Considering most animals are incapable of committing suicide, and considering evolution (usually) has no strict cut-offs, I don't think it's controversial to think we aren't the only organisms on Earth who are conscious of "death" and fear it.

Thanks for the response Maw. I missed your post before.

Though I don't agree with much of your characterization or the usage of non-neutral terms such as "comfortable" or "convenient", what you are discussing reminds me of Joshua Foa Dienstag's thesis in his excellent work, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit which delineates the common themes and minor divergences between prominent Pessimists from Rousseau to Unamuno. — Maw

Is that book any good? I heard you're re-reading it. I was thinking of picking it up.

I'm actually surprised that you would group Leopardi with the latter considering that Leopardi writes positively about taking action despite the unhappiness often generated by it. He uses the figure of Christopher Columbus as an exemplar of one who took action despite the risks it involved. — Maw

I mentioned Leopardi because I'm currently reading The Philosophy of Disenchantment by Edgar Saltus, and Saltus spends almost an entire chapter talking about Leopardi's life and how he, at least for a while, intentionally isolated himself from everyone else, and thought the only duty one had was to oneself: "be true to oneself".

An Active Pessimist may attempt to mitigate or eradicate gratuitous forms of human suffering, but would need to acknowledge that such attempts can fail, or that such problems can always return during or after the lifetime of the Pessimist. — Maw

Right, exactly. Some people seem to be missing this point. It's not about making the world a utopia, but making it comparatively better than it is right now. We have made progress. It's not perfect and it never will be, but progress has still happened. It's ridiculous, I think, to say we haven't progressed at all. Of course we have.

No amount of passive lamenting is going to stop the machine of blind ambition from spreading to places where it ought not go. The active pessimist, then, is one who does not approve of this continuation, but nevertheless follows along to offer advice and clean up the mess made by these fools.

Also I will point out that it's not just about anthropocentric suffering, but sentio-centric suffering.

Your basic complaint is still, "these figures didn't quite live up to their own ideals or the ones I propose to the degree that I would like." — Thorongil

No, again, you're misconstruing the argument. They don't live up to my ideals, true. But I have specifically stated that the actual argument here is that they don't live up the ideals of an active pessimist. They did not advocate what I have articulated to be active pessimism.

The fact you seem to be getting all pissed off about this says more about yourself than anything I've said.

“Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

>:O Are you for real right now?

Since character, so far as we understand its nature, is above and beyond time, it cannot undergo any change under the influence of life

I disagree. Why can't it change? After all it was Schopenhauer who said it takes time to get used to isolation and asceticism. Character can change, for the better.

I observe in myself that at one moment I regard all mankind with heartfelt pity, at another with the greatest indifference, on occasion with hatred, nay, with a positive enjoyment of their pain. (Schopenhauer, "On Character")

It's a shame pity and good intentions won't help anyone unless it motivates action. Simply recognizing suffering, as I've already said, is the hallmark of passive pessimism. The active pessimist goes further and fights back.

Okay? Tell me more. — Heister Eggcart

I'm saying "justice" is no longer about finding who is responsible for whatever action but rather a means of preventing this occurrence from happening again. Is it not fair to say that as the stakes become higher, the more value we place on justice?

Most people, it seems, see justice as a way of "setting things straight", and "getting back" at whoever "intentionally" perpetrated the event. Vengeance masked by ritual.

I come from a different perspective: justice is a means of "showing an example". Those who disobey civil order will be dealt with. Cause and effect. It is based on an element of fear and intimidation, just as practically any social relation is, or any legitimate learning process for that matter.

Schopenhauer's main ethical principles are: "Harm no one; rather, help everyone as much as you can." That's not far enough or amenable to your position? — Thorongil

That's a good representation of what I would say active pessimism is about. I just don't see how Schopenhauer embodied this principle, nor do I see this principle in effect in his writings. Why didn't you bring this up earlier?

But those who do have access to aesthetic enjoyment, contemplation, and the gift of intelligence aren't bad for making use of these things. — Thorongil

The problem, unfortunately, is when those who have the opportunity to enjoy these things mistake their own existential luck as desert and pursue these things exclusively, or at least are focused on these things as a high priority.

And who's to say they did not do precisely this? You? Why should we believe you? Your only argument to this effect has involved the ludicrous complaint about the quality of their pillows, something I doubt you have much expertise in. Unless you have the bank account records of these men and have deduced from them the precise amount of money they could have given to the equivalent of whatever infallible charity you give to, then you will have confirmed the feeling of hot air emanating from your posts. — Thorongil

Come now, I've offered more than just the plush pillow and poodle example. I've shown how Leopardi intentionally isolated himself and was a thorough-going egoist - "be true to oneself" was his motto; he missed an epithet, though: "by neglecting everyone else". And I've shown how Cioran was curiously drawn towards suffering and intentionally submerged himself in its depths, and analyzed suffering as an abstract notion pervading time and space. I've shown how Nietzsche's amor fati is flawed and insulting to those who are suffering. Please don't ignore these examples anymore.

This is so vague a charge as to be meaningless. I feel that any amount of specificity would bring about its death. — Thorongil

No, I'm getting this from several sources, including a biographical account of Schopenhauer in The Philosophy of Disenchantment by Edgar Saltus, who is extraordinarily praising of Schopenhauer in general.

I actually don't recall you saying this at all, anywhere in this thread at least. — Thorongil

Come now, open your eyes man. I've said it multiple times now, even to yourself. I prioritize non-human animals.

You again assume he had a free choice in the matter! — Thorongil

Determinism? Is this what this is all about?

No, it's not. There are ascetics who literally starve themselves to death, such as the Jains with their practice of sallekhana. They clearly prefer that to ennui and might even say that they suffer less thereby (since it's their ticket to leaving samsara, the world of suffering, behind). — Thorongil

Clearly if someone willingly undergoes torment and turmoil, they aren't really "suffering". They're experiencing pain and discomfort but they aren't suffering because they have freely chosen to experience these things. In short, they prefer to feel these things, they are more satisfied by doing so.

The ascetics don't starve themselves to escape ennui, they starve themselves in pursuit of a metaphysical end-goal.

Consider also that some philosophers, like Galen Strawson, object even to our being responsible for anything at all! Thus, your position is very far from being as obvious as you claim. — Thorongil

And once again I have to tell you that active pessimism does not require moral responsibility, but merely altruism.

Maybe because they can't help it, owing to their characters! — Thorongil

Maybe it's just my "character" to point out hypocrisy.

