It is absurd in the grandest sense. — schopenhauer1
Why did the young man have a crush to begin with? Perhaps a sense of longing for something pleasurable and a companion. Why a companion? Loneliness is not desired? Why? Boredom. Loneliness is one step away from boredom in my opinion. Boredom rules the non-survival aspects of our motivations (and discomfort). The positive joy of anything is at root, riding a wave of secondary goals that sprang forth from a general angst of not falling into a state of boredom. Keep yourself entertained long enough to not even give yourself a chance to see the root of the cause. — schopenhauer1
[The] impossible synthesis of assimilation and an assimilated which maintains its integrity has deep-rooted connections with basic sexual drives. The idea of "carnal possession" offers us the irritating but seductive figure of a body perpetually possessed and perpetually new, on which possession leaves no trace. This is deeply symbolized in the quality of "smooth" or "polished." What is smooth can be taken and felt but remains no less impenetrable, does not give way in the least beneath the appropriative caress -- it is like water. This is the reason why erotic depictions insist on the smooth whiteness of a woman's body. Smooth --it is what reforms itself under the caress, as water reforms itself in its passage over the stone which has pierced it....It is at this point that we encounter the similarity to scientific research: the known object, like the stone in the stomach of the ostrich, is entirely within me, assimilated, transformed into my self, and is entirely me; but at the same time it is impenetrable, untransformable, entirely smooth, with the indifferent nudity of a body that is beloved and caressed in vain. — Sartre
But wait ... This very presumption of an obtainable peace for Will through the obtainment of nonbeing all of a sudden makes the very absurdity of brute being no longer absurd: for it now has an escape from its predicament of brute being, a tangible salvation, and, thereby, a potential purpose worthy of pursuit. This same exit clause then renders the very absurdity of brute being null and void. — javra
Hey, you know why many of us don’t like addressing this topic, why it’s so taboo, in other words: it can easily result for too many in the conclusion that suicide is the only exist. I get that’s not what you’re saying. Then again, there’s now a worry in me that some kid somewhere will become the next 007 villain by living his life trying to bioengineer that enzyme I was talking about.
All the same, we may not fully agree on all of this. Like others, still hoping we can at least find some common ground. The absurdity of being is. What are we going to do about it is the issue that we may still find disagreements on. — javra
The difference perhaps is that I'll confess my own "myth" is ultimately groundless. I don't pretend to prove it in terms of objective or pre-established criteria. Personality is a risk.Your last line paints me as someone hiding from an important truth, yet this important truth grounds the necessity-for-you of what amounts to mass suicide (anti-natalism). Is it not equally plausible that you're "stuck on" a seductive idea? That rather than having the idea the idea has you? I've been "had" by the idea myself. In my most nauseated moments I have wished out of pity and disgust for the whole species to be wiped out. In retrospect I was thinking and judging from a narrowness of experience and thought. — t0m
In my view, all this cause-seeking is secondary to the "raw experience" of desire itself. My first-person experience of desire is an "absorption" in the object (her face in the room or in my imagination.) All conceptual talk falls away and is scattered like dead leaves in that bittersweet anguish. I want her to look at me or talk to me in a certain way. Life is narrowed down to only this in a moment of intense desire. — t0m
Such terms only apply to goals and how they are either helped or hindered by certain situations. Minds are the only things in the universe with goals and to project those goals onto the rest of the universe is a mistake and creates this confusion that you are experiencing.
This is why you can't find an objective answer to your question. It is a subjective answer, which is what I've been trying to tell you since I joined this discussion. Only YOU can determine if YOUR life is still worth living. There is no objective answer out in the universe that determines whether or not yours or anyone else's life is worth living, or why we live in the first place. The universe has no goals and therefore no purpose. It just does what it does and we are along for the ride. It is your choice whether or not it is "good", "bad", "right" or "wrong". — Harry Hindu
My feeling is that life is pointless and absurd, and every day I newly commit to life all the same, — mcdoodle
I can't imagine arriving at a philosophical position where I have a right to judge other people's valuations any more than in the service of affable conversations that may mean little, 'phatic communion' is a nice little phrase for such talk that I just found in a very old Malinowski essay that I like - Other people will go on being Other, but maybe our talk will make things a bit clearer to each other — mcdoodle
My feeling is that life is pointless and absurd, and every day I newly commit to life all the same,
— mcdoodle
Besides not eating/maintaining your body or outright suicide, is there any other way? — schopenhauer1
Certainly creating other people is presuming a right to think for another, and now there is a new person who was affected by your act. — schopenhauer1
That's fine, but in the end, my pre-established criteria does not lead to another life which passes on the issue. Rather, I let dead dogs lie. The existential situation rests on me alone to deal with. — schopenhauer1
The starting point of Kojève’s Master-Slave dialectic is the suicide of the Master. The Master in embracing death dislodges his attachment to the world. Whatever his triumphs, the Master is already dead and has already exited the stage of history. The world already belongs to the Slave. The only Freedom is death, thus the Free Master is already dead. It is the absolute freedom of suicide “which obviously distinguishes man from animal”. (IRH 248) The animal is a thing and thus determined entirely by natural laws. Man is free and autonomous precisely to the extent that he is not a thing. It is man’s power to embrace the nothingness, to be the nothing that makes him genuinely human. Contra Carnap, Kojève reveals that there is nothing more philosophically meaningful than Heidegger’s “nothing which itself nothings”. Man is the no-thing that nothings. In death the purely negative nature of man is revealed. Man is not a part of nature; he is a problem and question to nature.
