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Nation of One

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We are Peculiar Things
« on: February 01, 2019, 11:18:10 pm »
An excerpt:

The fear of women is more common than we think, and is generally manifested by men who no one cares about, that is, low-status males who are generally irrelevant, what society regards as "losers".  There are a lot more men in that category than women.

[5:57]: Lots of men have no sexual partner and they have no children.  That's not the case with women.  Almost all women have at least one child, and it's a rare woman indeed who cannot find a sexual partner. 

 


Also, he echoes Schopenhauer when he refers to women as "the gatekeepers of reproductive success."  I know on a deep level that my traits have been rejected by Nature itself, by women in general.  I am not alone.  There are a multitude of "losers" in this cancerous species.   I don't have the traits necessary to be successful cancer. I guess.






I'm not so sure if "Nature," "Evolution," "God," or "Women," really know what the hell they're doing.  What I mean is, whatever it is that women are "selecting" for, and this comes down to what Nature is selecting for, is skewed by many factors.  If everything plays itself out and is driven by unconscious forces, what does it even matter what I consciously "want?"

In some cases, the dominant males use physical force, just like the chimpanzees, to secure their access to woman, i.e. "breeding rights," and in other case the force is more subtle, as in the case when wealthy men use their religion to justify having harem while so many men go without a wife.

What is going on when the "rejected" low-status male, who society doesn't care about at all, gets it into his head that he is perfectly content to have been rejected?    What I am trying to imply here is that NOTHING THAT IS SO, IS SO, and that there is a chance that "superior traits" may get rejected by Nature (and women) for reasons having to do with the fact that certain "superior traits," like the unwillingness to be a slave, outright defiance, etc, are not conducive to the agenda of the species, which is to perpetuate itself.

Maybe survival is nothing to brag about.   Is this sour grapes on my part, or am I onto something?
« Last Edit: February 02, 2019, 12:29:19 am by Kaspar the Jaded »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

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Holden

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Re: We are Peculiar Things
« Reply #1 on: February 02, 2019, 01:54:38 am »
Herr Kaspar,

Like I have said I  have never had  a "girlfriend"( when I wrote to you about the young lady back in 2014 she was already engaged to be married to someone). I feel quite uneasy around women,truth be told.I feel  at home only among books.

In the streets of Calcutta I see a lot of couples.  The men with women ,I have noticed, are generally speaking,cocksure  about themselves  and about everything else,they appear to have it all figured out ::). I ,on the other hand, am tentative about  everything.

I don't really regret the lack of company of a woman. In fact, I actually like my own company.

As a  side note-I remember clearly that you once said that ,while in the state of inebriation you often  tore religion to  pieces ,however,you could never bring yourself  to rail against the Nazarene himself.Is  it because of the rejection  and humiliation and crucifixion he is supposed to have undergone?

Thanks!


PS: I don't quite like this Peterson character. He seems  to be one those "Alt-Right" fellows one hears so much about these days.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2019, 01:59:29 am by Holden »
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Silenus

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Re: We are Peculiar Things
« Reply #2 on: February 02, 2019, 07:42:56 am »
As an aside, I agree with Holden that Jordan Peterson should not be trusted. He reeks like a clergyman and seems to preach a Nietzschean "be a bigger man and say yes to life," whatever that's supposed to mean.

I profess no solution to the problem of "patriarchy," though I do understand that it is an issue. And I am neither for nor against "feminism," largely because I am ignorant as to their "agenda" and also because I simply see all human behavior to be totally tribal, irrational and animalistic.

Yes Hentrich, I don't find survival to be a bragging right. I know that I've been born into an environment that was shaped simply out of the modification and degradation of nature. The land of plenty, located a few blocks from the home in the grocery store. I am the result of a species that bred like the animal it is, because of our hallucinogenic plunge into manipulation and excess. What else could a self-conscious ape do?

What I'm trying to say is that if it were not for this anthropocentric environment, I would be totally lost and without a clue as to even grow a garden. It's pathetic, and I am a pathetic creature.

Just the fact that I wear glasses is enough. Imagine being born with poor eyesight in the "wild west" of times long past. Surely I would have been torn limb from limb by my fellow competing man, or at least another dominant animal. I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ALIVE RIGHT NOW. But the convenience of civilization allows me to play along.

