Although, csal, many pessimists and anti-natalists and so on are not pretty boys by any stretch of the imagination. I've met quite a few before, mostly online, but some in person, and they are mostly male, downtrodden, socially inept, possibly unemployed, maybe even impoverished, have physical deformities and mental illnesses, and so on. A lot of pessimists just have no natural endowments or life prospects, so the personal case seems to force them into a general understanding that the life of someone more comfortable can partially blind the to (there are just enough breaths that the river gives you to believe that pulling your head above water is a sot of 'gift' that the river gives you, notwithstanding it's the river drowning you to begin with).

I don't get how causality, time, and space are not manifest in world of appearance? It seems real in the sense that it is part of the world of appearances. — schopenhauer1

They're not part of the world of appearances, but their transcendental ground ala Kant. Everything of the world of appearances is in time and space, but time and space are not in that world.

As for your second statement that time isn't real in the Kantian framework, yes I just said that when I said time doesn't exist in any absolute sense for Schopenhauer and that this follows Kantian's transcendental framework. So you seemed to restate what I said as if I did not agree with you. — schopenhauer1

Alright, but your responses don't seem to be fully consistent with the point.

Will needs time/space/causality in order for the world to be Will and Representation. Otherwise, the world is just real. You have a couple problems if you say the world is just Will and representation is not "real". Here are some problems: — schopenhauer1

The will doesn't need time, space, etc. Only presentation does. The will doesn't always objectify itself as presentation.

2) If Will is primary and representation is an illusion or somehow subordinate or secondary, then you have to explain how it is that representation is created by Will. — schopenhauer1

Again, I think this makes the mistake of reifying causality as something applying to the thing in itself. How does the will 'make' representations?

So, in order to counteract this idea, we have to say that representation is not secondary, but is rather the flip side of Will that ensures that there is always an object for the subject. It was there all along. — schopenhauer1

This is just not Schop's position. Presentation is secondary, as one sort of behavior the will participates in (objectifying itself). Nothing needs to 'ensure' that there are objects. Objects only exist for representing creatures.

The odd conclusion is that the first organism has to always be around as it can never be caused. — schopenhauer1

The organism does exist in a kind of timeless present, but that's not the same as it being eternal or having always existed in the past (eternality is not timelessness) -- to think this again seems to reify time inappropriately.

And again, causation doesn't apply to the will as such, only to the forms of representation, when time and space interact. But these are only veils used to objectify the will.

and they are mostly male...

I've noticed this too. What do you make of that? Wouldn't it make since that women who are downtrodden, unemployed, socially unskilled etc. would be equally antinatalist and pessimistic?

My reproach to the antinatalists and pessimists isn't that they're wrong, necessarily, but that denying 'the river' can only be a pose, even if sincerely meant. The river doesn't care etc. People will always have babies. It really fucking sucks to drown, but making sure to disapprove of the river while drowning isn't worth much.

I've noticed this too. What do you make of that? — csalisbury

Men have harder lives. Women have social safety nets available to them that make them live in a sort of bubble, never really experiencing the worst life has to offer unless they are violently assaulted or something like that. Men on the other hand can often expect to experience how bad life is just in virtue of being regular men. We're disposable, expected to suffer and die. Women always have a second chance, a failsafe, an excuse, etc. The narrative that women have it worse is itself part of this bizarre state of affairs. Part of what makes life hard for men is that it's unacceptable to acknowledge that men have hard lives, unless this is acknowledged in order to service women (patriarchy hurts men 'too,' men are suffering only in the sense that they're complicit in sexist behavior, men need to behave more traditionally feminine in order to be 'saved' from their masculinity, etc.) -- because only the suffering of women is seen to be something 'wrong' by and large. No one cares about men, and no one ever will IMO.

Conrad:

It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It's too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.

That's not the kind of thing I'm going to say in public, ever (men also can't talk about their suffering, unless in service of women), but I think most of us 'know' this pretty deeply. Men are the 'blue collar' gender, women are the 'white collar' gender. In trying to pass gender boundaries, male-assigned people are more eager to be seen as women than vice-versa, because they are transitioning upward.

