There is no disgust with life, no despair, no sense of the nothingness of things, of the worthlessness of remedies, of the loneliness of man; no hatred of the world and of oneself; that can last so long: although these attitudes of mind are completely reasonable, and their opposites unreasonable. But despite all this, after a little while; with a gentle change in the temper of the body; little by little; and often in a flash, for minuscule reasons scarcely possible to notice; the taste for life revives, and this or that fresh hope springs up, and human things take on their former visage, and show they are not unworthy of some care; not so much to the intellect, as indeed, so to speak, to the senses of the spirit. And that is enough to make a person, aware and convinced as he may be of the truth, as well as in spite of reason, both persevere in life, and go along with it as others do: for those very senses (one might say), and not the intellect, are what rules over us . . . . And life is a thing of such small consequence, that man, as regards himself, ought not to be very anxious either to keep it or to discard it. Therefore, without pondering the matter too deeply; with each trivial reason that presents itself, for grasping the former alternative rather than the latter, he ought not to refuse to do so." — Giacomo Leopardi
This dominion of man over Nature shall gradually be extended, until, at length, no farther expenditure of mechanical labour shall be necessary than what the human body requires for its development, cultivation, and health; and this labour shall cease to be a burden;—for a reasonable being is not destined to be a bearer of burdens. — Pantagruel
↪Pantagruel
@schopenhauer1 Antinatalist
I don't know if you saw this, but I thought you might be interested. It is not the same argument you guys use, but it's similar. I found it more convincing. — T Clark
What information where you referring to? I didn't see a link. — schopenhauer1
I can see that your poetry is heart-felt and sincere. It's romantic, which is fine. It is also philosophical, as the OP specifies. But it is not good poetry. — T Clark
It’s a poem in the style of those daunting but rather wonderful depictions of love and loss and the battle between good and evil: The Iliad, The Aeneid, The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost.
The last of those works I spent three years studying for a PhD that I never quite managed to complete. There’s an unconscious connection: my title Pandemonium was a word invented by Milton and first used in Paradise Lost to describe the home of Satan and his fellow fallen angels. Maybe writing Pandemonium is my closure?...
Not long into lockdown, trying to understand my shock and bewilderment at what was going on, I started tapping out what became the poem Pandemonium. It began in a rush, 10 lines at a time, and then would stop. Maybe a month or so would go by and then more would come. It seemed instinctive to compare these people who had power of life and death over us to the immortal gods of Greek myth and religious verse, and see how they matched up. Maybe, too, poetry – with its play on ambiguity and double meaning, the fact that it need not be literal, that it thrives on evoking several interpretations at once – was the only form that, for me, helped make sense of the many contradictions the past 18 months have forced upon us.
— Guardian: Iannucci's epic covid poem
Not particularly philosophical, — Michael Zwingli
Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. — Michael Zwingli
Love it. Love it. Love it. — T Clark
Myself as well. Owen, through his poetry, was one of the major writers chronicling the horrors of the First World War. This is my favorite of his poems, of which I especially admire the rhyme scheme. The fact of an odd number, seven, of lines per stanza, I find interesting. Note how lines 1-3 and 2-4 of both stanzas uses alliterative rhyme, and lines 5-7 uses true, direct rhyme. It's just really good in it's effect. — Michael Zwingli
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