ourselves in a life. That, too, is just how it is. Rejecting it is unrealistic. Anger against it is pointless.
So we're in a life. Instead of just saying it's absurd, why not listen to people's explanations. I say that our being in a life is explainable, and I've told a good explanation.
I say it comes down to you being someone who wanted, needed, or was otherwise predisposed to, life. Why are you in a life? Undeniably, uncontroversially, there's a hypothetical life-experience possibility-story about the life-experience of someone just like you (You, actually).
Michael Ossipoff
So instead of, "my own conscious experience is a burden to me, I feel like all I do is get pushed and prodded by various sufferings/pains/deprivations into making various actions to strive against them, in some endless process with no overreaching purpose/meaning", the very personal, individualized nature of this conscious experience is projected outwards into the structure of the world: "the world is at it's core just suffering and striving". Schopenhauer's philosophy probably being the most flagrant example of this projection.
I think a solution to the pessimist mindset may be to stop the projection/extrapolation from your own conscious experience outwards entirely, and then to view your own conscious experience as being an individual, private, pathological experience. So what I mean is, instead of "the structure of the world is [as the pesimisst describes]", it's "my own life is experienced as a burden to me, and this is because I am a sick human being".
What difference does this make? Well, when the burdensome nature of your own experience is projected into the structure of the world, then there is no solution, or hope. What can you possibly do to alter the structure of the world? The only real 'solutions' seem to be suicide, or total world annihilation/antinatalism. Whereas when there is no projection outwards from your burdensome experience into the structure/nature of the world, the issue seems far more manageable. You can't change the structure of the world, but the structure of the world is not the issue here - the problem is merely your own pathological experience. You are just sick, and you can get better.
The whole project of philosophical pessimism strikes me as a sort of intellectual learned helplessness. People with quite obvious psychological sickness (call it anhedonia, depression, despair, etc) are drawn to the very philosophy that attacks and stifles any chance they have of getting better. Philosophical pessimism is something not to be argued against/debated, it's a pathology that is dissolved by getting well again.
So for example, to the anhedonic, it seems as if we merely eat because we're embodied within a being that has perpetual caloric needs, that suffers and pains us when it runs low, causing us to act against these pains/hungers. And so through this avoidance of hunger by the consumption of food, our existence and suffering (and ongoing need for calories) is therefore perpetuated. Which is actually what is happening for the anhedonic - it's not a wrong view of their own conscious experience. But the philosophical anhedonic/pessimist takes this very individual experience and projects it outwards into the structure of the world. It is as if everyone eats due to these same reasons. But the vast majority of the world gets actual genuine joy from eating, and judge the hunger pangs as a small, almost insignificant price to pay for the pleasure. The solution here is not for an ending of the anhedonics life, or a total ending of lives altogether - it's for the anhedonic/pessimist to find joy in eating again.
If in pain then this statement of your makes sense. If not in pain then this statement of yours is what is troubling.
I wasn’t done replying to this thread, or, in general, to Schopenhaur1’s Anti-Natalist and pessimistic comments. Those comments surely speak for others too, who have those sentiments. They raise interesting and relevant general questions. Topics like this seem, to me, to be what philosophy is for, when they’re about strong feelings instead of just opinions, feelings about bad and good, in regards to our finding ourselves in this life.
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Where to start?
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Pessimism:
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What I’ve heard from followers of Arthur Schopenhauer sounds like it’s partly from Buddhism. They take what Buddhism says about how some people manage to make themselves suffer. But they conveniently leave out the Noble Truth about the avoidability of that suffering, and the suggestion about that avoidance of something unnecessary.
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Schaupernhaurism: Selective cherry-picking Buddhism?
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I’m not a Buddhist, and I don’t claim to understand Buddhism. But I don’t have any trouble understanding the simple, valuable and helpful message of Kentucky Buddhist Ken Keyes.
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You needn’t have addictions, needs and wants. You have likes.
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How complicated is that?
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As I’ve been saying, your instrumentality is indeed a great source of misery. So don’t live that way.
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You should read Eckhart Tolle. Preferably his first very popular book, “The Power of Now”.
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Tolle says that instrumentality is insane. He’s right.
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Don’t keep making yourself miserable by being an entertainment-addict.
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I know that you believe that your position is the logical one (as if logic could have anything to do with this broad meta-metaphysical matter), and that the rest of us are just expressing wishful thinking. But, even claims that go beyond metaphysics should be accompanied by some sort of reason…even if proof or disproof aren’t possible. Anyway, just as meta-metaphysical claims can’t be disproved, so they also aren’t really assertable.
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You’ve adopted positions taken by Arthur Schopenhauer, and taken them as gospel. But that isn’t “logic”; it’s doctrine. And it’s unsupported doctrine.
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I just wanted to make those few brief comments about that.
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Antinatalism:
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The notion that Antinatalist celibacy or birth-control can prevent any births is naïve Materialism. Sure, it can prevent births in this country and on this planet, and I don’t deny the desirability of that. But it can’t prevent any births.
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(But, admittedly, I wouldn’t want a victim of this societal-world to be an offspring of mine. But maybes that’s just selfish on my part. …an instance of NIMBY?)
