This does not change the fact that torture can occur beyond human interaction. — darthbarracuda

Only if you change torture's definition.

Yes, indeed if I had the choice I don't think I would condone abiogenesis. — darthbarracuda

Could it get any more laughable?

Let me know when you are ready to deal with nature in terms of what is natural rather than imagining yourself sitting at God's right hand, tugging his sleeve as He is doing his creating, and murmuring: "Do you really think this last little DNA thing is wise?".

Only if you change torture's definition. — apokrisis

But not its immanent objectivity.

Let me know when you are ready to deal with nature in terms of what is natural rather than imagining yourself sitting at God's right hand, tugging his sleeve as He is doing his creating, and murmuring: "Do you really think this last little DNA thing is wise?". — apokrisis

What is natural is not what is good per se.

Could it get any more laughable? — apokrisis

I don't know, you're setting the precedent here. I mean, we can a more cordial discussion, or we can descend into useless name-calling.

I don't know, you're setting the precedent here. I mean, we can a more cordial discussion, or we can descend into useless name-calling. — darthbarracuda

The core issue seems to be that you treat phenomenology as brute fact - we can't help what we feel - whereas I say scientific naturalism supports the position that what we feel is controllable on many levels. So if a feeling is a problem, it is also a problem that can be tackled. Or at least solution seeking becomes the first natural response.

So there are two models in play. And in mine, getting completely rid of suffering, pain, anxiety and other negative signals is self-evidently an unnatural desire. What is natural is obviously behaviour that seeks to minimise the signal. But you would still want to be able to feel it as a possibility.

You on the other hand are taking an abstracted, cosmological and dualistic approach where "bad feelings" stand alone as concrete "mental things". Pain is just pain in an uncontextual, Platonic ideal, way. That is the basis on which you could even want to rule it out as a class of being by fiat.

Pain is a bad thing because it can grow to any scale and become the worst thing in existence. So even the most marginal forms of pain - like unease or boredom - need to be banished too. Hence your continual resort to slippery slope argumentation. One minute we are suffering a papercut or aching neck, the next thing we know, it is going to be genital electrodes and the Holocaust.

So we have two quite different metaphysics in play. And where I lose patience is when you claim that your ontology is also founded on scientific naturalism. Just be honest. It is not.

You have avoided dealing with my arguments against your simple-minded phenomenalism. It is basic to my position that phenomenology - as an introspective level of awareness - is a socially constructed linguistic habit. And all you say in reply is that you can't see the point in talking about social constructionism (as it is indeed "pointless" in within your mind-stuff paradigm).

Likewise you have not dealt with my claim that a natural evolutionary understanding of the brain would see it as a problem solving organ. The importance of that is this is what makes it necessary to be able to evaluate alternative actions in terms of - broadly speaking - reward and punishment. So to imagine a world without punishment is to make being a problem solver impossible.

Thus in my view pain is both necessary and controllable. The existence of pain is mostly not a big deal because there is a bigger game that should be going on - the one of living a life. If you focus on that, pain can be put in its proper perspective.

But you are arguing for some simplistic calculus where pain should not exist, and so from that premise, life should not exist. Yet it is an unnatural claim to treat pain as if its degrees of difference make no difference. And as if it is not controllable in practice.

So your position relies on a number of socially constructed delusions. The obviousness of that is why one would ask what it is exactly that you are psychologically shielding yourself from?

Yes, you don't like the tables being turned in that fashion. You want to be the one calling the rest of us self-deluded and unable to see the truth of existence. But there you go.

The core issue seems to be that you treat phenomenology as brute fact - we can't help what we feel - whereas I say scientific naturalism supports the position that what we feel is controllable on many levels. So if a feeling is a problem, it is also a problem that can be tackled. Or at least solution seeking becomes the first natural response. — apokrisis

I agree that solution seeking becomes the first natural response. When I get a headache, I take ibuprofen. When I balance my checkbook, I use a calculator to assist me.

But the nature of the pessimistic argument is that some problems are just not solvable. They can be pushed aside, mentally rearranged, or eliminated, but never satisfactorily solved. And in this case, such problems are existential, i.e. structurally unremovable from life, i.e. a necessary condition for life as we know it.

Indeed, when I get a headache, taking a pill seems to only solve a surface problem. The problem may re-surface when the pill wears off, or the pain is a symptom of an underlying problem, or perhaps the ibuprofen isn't enough. In any case, it's worth noting how much of our problem-solving involves a dependency on other things. Thanks to our creativity, we have tools, medicine, and gadgets that help us and keep us in a relatively comfortable state today. But the key point in this case is that we have creativity just because we are inadequate without it.