Some of us just weren't cut out for survival. We "tricked" nature so that everyone could breed and play the game. And there is nothing wrong with admitting that.

"And the strict master Death bids them dance."

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Re: We are Peculiar Things
« Reply #3 on: February 02, 2019, 08:35:49 am »
While I was typing, Silenus, you replied.  I agree that there is nothing wrong with facing the possibility that we ought not exist in the first place.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote from: Holden
As a  side note-I remember clearly that you once said that ,while in the state of inebriation you often  tore religion to  pieces ,however,you could never bring yourself  to rail against the Nazarene himself.Is  it because of the rejection  and humiliation and crucifixion he is supposed to have undergone?

I never railed against the Nazarene since, well, I'm not quite sure why not.  It most likely has much to do with the stories of how he was treated by the authorities (of state and religion) and the appeal of his apparent hatred of wealth.  Other than that, I'm not sure why the Nazarene gets a kind of "free pass" with me.  Do I take issue with his supposed philosophy?  No, I don't think I care to know it too well, but I had suspected he may have encountered influences from your neck of the woods, which is what made him such an influential philosopher.   All that "son of god" stuff and grounding his identity in the historic records of the Hebrews, well, at this point in my life I find it all rather annoying.   It's best, I think, not to give a shiit about it.  Then I don't have any reason to hate anyone in particular.   I'm sick of hearing about Jesus, actually - and I don't care for his father at all, a very jealous and corrupt putz of a god, if there ever was one. 


One thing that comes to mind is a passage from Ligotti's philosophic treatise, CATHR, when he rails against Christianity and Islam.  Surely, the figure from the former is a far more amiable character than the figure of the latter, but there was something very liberating about the way Ligotti expressed it, something that gave me a renewed sense of being on the "right path" (The Path of Rejection and Renunciation):

Quote from: Thomas Ligotti
Lovecraft is a figure of exceeding intrigue here because much of his fiction is based on a clutch of godlike beings whose very presence in the universe degrades the idea of betterment in human life into a cosmic miscalculation. Azathoth the Blind Idiot God, Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos, and those monstrous researchers of the Great Race who pass the eons by traveling through time and the galaxies to record miscellaneous data and lore to fill their library: these entities symbolize the Lovecraftian universe as a place without unconditional sense, meaning, or value. This perspective is memorably expressed in Lovecraft’s poem “Nemesis”: 

I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge or lustre or name.


This is not what fans of a better future wish to hear. Even highbrow readers — perhaps because they tend to be immoderately stricken with consciousness, which is always a stickler if you want to keep your spirits from flagging into depression — will deny the validity of such a vision or treat it as only a literary diversion, which in effect is all that it is . . . along with every glyph and scribble ever made or tale told since Gilgamesh sojourned in the land of the dead. These same readers have been seen in public lapping up such drivel as Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Transcendental Meditation, Paganism and Neopaganism, Pantheism, Gnosticism, and the preaching of New Age sects.

As a rule, though, most prefer old and reputable belief systems and their sectarian outgrowths. So they trust in the deity of the Old Testament, an incontinent putz who soiled Himself and the universe with His corruption, a born screw-up whose seedy creation led the Gnostics to conceive of this genetic force as a factory-second, low-budget divinity pretending to be the genuine article. They trust in Jesus Christ, a historical cipher cobbled together like Frankenstein’s monster out of parts robbed from the graves of messiahs dead and buried—a savior on a stick. They trust in Allah and his mouthpiece Mohammed, a prophet-come-lately who pioneered a new genus of humbuggery for an emerging market of believers that was not being adequately served by existing religious products. They trust in anything that verifies their importance as persons, tribes, societies, and particularly as a species that will endure in this world and perhaps in an afterworld that may be uncertain, unclear, or an out-and-out nightmare, but which sates their appetite for values not of this earth—that depressing, meaningless place they know so well and want nothing more than to obliterate from their consciousness.   Sure enough, then, writers such as Zapffe, Schopenhauer, and Lovecraft only write their ticket to marginality when they fail to affirm the worth and wonder of humanity, the validity of its values (whether eternal or provisional), and, naturally, a world without end, or at least one that continues into the foreseeable future. Anything else is too depressing to be countenanced.

