You’re probably misinterpreting me. Contra other animals, humans strive to (or need to) find balance.

A prefrontal lobotomy works too.

(Consciousness, not living itself, is the problem.) — 180 Proof

Yes, I’m giving an account specifically of how human cognition is especially the problem. The fact that I can point to this and explain it is significant.

See my responses above as it addresses your confusion..I’ll put the most salient one below.

don’t think other animals “find” balance. Not in the way humans must do. Because of this inability, we are miserable aberrations from the rest of nature. The origins are the same. I’m not claiming metaphysical difference, but a resultant consequence of how we evolved. If I claimed bats can do things birds can’t and vice versa, you would probably not have a problem. Humans are different as well obviously, and the individual heuristic based self-talk justifications and decisions we make to survive, and our own ability to know this situation puts us on our own miserably outcast ship, part of nature but not at home in the same way. — schopenhauer1

Your position assumes the inability of man to move into a state of acceptance of his life. That seems very sad to me. It also turns a blind eye to those that have achieved balance in their lives. We do not "have it bad" at all. — Book273

We’ve achieved balance, damnit! [fist pounds on desk].

I say that they are aware of these things, they have simply found balance, something that we, generally, have yet to find.

We are hardly the higher being. — Book273

I don’t think other animals “find” balance. Not in the way humans must do. Because of this inability, we are miserable aberrations from the rest of nature. The origins are the same. I’m not claiming metaphysical difference, but a resultant consequence of how we evolved. If I claimed bats can do things birds can’t and vice versa, you would probably not have a problem. Humans are different as well obviously, and the individual heuristic based self-talk justifications and decisions we make to survive, and our own ability to know this situation puts us on our own miserably outcast ship, part of nature but not at home in the same way.

Meditating and “taking in nature and the moment” is not the same as an animal that doesn’t have linguistic based, conceptual, heuristic self-talk cognition. You might say we try to mimic these states through things like mediation and meditation.

the ascetic consciousness can be said symbolically to return Adam and Eve to Paradise, for it is the very quest for knowledge (i.e., the will to apply the principle of individuation to experience) that the ascetic overcomes. This amounts to a self-overcoming at the universal level, where not only physical desires are overcome, but where humanly-inherent epistemological dispositions are overcome as well.

Yes Schop’s denial of the Will. But I think even he thought this was reserved for the few who had the ascetic character to do so. The rest of us have aesthetic contemplation and compassionate-driven acts. Much lesser vehicles for overcoming the PSR and the world of Representation.

There's also something in Eric Fromm's notion of 'the fear of freedom'. Liberty is a kind of burden in some ways, because so much is left up to the individual. I think that's why people used to join the army or become monks - it removes that burden. But ultimately the burden is that of self-hood, and that is inextricably part of the human condition. The philosophy of individualism actually excerbates that in some respects. That was also central to Durkheim's analysis of 'anomie' and Weber's 'spirit of capitalism'. — Wayfarer

Yes, the individual bears the brunt of everything. Interestingly, this then becomes a vicious cycle whereby your sub-optimal condition is the individuals “inability” to make the right “judgement call” or decision. The very fact humans must even try to find or cultivate a heuristic is it’s own burden.

Phase 1: Cynical comment on human misery: "Yes, what great non-paradise conditions we are born into as humans".

Phase 2: Pessimist answer: If not paradise conditions, let's do something about it for future people.. As for ourselves, let's commiserate.

Phase 3 The crowd's answer: [Throw rotten vegetables.. and in Monty Python-cockney accents] "Boooo you! Fuck off! Leave us alone! You are such a downer! Talk science or politics! Boo you!!! Fuck off with your pessimism!!! We like this non-paradise arrangement!! Don't remind us of the structural downsides!! I'll ignore you!! I'll sublimate it!! I'll anchor it in X!! I'll wave you off as a [place degrading remark here]!!! That ad hom will show him and hopefully those other pessimists will get the point!! You're not wanted!! Go away!! Did I say Fuck off?!! Make sure none of the other you lot get any ideas now!! Let's talk economics, politics, and science.. Those are LEGITIMATE!! Now fuck off!!

