It is absurd in the grandest sense. — schopenhauer1

Though I’m taking the quote slightly out of context, that the presence of being "is absurd in the grandest sense” I can very much acknowledge. There is no rational answer to why there is being rather than nonbeing (the very issue eludes the PSR). I’m fully on board with this conclusion of absurdity in respect to brute being. The next question is, “now what?”

Various options come to mind as hypotheticals: like the bioengineered creation of a new enzyme or chemical that would render all life biologically non-reproductive. Whamo!, right?: Instant peace for all that is Will … But wait ... This very presumption of an obtainable peace for Will through the obtainment of nonbeing all of a sudden makes the very absurdity of brute being no longer absurd: for it now has an escape from its predicament of brute being, a tangible salvation, and, thereby, a potential purpose worthy of pursuit. This same exit clause then renders the very absurdity of brute being null and void.

Still, there is no metaphysical proof I know of to substantiate that the nonbeing of all Will is in any way possible.

Then, of course, there might be other goals of Will that may be worthy of pursuit. Schopenhauer borrowed heavily from Eastern religious paths but omitted their notion of Moksha, for instance, which is also stated to be about peace of Will but is not about a state of nonbeing.

Also, maybe paradoxically, because some of these other potential goals of Will are not about states of nonbeing, here the grand absurdity of being’s presence will be thoroughly embraced despite these “salvations” from Will’s conundrum: for here there will neither be escape from being nor will there be the promise of an understanding regarding why being instead of nonbeing.

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

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

Why did the young man have a crush to begin with? Perhaps a sense of longing for something pleasurable and a companion. Why a companion? Loneliness is not desired? Why? Boredom. Loneliness is one step away from boredom in my opinion. Boredom rules the non-survival aspects of our motivations (and discomfort). The positive joy of anything is at root, riding a wave of secondary goals that sprang forth from a general angst of not falling into a state of boredom. Keep yourself entertained long enough to not even give yourself a chance to see the root of the cause. — schopenhauer1

In my view, all this cause-seeking is secondary to the "raw experience" of desire itself. My first-person experience of desire is an "absorption" in the object (her face in the room or in my imagination.) All conceptual talk falls away and is scattered like dead leaves in that bittersweet anguish. I want her to look at me or talk to me in a certain way. Life is narrowed down to only this in a moment of intense desire. To say that this is "really" an unconscious flight from boredom strikes me as implausible. How could such an idea be tested? I love Schopenhauer, but I always his reduction of pleasure to the removal of pain was contrary to my direct experience. I strikes me as a sort of naive "biologism," as if we were only amoeba responding to being poked. He probably should have read Hegel instead of enviously mocking him. (To be clear, they're both great.) Consciousness evolves creatively. History is not repetition, and the essence of man is not fixed. Or rather that which is distinctly human is precisely this escape or violation of fixity.

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

I find this to be a more sophisticated description of human desire:

[The] impossible synthesis of assimilation and an assimilated which maintains its integrity has deep-rooted connections with basic sexual drives. The idea of "carnal possession" offers us the irritating but seductive figure of a body perpetually possessed and perpetually new, on which possession leaves no trace. This is deeply symbolized in the quality of "smooth" or "polished." What is smooth can be taken and felt but remains no less impenetrable, does not give way in the least beneath the appropriative caress -- it is like water. This is the reason why erotic depictions insist on the smooth whiteness of a woman's body. Smooth --it is what reforms itself under the caress, as water reforms itself in its passage over the stone which has pierced it....It is at this point that we encounter the similarity to scientific research: the known object, like the stone in the stomach of the ostrich, is entirely within me, assimilated, transformed into my self, and is entirely me; but at the same time it is impenetrable, untransformable, entirely smooth, with the indifferent nudity of a body that is beloved and caressed in vain. — Sartre

Your post is full of subjective terms like, "wrong" and "better" and "needs", etc., that seem to be applied objectively - as if you think that things can be "wrong", "better", or "needy" independent of some mind with goals. This is absurd. The basis of your whole question is absurd. You seem to be asking if the universe "needs" life to go on, or if it is "necessary", or if it would be "better" or "worse" if humans continued their existence. Such questions are absurd because they misplace these terms, as if the world or universe has goals that "need" to be met, or if the universe seeks a "better" situation with our without life in it.

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

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

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

Yes, I've had a similar idea. The idea of non-being being preferable to being is only had if one is being.

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

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

I agree, it seems very taboo, even in forums where taboo topics abound. I think the more the topic is addressed in everyday life the better. I wonder what gets in the way of existential thinking? Hmm, all the goals and desires related to survival and boredom. A lot of distraction and ignoring.

