You are making an argument premised on the belief that there is actually something more than just pragmatism when it comes to living life. You name these higher facts as truth, goodness, and the divine. You want to put these at the centre of our attention and efforts, and advocate for practices that are self-denying, self-effacing, oddly self focused in being self-rejecting. A life built around rejecting the everyday stress and pleasure of being a social self and aimed at becoming this notion of some more perfected state of being. A godly creature barely existing in the world as it generally is, and generally must be, for an organism pragmatically dependent on its socially-constructed environment.

So what supports this metaphysics as a factual argument? Where is the evidence that this ought to be any kind of project for us humans? — apokrisis

Indeed.

These kinds of life lessons can be worked into the educational curriculum from a young age so that children start off properly equipped with an understanding of how their real world works, and the possibilities for improvement – of the self and its society – that flow from there.
/.../
It is the celebration of humanity as bestial rather than celestial.

But if this is so, how do you propose to teach it, and why??
It would be like being a successful stock broker but revealing your business secrets to others. You couldn't be successful for long afterwards.

The issue at this level isn't even philosophical. You will get no solutions from examining ideologies. Ideologies of any stripe become the problem when they are marketed as the absolutes that must rule our lives rather than some possible wisdom about how best to play the game that is being a useful member of a flourishing community.

I suspect that marketing something as an "absolute" is first and foremost a power move, an effort to exert control over others. If one can control what other people consider real and relevant, one can control others.

Modern self-help programs often seem to be excessively self-focused. But I would argue that the same is true of many traditional spiritual practices. What is it that motivates a search for "salvation" or "liberation" or "enlightenment" if not a concern for one's own well-being or life project? — Janus

Of course, but actually going through with one's personal salvation project used to be reserved for the select few, certainly it wasn't meant for everyone.

I think there is a puritanical elitist element in the idea that modern self-help programs are merely watered down caricatures of the ancient "true" practices.

I mean, if these programs really do help people to live better, more fulfilled and useful lives, then what is the problem?

One problem with that is that the watered down versions are being promoted as the real thing, and can eventually even replace it. This can lead to a lot of wasted time, wasted life opportunities, a lot of interpersonal strife.
Buddhism is a good example for this.

Is it because they don't really renounce this life in favour of gaining Karmic benefit or entrance to heaven? Is the most important thing we can do in this life to deny its value in favour of an afterlife, an afterlife which can never be known to be more than a conjecture at best, and a fantasy at worst? There seems to be a certain snobbishness, a certain classism, at play in these kinds of attitudes.

These things become more relevant and glaring once you look at them in the context of the particular religion/spirituality where they take place.
Again, Buddhism is a good example. It's gotten to the point where one has to defend the Pali Canon (the foundational text of Buddhism) to people who claim to be Buddhists. From an insider's perspective, a total insanity is going on. From an outsider's perspective, it probably doesn't matter.

There will always be a tension between individual preferences and societal desiderata. It seems obvious that in any community harmony is more desirable than conflict. — Janus

Of course. However, the striving for harmony usually involved a lot of torture and killing in the past, and still involves a lof of strife.

Yet, while introspecting, I can certainly see the allure even in the analytic. Only focusing on a narrow problem inside a big problem, breaking it down into conditionals and treating important questions like sterile puzzles has a strange comfort. — GazingGecko

Hence to allure of koans. Thinking about a koan makes one's mind stop, which is oddly satisfying.

Modern self-help culture, mindfulness programs, positive psychology, and to a lesser extent outdoor education, present themselves as the heirs of ancient, medieval, and Eastern wisdom traditions (i.e., to philosophy and spirituality). They borrow their vocabulary from these sources, speaking to "character development," virtue, flourishing, balance, discipline, detachment, etc., yet sever these practices from the original anthropology that supported them. In turn, the switch towards a "thin" anthropology, and the liberal phobia of strong ethical claims tends to unmoor them from any strong commitment to an ordering telos that structures the "self-development" they intend to promote. Everything becomes about the individual, about getting us what we want. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Modern self-help products are a for-profit genre. So already from this perspective, what is being sold by the self-help genre has to be tailored in such a way that it will make it marketable, appealing to prospective consumers.
This means that there has to be an intense focus on the idividual and what he wants (or subversively, what he should want, so as to benefit the author of self-help).

Further, in much of self-help, the underlying assumptions, made both by authors as well as consumers go like this:
It's a dog-eat-dog world.
Might makes right.
Of course, it's mostly considered too crude to actually say these things out loud, so they are mostly just implied; although there are self-help books that are direct like this.