Right. Which is why the solution to the problem is out-of-scope for naturalism. — Wayfarer

All I'm saying is that we are given the burden of, "If I don't want this, I have to do that.. but I don't want to do that". There's bad decision-making and heuristics. It's all confined to the individual's own deliberation.. It isn't unthinking instinct or shared amongst the group.. It is each person's individual deliberative situation. Don't forget the monkey wrench of mental illness.. So human condition is burdensome even for the most well-adjusted.. Add in mental illness for inefficiencies, and you get all sorts of glitches for more maladaptation to the psycho-physical circumstances. Perhaps they would have simply been dead earlier in previous times.

Either way, humans have the burden of how to exist each and every day/moment.. Other animals don't have that extra burden.

What's funny is when you try to answer that "no there is a way.." this becomes untenable in its own justifications.. Yes, humans "tend" to form habits based on cultural cues but this is still up to the individual if they want to accept that and use it, or even if they do, whether they integrate the habits well, or even if they are decent at integrating social-survival habits, they can still make a bad choice somewhere at a particular time or use the judgement wrong, or simply contingent circumstances don't work out etc..

It would be hard to over-state the intensity of efforts against labor and the left by the capitalist class (the ones who actually are succeeding at capitalism) and their government / political branches. — Bitter Crank

But Cuba.

God intended nothing other than survival, maintenance, and contingent harms along the way. You’re on your own for entertainment.

as only making the point that one must first exist in order to negate stress. The argument that one will not feel stress if he doesn’t exist is a weird one. He will not feel, do, or be anything, so you could replace “not feel stress” with any aspect of existence, like joy, happiness, gravity, breathing, eating McDonalds. — NOS4A2

Hence my use of “state of affairs”. It is sub species aeternatatis.

I don’t believe that giving birth is tantamount to imposing stress and work. That opposite is the case, except in the case of negligence. More often than not a person is coddled, raised, and cared for during the early stages of life, so pretending parents impose work and stress is largely untrue. — NOS4A2

You are either being intellectually dishonest or you are truly not understanding me. It’s not that parents are directly giving work to their children. It’s that by giving birth to them they will have to work and feel stress. This can be prevented. The state of affairs of someone working and feeling stress is not occurring by not procreating. You do understand that, right? That is the point being debated: Is knowingly putting someone in a position where they must work and feel stress (unnecessarily) ethically wrong? That is the point being debated, not whether someone has to exist to know that this is the case, just that proposition there.

You misinterpret and you take everything to be about you. I was not talking about antinatalism. And I was not talking about you. I was elaborating on the principles you raised and seeing where they go. Let's stop here. — Tom Storm

About me? Don’t see where you get that but okie dokie.

You can call your state of affairs a world where no one feels stress, and I’ll call your state of affairs a world where no one feels joy or happiness. — NOS4A2

So @Tom Storm indicated that “ends justifies means” reasoning. You are assuming that the collateral damage of stress and work is okay to impose for someone else to justify providing possible experiences of joy. Why is this kind of collateral damage justified, even if joy is the intention? It’s not like the person already exists to ameliorate a lesser harm for a greater harm. This would be creating the state of affairs of stress and work just because the parent wants this outcome to come about. That doesn’t seem like a good justification. An intention for good outcomes with known (and permanent/intractable) collateral damage, and for no other reason, “just because”, seems wrong. Not sure how it’s defended other than it’s currently held to be ethical by most people currently.

No. I would only consider stopping anything if there were no significant and damaging consequences. To do otherwise is naive. You can always make things worse, no? — Tom Storm

So an individual choosing to not procreate is all that? Misleading and false characterization. How is simply not procreating “damaging”? Quite the contrary..not foisting the state of affairs of work and stress to another person is a good thing.

