This makes me think of one of Hans Rosling's TED talks from a few years ago, in which he says:

Africa has not done bad. In 50 years they've gone from a pre-Medieval situation to a very decent 100-year-ago Europe, with a functioning nation and state. I would say that sub-Saharan Africa has done best in the world during the last 50 years. Because we don't consider where they came from. It's this stupid concept of developing countries that puts us, Argentina and Mozambique together 50 years ago, and says that Mozambique did worse.

Source

I think we also need to consider the huge differences between the many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. But I'll leave it there for now.

By afropessimism, I mean the "the perception of sub-Saharan Africa as a region too riddled with problems for good governance and economic development."

Cause let's be honest, a lot of Africa is fucked up. Thanks to the first "World" war of the Europeans, the native tribes of Africa were artificially divided based upon European imperialism and not what would be best for Africa and its inhabitants. There have been brutal civil wars in many of these third world countries. Millions have died. Plagues continue to ravage the continent. — darthbarracuda

I think that the whole view of Africa is off. If we are judging Africa by Western standards, then it does not live up to the "developed" world of the West. But why are we judging it by Western standards? It simply is because the West took over the native African views on what is success for their culture. Success was defined in a context of living a certain lifestyle. Usually this had to do with subsistence farming in a certain ecological and cultural niche with various amounts of trade with surrounding villages. For thousands of years this developed, with enough sustainability to have thriving cultures. Ever since it has been subsumed into the world system, it is relegated to being underdeveloped. It seems there is a theme in sub-Saharan Africa of always getting its native culture subsumed by foreign cultures. In some of the northern sub-Saharan regions the Muslims dominated influence due to trade. This created impositions of foreign standards on native communities. Then of course, starting in the 1500's and culminating in the 1800's with the "Scramble for Africa", the West has dragged it into the world economy (with the internal help from some native African leaders who saw advantages in this I am sure), that has almost completely subsumed ancient lifestyles and standards of success.

So since one cannot reconstruct the past for a pristine pre-Westernized African continent, it is sadly about "moving development" forward following the notions that we have laid out in post-Renaissance and post-Enlightenment Western fashion. This means judging Africa from the Westernized view- least technological, least infrastructure, least access to medicine, most prone to natural and economic hardships, etc.

Could it be, that the Westernized notion is just "the" notion, and all others would more or less have lead to this same version of economic/social relations if they just "developed" first? Is even the idea of progress and development in the fashion that we have today Western or universal? Is development of technology and the culture that surrounds the culture of technology a universal truth that the West hit upon, dragged or converted other cultures into, and should be thanked for doing so? I don't know.

A typically Western response, of course. The moment people, wherever they are, get a chance to get out of subsistence farming and get washing machines and escape from the social tyranny of village life, they tend to take it. That's what makes these measures not simply a measure of Westernization: they are not about what is particularly Western.

A typically Western response, of course. The moment people, wherever they are, get a chance to get out of subsistence farming and get washing machines and escape from the social tyrrany of village life, they tend to take it. That's what makes these measures not simply a measure of Westernization: they are not about what is particularly Western. — jamalrob

Hey, I am not saying that it is wrong, just questioning whether the "Western" standard is universal or not. I guess you are on the universal side: The West's way of life is correct, and Africa has to do better at meeting these standards. This is not necessarily a bad view, just one way of looking at it. Also, did you read my whole argument? I went into some lengthy historical detail there and this seems to be ignored based on your oversimplistic evaluation "A typically Western response, of course." Perhaps you can start having a more thorough dialogue by answering the questions I posed in my previous post:

Could it be, that the Westernized notion is just "the" notion, and all others would more or less have lead to this same version of economic/social relations if they just "developed" first? Is even the idea of progress and development in the fashion that we have today Western or universal? Is development of technology and the culture that surrounds the culture of technology a universal truth that the West hit upon, dragged or converted other cultures into, and should be thanked for doing so? I don't know. — schopenhauer1

