In economic theory, Hayek in his epoch The Road to Serfdom, concludes that it only gets worse when the means of production are in the hands of the government. The classic economic theory just says that you have the choice to live a poor life though, with the opportunity of that changing. — Posty McPostface

I am not saying that having a different economic system will change things. I am simply explaining how, once born, we are exposed to the de facto economic grips of almost everything we deal with. Our relationships are often defined on our interactions at an economic level. At the end of the day, there is no choice outside of the system except slow death and deprivation. This is connected with the idea of not having more people who are forced (de facto) into this.

When I am useful it is on my own terms, and my worth is based on my control of my time to utilise as I wish. — charleton

You may think that, but if you try to sustain that in economic terms, you will be homeless or a hermit outlier. Otherwise, you will be used for your economic value. You have no choice. You are "locked in" by your need for a home, your need to consume products to survive, which needs a job, which needs transportation, etc. etc. You can "choose" not to. But is that a choice, or is that just a slow death and life of materially impoverished misery?

As for me, I have been trying for a long time to be useless. I was almost destroyed several times. Finally I am useless, and this is very useful to me. — unenlightened

Yes, all the other trees were used. We are like the other trees- our labor is useful, our money is useful, our consumer decisions are useful, our 401k and tax dollars are useful, our rents/mortgages are useful, our utilities payments are useful, etc. etc. We cannot be like the oak as our economic selves need to be used and use others.

Well, I think your questions start from the wrong presuppositions. You presuppose we must have a positive reason to procreate and to help - but the truth is that we need a positive reason to do the opposite. Procreating and helping is what comes naturally.

For example, what I like most is problem-solving, pretty much regardless of what problem is in question. I enjoy the process, and it comes naturally to me. It's sort of like being an adventurer. — Agustino

Procreating and helping is pretty vague, but it's a pretty big generalization that "procreating and helping comes naturally". Innate? Culture? Both?

But my main rebuttal is, why create more people in the first place that need to help and also procreate, and help and procreate etc..

In any kind of society that you'll ever imagine, people will generally be appreciated for their usefulness to others, and this doesn't include just economic usefulness. Helping others is key to being appreciated. Solving your society's problems is likewise key to being appreciated or valued. — Agustino

I agree, but as is my theme with pessimism, why do we perpetuate any instrumental reason by putting more individuals in the world? In other words, why do people need to be born to help? Why not just not be born? No help needed. Also, what is the use of helping so that we can help to help to help. There is no end goal from this, and if we did have a goal, there would always be another problem. In that case, why make more people who will always need and have problems to overcome in the first place? No reason to perpetuate this whole instrumental affair.

They can't. The large scale systems we need to live together in large numbers require us to perform certain roles. We can't have a large scale system that enables people to live as if they were hunter gatherers. Only the folks at the top of the heap can live however they want, which is made possible by their vast wealth accumulation. And even the super rich have to drive on the correct side of the road, not try to defy gravity by stepping off of their 80th floor penthouse balcony, and not antagonizing other people too much. After all, a bullet will go through a rich brain as well as a poor brain. — Bitter Crank

This is true, hence my call for antinatalism. Why would I want to create another util to have to work for and be used by, and create more work for others in a larger economic system? Why give people the "gift" of economic (i.e. work/daily living) burden?

Hey, I have to attend to a shelter meal, just right now. That will take the rest of the afternoon to get ready. Shelter meals help destitute, homeless people not die under their bridges. People hate it when that happens. — Bitter Crank

Very admirable! It is interesting to parse out how many people choose homelessness versus people who desire to get out of that system but have no where else to go. Will there always be structural homelessness?

Without granting your usual conclusion that "therefore, not having children is the best response", then yes, all this is true. — Bitter Crank

But the antinatalism conclusion follows so axiomatically from the premise :D. Do you think that a worker's "utopia" would really solve the problems or would it just bring about new ones or the same ones but in a different way?

Marx, for instance, spells this out clearly. One of the tasks of the working class is to reproduce society, so that capitalism can continue. In the heyday of industrial capitalism, most people worked in factories, farms, and allied businesses. Some -- women raising children at home, teachers, religious, doctors, librarians, musicians, volunteers in civic organizations, etc. reproduced society and contributed directly to the transmission of culture.

