The mild torture of "Do something about it!" assumptions
Recently, I've been musing about the notion that there is a pervasive metaphysical and normative ethical position that humans must "Do something about it!". Let me explain.
Metaphysical: Going back to the very framework of human/animal existence, we are thrown into the world (not of our choosing), and then have to "deal" with navigating it to maintain self-preservation and to navigate comfort levels, and presumably, entertainment levels. This is metaphysical as, once born, and become an autonomous, self-conscious being, we must always deliberate with how to deal with a situation. We are presented with challenges, discomforts, obstacles, and then we deliberate and act accordingly. This is what I mean with "dealing" with the situation. In other words, we are presented with existence, and then we have to "Do something about it!". There is no other option. Non-action is still doing something about it.
Axiological: If you are ever given advice about something that is causing discomfort, making you unhappy, etc. it is always "Do something about it!".
In other words, combining the metaphysical and axiological/ethical here, it seems that most humans assume it is good to be put (put someone else) into a situation where they have to "Do something about it" (the experiences, obstacles, challenges of life vs. not existing at all). This assumption thus creates the situation (i.e. new life) for which people MUST do something about "it" (life/life's discomforts/challenges/needs/wants). What is it about this assumption that there needs to be something that we must do something about, even to the point where we create others to "deal" and "do something about it" who didn't need to deal with anything in the first place?
This is not as easy and open-shut as "because happiness/flourishing!!". This is discounting the fact that all of life is "dealing with" some situation- even getting out of bed, opening a door, walking down the street. This is not trivial, it is the heart of human existence. We are thrown into a world of "dealing with" and we give advice of "do something to deal with X situation", and we throw people into a world that they didn't need to deal with, but once born MUST deal with.
This to me seems to little reflected upon why people think it's good to
a) "deal with" situations in the first place
b) cause others to "deal with", situations (by birthing new people)
c) we give the de facto (and tautological) advice to "Do something about it" is good, which, even if true, indicates that we are constantly in a dissatisfied state and constantly need to do something about it. Yes, you can point to some repose of some sort- but it is always in relation to the dealing with.
Why are we assuming it is good to "deal with" anything at all? Why is this such an ingrained baseline notion that this is a right/good existential state, besides the fact that it is inescapable?
Metaphysical: Going back to the very framework of human/animal existence, we are thrown into the world (not of our choosing), and then have to "deal" with navigating it to maintain self-preservation and to navigate comfort levels, and presumably, entertainment levels. This is metaphysical as, once born, and become an autonomous, self-conscious being, we must always deliberate with how to deal with a situation. We are presented with challenges, discomforts, obstacles, and then we deliberate and act accordingly. This is what I mean with "dealing" with the situation. In other words, we are presented with existence, and then we have to "Do something about it!". There is no other option. Non-action is still doing something about it.
Axiological: If you are ever given advice about something that is causing discomfort, making you unhappy, etc. it is always "Do something about it!".
In other words, combining the metaphysical and axiological/ethical here, it seems that most humans assume it is good to be put (put someone else) into a situation where they have to "Do something about it" (the experiences, obstacles, challenges of life vs. not existing at all). This assumption thus creates the situation (i.e. new life) for which people MUST do something about "it" (life/life's discomforts/challenges/needs/wants). What is it about this assumption that there needs to be something that we must do something about, even to the point where we create others to "deal" and "do something about it" who didn't need to deal with anything in the first place?
This is not as easy and open-shut as "because happiness/flourishing!!". This is discounting the fact that all of life is "dealing with" some situation- even getting out of bed, opening a door, walking down the street. This is not trivial, it is the heart of human existence. We are thrown into a world of "dealing with" and we give advice of "do something to deal with X situation", and we throw people into a world that they didn't need to deal with, but once born MUST deal with.
This to me seems to little reflected upon why people think it's good to
a) "deal with" situations in the first place
b) cause others to "deal with", situations (by birthing new people)
c) we give the de facto (and tautological) advice to "Do something about it" is good, which, even if true, indicates that we are constantly in a dissatisfied state and constantly need to do something about it. Yes, you can point to some repose of some sort- but it is always in relation to the dealing with.
Why are we assuming it is good to "deal with" anything at all? Why is this such an ingrained baseline notion that this is a right/good existential state, besides the fact that it is inescapable?
Comments (115)
I think by “do something about it”, people mean you should work to change the situation rather than complain to us about it.
"Us" I like it..brings images of people standing in a circle with angry faces and torches. Village of the "annoyed". Anyways, you kind of didn't see the main gist of the post I see. I was about ALWAYS being in a place of dealing with something and putting others in this situation. We assume this is good. Why? What is good about dealing with at all? Of course, we have to "do something about it", there is no other way..
I think I get your point: we can’t not deal with it. But I think that when people use the phrase “deal with it” they mean you can take certain steps to alter your situation. I just know that whenever some has said “deal with it” to me, it was because I was complaining about a situation or other.
Yes I get that- but that is kind of the surfacey way of thinking about it. Yes, we all know that "do something about it" is a colloquialism for, "change your course of action or take these other steps you are not taking". However, to broaden and deepen the point here, we are ALWAYS in a state of "dealing with", and when bringing people into existence (procreation) we are recruiting THEM to deal with as well, so there is something about "dealing with" that seems culturally/individually assumed is good. Being put and putting others in a situation of "dealing with" seems to me a mild torture that we simply take as what existence is about. It is the dissatisfied background radiation of life.
