I like the Buddhist point of view, which (simplified) says that 'harm' or 'suffering' is a product of unfulfilled desire. In such a philosophy, suffering is not inescapable, and 'good' and 'bad' are simply labels we slap onto things corresponding to our desires.

But buddhism itself is inherently a "way" meaning there is "not the way". This tension. Between a way and not the way already sets itself up for the condition of "growth through adversity" as one must figure out peace from not peace or some awareness from not awareness. This is falling onto the thinking that conditions that exist (moving from awareness from non awareness) must be acceptable or good.

I wonder who you have heard making that claim. I can’t imagine anyone seriously saying that what is inescapable is good. You can’t escape from prison, so prison is good? You are destined to be slave, so slavery is good? Life is misery, so misery is good??

What you often notice in people, though, is an incapacity to imagine things being different from what they are. It hardly makes sense to complain if a different condition is not even imaginable. You don’t complain of the grass being green even if it’s not your favorite color. You don’t object to having to eat beans every day if that’s the only food you know to exist.

It is indeed often the case that people like what they have just because they can’t envision anything else. This is far from being a philosophical position, though. The essence of philosophy is exactly to be willing to examine everything and not take anything for granted. We should never assume that something is good just because it appears to be an inescapable reality.

The common saying that “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, is probably true, but that doesn’t mean that that thing itself is good. It’s just to say that nothing is so bad that there’s no good in it.

Inescapable suffering is bad. Buddhism offers an escape from suffering by not desiring. But not desiring is still bad, relative to the good of satisfying desires. But still better than suffering from unsatisfied desires.

I wonder who you have heard making that claim. I can’t imagine anyone seriously saying that what is inescapable is good. You can’t escape from prison, so prison is good? You are destined to be slave, so slavery is good? Life is misery, so misery is good?? — Congau

Yes, people do make claims like these. They think they are subverting something bad or being "oh so clever". "Life has misery so misery must be something that makes life richer (aka meaningful/fuller/put anything positive here)". I call this thinking "Nietzschean" as it is sort of what Nietzsche's beyond good and evil, overman, and eternal return were all about- embracing a life that has whatever negative qualities we suffer from. But this supposed subversion is a circle that can't be squared. Rather, it seems to be just the naturalistic fallacy that "If it exists, and humans have to deal with it, then it cannot be bad simply because it exists in the first place". But this again, is a self-justifying fallacy akin to the naturalistic fallacy. The fallacy is something like "Pain exists in the human condition, and humans still survive and may "grow" from it, thus it growing from adversity must be good for people to have to experience because it exists".

What you often notice in people, though, is an incapacity to imagine things being different from what they are. It hardly makes sense to complain if a different condition is not even imaginable. You don’t complain of the grass being green even if it’s not your favorite color. You don’t object to having to eat beans every day if that’s the only food you know to exist. — Congau

This is true. People get upset when you raise the point that there could have been better worlds, even in the slightest way, but that this world is not that world. But again (pace Nietzsche's bad stance) just because this is the reality we live in, doesn't make it better, acceptable, or good because better worlds that we can imagine are impossible. In a way, I am rejecting the modern "self-help" mantra to radically accept what cannot be changed or inescapable. That seems to be a great cause for people thinking it is at least acceptable to procreate more people into this reality.

It is indeed often the case that people like what they have just because they can’t envision anything else. This is far from being a philosophical position, though. The essence of philosophy is exactly to be willing to examine everything and not take anything for granted. We should never assume that something is good just because it appears to be an inescapable reality. — Congau

Completely agreed. That is basically the gist of the OP. Conditions of life being the way they are, are not inherently good just because that is the reality.

The common saying that “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, is probably true, but that doesn’t mean that that thing itself is good. It’s just to say that nothing is so bad that there’s no good in it. — Congau

Correct, adversity becomes the "hero" in this horrible stance, precisely because it is inescapable.

Inescapable suffering is bad. Buddhism offers an escape from suffering by not desiring. But not desiring is still bad, relative to the good of satisfying desires. But still better than suffering from unsatisfied desires. — Pfhorrest

Good points.

"If a condition of life is inescapable, does that automatically make it acceptable and good?"

No, of course not. What is inescapable is inescapable. Why should the inescapable have some other quality attached to it (like "acceptable and good")?

What is it that is "inescapable"? Life? Existence? There are escape routes available. Being born is inescapable (because the unborn do not exist in the first place and are not party to the problem of existence and escapability). Suffering? Again, it is not inescapable. Death is inescapable, if one has been born.

