{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

General Category => What Now? => Topic started by: Nation of One on December 26, 2015, 10:31:07 am

Title: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on December 26, 2015, 10:31:07 am
When someone asks me how I'm doing, I think I'll just respond with "mildly depressed".

If they ask me if I am an atheist, I'll say, "Most likely.  I like to refer to myself either as a Depressive Realist or a Cosmic Pessimist.  I don't know.  Maybe Comic Pessimist is more accurate."

 :-\
Title: Re: Cosmic or Comic Pessimism ?
Post by: Holden on December 27, 2015, 01:26:17 pm
I don't think I could maintain even a little bit of cheerfulness if I were younger and was still deluded about "getting somewhere" with my studies.

While I am younger,I will try not to get deluded about "getting somewhere" with my studies.
Title: Re: Cosmic or Comic Pessimism ?
Post by: Nation of One on December 27, 2015, 03:13:28 pm
My intention is not to discourage you from your studies, but to encourage you to pursue your studies without regard to being acknowledged by society.

This is just from my own experience.
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on January 01, 2016, 07:13:54 pm
" ... it is often impossible to separate a 'bad mood' from a philosophical proposition (and do not all philosophies stem from a bad mood)?"

~ Eugene Thacker, Cosmic Pessimism c.2015


Here's that essay I pointed to while researching Zapffe:  What You Call Depression I Call the Truth (http://www.vice.com/read/what-you-call-depression-i-call-the-truth-309)

Quote from: Nat (JQ)
The forms of madness which hide madness from the mad are considered sane, despite the obvious insanity of self-delusion. The forms of madness which recognize madness are considered insane, despite the obvious sanity of telling it like it is.

I wrote a little note yesterday which might sum it up:  Oh, I’m crazy, alright. In a world as backward as this one, I worry about the sanity of anyone who isn’t crazy.
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on January 03, 2016, 10:40:22 pm
What I have tried to do for years is to try to be brutally honest with myself.  This may not make for very exciting literature.  It may even cultivate a depressive mood "disorder".

The kinds of things I try to understand may aggravate this sense of futility, and if this is the case, rather than just lose interest in everything, I want to be able to forge ahead, even at a turtle's pace.  My keeping track of daily existence in my notebooks, along with notes on what I am studying, is all I produce. 

I would like to keep it this way.  If one finds one's life ridiculous, and one finds highways, wars over fossil fuels, and TV Land celebrity culture a kind of nightmarish carnival, there may be a method available to us to view our daily existence as some kind of existential novel/film ...

Have you ever found yourself reflecting on python snakes, sharks, poisonous insects, psychopathic human beings, extreme weather, deformed births, and the countless horrors taking place at any given moment?  And then there's just plain living.  What a drag!

How weird I must seem to those who get a thrill over stupid sporting events ... that I am excited over a mathematics textbook or a little book called "Every Cradle is a Grave:  Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide".

I remember when I was 14 years old reading Ira Levin's THIS PERFECT DAY.  I was fascinated.  I had never read a book like that.  I always wondered why Hollywood wouldn't touch it ... maybe it was just too much like our reality ... reality is not America's cup of tea.

I also remember reading Hesse's Steppenwolf when I was young.  Has it not been referred to as autobiographical fiction?

Isn't Louis-Ferdinand Celine's Journey to the End of the Night also kind of autobiographical?

Well, now I am reaching the exact age that the protagonist, Harry Haller in Steppenwolf, was.  He was determined to end his life on his 50th birthday.  Can I really have reached the age of the Steppenwolf ... I am similar in many ways to Harry Haller, I think.

So I will keep scribbling my notes in a private notebook the way Harry Haller did, the way countless others do.  Even if not so many keep an actual notebook, they keep one in their heads.  Each morning and each night, there is how we really think and feel, and only we know what it is we truly think and feel.  The thing is, I think I get actual relief from writing.
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Holden on January 05, 2016, 03:23:47 am
Have you ever found yourself reflecting on python snakes, sharks, poisonous insects, psychopathic human beings, extreme weather, deformed births, and the countless horrors taking place at any given moment?  And then there's just plain living.

Yes.That Thou Art.I could have been a snake eating my own young ones.Gorts think they could have been the guy who is going to French Riviera with his young comely bride.
I reject them both.
I wonder if like the Jews who write commentaries on Old Testament, I could spend my whole life writing about WWR.
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on January 05, 2016, 06:33:53 am
Quote from: Eugene Thacker
The Ruins of a Book

Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation is one of the great failures of systematic philosophy.  What begins with the shimmering architectonics of Kant ends up crumbling into dubious arguments, irascible indictments against humanity, nocturnal evocations of the vanity of all being, cryptic quotes from the Upanishads, and stark, aphoristic phrases, entombed within dense prose, prose that trails off in meditations on nothingness.  Schopenhauer, the depressive Kant.

“Your book is a failure.” —- “No doubt, but you are forgetting that I wanted it to be one, and that it could hardly be a success otherwise.”  ~ Cioran

Quote from: Holden
I wonder if like the Jews who write commentaries on Old Testament, I could spend my whole life writing about WWR.

If you do that, I would be very interested in which parts of Schopenhauer's opus speak to you in particular, since you are such a forgiving reader - as far as having insight into one's inner rage, frustration, and disappointment, how one must act as if it is a perfectly acceptable activity to critique this contrivance of horror.

I was encouraged when you innocently confessed to being put off or confused by the very part of Schopenhauer's work, the beginning of WWR, with its shimmering architectonics of Kant, where he demands his readers read Kant first.  But Kant is not so interesting as Schopenhauer.  He doesn't seem to reveal that inner tension ...

I say I was encouraged, because you appear to have been attracted to the very things Eugene Thacker considers one of the great failures of systematic philosophy, and I am curious to see if we are attracted to the same elements of Schopenhauer's opus.  I wonder if we both find this great failure of systematic philosophy Schopenhauer's greatest, albeit accidental, success. 

It would be thrilling to witness you spending your life thinking and writing about those parts of WWR that crumble into dubious arguments, irascible indictments against humanity, nocturnal evocations of the vanity of all being, cryptic quotes from the Upanishads, and stark, aphoristic phrases, entombed within dense prose, prose that trails off in meditations on nothingness.

HT aka Holden Caulfield II - the depressive Nietzsche of India ...

You see, even as you appear young as an individual, you are culturally far older and, I suspect, far wiser than Nietzsche.  Looking back only as far as the Greeks or the Hebrews is a joke of cosmic proportions.  You, Holden, have far deeper roots, and you might be able to discern just where Schopenhauer (let's call him an accidental genius of European culture) was articulating truths that far more ancient beings figured out long ago.   

Schopenhauer was well aware of this, and I always respected him for pointing out, that while "modern man" is impressed with the "new" ... our species may have reached its heights closer to its origins, and now we are in a decadent phase, drowning in stupidity, despite our technological sophistication.  Perhaps these are symptoms of the great tiredness.

I rose at 4AM this morning.  It is 12 degrees Fahrenheit = -11 Celsius

The weather mocks my words ... Maybe this is what the ancient Hebrews (the people of the book) mistook for ... that word they were not supposed to say ...

solitude (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmV8niW5GXs)

Now, there is something I want to do before I carry my carcass to day jail.  From my experience with the Internet over the years, obscure yet great little message boards are always disappearing while commercialized corporate websites pollute cyberspace like so many strip malls in the "outer realm".   So, I want to get some quotes from the blog post I linked to above (http://www.vice.com/read/what-you-call-depression-i-call-the-truth-309).

I will start a separate entry, forever organizing our chaos.  Chaos is ok.  It is the nature of our thinking.
Title: A Post By So-Sad-Today
Post by: Nation of One on January 05, 2016, 06:56:41 am
I want to lift the text of a post by So-Sad-Today just for posterity.  I will not have time to comment, but would like to make it a part of this thread.

Quote from: So Sad Today
What You Call Depression I Call the Truth

 Does the truth really set you free, or does it only f-u-c-k you up? This is what I'm wondering as my psychiatrist and I continue to adjust my meds, looking for the right combination to keep an existential doom from eclipsing me. Simultaneously, I'm working with a cognitive-behavioral therapist on the "meaning" that I assign these feelings. She's trying to help me be less afraid of them.

I'm still afraid. But I've begun to think that these feelings are trying to tell me something pure and true—a message from my soul about the way I live my life and the nature of life itself. Primarily, they are telling me that the way I've been living is no longer working.

It is said that what we resist persists, and I have been trying to suppress these feelings my whole life. But only recently have I begun to really look at what they are—all of the layers that comprise what the Norwegian metaphysician, Peter Wessel Zapffe, describes as "cosmic panic." Now it seems that I can no longer ignore what part of me has always known, which is that life is absurd and terrifying. Perhaps we should be afraid of the truth?

In his 1933 essay " The Last Messiah," Zapffe describes depression as the over-evolution of the mind. He compares the mind of the anxious or depressed person to a particular type of deer from paleontological times, who were thought to have died off after acquiring overly-heavy horns.

"In depressive states," he writes, "the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendor pinning its bearer to the ground."

 He also conveys the idea that the mind of the anxious or depressed person may be more awake, or connected to a deeper truth, than that of other people.

"Depression, 'fear of life,' refusal of nourishment and so on are invariably taken as signs of a pathological state and treated thereafter," he writes. "Often, however, such phenomena are messages from a deeper, more immediate sense of life, bitter fruits of a geniality of thought or feeling at the root of antibiological tendencies. It is not the soul being sick, but its protection failing, or else being rejected because it is experienced— correctly—as a betrayal of ego's highest potential."

So why isn't everyone suffering from depression? What is this "protection" that I, like most people, have been able to cobble together throughout much of my life? And what is it that makes a person suddenly, and scarily, see through it?

This protection, as Wessel describes it, is composed of four defense mechanisms: isolation, anchoring, distraction, and sublimation.

