Glad you brought up Von Hartmann. I really want to get into him but I have no idea how. His “philosophy of the unconscious” seems like a massive tome dealing with all sorts of crap and owes a lot to Hegel. Doesn’t help that he seems very obscure by todays standards

sure but still I don’t think the Overman really is a titan of industry. After all the Overman is not someone who just rules over the mediocre masses, but rather an evolutionary ideal for humanity itself to aspire that. You can see the “meh” in that but I wouldn’t picture such individuals as even conceivable from our point of view.

interesting you mention Becker’s book. I’ve not read it myself but I am familiar a bit with his thesis. To answer the question in the OP, perhaps we can see the world of becoming and ephemerality was condemned by the philosopher’s because of their own intelligence. These were individuals living in relative comfort (for the time) who had time to ponder about death and about impermanence. In the OP it says “why don’t animals seem to condemn the world of becoming”, well maybe in a Nietzschean fashion, those who were best suited for living didn’t think about their own death and impermanence. The strong had no time for that self reflection. They were too busy bursting other people’s skull’s open for looking at them wrong.

Of course, we should stay wary of thinking Nietzsche thinks strong, unthinking brutes=good. He sings his praises of slave morality as well given the learned culture it allowed for us. Plato’s rejection of the unstable world of appearances for the stable realm of the forms is seen by Nietzsche as a mistake in thinking, but in no way was that a kind of original sin that tainted our thinking forever. Without Plato, without the people condemning Heraclitean flux, we wouldn’t have any of the good stuff culture gives us now.

Why do you see Nietzsche as a kind of proto Ayn Rand? I think Nietzsche would’ve detested Ayn Rand. Her obsessions with the strong man titans of industry who are supposedly leading the world to a better place through their own will is just self-aggrandizing BS. Nietzsche would point out these people aren’t ubermensch, anything but. If anything the capitalist figures who Rand thought were the real hard working ones aren’t accomplishing any difficult deeds, creating great works, or doing anything for human culture. Just look at those billionaires who died in the submarine accident. They were a bunch of comfortable fools role playing in a fantasy land. They’re “human, all too human” in Nietzsche’s language

What is it about these quasi-spiritual beliefs that the world is becoming whilst the core of some higher level of being is being? Why is this such a central theme? Where does this type of thinking originate, philosophically-speaking? Animals don't seem to have a need for this

I know you disparage Nietzsche a lot but his genealogical method pertaining to the origins of our thoughts and philosophical convictions seems to me like a fruitful way of opening the discussion. I don't think it was meant to be taken at face value but this reminds me of Nietzsche's 'story' of how you first had masters and slaves, (strong individuals and weak individuals) and so I guess in Nietzschean fashion you could say that the reason the world of becoming is condemned so much throughout the history of Eastern and Western philosophy is a problem of the philosopher's own impotence-their congenital defect as Nietzsche calls it. Of course, this is all a bit reductive and the story doesn't end here. But food for thought I'd say

I feel like Hannah Arendt would probably interest you. She's more optimistic than you when it comes to work, but her Human Condition has a ton of illuminating passages on how our ability to create things has almost gotten bigger than us. She says we no longer have the ability to even talk about these things; we've lost the "speech" so to speak about what is we rely on, and any form of understanding is gatekept by the scientists or the people making it. It's unsustainable.

this is excellent, thanks :smile:

this just about clears it up, thanks! I suppose things get even trickier when Schopenhauer throws platonic forms into the mix as well

Most of the Will is "below the water".. It is a sort of unknown (not even an unknown..it's literally the thing-in-itself...An all encompassing nothingness/everythingness.. can't be described without being contradicting.. it can only be spoken about in the negative)....

Right.

Of course, his suggestion will be to deny the will to negate the subject-for-object relationship all together. This would be akin to perhaps Nirvana/Enlightenment. This would be closest perhaps to a sort of pure gnosis of the Will "below the water" and not just will as it manifests in representation.

