Survival is much easier. Most people struggle with affairs that involve more than just survival - the achievement of pleasure, etc.we have to push to survive — Cavacava
Nietzsche had it wrong. He fell in the camp that tried to justify life. That's the wrong camp. The right camp is the camp that doesn't need to justify life at all - the camp for which the justification of life is a non-question. Some deny life, others affirm it - but to be a true man, neither deny nor affirm.Beyond Good and Evil 56: — Cavacava
I don't call an association of people a burden. If we didn't associate with other people, we would have a much harder time.He must burden other people to do so, consenting or not, who at the same time, are also preoccupied with rolling their own boulders up the mountain. — OglopTo
Absolutely! Because it's not the event of reaching the top that matters, but the process of getting there. Over and over.When he gets his boulder to the top and see it roll down again, can you still imagine Sisyphus happy to repeat the process all over again? — OglopTo
3) Suffering as Rewarding in and of itself1) Suffering as currency
There is an unavoidable baseline of suffering. The more you try to avoid it, the more ubiquitous it becomes (e.g. boredom, restlessness). If you fall into the habit of avoidance, this can becomes quite pernicious. Avoidance is the wrong strategy. This baseline suffering is biological currency that can be exchanged for pleasure. Meet it head on with physical exercise, strategically directed toil, and to do good for others if you have anything left to burn. That's how you cash it out.
2) Suffering as tragedy
This is the gratuitous suffering that I'm sure we mostly agree about. This is where you find the horrors of life that give the antinatalist position any bite at all. Statistically, it's virtually inevitable that life involves some of this. It's possible to get luck or unlucky here and, on one extreme end of the spectrum, it's hard to make the case that such an unlucky life is worthwhile. That's a fuzzy line to draw and folks draw it in different places. Where you draw the line, along with your sensitivity to risk, should guide certain moral decisions like whether to have kids. Having kids is a very serious gambit. Using your own subjective threshold and risk aversion to make this decision for others is the big mis-step of antinatalism. It's simply uncompelling to them. — Roke
I don't call an association of people a burden. If we didn't associate with other people, we would have a much harder time. — Agustino
Suffering as Rewarding in and of itself — Agustino
. Buddha, whom Nietzsche mocked, was unperturbed. For him there was no need to justify life in the first place. — Agustino
Because we must image it like that! I mean it contains the assumption that there's an obligation to answer in a certain way and so it restricts the answers to the questioner's agenda.How so? — Agustino
but I don't think living is the point in life but nourishing and cherishing what is of value to the particular individual — Noblosh
Well, I'm with you in that I find anyone in camp 1 suspect. Suffering is a fundamental part of life. — Roke
1) Suffering as currency
There is an unavoidable baseline of suffering. The more you try to avoid it, the more ubiquitous it becomes (e.g. boredom, restlessness). If you fall into the habit of avoidance, this can becomes quite pernicious. Avoidance is the wrong strategy. This baseline suffering is biological currency that can be exchanged for pleasure. Meet it head on with physical exercise, strategically directed toil, and to do good for others if you have anything left to burn. That's how you cash it out. — Roke
Now, in our free time we have chances for "flow" experiences (the stuff you were talking about.. funny how exercise is the best you can think of :D). — schop
The absurd, repetitive, never satisfied feeling. — schopenhauer1
And at what cost?
Having to bother other people and add to their problems and suffering, directly or indirectly...
Consuming resources that other people could have used instead... — OglopTo
Life is war. I prefer this war in its sublimated manifestations. I fight for a life of love, creativity, pleasure. This might require moments of hatred, destruction, and pain. Sometimes the ugly has to step in for a moment to maintain the usually beautiful. — visit0r
Anticipation gives life its color, the expectation of a future metamorphosis keeps us going, even if this future never actually materializes. — darthbarracuda
For example, I may program and code, with a cup of coffee next to me and earbuds in, listening to some sort of space ambient music or science-fiction music. It really pulls me out of "reality" and into a different one, the world of the what-if. What if I was on a space-faring vessel, exploring some distant star cluster, away from the political bullshit on Earth, the impending environmental disaster, the rampant suffering and decay? I think people live in this world of the what-if more than actual "reality". They spend more time dreaming than acting, because dreaming doesn't come with limitations. People take drugs to escape reality. They browse social media to escape their responsibilities. — darthbarracuda
Yes we need to get caught up in something. If we get stuck on our own existence- broken tool-mode, we cannot handle it for too long it seems. Does that sound about right?There are ready-at-hand entities (equipment), that have a reference towards-which (work), which is for-the-sake-of-which (a possibility of Dasein's Being), or for-Others, etc. The angst, the anxiety, comes from the moments when we ask for what sake do we ourselves exist and do all the things we do. It's a void of meaninglessness in which the nothing "nihilates" our contextual meaning, our world. Nothing matters anymore, it's all just very ephemeral and pointless. — darthbarracuda
As others have argued, the desire for perfect innocence is a desire for the grave. I wrestled with that desire intensely once and came out much freer and fiercer on the other side. Life is war. I prefer this war in its sublimated manifestations. I fight for a life of love, creativity, pleasure. This might require moments of hatred, destruction, and pain. Sometimes the ugly has to step in for a moment to maintain the usually beautiful. — visit0r
On the other hand, the task of philosophy as such is to attain a state of equilibrium, harmony, emotional balance, and so on - the traditional ethics. That is a rather different matter to effecting social change, although it can be related. But in my case, I have pursued that through meditation and study of the philosophical traditions associated with that. I suppose, to extrapolate from that, that if more people pursued such an understanding, then it would have a ripple effect, in that many of the compulsions, neuroses, and obsessions that often generate social problems would be dissipated by such a way of life. — Wayfarer
I suppose the problem you discount is humans are always at a disequilibrium — schopenhauer1
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