It is certainly a Hegelian notion that modern thinkers like Fukuyama sort of wrote about with the end of the Soviet Union. It could be applied here as well. While the West has lived out its history more or less and are at a sort of End of History, the non-Western cultures are still playing history out until it can get to a sort of End of History as well. I am not opposed to this notion actually, so I shouldn't have said that it is "off". It is only off in that, you still must assume that the Western notion is universal in the first place. One can argue that it is not. One can argue that with the non-Western native cultures of Africa, there was an equilibrium of sorts that was at least thriving enough that the cultures were intact and societies were flourishing in their own way. One might say that technology happened in a cultural context of the Scientific Revolution and the whole historical developments that surrounded it. Sub-Saharan Africa might have been too far removed for this context to make sense in their equilibrium of communities. Thus, when this Westernized notion came into contact with the non-Western notions, it was not just a melding of two rather similar worlds, but a rupturing of the African world and a replacing with the new one. However, this replacement was not wholesale, but one in which Africa for various reasons has been put in a position of underdeveloped within the very system that has subsumed its original culture.


But, I happen to think it is rather universal. As you say, people tend towards technology. Anyways, once everyone is subsumed in the "universal" notion of progress, and has gotten to the technological resources that the West has, maybe that will hasten people's thinking of antinatalism and pessimism, as they won't be distracted by low standards of living and ignorance of procreation. Also, people cannot use non-Western countries as ways of saying that "at least you don't have to live in their situation!". I am all for the hastening of the non-West to become more Westernized and more technological as soon as possible, so we can all be on the same page to understand Philosophical Pessimism and antinatalism. Low living standards in the Westernized system are just a distraction. There is no longer an equilibrium of living a certain lifestyle there. Since they are in the Westernized system already, it is better to be in the system robustly. If life is about survival and boredom, and survival has been subsumed in a Western notion, it is best to get the resources to live the best Westernized lifestyle one can since one is already in the system.

Sorry, it wasn't meant to be a thorough engagement with your whole post. Just a spanner in the works to see what sparks fly.

I think we also need to consider the huge differences between the many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. — jamalrob

I think that's where the real answer lies in terms of why certain groups are less successful than others.

I seriously doubt that the entire plight of Africa can be blamed on Western imperialism either, which seems to be the thrust of the OP and many of the responses. Oppression, imperialism, slavery, genocide, are all part of the joys of living as a human being on the planet, and the pain exacted on Sub-Saharan Africa is just another example. It has to do with history, evolution, and all sorts of things.

It's the weather, dudes. It's just too fuckin' hot to do much of anything except go crazy now and then.

Plus they are also rans in the league table of mass slaughter. They have Rwanda and Congo, lately, it's true, but compared to 80000000 deaths caused by European wars in the 20th century, the Africans are just too damn peaceful. Thank goodness for civilisation.

Is there any hope for Africa? — darthbarracuda

Much of what we acclaim about Western civ is in fact a relatively recent invention. It wasn't so long ago that belief in magic, persecution of "witches," the tortuous death of dissidents and heretics, and so forth were rampant in Western Europe, and autocratic rule was the dominant form of government. Anyone looking at Europe during the time of the Thirty Years War, the Albigensian Crusade, or the Inquisition (in all of its multifaceted cruelty) might wonder if there was any hope for Western Europe.
Perhaps African nations just needs some time to catch up?

I seriously doubt that the entire plight of Africa can be blamed on Western imperialism either, which seems to be the thrust of the OP and many of the responses — Hanover

Indeed. The fact that Western nations have played an outsized role in foreign aid and assistance to Africa seems to often go unremarked-upon in these discussions. Private and public philanothropy has spent vast amounts of money in combating disease in Africa, for instance, fighting malaria, river blindness, Guinea worm, HIV, and Ebola, among others.

I honestly feel that the question is not specific enough for me to grapple with. Imagine saying Europe is amazing, or North America is amazing. My immediate thought is -- which part? And what is so amazing about that part? What led to this, that, or the other?

Even cities take on geographies and histories which are diverse and multifaceted. How does one, then, evaluate a continent?

I also would say I'm just not familiar enough with African history to have either a pessimistic or optimistic attitude. So I can't answer your question in the specific. But the one thing that leaps out for me is that Africa is huge, and I would have a difficult time answering said question for places I do have a decent grasp of the history on.