Man creates himself as Man by the choices he makes with the limited amount of time he has. Death is the end of Time.
And in contrast to “natural,” purely biological death, the death that is Man is a “violent” death, at the same time conscious of itself and voluntary. Human death, the death of man and consequently all his truly human existence- is therefore, if we prefer, a suicide.” (IDH 151) Kojève intentionally uses the Christian language of incarnation, to express the manner in which Christianity is implicitly Atheism, the worship of Death itself. The Christian doctrine of Incarnation is the worship of God as Man’s mortality. The truth of Christianity is that it finds the Godhead, in a Man who voluntarily takes upon himself mortality. Christ as the Incarnation of God, is an allegory for the Truth of Man as the Incarnation of Death. — site
I agree we can get caught up by something, but the root of it is a restlessness that needs to be relieved. Perhaps boredom is too narrow a word. I have used restlessness in the past, and may employ that again here. I don't deny pleasure exists and humor and other forces that we are positively driven towards based on our preferences. However, there is root restlessness at the bottom of the need for these preferences. We don't like to be at the level of restlessness, but rather in the midst of this or that pursuit/thought/goal. — schopenhauer1
The starting point of Kojève’s Master-Slave dialectic is the suicide of the Master. The Master in embracing death dislodges his attachment to the world. Whatever his triumphs, the Master is already dead and has already exited the stage of history. The world already belongs to the Slave. The only Freedom is death, thus the Free Master is already dead. It is the absolute freedom of suicide “which obviously distinguishes man from animal”. (IRH 248) The animal is a thing and thus determined entirely by natural laws. Man is free and autonomous precisely to the extent that he is not a thing. It is man’s power to embrace the nothingness, to be the nothing that makes him genuinely human. Contra Carnap, Kojève reveals that there is nothing more philosophically meaningful than Heidegger’s “nothing which itself nothings”. Man is the no-thing that nothings. In death the purely negative nature of man is revealed. Man is not a part of nature; he is a problem and question to nature.
Man creates himself as Man by the choices he makes with the limited amount of time he has. Death is the end of Time.
And in contrast to “natural,” purely biological death, the death that is Man is a “violent” death, at the same time conscious of itself and voluntary. Human death, the death of man and consequently all his truly human existence- is therefore, if we prefer, a suicide.” (IDH 151) Kojève intentionally uses the Christian language of incarnation, to express the manner in which Christianity is implicitly Atheism, the worship of Death itself. The Christian doctrine of Incarnation is the worship of God as Man’s mortality. The truth of Christianity is that it finds the Godhead, in a Man who voluntarily takes upon himself mortality. Christ as the Incarnation of God, is an allegory for the Truth of Man as the Incarnation of Death. — site
Who decided that no person needs to be born at all?I think you are misinterpreting what I'm saying. What is it about the human experience that a new person has has to be born to experience it? A parent usually does not have an absurdist reason but some actual reason, however garbled or misconstrued. Well, if the basis of life is surviving and dealing with restlessness, it becomes absurd to put more people in that situation in the first place. Why is it necessary for a new person to survive and deal with restlessness when no person needs to be born at all? Somehow experience itself is cherished, which then still begs the question, and so on. — schopenhauer1
Who decided that no person needs to be born at all? — Harry Hindu
A question that allows for self-delusion. There is no one not to care or to care if there isn't anyone around in the first place. All caring (and not caring) takes place within life.Would anyone care if there was no anyone there? — schopenhauer1
But even if survival wasn't a thing, as we agreed upon, the underlying restlessness is there keeping us unsatisfied and doing, doing, doing. Always becoming and not being. We can't be, we must become until death- the final not be for our little socially-constructed selves that once existed and had to do all that doing! So why do we need to create more socially-constructed selves to view the world and run around restlessly? There is none. It is creating more doing socially-constructed selves for the sake of it. This is aggressive absurdity that has to be enacted through incarnation of yet another individual who has to take the mantle of living an aggressively absurd life of instrumental doing. I'm not sure if this is making sense. — schopenhauer1
A question that allows for self-delusion. There is no one not to care or to care if there isn't anyone around in the first place. All caring (and not caring) takes place within life. — Agustino
Kierkegaard in the above quote seems to signal that the view you hold - that idleness is the root of all evil - is a particularly modern view, one that "we" as a society are accustomed to hold. This is because we associate and cannot differentiate idleness from boredom. So, much like you, we feel that we need to work - to do something, by work I don't mean necessarily earn a living - because otherwise we get bored. Is it possible to escape from boredom completely? — Agustino
e2πiθ = cos(2πθ) + i sin(2πθ) — schopenhauer1
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