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.

When you are done ad homming and put your philosopher pants on, I'll wait for you. For now, ignore.

He only skipped desert that day.

Is this to say that Agape, Philia, and the like are wrongs to be avoided and shunned? — javra

Philia and Agape may be actually more acutely understood through withdrawal. Philia by way of not imposing more harms than necessary. Agape would be enhanced because one is showing compassion by not engaging. The delusion is that engagement means necessarily more love. In fact, it can be quite the opposite.

After all, if there for example is no "emotional entanglements" of friendship, then there is no possibility of undergoing the suffering of being betrayed by those you trusted as friends - nor is there the possibility of inflicting such wrongs upon others. — javra

Why would you want this??

Not my cup of tea, this general outlook. But it does appear entailed by your conclusion: friendship is a vice rather than a virtue. Am I wrong in this inference? — javra

It is a vice in that it causes more harm.

Oh, and if anyone posts Simon and Garfunkel's "I Am a Rock," don’t even bother- I’ve already called that cliché. You can try to romanticize being a "social animal" all you want, but at least the rock knows that peace comes from detachment. So, cheers to embracing solitude- and not just as some overused trope, but as a legit path to freedom from the madness.

Suffering is not simply caused by being born but by the demand that your life should be other than it is. — Janus

It’s caused when you are conscious, and amplified and a difference even in kind of suffering through self-awareness of existence.. In that regard, Schopenhauer’s Will is apt. Desire, needs, goals, lack in general. But whatever gotcha contrary opinion you want to answer here, I advise to read the dialectic of this thread as I think it’s helpful to see the development.

I won't take your word for it ;-) — Wayfarer

And yet, you deny the basic fundamentals of cause and effect. Suffering is caused by being born. It's that simple. No more.

I'm sure the Buddhas understand that. Escaping enculturation is the reason Buddhism started as a renunciate movement (one of many in that culture). — Wayfarer

The Middle Path, already shows defeat. Mama and papa.. Buddhist societies go on. Crying at birth won't do no good. It happened.

Yes, but as you know, I don't believe in the soteriology that Buddhist peddles. It's my suspicion that often spiritual terms get mixed with everyday psychological terms. We have an ego because there is an enculturation process, not any metaphysical other trappings. We have an ego because we are born (in the physical sense). We have an ego because we have language. Things like this.

Speaking of the Will and the power of boredom, one is reminded of Pascal's summary, "All of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone". — BC

Schopenhauer in a nutshell. The process is something like described here from Wayfarer's post:

In his book The Theory of Religion, translated by Robert Hurley (Zone Books, 1992), Georges Bataille analyzes the arising of human consciousness as it emerges out of animal consciousness and shows how religious sensibility necessarily develops from this. His argument goes like this:

The animal world is a world of pure being, a world of immediacy and immanence. The animal soul is like “water in water,” seamlessly connected to all that surrounds it, so that there is no sense of self or other, of time, of space, of being or not being. This utopian (to human sensibility, which has such alienating notions) Shangri-La or Eden actually isn’t that because it is characterized at all points by what we’d call violence. Animals, that is, eat and are eaten. For them killing and being killed is the norm; and there isn’t any meaning to such a thing, or anything that we would call fear; there’s no concept of killing or being killed. There’s only being, immediacy, “isness.” Animals don’t have any need for religion; they already are that, already transcend life and death, being and nonbeing, self and other, in their very living, which is utterly pure.

Bataille sees human consciousness beginning with the making of the first tool, the first “thing” that isn’t a pure being, intrinsic in its value and inseparable from all of being. A tool is a separable, useful, intentionally made thing; it can be possessed, and it serves a purpose. It can be altered to suit that purpose. It is instrumental, defined by its use. The tool is the first instance of the “not-I,” and with its advent there is now the beginning of a world of objects, a “thing” world. Little by little out of this comes a way of thinking and acting within thingness (language), and then once this plane of thingness is established, more and more gets placed upon it—other objects, plants, animals, other people, one’s self, a world. Now there is self and other—and then, paradoxically, self becomes other to itself, alienated not only from the rest of the projected world of things, but from itself, which it must perceive as a thing, a possession. This constellation of an alienated self is a double-edged sword: seeing the self as a thing, the self can for the first time know itself and so find a closeness to itself; prior to this, there isn’t any self so there is nothing to be known or not known. But the creation of my me, though it gives me for the first time myself as a friend, also rips me out of the world and puts me out on a limb on my own. Interestingly, and quite logically, this development of human consciousness coincides with a deepening of the human relationship to the animal world, which opens up to the human mind now as a depth, a mystery. Humans are that depth, because humans are animals, know this and feel it to be so, and yet also not so; humans long for union with the animal world of immediacy, yet know they are separate from it. Also they are terrified of it, for to reenter that world would be a loss of the self; it would literally be the end of me as I know me.

