Completely unnecessary - sexist character attacks with zero substance are not welcome here.
You want to write fiction - do it somewhere else, and leave me the fuck out of it! — Possibility
But notice, the indignity you felt, even of just your forum persona being a character in someone else's agenda (fiction). That indignity and disrespect, is like the indignity and disrespect of forcing (causing) someone into the world to comply with the dictates of life.. You can pretend moralize to me that it's different because life provides "options".. But AGAIN, it's the Willy Wonka's Forced Game again.. The options are not really options on closer inspections.... — schopenhauer1
Your namesake presumably comes from metaphysics like Whiteheads.. His idea of universal possibilities for each event.. But those possibilities were finite.. The possibilities of a human animal in a physical world with certain laws and historical developments is finite.. I cannot just be a bird cause I wish it... One must only use the gauntlet allowed by circumstances of reality (both social and physical). Thus, telling someone to "collaborate more awareness and you'll be better off" is like saying to someone, "I'm forcing you into the game and you are going to double down on it if you don't like it". Because the possibilities are there, but they are again, finite. At the end of the day you sound like Nietzsche's super-coked up Ubermensch philosophy which tries to embrace the absurdity through trying to be the most extreme version of the possibility.. It's all the same game.. I'm sorry, there is no "pat" answer that lets you escape the fact of the situatedness of reality.. No Eternal Return superheroes.. No Mother Teresea gods of charity and kindness.. It's just forced game of dissatisfaction overcoming.. — schopenhauer1
So for ethics, what do we do now that we are here? Surely, not much other than live out our life course. We can take away some understanding like "don't burden others" and "community recognition that we are in a forced game/leaky boat". There is some consolation in communal understanding of our situation. There is trying to alleviate undo suffering when one can. Okie dokie.. That doesn't mean thus life good. — schopenhauer1
Your fiction is pretend - the fact that life provides options aside from compliance is not. I have already agreed that ‘forcing someone into the world’ is worth arguing against. But I disagree with your argument that the limitations of an actual life in relation to perceived potential is a case of forcing them to ‘comply with the dictates of life’, let alone any specific agenda. What you want is the maximum value - the dignity and respect - without the life, but that’s not how value exists. — Possibility
Let's say I am Willy Wonka..
I have created this world and will force others to enter it... My only rule is people have the options of either working at various occupations which I have lovingly created many varieties of, free-riding (which can only be done by a few and has to be done selectively lest one get caught, it is also considered no good in this world), or living day-to-day homelessly. The last option is a suicide pill if people don't like the arrangement. Is Willy Wonka moral? I mean he is giving many options for work, and even allowing you to test your luck at homelessness and free riding. Also, hey if you don't want to be in his arrangement, you can always kill yourself! See how beneficial and good I am to all my contestants?
There are lots of ways to feel strife and anxiety in my world.. There is generalized boredom, there are pressures from coworkers, there is pressure of joblessness, there are pressures of disease, disasters, mental illness, annoyances, malicious acts, accidents, and so much more that I have built into the world..
I have also created many people who will encourage everyone to also find my world loving so as to not have too many dropouts. — schopenhauer1
Not Whitehead - don’t presume. I’m well aware that the possibility for an event is finite, but human capacity for awareness is not. — Possibility
If you don’t like it, you can look for ways to change it. You cannot BE a bird, but with awareness, connection and collaboration, you can fly or perform pretty much any other action that a bird is capable of, if you choose. — Possibility
Nietzsche’s Ubermensch is not a proposed actuality, but the conceptualisation of an idea - rather like your notion of maximum value apparently owed to the individual upon existence. It’s a way of thinking about the relational structure between human being/actuality and human value/potentiality. There is a common misconception that it’s linear - much like we assumed the relation between space and time to be linear. It isn’t. — Possibility
What life course? How you interpret ‘don’t burden others’ is not as straight-forward as you seem to think, and your description of this situatedness as ‘a forced game/leaky boat’ is highly subjective and charged with affect. It doesn’t mean life is good OR bad, except that you choose to interpret it this way. Life is diverse and ever-changing, and so is our potential relation to it. — Possibility
When we evaluate life, we reduce this perceived relation to a linear equation, with our (temporal) being on one side and our (eternal) value on the other. What is not acknowledged in this equation is that our temporal being is a four-dimensional existence, while our eternal value is a five-dimensional existence. They will never be equal, and any argument that they should be is illogical. — Possibility
Once you violate dignity of X time (birthing that new person), THAT is the violation.. That person doesn't have to exist prior to that to violate the dignity. — schopenhauer1
For example, not wanting to do the whole survival thing is off the table, lest death, depredation in the wilderness or homeless or free riding etc.. Utopia is off the table because there is no utopia. Some people aren't going to be X because they simply want X. — schopenhauer1
We are not aware of what we are not aware of. — schopenhauer1
Ugh, I knew you were going to say something like that :lol:. No, I literally mean, I cannot become a bird.. Meaning, I cannot change certain physical and social realities of life. They are off the table. — schopenhauer1
I noticed here that you didn't even deny my comparison to Nietzsche's coked out model. — schopenhauer1
Yeah that's right, life is a leaky boat of survival and dissatisfaction that has to be overcome. The whole point of the thread is that if being were positive in itself there would be no need for anything. — schopenhauer1