But heres my confusion: do we just not know this Gnosis we get in that ascetic self-denial is “true” knowledge of the thing in itself? Per Kant, we could never truly know, right? Or is @Xtrix correct in assuming that what Schopenhauer means is that the gnosis is the “closest we can possibly get” because anything else couldn’t exit the principle of sufficient reason?

yeah I’d definitely appreciate it! I guess it’s just hard because Schopenhauer is adamant that the thing-in-itself does not “cause” our representations like Kant thought since that would be a contradiction; and instead the noumena and phenomenal worlds are more like two sides of the same coin. But does that then mean if they’re two sides then we’re still not *really* getting the “gnosis” of the will?

I’m going to miss Streelight. He was probably one of my favourite posters here because of his knowledge on continental philosophy and post-structuralism. I think his corrosive anti-capitalism was honestly well-meaning and sympathetic as someone who’s also Marxist leaning, but I agree with everyone here that it got way out hand. He didn’t have to be an asshole to everyone who disagreed with him. He didn’t have to say those who disagreed with him would end up being killed. He didn’t have to call people stupid, or dumb, or wasting all of his time. I think this is overall a good lesson that even helpful, knowledgeable people can still be gigantic bellends when their egos are over the moon

Post modernism is largely a reaction to structuralism. Marxism is structuralist and uses historical materialism as a meta narrative. Post modernism posits that meta narratives do not exist

This is a really good question, and as someone who is sort of a Marxist I honestly think it's too ignored. Fromm was definitely right to point out that the Marxist Leninist model did away with alienation for no good reason, and it hurt them in the long run.

• https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/6515/1/PhD.Kandiyali.pdf
• https://www.academia.edu/43293587/The_Importance_of_Others_Marx_on_Unalienated_Production
• https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1017/S0265052500000327

Some helpful resources for everyone, all for free (to each according to his need and all that :smile: )There's a lot to plough throw here, but I honestly think the notion of an "unalienated" worker does have a coherent answer and isn't just some romantic hooey the juvenile Marx pulled out of his ass. I'd love to type something myself, but sadly I don't think I'd do the concept justice. In short, the unalienated worker has a lot do with self-realization.

also Will to Power, eh?

Thanks for answering Streetlight, I really enjoy reading your posts. This helps explain a lot. So is what you're saying is that any interest in attaining x is motivated by a prior engagement with whatever structure x belongs to? It's complicated stuff, and I look forward to reading that PDF

There’s an excellent little book I’ve been reading that answers these questions. It’s got some ingenious interpretations of the Overman and Will to Power. Really good stuff

You can download it here:
https://ca1lib.org/book/2641016/853436

Lol, ok I’ll bite. To preface the reason I’ve been hesitant is that I’m not even an anti natalist or a Schopenhauerian pessimist. In fact, I really admire Nietzsche and thinkers like him (who you have a bone to pick with but that’s a different conversation) so I don’t think Im the best authority here. Sure I could’ve let the dogs lie, but I had a conversation with some friends about this topic and someone brought up an argument pretty much identical to the one here, and someone responded with what I wrote. I wanted to see a further response that’s all-I really didn’t know you’d respond tbh or want to respond.

I will say this tho:
I’ll pretend I’m a moral realist for a sec, and I’m gonna have to admit that it’s just not true that not creating goods is unethical. This is probably one of many issues with utilitarianism: “Oh you’re living your life, why aren’t you being a good effective altruist and donating to charity all the time?” It’s just not intuitive. It would mean that every time I’m not doing anything good I’m technically being immoral. How far does this extend? Even pro-natalist philosophers agree universally there is no obligation to create happy people; merely that it’s permissible.

I understand this is a very old post, but I had a question about this (if you still hold the view)

This is precisely the premise that I am challenging. No, it is not absolutely unnecessary. Even framed in terms of harms done, both choices (have a child and don't have a child) will do harm. So one can say they are having a child to avoid an even worse harm on others. You would say that that is "harming the child for a higher purpose than them". Then I would say that NOT having a child is similarly "Harming the people the child would have helped for a higher purpose than them"

Maybe I’m getting you wrong, but your argument basically boils down to the claim that if we keep procreating somewhere down the line we’ll reach a point where the utility created for the already existing by harming someone into existence will eventually outweigh all the harm it took to reach that point.