The "help" offered is in line with those assumptions, less or more obviously, thus the egoic and managerial focus of self-help products.

A commitment to truth gets shoved aside for a view of philosophy as a sort of "life hack."

It's the only way that plebeians are able to conceive of philosophy. And plebeian mentality is the prevalent type of mentality nowadays, even in many people with advanced degrees and lots of money.
Why do you think Nietzsche is the most popular philosopher? Because he seems the easiest one to read, and people love his combative tone.

Philosophy itself has been thoroughly academicatized and professionalized.

I think insufficiently so. In the past, philosophy typically used to be reserved for the leisurely elites who didn't have to worry about paying bills, so they were able to concern themselves with matters of truth in the abstract without this having adverse effects for them. I think it should be kept that way. Because people who have to work for a living, often to the point of exhaustion, simply cannot afford to invest in activities that could in any way hamper their ability to function in a brutally competitive market (such as by inducing self-criticism or self-doubt, as reading philosophy can easily do in people).

Strong Natural Theism’s central thesis is comprised of two claims: (1) God can be known through the application of reason to empirically demonstrable aspects of the ordinary and natural world, and (2) this knowledge is sufficient for understanding and justifying living a proper and good life. — Bob Ross

The problem with this is is that it is your creation, a god of your creation -- and you know it. How do you respect such a god? How do you trust such a god? How do you fear such a god? What use is such a god or belief in such a god?

People seem to want to identify the really real. It’s surely a kind of god surrogate. — Tom Storm

People want to have the upper hand, they want to have power. The ultimate power is to dictate to everyone else what they are supposed to consider real.


(I predict that much better outcomes for psychotic patients could be brought about if they could be made to (re)gain some power, some self-efficacy, rather than further disempowering them by dictating to them what they are supposed to consider real. Hence the relatively good results of work-as-therapy.)

A third alternative is that the notion of an objective reality can't be maintained.

It's true that you are reading this screen. What more is said by "It is objectively true that you are reading this screen"? — Banno

Notions of subjectivity and objectivity are introduced for the purpose of establishing and maintaining hierarchy between people. Those higher up have objective truth, those lower down have merely subjective truth.

My senses can deceive me, so if I cannot trust my senses, I might as well conclude that outside reality doesn't exist; It's just me and you; but if my senses cannot be always trusted then your existence must also might be an illusion. — A Realist

One should not dabble in philosophy.

Either get serious about it, or let it go altogether, there is no middle way.

It's not like people go and shoot eachother because they had nothing better to do.

At the core of war is the belief, "We are more entitled to certain resources than other people, and we have the (divine) right to obtain those resources by whatever means necessary."

Kind of a dud answer if all you're gonna say is "it's subjective". — Darkneos

Perhaps the most important thing to learn in such discussions is that existential topics (including the question of suicide) are mostly pointless to try to discuss with others, and that this is due to the nature of those topics.

Many people who undergo such things never recover, their brains seem to be rewired by the trauma. — Tom Storm

Do people even want everyone to survive?

If yes, then why the military industry (guns are for killing people, yes), why the approval of euthanasia and assisted suicide, why the approval of capital punishment?

Are suicidal people not correctly reflecting society's actual values? Namely, that some lives are not worth living?

Don't forget people who have degenerative illnesses who would prefer to die than continue to experience suffering. Also people who have experienced traumatic events (prolonged sexual abuse, etc). The memories and pain - the PTSD may never go away either. Suicide may feel like the only method to gain permanent relief. — Tom Storm

One thing that is systematically being avoided in this discussion is the topic of shame and disgrace.

There are things that a person can do or which can happen to a person that render the person's life worthless, from then on forever.

On the one hand, there are criminal acts a person might do that the state deems so evil that the person's life must be taken via the death penalty. What the person has done might in fact be "termporary", but the state thinks the person doesn't deserve to live anymore. Treason is a prime example.

On the other hand, traditionally, some dishonoring events in a person's life, such as a woman being raped or a military general losing an important battle, for example, were considered so shameful that the person was expected to kill themselves (or be killed). It had nothing to do with PTSD or "not being able to bear the pain".

First, the source of the "optimism" is the Actual Data that proves that among those in your exact situation (contemplating suicide), the vast majority (70 - 93%) will change their mind and decide that life is, in fact worth living after all. — LuckyR

A source of optimism for whom? The general public?

Though your implication is correct that many can not or will not understand or accept that data. But that is an error.

What are you talking about??
So if a person is contemplating suicide, they should reflect that there is a 70 - 93% chance that they will not pull the trigger/jump off a cliff/etc.??