There's this other point you put and I do agree with you: bringing someone to life is something that should be analyzed more exhaustively because times change and they may become less diesirable to live in over time and therefore more problems will arise. It may have nothing to do but I highly recommend you to watch Evangelion. I think it refers exactly to this point you make. In it Shingi, the main character, refuses to do lots of things and flees from what he is supposed to deal with. Most people hate him as a main character but they don't realize he has been brought to existence to deal with the consequences of human stupidity, so I really believe that in his case life is really something to be dealt with.
To conclude I'll just quote Kierkegaard.
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. Soren Kierkegaard
Seems a little too tautological for my own tastes. I don’t see how “deal with it” amounts to living.
This is the first thing I disagree with here. In order for you to be "thrown into the world," there has to be a you that we can do something to (namely, throwing you into the world). But there's no you outside of the world. We can't do something to an entity that doesn't exist. Your existence can't obtain until you're already in the world.
I agree with this and I would also add that parents are not to blame either as there's no way to know why you were born and not someone else.
So this isn't about how to deal with something but THAT we deal with anything/all things at all in the first place. We are always in a state of "dealing with" (deliberating about goals, solving a problem, overcoming a challenge, prioritizing what to do next, finding more comfortable circumstances, etc.).
Quoting Alan
So this is dealing with, but it is just such a wrote enculturated routine, it feels more habit. But indeed you are dealing with what you should be doing, what is expected of what you should be doing, prioritizing, planning, executing, etc. In other words, you are almost always in a state where you have to do something about something. I mean, you can live in your own feces in one spot and slowly die of starvation. That is still dealing with in an ascetic (perhaps Cynic?) fashion. Dealing with comes de facto as a living being in almost all waking moments.
Quoting Alan
This is the heart of the question I am asking. Life has a series of "dos" these does must be dealt with (assuming no starvation and sitting one's own feces until death). We are constantly in a dissatisfied state, hence our "deal with" to get over dissatisfaction. The bed is uncomfortable and you can't sleep- must find bed. I need money, must find optimal job. The boss expects these goals from me- must deal with tasks or get fired and not get money. The bathroom looks and feels dirty- gotta clean make sure that gets cleaned. I'm lonely and can't find a partner or friends- better get out there and join some group. The grass is getting too long, better mow that. I need a garden- better go build a bed for the plants, plant, water, fertilize, and weed. Etc. etc. etc. It's a series of dos based on baseline dissatisfaction. But it is assumed this is what makes life great- tending to the garden, joining the social group, getting that work-task done, brushing the teeth, etc. Yes, you can say you do those things IN ORDER to do other things more preferable (pleasurable?), but these "goods" that are pursued represent also the things that are not had initially- again, the initial dissatisfaction (just more dos to get the goods, so to say). We are in an initial state of dissatisfaction or deprivation that must be dealt with, repeatedly until unconsciousness/death. This whole system is deemed as "good" by many, but not reflective about its deprivational nature that is there to begin with. If life presents itself as challenges to "deal with" (get and keep a job to survive, let's say, or making more comfortable environs for yourself), then what is it about this that is "good"?
Quoting Alan
Yes, there is nothing needs to take place for another person. By having them, they exist and must "deal with".
The minute you wake up you are dealing with. If it seems too simple to you, it is because it is never reflected upon or looked at from a birds eyeview...it's just assumed as what we do. I'm questioning the whole thing of having to deal with being good (essentially amounting to being good).
Ok, first this is a tangential argument. This is typical from you though and your poor argument-style habits. You are going down a rabbit-hole rather than look at the actual argument at hand..also we've had this type of non-identity debate numerous times I believe. But I'll indulge here..
When a child is born, it is thrown into the world at point X of its consciousness. It isn't relevant actually at what X time you want the person to be considered fully "conscious" either. That person was procreated, and the procreation is done by the parents of that person. This is a no-brainer and no amount of semantics will bypass the self-evidence that people are born from be procreated by a set of parents. The "born" is the thrown into the world part. Prior to this it is just the parents' imagination or projection of what the child will be.
Interesting egoistic perspective. The point is, we live in a world where we are constantly having to "do something about it". There is no way out of it. That I am saying is bad, and should be a good reason to not bring others into this state.
Ha, there are tons of people that have that knee-jerk response to a complaint someone else has. But my point is we are ALWAYS doing something, dealing with something in the first place. Why should we embrace the "dealing with" just because we are born into a world that is inherently like this? Do we have to identify with something just because it is what is the case? Doesn't make sense that we think it is always good to identify with that which causes suffering. For example, people rather say, "No pain, no gain" or "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger" than say, "life is inherently flawed due to structural suffering". It is enculturated to identify with that which causes the suffering than to call it out as bad.
I guess what I'm thinking is that whoever says that, if you challenge the notion to their face, they back pedal or go blah blah, and they really seem to have no understanding of the figure of speech. It came from somewhere and spread like a virus, just like "yoga" and "I'm going to surround myself with people who are brimming with false optimism".
Every figure of speech is just blah blah. 80% of people have little to no idea what they're saying or doing or why.
I tend to agree with you here. I think people pick up slogans and don't reflect on the assumptions behind them.
But they pick up more than the slogan, they base their lifestyle on it. It consumes them. This is what is accomplished when a society revolves around purchasing commodities.