Is the principle at play here something like: it is okay to harm indefinite numbers of people if there’s a chance somewhere down the line that one of them will end up reducing a greater amount of harm? Doesn’t lead to some disturbing conclusions? Like suppose I could stab one person every minute knowing there was some chance that in doing so I could create some groundbreaking medicine.

Even if it might be enough to outweigh all the harm I’m doing in a raw kind of calculus sense it still seems weird. Like all the dead stabbed bodies won’t really care that their deaths helped some future generation live longer. Since they’ll be dead and all. Yes there’s a chance that the 10 millionth child to be born from now could cure cancer. But there’s also a chance that the 10 millionth kid born from now will grow up to perform genocide. Doesn’t depending on the potential for future goods while ignoring the potential for future bads seem blatantly unsubstantiated?

In your system, can we then justify stabbing people every minute so long as it comes with a similar chance of creating a net positive utility later?

I don't think there is any metaphysical or moral problem when it comes to private ownership. I don't think it's about "who deserves" to own the means of production, nor do I think Marx was trying to "wake up" the proletariat. Rather, I think he was showing that even if we are completely comfortable, we could be even MORE comfortable if workers owned the means of production. The Scandinavian model might be a boat that's shiny, but probably has holes underneath that tend to spring spring leaks. Beside it is the "workers own the means of production" boat which is more difficult to obtain, but comes with the benefit of never having holes in it (For the record I'm not saying socialism is when our problems go away, we're human after all but this is just for the sake of the analogy), so I interpret Marx as someone who isn't giving commands necessarily, but is saying "seems to me option B is better than A, wouldn't it make more sense to go for B?" If you ask me, I understand your question of " what is being exploited even when we don't feel exploited" to look like how many of the people in the West are: living decent lives that could be better. I don't wanna go on some psychoanalysis diatribe, but I think the main reasons people don't think socialism would make their lives better is because the ruling class has a HUGE propaganda mill that's been churning since the 1920s against the "evils" of communism, but that I can't really add much on

On a completely moral and normative level, raising the standard of living with social democratic policies is good for short term harm reduction, but advocating socialism isn't really based on morality. There's nothing radical about those propositions. It would not satisfy socialists because it wouldn't solve the inherit issues involved with the worker-employee relationship, the state, the profit motive, nor would it solve the only reason capitalist nations even have so-called "middle class" standards of living: Imperialism and the plundering of African nations and the global south. I am not saying everyone should live in huts, and I am NOT saying that nobody deserves a comfortable life, but a problem of the Western left is that it's idea of a comfortable life; IE American upper-middle class lifestyles, is inherently unsustainable for the environment as a whole. Socialism can't just "be satisfied" with maintaining the labor aristocracy that makes up North America and the Imperial Core. Our idea of what constitutes a "comfortable life for all" needs to be radically shifted

Not only that, but this proposition misunderstands that capitalism's goals are aimless and just puts profit over all else. Infinite growth on a finite world and all that. Your worry seems to be that socialists can't decide whether its better to raise living standards for people, or to deal with power imbalances. The answer is that we sort of have to do both. Like I said, it's great to build social systems in the capitalist regime to allow people to live, but we also need stronger community building to show workers that safety nets can exist outside the state. Every socialist knows simply focusing on raising material conditions in capitalism will lead to those benefits getting chipped away. Then we're back where we started. That's essentially what happened in the late 70s and 80s, and what is still happening now (neoliberalization). The Scandinavian model is already starting to crack as more services are privatized. You have to remove the cancer at the root, not just put band aids over it that get slowly ripped off

Conservatives should thank liberals, as they helped sustain the system, not get rid of it.

This is why I really don’t understand modern day US political discourse from the right side. What’s with people thinking Biden is going to instigate a Marxist plot when it’s guys like him who are more interested in military spending than infrastructure

Understood. So I guess the best means to communism is let capitalism do its thing, cause it will just "get" there one day.