Even cities take on geographies and histories which are diverse and multifaceted. How does one, then, evaluate a continent? — Moliere

Well, the question did pertain to Sub-Saharan Africa, which, while still a very large area, cuts down the scope of the question somewhat.

Hrm! You're right. Sorry. I was mislead by the second sentence which just used "Africa", so the entire time I was thinking the entire continent.

It depends on which country is up for consideration. Congo? Kenya? Namibia? Mozambique?

Africa is a very, very large continent; too big to be written off; practically too big to make generalizations over.

There is good reason to be pessimistic about almost any area of the world; there are some reasons to be optimistic too. There is much more investment in Africa countries now than there was 10, 20, 30 years ago. That's good. Africa has mineral resources which are being exploited, sometimes to the benefit of very few, sometimes to wider benefit. It has reasonably productive land, it's population is not overwhelming large, and it has a moderate climate, more or less. With investment comes economic expansion which allows a larger number of people to improve their lives.

There is a difference in opportunities and problems between urban Africa and rural Africa. Nairobi's problems are not the same as rural Uganda's on the other side of Lake Victoria. Both types of problems are entirely as remediable as North and South America's problems, Europe's problems, and Asia's problems.

Africa is no more plague-ridden than SE Asia, India, or South America. Yes, there is malaria, which sickens and reduces the productivity of a lot of people, but malaria is an endemic disease in lots of places. Ebola pops up every now and then. Africa has AIDS. But then AIDS is pretty much everywhere. South America has the zika virus, but soon everybody else will too and there might be an epidemic of defective-brained children being born from Rio to Mumbai.

Development is usually assisted -- has been for a long time, everywhere. Money flows in along with expertise, things start changing, problems get solved, people do better. We don't want to be Pollyanna-ish about it, of course. People in rural Africa, disconnected from cities, will probably benefit later than people living in urban centers.

Some cities, like Nairobi, have huge slums -- largely resulting from the familiar rural to urban migration of people. But then, lots of cities in the developed world have some pretty bad places as well.

I am all for the hastening of the non-West to become more Westernized and more technological as soon as possible, so we can all be on the same page to understand Philosophical Pessimism and antinatalism. — schopenhauer1

Right. As soon as an African mother has a pot to piss in, she starts reading Schopenhauer, wondering why she bothers to have children, and doesn't just get it over with by using her machete to chop off her own head.

Right. As soon as an African mother has a pot to piss in, she starts reading Schopenhauer, wondering why she bothers to have children, and doesn't just get it over with by using her machete to chop off her own head. — Bitter Crank

Oh c'mon Bitter Crank, you should love Schopenhauer- he practically invented the genre of Bitter Crank (or at least perfected it!). But to address what you said there, you do raise a good point (see I'm at least being charitable).

If philosophical pessimism (or any abstract position that requires certain prior body of knowledge) is some sort of truth, can it be universally intuited or is it dependent on culture?

If I were to be accepted in a previously uncontacted tribal society and got to know their language and they were willing to accept me as someone they can converse with casually, and I brought up ideas of Philosophical Pessimism, would they "get" the very notion of choosing to not exist to spare the next generation, and the idea that life is flux and often unsatisfactory or would it be not even understood (shades of Sapir-Whorf.. but let's try to avoid that argument if we can).. Would they find an analogy in their own culture (oh yes, this reminds me of the myth of the laughing jackal...)? Would they actually get it without analogy? (Oh shit, now that I look at it, every day I am always hungry, I secretly am bored of all this damn dancing, and hunting just seems tedious, these fellow humans are very difficult to deal with, I'm tired of the constant warfare with the neighboring tribe)..

Or, is it a Hegelian thing? With a culture that has science, technology, comes ennui, and the nuances of living a post-scientific revolution lifestyle? Perhaps the more technology and science the more ennui and pessimism becomes unfolded in our dialectic as we start "realizing" things that were simply not apparent prior?