Isolation, according to Wessel, is not the solitary confinement of the self (though I do a lot of that). Rather, it is the banishing of scary thoughts about the nature of existence, meaninglessness, personal freedom, and death, into the periphery of the mind. I used to be better at this maybe? Or I used to be able to fake it better, especially when it came to what Wessel calls the general code of "mutual silence" in which we don't bring up scary thoughts in our daily, superficial interactions with other people.

As a poet, I've been able to relegate my exploration of these thoughts and feelings to the realm of my art. But lately, it's been harder and harder for me to keep my social mask on in mundane interactions. It physically hurts me now to interact at this level, to have a "pleasant" yet superficial conversation with another person, because I wonder: Why aren't you consumed by these thoughts and feelings? Are you not devoured by fear? If not, then what is wrong with me? And if so, then why are we both denying the existence of this fear and talking about bull-sh-it? I feel like we should all be hugging and crying, or something.

The second defense mechanism, anchoring, is to identify oneself with various social constructs: one's family role, job, religion, morality, position in society, physicality, goals. When we anchor ourselves to these external identities, we are able to construct "walls around the liquid fray of consciousness." The potential for existential crisis then occurs either when these ideas of who we are become opposed to one another, or, when we lose them entirely: a job, a loved one, or another external element that helped us to define who we are.

One loss that I've experienced recently is the desire to impress certain people, or seduce them with my achievements. One might think this is a good thing. But it's left me with a feeling of meaninglessness.

I've achieved a lot lately in terms of creative goals. But now I'm eluded as to why it should even matter. I feel like, well, if this person I had a crush on is now blocked on Facebook, he can no longer see what I've achieved. So what's really the point of achieving it?

Is it possible for me to be happy for myself in my creative accomplishments? I'm ashamed to say that the answer, for now, still looks to be no. The accomplishments feel hollow and pointless. In the face of death, perhaps they are. Even the work I do to help others—the girls I mentor and the dog I rescued—I seem to deconstruct. My new obsession is that the girls and the dog all eat animals. So while I am helping them with their suffering, they are causing suffering for other beings. Thus, I am only enabling more suffering. Also, I eat McDonald's sometimes too.

I'm finding the same lack of refuge in distractions that once protected me from feelings of doom. There are ways I've compulsively busied myself so I didn't have to think about deeper questions. I obsessed about my physical appearance, love, achievements. I waxed body parts, ****ed with my eating, and waited for texts. I've never been good at watching TV, but now I feel like I'm suffocating the moment I even turn it on. It seems like a lot of these tactics are being stripped away by some unseen force.

Perhaps this is what they mean on the depression questionnaire when they say, "Have you lost interest in activities you once enjoyed?" They say it like losing interest is a bad thing. But what if the truth is that those activities were always stupid, meaningless, and destructive? What if I am getting closer to a higher truth?

One thing that does keep me going is sublimation: the channeling of these experiences into this column. The act of writing provides a meaning and a framework to scary thoughts and feelings. It makes them feel less bottomless. But what if bottomlessness is the truth? Why am I so quick to be afraid of what is real?

Something inside of me says I should I be running as fast as I can from an awareness of meaninglessness, death, endless questioning. Another part of me says no: you should follow the destruction of what you think you know. There will be something higher on the other side.

I will print this out and go over it while caught up in the web of the Thought Police with their artificial authority and misguided, overbearing concern about how I'm "feeling".   ::) >:(
Title: Schopenhauer Contra Nietzsche
Post by: Holden on January 05, 2016, 04:44:24 pm
Schopenhauer defiantly faced reality and slew all the bull****.
Nietzsche was a confused child.
He didn't understand that Schopenhauer had laid the foundation for truth.
N. built ignorance on Schopenhauer's foundation and claimed to have surpassed him.
What a fool!
He single handedly undermined all the work of Schopenhauer, and perpetuated ignorance.
'Will to Power'? Ha!
(In fairness, you lost your mind too young. Perhaps you would have one day grown to be a man.)

The N. drones don't understand Schopenhauer, or they're too scared to embrace him.
I accept Schopenhauer with open heart.
**** his debasers. Cowards, the lot of them.
Schopenhauer was right, and his Will to Live was misrepresented.
The only integrity found within N., are all elements of Schopenhauer.
N. piggy backed on Schopenhauer, and was an accomplice to centuries of ignorance.
Schopenhauer had it right.
Schopenhauer was rejected by society.They waited until his death, before they derailed his thought.
But the truth doesn't die.
N.'s actions are of an irrelevant child, misunderstanding the genius of a man.
https://youtu.be/R5GFgulByuM
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on January 05, 2016, 06:19:43 pm
I have had similar feelings concerning Nietzsche.  I was put off from the start by how he turned on Schopenhauer ... but, alas ... I would then find the shelves of book stores lined with Nietzsche's books ... and I was not interested too much in Heidegger since he promoted Nietzsche's work but ignored Schopenhauer.  Shameful.

For Nietzsche to present himself as having surpassed Schopenhauer with the use of clever sayings,  I pity the fool.  As you so brutally point out, he is a boy whistling in the dark.  For his entire life he was haunted by Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation.  For us, reading Shopenhauer's opus is a consolation.  We know truth when we hear it!  We stand in truth!

Quote
N. built ignorance on Schopenhauer's foundation and claimed to have surpassed him.

What a fool!

He single handedly undermined all the work of Schopenhauer, and perpetuated ignorance.

'Will to Power'? Ha!

Anyway, I was a little more frustrated than usual today by the mandatory and redundant "positive thinking" therapy-as-punishment.   When I returned to the Mother's domicile, the hot water heater was leaking into the bathroom.  I had just received Colin Feltham's Keeping Ourselves in the Dark as well as Sarah Perry's Every Cradle is a Grave:  Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide.  All I wanted to do is read some honest assessments of our pitiful reality, but .... well, I turned off the electric to the water heater, shut off the water, and am draining the tank with a hose (that was packed with ice) into the tub.  What the hose doesn't drain, I'll do with a pan.  It's a wonderful life.   ::)

Also, there are other problems having to do with banks and loans and losing house, but let's not discuss such things.  Those kinds of worries will cause premature heart failure.  I know, it is tempting, isn't it?   I'm not too keen on worrying myself to death ...

I think your rant against Nietzsche was justified and understandable.  I too am a Schopenhauer disciple.   I won't refer to you as the depressive Nietzsche of India.  I see that that might be insulting considering how he turned Schopenhauer on his head ... Will-to-Power - jeezuz.

Maybe by honoring Schopenhauer, we might shame Nietzsche.  Maybe one day we might work on a book together ... or, we'll just work it out here and ignore the book publishing industry.  Let them continue peddling their self-help, religion, positive psychology, and ... energy drain ... We will just work out what we can here.  We'll do what we can, and that's all we can ask of ourselves. 

Thank you for your bold honesty.  I guess I sometimes pity Nietzsche too much.  Evidently, you are taking your gloves off. 

As frustrated and "shaky" as I am, I am relieved to have a couple books that could serve as an antidote to some of the bulls-h-i-t I am fed on a daily basis as "therapy" ...

Now our attitudes can be criminalized!   Talk about the thought police.  Holy F*ck, it is infuriating.
____________________________________________
AFTERTHOUGHT:  At least the tank is drained and did not flood the unit.  We'll call a plumber in the morning and pray it doesn't need to be replaced.
______________________________________________

Ah, those books came just in time.

Maybe these books will keep me calm tomorrow.  It is better I quietly fester than to become too vocal about my disgruntled attitude.   The demon was on a roll today.  Old Captain Howdy made an appearance ... laughing up a storm ... but it was angry laughter.  How to explain?  Just that.  Angry laughter.
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Holden on January 06, 2016, 02:01:19 pm
I came across this today on a philosophy forum:

I'm not aware of too many seminars on Schopenhauer being offered, but my university and my former university (I transferred) both held Hegel seminars, which could be a reason Hegel philosophy continues to propagate. Personally, as a philosophy major during undergrad, the only experience I ever had with Schopenhauer was through Nietzsche. He talked about him so much I figured I would give him a read. No professor ever taught his philosophy. Again, this is the opposite for Hegel. So, in short, in my experiences, Hegel is more popular
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on January 06, 2016, 06:16:10 pm
Oh, there certainly is something fishy in Denmark.

This is why I would never, and I mean NEVER suggest choosing Philosophy as a major to study in the University.

It is best to just study Schopenhauer and do your own thinking.  I had taken some philosophy courses to fulfil Humanities requirements, and the professor confessed to me that I taught him about Schopenhauer.  He really appreciated my term papers.  Years later, he happened to have my nephew as a student, and my nephew wrote a paper on the various ideas Freud used that were obviously spin-offs of Schopenhauer's philosophy, such as the unconscious (being the Will). 

Remember the Critique of Power Thread (http://whybother.freeboards.org/what-now/hegel/msg848/#msg848)?

Quote from: Bryan Magee
Schopenhauer despised Fichte and Schelling, but he hated Hegel and described him as ‘that clumsy and nauseating charlatan, that pernicious person, who completely disorganized and ruined the minds of a whole generation.’    On almost any square foot of ground in the landscape of his writings a geyser of wrath may suddenly erupt, spewing out imprecations against the same three men. ‘What was senseless and without meaning at once took refuge in obscure exposition and language. Fichte was the first to grasp and make use of this privilege; Schelling at best equalled him in this, and a host of hungry scribblers without intellect or honesty soon surpassed them both. But the greatest effrontery in serving up sheer nonsense, in scrabbling together senseless and maddening webs of words, such as had previously been heard only in madhouses, finally appeared in Hegel…’

Hegel, said Schopenhauer, was ‘a commonplace, inane, loathsome, repulsive and ignorant charlatan, who with unparalleled effrontery compiled a system of crazy nonsense that was trumpeted abroad as immortal wisdom by his mercenary followers…’

I do not think anything in the whole history of philosophy compares with this invective by one now world-famous philosopher against another, especially when one considers that they were near-contemporaries and colleagues.

I see what Schopenhauer meant.  I stay clear of philosophers who complicate things with their jargon. 