Why don't you advocate death for children? They are only going to suffer through puberty, relationships, illness, work, and disappointments. Death is better, right? A rock solid guarantee of no more suffering? I also think anyone seriously interested in reducing their carbon footprint and environment impact could consider dying too. — Tom Storm

Because, why would I be the opposite of ethical? How do you jump to the conclusion that my position is the ends justifies the means in ethical reasoning?

I wonder if just being a human necessitates living with unfair decisions on other's behalf. — Tom Storm

It does and hence there is the first political thing to tackle. What do you do when a practice is unfair or unjust or unempathetic or cruel? Stop it.

The question for me is what can be changed, why should it be changed, and how can it be changed. — Tom Storm

Don't have people, it causes a state of affairs where the consequence is another person is having to work and feel stress.. the how goes along with the what basically.. don't make the decision for others, like birthing them in the first place to work and feel stress.

If the situation is intractable, then the people already existing can at least realize the folly rather than just accept it as the way it is... Well no shit it's "the way it is".. and so then what? I just gave you an answer. Communal catharsis of recognition of the situation "this sucks" OR that "not everyone will like X, Y, Z work and stress that I do" and a realization not to put the burden on a future generation "We won't make the state of affairs like this for someone else".

“There is no state of affairs where no one feels stress”. Such a state of affairs exists only in fantasy, like a world made of candy. — NOS4A2

A world with no people is still a state of affairs where no one feels stress.. So it isn't a world of fantasy. The world in fact existed billions of years before humans and presumably billions of years after.

Why should people be forced to go looking for animals and edibles berries in a hunter gatherer tribe? — Tom Storm

Exactly. Any person born into the world will have to work. Is that a fair decision on someone else's behalf?

Let's chuck any argument with the non-identity issue.. Which brings me to NOSA2 haha.

Sure I am. You're treating the fetus like it's a tabula rasa. It is not. It is striving to live. You haven't made a creature that might not want to live. You have made a creature that is striving with all its energy to live. It may change it's mind later and then it can make a decision. — Bylaw

This is inauthentic. Once humans develop the capacity to "reason" or "find reasons" rather, most waking decisions are not "automatic striving for life" but rather micro-decisions made as to what, when, how to do something. Humans barely unthinkingly do anything, and to compare to animals that may do so, would be misguided. Yeah you can find times when humans "zone out" or find "flow states" but in the course of daily X, Y, Z, there is a lot of stress, tedium, etc. and knowing one is stressed. So then one has to made a decision to try to be less stressed, etc. etc. An example is one can choose to walk out of the workplace at any time. One just doesn't want to live with the consequences.. All of this is reasoned and not automatic thinking. Certainly as @darthbarracuda stated, there is a societal pressure as to how one reasons, however. Like memes, the idea of "work hard to survive" needs to be in there.. But that isn't the real focus here. It is rather, should someone else (like a parent) decide that this person needs work and stress which is inevitable in being born in the first place.

There is no state of affairs where no one feels stress, but I suppose one could avoid it with drugs and the like. I wouldn’t impose any of that, but I would advise against it. — NOS4A2

You can stop at, "There is a state of affairs where there is no one who feels stress". That is not existing in the first place.

Work is stupid but if you don't work, you will eventually die, because (surprise surprise) society has not conditioned you to be able to survive outside of it, so you gotta fill that slot! Yippeee!!! — darthbarracuda

Ha, well, you know my answer though. If we can't find a way out of it, why put people in it? As I said to another poster, if people liking X thing (work) is a stochastic and not guaranteed thing (happy with it), why would we presume that we can make the decision for other people, when it was unnecessary to create that situation in the first place (meaning someone didn't already exist to be ameliorated by these negative situations of unwanted work/stress).