Once again, I find myself repeating the same unanswered questions and objections. This will likely be my last post to you here. — Thorongil

Same, but mostly because you seem hell-bent on misunderstanding the main thesis of the OP and instead try to bring it all back to me apparently hating on Schopenhauer or something.

No we don't. You sound for all the world like an optimist here! — Thorongil

You cut yourself on a piece of wood. You don't just give up, you find a goddamn bandage to stop the bleeding. That's the point of intelligence, of rationality: problem-solving.

Once again, it's not about fixing the metaphysical problem. It's about making hell a little less hellish.

Hold the phone! Darth is appealing to his character to explain why he might not do something?! — Thorongil

I'm saying it's one of those things I doubt anyone could seriously condemn me or anyone else for not doing anything about. Just how you can't seriously condemn someone for not failing to kill themselves for the benefit of everyone else. It's too extreme.

And the argument in the OP is that these sorts of things are not the things an active pessimist would be expected to accomplish. You might as well ask them to teleport or shoot lasers out of their eyes. It's not reasonable. But the things that separate an active pessimist from a passive pessimist are reasonable. The passive pessimist just doesn't see them as important enough to pursue.

Victoire si douce! — Thorongil

Umm, okay? It's not as if you "won" anything, as I never said there was inherently something wrong with being a passive pessimist. You just played yourself...

Again, I have presented the descriptive qualities that separate active from passive pessimism. Whether you see this as a "threat" to your way of life is a you-problem.

But I've already told that I have no means or power to help them. — Thorongil

But, you do...

I'm not a sociopath thank you very much. — Thorongil

Nor do I think you a sociopath...? What the hell?

Intentions are important because my walking toward you with a knife means something completely different depending on if I intend to murder you or intend to chop up some onions for dinner. — Thorongil

Yes, as a means of predicting what you're going to do with the knife. As you said you're not a sociopath so I doubt you'd have the intention to stab or slice me.

Most laws are based on moral principles, so this is a false distinction. — Thorongil

Most laws are based on common-sense moral principles, sure. There's a reason legal issues are tangled up with moral issues, as common-sense morality, the one that drips with ad hoc intentionality, is inadequate in many cases.

No he didn't. In fact he objected to the term. — Thorongil

Oh?

From what? It's not completely different from Schopenhauer's. — Thorongil

But there are differences.

Trying and failing, yeah. — Heister Eggcart

Okay, then...:-}

Consider yourself falsely accused of murdering someone, when in reality you merely acted in self-defense. Regardless of this fact, however, you have been sentenced to life in prison without parole. If you wanted to contest such a verdict, how ought you go about doing so? Ah, yes, through an appeal to good intention. Otherwise, you must accept the wrong done unto you simply on the grounds of "what's left over" - i.e., you killed someone, they're dead, and because you done did it, you're guilty, whether you intended to kill the intruder in your home, say, or not. — Heister Eggcart

Right, so there's a difference between legal code and moral code - justice and values. Some might argue that justice is a value, but for a consequentialist, justice is merely an instrumental value of a rather ritualistic and vindictive nature.

Dear God in Heaven, is this a philosophy forum or a cook-book message board? — Heister Eggcart

If it wasn't apparent, I was trying to show how intentions have little importance. One can always characterize any situation to suit one's needs by invoking intentions here and there. That's the lesson of consequentialism - the only thing that matters at the end is what's left over.

I don't think it's too controversial to say that most people, if not all people, live most of their lives "in the future". They contemplate what reality could be like, what their lives could consist of. This is one of the great contributions from phenomenology, it seems: possibility is always "better" than actuality - existence itself seems to be some sort of imperfection. So long as the dream is maintained, the actual world is forgotten. An escape from reality that provides a person meaning even if the dream never actually comes to be, a dream in which they imagine a perfect avatar of themselves.

Perhaps you will say that if they had given more to charity then things would have been comparatively better still, but this assumes you have some criterion for determining the adequate amount of charitable giving a person is obligated to meet, and that one is indeed obligated to meet it, which you have not yet divulged. — Thorongil

So, yes, we of course have to take into account input as well as output. However like I said I am focused more on passive pessimism as an ideal. For Schopenhauer et al, it's about minimizing harm that you yourself experience, even if it's just small bouts of anxiety or what have you, since that's a symptom of the overarching metaphysical "problem" so to speak. It's why Schopenhauer advocated contemplating the aesthetic as a means of calming the Will, or "escaping" the Will's grasp.

The fact that they didn't seem to really advocate anything more is the main point here. Their actions themselves of course are also evidence but the fact that they offered no real plan of action is what separates them from active pessimists. Not everyone has access to the aesthetic. Not everyone has the opportunity to contemplate the universe as a leisure. Not everyone even has the intelligence to think about their condition (non-human animals for example).

Their emphasis on the "big problem" is what made them overlook the smaller problems.

The criterion imo would be to at least emphasize charitable and altruistic actions for the benefit of others, so long as you yourself don't drop below whatever you would see to be the line between "manageable" and "okay I'm suffering big time now".

Schopenhauer got a lot of inspiration from Buddhism and other Indian religions that emphasized non-self, yet curiously seemed to be overly-concerned about his own well-being and status in mainland Germany and Europe as a whole.

Thus, it could be that Schopenhauer et al suffer more profoundly than the Ethiopian villager, in which case your priorities ought to be reversed. — Thorongil

Just...no. To attribute the angst and ennui Schopenhauer apparently felt as "suffering" is to bastardize suffering and insult those who actually are suffering. Like it just boggles my mind how someone can actually think this, that a first-world countryman somehow inherently suffers more than a third-world "country"man. Maybe Schopenhauer should have just left Europe and hung around the slums in Zimbabwe or something if he really thought he was suffering more than anyone else. That sounds more like a him-problem than anything else.

Schopenhauer can say all he wants about how increasing knowledge increases suffering, yet if he actually was suffering because of it he wouldn't have pursued knowledge. Thus his decadent and indecent equivocation is apparent. And if he thought this way then he probably shouldn't have taught or done anything related to philosophy as a whole. That's just bourgeois entitlement - decadence.

What is more, if you bring the Ethiopian out of his physical misery, then you have merely served as the enabler of his entering new forms thereof, that is, forms common to the materially satisfied and affluent, such as depression, substance abuse, risk of suicide, and other psychological disorders and conditions. In the absence of physical suffering, one creates fresh desires to strive after, whose unfulfillment causes yet more suffering. Paradoxically, then, the materially disadvantaged Ethiopian villager may actually be happier and more content than the materially prosperous American. — Thorongil

Again, just...no. I don't know how I'm supposed to argue against something like this, or how anyone for that matter can actually take this seriously. It's just obvious that extreme starvation is worse than ennui. One is manageable - you can still produce philosophical works if you experience it. The other one is cripplingly overwhelming.

