Suicide and hedonism
We all want to avoid suffering. Even more so than we want to chase pleasure (one must first attend to their broken arm before concentrating on feeling pleasure). Suffering is more negative than pleasure is positive. Consider, would you experience one hour of the worst suffering imaginable in return for one hour of the best pleasure? Suffering is the stronger of the two values.
So why not just suicide? Suicide will free you from all suffering, ever. You'll never suffer ever again. Suicide is a the ultimate pain reliever, better than heroin. And the good thing is that it doesn't even matter that you wont experience pleasure again - because this is a kind of suffering, and you are dead. The dead can't be deprived.
Pact suicide when? If not, doesn't that mean there are values other than pleasure and pain?
So why not just suicide? Suicide will free you from all suffering, ever. You'll never suffer ever again. Suicide is a the ultimate pain reliever, better than heroin. And the good thing is that it doesn't even matter that you wont experience pleasure again - because this is a kind of suffering, and you are dead. The dead can't be deprived.
Pact suicide when? If not, doesn't that mean there are values other than pleasure and pain?
Comments (91)
Seems perfectly logical. Everyone still living is blue-pilled as fuck.
Indeed this seemed to be the perspective of Tolstoy, who thought there were roughly four types of people:
1.) Those who were ignorant of their existential condition
2.) Those who understand their existential condition but focus on pursuing pleasure (hedonism)
3.) Those who understand their existential condition and also understand that hedonism will not give meaning or purpose to life and so kill themselves (he calls these people the "strong")
4.) Those who understand their existential condition and also understand that hedonism will not give meaning or purpose to life, but are unable to kill themselves (the "weak")
This also seemed to have been the perspective of Sartre, or at least one of his characters, when he said that every person is an accident that dies suddenly and persists out of weakness.
Sometimes I agree with Tolstoy (possibly Sartre). Other times I would like to continue to experience whatever it is that I am experiencing.
Life is not a sequence of arithmetic pleasures and pains. The existence of moods effectively disqualifies deprivationalism or any similarly crude axiological calculus.
What seems to be reasonable is to always have suicide available as an option as a means of grounding one's decisions and outlook on life. It's easy to get carried away in a stream of good fortune and forget the underlying mechanisms of life. Good fortune, of course, is good, but having an exit available in case this does not last or shit hits the fan is, in my opinion, only rational. It means to take control of one's life. If you burn a meal in the oven on accident, you don't force yourself to eat it. You throw it away. It's only rational - i.e. in our best interests.
Of course, this is all easier said than done. Probably why Tolstoy called those successful in suicide the "strong" - they were able to exit life without any present strenuous or horrible experiences, but merely the thought of the possibility of horror.
How do you know that you will never suffer again if you suicide? That seems a rather large presumption to make.
That doesn't sound like Tolstoy (who was a Christian) at all. Can you cite a source for that?
Consider this:
Letter on Suicide
by Leo Tolstoy
[i]The question "Has a man in general the right to kill himself?" is incorrectly put. There can be no question of "right". If he is able to do it, then he has the right. I think that the possibility of killing oneself is a safety-valve. Having it, man has no right (here the expression "right" is appropriate) to say that life is unbearable.
If it were impossible to live, then one would kill oneself; and consequently one cannot speak of life as being unbearable. The possibility of killing himself has been given to man, and therefore he may (he has the right to) kill himself, and he continually uses this right - when he kills himself in duels, in war, by dissipation, wine, tobacco, opium, etc.
The question can only be as to whether it is reasonable and moral (the reasonable and moral always coincide) to kill oneself. No, it is unreasonable; as unreasonable as to cut off the shoots of a plant which one wishes to destroy; it will not die, but will merely grow irregularly..
Life is indestructible; it is beyond time and space, therefore death can only change its form, arrest its manifestation in this world. But having arrested it in this world, I, first, do not know whether its manifestation in another world will be more pleasant to me; and, secondly, I deprive myself of the possibility of experiencing and acquiring by my ego all that could be acquired in this world.
Besides this, and above all, it is unreasonable because by arresting my life owing to its apparent unpleasantness, I hereby show that I have a perverted idea of the object of my life, assuming that its object is my pleasure - whereas its objects, on the other hand, personal perfection, and on the other, the service of that work which is being accomplished by the whole life of the Universe.
It is for the same reason that suicide is also immoral. Life in its entirety, and the possibility of living until natural death, have been given to man only on the condition that he serve the life of the Universe. But, having profited by life so long as it was pleasant, he refuses to serve the Universe as soon as life becomes unpleasant: whereas, in all probability, his service commenced precisely when life began to appear unpleasant. All work appears at first unpleasant.
In the Optin Monastery, for more than thirty years, there lay on the floor a monk smitten with paralysis, who had the use of his left hand only. The doctors said that he was sure to suffer much, but not only did he refrain from complaining of his position, but incessantly making the sign of the cross, and looking at the ikons, he smilingly expressed his gratitude to God and joy in that spark of life which flickered in him. Tens of thousands of visitors came to see him, and it is difficult to imagine all the good which flowed into the world through this man, though deprived of the possibility of any activity. Certainly he did more good than thousands and thousands of healthy people who imagine that in various institutions they are serving the world.