Some of these existential problems are thus:

• the constant devotion to assessing needs (which causes anxiety and uneasiness) of which we may not want to have to fulfill (i.e. enslavement),
• the automatic and natural elevation of desires to needs (which causes anxiety and uneasiness as well),
• the general experience of dissatisfaction (of which Buddhism focuses the most on which can be minimized but never fully expelled for an extended period of time while conscious),
• the very real and very threatening danger of intense, unrelenting pain of which suffocates our ability to continue life normally (thanks to our environment and our own crude bodies),
• an environment which is prone to accidents (little mishaps are only an indication of what could happen in the future; a far worse catastrophe, i.e. a tragedy),
• the apparent lack of any important cosmic agenda that could explain why bad things happen for no substantial reason,
• the aforementioned intense pain which cannot be made up for by any future accomplishment or paradise (i.e. instrumentality),
• the combination of needs/desire-needs and the metaphysical necessity of scarcity which causes strife and conflict,
• the aesthetically un-appealing dominating and submissive nature of Being (instrumentality),
• the incompatibility of happiness with the prospect of death (a well-established psychological phenomenon),
• the general unremarkability and boring, dull repetition of the world (manifesting in sentients as boredom, apathy, tediousness, and distractions thereof),
• the metaphysical isolation a sentient mind has (its inability to "contact" other minds, forever alone),
• the morally disgusting natural practice of cannibalism in nature manifesting as predation and natural selection,
• the inevitability of destruction (our comfort-bubble of sturdy structures will fall and be replaced by something different, regardless of how we feel about it),
• the realization that history is primarily dictated by might instead of right,
• the incompatibility of the human condition with our own sense of self-worth, dignity, and/or self-esteem,
• the realization that your very existence is indebted to billions of years of trillions of trillions of organisms being selected against (and the subsequent realization that it would be selfish to subjugate all these creatures again just so you could exist, i.e. post hoc regret),
• the realization of how morally disqualified we are (we can hardly ever do anything without somehow crossing into someone else's preferences),
• the realization that we are inherently self-centered (neurotically vane) and clan-centered (thus resulting in family ties, nationalism, and speciesism - other sentients aren't important or worthy of our attention),
• the moral and legal issues of birth,
• the realization that one's culture is primarily the product of a collected subconscious fear of death as well as a reaction to boredom,
• the realization that if I am wrong about all this, then the fact that universe is capable to producing such erroneous and misguided ideas leads to skepticism of the very error of the overarching pessimistic point

So we have two quite different metaphysics in play. And where I lose patience is when you claim that your ontology is also founded on scientific naturalism. Just be honest. It is not. — apokrisis

But just to be clear, you haven't really provided anything of scientific worth. Your scientific background is not sufficient for evidence. Whereas I have explicitly given you more than sufficient data.

Again you keep slapping around the word science as if it's the end-all be-all method of obtaining truth, when in reality there are many things that are more obvious and easy to understand without a specific scientific method.

In any case, all of what I have said is either backed by scientific data or is not inherently in contradiction to the established medium.

Pain is a bad thing because it can grow to any scale and become the worst thing in existence. So even the most marginal forms of pain - like unease or boredom - need to be banished too. Hence your continual resort to slippery slope argumentation. One minute we are suffering a papercut or aching neck, the next thing we know, it is going to be genital electrodes and the Holocaust. — apokrisis

The extreme pain is the practical argument, the one that is most pressing and striking. Yet you still ignore it as if there is a justification for it happening (because you're not experiencing it right now?) The tediousness and uneasiness is also uncomfortable, but it draws more from the aesthetic. It's disillusioning to see ourselves naked and afraid. It's something that I think we aren't able to completely get over. Underneath all our actions is this ever-present rumbling of need, desire, dissatisfaction, concern, fear, anxiety. It's what is there if nothing else is, what everything else is built on. So like I said before, life is not meant to be comfortable.

You have avoided dealing with my arguments against your simple-minded phenomenalism. It is basic to my position that phenomenology - as an introspective level of awareness - is a socially constructed linguistic habit. And all you say in reply is that you can't see the point in talking about social constructionism (as it is indeed "pointless" in within your mind-stuff paradigm). — apokrisis

Because it doesn't change the fact that we still suffer. Deconstructing our experiences doesn't just dissolve them away. Such is the conviction of a lucky person.

So your position relies on a number of socially constructed delusions. The obviousness of that is why one would ask what it is exactly that you are psychologically shielding yourself from? — apokrisis

Just like anyone else, I'm shielding myself from the above ideas. What makes me a pessimist is that I'm not too good at it.

such problems are existential, i.e. structurally unremovable from life, i.e. a necessary condition for life as we know it. — darthbarracuda

Yes, they are part of the structure of life. We both agree that. But I say necessary for a reason, while you claim it to be an unreasonable fact.

I ask how you can talk about "life" when you don't even seem to believe in life's naturalism in this regard. The logic of your position requires you to argue that life is unnatural in some deep fashion. I'm waiting for you to resolve that paradox.