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As has often been pointed out in these threads, there’s no such thing as someone who has isn’t, and never been, conceived.
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Whether you subscribe to Materialism, or to my metaphysics of Eliminative Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism (Any suggestion of a shorter name?), if there were never “you” conceived, then there is/was no “you” who was better off and who had something better than birth, had that conception and birth not happened.
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Sure, we agree that, at the end-of-lives there will come a time when there’s no knowledge of such things as worldly-life, identity, individuality, time, events, concerns, problems, lack, menace, strife, etc. We agree that that’s pretty good.
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It’s the time when you approach the Nothing that is where you came from, (Of course there’s no such thing as a being actually reaching Nothing.)
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…the Nothing that is the quiescent background behind the life-experience stories. …and is the normal, natural state. Lives (whether one or a sequence of many) are a blip in that timelessness.
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But, as I said, Nothing is only approached in that sleep at the end of lives.
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The matter of whether we have one life or a sequence of many is just a quibble, in regards to this topic.
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Above I’ve mentioned the end-of-lives. What about before? What were you when you weren’t conceived? As I said, there was no such thing, by my account, or by Materialism’s account.
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You’ve heard Materialism’s account. Mine says that there timelessly is a life-experience possibility-story about your experience, complementarily including or implying you, its protagonist. That’s why you’re in a life, and that's the "you" that's in a life. So though there was/is no you that wasn’t/isn’t in a life, you’re metaphysically-prior to this life and the world that is its setting.
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It doesn’t matter if you agree with that metaphysics. Materialism gives a similar conclusion about the not-ever existence of a not-conceived you.
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I’ve said that the Nothing approached at the end-of-lives is the natural and normal state of affairs. Might there be anyone who could say more than that, about Nothing as an origin or original state for us? I just vaguely mention it as the background to the abstract facts and experience-stories, which is approached at the end-of-lives. Maybe there is or was someone who could comment more, but that person isn’t at these forums.
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Aggrievedness or Complaint about Having Been Conceived:
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Of course this topic is closely-related to the previous ones.
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As you perceive or believe, why were you born? You complain that it happened to you, but why, in your belief or opinion, did it happen? Because someone had sex? :D Get serious.
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If you can’t suggest a reason, then I’ll suggest one: There timelessly is an experience-story whose protagonist, you, wants, needs, or is otherwise predisposed to, a life.
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In other words, I’m saying that it happened because of you. Don’t blame God. We should explain things metaphysically, within metaphysics, when possible. …and own up to what we’re responsible for.
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Of course, if you can support a claim for Materialism, then you can blame the random action of the brute-fact physical world of Materialsm. But you can’t support it. …but I suspect that it’s the naïve and unsupportable metaphysical basis behind Anti-Natalism and the gloom-& doom philosophy of pessimism that we hear from Shopenhauer-followers.
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But, aside from being born at all, why were you born in such an awful societal-world as this one? Well, for some reason, this is the world that was consistent with that “you” I spoke of above. So, again I emphasize: It’s because of you.
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I used to say that past-lives are indeterminate, in the sense that it isn’t true that you did or didn’t live before.
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But more can be said about that: I don’t believe that life in a societal-world like this would be anyone’s first life.
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Of course a newborn baby is innocent, and deserves the best of treatment. His/her past life is none of our business.
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Of course that baby is born with inclination for life, which s/he has since conception. …and which is metaphysically prior to that conception, as I said earlier.
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But would that inclination, of itself, be something that could have made a societal-world like this one be the world that’s consistent with you…if this were your first life, and if your only influence were your basic inclination for life?
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....this miserable hate-and-malice-filled land-of-the-lost?
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I suggest not. That predisposition or influence isn’t part of basic initial inclination for life.
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You’ve been through the crucible before. I don’t know what happened, but evidently some of it wasn’t very good.
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Reincarnation disclaimer: I don’t claim to have proof of reincarnation. No living person has any memory of such a thing. But reincarnation is implied by, and is at least suggested as a consequence of my uncontroversial metaphysics.
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Some people here take a pseudoscientific position that there’s a natural default presumption, and that it’s something else instead (What?). But, whatever it is, it would be just as remarkable, and is less supportable.
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I emphasize that, though reincarnation is implied by my metaphysics, it isn’t part of it.
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I mention it here only because the matter comes up in discussion of why you’re in a life in a societal-world like this one. It’s a good question, and I’ve suggested an explanation.
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Michael Ossipoff
That is the only quote I find I want to comment on. I agree that there is a paradox of being whereby you cannot know non-being unless being- one implies the other. I had a thread a while ago called "Ever Vigilant Existence" that discusses this somewhat. As far as my pessimism and antinatalism, and instrumentality, etc. there is no escape from the absurdity. You need to survive, you need society, etc. But this need creates its own prisons of sorts- absurd repetitions of habits. The restlessness does not go away by enlightened fiat (some Buddhist mind-game). The misery is also not self-created. If anything, the world discloses how much you don't have much control. The thrownness of ourselves into the given is real, not manifested through pessimistic prose. Indeed, your idea of reincarnation is the ultra-version of the givenness if it be true. The eternal return, over and over of the given world, and our absurd habits within it.
