Its good you are questioning and doubting everything, but hopefully you are also questioning and doubting yourself. Especially, the value/meaning/ "status" you give to everything and yourself. Both the values, and the e-valuer. Therein is the repository of tricks as well as the trickster. — skyblack
I’m not going into the whole procreate business again. No point. We are not going to see eye-to-eye there not understand each other because the problem lies deeper in trying to understand each other at all. So … — I like sushi
It is this underlying issue that seems entwined around buddhism and is why I am not exactly in favour of certain buddhist factions. It is too much like living can be viewed as living as a zombie or as if life itself is illusionary. The ‘illusionary’ part is okay to some degree because the life we perceive is mostly a human life not some intrinsic connection to ‘the things in themselves’ and we live in a culturally defined cooking pot … so even the Schopenhauer ideas are build upon the vast waste of nothingness … the pointlessness, but we never see the pointlessness directly or we wouldn’t move. — I like sushi
We ‘live’. Why? No one knows. I think ‘why?’ as a serious question about this is quite meaningless if anything it meaningless. — I like sushi
Life in this world is about dominance.
Antinatalists are simply losers, weaklings. — baker
People, however, can be able to understand what is going on, even if just a few can really recognize it for what it is. — schopenhauer1
Or simply overpower others. Understanding what is going on is overrated, for the most part.
You'd need to show that understanding really does make a difference, a relevant difference. — baker
So you obviously don't pay attention to what I am saying — schopenhauer1
We are lacking in something present that drives us to the goal/basic need. We lack a fulfillment, and what we relieve it with is temporary and unsustainable. And thus Schopenhauer's quote about if life was of positive value, we would want for nothing. We wouldn't have dissatisfaction. But of course it isn't like that. — schopenhauer1
You think I have been reading every post? No. — I like sushi
Stop what? Trying to find somewhere we can have a discussion … no I won’t. We do not have to agree on one point to have a discussion about something else.
I’ll skip over the rest of the weird snipes at me and put it down to … you can fill in the blanks with whatever. — I like sushi
Here is where I see the problem. Life as a ‘positive value’? What does that even mean. If we didn’t have ‘dissatisfaction’ we would not be living beings. So what? How does stating that if we didn’t have anything to do, nothing to work for, no need to try and survive, then we would be dead make any kind of sense as either a ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ value? — I like sushi
This literally makes no sense whatsoever to me. Life contains value. That is how we are able to attribute ‘value’ - by being alive. No life means no value whatsoever as there is no evaluation of anything by anything. The fact that we can value things means we attribute both positive and negative value to items. Not existing means absence of value NOT something either ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. — I like sushi
I a not straw manning you here at all. I am presenting, as best I can, my thoughts on this matter. So PLEASE take them as they are and quiz/correct where you feel you need to. I am not hear to learn from you I am here to learn full stop so drop the ego … it is depressing and tiresome if all you give are barbs on barbs. — I like sushi
Just because “we” are part of a changing social arrangement or dynamic or that we learn by social means largely, doesn’t mean there is no individual whereby no one actually is doing the thinking, decision-making, who feels, who is the person writing this right now. — schopenhauer1
There is standard Buddhist doctrine. — baker
No. From what I've seen, insiders understand it immediately to be about the idea that one should "postpone" one's enlightenment in favor of "helping others".
It's a belief that the blind are nevertheless fully qualified to lead the blind and to be trusted (blindly).
Mahayana criticizes Theravada for being "selfish", for not caring about others, and only focusing on one's own development. Theravada points out the folly and the danger of the blind leading the blind.
I brought this up in reference to your proposition that we should help others, even at the expense of our own lives. It's an absurd proposition that serves no other purpose but to bolster one's ego. — baker
We are all blind until the moment we attain enlightenment, at which point we are no longer in a position to lead. This is the dilemma we face. — Possibility
1) Try burdening people with less. Just as we were burdened with the dissatisfaction-overcoming of being born at all, perhaps we can try to not put too many burdens on others.. Too many demands. Too many ultimatums.. Too many musts.. Of course this is never unavoidable with the Game (lest death) so it is only to lessen, it can never be to make go away completely all demands on others, obviously.
2) Try using humor, especially shared cynical humor when doing tasks that are unpleasant.. Like making the unpleasant task known as a shared hatred amongst peers that must deal with the task.
3) Try to tread lightly.. don't be aggressive with others, dominant, etc. This is what got us here in the first place.. people aggressively pursuing their agenda.