There will be a collapse in this scenario and something needs to replace that collapse. — Christoffer

I find it funny how it is all a big raucous, work, life etc. All needing to be maintained. How about the goal of not spreading more work and stress via "just don't create the situation for more people". If we can't actually develop a way out of it, then why would we put people into it? Pondering ways out on a philosophy forum won't suffice to change anything. The micro-decision to not put more people into situations of work and stress is attainable, however.

Who is deciding? Just adding to the picture not advocating any path. — Tom Storm

A parent.

Permissible based on whose reckoning? Why use the word permissible? Nothing is necessary, I am just describing a situation, not making a prescription. — Tom Storm

Well, I am trying to find some standard here as to the ethical weight of forcing something else to work-in-order to X (survive, maintain, entertain), which is the situation of an average person born.

Are you asking if it's better to exist and suffer or not exist at all? — Christoffer

Sort of. Rather, is it ethical to choose for someone else a state of affairs whereby they must "work" and "feel stress" and do so when there was no need in the first place (no one existed prior to work or feel stress)? I am looking for a standard here, not necessarily what is happening in practice.

That said, some people love their work and not all work is equal. Some involves doing things the worker loves. Some jobs are rewarding and useful to others. This matter is far from straight forward. — Tom Storm

But should you decide that for someone else if the “like work” preferences are contingent and stochastic? I’ll even grant you the notion that if you created a guaranteed happy situation for someone else, it is permissible to create the situation for someone else…But if it’s not? Is it really necessary to do that for someone else? And if it’s not, why would such an unknown situation be considered permissible?

So if the choice was between no one existing and creating someone who must do X work to survive, maintain, entertain, what would yo do?

What an odd thing to post on a forum that currently has 194 pages of people doing the exact opposite. — Isaac

When was the last time you made your own argument and not just chiming in pro or con on someone else's claim?

The organism is aligned. — Bylaw

Yes, organism is aligned.. just makes no sense. You aren't explaining it either.

But any that comes to term has been aligned with survival and being alive. — Bylaw

What does "aligned with survival and being alive" mean?

the child you create is aligned by its nature with your choice to have a new being come in the world. — Bylaw

Again, this doesn't make sense to me.

It is in essence aligned with your choice. Or it would misscarry (or perhaps be miscarried?). — Bylaw

Oh that sounds like spiritual stuff.

You cannot create someone who is not complicit in that yearning for life. — Bylaw

I just don't get what you are saying here, especially when you mention "complicit".

It's essence is bound up in striving to survive and thrive. — Bylaw

That isn't answering how it is right to allow impositions on someone else's behalf.

Their very essence is aligned with your urge procreate (if you had it, you might have wanted to just have sex, though, sure, you decided to go along with the consequences). — Bylaw

Urge to procreate isn't the same as dire urges that lead to death. That is a tricky one for humans, and to conflate it with how things work with other animals would be misguided.

People have the urge for a lot of things that don't need to be followed through (violence perhaps as an example).

Stress can be a valuable function insofar as it helps one stay alert, motivated, and adaptive. If you can manage stress it can be quite beneficial. — NOS4A2

So if there could be a state of affairs where no one feels stress, and one where there was, would you pick the one where the was on someone else's behalf? Is that kind of imposition right to do for someone else?

Generally we don't want to play ping pong with a world champion whose serves we cannot return and who can easily slam our serves. Nor would we choose the theoretically stress free game with someone we can beat that easily. — Bylaw

But how about forcing someone into a situation where they have to work in the first place?

So if someone is exploding fireworks everyday at 2am, upsetting the neighborhood.. It is imposing on others.. Generally people would frown on this.. But putting new people (born) to work and deal with stress.. essentially imposing. That's okay. Because it's what a lot of people want, so it must be right.

The great out for everyone: "It's what we do!!!".. Rather it's just what a lot of people want.. And that is an excuse?