Deconstructing our experiences doesn't just dissolve them away. — darthbarracuda

My argument is that we would be simply replacing one construction with another in switching out your ridiculously negative construction for a more balanced view of existence.

It's probably un- or sub-conscious.

I ask how you can talk about "life" when you don't even seem to believe in life's naturalism in this regard. The logic of your position requires you to argue that life is unnatural in some deep fashion. I'm waiting for you to resolve that paradox. — apokrisis

Indeed this was kind of the point of this thread to begin with. From a phenomenological perspective, we don't seem to belong. We're aliens to the world. We're able to self-reflect. Existentialism 101. How the hell is the universe even capable of hosting something like us?

You can see this applied in psychology by learning about Terror Management Theory and the psychoanalytic/humanistic theories of Rank and Becker.

My argument is that we would be simply replacing one construction with another in switching out your ridiculously negative construction for a more balanced view of existence. — apokrisis

What would this "balanced" view consist of? Certainly we can't just magically think away our pains and fears.

What would this "balanced" view consist of? Certainly we can't just magically think away our pains and fears. — darthbarracuda

If a certain intense subset of life's pains and fears is the result of simple identifications with the True and the Good, then what I'd expect (from personal experience) is the eventual abandonment or reconfiguration of these identifications. But I don't think there is a "magic" leap. Self-esteem collapses without such identifications. Self-esteem just is identification with some mask of the generalized hero. The young man will almost have to identify with an anti-worldly notion the hero at first, for he is too young to have done anything in the world. He is patricidal. The "father" (worldly, selfish, 'cynical', ironic, laughing) must be profane, illegitimate. Because life isn't funny from the perspective of the humiliated-by-his-worldly-nullity youth.

So he inherits a notion of the absolute, or actually conflicting notions of the absolute. There's an idea of moral purity in altruism, but also an idea of intellectual purity in truth. Obviously we want to hold both absolutes in a single vision. The true is altruistic is the true. But commitment to truth leads to epistmological concerns. Others with other myths/truths bring cognitive dissonance. Some of them look successful. Maybe they do know something we don't. Epistemology becomes "prayer" in a religion of truth. Maybe we don't have it, but we pursue it, and are hence ennobled by the intensity and seriousness of this pursuit. Somehow, all along, the truth must be good-for-all, via conflation of altruism and truth. But our knight of truth-and-altruism finds only lies and selfishness in the world, which is to say disagreement and the assertions of other notions of value. Instead of putting his axioms into question, he projects this impasse as a universal situation. Solving his own problem would be 'selfish' and insufficiently grand orbanal.

So the sough truth seems to be bad-for-all. It's a rigged system, a world run by the devil. How then can our dialectical knight save the good demanded in the true? Simple. It becomes a tool that aids in the renunciation of life = bad. All that can be hoped for the cessation of suffering. The good is now just the absence of the bad, its void-empty negation. Since all happiness is illusion that binds us to the bad, happiness is false and bad. Self-extinction is nobility itself. What a twist! Selfish and bad man can (so it seems) will his own extinction in the name of the good and the true. Because "he who despises himself still respects himself as one who despises." If feeling like a superior person (true and good) demands universal extinction, so be it. But this is violence at its heart, ultra-violence that wants to see itself as the perfection of pacifism.

Indeed this was kind of the point of this thread to begin with. From a phenomenological perspective, we don't seem to belong. We're aliens to the world. We're able to self-reflect. Existentialism 101. How the hell is the universe even capable of hosting something like us? — darthbarracuda

I've answered all this already. So you are simply returning me to your assertions rather than dealing with my arguments against them.

You can see this applied in psychology by learning about Terror Management Theory and the psychoanalytic/humanistic theories of Rank and Becker. — darthbarracuda

Yes, you can certainly make a case that there is a socially constructed fear of death because there is also the precondition of a socially constructed sense of self. Culture must react in some way to the sharpness of failing to exist, after leading to a sharp notion of being a self in existence (in a soul-like fashion).

The question then is what metaphysically is the correct way to respond - responding in terms of notions of souls and other traditional social mythology not being a very naturalistic/scientific way of framing the issues.

So again, we are back to the same situation. I defend a naturalistic/scientific ontology. You seem to take the other road - the romantic, dualistic, idealistic path. For you, the organic whole that is the world is divided ontically into brute material objects and sensuous being. And from that broken duality, all kinds of confusion flows.

I've answered all this already. So you are simply returning me to your assertions rather than dealing with my arguments against them. — apokrisis

I did not mean that you hadn't, only that we have strayed far away from the original intent of the thread. And your arguments aren't even arguments either. You've mentioned, what, one scientific theory that doesn't even do anything to the phenomenology of my argument. And then you claim that ignoring my arguments, counts as an argument, since you still have not addressed anything I'm saying but merely handwaved it away as childish, as if it's not worth the effort to actually explain to me how anything I listed before is unproblematic.

