edited for more explanation

I did read it. The title "withdrawal", and your comments in the OP like above give strong impression that you were suggesting the best way to live your life is escaping from the social activities, the world, and even your own existence. — Corvus

Ok, what about it? You can't escape from yourself is not a response to the idea I am proposing. Are you familiar with ascetic practice? Schopenhauer et al? There are more complex ideas at play here. By just saying it like that, you present a cliche as philosophical critique. Which is why I "withdraw" much critical response to it.

There is 'being alive' and there is 'living'. It is unfortunate you have not seen the difference yet. If you keep digging down you may, perhaps, come to understand things differently. — I like sushi

So is this like Corvus in the other thread? Am I supposed to refer to the Hollywood movie where the curmudgeon main character learns that human connection is the most important thing?

The point is that, your seeking to withdraw from the world, society and yourself will be futile and unrealistic. — Corvus

Queue Hollywood movie.

So you didn't really read my post. You don't get what I am conveying about Schopenhauer. Do you know what a charitable reading is? Before you critique, breakdown something in what you think the intended idea is.

You can withdraw from the world, but you cannot withdraw from yourself and your own existence. — Corvus

Yeah sorta my OP. What’s your point other than cliches? Read my op as I don’t think you grasped what I was conveying,

But if everyone withdrew from the world, then would they not be harming each other even more? All the jobs to be done for others wouldn't be done, and the world will degenerate into chaos e.g. rubbish bins won't be collected, no running water and no electricity due to everyone withdrew from the world and their duties in the works, and the shops, schools, and hospitals shut. — Corvus

Best preventative option is not producing more workers. For us laborers already here, I did say this:

The key is to ensure that any contact is purely transactional- just enough to meet the basic requirements of existence, without letting it spiral into further emotional entanglements. — schopenhauer1

The ineffable. Does the ineffable have a place in philosophy? Does talk of The Middle Way or The Dao/Tao really constitute a philosophical position we can do much with? — I like sushi

I gave you language more adept at conveying non-willing, as you noted action words driven by goals. As far as the ineffable, it isn’t hard to articulate the problem- being born/existence itself. The solutions I’ve presented over and over. Tell someone on here who recently fell in love that existence is suffering. The hormones alone will lead them to (internally) violently resist. They just “won” and you are going to question that? Skip a few years and babies, and more pay from work, and a bit of status in society. You end up with grandkids and half the old timer posters on here giving you their quite middlebrow-everyday man’s workaday morals of something equivalent to Aristotle’s Golden Mean. At the most, they can give you “balance” in some Tao inspired koan. But it’s all to preserve that lifestyle. They cling to it, because if that was lost, a whole despair from a loss and attachment to a lifestyle and stability has gone away. Of course these posters oppose the kind of radical pessimism and antinatalism I speak of.

I guess it works more like in this post..note, language is tricky here:

But as for the starvation, I wonder how far Schopenhauer intended the ascetic. Sometimes I think he thought the ascetic man needed to go beyond Buddhist monks. Starvation without really starving, because one is no longer attached. This happens not through striving though, because that itself would be "motivated" and this "will-driven". It's sort of a paradox. — schopenhauer1

So Schopenhauer claims there is no diversity in the ways people respond to their conditions? In that case he would obviously be mistaken. — Janus

:roll:

Please lay out the point you want to make. I am not inclined to read that passage and have to try to figure out what the counterpoint to what I said is. — Janus

All of what you said is pretty much the opposite of Schopenhauer's claim. Figure it out.

In the case of life itself however it becomes a bit less clear what it is we're trying to avoid (or gain control over). Death perhaps? — Tzeentch

With other people, its more pain. With life, it's more pain. And thus, one gives up perhaps eros or philia for agape. Loneliness becomes aloneness becomes solitude becomes stillness becomes non-being. Or something like that.

Genuinely, I think much of the negative influence we experience from social interactions are a product of the aforementioned whims of passion and desire.