I follow my own gut.  I trust Schopenhauer.  I don't trust the universities.  Like I said, there's something very fishy in Denmark.

You know, that quote from a philosophy forum is kind of revealing.  Here the person concludes that Hegel is more popular.  Is it just me, or don't you want to reply, "No S-H-I-T Sherlock."

No kidding Hegel is more popular.  That is common knowledge, right?  The more interesting question is what merit is popularity?

Just because something is popular does not make it virtuous. 

To me, the absence of Schopenhauer in the curriculum is because Schopenhauer is ignored, either out of ignorance or out of fear.  Why would the professors of universities promote a philosopher who did not pay deference to professional academic professors of philosophy?

What is a gort?

( The Short Answer ) : A gort is someone who believes that “That which is so, is so.”

If someone perceives Hegel as being more significant a thinker than Schopenhauer because he is taught in our universities, my phenomenological radar might detect a gort.  Neither of us probably have the will to bust the gorts.  It is more relaxing not giving a damn about the perceptions and views of other subjectivities. 

"The first repsonsibility we have is to recognize the gort inside ourselves, and to insure that it will never take control of the human consciousness control panel in the brain’s command center."

"There is a tradition of human awareness in the history and evolution of our species. Let us be part of it."

Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on January 15, 2016, 05:33:08 pm
A 16 page paper by Eugene Thacker: DARKLIFE: NEGATION, NOTHINGNESS, AND THE WILL-TO-LIFE IN SCHOPENHAUER (http://parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia12/parrhesia12_thacker.pdf)

Quote from: Eugene Thacker
As Schopenhauer evocatively notes, every manifestation of the Will-to-Life is doubled by a kind of Willlessness (Willenslosigkeit), every sense of the world-for-us doubled by a world-without-us. Pessimism for Schopenhauer is not so much an individual, personal attitude, but really a cosmic one – an impersonal attitude. The indifference of the Will-to-Life thus stretches from the micro-scale to the macro-scale: 

Thus everyone in this twofold regard is the whole world itself, the microcosm; he finds its two sides whole and complete within himself. And what he thus recognizes as his own inner being also exhausts the inner being of the whole world, the macrocosm. Thus the whole world, like man himself, is through and through will and through and through representation, and beyond this there is nothing.

In an enigmatic way, negation courses through Schopenhauer’s notion of the Will-to-Life. Evocations of the Will-to-Life as “nothing” or “nothingness” recur throughout Schopenhauer’s writings. Certainly Schopenhauer was influenced by his encounter with classical texts in the Buddhist traditions.  As we’ve noted, this type of cosmic pessimism stands in opposition to the ontology of generosity in post-Kantian Idealism, with its emphasis on overpresence, flux and flow, and the becoming of the Absolute. In response to the Kantian split between Life and the living, and in contrast to the post-Kantian ontology of generosity, Schopenhauer opts for a negative ontology of life.

However, that life is “nothing” can mean several things. The enigmatic last section of WWR I bears out some of these meanings. Here Schopenhauer makes use of Kant’s distinction between two kinds of nothing: the nihil privativum or privative nothing, and the nihil negativum or negative nothing. The former is nothing defined as the absence of something (e.g. shadow as absence of light, death as absence of life). For Schopenhauer the world is nothing in this privative sense as this interplay between Representation and Will; the world, with all its subject-object relations, as well as its ongoing suffering and boredom, is transitory and ephemeral. By contrast, the indifferent Will-to-Life courses through and cuts across it all, all the while remaining in itself inaccessible, and “nothing.”

The problem is that, at best, we have a limited and indirect access to the world as a nihil privativum, and “so long as we ourselves are the will-to-live, this last, namely the nothing as that which exists, can be known and expressed by us only negatively.”  For Schopenhauer the very fact that there is no getting outside the world of the nihil privativum hints at a further negation, one that is not a relative but an absolute nothingness:

...in opposition to this nihil privativum, the nihil negativum has been set up, which would in every respect be nothing...But considered more closely, an absolute nothing, a really proper nihil negativum, is not even conceivable, but everything of this kind, considered from a higher standpoint or subsumed under a wider concept, is always only a nihil privativum.

At this point it seems that one must say – or think – nothing more. It is as if philosophy ultimately leads to its own negation, to Wittgenstein’s claim that what cannot be thought must be passed over in silence. That WWR closes with an enigmatic affirmation of life as nothingness is indicative of the limits of Schopenhauer’s negative ontology. On the one hand the Will-to-Life is nothingness because, considered as the interplay between Life and the living, the Will-to-Life in itself is never something in an affirmative or positive sense. But Schopenhauer suggests that the Will-to-Life is nothingness for a further reason, which is that, in itself, the Will-to-Life indicates that which is never manifest, that which is never an objectification of the Will, that which is never a Will for a Representation. To the relative nothingness of the nihil privativum there is the absolute nothingness (absolutes Nichts) of the nihil negativum. While Schopenhauer is himself opposed to the post-Kantian Idealists, he is united with them in his interest in the concept of the Absolute, albeit one paradoxically  grounded in nothingness.

His contribution is to have thought the Absolute without resorting to the ontology of generosity and its undue reliance on romantic conceptions of Life, Nature, and the human. To the negative ontology of life, it would seem, therefore, that there is an kind of meontology of life. It is for this reason that Schopenhauer can close WWR I by stating that “this very real world of ours with all its suns and galaxies, is – nothing.”
Title: Re: Depressive Realism [Colin Feltham]
Post by: Nation of One on October 14, 2017, 01:15:08 am
What's Wrong with Us: The Anthropathology Thesis by Colin Feltham (https://libgen.pw/download.php?id=438803)   (fixed link as of 2017.10.14)

I was relieved to find the above as Depressive Realism: Interdisciplinary perspectives (Explorations in Mental Health) (https://www.amazon.com/Depressive-Realism-Interdisciplinary-perspectives-Explorations/dp/1138823546/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1507957367&sr=8-1&keywords=Depressive+Realism) is prohibitively expensive.   
Title: Re: Depressive Realism [David Benatar]
Post by: Nation of One on October 16, 2017, 10:13:35 am
The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (http://libgen.io/search.php?req=The+Human+Predicament%3A+A+Candid+Guide+to+Life%27s+Biggest+Questions+&lg_topic=libgen&open=0&view=simple&res=25&phrase=1&column=def)  (circa 2017) Library Genesis
Title: Super Multi Orgasms:To Herr Hentrich and Senor Raul
Post by: Holden on October 17, 2017, 10:17:03 am
To Herr Hentrich and Senor Raul,


Thanks for the links Herr Hentrich, I am familiar with Houellebecq.I read his monograph on Schopenhauer sometime back.You know how Mr.Gary calls us "Cheese Chasers", well,I think that is what we are -we are Orgasm Chasers.
But I have to tell you that reading Kant has indeed helped me in comprehending Schopenhauer better.For about 2 weeks now I have been feeling completely asexual. I do not know if it would last long but I certainly hope it does.It is a good indication of the fact that at least to a certain degree the Will to Life is turning against itself.

When a man is chasing orgasm he feel quite omnipotent. As if he can tackle everything. I have read quite a few books on Schopenhauer & must say that ,like Schopenhauer says himself,  I prefer to read the original works now.Mr. Gary gets a lot of things right and yet he gets a lot of things very wrong too-unlike you and Schopenhauer.


Think about it,here is a little child ,who likes to read comic books the whole day long ,a child who is so afraid of the dark that he clutches  his grandma's skirt even if she takes him to the house's courtyard(did the parents think that they would be giving birth to some sort of Daredevil? Well, if they did, they were wrong.).In the school he fights the bullies to defend himself but is often beaten up as he is smaller,he hates the school. He comes back and goes straight away to his beloved collection of comic books.


As he enters his teens he feels this strange urge rising inside of him-something truly weird and horrible-he never asked for it. He was quite happy and content without it,so why burden him with the libido now?

Everyone is born to be the personification of the libido-does Schopenhauer not say that it is the most concrete manifestation of the Will to Live?
Well,I'm glad to tell you that I have tamed it to a large extent. And now I must keep it that way.
It will make life much easier. I could then focus all my time and strength on aesthetics.

I never want to be born again. Whenever I see a toddler's  hesitant steps I feel like weeping.I curse all the parents of the world.What the heck were they thinking-oh! that is right-they were not thinking at all.


 
 


Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on October 17, 2017, 10:24:36 am
I began reading Benatar's Predicament last night.  I think it is worth reading.  It helps validate my worldview, and that those who tend to be depressive just happen to be more honest about the world they experience and perceive.  Perhaps those who have a gloomy outlook are simply more intellectually honest and courageous even.

In fact, reading just what I read last night seems to have toughened my mind in some way.

------
I wrote this before your post.  We must have been typing at the same time.

I think you will like this new book by Benatar.

As for the libido, you are most likely on to something there.  As I have said, you seem to be grabbing the bull by the horns.  You want your mental life to surpass the genetically programmed life of the Will.

Just about at the time I was trying to read Kant, back in 1992, I had met a young woman and became very distracted and caught up in the never ending drama, a bad comedy.  I had to put down Kant to read about the G-spot and how to control my ejaculations.  Messy business.

The feeling you get while studying the translations of Kant, circling around and around key concepts such as the ideality of space and time, I think that I enter a similar state of mind while contemplating upon mathematical concepts, the rhyme and the reason of it.   Even some little section of mathematical code can have this kind of beauty.

You are an inner-directed man, Holden.  That's why I think you are also going to return to mathematics again and again throughout your life.  When you are inner-directed, you do not study things for outer-recognition or status, but for purely aesthetic motivations.

Beauty and horror are not mutually exclusive then?

The kind of beauty which excites the passions (the libido, the Will) is altogether different than the beauty of some theorem, proof, or segment of code. 

There is a part of me that still goes GOO-GOO GA-GA over a certain prototype of a woman, but I have no more delusions about where anything might lead.  In fact, for many males, myself included, the libido will lead you directly to a jail cell.  Most women who would excite "my libido" are definitely off limits [NO! NO! BAD DOG!!!]