Don't know, don't care.. Doesn't mean anything as this is written. — schopenhauer1
Explain to me what this ‘rule or formal agreement’ is that is broken, or what this ‘something sacred’ is that is treated with disrespect. Because I get that the violation is the birthing, the actual existing, but it’s unclear what an unviolated ‘new person’ is. Seems to me like this violation is committed against an unrealised concept, a perception of value. — Possibility
They’re not promised actualities at all, just ideas to which we attribute value based on quality and feeling, and then conceptualise. — Possibility
I’m arguing that the entire agenda, these ideals we’ve convinced ourselves to strive towards, are a false construct. Which is not to say the potential is non-existent, only that it’s been constructed to give the illusion of definitive goals, when the reality is far more open-ended. — Possibility
Seriously, though - physical or social realities don’t determine your dignity or respect unless you buy into the agenda. They can be taken off the table, and all it changes is the distribution of time, attention and effort. — Possibility
Why bother? — Possibility
Subjective opinion, again. Life is neither positive or negative. The fact that you NEED it to be inherently positive goes back to your sense of entitlement, and this desire for a definitive goal. ‘I never get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day’... — Possibility
Right…so if I somehow plot and plan a person to materialize so I can punch him in the face, the second that person materializes, and I punch him, is the violation. Non identity no more. Also, as I’ve been stating the whole time, the parent is creating collateral damage when they could have not created this for someone else. — schopenhauer1
Another example I give often is that if a parent chooses to birth a child into a volcano, surely they can’t be doing wrong to that child that will be born in the volcano :roll:. — schopenhauer1
While I agree in a sense that humans conceptualize their survival as they do it, that doesn’t negate the survival. In fact it may make the situation worse. Instead of instinctual programs we must conceptualize. We can even be aware of a negative value of a task and realize it must be done despite not preferring it if we want to achieve X. We are aware of our shitty options. — schopenhauer1
I’m arguing that the entire agenda, these ideals we’ve convinced ourselves to strive towards, are a false construct. Which is not to say the potential is non-existent, only that it’s been constructed to give the illusion of definitive goals, when the reality is far more open-ended.
— Possibility
But it’s not. Try not eating for a couple weeks. Try living in extreme cold or heat over long periods of time. Not to mention that “where” you put yourself is determined by outside principles like property arrangements. There are quite a few things that de facto happen due to physical, social, and historical situatedness. — schopenhauer1
But they do. Every possibility of action is one whereby I need to figure out how to maintain my being. Willy Wonkas Forced Game is really a limited one, and you can piecemeal it further if you want but they fall under the categories listed..if I want none of that? Death. Comply or die. — schopenhauer1
Cause he’s peddling bullshit. It’s doubling down on the agenda..it’s not bypassing it cause you are doing it with more conviction or extremely. — schopenhauer1
Right, yet you don’t mind literally forcing people into a “choose your own adventure story” that can’t be escaped and is actually limited in options. Then you blame the person forced that how dare they question the situation. Willy Wonka lovingly forced this game for which you can comply or die. You still haven’t addressed Willy Wonka scenario..you, who got indignant at being even mentioned in a silly tertiary way as a fictional character gaslights the fact that people are literally forced into a real situation of inescapable, non-trivial, suffering and an agenda of comply or die. — schopenhauer1
But in procreation there is no existing character/identity to violate. — Possibility
A person’s immediate situatedness is predetermined, but highly variable and ultimately as temporary as they determine it to be. — Possibility
To judge it ‘inescapable’ is to reduce this actualising relation with potential/value to a binary (potential = good, actual = bad), even though both are continually subject to change, and subject to our conscious determination. — Possibility
It is your opinion that the chance of someone’s life being less than their potential is sufficient enough to warrant non-being. Plenty of people disagree with this evaluation, and you claim they’re wrong, but all they’re doing is evaluating life differently to you. You have no way of proving your own evaluation to be objective - it will always be relative to the affect of your limited experience. — Possibility
A person’s immediate situatedness is predetermined, but highly variable and ultimately as temporary as they determine it to be. — Possibility
Same goes for you. You have no way of proving your own evaluation to be objective - it will always be relative to the affect of your limited experience. — baker
Just google "create a life you love". But it's still all craving, granted, sometimes more sophisticated, but craving nonetheless. — baker
But apparently I need to be discredited by any means, because everyone needs to defer to his perspective as ‘the truth’. I’m not okay with THAT. — Possibility
No.Is ‘striving’ the same as ‘challenging yourself’ in your mind? — I like sushi
Are all hobbies, loves, likes and passions merely purposeful ‘distractions’ from the reality of inevitable existential angst? — I like sushi
If this is then taken into the realm of moral theory then I am assuming you and Schopenhauer are/were striving (‘suffering’) to produce a better moral theory. It kind if follows that we should not strive for a better moral theory because such is suffering and suffering is necessarily worse than not suffering (as you have stated elsewhere). — I like sushi
The fact you don’t recognize that we are all burdened with the task of subsisting at all and overcoming it, is denied by you. We can try to work together but it would be in this recognition of the tragedy and not through obfuscating misdirection of vague optimistic slogans. — schopenhauer1
And I’ve repeatedly said so. — Possibility
it’s inaccurate to morally judge someone else’s actions based on your own evaluation of life.