The working class in Marx's day didn't consume that much (not by choice, but because of their low incomes).

Factory production as a share of work has dwindled, and providing services has greatly enlarged. Also enlarged is the working class's role of consumer. The task of reproducing society is still there, however, and it hasn't changed much. Have children, raise them to be stable, functional, productive people, and transmit the culture. — Bitter Crank

So I guess a question is, besides not having children (what I think to be the only real solution), how can people not fall into being just a utility for landlords/banks/investors/consumers/employers (emphasis on employers as that is the largest amount of time that most people spend their day in- even if in more white collar jobs)?

Various groups have tried to escape the system. Some hippies tried living in communes. Some of them succeeded, a handful of these efforts continue, but they have about zero effect on society. Today, much larger group have escaped the system by becoming destitute and homeless, living under a bridge to escape the hot sun and cold rain. This approach works in warmer climates -- it doesn't work very well in cold, northern climates. A bridge is no protection from sub-zero temperatures.

I tried to escape the system for a while by working as little as possible. That approach works until one runs out of cash, then one has to go back to work. — Bitter Crank

Exactly. No modern way succeeds. Also, if somehow there was a radical revolution, how do you actually see that playing out? Anarcho-communism only works as far as we know when they can rely on a larger superstructure to really create the networks that they can then ride on top of and find a niche within. Also, as I stated earlier, how would anarcho-communism even solve the problems of just being another worker (this time being a tool for the group instead of a broader economic market structure).

Edit: I see you added a response from my first post, so I'll address that one.

Even a suicidal person is looking for relief (read happiness) from his suffering. So, if we want something so badly and the world isn't being helpful why not simply be happy? Is it impossible? — TheMadFool

Well, what I was trying to say is that it is no good being ignorantly happy to the detriment of not understanding something that is happening to you negatively. For example, if you lived in slavery, or were wrongly imprisoned, or lived under a maniacal dictator, or simply worked under an abusive personality-type (think Trump or someone of his ilk). These are all instances where perhaps just "being happy" would be the wrong approach. Sometimes, you must see what is really going on, how you are being manipulated or abused. This can work on a practical level (i.e. not having someone put you in this condition). But it also works in an existential level. Is the premise of life itself abusive? Was it good to be born? Is it good to make other people born? Does the whole economic structure put us in an inescapable situation in our relations to ourselves, others, and the world? So ignorant happiness may not be so good for the long-haul of investigating the human condition itself or the intra-worldly affairs that we must face within the daily grind of life.

(Y)

Humans do not generally reason by principle, they reason by an intuitive glance at whatever the situation is, where the principles are operating discretely in the background. — darthbarracuda

The problem is when you are in conflict with someone over principles. To your mind (and perhaps to many others who share your point of view), a moral situation is clearly X, Y, Z, but to someone else who you are having conflict with, the moral situation is A, B,C. No one is going back to Kant's deontology or Mill's utilitiarianism to work it out. Rather, people will go back to their own principles. Who is right? It only resolves when either one party capitulates and accepts situation in defeat, both capitulate a little and there is a compromise, or an outside mediator dictates who is correct. That is how the real world works. That is where morality lies. Much of it works on ignoring those with different values, hashing it out with them, or having a mediator of sorts. Normative ethics as a useful tool perhaps only works as a heuristic for those in the legal system. If a judge has a "rule" on how to apply a case, he may refer to an ethical theory of some kind to judge a rule (what creates the best utility in X tort situation perhaps).

However, there is something to be said for virtue theory if it is not overblown into VIRTUE THEORY (with capital letters). In other words, virtue as some reified thing that is good in itself is not really the value of virtue theory. Rather, that when dealing with each other in the chaos of real world situations of conflict, different personality-types, etc. that there is a groundwork for common decency and fairness in how we treat each other. For if one party thinks its okay to manipulate, and bully, and other thinks this is an unacceptable way to go about business, there is a problem. If both parties think it is wrong to act this way, then if someone does act this way, perhaps there can be a mutual agreement as to which party was not acting appropriately in that case.