This is actually a huge point of debate when it comes to contemporary Marxist academics. Most Marxists today don’t think this anymore, and understand Marx was incorrect about a lot of things like this (that it’ll just get there because dialectics say so). However, the orthodox Marxists do agree with this. If you ask me, the various economic crises that capitalism has successfully overcome like 2008 show that a revolution can’t just “happen”. Nobody could’ve predicted capitalism’s resilience

There are many scenarios, especially in the cases of small businesses, that are run by families, friends, etc. There are sole proprietorships and partnerships of two or more people, etc. Some are run by decent people who treat others with respect, pay decent wages, etc. But again this ignores something important: the very system of power. There were, after all, very decent slave owners -- but you wouldn't argue, I presume, that this fact justifies the system of slavery?

Not only this, but tons of leftist theorists have pointed out that “mom and pop” small businesses are usually the first people or most prominent to support fascist or reactionary movements. Fascism itself has always been called a “petite bourgeoise pseudo revolutionary movement”. I think the critical theorists were right to point out that independent small businesses that can’t compete with the big ones will turn fascist, because they are basically programmed to go into survival mode when scary leftists want to abolish private property. They’ve been trying to stay afloat for years and right wing populism always tries to appeal to the white American storefront owner

Barring corruption (which is its own problem), what is inherently wrong with owning the means to produce products and services if you got it with your own money or a loan?

If I’m not mistaken any seasoned Marxist will tell you there isn’t anything “wrong” with profit in the moral or normative sense. Rather, using some tricky language Marx is simply saying that profit entails the worker to be exploited insofar as they produce X amount of value but are only compensated a lesser Y amount. Marx isn’t saying “because of this, profit is morally wrong” but rather that workers working for a wage is like going to a dock and getting on a boat with holes in it when right beside it there was a perfectly good boat you had to work a little harder to operate.

Owning the means of production privately and turning a profit is a "problem" in large part because Marx’s analysis also leads him to conclude there's a tendency of the rate of profit to fall with increasing automation-where in the short-term it tends to be in the interest of individual firms to introduce more automation that lowers production costs relative to their competitors. However, in the long term automation decreases the overall rate of profit across the capitalist economy. Marx thinks this will cause the system to become increasingly unstable, among other reasons because it will drive the rate of exploitation to increase, and this will make it more likely that there's a revolution where the workers seize the means of production (this is the sort of thing that Marxists may be referring to when they talk about 'internal contradictions' of capitalism).

So forget the moral language, the whole thing is more of a causal analysis; like a doctor analyzing a disease that will probably spread. Marx is not attempting to change the "natural" course of things by persuading enough people to overthrow capitalism by appealing to their moral sense, though many socialists do this to certain degrees of success

honestly to me these types of replies only seem to reinforce my socialist views:

Just because you happen to be a rich and intelligent, hardworking CEO who made millions out of a few dollars doesn't mean your kid is going to be able to maintain your legacy or even not be abjectly horrible at management. A stranger might simply be better. For the company, your sense of "peace" as you close your eyes and breathe your last breaths in old age (some people need concrete evidence of their longevity to comprehend immortality and thus spirituality, I was like that and in many ways still am so I can't talk down)

The reason is because to me it reveals just how merciless and unsustainable the capitalist system really is. As you said, Mr Monopoly can rake in millions, but maybe stocks will go down, the economy crashes, and Mr Monopoly Jr ends up committing suicide because he’ll leave his kids with nothing. Marx and tons of other left wing theorists have pointed out that this constant cycle of booms and busts is unsustainable for everyone, including the bourgeoise. Hell, contemporary vulgar socialism tends to demonize the bourgeoise as much as they can, but even Marx pointed out how they’re alienated from the world and estranged from labour just as much as a worker is but in differing ways. A core tenant of socialism is that everyone would get what they need and deserve a comfortable life that isn’t constantly threatened by capitalism’s inherent contradictions.

