You and schopenhauer1 are really pitiful. You resent anyone who isn't as miserable as you are. You can't even imagine there are people satisfied with their lives.

You two are broken and you want, demand, that we all be as broken as you are. — T Clark

So people who are satisfied with their lives say such things to others as you do here to us?
Interesting this, this "satisfaction with life" ...

This additional dimensionality to Schopenhauer’s approach comes from recognising a qualitative relativity to both reasonable and ethical descriptions of the human condition. Schopenhauer’s philosophical ideas show no awareness of qualitative variability - this is particularly evident in his colour theory. With a father who supposedly committed suicide and a mother who seemed far from accepting of his personal qualities, I would say this is understandable. — Possibility

So how come that you have this awareness of qualitative variability, while Arthur Schopenhauer didn't have it?

Were you born with it?
Or did you learn it?

Our thread troll, informing us of the official Russian view — ssu

The West has indeed shown a remarkable commitment to never looking at itself.

So you set up hardcore weapons along the border with your neighbor, the weapons directed at your neighbor, but you insist that your neighbor is irrational for thinking that you have the intention of using those weapons?

You have some really interesting ideas about good neighborly relations.

I think an essential step toward a real and lasting solution would be to understand that the root cause of the problem is not Russian aggression but Western imperialism. — Apollodorus

I agree. But it seems the West will rather destroy Russia than admit to this.

Instructions for use: Attach said meaningless cliche to enemy of choice — Baden

Exactly what the West is doing.

Hagglund’s argument goes deeper than simply critiquing the idea of heaven. He uses a Derridean deconstructive approach to show that any value that is assumed to be beyond cultural contingency, such as universal notions of the good , the moral , the just or the generous , are incoherent. It is not just that we should prefer finitude over the eternal, the unconditional or the universal, but that all such assumptions fall prey to their own deconstruction. All valuation is contingent and relative. This is just as true of our imagining of a timeless deity, value structure, notion of the good or the true as it is of scientific and aesthetic endeavor. — Joshs

And so the alternative he suggests is ...?

I guess the modern approach to mental health is get used to it! or, roughly, shut up or put up! — Agent Smith

It seems this has always been the main approach most people used, and used a lot.
Remember, for the greater part of human history, human life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". And yet people somehow made it through it. Given the rich art history they've left behind, it seems they managed somehow. Perhaps they even coped better than we do, perhaps because their expectations about life were lower than ours.

The issue is that post-Enlightenment culture has lost sight of there being any way out of it, but that is due to its own philosophical shortcomings. — Wayfarer

Or it's the case that post-Enlightenment culture has too high expectations from life, so high they are bound to be disappointed, thus guaranteeing an additional misery.

Perhaps Viktor Frankl's insights might be relevant to that. — Wayfarer

No. He figured out his life philosophy before he was imprisoned, so he had an absolute advantage.
What would be relevant is if he would develop a meaningful philosophy of life while imprisoned; if he would have gone in unprepared, but came out wise.

it is generally the case that traumatic stress is the most usual triggering cause. — unenlightened

Why is that so? What do your sources say?

It seems "traumatic stress" is so powerful because it forces the person to face moral quandaries for which they were not prepared for.

It does apply to you.

You think Putin has gained anything by violating Ukraine's rights of self-determination for his own irrational purposes? — Garrett Travers

One party's right to self-determination includes their right to make themselves an enemy to another, but that other must simply stand by?

Again, the rational selfishness standard of ethics is the only one that produces interpersonal harmony, or individual flourishing. You've just got it mixed up a bit is all. — Garrett Travers

Americans love drama and they love to overstate the obvious and try to present it as something special.

You think Putin has gained anything by violating Ukraine's rights of self-determination for his own irrational purposes? — Garrett Travers

What do you gain by bad faith and misrepresenting others?

