I think the responses were already in hand before the objections were read. — Leontiskos

If you are referring to how Linino responded, it seems so yes.

One doesn't need to remain dissatisfied with the prevalence of dissatisfaction; reducing dissatisfaction, however much or temporarily, cultivates degrees of 'satisfaction'. Schopenhaurean pessimism merely amounts to self-fulfilling immiseration (even though it aptly reflects an inescapable fact of (human) existence). — 180 Proof

Yes we've been over the notion of the philosophies of acceptance and denial. I don't see satisfaction-attaining as a matter of hypothetical imperatives cooked up by aphoristic wisdom. Even Schop had these in his Maxims. One can train before a game to get better at the game. It's the game I am looking at. Unlike an actual game, the contingencies involved and ability not to escape. And if you discuss suicide like Mainlander.. Again I quote a philosopher you also seem to like, Cioran:
The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time.
Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists.

Religionists argue that these restraints are necessary to prevent civilization from descending into decadence and excessive hedonism, where higher values are discarded in favor of simple pleasures. They believe that without these moral guidelines, society would lose its ethical foundation and succumb to chaos.

I think that's partly the critique, but it can go in a number of directions. Partly the critique is that people are made unfree by hedonism, they are essentially chained to their appetites and conditioned passions à la A Brave New World. They never develop a capacity for self-determination. Huxley is a good example here, or for a (slightly) more religious angle you might consider C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man, particularly just the last, rather short chapter, which can be found here: here.

I don't think this is exclusively the purview of "Christian nationalists." This seems to be a fairly common objection to the direction of modernity. A key idea is that "not everything we desire is good for us," even if we can grow the economy or make some men rich by allowing or promoting them. The issue here isn't so much any one religion but belief in a concrete human good, which, as Lewis notes, is common to the Indian and Chinese traditions as well.

Virtually all people agree with this sort of view to some degree. Very few people want the drinking age lowered to 11 because kids might enjoy a drink, for pornography to be show on broadcast television because people might want to tune in (although it might as well be given how ubiquitous it is), for heroin to be sold as the corner store like candy, or even for us to market and hook kids on sugary and caffeine loaded drinks the way we do. Nor do we want people to necessarily be able to buy all manner of things just because they'd like to consume them—hence why I have never gotten to mount an anti-tank guided missile on my car to stop people from cutting me off.

There is even some grudging acceptance that the state and society have a shared interest in forcing people to undergo an education. Although here you can see the fault lines come through. A lot of people want such an education to be "practical," to be totally focused on "getting a job," and so really focused on "doing some unpleasantness now so you (and we) can all consume more in the future." Lewis would represent the common opposition to this way of thinking, the traditional view that education should involve showing people what should be appreciated, an education in good taste, a moral education, an "education in the virtues," and the fostering of "excellence." Obviously, for people who deny that excellence really exists, or goodness, the focus is different since moral "conditioning" can only really ever be justified on some other grounds (perhaps higher consumption for all). Why is more consumption better? That's a good question; it seems unanswerable given common starting points vis-á-vis goodness.

Anyhow, the OP seems to dismiss any real belief in "goodness as such," as opposed to some sort of operationalization like "promoting pleasure," as the realm of religious fanatics. I don't think this is particularly accurate. And the common critique from this direction of existentialism and hedonism would tend to be:

A. That it ignores the risk of being ruled over by appetites, passions, and circumstance—that it ignores the freedom of the self over the self, and the unification of the self (as opposed to Plato and St. Paul's "civil war within the soul"); and

B. That it ends up being ultimately arbitrary. Value is "created" based on what? Why is becoming free to create one's values "good?" Why is authenticity "good?" What if someone is authentically a sadist, or thinks they are? Why shouldn't they deprive others of their freedom? The pragmatism of "live and let live," would of course only apply if one were not strong enough to overcome all rivals, and so it really can't be an answer to these questions.

Humanism champions the pursuit of happiness, ethical living, and progress, with an optimistic belief in the potential for human improvement. Yet, it often glosses over the fundamental suffering that pervades life and the fleeting nature of pleasure. Pessimism, on the other hand, cuts through this idealism, recognizing that suffering is a constant part of existence. By acknowledging this harsh reality, pessimism offers a more grounded perspective that avoids the disillusionment that comes from chasing unattainable humanist ideals.

If suffering was constant could it be distinguished from non-suffering? Suffering might be ubiquitous, but then again so is pleasure.