The difference perhaps is that I'll confess my own "myth" is ultimately groundless. I don't pretend to prove it in terms of objective or pre-established criteria. Personality is a risk.Your last line paints me as someone hiding from an important truth, yet this important truth grounds the necessity-for-you of what amounts to mass suicide (anti-natalism). Is it not equally plausible that you're "stuck on" a seductive idea? That rather than having the idea the idea has you? I've been "had" by the idea myself. In my most nauseated moments I have wished out of pity and disgust for the whole species to be wiped out. In retrospect I was thinking and judging from a narrowness of experience and thought. — t0m

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

In my view, all this cause-seeking is secondary to the "raw experience" of desire itself. My first-person experience of desire is an "absorption" in the object (her face in the room or in my imagination.) All conceptual talk falls away and is scattered like dead leaves in that bittersweet anguish. I want her to look at me or talk to me in a certain way. Life is narrowed down to only this in a moment of intense desire. — t0m

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think you probably do it all the time, and don't suspect it. Certainly creating other people is presuming a right to think for another, and now there is a new person who was affected by your act. Anyways, it is not so easy to not have judgements when judgements are what commits one to actions, coordinating with other humans in a society. Actually society has made judgements for you- what country have, what economic system, what production opportunities there are, etc. So you are being moved by forces that others have judged necessary to enact and that you must now live in. You cannot avoid it. Judgements, and convincing others of one's own judgements are a part of being a social creature and it has REAL consequences. In the case of anti-natalism, the actual creation of a new person that was deemed necessary to exist, for example.

As for a jumping off point for the existential condition- it is absurd in the sense that it surviving and restlessness are the two main driving factors. Our preferences based on our situatedness/enculturation in a particular historico-cultural setting just shape the nuances of how those to forces play out in our linguistic-social surroundings. Why this needs to be carried forth by people in the first place, again is absurd.

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

Besides not eating/maintaining your body or outright suicide, is there any other way? — schopenhauer1

Yes, there are plenty of other ways, as you then go on to list. In the existentialist way of understanding, there are many inauthentic ways of living, and they are quite different from commitment; you are denying the basic notion of existential faith.

Certainly creating other people is presuming a right to think for another, and now there is a new person who was affected by your act. — schopenhauer1

'Certainly' is erroneous here: this is your evaluation, not a fact. People who make children take responsibility for care and education of a child; in my opinion this is not necessarily the right to think for another. Where I am disagreeing with you is that you assert a right to judge (and find wanting) everyone else who makes a child. I just don't think anyone has that right to judge. You presume you are a superior moral agent to them; you refuse to meet them on a level playing field. I take ethics to be built on foundations of mutual equality. I don't think you make any arguments that demonstrate that you are somehow a superior moral agent to someone who with a clear head decides to make and bring up a child.

That's fine, but in the end, my pre-established criteria does not lead to another life which passes on the issue. Rather, I let dead dogs lie. The existential situation rests on me alone to deal with. — schopenhauer1

I pretty deeply agree with you here. We can't live one another's lives. What "being-towards-death" or mortality means to me is the radical "mineness" of my life as well as my death. All systems and complacencies are threatened by the absurdity that comes with mortality. Or that's how I see it, which, according to how I see it, cannot be authoritative.

Here's something grimly beautiful that you may also enjoy:

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

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

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

https://fatidiot.wordpress.com/2014/09/29/the-phenomenology-of-being-toward-death-in-the/

I agree we can get caught up by something, but the root of it is a restlessness that needs to be relieved. Perhaps boredom is too narrow a word. I have used restlessness in the past, and may employ that again here. I don't deny pleasure exists and humor and other forces that we are positively driven towards based on our preferences. However, there is root restlessness at the bottom of the need for these preferences. We don't like to be at the level of restlessness, but rather in the midst of this or that pursuit/thought/goal. — schopenhauer1

I will agree that there is something like an impossible or infinite desire. As you may know, Sartre writes about man qua man being a futile passion to be God or the in-itself-for-itself. His chapter "Existential Psychoanalysis" in Being and Nothingness is a description of something like this restlessness. I think the desire for the young woman used as an example above is anguish as well as sweetness because it involves the chasing of something like a projection.

We project something like a fullness or density of being on various objects. Upon close examination, this fullness or density is not there. Nietzsche also wrote that whatever we can find words for is already dead in our heart. I can relate to this. It's the revelation itself that's most exciting. It's the striptease. So there's something crucial going on like a "distance" effect. The "futile" movement itself gives the pleasure, but there's an anguish in it, too.

