What Now? > What Now?

Anguish Tabulator

(1/7) > >>

Nation of One:
Zappfe wrote that sublimation is the conversion of anguish into uplifting pursuits, such as art and literature.  For me, it is the study of mathematics.  While this may not be very "uplifting," it certainly does qualify as an attempt to convert anguish into something more easily endured.

And yet, what about the anguish that is very often experienced when the mind is not so sharp, when the struggle to make sense of something intensifies the anguish rather than converting it into an "uplifting pursuit?"

With this thread I draw a line of demarcation between the all-too-medical term, depression, and something I wish to distinguish as different from what has been defined in clinical terms by medical professionals.

I am talking about the basic anguish inherent in being a sentient life-form.

What will differentiate this thread from the Depression Tabulator thread?

Well, therein lies the rub.  It is an experimental attempt to see if I can tell the difference, subjectively, between clinical depression and the general anguish inherent in all life, especially apparent to those deep thinkers who are not afraid to acknowledge when they are experiencing this.

Nation of One:
I have felt a not-so-intense but constant anguish and misery throughout the day.  There does not seem to be any reason in particular.  I have only smoked a few cigarettes all day, and during each "smoking" I was fully aware of this mood, this funk, I have been in all day.

Getting through days such as this must be considered a kind of life skill.

Maybe if I were living totally alone, I might find myself in tears for no apparent reason.  Maybe I might succumb to inebriation.

The thing is, we each do have to endure our own existence alone.  Maybe many might be ashamed to admit they feel miserable for no apparent reason.   It is creepy how difficult it is to express this miserable feeling.  It is as though there is a point one reaches where it just doesn't seem worth the effort it takes to articulate.   Moreover, who reallly cares?

Well, that is the power of becoming a diarist.  You do not have to write for others.  You do not have to keep the interest of an audience.  Writing then becomes simply an alternative to suicide.   It is a coming around to certain conclusions.

There will be times when one is so miserable, that it may be impossible to focus on what you would like to focus on. 

Days such as this, when in a funk, I might watch a couple videos on zootube, but I find that this can actually make the misery more intense.   And so I pace.   I try to focus.   I do not deny the misery, and I wait for the misery to transform into a kind of resignation. 

I did not force myself to eat today.  The culture I was born into does not have any traditional practices like "fasting."   If we go without eating food, this is considered a sign of clinical depression.    Tonight, by 10PM, I think I will force down a couple fried eggs on some rice.

I know that these things I write are not of great interest to anyone, but I am continuing to use this message board as a kind of "diary" for when I just need to "write to myself."   If anyone else has something to add, feel free to do so, but do not feel obligated. 

Holden:

My mother is very similar  to that of Schopenhauer's. She  would like  me  to  marry just   so  she could keep up  with the Joneses.While outwardly she  acts like a pious  hindu woman she keeps pestering me  with comments like"as you are an only  child   you MUST marry.If you had siblings things might have been different. My father is a bit better though.

Yes  is a  hindu  woman,sure.But not the Upanishadic kind, but of the  right  wing  variety.

She has  no idea how  easy it is  for  me  to  let  go of this life.That I  have been preparing for such a moment for more than a  decade  now.
I won't mind. I have just started getting hang of maths a little  bit.  If I live,I will comprehend it some more,if  not,well,never mind.

I  may  not  have  a lot  of principles and I am not a very kind man. But  I do have one  -no matter   the  amount of hardships  I am forced to endure,never would  I force  another  creature to get  tortured so.Yes, I  think  this principle of mine is  not  up  for negotiations. I am in my early  thirties. Almost  half of my life( if I live to  be 60)  is over. With Schopenhauer I  say,what happens  to  me personally is secondary.What  I  think,what I write is what really matters.

You,Herr Kaspar, are ,to be  it bluntly,my hero. You are  the  teacher  I was searching for  since I was about  13. What I say here  on  this message board,Herr Kaspar,what I write here, that  is my real life.Not the time I spend  as  a wage  slave.

