I subscribe to a Buddhist philosophy — Wayfarer
Why bother, dude? It's all just ripples in the nothingness." — visit0r
I think it should be noted that "it's all just ripples in the nothingness, dude" was my voicing of a position that I was criticizing and not my own position. — visit0r
Perhaps I can tie all of this together by suggesting that the nihilist is wise at least in his tearing of the divine predicates away from any particular subject that stands at distance from him — visit0r
Nothing. — Agustino
As I see it, life can be sufficiently fascinating on the local level so that "ultimate futility" can be abstractly true and yet not terribly relevant. — visit0r
The urge to procreate is a biological drive, actually the fundamental biological drive. — Wayfarer
But in the here and now, and in the immediate future, having children and pursuing one's "passions" has its costs, e.g. adding to other people's worries, eating resources, etc.I don't care that it achieves nothing in the grand scheme of things. — Agustino
It also adds to their blessings.adding to other people's worries — OglopTo
What else are you gonna do with them?eating resources — OglopTo
Right. I'm also an engineer by training, clearly we're not making the same assessment.My training in engineering prompts me to weigh in the costs and benefits. It just seems to me that paying for one's personal happiness with these costs is not a fair bargain. — OglopTo
Right. I'm also an engineer by training, clearly we're not making the same assessment. — Agustino
It's simple. Don't engage in risky things. Be patient. Build your resources and your life slowly. Only have children when you can afford to completely take care of them. Etc. Nobody said you should be an idiot and max out your risk.Maybe we're putting different weights on suffering vs. blessings and different risk valuations. — OglopTo
The urge to procreate is a biological drive, actually the fundamental biological drive.
— Wayfarer
And at what cost? — OglopTo
It's simple. Don't engage in risky things. Be patient. Build your resources and your life slowly. Only have children when you can afford to completely take care of them. Etc. Nobody said you should be an idiot and max out your risk. — Agustino
So what? Suffering is a part of life. It is good to taste of the fountain of suffering. Only when it hurts can you finally encounter your own will, and look at your own face, perhaps for the very first time. It is through overcoming adversity - through not yielding - that the human soul remarks itself. Being close to your loved ones when they suffer, and being there to guide them, that is of the essence.there is 99.9999% certainty that one's offspring will experience pain/suffering — OglopTo
God has thrown man into hell to show him that not even the fires of hell can consume his soul. — Agustino
Why NOT? :sWhy is this something that should take place? Why throw more actors on the stage? — schopenhauer1
The stage needs neither more, nor less, nor the same number of actors. The idea of a stage with no actors is incoherent. The outer world is a manifestation of the inner world, and just as the inner pulses with unending and never-dying life, so will the outward. What use if you stop multiplying? Human like species will appear on a myriad of other worlds across the Universe, and even in other Universes. The dance knows no beginning and no end. Pff - one puny species stops having children. The Universe doesn't give a damn. For every child you do not have, the universe will spit out a hundred more while laughing in your face! Man is like fodder for the gods, a plaything. Nothing you can do ultimately matters to it. It shall go on, with or without your approval. You desperately shout why, and it laughs asking you why not?Does the stage need more actors or do you simply not like the idea of no actors on the stage? — schopenhauer1
and out of fear and trembling cannot bear to bring it to your own lips and sip it in a single gulp, as if it were nothing - you are cowardly. FEAR rules you. — Agustino
And don't you make bank on your suffering? Every time you suffer, isn't the dough hitting your cash register? Aren't you learning how to deal with the pain, how to overcome it, how to transform it? Isn't suffering its own reward? Hasn't God more than provided you with what you need? The largest benefits are the direct result of suffering. Suffering and benefit are tied like cause and effect.A gentler way of putting it is that I empathize with the suffering that my hypothetical offspring will inevitably suffer. — OglopTo
The reward and the suffering are not two different things - they are one. So there is no question of the suffering being worth it. It's not even a question. You don't exchange suffering for a reward. The suffering is the reward.With that logic, you're implying that self-realization and fulfillment is the ultimate reward and that the suffering one has been through and the suffering one has inflicted on other people, directly or indirectly, is worth it. — OglopTo
Poor Job, tragic hero.What did God tell Job? Who are you to dare question my Supremacy, my infinite wisdom, my decisions, and my creation? Where were you when I made the Heavens and the Earth? You are a nobody, no one asked you for your opinion. So go back and accept your burdens with faith in Me - I know better than you can ever know. — Agustino
How so?That's a loaded question. — Noblosh
I partly agree with you, but I don't think this is everything. Remember when Camus said that the struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart?I think Camus wanted to say that regardless of fate, man creates his own values. Sisyphus is happy because he is his own man regardless of his fate. — Cavacava
No, I don't try to justify it, I'm saying that it needs no justification whatsoever. It's as simple as that. It exists. It doesn't need to be justified. Putting people into the world doesn't need justification. Neither does suffering.This seems to be Agustino's view for example. At least this one ADMITS there is suffering but tries to justify it. — schopenhauer1
the struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart?
Anyone who, like me, has, with some enigmatic desire or other, made an effort for a long time to think profoundly about pessimism and to rescue it from the half-Christian, half-German restrictions and simple-mindedness with which it has most recently appeared in this century, that is, in the form of Schopenhauer's philosophy; anyone who really has, with an Asian and super-Asiatic eye, looked into and down on the most world-denying of all possible ways of thinking - beyond good and evil and no longer as Buddha and Schopenhauer do, under the spell and delusion of morality - such a man has perhaps in the process, without really wanting to do so, opened his eyes for the reverse morality: for the ideal of the most high-spirited, most lively, and most world-affirming human being, who has not only learned to come to terms with and accept what was and is but wants to have what was and is come back for all eternity, calling out insatiably da capo [from the beginning] , not only to himself but to the entire play and spectacle, and not only to a spectacle but basically to the man who needs this particular spectacle and who makes the spectacle necessary, because over and over again he needs himself - and makes himself necessary. How's that? Wouldn't this be circulus vitiosus deus [god as a vicious circle]?
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