If I were to be accepted in a previously uncontacted tribal society — schopenhauer1

An interesting book you might enjoy, if you can find a copy: Keep the River On Your Right by Tobias Schneebaum, 1969. (Check out on line used book stores like Alibis or ABE.com.) Schneebaum (now deceased) traveled into the jungles of Peru in search of a particular tribe, the Arakmbut, who were presumed to be uncontacted. He found them, and stayed with them for a long time -- accepted. They turned out to be cannibals, and the book includes discussions of flesh eating.

There is no lesson in it about Schopenhauer or Hegel, but he does describe exactly the kind of experience you propose. In time there was more contact, the tribe caught numerous diseases to which they had not been previously exposed, and their quality of life took a nose dive.

I would imagine that their latter day view of life was a lot less sanguine and cordial than it was early on in their contact with Scheenbaum. He didn't seem to be the source of the viruses.

Or, is it a Hegelian thing? — schopenhauer1

Another tangent: Theoretically, all human populations should display the same frequency and type of mental illnesses. We share the same genes, and life is life (good bad and indifferent) wherever we live. But that doesn't seem to be the case. While schizophrenia does show up pretty much everywhere, as do other disorders, societies that industrialize experience a sharp rise in the incidence of these maladies. (At least, I think this is correctly stated. Going on old memories here...)

"Improvements" in the quality of life -- electricity, indoor toilets, better food, less disease... seem to be paired with a decline in the quality of life -- assembly lines, piece work, ruthless exploitation, low pay... The better things get, the worse they are. What Marx described for 19th century Europe and England occurs all over again in SE Asia. The interpersonal, family, community, religious structures that bind life and meaning together are ripped to shreds by factory life. Farm life was hard, factory life is worse.

Modern industrial life, conducted on its terms, drives people crazy.

An interesting book you might enjoy, if you can find a copy: Keep the River On Your Right by Tobias Schneebaum, 1969. (Check out on line used book stores like Alibis or ABE.com.) Schneebaum (now deceased) traveled into the jungles of Peru in search of a particular tribe, the Arakmbut, who were presumed to be uncontacted. He found them, and stayed with them for a long time -- accepted. They turned out to be cannibals, and the book includes discussions of flesh eating.

There is no lesson in it about Schopenhauer or Hegel, but he does describe exactly the kind of experience you propose. In time there was more contact, the tribe caught numerous diseases to which they had not been previously exposed, and their quality of life took a nose dive. — Bitter Crank

That does seem interesting. That might be some good reading. A more contemporary one I've heard was pretty good is Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday which I believe is about tribes in New Guinea.

"Improvements" in the quality of life -- electricity, indoor toilets, better food, less disease... seem to be paired with a decline in the quality of life -- assembly lines, piece work, ruthless exploitation, low pay... The better things get, the worse they are. What Marx described for 19th century Europe and England occurs all over again in SE Asia. The interpersonal, family, community, religious structures that bind life and meaning together are ripped to shreds by factory life. Farm life was hard, factory life is worse.

Modern industrial life, conducted on its terms, drives people crazy. — Bitter Crank

So is your answer that philosophical pessimism is simply culture? Let us say there is a spectrum of truth, but with it comes certain painful understandings. In a traditional society, perhaps one feels more in tune with nature, the tribe, and a certain pattern of lifestyle but one does not have insights into the things that civilization can bring. Let us say that one insight is philosophical pessimism. It makes me wonder if there have ever been philosophical pessimists in a tribal society ever. They don't have to be Westernized ones, but perhaps their own version. Someone who just sees life as an instrumentality that goes nowhere. I mean, supposedly, human nature is human nature. Philosophical pessimism goes back at least as far back as the first Wisdom literature. Can it go back further than that, pre-agricultural society? What I don't want to do is fall in the trap of the "noble savage". It is easy to do, and I think agricultural based societies have been romanticizing traditional societies since the beginning of agriculture. Stories like the Garden of Eden and the like always propose a more idyllic time before large civilizations.

would they "get" the very notion of choosing to not exist to spare the next generation — schopenhauer1

Well, I don't know, of course. It's a very good question, though.

My view of philosophical pessimism is that it is a creature of neurological or psychological pessimism. Don't have any data at hand to prove it, but I think people are born either as predominantly optimists or predominantly pessimists. It's a "leaning" which will prefer certain kinds of thinking over other kinds of thinking. It's like people are born with one of two sexual orientations. If you are straight, the opposite sex looks more interesting to you. If you are gay, your own sex looks more interesting.

