It doesn’t have the burdens of reasons, that is. — schopenhauer1

Lucky Cow! Was that productive for you?

Lucky Cow! Was that productive for you? — Vera Mont

Yes, very.

But that's not the focus of my OP. It is the extra burden of this existential situation.

Every time I bring this idea up, it is like there is a bug in this forum where no member quite understands what I am getting at but wants to debate animal cognition, losing site of the focus, and throwing up red herrings or getting lost in non-essential tangents rather than productive dialogue on our existential situation. — schopenhauer1

I honestly still do not get your point, except this is leading to the idea that not being born is better. Am I right?
I can't have a rational discussion about the choice of existing and not existing because they're not in the same realm. Debating the comparison is not productive or it is useless.

@schopenhauer1

Humans are an existential animal.
— schopenhauer1

If by "existential" you mean reality-denying, I agree with you — 180 Proof

No doubt we're counterfactual (talking) animals.

No doubt we're counterfactual (talking) animals. — 180 Proof

Yes agreed. The going to work example:

I don't want to work, but I will continue because of X. You know you can do otherwise, but you continue with the thing you'd rather not do. I consider this a burden. A bear eats its berries or it starves, but it (as far as I know) can't think "Well, why do I have to keep on foraging for berries everyday. I really rather just sit and stare at the stars, but here I go, continuing perpetually until I die or gather enough berries to retire". Obviously I'm being absurd here, but in a way, the error loop we find ourselves in is absurd. The other animals seem more content not having to deal with this it seems. The self-reflective is the evolutionary error (to the individual) even though it was a (emergent over time) solution (for the species).

The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by over-evolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment. In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground.

After placing the source of anguish in human intellect, Zapffe then sought as to why humanity simply didn't just perish. He concluded humanity "performs, to extend a settled phrase, a more or less self-conscious repression of its damaging surplus of consciousness" and that this was "a requirement of social adaptability and of everything commonly referred to as healthy and normal living."[1] He provided four defined mechanisms of defense that allowed an individual to overcome their burden of intellect.

Remedies against panic
Isolation is the first method Zapffe noted. It is defined as "a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling". He cites "One should not think, it is just confusing" as an example.[1]
Anchoring, according to Zapffe, is the "fixation of points within, or construction of walls around, the liquid fray of consciousness". The anchoring mechanism provides individuals a value or an ideal that allows them to focus their attentions in a consistent manner. Zapffe compared this mechanism to Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's concept of the life-lie from the play The Wild Duck, where the family has achieved a tolerable modus vivendi by ignoring the skeletons and by permitting each member to live in a dreamworld of his own. Zapffe also applied the anchoring principle to society, and stated "God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the laws of life, the people, the future" are all examples of collective primary anchoring firmaments. He noted flaws in the principle's ability to properly address the human condition, and warned against the despair provoked resulting from discovering one's anchoring mechanism was false. Another shortcoming of anchoring is conflict between contradicting anchoring mechanisms, which Zapffe posits will bring one to destructive nihilism.[1]
Distraction is when "one limits attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions."[1] Distraction focuses all of one's energy on a task or idea to prevent the mind from turning in on itself.
Sublimation is the refocusing of energy away from negative outlets, toward positive ones. — Peter Wessel Zapffe, The Last Messiah

I honestly still do not get your point — L'éléphant

Me neither. Perhaps it's simply that we are born without meaning of existence somehow programmed into our brains, and yet a need for it, and must constantly deal with the burden of creating meaning in our lives. This, apparently, is suffering we must endure. Why doesn't society give us money so we can go live under a bridge and snort drugs? Why must we be born into such a fix? :roll:

Yeah, P.W. Zapffe is one of my favorites listed on my TPF profile. :death: :flower:

Yeah, P.W. Zapffe is one of my favorites listed on my TPF profile. — 180 Proof

He does have some good points for sure about the human condition and seems to fit nicely with the ideas I was playing around with about the burden of having and needing reasons.

The idea of death as the greatest consolation and escape, and which is always at hand, penetrates me with even greater force

(Zapffe)

And yet he lived to the ripe old age of 90. Also, he was a noted climber, so his existential search was not unfruitful.

And yet he lived the ripe old age of 90. Also, he was a noted climber, so his existential search was not unfruitful. — jgill

But isn't mountain climbing the perfect metaphor for getting nowhere? :grin:

But isn't mountain climbing the perfect metaphor for getting nowhere? :grin: — schopenhauer1

Rather, getting to the edge of nowhere. Big difference. :cool:

Rather, getting to the edge of nowhere. Big difference. — jgill

I rather see it like this:

I rather see it like this: — schopenhauer1

And that's why you're not a climber. You should try it. Might lead to an existential breakthrough. Can't hurt (since death is admirable).

