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
This doesn't address the structural suffering. I'm sorry but it doesn't. I do appreciate your sincerity and passion. — schopenhauer1
The "structural suffering" is doctrinal suffering. It's your conceptual suffering about your conceptual doctrinal notion of life. Is it the same as that "Existential angst" that we hear about? I suppose that a person can make himself miserable if he tries. But you wouldn't do it if you didn't like it. You've adopted it as a philosophy of life, right? — Michael Ossipoff
The problem of absurdity might be too translucent for many people to grasp; perhaps you may have to "feel" it. The absurdity of living every day is enough, for me, to not start life anew. There is no justification for life, yet we live it nonetheless. It isn't just that we live it in "bad faith" in Sartrean fashion- taking on roles without freely doing so, but it is the fact that there are no "good faith" moves to move to. Freely knowing one's entrapment doesn't negate the entrapment and the entailment of one's own being. If you've ever shit in the woods and had to dig your own hole, that might be the closest thing I can think of in regards to life's absurdity par excellence. — schopenhauer1
On another note, I think that there are two main views when it comes to pessimism. The positive psychology view (the common one) is that pessimism is in the software- it is simply bad programming or a bug (in other words, it is simply bad habits/attitudes/lifestyle). The structural pessimists will say that it is in the very programming of life- it is in the the binary code itself.
The structural suffering can be found in:
1) The individual's wants/desires vs. the realities of the social/physical world.
2) The need for more need and wants (deprivation at almost all times)
3) The absurdity of the repetitiveness of survival, maintenance, and entertainment
4) Encountering of contingent harm (though it comes in various quantities and kinds that are probabilistic) — schopenhauer1
There is simply enduring and coping. Again, troubling. — schopenhauer1
Whether you subscribe to Materialism, or to my metaphysics of Eliminative Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism (Any suggestion of a shorter name?), if there were never “you” conceived, then there is/was no “you” who was better off and who had something better than birth, had that conception and birth not happened. — Michael Ossipoff
.I agree that there is a paradox of being whereby you cannot know non-being unless being- one implies the other.
.far as my pessimism and antinatalism, and instrumentality, etc. there is no escape from the absurdity.
.You need to survive
.The restlessness does not go away by enlightened fiat (some Buddhist mind-game).
.The misery is also not self-created.
.If anything, the world discloses how much you don't have much control.
.The thrownness of ourselves into the given is real, not manifested through pessimistic prose.
.Indeed, your idea of reincarnation is the ultra-version of the givenness if it be true.
.The eternal return, over and over…
.…of the given world
., and our absurd habits within it.
And what absurdity would that be?
.
1. Exactly how do you define “absurdity”?
.
2. What, specifically, do you think is absurd?
.
3. In what way does it fit your definition of “absurdity”?
. — Michael Ossipoff
No, you prefer to survive. So you survive as long as it’s possible with acceptable quality-of-life, because there are things that you’d like to do. — Michael Ossipoff
If you’re a miserable bundle of needs, that’s your choice. — Michael Ossipoff
Of course no living being has complete control over its environment. Life isn’t like that. Living beings merely respond to their surroundings as they prefer or like to. Evidently you (think that you) have need for something quite different from what life is. — Michael Ossipoff
In my early-life background-conditions, there’s plenty that I can complain about. Societal wrong, sure. But you want to make it into a belief in a broad philosophically universal badness, without giving any kind of support or justification for your position. — Michael Ossipoff
.And what absurdity would that be?
.
1. Exactly how do you define “absurdity”?
.
2. What, specifically, do you think is absurd?
.
3. In what way does it fit your definition of “absurdity”?
.I've said it too many times for me to repeat it.
.We've even discussed this I think. Read some of my threads.
.No, you prefer to survive. So you survive as long as it’s possible with acceptable quality-of-life, because there are things that you’d like to do.
.No, fear of pain, death, and pain of death, is pretty ingrained.
.It's default, not preference.
.If you’re a miserable bundle of needs, that’s your choice.
.Nope, that's the given of being a particular human with preferences
.Of course no living being has complete control over its environment. Life isn’t like that. Living beings merely respond to their surroundings as they prefer or like to. Evidently you (think that you) have need for something quite different from what life is.
.That we have needs and wants is part of the instrumentality.
.The repetitive actions of survival (in a society), comfort levels, and entertainment-seeking (this need not be frivolous but anything that comes out of the restlessness).
.That's right, structural suffering. Look up about any thread that I've written.
.I've discussed this before, even with you I believe. Go back and read all of them.
.I wrote about it extensively. If it’s not enough justification for you, I can't help you with any more words than I've already used.
.Michael Ossipoff is unconvinced, and I can live with that.
.Why does this topic matter to you? You can easily just ignore it if you find it not worthy of discussion.
.Tell me this, why are you so aggressively attacking this thread?
.Why is this so personal to you?
.These attacks on me, especially the contemptuous tone, and ad homiems thrown at me in general…
.You mentioned sleep perchance to dream. Sleep seems the only reprieve. I don't know why you would discount it.
.When we are born, we are tasked with life. That is our job. Life.
.This individual's drive to live (what Schopenhauer often called will-to-live), I have (not arbitrarily) split up this restless striving […if we choose restless striving] into three main categories (for at least the average human condition), and that is to say that we survive, find comfort/maintain our environment, and find ways to entertain our restless minds. These are essentially the drives for which our goals (formed by cultural/social/internal preferences) are grouped.
.we survive, find comfort/maintain our environment
.and find ways to entertain our restless minds.
.Now, maybe some people don't see it that way- a majority doesn't even.
.I recognize that. It doesn't make this aesthetic understanding less true, just less known. People may not reflect much on the structure, may not see it.