The question then is what metaphysically is the correct way to respond - responding in terms of notions of souls and other traditional social mythology not being a very naturalistic/scientific way of framing the issues. — apokrisis

Nor did I ever mention souls...? Sellar's manifest image doesn't just dissolve away after looking at the scientific image of man.

What do you mean by "metaphysically correct" way to respond? There is no correct way to respond, that's the rub of pessimism. Not everything can be solved, not everything belongs. Just like bugs in computer software, they must be eliminated, not allowed to continue. They're not meant to be there and yet they are thanks to lucky coincidental conditions.

So again, we are back to the same situation. I defend a naturalistic/scientific ontology. You seem to take the other road - the romantic, dualistic, idealistic path. For you, the organic whole that is the world is divided ontically into brute material objects and sensuous being. And from that broken duality, all kinds of confusion flows. — apokrisis

How you got any of that from what I've written is beyond me. None of what I have written depends on a dualistic notion of anything aside from the identification of powerful phenomenological experiences that cannot be dissolved under investigation, which is more in line with idealism than anything else.

Honestly whenever anyone argues against you you always either pull the science™ card or the dualism card without explaining anything else as if your position is self-evident or as if the authority of science today is an automatic trump card for anything that isn't explicitly empirically pragmatic. It's really annoying and patronizing.

None of what I have written depends on a dualistic notion of anything aside from the identification of powerful phenomenological experiences that cannot be dissolved under investigation, which is more in line with idealism than anything else. — darthbarracuda

Err....so nothing dualistic in your position because it is claiming the reality of "phenomenology" in terms of the idealistic?

OK.

Honestly whenever anyone argues against you you always either pull the science™ card or the dualism card without explaining anything else.... — darthbarracuda

Yeah. I never explain how my philosophical naturalism and pragmatism is quite different from Scientism, or reductionism, and other authorised forms of dualism....

It's quite annoying that no matter how many times I explain the difference, you keep jumping to one side or other of your good old dualism. Either my metaphysics is insufficiently phenomenological, or insufficiently material, for you.

Your holism ignores the specifics in favor of a global analysis. When in reality phenomenologically consciousness is it's own universe in itself, regardless of what contingency factors exist in the environment in which it presides. You look at the building without looking at its random structural issues, even if the entire structure itself is generally stable. When in fact these random chinks in the structure are sentient, feeling beings that don't take kindly to being brushed aside as if they are irrelevant - for they already know that in the big picture they aren't relevant at all.

What this means is that your metaphysics can stay intact but is ultimately insufficient, just as my phenomenological analysis is insufficient for a global metaphysics. In terms of pessimism we're not talking about metaphysics more than we are talking phenomenology and existentialism. The metaphysics is derived from the phenomenology and existentialism and more often than not looks like a story than a rigorous metaphysics. In any case it's phenomenology and existentialism that is first-and-foremost and the center of attention and is what should be taken as the main argument.

If your unrevealed scientific arguments are good enough to diffuse my own, then you wouldn't have to result to clearly unscientific arguments handwaves like "stop being childish" or "stop exaggerating". Instead you have participated in these handwaves and thus your critique of my argument as being unscientific (which it's not) applies to your own argument as well.

Your holism ignores the specifics in favor of a global analysis. When in reality phenomenologically consciousness is it's own universe in itself, regardless of what contingency factors exist in the environment in which it presides. — darthbarracuda

That's silly because instead I have pointed out that the phenomenology - particular feelings - are shaped or individuated within a socio-cultural, and a biological, context.

So my approach is not just contextual in a way that connects the world and the ideas. It recognises the different levels on which this is happening - the biological and the social - as well as then talking about the further fact of their integration.

If your unrevealed scientific arguments are good enough to diffuse my own, then you wouldn't have to result to clearly unscientific arguments handwaves like "stop being childish" or "stop exaggerating". Instead you have participated in these handwaves and thus your critique of my argument as being unscientific (which it's not) applies to your own argument as well. — darthbarracuda

Alternatively, you actually are parroting childish and exaggerated "philosophy" here. And you talk past any science I mention rather than answering it.

Don't forget that it is you who started this by telling me how I ought to feel about the facts of my own existence. And that if I claimed to feel any other way, then I was simply being delusional.

So you have gotten the robust response which that kind of tripe deserves. Suck it up.

That's silly because instead I have pointed out that the phenomenology - particular feelings - are shaped or individuated within a socio-cultural, and a biological, context.

So my approach is not just contextual in a way that connects the world and the ideas. It recognises the different levels on which this is happening - the biological and the social - as well as then talking about the further fact of their integration. — apokrisis

AND THAT IS PERFECTLY FINE (in fact what I was originally focused on in the OP)...