Well, this is partly why I am questioning this in the thread- specifically the slogan "Do something about it". In this case, I am delving into the idea that we are ALWAYS dealing with in life, and then asking why is it that we embrace the notion that "dealing with" is a good thing.
Just tackling things I disagree with in the argument, in the order that they occur. If it wasn't important in your argument, you should have edited it out prior to posting.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The child is already in the world prior to birth.
I think there might be a good emotional reason. I might feel pretty bad about bringing someone into existence and it might cause me to suffer. But, if I was capable of not feeling bad about causing others to suffer, what reason would I have to not cause suffering to others? Well, I would say only the prudential reasons like the fear of being reprimanded or the fear of spoiling valuable cooperative relationships. I think it would easier for you to persuade people to avoid having children by talking about how much suffering will come to them from the stress, anxiety, worry, sleep deprivation, emotional exhaustion, labor pain, boredom, and possible grief that comes with having children.
It's a colloquialism you are taking too far then. Clearly no actual "thing" is "thrown" into the world. A person is conceived, gestated, and birthed into the world. The idea is, no one existed prior to their existence (whatever that might mean, conception, gestation, birth, consciousness, self-consciousness one or all of them).
Yes, there are apparently people like @Terrapin Station that don't care about causing unnecessary harm where it can be completely prevented unto another person.
You're always so full of skewed hyperbole. It's a joke.
Calm down.
He used the term "us" in hyperbole terms, just showing what it was conveying.. US- the "real people", "genteel society", "the regular Joe" annoyed at someone complaining.
Seriously man, if you see a car slam its brakes on the freeway do you just drive into the back of it?
I interpreted the response a bit differently.. He may have been simply giving an explanation rather than an admonition. I was thinking there was a sly ad hom in there, that may have not.. Either way, "us" threw me off.
What the hell is your problem... You approached and are now worse than Terrapin levels of debate etiquette.
Yeah, we agree with that.
In my opinion, if we're doing philosophy we should not do so by throwing in colloquialisms that don't amount to much in terms of anything that's literally the case.
Say what?
Again, miss the point which was broadening the very assumption of "dealing with" in the first place that generally, people (I guess like yourself) like to assume is default a "good" thing in the first place. Dealing with, and creating new people to deal with is taken as default good. I am questioning that. So this isn't really about the phrase qua phrase as it is often used, though it tangentially has to do with that. Rather, I am showing how it reveals a bigger picture of assumptions about how we think "dealing with" is a good thing in the first place.
You know I don't agree on the inherent suffering in life but I do agree that many people identify themselves with the actual suffering and it fucking gets to my nerves because it apparently enables them to be assholes because they've gone through so much pain. It's as if they gained more dignity or something.
You haven’t noticed that people have taken to making derogatory statements about you but directed to others instead of you?
Still think S probably generates a bit more hate but youre getting there lol
Okay, so the next point: this sounds like "overthinking" a bit. I don't think that most situations are dilemmas in the way that you're describing it. It sound like you're describing someone rather neurotic, who would find even the slightest thing stressful for some reason, rather than being able to just go with the flow without worrying about most things. Certainly everyone has to work through some things that are dilemmas for them, but most things won't be dilemmas for most people I don't think.
I've been around people who constantly worry and stress and find everything difficult to deal with. They tend to be "psychic vampires."
C'mon. Everyone loves me. :joke:
Then don't respond.
Agreed. Suffering apparently gives you more credibility. It's used in various ways too. For example, because someone is starving in Africa, your pain shouldn't be so bad. Rather, it is revealing that despite not being an even worse pain, it just feels that much relatively worse when you go up the hierarchy of needs.. it doesn't disappear, the little is now the big thing as you move up. Also, how screwed up is that that in order to negate someone else's negative experiences, you have to point to someone with yet worse negative experiences.
How can you decide having to deal with stuff is bad if there hasn't been any other way ever? This is my point when I talk about ideals. It seems bad to you because there's a completely idealized idea and then you just compare it to the real thing!
Yes. You perfectly got my point. I only compare the suffering of others to myself to realize that what I'm going through is not the great deal. However, I don't think others have the right to do the same to me nor do I do that to others.
In my opinion, there are three components “to dealing with it": the agony of having the problem, the cost of dealing with that problem, and the satisfaction having dealt with the problem. The first two components are usually associated with negative feelings. The third component is usually the only positive one. I think it is often the case that the displeasure of having a problem and dealing with it, is greater than the brief pleasure of solving the problem. So I would agree with you that having to deal with problems is overall not a good thing. (Or I might have totally misunderstood you.)
Well, I don't think I am overthinking it. Rather, I am analyzing what people don't perhaps analyze. I believe in existentialist literature at least, there is talk about an "aboutness" to consciousness. I see a similarity here in terms of there being a "dealing with-ness" to normal waking life. We deal with all the things mentioned. And yes, if just very "low grind" activities like getting out of bed, it isn't so bad, but added to the complexity of how humans live and interrelate and survive, there is very much a stressful dealing with in even the most mundane of lives. However, I don't want to downplay the initial "dealing with" that is deemed as good in the first place. What is it about overcoming situations and challenges that need to take place? Of course, if someone wants to sit it all out.. well, that is not an option. At least not without suicide or making someone else deal with it, thus transferring the dealing with situation to someone else.
The world is saturated with people who "complain too much" while complaining to others they "complain too much".
