• schopenhauer1
    10.9k
    So life is pretty harmful and I was wondering how many harms we can come up with as a running list. The stipulations are that the harms have to not repeat, it cannot be so similar as to fall into one of the items already on the list, it cannot be too specific (i.e. stepping in dog shit) because that would make it not a general experience that everyone would necessarily suffer from, but it cannot be so general that it would not be its own category. I'll start us off with a list I had from another thread:

    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
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    Did you mention pessimism?
  • schopenhauer1
    10.9k

    No, that would be a conclusion from all this harm. But I did mention inconsiderate people. Also mentioned was any hostile, bitter, stressful, spiteful, resentful, disappointing experiences with interperonal relationships with close friends/family, acquaintances, and strangers
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    So pessimism isn't a harm? But what if being surrounded by it is one of life's great unpleasantnesses?
  • schopenhauer1
    10.9k

    We are surrounded by harm.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    So is this particular one now also on your list?
  • schopenhauer1
    10.9k

    So besides being snarky, what are you getting at? Either list some real harms or move on.
  • Barry Etheridge
    349
    Incompetent teachers setting meaningless homework?

    No that's not mean to be added to your list. It's a genuine question. I can't see any other reason for this entirely pointless, arbitrary exercise!
  • wuliheron
    440
    Bad grammar, wars have been fought over bad grammar.
  • BC
    13.6k
    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 otherwiseschopenhauer1

    25.5 The hangman's noose of despair.. altogether unbalanced Cassandra predictions that we are tricked into by pessimism despite experiences otherwise

    27. Philosophical OCD

    28. Tedious fixations on negative interpretation

    29. Anti-Mame Syndrome: the conclusion that one is starving during a banquet.§

    §Auntie Mame - Anti Mame -- get it?
  • jkop
    903
    It's easy to name harms, harder to say whether they are actual. Some people find the mere presence or absence of others harmful, or a reality which exists independently of their beliefs or statements.
  • _db
    3.6k
    The feeling you get when you start to doubt if you're even suffering, and you start suffering even more (i.e. Tolstoy). Am I myself suffering, or do I simply suffer because I know others are suffering? Am I pessimistic because I myself experience these things, or because I hear about other people experiencing these things?

    Human languages, across the board, have significantly more adjectives related to harms than to benefits. The English language, for example, has around three times as many adjectives of harm than of benefit. So it won't be surprising when we can make such a large list of harms. This is due not only because we tend to experience more harm than benefit but also, if not primarily because, we subconsciously focus more on the bad than the good. Bad is, in most cases, psychologically stronger than good - it is an extremely well-founded psychological fact. However I will say that since we experience more bad than good, and yet find ourselves still alive, this means that the human specimen is, all things considered, a rather durable specimen. The sun will rise tomorrow one way or another.

    Follow this through to a more speculative destination, and we find ourselves agreeing with Dostoevsky: suffering is the root of consciousness.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    Either list some real harms or move on.schopenhauer1

    Laughter, children, orgasms, contentment, reaching the top of the mountain - these are all harms because they are all clever illusions and distractions momentarily interrupting our cultivation of a habit of pessimism, our proper philosophical appreciation that the root of all being is suffering.
  • _db
    3.6k
    Correct. Pleasure has a twisted way of tricking us into existential continuation.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    Pleasure has a twisted way of tricking us into existential continuation.darthbarracuda

    That makes it the worst harm of all in my book. At least the others are honest harms. Pleasure is positively malicious. And without pleasure, how could we truly suffer?

    Damn you to Hell happiness.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    First, how are we defining harm?
  • _db
    3.6k
    Unpleasant experiences with varying levels of obnoxiousness, I suspect.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k


    Okay, although that would be pretty broad and I wouldn't say it has any moral connotations (whereas people often seem to have moral connotations in mind).
  • andrewk
    2.1k
    It's like a reverso Ian Dury wanted to write a song 'Reasons to be Miserable - Part Three'.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIMNXogXnvE
  • _db
    3.6k
    That makes it the worst harm of all in my book. At least the others are honest harms. Pleasure is positively malicious. And without pleasure, how could we truly suffer?

    Damn you to Hell happiness.
    apokrisis

    Pleasure is only a proxy bad when viewed in a certain way. When seen as a reason to continue, pleasure is a manipulative force. When seen as a something good without manipulative/intoxicative properties, then there's nothing wrong with it. I'm not a masochist.