...except when you start to argue that the overall holistic context can replace the immediate specificity of immanent objectivity, thus somehow "disproving" my pessimism by ignoring phenomenology entirely. Assessing the origins and constraints imposed on phenomenology is what we would call metaphysics, and yet this does not have much relevance to the pessimistic argument in general, since the pessimistic argument starts from phenomenology, while you are starting with metaphysics.

Alternatively, you actually are parroting childish and exaggerated "philosophy" here. And you talk past any science I mention rather than answering it. — apokrisis

What science, other than the social constructivism that you mentioned in passing and your signal argument that I don't particularly doubt but neither am appreciative of the utter lack of any citation?

...except when you start to argue that the overall holistic context can replace the immediate specificity of immanent objectivity, thus somehow "disproving" my pessimism by ignoring phenomenology entirely. — darthbarracuda

The biological and social context challenges that phenomenology in a basic way. Even pain can be pleasure as any masochist knows.

So the counter-argument is that your pessimism is based on a particular social construction - a negative habit of thought which you have mastered to the extent it seems completely real and undeniable to you.

Are you willing even to consider that you are the victim of this kind of self-delusion? How are you going to demonstrate that you are not?

The biological and social context challenges that phenomenology in a basic way. Even pain can be pleasure as any masochist knows. — apokrisis

This is hardly a challenge, as you have ignored the point I made several times about how pain is not equivalent to suffering. A mashochist who enjoys pain is not suffering, because they are enjoying it which makes them a masochist.

Certainly even a masochist would not enjoy being impaled through the stomach. There are levels of pain outside the realm of enjoyment or even endurance.

So the counter-argument is that your pessimism is based on a particular social construction - a negative habit of thought which you have mastered to the extent it seems completely real and undeniable to you. — apokrisis

Instead I would argue that my pessimism is the result of an honest look at the human condition and a compassionate connection to the unfortunate and tragic. The stegosaurus died by being mauled to death by a hoard of velociraptors - what was the use of this? So you could read philosophy or eat ice cream or have sex? That's instrumentality right there and anyone of any moral worth, I think, ought to find it repugnant.

So I think you perceive my pessimism as going about in a rather moat-and-bailey fashion, when I see it as an all-encompassing philosophy that takes into account the gutters of reality that nobody likes to talk about. My pessimism isn't comfortable, nor does it feel natural (it's not in our usual interests to think about death and suffering) - however I consistently see it manifest in the world (even just in possibility) and when I am in a relatively serene state I usually end up wondering what made me forget about all the bad. And yet these bads are real facts of life regardless of how I or anyone else wants them to be. As soon as you realize just how endemic Pollyannism and magical thinking is, you become disillusioned with the concept of happiness and security and realize that they're built on a throne of lies and concealment.

Are you willing even to consider that you are the victim of this kind of self-delusion? How are you going to demonstrate that you are not? — apokrisis

I will need to have a good reason to believe that I am self-deluded, otherwise it's:

1.) irrationally believing in something based on hope
2.) setting oneself up for the inevitable disappointment when you realize you were right after all (happened to me with the various individual-centered philosophies (although Buddhism left a lasting influence because of its kernel pessimism), as well as positive psychology and the transhumanist movement)

So no, I don't doubt myself for no reason.

This is hardly a challenge, as you have ignored the point I made several times about how pain is not equivalent to suffering. — darthbarracuda

So define suffering for me - in a way that doesn't include everything (like being tickled, vaguely bored or uneasy, laughing until it hurts, satiated until its uncomfortable, etc).

And also define pain for me - in a way that is different from your usual claim that it represents suffering of the worst kind, and hence the most important suffering to mention (as in torture, being left trapped in a car wreck, etc).

My pessimism isn't comfortable, nor does it feel natural ... when I am in a relatively serene state I usually end up wondering what made me forget about all the bad. — darthbarracuda

You should have been a Christian monk. You would have loved the hair shirt and flagellation. God forbid that you might have a positive outlook on life here among all us unholy sinners.

As soon as you realize just how endemic Pollyannism and magical thinking is, you become disillusioned with the concept of happiness and security and realize that they're built on a throne of lies and concealment. — darthbarracuda

Yes, beware of false gods. There is only room in Heaven for the self-abnegating.

I will need to have a good reason to believe that I am self-deluded, otherwise it's: — darthbarracuda

So the worst that could happen is that you might have hope and that you would end up disappointed all over again?

Yeah. I can understand why that is a risk not to be endured, a fate ten times worse than remaining convinced that a life in a hair shirt, scourge in hand, is best preparation for a likely horrible death.

That's instrumentality right there and anyone of any moral worth, I think, ought to find it repugnant. — darthbarracuda

And this self-conscious repugnance looks like an instrument for the attainment of a sense not only of moral worth but of moral superiority. While aspects of life are certainly repugnant, a pessimistic system rewards the pessimist for exaggerating this repugnance. Disgust as virtue.