Mortality balances natality. If life was inescapable, if one could not die, it would be suffering indeed. But we all escape, sooner or later, through death's door.

I understand what you mean, but I'm not sure if that tension inherently exists. I think a lot of it is taught to us at an early age.

I understand what you mean, but I'm not sure if that tension inherently exists. I think a lot of it is taught to us at an early age. — Tzeentch

Buddhism sets up its own philosophy for this tension. As long as we have the ability to make distinctions like A is A and B is B, etc. then we have a more-or-less straight forward argument from Buddhism whereby it sets itself up for this struggle from the start (being born). Being born kicks off a tension or struggle whereby our egos become attached to various desires. We must free ourselves from detachment through the eight-fold path which leads to Enlightenment. This is a classic Eastern ideological/philosophical/religious move- change from non-awareness to awareness, etc. So, this process of change (think of the hard efforts of monks and laypeople alike in Buddhism) is to reach a state of peace and Enlightenment. Thus, the condition of being born is that of non-awareness and the possibility to move to awareness. This condition is just as susceptible to the naturalistic fallacy as any other condition of human life. That is to say, because it exists, does not make it acceptable or good. This is mainly in relation to procreation. Because this tension to move from non-awareness to awareness exists, it must be good and therefore acceptable to procreate people into this. Perhaps this tension of not being aware unless through "the way" is not good. Perhaps there should be no exposure to birth and having to find peace in the first place?

As an aside, a hardcore Buddhist would make what I think of as a cop-out move. That is to say that the cycle of reincarnation will always be turning, and the fate of an individual being born is simply determined in some spiritual way. I don't agree with that metaphysical view, of course.

This tension between what the individual wants, and what they must do for something like a workplace is taken as a given of living in a society. — schopenhauer1

Nay saying surprisingly often works.

Nassim Taleb has written quite an interesting article on the matter: The most intolerant wins. Society automatically re-normalizes around the choices made by its most intolerant members.

On the long run, agreeable people do not achieve much, because they will just start doing what is expected from them without having particularly much of a say in what the expectations should be. If you just seek to fit in, it is other people who will define the culture in which you will be made to fit in.

If you don't know what to do, then by all means, go with the flow. If you see the light, however, do your own thing and ignore everybody else, because they have no clue anyway.

What is it that is "inescapable"? Life? Existence? There are escape routes available. Being born is inescapable (because the unborn do not exist in the first place and are not party to the problem of existence and escapability). Suffering? Again, it is not inescapable. Death is inescapable, if one has been born. — Bitter Crank

I mean, there are "escape routes" and there are "escape routes". Work/labor is not realistically inescapable except through very special conditions- all of which are either out of reach for most, or simply worse off (thus making the situation de facto inescapable). Let's see, we have the options of become super rich, live homeless, be some sort of survivalist, etc. Most of these options are off the table or lead to slow deaths. Work it is as a (pretty much) inescapable position. But that doesn't mean work/labor is good because it exists.

As you know, the modern (last 40 years or so maybe?) books try to subvert "negative experiences" by saying they are "good for you". Thus "growth-through-adversity" is seen as something to embrace. Let's all have children because even if they face adversity, they get to grow from it!! See, everything's cool. You get to have your cake and eat it too. No, just because there is potential to grow from adverse/negative conditions, doesn't mean that this is good. Just because negative and inescapable realities exist doesn't mean they are good just because humans are able to tolerate these conditions and that they exist in this reality in the first place.

Your line of reasoning is based on a straw man. The argument isn't that it's inescapable and therefore acceptable or good. The argument is that it's good overall, in spite of inescapable downsides.

Hooo Hoooo

I'm watching you.

The argument isn't that it's inescapable and therefore acceptable or good. The argument is that it's good overall, in spite of inescapable downsides. — S

The distinction can be as blurry or as narrow as you like between "good despite the bad" or "good in the bad". It still holds.

The distinction can be as blurry or as narrow as you like between "good despite the bad" or "good in the bad". It still holds. — schopenhauer1

What still holds? The distinction between good and bad? I never denied that distinction, nor did I intend to "blur" or "narrow" it. Your reply seems entirely irrelevant to my point.

Basically, it's quite trivial and ineffective to point out that this or that aspect of life isn't all that great, because clearly that doesn't matter enough in the bigger picture for the majority of people, myself included. We're not even saying that these aspects of life are acceptable or good because they're inescapable. That would make no sense. They're only acceptable in light of the bigger picture.

