Author Topic: Anti-natalism?  (Read 13198 times)

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Nation of One

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #15 on: July 09, 2014, 03:07:27 pm »
Wow.  I watched the link, and I was impressed.  Yep, that's 99.9999% Ligotti ... almost verbatim.  Very impressive ... Isn't it something how his co-worker pushes him to reveal his philosophy of life (his worldview, his Weltanshuung), and then ... maybe because it is so counter to anything he's been exposed to before, tells him to please shut the **** up.

It's not actors that suck.  Those actors are cool, doing some justice ... It's the industry that irks me.  Sometimes I can't blame people for zoning out in front of the tube. I know that when I am living alone - and I never get a TV - there is a definite anxiety I experience ... which is most likely the "natural state" ... When at my mom's I can't help but overhear the tube ... I think that this show you point out, True Detective, would most likely hold my attention for awhile.  My thing is that I find it difficult to commit myself to watching anything. 

I get up and just spontaneously wander away from it ... Then again, if I saw George Carlin's face on the tube I would be glued to it ... Maybe it has more to do with the content than the medium itself.

Thanks for pointing that show out to me ... I mean, I'm not going to run out and buy a TV or look into subscribing to cable, but it is good to see Ligotti is influencing popular culture.

Lately I have returned to studying concepts of a technical nature and find that anxiety seems to decrease when I lose my "self" in abstract thought.  Also, rather than "moving on" I have returned to things I may have went over too quickly ... 10 years later ... It took that long for interest in it to return.

While life in general may be an overall disaster and holds great potential for horror and despair, I have a tendency to find inner peace in studying things that have a logic to them ... that I can understand.

Maybe antinatalism is carrying logic to the extreme.  Life is irrational ... it makes no sense. 

When one values intellectual integrity and emotional honesty, one tends to isolate since this is such a rare quality in society.  So much of society is just an outright farce and it is considered quite foolish to actually be honest, to display feelings, or to publicly scorn ideas that people literally kill one another over; and often it is foolish because it's not worth the trouble ... so we learn to hide ...

The world of logic is safe ... and consistent ... If a compiler tells me there is an error and I know there is no error in my logic, then there must be a typo somewhere ... I (the presence in the brain we call ATTENTION) has to inspect the code ... hunt down the "bug" ... While lost in such things, my mind is a million miles away from, say, being tormented by the image of a beautiful woman's face ...

Maybe "intellectual" or "technical" types of activities provide a spiritual sanctuary from the brutal facts of existence ... Is it a transcendent state?

And yet, when one is grieving over a loss or just in a terrible funk, it is nearly impossible to become interested in anything. 

Maybe that is why I find watching TV depressing since I have experienced the magic that occurs out of nowhere when I am lost in studying.  This is the enjoyment of our higher mental faculties that Schopenhauer was continually writing about.  That's why a few of us here openly declare our favorite activities are solitary.

This is why books are usually so much more effective than films will ever be, since films always involve the external social world, where books are a better medium for reflecting the subjective world. 

Then again, sometimes it is a relief just to zone out watching cartoons. 

The group mind is a creepy phenomenon.  Think of the obsession over sporting events ... the emotion ... what is that all about?  Nation-states ... group-think ... It is quite frightening to witness the herd in action ...

I miss George Carlin's perspective.  He hated groups.  He said he could only relate to people as individuals and hated all the groups people "identify" with. 

Anyway ... If one has ever been in the grip of an intense chemical addiction, whether it was to a drug or to another human being, one appreciates a state of satiation or "lack of yearning" ... to be calm enough and focused enough to try to understand something.

Maybe mechanics and other problem solvers are content as long as they have a machine to trouble-shoot and diagnose ... I can't help but wonder how many turn the laser beam of their attention inward and try to diagnose the very problem of existence itself ...

Does the brain think on different levels simultaneously?  I mean, when one part of the brain is reflecting on memory segments and where variable values are stored in actual hardware, a higher part of the brain is observing still yet another part of the brain thinking of weapons that are exploding, animals that are at this very moment ripping the flesh off their cousin's bones, whether a loved one will once again avoid an almost inevitable vehicular misadventure, and all this chaos of mental life ...

Words give an illusion of one-dimensional thought ... What we type here is not even the tip of the iceberg of our mental life ... but, for now, if it helps us to scribble somewhere that is not affiliated with any corporate mind set, then this board will be just what it is.  In a world where it is difficult to get a hearing or even taken seriously as a "Metaphysical Creature with very serious thoughts", at least here we can carry on like David Hume, making any addition to our stock of knowledge in subjects of such unspeakable importance ...