Disgust as virtue. — Hoo

Damn right.

So define suffering for me - in a way that doesn't include everything (like being tickled, vaguely bored or uneasy, laughing until it hurts, satiated until its uncomfortable, etc). — apokrisis

Discomfort that is not wanted. An experience that does not match with a person's preferences. Something that must be endured or eliminated because it is self-evidently bad. Useless and meaningless harm.

And also define pain for me - in a way that is different from your usual claim that it represents suffering of the worst kind, and hence the most important suffering to mention (as in torture, being left trapped in a car wreck, etc). — apokrisis

Any sort of discomfort that, in normal circumstances, would promote action and therefore a response. A signal, as you said, or as I say, a way for the body to enslave itself. But pain is not equivalent to suffering as we often undergo pain for the greater good.

However if we had the choice to live without any pain (and instead have an analogous signal that doesn't hurt us) we would all choose this option over the crude apparatus nature has given us.

You should have been a Christian monk. You would have loved the hair shirt and flagellation. God forbid that you might have a positive outlook on life here among all us unholy sinners. — apokrisis

I should have been a Buddhist monk if anything, although any asceticism is wishy-washy pipe dreaming that focuses too much on the self and not enough on other people and their plights.

So the worst that could happen is that you might have hope and that you would end up disappointed all over again?

Yeah. I can understand why that is a risk not to be endured, a fate ten times worse than remaining convinced that a life in a hair shirt, scourge in hand, is best preparation for a likely horrible death. — apokrisis

Are you telling me to lie to myself? What happened to Diogenes' "truth above all else"?

Are you telling me to lie to myself? What happened to Diogenes' "truth above all else"? — darthbarracuda

Every papercut turns into the Holocaust with you. Did I tell you to lie to yourself or did I say stop presuming that you own the truth?

I like that you went all in. I can respect the style without agreeing.

This is silly. Have you considered that you are deluded? Both of us have our beliefs and questioning the foundations of them is going to have to be through rational discussion and not skepticism of our honesty.

Did I tell you to lie to yourself or did I say stop presuming that you own the truth? — apokrisis

You told me to ask myself if I had considered the possibility that I am wrong, in which case I responded by saying yes, I have, and that no, I will not change my beliefs without good reason, and stupid possible hopeful futures are not a good reason.

Every papercut turns into the Holocaust with you. — apokrisis

No, no they don't. In fact you're the one downplaying Holocausts as if they're papercuts.

Yes, you can certainly make a case that there is a socially constructed fear of death because there is also the precondition of a socially constructed sense of self. Culture must react in some way to the sharpness of failing to exist, after leading to a sharp notion of being a self in existence (in a soul-like fashion). — apokrisis

This is silly. Have you considered that you are deluded? Both of us have our beliefs and questioning the foundations of them is going to have to be through rational discussion and not skepticism of our honesty. — darthbarracuda

I think apokrisis is saying that all problems can be magically made to go away with social action. He does not like the idea that pessimist phenomena does not just go away. Some things are in the mix of what it means to be an animal/human etc. I believe he calls this idea dualistic because it is not "dissolved' in semiotic-pragmatist change. He also downplays the problems such that they are "really" non-problems. I don't think he addresses the problems- he only knows how to belittle them. So, if he can side step it with invective, being patronizing, etc. then he can at least try to gain rhetorical points, even if the issues are never addressed.

I realize that my previous post might not have been as clear as I had thought so I'm making another. When we look at our lives, we typically say we have various good and bads, enjoyments and discomforts, joys and sorrows.

What I was trying to say before is that I think most of what we consider to be enjoyable or pleasurable moments are actually just a reaction to a need or a desire: the relief of anxiety, or suffering-in-disguise.

This is why I think that although the Benatar's procreative asymmetry is not logically valid, it really strikes us as intuitive and difficult to immediately reject. The various things we typically call good are not actually really that good, for their absence doesn't seem to be bad at all. If they were truly good then their absence would be worse, but at first glance it doesn't seem as though me not being able to play my favorite video game is actually a bad thing if I had never existed, since the video game is inherently connected to a discomfort which seems to disqualify any good feelings we derive from the satisfaction of this desire. Ice cream, acquaintanceship, walks on the beach, etc - these are all enjoyable but they come with a condition: an unwanted need or a discomfort precedes them. This applies even to our quest for meaning - what meaning we do derive from our lives seems to be fundamentally reactionary. Tragedy leads to meaning.

And this is where I will disagree with your own views Schop1 on deprivation. Certainly we do have some goods that are truly good, whose absence would be bad regardless of whether or not there is already a person around. It's too bad more people can't be authentically eudaimonic (happy), the one pure, good experience we do have; in other words, it's not incoherent to look at an empty universe in sadness, knowing that it's incapable of producing consistently happy people, to value happiness for the sake of happiness.