Right, instead of answering questions about your justification of your claims, or responding to what others say, you just repeat your unsupported doctrine.
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I don’t agree that there’s such a paradox. Supposed “paradoxes” are usually the result of faulty or fallacious assumptions or premises. Evidently you perceive a “paradox”, based on your faulty premises.
No one claims that you can know non-being. So where’s the paradox? Only you believe in a “you” who was better-off in non-being.
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And what absurdity would that be?
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1. Exactly how do you define “absurdity”?
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2. What, specifically, do you think is absurd?
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3. In what way does it fit your definition of “absurdity”?
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Carelessly, sloppily, flinging the word “absurd” or “absurdity” around is popular and fashionable with angst-ridden Existentialists etc.
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No, you prefer to survive. So you survive as long as it’s possible with acceptable quality-of-life, because there are things that you’d like to do.
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Your “needs” are a belief-invention.
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(Yes, liked things often have requirements for other things and conditions. But it comes down to likes, not needs.)
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If you’re a miserable bundle of needs, that’s your choice.
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Not everyone shares your restlessness. As someone else recently pointed out in this thread, you attribute your regrettable attitudes and approach to life to everyone, and you mistake your self-manufactured misery for a broad philosophical badness.
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For you, your doctrine is a foregone conclusion, making it impossible to talk to you. It’s obvious that you’re clinging to it because you like to.
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As for Buddhism, it has been suggested that Arthur Schopenhauer got the position you quote, from a selective cherry-picking from Buddhism.
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I acknowledge that that’s the doctrine that you’ve uncritically adopted.
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Our societal world is full of hardship, adversity and societal wrong, and no one denies that. There are people who make themselves miserable by their attitude, and no one denies that either. But, as I and others have been pointing out to you, you want to make that hardship, adversity, societal wrong, and attitudinal misery into an alleged philosophical broad universal state-of-affairs. …but you offer no support for that doctrinal contention.
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Of course no living being has complete control over its environment. Life isn’t like that. Living beings merely respond to their surroundings as they prefer or like to. Evidently you (think that you) have need for something quite different from what life is.
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That alleged “thrownness” is an artifact of your metaphysics. First you uncritically swallow Materialism’s brute-fact, and then you wonder why it’s like that, and complain that it has wronged you.
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In my early-life background-conditions, there’s plenty that I can complain about. Societal wrong, sure. But you want to make it into a belief in a broad philosophically universal badness, without giving any kind of support or justification for your position.
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Inyenzi was spot-on, in his assessment of your philosophical complaining, and your determination to elevate the misery that you cause yourself, and the adversity presented to you by the other inhabitants of the Land-Of-The-Lost, to a philosophical state-of-affairs instead of a local personal and societal problem.
If you genuinely want to solve your problem, then work on it, and listen to people; talk to more people.
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The only “givenness” for this life is you and your predispositions.
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No, I didn’t say that the return is eternal. Neither I, nor Buddhism, nor Hinduism says it’s eternal.
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For everyone, there’s an eventual end-of-lives, arriving when the individual is life-completed and life-style-perfected.
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For someone who was consistent with a societal world like ours here, that completion and perfection typically could be expected to involve a very many lives.
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…given by the person that you were, as the protagonist of your hypothetical life-experience-story.
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As I said, you experienced being born into a world that was consistent with the person that you were.
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…because experience is self-consistent.
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Then give up some of your absurd habits.
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Michael Ossipoff
Life is a chronic disease?
I've said it too many times for me to repeat it. We've even discussed this I think. Read some of my threads.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
No, fear of pain, death, and pain of death, is pretty ingrained. It's default, not preference. Also, hope is pretty powerful.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Nope, that's the given of being a particular human with preferences, with a character, in a physical world, in a real society.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
That we have needs and wants is part of the instrumentality. The repetitive actions of survival (in a society), comfort levels, and entertainment-seeking (this need not be frivolous but anything that comes out of the restlessness).
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
That's right, structural suffering. Look up about any thread that I've written. I've discussed this before, even with you I believe. Go back and read all of them. I wrote about it extensively. If its not enough justification for you, I can't help you with any more words than I've already used. Michael Ossipoff is unconvinced, and I can live with that.
I’d asked:
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Schpenhauer1 said:
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Translation:
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Schopenhauer1 doesn’t know what he means by “absurdity”.
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You’re joking, right? What else are you doing in these threads, other than repeating. …endlessly repeating your doctrine, quite oblivious to what anyone else says. That isn’t discussion.
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There’s no such thing as “too many times for [you] to repeat [something]”.
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We all have. And yes, you’ve often used the word “absurdity” or “absurd”, without definition.
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If you mean something like, “brute-fact”, then that’s your Materialism belief talking.
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I don’t address your meta-metaphysical philosophical claim of universal badness, other than to say that such a feeling can result from your Materialism, and that, as I’ve said, you haven’t given any support for it. Yes, meta-metaphysical impressions can’t be proved, but they aren’t really assertable either. But reasons can be given for them, and you haven’t done so.
