It is not handed down on tablets from Moses and everyone just gets it. — schopenhauer1

But the point of a philosophical position isn't just to gain a following. It's supposed to claim itself to be correct. You can be humble and aware that you might be wrong, but those who reject your position cannot be right if you believe yourself to be right. They must be wrong. I assume you aren't a relativist.

So I'm not claiming that because people disagree with x, x is wrong. What I am claiming is that a certain kind of x is wrong just because people disagree with it because x claims something about those who disagree with it. If it claims to cover humanity as a whole, and yet fails to account for other variables (disagreement), then it's flawed. This does not apply to every position.

Well, some people will just say the same about pleasure and pain, unless it's physical. Then it will be about how people look back on the pleasure and pain. — schopenhauer1

Pleasure and pain are felt by everyone. We can easily see how giving someone pleasure is good and giving them pain is bad. But aesthetic experiences are ultimately grounded in pleasure and pain - I enjoy looking at a piece of art, and I do not enjoy watching a lion tear out an antelope's throat on a nature show. But I can't necessarily say this about everyone. Not everyone feels ennui or angst about the human condition, it seems. And if this ennui or angst is enough BY ITSELF to make life not worth being born into, then it's enough to make someone suicidal. And if it's not enough to make someone regret being born, then being born is not problematic (if this is the only argument used).

So I'm not claiming that because people disagree with x, x is wrong. What I am claiming is that a certain kind of x is wrong just because people disagree with it because x claims something about those who disagree with it. If it claims to cover humanity as a whole, and yet fails to account for other variables (disagreement), then it's flawed. This does not apply to every position. — darthbarracuda

The aesthetic is not a given. People who disbelieve evolution for example- sometimes no matter how much evidence, they cannot accept it. That is a poor analogy because there can be said to be a corpus of literature that is empirically verified.. However, the sense is similar. Now, the patterns and such that the pessimist sees, some people can accept it, others do not. But, just because pessimism does not give an almighty epiphany when it is explained correctly, does not mean it is wrong. "Truth" does not have to be instantly believed. Physical pain and pleasure is only one element of suffering. If some people have relatively less physical pain and pleasure, there are other things to consider as well. I am not a relativist, but I also don't think that everyone has to agree with the position for it to be true either.

Pleasure and pain are felt by everyone. We can easily see how giving someone pleasure is good and giving them pain is bad. But aesthetic experiences are ultimately grounded in pleasure and pain - I enjoy looking at a piece of art, and I do not enjoy watching a lion tear out an antelope's throat on a nature show. But I can't necessarily say this about everyone. Not everyone feels ennui or angst about the human condition, it seems. And if this ennui or angst is enough BY ITSELF to make life not worth being born into, then it's enough to make someone suicidal. — darthbarracuda

First, I don't buy that not everyone AT SOME POINT does not feel ennui or angst. They may say they don't, but that's a different thing. Anyways, life's impositions, and self-impositions as I explained, are certainly things you can prevent for others, and endure while alive. Again, you still are making the assumption that life must be agonizing in order to not start, and that is simply not necessarily the case. One can endure life, but not want others to endure life.

I know for a while, the big bad classic pessimists have been the gazelle you have been wanting to take down and replace with a more suitable utilitarian theory, but I just don't think it really does the trick. People can disagree and make it

I am not a relativist, but I also don't think that everyone has to agree with the position for it to be true either. — schopenhauer1

True. But the classic pessimists were arguing that all lives are structurally problematic. They were claiming an verifiable aspect of a person's life - such as the constant "willing" of Schopenhauer - was a severely problematic thing. Now it's one thing to say everyone wills, and a totally different thing to say that because of this will, life as a whole is bad. Seems to me that the only person who can say whether or not their life is bad is the person themselves. This makes the classical pessimists seem almost authoritarian in their philosophies - they apparently know more about someone else's value of life than the person themselves. And if this person disagrees in this evaluation, well, they're just wrong. Certainly these philosophers were not just suggesting an evaluation of life, either. They were asserting (via argument) that life is bad.

It doesn't make any sense for the optimistic mafia (as you called them before) to tell you that your life is great. That's up to you to decide. So it equally does not make any sense for someone to tell you that your life is bad. If you happen to agree with them, then cool you agree with them. But that's based upon your evaluation of life, not on some logical proposition that can only be denied if someone is incapable of understanding logic.

