Most importantly, if we agree on what is the case, we can talk within the same context about what to do. — schopenhauer1
Is existence structurally negative for the human? Again, there will be many phenomenological angles to explore that issue and mine certain ideas that can be intuited from this kind of rationalizing about the human condition. — schopenhauer1
One can perhaps dig deeper than the ologies and try to mine what is at the heart of human nature and existence in general. — schopenhauer1
i guess what i want to say is: i accept your tragic view - but I'd add: Oedipus cut out his eyes. If he talked about how tragic it was to be oedipus instead - the tragic element would be lost. — csalisbury
There is simply enduring and coping. Again, troubling. — schopenhauer1
The scintillating, positive-minded intelligences here will attack your views just the same, but a novel approach might drive a larger dose of cold rain under their shingles to spoil the faux perfection of their painted ceilings. — Bitter Crank
through Scientific American — NKBJ
i guess what i want to say is: i accept your tragic view - but I'd add: Oedipus cut out his eyes. If he talked about how tragic it was to be oedipus instead - the tragic element would be lost.
and theres sequels, right? there wouldnt be sequels if oedipus was cioran. it would be peverse. "the tragedy of being born oedipus." — csalisbury
Suicide? If being alive involves being embodied within this locus of perpetual needs, wants, desires and pains, why not just bring this endless striving to a halt? But, if your consciousness ceases, it's not like you could determine whether or not you're better off than before. Any sort of solution to the 'structural negativity' of your conscious experience can only be found within that experience. But, we agree that the negativity is structural - there is no solution. A headache isn't solved by guillotine (although the blade is always for when the pain gets intolerable). — Inyenzi
So, what to do? It then becomes a question not of how to solve the structure of life, but of how to cope with it. And I think it comes back to the standard advice you denigrate in the opening post - get a hobby, find some love, try to laugh, get yourself absorbed into the world, look forward to things, structure your time - find whatever works for you (it seems like what works for you is spending your time writing and debating with others about the structural negativity of human existence :wink: ). — Inyenzi
Personally, I really try not to dwell on it, as it leads to some pretty dark places. Is eating a meal made all the better knowing it doesn't solve your predicament as being a human with perpetual caloric needs/hunger? I think a meal is made better eaten in laughter/conversation among people you care about. — Inyenzi
What do you think about coping with the 'negative structure' of human existence with a sort of ironic (?) mirth/comedy/sense of humor? — Inyenzi
You live in a time of "positive psychology" wherein healthy=happy, wherein negative=sick. The positivity of the times is shallow. People are expected to get with the program and cheer up, or at least, shut up about their darker views. — Bitter Crank
If life is absurd (unreasonable, illogical, preposterous, ridiculous, ludicrous, farcical, idiotic, stupid, foolish, insane, unreasonable, irrational, illogical, nonsensical, pointless, senseless...--but no joke) then there must be many angles from which to attack the bourgeois delusions about a purposeful universe, meaningful life, potential for happiness, and so on, not to mention other worldly schemes that make this world a processing mill for the hereafter. — Bitter Crank
But that is a play/art and this is philosophy. So we are getting right at it straight on. Sure, we can make poems and stories about tragedy using all the allegory, alliteration, allusion, and all the rest, but that is what makes art different than mere philosophy. Here we are using the avenue of propositions, observations, evaluations, logic, dialectic, discovering ideas of first principles, etc. etc. I don't see why being so blatant makes that bad. I will agree it might be less interesting, but I never claimed to be doing art (though perhaps your world view is that everything is art).
It's kitsch—the self-indulgent explication of the tragic that destroys its value by transforming it into just another mental commodity to be toyed with and ideologically weaponized, and that paradoxically reduces the subject as messenger of the "unpalatable truth" to precisely the kind of meaningless and impotent force that was supposed to be the origin of its angst[..]
[..] the structural negatives of life are precisely the elements that make possible an orientation within which life as recognizably human, as having value, can subsist.
So that's not realy a reason for me to avoid having my one son. — NKBJ
some moments of unhappiness don't cancel out all the moments of actual happiness — NKBJ
It's also wrong to declare all striving in this world as a struggle — NKBJ
Most of the strivers I know don't seem to be suffering much from the struggle, 'der Kampf'. — Bitter Crank
If much of life is about "getting it right", then there is something inherently wrong with it. The minute someone has complaints about life not being fulfilling, the immediate response is to suggest a new hobby, club, group, sport, etc. as if just getting into a routine of non-work activities is the answer to the lack at the heart of things. The assumption here is that to live modern life properly and in balance, one has to "get it right". The fact that we are born to hone in on "getting it right" is troubling. It is also not recognizing that there may not be a "getting it right". There is simply enduring and coping. Again, troubling. — schopenhauer1
"Part of the royal art where the true gold is made" is how Jung described the "coping mechanism" of Sublimation — matt
You spend too much time worrying about it, instead of just doing things that you like. Alright, you like bemoaning life, but you're deceiving yourself if you convince yourself that that's all that you like.
And even "simply enduring and coping" isn't without likeable aspects. — Michael Ossipoff
that make possible an orientation within which life as recognizably human, as having value, can subsist. — Baden
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