So maybe we mostly agree in these new terms, especially if you understand this restlessness to be "within" the desire. Boredom is a state that I almost never experience these days. It occasionally happens when I am trapped in a social ritual and can't amuse myself in the usual ways. I suppose this kind of boredom would be a desire for desire, a desire to return to the sweet anguish or creativity, etc. (I hope I've proven that I'm not closed off to the discussion of the grim aspects of existence. I just tend to draw the conclusion of a radical freedom as well as a sort of moral neutrality from the same kind of premises.)

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

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

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

Death only adds to the absurdity in that it gives us the first step- survival. Through what means though? Linguistic brains that are socialized to learn habits of survival in a historico-cultural setting. So we are enculturated to pick up habits- first of language (I, you, they, object, subject, emotions, coordinated intention, goal-seeking, learning any cognitive skill in general), then of economy, lifestyle, and navigating the larger social context etc. in order to maintain our bodies and comfort levels. One ironic habit is to pretend work has value in itself (a good way to keep people from questioning or going into despair). Hence, like good cultural caretakers, psychologists and self-help gurus want to make sure you find "the right job" that fits your temperament and personality.. It's all quite individualized now and neverending in its snowflakness. Anyways, this is supposed to make up for the fact that the entropy of keeping yourself, and the social unit alive is a given that must be dealt with (i.e. is a given burden) saddled on the next generation that is born.

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

I think you are misinterpreting what I'm saying. What is it about the human experience that a new person has has to be born to experience it? A parent usually does not have an absurdist reason but some actual reason, however garbled or misconstrued. Well, if the basis of life is surviving and dealing with restlessness, it becomes absurd to put more people in that situation in the first place. Why is it necessary for a new person to survive and deal with restlessness when no person needs to be born at all? Somehow experience itself is cherished, which then still begs the question, and so on. — schopenhauer1

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

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

Would anyone care if there was no anyone there?

I don't see how that answers my question.

Would anyone care if there was no anyone there? — schopenhauer1

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

Okay, let's talk proper existential issues, enough anti-natalism.

"Idleness, we are accustomed to say, is the root of all evil. To prevent this evil, work is recommended.... Idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; on the contrary, it is truly a divine life, if one is not bored" - Soren Kierkegaard

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

But even if survival wasn't a thing, as we agreed upon, the underlying restlessness is there keeping us unsatisfied and doing, doing, doing. Always becoming and not being. We can't be, we must become until death- the final not be for our little socially-constructed selves that once existed and had to do all that doing! So why do we need to create more socially-constructed selves to view the world and run around restlessly? There is none. It is creating more doing socially-constructed selves for the sake of it. This is aggressive absurdity that has to be enacted through incarnation of yet another individual who has to take the mantle of living an aggressively absurd life of instrumental doing. I'm not sure if this is making sense. — schopenhauer1

I like "we can't be, must [only] become until death." This issue is whether this endless becoming is bad, good, or indifferent in some universal or "transpersonal" way. Returning to the "sweet anguish," it's a matter of whether the sweetness is worth the anguish. I don't see how that issue can be resolved objectively. In my life I currently find this endless becoming more pleasant than unpleasant. Perhaps you feel the opposite way. Antinatalism seems to project a personal decision "outward" as a decision-for-all.

To be clear, I'm not against antinatalism (pronatalism). I'm politically neutral. I have abandoned the transpersonal pose. I don't "know for others" and I am glad to no longer need to know. In my view, the unconsidered medium or background of metaphysical thinking is this assumption that it is a knowing-for-all. As unconsidered "medium" it dominates the message. Every answer is constrained by what's hidden in the shape of the question. I understand abandoning the mission to know-for-others as a form of detachment or transcendence. Obviously I'm still interested in sharing my ideas, so it's not about a prohibition of knowing-for-others. That would still be knowing-for-others. It's really just pointing out the apparently necessary as (potentially first-person) contingent.

So when we ask "why do we need...," you have a point. But why do we need to have a why in the first place? I'm interested in pointing behind this grasping after justifications.

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

Bingo.

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

Aggressive absurdity would be a world where we are staving off entropy in our species' usual habit (i.e. social learning via cultural institutions) and the restless need to become and never be with goal-seeking. Yet, we cannot trick ourselves forever with goals- we know that it is simply a weigh station for yet more restless needs and wants. We are always needing to do. Why create more aggressive absurdity for the next person? So no, I don't think it can be escaped completely- not through romanticizing our goals, nor by simply taking it easy.

e2πiθ = cos(2πθ) + i sin(2πθ) — schopenhauer1

That should be e^(2*pi*i*theta) for the left side of the equation.

(writing out the Greek letters' names,and using " * " to indicate multiplication, for clarity)

Michael Ossipoff