My reproach to the antinatalists and pessimists isn't that they're wrong, necessarily, but that denying 'the river' can only be a pose, even if sincerely meant. The river doesn't care etc. People will always have babies. It really fucking sucks to drown, but making sure to disapprove of the river while drowning isn't worth much. — csalisbury

Actually, I have hope -- it turns out that when people settle down and their material circumstances are taken care of, they stop having children, and a stable happy society tends toward a birth rate that's lower than replacement. Antinatalists are only odd in making a practical position everyone seems to hold implicitly, theoretical and explicit.

Women have social safety nets available to them that make them live in a sort of bubble, never really experiencing the worst life has to offer unless they are violently assaulted or something like that. Men on the other hand can often expect to experience how bad life is just in virtue of being regular men....That's not the kind of thing I'm going to say in public, ever (men also can't talk about their suffering, unless in service of women), but I think most of us 'know' this pretty deeply. Men are the 'blue collar' gender, women are the 'white collar' gender.

Huh, yeah, I'm not going to scold you out of political correctness or anything like that, what's true is true, but what you're saying doesn't align with my experience. (I'm particularly confused by the suggestion that men can't talk about their suffering.) Do you have any sisters or many close female friends?

it turns out that when people settle down and their material circumstances are taken care of, they stop having children, and a stable happy society tends toward a birth rate that's lower than replacement.

Maybe one day we'll reach a point where everyone is settled down and all their material needs are met and they'll stop having kids altogether rather than reaching some equilbrium. I guess? It seems unlikely to me. And it also seems utterly unrelated to the pain of the antinatalists you mention. Why specifically cite the impoverished, the destitute etc when it seems like the key to antinatalism's success is being happy and well-off? Most antinatalists, imo, want their pain recognized.That's what it's about.

Huh, yeah, I'm not going to scold you out of political correctness or anything like that, what's true is true, but what you're saying doesn't align with my experience. Do you have any sisters or many close female friends? — csalisbury

Sure, but I've connected far more with men than women, because I empathize with their struggles more. I think by and large women feel entitled to their lives being kept in stasis by male suffering. And men are okay with that and perpetuate it. It's not about men being angels and women devils -- it's in very large part men's fault that this is how they are.

The best way I can try to put it is this. Men suffer in feeling a kind of existential displacement. They feel fundamentally alone, not at home in the world, and are hurt because deep down they have (and feel like they have) nothing. Women suffer in feeling slights agains their rightful place. That is, they are confident that they have some place in the world and are entitled to the rights that come with it, suffering in reaction to this expectation being disappointed in some way. The world is 'for' women, men just form the plaster that lets them sit in it (with their dead bodies etc.)

Maybe one day we'll reach a point where everyone is settled down and all their material needs are met and they'll stop having kids altogether rather than reaching some equilbrium. I guess? — csalisbury

Maybe. I think people would probably have a population panic if the whole world's population was on the decline and try to institute programs to inflate it. But I think no one individually would actually want to bear the burden of having more children themselves (else they'd do it without the programs). I don't know, it all gets pretty sci-fi even decades in the future at this point.

At this point I think it's totally possible that the whole world turns into a third-world hellhole. institutions are more fragile than people tend to think.

The best way I can try to put it is this. Men suffer in feeling a kind of existential displacement. They feel fundamentally alone, not at home in the world, and are hurt because deep down they have (and feel like they have) nothing. The best way I can try to put it is this. Men suffer in feeling a kind of existential displacement.

Do you think it's possible that you associate this existential displacement with men because you discuss these issues mostly with men?

I've mentioned that before, I think, here or on the other forum and I've also mentioned my favorite anecdote - Cioran's letter to someone or other about seeing Beckett on a park bench and being just bowled over with envy for how deeply he appeared to be in despair. Susan Sontag, apropos of Cioran, describes the pessimistic style as often veering dangerously close to a 'coquettishness of the void.' . One becomes invested in one's pose and routine, which begins earnestly, but which becomes a well-oiled machine that runs on examples and aestheticizations of suffering. To quote Beckett: ''I must have got embroiled in a kind of inverted spiral, I mean one the coils of which, instead of widening more and more, grew narrower and narrower and finally, given the kind of space in which I was supposed to evolve, would come to an end for lack of room" — csalisbury

This is interesting. I think, however, the reason Cioran, Beckett, or Schopenhauer were able to live somewhat normally but still have such pessimistic views on life is because they got used to the reality. Schopenhauer explicitly calls the world a prison. They live lives not of extreme depression but neither extreme elevation - a contemplative and melancholic existence.