4) Shared consolation of suffering.. complain and listen to others complaints. Be sympathetic to them and perhaps feel a sense of community in sharing the burdens and the dissatisfaction-overcoming process. — schopenhauer1
It is funny how people confuse leading out of a bad situation to putting people in the situation in the first place so that they can lead them out. I'm not saying you are doing that, but surely that is and has gone on trillions of times over. I'm trying to prevent the latter situation. I don't want people to even have to lead people from X to Y, or from ignorance to enlightenment, or whathaveyou. I certainly don't want people to follow Wonka's "loving" agenda of which way to survive, get more comfortable, and overcome dissatisfaction. — schopenhauer1
They ignore or belittle anyone who proposes an alternative, and they take great pride in pointing out how every opportunity to change just appears to be more of the same. It’s a crab in the bucket scenario. — Possibility
Yet, you have offered no real solution other than words like "connection, collaboration, and awareness". Funny how easy that part is. Vague notions are a dime-a-dozen. — schopenhauer1
vocal pessimism — Possibility
Sleep apnea is a microcosm of the gaslighting situation. You see here is a problem that one’s esophageal tissue is in the business of actively suffocating yourself at night. But eh, now we have a “solution”, the CPAP machine to shove up your face to allow proper breathing. So to get this, you go to the sleep doctor and have electrodes put on you while you sleep in a monitored hospital bed for 8 hours. They see all the lack of sleep and pauses in breathing, and you are prescribed an expensive machine to wear over your mouth and nose every night to help you breathe.
You might say, “Look at that! We can find solutions to so many problems!”.
But the problem is having the problem to overcome in the first place. It is this moral disqualification of being presented with problems to overcome in the first place, that I will never let go. You can play pretend all you want that self is an illusion. Pretend at being some Eastern sage. But the reality is it is the individual dealing with these things. You can try to twist the logic in wordplay but that’s it. Whether you say it is an illusion matters not because there is still the first person protagonist getting suffocated. The obvious fact that we have to work together to solve problems doesn’t make the individual self disappear either, nor does it negate the fact that the problem existed the first place to be overcome. This misguided notion is that overcoming itself means is good when in fact it’s just the opposite. It’s people being forced to face overcoming dissatisfaction. — schopenhauer1
Because there IS NO one-size-fits-all, ‘concrete’ solution. Because everyone’s situation is different, and changes all the time. Because any step-by-step instruction manual for life is going to be relevant to only those whose situation is identical to yours was. — Possibility
We don't recommend natalism (there's still so much suffering and by the looks of it, the situation is only going to get worse), but do continue to have children because there's a slim chance that one of those children or their descendants will find a solution to suffering.
State control of family aka Family Planning! — Agent Smith
No, the appearance is the ‘individual dealing with these things’. For you, it seems, the world as representation is the reality, being oppressed by the world as will, in the form of an ‘agenda’. This seems to directly contradict Schopenhauer...? — Possibility
To reduce the suffering, it helps to be aware of what’s going on inside the body, how these systems connect to the suffocation, as well as how that affects both the quantitative and qualitative potential of the world as will. In other words, recognise that the individual is just one minor aspect of a far more complex situation, and find ways we can collaborate with the many aspects that contribute to the situation. — Possibility
But I’m not proposing ‘a solution’, and if you were paying any attention to what I’ve been writing here (apart from how it appears to contradict your position), you might see that. I’m not saying ‘we have to work together to solve problems’, either - that’s only a narrow perspective of collaboration. Situations appear as ‘problems’ relative to a perspective. The human mind is capable of understanding the reality of a situation from a number of different perspectives and at various different levels of awareness, and prioritising one of these over another is merely a preference on our part, not a necessity. — Possibility
To reduce the suffering, it helps to be aware of what’s going on inside the body, how these systems connect to the suffocation, as well as how that affects both the quantitative and qualitative potential of the world as will. In other words, recognise that the individual is just one minor aspect of a far more complex situation, and find ways we can collaborate with the many aspects that contribute to the situation. — Possibility
let alone construct a definable (concrete) position so you can orientate yourself in opposition. — Possibility
The human mind is capable of understanding the reality of a situation from a number of different perspectives and at various different levels of awareness, and prioritising one of these over another is merely a preference on our part, not a necessity. — Possibility
We tend to think that the value of humanity derives from this capacity to act individually and collectively against the ‘natural’ process of existence, but if there is value in humanity at all, then it is in our capacity to be aware of and participate in it, rather than try to survive it, dominate it, or ‘overcome’ it through procreation, as if it’s a ‘problem’. — Possibility
That means that those possible future children will be treated as a means, not as an end itself. That is wrong. — Antinatalist
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.