On the one hand, you claim to be looking for solutions, on the other you focus on attributing blame. Let's suppose, for arguments sake, this is 100% Putin's fault. Now we are precisely zero steps closer to finding a way to deescalate the situation. — Baden

What could we as observers do?

It's not like we can actually reach the decision makers and share our ideas with them. So our efforts are doomed from the onset.


The Ukraine could have a nice life as a neutral state and enjoy the benefits from being on good terms with both sides. Like Switzerland. But no. They don't want to profit from their strategic geopolitical position. They don't want to care who one of their neighbors is. They want to do their own thing. They want to be free to threaten their neighbor.
And the Americans don't want to pass up this opportunity either.
And after two years of covid, people are stressed out and need to relieve themselves somehow.

So it's not clear how realistic it is to even consider that the situation could be deescalated.

This is another hint at his mental problems. There's no contingency plan for retreat, it almost seems to be "do or die". — Christoffer

The same thing the West planned to do anyway.

It's strange how so many people think that this is somehow a "one-man show", as if a president is somehow so powerful that he can command everything and everyone under him.

The heavy airplanes fly above relentlessly, one about every 10 to 15 minutes, day and night.



What American president would pass up the opportunity to destroy the country they've been hyping themselves up to hate for 80 years (and more, actually).
This will guarantee Biden a reelection, the Democrats will gain more pover, and the American economy will get a boost, not to mention the American self-image.
Boris Johnson, too, stands to profit from this, with his covid indiscretions firmly forgotten, he's guaranteed a reelection.

What does Rand mean by selfish:

P1. if humans are generated by natural processes with reason (logic, rationality, conceptual faculty) being their means of survival.
P2. and if it is only through this conceptual faculty of reason that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty
C. then the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals

Let's start there, what's your issue with this proposition? Is it valid, is is sound? If not, then why for each. — Garrett Travers

For starters, unless one is a Candidean optimist who desires everything he has and who has everything he desires, a Randian egoist is oddly similar to everyone else and not exactly an egoist at all (and certainly not special).

Given that even a Randian egoist still has to make a living, either by selling products or services, or by theft or robbery, this means that his values and goals need to be aligned with the values and goals of other people. For in order to make money, by selling one's products or services, one has to offer other people products or services that they will buy, ie. those products or services need to be aligned with other people's values and goals, or they won't buy them. So not much individuality here. But the thief and the robber aren't much better off either, for they are still bound by what other people have that can be taken from them, and those things are a reflection of those other people's values and goals. Again, not much individuality here.

In short, all this Randian talk of the freedom to pursue one's own values and to achieve one's own goals doesn't contain much freedom nor individuality. At best, it's a hotheaded glorification of the ordinary.

Covid has come, and it seems, mostly gone, and people haven't learned anything from it.
This Ukraine crisis has come, and it will go, and it seems people won't learn anything from it.

The world will go on in a process of destruction and rebirth, and nobody will be the wiser for it.
Just one giant mass of suffering begetting another mass of suffering.

Depression results when a person's view of themself falls so far short of who they think they should be that they can no longer live with themself normally. The psychological treatments aim at redressing this imbalance - which is of course constituted of two self-evolved and self-perpetuated judgements, not by events. Counselling seeks by various means to encourage you to replace your overly critical view of yourself with one more realistic; and to replace your overly optimistic view of where you should be in life with a more realistic one. — Tim3003

So counselling sometimes teaches people to come to terms with being homeless, dying in the gutter?

How do they do that?

So no, depression is not a natural state of man. Perhaps in today's ever-faster-moving and more chaotic society it is becoming more and more common, but it causes under-performance and grief for all who encounter it. I see no evolutionary advantage in that..

Natural selection.

The way I see it, there is a process to the universe in which we don’t so much serve a predestined purpose as
‘creatively intend’. — Possibility

Indeed, this is also called karma, and keeps the round of rebirth going.
All three of your examples (the ascetic, the suicide bomber, and the sage) creatively intend, hence they are bound to the round of rebirth, and thus suffering.

