Greetings to Holden, Raul, Ibra, Silenus, and others who may check in here on a regular basis.
There is a luxury of being loser (I think Mr Hentrich mentioned that in a post but i can't locate). Unfortunately, I can not afford that, too late for the party. I faked being normal for so long, but my cover is cracking by refusing to get married at such age of mid thirties. here is in middle east, is very late age to get married and shunned socially.
- I tried to get back to study math/calculus but I think I don't have the capacity to study or learn any new thing. I can not retain much nowadays. actually I tried many things but nothing interests me to study,learn or do.
Ibra, I think you may be thinking of the thread, "
The Benefits of Being a Nobody/Loser," specifically:
I'll start out by saying that one of the main benefits of embracing being a nobody is that it liberates you from many of the petty societal pressures of existence. You know, this is very related to "
The Tyranny of Public Opinion."
And here I am digging, scratching at the surface of something sublime that might turn out to be quite significant: there are benefits to being in a position to actually enjoy one's own company tinkering with things others would find "boring". There are benefits to being a socially inept misfit.
I recently read somewhere that we now live in a world where we’re connected to everything except ourselves. Ibra, when you say "I tried to get back to study math/calculus but I think I don't have the capacity to study or learn any new thing," maybe you might find an approach that suits you. I found that investigating the theory of limits (sequences and infinite series) can give deeper insight into the foundations of calculus. It is not always best to study more and more advanced subjects. There is a time when you might want to deepen your understanding of concepts you have already been exposed to, return to them with a fresh mind, a beginner's mind.
I sympathize with your depressive and dejected feelings, and even though I have made this personal commitment to continue to study in this manner, there are days, especially in the mornings and late at night, that I cannot help but entertain serious doubts about just how much I am retaining. I am older, so I see clearly that, just exposing oneself to the curriculum of the undergraduate does not guarantee that a great deal will be understood and retained. The weird thing is that it is possible that what I take to be a minimal understanding may be far greater than if I had taken no interest whatsoever. Maybe all this studying will give me a great deal to think about as I age. Or maybe the knowledge gained will just make me more bitter. I would like to stumble upon a way of life which allows me to reject society's wealth-warped values. I want to be like the prisoner in the dungeon who Schopenhauer mentions, the one who has a richer inner life than the miserable prince.
This also has to do with "Nothing that is so, is so."
As a man who has had intellectual interests since youth, you can imagine that, throughout my life, I have had to find some kind of balance between "how I might appear in the eyes of others in society" (a man who lacks the subservient and obedient qualities sought for in
employees) and the man I really am, the human organism who hides curled up under afghan, the creature who prepares and eats meals, the creature who has fears about the future, the creature who avoids alcohol even though it knows this substance is a pain reliever (my behavior is very unpredictable on the stuff, and at this stage of my life, I am tired of trouble with authorities). I have learned how to get through the night, no matter how anxiety-filled. I have learned to embrace the morning without hitting the liquor store. Still, there are times I wish I could keep a cannabis plant ... just for "greeting the day."
Finally, you raise a question and make a connection I had not made before, that between the idea of a gort and Dostoevsky's "primary cause."
I think you make the connection here because the dull and narrow-minded (ingenuous people and active figures)
mistaking the secondary cause for the primary is identical to the gort
mistaking perception for reality. The gort thinks that things are exactly as they appear to be.
The leaders of nations and states train armies of men to carry out orders. There is a chain of command. Marching is one of the ways in which men are trained NOT TO THINK. It is quite possible that the artificial hierarchies of status imposed upon individuals by their respective society reverses the natural order of the universe. That is, exceptional or extraordinary individuals may find themselves at the mercy of the dull and narrow minded who love to have the unconventional at their mercy.
Related to this is the thread, "
Mental Illness as Rebellion Against SocietyOur rebellions are often passive and disorganized, and routinely futile and self-destructive.It has been my experience that many anti-authoritarians labeled with psychiatric diagnoses usually don’t reject all authorities, simply those they’ve assessed to be illegitimate ones, which just happens to be a great deal of society’s authorities.
I know we live in a time when so many essays written end on a good note. Maybe what is happening here, since there are only a small handful of us posting, is that, for whatever reason, we do not feel obligated to always "end on a positive note." Since we are under no obligation to "think positive"
, we might allow ourselves to consider the possibility that we are in fact "mentally ill" - that is, we are experiencing psychological pain, existential loneliness, and all the various terrors, fears, and anxiety that go hand in hand with being a living, breathing organism that is compelled to eat food in order to remain a living, breathing organism. Many of us continue to live long after we have realized just how unpleasant the scenario is as a whole. The admission is not worth the cost. We might as well face the brute fact that long lasting happiness is not even a remote possibility. We have to learn little things about ourselves so as not to become panic-stricken when in the grip of familiar
weird moods that we call "being in a funk."