In the midst of this essential human loneliness and perplexity, which is almost unbearable, religion appears. It intuits and imagines the ancient world of oneness, of which there is still a powerful primordial memory, and calls it the sacred. This is the invisible world, world of spirit, world of the gods, or of God. It is inexorably opposed to, defined as the opposite of, the world of things, the profane world of the body, of instrumentality, a world of separation, the fallen world. Religion’s purpose then is to bring us back to the lost world of intimacy, and all its rites, rituals, and activities are created to this end. We want this, and need it, as sure as we need food and shelter; and yet it is also terrifying. All religions have known and been based squarely on this sense of terrible necessity. — Wayfarer

That is to say, the irrevocable breach of our existence into the framework of conceptual objectification of the world. The self-and-other, the self that needs goals, the self that suffers, is felt in the immediacy of self-awareness.

I enjoyed the essay on boredom, thanks.

It looks very much what you call "Will" is what I framed above as "Self".

The "biases," as you put it, would wrapped up in the "Seeking". — I like sushi

Will is Schopenhauer's label for the restlessness. The boredom essay sort of captures it. Boredom was very important to Schopenhauer, as it showed Will's negative (lacking that is) nature. That even just existing carries with it a sort of lack. Hence my quote here:

So we are a lifeform that is self-aware of its existence. Consciousness, even without self-awareness, is pulled along by some drives- hunger, boredom, mating, etc. Self-consciousness brings with it a negative element to it as well (as in "lacking" something). That is to say, we have hunger- lack satiation or the stimulation of the senses in the form of food. In a more general sense, we lack a general satiation of the mind- a profound angst or boredom. We lack social stimulation in the form of loneliness and being lovelorn. — schopenhauer1

Read some of the previous posts to understand what I'm getting at. The gist is a pessimistic understanding. Self-awareness of existence entails an understanding of suffering. The quote from Wayfarer describes the process:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/944435
This is more-or-less the conclusion:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/944343

With the self-awareness, we divert the attention of the immediate conclusion. It is the biases of Pollyannaisms and "but what fors".. As I have described throughout the thread. So I would say read the thread as a whole to see what I mean, then reply.

If concepts are created then this implies Values are concepts that have been created. This is all skirting around ineffable territory though. — I like sushi

What are we aware of by being self-aware of existence? What is the content of our/everyone's existence?

Animals, that is, eat and are eaten. For them killing and being killed is the norm; and there isn’t any meaning to such a thing, or anything that we would call fear; there’s no concept of killing or being killed. There’s only being, immediacy, “isness.” Animals don’t have any need for religion; they already are that, already transcend life and death, being and nonbeing, self and other, in their very living, which is utterly pure.

Damn that comes close to a lot of themes I've explored on here. That's a good one.

Bataille sees human consciousness beginning with the making of the first tool, the first “thing” that isn’t a pure being, intrinsic in its value and inseparable from all of being. A tool is a separable, useful, intentionally made thing; it can be possessed, and it serves a purpose. It can be altered to suit that purpose. It is instrumental, defined by its use. The tool is the first instance of the “not-I,” and with its advent there is now the beginning of a world of objects, a “thing” world.

I like...