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If you really believed what you’re saying, that would be pretty bad for you, and it’s understandable that people would want to help you. But I doubt that even you believe what you say. You’re just following some particular form of “trendy”.
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I’d said;
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…in you. And yes, of course a lot of people share your very common way of living.
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Making a reasonable effort to maximize our quality-of-life-acceptable lifetime is a reasonable preference, and doesn’t justify all your hand-wringing, bemoaning, drama.
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The rest of the animal kingdom doesn’t worry as you and your common majority do.
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As perceived by you, and the average Joe.
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I’d said:
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Ridiculous. You’re confusing preferences with needs.
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This discussion has devolved to repetition of your doctrine. Of course it had done so long before I naively joined it.
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…explaining why others have so little patience with your perpetual repetition.
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Everything that Inyenzi said in his recent reply to you was correct.
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I’d said:
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You said:
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Speak for yourself. Not the instrumentality. Your instrumentality.
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If that’s what you want and like, then go for it. …preferably without all the complaining.
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Yes, they’re all essentially identical.
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No thanks. We’ve all seen them, they’re all the same, and we all get the idea.
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Don’t worry, maybe you’ll eventually be able to help some people to be as miserable as you are.
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“…more words than [you’ve] already used”? But of course there will be endlessly many more posts and words about it, won’t there.
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I’ve naively tried to help you, but what becomes evident is that you’re playing fashion. Your existential angst is your chosen philosophical niche, your chosen schtick.
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You’re not the only person who has chosen it, but you’re certainly the most persistent and repetitive one here.
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Talking to you is quite pointless, as Inyenzi has already pointed out.
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Oh, and just one other comment about an inconsistency:
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You say that you’re restless. There’s no reason to doubt you on that.
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But you’ve suggested that you’re placing your deferred-happiness hope in something after your life-rejecting life. Deferred-happiness is always completely unrealistic, and you sometimes seem to understand that. So then, what are you expecting, with your present-rejecting attitude? Do you see the problem there?
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Shakespeare wrote, “To sleep, perchance to dream.” No one reaches oblivion. There’s no such thing as oblivion. You’re kidding yourself.
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Yes, your affairs are none of my business, but, with your miserable, rejecting, bawling-ranting-child attitude, do you really believe that your problem will be resolved and that you’ll be done and have oblivion, when it’s “…perchance to dream”?
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Michael Ossipoff
When we are born, we are tasked with life. That is our job. Life. It is a mix between the individual and given- genetics, epigenetics, and inputs of the outside world shape the character/personality of a person who also shapes the society in some way, which feeds back on itself, etc. This individual's drive to live (what Schopenhauer often called will-to-live), I have (not arbitrarily) split up this restless striving into three main categories (for at least the average human condition), and that is to say that we survive, find comfort/maintain our environment, and find ways to entertain our restless minds. These are essentially the drives for which our goals (formed by cultural/social/internal preferences) are grouped. Sometimes all three are intertwined intractably in a certain goal-task.
The absurdity comes in when we form habits of goal tasks repetitively (not out of choice, but out of how we usually need to live our lives to execute survival, comfort, boredom-fleeing activities). The absurd tasks of maintaining the social landscape through work and tasks. The absurdity of getting up every morning and doing our routines. The absurdity of do to do to do to do. Even just the absurdity of an earth rotating and revolving around a sun day in and day out. It doesn't stop, unless perhaps in sleep, a temporary reprieve from the tasks and the will.
Now, maybe some people don't see it that way- a majority doesn't even. I recognize that. It doesn't make this aesthetic understanding less true, just less known. People may not reflect much on the structure, may not see it. I don't necessarily believe in Plato's ideas of forms but it is akin to seeing the forms of reality, versus living in its shadows perhaps. It may be real, but most people are living in shadowland rather than seeing it for what it is. Also, as I've said before, there are well-known psychological mechanisms that allow for people to repress any notions of these kind of structural questionings. Ask a lot of people if they think of life in a general sense, I bet that doesn't come up a lot except in the context of religion or perhaps something they saw in popular media that made them have a feel good moment. What people say in a social context, what they say in the moment, what they say in their head, what they say to their therapist, what they say to a friend.. all of different context. Right now, you are playing the (unnecessarily) aggressive opponent to schopenhauer1 on this philosophy forum. Who knows what you really think out in the "real world" in the context of other various situations of life. So no, I don't think an appeal to the majority on the structural suffering is necessarily the way to prove anything, especially if you asked people in a simple "yes" or "no" kind of way as to whether life is "good" or "worth it".
Questioning birth, gives us a chance to step back and say, "[i]Hold on, what exactly am I trying to do here by having this new person?. What does it mean to live life? Am I giving opportunities, or a burden?