Psychological / neurological optimists and pessimists are drawn to thought systems that are most congruent with the mind's native style. This isn't quite as fixed as one might think.

Believe it or not, I used to be much more of a philosophical pessimist. It paired nicely with chronic depression which lasted a long time--maybe 25 years? When the depression lifted, which it did fairly abruptly, I became less pessimistic and more optimistic, whether I liked it or not.

Take Global Warming. I feel much less depressed about global warming, but I'm pretty sure we're totally screwed. We show every indication that we will NOT get ourselves together to set things right. This used to agitate me a great deal. Now it doesn't. I am, frankly, pretty surprised to find myself in this state. Maybe it was doing the arithmetic and discovering that I will probably be dead from old age in just 20 years (at the outside) well before the final heatwave begins.

I can understand people being reluctant or unwilling to bring children into a world that is in serious danger of being severely degraded in the foreseeable future. If predictions are accurate, life will be far, far more difficult in the future which one's newborn children will live. One's grandchildren will likely find an even more difficult situation.

You seem to feel that life has always been too unsatisfactory to bear children.

So is your answer that philosophical pessimism is simply culture? — schopenhauer1

Not quite that simple, no. The philosophical stance one takes is a combination of the cultural resources the culture makes available, one's personality, and one's personal experiences. A neolithic hunter-gatherer band member would have had language, a religious view point of some sort, close human companions, folkways, and the possibility of a more or less pleasant life.

Their "philosophy" might be a version of whatever will be, will be. Enjoy the good stuff and endure the bad stuff.

A given individual, though, might be inclined to react more negatively to the bad stuff, and derive less pleasure from the good stuff. He need not be "depressed"; maybe his nervous system just works that way. For him, his hunter gatherer life is not satisfactory. (His language might or might not afford him the terms needed to say that, but he could sure feel it.) He just feels bad about his life and doesn't especially look forward to the next hunt. "What's the point?"

So, yes, I think a neolithic society could produce somebody who was antinatalist in feeling, though probably not in concept. It wouldn't produce very many, probably, and if it did the band would probably be extinguished by a lack of necessary enthusiasm for the essential hunter-gathering tasks.

Neolithic people (the era ended around 3000 b.c.e.) were innovators, experimenters, explorers, and so on.

Not quite that simple, no. The philosophical stance one takes is a combination of the cultural resources the culture makes available, one's personality, and one's personal experiences. A neolithic hunter-gatherer band member would have had language, a religious view point of some sort, close human companions, folkways, and the possibility of a more or less pleasant life. — Bitter Crank

While I agree with you that temperament might lead someone to philosophical pessimistic conclusions more readily than someone with a more optimistic temperament, the conclusions of philosophical pessimism are not necessarily dependent on individual personalities.

1) There will always be unwanted pains in the world- from minor discomforts to major catastrophes whether that be other people, unwanted situations, natural disasters, accidents, disease, and the like.

2) The world is the reality that it is- learning conforming to conform and being stoic/unaffected by it (despite this being a by-and-large impossible thing to do), does not take away the fact that it was not ideal in the first place.

2a) Other-imposed constraints- The world imposes on us the needs of survival and unwanted pain in a certain environmental and cultural constraints.

2b) Our individual wills impose upon ourselves the need to transform boredom into goals and pleasure. Being that we can never have true satiation, we are always in flux and never quite getting at anything in particular. It is a world to be endured. We may find ourselves projects to concentrate on and have that "flow" feeling, but once one is out of such a mode that might capture one's thoughts thoroughly, one sees it is just going from project to project or chasing the "flow" so as to not think about the situation at large.

These "truths" are independent of one's general temperament. Though it is an aesthetic of sorts, I cannot see how it is a matter of perspective as really the core of the matter of the human condition. It is not even a matter of people denying these claims. Rather, it is a matter of putting 2 + 2 together to see the larger pattern going on.

