Not a curse. Accursed, perhaps. — Ciceronianus the White

“I despise the kind of book which tells you how to live, how to make yourself happy. Philosophers have no good news for you at this level. I believe the first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep shit you are in!”
~Slavoj Žižek

Not sure if a sorta-Stoic like you gets as much of a kick outta Žižek as sorta-Epicureans like me usually do. "The first duty", perhaps; certainly not the only one or the last ...

:death: :flower:

From childhood to year 19 all I asked was "how?"; I was only interested in the natural sciences. Then I met a person, he called himself an existentialist.
From that day I was cursed by "why?".

After 33 years of looking for answers, God, enlightenment, it suddenly ended. This should not peak your interest since I don't know how. I know it preceded by a few intense days of thoughts like "there's nothing I can do, thinking cannot solve the problem, whatever I do just aggrevates the problem, there's absolutely nothing I can do to solve this".

Then on June 24 2020 it was gone. I wrote "The End of the Search!" in my diary.

The search is still gone and philosophical thinking and ideas are a minor side interest today.

I feel kind of empty but in a neutral way, sort of vacant but mentally very alert. It's only been less than two month so I'll probably find a way back to the curse of "WHY?!".

Not sure if a sorta-Stoic like you gets as much of a kick outta Žižek as sorta-Epicureans like me usually do. "The first duty", perhaps; certainly not the only one or the last ... — 180 Proof

It's not clear to me that philosophy is needed for us to understand that we're in deep shit. And, if we don't already know that, I doubt it will be philosophy that persuades us that we are. It may help us understand why we are, though. But in order to do that, I think we have to consider what's wrong with how we live, which ultimately involves determining how we should live.