Happy could just as well be complacent. Essentially everything from life itself, to aspects of the economic system ensure that you are locked into something you cannot escape. Laughing in the face of this is a coping mechanism for the masses. It is post-modern advice given to those in hopes you do not investigate too much into the existential problems of life, and the intra-worldly affairs of being a part of a larger economic system.

Well put. I call this 'world weariness.' I experience it occasionally. Especially in my 20s, I would sometimes be struck by an intense longing for death. But I was still attached to life, too. So I was ripped in half. Reality was nightmarish, obscene. It was 'noise.' But (humoursly) I could be contemplating suicide, more or less theoretically, and then a pretty girl would cross my path. I would be ripped out of my gloom by her pretty face. Then she'd vanish and I'd laugh at the ridiculousness of this zig-zag. I speculate that there's a shift of eros or libido from the death-object to the life-object to the death-object, etc. We don't lust for death when are lust is aimed at objects that exist. — t0m

But that's what I said in a different way.. getting caught in the flow. It's what we must do to not experience the world-weariness.

For me the desire for the female and the desire for knowledge have been dominant. We might think of this desire for knowledge as narcissistic --since it involves playing the knowledge-hero, being noble via possession of or proximity to the truth-as-god. The dangerous thing about this chasing of truth-as-god is that it involves the ideological violence that can (for us has) put the value of life itself in question. In some sense the most radical and fearless doubt is that which doubts the value of life and therefore of knowledge itself. In short, there is a 'suicidal' potential lurking in the knowledge-hero understood as demystificaiton incarnate. Demystification makes short work of everything sacred. Otherwise out of targets or prey, its greed for domination is turned back against itself. This opens both suicide as a beautifully decisive action and/or 'the laughter of the gods.' For me Steppenwolf is largely about this revelation, and Hesse, of course, sides with laughing with the gods. His protagonist is opened up by sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll jazz to a less rigidly rational or stuffy sense of life. He has visions of the wicked laughter of his hero Mozart (one of the immortals originally justifying his disgust for middle-class intellectual/emotional complacency.) To be sure, Hesse is biased. He is 'decorating' his own choice, not doing science. — t0m

Okay.

In some sense yes, but not in the typical sense. I acknowledge something like a 'primordial' desire to influence others. There is a 'fight for recognition' of one's own interpretation. But my own view strives for an awareness of precisely this kind of fight. It doesn't escape or pretend to escape from what it describes. That it explains itself (or seems to) is one of its virtues. This theme is big in Kojeve --the idea that a philosophy should be able to explain its own appearance. — t0m

Okay.

I see that. I understand. I think the sense of winning involves a kind of faith in the unjustified foundation of one's justifications. I postulate a sort of brute self-assertion. But that's another reason that I experience the contingency of perspectives, including (problematically, confessedly) my own. — t0m

Unjustified? Hmm, not necessarily. Such poetic ways of saying "I don't agree" :-} and "you can't convince me nah nah nah poo poo".

I don't deny that there is some hard kernel, but I think the boundaries of this kernel are established by interpretation. — t0m

One can go on and on and on about the human experience and never exhaust it. However, there are boundaries. Prove me wrong. Survival, discomfort, boredom. Instrumentality. What about it do you not agree with other than there are positive experiences in the world that people can experience (i.e. mainly relationships/connections, physical pleasure, engrossing mental/physical activities, aesthetic pleasures, achievement, and learning)?

I do cherish the tool metaphor as a corrective of mind-jamming representationalism. But I think truth as correspondence is great most of the time. I do think, however, that this correspondence paradigm breaks down as we move away from practical life and toward interpretations of existence as a whole. — t0m

Granted, but the pessimistic argument relies on seeing some non-trivial truths. As I've stated:

1) We agree that life is forced- it was not a choice. Survival-work-economics and restlessness-boredom-discomfort are a fact of the human condition. This is structural- a fact that cannot be escaped.
2) We may agree that life is structured for instrumentality- that is, we do to do to do, there is an endless goal-seeking cycle of maintaining survival and boredom. Forced into some socialized economic/survival system and restlessness needing to be entertained (e.g. you are entertained by trying to thwart other philosophies with irony ;)).
3) We may agree that life has contingent harms- ones that depend on circumstances of life (genetics, disease, past decisions, etc. etc.).
4) You may agree that to not think about instrumentality, our own restlessness, forced economic/social dependencies we'd otherwise not choose to be a part of, we have psychological mechanisms to distract us.