This additional dimensionality to Schopenhauer’s approach comes from recognising a qualitative relativity to both reasonable and ethical descriptions of the human condition.

Schopenhauer’s philosophical ideas show no awareness of qualitative variability

You're missing that the various experessions of this qualitative variability still all function on the same platform, namely that of craving.

Fantasize? Worry maybe sometimes. I do read, fiction and non-fiction. I participate on the forum. I swim. I do my physical therapy exercises. — T Clark

In other words, keep yourself busy.

I don't think you understand how this works, at least works for me. The motivation to do things comes from inside me. I picture a spring bubbling up from under the ground. Just because I do stuff doesn't mean I'm keeping myself busy. Sometimes nothing bubbles up, so I just pay attention and wait. It doesn't usually take long.

Of course. It's like this for most people most of the time anyway. The difference is how deeply one analyzes one's state.

I guess you and schopenhauer1 lack imagination and empathy. You can't imagine other people experiencing things different from what you do. You don't seem to understand that others may feel differently.

Arthur Schopenahuer's, and Buddhism's, idea is that people can't stand doing nothing (actually doing nothing, not mentally, verbally, physically) and that when they find themselves in circumstances where they can't act in any way, they experience this as suffering.

It's why people hate to wait in line, hate to be ill and tied to a hospital bed, hate to be unable to fall asleep. Why prolonged sensory deprivation has an adverse effect. This is also why they hate many types of meditation because there is so little activity there.

I asked you before -- Can you really sit quietly, doing nothing -- not even fantasizing -- for hours, while being fully awake and alert?

Through meaningful engagement with the world - namely, the voluntary identification and pursuit of goals derived from one's highest ideals (and the intentional cultivation of such ideals), assuming you've had your basic physical needs met. — Aaron R

Which still doesn't change that you started out as bored.

In order to externally test Schopenhauer's concept of boredom, we would need to interview people directly when they are in dire situations where they can do nothing but wait (such as when being held hostage during a bank robbery, or when they wait for the results of tests that could show they have a serious disease, or when they are tied to a hospital bed, mechanically ventilated, but still conscious). Such dire situations are relevant for this topic because we presume that in them, people will be left to themselves and will not be able to resort to their usual ways of keeping themselves busy or distracting themselves, or at least this ability will be significantly impaired.

Of course such experiments are unethical, so we don't do them, but instead have to rely on people's testimony after the fact, which is likely going to be biased, especially if the outcome was positive for the people.

Schopenhauer's idea is that left to themelves -- truly left to themselves -- people are bored. And then to relieve this fundamental boredom, they engage in all manner of activity, mental, verbal, or physical.

Europeans can resist America in Europe. — Apollodorus

There is no will to do so, because Europeans have become too entitled, too greedy, too thankless, too short-sighted. They've become like a bunch of spoiled teenagers.

Look at the level of your discourse.

As I said, I'm not making any further comments on Ukraine, other than to point out that real people are being killed in large numbers. — Wayfarer

In the EU, a kilogram of zucchini costs about 1,80 Euros, often more.
The Spanish zucchini farmer who grows them gets about 5 cents for a kilogram, and that if he is very lucky. Usually, the price is even lower than that.

Real people are living misearble lives, in large numbers, people dying slowly in misery to feed the EU which wants to live like the elite.

Odd how people don't think this is offensive.

This is copypasta from an intern working in a Russian propaganda agency, right? It's really that silly. — Baden

It's "silly" only in the sense that it comes too late. Most Europeans have sold their souls to the US long ago.

I live about 1000 km SW from where it's happening.
Day and night, heavy cargo airplanes are flying over, NE bound, a few per hour.

You need to keep yourself busy at all times because ...
— baker

I said I am never bored, not that I am always busy. — T Clark

Watching television, fantasizing, and such are still under "keeping oneself busy".