It is best to overcome it and focus on the mental life.  That you do not dance around this sensitive issue, that you grab this bull by the horns, I think shows how serious the situation is.

The Will, although it is the cause of our existence, is not All Powerful.

It can be overcome in the life of a contemplative, or a contemplative life. 

Quote from: Holden
Mr. Gary gets a lot of things right and yet he gets a lot of things very wrong too-unlike you and Schopenhauer.

Supposedly Schopenhauer was wrong about a few things, possibly even his conception of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.  At least this is the opinion of that Dennis Vanden Auweele (http://whybother.freeboards.org/general-discussion/the-dark-side/msg4225/#msg4225) you had mentioned.  He seems to think Heidegger had a better grasp of what they are now calling PSR. 

But, like you, I will always be partial and prejudiced in favor of Schopenhauer.  I don't know how he pulled it off, but he did.  He wrote what needed to be written.  If he had been bogged down with computing and calculating, he would not have had the time to formulate his ideas (and opinions).

We work with what we have.

I have been wrong about a great deal of things.  Besides that, my mental state is very much dependent upon whether or not I have "stability" as far as having a residence and the nature of that residence.

Environment plays a huge role in shaping each of our lives and our "mental states".

As the Nazarene said, let he who is without sin cast the first stone.  There is something wrong with all of us.  It would not be difficult to point out what might be wrong with Schopenhauer. I refrain from doing so.  I rather like Schopenhauer, as you know.  I'm not going to point out his flaws.  Who doesn't have flaws? 

Alas, he was a human animal.  I'm very glad he spent his life writing and that he got his material published.

As for Gary, I prefer not to comment, but I will anyway.  He is some kind of phenomenon.  I mean, holy shiit, he is listed on Planet Zapffe's ANTI-NATALISM HALL OF FAME (http://www.knunst.com/planetzapffe/?page_id=180) right there along with Cioran, Schopenhauer and others!   Gary is on the map.  Good for him.  He has certainly put in the hours.  I would never want to expose myself in such a manner, what, with this world crawling with creeps and those who just love to fuuck with others' lives?

No, what we are doing seems much more sane and logical.  We know better than to try to present our worldview as something that can be sold to the masses or marketed as some kind of "movement".

You're just reading some horror and reading Kant to better understand Schopenhauer; and I'm revisiting high school geometry with plans of spending the next couple of years writing mathematical code having to do with high school "precalculus" math ... rebuilding many wheels as a hobby to pass my days in contemplation upon numbers and mathematical symbols.

And yet, even when I am caught up in working through these exercises, things Schopenhauer wrote come to mind.  When I catch a numerical error just by looking at my diagram, he comes to mind.  I mean, it is true, we can see that our arithmetic is off when looking at a diagram.  We intuit when we have miscalculated.  We have a feel for the neighborhood the result should be in.

Anyway ... even though you would think I have all the time in the world to devote to these mathematics exercises, there is always something that has to be done.  Not only that, but we have access to so very much "information" that, in order to remain focused on anything in particular requires a certain amount of discipline and stubbornness - even thickheadedness and willful ignorance.  I find that I am most delighted and "at ease" when I have to think carefully about a problem one would think would be "easy".  I actually enjoy being humbled!

I am this ape-like creature who finds itself a bit more intelligent than many, but so very slow and dull-witted compared to many others.  i can't help but feel I am just "mentally mediocre".  And, do you know what?   I am ok with this.  Really.  I'm no wizard.

I want to be one of those annoying writers who mentions the not-so-glamorous details of getting through the days. 

While I have great love and respect for Arthur Schopenhauer, I am not like this man.  I am not so ambitious.   I will be proud of myself when I get through these two Geometry text books and move on to the next 5 on the queue.  Currently I live my life as though I were living in some kind of one man mental asylum, and my "treatment" consists in revisiting mathematics as slowly and with as much patience as I can muster, blocking out the "News of the World" - totally detached from politics ... detached in the way a mental patient is detached.   I'm only partly of this world.

Using the most honest language I can muster, considering my sustenance is dependent upon government funds, it is not a far stretch to say that I am contentedly quasi-institutionalized.   :-\

Hide, hide, hide ... behind paranoid eyes.

paranoid eyes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l-yxHxPawU)
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: raul on October 17, 2017, 02:03:56 pm
Holden,
Orgams Chasers? I do not know. We are built for orgasm. The path to bringing children. No pleasure, no sex, no children.
I read the that the body is the puppet of the mind.
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on October 17, 2017, 02:20:35 pm
A creepy aside:  I went to a Catholic high school, and as freshmen we were required to study some Latin.  The instructor was a "brother" - not a priest, but kind of like a male nun.

Well, he told us young chaps that his idea of "Heaven" was a Never Ending Orgasm.

Really, brother?  Something was not right about his grin.   :-\

Another aside:  Many years later (2013 - 1981 = 13 + 19 = 32), like 3 decades later, I was reading about the current Latin teacher of the same school I had gone to.  He had been arrested for murder.  Evidently, after having developed a bad crack habit, his dealer (or whoever it was that was feeding his cravings) had threatened to reveal to his employers the nature of how he spent his evenings.  Well, he proceeded to stab her to death, which, as you might suspect, was viewed as a far worse offense than drug addiction.

Never Ending High?  Never Ending Orgasm?

What is involved in the experience of orgasm?  Deeeeeeep (but temporary) pleasure.

What is involved in the experience of smoking rock?  Deeeeeep (but temporary) pleasure.

We are vulnerable to addictions because of the way we are wired. 

What Holden is up to, what it appears to be to me, is that he is like a code breaker hacking into the workings of the phenomenal world.   He wants to crack the code so as to, if not deprogram himself, at the very least throw a monkey wrench into the mechanism, in effect, to destroy the Puppet Master.

master of puppets (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnKhsTXoKCI)
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: raul on October 17, 2017, 02:55:14 pm
Hentrich,
I suppose only a few can destroy or overcome the Puppet Master. We are built or programmed, as I said, for orgasms. Nothing new. The problem is repression and it is much worse when you are a part of a "dysfunctional", how psychologists love this term, family. We have dark desires and needs and specially those with sadistic sexual fantasies. Whether we like or not, these people suffer too. And they do everything to satisfy their intense compulsions. The problem is in the human brain.


Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on October 17, 2017, 06:53:21 pm
Quote from: Raul
We have dark desires and needs and specially those with sadistic sexual fantasies. Whether we like or not, these people suffer too.

I agree that it is difficult to apply moral standards in the face of genetic programming and environmental conditioning. 

I'm not sure if there is a way out of this.

the body electric (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dW8wEQbAXU)
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: raul on October 18, 2017, 06:16:14 am
Hentrich,
You mention South African Professor David Benatar and his new book. Did you finish reading? Did you learn something that you have not learned before? New insights about the misery of our human condition? You have written much about this topic, that maybe a book by Michael Hentrich should be published with a preface by Holden.

But I sometimes I ask myself why must people from all walks of life want things, why must they move, pass and change? Why not doze through life, by the sun in summer and spring, by the fire in winter and autumn?

"I agree that it is difficult to apply moral standards in the face of genetic programming and environmental conditioning. 
I'm not sure if there is a way out of this."

I don´t think there is a way out of this in this killing field called Earth. That is the reason for the original sin. It is attributed to Job these words : “Yet man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.”  I do not know who said "All men are murderers at heart".

In the Middle Ages, the church men believed that aggression and violence were caused by foreign, evil spirits attacking an individual. This is a new century but this thinking has not changed much.
Stay well and drive safely. Go to the eye doctor.

Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on October 18, 2017, 10:36:37 am
I try to avoid doctors, and my eyes are not bothering me at the moment.  I don't suffer from too many headaches, and even with all the reading and squinting I do, I'm not noticing much blurriness.

I used to think about writing some kind of book, but I have no idea of what the subject would be at this point.

There is something people are calling "man-splaining"  or even "white-splaining".

Since I am a "white male" in the United States, I don't want to delude myself into thinking anyone would actually take anything I write seriously.  nobody wants to know what I think, and they would say, "Why would we listen to anything he has got to say?  He doesn't even have a job, a wife, or kids!"

So, basically, besides the fact that there already exists an abundance of books, I don't really have an audience.

If I were to spend my days trying to organize my thoughts into a book, I would not have time to do what I really want to do, which is to better understand all the math I supposedly already learned, and to write a little code in different programming languages that is focused on the math one uses in secondary school and as an undergraduate student in mathematics-oriented studies.

Thanks to you and Holden, I am able to write my daily thoughts and have the words received by an actual audience.  When I become frustrated and irritated, I am able to express unpleasant sentiments, and I do not have to restrain myself since, at this point, I feel free to just express myself.

These days I mostly work like a monk from the Middle Ages.  I mean, I like to work on exercises with pencil and paper.  I sometimes write some math code as well, but it is all very much for my own use with no attempt to be "user-friendly".

In a certain sense, what you and Holden offer me, by reading what I write (and commenting) allows me to write in a manner that does not have to be "reader-friendly".

Henry Fool said he did not want to be "poked with a stick" or judged by what he has written.  I no longer entertain ideas about organizing my thoughts into some kind of book.

Having said that, one might accuse me of doing nothing with my life, that my life is a total waste.

There is a "spiritual element" to my life these days.  In society's eyes I am a total failure since I never really stayed with any job for long other than the job with the park, and I did "nothing" to justify the government helping to pay for my higher education.  I've turned out to be quite a deadbeat.

And yet, I do not have the responsibility of raising children.  My outlook on life forbids this.  Not only that, but no women have wanted anything to do with me.  So be it!  I have my own agenda.

For a long time I just wanted to drink, smoke herb, and sing, cry, walk in the woods ...

Now my mother needs me to be sober, and I have embraced this as an opportunity to revisit mathematics.  It is not a glamorous life, and I am not trying to make any major breakthroughs.  I don't believe I have that kind of talent or ability.