Does the person need to experience the deficits in order to overcome them that inevitably are part of life's experiences? What is it that I'm trying to do here? What is it that they are trying to do here? These get at the heart of the existential questions about why go through living in the first place.[/i]"
Certainly, by having a new person, you are creating more work, more tasks, more deficits, more laborers. Why is that important to impose on someone? This thread was about "not getting it right". It brings up issues like inequality. Some people "get it right" better than others (due to whatever personal/circumstantial reasons). It also brings up issues like, why should we bring more people into a world where "getting it right" is something that needs to be honed in on in the first place? Why give people (sometimes great) deficits to overcome so they have to "get it right' in the first place? It also brings up notions of what "getting it right" really means. Is that even desirable? It can mean many things and can be discussed many ways. You seemed to have taken it in some aggressive rant against me personally.
You mentioned sleep perchance to dream. Sleep seems the only reprieve. I don't know why you would discount it.
Tell me this, why are you so aggressively attacking this thread? Why is this so personal to you? These attacks on me, especially the contemptuous tone, and ad homiems thrown at me in general, seem tell me more about you. Why does this topic matter to you? You can easily just ignore it if you find it not worthy of discussion.
Let me start with your last paragraph (and maybe also answer some of the other paragraphs in other than their original order):
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But I clarified, at the beginning of one of my most recent replies, that I consider it worthy of discussion.
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How could those issues about goodness of, badness of, or reason for, life not matter?
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I guess you could call it “attacking” whenever someone expresses disagreement, or tries to point to erroneous conclusions.
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I wouldn’t say that it’s personal to me, in the sense that it’s important to “win an argument”. Like the other people replying to you, I’m trying to help, trying to tell why your pessimism isn’t necessary.
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Also, unlike philosophical discussion that’s only of theoretical interest, your thread is about personal good-or-bad significance of things. So the topic is relevant and personal to everyone.
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Not at first. But, people get discouraged when you dismiss what everyone says, and only answer by repeating a doctrine. I call you on that when you do that, but I reply when you also post serious arguments.
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I don’t discount it. In fact, I’ve been saying that the quiet and peaceful sleep at the end of lives is the timeless natural, normal and usual state-of-affairs. I’ve been saying that a worldly-life (or a sequence of them) is just a temporary blip in that timelessness.
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But I disagree with your notion of reprieve. You say that you’re restless. Then what makes you think that you’re going to accept rest, when you reach the end of this life? What makes you think that some physical event like the collapse of the body, is going to cure your restlessness and addiction to entertainment? I’m saying that, instead of just sleep, there will be “dream”, consisting of a continuation of your restless pursuit…until such time as you eventually resolve it…as you eventually will (or so it’s said). That restless pursuit doesn’t just go away, but it eventually resolves.
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Then that’s when there’s quiet, peaceful timeless rest. Very, very few people now qualify for that or subconsciously want it.
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It’s said that that’s normal, in the sense that practically none of us will be done with life at the end of this life.
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So I don’t discount the sleep at the end of lives. I merely suggest that you won’t be ready for it, won’t subconsciously want or have it, at that time during death when you don’t have conceptual waking consciousness. So the story, the striving, will continue and resume, beginning from birth again.
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This is just a brief preliminary reply. There may well be other things in your post that I can reply to.
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The other things that you say seem to imply and depend on a belief in Materialism, which I disagree with.
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I agree that we’re conceived and born with a will-to-life. But I claim that we’re already that person, with that will, and that, as that protagonist with that will-to-life, we’re metaphysically prior to conception and birth.
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So, it didn’t happen to you. You timelessly were/are, as someone predisposed to life and in a life.
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This life didn’t happen to you. It’s because of you and your predisposition to it.
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Again, this is a brief preliminary reply, and I might well find other things in your post to reply to.
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Michael Ossipoff
Continuation of reply:
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…from an age when we didn’t know what was going on, with elder guardians (family & school) with questionable qualification and motivation, presenting and imposing their versions of that “task”. But the situation, at its worst, was largely imposed on us by those elders, and later by a societal-order in general, not by intrinsic aspects of life.
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So, as I and others have said, you’re mis-attributing to philosophical “how-things-are”, a situation that comes from the societal and individual levels.
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The metaphysical origin of a person’s life is highly relevant to the validity of your claims, but it’s time to agree to disagree about your Materialist beliefs regarding a person’s life’s origin.
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That leaves the matter of your instrumentality and forced-entertainment. In that matter, you’re asserting a doctrine that you evidently got from Arthur Schopenhauer. But the feelings that you describe are common. Most people didn’t learn them from Arthur Schopenhauer. He just officially articulated a common feeling.
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As various writers, including the two that I cited in a recent post, point out, your popularly-commonly-shared feelings about instrumentality and forced-entertainment are bizarrely, miserably, a**-backwards wrong.
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You and your respondents could, and do, go on forever arguing the matter, but no one can pry you free from your chosen doctrine. Can we agree on that too? I still say it’s serving a purpose for you, as a posturing-niche, a chosen schtick.
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For whatever reason (about which we can disagree), we find ourselves in this life, and then there’s the matter of what that life-situation is like, and how we can, should or have-to deal with it.
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Continuing what you were saying:
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Hinduism speaks of Prusharthas, often referred to in English as “life goals”. It has been suggested that Schopenhauer got his life-goal classification from them, as part of his selective cherry-picking.