So maybe Schopenhauer was more focused on the increase of melancholy in those who are more intelligent or knowledgeable, a so-called "burden" of the academic. This might be true but I think it's blatant equivocation to see this as legitimate "suffering" and not just a general disenchantment with the world. This is exactly why someone like myself sees Schopenhauer and co. as almost solipsistic in their philosophy. They "recognize" that other people exist but don't seem to really act like it, as they seem to be caught up in their own world of metaphysical theorizing. Suffering is analyzed in an abstract manner and detached from anyone actually experiencing the condition.

The threshold I typically like to use is the one that establishes a point in which someone can "take care of themselves". Schopenhauer obviously wasn't doing all that bad considering his biography and works, so he wouldn't be that important in the prioritarian/sufficientarian sense (consider how absurd it would be for someone like me to knock on his door and tell him I'm here to give him a massage or something because he's suffering extraordinarily). The Ethiopian obviously isn't, so they are who we would be focused on (consider how welcoming the Ethiopian would be to even the smallest of aid).

Also, those who are extremely disadvantaged and are brought up to a higher level of living typically have a lot more appreciation for their new living conditions. They may still be in an all-things-considered "shitty" existence but they don't seem to recognize this as such.

But again, like I said, I have very little hope for humanity as a whole. Human-oriented charities are inevitably fucked by the corrupt governments of the countries they're trying to help. This is why I said I'm focused more on non-human animals, the sentients that don't have representatives, who can't contemplate the aesthetic, and who probably actually suffer more than higher-intelligence sentients. That's one point Schopenhauer was 100% wrong about. Higher-intelligence does not necessitate higher suffering. Lesser-intelligence oftentimes constitutes a higher likelihood to suffer, as one doesn't have the capability to grasp and understand the cause of the condition but rather simply has to endure. They have two options: endure or escape. Humans have a third: fix the problem, or even a fourth: dissociation/distraction thanks to our "will" or what have you.

Thirdly, if you wish to end or alleviate suffering and agree that procreation is the principal cause thereof, then you ought to be focusing all of your efforts on encouraging people not to have children. By not doing this, and instead providing charitable assistance, you're acting in conflict with said goal. In other words, to use a word you accused Schopenhauer of earlier, you are in fact an accomplice to suffering by refusing to address the source. If the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by the consequences of it, and the desired consequence in this case is an end to suffering, then it is wrong to give to charity, since it frees people to have children, which is the cause of suffering. — Thorongil

Not necessarily. I mean, I could go up to my university's speaking ground everyday and advocate antinatalism. I could blow up a sperm bank or put sterilization chemicals in the water. I could.

But this probably wouldn't be as effective as you might envision it to be. Nor do I think I have the guts to do something like this. Furthermore, this could actually be counter-productive; if everyone's sterilized, then suddenly research into test-tube babies will skyrocket exponentionally as everyone freaks out about the prospect of extinction.

Trying to advocate AN to even my closest acquaintances is like talking to a brick wall. It just doesn't compute. Whether this means I have to resort to violence, I'm not sure. It's one of those things I'd rather not do. Thinking about this makes me feel like a supervillain. But there's always that veil of ignorance - I don't know how effective things like this will be. It might be really effective, or it might backfire. Who knows. It's easier and more effective, I think, to focus on educating the public and increasing the welfare of those already alive. I may not approve of birth but I also harbor disapproval of extinction. There's all sorts of goofy and uncomfortable clashes in intuition. I accept this.

Simply put, I am suited to the vita contemplativa, rather than the vita activa, and civilization needs both. — Thorongil

Civilization only needs the vita contemplativa, or whatever you called it, as long as they make their ideas known and try to put them into practice. Otherwise you're just as you said: a hermit, irrelevant to the rest of the world as much as the rest of the world is irrelevant to yourself.

If that's the case, fine. Okay. But this doesn't change the fact that you are not an active pessimist. Again, if you don't find anything wrong with this, fine. If passive pessimism suits you and fulfills whatever ethical criteria you see as important, fine.

Burn-out is real. You can't pursue a high-paying job that you hate. I recognize this. EA is all about doing the most you can do, which is also why we typically don't like comparing how much we all do. But the focus of active pessimism is involvement in the world at large and being a productive asset to the overall increase in welfare of sentients.

I've always loved this quote from Julio Cabrera:

"The negative human being has a greater familiarity with the terminality of Being; he neither conceals it nor embellishes it, he thinks about it very frequently or almost always, and has full conscience about what is pre-reflexive for the majority, that is, all we do is terminal and can be destroyed at any moment.

Negative life, in this sense, is melancholic and distanced (but never distracted or relaxed), not much worse than most lives and much better than them in many ways, a life with neither hope nor much intense feelings, neither of deception nor even enthusiasm. And, above all, without the irritating daily pretending that “everything is fine” and that “we are great”, while we sweep our miseries under the carpet. Therefore, it is usually a life without great “crisis” or great “depressions” (by the way, depression is the fatal fate of any affirmative life); negative lives are anguished lives, poetic and anxious, and almost always very active lives.

In the Critique, I have already written that a negative life shall emerge, basically, on four ideas: (a) Full conscience about the structural disvalue of human life, assuming all the consequences of it; (b) Structural refuse to procreation (a negative philosopher with children is even more absurd than an affirmative one without them); (c) Structural refuse to heterocide (not killing anybody in spite of the frequent temptation to violence); (d) Permanent and relaxed disposition for suicide as a possibility."

The only part I really disagree with is his views on heterocide, as I see murder as an open possibility in extreme cases.

An ethic isn't more true to the degree that it is demanding. — Thorongil

Right, but I see these sorts of ethical limitations as ultimately baseless.

No, if by "not my problem" you mean "not responsible," then it's simply correct. If you honestly think that I am responsible for people starving in Ethiopia, then your definition of responsibility is in error, since it would say of me that I caused or intended to cause their suffering, which I clearly did not. Nor, as I said, do I have the means or the power to end it, unlike the drowning child example. — Thorongil

You didn't intend that they starve, but you did intend to ignore their plight. There is no "no action" here. Every single thing we do is an action. Allowing something to happen is still an act. You intended to allow something to happen so long as you are knowledgeable of it and did nothing to interfere. And if you're not knowledgeable of it, you're at least knowledgeable of the general existence of things like it.