Look how doing it has built your climber's muscles! His self-esteem is surging. Look on the bright side! :smile:

:up: Just like breathing ...

Destinations are a relatively modern human concept. Over the past couple of centuriess too this appears to be a rather weird concern of many … the ‘goal’ or ‘target’.

Over the past couple of centuriess too this appears to be a rather weird concern of many … the ‘goal’ or ‘target’. — I like sushi

You mean the Medicis didn't have goals and Alexander didn't aim for targets?

I find it interesting to discover what things are uniquely human or at the least shared between humans and only a few other animals.

We do really seem very set apart/ different from any other animals that came before us. As humanitys activities are wildly more diverse and complex than any other animal.
I think despite their complexity, some of them do come down to the same basic impulses/instincts and needs of more simple creatures.

As for the rest, why is that?
Why for example are we exceedingly fascinated with creating and appreciating art unlike most other animals. I say most, because despite maybe not being considered art, many animals do preoccupy themselves with decorating their habitat, usually for a mate.

It could be see as some ritualistic courting display or it could truly be that they enjoy the art of different styles of decoration and find that attractive.

Of course it's near impossible for humans to truly know or gain such depths of insight into the psychology of other animals.

But whatever the case, we are very unique in many ways - our behaviours, values, interactions and awareness/relationship with the natural world.

And I do wonder where that all comes from? Why are we just so damn different in so many ways. What drives evolution to produce such an outlier, one that perhaps can even take charge of their own evolution, shape and recreate/reinvent themselves?

For humans, the sky truly is the limit. And even then, it is not. Blast off.

But whatever the case, we are very unique in many ways - our behaviours, values, interactions and awareness/relationship with the natural world. And I do wonder where that all comes from? — Benj96

I'm sure some evolutionary reasons. Our evolutionary path was that of flexibility over specific modules to handle situations. These in turn, were probably a kind of Red Queen scenario where each new advantage created its own problems which needed more ratcheting. So for example, it may have started out simply with walking upright continually, which freed up hands for tools. As with other primates, tool-use is not new. But the complete freedom from using hands for mobility and bipedalism created the opportunity for more exploration. This in turn favored higher rates of pre-frontal cortex formations for abstract and long-term planning. This created the situation where social pressures needed even more ratcheting for there to be awareness of intent and understanding social relations. The shift to some language-based thinking that could have been due to various mutations (FOXp2 gene for example), along with exaptations like the the mirror-neuron system (that is just one idea), might have helped in developing dedicated regions like Wernicke and Broca's region of the brain. This in turn ratcheted up things exponentially as symbolic thought combined with a general processing brain (not specified to certain tasks and responses), created the goal-directed, reason-producing, narrative creating human being we saw appear 500,000-150,000 years ago.

But though interesting, I am trying to showcase the burden that this kind of cognition carries. We are an animal that knows it does not have to, but does it anyways. A chimp forages and hunts in its environment but it almost certainly doesn't have to motivate itself. Sure depression is something that can be seen in animals, but it is not necessarily the same as a daily struggle for providing reasons. We know there are nasty, shitty, crappy, negative aspects that we don't want to encounter, and we must grapple with that and overcome that. If we didn't, we would literally die.

So I did predict that answers were going to focus on the idea that animals too have some sort of deliberation, and that may be true, but can you think of how this is different than human deliberation? I am specifically thinking of reasons as motivations, not just intention in general. An animal might desire food, and they might even plan to some extent. But there is still something altogether different regarding this and what a language-bearing being such as a human does. It is this implication of this unique ability that I want to explore. — schopenhauer1

Humans stand out in three particularly striking ways. We can commit suicide, we can sacrifice ourselves/risk life and limb for the "greater good" and we can choose to be celibate.

Those three facts suggest we truly do have the power to completely override every core instinct to survive that has been fostered and nurtured in our bodies through millenia of evolution.

I think that is more significant than it is given credit for. We are indeed free, we have broken away from natural imperative - the continuity of life.

Why? Why would nature ever allow for a level of conscious awareness, of complexity, to undermine its sole drive like that?

In that way we could almost consider ourselves supernatural. No other living thing demonstrates such abilities to such degrees. Perhaps hives/colonies can be considered as disoensibke units in that for example ants can sacrifice themselves for the safety of the colony. But we differ in that we can commit suicide for purely personal reasons rather than to further society.

Instinct seems to predominate for them to a degree that these abilities have not been documented.