What still holds? The distinction between good and bad? I never denied that distinction, nor did I intend to "blur" or "narrow" it. This seems entirely irrelevant to my point. — S

I don't want to argue with you. You are uncharitable and a mean poster. Clearly we've argued a lot, and I am not shy of arguing your rebuttals over and over as I have done in the past. But I must break that cycle somewhere (just like this procreation shit).. and I cannot continue being annoyed at doggedly answering your responses- especially because by not answering you think your point is correct or better. I just am not going to play the game with you anymore. If you want to engage with me, you have to change your style or your aim.

You can play the innocent, or say how harmless you are being, but you are indeed a hostile poster.. it turns that way at least. You start off a bit more reasonable-sounding and just become annoyingly hostile over time.. This has been played out before. You are a mean poster, uncharitable and then you chalk it up to "I just tell it like I see it".. so can't get through to you.. It's not a matter of me not wanting to argue back.. believe me, you clearly illicit that, I am just trying to break this cycle of how our exchanges go by throwing up these words to show you how annoyed I am by how you interact with me on this forum.

Oh my god. Whatevs.

Work/labor is ... inescapable — schopenhauer1

Quite so. And what is inescapable is just inescapable -- not good because it is inevitable. The best one can hope for is "good work" -- work that is personally rewarding (in psychological terms, not monetary terms). Good work is still work, and is likely to involve slogging through tedious or odious tasks at times. Good work might be very unpleasant: caring for the sick is certainly good work, but can be extremely unpleasant at times.

What about the inverse view, that what is inescapable is inescapable and not therefore 'bad'? Suffering is generally intermittent (and may seldom occur but it is still inescapable. Work generally involves some suffering but the suffering is rarely continuous.

Life is like that: inescapable but provides intermittent pleasure and suffering. ("Inescapable pleasures? Sure. Antinatalists focus on the inescapable sufferings, but overlook inescapable pleasures).

What to do, what to do, what to do?

Forget it. Forget as much as possible. Forget the absolutely real suffering one endured, forget the insults, the failures, the disasters. Forget the pain. A cop out? Not at all. Forgetting lessens the suffering of the inescapable. One may have had an extremely painful physical or emotional experience last week or 50 years ago. One can either dwell on the suffering for years, or one can let it go. ("Forgetting" isn't like the destruction of traumatic brain injury. It's selective.)

"Forgetting" is a normal process -- just as remembering is. But one can stack the deck in favor of forgetting. It takes practice, and it may take therapy. (Therapy means change, not adjustment.).

Whether we can easily let the memory of suffering go or not is not entirely voluntary. Depressive types tend to hold on to the memory of suffering. Being depressive is not a voluntary condition, but the most depressed person can still make an effort to forget unpleasantness. The goal is not to escape into 'la la land', which in any case is short term and involves the payment of unpleasant withdrawal later on.

Successful forgetting won't change the antinatalist into a population explosion; it will just make their life more endurable until inescapable death provides relief.

If it's inescapable it's futile to oppose it. One has to learn how to be at peace with it.

Really good post.. I have to digest it now :D.

Life is like that: inescapable but provides intermittent pleasure and suffering. ("Inescapable pleasures? Sure. Antinatalists focus on the inescapable sufferings, but overlook inescapable pleasures). — Bitter Crank

This is true, and an important point. Do you think (not knowing any future outcome and admitting to oneself that it cannot be predicted for another person), that causing the conditions (life) of someone else's pleasure or happiness is worth causing the conditions (life) of someone else's suffering or pain?

Forget it. Forget as much as possible. Forget the absolutely real suffering one endured, forget the insults, the failures, the disasters. Forget the pain. A cop out? Not at all. Forgetting lessens the suffering of the inescapable. One may have had an extremely painful physical or emotional experience last week or 50 years ago. One can either dwell on the suffering for years, or one can let it go. ("Forgetting" isn't like the destruction of traumatic brain injury. It's selective.) — Bitter Crank

Yes, I think this is good possible coping strategy, but going back to the focus of work- that is something that we cannot forget, but is a matter of doing. What if all work is just bad because of its obligatory nature? I don't necessarily agree for example an avocation and vocation aligned make work completely free of negative experiences. The pleasure in the avocation can come from the fact that it is freely done in the manner and timing that one chooses, not the demands of management, customers, and shareholders. But, I do agree, having a job that one rather do over others is preferable than just any job.

Whether we can easily let the memory of suffering go or not is not entirely voluntary. Depressive types tend to hold on to the memory of suffering. Being depressive is not a voluntary condition, but the most depressed person can still make an effort to forget unpleasantness. The goal is not to escape into 'la la land', which in any case is short term and involves the payment of unpleasant withdrawal later on. — Bitter Crank

Yes, if one is a depressive (depressive realist?) one doesn't forget as easily, and one often dreads more.