@Bitter Crank I think you’d know more about but if you take all this:

The work-folk will just say that they don't mind the arrangement as long as they are getting paid enough. Governments can fill in any gaps in between if necessary.. And here you have the standard liberal view rather than revolution and tearing down of the system. There is simply inertia created by people's wanting to simply get on with their lives without much thought to the systems that were created before them.

They think the current arrangement is "just" and "right" to impose on a new person born into this life. The injustice of it is lost on them. I'm just saying, despite your (assured) protestations, we have similar problems in this regard, even if we disagree.

If I’m not mistaken, is this not what contemporary critical theory and the Frankfurt School sought to uncover? Isn’t the issue of “if things are so bad why don’t westerners revolt” the reason psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and Marxism are (or were) very intertwined?

Schopenhauer1 argues the solution to this problem is antinatalism. I heavily disagree with this. To me the solution is trying to solve the prevailing psychological phenomena of what Mark Fisher called “capitalist realism”. However, to offer my own views here I think we’re along ways off from that because the vast majority of people who live in (to use colonial terms) “western” and “developed” countries aren’t even proletarians. They are either petite bourgeoise, or labour aristocrats who have achieved a comfortable standard of living through the exploitation of Africa and the Global South (myself included really) So Schopenhauer1 is correct to point out that your average person will not see the trouble in their arrangement. They have all understood the Thatcherite slogan that there is simply “no alternative.” That’s why I think debating this stuff with America, Canada, Britain etc in mind is probably a waste of time for now.

If you ask me the only thing CEO's and business owners really risk are becoming workers again.

In my opinion, the root disease for climate change and political corruption is capitalism and all of the contradictions associated with it. Overpopulation is a reactionary myth more than anything that tries to blame resource depletion on average people starting families; but I think it's really just large corporations who are backed by the state who engage in propaganda campaigns convincing Western countries their way of life is sustainable forever when its not

I didn’t know there was so much right wing nonsense on this forum. I think he is innocent purely on a legal technicality. He did this to protect private property that wasn’t his on behalf of someone who testified under oath that they never actually asked them to show up. This is coming mere days after a video shows KR expressing the desire to harm people he believed to be vandals, saying “I wish I had my fucking AR, I’d start shooting rounds at these people.” They were MAYBE looting, or else just putting something in their car, when he expressed the desire to murder them. This context was not admitted into the trial at all, the jury was entirely ignorant of it.

The prosecution, however, was an absolute disaster. The whole trial was a farce. They made so many bizarre blunders it’s a wonder they graduated law school at all. They pressed charges for first degree reckless homicide and first degree murder, neither of which were easy, both have an extraordinarily high bar legally for the state to prove. Never should have pursued some of those charges, they had enough to get a jury to convict him on reckless endangerment and the gun charges. They fucked it up.

He showed up with a rifle he wasn’t legally allowed to carry (this law was confusing and gun charges dismissed by judge, in my opinion completely incorrect interpretation of the hunting provision of the law). He was illegally possessing this rifle, and it was illegally obtained through a straw purchase by his friend who did so despite knowing the illegality of it and that KR wasn’t legally allowed to possess it in the state until he turned 18. He then utilized this weapon to defend himself costing two lives and severely injuring Gaige Grosskreutz, who in my opinion is exceptionally brave and heroic.

However, the jury doesn’t say what the law should be, and they don’t get to give their moral opinions. They interpret the law and assess the evidence. That is all. Under Wisconsin law in the USA, what the videos show give him a clear self defense case when charged with first degree murder, there is plenty of reasonable doubt, especially considering he ran away and didn’t shoot two individuals who backed away with hands raised.

Overall he’s a wannabe gravy seal cop loving right wing proud boy type generally awful person engaging in vigilantism, and he acted in a way that created the situation that otherwise wouldn’t have existed, and bears some responsibility. But he isn’t the Vegas shooter, either. It’s a complex and nuanced case, and the prosecution’s ineptitude resulting in him getting off completely free is highly worrisome in the precedent it sets. Far right counterprotesting vigilantes will use this as an excuse to antagonize people while heavily armed and plead self defense once they provoke some hostile action, then shoot everyone in the crowd who tries to disarm them, thinking they’ll get off. Very dangerous precedent. However, this wasn’t really the jury’s fault. Blame cops, the judge and prosecution, the US justice system as a whole, the way the laws are written in so many states in the US, blame Rittenhouse too, and Rosenbaum if you want. But the jury had no choice but to issue a not guilty verdict.