Basically I am saying, "Fuuck the world.  I don't have to be useful!  I have been diagnosed with some kind of mood disorder, and I will make the most of this situation.  I have an opportunity to revisit mathematics and tinker with programming along the way.  This is how I will get through a life not worth living."

And you know, Raul, it is now clear to me that this is only my particular solution to the problem of how to get through a life not worth living (https://xhentric.wordpress.com/the-book/eight/).  I suspect that each individual has to find their own way to get through theirs.  Hence, in a way, we each must write a book to ourselves and store it somewhere.  In the future, it might help someone else.

I sometimes catch myself worrying about how I would react were something to happen to my mother, where she no longer depended upon me to remain coherent and "out of trouble."   Hopefully I am currently developing a way of life which might sustain me throughout this journey. 

There is an awful lot of trouble in this world.  Hitting the books just might prove to be some kind of template others could follow in order to protect themselves from the epidemics of madness engulfing the multitudes.  It might even hold up in the inner cities.  Where is there for one to hide from the madness in the streets?   

The world is a mess.  the only environment left to defend is between our ears.

Take care and be square - avoid the cool ghouls in cesspools.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Writing for money and reservation of copyright are, at bottom, the ruin of literature. No one writes anything that is worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: raul on October 18, 2017, 02:31:01 pm
Hentrich,
"I used to think about writing some kind of book, but I have no idea of what the subject would be at this point."
I think this blog is already a part of a book. "Thoughts on the Futility of Existence" by Mr.H. would be a title.

""Why would we listen to anything he has got to say?  He doesn't even have a job, a wife, or kids!"
Maybe all these would appeal to many in reading what you say. Of course, many would call you a traitor to the white race,to the flag, you went on a strike in reproduction.

"So, basically, besides the fact that there already exists an abundance of books, I don't really have an audience."
There exists an abundance of books but dealing with these "unpleasant" subjects. Of course what you, Holden and others write are for the serious.
Speaking the truth is always nausating to most. Most wants written words to be like sculptures, made in their image and likeness.

"Having said that, one might accuse me of doing nothing with my life, that my life is a total waste."
What do they know about living in this insane asylum? They will never understand that we,humans, are the problem.

"There is an awful lot of trouble in this world.  Hitting the books just might prove to be some kind of template others could follow in order to protect themselves from the epidemics of madness engulfing the multitudes.  It might even hold up in the inner cities.  Where is there for one to hide from the madness in the streets?   
The world is a mess.  the only environment left to defend is between our ears."
Yes, we live in a nightmare. And the epidemics of madness will continue to grow. Most see only the tip of the iceberg.

Take care, and drive safely.






Title: To Senor Raul: Depressive Realism
Post by: Holden on October 19, 2017, 11:20:31 am
Senor,
They are celebrating Diwali here today-the Hindu Xmas.Bursting cracks all around. Crackers worth millions . Sweets worth millions while millions of the citizens starve to death or die due to malnutrition.Do you like horror stories Senor? I do not like all of them ,just Lovecraftian ones.I loathe Stephen King-what a gort.

Is education very expensive in Paraguay? Tomorrow in the newspapers there would be stories about fireworks and cracker related injuries and accidents -like there are every year but who cares right? God forbid that one should try to stop them from gorging on sweets and bursting crackers. They would freaking crucify that man there and then.

No ,we can change nothing. I am not mesmerised by technology. It is so superficial.
By the way, do you have any idea as to what sort of philosophy they teach in Paraguayan universities? Is it continental or analytical?   
I am sorry to know that you did not go to the hospital for eye check up,but believe me,I know the feeling-one just does not want to bother about anything. I am sorry about all the pain you need to put up with. But tell you what-if Schopenhauer is right,
and I do think he is,then in the very heart of his pessimism might lurk a spark of light.

I feel very confused sometimes, but Schopenhauer gives a great deal of support to me. I mean,think about it,in the final analysis-it is about getting through this life somehow.

By the way, in you life have you ever some across any supernatural phenomenon? I think the whole of our lives are irrational and preternatural.

Keep well and take care of your eyes.
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: raul on October 19, 2017, 02:34:56 pm
Holden,
These words are atributed to U.S. General  George S. Patton : "All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened."
That is the problem, you are an intelligent person. So you feel afraid all the time. Who would blame you? Living in this Island of Dr.Moreau aka Earth certainly makes one afraid all the time.I think that anyone who is not afraid in this world is a sociopath.

I suppose this celebration, Diwali, must be really huge considering where you live. Here people use firecrackers at Christmas and New Year´s Eve and of course liters and liters of alcohol. Then accidents and sometimes deaths by stray bullets. I suppose this kind of festivities are needed to keep people in check. Distraction on a full scale.And let us remember these festivities are occasions where many people meet their future wives and husbands, and nine months later you see the results. These festivities are in a way related to fertility. Of course you know this better than me.

"No ,we can change nothing. I am not mesmerised by technology. It is so superficial."
Well,maybe technology in the field of medicine did change something. In the so called first world most do not die young. That is if you compare with other times in history. Imagine the lifespan of a gladiator in Roman times, and the modern gladiator (soccer player) in our stadiums.
 

"Do you like horror stories Senor? I do not like all of them ,just Lovecraftian ones.I loathe Stephen King-what a gort." Life is already a horror story. I only read the Call of Cthulhu and The Yellow King. Also, I do know how to translate into English by Guy de Maupasant The Horla and others stories. Also five or six stories by Thomas Ligotti and one by H.G. Wells.

Public education is becoming more expensive here because parents have to pay uniforms, books, notebooks, school cooperatives, outings. Of course compared to private it is a little cheaper but if you have many children,there´s the problem. From August,2013 to 2015, some months, I went to the ASA, the American School of Asuncion, one of the most expensive schools here. I helped three teachers with Spanish. There you see wealth. Most of the teachers come from the USA, some from Europe, Canada,too. Some children go with their bodyguards. There are othere private schools, important ones too but not with wealthy parents as I saw in ASA. The fees are between USD 8,000 to 9,000 per year.

Here we have the Faculty of Philosophy in the National University of Asunción and the courses last four years, then you, if you have money, hire a tutor for your thesis, present the subject matter, have it approved by a university board if they like your subject, and you are "Licenciado" later, that is the title. I don´t know if they teach analytical or continental philosophy. Two years ago the students went on strike demanding changes because the female dean and some professors were involved in corruption. Some were dismissed and others are facing judicial processes. We also have the Catholic University where philosophy is taught. There is also a Jesuit school for students of philosophy too.

Do you mean if I have ever seen a ghost or something like that? No,never. I only heard stories like the one I heard from someone who saw a dead lady walking in one of the parks here in Asuncion. She died in an accident near there, they said, and her sould does not rest.
I think human beings are a supernatural phenomenon. Irrational indeed.

I admire how you are able to read vast volumes. But also digest something for your body and mind.
Stay safe. 
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on October 19, 2017, 11:09:33 pm
Quote from: Raul
You mention South African Professor David Benatar and his new book. Did you finish reading? Did you learn something that you have not learned before? New insights about the misery of our human condition?

No, I did not finish reading it.  his writing style is very calculated and detailed, so I only read a little at a time.  I never thought there would be so much to read.  At the moment, I am reading a little from several books - a little here, a little there ... some Houellebecq, some Feltham, some Benatar, and others as well.  I am not committed to anything and hardly ever read anything but math or programming books during the long day.  you see, the math is so very time consuming, and as i have said, it keeps me humble.   

I feel I am most authentic when I force myself to stay focused on the math - revisiting the fundamentals.

As far as what Benatar mentions, it is more of the same; and yet, I do appreciate reading his point of view since it is not exactly a popular view.

Whereas Schopenhauer wrote in an almost poetic manner, when asking us to compare the respective pleasure or pain involved in animal existence of one animal eating another alive, Benatar writes the horrific details. 

Consider the following description:

The lioness sinks her scimitar talons into the zebra’s rump.

They rip through the tough hide and anchor deep in the muscle. The startled animal lets out a bellow and its body hits the ground. An instant later the lioness releases her claws from its buttocks and sinks her teeth into the zebra’s throat, choking off the sound of terror. Her canine teeth are long and sharp, but an animal as large as a zebra has a massive neck, with a thick layer of muscle beneath the skin, so although the teeth puncture the hide they are too short to reach any major blood vessels. She must therefore kill the zebra by asphyxiation, clamping her powerful jaws around its trachea (windpipe), cutting off the air to its lungs. It is a slow death ... the zebra’s death throes will last five to six minutes.

Some animals are eaten alive. In the following description, the victim is an adult blue whale:

The beleaguered whale, trailing streams of blood from several wounds, is flanked on either side by three or four individuals. Two more swim ahead and three behind.
A squadron of five killer whales takes turns patrolling under the blue whale’s belly, preventing it from diving. Three more swim over its head, discouraging it from raising its blowhole above the surface, thereby hampering its breathing.  Dominant males lead sorties to rip off slabs of blubber and flesh. They have already shredded its tail flukes.

This continues for over five hours.

This does not look like a world created by a beneficent deity with unbounded knowledge and power. It is credulous to believe that things are not the way they seem and that the world was created by such a being.


Maybe I should wait until I have finished reading a book before posting a link here.  I saw it was on Library Genesis, so I thought Holden might be interested in grabbing it.

By the time 10 or 11 PM rolls around, it always becomes clear to me that I can only get so far with math, but I will continue studying it in this obsessive manner until I burn out or become indifferent and apathetic.  I like to read something having nothing to do with math once I put the texts on the shelves - usually before midnight.

Quote from: Raul
I think this blog is already a part of a book. "Thoughts on the Futility of Existence" by Mr.H. would be a title.

I think you are correct in saying that what we write here is some kind of book, and you and Holden are crucial participants. 

Holden and I had realized that Schopenhauer did not write for the masses, but only for a few who happened to be receptive to his views.

Schopenhauer repeated frequently, "forever reading, never to be read."

It is enough for me to communicate with a couple people.  This is more satisfying than filling page after page with the same old complaints which actually only increase my anxiety.