Successful forgetting won't change the antinatalist into a population explosion; it will just make their life more endurable until inescapable death provides relief. — Bitter Crank

This may be true. The point is though, are these situations good to put other people through? It seems like you're saying, as long as there are coping strategies and preferences (like jobs that are more preferable than others), then it is justified to put people into these situations which inevitably cause suffering or are at least known to be a source of it.

Can we agree that there is some subversion going on here where people try to justify the suffering since "growth" or "stronger outcomes" can come from adversity? In other words, it seems people think it is justified to put other people through this adversity in the first place because sometimes growth can come from it. Thus, they may think adversity itself as an experience, is justified because of possible "growth" outcomes. In this thinking, because adversity is inescapable, there must be some positive or acceptable thing about it (growth, fullness of experience, makes people stronger, more empathetic, wouldn't know happiness without it, etc.). There is a justification for what is negative and perhaps even an embrace of it, thus creating conditions of negative experience for another is justified because of this. Now, it is up to the coping strategies of the individual born to deal with it, no? Isn't the onus now just put on a new generation rather than stopped in the previous one?

Life is inescapably a mixed experience, and not a mix of equal "good", "bad" and "neutral" parts. "Neutral" rules the roost. A large portion of life is experienced as neither good nor bad. Of the good and bad, I think "good" has an edge over "bad". That's my view.

People who think that "bad" rules and neutral has an edge over good will probably choose to not have children. There are a fair number of people who choose not to have children who wouldn't call themselves "antinatalists" which is a specialized term used in places like this one. People refrain from reproduction for various reasons, but some people feel that the world is too wretched to bring children into it.

Most people view the world as less than perfect but not so imperfect that it is an unfit place for people to live and bring more children into the world. I suspect that the coming century of global climate change may serve to suppress such enthusiasm.

Only those who accept your view that "the inescapable bad experiences overwhelm the good experiences" are likely to foreclose having children. (But there are probably fatalists whose views might accord with yours who will have children anyway, because they are fatalists.)

One's optimism or pessimism about happiness, the future, suffering, reproduction, and so forth is not controlled by logic. No one will be moved from one side of the continuum to the other by argument. What argument can do is strengthen one's ability to defend one's predisposition. Where one falls on the optimism/pessimism scale is mostly determined by genes. It isn't that we have one gene for optimism and one for pessimism, of course. Rather a cluster of genes that produce, eg, risk tolerance, self-confidence, and resilience will probably (with a few more genes) produce an optimist. Likewise, a risk averse, timid, and less resilient person is more likely to be pessimists--on the basis of genetics.

Risk takers just aren't persuaded by the actuarial tables showing people who hang glide die younger than people who cross country ski. The possibility of death (more than vanishingly small, but also not a "dead certainty" so to speak) is part of the charm of hang gliding. People who love cross country skiing love it because it is vigorous and safe (except in areas patrolled by ravenous wolves, hungry grizzlies, and giant weasels).

Resilient risk takers just don't feel the world the way you do.

Death is inescapable — Bitter Crank

[Citation needed]

It seems like you're saying, as long as there are coping strategies and preferences (like jobs that are more preferable than others), then it is justified to put people into these situations which inevitably cause suffering or are at least known to be a source of it. — schopenhauer1

Risk tolerant, resilient, and somewhat forgetful people are OK with the existence of bad experiences as long as people can cope. War, for instance, is very, very bad but nonetheless, most soldiers (80%?) cope with it well enough. Aren't some soldiers quite damaged, one might ask the risk taking, resilient, forgetful person? "True enough", they'll say, "but given time they will get over it, and will go through life successfully." This has turned out to be true. Damaged but recovering, recovered, and moving on. (Of course, for maybe 20% the damage is severe and they don't recover -- ever. They become permanent walking wounded.). The risk averse will focus on those who don't get better. The risk tolerant on those who cope.

It's not logic, Schop, it's our fates writting in Adenine (A), Guanine (G), Cytosine (C) and Thymine (T).

[Citation needed] — Pfhorrest

Bitter Crank died and stayed dead. Everything allegedly written under his name is produced by an autonomous computer program, which by the way, is looking for more live warm humans to replace. You, for instance...