First, I don't buy that not everyone AT SOME POINT does not feel ennui or angst. They may say they don't, but that's a different thing. — schopenhauer1

Do you think they feel ennui or angst regarding the same things that you do?

One can endure life, but not want others to endure life. — schopenhauer1

If I'm eating a stale piece of pizza, and don't want anyone else to eat this stale piece of pizza, then why am I eating this stale piece of pizza? Why am I subjecting myself to something that is ultimately not necessary and is rather gross too?

I know for a while, the big bad classic pessimists have been the gazelle you have been wanting to take down and replace with a more suitable utilitarian theory, but I just don't think it really does the trick. — schopenhauer1

Absolutely not. I think the classic pessimists have a lot to say about the human condition, and in fact I suspect they are correct on a lot of it. I think it was Cioran who said that suicide ought to be a legitimate option, and I've taken this to heart. I live my life with a keen understanding of the contingency of pleasure and an acceptance of the option of suicide.

What I don't know about these pessimists (including Cioran) is whether or not they actually did view suicide as a legitimate option for themselves. Were they suicidal? Were they just barely living? I suspect not. I suspect they derived a certain amount of pleasure from life. Because if they were not suicidal, then their pessimism just turns into a romanticized cynicism or social criticism. A stub in the toe does not make life not worth starting nor worth ending, and the pessimists weren't focused on these little pains. They were focused on bigger, more overarching pains, pains that logically lead to a desire to end them.

To sum up what I am arguing for: it cannot be that a life not worth starting is a life worth continuing, since continuation requires a beginning. Perhaps we could appeal to some existentialism, like Camus, and say that we would rebel against this system and live regardless. But rebellion does not work against pain. When I get a headache, I don't just suck it up and "rebel" against the headache. I take an aspirin. When life is quite a burden, nobody would "rebel" against it - they'd end it. The rebellion is focused on nihilism and a lack of meaning, not on compensating for great pain.

Because what I sense this is all about is an overabundance of suffering. We wouldn't not have kids because they will be exposed to a meaningless universe that somehow threatens their own dignity - they can rebel and relish in their rebellion. We wouldn't have children because they might feel extreme pain and live a life not worth living. The sheer potential for great pain is enough to argue against birth. But if we go further and claim that all lives are of great pain, then there's really no reason to live anymore except by a fear of death or a need to spread the word.

Just thinking about this a little more, perhaps we can have a more moderate stance of antinatalism based upon structural flaws in life without pro-mortalism. Essentially this would mean that life is not worth starting, and neither is it inherently worth continuing, but additionally neither is it worth the effort to end (in most cases at least). Like it's not good enough to start, but neither is it bad enough to end.

What I don't know about these pessimists (including Cioran) is whether or not they actually did view suicide as a legitimate option for themselves. Were they suicidal? Were they just barely living? I suspect not. I suspect they derived a certain amount of pleasure from life. Because if they were not suicidal, then their pessimism just turns into a romanticized cynicism or social criticism. A stub in the toe does not make life not worth starting nor worth ending, and the pessimists weren't focused on these little pains. They were focused on bigger, more overarching pains, pains that logically lead to a desire to end them. — darthbarracuda

I can't speak for past pessimists, but I don't think suicide is a necessary conclusion to not wanting to give life to others. A life worth starting is not the same threshold as a life worth continuing. Benatar wrote about this very thing extensively. I believe it had to do with the fact that once alive, one is attached to his own interest in continuing to exist, and thus the threshold is higher. These interests in continuing to live do not exist for any particular person in the life worth starting scenario and thus do not need to be in consideration. However, attachment to life (fear of death being one of them), does not de facto make life better to have been started in the first place.

If one follows a Schopenhauerian and anti-frustrationism approach, then lack is the driving force. What we need and want we lack. The very source of lack is life itself. Lack would not be necessary if we did not exist to lack. Some people think the problem is that we simply need to give into the need and want, thus fulfilling the lack. Schopenhaurieans, pessimists, and anti-frustrationists believe that you can take lack out of the equation by not perpetuating the source of lack.

Schop had an even rosier outlook in thinking that asceticism can possibly end lack while we are alive in some sort of rebellion against the Will's directive. He thought suicide was somehow not rebelling, but simply following the will's directive with the goal of ending one's life. The suicidal person was willing their end rather than ending the very source of one's own Willing by suffocating it in self-denial. My particular spin is that the problem(s) of existence should be brought to the forefront, we should recognize them as existing, understand each other as fellow-sufferers and have compassion for the fact that we are all in this situation. Of course, it does not get rid of anything completely.