    Actually, I see the ethical issues relating to pleasure as more important than how it feels phenomenologically. Pleasure is partly responsible for a billion(s)-year-old-and-counting systematic process of instrumentality. Sentients value their own pleasure more than the pain of other sentients.
  • Wosret
    3.4k
    Laughter, children, orgasms, contrentment, reaching the top of the mountainapokrisis

    Hopefully not all in one day.
  • dukkha
    206
    Hangovers

    Having your pets die

    Having to follow laws even when you don't want to, under threat of state sponsored violence/oppression

    Knowing that you and everyone else is going to die

    Nightmares

    Living in a society where you're judged by your material wealth

    Doing something cringeworthy and then remembering it just before you go to sleep and then you cant sleep because you're cringing so much

    Having phobias

    Needing to wear clothes even when you don't want to, due to weather, laws, social customs, etc

    Having your things break or get ruined

    Losing money (eg, playing poker, getting ripped off, dropping coins)

    Having to transport yourself places (eg, morning commute, wasting time riding bus or train, can't just teleport to your destination)

    Eating bad tasting food
  • schopenhauer1
    10.9k

    That's it! Yes, keep going... Anyone else can join in and continue... My original post asks for more general things, but I think the rules can change to include more specific types of events that cause harm.
  • _db
    3.6k
    What's your goal here, Schop?
  • schopenhauer1
    10.9k
    Awkward occasions
    Paranoia
    Losing face
    Villages being wiped out (if you happen to live in the wrong area)
    Torture
    Inter tribal warfare (if you happen to live in that kind of society)
    Gang warfare
    Ailments associated with aging
    Many experiences that go along with dying
    Putrid smells, tastes, and exposure to "gross" stuff in general (sewage, bed bugs, scabies)
    Food-borne illnesses
    Pressure to have forced occasions of interaction with unpleasant people
    Automobile anything (bad drivers, accidents, potholes, etc.)
    Primitive tribal societies having their way of life and worldview wiped out to be reintegrated in a Western context (if that sort of thing matters)
    Loud noises
  • _db
    3.6k
    Like I said before: The feeling you get when you start to doubt if you're even suffering, and you start suffering even more (i.e. Tolstoy). Am I myself suffering, or do I simply suffer because I know others are suffering? Am I pessimistic because I myself experience these things, or because I hear about other people experiencing these things?

    Also:

    Tinnitus (the tune of pessimism)
    Tedium
    Wild organism attacks
    Sexual failings
    Sudden catastrophes
    Disfigurement, dismemberment, paralysis, etc
    Allergic reactions
    Academic failures
    Ostracized from the tribe
    Political disappointments and failures
    Economic catastrophes
    The experience of dread once you realize that all of this is possible and even likely
  • schopenhauer1
    10.9k
    Like I said before: The feeling you get when you start to doubt if you're even suffering, and you start suffering even more (i.e. Tolstoy). Am I myself suffering, or do I simply suffer because I know others are suffering? Am I pessimistic because I myself experience these things, or because I hear about other people experiencing these things?darthbarracuda

    I guess you can suffer from knowing about other people's pain but surely painful experiences can be had by everyone. True, some people have more of them than others, but that just goes to show you earlier my point about harms being unequally distributed.
  • _db
    3.6k
    I guess you can suffer from knowing about other people's pain but surely painful experiences can be had by everyone. True, some people have more of them than others, but that just goes to show you earlier my point about harms being unequally distributed.schopenhauer1

    To be quite honest with you, it is other sentient's suffering that bothers me more than my own, and is the main source for my pessimism. I haven't had it super easy either but my own suffering pales in comparison to what others are going through. And the fact that others, like yourself, are pessimistic is definitely an argument for pessimism in general. Only in an unfortunate world would someone like the pessimist exist and actually be wrong about their pessimism. By its very existence, pessimism validates itself.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k


    Mr. Men gotchya covered.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    - when you zip up too early in the bathroom at work and you get a little dime-sized spot on your crotch and now you can't leave the bathroom because someone will notice the spot but can't stay in the bathroom because someone will notice your absence.

    - when you smoke weed in an unfamiliar setting, at a house party, and it suddenly hits you hard - and this song starts playing and you realize there are all these emotions you've always had but had entirely forgotten about - you're really starting to feel these emotions now, vividly - and you start to think 'whoa, wait, have all these other people been experiencing these emotions the whole time, and I haven't?? - and so have I, like, been almost literally living in a different world than them, but *thinking* I was in the same world?? - and they just didn't realize I wasn't in the same world?? - but - like - they can tell right now, can't they - are they looking at me? - have they always been looking at me???"

    - when you swipe your debit card too soon, and you do it while the cashier is turned away doing other things, so they don't realize you've already tried to swipe (too soon) so you're standing there waiting for the computer to process and they're standing there waiting for you to swipe, but neither of you realize the other isn't waiting for the same thing , but you still feel this kind of tension, and also the cashier is very cute and that makes everything somehow worse.

    - the idea of death - it's so final! but then the idea of eternity - it's so claustrophobic! there's no way out! - so then the respite of the idea of death - but....it's so final! - sooo the respite of the idea of eternity - but there's no way out! and back and forth and back and forth (going to sleep for me every night grades 2-5)
  • schopenhauer1
    10.9k

    >:O

    Somehow you managed to capture the these harms so well that anyone whose experienced them can truly empathize.
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