Author Topic: Depressive Realism  (Read 4507 times)

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raul

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #30 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.



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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #31 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 ....

Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

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Holden

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To Herr Hentrich and Senor Raul: Depressive Realism
« Reply #32 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.

La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #33 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.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2017, 04:22:13 pm by Non Serviam »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

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raul

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #34 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.

Holden

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #35 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.













La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

raul

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #36 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.


 

Nation of One

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The quality of human life is actually quite appalling.
« Reply #37 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.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2017, 12:19:26 am by Non Serviam »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

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Holden

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #38 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.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2017, 12:00:19 pm by Holden »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #39 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.

« Last Edit: December 23, 2017, 11:57:02 am by Non Serviam »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #40 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.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #41 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!
« Last Edit: December 23, 2017, 11:21:58 pm by Non Serviam »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

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The End Of The Human Condition?
« Reply #42 on: July 26, 2021, 06:50:35 am »
From Resignation

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.

FREEDOM was launched at the Royal Geographical Society in London in June 2016, where Sir Bob Geldof — 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."
« Last Edit: July 26, 2021, 06:54:17 am by Kaspar Hauser »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~