Author Topic: Depressive Realism  (Read 4512 times)

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Nation of One

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #15 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.

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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 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 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.

« Last Edit: October 17, 2017, 02:06:30 pm by Non Serviam »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

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