Of course, the command to us to go kill ourselves may be becoming more and more realistic, considering assisted suicide has been legalized in many states, as well as in other countries like Switzerland. Or perhaps we all just get together and intentionally get stoned as to attempt to remove the instinctual barriers keeping us alive.

This is about where I realize that, despite the shittiness of life in general, I have a distinct urge to continue to live, for whatever reason that is. I don't want to miss out on the happenings of the world, at least not right now. Game of Thrones hasn't ended yet.

So the real twist in the stomach is when you simultaneously see very little in life as a justification for the beginning of a life, but somehow see these things as a justification for continuing a life. And you realize that yeah, all these things are pretty much just distractions, and that if you're gonna hold that it's not enough to make a life worth starting then it really ought to not be enough to continue a life. Suddenly it becomes more difficult to truly enjoy things; instead one has to take a mindfulness approach to experience, and/or submerge oneself in the absurdity of it all and find a sort of aesthetic to the rogue, absurd, wandering survivor, an internal contradiction that can only be expressed in catharsis.

Tolstoy hit the nail on the head: there are four different ways out of our position: ignorance (in which you don't even know our position), epicureanism (hedonism, most people do this), the rejection of the former two but the continuation out of weakness (i.e. existentialism) and the rejection of all three and the embracing of suicide (i.e. the strong). It is the strong who kill themselves, and the weak who persist for no apparent reason whatsoever.

So what would be equivalent to "You shouldn't have been out at night!" in this situation? — schopenhauer1

"Why don't you just kill yourself?!" or "Stop being a lazy fuck!"

So is flow and faith a good thing or is it more of a stop-gap from addressing bigger existential questions? — schopenhauer1

I guess it depends on what ones' priorities are. If you're going for authenticity then no, the probably aren't. If you're just trying to survive, then yeah they're probably going to be helpful.

One is the victim blaming phenomena. Do you think it is a strategy for regulating societal expectations? In other words, is it to prevent people from voicing despair and bringing others into despair mode? Is it like a meme that worked well in maintaining the status quo, so remained as part of the social discourse when someone evaluating the negative voices an opinion? — schopenhauer1

Yes. I mean we still see this with rape victims. "You shouldn't have been out at night!"-like bullshit.

Does flow and hope justify life affirmation? Flow can prevent the mind from thinking of all these larger angsty existential questions.. Hope can cause someone to take a plan of action to get to a more desired situation. — schopenhauer1

Flow and in particular faith can justify the continuation of a life even if they are not founded well.

You need to realize that when we perceive anything, it's really just the reflection of photons traveling through a transparent gas or space.

I suspect it has something to do with liberalism being seen as naively optimistic. But we'll see what tgw has to say.

Because that's what it means to be see-through: photons are able to pass through the material.

The trouble with this idea is that, thanks to modern physics, we already know what makes things transparent. Depending on the grain pattern of a substance, light may or may not be absorbed. That's what transparency is - something going through another thing without much friction.

So your theory becomes irrelevant because in this case, empirical evidence trumps a priori speculation.

Of course. Do you think Sanders is done with politics now?

Besides being a consolation, it may provide perspective on existence itself. — schopenhauer1

I mean, yes, I agree that the pessimistic perspective is helpful in toning down expectations and desires. That's fine.

Believe it or not, there can be a giddyness to pessimism.. To knowing we are all in the same boat, that it is all part of a similar structure. I dare say, there may be a joy and connectedness in pessimism. — schopenhauer1

This is have an issue with. There is no giddyness to torture, horror, or anguish. It's comedic to see how absurd everything seems to be, so long as you aren't being impacted too much by the absurdity of it all. Why should I be giddy that countless animals are currently being ripped to shreds by predators? Why should I be giddy that life is disappointing and painful? This kind of giddyness ends up being not too dissimilar to the crazy guy in the movies who starts out laughing and ends up crying.

