What Now? > What Now?
Depressive Realism
Nation of One:
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."
:-\
Holden:
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.
Nation of One:
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.
Nation of One:
" ... 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
--- 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.
--- End quote ---
Nation of One:
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.
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