As for Colin Feltham's What's Wrong with Us?, he quotes Schopenhauer:

Quote
Schopenhauer describes the typical human lifespan in this way:

We begin in the madness of carnal desire and the transport of voluptuousness, we end in the dissolution of all our parts and the musty stench of corpses. And the road from the one to the other goes, in regard to our well-being and enjoyment of life, steadily downhill: happily dreaming childhood, exultant youth, toil-filled years of manhood, infirm and often wretched old age, the torment of the last illness and finally the throes of death .  (Schopenhauer, 1851)

It is tempting to ascribe such attitudes to the gloominess of ‘ old Europe ’ . The contemporary novelist Houellebecq puts it even more starkly and miserably:

Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, . . . were the salt of the earth. . . . Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility and the diffi culties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities whilst ceaselessly bearing witness – powerless and shamefilled – to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies. . . . They would have to look after children, . . . feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, . . . they would remain the slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no good for anything. . . . It was a pure and simple holocaust of each generation in favour of the one that replaced it.  (Houellebecq, 2006)


Something he says about literature caught my attention just before I dozed off last night:

Quote from: Colin Feltham
Although poetry, drama and novels are celebrated as among our finest achievements, my own view is that they mesmerize us unhelpfully. Of course, part of the story of humankind is told through literature, sometimes with great poignancy, but this is no longer necessary or helpful. We have increasingly accurate descriptions of and feasible explanations for the human condition, along with clear and urgent implications for action. Literature, like religion, was a necessary encoding of our struggle, but we now neither need it nor are served well by it. Life is entertaining and tragic enough in itself, in its quotidian and chronic anthropathological aspects and in the unspoilt sensuousness and wonder of the natural world. Yet, I think we prefer stories about it rather than experiencing it fully or engaging in serious and necessary changes. This does not mean we should abolish literature, as in some totalitarian political or religious nightmare; rather it is a cry for us to wake up to our real tragedy and to ‘ re-write ’ it transformatively.

Sometimes I hesitate to post something here since I don't want to trouble you with something that might not be worth the trouble reading.

Oh well, thanks for keeping these dialogues going.

Maybe we can just keep track of our conversations here and this will satisfy any longing we might have had to "reach some audience".

And if something happens to us where we are left without such a haven as this message board, well then, whichever one of us is the last, the one left totally alone in this twilight zone horror show of soccer/football/baseball/basketball/hockey arenas; facebook, selfies, nintendo, starbucks, over paid athletes, politicians, shopping mall rats, false religion, the X Factor/Idol/Dancing-with-the-Cars, chart music, etc., - the one who is left might be inspired to gather and organize our conversations.

But not now.  Now I think it is best we just write here when we are able.

To be honest, I would rather spend my days exploring math that I think I "already know" and just see how authentic I can become in my daily existence.

It was almost awful studying such things as an adolescent, the way it was presented, the pressure, the worries about having to register with the military at age 18, the LSD, the nervous breakdowns, the suicidal ideations.

Now that I stand on this ground here in the future of my life, looking back at my experiences over these years, none of the motivations handed to the youth exist for me now.  Now I can approach the material out of genuine interest and also as a kind of revenge against all those who go on and on about "people on government relief with no responsibilities spending their days watching TV and playing video games".

I know that I am much better off exploring mathematics than I would be were i corralled into one of these "outpatient behavioral health clinics" bombarded with positive psychology and group therapy.   Those places cause more psychological and emotional disturbance than they ever "cure".

I suppose this was a rather long response as to why I do not think it is necessary for me to seriously consider some kind of book project.

I would just tell the reader to check out Schopenhauer.  Reading Schopenhauer actually will make your burden lighter, not heavier. 

Also, I find myself more inclined to be in student mode, wanting to learn from others - technical things.  As for how I feel about life, that may be the only thing I would be comfortable writing about.   Everything else is NOTES.

I write and scribble things few would be interested in looking at, and why should I even need anyone to share my interests.  I don't, really.

I am just one of the countless human creatures hiding away in my own little world.

As I say, I appreciate that you and Holden take an interest in what I type.

From my experience, most have no interest whatsoever - and so, why would I bother organizing some kind of book?

You see?   I am free to tinker with mathematics.

The professors of philosophy and psychology and neuroscience can publish their books.  I might even read a few ... but I prefer spending a day with a couple pages from some unappreciated treasure such as Arthur Engel's Exploring Mathematics with your Computer (https://www.amazon.com/Exploring-Mathematics-Computer-Mathematical-Library/dp/0883856360/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1508468774&sr=8-1&keywords=arthur+engel+exploring+mathematics+with+your+computer) from 1993.

I tinker with math and code.  I have lost interest in any notion of presenting myself as someone worth reading.

No, and again, no.  I am content with my status as an "emotionally disturbed person" in remission.    ;D
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: raul on October 20, 2017, 01:56:33 pm
Hentrich,
Yes,mathematics is a discipline that is very time consuming and that is the way it should be.

"As far as what Benatar mentions, it is more of the same; and yet, I do appreciate reading his point of view since it is not exactly a popular view."
Benatar and the others such Ligotti, Sarah Perry, Caraco,Feltham, and other authors  will not enjoy popularity. Their views are not exactly life affirming and unfortunately our terrible human inertia will only santify joyful lies. As Thomas Ligotti said in an interview : ”They just want to relax and be told a diverting story from a third-person omniscient viewpoint, giving them the sense that they have a movie playing in their mind. I don't blame them in the least."


In their time Schopenahuer and others endured isolation and distrust. It is comprehensible given our human nature.

"the worries about having to register with the military at age 18,"
I thought military service was no longer obligatory in the U.S. in the eighties.

"How I can approach the material out of genuine interest and also as a kind of revenge against all those who go on and on about "people on government relief with no responsibilities spending their days watching TV and playing video games".
Well, you could sell firearms to the Mexican Cartels and make tons of money and "contribute" to the IRS there. That is the meaning of "responsibility" to most. I just wonder in one decade or more when unenployment increases if the authorities are going to tell the youth to stay at home and watch TV.

Is it true that is illegal to give food to homeless people in the U.S.?

Take care.

Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on October 20, 2017, 03:19:47 pm
Quote from: Raul
"the worries about having to register with the military at age 18,"
I thought military service was no longer obligatory in the U.S. in the eighties.

You still have to register with the selective service if you are between 18 and 25:  Who must register? (https://www.sss.gov/Registration-Info/Who-Registration)

Failing to register or comply with the Military Selective Service Act is a felony punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 or a prison term of up to five years, or a combination of both. Also, a person who knowingly counsels, aids, or abets another to fail to comply with the Act is subject to the same penalties.

Quote from: Raul
Benatar and the others such Ligotti, Sarah Perry, Caraco,Feltham, and other authors  will not enjoy popularity. Their views are not exactly life affirming and unfortunately our terrible human inertia will only santify joyful lies. As Thomas Ligotti said in an interview : ”They just want to relax and be told a diverting story from a third-person omniscient viewpoint, giving them the sense that they have a movie playing in their mind. I don't blame them in the least."

That's why I read the authors I read.  If not me, then who?

Quote from: Raul
I just wonder in one decade or more when unemployment increases if the authorities are going to tell the youth to stay at home and watch TV.

I'm not sure how the government will handle this kind of situation.  Currently the blame is being placed on the individuals rather than the "situational circumstances."   That is, one must be diagnosed with some kind of behavioral, emotional, or mood disorder.  It is most likely very wide spread to the point of appearing as some kind of scandal; but it most likely has much more to do with rising unemployment and peoples' warranted fear of slipping through the cracks, living in the streets, and becoming institutionalized.

My theory is that most the people who end up homeless and chronically addicted to alcohol and street drugs are caught in a vicious cycle, the infamous downward spiral.

I'm not sure what governments can do about this transition.  They may want to invest research into much safer recreational drugs than alcohol.  Huxley had ideas about this "soma".

Not everyone is going to find "salvation" in studying math and computing while resigning from the species.  I mean, many will continue to demand the "right" to reproduce and have the government subsidize the raising of their offspring.   Look what is happening all over the world.

And yet, people will insist that their societies require a future workforce and military personnel.  That's why I totally agree with your assessments about the global plantation where we are farmed.

Quote from: Raul
Is it true that is illegal to give food to homeless people in the U.S.?

Food-Not-Bombs group arrested for feeding homeless, violating Orlando ordinance (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/food-not-bombs-group-arrested-for-feeding-homeless-violating-orlando-ordinance/2011/06/03/AGufUBIH_blog.html?utm_term=.d49190f8d296).

I think the ordinance was against feeding groups larger than 25 people in a public place, but the ordinance was designed specifically for those feeding the homeless. 

Out in Washington (around Seattle) the municipal government seems more homeless-friendly.  I mean, for example, anyone can get a library card.  It was vital to be able to use the Internet when I was seeking to get an apartment through "Section 8" housing.   In New Jersey, one has to have a residence, an address where the library mails you your ID card - which is required to use the Internet or else I think it costs $3 per hour.  Homeless in New Jersey no esta bien.

When I was homeless I would use $3 for two high octane beers.  Hence, the vicious cycle.

Today when I carefully draw a diagram with a compass and straightedge, the Zen-like calm I experience does not make me feel intellectually superior, but just mentally fortunate.  I understand that this calmness is a consequence of a stable living situation and my determination to keep a steady hand and remain coherent.   It would not take much to land me back in the gutter or locked in a cage.

Take care.
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Holden on October 21, 2017, 12:04:54 am
I am reading "What is Wrong with Us".Thank you for mentioning it.Very interesting."
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: raul on October 21, 2017, 06:16:26 am
Hentrich,
Thank you for your response.
"My theory is that most the people who end up homeless and chronically addicted to alcohol and street drugs are caught in a vicious cycle, the infamous downward spiral."
Indeed it is a vicious cycle. And this cycle will continue. I think the next generations, in my view, will ask their parents why they brought them into this savage planet.