The anecdote of Cioran is funny because Cioran, being aware of the problems of existence, was unable to really feel any angst about it because he seemed to have become numb to them. Life will beat you to a pulp, and you either die or survive. Those who survive have to numb themselves somehow. Cioran wishing he felt despair would have allowed him to write more on the problems of the world, the same problems he had become numb to.

There does seem to be a certain tone of romanticism in some of their thoughts, though. The romanticism however seems to be just simply that - a fantastic tragedy meant to entertain by a catharsis. But when life hits you, it's not romantic at all. It's stupid, pointless, and raw. There is no romanticism in despair. There is no romanticism in actual angst. There is no romanticism in intolerable pain. It sucks, plain and simple, unworthy of any aesthetic elevation.

Do you think it's possible that you associate this existential displacement with men because you discuss these issues mostly with men? — csalisbury

Maybe. But you can see it, IMO, in the kind of art men v. women create. There are exceptions -- Kate Chopin seemed to have 'the gene,' whatever it was, which is why The Awakening pisses off so many women who read it despite being ostensibly feminist. These trends in art were noticed by second-wave feminists -- Valerie Solanas has this great bit on male art that I pretty much agree with, but I still like male art for all that. It's not a perfect correlation, but it's pretty hard to deny. (Actually, I pretty much agree with the radfems on everything).

There's also just the fact that any time a gender-neutral space is set up to discuss this sort of displacement, they become male-domainated, and that the ranks of the disenfranchised, alone, radical, etc. tend to swell disproportionately with men (as do the homeless, dead, and suicidal). So it's hard to tell which way the bias runs. If you ask a woman what she thinks being lonely is, and a man, prepare for very different answers.

Most antinatalists, imo, want their pain recognized.That's what it's about. — csalisbury

We shouldn't diminish this pain, however.

But I consider myself rather pessimistic and have issues with birth, and yet I haven't really experienced anything absolutely horrible, at least nothing that I couldn't internally repress and attempt to ignore. I hold these beliefs because I am acutely aware of the conditions of human existence.

(there are just enough breaths that the river gives you to believe that pulling your head above water is a sot of 'gift' that the river gives you, notwithstanding it's the river drowning you to begin with). — The Great Whatever

Romantic as this may be, it fails to explain pleasure. Deprivationalism is incoherent. The pleasures of life are not just breaths of air to maintain us from drowning.

Of course many times these pleasures accompany needs. But it's obvious that these are pleasurable experiences in themselves and that there are also pleasurable experiences that are not dependent upon reliefs.

A concrete example for you, csal, since I know you like DFW (definitely a 'male-oriented' author):

What I’ve noticed at readings, is that the people who seem most enthusiastic and moved by it are young men. Which I guess I can understand — I think it’s a fairly male book, and I think it’s a fairly nerdy book.

Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties — all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name’s Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion — these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

Feminists are always saying this. Feminists are saying white males say, 'Okay, I'm going to sit down and write this enormous book and impose my phallus on the consciousness of the world.'

Yes women read him, but not as much, and not in the same way. And many women mock men for reading him because it is a typical thing for a male of a certain age social status and education level to do.

If you ask a woman what she thinks being lonely is, and a man, prepare for very different answers.

I don't know, most of the women I've talked to describe it a lot like this:

They feel fundamentally alone, not at home in the world, and are hurt because deep down they have (and feel like they have) nothing.

Clearly there's an asymmetry between pleasure and pain. It may be difficult to characterize, but I'm convinced that the latter is in some sense the servant of the former. In order to augment pain, having a carrot on a stick (pleasure) helps.