Well right, and you hit on an interesting issue. I think people identify with the terms of this existence (like suffering, and "dealing with") because it is the only existence that they know or can know. Thus since it is all there is, it must be excepted and not critiqued. You can critique specific instances, but never the reality background the show takes place in itself it seems. Again, that is perhaps because it is the only one we know. But as you point out, we do have ideal notions. There are notions of possibilities, contingency, ideals, and better possible worlds.
The current world is one with undue suffering (i.e. exceeds what one would have asked for to "grow") and growth-through-adversity (pain to a point that one supposedly "grows" from it). The world also has an orientation to "dealing with" situations, decisions, problems, challenges, etc. These are the facts. A better world might be one where one can dial down or up the pain to grow as much as one wants, or even a world where one doesnt' have to grow or find meaning in any pain, and one doesn't experience undue harm. Or a better world might be where one can transfer to all various kinds of worlds with amounts of pain and suffering at one's will. Of course the only way those worlds exist are through imagination. Instead we have this world- a world where we are always oriented with "dealing with". My normative claim here is that we should not just accept this as "good" simply because it is the reality.
I'll go with the latter.
No, you understood very well. I agree with your assessment too. And if we add to the fact that problems will not cease to need to overcome, that is a lot of negative in regards to the first two parts of your model.
Hey I guess you just have to "deal with" the situation :lol: .
Are they dilemmas if people don't think of them as dilemmas?
I will grant you that a lot of mundane habit-behaviors are not dilemmas nor seen as problems to overcome. That is unless something goes wrong, missing, etc. But even the most mundane stuff can be seen as mildly annoying to deal with and will simply have to be done again and again and again adding up to a lot of mildly annoying deal with situations. Like human desires itself, it is endless.
I believe you got that idea from Heidegger. Link. :grin:
Oh @schopenhauer1, you're such a knucklehead. You can't fool us. We know this is just Antinatalism, Take 73.
Yes in a rough way, and you notice here in the article:
[quote=Thrownness]Awareness and acknowledgment of the arbitrariness of Dasein is characterized as a state of "thrown-ness" in the present with all its attendant frustrations, sufferings, and demands that one does not choose, such as social conventions or ties of kinship and duty. The very fact of one's own existence is a manifestation of thrown-ness. The idea of the past as a matrix not chosen, but at the same time not utterly binding or deterministic, results in the notion of Geworfenheit—a kind of alienation that human beings struggle against,[2] and that leaves a paradoxical opening for freedom:[/quote]
This might describe a lot of what I am talking about in terms of structural suffering and unable to change systemic parts of either existence itself, culture, or circumstances one is brought into.
I do like focusing on existential matters and basic assumptions- why people assume "dealing with" is good. Why people assume "progress" is something people should pursue. Why putting more people into the world is a good thing, etc. If I talk to you about the induction of electricity through copper wires and power stations having huge magnets that spin and create electricity that is pushed through metallic wires.. You might ask, what is the reason? Well, I want to know how electricity works. Why? Well, a lot of modern society runs on this? Who were the people involved in understanding electricity to the point of utilities that generate large amounts of viable electricity and electrical components? There is all this minutia but it's all based on assumptions- by the people who created this stuff, by the people who consume it, by the people who study it's history and science. The ideas of logic, fundamental laws, complexity, emergence, language, etc. In other words, all these assumptions but it goes back to existential attitudes like the very ones I bring up.
I think I know where you come from and you know the same for me. After a few tries, we've found that we're not going to convince each other of our positions. I'm comfortable with that.
I was teasing you. It was intended to be friendly teasing.
Then no value should be assigned to it. Doing things and dealing with others are just a feature of life. Being aware of the differences between the way we want things to be and the way they really are somehow drives both individual and social change towards minimizing the difference between that which is not as we want it to be and the ideal. This is very similar to what happens in nature : electric potential difference causes electrons to flow, pressure differences cause fluids to flow etc. but when the difference ceases to exist those flows also come to a halt and when all differences of energy of all kinds cease to exist life will also cease to exist.
In the end dealing with things may not be good or bad but if you deal with them you may get closer to this ideal world you and I want. If we actually got to create this ideal world then life may not be possible because the ideal world and the actual one are mutually exclusive. The only thing left is to improve the world for us and for the rest of the people even if that is achieved asymptotically.
When Heidegger [thought he] was thrown into the world, I think he must have hit [the nail on the] head.
There, fixed it.
I know :D
I think you are saying that philosophy doesn't assume anything. I think it is good. We are not robots who just do stuff, but ask why, analyze, compare, look at underlying metaphysical and epistemological and ethical underpinnings.
:ok:
It can be, sure. There are a lot of ways to look at it, including the zen "wash the dishes to wash the dishes."
As in this lost haunt of my imagination where philosophers gather:
Back to the tavern we creep, its drinks calling,
Where the inquisitive sit, pondering.
One and another says, [i]We’ve more questions,
For we’ve all been born here without asking.[/i]
The scroll writes itself, my wondering friends,
Having not any plan unto its ends,
In this life borrowed from death that it lends,
So, we know not how the veil weaves and wends.
What can we do, as thrust into life?
Life’s object must be mental happiness,
For thoughts are all we can think, feel, or sense.
Aim for this euphoric state of well-being,
For true paradise is a state of mind.
Happiness is a way of life that celebrates
A living aliveness—that then opens gates
To further adventure, friendship, and delights,
To joy, success, triumph, and greater heights.