It seems to me that pessimism needs to show that the Good is truly unachievable, not merely that suffering is ubiquitous. Medieval thought for instance can often be pessimistic. The world is indeed fallen, and what is worse progressively decaying and getting worse. Life is filled with suffering and evil. However it has a radically different conclusion because the Good is achievable

In fact, it is the people who actually went through great hardships and actual suffering that seem to have the most positive outlook on life. The "always kinda-depressed but not really" type seems to be an existence that occurs almost exclusively in upper middle-class urban settings. There is almost a role-play element to it:
"Oh no, my crush is sleeping with another guy! There are children in Africa starving! Time to read another Dostoyevsky novel."

lol, but the last part doesn't make sense. The Brother's Karamazov presents both one of the most effective arguments against the acceptance of suffering (Ivan in Pro and Contra) and also one of the most powerful theodicies in response to it (David Bentley Hart's "The Doors of the Sea," on the 2004 tsunami is a great essay looking at BK as well). Reading Dostoevsky should have the opposite effect!

@schopenhauer1 ... the Shortcomings of Popular Secularist Philosophies, or secularism in general?

Harvey Cox, a distinguished and maybe even popular theologian (he's 95 years old) wrote The Secular City in 1964. This was at a time when the people in the pews had noticed the EXIT signs over the church doors and were leaving the church, mostly to not return, Secular institutions--government, media, entertainment, corporations, education, etc. were becoming more dominant in society, not just in the US, but around the world.

Cox proclaimed that God was as present in secular societies as in any religious one, because God is present at all times and in all places, whether we like it or not. The problem of believers, per Cox, is to discern God, and discern what it means to believe in God, and be Christian in the middle of societies organizing or reorganizing around secular principles.

There is nothing to be done about secularism. It has developed over time and been driven by various processes, like industrialism, technology, and so on. It is a fact of life; it's the world we live in; it isn't going away; it isn't the enemy.

The Secular City made a very big impression on my 17 year old brain in 1964, and it's had an enduring influence. I was brought up in a religious (Protestant) home, and Christianity, whether I like it or not, is the core of my 'operating system'. There were / are conflicts between core beliefs and current realities. When the choice was between physically affirming my gayness and faith, the Christian condemnation of homosexuality--and promiscuous, anonymous, hedonistic sex in general, gay or straight--had to be dumped over-board. Sexuality was the right choice and the church was wrong. (And, of course, more power to those who love monogamously till death do them part.)

Still, God is present in the gay bath house, the brothel, and walks with the street whores (aka sex workers). If God worries about sparrows, God also worries about the well-being of "degenerate" members of the community. The preaching of Jesus is relevant in all places, (brothel or corporate board room) something most of us find quite inconvenient.

Secularism may be accommodating to the least among us, but just as likely, it may be dismissive or punitive--like the neglect of the homeless living on the street. That certainly describes the church's overall approach--cue the pogrom, the stake and firewood, public humiliations, etc. Jesus still stands against all that, even if it is all done in His name.

God, Jesus, and salvation are motivations one won't find in secularism. There are other motivations, of course, and I'm not knocking them.

I've been far more secular than religious for decades. If I am standing up religion here, it is just to say that IF a secularized individual needs some rock solid moral directives, religion does offer them. Just don't get carried away and turn them into cruelty, bigotry and oppression (like stoning apostates to death or burning heretics at the stake).

:ok: And yet ...

Schopenhaurean pessimism merely amounts to self-fulfilling immiseration — 180 Proof

i.e. learned helplessness. :mask:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

As for the OP's 'problem of secularism', I think it is the same as the 'problem of democracy': tolerance of the intolerant (i.e. sectarian anti-secularists & partisan anti-democrats, respectively), and not uneven, or inconsistent, 'Enlightenment melioration-ism' per se.

Or, he is a New Age God, and he is LOVE

This isn't really "New Age." It's in First John: "ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν," generally rendered as "God is love." (God is also being itself, that "in which we live and move and have our being"—Book of Acts 17:28—and truly subsistent being, being where essence entails existence—Exodus 3:7-14.) Apokatastasis, the doctrine that the entire cosmos shall be redeemed, including the Devil and his archons, far from being a modern "hippy" innovation, was at its peak in the first 500 years of the Church. It was probably more popular that "infernalism," the doctrine of eternal punishment for sinners, in the first 300 years (this did not mean it was a majority opinion; majority opinion was that unrepentant sinners would simply cease to exist, or that all people would endure purgation and some would cease to exist to the extent they did not repent). In the Oriental Orthodox churches one finds matter of fact references to universal salvation until the 14th century.

The question of how to deal with the evolution of tradition is as old as theology. Bart Ehrman types or your Christopher Hitchensens might think that the problems of reconciling changes in tradition is a modern problem brought out by "new tools of scholarship," but it isn't. Questions like the authorship of some Epistles are as old as Christian theology, showing up in Origen. In fact, because the Jewish and Christian Canon were still open people were particularly aware of how man's decisions effected tradition.