So I don't deny that the satisfaction of desires is good, but it seems to only be good on the personal level and not when considering pre-natal conditions. Most experiences we see as positive are thus more akin to a resolution of a problem. It feels good to resolve these problems, but relief doesn't seem to be authentic goodness. It's desperation-in-disguise.

Nietzsche touched on a similar point when he observed that religions, like Christianity, have an idea of sorts that it is good to create people to help them once they are alive; it is good to make problems for no reason other than so we can fix these problems. Similarly, is it good to make people just so they can satisfy a desire? My initial thought is no, but after reflection becomes a "modal-dependent yes". In the world we live in, our desires are accompanied by a level of discomfort. But if we had desires that didn't have unwanted enslavement-like discomfort, but only led to more and more pleasure (with the other problems also resolved of course), then I suspect I would see birth in a much more accepting way.

What I was trying to say before is that I think most of what we consider to be enjoyable or pleasurable moments are actually just a reaction to a need or a desire: the relief of anxiety, or suffering-in-disguise. — darthbarracuda

I was first exposed to this view via Schopenhauer, but I don't think it's an accurate conception of pleasure. True, pleasure includes the cessation of pain. But when I first fell in love (and it was reciprocated), this earth became a paradise for me. (It's still good and still her, but there's nothing like the beginning. Things become warm and comfortable.)Then of course there is the combination of friends, drugs, music. I've been so "blissed-out" that I didn't even want to speak. Words were cups too small. Paintings of Christ making that hand-sign come to mind. There's just no way I could begin to describe this as mere cessation of pain. And then there are especially good sexual encounters that again one wouldn't dream of reducing to cessation of pain. True, we need some hunger to enjoy food and some lust to enjoy sex, but even this hunger/lust is mixed (if life is going well) with the anticipation of its joyous consummation. Finally there are philosophical pleasures. Great new ideas are like love affairs of the mind. Conceptual revolutions are like falling in love. You assimilate them, take them for granted, and then find a new revolution. These are peak experiences, hardly available upon demand or without risk. But they help me make my case that pleasure is not just relief. I can't know what intensities you've had access to. But I insist that 'spirituality' is largely a matter of the heart and therefore of experience which alters the sense of what is possible. ( I must admit that I have been lucky. I wasn't born to a rich or educated family, but I was given (by 'the gods' or chance) decent looks, great health, talent. I really can't know the pain/pleasure ratio of others. I just know that I got better at finding pleasure and dodging pain, and that much of this was an adjustment of ideology, slowly and painfully achieved. )

And this is where I will disagree with your own views Schop1 on deprivation. — darthbarracuda

Where in that quote did I mention these views? What views on deprivation do you refer?

his applies even to our quest for meaning - what meaning we do derive from our lives seems to be fundamentally reactionary. Tragedy leads to meaning. — darthbarracuda

Felix culpa? Thrownness. It's hard to imagine a better drama. If the protagonist had some tiny guarantee of justice or success, it would be a smaller tale. I checked out your blog and found a link to some guy whose theory was that irony was maximized in the creation of the world. I like that. There's a humor in Dostoevsky that surpasses just about everything mortal. I call it the laughter of the gods. It haunts all human earnestness. Hesse explores it in Steppenwolf.

Maybe we have a purity myth versus a completeness myth here. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. In Hesse's Siddartha the future Buddha sees in the ferryman/sage all human faces, including murderers and prostitutes. That's what I like in Hegel, too. We have increasing complexity, not a whittling down. The higher evolves from the lower and depends on it for contrast. I suppose I sacrificed the good to the true, thinking as I abandoned religion that the good was a candy-coating. It's not so simple, of course, but I see the philosopher as a man of the darkness as much as of the light. Under-standing. There's that fruit of the tree of knowledge as sin. Catholic upbringing backfired. The serpent turned out to be my guy. And yet: "Be wise as as serpent and gentle as a dove."

Sorry, I meant in previous threads. I seem to recall you arguing that you view all desires and needs as though they are bad. When I think there needs to be a distinction between the satisfaction of a concern and the mood that is associated with it.

In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground. — Zappfe

Depressive states are perhaps sustained in a mind seduced by such an image. (This is not to say that there is something other than seduction by images when it comes to grand judgments about life as a whole.)

It performs, to extend a settled phrase, a more or less self-conscious repression of its damaging surplus of consciousness. This process is virtually constant during our waking and active hours, and is a requirement of social adaptability and of everything commonly referred to as healthy and normal living. — Zappfe

Is the alternative of filtering and selection supposed to be truth rather than chaos? Much thinking is unconscious. I believe that. But how is this mass of unconscious thinking the truth rather than the background? Repression is used in a sly, pejorative way, as if there were something to recommend the alternative.