Again, I ask why intentions have any importance here. They might be important in the legal sense, sure. But in the moral sense, what is so important about them?

I've never done drugs before, unless you count caffeine and the rare consumption of alcohol at get-togethers or what have you. Never really have the opportunity to, though I'm not opposed to trying some weed to see what all the fuss is about.

In other words, they weren't what you wish them to be, and you're upset about that fact. — Thorongil

Nope, this is just you projecting. I'm disappointed that they weren't active pessimists but it's not like I expected anything more. I'm condemning passive pessimism as an ideal more than I am condemning those who practice it. You're taking this waaay too personally. Boo-hoo, so I pointed out how your idol Schopenhauer wasn't as productive as he could be. Oh well.

You can't change the past and you can't change other people, so stop acting like a petulant child. — Thorongil

>:O

But I don't make it a habit of going out of my way to create essay length threads condemning them. — Thorongil

Nice straw man.

Productive in what way? Tell us all how great and wonderful darthbarracuda is in comparison with those icky "decadent" pessimists like Schopenhauer and Leopardi. — Thorongil

Part of Effective Altruism is that EA-ers don't typically go around bragging how much they do. Safe to say I donate to specific organizations and contribute time and energy to local projects. I also am pursuing a degree that not only interests me but will make me a relatively large amount of money, which I plan on donating most of.

So no, I'm not on the front lines, but as I've already said, for every soldier on the front, there's ten behind. EA may be liberally optimistic but they do more good than the alternatives.

"In the grand scheme of things...." — Thorongil

And as I have said several times now, the grand scheme of things isn't important because it's not feasible to work with. But every life is a world-in-itself. Every instance of suffering is important, perhaps even more-so if we take the block theory of time seriously.

The total amount of suffering is not lessened one single iota due to Schopenhauer giving to charity. Not one. Suffering and misery in fact increased exponentially after his death, as the human population exploded and we embarked on one of the most barbaric and violent centuries yet seen in the history of this sad, pathetic vale of tears. — Thorongil

So maybe let's team up and do what Schopenhauer couldn't/didn't?

Consequently, I do no wrong in withholding charity from starving Ethiopians, for I am not the cause of, and so am not responsible for, their plight. Now, lest you misconstrue what I am saying, charitable giving is good, undoubtedly, but not giving to charity is not bad. — Thorongil

Of course you can argue that doing good is entirely supererogatory. This is a popular move. But it still misinterprets the OP, as I already have said how an active pessimist could still see this as supererogatory and yet be a part of it. For example, bodhisattvas.

But consider a drowning child. Do you do anything wrong by not helping the child escape the water? I think you'll probably agree that it's not simply an instance of altruistic good but an instance of moral expectation. To ignore the child is to be neglectful, possibly even criminally.

Or what if you saw a man kidnap a young child, and saw the license plate number on the vehicle? Surely you would think you have an obligation to call the police, no?

And what about those suffering by natural disasters? Who is to blame for this? Surely not the tsunami, but perhaps those who stood idly by and watched as people died. People who didn't have to die.

I have to ask you, what reason do we have to accept this distinction between doing and allowing? Why is it important? What motivation do we have to see morality this way? I suspect many attempts to limit morality in this way are at least partly due to a dislike of how demanding a morality without it would be - yet I've already shown how this is nothing more than an affirmation of the status quo and how the over-demandingness stems from a non-ideal and unequal distribution of responsibility. Not everyone are consequentialists, so those who are are given a taller order than they should.

So it's easy to just say "not my problem" when the issue is thousands of miles away and whose causes are difficult to attribute. In a world as complex as ours, there hardly ever is one single determinate cause for a problem, and no amount of pointing fingers is going to sort things out. That's why the active pessimist is going to say "to hell with it" and start fixing things themselves, even if they don't have to. Such a move could thus be seen as that of virtue. Or altruism, as I had already said in the OP and several times already in this thread.

Schopenhauer, being a pessimist, should of all people been the one to realize that the world is non-ideal and unfair - yet for some reason found room to push in these idealistic, absolutist moral codes that drip with appeals to intention. Once again we have an example of a security-bubble; the world is crazy and malignant, but there's a special code that recognizes intentions when the rest of the world quite obviously does not. A world that harms indiscriminately is not a world which has this sort of morality. To the consequentialist, there is no difference between doing and allowing. To the non-consequentialist, there also shouldn't be a difference between doing and allowing in extreme and non-ideal circumstances. To deny this screams, to me, the just world fallacy.

You must like being coy, because you have continually refused to give me concrete examples of what they did wrong, what they ought to have done, and why. — Thorongil

On the contrary, you seem to just enjoy being an argumentative ass. I've given you plenty of examples already. And I've already conceded that Schopenhauer donated to charity.

And once again, I'm not arguing that they did anything wrong, per se, I'm explaining how they certainly were not what I would call active pessimists. So stop taking this so personally and stop being so belligerent. Whether there is something wrong with being a passive pessimist is not really the point of the OP, although I hope you and others will consider what it actually means to be a passive pessimist in the long run.

2) These figures, or at least Schopenhauer, would say that the problem CANNOT be solved, outside of abstaining from procreation. This is part of what makes them pessimists. — Thorongil

And I have already stated multiple times that it's not about solving the entire problem but of making things comparatively better than they otherwise would.

Yes, you're a hypocrite. Think of all the drowning children you could have saved if you slept on a rock and used the money for that Target pillow on them. — Thorongil

I never said I wasn't a hypocrite, just that I'm a more productive hypocrite. :-}

A good deed, but in the grand scheme of things it did absolutely nothing, as is the case of all forms of charity. — Thorongil

I'm sure it did a lot to help those who were on the receiving end. It didn't do "absolutely nothing" as you so boldly claim, otherwise it wouldn't actually be a good deed.

Throwing money at the problem will not fix it, for the condition is terminal and permanent. It will merely act as a fleeting and minutely effective band-aid. I am not saying not to give to charity or that I wouldn't if I had the means, I am only pointing out the sheer idiocy and folly in suggesting that it will make any substantial difference. — Thorongil

And once again I have to tell you that it's not about fixing all the problems but making things comparatively better. But I guess there's no aesthetic to this, it's more aesthetically pleasing to just give up on everything. Everything sucks and there's nothing we can do about it...except there actually is.

That you're not grateful to be so informed by such a man doesn't negate his value. — Thorongil

I'm grateful for his observations because I now am able to do something. It probably would be harmful just to talk about how much life sucks without doing anything about it, because now you've just made everyone's sufferings that much more obvious.