It feels a little like you're conflating fuck-yeah tumblr feminism with women as a whole. I don't like fuck-yeah tumblr feminism either.

It feels like you're conflating fuck-yeah tumblr feminism with women as a whole, kinda. I don't like fuck-yeah tumblr feminism either. — csalisbury

No, I don't think so -- nu-feminism is really beside the point, although I think it's more conservative than it lets on, in that the way it plays out is a reflection of old, deeply-held ideas about how the genders do and should interact (woman as victim, man as agent). If you like it's just one passing shape of how these things work. (I like radfems because they tend to be radical as they claim).

But yeah, beside all that I think men and women as a whole see the world in fundamentally different ways. It might be hard to articulate, and of course it has exceptions, but that's fine, it's there. I'm not going to deny the relationships you've had with women who profess these existential anxieties. All the same I wonder if you would admit even a tendency in what I'm saying.

If Schopenhauer's metaphysics is untenable, what else could explain the problems of life?

The problem with Schopenhauer's metaphysics, and the metaphysics of any rationalist philosopher it seems, is that it takes the human condition as an example of the entire enterprise of existence. The problems of human existence may be like a pimple on the overall purity of the world.

However, even if we take a naturalistic perspective on this (by naturalistic I mean scientific-oriented, especially in regards to physics...if apokrisis from old PF were reading this thread he'd be having a nightmare), we still need to explain why human existence seems so bad.

It will not do to impose a metaphysical picture of the world that contradicts or does not take into account the human condition. That would mean ignoring the most personal and obvious while being committed to a potentially unknowable doctrine.

Basically, we need to have a manifest image of humanity. We can say that humanity gradually evolved out of other species of organisms. We can say that life is a result of entropy-dissipation. We can say that the universe was created 7+ billion years ago.

But none of these by themselves explains why human existence is the way it is. It does not explain why we feel so much suffering, boredom, angst. So what is it?

I think it's the human mind. Being able to reflect, contemplate, predict, and critically examine things leads not only to a greater ability to survive but a crippling defect as well (Zapffe).

So I think, from a naturalistic perspective, it's not that the world is malevolent or malignantly uncaring, but that some of the residents of the world are aliens to it. This, of course, still begs the question as to how and why these residents became aliens. Which I believe is why Schopenhauer thought the only explanation of this was that life was a kind of cosmic punishment. And we're right back to rationalism.

Clearly there's an asymmetry between pleasure and pain. It may be difficult to characterize, but I'm convinced that the latter is in some sense the servant of the former. In order to augment pain, having a carrot on a stick (pleasure) helps. — The Great Whatever

Of course. Pleasure is contingent upon structural imperfections. But it nevertheless is pleasure independent of the relief it often accompanies. Which is why the river allowing you a couple gasps of air is not a sufficient analogy. Pleasure motivates continual existence, pain forces it.

Of course. Pleasure is contingent upon structural imperfections. But it nevertheless is pleasure independent of the relief it often accompanies. Which is why the river allowing you a couple gasps of air is not a sufficient analogy. Pleasure motivates continual existence, pain forces it. — darthbarracuda

I think that life's pressures and pains are so pervasive, so obvious, so intense, and so inevitable that whatever pleasures there may be that aren't just reliefs from them are negligible by comparison.

I don't know, man, I think you might be a little depressed and unable to experience pleasure independent of pain. It's inconceivable to you.

I myself am depressed. But I just ate a bowl of ice cream. That was nice. I'm going to a concert tomorrow. That'll be dope. What I'm not currently experiencing is an overwhelming amount of pressure or pain. And if I am, then I'm just kind of used to it and have accepted it as part of my deck of cards. It's really not that bad, but it's not fantastic either.

I don't know, man, I think you might be a little depressed and unable to experience pleasure independent of pain. It's inconceivable to you. — darthbarracuda

I have been depressed, but I'm not really right now. I've had highs and lows and I know the former are nothing compared to the latter. I try to keep this in mind even as my temporary psychological state changes. I want a correct philosophical position, not an outlet for my passing urges.

But I just ate a bowl of ice cream. That was nice. — darthbarracuda

Heh. I doubt it.