[i]Who can we blame for our selves unmended,
For base nature’s ingredients blended?[/i]
You could invent ‘Allah’, as the baker,
Who disowns His recipe intended.
[i]No. What's this wonderland? I'm baffled here.
What sends me though the ages, to my bier?[/i]
You’ve near said: death sifts the best from the rest;
And, overall, you cannot not be here.
What my life’s narrative that I hie through?
No matter it, for any one will do.
What’s left, then, in all common, as the clue?
We’re back to being—experiencing a ‘who’.
Where am I going? Am I important?
You’re going nowhere; here is your life’s plant.
True based on being a fact.
Quoting Alan
Yes, but again, the initial separation is there, and then the (basically) forced working towards fixing the gap. This is deemed as good and then mumblings of meaning attached to this pursuit.
Quoting Alan
In the end, there is dealing with. It cannot be avoided. We are forced-oriented to it. However, is this something we should identify with simply because it is an inescapable feature? No, rather it is a forced "thrownness" on the person. It's like being on a game with obstacles you cannot escape.
But the fact that there is even a reason to zen out on washing dishes is a dealing with.
Interesting themes there.
And so they went on, deeper, since, well they had to [do something]:
Upon all worlds our shadows are cast,
From our inner musings that are so vast,
While we savor the gladness of life.
We’re off back to the inn to hear what’s asked.
[i]Oh why, why is there anything at all?
There has to be, for Nothing has no call.
No birth, nor creation, choice, or option?[/i]
Even the Great Wheel knows not its withal.
[i]What happens, from there being no election,
Of that which hath no point for direction?[/i]
Everything happens, as it e’er changes,
Revealing all faces of complextion.
What becomes of this potential everything?
Anything, as all its possible rings.
What’s the information of All these things?
Nothing, so it e’er jitters, flutters, and sings.
[i]What sense to it all, in that it must be?
What is the message of eternity?[/i]
The only missive of all time is being,
Its point is but that it cannot not be.
[i]But what’s the base of the basis, as First,
The simplest from which all things fill their thirst?[/i]
The first, simple, fundamental monads
Compose complicates, uni-versed.
So, we’ve it wrong that the base is complex?
Yes, as wrong as opposites can expect,
For complexities are of e’er the less,
Of more and more underlying simplex.
Is future connected to the present?
Yes, and in more ways than you’d want it sent,
As the consistencies you might resent:
All future flowers from seeds of the present.
[i]Fine, but not; you leave me with mystery.
What is going on here? For what purpose me?[/i]
You and it are the riddle that solves itself.
You are exactly ‘being’ in its spree.
Thanks. Yes, I wrote it, and it's from my sequel to the Rubaiyat (called 'Rubaiyat II'). I've been putting the quatrains in the threads as appropriate to the OP, and the unused or all will probably end up in my Omar Khayyam thread that has just begun (see 'Austin's Golden Rubaiyat' video there). More such videos on Vimeo.
The poetic form is described here:
The verses beat the same, in measured chime.
Lines one-two set the stage, one-two-four rhyme.
Verse three’s the pivot around which thought turns;
Line four delivers the sting, just in time.
(Ten syllable lines are about the most one can speak without taking a breath.)
Exactly. Without dukkha, there exists no impetus to act. Yet we humans are perpetually caught up in action - striving towards, maintaining, dealing with - all in response to dukkha. Things are never completely and totally as we want them to be. People come to identify with and support (eg, through procreation) the conditions of human existence because they don't grasp the deprivational nature of their lives - the dukkha that pervades their existence. That (some) people identify with the conditions of this life, and even come to as they say "relish the challenge" in no way negates the existence of challenges being a bad thing in the first place. However, when we conceptually grasp the absence of our existence (i.e. non-condition, non-existence, un-born), the negative conditions of our lives reveal themselves in contrast. The unborn do not even have desires to be satisfied.
Yes, T Clark is kind of right. This is yet another reason not to procreate someone else into this situation. What this could inform us, the already-alive is about our own conditions of human existence. It tells us where are striving comes from, our constant dissatisfied state. Perhaps it will bring empathy when dealing with others and ourselves. In a way we can never be satisfied, only temporarily satiated. The ship is always going to leak- it will never be waterproof.
Ironically, I read an article in The Atlantic of of a reinterpretation of Job by Edward L. Greenstein here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/job-edward-l-greenstein/594769/
According to this interpretation, instead of Job showing contrition when YHWH shows him this spectacle of how he created the stars,and can make nature do all these seemingly miraculous things, Job essentially does a white knuckled fist to God and simply says he feels sorry for everyone in creation. I'll just share the last part of the article here and bold what I think is important.
[quote=The Atlantic; James Parker]
But then: enter God. “Up speaks YHWH,” as Greenstein puts it, momentarily folksy—a voice “from the windstorm.” “Bind up your loins like a man,” God warns Job, before stamping on the effects pedal and delivering perhaps the most shattering speech ever recorded. Question after question, power chord after power chord: “Where were you when I laid earth’s foundations? … Can you tie the bands of the Pleiades, Or loosen the cords of Orion? … Do you give the horse its bravery?” No explanation; no answer for Job; no moral or theoretical content whatsoever. It’s the interrogation of consciousness by pure Being, by the Logos, by the unstopping, unmediated act of creation itself. Do not try this at home. “Does the falcon take flight through your wisdom, As it spreads its wings toward the south?” The human intellect shrinks before the onslaught. The language is incomparable. God, it turns out, is the greatest poet; no one can touch him.