I’m very concerned for the near future of protests in the United States.

I think you would benefit from reading Spinoza. He's very similar to Nietzsche in some ways, but in other ways closer to the Stoics or even Taoists. Even he came to the conclusion that all things that were impermanent were going to be unsatisfying. Spinoza's solution? Find happiness in something that is eternal, which is your power of understanding. These are some good posts that go into this sort of thing from a Spinozist angle:

https://www.academia.edu/36390747/Affective_Therapy_Spinozas_Approach_to_Self_Cultivation

https://martinbutler.eu/spinoza-on-desire/

https://martinbutler.eu/sweet-dissatisfaction/

https://martinbutler.eu/wp-content/uploads/MasteringEmotionalPain.pdf

https://martinbutler.eu/an-antidote-to-inner-emptiness/

https://www.youtube.com/c/MartinButlers

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFaZ3oYd5R77HVit9NzJLKA

Butler has a great channel. A decent philosophical mind who explains Spinoza's philosophy easily. He can contradict himself and be a bit too pessimistic at times, but his work is invaluable.

If you don't like Spinoza (He's quite technical, and honestly boring to read) the Nietzschean angle on all of this was very helpful too. I hope you find these useful. Reginster explains the Will to Power better than anyone I've seen:

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/233570734.pdf

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43154731

https://philpapers.org/rec/REGTWT

I think in Marxist terms the majority of the WFH is just another evolution of the labor aristocracy, but this time their exploitation is made even more apparent

this is totally true tbh, I guess what I meant is that if the ship is sinking and it’s being purposely steered by those on top, those on the bottom are the only ones left to stop it-but we can’t and the capitalists have made sure we can’t. I don’t blame people for trying to survive, but it’s sad to see how we totally have the power to start a working class movement but the guys on top have made the majority of people very comfortable with this warped system to the point where they’ll defend it. With the whole “great resignation” stuff people are waking up to something…but whether or not a mass left wing movement led by the people is yet to be seen.

And I just wanted to add, if you weren’t already aware the /r/Antiwork subreddit has now surpassed 1 million subscribers and is continuing to grow. Climate change damage maybe set in stone but I don’t think I’m wrong to be a little optimistic that something could change here

Classic capitalism: Oh no, we're approaching the inevitable breakdown of hundreds of nations across the world and a significant decrease in quality of life for most Western countries! Anyway...gotta pay the rent, save for groceries, deal with my bullshit job

I don't think I agree with it on everything, but I've always found pessimism in the philosophical sense to be an interesting tradition. Might I ask how you came to those conclusions? I don't want to psychoanalyze or troll, I'm just generally interested. You don't have to answer if it's too personal either. It's not like Schopenhauer is very popular, even for his own time

Yes actually. I feel a big part of like your antinatalism debate here hinges upon consequentialism vs deontology, but I feel like virtue ethics has been totally neglected here. When you ask is it justified to base all ethics on post-facto reports, pretty every consequentialist is going to say yes, but so far nobody here has provided an opinion based on virtues.

@Albero you like to see others debate. Can you add anything? Are you willing to contribute past a couple posts on the matter?

Sorry if I don't have much to say. I just prefer to lurk if that's okay with you, unless this forum has a contribution rule I'm violating. If anything comes to mind I'll add it. I'll say this though (and I think I said this before) I honestly think it's easier to try to convince people of schopenhaurian pessimism rather than rely on these kind of technical arguments. If people accept that, there's no reason why antinatalism wouldn't follow. It would be like deciding if you want to take a boat with holes or a brand new boat out to sea.

but how would you even know if someone will think it's worth it? Yes you can make an educated guess just like everything, but what do we do if they end up hating it?