Asceticism and isolation can be a way to regain control over these influences. — Tzeentch

:up:

Fasting can be productive, but don't starve yourself. Even Buddha seemed to have felt this wasn't necessary. But what's stopping you? — Tzeentch

What's stopping me, is me.

But as for the starvation, I wonder how far Schopenhauer intended the ascetic. Sometimes I think he thought the ascetic man needed to go beyond Buddhist monks. Starvation without really starving, because one is no longer attached. This happens not through striving though, because that itself would be "motivated" and this "will-driven". It's sort of a paradox.

Fun quote.

In some ways I view the problems you describe similarly as for example addictive substances. One can avoid them like the plague, in fear of the damage they might do. Or one may, treading cautiously, confront the danger and rise above it. The latter approach bears a certain risk - this is true. — Tzeentch

:up:

Human social interaction, for all its surface appeal and fleeting “highs,” often pulls us into cycles of drama, pain, and struggle that leave lasting marks. Entangling ourselves in the lives and expectations of others can feel exhilarating initially, like a quick fix of validation or belonging, but it frequently devolves into complex webs of obligation, conflict, and disappointment. Much like a drug, social interaction can create a dependency- where we crave that next connection or approval, only to find it comes with an equal measure of stress, misunderstandings, and sometimes even betrayal. In the end, the temporary buzz fades, often leaving us more entangled and drained than before.

This isn’t about a rigid rule for how every single person should live; it’s about recognizing that most of our daily struggles come from entanglements with others- the stress, drama, and inevitable disappointments of dealing with people, along with all the attachment and validation-seeking that comes along with it.

I’m not saying everyone can just turn their backs on this and be perfectly content. But look at those who do- monks, ascetics, anyone who’s chosen to walk away from the usual cycle of social and material pursuits. They weren’t born immune to desire or perfectly serene; they actively choose to confront and deny those attachments, and in doing so, they find a quieter, more enduring form of satisfaction. Sure, it’s a path that involves struggle, but it’s a different kind of struggle- one that cuts through the noise instead of adding to it.

It’s understandable that, with longer lives, the idea of spending decades in isolated repose might seem daunting or even unbearable. But maybe that very dread hints at how conditioned we are to constant social stimulation, mistaking it for fulfillment. The silence and simplicity of withdrawal might seem intimidating in theory, but in practice, it could offer a kind of clarity and peace that our social habits continually obscure. This isn’t about forcing isolation on everyone; it’s about rethinking what kind of life actually brings us to a place of genuine peace.

:up:

They say life is short, but it can actually be pretty long. We are all paying for it. Novelty and certainly more human entanglements seem to make it more than it is but rather, it creates more pain and strife. It’s because we can’t be quiet in a room, or something like that, as Pascal said.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/945186

Humans are so addicted to human interactions we are debating stuff as:

A -> Not -A

We love the drama, the strife. We learn through dialectic, but we are also crushed by the "getting the last word", or "showing them what", or "getting my point across", or "making that clever turn of phrase". And on and on.. the interactions are just dross jabs.

We don't need much from others. You pick up groceries you get into a fender bender. You find love, but you get into a fight, etc. And all the human drama. How about just cut out the source of the drama? Can we bear it? We can, we just like the junk, like heroin. Drama.

In Buddhist cultures, unlike Christian cultures, Buddhist don't feel generally obliged to impose their religion on others. So if someone said, 'I don't see any rationale for it', they would probably say 'suit yourself!' rather than try to evangalise you. — Wayfarer

My point in asking what the monk would say, wasn't that I thought he would evangelize the greatness of the monk lifestyle.

I think withdrawal being counterintuitive is similar to other counterintuitive things. You might not see on the surface that withdrawing leads to greater happiness.. You become content with yourself and you will see the tremendous amounts of strife in interactions. As with withdrawing from a drug, at first it seems to be quite the opposite, until one becomes simply content.

I just don't aee why I should do it if I don't think its going to benefit me at all. — Apustimelogist

@Wayfarer, what if someone asked that to one of the monks?