.I don't necessarily believe in Plato's ideas of forms but it is akin to seeing the forms of reality, versus living in its shadows perhaps.
.Right now, you are playing the (unnecessarily) aggressive opponent to schopenhauer1 on this philosophy forum. Who knows what you really think out in the "real world" in the context of other various situations of life.
.if you asked people in a simple "yes" or "no" kind of way as to whether life is "good" or "worth it".
Questioning birth, gives us a chance to step back and say, "Hold on, what exactly am I trying to do here by having this new person?. What does it mean to live life?
.
It would be better to not reproduce, because doing so increases the world’s overcrowding.
.
.Am I giving opportunities, or a burden?
Does the person need to experience the deficits in order to overcome them that inevitably are part of life's experiences?
.What is it that they are trying to do here?
.These get at the heart of the existential questions about why go through living in the first place."
If much of life is about "getting it right", then there is something inherently wrong with it. — schopenhauer1
…from an age when we didn’t know what was going on, with elder guardians (family & school) with questionable qualification and motivation, presenting and imposing their versions of that “task”. But the situation, at its worst, was largely imposed on us by those elders, and later by a societal-order in general, not by intrinsic aspects of life.
. — Michael Ossipoff
That leaves the matter of your instrumentality and forced-entertainment. In that matter, you’re asserting a doctrine that you evidently got from Arthur Schopenhauer. But the feelings that you describe are common. Most people didn’t learn them from Arthur Schopenhauer. He just officially articulated a common feeling. — Michael Ossipoff
You and your respondents could, and do, go on forever arguing the matter, but no one can pry you free from your chosen doctrine. Can we agree on that too? I still say it’s serving a purpose for you, as a posturing-niche, a chosen schtick.
.
For whatever reason (about which we can disagree), we find ourselves in this life, and then there’s the matter of what that life-situation is like, and how we can, should or have-to deal with it. — Michael Ossipoff
You list that as two “goals”, but that all seems to fit in “Artha”, the Purushartha of getting-by. Yes, that’s undeniably a requirement that life imposes on us. We can complain that we didn’t choose to be in this situation that has that requirement. I often feel that way myself, but it doesn’t philosophically hold up….as I’ve argued in previous posts here.
. — Michael Ossipoff
Kama, things we like, is of course the basis of that life-inclination, or will-to-life that we’ve both referred to, and thereby is the reason why you’re in a life.
.
When the Purusharthas are listed, Artha, not Kama, is usually listed first. That can be justified by the fact that, though Kama is really the original basis of life, it isn’t something that has to be goal-orientedly pursued. (…said with apologies to you and Arthur Schopenhauer.) — Michael Ossipoff
Next in your post, you speak of everything being “absurdity”. It’s impossible to evaluate those claims, without disclosure of your secret definition of “absurdity”.
.
Some would say that what’s absurd (as defined by Merriam-Webster) is your attitude toward life. …even if you did get it from one of the philosophical classic-writers (Schopenhauer). — Michael Ossipoff
Some of us discuss structure, answering arguments about it…instead of just reciting a doctrine about it.
. — Michael Ossipoff
Sure, in truth, I often have feelings that are similar to your doctrinal beliefs. Some anxiety and insecurity, it seems to me, is natural and normal in life (…particularly in our societal-world, but in general too.)
.
I admit that I often want to say, “I didn’t choose this!” Feeling it and making it into an unquestioned philosophical belief aren’t the same thing.
. — Michael Ossipoff
When this life began, you didn’t have conceptual waking-consciousness, and your subconscious will-to-life prevailed. You didn’t have an opportunity to make a conscious choice about it.
.
As for the origin of this sequence of lives, you, metaphysically-prior to conception and birth, were someone who wanted, needed life. Why was that? Because, there are timelessly an infinity of life-experience possibility-stories, and yours is one of them. You can say that that will-to-life was a mistake for that prior-to-conception “you”, but, as I said, that’s moot now. The sequence of lives is started and underway. No choice now but to live with it. There’s no way back. Through is the only way out. As I said, once started, the sequence of lives will eventually resolve itself. So stop worrying about it, and allow yourself to enjoy it. No, it isn’t necessary or advisable to try to force yourself to achieve enjoyment. If it’s a bother, then don’t bother. Just concentrate your efforts on Artha and Dharma. Why not? Do you have something else to do? As I said, things that you like are there when you aren’t goal-orientedly pursuing “entertainment”. — Michael Ossipoff
I think the commonly recorded "just world hypothesis" and "fundamental attribution error" found in psychology are a partly based on a denial of biology/psychological findings. — Andrew4Handel
Some people have to "hone" while others "get it" right away. If that is the case, why are we putting people through the "honing" in the first place? Do we like giving deficits to people so they can overcome them? But why — schopenhauer1
.Why give people the tasks imposed on them by birthing them?
.It’s the givens of life (survival, regulate comfort, regulate boredom..with emphasis on survival), through cultural means of social institutions. Its how humans function- from tribal to post-industrial societies. There is no way to avoid the impositions.
.I don't see your need for the metaphysics. What about this story you provide about having an identity metaphysically prior to conception that convinces you that it is true? What evidence do you have that this is the case?
.We already know the physical cause of birth, why this added metaphysical story?
.I just don't see it. What evidence do you provide for reincarnation?
.Why is that a necessary part of a world-metaphysics?
.Yes, I am a materialist in the idea that everything is matter/energy inhering in time/space.
.I don't see room for spiritual reasonings, when perfectly good explanations are had through empirical evidence.
.Two gametes come together and this is the efficient cause of the new child. Nothing more is needed in that narrative.
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