I added underlining because I think you missed rationalization as understanding. Of course I believe in the world outside of language. I even believe that understanding is not necessarily conceptual. But I was just trying to stress that our understanding of the world is its conceptual structure 'for us' almost tautologically. To call it a 'rationalization' is of course to add bias to this understanding, but I thought we agreed on that? — t0m

The world 'for us' still has some common truths to it- not all subjectivized but real and universal.

But we've talked about that, in terms of 'post facto.' We are thrown into life. If a titty or a bottle isn't shoved into our mouth, we die. If we don't eat, the brain dies. A pretty face annihilates the pride in one's high talk. We are ripped down from ironic-pessimistic into the primordial game of wanting a smile from that face. In some ways, my view is the opposite of faith in language games. The 'tool' metaphor is an acknowledgement of the primacy of desire. We only represent to accomplish something, possess something, enjoy ourselves as something. This desire glues us to the senses, the world outside language --with the important exception of wanting to be a strong poet. For Bukowski, writing was a way to kick death's ass. I'd say he was really living his death. — t0m

Yes exactly, you can't negate the very desire and discomforts at the root of goal-seeking. We are never completely complete, never satisfactorily satisfied, all is flux. Metaphysical stasis is the Eden, the sleep, the Nirvana, the rest. All that seems rest is illusory as we must move forward- something akin to Heideggarian death. Satisfaction and serenity is never sustained as all context-dependent moments die. The longing for death is nostalgia for the before birth (pace Cioran). It is the wanting to be done with the burden that one never asked for. The burden of staying alive, of finding entertainments, of being swept up in the flow of some task, of finding Happiness (with a capital H), of living in a society, of enculturating into institutions.

The idea is that we are mostly no one in particular when we move in the daily world. We do what one does, say what one says, drive how one drives. The very language we use is crammed with a pre-interpretation of existence, of the things we encounter. 'This is for that.' This 'they' or 'anyone' is a personification of the generic personality of a culture, a personality we have to 'incarnate' to become functioning, sane adults who are capable of understanding one another. I can't be me until I've become the we and started to question the very 'operating system' that makes this questioning possible.

My current understanding is that our 'finitude' is the impossibility of every getting completely behind or around this inherited 'software.' We might say the desire to get around this finitude is the desire to be one's own father, to have one's foundation in oneself. (Joyce, Sartre, Bloom). I'm sure I'm laying the Heidegger down pretty thick, but I'm pretty dazzled by the fresh territory. It'll become taken-for-granted at some point. 'Whatever we can find words for is already dead in our heart.' — t0m

It is true that we have to integrate the culture we live in in order to find our own viewpoint in the context of that culture. Nothing is really outside the they since language is a social event. Even the ego's idea of self is socialized- an internalized "I" versus a "you" and "they" and "world". It is all linguistically-based and originating from interaction of self and others.

I don't exactly deny the there there. I would have to appeal to this there in order to deny it. There is something like 'logical space' or 'being-with-others' that is prior to the objective world of science. I say this because I can imagine someone denying that the world of scientific theory is not the true world. The 'true' world is 'primordial' or something understood vaguely as the 'shared world' or the mysterious 'that' to which non-scientific propositions must conform to be correct.

I suppose I do have doubts about the logical space of interpretations of existence. I experience this space in some way to the degree that I believe what I believe. But thinking about this space puts it into question. To be clear, the ordinary version of this space is as intact as ever. I think the houses outside my window are really there. I can't move them or make them vanish with words. But my belief in God vanished once, washed away indeed by mere words. — t0m

Yes, the there there in the case of pessimism is not as clear-cut as experiments on physics concepts that produces measured results. The there there is about the human condition- the structures of what it means to be a human, a self-reflecting animal. The humans attempt to understand the everything. But the there there of pessimism is trying to get at real of the position we find ourselves in. You would like pessimists to realize some "truth" of the skepticism. In other words, if you try to assert some epistemological dead end, then the certainty of pessimism loses its steam. Again, pessimism asserts there are some basic facts we can perhaps distill from the whir of this or that point of view.