Humans stand out in three particularly striking ways. We can commit suicide, we can sacrifice ourselves/risk life and limb for the "greater good" and we can choose to be celibate. — Benj96

Interesting. I can think of many others, but existentially speaking, these are good

I think that is more significant than it is given credit for. We are indeed free, we have broken away from natural imperative - the continuity of life. — Benj96

Yep, I called it an error loop. We are thus stuck with giving reasons for anything. We cannot just "be". Even "deciding" to "just be" (some Buddhist sounding stuff) is a deliberate decision we still grapple and internalize. Also, at the end of the day, we got to deal with things we do not like, Buddhist claims aside.

Why? Why would nature ever allow for a level of conscious awareness, of complexity, to undermine its sole drive like that? — Benj96

Exaptation. It was not adapted for, but a byproduct of a general processing directionality in evolutionary trajectory. We veered away from innate models of being and adapted for general processes of learning. Again probably due to tool-use, social complexity interplaying with the exaptations and then adaptations for symbolic thought.

In that way we could almost consider ourselves supernatural. No other living thing demonstrates such abilities to such degrees. Perhaps hives/colonies can be considered as disoensibke units in that for example ants can sacrifice themselves for the safety of the colony. But we differ in that we can commit suicide for purely personal reasons rather than to further society. — Benj96

We commit suicide for personal and even existential reasons. What's the point? I don't like this game anymore. That sort of thing.

Instinct seems to predominate for them to a degree that these abilities have not been documented. — Benj96

Yes.





.

We commit suicide for personal and even existential reasons. What's the point? I don't like this game anymore. That sort of thing. — schopenhauer1

Exactly. Well said. And this is quite defining of humanity. Albeit a sullen/sombre distinction. But we have a say in our existence that I'm not sure other animals have as much autonomy in. And that is quite remarkable.

I agree that we really have transfigured to a nature that is based more on symbolic value (accompanying our highly sophisticated and nuanced languages) than innate biologic values - like sex, food and competition.
We can be asexual, anorexic, and passive. And importantly we have the choice to do these things. Instinct does not grip us as it does the rest of the animal kingdom.

As humans, we are conceptualisers. We differ from animals in our ability to not only develop sophisticated enquiries (philosophy), but also in being swayed by them - adjusting our behaviour with them.

In essence, we think beyond. And sometimes that's our greatest merit, in other cases its our greatest flaw.

Exactly. Well said. And this is quite defining of humanity. Albeit a sullen/sombre distinction. But we have a say in our existence that I'm not sure other animals have as much autonomy in. And that is quite remarkable. — Benj96

I think my point was that other animals don't even have that in their way of life. They are much more present, immediate, and specific in their intentionality. They don't have the burden of "Why or what should I do with my life" at each and every moment. Or the possibility of that. Of course it is hard for humans to stay truly "authentic" as Existentialists would say. Many times we really do live out our lives in habits and roles we "fall into" rather than "take on" which would indeed be as they would say, "bad faith". But it would be exhausting I am sure to always be "authentically" living as each moment could have been counterfactually lived another way.

I agree that we really have transfigured to a nature that is based more on symbolic value (accompanying our highly sophisticated and nuanced languages) than innate biologic values - like sex, food and competition.
We can be asexual, anorexic, and passive. And importantly we have the choice to do these things. Instinct does not grip us as it does the rest of the animal kingdom. — Benj96

Agreed.

As humans, we are conceptualisers. We differ from animals in our ability to not only develop sophisticated enquiries (philosophy), but also in being swayed by them - adjusting our behaviour with them.

In essence, we think beyond. And sometimes that's our greatest merit, in other cases its our greatest flaw. — Benj96

As I said, I think it is quite a burden above and on top of simply surviving that other animals only have to deal with. The fact that I know that I don't like working but that I have to do it anyways to survive, is not just the thorn in the side, but the dagger in the flesh (to take a phrase from Cioran).

Why would nature ever allow for a level of conscious awareness, of complexity, to undermine its sole drive like that? — Benj96

Just a guess – it might have something to do with 'Gödel's proof of incompleteness from self-referential complexity' (Seth Lloyd, Douglas Hofstadter). It's reasonable to assume that the vast majority of h. sapiens have not deviated significantly from our 'evolved biological drives' but it is always possible, no matter how improbable, to do so because those drives (which seem computable (i.e. algorithmic)) are either 'incomplete' or, more likely, not always / inexorably 'consistent'. :chin:

Well said. I agree.

Furthermore, it seems like the very neccesity of evolution in the first place is because simple steady state survival is incomplete. Not yet possible. Nor may it ever be. The only other option, is to improve and approach some fully complete, nth degree of complexity that really liberates an organism and by that I mean they become immortal.

If survival of the fittest is the game. Immortality is the trophy. The greatest degree of fitness.

And individual genes do this much better than we do as holistic collections of thousands of genes. As one gene can be passed from parent to offspring for thousands of lifetimes. There are genes in our bodies which have been protected from mutation for millenia by the sheer volume of other genes insulating it, and instructing the machinery neccesary to copy them all, with many not making it, getting damaged or mutated along the way, or simply deleted.