Likewise, visions of tradition as unfolding in history according to Divine Providence, but also shaped by the free volitions of creatures (man but also angels, and corrupt archons/principalities)—the idea that Plato was were he was, when he was to help with understanding revelation, or that Rome helped to bring Athens and Jerusalem together, and the general idea of historical synthesis driving on progress, all go back long before Hegel (Eusebius, St. Jerome, etc.). A big innovation of Christianity was to extend the cyclical philosophy of history dominant in antiquity into a spiral pattern progressing towards a teleological horizon.

David Bentley Hart's Tradition and Apocalypse is a pretty good book on this, although I think it undersells the historicism present in earlier eras.

You imply that the non-upper...blah blah class suffers a certain way implying other classes don't — schopenhauer1

No, not at all. You can only reread my post until you stop seeing statements that are not there, it is clearly written, but I know it is not gonna happen.

It's actually the opposite of acceptance. — schopenhauer1

Sure I should have said resignation towards suffering instead of acceptance.

suffering is necessary for happiness — schopenhauer1

Many psychologists would agree with that. It is not sadism.

Glad to know you solved the problems of suffering with the gym, brah. — schopenhauer1

Yes, it worked for a bunch of people and keeps working every year. Be honest, do you exercise?

You didn't have to post that image twice, by the way.

Ah yes, YOU are the arbiter of what people should be feeling about life. — schopenhauer1

Most people are not depressed or miserable despite having far worse lives than you, so it is you who thinks yourself an arbiter.

You are arguing as if you are in the Lounge. This thread should be merged into the antinatalism containment thread, because that is what it is.

You are arguing as if you are in the Lounge. This thread should be merged into the antinatalism containment thread, because that is what it is. — Lionino

And there should be a thread for Nietzsche answers.. All answers that implicitly refer to NIetzschean "pain is gain" straight to that thread. Can we parse out your replies to those?

No, not at all. You can only reread my post until you stop seeing statements that are not there, it is clearly written, but I know it is not gonna happen. — Lionino

Dude bro, you said the most dismissive trivialized version of Pessimism I've seen in a while right here and I countered it. You said:

In fact, it is the people who actually went through great hardships and actual suffering that seem to have the most positive outlook on life. The "always kinda-depressed but not really" type seems to be an existence that occurs almost exclusively in upper middle-class urban settings. There is almost a role-play element to it:
"Oh no, my crush is sleeping with another guy! There are children in Africa starving! Time to read another Dostoyevsky novel."

Perhaps there is a neurological element to it. For someone who went through a great crisis, everyday life will often be a high. For those however who have dwelt forever in mundane mediocrity, life is like a constant barely-worse-than-average experience. — Lionino

Go F off then if you say you didn't say what I responded to in kind.

Thank you so much. That was beautiful.

Humanist Pursuits: For humanists, meaning can come from scientific inquiry, the arts, and building technologically advanced societies. These pursuits aim to improve the human condition and advance knowledge, but they can still feel empty without a connection to something greater than individual or collective achievements. — schopenhauer1

This doesn't much describe what I experience as finding life meaningful, although there is an aspect of 'doing art' involved in the story below. For me what is most meaningful lies in human interactions, and cherished memories of such interactions.

I'm particularly high on finding life beautiful right now, due to a message I received yesterday. I want to share it, although I don't know if it will seem meaningful to you, and in fact I wonder if it will somehow make you angry.

To start off, there is this video game called Journey. It's a very artistic game designed with a goal of providing people with spiritual experiences via one on one interactions between two people, with the only means of communication between the players being via on screen 'body language' and repertoire of beeps. Typically you are playing with a stranger and don't find out the other player's screen name until the game is over. One playthrough of the game takes about two hours.

Five years ago I played through the game with someone, and afterwards I received a personal message that said:

Hi, sorry if this is weird or unusual, but you just went through a Journey with me, and I want to say thank you. This was my third play through and in my second I lost my companion through the [Spoiler omitted] Thank you for sticking with me and showing me all those symbols. For some reason this all made me really emotional. Thank you so much, that was an amazing feeling. I was thinking maybe some day I can help someone like that too. I hope I will. It's not just about completing the game.
That was something else really.

I'm not going to bother typing my response, but three months later she messaged again to say:

Hello, I wanted to say goodbye. I'm tidying up my friends list on here and removing anyone but my real-life friends and colleagues. I'm wishing you all the best. I hope you've been well whoever and wherever you are. I hope you'll always find joy even after dark times in your life. Be well and farewell, and maybe we'll meet again in Journey. Until then, take care, and thank you.