And I believe this too. What's wrong with seeking the truth? Presumably the harshness and violence of the world is true and requires pointing out and defending as such. — Thorongil

There's nothing wrong with seeking the truth, per se, so long as you recognize that some truths are sought because you want to know, not because of some "higher purpose" that truth-seeking embodies.

And in the end, truth won't get food on the table. It will leave you on the side of the road wondering why you even bothered with it in the first place.

I shall seek the truth above all else. — Thorongil

Meanwhile in Ethiopia, over 14 million people don't really care about metaphysics. Because they haven't eaten in ten days. If you don't find anything wrong with this, fine. Just don't pretend Schopenhauer and co. did anything substantial over their lifetimes to help people like this. They were passive, focused more on abstract metaphysics than the suffering they were famous for characterizing. And they were profoundly lucky that they had the opportunity and resources to pursue these sorts of dainty hobbies.

So pessimism fails because it expects reality to be unnatural. Or supernatural. Perfections and utopias are defined in ways that are brittle and mechanical, not fluid and organic. — apokrisis

On the contrary, pessimism succeeds as it recognizes sentience to be "unnatural" and ill-equipped to deal with the oppressive forces of nature. Instead, sentients have to pretend reality is different than it actually is. To be sentient, then, requires one to live in a fantasy. Everyone has their crutch.

Wait a minute, if your solution to the world's suffering is charity, then Schopenhauer's giving his money to charity upon his death is more effective than anything either of us could or likely will do. I have substantial student loan debt, a microscopic bank account, very few possessions to my name, and no desire to be extremely wealthy, so I'm not the sort of person for whom these organizations operate. — Thorongil

That's unfortunate. Remember I did recognize that Schopenhauer donated all his money to charity. So once again you're taking this personally and assuming I'm attacking the virtues of Schopenhauer and co. directly when I'm really not. If anything, you getting all riled up about this effectively has proven my point. I am using these men as examples of passive pessimism - far from being just about their general hypocrisy, I'm trying to show how they didn't go far enough. They weren't radical enough to see their already-radical philosophical views actualize.

But this means your criticism has been meaningless from the start, since you have been assuming an ethic contrary to those about whom you criticize. In order for your criticism to stick, you would first have to show how their ethical systems are false. — Thorongil

No, it's not meaningless, as I have argued that welfare consequentialism is the inevitable next-step after pessimism is accepted. Problem-solving instead of simply problem-acknowledging.

So you're a hypocrite. — Thorongil

No, apparently you missed the sarcasm. I sleep on a pillow I got from Target.

And why should anyone listen to what you think other people should do? More importantly, what makes you think they will? — Thorongil

Well presumably because I think I have offered reasons why I am to be believed.

Like what? Selling their pillows for crappier ones? Come on, man. — Thorongil

Actually Schopenhauer is a better example of an active pessimist than any of the other ones. He still was decadent and self-centered but at least he did donate the charity at the end of his life. Didn't really do much else, though. Thought it was good enough to just talk about the suffering of the world.

What makes a man great is not just the work he produces but what he does with it. Part of my argument, then, is that Schopenhauer (and co.) felt Truth was still "important" for some reason in a world as harsh and violent as the one their perceived. Truth or bust. They maintain an affirmation of something that is "alien" to the rest of the world - this is what I called their "bubble of security"; philosophy is a sort of reassuring comfort of perfect rational structure that isolates someone from the rest of the dirty, wild world. We see the first thinking on this arise in people like Freud and Peter Zapffe.

I have argued that understanding the world this way should lead one to see absolute Truth as something secondary in importance. Sacrifices must be made. That is what ultimately makes the difference between active and passive pessimism.

The simple fact is that, in academic philosophy at present, Schopenhauer is estranged from both the analytic and continental camps. He doesn't belong to, nor founded, any "school," and for this reason is ignored. — Thorongil

This is unfortunate. I get how some people might think Schopenhauer's metaphysics is a Kantian cul-de-sac, but goddamn are his observations of the human condition on point and shouldn't be ignored.

It seems we have a millionaire in our midsts! :D — Agustino

If only ... looks like mac and cheese is back on the menu, boys!

(whether effective or with as much revenue is another question). — schopenhauer1

Very true, this is why we have to be careful and deliberate about who we donate money to. An unfortunately large amount of charities are scams.

Rather, it entails civic involvement by all concerned parties. In short, your ideas are really political more than anything. It is a more an appeal to "Get out the vote" and be more involved in the community. — schopenhauer1

Yes, indeed, however I made the caveat that we shouldn't feel obliged to put our lives or general well-being at risk. Try advocating AN to a college crowd. That'll go over great...

If you want to REFUTE their ideals, that is one thing, but I do not think they are being hypocritical to their own ideals. So again, to entail utilitarianism with Pessimism is to unfairly tie two concepts together that are not necessarily entailed. Pessimism actually has very little in the way of ethics- it is mostly an aesthetic comprehension of the world. What one does about it is more open for interpretation. What it does have (i.e. Schopenhauer's compassionate ideal), is not necessarily utilitarian anyways. — schopenhauer1

I'm glad you recognize the aesthetic component of pessimism, I entirely agree. I don't agree that consequentialist theories necessarily require things to reach this utopia. It simply has to acknowledge that things could be better, all things considered; 9 sufferers is better than 10 sufferers.

We MUST get up, we MUST survive, we MUST entertain. On top of this kernel of uncalmness, is the complexities of contingent harms that we must face. Is this the real metaphysical "truth" of the world, or is this just the product of a certain temperament? I brought that up in a previous thread, but indeed, there is a Pessimist aesthetic and a certain byline that runs through it. — schopenhauer1

No, I completely agree with all this. The unfortunate ironic truth is that this aesthetic can make living altruistically more difficult than had the aesthetic never been accepted.

Though I know you disagree with the execution of Benatar's consequentialism/utilitarianism in regards to his asymmetry logic, you may want to see what he has to say about ethics outside of antinatalism, as you can see where another antinatalist/pessimist that is consequentialist/utilitarian balances consequences and personal responsibility. I honestly don't know much else about what his ethics entails based on his premises. He is obviously most famous for applying his assumptions to antinatalism in particular. How he handles altruism in general would be interesting to explore. — schopenhauer1

Indeed I have been interested in picking up a book on everyday ethics by him.

You can pat yourself on the back, have a secular "Kingdom of God" complex by working to end this or that problem, but the problems of existence do not go away. Existence itself does not provide a smooth existence simply because one's basic needs are met. — schopenhauer1

Right.