Holden is my real name,the other name is just that of the wage slave.


https://youtu.be/GZbHKTBpXA0

Nation of One:
I sure don't feel very heroic, Holden, but I am honored that you see me as such. 

I have been observing my appetite lately.  I have been hungry but with no motivation to eat food.  I was able to get down some fresh baby spinach fried in olive oil with chunks of garlic.  I was able to get down some prunes.

Mind you, I am not ill.   Maybe the body wants to "fast" but since I remain unschooled about such practices, I do not know how to listen to my own body.  Well, I do listen to it, but when I don't eat, I feel very strange.    Isn't it something the situation we are in - having to eat food.  Our bodies are really a constant buden to us.

Your reasons for not wanting to reproduce (or marry) show wisdom and thoughtfulfulness.  You do not wish to take part in the process of creating another sentient feeling creature very similar to yourself who would have this constant want and need imposed upon him or her.

I think that if you repeatedly confide in your mother about these reasons, she will have no choice but to accept that you are under no obligation to provide your parents with grandchildren.

I am fortunate that neither of my parents harass me over such things.  They know that I have just never been very much of a money-maker, and therefore can see that I would not have had the means to start some kind of family.   Besides that, I think my mother thinks it has to do with "the times we live in," that I am not motivated to bring life into such a world as ours, as it is now; and yet, I have to agree with Thomas Ligotti in his assesment that it has nver been a good time to be born, and there never will be.

Once such an opinion has crystalized, certain conclusions will follow.  The reason why so many passages by Schopenhauer resonate with you is because you feel it in your bones.  It's simply not worth the struggle.

If you reach a point where you just can't take it anymore,  I would hope you would first quit your job rather than take your own life.

In the meantime, I cannot advise you to quit your job.   Although you refer to me as a kind of teacher, I am certainly no guru, guide, nor some kind of Oracle.

You say I have helped you.  Maybe it is simply the fact that you see in me an honest and fairly intelligent man who is just getting by in this life, who is just barely able to endure himself.  You see that I am not some kind of drama-king.  I've just developed this habit of not masking the way I really feel about life.

Should you live into your fifties, by then, your parents and other relatives will no longer urge you to marry and reproduce.  You will have made your point by then.

Please take care of yourself and know that, as alone as you feel, you are surely not alone.   You know, even in the animal kingdom, there are plenty of antinatalists.   Sure, think about it.  Not all specimens reproduce.

The problem I see, especially with the nature of the demands your mother keeps making, is that, as you suggest, this strong desire for grandchildren (and daughter-in-law) may sadly represent some kind of commodity.   In other words, pictures to show?   Life is not a peep show.   Witness the masses posting photos on the Internet all over the developed world.  Many people believe their own lies.   They believe their own narratives, the stories they tell themselves. 

In the meantime, you and I both know (FOR A FACT) that moment-by-moment existence in the here-and-now present is an endless state of discomfort anxiety.   Point blank.

At least we know that we have our hands full just enduring the burden of our own individual existence.  We do not believe the Great Big Lies, the really big lies about "what is the nature of our existence."

We are told that we are here to reproduce ourselves.  Does this make any sense?

We find ourselves on a runaway train with no one at the helm, and the great big lie is that "we must survive."

We do not need to survive.  We are trapped in some kind of cycle.  I do not claim to have some kind of secret insight into the nature of our predicament, but I promise I would try to be as honest as possible concerning my own observations.

Thanks Holden.  I am glad you have found this message board to be a place you might exist as a mental entity.

I'm still in kind of a funk.   

Signing off,

Whatever My Name Is, it just doesn't matter.

Nation of One:
When I was an early teen, maybe 10, maybe 12, my Great Grandmother, while sitting close by me, declared to the adults in the room, "I would not blame a young man for not wanting to marry and start a family in a world such as this."