You keep bringing in this sociological/statistical approach to a discussion that was from the onset intended to be philosophical. You keep avoiding the OP.

While it's understandable that the discussion of existential topics has to be opaque to some extent, at some point, all this opaqueness is just a waste of time.

Hence my observation that the argument against suicide is: it's a permanent solution to a TEMPORARY problem. — LuckyR

And whence is one supposed to get the optimism to believe this argument or see it as relevant?

Presumably every person has a breaking point, some just reach theirs temporally sooner than others. Once a person has reached that point, based on what can they still see their particular predicament not only as temporary, but, more importantly, that many better things are yet to happen for them and that their life will be nice and easy from that point on until the end?

Not even a reply because it's speaking massively of privilege and doesn't grasp the whole scope of life. Outside of modern society life is pretty brutal, and even in society you have to be born lucky to experience the good stuff. Honestly man...have some perspective. — Darkneos

So the question for this thread topic isn't something like "Is life worth living?"

But rather, "Is life worth living for underprivileged, unlucky people?"

And if we look at the modern socioeconomic trends, the answer to the latter is clearly, No.

Modern cultures that view euthanasia and assisted suicide positively and have legalized them are clearly saying that if one cannot live up to a certain socioeconomic standard, then it's better to die.

What do you mean “by definition”? That isn’t the definition of nihilism. — praxis

It's fairly common for religious people to think that non-religious people are leading meaningless, aimless, worthless lives. This belief is part of the foundation for their apologetics and proselytizing.

We could quote doctrinal tenets from religions that say as much.

Maybe you are already enlightened, and didn't know it. — Patterner

According to Early Buddhism, such is impossible, because an enlightened person knows they are enlightened, they have no doubt or confusion about it. Everyone who is enlightened knows they are enlightened.

No one knows for sure so we are stuck with what seems most plausible. — Janus

While many people say such things, I doubt many people mean them. It seems to me that people are far more sure of themselves, far more certain than you make allowance for.

But unless one is enlightened, one cannot talk about these things with any kind of integrity, nor demand respect from others as if one in fact knew what one is talking about.
— baker

I tend to agree with this, although I would say not only "unless" but "even if".

Why the "even if"? Why couldn't one talk about enlightenment with integrity even if one is enlightened?

If you believe being enlightened is a real thing, what leads you to believe it, presuming you are not yourself enlightened?

I am aware of the standard definitions of enlightenment. Whether what those definitions say is "real" or not I can't say, given that according to those definitions, one would need to be enlightened oneself in order to recognize another enlightened being.


But I certainly acknowledge a strange pull that I feel towards these topics and a desire to reflect on them.

Says you, who just this minute has pasted an entire paragraph from the Pali texts into another thread. — Wayfarer

Have you noticed that I am not discussing Buddhism in the manner of Western secular academia?

I don’t see any ‘bad blood’.

You don't say. I have to take breaks from this forum, as I feel downright metaphorically bespattered with blood.

Hostile reactions are only to be expected when people’s instinctive sense of reality is called into question.

What a spiritual take on the matter!

For instance, philosopher Shaun Gallagher, taking inspiration from the work of Francisco Varela, links the modern empirical discovery of the absence of a substantive ‘I' or ego with the Buddhist concept of non-self, and imports from Buddhism the ethical implications of the awareness of this non-self, which he formulates as the transcendence of a grasping selfishness in favor of a compassionate responsivity to the other. — Joshs

To be clear, such views are typical for Mahayana and Vajrayana schools of Buddhism, but certainly not for Early Buddhism, nor for Theravada.

What could be more nihilistic than to believe that life is suffering and the only way to escape the endless cycle of life and death is the complete extinguishment of everything that makes you you. — praxis

When phrased this way, it certainly sounds nihilistic.

But at least in the fundamental Buddhist texts, the Pali Canon, it's not phrased that way. You'd just have to read those for yourself, it's too much to post here even just the relevant passages.

That said, we extinguish everything that makes us who we are anway. It's just that we do it slowly, gradually, and usually without thinking of it in terms of "I am extinguishing everything that makes me me". For example, we identify with our food for as long as it is in our mouth and stomach, but then when we excrete it, we disidentify with it.

The point I aim to make is that not believing in life after death, or being a materialist, or non-religious, is not nihilism. — praxis

From the perspective of (some of) the religious, it is nihilistic, by definition so.

Do you suppose you can describe and explain things in a neutral, objective way that is beyond perspective(s)?

To believe that it is nihilism is denying reality and a rather extreme view, a grasping view.

What reality is being denied by this?