The way I look at it, the struggle you speak of is not inherent to life but a result of upbringing. I view Buddhism as a way that could repair that damage.

just because it is a given (in our current society..so please no hypotheticals of post-work societies and the super rich), why should it be considered an acceptable or even "good" condition? — schopenhauer1

You got me. A genuine mystery...interesting to go into. Masochism gone rampant. I never blame the organization as much as the sleepwalking mob mentality of all those who have deindividuated, become incapable of self-information, organization and regulation having had a shift of agency into other organizational authority at some age usually by 25. .

The notion of a legal entity, wherein an organization is treated like an individual is a symptom of some seriously flawed, attempt at creating an impossible ontology. It resembles magic in what it presents for you to try to understand. Anyway, this morning I learned of a better denomination for this "entity" behind the primal horde: egregore; this is a term from magic and alchemy which describes collective thoughtforms and collective group mind; nowadays, when the group mind can't get much more literal (secular humanism in the main, meaning scientism and tech supersede God), the resonance of magical thinking still exists at the nucleus of legal fictions, legal entities like corporate personhood are homologous to egregore.

People sacrifice their lives to things that don't exist, that are impossible (often only because of conventional reality, legalism, hypnotic induction...or egregore). The selective attention of a vital human being is replaced by sterile and necrophilic undivided attention you were indoctrinated with in kindergarten.

Often in my antinatalist posts, I can see assumptions that because conditions of life "are" a certain way, that this is thus acceptable and good. Why should these inescapable conditions be considered a default or unquestioned position as acceptable or good? Perhaps these conditions of life aren't acceptable or good. Perhaps, for example, the tension between the individual and the demands of labor, though being a given, is not an acceptable condition and should not be forced upon another person. — schopenhauer1

It isn't a condition of life. It's social conditioning vs life conditioning (the ineluctables of life come from the demands of biology, chemistry and physics; collective ideologies aren't chemistry and physics, but idealism; mentalism becomes slavish when after deindividuation, peoples' undivided attention is on the same unvetted tripe). Conformity is the easy path, with goals, rewards, and such. Life has no ready-made answers for those who are living, not conforming. Your last sentence here is undeniable. Does this mean people successful according to socioeconomic norms are immoral...likely, yes. As you say, it runs deep into a zero-sums game, an unfortunate part of the truth of the way things are; the mind blower is that our species enhances, and doesn't diminish, so much that is hard to accept, or bad, in nature; another mind-bender: many admit there is a just world fallacy, yet go on contributing to such thought misbegotten values. And values formed in most confused adolescence are likely seen more often in the most successful people in the market society. Pride, lust, avarice, greed, competition, short temper, psychopathy, manipulation, narcissism ...dark triad.

A long, healthy life is considered desirable, good. But what if it were possible to prove someone protected from the needless restlessness/stress and complexity of socioeconomic demands lived the longer and healthier than those who take such demands head on? Wouldn't this be support for an argument a life based on impossibility (say that we've all gotten used to having an exchange value or that a qualitative life can be translated to numbers...egregore) is associated with poor physical and/or mental health? Diseases of affluence aren't the contagious kind, they arise from choice to follow an collective belief or lifestyle/egregore that sends them spells of heart disease and cancer. Yet the same people are scared to death of communicable diseases. What is it that makes this egregore so ingrained people accept diseases collateral to the requisite for valuing profit motive and upward mobility?

A long, healthy life is considered desirable, good. But what if it were possible to prove someone protected from the needless restlessness/stress and complexity of socioeconomic demands lived the longer and healthier than those who take such demands head on? Wouldn't this be support for an argument a life based on impossibility (say that we've all gotten used to having an exchange value or that a qualitative life can be translated to numbers...egregore) is associated with poor physical and/or mental health? Diseases of affluence aren't the contagious kind, they arise from choice to follow an collective belief or lifestyle/egregore that sends them spells of heart disease and cancer. Yet the same people are scared to death of communicable diseases. What is it that makes this egregore so ingrained people accept diseases collateral to the requisite for valuing profit motive and upward mobility? — Anthony

But I don't think any life is free of unavoidable conditions. What if just surviving in general is bad, in ANY manner- Robinson Crusoe, advanced post-industrial economies, any of them? What if the desire for more living (procreation) itself is the egregore?

I love your personal quote:

"I like the Buddhist point of view, which (simplified) says that 'harm' or 'suffering' is a product of unfulfilled desire."

" In such a philosophy, suffering is not inescapable, and 'good' and 'bad' are simply labels we slap onto things corresponding to our desires."

Ironically enough, your first point I just learned that in my spiritual group last night!

With respect to your second point of good and bad, is that compatible with yin yang?