While there is life in man, he can perfect himself and serve the Universe. But he can serve the Universe only by perfecting himself, and perfect himself only by serving the Universe.[/i]
Why we need to exist to perfect the universe he does not say. The exact question begging I bring up in other threads. There is no need for redemption if there are no humans who need redeeming. Why do we need to exist just to redeem things?
Because that's just the way things work out??? :s
I'm not sure what that means, or you are indicating that you aren't sure either.
I'm indicating that I don't think there's any explanation, of the kind you appear to be after, either available or needed. Which you could take to mean that I am not sure; but then not being sure usually makes most sense in contexts where there is actually a possibility of being sure.
That's not true, actually . . . At least depending on how you're defining "suffering." But if you're defining it as something one wants to avoid, you're saying something vacuous here.
Also, the assessment one makes of suffering versus pleasure is subjective.
It's the needed part I'm perplexed at. I asked why we need to exist to redeem the universe, and we do not need an answer to that seems to be like me saying "We need to exist to make plastic.. don't ask me why, an answer is not needed".
How much are you suffering? Are you being stretched on the rack? Are you scraping by in the zombie apocalypse? Did someone put you in the dungeon and throw away the key?
Usually people consider suicide when they become seriously depressed, their suffering seems unbearable, or their situation seems hopeless. Often it's a psychological issue or a physiological one. But just every day life doesn't usually make one consider suicide. Continuing to experience the only life you are certain to have seems like a better choice than not experiencing anything.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Everyday life 'should' make one consider suicide, it's easier to toy with the idea without actually wanting to comply with it. I fully agree with darthbarracuda in that, it shouldn't be excluded as an option a priori. It's the ultimate option we might have to decide freely upon our own faith and vica versa, being aware of this option might actually negate suffering seeing it can be used to willingly undergo certain circumstances instead of feeling like a slave to circumstances.
From the perspective of religion, we are God's children in kindergarten, so need to be nappy trained and this is as good a way as any to do it. From the perspective of spirituality we are fulfilling a role within an eternal cosmos of being. That role is not necessarily something we can know, but will have some relevance to the development of being, or the enterprise we find ourselves involved in.
In both cases as I expect you were expecting the greater purposes are known to God/god, or whoever is in that role.
So this is of course subjected to the same absurd conclusions- why does this whole training have to occur in the first place? If it is because God wills it, then he must have also been bored to set up this little game. But, if we are here in order to raise the lower worlds to the higher worlds, I don't see how this should make us feel much better. Now we are just pawns in this cosmic game. Of course, this is all based on a fantasy that somehow is more believable than other fantasies due to historical contingencies of conversion.. Odd, how this cosmic game is something that is oddly anthropological. Of course it centers around humans, of course it is some sort of struggle, of course it has aspects of Platonic and Zoroastrian cultural elements. All beliefs picked up by various philosophers from various regions, reified into a nice little fantasy package.
If God is somehow incomplete or must go through a process of raising his lower parts to his higher parts by our actions and deeds (what constitutes as legitimately a "good" action or belief versus just an action or belief..must have some sort of magical metaphysical quality of course), then it means that something happened to God. He was complete and now he is not. We need to fix Humpty Dumpty back together again.. Mainlander has a similar story reversed though. Instead of God bursting himself into the physical world in order to get fixed again, he was really bored and wanted us to exhaust ourselves in entropic nothingness so that he could commit suicide. It seems either way, God is a bored fella.. He either is bored to death (Mainlander) or bored with being a complete being and so needs pawns in a game (Judeo-Christian mystical traditions for purpose).
At first blush, at least, it looks to me like there is confusion over this distinction:
(A) If we are to perfect the universe (or redeem humanity or what have you) , then necessarily, we must exist,
and
(B) Necessarily we must perfect the universe (or redeem humanity or what have you), therefore, we need to continue our existence.
(A) is noting that the only way we can take a particular action is by existing. We can't act in whatever way if we don't exist.
(B) is claiming that it's necessary for us to perform the action in question, with it being an upshot, then, that we exist to perform the action we must exist.
Here ya go. A Confession, by Tolstoy.
Quoting mcdoodle
Right, similar to how Sartre had characters who were deeply pessimistic but he himself may not have been.
Quoting Gooseone
Exactly. The prospect of suicide keeps us sober and present.
Fuck the red pill/blue pill debate. The former are a bunch of degenerate scumbags and the latter suffer an inferiority complex. Reality ain't that binary, and both groups are extreme and attempt to impose a universal sexual law upon society. I neither want to be a douche nor do I want to be a whiny bitch.
What's so great about non-existence? That you don't suffer? Existence must be quite horrible if you actually see non-existence as good for you, considering you aren't even you when you don't exist. You're a fiction when you don't exist.
The various experiences we have, extrapolated into good/bad valence, are reasons for and reasons against living life.
This almost reads as a rationalization for murder.
The impulse to suicide stems from real suffering. It is a stop gap measure which could just as well accompany an existential resentment strong enough take the lives of other people.
What do you say; do we exist to redeem the universe, or do we exist to make plastic? Or do we just exist?