Phobic to any somber cast of thought, humankind has nonetheless imbibed ever-increasing disillusionments throughout its history. The biblical Genesis, and all other fables of origination, has been reduced to a mythic analogue of the big bang theory and the primordial soup. Pantheon after pantheon has been belittled into “things people used to believe.” Petitions for divine interventionism are murmured only inside the tents of religious fanatics and faith-healers. And things have not been the same since the earth began revolving around the sun rather than the other way around. In the past century or so, disillusionments of this kind have become the province of specialists in the various sciences, so they are not well understood by, if known to, those who go to church on Sunday and read the astrology column in the newspaper the rest of the week. Generalists of disillusionment broadcast on a wider frequency. Yet their message, a repetitive dirge that has been rehearsed for thousands of years, is received only by epicures of pessimism, cognitive mavericks who have impetuously circled the field in the race to the finish line.

Contemporaneous with every generation, disillusionment must proceed surreptitiously.  Anyone caught trying to accelerate its progression will be reprimanded and told to sit in the corner.  While the Church has lost its clout to kill or torture dissenters such as Zapffe, Schopenhauer, and Lovecraft, they are still closely watched by the guard dogs of consciousness both sacred and secular. A sign of progress, some would say. But sufferance of such minds should not lead us into premature self-congratulation. The speed at which our kind moves toward an ultimate disillusionment is geologically slow, and humanity can be cocksure of kicking the bucket by natural causes or an “act of God” before it travels very far toward that glittering day when with one voice it might cry out, “Enough of this error of conscious life. It shall be passed down no longer to those innocents unborn.”


How to acclimate oneself to being miserable?  How does one omit the mandates of survival from our lives out of a stratospherically acerbic indignation?  Life itself is objectionable and not worth living, not just my life, not just your life, not just Schopenhauer's life, but living itself, existence in general, when viewed as a whole and in the details, is more than a little peculiar.  It's downright horrific!


Stratospherically Acerbic Indignation

from the context of:

Quote from: Ligotti
“If human pleasure did not have both a lid and a time limit, we would not bestir ourselves to do things that were not pleasurable, such as toiling for our subsistence. And then we would not survive. By the same token, should our mass mind ever become discontented with the restricted pleasures doled out by nature, as well as disgruntled over the lack of restrictions on pain, we would omit the mandates of survival from our lives out of a stratospherically acerbic indignation. And then we would not reproduce. As a species, we do not shout into the sky, “The pleasures of this world are not enough for us.” In fact, they are just enough to drive us on like oxen pulling a cart full of our calves, which in their turn will put on the yoke. As inordinately evolved beings, though, we can postulate that it will not always be this way. “A time will come,” we say to ourselves, “when we will unmake this world in which we are battered between long burden and brief delight, and will live in pleasure for all our days.” The belief in the possibility of long-lasting, high-flown pleasures is a deceptive but adaptive flimflam. It seems that nature did not make us to feel too good for too long, which would be no good for the survival of the species, but only to feel good enough for long enough to keep us from complaining that we do not feel good all the time.”

― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race


One last quote to show the source of the drunken reading above:   