I went on a Buddhist retreat many years ago, and at one of the Q&A's I put my hand up, and asked a question, along the lines, 'modern life is very complex. You have relationships, financial and work obligations, bad habits develop.' And so on. The monk replied, with a broad grin, 'I know! Why do you think we're monks!' — Wayfarer

But then you left!

Trust me. He goes on to say that we should strengthen ourselves against boredom rather than end up as lone trumpeters only able to play one note, forever seeking comfort in the company of others to make music. Whereas if we stick to boredom we learn to make music alone and become an orchestra. — I like sushi

Ok, so this speaks to what I'm saying when I said, "at least in ways they think". It relates to my other thread about finding comfort in ones solitude. One must learn to work through boredom, as the strivings against boredom aren't going to get rid of the underlying striving Will at work.

Sounds very tiresome to me. I would consider it if there was some good evidence that this would make life much better. — Apustimelogist

This is exactly the utilitarian approach Schopenhauer would point to as obfuscating the underlying problem. The drama and conflict that comes from relations with other people seem to solve a problem, when it actually adds. True freedom comes within one's ability to stand solitude with oneself. You can't help being an enculturated being (you learned language, a way of life), but after this, you can restrict your interactions, and sources of unnecessary sufferings that come about from it. Again, it quite defiantly bucks against common views of socialization and flourishing. I fully recognize this and said so in the OP.

Those are the monks. There are people who practice this way of living. — L'éléphant

Indeed, they live a lifestyle more to this regard. The hermit more so.

This alongside strengthening oneself against 'boredom'. The 'vermin' are trying to avoid 'boredom'. — I like sushi

I'd have to look at the context again, but the quote as is looks like it is saying that the "mob of humanity" try to get rid of boredom. Part of their ignorance is this attempt since boredom is not removable, or at least in the ways that they think.

Why does he promote 'boredom' as a means to fortify against 'boredom'? So as to better handle the inevitability of 'boredom'? — I like sushi

I'm not sure where you are getting that he "promotes" boredom, as the quote you have above clearly states that it represents a part of the suffering. The quote I'm referring to is here:

As soon as we are not engaged in one of these two ways, but thrown back on existence itself, we are convinced of the emptiness and worthlessness of it; and this it is we call boredom. That innate and ineradicable craving for what is out of the common proves how glad we are to have the natural and tedious course of things interrupted. Even the pomp and splendour of the rich in their stately castles is at bottom nothing but a futile attempt to escape the very essence of existence, misery. [...] That boredom is immediately followed by fresh needs is a fact which is also true of the cleverer order of animals, because life has no true and genuine value in itself, but is kept in motion merely through the medium of needs and illusion. As soon as there are no needs and illusion we become conscious of the absolute barrenness and emptiness of existence. [...] No man has ever felt perfectly happy in the present; if he had it would have intoxicated him.

He is saying here that boredom is very much showing that after all the goals and strivings, we go back to the initial empty state that was there all along as a sort of background noise.

But here you are saying that boredom is something 'negative'? Schopenhauer said the opposite. I am confused as to what you mean? — I like sushi

Huh? Boredom is a feeling important to Schopenhauer as to him, it is the emotional state of existence laying itself bare to a highly self-aware mind. Hence the quote about boredom being proof of life's "emptiness". Indeed, striving and lacking, is what is "positive" in the sense that it is what is primary and constant. Pleasure is "negative" in that it is temporary, and only works to temporarily fill the underlying "lack" (Wills principle of striving).

Note, we must also be careful as Schopenhauer can vaccinates using "negative" in the "bad" sense, and then "negative" in that which removes the initial condition (or a negation of the initial condition rather).

I'm not sure what you mean. I would say that absence of pleasure brings suffering and that absence of pain brings pleasure. — Janus

I don't think it works like that. First off, we know we die and that there is a demise. Then there is the fact that we are lacking and strive for satiation. These are just built into the framework. They are not situational, though situational harms add to it.