Little by little out of this comes a way of thinking and acting within thingness (language), and then once this plane of thingness is established, more and more gets placed upon it—other objects, plants, animals, other people, one’s self, a world. Now there is self and other—and then, paradoxically, self becomes other to itself, alienated not only from the rest of the projected world of things, but from itself, which it must perceive as a thing, a possession. This constellation of an alienated self is a double-edged sword: seeing the self as a thing, the self can for the first time know itself and so find a closeness to itself; prior to this, there isn’t any self so there is nothing to be known or not known. But the creation of my me, though it gives me for the first time myself as a friend, also rips me out of the world and puts me out on a limb on my own. Interestingly, and quite logically, this development of human consciousness coincides with a deepening of the human relationship to the animal world, which opens up to the human mind now as a depth, a mystery. Humans are that depth, because humans are animals, know this and feel it to be so, and yet also not so; humans long for union with the animal world of immediacy, yet know they are separate from it. Also they are terrified of it, for to reenter that world would be a loss of the self; it would literally be the end of me as I know me.

Yes, great point.

In the midst of this essential human loneliness and perplexity, which is almost unbearable, religion appears. It intuits and imagines the ancient world of oneness, of which there is still a powerful primordial memory, and calls it the sacred. This is the invisible world, world of spirit, world of the gods, or of God. It is inexorably opposed to, defined as the opposite of, the world of things, the profane world of the body, of instrumentality, a world of separation, the fallen world. Religion’s purpose then is to bring us back to the lost world of intimacy, and all its rites, rituals, and activities are created to this end. We want this, and need it, as sure as we need food and shelter; and yet it is also terrifying. All religions have known and been based squarely on this sense of terrible necessity. — Wayfarer

Good point.

Of course, much more need be said, and this is only an excerpt, but I think it frames the issue well. — Wayfarer

Yes it does, and corresponds very much to what I've been saying. Human being and (other) animal being has a difference in kind, that is a gulf, and it creates problems for us. But in this particular thread, I am also teasing out that there seems to be entailments with this "self-knowledge".

Edit: One of them is the self-recognition of the process described here.. but are there others? This is clearly not immediate, but indeed is a conclusion one makes from self-recognition. Is there something more immediate with knowing about this existence?

More edit: An inevitable conclusion that gets diverted with Pollyannas?

@Wayfarer
I wonder, with the profusion of media, that comedy and the overuse of irony adds to the diversions from the stream. More stones. As long as you can add a light-hearted quip, you are saved for now... Go about your day. Anxiety (not really) thwarted. Face saved.

@Wayfarer
Added a bigger part of the quote from the linked post above.

So, in the case of Buddhism, the basis of value - the fundamental axiology, if you like - is the ubiquitity and unavoidable nature of suffering, old age and death. Its formulaic exposition is always given in those terms - you will loose what you love, be beset by things you don't like, suffer, and die. Those are given facts of existence. Liberation from that (nibbana, Nirvāṇa) is the extinction of the factors that drive continued existence in the mode of existence subject to these conditions. — Wayfarer

Ok, so not quite following this request:

My guess is you will bring some Buddhist concepts to this. Suppose you were to formulate an answer without that- let's say it had to use common everyday language, and/or standard philosophical jargon. What would you say? — schopenhauer1

:razz: But I think the way that was phrased it was unclear that I didn't want any mention of Buddhism, just everyday or normal philosophical jargon (not translate Buddhist terms into everyday language). But that's okay, I can work with that, but veering away from the strictly Buddhist bent, just its implications...

So existence is basically a "suffering", in terms of this definition being the temporariness of satisfied states, and the initial lack that we feel, an incompleteness that is basically never-ending.

As I stated here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/944343

But the cruel part is the "fooling" aspect. As the human animal, unlike mere instinct or simpler forms of experience that other animals exhibit, is that we make "goals" for ourselves. And those goals often are thwarted, and we are disappointed, or when they are reached, they are but temporary, and thus "the vanity" of Ecclesiastes. And throughout all this will-thwarting-temporary satiation, we have the anxieties and physical ailments of social and physical harms. We are self-aware, we know this. Yet what biases delude us?

The ever pursuit of stability (work/home). The ever pursuit of social bonds (love, relationships, friendships, family), and all sorts of self-limiting things to focus the mind (hobbies, interests, studies, and other toys and imaginative wonderings). But if Schopenhauer is right, these are temporary, not satiating, delusionary, and often lead to more pain. But even more tragic, is it prevents someone from understanding this very nature of Will which is so ever-present in the dialectic of self-awareness of existence itself. Life itself should not be imposed.