That statement resonated with me.   She was the Arthur Schopenhauer of my earliest moments of consciousness as a "literate" [MENTAL=soul] entity.  As soon as I could learn to write cursive, I began a long exchange of letters to (and from) my paternal/paternal great grandmother.  I treasured her cursive written letters.  She was delighted the cursive written letters I sent to her, even when my teenage-world fell into a whirlwind of chaos, parents divorced and sleeping with other partners, sister pregnant giving birth to nephew shortly after parents' divorce, the letters I sent began to have to be restrained, if not altogether censored; and yet, the passion for honest written word must have compelled me to convey the pain and anguish and despair my world had become.   The big secret may have been concealing the state of my sister, but I had to convey to her somehow that my sister was in some kind of danger, being on the outs with both [divorced] parents and having to stay with the mother of the father of the child [my nephew].

She was old ever since I knew her, and she was older still at 100 when she passed (she outlived her son, my paternal grandfather). 

She was quite grouchy, but always tender with me.  When I was a very young child, great grandmother would put my head on her lap and put me to sleep by rubbing her old wrinkled thumb ever so gently and slowly on the top of my forehead.   As I aged I learned of the great grandfather I had never met, the man named Hentrich (or Heinrich) who had ended his life in the manner similar to the author of A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, attaching a hose from the exhaust of his personal automobile and putting the hose through a window closed as much as can be expected.   For my recent ancestor, it took place in a closed garage.  My father was only ten years old at the time, and he worshiped his grandfather (who came from a mysterious place called "Germany," spoke with peculiar accent, and tried to teach him words which were far too long and confusing for my father to learn). 

For the author JK Toole, by the way,  his vehicle was left running outdoors on the side of an old dirt road where he consciously took his final nap.

So,

My father never picked up on the German from his grandparents frequent arguments, and always complained that the words were too long.  Neither of his parents spoke much German either.  Generally, way back when, it was discouraged for "German-speaking" 'citizens of the United States of America' to teach their descendants the German language.  There was great effort and propaganda to Englisize those with Germanic heritage.   I learned this, not through formal education, but through reading Kurt Vonnegut Jr, novels as an angry and troubled young man.  It was verified later in life during a homeless spell and many trips to a library through John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of [American] Education.) And so it goes.   ;)

So, I'm not too sure how much a part my great grandmother played in my mysterious great grandfather's apparent suicide (to put it so bluntly - if there are ghosts and spooky presences not visible to the living senses of organic life, forgive my abysmal ignorance if my assessment is offensive.)  I know that financial agony was at the root, supposedly, from what I was able to pick up throughout my life through infrequent mention of this man, the grandfather my father cherished as a child, but who would vanish from the stage of life rapidly before his eyes.

Well, at least, were I to vanish into the void { }, there would be no mourning grand children or abandoned wife.   I never spoke to my paternal grandfather EVER about this subject (of his father).  It would have been considered HUGELY impolite to inquire.   I liked my paternal grandfather better than my maternal grandfather.   Both were scientific types, but my paternal grandfather, having been an only child, seem a bit more shy and reserved, where as I perceived my maternal grandfather as a bit more mischeivious and somewhat arrogant, but always trying to be funny (except on Christmas Day when he was bed-ridden over memories of his own father's death on a Christmas Day when he was just 12.)

Oh well, let he who is not a selfish animal cast the first handful of their own poop skillfully into the eye (?) of he or she who offends thee.

What I mean to say is that when I ramble on like this in free-style diaristic fashion [like diarrhea?], I am not seriously judging any of my elders' personality traits, just making what I think are honest observations and reflections ... blah, blah, blah

The main point was this:  When I was an early teen, maybe 10, maybe 12, my Great Grandmother, while sitting close by me, declared to the adults in the room, "I would not blame a young man for not wanting to marry and start a family in a world such as this."

I feel I had her blessing to resign from our species.  It's the only rationally and emotively correct thing to do.

Amen.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page