"Not everyone is going to find "salvation" in studying math and computing while resigning from the species.  I mean, many will continue to demand the "right" to reproduce and have the government subsidize the raising of their offspring.   Look what is happening all over the world."
I am sure the powers will have to resort to creating false flag operations, wars,instability, and entertainment and pharmaceutical drugs,  in order to keep the population distracted. As usual.

"And yet, people will insist that their societies require a future workforce and military personnel.  That's why I totally agree with your assessments about the global plantation where we are farmed."
This world is a very giant laboratory. Just one example, the U.S. threatens the Korean rocket man Kim Jon Un with miltary force, and yet this Korean guy had parties with former NBA star Dennis Rodman.I read that this Kim boy has his pleasure squad and that he uses rohypnol, called the drug ****.
Of course one needs miltary personnel to deal this "menace" to world peace. You need babies to oil the war machine.

I saw a picture of Trump and the First Lady with the White House staff, maids, cooks, all servants. You need the workforce. The elite will still need humans.

Take care and keep studying.


Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on October 21, 2017, 11:36:54 am
Quote from: Holden
I am reading "What is Wrong with Us".Thank you for mentioning it.Very interesting."

I quit working through "Geometry" early last night, around 9PM, and then proceeded to read What's Wrong with Us?

I was surprised that it kept my attention until around 2AM when I forced myself to just lay on my cot staring into the darkness.  I checked to see how much I had read, and i appear to be half way through it.  There is something about Feltham's style that is agreeable to me.   I think he is honest.  I appreciate his doubts about the academic scene.

When I woke up this morning I was looking through some notes from a couple years ago when I was studying Number Theory.   While I remember really comprehending what I was writing, first thing in the morning, 2 years later, it would take at least a week for me to get back to where I might understand the code I wrote at the time.

It helped me to think of your pessimistic theories about our inability to retain much, that progress in retaining knowledge may be a grand illusion of self-deception.  This helped me from sinking into depression.  I also looked at a physics text I had wanted to start, but I am determined to get through these Geometry texts.  Why?   So I can forget about it?

Being human is a difficult predicament to be in.  Part of our brain makes plans or sets a goal, and the animal part of us has to comply ... the animal part is stubborn and lazy and continually protests that it cannot see the point in following through.

I think what I appreciate most about What's Wrong With Us is that it kind of supports my suspicions about the tremendous amount of self-deception involved in the acquisition of "knowledge".  Those of us who are intellectually honest may be at a tremendous disadvantage compared to those who more readily engage in self-deception, false confidence, and ---- I am struggling to recall a term ---- it has to to with projecting this public image and has to do with acquiring "credentials" so as to be taken seriously ...

Part of what's wrong with us is that we deceive ourselves, and hence we must in turn deceive others.  In the end, this must create a total farce.  This must be what Shakespeare [whoever he was, we're not certain if his plays might have been stolen from Marlowe] meant with "Nothing that is so, is so."

Maybe the fact that this message board has few participants is what helps us to enforce brutal psychological honesty with ourselves to ensure we resist this seemingly inborn tendency to self-deceive, to delude ourselves and others.  We make a conscious effort to remain DISILLUSIONED.

I continue to study in spite of the fact that I expect to forget everything.

How and why?

I don't know why I study what I do, but I will now formally concede that a more honest expression for what we call "studying" would be "exploring".

I do not "study mathematics" so as to "know," but I "explore mathematical ideas" to see if I might understand in the present moment.

The whole nature of education is questionable!

What do I know?   Nothing!   I am the Will.  It is not the nature of the Will to know anything.

Why do we write things down?   To kind of capture what is fleeting? 

I work out a problem or come up with a solution, even if it is rudimentary or trivial.  There is a desire to capture the idea, to solidify it, to own it ... but we must admit that our mental states and our memory are not solid things.  We do not own our memory ...  The joke is on us, and the comical aspect of the horror of our existence is that so much is dependent on our deceiving ourselves.

It's as though we might not be able to function in human society if we just became completely honest.   It's not a level playing field.   Since we know that most every functioning adult most likely is deluded and deceptive, we have no choice but to "pretend" we have a grip on things.

Those of us who "drop out" of the show may have reached a point of self-honest that we might not be able to keep up the farce enough to play a role in the farce of society.

The teachers must project this image that what they are teaching will be retained.  The teachers must live this lie.  They only seem to understand the material so well because they cover it year after year (and have the instructor's solution manuals to the texts [or they wrote the text]). 

Got to go ....

Title: To Herr Hentrich and Senor Raul: Depressive Realism
Post by: Holden on October 22, 2017, 01:52:16 pm
The problem is that most people cannot entertain the possibility that there may be no way out. No "optimal" way to tackle life. There are men who think if they keep their boss and their wife happy(one man literally said that me-he focuses only on keeping his wife and his boss happy & the rest of us can go to hell),everything will turn out to be OKAY.

Some of my relatives want me to wear a pearl ring-it is supposed to cure me of my"strange" ideas :o
They go to the temple-put honey and water and perfume on the idols.The ritual means nothing to me.I just stay indoors the whole day long on Sunday.

Senor Raul is right in that Job, Marriage and Kids are used by the society to keep down honest,sincere men.
Henry Fool says almost the same thing.

I'd rather be a primitivist anarchist than be a corporate slave and yet it is very clear to me that anarchism is also no solution. There is no solution. Maybe the point is just to get through this life somehow.
However,I grow more and more certain that death would certainly not be the end of the force which manifests in form of human beings.In certain Hindu traditions ,they say that even if "one" does not attain freedom from the circle of life and death at once,one can certainly move an inch closer to the denial of the Will,if one fervently desires that.

You remind me of Abbe Faria sometimes.We are in this prison together.

https://youtu.be/O1lDpUhtw6Y
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on October 22, 2017, 03:06:25 pm
I read that book - of all places - in the county jail!

We were fortunate to have "Charlie the Book Man" in our wing.  Someone in his family would send in classic literature nearly every week.   I would wake up from a nap to find Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment on the little desk.   I was amazed that this Charlie lived in two worlds simultaneously.  You would never suspect him of having a love of such literature.  Never judge a book by its cover, I guess.

I do remember this character from the Count of Monte Cristo who knew what to do with all that time.

Quote from: Holden
Senor Raul is right in that Job, Marriage and Kids are used by the society to keep down honest,sincere men.   Henry Fool says almost the same thing.

I remember back in 1994 just when I began smoking a little herb after having abstained for about 7 years.  My live-in concubine warned me, saying, "What do you think your bosses would think of you smoking that?  You really shouldn't discuss such things with the crew." - the crew being those I supervised.

You see, in the state government, the chain of command seemed to imply that all of your boss's boss was in a sense also another boss, and his boss's boss's boss - all the way on up the corrupt chain of middle-management and windbag ellected officials.

I wondered if she might have been planted in my path to solidify my "employment" ... I began to question the nature of our relationship.   Also, when I had moved her stuff back into her mother's home, many of the higher-ups saw this as a disaster and the begining of my demise.

In other words, there would be no one to keep tabs on me at night ...

Oh well, now i seem to police myself rather efficiently as far as avoiding trouble goes.

Like Schopenhauer, my intellectual pursuits are not very political at all.  I'm just looking for a little mathematical empowerment.   Unlike Plato, I don't care about how geometry can be applied to war and I am far removed from the aristocratic elites.

You are right, my only ambition is to be this Abbe Faria.
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: raul on October 22, 2017, 03:23:21 pm
Holden,
"There are men who think if they keep their boss and their wife happy(one man literally said that me-he focuses only on keeping his wife and his boss happy & the rest of us can go to hell),everything will turn out to be OKAY."

I think you shoud add "there are men and women". Do not forget women have bosses, that is. mother,father,brothers, even, even female managers. A long chain of bosses. If a woman is a religious believer, well God is the first boss. Sometimes when I see so many women go to pilgrimage in the religious city of Caacupe every December, to pay their promises to Virgin Mary is because the lady suffered for his son on the cross in a place known as Golgotha, which means the skull. The lady obeyed faithfully and kept the Big Boss happy.

Do you work with women there?

The rest of us, well, are already in Hell.

"Some of my relatives want me to wear a pearl ring-it is supposed to cure me of my"strange" ideas."
Can they not give you diamong ring? At least you can pawn that. And you have no "cure". You have been "possessed" by the spirit of the great Arthur and his disciple of New Jersey, USA.

"It is very clear to me that anarchism is also no solution. There is no solution. Maybe the point is just to get through this life somehow."
My knowledge is very basic. Anarchists think that human nature can be improved if some institutions are straightened. They want to set the world straight. They believed that human beings can be fantastically transformed.
Did Arthur S. not say that Death is the great leveler?

A quote from Matrix:
Agent Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson? Why, why? Why do you do it? Why, why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting... for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although... only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?

Neo: Because I choose to.

Stay safe.
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Holden on October 23, 2017, 05:28:43 pm
Herr Hentrich,
Yes,Schopenhauer would have appreciated your life style. Your thoughts. I just keep my head down at the office. I say as little as possible. There is a peon who is considered as mentally retarded by everyone in the office.He is the only one who comes to my cubicle and sits by my side. I give him some goodies to eat.

He is the closest thing to a friend I have in the office. He is about 40 and still unmarried and all his colleagues make fun of him and ask him get married ASAP.
The layout of the office is full of open cubicles. So, everyone gets to spy on each other!

Senor Raul,

Yes,there are some women in the office.As a matter of fact a certain amount of posts are "reserved" for women.That is the policy. I stay way from them & they pretty much reciprocate. The problem arises when the Management decides to put me in a "team" with a woman.Bad things happen then. To me ,not to the woman.


I do not blame the women though, any more than I blame any other creature on this planet.They are what they are.
I have been thinking deeply about the evil triad which you mentioned-marriage,kids and job.
While I am free from the first two,thank god,I must do something about the third evil.


https://youtu.be/Ry4wsulam3Y










Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: raul on October 23, 2017, 07:34:49 pm
Holden,
As they say in American English, you are trying to stay as much as you can under the radar. The person who is considered mentally retarded reminds me of the people with the Down Syndrome. Although they have unpredictable reactions and can be sometimes violent, they really mean no harm. In my view they are close to angelic beings.