The whole of living that we see before our eyes today is from inmost to outmost enmeshed in repressional mechanisms, social and individual; they can be traced right into the tritest formulas of everyday life. — Zappfe

This is structure itself, unequal forces in collision, temporary stability. These 'repressional mechanisms' are (in the human sphere) tools for the achievement of purpose. Don't lie. Don't steal. It's better for most of us if most of us don't. Don't text and drive. Focus. Etc.

In everyday interaction, isolation is manifested in a general code of mutual silence: primarily toward children, so these are not at once scared senseless by the life they have just begun, but retain their illusions until they can afford to lose them. In return, children are not to bother the adults with untimely reminders of sex, toilet, or death. Among adults there are the rules of ‘tact,’ the mechanism being openly displayed when a man who weeps on the street is removed with police assistance. — Zappfe

So are adults living without illusions, or not? If so, what is Zappfe bringing? Is he not also trying to paint adults as such children?

We love the anchorings for saving us, but also hate them for limiting our sense of freedom. Whenever we feel strong enough, we thus take pleasure in going together to bury an expired value in style. — Zappfe

Easy to agree here. And I find it easy to see Zappfe as the salesman of one more anchoring (pessimism), one that I began to resent and finally took pleasure in burying.

Nothing finite satisfies at length, one is ever proceeding, gathering knowledge, making a career. The phenomenon is known as ‘yearning’ or ‘transcendental tendency.’ Whenever a goal is reached, the yearning moves on; hence its object is not the goal, but the very attainment of it – the gradient, not the absolute height, of the curve representing one’s life. — Zappfe

The object was the goal. Then a new object becomes the goal. So we can posit a goal archetype. But sometimes the goal is the sandwich we can make downstairs. We can also make living on this gradient a goal, aware that permanent satisfaction in a given object is not to be expected. No goal is central (all is vanity) but a life with many goals and attainments is good --or can be good.

The fourth remedy against panic, sublimation, is a matter of transformation rather than repression. Through stylistic or artistic gifts can the very pain of living at times be converted into valuable experiences. Positive impulses engage the evil and put it to their own ends, fastening onto its pictorial, dramatic, heroic, lyric or even comic aspects.
The present essay is a typical attempt at sublimation. The author does not suffer, he is filling pages and is going to be published in a journal.

The ‘martyrdom’ of lonely ladies also shows a kind of sublimation – they gain in significance thereby.

Nevertheless, sublimation appears to be the rarest of the protective means mentioned here. — Zappfe

This is more than a 'remedy against panic' in my view. Indeed, I prefer to see panic in terms of a clash of hero myths. When aren't we posing as heroes in a drama? This "rareness" is maybe just Zappfe being oblivious to the fact that most are consumers of personalities largely constructed by others (like Zappfe, for instance). The anxiety of influence is rare, but that's because not everyone casts themselves as a truly original personality potentially worth imitating/assimilating. We heroisms of humility and altruism that often work against posing as unique or beyond the law or...etc.

Then will appear the man who, as the first of all, has dared strip his soul naked and submit it alive to the outmost thought of the lineage, the very idea of doom. A man who has fathomed life and its cosmic ground, and whose pain is the Earth’s collective pain. With what furious screams shall not mobs of all nations cry out for his thousandfold death, when like a cloth his voice encloses the globe, and the strange message has resounded for the first and last time:

“– The life of the worlds is a roaring river, but Earth’s is a pond and a backwater.

– The sign of doom is written on your brows – how long will ye kick against the pin-pricks?

– But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution.

– Know yourselves – be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.”

And when he has spoken, they will pour themselves over him, led by the pacifier makers and the midwives, and bury him in their fingernails.

He is the last Messiah. As son from father, he stems from the archer by the waterhole. — Zappfe

This guy is the anti-Nietzsche, isn't he? This is the same mania of Thus Spake Zarathustra. It's (to me) nakedly a grandiose religious conception. It's the sort of thing Nietzsche suspected was hiding in the "great sages," but here it is proclaimed boldly, the religion of anti-life, anti-earth, and not in the name of some better place or better principle. In the name of nothingness, right? And yet it takes a pleasure in speaking itself, a pleasure in the existence of midwives to offend. It needs the very 'problem' it wants to diagnose and cure. Zappfe climbed his mountains. Schop. played his flute. They wore their dark views like a smart new jacket from the local H & M. I won't hypocritically curse them for this. That's just the way it is. It's fun to play dress-up. Life as endless play, however edgy and grim...

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice. — Bukowski

Bukowski omitted "writing" or being-Bukowski because (perhaps) 'illusion' is just the the other guy's (more or less stable ) solution. My solution frames the solutions of others. Do we not always look through such a frame? Does this game have an outside?