To that I replied:

Thanks for the kind words, and the same to you. And thanks for the best after Journey message I've ever gotten. There is nothing better I could have heard than that our journey inspired you to want to help people. Best wishes.

Yesterday, I decided to try another game of Journey, though the game is old and there aren't many playing these days. It can take a while to be paired up with a companion. When I logged on I found the following message:

Hey there, I played a bit of journey again, and was showing it to a friend. I mentioned you to her because after all this time I still haven't forgotten you. The playthrough was memorable to me. It really left an impression. I'm wondering whether you are fine and how you are doing -- I felt like we had talked more but I guess we didn't. I don't know where that memory came from. It's really strange seeing it now. I still think of you from time to time and hope you are well over there.

I guess my point, other than just wanting to share something very beautiful and meaningful to me, is that the nonexistence of cosmic meaning just doesn't seem very important to me. The human capacity for finding things meaningful exists, regardless of whether meaning exists. Furthermore the rather large percentage of the human population able to find such interactions meaningful simply isn't going to be argued out of finding life meaningful.

I do find it interesting that these are all veiled forms of superssessionism.. Let's look at some:

This isn't really "New Age." It's in First John: "ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν," generally rendered as "God is love." (God is also being itself, that "in which we live and move and have our being"—Book of Acts 17:28—and truly subsistent being, being where essence entails existence—Exodus 3:7-14.) — Count Timothy von Icarus

God is love from Book of John.. Arguably, John can be viewed in light of Marcion's notion that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, the creator god, was a demiurge of sorts who had a host of negative traits. It was Jesus and his more universal message from the Higher God that came to set the story straight and save from the material realm.

It was probably more popular that "infernalism," the doctrine of eternal punishment for sinners, in the first 300 years (this did not mean it was a majority opinion; majority opinion was that unrepentant sinners would simply cease to exist, or that all people would endure purgation and some would cease to exist to the extent they did not repent). In the Oriental Orthodox churches one finds matter of fact references to universal salvation until the 14th century. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Concepts of Hell are mainly from notions of Hades/Tartarus. The old notion of Sheol has little to do with purgation or sins.

Questions like the authorship of some Epistles are as old as Christian theology, showing up in Origen. In fact, because the Jewish and Christian Canon were still open people were particularly aware of how man's decisions effected tradition. — Count Timothy von Icarus

For sure, you can see these types of questions of authorship and authority in Dead Sea Scroll Sect, Josephus, and Philo.. And certainly people have questioned gospel authorship since their inception.

Likewise, visions of tradition as unfolding in history according to Divine Providence, but also shaped by the free volitions of creatures (man but also angels, and corrupt archons/principalities)—the idea that Plato was were he was, when he was to help with understanding revelation, or that Rome helped to bring Athens and Jerusalem together, and the general idea of historical synthesis driving on progress, all go back long before Hegel (Eusebius, St. Jerome, etc.). A big innovation of Christianity was to extend the cyclical philosophy of history dominant in antiquity into a spiral pattern progressing towards a teleological horizon. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a sort of supercessionism.. It can't be pure Jerusalem. Needs help from Plato to make sense of Judaic literature. Philo, for example spearheaded this. Paul took it in some directions, and Church Fathers completed the mixture. If we are going to throw out the native Judaic interpretations, let's go full hog and go with Marcion and the Gnostics, none of this middle ground stuff (The Israelite/Judaic stuff was legitimate but no longer, so fuck em). For the originators of the materials surrounding "Yahweh and his people", it was better to be ignored or chastised than superseded, hence the Gnostics were the least fatal. Paul and Church Fathers were deadly folks (Origen, Tertullian, Irenaeus. Eusebius etc.). Supercessionism is deadly.

Arguably angels came into being either as a relic of the old Canaanite pantheon that got subsumed into lower beings, and/or influence from Persia during the Babylonian Exile. The Books of Daniel and Ezekiel for example, seem to be something relatively innovative, and there was a time between 200 BCE- 500 CE that angels predominated Jewish non-canonical literature, especially the characters of Enoch and Metatron, but "archangels" like Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael.

I think that's partly the critique, but it can go in a number of directions. Partly the critique is that people are made unfree by hedonism, they are essentially chained to their appetites and conditioned passions à la A Brave New World. They never develop a capacity for self-determination. Huxley is a good example here, or for a (slightly) more religious angle you might consider C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man, particularly just the last, rather short chapter, which can be found here: here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Indeed, there is a Platonic or even just Aristotlean notion to this. Anytime there is an idea of "Higher" and "Lower" pleasures, it seems to allude to a sort of "realist" notion of Good or at least one who has cultivated a virtuous life.