Pessimists and depressives need not apply for a position in the enterprise of life. You have two choices: Start thinking the way God and your society want you to think or be forsaken by all. The decision is yours, since you are a free agent who can choose to rejoin our fabricated world or stubbornly insist on … what? That we should mollycoddle non-positive thinkers like you or rethink how the whole world transacts its business? That we should start over from scratch? Or that we should go extinct? Try to be realistic. We did the best we could with the tools we had. After all, we are only human, as we like to say. Our world may not be in accord with nature’s way, but it did develop organically according to our consciousness, which delivered us to a lofty prominence over the Creation. The whole thing just took on a life of its own, and nothing is going to stop it anytime soon. There can be no starting over and no going back. No major readjustments are up for a vote. And no melancholic head-case is going to bad-mouth our catastrophe. The universe was created by the Creator, damn it. We live in a country we love and that loves us back. We have families and friends and jobs that make it all worthwhile. We are somebodies, not a bunch of nobodies without names or numbers or retirement plans. None of this is going to be overhauled by a thought criminal who contends that the world is not doubleplusgood and never will be. Our lives may not be unflawed—that would deny us a better future to work toward—but if this charade is good enough for us, then it should be good enough for you. So if you cannot get your mind right, try walking away. You will find no place to go and no one who will have you. You will find only the same old trap the world over. Lighten up or leave us alone. You will never get us to give up our hopes. You will never get us to wake up from our dreams. We are not contradictory beings whose continuance only worsens our plight as mutants who embody the contorted logic of a paradox. Such opinions will not be accredited by institutions of authority or by the middling run of humanity. To lay it on the line, whatever thoughts may enter your chemically imbalanced brain are invalid, inauthentic, or whatever dismissive term we care to hang on you, who are only “one of those people.” So start pretending that you feel good enough for long enough, stop your complaining, and get back in line. If you are not as strong as Samson—that no-good suicide and slaughterer of Philistines—then get loaded to the gills and return to the trap. Keep your medicine cabinet and your liquor cabinet well stocked, just like the rest of us. Come on and join the party. No pessimists or depressives invited. Do you think we are morons? We know all about those complaints of yours. The only difference is that we have sense enough and feel good enough for long enough not to speak of them. Keep your powder dry and your brains blocked. Our shibboleth: “Up the Conspiracy and down with Consciousness.”

« Last Edit: February 02, 2019, 12:51:00 pm by Kaspar the Jaded »
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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Re: We are Peculiar Things
« Reply #4 on: February 02, 2019, 12:23:07 pm »
I have just recently viewed this video, and I had never heard of Jordan Peterson before this.   Yes, he is charismatic.  Thank you Holden and Silenus for your warnings.   It is becoming more clear to me that Peterson must support a belief in free will.  This concept of free will should be be trashed. The idea that people are somehow ultimately responsible for everything about themselves is problematic. Our legal system is predicated upon the existence of free will, but this does not mean that free will exists.

I think that one of the reasons that I have made a commitment to focus on mathematics at a level comprehensible to me is because it makes me feel more authentic and, yes, even more honest;  whereas there is a great deal of "intellectual activity" (debating ideologies, psychoanalysis, critical theory, etc) makes me tense.

When I view these videos, I am interested in the comments.  While it is better than watching television, I still feel as though I would be better off just plugging away at some math problems.   

So many thoughts I have I am unable to articulate, like when I reflect on how we always need to eat food.   The fact that I am dependent upon grocery stores, while I am always grateful for the food, does not give me much dignity.  There is no way around feeling like a pathetic creature, for me, anyway.

This might be simply a perception. 

I had always considered myself "able to articulate myself," but I am becoming more aware that the more authentic I wish to be, the less willing I am to put much faith in what I end up saying or writing.  It is as though I make a compromise:  I cannot express what it is I really think, and so some other words form.

Maybe I study mathematics at the level I currently do because it gives me this feeling of authenticity.   I am some kind of biological hoax, a creature who maybe ought not to have existed, and like the quote of Lovecraft left by Holden, at this point my object in life is to keep fed, warm, and amused till death comes to end the boredom..

I study math to amuse myself, for I am always amazed at how difficult certain activities can be, and how very lazy I sometimes feel --- there is that old feeling of "why bother?"  --- And so I have the ready-made answer for "why bother?" - which is, "well, this kind of math interests me," and it is equal to doing nothing at all.

I look at all my notebooks, and I could pick any one out and random, and the exercises would require just as much thought, and possibly much more thought, than when I initially went through them.  This practice has helped me to develop a healthy dose of self-doubt.

Maybe I have come to respect "lack of confidence" and DOUBT more than confidence and certainty; so anyone who appears to take a strong position with confidence is suspect to those of us with enough intellectual integrity to really doubt our intrinsic ability to understand anything at all.

Am I making any sense?

Something peculiar happens when we embrace self-doubt, or what I think Cioran referred to as Thinking Against Oneself.  Not only do we begin to wonder if we know what the hell we are talking about, but we may begin to suspect that hardly anyone does.   Remember when Holden mentions his perception of "couples out in public," how they appear to project this sense of "having their shiit together," having it all figured out.   Such confidence may be a sign that one has not entertained much self-doubt.