You'd have to explain that. It sounds like you have many things to say in regards to arguing for pessimism but no one to hear it.. You always have me, dark solitary biting fish. Just don't bite me too much, as is your nature or I'll tear you up like a hapless salmon that is eaten by the grizzly in the picture — schopenhauer1

Well, I mean to say that pessimism is pretty obvious. It is based in empiricism, specifically phenomenological immediate perceptions of existence. It's not easy to argue against it. Some people might say that this is simply because it's easy to complain and bitch and moan. Or maybe it's because it's an accurate picture of reality, and a tough pill to swallow. What is worse is when pessimists try to act upon their belief, they're seen as the baddies, destroyers. When really if something really is this bad then it ought to be destroyed. Permanently.

Goddammit, why couldn't Bernie have won.

I always feel bad when I argue for pessimism, unless I have an desire to change people's actions for what I perceive to be the better (ethics). Like, unless something productive is going to come from me presenting pessimism, I don't really feel comfortable intentionally trying to break people's spells of optimism. Unless there is something wrong with living a life unaware or uncaring of the pessimistic point, then arguing for pessimism only increases the total amount of suffering in the world. It's less about doing something productive and more about expressing oneself through pessimism, to the annoyance of others.

The thing about pessimism is that it is probably one of the easiest philosophies to argue for, yet one of the hardest philosophies to accept.

Please delete

Trump's speech was actually not too shabby. He still repeated himself a lot and asserted all these things that he'll never actually be able to do. But I was genuinely surprised that he apparently called Clinton right beforehand. For once, Trump was not a wild, raving lunatic in a suit.

Trump looked scared during his speech. Maybe he was just tired from the whole election campaign. But I suspect he also was finally understanding the gravity of the situation.

The state in which I live just legalized assisted suicide. This makes it legal to die if one is terminally ill with six months left to live.

If this was extended to those who are depressed or who just don't want to live anymore, would you take it?

For me at least, as much as I generally find life annoying and painful, I nevertheless have a strong instinct to survive, to create, to do. I don't want to die. Suicide fantasy has been a recurrent theme in my thought but whenever I actually seriously consider dying, there is something that keeps me back. Something beyond just primal instinct, I think.

Perhaps life is bad but not bad enough to warrant suicide, not enough to get a eliminate the capacity to derive a decent amount of enjoyment out of it. We may not gain anything in life but it sure as hell is difficult to act as if this is the case. At least by surviving we maximize irony.

Thoughts?

It requires certain assumptions and confidences, but it would be wrong to equivocate this form of belief with religious faith.

Disappointment with a collective group of ignorant plebs.

Dumbass new atheists...

Crikey.

I'm not so sure about the worth of pessimism. Whenever I think about all this stuff, especially how suffering greatly outweighs pleasure, and pleasure itself seems mostly just a reduction or cessation of some pain/suffering experience or another, I feel like I should just kill myself. I mean if life really is how the pessimist describes, why live? — dukkha

Why indeed? I would argue that life does not give us any reason to continue to live - any reason must come from the individual themselves. This is why Nietzsche said that those who continue to live (not just survive) have a purpose or a sense of meaning.

I think you're probably better off not being aware of any of this, like a child, or a cat. Being aware that you suffer is itself a type of suffering. — dukkha

Unfortunately, being unaware and ignorant often causes more suffering than not. At the very least it is irresponsible.

So if I whipped out a hammer and brained your baby to death in front of you, you would have serious difficulty saying my actions were morally wrong?

Seriously? — dukkha

Well first of all I wouldn't have children to begin with. Second, it is immoral from the perspective of those who have children. But infanticide cannot harm the infant, only those who have infants.

No, it's not. It's objective for all subjectivities. If I am upset, for example, then it's true I'm upset for any subjectivity, not just my own. For everyone, it's true I'm upset, whether they recognise it or not. I don;t suddenly bemuse not up set merely becasue a subjectivity doesn't think or thinks the opposite. Even with respect to the rock, I am upset Willow. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't think this is the correct way to use subjectivity. If you are upset, then it is an objective fact that you are upset, i.e. anyone theoretically can go out and discover that you are upset. "From the point of view of the universe", you are upset.