"He is about 40 and still unmarried and all his colleagues make fun of him and ask him get married ASAP."
Well they may mock him, but one of these days your colleagues may suffer the consequences.

So management wants you to be a "team player" in the company. It is a difficult situation.

"I have been thinking deeply about the evil triad which you mentioned-marriage,kids and job.
While I am free from the first two,thank god,I must do something about the third evil."
Well you already said you will save money to get by when you are no longer in the company.

Many times here they tell me "Most say ""Go and work!" "You want something, get a job." They push one into becoming a slave. " Nobody owes you anything."
I also wanted to be a corporate slave in order to minimize harassment but my circumstances and other factors put me in this situation.
It is because of the ability to blunt consciousness that I keep from blowing my brains out and stopping this nightmare.

Stay safe.


 
Title: The quality of human life is actually quite appalling.
Post by: Nation of One on December 23, 2017, 12:02:35 am
While reading a little more from Benatar's The Human Predicament last night, I found something that I do not want to forget.  It's a sentiment I have attempted to express in the past, but I did not word it so clearly.  It's related to my theory that nobody has a life worth living, that no one, no matter what they claim, has a high quality existence.  This sentiment I have based on the nature of existence itself.

Of course, I would not come out and tell anyone personally that their life is not worth living.   I would only make the general universal claim. Of course, most people would respond with the snide remark, "Speak for yourself!  We are happy as Hell!  You just need to get laid.  You need to lighten up, put down those math books and have some fun!"

It is almost pointless to try to explain what my sentiment is regarding people's unreliability to ascertain the poor quality of their lives.  When Schopenhauer talks about getting through a life not worth living, he is not just talking about his own life with his temperament or circumstances.  He sees clearly that he was fortunate in many ways.  He is talking about life in general, that all of us face this predicament.

That's why I was glad to type up the following from Benatar's book.  He helps to clarify this sentiment.

Quote from: David Benatar
The quality of human life is, contrary to what many people think, actually quite appalling.

The quality of people’s lives obviously varies immensely.  However, thinking that some lives are worse or better than others is merely a comparative claim. It tells us nothing about whether the worse lives are bad enough to count as bad lives or whether the better lives are good enough to count as good lives. The common view, however, is that the quality of some lives qualifies as bad and the quality of others qualifies as good. In contrast to this view, I believe that while some lives are better than others, none are (noncomparatively or objectively) good.

The obvious objection to this view is that billions of people judge the quality of their own lives to be good. How can it possibly be argued that they are mistaken and that the quality of their lives is, in fact, bad?

The response to this objection consists of two main steps. The first is to demonstrate that people are very unreliable judges of the quality of their own lives. The second step is to show that when we correct for the biases that explain the unreliability of these assessments and we look at human lives more accurately, we find that the quality (of even the best lives) is actually very poor.

Why people’s judgments about the quality of their lives are unreliable

People’s self-​assessments of wellbeing are unreliable indicators of quality of life because these self-​assessments are influenced by three psychological phenomena, the existence of which has been well demonstrated.

The first of these is an optimism bias, sometimes known as Pollyannaism. For example, when asked to rate how happy they are, people’s responses are disproportionately toward the happier end of the spectrum. Only a small minority of people rate themselves as “not too happy.”  When people are asked to rate their wellbeing relative to others, the typical response is that they are doing better than the “most commonly experienced level,” suggesting, in the words of two authors, “an interesting bias in perception.”   It is unsurprising that people’s reports of their overall wellbeing is unduly optimistic, because the building blocks of that judgment are similarly prone to an optimism bias. For example, people are (excessively) optimistic in their projections of what will happen to them in the future.  The findings regarding recall of past experiences are more complicated.  However, the dominant finding, subject to some qualifications,  seems to be that there is greater recall of positive experiences than there is of negative ones. This may be because negative experiences are susceptible to cognitive processes that suppress them. Judgments about the overall quality of one’s life that are inadequately informed by the bad things that have happened and will happen are not reliable judgments.

There is ample evidence of an optimism bias among humans.

This is not to say that the extent of the bias does not vary a lot. The inhabitants of some countries report greater subjective wellbeing than those of other countries even when the objective conditions are similar.  This has been attributed, in part, to cultural variation.   

   

I believe that while some lives are better than others, none are good.
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Holden on December 23, 2017, 09:36:14 am
In the market I saw two ads today:
LIFE IS GOOD
LIFE IS NOW

The said ads were having photographs of happy,smiling couples.Couples looking into each other's eyes.Just a few yards from the ads was a beggar with extremely horrible skin disease and no sight.

The decision not to marry or to have any romantic liaisons is perhaps the best decision.
Sometimes I just close my eyes and listen to the crowd.That is when I get closer to understanding the true nature of mankind.
But you see there are men who would never confess it-they would never accept that life is horrible.No matter what happens to them.
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on December 23, 2017, 10:01:56 am
We have figured out that it is not just our personal temperament or circumstances that have shaped our pessimistic philosophy, while the conspirators continue to chant "Life is good" or "Life is a gift".

The only conclusion we can arrive at is that many are intellectually dishonest.

While working on some math problems this morning, as is a kind of ritual for me, I wondered why I do this.   I think the reason is now quite clear to me.

It is a distraction, something to focus my attention on and an outright refusal to be bullied around by my own biological necessities.  I do not like to eat any meals first thing in the morning.  I like to isolate.   I understand that the problems I am working on do not matter at all; but for some reason I like to force my brain to concentrate on manipulating abstract symbols.

In the process I am sometimes able to detach from the demands and concerns of the creature that "I am". 

It is a way to be dead to the world. 

I like to think that I have fallen off the deep end.

The more elementary a problem is, the stupider I feel.

I must enjoy feeling stupid.  That has to be it.

Whereas some practice the mortification of the body, I practice the mortification of the intellect.

Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Holden on December 23, 2017, 12:15:19 pm
Society in general seems to be built upon a stack of lies, a stack of "feel good" tricks and impossible delusions. The perpetual existence of the human race is given to be intrinsically valuable, for example. Literature, films and shows, video games, political decisions, etc are filled with plots of an evil villain who is out to kill all life. For example, as a kid I played a game that required me to defeat an antagonist that wished to wipe out all life on a planet to feed his eternal hunger, and he would have later gone on to eat all life in the galaxy if I hadn't stopped him. The rational of stopping him was said to be the preservation of the galactic civilization. My priorities were that this antagonist would have caused a horribly large amount of suffering. But when the final battle was over, I was left with a happy-sing-song tune playing in the background while wondering if what I did was right, wondering if something like this happened in real life, would I be an active part in opposing it.

This is just one example that shows the incongruency between my pessimistic outlook and the general outlook of society. Another would be birth, as well as the myth of progress, capitalism, religion, and politics. I am surrounded by a society that is fundamentally different than I would prefer it to be. It is comedic at best and despairing at worst. This is why I end up "escaping" from the world via music, books and philosophy, especially the latter two. And even the escapism sometimes doesn't work, as shown above.
Title: Re: Depressive Realism
Post by: Nation of One on December 23, 2017, 11:14:57 pm
I appreciate your honest appraisal of our situation.  Not enough people are willing to be honest about the real situation since they have been trained not to complain and to "look on the bright side" of things.

Quote from: David Benatar
Even armed with various optimistic coping mechanisms, the quality of human life is not only much worse than most people think but actually quite awful.  This may not be true in every minute or even hour of (human) life - there are moments of relief and pleasure - but taken a s a whole, it is an unenviable condition.

Do you think that we may be much better off, psychologically anyway, facing these unpleasant truths up front, than those who attempt to deny or suppress their genuine negative appraisal of our condition?

I tend to think that those who insist on only focusing on their blessings may end up experiencing more intense anxiety in the long run.  At least being frank about the universality of this miserable condition, one is less likley to be hoodwinked by medical or religious experts who think you are in need of saving.

And while many assume that our misery is caused by Industrial Civilization alone, more and more I tend to agree with Thomas Ligotti's assessment that there has never been a good time to be alive.

Just because I have these views does not mean I do not appreciate that I can type a question related to mathematics into a search engine and get information about a question or even a specific problem.

And yet, for the very particular questions, the search engines are useless, such as asking why someone who graduated from university 15 years ago would revisit "advanced" high school mathematics.   The kinds of results that are returned by the search engine are not only way off, but reveal just what an unheard of idea this is.

At some point we face the reality that often the Internet can make us feel even more lonely and isolated, simply because we get a better feel for just how unique we might be in a world with nearly 8 billion people.

It's a miracle that we even have one another to converse with!
Title: The End Of The Human Condition?
Post by: Nation of One on July 26, 2021, 06:50:35 am
From Resignation (https://www.humancondition.com/freedom-resignation-reveals-mortal-fear-of-human-condition/)

Although rarely shared, adolescents in the midst of Resignation quite often write excruciatingly honest poetry about their impending fate; indeed, The Catcher in the Rye is really one long poem about the agony of having to resign to living a human-condition-denying, superficial, totally false existence.

I know that we tend to roll our eyes when someone comes along with a "solution" to SAVE THE WORLD, but the ebook is being given away, and I thought it might be a thought-provoking read:  FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition (https://www.humancondition.com/freedom-the-end-of-the-human-condition/).

FREEDOM was launched at the Royal Geographical Society in London in June 2016, where Sir Bob Geldof (http://whybother.freeboards.org/coda/the-real-situation/msg9222/#msg9222) — who was essentially knighted for his concern for humanity — began proceedings by pleading for scientists like Jeremy to save the world. Jeremy then presented that desperately needed scientific solution to the world’s problems, which is the reconciling explanation of our species’ ‘good and evil’ conflicted human condition.

At the bottom of one of the pages on the website is: "This is a scientific pursuit and was not created for profit. For this reason, all information and materials are provided free of charge."