And it’s at this point, with Job reduced to a pair of smoking sandals and the divine mega-monologue still ringing in the vaults of the firmament, that Greenstein and centuries of tradition diverge. He has produced his new translation of Job, he tells us in the introduction, to “set the record straight.” Every version of the Bible that you have read puts Job, in the wake of God’s speech, in an attitude of awestruck contrition or reconversion. “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes,” he says in the King James. “I’m sorry—forgive me,” he says in Eugene H. Peterson’s million-selling plain-language adaptation, The Message. “I’ll never do that again, I promise!” Greenstein’s Job, however, stays vinegary to the end. “I have heard you,” he tells God, “and now my eye has seen you. That is why I am fed up.” The Hebrew phrase commonly rendered as some form of I repent, Greenstein translates as I take pity on. Dust and ashes, meanwhile, is for Greenstein a biblical epithet meaning humanity in general. So the line becomes “I take pity on ‘dust and ashes.’?” Job’s last word: What a world you’ve made, God. I feel sorry for everyone.
What does it mean? This newly revealed Job, writes Greenstein, “is expressing defiance, not capitulation … If God is all about power and not morality and justice, Job will not condone it through acceptance.” Upon the scholarly merits of this approach, I am unable to pronounce; as an idea, I’ll consider it. We don’t read the Bible, it’s been said; the Bible reads us. It searches us. And here for us in 2019, right on time, with tyranny back in style and riding its behemoth through the streets, is a middle-finger Job, a Job unreconciled to the despotism of experience. He’s been shattered by life-shocks; then God, like a wall of terrible noise, fills and overfills his mind. His response: Thank you, but no.
Gloria Dei est vivens homo, wrote Saint Irenaeus: The glory of God is a living man. Might not the Author of Life look with favor upon this brilliantly resistant creature, this unappeasable critical thinker, this supremely lonely and dissenting figure, this Bartleby with boils—unswayed by the sublime, scratching his scabs in the land of Uz? That might be the rankest heresy: Let me know, bishops. But consider what Greenstein’s nonpenitent, polarity-reversed Job has done to the ending of the book. As before, with the experiment over, Job is blandly restored to a state of health and wealth; as before, God upbraids the sententious friends, the Bildads and the Eliphazes and the Zophars, and sends them off to make some burnt offerings, “for you did not speak about me in honesty as did my servant Job.” The quality or valence of this honesty, however, has turned upside down. It has become a kind of white-knuckle existential tenacity, a refusal to disown oneself even in the teeth of the windstorm. Maybe that’s what this God, faced with this Job, is telling us: Bring it all before him, the full grievance of your humanity. Bring him your condition, loudly. Let him have it.
[/quote]
Now, I am far from looking to the Bible for any inspiration, but this translation of Job has some good insights, at least as a metaphor for the human condition. The friends of Job to me, are like the equivalent of the guy who says, "Do something about it!". They don't see the bigger picture, the bigger reveal. Job sees existence as a whole for what it is, and ironically (in this translation), existence (God) commends Job for sticking to his guns and questioning the point of being born at all. THAT was the right answer. All this suffering and striving, and Job just says, "yeah, I just don't give a shit anymore, it means nothing to me now, I see that..give me all your excuses and justifications, it doesn't phase me anymore. Give me your 'Do something about its!!' and 'Progress', and 'flourishings', 'the technology of the modern age', and I'll show you striving after wind."
Taking this more existentially, and less mythical-dramatically, life is striving-after, always in a deprived state. The sooner people realize this,the more empathy we have for our state as fellow-strivers, how we treat each other, and how we respond to each other. There is nothing to get after, nothing to be, nowhere to go. Those are culturally-created and perpetuated values that are promoted by many who want to keep it that way. Rather, we are sufferers in and by existence.
@Inyenzi you may like the themes of that article and this post. I'd like your thoughts too.
You may also find this interesting since you are into literature and poetry.
I'm liking the themes of complexity and time.
Nothing negative though.
It's there by fact of being there. Wait that was zen.
This is stuff that's interpretational--whether something is a dilemma, whether it's negative, etc. It depends on how an individual looks at it.
Why did the person wash the dish in the first place?
You'd have to ask them. Usually I do because I ate something on it.
But you didn't have to clean it. Something cultural and personal compelled you.
"have tos" or needs always hinge on wants. I want to do it.
Cool..and why?
If this is a roundabout way to argue that it's a dilemma, it's only a dilemma if you think about it in those terms.
If you don't consciously think that, it's not the case. That's the whole point.
Same thing for thinking about anything negatively.
I am not arguing it's a "dilemma". But please, what is the reason you are washing the dishes?
This here, I agree with. Absolutely. It’s where you take it from here that I find difficult to understand from my perspective. But up to this point, I’m with you.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Where you see nothing here, I see potential. Where you see culturally created values, I see attempts to map a value structure that reflects our current level of awareness, connection and collaboration with reality. And where you see the promotion of insufficient value structures by many who want to keep it that way, I see fear, denial and avoidance of the striving-after - the pain, loss and humility - that informs our existence.
Force-recruiting more people into an inescapable game to strive-after, deal with that "informs existence" is all that matters here. The burdens of the "thrownness" of our situation (what is already-established and cannot be changed at all or readily changed by one person certainly), is all that matters. Potential is a propaganda tool to recruit yet more people to this existential scheme.