Life is inherently pleasurable when I am not experiencing some kind of pain and inherently painful when I am not experiencing some kind of pleasure. — Janus

This contradicts what I believe to be true from Schopenhauer's observation:

I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt. Leibnitz is particularly concerned to defend this absurdity; and he seeks to strengthen his position by using a palpable and paltry sophism.1 It is the good which is negative; in other words, happiness and satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state of pain brought to an end.

The chief source of all this passion is that thought for what is absent and future, which, with man, exercises such a powerful influence upon all he does. It is this that is the real origin of his cares, his hopes, his fears—emotions which affect him much more deeply than could ever be the case with those present joys and sufferings to which the brute is confined. In his powers of reflection, memory and foresight, man possesses, as it were, a machine for condensing and storing up his pleasures and his sorrows. But the brute has nothing of the kind; whenever it is in pain, it is as though it were suffering for the first time, even though the same thing should have previously happened to it times out of number. It has no power of summing up its feelings. Hence its careless and placid temper: how much it is to be envied! But in man reflection comes in, with all the emotions to which it gives rise; and taking up the same elements of pleasure and pain which are common to him and the brute, it develops his susceptibility to happiness and misery to such a degree that, at one moment the man is brought in an instant to a state of delight that may even prove fatal, at another to the depths of despair and suicide.

If we carry our analysis a step farther, we shall find that, in order to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally added to the number and pressure of his needs, which in their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy than those of the brute. Hence luxury in all its forms; delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous liquors, fine clothes, and the thousand and one things than he considers necessary to his existence.

And above and beyond all this, there is a separate and peculiar source of pleasure, and consequently of pain, which man has established for himself, also as the result of using his powers of reflection; and this occupies him out of all proportion to its value, nay, almost more than all his other interests put together—I mean ambition and the feeling of honor and shame; in plain words, what he thinks about the opinion other people have of him. Taking a thousand forms, often very strange ones, this becomes the goal of almost all the efforts he makes that are not rooted in physical pleasure or pain. It is true that besides the sources of pleasure which he has in common with the brute, man has the pleasures of the mind as well. These admit of many gradations, from the most innocent trifling or the merest talk up to the highest intellectual achievements; but there is the accompanying boredom to be set against them on the side of suffering. Boredom is a form of suffering unknown to brutes, at any rate in their natural state; it is only the very cleverest of them who show faint traces of it when they are domesticated; whereas in the case of man it has become a downright scourge. The crowd of miserable wretches whose one aim in life is to fill their purses but never to put anything into their heads, offers a singular instance of this torment of boredom. Their wealth becomes a punishment by delivering them up to misery of having nothing to do; for, to escape it, they will rush about in all directions, traveling here, there and everywhere. No sooner do they arrive in a place than they are anxious to know what amusements it affords; just as though they were beggars asking where they could receive a dole! Of a truth, need and boredom are the two poles of human life. Finally, I may mention that as regards the sexual relation, a man is committed to a peculiar arrangement which drives him obstinately to choose one person. This feeling grows, now and then, into a more or less passionate love,2 which is the source of little pleasure and much suffering.


2 (return)
[ I have treated this subject at length in a special chapter of the second volume of my chief work.]

It is, however, a wonderful thing that the mere addition of thought should serve to raise such a vast and lofty structure of human happiness and misery; resting, too, on the same narrow basis of joy and sorrow as man holds in common with the brute, and exposing him to such violent emotions, to so many storms of passion, so much convulsion of feeling, that what he has suffered stands written and may be read in the lines on his face. And yet, when all is told, he has been struggling ultimately for the very same things as the brute has attained, and with an incomparably smaller expenditure of passion and pain.

But all this contributes to increase the measures of suffering in human life out of all proportion to its pleasures; and the pains of life are made much worse for man by the fact that death is something very real to him. The brute flies from death instinctively without really knowing what it is, and therefore without ever contemplating it in the way natural to a man, who has this prospect always before his eyes. So that even if only a few brutes die a natural death, and most of them live only just long enough to transmit their species, and then, if not earlier, become the prey of some other animal,—whilst man, on the other hand, manages to make so-called natural death the rule, to which, however, there are a good many exceptions,—the advantage is on the side of the brute, for the reason stated above. But the fact is that man attains the natural term of years just as seldom as the brute; because the unnatural way in which he lives, and the strain of work and emotion, lead to a degeneration of the race; and so his goal is not often reached.