Bringing another person into existence is bringing another person into the burdens of life. It is literally giving another person burdens to deal with, so they can what? every once in a while feel the goods that life can offer? — schopenhauer1

Exactly. It makes you wonder whether or not you should help prevent more than just your own children from coming into existence.

Most importantly, if you do not indulge in those goods yourself, your very logic of helping people makes no sense- it becomes an absurd circular logic. We must help people so they can help people, so they can help people. — schopenhauer1

Right, there must be a balance. And a threshold. Once people can take care of themselves, they can do what makes them "happy" or whatever that is and also help more people get above their threshold.

Honestly, though, with all the political and social entanglements in the world, helping humans on a large scale is practically impossible. It's why I focus more on non-human animals. Under-represented victims.

Honestly this is probably the number one reason why I wish I could become a philosopher myself. I'd just love to have the chance to communicate and interact with some of these people; critique their views, refine my own, get tenure and write a controversial book.

The magnitude of suffering is so great that there is extremely little one can concretely do to alleviate it in any meaningful sense. — Thorongil

This is where you are incorrect. There are lots of effective altruism groups and other similar organizations that operate on donations from people like you and me.

So you're a utilitarian. Great, but he wasn't. Nor am I. — Thorongil

I'm a welfare consequentialist, yes. And my claim is that any sort of active welfarism is what separates active pessimism from comfortable "not my fucking problem" pessimism.

Even if this were true, again, so what? That shouldn't matter for a utilitarian. Also, what pillow do you sleep on? — Thorongil

I sleep on a pillow imported from the far east, with downy feathers and a silk cover. Some say the prince of Persia once rested his head upon its soft embrace.

Adorno is an idiot. To not write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. — Thorongil

Adorno was being hyperbolic. I was using it to convey a point that you're missing here.

Poppycock. If you really believed this, you would cease posting on a forum like this. Or perhaps you will admit to your own hypocrisy, in which case your criticisms of Schopenhauer et al lose all their force. — Thorongil

Eh, no, since I already said you can pursue these things, so long as you're not doing it exclusively. There's obviously a thresh-hold, I'm not saying we should all become altruistic slaves. I'm saying there were things that these pessimists could have done that would not have affected their lives in any unreasonable manner, and they did not do so.

Because most college professors are optimistic, left leaning progressives. I will say that there is a certain kind of pessimism which some of them exude, owing to the influence of certain postmodernist hacks, which I absolutely abhor. It's not "classical pessimism," as you put it, but a pessimism about the merits and achievements of science, Western civilization, truth, reason, the enlightenment, democracy, and so on. — Thorongil

What about scholars of thinkers like Nietzsche or Freud? Don't they have to read Schopenhauer, for example? Or for that matter, Germany as a whole which sees Schopenhauer as one of the great minds of their history?

I'm curious as to why someone we both see as accurately portraying the human condition could be so neglected. IIRC it was Schopenhauer himself who said most philosophers weren't actually doing philosophy.

The claim isn't about its impressiveness. — Thorongil

Rather it's about effectiveness and direction.

I don't recall any incidents in his life that are in any way comparable to this. — Thorongil

I'm not saying there were any incidents like this. I'm saying location and distance have no bearing on our knowledge of suffering. What difference does it make if the person is next door or down the street? What about a few miles away?

The pillow one sleeps on makes not one iota of difference, positive or negative, to the sufferings going on in the world. If a rock were his pillow, is he suddenly absolved? If he went down to the Main river, found a nice stone, and replaced his "plush" pillow with it, is the world suddenly a better place? What pillow do you sleep on? Judge not lest ye be judged. — Thorongil

Well actually technically it would make a difference, as he could have used that money for better use. But that's not really the point. The point is that Schopenhauer and co. all seemed to focus on their own comfort more than anyone else's. And I argued for this by pointing out his plush pillows and poodle, his want for aesthetic and his love of nature.

Which would have been what? The kind of free will you seem to be attributing to Schopenhauer he would reject — Thorongil

So not only was Schopenhauer a determinist, you're saying he was a fatalist as well?

The figures you mentioned were not, in any sense, "indifferent" to suffering. One would be hard pressed to find a more false claim one could make about them. — Thorongil

Well, remember the point of the OP, man. You're the one who is taking this personally and claiming I'm attacking these people in an ad hominem fashion.

I'm not, at least not directly. I'm pointing out how it can't really be denied that they were, in some sense, limited in what they accomplished to actually do something about the suffering in the world. They were not bodhisattvas. The claim is that their pessimism was comfortable/convenient because, as I see it, they did not follow through with their pessimism. One wonders how much they actually accomplished to reduce suffering in comparison to all those comparatively-optimistic social workers who didn't know two things about metaphysics but were more effective in reducing suffering as a whole than any one of these great thinkers.

To summarize, then, I'll quote Adorno: "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric." The natural world as a whole is like an Auschwitz. Pursuing things like philosophy or art that have no real contribution to the rest of the world as a whole, exclusively, means to prioritize oneself over another.

Again, like I mentioned earlier, Leopardi was a loner and an egoist, who thought being true to himself was all that mattered. Cioran obviously was not a public figure, just more of a shadowy outsider. Schopenhauer didn't just run away from cholera like any rational person would, he went further and called himself a choleraphobe, as if nobody else was, and focused on his own career and fame (especially later in life). Nietzsche was all sorts of crazy, maybe he can be given a break in this case. Camus didn't put two and two together to realize it is birth, and not just suicide, that are true philosophical questions. Even Zapffe decided to stick to climbing mountains all day and for some strange reason found ecology to be very important.

There is nothing wrong with my statement that these men could have done more. Whether they were obligated to do so is a totally different argument, although personally I think they were.

So why dwell on what cannot be changed? Focus on living morally in your own life, which is the only one you have any control over. — Thorongil

...Because I find this to be important and know that my own influence extends beyond my own body in the sense of persuasion.

-

Off topic question: if I remember correctly, you are at university, no? Do you have any thoughts on why pessimistic thinkers typically don't get taught as much as other thinkers? Or generally, why do you think pessimism is not as widely accepted as presumably you might wish it to be?

You're still desperately trying to paint him as "uncaring," but that impression simply does not stand up to the facts. — Thorongil

Please don't psychoanalyze me, I'm not "desperate" to prove these people as devils.

But he didn't marry and never desired to have children, so he is not an "accomplice" to human suffering at all, given that, as you admit, its origin is found in procreation. — Thorongil

Not having children isn't too impressive. He was an accomplice to suffering in the same way standing by while a child drowns in water is criminal neglect. Once you know what life entails, sitting on your plush pillows is neglect. With the stakes as high as they are, allowing becomes rather similar to simply doing.