You are certainly NOT the first person to discover that life may be, can be, may seem to be... meaningless. Get used to it and move on. That's what people do. — BC

This is another vulgar attitude. No, it has not been my experience that people generally accept that life is meaningless. This is a perverse, vulgar sentiment that can be found primarily among the educated poor.

You yourself have noted more than once how your degree in the humanities and your socioeconomic background were in conflict, and how you could never really be part of the academia or the intellectual class, given your socioeconomic background. It's this conflict that is the breeding ground of existential anguish.

It is my hypothesis that people who are poor but whose ambitions in life are realistic aren't likely to get depressed. In contrast, policies like the "no child left behind", all that striving for equity, equal opportunity, this is what is creating depressed people.

It's when one is trying to be something one is not that one gets sucked into an abyss of existential problems.

because everything is meaningless, and i am an idiot. — unenlightened

How vulgar.

I will continue to read with interest. — Amity

Yes?

The way the suicide discussion is so often carried out in Western culture (what little there is of such discussion, that is) is that all the blame is conveniently placed on the person who killed themselves or seems to want to, along with calling them mentally ill, selfish, etc. While it is somehow considered bad taste to point out how others may have contributed to the suicide, or even caused it.

All that talk of love, empathy, compassion. And yet, it is somehow always other people who should be the first to practice love, empathy, compassion, and never those who preach them.

Some people don't even realise their lack of awareness. And the role empathy plays in building trust and maintaining good relationships. Communication.

[...]

There are other areas or spectrums of mental health issues but I've said enough.
Leaving it here, thanks. — Amity

The irony, oh the irony.

There seems to be a lack of imagination or empathy as to the effect on others. — Amity

This supposedly adverse effect on others is so often grossly overstated.

Sure, if those others have depended on the person financially or in some practical way (such as for cleaning and cooking), then, sure, if that person dies, for whatever reason, those dependents will suffer a loss.

But so often, it's precisely those "loving loved ones" who push someone into taking their own life. Not rarely, they even wish for it.

but the most obvious alternative to the unsatisfactory rat race of striving, struggling, and all that is to stop striving, stop struggling. Try to be more in the present moment rather than being busy trying to accomplish something in the future, or fretting over something not done in the past, because "now" is where you live. — BC

Spoken like a retired baby boomer.

For an increasing number of people, the struggling and the striving isn't a matter of too much ambition, but a matter of bare survival.

The sheer physical and mental exhaustion from work eventually makes one wonder why go on with it.

People of your age could at least hope to retire someday, they had something to look forward to. This is the case for fewer and fewer people nowadays.

Official psychology tends to be quite out of touch with the realities of life.

Where other people come in is that there's a presumption in your posts so far that the person considering suicide's suffering is more important than the suffering of those they leave behind. — fdrake

That's an awfully idealistic scenario. Not rarely, it's precisely those other people who want someone to die, and they even say so.

I guess this is a good a place as any. — Darkneos

No.

William Styron wrote "Darkness Visible", a short memoir of his depression. It struck me as conspicuously superficial, but with one point sticking out. Namely, he says words to the effect that the only thing that was worse than his depression was the medical treatment he received for it (he freely went to a mental institution). He writes how he then complied, superficially, with the treatment, just so as to get out of the institution.

It's important to understand that especially in modern Western society, existential topics 1. are tabooed, and 2. what the consequences of breaking this taboo are. Talk about these things at the wrong place, and you could get the police at your door, and then some.

There is a whole art to not talking about existential topics, and it's important to master it. Already simply because of the sheer amount of time and energy that can be wasted in the process if done wrongly.

Unlikely — T Clark

Pretty sure they don't do that. — Darkneos

Any discussion of suicide and the meaning of life has to take into consideration the legal status of euthanasia and assisted suicide in a particular country/jurisdiction. Individual countries differ greatly from one another in this regard, from those strictly opposed to them to those where they are legal.

Then there are other considerations to take into account, like insurance companies refusing to pay for the medical treatment of the terminally ill, but willing to cover the cost of euthanasia.

You should talk to a therapist — T Clark

A therapist, who just might suggest "euthanasia as a treatment option", as is slowly becoming the new normal in "civilized" societies?

if it makes you uncomfortable then perhaps you shouldn’t involve yourself. — Wayfarer

Duh. Oh, please. I'm trying to explain to you why you often get the negative reactions you do and how come there is so much bad blood between you and some others.

Despite what some Westerners like to believe, Buddhism is not a philosophy and is not intended to be discussed at philosophy forums, in the manner of Western secular academia.