The counterarguments that one can just think their way out of the situation seem to not work. One cannot choose to turn off their needs and wants- they are a part of their situation. One cannot choose to get rid of unwanted pains. The absurdity of the instrumental, discussed by many philosophers is just part of the situation.

The world is the reality that it is — schopenhauer1

because...

There will always be unwanted pains in the world — schopenhauer1

The world imposes on us the needs of survival and unwanted pain in a certain environmental and cultural constraints — schopenhauer1

Our individual wills impose upon ourselves the need to transform boredom into goals and pleasure — schopenhauer1

These "truths" are independent of one's general temperament — schopenhauer1

One cannot choose to turn off their needs and wants- they are a part of their situation — schopenhauer1

and

The counterarguments that one can just think their way out of the situation seem to not work — schopenhauer1

I not only find each of your statements to be true (rearranged slightly) but taken together they are also true.

Does that make me a crypto philosophical pessimist? Maybe, but I am disinclined to take the additional step of concluding: Given that the world offers an inconsistently unsatisfactory arrangement, is it reasonable to voluntarily discontinue the species, non-breeding pair by non-breeding pair?

The key to my unwillingness to take this step is located in the phrase "inconsistently unsatisfactory". The world is also inconsistently satisfactory.

There will be unexpected pleasures in the world.
The world imposes on us the needs of survival and the possibility of realized dreams within certain environmental and cultural constraints.
"Our individual wills impose upon ourselves the need to transform boredom into goals and pleasure".
"These "truths" are independent of one's general temperament".
"One cannot choose to turn off their needs and wants- they are a part of their situation".

While granting the truth of your several points, it does not require a wholesale rejection of everything you said to place one's self CAUTIOUSLY on the side of philosophical optimism.

A Caveat:

For many people, possibly for most people, it is possible that global warming could make the world uninhabitable. If the following happens, Oceans rise; crops consistently fail where they were previously reliable; day-time temperature becomes intolerably hot to work outside; insect-borne diseases kill off animals, plants, and necessary insects; marginal areas become uninhabitable; inhabitable areas become marginal; inhabitable zones change faster than animals, plants, and insects can adapt (including humans); the cocoon of culture and civilization is inadequate to guide collective planning, and I were in a position to decide, I might conclude that further reproduction of our species was inadvisable.

But then, think back over the last 20,000 years of human life, a period in which we were then as we are now (modern humans): A million year ice age was coming to an end. (There had been about a mile-thick layer of ice over the northern half of North America, like where I live now.) Its melting revealed a landscape that had been scrapped down to bedrock or had been covered up with a geologically significant layer of mud. This is about the time people arrived in North America. They stayed to the west and south, out of necessity. The same conditions applied to Eurasia. We managed to subsist there, along with the Neanderthals. It was fucking cold, windy, unpleasant.

Philosophical pessimism must surely have been common at the time.

But you know, the ice melted; soil reformed; the philosophically pessimistic and grubby Neanderthals died out, along with the mastodons and giant predators that had been eating us. The weather warmed up and eventually life got quite pleasant again, at least compared to living in the tail end of the ice age. A few thousand years later, there was The Renaissance and The Enlightenment and here we are.

We survived ice; whether we will survive fire, don't know.

Does that make me a crypto philosophical pessimist? Maybe, but I am disinclined to take the additional step of concluding: Given that the world offers an inconsistently unsatisfactory arrangement, is it reasonable to voluntarily discontinue the species, non-breeding pair by non-breeding pair?

The key to my unwillingness to take this step is located in the phrase "inconsistently unsatisfactory". The world is also inconsistently satisfactory.

There will be unexpected pleasures in the world.
The world imposes on us the needs of survival and the possibility of realized dreams within certain environmental and cultural constraints.
"Our individual wills impose upon ourselves the need to transform boredom into goals and pleasure".
"These "truths" are independent of one's general temperament".
"One cannot choose to turn off their needs and wants- they are a part of their situation".

While granting the truth of your several points, it does not require a wholesale rejection of everything you said to place one's self CAUTIOUSLY on the side of philosophical optimism. — Bitter Crank

Crypto-philosophical pessimist- I like the sound of that! Perhaps there are thousands more!