“What though these reasonings concerning human nature seem abstract and of difficult comprehension, this affords no presumption of their falsehood. On the contrary, it seems impossible that what has hitherto escaped so many wise and profound philosophers can be very obvious and easy. And whatever pains these researches may cost us, we may think ourselves sufficiently rewarded, not only in point of profit but of pleasure, if, by that means, we can make any addition to our stock of knowledge in subjects of such unspeakable importance.”

“But as, after all, the abstractedness of these speculations is no recommendation, but rather a disadvantage, to them, and as this difficulty may perhaps be surmounted by care and art and the avoiding of all unnecessary detail, we have, in the following Inquiry, attempted to throw some light upon subjects from which uncertainty has hitherto deterred the wise, and obscurity the ignorant. Happy if we can unite the boundaries of the different species of philosophy by reconciling profound inquiry with clearness, and truth with novelty! And still more happy, if, reasoning in this easy manner, we can undermine the foundations of an abstruse philosophy which seems to have hitherto served only as a shelter to superstition and a cover to absurdity and error!” (Hume)

abstruse = “hard to understand”; “secret or hidden”
« Last Edit: July 09, 2014, 08:32:45 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

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Nation of One

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #16 on: July 10, 2014, 10:15:11 am »
Just a note: You might have noticed "Honorary Gortbuster" under your id ... I am going to remove that ... also, I will not refer to myself as a gortbuster.  I am a nobody along with the gorts who fancy themselves somebodies.

In an attempt to get rid of the silly "Jr. Member" and "newbie" tags which are generated by post counts, I just altered those tags to more interesting labels, like "Escapee from the Gort Mind" or "Underground Renegade" ... what's after that ... "Philosopher of the Void" ... It's just some silly ****.

You see, I am hating on the group mind, so I woke up this morning saying to myself, "No groups on the message board" ... we are not a "group" or a "religion" ... but simply a "sphere" or "orbit" ... like the rings of Saturn.  Maybe I should name the message board "A Strange Orbit" rather than "Metaphysical Mutants ...
« Last Edit: July 10, 2014, 03:06:10 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #17 on: July 10, 2014, 03:04:41 pm »
Quote from: Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann
The history of the world is that given by natural science, and particular emphasis is laid upon the Darwinian theory of evolution. Humanity developed from the animal, and with the appearance of the first human being the deliverance of the world is in sight, for only in the human being does consciousness reach such height and complexity as to act independently of the Will. As consciousness develops, there is a constantly growing recognition of the fact that deliverance must lie in a return to the original state of non-willing, which means the non-existence of all individuals and the potentiality of the Unconscious.   When the greater part of the Will in existence is so far enlightened by reason as to perceive the inevitable misery of existence, a collective effort to will non-existence will be made, and the world will relapse into nothingness, the Unconscious into quiescence.
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #18 on: July 20, 2014, 11:13:42 am »
Quote from: Thomas Ligotti
Consciousness is an existential liability, as every pessimist agrees – a blunder of blind nature, according to Zapffe, that has taken humankind down a black hole of logic. To make it through this life, we must make believe that we are not what we are – contradictory beings whose continuance only worsens our plight as mutants who embody the contorted logic of a paradox. To correct this blunder, we should desist from procreating. What could be more judicious or more urgent, existentially speaking, than our self-administered oblivion?

The horror of philosophy ...

Quote from: Eugene Thacker
The idea of an American pessimism is an oxymoron. In a culture that thrives on entrepreneurialism, pharmacology and self-help, ‘pessimism’ is simply a fancy name for a bad mood. In a culture that prizes the can-do, self-starter attitude, to be a pessimist is simply to be a complainer; if you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem. To live in such a culture is to constantly live in the shadow of an obligatory optimism, a novel type of coercion that is pathologised early on in child education in the assessment: ‘Does not like to play with others.’

No wonder one who has developed a pessimistic stance tends to isolate in such a culture.  Pharmacology and self-help push obligatory optimism.  Even if one is close to another, if one expresses their view that all living creatures are a brotherhood of suffering, one is frequently accused of "spreading misery" - as if the one pointing these things out is to blame for the suffering ... So, rather than be obligated to be optimistic and hopeful, the pessimist in corporate culture learns to keep these conclusions to himself (or herself) lest be labeled a whiner or "emo".
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #19 on: July 20, 2014, 01:00:45 pm »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #20 on: July 20, 2014, 02:57:23 pm »
I like when Gary lets out a spontaneous chuckle as though he is getting a kick out of hearing the things he's saying ... I think he just has confidence in his brain as a tool for figuring out what's going on, and he lets it rip. 