What you're experiencing is a case of grasping the snake of the Dhamma at the wrong end, at the tail, and thus getting bitten. But you don't seem to understand that, and instead blame your opponents.

Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making.
— Joshs

Sorry, this is opaque to me. — J

While waiting for @Joshs --

The way I understand it is that empathy, love, and compassion as fundamental attitudes will inform how we make sense of other people's words and actions.

So that, for example, instead of interpreting a particular child's action as "evil" (and feeling justified and obligated to punish the child), one interprets it perhaps as a cry for help, or a consequence of parental neglect, or something else altogether.

It's important to note that often when people claim to exhibit empathy, love and compassion, they are actually practicing contempt, or at best, pity. They tell you they love you, but they still believe you're bad, wrong, and deserving punishment. In their mind, it's love, or compassion, if they don't criticize you or punish you when they believe they should do so.

Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making. — Joshs

How do you explain that religions/spiritualities that focus heavily on love and compassion also "balance" this out with extreme violence, such as Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism (the Secondary Bodhisattva vows, where a person basically vows to kill, rape, and pillage in the name of compassion -- for the killed, raped, and pillaged person!!)?

My hypothetical is likely too far afield from Benj's pattern: 'is truth owed if it diminishes free will'. — Nils Loc

It's the idea that truth is somehow objective, neutral, and completely independent from the person who utters it that is problematic.

I had to look up "virtue signaling." Could you explain how it connects to meta-ethics? I'm not seeing it. — J

People are often prone to give socially desirable answers.

In social science research, social-desirability bias is a type of response bias that is the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others.[1] It can take the form of over-reporting "good behavior" or under-reporting "bad", or undesirable behavior. The tendency poses a serious problem with conducting research with self-reports. This bias interferes with the interpretation of average tendencies as well as individual differences.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-desirability_bias

What this means for discussing ethics, among other things, is that in discussions of ethics, people can present and defend socially desirable views in order to appear ethical to others (ie., they signal their virtue), when in fact they don't actually hold those views, or at least not as strongly or as consistently as they claim.

This then leads to those strange situations where, for example, someone talks about the importance of empathy or the importance of interacting with others in good faith, but their own behavior (even in those very discussions) indicates that they don't actually believe in those things. So one has to wonder what is really going on.

I think that at least some (if not many) traditional problems of ethics are born precisely out of this virtue signaling, creating artificial ethical problems that nobody actually has or cares about, but they just want to make themselves look good.

A naive and goodwilled person can waste a lot of time and energy on those problems, failing to realize they are artificial and merely there for the purpose of keeping up appearances.

Constructivism applies to the ways in which we see things but not to what we see. — Janus

This is what a realist says, yes.

Sure, and I understand (roughly) how Ethics is taught. But this literally foregoes any meaningful answer to the question, and returns to circularity. I'm not particularly intending to further some philosophical position but to address why I think the question itself is a bit moot. "X is good" requires my bolded to be sorted through. "You should do X" requires the previous sentence to be adequately addressed. So, I think this is prima facie a pretty unhelpful way to think about what to do in life.

Ignoring that "good" and "right" can come apart readily, I can't see how this conceptualisation is anything more than paternalism, rather than learning how to think and assess claims — AmadeusD

For the most part, ethics and the discussion of ethics are about controlling people, about getting them to do what one stakeholder wants them to do. But in order to avoid the controlling from becoming too obvious and too easy to rebel against, the discourse of ethics is often formulated in objective terms, as if indepedent from the people who promote it. "It's not I who wants you to do that, it's God." "It's not I who wants you to do that, it's simply how things really are."

This is one of the reasons why the discourse of ethics so often goes nowhere and why it logically doesn't add up.

/.../ The other falls short of our ethical standards due to a failing of ‘integrity’, a ‘character flaw’ , dishonesty, evil intent , selfishness, etc. In doing so, we erase the difference between their world and ours, and turn our failure to fathom into their moral failure.
— Joshs

I find this particularly interesting. Does it follow from this frame that no one is ever knowingly dishonest or has evil intent and that the matter can always be understood as arising from incommensurate perspectives? — Tom Storm

It doesn't follow.

A person can be dishonest, act with evil intent. The point of contention is that it's not up to the other person to decide that.

Usually, people are eager to ascribe motivations to others, to project into them. They consider it their right, a matter of their self-confidence. But what they are basically saying is:

"You feel whatever I say that you feel.
You think whatever I say that you think.
Your intentions are whatever I say that your intentions are.
I am the boss of you.
If you in any way disagree, you are bad, evil, deserving punishment."