But few, maybe a tiny percentage, perhaps by sheer odds, lick or maybe by inherent fitness, have managed to stay relatively the same for a very long time indeed.

Whatever those more immortal genes are, they likely govern the most conserved and vital parts of our organism, and the operations that we see across most of the animal kingdom, for example the maintenance and function of mitochondria, or the hemoglobin in our blood, or the membrane proteins that allow our heart to spontaneously contract. Those functions have been around from the earliest multicellular complex organisms and continue to be essential to our on going survival.

Blue eyes, earlobes, being able to roll our tongue, we'll, not so much. So maybe they are not as old and wise veterans as the other genes.

Many times we really do live out our lives in habits and roles we "fall into" rather than "take on" which would indeed be as they would say, "bad faith". — schopenhauer1

Well, I think we can apply to animals and plants too. The seed of a tree quite literally "falls into" a specific habit (habitat).

In that the exact conditions faced by that little sapling are unique to it. A little bit different to the other trees nearby or far away. Different soil quality, different light exposure, different access to water, protection from the wind etc. They must grow in a specific way to maximise the conditions they fell into if they are to compete adequately with any of the others for resources.

Sone are lucky and have little pressure to survive easily, others are not so lucky and everything is a battle for them to make it. Some are adaptable and some are not.

But in the end every organism faces unique spatiotemporal dynamics and conditions that they had no choice in, all they have is a set of instructions (genetics) to make do the best they can.

It's the nature verse nurture argument a bit. Does what any given human does with their life, who they meet, what career they take, what decisions they make, depend on circumstance, or on their inherited genes?

Who is to say we aren't doing exactly what is personally instinctual all the time?

So anyways, the point is, this is all recognized and understood by yours truly. I get it. We don't have to parse this understanding out and belabor this point. Rather, I want to re-adjust back to what the OP is really getting at and that is that we are existential animals. So, what I mean is more the self-reflective element. We KNOW we could do otherwise (even if comfort of habit makes us decide one way mostly). This is an exhaustive extra layer. It is a continual judgement that rides on top of things. I don't just survive by learning mechanisms and instincts combining. I DECIDE to do something, sometimes against what I would really like to do (I don't want to tend to the plants, but I don't want to see them die) and JUDGE things (I don't like seeing the plants die). I don't have to do any of that though (I can watch the plants die and live without a garden).This is more what I mean for it to be existential. I am not denying that we can do things by routine, but it is the fact that we know that we can fall into a routine, that it is quite iterative above and beyond simply routine. — schopenhauer1

I can stop working and not work, but then the anxiety of leaving people without saying a word, the anxiety of looking for another thing, of not getting money, etc. You see, I just decided that these things were important, though I could decide otherwise. Perhaps freedom from work is most important to me at all costs to the point I'd rather live under an underpass than work for the Man. You see, we have a large degree of deliberative freedom, and this causes the burden of knowing we can do things which we didn't necessarily "have" to do, but do "anyways" because we decide things continually to do or not do. This, whilst praised in the main, is I see a burden of the human. This is the error loop where nothing is justified. — schopenhauer1

The self-reflective is the evolutionary error (to the individual) even though it was a (emergent over time) solution (for the species). — schopenhauer1

Cool.

At some point, though, one finds themself.

The deliberative moment is prior to finding oneself. The choices are endless, because one doesn't know who one is.

But if you know who you are, the choices slowly dwindle down.

And there isn't a reason, as you note.

There's simply yourself, and the world, and what you need to do.

And there isn't a reason, as you note.

There's simply yourself, and the world, and what you need to do. — Moliere

Personality? Schopenhauer thought there was a character behind decisions perhaps. No freedom.

I don't think so. At least, the identification of self with activity, or at least a strict relationship between the two, is a strong part of existential philosophy as I understand it -- and it's not a personality that one is looking for in asking nor a personality that one gives in answering.

Think of the archetypes which Camus gives as examples of existential heroes. Many personalities could fill those archetypes.

And, for myself -- though I am inspired by Camus -- I don't even think the heroic stance towards the absurd is really the best. I prefer a softer approach.

What answers the absurd? I'd say that's pretty close to an existential identity of some kind, and this being existentialism, activity is what I'd put forward as central.

Deliberation occurs before activity, and one can always return to the existential question and deliberate again. (one can choose otherwise again, become someone else)

But we can also just answer the question with the simple declaration: Here I am! Even the fact of choice need not weigh us down. We can choose to refuse the weight of choice, if that fits us.

And what could the existential thinker say to such a person?

Try thinking. It might help.

It might help. — I like sushi

Help whom accomplish what?