Again, it's what humans do. — T Clark

Maybe the right word is "unserious." I wanted to respond to that without taking it any further. — T Clark

So you weren't seeing my line of argument then. You said that "It's what humans do".. But you cannot hide justifications behind such a naturalistic fallacy as we can "do otherwise".. hence why I said:

We don't just X, we have reasons for X (not just causes). — schopenhauer1

So, when you force others to X, you are doing it for your reasons, and deeming it as "good".

You are also missing that I usually like taking everyday assumptions and question them. You call it "unserious", but I call it not taking any given as taken for granted as "just what is the case".

Yet all animals don't have the ability to even think of the idea of "Not causing others to unnecessary work or feel stress".. So the point seems moot. — schopenhauer1

So about that, a theme I've been toying with for a little bit is the idea that humans have the extra burden having to justify (or make excuses) for why X, Y, Z is happening on top of just "doing" the task at hand. We don't just X, we have reasons for X (not just causes).

I don't have to work and I love it. — T Clark

If life was all retirement.. But you see we need to create some sort of excuse for why people need to be put in situations that aren't retirement... "It's good to overcome X"... "You can't get Y without X", but then why we need X is not justified, only that Y isn't possible without X (Y= retirement, X = work). X is never accounted for other than people's excuses.. Like:

I needed to be able to support my family; I needed clothes. I worked because I had to, as do all humans. — T Clark

As do all animals I guess. It's not unfair. It's just how it works. — T Clark

Yet all animals don't have the ability to even think of the idea of "Not causing others to unnecessary work or feel stress".. So the point seems moot.

why? Its only an observation... — Wheatley

Ha, this is a true statement.

I worked because I had to, as do all humans. As do all animals I guess. It's not unfair. It's just how it works. — T Clark

You know how I'm going to answer though, right? Let's say my other arguments are on the table here...

Consider: a young man wonders, usually, what it would be like to make love to a woman - perhaps not in that exact language - and in the great currents and turbulences of life eventually, usually, has that experience, even if not as he may have planned or expected. And in his wondering is nothing whatever pathological. Suppose a young man whose wonder is such that he uses it to block the possibility of the experience. Eventually that wonder becomes a denial of life and pathological. And nothing more complicated - in principle - that that. — tim wood

Again, I don't see how this addresses my concern that you are just saying (more subtly), don't question existence itself. That is to say, the enterprise of existing (aka continuing doing what we are doing as humans).

My point earlier with the "throwness" mixed with the idea of "micro-decisions" is that existence is not "for us", as we did not create this world, but inhabit it. HOWEVER, we are the only animal that can in most respects, "do otherwise". We can sublimate our curiosity on why we have to do anything by saying, "BUT this questioning makes us miss out!", but I don't see that as a real reason not to question. Rather, it is being authentically a human- someone that can wonder about these things, and perhaps judge the whole enterprise of being thrown into the world as sub-optimal. One can then try to sublimate and forget as you say as to not experience dread, or stay on the thin line and see the questioning through.

Thank you! You noticed and understood. Or at least partially. What would you call "too much or inappropriate wondering"? I have in mind that wondering that blocks living. You may prefer to all it pathological wondering - no objection here. — tim wood

For clarity's sake, there is a whole lot of useful and productive wondering to be done, but these all within a framework that a least anticipates the possibility of substantive and meaningful answers. That is, the whys that are asked are more-or-less well understood. Until and unless "existence" is understood even in preliminary or speculative terms - in service of seeking substantive and meaningful answers - such wonder pursued becomes a sickness. — tim wood

To not acknowledge that we "could do otherwise", even survival itself, is to be inauthentic. You would be arbitrarily using the justification of, "but this doesn't compute for survival". I'm assuming "blocks living" has something to do with survival, so if you want to clarify, then that is fine too. I just think anything survival or any X thing you think is "living" is some essentialist arbitrary tim wood opinion "writ large". And basically you are saying, "Do not question the enterprise itself, only follow the patterns set out for you". At least, you are saying something dangerously close.