The brute is much more content with mere existence than man; the plant is wholly so; and man finds satisfaction in it just in proportion as he is dull and obtuse. Accordingly, the life of the brute carries less of sorrow with it, but also less of joy, when compared with the life of man; and while this may be traced, on the one side, to freedom from the torment of care and anxiety, it is also due to the fact that hope, in any real sense, is unknown to the brute. It is thus deprived of any share in that which gives us the most and best of our joys and pleasures, the mental anticipation of a happy future, and the inspiriting play of phantasy, both of which we owe to our power of imagination. If the brute is free from care, it is also, in this sense, without hope; in either case, because its consciousness is limited to the present moment, to what it can actually see before it. The brute is an embodiment of present impulses, and hence what elements of fear and hope exist in its nature—and they do not go very far—arise only in relation to objects that lie before it and within reach of those impulses: whereas a man's range of vision embraces the whole of his life, and extends far into the past and future.

Following upon this, there is one respect in which brutes show real wisdom when compared with us—I mean, their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment. The tranquillity of mind which this seems to give them often puts us to shame for the many times we allow our thoughts and our cares to make us restless and discontented. And, in fact, those pleasures of hope and anticipation which I have been mentioning are not to be had for nothing. The delight which a man has in hoping for and looking forward to some special satisfaction is a part of the real pleasure attaching to it enjoyed in advance. This is afterwards deducted; for the more we look forward to anything, the less satisfaction we find in it when it comes. But the brute's enjoyment is not anticipated, and therefore, suffers no deduction; so that the actual pleasure of the moment comes to it whole and unimpaired. In the same way, too, evil presses upon the brute only with its own intrinsic weight; whereas with us the fear of its coming often makes its burden ten times more grievous.
— Schopenhauer - On the Sufferings of the World

Right and it would be equally absurd to claim that existence is completely free from pleasure. — Janus

Suffering as Schopenhauer defined it, is structural and contingent, pleasure is only contingent. As a more straightforward point, suffering is all that matters in axiological estimations.

It would be absurd to claim that existence is completely free from suffering. — Janus

Indeed, and this is an important insight, yet it’s often put aside.

What does existential self-awareness actually consist of? Does a recognition of mortality accompany it? When I first came to this realisation as a child my primary reaction was, why did I have to be born? In reversing the usual cliché about such matters, I often thought to myself that it might be bad luck to be born - to have to go through the laborious process of learning, growing, belonging (to a culture you dislike), experiencing loss, decline and ultimately death. It's not easy to identify an inherent benefit attached to any of this. But there's a lot of noise called philosophy and religion which seeks to help us to manage our situation. — Tom Storm

This kind of stuff. There are a lot of structural elements to knowing about existence, many of them negative.

Suffering is not caused merely by being conscious or being self-aware. You could be conscious and self-aware and not suffer, if by suffering you mean a general condition and not chronic pain or the suffering caused by illness.

It is laughable that you consider any counterargument but not your own taken to be self-evident assertions to be a "gotcha".

I'm only interested in reading (more than once) good arguments and not in being advised to go read this or that. If you have a decent argument you can set it out in your own words. — Janus

Nah, I mean the concept of suffering is entailed in being self-aware of existence. If you are not self-aware (of existence), you probably don't understand about suffering as a concept, even though you may suffer.

At the end, it is a slow withdrawal from the world in general. Social entanglements bring strife and are one factor one can minimize.