So in this view, clearly Einstein's insights into theoretical physics would be Higher.
Passively watching TV for 10 hours is Lower.

Masturbating to images of a lewd nature is Lower.
Sexual union with a significant other is Higher.

Figuring out the complexities of the human biochemical system to develop new drugs Higher.
Figuring out the best bet on a gambling app is Lower.

Reading Medieval philosophers on the notion of the Good is Higher.
Reading trashy romance or thrillers is Lower.

And we can think of various things here. But the point is that "Lower" seems to indicate something like purely physical, or low effort. They are too easy. Higher takes effort, is more aesthetic than physical, takes mental effort, and uses more than physical sensory systems.

Anyhow, the OP seems to dismiss any real belief in "goodness as such," as opposed to some sort of operationalization like "promoting pleasure," as the realm of religious fanatics. I don't think this is particularly accurate. And the common critique from this direction of existentialism and hedonism would tend to be:

A. That it ignores the risk of being ruled over by appetites, passions, and circumstance—that it ignores the freedom of the self over the self, and the unification of the self (as opposed to Plato and St. Paul's "civil war within the soul"); and

B. That it ends up being ultimately arbitrary. Value is "created" based on what? Why is becoming free to create one's values "good?" Why is authenticity "good?" What if someone is authentically a sadist, or thinks they are? Why shouldn't they deprive others of their freedom? The pragmatism of "live and let live," would of course only apply if one were not strong enough to overcome all rivals, and so it really can't be an answer to these questions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good questions, but as you might have noticed, I did not embrace Existentialism either. Hedonism, Humanism, Economics as Religion (I made that up, but it's essentially hedonism without knowing it), and Existentialism are all critiqued, and instead Pessimism is what is proposed.

Also, in a Platonic idea of "Higher" and "Lower" if Goodness comes in various forms, then you can see this in gradations...

sex for fun < sex with lover | < love for lover (Eros) < love for friend (Philia) or family (Stroge) < saintly, love of Good itself, or God (agape)

Even in the sciences you can make a Platonic gradation...
Practical Science (applied physics, engineering, chemistry etc.), theoretical science (theoretical physics, etc.) > mathematics and logic > gnosis of the Form itself

Mind you (no pun intended), I don't believe in that shit, but I will indulge the notion for philosophical argument's sake.

I fear that your distinction might be missing the point. The workout routines of the cast of the Jersey Shore probably required a lot of effort, but it seems that were not very edifying. The Place of the Lion or Out of the Silent Planet are meant to be easy reads, enjoyable fantasy/sci-fi, and edifying.

Whitman's walks in the woods reach towards the "higher," despite being physical, while a much more strenuous run aimed only at eliminating body fat to look "cut for the girls at the club," might fail in the dimensions where Whitman succeeds.

To be honest, the division into "higher" and "lower" activities seems likely to become pernicious and misleading. The point, as I take it, is more that there are proper responses and orientations to things in the world. To see Zion or the Grand Canyon for the first time and go right back to playing Candy Crush on one's phone is to miss something important. Likewise, to find a lost and injured child on a trail and to respond with an internal shrug of "not my problem," is similarly a sort of failure.

You mentioned the study of the natural sciences. Without getting into a long digression into Plato, I think it's worth pointing out that the development of techne and episteme is important because it makes us more self-determining and more fully real as ourselves. These aren't always good in themselves except to the extent they involve self-transcedence. But obviously they can be pursued in a way that is tainted by vice.

I fear that your distinction might be missing the point. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, I don't think I missed the point with the distinction. Rather, you are simplifying my point. It isn't JUST effort (like the Jersey Shore sweating it out for vanity), but for a connection to an aesthetic or mental union or understanding. Generally, this does take more effort (mentally, aesthetically), but it also aims at some view of reality that aims above and beyond that of mere physical pleasure or self-interest.

Of course, I don't believe that Platonic spin on things myself, but I am indulging the point of view of the Platonic Realist. You might get a sense of sublime, I don't think it means you are reaching any instantiated Form. In this sense, I don't agree with Schopenhauer's very Platonist view of Forms as laid out in The WWR. However, his notion of Will does have enormous cache. That is to say, there is something to the idea that engaging in certain activities "attunes" ones will by focusing it acutely, or its opposite, of "clearing" the mind, or even "filling it up" (experience of the sublime, letting the object take ahold of your view over and above the internal chatter).

As far as self-determination and its more goal-oriented form of "self-actualization", I see this as its own vanity. In that sense, can the saint, or the Ubermensch be vain in their attempts at such?