Hmm, I guess my apologies about making long winded posts in the paradox of purpose thread were in place...
It sounds more like you exist to objectify with slave-like efficiency. ;)
Deleted
If the futility of putting more people into the world who must survive, make and pursue goals, and deal with contingent harms is not readily apparent, nothing I say will make the situation more relevant. It is the instrumentality of things.. We exist to exist to exist.
Also I would point out that we can't presume that God(or whoever it is) is infallible. This was wishful thinking by the early Roman christians.
Anyway in putting the case for spirituality I would categorise purpose into 3 divisions from our position.
a, divine purpose, or eternity. Something which is way beyond us , so it is pointless to speculate.
b, cosmic purpose, the purposes of the greater beings in our vicinity, the entities upon which we live and which sustain us. Something which is beyond our limited understanding, but which can be intuited a little, or passed to us via revelation.
c, human, or animal and plant, purpose, something which is contingent on categories a, and b, so can only be pragmatic.
So in answer to you on this point, we are blind to the purposes which put us here, so such speculation is fruitless.
Yes, a typical answer provided by the major religions. It cannot even be knowable except through past prophetic figures who actually talked with the big guy. Odd how that works.
Quoting Punshhh
Right, so the fall is a great metaphor for humans not even being happy in paradise. That's my point. We are restless beings striving for nothing. Even God was bored it seems, otherwise why not be content in his own existence? He needs to create or experience evil/misfortune in order to feel complete or feel satisfied? Sounds like a bored God to me.. but I guess since God's reasons are ultimately beyond human comprehension, I can't call it bored because that would be too human, it would be something like "blored" because, you know, it is an experience beyond human comprehension..
But really, the most important thing if this is true, is that God is such an alien being to us, that his goals may be inimical to human happiness, and that effectively means nothing for the living/breathing human. Just because a cosmic/spiritual aspect of things supersedes the physical human, does not make my lot as a physical human any better. If my suffering matters because of a cosmic game that is beyond my control, it effectively means I am shit out of luck in terms of life being anything for me, the human. Purpose in a grand sense becomes meaningless for the human.
Quoting Punshhh
How is this "fallacious"? If God set up a little cosmic scheme that the lower worlds must be purified by humans- that is indeed a little scheme, a game, and indeed we being but a small but important part, are pawns to ensure the scheme's success. Thus, we are pawns in God's game... Again, he seemed bored (I mean "blored") with just, you know, being God.. existing.. better to exist in a physical world with individuated beings with consciousness I guess that has some sort of mission.
Quoting Punshhh
No, my point was that this cosmic struggle is oh so human.. light vs. dark, "Good deeds", wishing for a better life elsewhere, and of course the very important part the WE humans play. Also, God seems concerned with pretty minute human affairs.. he also seems vindictive- a very human trait.. You don't follow him, it is no good for you.. Also, the point was that it smacks of simply cultural contingencies of place/time- these ideas were ones from various cultures (Platonic/Greek and Zoroastrian/Persian). It cannot help being what it is based on its time/place and then of course the human tendency for myth-making in general.
Quoting Punshhh
I never said he was.. If God gets bored, like I've said earlier, that seems pretty fallible. If this is an experiment gone wrong, that's pretty fallible. If Mainlander's just as fantastical a version is right, instead of humans being pawns that must correct the evil of the physical world by redeeming it, we are in fact pawns here to die out so God can commit suicide from an ultra-complete/pure being to an ultra-vacuum/nothing being then there we go. I don't know which is worse- we are pawns either way. So yeah, the all-knowing, caring god (at least in terms of human versions of this) doesn't seem so if looked at in this perspective. Also, I am suspicious if anything where you get just enough reason to do something (God said it via prophets in an ancient time period when the magical ability of prophecy conveniently existed but no longer does), but no real justification (don't ask why the prophets revealed what they did, that is beyond us). That is oh so convenient a combination.. just a bit too convenient.
Yes, that seems to be your opinion...I get that...
What you don't seem to get is that it is merely an opinion (a not very helpful one at that) and that others may be of an entirely different opinion.
The problem I have with this and presumably Schop1 has with this is that we have reasons to hold this opinion, whereas we see those who disagree with us as having very little in terms of actual reasons to support their disagreement.
Simply saying "I disagree" is unhelpful. Much too often do people mistake actual disagreement with not liking the consequences of an otherwise fine argument.
Reason to hold positions are always underpinned by presuppositions, and there are no unbiased presuppositions. People usually have great difficulty in identifying their own presuppositions and find it much easier to identify those of others.
The main vulnerability in religion is that it has been exploited relentlessly by power brokers and priests who loose the piety it teaches. Although this is understandable if one considers how unpleasant life was in the past, certainly in the northern climbs, for all but the few who managed to get into a position of relative privelidge and comfort. Anyway, an analysis of religion will only ever result in a discovery of aspects of human nature and how promises of heaven or paradise can be exploited.
There is though a thread of insight to be gleaned from the teachings and the history, which like in the spiritual analysis, can give us some perspective and sight of our predicament in this world.