If I can't trust my own arithmetic, then I am likely to mistrust the arithmetic of others.  This kind of mistrust (or doubt) is not a bad thing at all to develop.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2019, 01:14:19 pm by Kaspar the Jaded »
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 ~

Nation of One

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Re: We are Peculiar Things
« Reply #5 on: November 22, 2021, 08:34:03 pm »
Quote from: Holden
I don't quite like this Peterson character. He seems  to be one those "Alt-Right" fellows one hears so much about these days.

I'm not too crazy about this professor of psychology either.  I was wondering what it was about him, specifically, which rubs me the wrong way.

From Quora:

In short, just as Donald Trump is a poor person’s idea of a rich person, Jordan Peterson is an uneducated person’s idea of an intellectual.

___________________________________________________

I am wondering if anyone can access my link to Stratospherically Acerbic Indignation (me reading Ligotti)

This is related to the post from 2019.02.02.

Is it possible to live authentically in a phony society based on lies and self-deception?
« Last Edit: November 23, 2021, 02:28:04 am by mike »
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: We are Peculiar Things
« Reply #6 on: November 23, 2021, 01:33:57 pm »
You might like to read this:

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NEWS
Jordan Peterson says he was suicidal, addicted to benzos
By Jesse O’Neill

January 31, 2021 | 3:38pm


Jordan Peterson discussed his health issues in a new interview with the Sunday TImes.
Toronto Star via Getty Images
Jordan Peterson in a new interview described his spiral into drug addiction and suicidal thoughts — and then undergoing a controversial Russian treatment that placed him into an induced coma for eight days.

The controversial Canadian psychology professor, who has spent much of his career railing against political correctness, spoke to the Sunday Times, along with his podcast host daughter, Mikhaila Peterson, about his downward spiral.

“I don’t remember anything. From Dec. 16 of 2019 to Feb. 5, 2020,” the self-help author said of period he was sent Russia for treatment. “I don’t remember anything at all,” Peterson told the British newspaper.

Peterson gained international fame for blasting academic “safe spaces” and feminism, as well as his refusal to use transgender people’s preferred pronouns.

He penned the international bestseller, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,” in 2018, but was struggling with an addiction to benzodiazepines prescribed to him after a violent reaction to a strict meat and greens diet.


Mikhaila, 28, her Russian husband and Peterson began the diet in 2016, but all three had a violent “sodium metabisulphite response,” she said. “It was really awful — but it hit him hardest,” Mikhaila told the Times. “He couldn’t stand up without blacking out. He had this impending sense of doom. He wasn’t sleeping.”

Peterson has previously claimed that he didn’t sleep for 25 days during this time, but the longest period of human sleep deprivation ever recorded is only 11 days, the paper notes.

He was prescribed a low dose of antidepressants, which helped him recover, but the dosage was increased after Peterson sunk into depression following his wife Tammy’s cancer diagnosis.

“And things just fell apart insanely with Tammy. Every day was life and death and crisis for five months,” Peterson told the paper. “The doctors said, ‘Well, she’s contracted this cancer that’s so rare there’s virtually no literature on it, and the one-year fatality rate is 100 per cent.’ So endless nights sleeping on the floor in emergency, and continual surgical complications… So I took the benzodiazepines.”

Tammy Roberts recovered from complications with a kidney surgery, but Peterson’s drug dependency worsened.

“Dad started to get super-weird. It manifested as extreme anxiety, and suicidality,” Mikhaila, who the Times reports “seems to have assumed full charge of his affairs,” said.

The anti-political-correctness crusader went to a Toronto clinic, where he was reportedly taken off benzodiazepine and prescribed ketamine, before checking himself into a New York rehab in 2019.

The Times reported that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia around this time. But Peterson subsequently released full audio of the interview to show that Mikhaila said he was misdiagnosed with several conditions, including schizophrenia.

“Well, I went to the best treatment clinic in North America. And all they did was make it worse. So we were out of options,” Peterson said to the Times regarding the decision to undergo a controversial treatment in Moscow.

SEE ALSO

Jordan Peterson recovering from tranquilizer addiction in Russia
“I had put myself in the hands of the medical profession. And the consequence of that was that I was going to die. So it wasn’t that [the evidence from Moscow] was compelling. It was that we were out of other options.”

In Russia, Peterson was intubated for undiagnosed pneumonia and administered propofol so that he could be induced into a coma for more than a week while medics cleared his system of drugs.   