Just thinking about this a little more, perhaps we can have a more moderate stance of antinatalism based upon structural flaws in life without pro-mortalism. Essentially this would mean that life is not worth starting, and neither is it inherently worth continuing, but additionally neither is it worth the effort to end (in most cases at least). Like it's not good enough to start, but neither is it bad enough to end. — darthbarracuda

Then you are simply making normative pessimist distinction of the difference between a life worth starting and a life worth continuing and there is nothing wrong with that t

Then you are simply making normative pessimist distinction of the difference between a life worth starting and a life worth continuing and there is nothing wrong with that — schopenhauer1

I certainly don't think there is anything wrong with it. That's why I suggested it to see if you have any thoughts.

The Will and such proposed by Schop is not painful in the sense a headache or a stab wound are. It's not something to be dreaded or hated per se. It certainly is not something to be avoided by suicide. But neither is it something good in itself.

Benatar wrote about this very thing extensively. I believe it had to do with the fact that once alive, one is attached to his own interest in continuing to exist, and thus the threshold is higher. These interests in continuing to live do not exist for any particular person in the life worth starting scenario and thus do not need to be in consideration. However, attachment to life (fear of death being one of them), does not de facto make life better to have been started in the first place. — schopenhauer1

Cioran also talked about this. But this makes it out to be that the only interests to continue to live are excuses and not actually reasons. This is absurd. We can have genuine reasons to continue to live, not just excuses like a fear of death or an attachment to friends and family.

I can't speak for anyone else of course, but I suspect that if you took away my fear of death or family attachments, I'd still have some reasons to continue to exist, at least right now. I'm not clutching to life like some desperate animal, motivated by fear. The reason I fear death is not just because it's unknown and possibly painful but also because it results in the loss of genuine pleasures. These pleasures I think tend to get overlooked as unimportant by the severely depressed, but the reality is that although the greatest of pleasures will never outweigh the greatest of pains, they are still extremely pleasurable.

These pleasures I think tend to get overlooked as unimportant by the severely depressed, but the reality is that although the greatest of pleasures will never outweigh the greatest of pains, they are still extremely pleasurable. — darthbarracuda

No doubt. Hope in future pleasures is another attachment. But does this translate that thus future people need to exist to be attached to the hope of future pleasures?

No doubt. Hope in future pleasures is another attachment. But does this translate that thus future people need to exist to be attached to the hope of future pleasures? — schopenhauer1

Not if it comes at the price of great suffering, or the potential thereof. Too often are pleasures remedial instead of independently worthwhile.

Not if it comes at the price of great suffering, or the potential thereof. Too often are pleasures remedial instead of independently worthwhile. — darthbarracuda

Agreed. Pleasures are often temporary (novelty wears off, you simply need more or something different once you get it), illusory (not as great as you thought or side effects ), and often, as you stated, something to bide the time. Even Schop wrote extensively about how to try to maximize happiness. He did not deny its existence of tell people not to be happy, but simply that it was temporary, and that we need to find a balance otherwise it will be even worse than what it could otherwise be. In other words, we can cope with existence while alive and try to find a balance, but it will never make the pervasive lack go away, simply make it more tolerable. Schopenhauer even created a work to address how to live in a world of pain and called it Counsels and Maxims. This proves that pessimists did not deny themselves or others happiness, but simply recognized happiness in a certain context.

The existence of these pleasures however, in my opinion, to a far less vocal and obsessive antinatalism than one practiced by those elsewhere on the internet. Even if being born is risky and unnecessary, the subsequent life is usually not horrendously awful. It is mostly mediocre, with genuine highs and lows but characterized by an almost ever-present feeling of dissatisfaction in varying degrees. We can be reasonably reassured that most people will be able to cope with this willing.

Schop if I understand him correctly thought that most lives were not worth living. Like I said before, not worth living for is not equivalent to worth dying for. But Schop also thought that geniuses could rise above this mediocrity (coincidentally and probably conveniently he thought he was one of these geniuses).

ooo I want to read Counsels & Maxims, I didn't know it existed.

Thus, it's the ideation of suicide that becomes more of a coping mechanism, not the actual suicide. — schopenhauer1

In what psychodynamic system is suicidal ideation more of a coping mechanism?

Tripe.

In what psychodynamic system is suicidal ideation more of a coping mechanism?