Secondly I would point out a naivety in your reasoning, you criticise the anthropomorphism while then resorting to it to make your case. It is quite reasonable and philosophically astute to recognise our limited intellectual understanding of our predicament in finding ourselves in this world. This would entail a realisation that we cannot make any presumptions in terms of purpose about any purposes that we may be subject to. Indeed it strikes me that an apophatic analysis of what we don't know and can't say would be an appropriate starting point, so as to avoid those very anthropomorphic assumptions.
To address the two points you raise;
The restlessness of humanity, the will, is as I pointed out in the other thread a result of evolutionary pressures in shaping life. It is only the relentless, the resourceful and sometimes the ruthless which survive and outlive the rest. So it's no accident that a restless and resourceful species has come to dominate the ecosystem. This doesn't however say anything about our soul or any purposes we are subject to.
Secondly, that any cosmic purposes may not have any care for, or require the suffering etc of humanity, or that it is out of our control etc. Well this is all based on assumptions as I outlined above. We really can't say what requirements there are in our being here and the reality of our existence may be existentially far more complex and subtle than we can realise. Making any assumptions irrelevant to the truth of it.
I'm not sure you are making a valid point based on what I said. A God that has a purpose and design we can never know is a relatively moot one. As I said above, "God is such an alien being to us, that his goals may be inimical to human happiness, and that effectively means nothing for the living/breathing human. Just because a cosmic/spiritual aspect of things supersedes the physical human, does not make my lot as a physical human any better. If my suffering matters because of a cosmic game that is beyond my control, it effectively means I am shit out of luck in terms of life being anything for me, the human. Purpose in a grand sense becomes meaningless for the human."
And I already told you that it is convenient how we know just enough from these ancient prophets that had this magical ability to tell us some partial truth of it. It is convenient that it is in ancient times, it is convenient that when we ask for justification, we can never know the whole truth, but just enough to keep the carrot and stick of following this or that.
So BOTH points are at a loss here.. If it is as you say, beyond human comprehension, it loses any matter for the living breathing human who must endure life as the mortal human. We become but pawns in a greater scheme that is beyond our control for something is never for us. At the same time, most of what religion does IS anthropmorophize the deity, and this is certainly true in how MUCH it cares about humans in the actual religions that we see. So both fronts have flaws in them.. The first one may be true, but we would never know it.. Just like we can be a brain in a vat or something.. The second objection we know to be true because it is not hard to see how being humans, our deity seems to care a lot about our human affairs and has characteristics like humans and resembles a lot of ideas that were floating around in the region that the concept of the Judeo-Christian god was conceived. By logic, if we humans can think of a concept ("moksha"..union with a godhead..worlds beyond our mere mortal world) it is not in fact beyond our comprehension... If it is beyond our comprehension.. then we can never know it anyways.. The cop out argument is to say... prophets in the past were given a glimpse that was comprehensible to us but we don't know the bigger picture.. and this I said just sounded a bit too convenient. That was my argument.
As far as your objection to my restless point.. That isn't really an objection. I agree about evolutionary pressures perhaps, but the Garden of Eden story, if taken literally is about two people who wanted more than what paradise had to offer.. Which seems like we were pretty bored, even in paradise. This does not provide much hope as nothing offers true satisfaction according to this story. If everything was redeemed, would we just get bored again in paradise? Anyways, even these ideas of paradise, or a more pristine time.. or a better time.. this is all so human, going back to the anthropomorphizing point.. It can even be an analogy for early hunting-gathering societies. The longing of early civilizations for an even earlier time when things were less complicated.
Looking beyond the religious discussion here, my theory is that we are essentially striving at nothing.. we survive and then get bored and these two sides of the pendulum motivate us to make goals. We are put into the stress of living life and then must contend with the energy to deal with surviving and then keeping ourselves entertained. The Garden of Eden story as an analogy for this fits nicely in that framework.
As above, I am saying the cosmic purpose might be beyond our comprehension, the truth is we don't know. It might simply be like the plot of a Sherlock Holmes story, impenetrable at first sight, but when revealed the dastardly plan of Profesor Moriarty might be quite simple and obvious, even in plain sight. Anyway the point looses traction if one consideres that for example the cosmic purpose is the same purpose being played out in an individual human life, but on a larger scale, so equally relevant. Indeed there are numerous ways in which it could be imminently present and critical.
Just because a person is not aware of the relevant purpose in their action does not prevent them living a constructive and caring life etc. Personally, even though I am not aware of my cosmic, or divine purpose and have to craft my own personal purpose in life. I feel a deep reverence for this life and what experiences and opportunities I have been afforded. Not to mention my exploration of the subtle ways that those purposes might run through my being and body in this world.
There is a deep meaning in the story and I certainly don't see it having anything to do with getting bored in paradise. It is more about an inadvertant loss of innocence, or more precisely a step change in our development as autonomous animals(agents). Resulting in us having the capacity to step outside, beyond, our instinctively conditioned behavioural responses in our environment. Resulting in a crisis of agency and our having to take responsibility for our own actions within the ecosystem. So in a way Eden is our ecosystem before we got to clever and messed it up.