But to say that "for everyone" it is true that you are upset is incorrect because some people might not know you are upset.

It's not a question of observation. The issue is feeling, experience or knowledge. People may feel someone else's pain without observing them at all. All it takes is for them to have the experience: "My friend is in pain." It can even take the form of the same pain within themselves (i.e. knowledge as).

There is always an isolation, my experiences are never yours, but that has no impact on what may be known of other's experiences. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Correct, but this is what I had been saying earlier. That subjective experiences can be known but only through duplication (or inference), not through the sharing of a numerically identical thing.

That's doesn't go far enough though, for each subjective states is also universal. No matter what what anyone thinks, my experiences are mine, for example. Similarly, a rock remains a rock, in all the ways it may appear, no matter what anyone thinks. Effectively, the subjective state is, the sense usually used, is the objective. — TheWillowOfDarkness

It is only objective and universal for the subjective itself. So it is an objective fact that there are subjective systems spread universally across the world.

Minds are no exception. Just as we know rocks without becoming "the subjective of the rock," we may know minds without becoming the "subjective of the mind." — TheWillowOfDarkness

We can only observe a shadow of the subjective. There is an inherent isolation at play here. So we may know that someone is experiencing pain if we understand the common behavior indicating that they are experiencing pain, but this is merely knowledge of, not knowledge as.

As an aside, in a secular context, killing infants tend to be considered atrocious, and is free from such reasoning. Of course. Any ordinary person would think so, I hope. — jorndoe

I lean towards the views of Peter Singer. Infanticide, despite its scary-sounding verbage, is probably not morally problematic because infants aren't even capable of futural thoughts or even are conscious. To say that it is morally wrong to take the life of a young infant is, in my opinion, probably unfounded equivocation.

Feeling are material objects. Such experiences are no less an existing state of the world than a rock or bookshelf we might see. All experiences are owned, are private, including those of empirical observation. If we are looking at the same mountain, we only see or understand the same thing (mountain). We never are the same thing. My experience of the mountain is not yours and visa versa, even if what we see is identical. Observation of empirical objects must be "cloned" to be shared too. In the passing of knowledge and understanding, there is only replication. "To be shared" means for someone else to have their own experience of a particular thought or feeling, a replication of what someone else knows, thinks of feels. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes, this is what I was getting at. Replication, copies. Objectivity (particular universality) can only be shared via subjectivity (universal particularity). Thus subjectivity, or private "closed" states, is a very real part of reality. The relations between things are objective, but the things themselves are subjective. It's not just this way with minds. There is literally a subjective "what is it like to be a rock". Thus the world itself is an array of impossibly deep objects, signaling to each other. This is a very, very rough sketch of the object-oriented ontology presented by Graham Harman.

Even feelings can be replicated. (that's how empathy or "lived" awareness of other people's feelings work). — TheWillowOfDarkness

I wonder what consequences this has for personal identity theories. If I die, and then the brain states that my brain was in, in the past, are observed beforehand and then replicated, I essentially could come back to life. It's not "me", though there actually isn't any "me" at all. There's only the phenomenon of appearing to have a "me", i.e. there are multiple specimens all believing themselves to be special in their own little way, that are in fact the exact same little way. Do I have two arms and two legs? Yes, and so does my clone. Do I have green eyes? Yes, and so does my clone. Do I believe myself to be an autonomous self with a sense of personality and uniqueness? Yes, and so does my clone in the exact same way.

In this sense, ownership becomes reproducible.

But what I think Schop1 find problematic (as do I) with some accounts is how they try to get around the fact that feelings can only be replicated, they cannot be shared. The mind is a private world in itself. The external world is public. Feelings are a totally different thing than material objects; whereas an everyday object can be shared between many different observers and still be the same thing, a mental event must be cloned in order to be "shared".