It clearly matters to you, but it doesn’t matter to everyone - not necessarily because they’re ignorant of the ‘prison’ they’re in, but because they’ve found a way to escape the value structure you believe is a permanent fixture. There is no ‘already-established’ that cannot be changed, except that your subjective value structure renders it so. You’re actually railing against a system that it is within your capacity to deconstruct for yourself, and for others, simply by increasing awareness, connection and collaboration with anything that challenges its reality.
But all your ranting about ‘propaganda’ and ‘force-recruiting’ only reinforces what you find so abhorrent. It’s like a prisoner constantly claiming their innocence, declaring that they shouldn’t even be in jail and complaining about the walls and the guards and the restrictions - it does nothing to change the reality, it only becomes tiresome to those around you. It’s not like we don’t see this already.
Whether we agree with your interpretation or not makes no difference - we’re all in the same physical situation. If you believe there is nothing that can be done about that, then why even bring it up? If others choose to interact with the world in a way that brings a more satisfying structure to their experience of the same situation, who are you to say that it’s false, when the structure within which you continue to interact with the world renders you a prisoner? Is it because the sense of purpose and joy they may express as a result only reinforces your feeling of hopelessness?
You seem to be a prisoner of society’s apparently ‘already-established’ value systems. I’m not. I cannot change what others do, but I can demonstrate a way to experience reality that strips the so-called ‘recruiting’ of its apparent force, rather than just complaining about it.
No one has escaped anything.
Quoting Possibility
We cannot change our natures, and we cannot change larger social and economic structures. Yes we definitely habituate in them.
Quoting Possibility
Le me be clear- "force-recruiting" here means the act of procreating new participants. By procreating new people, that is forcing more players into the game by default.
Quoting Possibility
This I don't care about. I will complain about the conditions of the game.
Quoting Possibility
I can let people know the wiser choice of antinatalism. I can let people know that indeed, existence itself is the problem and that more minutia mongering isn't going to dig your way out of the existential situation.
Quoting Possibility
Unfortunately, you experiences come on the behest of people who need to focus on widgets. You think this modern standard of living comes from only happy circumstances, for example?
It's basically true that existence has been a bitch for us and all creatures for the last umpteen million years.
The heart, like tapers, takes at beauty’s eyes
A flame, and lives by that whereby it dies;
And beauty is a flame where hearts, like moths,
Offer themselves a burning sacrifice.
Take heart! Long in the weary tomb you’ll lie,
While stars keep countless watches in the sky,
And see your ashes molded into bricks,
To build another’s house and turrets high.
For me, heaven’s sphere no music ever made,
Nor yet with soothing voice my fears allayed;
If e’er I found brief respite from my woes,
Back to woe’s thrall I was at once betrayed.
Thrust into life, we seek the depths to know
The plots beyond the curtains of the show,
Learning naught but a whisper from the waste:
‘We came as water and to dust we blow.’
The bowl of life will drain you from your soul,
And hence you’ll part the veil or be as coal,
So, you might as well drink the wine of life;
One knows not what’s writ, or if, on Fate’s scroll.
What shall be, remedy or pain, or mix?
No contest, for we’re wise to change’s tricks,
So, can expect sorrow and joy alike;
But who cares! They’ll pass; we all go to bricks.
From birth we can look forward to being host
To woe, and then to giving up the ghost.
Happy are they who quickly burn to toast,
And blessed are they who ne’er came to the roast.
Creation’s smoke burns evermore thy meat,
E’en ‘fore you cinder from the deeper heat.
Ah, shun what bane you may of the kitchen;
Take no stock in trade; all sweet profits eat.
(These quatrains above are only half mine, or less, for they were retransmogrified into English from Omar's Persian/Arabic originals.)
Is this a joke? Are you pretending to be someone from another planet?
Stop trolling. In the context, it was about what is motivating the action. That's all I am getting at. Discomfort, dissatisfaction of some kind. To take the argument that cleaning the dishes is no big deal, thus life has no big deals is a red herring and you know it. However, I was reversing this argument and saying, even mild dissatisfactions add up. So there.
How is that trolling? The answer is still obvious, clarification not withstanding. So the real question is why you're asking stupid questions.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The dishes are being cleaned for good hygiene, obviously.
Yes, mild dissatisfactions add up. But that still doesn't justify your ridiculous conclusions.
No, this whole course of reasoning that Terrapin and now you are following is ridiculous. He used an example of something that wasn't a "dilemma" to prove that life isn't that bad or something like that, and now you are picking up his mantle. No rather, the bigger conversation here, is at root there is dissatisfaction as motivating factors. In other words, we are always in a "dealing with" situation when born. That is how we are oriented towards things to be done. This is pervasive in every aspect, even washing the dishes. However, to take "washing the dishes" as all that there is in life or all the kinds of activities that there are in life, is itself a red herring or straw man, and that is what I object to here really. But we can keep discussing it.
I use paper plates, but, after a week, I have to take out the trash.
So, now who is exaggerating for effect? Again, why are you picking up this shit-pile of a reasoning. So life is just doing dishes only then? Also, EVEN washing dishes "zen-like" doesn't negate my initial claim that life is oriented for "dealing with".