Yes, I am happy to leave religion behind here and focus on agency and our limitations in terms of insight and analytical thought. I agree with your summary here, although in the light of my ideas about Eden, it might add a twist in its use as an analogy. However I do think that some people do seek a vision of a grander purpose, even sense it, or realise it on ocassion. Also there is the farsighted pragmatic vision which I pointed out in the other thread. One in which humanity secures peace, its long term survival and acts as custodian to the ecosystem.
And what then?
I don't know.
Presumably some greater (cosmic) purpose would emerge at some point. Unless there is no purpose, but only happenstance(because cosmic purpose is speculation)
Do you/we require a purpose?
You ask me to suppose that the point of existence is to avoid suffering, then inform me that the only way to realize that point is to cease to exist?
Does not add up in my book.
Instrumentality.
I have my own definition that I've used on this forum for that concept. We suffer from many things, including people, environment, circumstances, our own bodies.. We go through every day for no reason except we are alive and need to survive and be comfortable in our cultural/envirionmental setting and entertain ourselves. It really is not worth going through in the first place. There is no reason to force people into one day then the next then the next until death. Better never to have been.
Great minds said you're a free man but now i find on this post i find that i am not free. I have to serve the universe and thus taking my life would be not moral?
This depends on what you mean by these terms.
Quoting dukkha
What is the pleasure in question? There are some pleasures I don't want to experience, such as those found in the traditional list of deadly sins, and there are some pains I don't mind experiencing, such as those derived from fasting, exercise, surgery, and so on. And to anticipate an objection to the latter claim, I do not experience such pains as pleasurable nor do I submit to them in order to feel pleasure.
Quoting Punshhh
I must say that this phrase sounds so annoying.
>:O The interesting question is why are they called pleasures in the first place? Clearly I presume you don't want to experience them because you'd find them hurtful in some way.
Quoting Thorongil
(Y)
Quoting Thorongil
No, but you find such pains beneficial instead of hurtful. The pleasure/pain dichotomy is more superficial than the benefit/harm one.
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You really believe that?
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Even if you’re an Atheist and a Physiclist, and you’re sure of your Atheism and Physicalism, are you sure that suicide will free you from all suffering, and that [with suicide] you’ll never suffer again?
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What was it Hamlet (from Shakespeare) said?:
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”…to sleep, perchance to dream.
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Aye, there’s the rub.”
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Quite aside from evidently being too sure of your beliefs, you’re guessing about the end of life. Don’t be so sure that it’s as simplistic as you think, or that your guess about the resulting experience is reliable.
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In several topics, I’ve posted this description of the end of lives:
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Your body will be shutting down. But, at the extreme of that body-shutdown, you won’t have any idea that there was ever such a thing as a body. …or that there was ever such a thing as time, events, identity, problems, needs, insufficiency, incompletion, dangers, threats, suffering, hardship, etc.
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Yes, that sounds pretty good.
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It will arrive in its own time. …when it’s time for it.
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…when someone has reached a (far away, for most of us) point at which there are, already, even in life, no more needs, and no more of the consequence-producing kind of involvement in life, or the un-exhausted consequences thereof.
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At least it’s said that there are some people like that, and that every one of us will get there eventually. I can’t comment on that, because I only have 2nd-hand information about that claim that we’ll all get there.
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But do you think that you can force it, by suicide? The only thing you’ll force is a really bad time for yourself.
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…and that remains true even within the beliefs of Atheism and a Physicalism.
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Now, what follows is just my own explanatory suggestions, and you needn't agree with them:
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I suggest that you're here in this life because you wanted or needed life. You'll be done with it when you're done with it. Suicide only produces a bad time.
Why were you born into this Land of the Lost? Like all of us who were born in this world, this birth is probably consistent with each of us having badly messed up, and having badly messed-up our lives.
That's just an explanatory suggestion. Disregard it if you want to.
In the first section of this post, I said things that don't depend on what your beliefs are.
Michael Ossipoff
That's the linchpin - want. It goes against fact and truth - that suffering is impossible to avoid - and therein lies its flaw. Is it wise/reasonable to want the impossible, in this case the total liberation from suffering? How do you respond to the child who thinks he can fly like superman? You don't preach suicide, rather you explain the foolishness of the want to fly.
The view above is also enunciated in Buddhism - that suffering is irrational and arises from a disconnect between reality (truth) and our expectations (wants).
So, anyone who advocates suicide as a solution to suffering is being totally irrational. Not that I'm saying suicide should be completely off the table - it's a rational choice when faced with extreme psychological or physical pain. However, your argument is not about these exceptional cases. Rather it's about all life and that is a falsehood.
Suicide is NOT rational (except in extreme situations) or if you prefer, suicide is rational in extremis but not in MOST situations.
One does not have to be suffering to want suicide. One could think that dying on his/her own terms rather than nature's terms is preferable. One could see that famous people took their own lives and want to be like them. One could think that he/she is a burden to others and is doing them a valuable service by ending his/her own life.
Suicide is not the norm. Everybody suffers. Therefore, assuming that suffering is never good, if suicide is a rational response to suffering then the overwhelming majority of people must be irrational.
Or it is more like this: life is neither rational nor irrational. Life is a thing that we do not have the ability to predict. The appropriate response to suffering depends on life. Therefore, suicide as a sufferer's response to suffering is an illusion. The reality is that the occurrence and timing of suicide is simply how life works. In other words, suicide is itself a natural death.