I could be terribly mistaken but I'd otherwise bet you have a great many things to be thankful for, things others would kill for, even if these things are relatively common to the degree you have lost (or never had) appreciation for them. Perhaps you should bear in mind those around the world who have things much worse off than you and not let your relatively good fortune to have been in vain. — Outlander

I always found this pretty telling:

Benatar raises the issue of whether humans inaccurately estimate the true quality of their lives, and has cited three psychological phenomena which he believes are responsible for this:

Tendency towards optimism: we have a positively distorted perspective of our lives in the past, present, and future.
Adaptation: we adapt to our circumstances, and if they worsen, our sense of well-being is lowered in anticipation of those harmful circumstances, according to our expectations, which are usually divorced from the reality of our circumstances.
Comparison: we judge our lives by comparing them to those of others, ignoring the negatives which affect everyone to focus on specific differences. And due to our optimism bias, we mostly compare ourselves to those worse off, to overestimate the value of our own well-being.

He concludes:

The above psychological phenomena are unsurprising from an evolutionary perspective. They militate against suicide and in favour of reproduction. If our lives are quite as bad as I shall still suggest they are, and if people were prone to see this true quality of their lives for what it is, they might be much more inclined to kill themselves, or at least not to produce more such lives. Pessimism, then, tends not to be naturally selected
— Benatar article

Oh and to also be a demonstration of what I mean.. I am now pissed off at one poster, annoyed that people aren't engaging with it the way I was hoping, and my blood pressure is up. Definitely shouldn't be attached to this forum/thread. So I am willing to be a test case in real time ;).

I always find it annoying when someone misuses the phrase “ad hominem.” — T Clark

Cool

You're telling us to withdraw while not withdrawing. I again call this out as hypocrisy. — javra

:up: Yep, it is indeed doing the opposite. I am showing you what not to do then.

If not, and the facts of the matter are such, then why should I entertain your hypocritical reasoning? — javra

Schopenhauer was also a hypocrite you can say, but he was right.

(I also ate today, against my better judgement).

Leave me alone. Fuck off.

I suppose if one craves socialization, as most normal people do, at least every now and then, it is a willful, conscious act of deprivation. — Outlander

More this than anything. My assumption is people are already overly engaged, so this is the suggestion. I guess you can frame it "withdrawing" vs. the ascetic "already withdrawn". It is mainly to highlight the social aspect is very much in the background and a sort of temptation to pursue.

I can't think of the PC version for the following quote so I will just say it does the mind and soul (or psyche) wonders to occupy oneself with true vocational purpose. Example, I have an ungodly amount of computer-related work to complete this season. It brings me joy when I complete a portion or bring a functionality of the software I'm creating to fruition. It also brings me joy, when I'm feeling a bit burnt out staring at thousands of lines of code for hours or get stuck on a particular area or simply need a break to tab over to TPF and see if there's a reasonable entry-level discussion that interests me enough to participate in, like this one. It's about finding balance. — Outlander

Eh, withdrawal can also be from what you describe your avocation/vocation which you pursue. If it brings you joy, cool. Suppose the code was deleted mistakenly, and all your hard work was wiped out? Suppose your boss/owner rejected your code as insufficient, inelegant, and trash? Suppose they rejected every attempt, even if you are convinced it is genius? Anyways, strife can be found anywhere, just as much as joy. Pursuits of joy are temporary. That's the point of Schopenhauer makes of goal-seeking, attachments, and all of it.

That one's a bit too esoteric for me I'm afraid. Sounds a bit fatal, frankly. If that's what it takes to reach your desired state of being, I'd question your sense of reason in regards to what you want out of life and how to best go about obtaining such. — Outlander

It is fatal. The limits in eating is meant only as a step towards not eating.

You can remove the object of temptation but the underlying "unwellness" (if that's what you consider such) would undoubtedly remain, at least in some form, wouldn't it? — Outlander

Indeed, hence the final step. Will is ever-pervasive.

Given your shpiel, I can only assume this is an honest question. To answer honestly: because friendship reduces suffering. I'm pretty sure this is supported by the empirical sciences as well, something to do with dopamine and other neurotransmitters, improved longevity and quality of life, and some other such things. There's also the having help in times of need, to boot. — javra

You would have to show that the negative dramas, et al that come from engaging with friendships would ever be more than the dopamine supposedly received from these engagements. But I don't need to look at data to understand how these engagements DO indeed cause more strife and conflict.