Gary:  "You **** theist!"

That is very funny, indeed.  I have to say, Gary doesn't pull any punches.

"Atheist 2.0" ----> Atheist 1.0 replaces God with Nature. Atheist 2.0 sees Nature as a blind demon.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2014, 11:31:46 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #21 on: July 21, 2014, 03:23:45 am »
If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear-stained eyes
Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet.
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #22 on: July 21, 2014, 05:53:21 am »
I like the way Roger Waters mocks figure-heads of [corporate State] power as vain children playing with toys.   I always admired the deep thinking tortured artist type reflected in the "Pink Floyd" characters of this world ... the detached individual in his/her own orbit with that space-cadet glow ... even if he/she is on dope ... better to be a spaced-out introvert scribbling in a diary than to be a tool for the corporate State hiding in a fox-hole ... scribbling in a diary.

Do you know that JD Salinger wrote the first 10 chapters of Catcher in the Rye while in a fox-hole (in World War II)?   He brought a type-writer down there into his hiding place.  Imagine that.  While he was typing away from down in his hole, his girl-friend back home had just turned 18 and decided to marry Charlie Chaplin, a famous old Hollywood actor.  This might be one of the reasons why Holden Caulfield hates Hollywood so much. 

I hate war films.  I hate police/detective shows.  How many gorts get their personalities directly from TV and movies?

I don't think Schopenhauer (or Roger Waters, for that matter) could ever have been turned into an obedient soldier following orders ... or a member of a gang following orders ... or a cop following orders ... or a corporate "associate" following orders ...

Isn't it enough to make you puke to witness someone like Gene Simmons (a so-called rock god) waving a flag and lionizing soldiers who follow orders? 

Kurt Vonnegut Jr was a soldier in World War II.  He objected by refusing to carry a gun.  That takes courage, to stand up to the herd, the group mind.  Just because one finds oneself in the Machine does not mean one is a cog in that machine. 

"How long would authority exist, if not for the willingness of the masses to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen."

Most the "characters" I admire, whether philosopher Schopenhauer or musician Waters, are those who are extremely detached from the hive, the herd, the Machine ... who stand on the sidelines criticizing this Machine and pitying the poor idiots who worship it, who are proud to serve it, and who internalize its values.


Here are the people Waters mentions by name in the song to send to the Fletcher Memorial Home:

US President Ronald Reagan
US Secretary of State Alexander Haig
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin
UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
Revered Ian Paisley of Northern Ireland
US Senator Joseph McCarthy
US President Richard Nixon




To this day, the knuckle-dragging gorillas have more respect for a Hitler than for a Schopenhauer ... they respect bombs and brute force ... but don't these primates understand that bombs and bullets and prisons can't destroy a single "idea"? 

A seven nation army can't destroy an idea ... not one single thought.

In fact, antinatalism takes the power back by saying, "No, not one more generation.  We shall not farm babies for the State."

These corporate slaves and the masters they suck up to have no power over those who refuse to participate ... who resign ... who walk away from the quarry ... who lie down and sleep ... who take to the hills ... who become a burden to the war-machine economy ... who just can't seem to "get with the program" and GET BACK TO WORK!  The trains must run on time!  We have to round up all the kiddies for indoctrination and flag saluting exercises! 

Yes ... now haul those kids into school so we can teach them about how lucky they are to be free ... free to be slaves ...

« Last Edit: July 21, 2014, 06:38:54 am by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #23 on: July 21, 2014, 09:13:10 am »
People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #24 on: July 21, 2014, 09:18:16 am »
“It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #25 on: July 21, 2014, 09:38:01 am »
I did not know that about Saligner. That's interesting.Something to think about. Yes,I think a lot of gorts try to copy the authority figures they see in the movies.War movies are the worst.Movies in general are also inferior to the written word.The world has always been full of slaves & that's how its always going to be.Physical slaves,Economic slaves.Mental Slaves.

I hope a Spartacus rises again.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #26 on: July 21, 2014, 10:33:58 am »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #27 on: July 21, 2014, 01:07:15 pm »
"Glorification of Nonsense ..."