Heh. I doubt it. — The Great Whatever

No, really, it was good. Chocolate syrup, sprinkles, a banana, all with three scoops of vanilla ice cream. Perfect snack for a hot summer night, only tainted by the ever-present understanding of our existential conditions.

Of course, I take it you are speaking just for yourself here, or at most including others that have avowed to experience much the same 'account balance' as you?

I definitely agree there's an Essentially-Alone/Defending-the-Place-That's-Rightfully-Mine divide. It just hasn't fallen along gender lines in my experience. More along sheltered/not-sheltered lines. It may just be that we inhabit different social milieus. Your schema works when I think about my Waspy paternal grandparents and their circle. My grandpa was ironic, kinda Beckett with a heart and my grandmother was ultra-judgy. But I barely know that world anymore. You may be right in terms of academia too, I'm not sure. Most of the women I've been close too were dis-sheltered early on. I think girls, especially in troubled families, are less protected from the realities of what's happening to mom and dad and the family. But most of the ppl I know are middle class ppl on the margins (wannabe poets and musicians and artists) with little prospect of a Career. None really sheltered.

The sheltered/non-sheltered distinction non-trivially correlates with the female/male distinction in certain ways. Women by and large will simply never have the 'wake up experience' of becoming truly alone and homeless, utterly discarded by society, in the street or on a battlefield. Some will, but most that will are men. That's just how it works.

But I barely know that world anymore. You may be right in terms of academia too, I'm not sure. — csalisbury

I live in academia now, and in my experience it's pretty sexless. Men tend more commonly to have feminine voice patterns and affections, and likewise for women with masculine ones. It's actually pretty jarring to leave back into the 'real world,' you sometimes forget how dimorphic (physically and socially) men and women are outside of the ivory tower. Universities tend to flatten that, which can sometimes be good.

It's interesting you think it's an essential gender divide. Men by and large don't hit rock bottom either. For every man that fell on the ancient battlefield, a woman was raped and sold into slavery. Those are two different ways of being alone, sure, bit they're both v lonely. I pass homeless women every day on my walk to work. One of Beckett's loneliest monologues 'Not I" was inspired by an old homeless woman walking alone. Idk, I don't really buy your distinction and not bc I'm a white knight or w/e

It's interesting you think it's an essential gender divide. Men by and large don't hit rock bottom either. — csalisbury

Men very often hit rock bottom -- one of the things in my life that I'm most thankful for has been the way the internet has allowed these men who have hit rock bottom to talk to each other and share these frustrations, so that I can listen to them. Of course, the true rock bottom is where you can't even get on the internet from the public library!

Do you believe there is a 'glass floor?' That's basically what I'm getting at.

I pass homeless women every day on my walk to work. — csalisbury

OK, but you pass more homeless men -- far more. Unless you live in a very weird place. I don't deny generalizations have exceptions, fine.

Also, battlefields are not just ancient, and the insinuation that they are is a little disturbing.

I mean I guess it depends on what you mean by glass floor. Most women probably won't be left to die alone. Because people will pay to fuck them (whether they want to fuck or not. If they won't sell, someone will sell them.) Maybe this is a class thing though. I've spent some time in low-level mental health institutions. You hear some shit there. I guess an affluent man could fall more easily through the cracks than an affluent woman.

It's obvious that a poor person has a worse shake at absolutely everything regardless of gender. But yeah, correcting for wealth, men have it worse as far as the cracks. We fill the cracks of the world, it's literally built on our bodies. And the cracks that get filled by men hold women up. To women, and to other men, we're just putty.

I've felt my share of loneliness in life -- I've gone long periods of time without interacting personally with anyone at all. That said I've always been privileged and thank God for that privilege. I have always had a family, a home to go back to, and enough money to live comfortably. I understand what I experience is just a glimpse of what so many men go through on a daily basis. Yes, women may go through it too -- but not because they are women, in this way. A woman has to either have something horrible happen to her, or be severely physically and/or mentally handicapped or disturbed, in order not to have friends. Normal men don't have friends all the time. That's just how it works. No one wants men, by and large, and no one is going to stick up for them.