BC Premise: Your basis for supporting procreation is the possibility of unexpected pleasures, and this reason should override the very burdens that the world imposes in the first place.

schop1 rebuttal:
1. The very instrumental nature of existence overrides unexpected pleasures. To have a child so it can experience a Nietzschean tragic-comedy seems dubious. Your position, so it seems, is "we may win or lose but the fact that we experienced the game is what matters" (this is the way interpret it at least being that we know that unexpected pleasures are not all that exists). To de facto force a person to deal with instrumentality for the possibility of brief pleasures (with the ironic twist of living a tragic-comedy of life) does not make sense to impose on a new person when there is no one who is there in the first place. People should not be grist for their own mill just so they can experience their own lives being played out for better or worse.

2. Are you sure you do not put your hopes into an imaginary version of what the next generation will be? Hope can be an addictive drug that very likely distorts the reality of future pleasures. As Schop/Buddhists state, pleasures are temporary, often accompany pain, and often are the cause of suffering when they are frustrated. The fact that when pleasure/flow/concentration is not met or has already been achieved, we see reality in its relatively blah/ennui state tells us something.

3. Accommodating to life is often seen as the "realist" attitude (pragmatic attitude). But that is simply because we must make do. Making do is after the fact of birth, not before.

4 You seem to think "life is good right now, ergo life is good", but this may be short-sighted.
Entailed in this position seems to be the idea of: "Why tempt fate by questioning life's value for the future generation?" You don't want life to make you pessimistic again, so don't tempt fate. It is a very human trait to not want to tempt fate. It has relics of tribal superstitions. The "gods" of positive experience need their sacrifice so they can keep sending positive experiences. The sacrifices they want is the constant reassuring that things are all right all the time. We don't want to make them angry and therefore vengeful.

I would resign the chess board and recognize your victory IF one condition could be met:

IF I could show that your view of life was entirely and objectively true and my view was entirely and objectively false.

I can't, so... I do not resign the board.

That said, I have gained some respect for your argument. I don't like it, but for anyone so inclined it makes perfectly good sense.

I would resign the chess board and recognize your victory IF one condition could be met:

IF I could show that your view of life was entirely and objectively true and my view was entirely and objectively false.

I can't, so... I do not resign the board. — Bitter Crank

That is fair. Objectivity is quite slippery here. I can only try to do this several ways all of which will probably be unsatisfactory (although I wouldn't mind an unexpected satisfactory). I am going to assume that empirical means verified through the scientific process as it is accepted in the academic community of verification. This will probably never be the case. I can argue that being value statements, they never will. You can argue value statements are at the least nonsensical statements (shades of Wittgenstein) or at most charitable, based on the predisposed attitudes of the individual. Anyways here are three attempts:

1) If all of "this" (meaning both unwanted pains and the very internal flux of our individual (lowercase) epistemological wills) are manifestations of a vaster (uppercase) Will, then perhaps we can say that encoded in the DNA of metaphysics is very design of our suffering. Will is playing itself out- striving forward with no design and with no final ends. Of course Will being considered "the-thing-itself" it cannot, in principle, be verified using empirical standards of space and time. It can only be seen by first-hand observation of one's own introspection. Then this is analogized to others, objects, and the universe itself.

2) If pain is to be measured in any "empirical" way, it would have to be judged by either objective or subjective standards, then it would have to be measured in a precise way such that each feeling is measured for quality, condition, and quantity of particular mental states. If these studies suggest that indeed we are always in suboptimal states and then this may be "evidence".

3) One cannot say "aha, you are lying, you really feel this way", but one may be able to get a consensus that while optimistic aesthetics (feeling connected, feeling like one has it figured out, etc.) last a little while, the pessimistic aesthetic (even if just rudimentary form) always comes back to the fore when the others do not seem to work out. Like a "broken tool" the pessimistic aesthetic may be behind the optimistic ones that seem right only in short durations.

That said, I have gained some respect for your argument. I don't like it, but for anyone so inclined it makes perfectly good sense. — Bitter Crank

Thanks for the acknowledgement. At the end of the day, that's all we can do with arguments whose premises we disagree with but see the validity in the points.