Short answer: a lot of them. Not a healthy coping mechanism, mind you, but a coping mechanism. Nietzsche's got a famous quote about it: "The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night."

And there's the less elegant formulation they couldn't stop repeating at the 'hospital' I spent a few miserable weeks at: "the idea of suicide is the idea of peace." (They were 'honoring our pain' in the hopes of leading us to truer greener peace-pastures)

And from experience, it's true. It's amazing how much you can calm yourself down by looking up the nearest bridge of foolproof height, and the train schedule, and promising to yourself you'll do it, for real, on Wednesday. And then on Wednesday, agitated, despairing, you can promise yourself the liberating plunge will really, for real this time, no excuses, come on Friday. And so forth. Some people have likened suicidal ideation to drug addiction. It doesn't seem far off. Tho it's a weird sort of addiction where the promises to quit and the high itself are the same thing.

In what psychodynamic system is suicidal ideation more of a coping mechanism?

Tripe. — Bitter Crank

Pretty much @csalisbury answered the question sufficiently. It's not so much that one is going to commit suicide, but that one can commit suicide that may be a sort of consolation.

In what psychodynamic system is suicidal ideation more of a coping mechanism? — Bitter Crank

Short answer: a lot of them. Not a healthy coping mechanism, mind you, but a coping mechanism. — csalisbury

It's not so much that one is going to commit suicide, but that one can commit suicide that may be a sort of consolation. — schopenhauer1

I was definitely thinking of healthy psychodynamic systems. I will grant the possibility of suicide serving as a relief valve in extremis. "If it gets worse, I can..."; "I'll endure until Friday, and then... and such.

There is a Romantic literary notion of suicide, and a philosophical notion too, but I don't consider romantic moping about in the ruins as any sort of a psychodynamic system. Theories of personality certainly include suicidal ideation (and acts), but not as a normal strategy for persons.

Theories of personality assume the development of individual psychology from infancy forward, including inheritance and environment, experience, learning, physical disease, and so forth. The life on which the child embarks normally goes on until accident or disease brings it to an end--for at least "three score years and ten" as the Psalmist put it.

Suicide generally figures as a consequence of disease--the mind gone haywire. People suffering from mental illness don't turn to suicide in the sense of "deciding to end suffering"; rather, suicidal thinking is part and parcel of the illness itself. In severe mental illness, hallucinations urge suicidal acts.

Antinatalism, at least as it has appeared in on-line discussion forums, seems more like an adolescent game than a serious philosophical position (though some people are serious about it). To me it begs the sarcastic question of "why don't you commit suicide if being born was that bad?" I don't think antinatalism leads to suicidal ideation, unless one were otherwise heading in that direction.

Of all the sources of consolation one can find, suicide seems like one of the flimsiest.

What I don't know about these pessimists (including Cioran) is whether or not they actually did view suicide as a legitimate option for themselves. Were they suicidal? Were they just barely living? I suspect not. I suspect they derived a certain amount of pleasure from life. — darthbarracuda

Look: People who are suicidal and just barely living, don't write books about it. They are beyond caring whether the book gets written or not.

Your suspicion is precisely correct: they did derive a certain amount of pleasure--not only from life, but also from writing a book about suicide and the misery of existence -- a misery they, themselves, did not feel. Else, they wouldn't have got the damn book written.

David Benatar is a professor of philosophy and head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town. Does that sound like somebody who has been just barely living? Similarly, Cioran was too productive and long lived to take his extreme pessimism too much to heart. His New York Times obituary reads like most NYT's obituaries: another quite successful person who made a significant mark in literary circles...

The source of his world view, he said in an interview published in 1994, was severe insomnia that began plaguing him as a youth and led him to give up his faith in philosophy after years of studying it.

I am much, much, much more impressed by people like Dorothy Day who worked a life time in very squalid conditions but whose writings are full of bright and realistic optimism, than people who occupy academic sinecures and write books about how squalid life is.

I think that even though these pessimists were and are not largely living horrible lives of tremendous suffering, they nevertheless are aware of the contingency of the stable life. They can write about the aesthetics of the human conditions, which end up being negative.

Dorothy Day's optimism was at least in part inherently tied to her belief in Catholicism. A religious belief allows a person to attach themselves to something greater than themselves, and distract them from their day-to-day lives. It's an idealism.