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I’d suggest that “goals” is a misleading word, because it suggests goal-orientedness, which is unproductive. Maybe a better word would be “aspects of life”.
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You list that as two “goals”, but that all seems to fit in “Artha”, the Purushartha of getting-by. Yes, that’s undeniably a requirement that life imposes on us. We can complain that we didn’t choose to be in this situation that has that requirement. I often feel that way myself, but it doesn’t philosophically hold up….as I’ve argued in previous posts here.
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That sounds like a peculiar mis-statement of the Hindu Purushartha of Kama—things that we like.
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The Hindu view is that, basically, life is play, for its own sake. Fundamentally there neither is, nor needs to be, any life-meaning other than that.
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(…though we can nevertheless get ourselves in an unnecessary harm-to-others snarl of our own making. …the subject of the Dharma Purushartha.)
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For one thing, things that you like are available options, not requirements. No one is forcing you to “entertain” yourself.
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For another thing, as I said before, of course there are things that we like, even among the Artha tasks. You don’t have to goal-orientedly pursue things that you like, because they’re everywhere, even in the getting-by tasks. …and likewise in things that one might do in regards to the Dharma (right-living) Purushartha.
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Kama, things we like, is of course the basis of that life-inclination, or will-to-life that we’ve both referred to, and thereby is the reason why you’re in a life.
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When the Purusharthas are listed, Artha, not Kama, is usually listed first. That can be justified by the fact that, though Kama is really the original basis of life, it isn’t something that has to be goal-orientedly pursued. (…said with apologies to you and Arthur Schopenhauer.)
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Next in your post, you speak of everything being “absurdity”. It’s impossible to evaluate those claims, without disclosure of your secret definition of “absurdity”.
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Some would say that what’s absurd (as defined by Merriam-Webster) is your attitude toward life. …even if you did get it from one of the philosophical classic-writers (Schopenhauer).
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No, I believe that most people erroneously share your feelings on those matters.
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Some of us discuss structure, answering arguments about it…instead of just reciting a doctrine about it.
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Come out of the shadows whenever you want to.
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Good point. I don’t want to promote a position at the expense of the questioning that any discussion needs. …either in this thread, or in the metaphysics threads.
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Sure, in truth, I often have feelings that are similar to your doctrinal beliefs. Some anxiety and insecurity, it seems to me, is natural and normal in life (…particularly in our societal-world, but in general too.)
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I admit that I often want to say, “I didn’t choose this!” Feeling it and making it into an unquestioned philosophical belief aren’t the same thing.
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Nisargadatta said that birth is a calamity, and I’m sure you’d agree with him on that. But you (at least subconsciously) chose that, wanted it, needed it, or were at least predisposed to it. Don’t blame anyone other than yourself.
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Worth what? The trouble of getting-by and dealing with the various hazards? That’s moot now, because, due to your will-to-life, you’re in it. In a meaningful sense, you chose it, and it’s pointless and unproductive to now second-guess that will-to-life that you had that brought you here. Did you make a wrong choice? Was this sequence of lives a bad idea? That’s irrelevant and moot now.
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That isn’t up to you. Someone who’s inclined to be born will born, even if everyone on this planet is a practicing celibate or birth-control-using Anti-Natalist.
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You aren’t causing life if you reproduce. But of course I agree that you’re contributing to Earth overcrowding.
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Good question. That’s my question, regarding my early life. …just on the societal-level, the combination of birth and subsequent harm by controlling-elders.
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But, philosophically, it didn’t happen because someone had sex and there happened to be a bad society.
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When this life began, you didn’t have conceptual waking-consciousness, and your subconscious will-to-life prevailed. You didn’t have an opportunity to make a conscious choice about it.
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As for the origin of this sequence of lives, you, metaphysically-prior to conception and birth, were someone who wanted, needed life. Why was that? Because, there are timelessly an infinity of life-experience possibility-stories, and yours is one of them. You can say that that will-to-life was a mistake for that prior-to-conception “you”, but, as I said, that’s moot now. The sequence of lives is started and underway. No choice now but to live with it. There’s no way back. Through is the only way out. As I said, once started, the sequence of lives will eventually resolve itself. So stop worrying about it, and allow yourself to enjoy it. No, it isn’t necessary or advisable to try to force yourself to achieve enjoyment. If it’s a bother, then don’t bother. Just concentrate your efforts on Artha and Dharma. Why not? Do you have something else to do? As I said, things that you like are there when you aren’t goal-orientedly pursuing “entertainment”.
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Just drop the unnecessary worry. See above about Kama and the nature of life as play.
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Next in your post is the part that I replied to yesterday.
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Michael Ossipoff
I think the problem is the limitations of our biology.
There are things people can improve within limits but it is all a fight against our biological state which is leading to an eventual decline.
I think the commonly recorded "just world hypothesis" and "fundamental attribution error" found in psychology are a partly based on a denial of biology/psychological findings.
...but they're right about the physical universe, and life, not having purpose or meaning. Where they're wrong is in their perceived need for life to have purpose and meaning.