I’m not saying it isn’t. I’m saying that we have the intellectual capacity to reconfigure how we make sense of reality, so that craving, dissatisfaction or suffering is not a ‘problem’ to be overcome. This may sound to Schop like PR spin, but there’s little difference between what I’m doing and what he’s doing - we’re just pointing people in different directions. Only he’s insisting that his description of the world is the truth, while I’m just plain wrong.
I’m not going to defer to his perspective as ‘the truth’, and he’s not going to acknowledge my perspective as anything but an invalid default, because apparently only one of us can be right, and it must be him.
But I honestly think that BOTH our perspectives are valid, and the fact that I choose to live my life as if it has value doesn’t negate his choice to live his life as if it doesn’t, and vice versa.
I’m okay with that, and I actually think there is potentially a lot we can gain from a charitable discussion. But apparently I need to be discredited by any means, because everyone needs to defer to his perspective as ‘the truth’. I’m not okay with THAT.
“No” … how are they different to you?
If it is notthe right question why is it not. It is one I am asking. — I like sushi
Boredom sits at the heart of the human condition. — schopenhauer1
It's not that they don't recognize this task of subsisting, it's that they claim it's a matter of your choice, not of something forced on you.
In their view, when you're hungry, you _choose_ to eat. Your predicting that you will be hungry tomorrow and the day after that and so on, and therefore need to find ways to satisfy that need (by work, theft, reliance on mercy) is also something they see as a matter of your choice.
Perhaps with some arm twisting, they'd even declare that breathing is a matter of choice.
They are not alone in this view. A few more examples:
A Buddhist teacher once said in a speech words to the effect "your body is perfectly willing to die" and that it is a matter of your choice that you feed it, take care of it, etc.
Some spiritual teachers go further and say things to the effect that until you take responsibility for having been born at all, your life cannot really begin (Caroline Myss, IIRC).
In some religions, such as some schools of Hinduism and Buddhism, it is believed that one was born because one wanted to be born. Mormons, too, believe that one is born because one wanted to do so and chose it. — baker
"Comply or die" isn't tragic to them, it's the baseline, the bare minimum. In order to see things from their perspective, you need to forget about what secular constitutions of democratic countries and the Declaration of Human Rights say about the value of a human being, human dignity, and so on. To them, this is merely about human potential, not about actual people. In their eyes, you get no credit simply because you happen to be a human. You yet need to prove yourself to be worthy. — baker
"But at the bottom, the immanent philosopher sees in the entire universe only the deepest longing for absolute annihilation, and it is as if he clearly hears the call that permeates all spheres of heaven: Redemption! Redemption! Death to our life! and the comforting answer: you will all find annihilation and be redeemed!” - Philipp Mainländer, The Philosophy of Redemption — Gus Lamarch
Indeed, Mainlander seems pretty committed to promortalism, not just antinatalism. I understand where he's coming from. There is no escape from the constant dissatisfaction once it is set in motion for each individual. — schopenhauer1
E.M. Cioran — schopenhauer1
If “just about everything” in waking life is ‘dissatisfaction’ what is not ‘dissatisfaction’? — I like sushi
Both came to the same conclusion, however, Cioran, in a maniacal way, decided to laugh at the pain. — Gus Lamarch
And schopenhauer1, to communally recognize, and empathize about the situation. Collective understanding of tragedy. Consolation of shared understanding. Cioran was doing the same thing in a way because he published his work. He was sharing his thoughts.. having a dialogue with the public, held some interviews and discussed with friends. — schopenhauer1
"Comply or die" isn't tragic to them, it's the baseline, the bare minimum. In order to see things from their perspective, you need to forget about what secular constitutions of democratic countries and the Declaration of Human Rights say about the value of a human being, human dignity, and so on. To them, this is merely about human potential, not about actual people. In their eyes, you get no credit simply because you happen to be a human. You yet need to prove yourself to be worthy. — baker
it is noticeable that if taken as something to share with others, the possibility of a resentful community emerging grows tremendously. — Gus Lamarch
And resentful people eternalize collective suffering. — Gus Lamarch
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