When he emerged from the treatment, Peterson had lost the ability to walk, along with large parts of his memory, according to the report.

“He was catatonic. Really, really bad. And then he was delirious,” his daughter told the paper.

After making some progress, Peterson was flown to Florida in February, where his pain and suicidal thoughts returned.

Mikhaila then flew her father to a private hospital in Belgrade, Serbia, where he was diagnosed with akathisia — a restlessness condition linked with withdrawals of benzos.

Peterson, who also contracted the coronavirus during his time overseas, returned home to Canada to recover from akathisia. He told the Sunday Times that being labeled an “icon of white supremacy and hate speech,” by employees at his book’s publisher affected his mental health.

“I was at the epicenter of this incredible controversy, and there were journalists around me constantly, and students demonstrating. It’s really emotionally hard to be attacked publicly like that. And that happened to me continually for, like, three years,” Peterson told the paper.

“I was concerned for my family. I was concerned for my reputation. I was concerned for my occupation. And other things were happening. The Canadian equivalent of the Inland Revenue service was after me, making my life miserable, for something they admitted was a mistake three months later, but they were just torturing me to death.”

When asked about the apparent of irony of turning to drugs after telling his followers that life is about battling through pain and suffering, the author deflected.

“No, I’ve never said that. Look, if you’re a viable clinician you encourage people to take psychiatric medication when it’s appropriate. What I really encourage in people is to understand that it isn’t useful to allow your suffering to make you resentful. And, believe me, I’ve had plenty of temptation to become resentful about what’s happened to me in the last two years,” Peterson told the paper.

During the ordeal, Peterson wrote a sequel to his best-selling book dubbed “Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life.” It’s expected to be published in the spring.

FILED UNDER AUTHORS ,  COMA ,  DRUG ABUSE ,  MOSCOW ,  SUICIDE ,  1/31/21
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La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: We are Peculiar Things
« Reply #7 on: November 23, 2021, 06:01:13 pm »
Thank you for that information, Holden.  Not only might those experiences give the professor more empathy for those who suffer with addictions to substances, but just witnessing his suffering might make it more difficult to outright despise the poor devil.   

From the Weirdo-Rejectionist thread:

Quote from: mike
We each would endure our illnesses and heartache alone within our own hearts, within our own animal body.  I suppose this is why Schopenhauer suggests compassion as the only sensible attitude to take towards our fellow-creatures.   One must even try to have compassion for those who have wronged us.

Schopenhauer suggests that, when you find yourself hating someone with intense feeling, to consider the pain this person has experienced in their life.  Some say to forgive as long as you don't forget.   It is difficult, but if even the slightest degree of forgiveness is to be felt in the heart, it must be linked to an intrinsic awareness of their suffering and general dissatisfaction.   Even when people put up a front, like a couple that wants people to envision them as lovebirds, one knows from experience the drudgery that is animal existence.  Want, need, and utter futility.

Note:  I am coming out of the physical funk, giving the animal body much rest ... drinking water instead of booze.   I witness those in my monkey-sphere suffering the consequences of their spiritual deficiencies, and I wonder if they will be transforming.   The thing is, in this world, when someone is sinking in a downward spiral, reaching out to them is not always an option lest you be pulled into the vortex along with them.

The cold weather does frighten me to the core, and I wonder how the wildlife endures the harshness of their/our "Great Mother" (Nature).  I dress accordingly - and I even act as though it does not get to me, but deep down in my bones, I am genuinely horrified by our vulnerability at the hands of the elements.    :-\
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: We are Peculiar Things
« Reply #8 on: November 24, 2021, 10:44:18 am »
I agree with Peterson on a number of points. But they mean little when he commits the cardinal sin and speaks against Benatar and his anti-natalist philosophy:



He remains ,at the end of the day, a psychologist and is not a  true philosopher.He is just a run-of-the-mill right-winger. That is why Schopenhauer is a genius. Peterson wants men to be conventionally masculine and women to be traditional house-wives. Now, as you have read Schopenhauer’s definitive biography, you know quiet well that he entertained the idea of getting a hausfrau at one point of time. Do you see how this sets Schopenhauer apart from the likes of Peterson?