Michael Ossipoff
So then, just regard it as an unnecessary play that you, for some reason, started, and now are in,
...and now might as well go with, disregard and quiet your unnecessary worry and complaint, and let yourself enjoy (only if you'd like to), finding things that you like (only if you'd like to).
Michael Ossipoff
But what is the reason for the imposition? Its the givens of life (survival, regulate comfort, regulate boredom..with emphasis on survival), through cultural means of social institutions. Its how humans function- from tribal to post-industrial societies. There is no way to avoid the impositions.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I agree.. I didn't learn this from Schop, I had the same sense, and he articulated it more clearly in words.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I mean, you can characterize anyone's worldview as a schtick, but that's just irrelevant rhetorical maneuvering. Taking the high ground, without saying anything of significance.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I mean that is precisely the argument in question. Why give people the tasks imposed on them by birthing them? You are going to say something about reincarnation so...I'll reply to that.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I just don't see it. What evidence do you provide for reincarnation? Why is that a necessary part of a world-metaphysics? Yes, I am a materialist in the idea that everything is matter/energy inhering in time/space. I don't see room for spiritual reasonings, when perfectly good explanations are had through empirical evidence. Two gametes come together and this is the efficient cause of the new child. Nothing more is needed in that narrative.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
By absurdity, I specifically stated that it was about the repetition of things, and by this I don't mean specific events (like if I just climbed Mount Everest, traveled more, and skydived I'd really see things things for what they are. As I've said before, By "absurdly repetitious" we don't mean that we are "literally" doing the same thing over and over- it is one step removed from the actual acts themselves. It is as if we know we must conjure the moves to occupy us before we make them. But this conjuring is old hat..
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I am discussing it with you now, and I'm sorry if I take a position on something that is not yours. This is just rhetorical posturing.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
If I didn't want it questioned, I wouldn't constantly post in a philosophy forum for discussion to be dissected and countered over and over.. I'd just write it in a blog and not engage with anyone. Again, just because I keep defending a position and not moving on it, doesn't mean I am not opening it up for critical commentary. Just don't be shocked if I also have critical commentary on those commentaries. A philosophical position based on an understanding, a "feeling" about life as you say, is not bad to me. Even you admit there are structural suffering to life, and there are contingent harms. I'm am trying to tease this out and define it. You also admit that it is good to question the big picture of life, the bigger significance. Having a child is literally evaluating life as worth having someone to bring it into. Therefore it becomes a main jumping off point to ponder these questions.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I agree there is no way back. The task has to be completed (to whenever it ends). But again, I don't see your need for the metaphysics. What about this story you provide about having an identity metaphysically prior to conception that convinces you that it is true. What evidence do you have that this is the case? We already know the physical cause of birth, why this added metaphysical story?
True, a lot of psychological bias' play a role in this. One point of the thread though is how "doing it right" is distributed unequally. Some people have to "hone" while others "get it" right away. If that is the case, why are we putting people through the "honing" in the first place? Do we like giving deficits to people so they can overcome them? But why?
What disturbs me is the acceptance of inequality backed up by a denial of facts. The idea that failing is a personal flaw not luck.
I think it would be hard to justify creating more people if people had a factual logically rigorous discussion about procreation.
Well society was successful under centuries of religion and exploitation and to me that proves you can create a successful society on untruths. Some people argue that religion was necessary to motivate progress because the natural order does not inspire us. I think people are becoming more disenchanted now despite humans technical achievements, because some of these historical myths and fancies have been undermined.
I think society should be based on reason and logic as much as possible. That does seem to lead to antinatalism but even if you don't go there I think society could be improved in someway be more sound examinations of ideas and fallacies and metaphysics.
I’m sorry about the critical ad-hominem language. It was because I didn’t think you were expressing a sincere worldview. But maybe you are, and I don’t think that disagreement should be angrily or critically expressed (a minority position here), and of course I should live up to my standards of forum-conduct.
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This is a brief preliminary reply, because the household emergency (discussed at the Ethics subforum here, under a “medical ethics” subject-line) still obtains and delays my forum-participation.
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As for absurdity, I won’t question that anymore, because with Materialism indeed comes absurdity. As I said, Absurdists are Materialists reacting to their own metaphysical belief (Materialism).
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Metaphysics is my chosen topic at these forums, because I like metaphysics, the matter of what-is (Yes, that’s called “Ontology” too.) For the purpose of this discussion, metaphysics makes all the difference in the matter why you’re in a life, and your complaint that you’re in life. ...something that you attribute to the absurd unexplained operation of a material world whose existence itself, under Materialism, is likewise an unexplained brute-fact.
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So that’s why I bring metaphysics into this topic.
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But I don’t think your pessimism would be supported even if Materialism were true.
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Reincarnation is something of a side-issue, with respect to your pessimism. I merely bring it up because you spoke of a “reprieve” at the end of this life. I argue, if you’re restless, then are you really going to accept rest at the end of this life? As I said, there’s obviously no such thing as oblivion. There’s no time when you perceive that there’s been an end to experience. Your eventual nonexistence will only be in the perception of your survivors. You shouldn’t put your hope in oblivion.