Here we have another reason why I love Nietzsche
As if Plato didn't say pleasure isn't the highest good thousands of years before Nietzsche :P
It's well to recognize a distinction between suicide and medically-justified auto-euthanasia or requested euthanasia.
If any individual feels that an injury or disease has spoiled hir (his/her) quality of life, then s/he should be able to get physician-assisted auto-euthanasia or requested euthanasia.
...and the judgement regarding whether or not that person's qualify of life has been unacceptably lowered should rest entirely with that person.
Michael Ossipoff
But that's a very facile & superficial reading of Plato...
Which dialogues of Plato have you read?
I have read Apology, Crito, Phaedo Gorgias, Symposion, Phaedro and the Republic. I Will soon read Timaeus, which I have heard many consider to be his greatest work.
Sure. Nietzsche wasn't infallible either :P
Quoting Beebert
But this distinction seems to me to be absolutely vital. When we're looking for the Truth, are we looking for something that is today so and so, and tomorrow different? Or are we looking for something permanent and unchanging? When we're looking for morality, are we looking for something that is right or wrong only today, or something that is right or wrong any time?
Quoting Beebert
I don't think Plato thought there must be one.
Quoting Beebert
lol - I have quite the opposite impression. The Greeks, including Plato, Socrates and Aristotle were lovers of the body. Sure, Plato did say that the realm of the senses is inferior, with regards to knowledge, compared to the realm of ideas. But Plato's conception of virtue as harmony of the tripartite soul necessitates that the body be satisfied too. And Symposium does treat about the gradation of love, from the spiritual to the physical.
Quoting Beebert
I don't follow.
Quoting Beebert
But his quest was deeper than this - it was the quest for the Agathon - the Form of the Good. Plato was a lover of Good.
Never Said anything else. But he is far more misunderstood and mistreated by those who do not appreciate him. And by blind fanboys too for that matter.
Would you Btw call Socrates superior as a human being to Plato or the other around?
Aristotle I agree, and he is in many ways preferable to Plato. Though I prefer Plato in the end because of one very important aspect: Beauty.
Though I must ask you: Are you kidding me regarding Plato's view of the physical?
We don't know much about Socrates except through Plato, so to me Plato and Socrates are one.
No, why do you think I am? In the Republic Plato is quite clear that flourishing requires harmony between all of the souls elements, and this can only be achieved via reason becoming the ruling faculty. This isn't a denial of the body, but rather placing the body in its proper place so that it can attain its own fulfilment.
"Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far"
And in Phaedo Plato through Socrates speaks about the evil body that causes man to be sick etc. And the convienience of dying so that the virtuos soul, the philosopher, can be freed from it.
One problem with Plato is that he speaks of the soul as trapped, imprisoned in the body and yet there is no clear account of what binds a particular soul to a certain body. Their difference makes the union a mystery.
I don't think Plato makes this kind of ontological separation :P But rather he distinguishes there are different parts of oneself, which includes the body and its appetites. To satisfy the entire person means that there is harmony between these parts. To bring this into N.'s language, we ourselves are formed of multiple and contradictory "wills-to-power" - so we have to bring those wills to power in harmony, otherwise we're conflicted people, and we don't even have a self as Kierkegaard would say. This is effectively what Plato is saying - he identifies three different faculties of the soul/body and he investigates how they can be brought in harmony. His conclusion is that this only happens when the rational faculty rules over the others. But this rational faculty includes much more than what we consider reason today. It also includes intuition - for example. This is absolutely essential - Dostoyevsky's and N's critique of reason isn't a critique of Plato's reason, it's a critique of scientific reason. Intuition plays a fundamental role in Plato - it is through intuition that one has access to anamnesis - remembrance. That's why Plato thought that only those who have the mystical vision of Agathon can be philosopher kings.
Blake sums up some of my problems with Plato:
"All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors:
1. That Man has two real existing principles, viz. a Body and a Soul.
2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body, and that Reason, called Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True.
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age."
Aaaaaannnnndddd...
"Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion,
Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil.
Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing
from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell."
>:O >:O Funnily enough this is very very Platonic :P
Quoting Beebert
This is more controversial. BUT! "Progression" is only a temporal matter belonging to this world, and this life.
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body, and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal delight!
Sure. But the next life is unimportant right now. Only Now is important. Nothing else. Progression for Blake is never about material things. But always about art and creativity
This is where I simply cant agree with Plato
Why?
Quoting Beebert
Hmmm... now is as important as then. I don't see why you prioritise now over everything else.
I can entirely buy Wittgenstein's view here but I have never met a Christian in Real life who hold this view, though I am sure they exist. Dostoevsky was one.
I am against Plato's view here about rationality for the same reason Nietzsche praises Dionysos over Apollo
I'm not quite sure. So long as we have a physical body we're trapped in time. After death we will be, as you say, in eternity, completely. Much more than we are in eternity by living in the present now.
Quoting Beebert
N. misunderstood Plato's view of rationality, so he was criticising a strawman. What N. called the Dionysian element was always a part of Plato's view of rationality.