Excessive in comparison to what? — Thorongil

In comparison to what he could have done.

False. — Thorongil

True. X-)

Yes, for we all know that whoever advocates asceticism but does not sleep on a cement block next to a charnel ground in the howling wind is the vilest of hypocrites. And, obviously, to hell with animal companionship. — Thorongil

It's pretty obvious visiting a whorehouse is not the ideal of an ascetic.

Would that all men behaved like saints and lived up to the highest ethical ideals! But they do not, and it is precisely this realization that makes one a pessimist, generally speaking. Your criticism is therefore entirely impotent because it fails to understand all of what pessimism logically entails. — Thorongil

And so what does it "fully entail"? Please enlighten me.

I'm not surprised that these people didn't live up to ethical standards. But I'm disappointed that they didn't even seem to try given what they obviously understood about life.

Funny how you seem to focus only on Schopenhauer when I mentioned other pessimists, like Leopardi, who intentionally isolated themselves from everyone else.

Haven't I explained this to you before? If everything tries to happen at once, most of it will be contradictory and so will self-suppress its own existence, cancel itself away to nothing. — apokrisis

Okay, but apo you still have to explain why these things are happening all the time. Why this outcome? Was it inevitable? Is there only one universe that can emerge from the cancelling action? And why was this foamy apeiron stuff there? Where did it come from?

You're still implicitly avoiding the question of Being: why does anything exist? Why something, rather than nothing? We can always ask "why"?

This actually takes political and community action to help solve, and even then the problems don't just disappear but are cyclical. Anyways, this is just one social ill that is way beyond one person's charity or volunteering or even a lifetime of a Mother Teresa lifestyle. — schopenhauer1

Right, this is why more "sophisticated" consequentialists typically advocate change through institutions and organizations. A mass effort. For the consequentialist, the state of affairs is what matters. What is moral is not always what makes you feel good. Of course, people are needed to actually go out and interact with those in need. But it's similar to a military campaign. For every soldier, there are ten support units behind him. The support units are necessary and important but don't get the "glory" so to speak. They are the units "behind the scenes".

I have an acquaintance who decided to switch majors to social work because he wanted to "help people". True, social work will help people, but he was more concerned about human interaction and all that. The "good feelings" of helping people. But let's not forget that impersonal donations of money or labor can do just as much, if not more, good. Giving $20 to a homeless person might make you feel good. Donating this $20 to a food charity will help far more people, though, and it will guarantee this money will go to good use. But it doesn't "feel" as good...

For Schopenhauer, then, its seems that he was committed to the view that there are some things you just don't do, like murder or rape, but generally being an altruist is entirely voluntary and only worthwhile so long as you experience some form of compassionate aesthetic. The "bonding" moment.

Those who are consequentialists are given an unfair amount of responsibility, since reality is non-ideal and not everyone are consequentialists. For consequentialists, one does not necessarily need to feel sympathy all the time, but merely recognize that their cognitive faculties are preventing them from seriously sympathizing with those in need.

Now, the Mother Teresa types are often religiously inspired- so they much of their actions are trying to model a religious ideal or mandate and even using it to proselytize. They are trying to get a metaphysical change from the action and save souls while they are doing it. The good deeds are bringing about the Kingdom of God or bring about a spiritual change. Some people might genuinely be doing these actions out of some sort of innate capacity for extreme altruism, but this is rare, as Schopenhauer pointed out. — schopenhauer1

True. Actually Mother Teresa once said that it's not about the people you help, but the relationship between you and God. She cared very little for the suffering of others, it seems. Rather it was merely a way of getting closer to God. Twisted if I say so myself.

Thus the best one can do is make do with long-term goods, help out as much as possible without it becoming simply a negative slavish force for oneself and strip all long-term goods from one's life (thus making one's goals to help others more meaningful as they too can pursue long-term goods), and finally, to not procreate, and thus end the harm and addiction to the next generation. — schopenhauer1

Generally I agree. We're not robots that can just do something 24/7. Those who do typically do so because they like doing it or like you said they have a metaphysical redemption in mind.

Now that I think of it the greatest threat to my view has got to be the fact that those who are better off could become very much worse off at the flip of a coin, perhaps in the process of doing altruism. I already recognize that one shouldn't be obligated to kill themselves for the benefit of others, that is too extreme of an obligation to be seriously expected. Yet every day we expose ourselves to life-threatening risks, even if we don't recognize it.

180 Proof — Erik

Also where is 180 Proof? — Maw

I think 180 Proof showed up briefly but didn't return. Not sure why though.

What is the Pessimist's incentive? — schopenhauer1

Does there need to be an incentive?

I think I've explained to you before how I hate guilting people, but all anyone has to do is imagine the suffering a wild animal feels while being devoured by its predator, or sympathize with the unknown nobody in Ethiopia who hasn't had anything to eat for two weeks.

The guilt one feels is incomparable to the suffering experienced by these sorts of situations. As Peter Unger said, it's "living high and letting die."

Is it to impress his fellow man as to what a great person he/she is; in other words pride in how selfless he/she is? — schopenhauer1

Not precisely, and I would personally feel bad about intentionally bragging about my adventures in altruism. Although I will admit that at times I feel a sense of superiority that I can only see as justified.

Perhaps this is a cop-out- some people have the right stuff, and others do not and thus did not give enough credence to free-will to justify why some people are more compassionate than others rather than everyone, especially the Pessimist, doing his/her part. — schopenhauer1

I might be willing to argue that since nobody asked to be born, nobody has an obligation to clean up to the mess and do anything for anyone else.

This of course conflicts with intuitions regarding drowning children, but it's at least coherent.

Scheffler argues that there should be nothing preventing people from doing good, but there is no obligation to do so. Perhaps he's right. I'm not too sure, cases like drowning children make me believe we do have some obligations.

And anyway if we eschew obligations then Schopenhauer and co. have absolutely no right to condemn those who have children, as they have no obligation to care about the welfare of their offspring. It's a double-bladed sword.

Rather, if we were to only think of others' alleviation of suffering, life would be even more absurdly tormenting than it was originally, as not even its enjoyment, that which is the goal of alleviating others' suffering, would be enjoyed by anyone. — schopenhauer1

I would say that there this sort of enjoyment is not as important than minimizing the suffering these people feel. This goes back to distributive inequality issues. I believe that the angst and ennui that characterized pessimistic philosophies in the past is largely irrelevant when compared to the feelings experienced by those worse-off.