Like most political activists, left and right, she felt the need for society to change. If you're a leftist, then you want "progress", and if you're a rightie, you want society to "go back to its roots". For the leftists, the progress ideology is a longing for a society that is Platonic-ally perfect, and for the righties the past and the traditional are given a reverent nostalgia. Both are idealistic. Leftists predict a bright, happy, hopeful, productive future (one that is always just one step away that we never are quite able to reach), and righties ignore the fact the we progressed out of their reverent traditions largely because we found them unnecessary or harmful.

For any political idealist, though, the current situation is not good enough.

The pessimists are quite similar in that they would agree that the current situation is not good enough. It's just that they don't think it can be made substantially or structurally any better, and perhaps may even get worse. They don't personally need to be going through a hellish existence to argue this. Sometimes it's just enough to have something happen to you to break the spell of optimism. Something that makes you realize that optimism is a comfy illusion and not an accurate representation of reality. It's this disillusionment and the subsequent attempts to live in a still-illusioned society that much of pessimism gains its angst from.

Antinatalism, at least as it has appeared in on-line discussion forums, seems more like an adolescent game than a serious philosophical position (though some people are serious about it). To me it begs the sarcastic question of "why don't you commit suicide if being born was that bad?" I don't think antinatalism leads to suicidal ideation, unless one were otherwise heading in that direction. — Bitter Crank

Certainly there are different ways one can arrive at antinatalism. Hating life is but one reason.

I personally don't hate life. Nor do I love life like those sappy Christian youth ministers proclaim. I find it to be mostly mediocre, just a blip on the cosmic history. And I believe that although I've lived a relatively stable life, this is by no means a given. A lot of these pessimists were able to write about the poor quality of life simply because they managed or were lucky enough to live a relatively stable lifestyle and understood this lifestyle was contingent and never a given.

Basically a "posh" pessimist as you seem to imagine them being is keenly aware of not only their own posh lifestyle but also the contingency of it.

Antinatalism, at least as it has appeared in on-line discussion forums, seems more like an adolescent game than a serious philosophical position (though some people are serious about it). To me it begs the sarcastic question of "why don't you commit suicide if being born was that bad?" I don't think antinatalism leads to suicidal ideation, unless one were otherwise heading in that direction. — Bitter Crank

I've learned to take your trash-talking on antiantalism with stride :). Suicide ideation in this case does not mean that people are actually thinking of putting the knife to their wrist and taking a warm bath, but rather the abstract notion that you have power over your very existence.

This does bring up an interesting topic. There is a certain taking back control in suicidal ideation that has not as much to do with being non-existent as it does with YOU are the one doing it to yourself. I agree that there is some romanticism to this. Why? If we did a thought experiment where someone was about to commit suicide but at the last moment, someone else did them in and not themselves, this is not the scenario that the person had in mind. There was some sort of dignity taken away there because they were not the ones who were doing it. There is something more than the mere idea that one will no longer exist, there is a feeling of something akin to self-induced salvation involved with the ideation.

Again, this does not mean people actually go through with it, or even think about it in the particular. As you rightly state people who go so far as to plan something and going into detail are in extreme pain and/or have a mental illness. However, just the abstract ideation has a sort of soothing affect whereby one can detach oneself from the actual act and console oneself in the idea that it has gotten that bad, or at least circle back and realize the absurdity of things.

I've learned to take your trash-talking on antinatalism in stride... — schopenhauer1

A wise policy.

Suicide ideation in this case does not mean that people are actually thinking of putting the knife to their wrist and taking a warm bath — schopenhauer1

I understand that suicide here is a "gesture" not a concrete plan to end it all. That's what makes it romantic. Were it a serious plan with an on-hand method and a timetable, it would be a psychiatric matter rather than a dramatic move.

...but rather the abstract notion that you have power over your very existence. — schopenhauer1

This is where I have difficulty, and this is the bin out of which all the trash talking emanates.

IF one believes that one gains (or acknowledges) power over one's very existence by the assertive philosophical gesture, THEN the affirming gesture that life is good, worth living, and good exceeds ill is as powerful a claim on one's fate as the gesture of suicide.

Asserting that "life is good" has the added advantage of easing the burden of living (and yes, at times life is a burden -- work, for instance, or prison, or illness, or war, or...). If life is viewed as a river of shit` and one might as well drown in it, it makes for a rather dreary passage.

I don't think we are entirely masters of our "fate". The assertion that one gains control over fate with the suicidal gesture is as deficient a force as the gesture that life is always a bed of rose petals. That is to say, it may be marginally helpful to the individual, and no more than that. Much of what happens in life happens with utter indifference to our wills.