The guy whose video Gary is critiquing is like, "If life is torture, give me more, baby!"

Gary tells the guy, "Maybe you should wake up in Indonesia."   :)

Gary calls him "a kind of a fat worm"  - a kind of chubby gort?

**** these deluded gorts chasing the pink balloon.  At least have a little shame, right?  It's not a party, but a massacre, a feeding frenzy ... four billion years of eating and Shitting and **** and rotting in the earth ... not a trip on a yellow submarine with dancing bears and entertainers ... horns, parades, fan-fare ... consumption and replicating.  Consuming and Shitting - with the stars!  Pooping with the stars!

That deluded Shithead who is talking about how great HIS life is basically belongs in a sandbox with some toys ... or maybe he might prefer a real twuck with some motorcycles to tug around ... and a motorboat to pway wiff.  Wonderbra.


I have to be honest that those Inmendum videos used to frighten me, but now it is more clear to me that he just doesn't pull any punches when it comes to busting gorts, whereas I might tend to be more gentle and merciful with my words.

When we call others gorts, it is not the same as calling them worms.  We're all worms.  We are tubes that suck food into an orifice and defecate the waste out of another orifice at the other end of the tube.  We glorify this process with myths and fables to make it seem grander than it actually is.  We can't help it that we've been born into it, but some of us are trying to see it for what it is ... like some weird alien creature stroking one of its tentacles (testicles?) rather than seeing it as, say, "Soul Train" ... :-\

There is something inherent in LIFE which makes it creepy and weird ... The snake devouring itself ... "highly evolved worms with more tools to do more wormy things with" ...

Funny **** ... not tragedy, but comedy ... not heroic tragedy, but pathetic comedy.  Now that I think about it, I think Schopenhauer suggested this in the fourth and final book of The World As Will and Representation.   Hold on, because I am reading it for the Nth time, and I swear I remember reading something of the sort just last night ... Let me check.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2014, 03:12:01 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

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Nation of One

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #28 on: July 21, 2014, 03:34:56 pm »
Page 322 of WWR v1:

The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.  For the doings and worries of the day, the restless mockeries of the moment, the desires and fears of the week, the mishaps of every hour, are all brought about by chance that is always bent on some mischievous trick; they are nothing but scenes from a comedy.  The never-fulfilled wishes, the frustrated efforts, the hopes mercilessly blighted by fate, the unfortunate mistakes of the whole life, with increasing suffering and death at the end, always give us a tragedy.  Thus, as if fate wished to add mockery to the misery of our existence, our life must contain all the woes of tragedy, and yet we cannot even assert the dignity of tragic characters, but, in the broad detail of life, are inevitably the foolish characters of a comedy.

Yep ... that was it.  As these mythological/fable fairy tale creatures called "men" or "human beings," life is tragic ... but as sophisticated tubes filled with phlegm, excrement, blood, and god knows what else (worms doing wormy things), our fates are filled with the comical. 

We are life's dupes.


Page 322 of WWR v1: comedy

It is great to be able to think AGAINST ourselves.  Thinking against oneself means being able to see the ridiculous nature of our predicament without feeling destroyed by it.

Going through some material at whywork.org/forum, I came across something I wrote:

When Jesus says, "He who drinks of my mouth will become as I am, and I am he," that's Gnosticism, that's Buddhism! We're all Buddha-beings. We're all Christ-beings.

Now I can say, we're all worm-beings.  Christ and Buddha are may just be fables describing the inner subjectivity of the creature made of tubes and bad chemicals ... we are not superior to worms, just more complex.   If someone doesn't get this, there is no sense explaining it. 

In a way, we all have this potential (He who drinks of my mouth will become as I am, and I am he) ... I mean, that's why I keep returning to Schopenhauer's words, right?  I want my mind to develop in that direction, the direction his mind was leaning toward.  Many people seem to enjoy listening to this Gary dude give his take on things ... and, sure enough, they may appreciate their own inner protagonist start to resemble Gary's attitude ... and that's alright ...

When the mythological or historical Jesus says, "He who drinks of my mouth will become as I am, and I am he," he is stating a psychological/social fact ... and the same goes for everyone of us, worm or not.   

Anyway ... food for thought.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2014, 04:30:53 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Re: Anti-natalism?
« Reply #29 on: July 22, 2014, 12:35:47 am »
DNA= Blind Will(The Thing in itself)
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.