Science can only report observations, but can never assume to know anything about when, what, where, and why. — taylordonbarrett

This is patently false. Science is not just observation, otherwise it would never have gotten off the ground. Science is a systematic method of obtaining data and forming a model or theory that best represents this data, which includes these circumstantial questions.

Interesting.. can you explain further? The self-validating pessimist.. Isn't it a bit strong to say though that being wrong on a theory proves the pessimistic point? Or is it rather that being wrong about pessimism is bad because, even if pessimism is wrong, the mere fact that others can feel this way proves that a world exists that has people that feel this way and thus shows the non-idealty of the world to allow people that can feel this way about the world. The pragmatist would just chortle that this is simply thefault of the pessimist, not the universe. — schopenhauer1

Yes, I made a blog post on this a while back (shameless self-promotion). Basically, pessimists argue that harmful illusions exist. And you have Stoicism and Buddhism both arguing that ignorance (or the illusion of knowledge) is the cause of all suffering. But I would put it one step further, and claim that, from a more Heideggerian perspective, we are part of the world, not merely "bystanders". The universe produced us. And thus it is capable of producing such harmful ignorance. And like you said, more pragmatic visions essentially boil down to victim blaming. Even the victims themselves are willing to blame themselves, as a method of maintaining order and stability.

I guess you can suffer from knowing about other people's pain but surely painful experiences can be had by everyone. True, some people have more of them than others, but that just goes to show you earlier my point about harms being unequally distributed. — schopenhauer1

To be quite honest with you, it is other sentient's suffering that bothers me more than my own, and is the main source for my pessimism. I haven't had it super easy either but my own suffering pales in comparison to what others are going through. And the fact that others, like yourself, are pessimistic is definitely an argument for pessimism in general. Only in an unfortunate world would someone like the pessimist exist and actually be wrong about their pessimism. By its very existence, pessimism validates itself.

Like I said before: The feeling you get when you start to doubt if you're even suffering, and you start suffering even more (i.e. Tolstoy). Am I myself suffering, or do I simply suffer because I know others are suffering? Am I pessimistic because I myself experience these things, or because I hear about other people experiencing these things?

Also:

Tinnitus (the tune of pessimism)
Tedium
Wild organism attacks
Sexual failings
Sudden catastrophes
Disfigurement, dismemberment, paralysis, etc
Allergic reactions
Academic failures
Ostracized from the tribe
Political disappointments and failures
Economic catastrophes
The experience of dread once you realize that all of this is possible and even likely

What's your goal here, Schop?

That makes it the worst harm of all in my book. At least the others are honest harms. Pleasure is positively malicious. And without pleasure, how could we truly suffer?

Damn you to Hell happiness. — apokrisis

Pleasure is only a proxy bad when viewed in a certain way. When seen as a reason to continue, pleasure is a manipulative force. When seen as a something good without manipulative/intoxicative properties, then there's nothing wrong with it. I'm not a masochist.

Actually, I see the ethical issues relating to pleasure as more important than how it feels phenomenologically. Pleasure is partly responsible for a billion(s)-year-old-and-counting systematic process of instrumentality. Sentients value their own pleasure more than the pain of other sentients.

I would appreciate it if you didn't treat me like a child. What exactly is the mechanical notion of time, and how does your pansemiotic view somehow escape eternal existence?

Had symmetry always existed before it broke?

Hence the third category of vagueness - the land of no brute fact which can give rise to the yin and yang of mutually co-arising brute facts such as stasis and change. — apokrisis

Is it a brute fact that the third category of vagueness is the land of no brute fact?

But surely if something must be stopped, it must have begun before. Unless it is just a brute fact that something is the case, which sounds suspiciously like a first cause.

Yet Aristotle posited the Prime Mover...

But where did all this material self-organization originally come from? Do you accept the necessity of a first cause?