Indeed it seems wrong to feel ennui because one knows someone else is being tormented, because this means one is viewing them as some kind of tarnish in a world they would rather see as good.

2.) As others commented above, Pessimists inherently think that suffering cannot be eradicated. — schopenhauer1

Without such a context, a cathartic metaphysical "something to show for it", it is essentially putting a band-aid over a mortal wound and then saying- you must be a good Pessimist, like they used to say you must be a good Christian. — schopenhauer1

Yes, indeed, I have quasi-religious conceptions but they are only inspiration, not legitimate options I think. Like I told TGW, it's not about eradicating suffering, it's about minimizing it.

Perhaps an argument against mine would be that we can never distribute altruistic care equally. There will always be someone "left out" wondering why they didn't get help. If you care about equality then perhaps this is important - maybe it's more important to preserve equality than to minimize suffering. I don't think it's very strong, though, because you yourself would be left out of the equation. And in ideal theory, those worse-off would still recognize that there are those who are equally as worse off as they are.

If this is the case, then what was the cause of this dynamism stabilizing? It couldn't have started itself, otherwise there's obviously a chain of being within this dynamism that isn't accounted for.

Yes, indeed, we might actually agree on something here. I'm skeptical of cosmological arguments since they attempt to superimpose a metaphysics of the here-and-now on the then-and-there. There's no telling what was actually going on way back in time.

However Apeiron doesn't seem to answer anything either, since it doesn't exactly explain why anything started at all. And thus we come to Heidegger with his question of Being: why does anything exist? And, surprisingly enough, we see the same sort of thinking in Aquinas that Heidegger later refined.

I wonder why you said that Aristotelian four cause causation "flickered in the background" - on the contrary, it was perhaps at its height during the medieval Scholastic period. Aquinas was a hardcore Aristotelian and his Five Ways reflects this. It wasn't until Hume's time that we saw the reduction of causality to mere efficient and material.

To be fair a lot of those 'comfortable pessimists' espoused anti-natalistism, something which really would 'end the problem once and for all' once implemented. Neither Schopenhauer, the Buddha, nor Emil Cioran had children. — dukkha

That doesn't change the fact that they weren't really doing anything else. Not having children isn't especially that impressive.

Okay chief, whatever you say.

I think I'd start genuinely considering suicide if all I did was suffer, and pleasure was some sort of illusion.

The problem is not that pleasure doesn't exist, or that it's some sort of illusion, or that pleasure isn't actually positive in the way suffering is negative/bad. The problem instead is just it's rarity. A lot rarer than I think most people believe (or want to believe). — dukkha

Yes, indeed, true pleasure is so rare that it's hard to see how it could possibly still be seen as a good, that is, something that is good for us to obtain for its own sake. An analogy would be being dragged across a cheese grater.

Suicide is generally out of the question unless one is suffering tremendously or has an abnormally strong will. Contemplating suicide may cause more suffering than would be if suicide was not an option. Personally I think the threat of annihilation is a major contributing factor to our suffering. It magnifies the suffering by making it unnecessary.

So I see a disoriented penguin in Herzog's film. — apokrisis

It's not, though, since apparently if you picked it up and brought it back to its waddle, it would just turn right back around.

Also animals like penguins, who aren't exactly apex predators, typically wouldn't just go off exploring by themselves, miles away from everyone else in their waddle.

I'm sorry if video evidence isn't enough for you. :-}

Males are known to walk into the ice desert of Antarctica when they can't find a mate, or in general when they just hate their clan.

Or the countless wild animals currently suffering and/or dying in some way, whether that be by disease, malnutrition, predation, infirmity, injury, etc. Hell, even penguins are known to commit suicide.

Sorry to hear that. I can't offer you any of those nauseating self-help three-steps to happiness pep-talks.

I conceive of a threshold that people need to be kept above in order so they can take care of themselves so to speak. Prioritize those who fall below this threshold, or those who ask for help. This also means I typically don't tell people to "get help" because they probably already have tried and failed to accomplish anything productive.

So I do share your general pessimistic evaluation of humanity as a whole. We're a sorry lot. So I focus more on non-human animal welfare, those residents of the Earth that are continually neglected and forgotten about.

I don't have a name for it, and the sublime is not quite it. — The Great Whatever

Cathartic?

Been getting into doom metal lately.

So my contention is just that people don't have the skills to improve the world in that way - they're too stupid. — The Great Whatever

It's not perfect, and it's sort of infected by the scientistic types, but the Effective Altruism movement is perhaps one of the most effective and reliable groups that is focused on making things better than they are right now.

At any rate I sense the same sort of isolation in your response as I did in the writings of Schopenhauer and co. You say that people are just so stupid. Not everyone is. Apparently you and I have enough brain cells to figure some of this stuff out.

It'd be nice to be able to just say that the world is kept alive by the zombies. Unfortunately humans aren't zombies because they can feel. And every now and then there's those like you and me and others here that pop out and wonder why the fuck they're here anyway.

Yes, I think I would agree with that for the most part. Very similar to my analogy to heat and friction. Pleasure is something produced through the process of alleviating discomfort. Not always, but in the natural sense, this is what it is.

Isn't pessimism 'worse' than nihilism, in its valuation of the world? It seems that the pessimist is yet more extreme than the nihilist in the extent to which he voids the relevance of such observations. — The Great Whatever

To the pessimist, nihilism is worse than pessimism because it ignores values and is thus a bystander perpetrator of the whole disvalue game.

To the nihilist, this is all dumb and there's no value for anything at all, including nihilism.

Like I said, I see nihilism as a cop-out. In the past, "nihilism" was seen as anything that threatened the status quo, the teleological status of human civilization set up by the Christian theologians of the middle ages. Nowadays it's seen as a rejection of all value. It's the final stance a person will adopt - a position of no position - in order to deny the reality of value in the world. For the acceptance of nihilism rests upon value itself.

Unless your view is that some sort of activity can lessen the poor quality of the world, despite its being in some way fundamentally or irreparably bad. I'm not quite sure of that, largely because I believe that humans are animals that aren't smart enough to figure out how to make things better. But it's a logical possibility. — The Great Whatever

Too many times do people make the mistake that it's pointless to do anything because we'll never fully succeed. Will we ever get everyone to stop popping out babies? Will we ever have the opportunity to nuke the planet (I would prefer more peaceful methods...)? My bet is that we won't.

What I still hold on to though is the fact that the world can be improved without being fully good. There's no need for a good outcome to act in the right way. Getting a C+ on a test is better than an F.