I only know what it feels like to exist as me, and Schopenhauer only knew what it felt like to exist as him, but we can infer from our own experience what the nature of reality is, we can feel what it must be like for any sentient organism to exist. There is no dodging the problem of existence. We each can feel the gravity of the Will to Live in the way that we are wired. People like us have passed through our respective societies. Our species has undergone sweeping transformations and globalization. Maybe our tinkerings with mathematics or programming, and our explorations of literature, philosophy, and music/film are more reflective of what human animals will be doing after the collapse of industrial civilization. Remember that we have conflicting expectations of what a post-collapse or partial collapse would be like. Our natural state may not leave much time for the preservation of cultural artifacts, but, on the other hand, it may leave nothing but such time.
Cultivating the ability to pass long periods of time in solitude might be beneficial for mental health in the very long run.
Ataraxia is the ability to keep one's head together while the world outside is falling to pieces. I discovered this word while rereading Cioran's
The Trouble with Being Born for the Nth time in "the hospital" ... the concept itself helped me. it was what I needed to get through each moment.
It appears that this ANTARAXIA may be at the heart of Husserlian Phenomenology in the suspension of judgement about the reality of the objective world, epoche. Husserl coined the term epoche to represent the phenomenological reduction, but it has deeper roots:
Epoché (ἐποχή epokhē, "cessation"[1]) is an ancient Greek term. In Hellenistic philosophy it is a technical term typically translated as "suspension of judgment" but also as "withholding of assent".[2] In the modern philosophy of Phenomenology it refers to a process of setting aside assumptions and beliefs.
I do believe that this happens naturally when practicing mathematics over a lifetime. It is OK to forget, then have to relearn in order to remember. Maybe the understanding deepens each time we have to relearn something. So we suspend our assumptions and approach a problem attentive to details. We are also aware that we must ignore the pressing demands of the Will, all the panic and anxiety and fear that is hard-wired into our animal being. That is a tricky part that I doubt anyone can claim to have mastered, since we never know what life is going to throw at us, and we each have breaking points. Nature/existence-itself will bend us and break us. It is our Fate. We will be crushed and devoured.
In the meantime, we are individuated creatures placed in the predicament of NEEDING to eat in order to remain alive, to avoid death. Is it worthwhile to solve triangles? Is it just a monkey's trick to distract the mind from deeper questions?
What if there exists no "intellectual leader" who might provide an honest answer to our most disturbing questions? The masses rely on traditional world religions, but within these masses are individuated human animals, each with a subjective Lifeworld (Lebenswelt). The rulers and industrialists will not dictate the unfolding of our shared reality, but Nature itself, the one that exists in each of us,
as each of us - this is the only reality any of us will ever know, the reality of having to eat and urinate and defecate. I wake up emotional (angry? anxious, insecure, nervous?) --- requiring coffee like an infant requires a pacifier. Without tobacco, I become quite a nervous wreck.
As anyone can see, I never claimed to be some kind of healthy guru with the answer to the question, How to live? or How to get through a life not worth living?
I'm just a frustrated chimpanzee with some disturbing questions. And I wish to, once and for all, smash through the collective projected lies of what reality is, the Disney-ification Silenus mentions --- What is in the heads of the masses is not reality. Reality happens within the animal body. The emotions they experience, their frustrations and fears, are played upon by governments and corporations paid by governments to control and manipulate the masses. Schopenhauer and Freud explored the unspeakable world, and Freud's nephew used the fruits of those explorations to strengthen the influence advertisers and propaganda machines have on YOU and ME, little units of humanity among this mass of activity on the surface of the planet.
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NOTE: I have started to listen to (and watch) the Bernardo Kastrup audio/video clips, but my attention is limited with such mediums. I am pecking away at his book as well, meaning, some times during the nights when I pull myself away from calculating or computing or deriving. I get it that there are those, like Schopenhauer himself who wish to sum up and explain the main problem of existence itself, and this perplexes me nearly constantly, but there is something relaxing in reckoning in a calm and reflective manner.
I listened to the part about "the intellect pulling us out of depression" with positive thinking. I was curious to hear Kastrup's response. I share his skepticism about the superficial changes brought about by cognitive-behavioral therapy. Our foundations are driven by the blind will.
https://youtu.be/W_e17mfbX2s?t=1289"Schopenhauer's recipe [for dealing with suffering, was not positive thinking at all] was to overwhelm thinking, get rid of thinking, get rid of abstract representation by flooding your consciousness with pure un-re-represented perception, that you could access the primary template behind the forms of the world underlying everything."
Freedom from suffering induced by meta-congnitive reasoning:
Freedom from reason, freedom from deliberate thinking, freedom from personal identity ...
https://youtu.be/W_e17mfbX2s?t=1190On some level I am realizing how very limited our time on this earth really is. With so much information available at our fingertips, it is especially challenging to focus. Blank, unruled paper and pencil (or pen, if you insist) ... pecking away as Holden suggests, trying your own intuitive approach first, before researching a more refined approach (solution key). Maybe your own approach is novel and worth preserving in a more permanent notebook. Maybe graphomaniacs are drawn to mathematics because it requires a great deal of scribbling with meaningful notation, diagrams, sketches, side notes. It is great that Schopenhauer is recognized as something more than a freak philosopher. I suspect that the future, if there is a future as such, Schopenhauer might be listed more along the lines of the founders of religions. That is, he may have created a "holy book" - he was using all his mental powers in a most sincere manner in an attempt to become an instrument of the Kernel of Nature Itself speaking to mankind.
We might want to consider ourselves as the inner kernel of Nature trying to get a grip on itself, trying to understand itself.