Peterson accepts the idea of housfrau.Schopenhauer merely entertained.As good old Aristotle would tell us-it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

When people claim there are more genders than there are prime numbers, well, Peterson might have point, but you see, even if his fantasy comes true and all the men turn into  the bread-winner and women into traditional house-wives,does he think the conflict between a man and his wife would end? No. I am quite sure Schopenhauer knew many a housfrau who mocked her husband and insulted him right to his face.
“Leave It to Beaver” era was not what is assumed to be.

I am glad you are being able to take rest. I hope you heal mentally and physically soon. I really want you to feel better and I truly wish bad people leave you alone and let you do your own thing.

Take care.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2021, 11:21:49 am by Holden »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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

Holden

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Re: We are Peculiar Things
« Reply #10 on: November 25, 2021, 12:45:53 pm »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: We are Peculiar Things
« Reply #11 on: November 26, 2021, 03:30:32 pm »
How does one grapple with the realization that the more genuine insight into the nature of "reality" you possess, the more insane you will become?   Insanity is defined by a society which itself is composed of members who are brainwashed to deceive themselves in order to function in a society founded upon webs of lies.

Reading Ernest Becker's Escape From Evil and parts of The Birth and Death of Meaning, I not only became aware that we are all better off dead, but I saw how I am somewhat alienated from Becker's over-estimation of the "science" of psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis.

He might have been too heavily influenced by academia and the Freudian theft of Schopenhauer's ideas to become a tremendous influence upon me.

Still, I drink up as much of Becker's theory as I can handle, even as I find myself dismissing his puffing up the significance of the soft pseudo-sciences of professional and academic psychology/psychiatry.

As Becker noted, mental health is often not a question of delusions, but of too close a confrontation with the reality of existence.  This is one of my core problems with the so-called science of psychology.  It has become not so much a search for truth and mental liberation, but a "theory of conformity and self-deception."

The healthy member of our society is one who is secure in the lies they tell themselves, whereas one who goes looking too closely at the reality of our predicament goes insane.   I find such conformity to the Big Lies to be repulsive.

I do not see how I can continue to exist much longer without taking myself out of this miserable predicament of being a sentient creature who is all-too-aware of what worms we are.  One of the great qualities I admire about the writings of Ernest Becker is his ability to articulate the science-fiction nightmare of being a creature with mouth, intestines, and anus - depending upon food in order to experience continued existence (even if this continued existence is nothing but pain and horror).

The harshness with which I view family members and other human organisms in general forces me to keep much of my thoughts to myself lest I even further alienate potential allies.   I have a good mind just to withdraw deep into myself and do what I have to do to liberate myself from the human condition, not communicating my truest sentiments to anyone.

The same strategy might be taken with regard to professionals and academics.  Since an honest thinker will be bombarded from all sides by professional liars, it seems to be a complete waste of life-energies for me to constantly confront those who conveniently ignore that Freud was a fraud who deceived himself and succumbed to pseudoscience.

See Freud: The Making of an Illusion by Frederick Crews.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2021, 04:44:26 pm by mike »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

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Holden

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Re: We are Peculiar Things
« Reply #12 on: November 26, 2021, 07:53:57 pm »
The distance between the superior man (a Kant or a Goethe) and the common man is much greater than the distance between the common man and the ape. - Haeckel
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Ibra

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Re: We are Peculiar Things
« Reply #13 on: December 01, 2021, 06:56:22 pm »
Mike, 

Quote from: Hentrich
One of the great qualities I admire about the writings of Ernest Becker is his ability to articulate the science-fiction nightmare of being a creature with mouth, intestines, and anus - depending upon food in order to experience continued existence (even if this continued existence is nothing but pain and horror).

likewise, this is the what I admire about Becker writings. I tried to read his other books, but he was too deep into psychiatry which I consider a bogus science at best or a straight up a tool used by the powerful for indoctrination and incarceration. I think you touched on this point in many posts in this board.

I read somewhere that Freud applied the Greek mythology to genitalia. and so-called intelligent intellectuals swallowed it whole.  ;D

Mike, you too an articulate writer but without the tricks and obfuscations of the academia. I think you inherited the clarity of Schopenhauer somehow. you are too honest for the society and academia.

stay well
Suffering is the only fruit of human race