The moment when you understand that you are not an island, and your happiness depends on the happiness and fulfilment of others - that your sense of self is given by, and sustained by your community, then you will love your neighbor as yourself - because you will understand that when your neighbour suffers, you suffer.

Well said.
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Well said. — Wayfarer

Thank you, but I must say your agreement puzzles me :D

Buddhism emphasises annata - which seems to be very contrary to what I say. More like what I described here:

Any other solution (for example getting rid of the person/self who lacks) is just like claiming that suicide solves the problem of life, or that burning the village solves its flood problems. That's merely an escape from the problem, not a solution, and there's a big difference there. — Agustino

Ending all desire, ending all attachment, extinguishing the self, attainment of Nirvana - all these are very very antithetical to what I have described above. Desire is good - if one desires to be loved by their mother for example, that is a very very good desire. If one is attached to their child - that too is a very very good attachment. In fact, if people don't have those desires and attachment, they should be encouraged to cultivate them! If you don't plant beautiful flowers in the garden, weeds will grow! Understanding that the fulfilment of such desires may not be in one's control (and thus tolerating an unfulfilled desire - living with it, in the same way a man lives with an incurable disease) is different from ending the desire, or the attachment. Ending the desire or the attachment is absolutely wrong, because it denies the core of being human.

And I may add that I know there are ways to solve these problems that I mentioned above in Buddhism - but they seem to me like obvious mental gymnastics to avoid a core issue. Like ending all craving will be associated with ending lust, greed, etc. Okay, fine - but still, it says ending all craving - it creates a very wrong association. Furthermore, it doesn't state cultivate good desires. So you will end all the vices okay. What then? Do the virtues just pop out of thin air? Of course not, they need to be cultivated. One doesn't only pluck out weeds, one also plants beautiful flowers.

I would agree to something like... https://essenceofbuddhism.wordpress.com/2015/12/12/dr-christian-lindtner-ph-d-on-the-self-atman-in-buddhism/ . However, the language of Buddhism seems to be very very prone to misunderstanding, hence I still don't like it. Things have to be stated clearly if they can be stated at all.

You write as if none of those old Eastern sages were aware of this, but I'm sure they were. Your posts are not informed on this matter, you're essentially philosophizing on the basis of your own emotional disposition, from what I can discern. — Wayfarer

Do you want me to cry or something for not mentioning Eastern mystics? It is mostly on my experience this is true. I am someone who exists and can discern stuff myself. What I was trying to say was that these Buddhist/Eastern teachings do not get rid of the problem any more than focusing on any certain subject for long gets rid of a problem. It simply KEEPS YOUR ATTENTION.

The moment when you understand that you are not an island, and your happiness depends on the happiness and fulfilment of others - that your sense of self is given by, and sustained by your community, then you will love your neighbor as yourself - because you will understand that when your neighbour suffers, you suffer. — Wayfarer

Again, I bring up the idea of instrumentality. We exist in repeated acts of self-maintenance This may involve helping others. But, the repeated acts of survival and X activity (i.e. compassionate acts), comprise the instrumental nature of existing to exist to exist to exist. This absurd instrumental nature of existing to exist is what I am talking about.

I understand what you're trying to say, but fail to see the point of it. BTW the quote above this one was from Augustino.

Buddhism emphasises annata - which seems to be very contrary to what I say. — Agostino

I was going to say that, but I didn't want to muddy the waters, and besides I agreed with the sentiment. But the idea that Buddhists reside in a kind of emotional vacuum is entirely mistaken, in any case. It is true that some schools of Buddhism seem to emphasise emotional detachment and even withdrawal, but the motivating factor in mahayana Buddhism is compassion - not simply as an abstract principle, either. For the practitioner, compassion becomes a real factor in their lives and the way they deal with others.

As for the anatta teaching, this is frequently misunderstood also in my view. It doesn't deny the reality of agency or even, really, of people, as such. It is a principle about the non-existence of anything which can be understood to exist separately or in isolation from anything else; 'self' conceived as being something self-existent, unchanging or eternal.

I can't recall this, but did Schopenhauer claim that some aspect of the world is not a "unitary force that manifests as individuated objects in the phenomenal world of space and time"? The way you're stating it, it sounds like he wasn't claiming that (that some aspect was not a unitary force). And it sounds like per him, one of the characteristics of the world as a unitary force is striving because of a deprivation or lack of someting. In other words, that doesn't sound like a departure from the world as a unitary force. (After all, if it were a departure, then "the world is a unitary force . . ." wouldn't be quite true after all. The world would be a unitary force AND something else.)

If that's the case, then there would be no difference between that and "absolute unitary existence."

(Now, whether a claim like "the world is a unitary force (aka will)" actually makes any sense is another issue; but I'm just dealing with the logic of the concepts as presented.) — Terrapin Station

Schopenhauer said the world is ultimately Will (unitary force) but it had the flip side (illusion I guess) of representation which is the world individuated via space, time, and causality. The world of Will is a striving force. I am trying to understand what a unitary existence would be like. If everything is everything else, and there is no individuated anything, then there is no room for even striving as that would indicate some sort of movement, which means that it is not complete. However, I also mentioned that perhaps there is some metaphysical principle that striving represents that we can never really picture that "seems" like striving, but in the metaphysical sense, it is not. We only picture what we know through space and time. In this interpretation, Schopenhauer was trying to get at a metaphysical principle with an analogy of striving, but we cannot take that too literally.