Not at all. It's concerned with how we should live life. Thinking always has a practical aim for Plato.
This is not true in m experience...
I believe that the more suffering someone experiences, the more sensitive they then become to the alleviation of suffering or the presence of comfort. Like a cold beer at the end of a hot day, the struggles we undergo actually seem to sweeten and enhance the temporary plateaus of pleasure and relaxation which we continuously strive toward.
Leo Tolstoy wrote about his suicidal thoughts later in life as an existential and mental crisis which he scrambled to alleviate. He was rich, highly famous, had a family, was an accomplished writer, had servants, and was well liked and respected by all accounts. Why then, should he of all people, be the victim of recurring thoughts of suicide? He could see no grand meaning in life; especially compared to his personal accomplishments, the small things in life no longer offered any satisfaction and he was left suffering because of this...
When he asked his servants about suicide, who he reckoned must idolize it even more than he due to their more difficult day-to-day existence, he was flabbergasted to learn that they held suicide to be the most sinful of all actions. In my opinion, it was not just because they were Christian that suicide was seen as a bad thing, but rather that to them life was precious and an abominable thing to waste.
In one of his late essays (I forget the title) he expresses that the reason these peasants were so content with life must be due to their religious faith, and over time he came to embrace ascetic Christian ideals. I submit that it was not the ideas themselves which most helped to alleviate Tolstoy's thoughts of suicide, it was his scramble itself -- hard work and suffering -- and his embrace of a more ascetic lifestyle, which would have been more beneficial to his day to day mental satisfaction with life.
A contemporary example of how too much success can be a bad thing (mentally) would be Tom Cruise. Rich, famous, and idolized, he fell prey to Scientology which to him seemed like the thing which offered the most meaningful and satisfying path forward in life. Having himself already reached the plateau of his conception of western success, he had nowhere else (that was sane) left to go, and so buying in to Scientology seemed natural.
There's an underlying reality about the human psyche that makes this an enduring fact of life; we tend to want what we don't have. When we have everything, which seems a wholly unnatural state of existence, our drive to constantly get more doesn't go anywhere. I think that evolution afflicted us with this, and that we should all constantly have to struggle toward a next achievement is a good thing at times and a bad thing at others.
Pain and pleasure are linked in a strange and similar way. A pleasure which becomes too familiar loses potency as does a familiar pain, and when there is contrast between pain and pleasure (including emotional pain and pleasure) we feel them more powerfully. To me this paints a kind of "crack-head model" of the human condition: we willingly endure suffering in order to temporarily rid ourselves of it, and in this cycle we find balance. Perhaps this can also offer some interesting insight into the phenomenon of "masochism" (wanting to be harmed); when we experience pain, some connected aspect of pleasure is affected, and perhaps normally, or if an individual is comfort laden, merely the alleviation of suffering itself is a desirable and pleasurable end.
Could you explain this more in detail?
I'm not so sure about this. There's accumulating scientific evidence that traumatic events shape one much more than ecstatic moments do - the brain also seems to remember pain much more than pleasure. There seems to be an evolutionary reason for this, since avoiding pain ends up being more important than pleasure in terms of survival. Pain implies death and death is final, whereas pleasure has no finality. There is an asymmetry between pleasure and pain...
For example, reason for Plato includes, and in fact is based on noetic truths and intuition, and the intellect is active, and not just a passive recipient of ideas as it is for Bacon. The passive, life-killing intellect that is based on pure logic that Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche criticise isn't the intellect of Plato.
It's my suggestion that experiencing one changes your experience of the other...
But yes, I'm talking about the negative of pain being greater than the positive of pleasure.
@Maw if you're around, can you give your input on this? I may be mistaken, but I remember you had researched and studied this phenomenon quite a bit!
But yes, I'm talking about the negative of pain being greater than the positive of pleasure.
@Maw if you're around, can you give your input on this? I may be mistaken, but I remember you had researched and studied this phenomenon quite a bit!
How can we reliably say this is true? Perhaps in our modern age so filled with comforts, and since pain and trauma are infrequent, they seem more significant to us when they do occur. It could be true that for people enduring lives of hardship and pain, the rare moments of comfort and happiness they are able to find become more defining or longer lasting as you suggest trauma is for westerners.
Where are you getting this idea from in the first place though? Who told you that "the negative of pain is greater than the positive of pleasure"?
I'm still not quite sure what this necessarily means...
Do you know what will happen after you die?
Do you guarantee that you will actually be free from all suffering?
Cause seriously, I don't.
In some circumstances, that is possible.
When you have nothing to lose and you just don't give a shit anymore.
The pain is driving you crazy and you just wanna end it. People telling you to hold on and get through it and things will get better, but they aren't convincing anymore.
There is just too much PAIN.
And you won't care about the pleasure you gonna get after getting through the pain, you just want to end it.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I agree with that. As I said, not all circumstances, but some.
Because we value our lives, we're willing to put up with a significant amount of pain before we generally consider giving it up. So suicide is generally not an attractive option until the horribleness of the pain outweights the good of any continuation of being alive.
The better question is why we continue to procreate. Fear of death, the "unknown", pain, and the unsettling idea that there will be no future "self" that we are so used to chattering with, are sufficient enough reasons to me for why people do not commit suicide often outside of extremely painful circumstances.