I'd given senor Raul "farm analogy" a deep thought and I presume it is literal. I have given my home country government around 10K USD to waive the military conscription. this sum is saved with 4 years of work. we are just serfs, born to be exploited and then tossed off by the masters.
Even worse than being exploited by the masters is being abused by fellow-serfs. There is a Spanish word that I can't recall, maybe Raul knows it, that means "poor who rob other poor" (like taking someone's wallet who is on the ground just hit by a car). I think I learned the word while reading Under the Volcano, a book written by Malcolm Lowry, who wrote the book when he went to Mexico to drink himself to death.
This ties together with the point Silenus made concerning what Cioran may have meant by "
Only one thing matters: learning to be the loser."
I think what he was getting at is something similar to the Stoics "premeditatio malorum," essentially, meditation on the worst possible outcomes of any future scenario. Elsewhere in "Trouble" he mentions Epictetus and Ecclesiastes and they summarize similar thoughts: prepare for the worst, for ruin, and accept futility and fate.
Learning to be the loser: preparation for disaster; acceptance of futility and strife.
Holden had his own take on what might be meant by "
learning to be the loser."
Of course, being a "loser" means different things in different cultures. It is sickening to witness how many people in the United States judge themselves harshly by their "lack of resources," as though simply being hungry and homeless is evidence of deserving to be shunned by society. After all, we are each a burden to ourselves. Many lives are also not only a burden to themselves, but a burden to others as well.
I also have thought a great deal about Raul's farm/zoo analogy, and I agree that we can take this analogy literally. We are each these creatures ... each alone making their way through the darkness.
I think that what Silenus sees in Cioran's statement cranks up the idea of being a loser to cosmic proportions. Those who consider themselves "winners" will find it much more difficult to learn to be the loser, in this cosmic sense. In having been born, we have been thrown into a predicament. The need to eat food is an imposition. Let's look at our predicament honestly without becoming too depressed over low-social status.
This can be a painfully lonely life. The thing is, though, who is to say that those who are a part of a "couple" are not also lonely? Loneliness is subtle. We all experience that special loneliness in crowds.
It may have taken me an hour or so by the time I finished writing this. I would go back and forth. I did not want to just cut it short. Even doing something as simple as posting a message on this board took me having to decide not to study any more math tonight. It's one or the other, not both. I'll be lucky if I fall asleep by 4AM. That's how I get when I write, when I decide to let it flow ... Tomorrow is another day, they say. That's the thing about math. You will never be finished studying mathematics. I know you have lost interest for now. Your interest may resurface in some other point in time, maybe when you are less distraught and distressed. I understand that it is difficult to commit to something like the study of mathematics (since it takes so many years/decades, a lifetime) when you are questioning whether or not life itself is even worth living.
We each know that this life is difficult. We are living it each moment. We don't know why we exist in the first place. Maybe there doesn't have to be a reason. How do we prepare for the worst? How do we prepare for ruin? How do we accept futility and fate?
Can we even imagine what it means to be absolutely nothing?
Learning to be the loser: preparation for disaster; acceptance of futility and strife. This means that I shall not be surprised if I do a little tossing and turning at night from primordial anxieties. It means I shall not be too disturbed if I wake up feeling like I don't want to "do this anymore."
May our spirits be renewed. I know this may sound corny, but it does happen, every so often, that after a very restful sleep, that you gather enough energy and enthusiasm to go through the motions and endure another day. We never know when our time is up, and it might all pass like a dream. It is highly likely, in fact, that Schopenhauer is right on the money when he imagines that the hour of death will be similar to waking from a nightmare only to discover that it was phantasmagoria.
I know that, with the mighty oceans, the heavy winds, etc, we cannot doubt the reality of the physical universe as an objective brute fact. Our stomachs gnaw at our insides demanding sustenance. It is all a very "physical" phenomena - and yet the physical is representation ... in our heads. How is it that our heads are in this world, but that this world is in our heads?
At the moment of our death, will this life seem to have been just a dream?
This is a significant question. For, if it is so, that this life passes like a dream and is total phantasmagoria (an exhibition of optical effects and illusions), then maybe this explains the smile on the faces of the deceased. Maybe there really is a sense of relief, that the lone individuated creature was more akin to wind and rain than the narratives we tell ourselves about who and what we are.
May you find some peace and renewal in good sleep.
- Mike