You can't just expect a "life of pleasure". It is personal growth and social connectedness that is what most folk actually report as rewarding. So right there, that includes meeting personal challenges and making various social sacrifices - the kinds of things you regard as part of the intolerable burden of existence. — apokrisis
Check out the neurobiology of the sympathetic nervous system some time. Arousal is arousal. Why do you think people pay so much to ride roller coasters or bungee off bridges? — apokrisis
The research of course shows a U curve of arousal. There is a case of too much as well as too little. But peak performance requires excitement/fear. Step on to the stage and your heart ought to be pounding as if you were running from that bear. — apokrisis
And try giving a public lecture or doing a TV interview. Or playing a sports match in front of a crowd. You need to be shitting yourself with adrenaline to give a top performance - intellectually as well. — apokrisis
Gawd, it must be true then. :roll: — apokrisis
Drop this. The problem dissolves. — Banno
This is so because truth, as it’s commonly understood, is a relation between one or more points of view
— javra
Drop this. The problem dissolves. — Banno
Don’t follow you so far. Drop the part about a particular relation between sentience and reality and what alternative meaning remains for the word “truth”? Somehow came to believe that truth was an important thing for you as well (here thinking in relation to Trump and friends). — javra
Darth, am I hearing you right? All life that intends to live is cowardly? Including that which perseveres against what can nearly be insurmountable odds? There something in the way to this. At any rate, it’s not how I ascribe meaning to the desire to live, nor to what courage is all about. But maybe this isn’t at all what was intended in your last post after all. — javra
The challenge is to transcend our own desires and ask why it is that we desire what we do. We are not the authors of our own desires. We desire things - but why? Why do we desire to live as opposed to die? Could desire be a form of manipulation, in the same way that pain and fear manipulate us into certain courses of action? — darthbarracuda
I can't see how you got "Drop a particular relation between sentience and reality" from "Drop truth, as a relation between one or more points of view". — Banno
With that level of misunderstanding, why continue? — Banno
Some of the most inspiring individuals were those who didn't care if they died in the process. Why do we admire these heroes? Because they were not afraid of death. Imagine this kind of radical detachment towards your own existence - does not everyone wish they could simply let go? — darthbarracuda
I just know that I dont get any enjoyment from philosophy anymore. It feels more like a very tense and nervous imperative to organize thought into some arrangement of leakproof compartments. — csalisbury
Well, there is the ancient skeptical approach. To paraphrase, the awareness of leaky compartments leads to ataraxia, in which one suspends work on leakproof compartments. After which, the leaks are no longer bothersome. — Marchesk
Like this? — Andrew M
Certainly describes my attitude toward work some days. — Marchesk
Given what you've said though, I'm interested in your answer to where do you see the boundary between philosophy and art. How do we distinguish between the two? — Baden
Another way of putting it that just occurred to me is that to do good philosophy you really have to know what you're doing whereas to do good art, you don't, you just have to be what you're doing. — Baden
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