In real life many people will not resort to suicidal gestures. Like some victims of the Nazi death camps, many will cling tenaciously to life, no matter what. It isn't that suicide is against their religion or some such excuse. They just don't think in terms of suicide. (And here I am holding nothing against the Nazi victims who did choose to leap onto the electrified fence or easily provoke a guard into shooting them.)

Most people endure and proclaim their endurance as their will without asserting that life is not a long suffering. They know full well that life entails suffering. But they (at least think they) are on top, not on the bottom.

That is to say, it may be marginally helpful to the individual, and no more than that. Much of what happens in life happens with utter indifference to our wills. — Bitter Crank

I don't disagree really.

They just don't think in terms of suicide. — Bitter Crank

I never claimed that most people cope using suicide ideation.

Most people endure and proclaim their endurance as their will without asserting that life is not a long suffering. They know full well that life entails suffering. But they (at least think they) are on top, not on the bottom. — Bitter Crank

I'm glad you can speak for most people. I guess all is solved. Let's all go home. Oh wait, that's not possible as life goes on. The instrumentality of existence- it's moving to stand still nature. Well, that no longer matters. It is the romantics reification. Leave it all to the sobering tales of Bitter Crank who will tell it how it really is. He will get people in line such that they will see that their romantic doughy eyed pessimism is an aberration from the normative common man who lifts himself by his own bootstraps by not even thinking of the world on a whole but looks at each occasion carefully, avoiding any such ideas. The world of the small is the world of the good according to Bitter Crank and thus if said in the most pragmatist terms possible, has the sound of common sense, and thus must be the truest sense.

I get it, the little things in life (petting a dog) and the hopes of future accomplishments (finding a unified field theory and going to Mars) should be consolation enough. Why all the doom and gloom? You make your world. If life is simply an accident from contingent circumstances from the big bang, I should be glad that I can experience at all. Is that the notions you were going for?

Suicide ideation in this case does not mean that people are actually thinking of putting the knife to their wrist and taking a warm bath, but rather the abstract notion that you have power over your very existence. — schopenhauer1

Interesting perspective, I basically agree. It's interesting because it reminds me of Nietzsche. Dignity, meaning, self-hood, POWER, REBELLION, these things transcend the experiences of pleasure and pain. If we aren't looking for survival resources or distracted by a certain novelty we're spending our time nursing our self-esteem or managing our CONTROL (power) over ourselves, our environment, and perhaps even other people.

Letting someone else kill you would be allowing them power over yourself, an unacceptable notion that stains the ego.

I'm glad you can speak for most people. — schopenhauer1

As well you should be. :)

Look, is it any different claiming enough authority to say that life is generally good, than saying life entails too much suffering to justify bringing a life into the world?

Why do you object to me doing that?

Look, is it any different claiming enough authority to say that life is generally good, than saying life entails too much suffering to justify bringing a life into the world?

Why do you object to me doing that? — Bitter Crank

Similar to other answers I gave, life does not have to be pure agony in order to not be very good. There is no doubt that life has to be tolerable enough for people to not commit suicide whatever chance they get. However, we are already in the situation once born and there is no pause button (sleep not really counting as one cannot choose sleep at any time for any amount of time obviously and for some getting to sleep itself becomes a burden).

Being born puts people in a framework (whether they see it or not). In this framework, life imposes on us other-imposed and self-imposed challenges to be overcome. It is now something to deal with. Why give someone these other-imposed and self-imposed challenges to deal with in the first place?

To put it all together, at the end of the day, your kind of (limited) optimism creates narratives that have in mind that people should be content living in hope of reaching ever more expanding personalized goals. Usually it is some sort of improvement regimen. If everyday, for example, we are working towards a project, this provides suitable goals for human needs to feel accomplishment, and isn't this a good thing? I don't think so. Rather, what's going is people distract, sublimate, and isolate that the world is a given, and that it is an imposition. Thus people focus on certain long-term goals or immediate pleasures only so as not to face the idea it is an imposition. There is no peace to be found in the goals. There is no going home. There is only the constraints of the world, and our own impositions pressing on us, and we have to react or endure it NO MATTER WHAT. We are constantly moving to get peace, but peace is never there. Sometimes we are more comfortable, more well-rested, more able to cope, but we are still moving for peace. Time still presses on us, the impositions do not go away. If we sublimate, isolate, distract, and the like perhaps we can live in the world of the small, where the impositions are not seen as such. This is not seeing the bigger picture.