The more fundamental question is why we continue bringing forth more people. What is it about having a next generation that needs to take place? The thoughtful answers would be something like: self-actualization, scientific discovery, art/music/humanities, creativity, flow experiences, physical pleasures, friends, relationships, achievement in some field or area of study, and aesthetic pleasures. However, the thoughtful person may also know that these experiences have some vague repetitiousness to it. It seems old hat that just repeats for each person in each generation. Why does it need to be carried out? Why go through it in the first place? In our linguistically-wired brains, we take the chaos of pure sensory information and through many cognitive mechanisms, create concepts and provide an impetus for our actions. In other words, we create goals. These goals, whether short-term, long-term, vague, or well-planned are executed as we have no choice. They well up from the unformed and provide some sort of ballast to the chaotic, undefined world. We must make one goal, then another, then another, even if just to get something to eat. What is really a value-less, goal-less world, is subjectivized into one where the individual human now has "priorities", "preferences", "tendencies", "hopes", "way of being in the world", and "personality". The structural needs of survival, the existential needs of entertainment, and the contingent setting of cultural surroundings that provide the content for surviving and entertaining, what is it that we want from this? Why do we need more people to exist who need goals to work towards, over and over, relentlessly until we die?
It is true that pain and pleasure are incommensurate, with the former being more potent physiologically and psychologically, all things being equal. than the latter. For a rudimentary introduction (particularly on the psychological aspect), check out Prospect Theory (the graph in particular). From an evolutionary standpoint, it certainly makes sense: an organism feeling pain will react quicker depending on the potency of the pain, and escaping that pain will enable it to survive). An organism feeling pleasure isn't likely to be in any danger, and feeling overwhelming pleasure may in fact distract it from potential dangers, thus its restrained force relative to pain.
Some people might endure an hour of the worst suffering for an hour of the best pleasure. I don't think the choice is so obvious. Examine your fantasy life. Does nothing you can dream up at least tempt you? Let's say you get to experience yourself as a world famous genius of some kind experiencing the perfect sexual situation with the perfect cocktail of drugs in the blood stream. Maybe you just completed the greatest work ever, the female(s) and/or males(s) and/or those more complicated arrive, and the doctor plugs the shot in your arm. You feel yourself to be as complete as God, etc. Maybe all of your sexual visitors are "geniuses" too -- who just happen to absolute fit your vision of the perfect sex partner physically and in terms of how they present themselves. If you act now, I'll throw in the sensation of killing all your enemies in a supremely elegant act of ultraviolence. Personally, I'd forget I had enemies with everything else going on. But I'm throwing that into the sales pitch.
I know by not killing myself this minute that I put myself at risk for great and unexpected suffering. Most of us know this and many of us do not feel constrained by platitudes or religious principles to live whether we want to or not. Some of us make peace with this possibility (to some degree) by remembering that it's probably the case that suicide will remain an option. Accidents could of course change us unexpectedly. That does scare me, an assault on my personality or self-ownership. But even this is "rationalized" or forgiven as a necessarily temporary situation. Certainly there's some probabilistic reasoning involved. Anyway, I suspect that lots of men especially at least fantasize about the possibility of ending their lives at some future time, when life can no longer be lived "nobly." And maybe lots of us aren't really disturbed by the suicide of those we don't love. Of course public, respectable voices (because they are public voices who must play a role) will offer your blue-pill platitudes. But I wouldn't take any of that at face value. There are plenty of mostly happy people who are well aware of two-faced life's terrible face. And they probably value suicide as a option that allows them to describe their life as an affirmed, calculated risk.
I really enjoyed your post. I definitely share your perception the repetitiousness. But I'll try to supplement your post with an answer to your rhetorical question, although I myself am not a parent. Of course kids just happen if you don't take precautions and becoming a parent (especially if you can support your own children) is anything but taboo. But those are easy reasons. How do parents justify their bringing of life into the world when they stop to reason about it? I think it's pretty simple. Life is viewed as a "net good." Despite the horror and futility and dogs it, it is nevertheless viewed as a silly dream worth having or passing through. Many of us (most of us?) do not regret being born. We can chalk this up to "blue pills" or something, but it's hard not to see the blue pill talk as itself a sort of rationalization. Thoughtful parents know that they bring suffering as well as pleasure into the world, perhaps even "more" suffering than pleasure in unlucky cases. It's a calculated risk. Maybe we circle around a hole. We amuse ourselves with partial objects and fragile, ultimately meaningless projects. We floss thousands of times. Behind the brilliant moments of life lurks an immense background of repetition. I definitely see that.
I personally take a neutral view. I don't know whether in some ideal general case the game is worth the candle. I even want to not know or take pleasure in the freedom from needing to know. I think of it as a transcended attachment, this extremely common itch to declare general existential truths. I can see the "blue bill" cheerleading from the outside and the "black pill" (red pill) cheerleading from the outside. Both are in some sense poses. What they share is an attachment to trans-personal truth.
I would turn the question around just a quarter turn, and give rewards for murdering others. It serves the same purpose, and it is way easier to execute as a course of action than suicide.