THAT IN FACT, SELF-AWARENESS ITSELF LED TO THE ANXIETIES THAT LED TO THE IMPOSITION OF MORE SELF-AWARENESS :scream: — schopenhauer1

But, is there something axiologically entailed for a being with self-awareness of existence?

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15556/existential-self-awareness/p1
@Wayfarer

My guess is you will bring some Buddhist concepts to this. Suppose you were to formulate an answer without that- let's say it had to use common everyday language, and/or standard philosophical jargon. What would you say? In a Buddhist sense, you might agree with Schopenhauer that Buddhist practice is what the self-aware animal must look to. I just wondered what else you might say. Is there a definite conclusion that is often biased away, for creatures that have self-awareness of existence? Is there a definite course of a stream from this fact that we are self-aware that is trying to be diverted by the stones of biases?

It's important to note that axiology is a branch of ethics regarding the degree of good or evil. — Shawn

I'm going by this definition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_theory

That is to say, I see ethics as a type of value, not the other way around. Axiology > Ethics.

Aesthetics, economic value, love, and ethics are axiological in nature.

Yes. But.

I was being silly and didn't intend to subject Bambi to the further suffering of existential analysis. I also don't want to suffer by being forced to think more deeply about Bambi. In the last five minutes I've tripled the size of the Bambi case file, and most of the New Yorker article remains to be read. — BC

I know you were being ironic and silly. But even this can be instructive to my point. Please do add more, maybe not about the plight of Bambi, but the question at hand:

Does having the capacity for existential self-awareness imply anything further than this fact?
That is to say, does a species of animal(s) that has the ability to conceptually "know" that it exists, entail anything further, in any axiological way? — schopenhauer1

I felt compelled to scribble a little nonsense about fawns burning in the forest. It's an example of the Will to Nonsense. — BC

That's not entirely true in the animal that is SELF-AWARE OF EXISTENCE. Is there not something in this understanding that is quite clear and leads to conclusions, and not simply a fact? The fact that we know Bambi can burn means something?

How believable and/or compelling is Schopenhauer's blind and aimless "will"? It seems like one could dismiss this "blind aimless will" as easily as a personal creator. Isn't Schopenhauer just swapping out one invisible entity for another? — BC

Which is why I said this in reply to Shawn:

As for the notion of the Will itself, I think it can simply be a metaphor as if we are "driven by an aimless "Will". As the fact of a metaphysical Will and the practicality of living as a conscious, and self-aware being is basically identical. That is to say, the reality of Will as some metaphysical entity at play, need not even have to be the case for Schopenhauer's conclusions about how life (from the perspective of a subject/lifeform) operates.

So we are a lifeform that is self-aware of its existence. Consciousness, even without self-awareness, is pulled along by some drives- hunger, boredom, mating, etc. Self-consciousness brings with it a negative element to it as well (as in "lacking" something). That is to say, we have hunger- lack satiation or the stimulation of the senses in the form of food. In a more general sense, we lack a general satiation of the mind- a profound angst or boredom. We lack social stimulation in the form of loneliness and being lovelorn. — schopenhauer1

I'd find Schopenhauer's cold wind of will sweeping across the cosmos more convincing if the wind was God. God doesn't have to be warm, fuzzy, loving, up close and personal or personable. God could be distant, cold, hard edged, indifferent, not lovable and still be God and creator. Just between you, me, and the fencepost I rather think God is closer to being a cold wind than a god keeping watch over sparrows and dandelions, — BC

If the ancient Israelites were correct, and we are reflection of God, then God is also a reflection of us. That gives me a cold shiver indeed! I think things were muddled when medieval philosophizing tried to misconstrue God as all-powerful/all-loving/all-good, etc. Rather, the one from the Bible is capricious YET oddly goal-driven, needs things to happen to be satisfied. This God is rather not necessarily all-X, but rather a SUPER version of the human. The human traits MAGNIFIED into (monstrously) awe-filled forms.