@khaled

What makes the negatives especially so bad? All the contingent and systemic harms:
Contingent harms are things likely to happen but are not entailed in a given life including:
1) Individual people's wills and group's will.. Constant jockeying for power plays on when, what, where, hows, social status, social recognition, approval, respect

2) Impersonal wills... Institutions whose management and bottom-line dictate when, what, where.. ranging from oppressive dictatorships to the grind of organizational bureaucracies in liberal democracies.

3) Cultural necessities.. clean-up, maintain, tidy, consume, hygiene

4) Existential boundaries...boredom/ennui, loneliness, generalized anxiety, guilt

5) Survival boundaries..hunger, health, warmth

6) Being exposed to stressful/annoying/harmful environments and people

7) Accidents, natural disasters, nature's indifference (e.g. bear attacks, hurricanes, storms, earthquakes, etc.).

8) Diseases, illness, disabilities, including mental health issues (neurosis/psychosis/phobias/psychosomaticism/anxiety disorders/personality disorders/mood disorders)..

9) Bad/regretful decisions

10) Unfortunate circumstances

11) After-the-fact justifications that everything is either a learning experience or a tragic-comedy.

12) The good things are never as good as they seem

13) How fleeting happy things are once you experience them

14) How easy it is for novelty to wear off

15) The constant need for more experiences, including austerity experiences that are supposed to minimize excess wants (meditation, barebones living, "slumming it").

16) How easy it is to have negative human interaction, even after positive human interaction

17) Craving and striving for more entertainment and "flow" experiences

18) Instrumentality- the absurd feeling that can be experienced from apprehension of the constant need to put forth energy to pursue goals and actions in waking life. This feeling can make us question the whole human enterprise itself of maintaining mundane repetitive upkeep, maintaining institutions, and pursuing any action that eats up free time simply for the sake of being alive and having no other choice.

19) Any hostile, bitter, stressful, spiteful, resentful, disappointing experiences with interperonal relationships with close friends/family, acquaintances, and strangers

20) The classic (overused) examples of war and famine

21) The grass is always greener syndrome that makes one feel restless and never satisfied

22) The need for some to find solace in subduing natural emotions in philosophies that mitigate emotional responses (i.e. Stoicism) and generally having to retreat to some program of habit-breaking (therapy, positive psychology exercises, visualizations, meditations, retreats, self-help, etc. etc.)

23) Insomnia, anything related to causing insomnia

24) Inconsiderate people

25) The carrot and stick of hope.. anticipation that may lead to disappointment..unsubstantiated Pollyanna predictions that we are tricked into by optimistic bias despite experiences otherwise

26) Addiction

etc. etc. etc. ...

1) Systemic suffering includes:
Having to conform to/play a game (like our economic one) that one cannot escape, that one could never have created, and have dire consequences for leaving (death, starvation).

2)Having constant dissatisfactions that can never be full met (the lack game). — schopenhauer1

What do you make of this Khaled? I've been enjoying your back and fourths on the subject, and would like to know how you would respond. It's true we justify most of what we do "after the fact" or "post hoc" but do you think this really makes a difference for natalism/antinatalism

The only country I see making significant progress in emissions cuts is China. I’m not some china loving bootlicker but it’s undeniable how they’ve stuck to their pledges. A mixed economy probably helps

Maybe it works for some people, but I myself am skeptical that philosophy is therapeutic. In fact, a lot of the philosophy I took time to read only made my depression and anxiety worse (Schopenhauer). On my best days life affirming thinkers like the Stoics, Nietzsche, and even Heidegger made me feel really good about life, but that alone didn't make my problems go away. That was therapy's job.

Forgive me if you're not actually asking, but I think I can clarify what makes premise 4 repugnant. Contrary to positive utilitarian ethics, I think the reduction of suffering does trump making more people happy, but this isn't the only thing we put into the equation when we judge whether something is ok or not. I think most people value autonomy and it's clear killing others overrides that. Otherwise, if you only care about reducing suffering and autonomy isn't important, how can you say something like the Holocaust was bad?