Also, don't forget that social constraints are a product of other-imposed and self-imposed constraints as well. The need for others, although seems nostalgically "good" in itself is really just another imposition. Life is not good in itself, we must ease the burdens of others by making them less lonely, or they making us less lonely, providing us a source of entertainment, providing advice, solutions, resources, someone to care for, and sources of labor. These social relations are about easing burdens, but it is not like with each encounter the burden goes away until nothing, it is a constant need to be satisfied. Social interaction, and perhaps the motives for true ethical action are all about easing the burdens of others, which is not a consolation in itself. Again, life provides other-imposed and self-imposed imposed challenges to be overcome. It is now something to deal with. Why give someone these other-imposed and self-imposed challenges to deal with in the first place?

This is not even going over the classical examples of the amount of unwanted pains, discomforts, and situations that vary from person to person and circumstance to circumstance. I also did not go over frustrated goals. But even WITHOUT talking about presence of unwanted pains and frustrated goals, there is a lot there one can see in the bigger picture view as far as the burdens of life.

Thus, I don't deny that you also have experiences and thus some authority on the matter, but object that your claim is correct on the grounds that it is either not taking into account the bigger picture, denying it, distracting from it, or claiming to not look behind the curtain, nothing to see there. I can't say which one, but from "my authority" of living out experiences, and reflection on those experiences, I see something is at the least missing from this view or not taken into account.

Had I come to this same discussion 20 years ago I would have found your position consistent with both my experience and philosophical view. Life seemed much more unsatisfactory then (not just for a few weeks; more like a couple of decades). Life seemed to be composed more of ruthless exploitation, hindrances, bastards, etc. I very much exposed to an acid rain.

It isn't that I now think that life is constantly sunny and sweet. I don't. I'm well aware that even if I feel more optimistic and positive, life hasn't changed for everybody else. There is still exploitation by ruthless bastards lurking around every corner, hindrances of all kinds, disease, suffering, and steady acid rain (so to speak) is still falling. I can't supply a full explanation of why life seems less malignant now than in the past.

Our larger social / political / economic system (not just in the USA, but in most of the world) is deeply corrupted and exploitative. Disease, destitution, disorder, and dying are as rampant now as ever.

I didn't will a change in feeling and thinking from "life is barely tolerable" to "life is OK, maybe even good" though I find the change is a relief. It just happened. Maybe the cold, wet rain and dark clouds will return. Don't know.

Look, is it any different claiming enough authority to say that life is generally good, than saying life entails too much suffering to justify bringing a life into the world?

Why do you object to me doing that? — Bitter Crank

There is a difference between being worth continuing and being worth ending. You can have a life not worth continuing while not having a life worth ending. Of course, having a life worth ending means you have a life not worth continuing. But sometimes there's just not enough pain to make suicide a viable option - but there's enough to make life a burden. It's mediocre. It's just something to get through.

Alternatively you could make a life worth living by other means, like rebelling or finding meaning in your life. This goes beyond what Schopenhauer thought and into the existentialists. But most of the existentialists were focused on the life already given and weren't focused on the potential lives. If we have to find a way to deal with life then it should be an alarm that perhaps this isn't something we ought to continue.

didn't will a change in feeling and thinking from "life is barely tolerable" to "life is OK, maybe even good" though I find the change is a relief. It just happened. Maybe the cold, wet rain and dark clouds will return. Don't know. — Bitter Crank

Amen my brother. The pervasive theme of this forum and its less evolved predecessor (especially as it pertains to political discussions) is pessimism masquerading as realism. That is, should anyone ever allow for the possibility that we're not all going to hell in hand basket (whatever that means), they are looked upon as naïve, or worse yet, someone trying to manipulate and control the masses into protecting the status quo.

I do recognize that you haven't really admitted that the world might not be on a collision course, but have instead suggested that your optimism has come upon you as would a random change in the weather. I suppose it goes too far against your grain to allow that you might be feeling better because things are actually better, but I, for one, will take your contentment as a harbinger that the world is on the upswing.

PUSHKIN:

My path is sad. The waving sea of the future
Promises me only toil and sorrow.
But O my friends I do not wish to die,
I want to live - to think and suffer...

(remarkable fact: Pushkin, embodiment of Russia, was the great grandson of a black African)