Or can you really sit quietly, doing nothing -- not even fantasizing -- for hours, while being fully awake and alert?

The fact that there is boredom (and anxiety) proves only that life’s intrinsic positive value is not guaranteed to us, but that it has to be “won”. — Aaron R

Won how?

It's easy to underestimate boredom, and it's easy to fail to see that we do so many things just to relieve our boredom.

All I can say is that if boredom lies at the root of your existence then your existence lacks a certain serenity and creative sensibility. — Janus

Shall we test you by placing you on a desert island, alone?

War is entertainment. There's a reason it sells newspapers (or whatever the modern digital version of that expression ought to be). — Isaac

What a twisted irony.

War is also business. Nothing gives the economy as much boost as a war. Even if it seems counterintutitive at first. During the war, there is massive war profiteering, and then again massive post-war profiteering, when rebuilding the countries.

BTW, as a Slavic speaker, how would you interpret the word "Ukraine"? To me, it sounds very much like this was not the name of a people but of a geographical area, inhabited by a plurality of nationalities and controlled by various countries at different points in history. If so, Putin may have a point regarding the legitimacy of the "Ukrainian" state. — Apollodorus

The name "Ukraine" has the meanings 'land, province, region' at its core (I actually can't think of an exact English equivalent; there is, for example, a part of Slovenia that is called "Bela krajina" and it refers to a geographical region).

It's not uncommon for the names of nations and lands to have a common name as an etymological reference (many names of nations and lands can be etymologically "translated"), so this per se is not grounds for arguing for or against the legitimacy of a state.

But if we look at the history of states worldwide, it's clear that the legitimacy of a state is a very complex phenomenon. Germany, for example, became a nation state only a 150 years ago, Italy 160 years ago. One would expect a legitimate nation state to have a history spanning back much longer than that. Other states came into existence and disappeared, changed their shape. So where exactly is the legitimacy of a nation state? Note how the UK isn't exactly a nation state, while the US requires an entirely different concept of "nation" to consider it a nation state.

The situation in the Balkan and Eastern European states is very complex further because of the long history of the various foreign rulers and empires of which these lands were part. Moreover, what is now one country or parts thereof, often used to be part of several other countries.

At least when I was going to school, we were taught these things in history class. We learned about how the boundaries between the states were often a matter of negotiation or an administrative matter (we had to know all the foreign rulers, all the dates of treaties and wars, and the geographical situation at each time).

The corollary I draw from this is that state borders are largely artificial and national identities a matter of ideological construction.

The West is operating on the premise that people will do anything for money, for any amount of money.

Those who don't see the problems with this premise ... well, I don't know what to say.



It's also clear that the world at large isn't taking the situation in the Ukraine seriously, given that sports, fashion, and other entertainment events go on as usual, tv programs are only slightly changed, but the majority is entertainment as usual.

One would think that at a time like this, people would rethink their indulgence in enterntainment and luxury ... and one discovers that one was wrong.

Is it really philosophically correct to take for granted that the party who feels wronged is automatically the arbiter of morality?
— baker
You do know what I mean. Are you saying that rape is justified sometimes?
No one could say, yes I raped her as a self-defense. — L'éléphant

A: Tommy, why did you hit Harry?
B: Because he then hit me back!

Is Tommy the victim here?

How about we think before we take the neutral position or the it-depends position.

How about we discuss the complexity of the matter.

What this discussion is lacking is an acknowledgment of the role of the power differential in moral judgments.

The one who can punish is in the position of power.
If punishment is justified, as a matter of principle, then might makes right. Do you want to go in that direction?
— baker

First of all, I don't understand your post. Power differential in moral judgments -- what's that?

That whether something is perceived as moral or not has to do with the relative positions in the power hierarchy of those involved.

The same kind of action is perceived differently, depending on whether it was done by a person of wealth and power, or if it was done by a person of low socio-economic status.
Or if it was done by your boss or by you. Or by a teacher or his student.