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You said:
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I agree with AntiNatalism because the Earth is overcrowded, resulting in more resource-use, starvation, land-scarcity, and pollution of all kinds, including the kind that causes global-warming.
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But whether giving-birth causes a birth that wouldn’t have otherwise happened is a matter that Materialists and some Idealists (including me) disagree on.
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Yes, the requirement for survival is a “given” of life. Your alleged need to fight boredom isn’t. It’s purely imaginary. Why this need for constant entertainment to fight boredom. Try letting yourself be bored. It might not be as bad as you fear. Or, as I said, just devote your effort to getting by, and doing good for others (human and otherwise). I’ve quoted and recommended two authors on “boredom” matter.
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As I’ve said, there uncontroversially are infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implication-facts…an infinite subset of which are life-experience possibility-stories such as yours.
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There’s no reason to believe that your experience is other than that.
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Such a story has or implies a protagonist, an experiencer, an essential complementary component of an experience-story.
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That’s why I say that you’re metaphysically-prior to your conception and birth.
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No one denies the physical account. In fact, I admit that I can’t even prove that your objectively-existent physical world doesn’t superfluously exist as an unverifiable and unfalsifiable brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of the uncontroversially-inevitable logical system that I’ve described.
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The logical system isn’t “added”. It’s uncontroversially there. What’s superfluously added is the belief in a physical world that’s more than, other than, the setting in the experience-story that is the logical system that I’ve mentioned.
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No one has any memory of a previous life. There’s no evidence of that kind.
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It’s just that reincarnation is suggested by, follows reasonably from, an uncontroversial metaphysics.
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If that sounds unlikely or unbelievable, it’s less so than the at least equally-remarkable things that Materialists believe. (…but which don’t seem remarkable to you, because you’re used to them as a standard officially-annointed belief.)
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You say this life is “absurd”. …by which you mean that there’s no explanation for it (under Materialism). …but that doesn’t make you say that Materialism is a remarkable belief.
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It isn’t. Reincarnation isn’t part of, or necessary to, my metaphysics (…which maybe I should call “Abstract-Implication Subjective Ontology (AISO), or something like that.)
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As I said above, it’s just that reincarnation is suggested by, reasonably follows form, an uncontroversial metaphysics,
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Everything, all of Reality? But yes, that’s what Materialism believes. Materialism believes in a big, blatant brute-fact assumption.
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There’s no empirical evidence for Materialism. There’s un-denied empirical evidence for a physical world that we live in. But not for your Materialist metaphysical belief about it
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Materialists forget that their belief is, itself, a metaphysical belief, and not a privileged one.
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Strictly speaking, of course, all that you know about the physical world is from your experience. You have no empirical evidence for a physical world other than the one that is the setting that’s part of the hypothetical experience-story that I’ve described.
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Surely you’ve read about Empiricism in philosophy.
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No one denies the physical mechanism of your conception, in the physical story. What Idealists don’t agree with is your unsupported, unfalsifiable and superfluous brute-fact belief in a physical world that is primary and fundamental, and that comprises all of Reality.
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…a belief that you, yourself, admit is absurd. (That’s how you characterize the world that you believe in.)
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More when I again have an opportunity to write.
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Michael Ossipoff
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Unless you can say for sure that there's no reason why you're in a life, then, if there is a reason, and, if at the end of this life that reason remains, then what does that suggest? Is it unreasonable to suggest that, due to that reason, you might again be in a life?
Anyway, whether there's reincarnation or not, even if there's only one life, the following can be said:
In the increasingly-deepening sleep at the end of lives (or the end of this life, if there's no reincarnation), there must eventually arrive a time when you no longer remember that there was such a thing as identity, time or events, etc. As far as you're concerned (and your subjective experience is what we're talking about here), you've entered timelessness.
Then I suggest that the temporary life (or temporary sequence of them) is only a blip in timelessness, and that (as I said in an early reply in this thread) the sleep at the end of lives is the natural, normal and usual state of affairs.
That being so then, with or without reincarnation, what happens in a life isn't as much to worry about as you think it is. It's still important, and real enough in its own context. It matters how we live. But, as a temporary blip in timelessness, it isn't the cause for worry, complaint, etc., that you think it is.
One problem here is that it's officially-decreed, and widely-accepted, that Materialism is the official default, the first presumption, assumed true unless proven false.
There being ;only one life is another assumed default first presumption, by those supposedly avoiding assumptions.
Actually, those assumptions have no more support than their alternatives. The fact that you're in a life at all is remarkable, and there's no such thing as a metaphysics that doesn't claim or suggest something remarkable or fantastic-sounding (...but, with Materialism, it's things that you're used to hearing, and have erroneously accepted as "scientific fact"..)
Materialism isn't the Ockham Parsimony winner. Far from it, with its brute-fact.
I've proposed a metaphysics that doesn't need a brute-fact or assumptions.
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Actually, for some time now, some physicists have been saying that physics--quantum-mechanics in particular--has provided convincing evidence against Materialism.
Will philosophers cling to Materialism after more and more physicists have abandoned it?
Michael Ossipoff