I advocate antinatalism, yes. I believe it is not right to put others in "dealing with" situations, when they don't need to be.. even, gasp, doing the dishes! Other courses of action- there is none. Another reason against it. A lot of these problems are simply structural or too big to change.
I'm not even disagreeing with you that life is oriented for dealing with things. That's obvious and either not a problem at all, or at least not a problem that can't itself be dealt with. My criticism is that here, as in your other discussions, you're just making a fuss about mundane things which are part and parcel of life as though you have something deep and meaningful to say. Underneath the rhetoric, there isn't much depth.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Oh, you do? I had no idea. Have you considered creating a discussion on the topic?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't really care that you believe that it's not right. I don't agree with you, obviously. And if nothing can be done about it (not true), then I say put up and shut up.
Clearly, we disagree. Shocker. But, at the end of the day, I am creating no fuss or mundane things for someone else. Answer me, why is it needed in the first place? But you cannot. You will just fall back on attacking but you won't answer the question. You will mention something about "good" or some other experiences you deem needs to take place for someone else. You will speak on behalf of the democrac council of humanity against schop 1. Yep. Agendas for someone else combined with me making a "fuss about nothing" amounts to shit, when the other side is NO harm, no agendas foisted on anyone else. You have made no case for the other side, but I have made the case for no harm to any future person. Except for dramatics, trolling, and rudeness, you have no case.
And yeah, it sucks for us. We are here and have to... deal with it. Of course we identify with the game chosen for us. Again, the assumption is what is it about the dealing with that we crave? I am asking to look deeper than your own knee-jerk anti antinatalism and pessimism. But you don't engage, so I'll just expect more theatrics from you.
Again, the question in the OP is:
Why are we assuming it is good to "deal with" anything at all? Why is this such an ingrained baseline notion that this is a right/good existential state, besides the fact that it is inescapable?
It's very closely linked, except existing means something... I am claiming for human existence (human nature?) there is a self-aware "dealing with" orientation and asking, why is this a good thing?
:lol: Good point. Deal with now, or deal with later
I've addressed this line of questioning from you about a million times before. You must like going around in circles to the point of absurdity. Absolute (or unconditional) necessity is a nonsense, and conditional necessity in the context of procreation or continued existence or washing the dishes would relate to various desires or practicalities, the more common of which can be quite easily fathomed through common sense, e.g. I want to start a family because of the joy it will bring, I continue to live because I value my life, I need to wash the dishes to make them clean and reusable.
All of this you already know. You are presumably just feigning ignorance as some sort of rhetorical tactic. I know that you have your own answers, and that you disapprove, but why do you feel the need to repeatedly express this? Is that normal behaviour, do you think? Do you think maybe you would benefit from counselling?
Quoting schopenhauer1
It's not a craving, that's just more rhetoric from you. It's simply our natural inclination towards problem solving. Got a problem? Deal with it. This is, again, something you already know. You are human, are you not? You are from this planet, yes?
Sometimes, only a handful of questions really matters. Everything else stems from those assumptions. I go back to first principles and do not jump to (yawn), why this or that is like this or that, without this crucial one first. Since no one ever has a good answer... I go back to it... But if you look, I do dabble in the other mundane/minutia/trivial shit that we discuss here. Yep, I can have an opinion too, just as you.
Quoting S
That is so myopic. You know the line of argument I will say: no harm to anyone, no deprivation for anyone vs. harm for someone (and unknown amounts of undue harm). As I've mentioned in another post: I have this idea that this world can be characterized as "growth-through-adversity coupled with undue harm".
Growth-through-adversity is defined by challenges faced by someone in order to attain a particular goal. For most people this at least involves survival/work along with goals involving entertainment/family-pursuits outside of survival/work.
Undue harm would be overriding illnesses, circumstances, accidents, disasters, etc. that otherwise would not be asked for outside the usual growth-through-adversity.
To be concise in these posts I am going to call growth-through adversity GTA and undue harm UH.
The GTA-UH model that is our reality, most people think is good to force other lives into. When a parent chooses to have a child, they are really saying, "I approve of the life of GTA-UH onto this new person and believe they should live X number of years of life in this kind of reality". There is no escape from it outside suicide. But no one asks why this is good for someone who doesn't exist in the first place to put this reality onto a new person. Oddly, the parent is an existential missionizer force-recruiting new people who, like religious families tend to do, try to enculturate the new recruit into identifying with the GTA-UH model so as not to regret being recruited.
Quoting S
Again, first principles. If dissatisfaction and dealing with are our orientation, why should this be embraced because it is the reality? I never understood equating what is the case with simply what is good. I only accept it as what people do as a coping strategy, but certainly not a reason it is deemed "good" or approved.
Quoting S
No problem solving is the response to the situation. So it is not rhetorical, it is how life orients every person. Sometimes things are so obvious, they seem rhetorical. We only answer the details but not the actual question that is posed at us from which all the details are flowing from or to.
1. a child must do homeworks under his mom's push
2. a thief must go to prison due to the sentence
3. one must eat because of hunger
4. the driver must take a right turn to avoid falling off the cliff
5. the roulette ball must fall in one of the 38 slots
I guess you asked why there are imperatives? or most fundamentally why things interact at all so there will then be reactions?
If considering only for conscious agents, then you have constraints from the society and environment that you'd better follow. As you have free will you can opt not to, say opposite of #4 and the consequence may be severe.
I agree there are constraints by society and environment/circumstances. So why put people in these restraints in the first place by having them be born?