If a rich person hits you with their car and runs off, they can expect to get away with it.
If you were to hit a rich person with your car and run off, you should get ready for grave consequences.

Etc.

Say we have a court functioning with integrity. Is it really that hard to discern fault here?

You mean a modern court in a democratic country where having a good lawyer can get one off the hook for pretty much anything, and where a person with few financial means has to endure injustice?

So we also need to watch our use of they-language. When we include ourselves in what we say about ‘people’, we recognise our own capacity to make the same errors of judgement. Using ‘they’ seeks to distance our self-awareness from the statements we make. It implies a passive self-righteousness. — Possibility

How self-righteous, and actively so!

You assume entirely too much and allow too little room.

When we include ourselves in what we say about ‘people’, we recognise our own capacity to make the same errors of judgement.

But perhaps we think that those might actually not be "errors of judgment" to begin with, but in fact virtues. If anything, the state of the world suggests that anger and blame are virtues, something to strive for. And that we (minority-we) are ninnies to think them vices.

I am not sure what kind of evidence would satisfy you. I imagine one could plot murder rates in various places vs some indicator of the prevalence of forgiveness in society. The latter indicator would be hard to develop though. — Olivier5

You were the one to make the claim, so it's on you to provide the evidence.

Or one could appeal to faith: all religions call for it.

This would take a bit to explain, but it's not clear that "all religions" call for forgiveness and redemption, or what they actually mean by them.

Or to logic: hatred breads only more hatred, so how else can one break the cycle than through forgiveness?

"Logic" cannot determine the truth value of the premises we use in a syllogism.

It makes life bearable. You should try it one day. — Olivier5

When "forgiveness" becomes a channel for contempt, then it no doubt makes life bearable, even more than that.

Another possibility is shame. If the person feels ashamed of asking for help
— baker

But then again, repaying (although not asked to do so) would assuage that feeling. — Tex

No. The psychological effect of debt and indebtedness can be overwhelming. It's not just about the money or particular favor per se. If one has received the money or the favor at a time when one was particularly vulnerable, then getting a sense of satisfaction by repaying it or returning the favor would only come if the other person would be in a similarly dire situation. Of course one doesn't wish that on them.

Could be, although I don't know where that sense of entitlement would come from. Seems illogical, but we're talking about people here.

It's quite common. Especially younger generations were raised with an enormous sense of entitlement.

But the fact is, this is not just about NATO enlargement. — ssu

No, it's about the normalization of bad faith, ill will, and dishonor.

And, as I said before, if Russia loses, British and American corporations will be the first to get their hands on Russian resources, exactly as they did, or tried to do, in the 1990's after the collapse of the USSR. — Apollodorus

They've always had their claws set on Russian resources. That's always been clear.

Putin supporters tend to be quietists who seek stability. I don't see how they could reconcile this invasion with a concern for stability. — jamalrob

There comes a point when one has to decide between perishing on one's knees or die fighting.

This is an inevitable conflict, caused as much by Western provocation and puppet-mastery as it is by Russian lunacy and stubbornness. — Isaac

No, it's only the former.

Ever since I can remember, Slavic people have been put down by the West. In every international setting I have been, there was a palpable contempt for us. Online, as soon as people hear where I'm from, if they are Westerners, then 9 out of 10 times, they automatically adopt a negative, patronizing, bad-faithed attitude toward me. Like I'm automatically a second-class person because I'm from a Slavic nation.

This Western contempt and bad faith toward the Slavic people is so consistent and so grave that there is even a trend for Slavic people to despise themselves because of their national roots, to deny them, to reinvent the past (like some who say that we're not really Slavic, but an offshoot from the Italian group), and many adopt a Western identity.

The way many Western people have been talking about Putin is actually "just business as usual". There is an anti-Slavic nationalism that has become so deeply ingrained in Western culture, so normalized that most people don't even see it.