That is a great example as you say of what I theorize about, this way that we enclose and neutralize one another's assaults on dearly held beliefs. That's part of the thrill, testing ourselves in a friendly kind of war. I have played bullet-chess obsessively in my day. But 'just trying to prove my point' is somewhat reductive. I really love writing. Conversations with others inspire me. I find new metaphors. I overhear myself. This 'overhearing' is very important, I think. We automatically see ourselves through the eyes of our conversational partner, sometimes discovering certain excesses or failures of style through this empathetic leap. Of course I also learn from others, assimilate what they offer. Finally this conversation is life experience. I'm a theorist of the dialectical clash dialectically clashing with others in the presentation of this dialectical clash. It's strange, exciting, absorbing. — t0m

I mainly agree with this sentiment, I guess hence why we are on a philosophy forum- a place to test and contest ideas. However, do still pay attention to my phrasing. Where you will assert that you "won" by this repartee of ideas "proves" it is truth-tools, I will claim that I "won" when you live the very restless/survival life that pessimism describes. Thus the proving grounds are going to be in different arenas. In the context of two people just fighting idea vs. idea, your Ironism seems more appropriate. In the broader arena of life in general, what I describe is simply being lived out, whether consciously known or not. Deprivation, desire, discomfort, survival, and all the secondary, tertiary, and quaternary goals that branch off from these roots will be carried on, as there is no choice. That is the there there that is going on, and not just fodder for debate and dialectic of points of view :).

I underlined the part where you pretty much agree with me. Maybe there's a quantitative difference, but we both see that existential truths are quite different from math. For me math is the 'pure form' that is also in language. Language has a logical core. Entities are still 'units' or unities. But metaphor is foggy. It is liquid as opposed to crystalline. The metaphysical dream needs a language as rigid as math, a language that doesn't rust and mutate, subject to time. It was Eliot of Pound who stressed that poets have to keep making it new, precisely because poems lose their force away from the living, linguistic context of their day. — t0m

Indeed, me saying "deprivation, desire, discomfort, survival" has much less efficacy than describing in more poetic or musical terms these themes. That I tend to agree. Where I disagree is that despite these "shadows" of language terms and neologisms, there is a sort of truth behind it that is being conveyed, thus the liquid is maybe hard to capture but it is still H20.

It probably goes without saying, but for many people, having children is the life-defining project. The goal is to marry and have a stable income so you can raise your progeny. In many respects, life is seen as a creative process, the object of art being descendants. It brings many parents great joy to see their children succeed, and go on to have their own children, and on and on and on. Personally I think it's absurd and if I were in the scenario of being a grandparent I would be horrified that all "this", my children, and their children, and their children...all started from my loins. A single orgasm enabling centuries, millennia of faces. A single orgasm condemning so many souls to life, and death. Haunting. — darthbarracuda

Yep. I like how you describe the notion many people may have that life is the creative process and progeny being the object of art. But they will say "see, life is art not a burden" and thus continue infinitum. More instrumentality. A lack is being fulfilled but it just causes more lacks that need to be fulfilled, and so on. What are your thoughts on the debate me and t0m are having? Roughly speaking, he is trying to say all is language-games and stories (pragmatist/post-modern stance) ergo pessimism is just one story amongst many. It is all contingent, there are no necessary truths, at least on existential matters.

Neither I am, or I wouldn't be convinced of it. It's 'paradoxical' or 'mystical' perhaps. It's 'behind words.' For me the 'mystical' can't be about hidden entities, apart from the hidden 'entity' of feeling. In the high moments this 'irony' becomes poetry, rock-n-roll lyrics. A Hendrix guitar solo is more properly its theology. Myth and music express 'the highest,' for me, though I like trying to mechanically conceptualize this transcendence of the 'mechanical-conceptual.' That's why I stress the 'irrationalilty' of the hero-myth. Our 'final vocabulary' ultimately just happened to seduce us. If 'rationality' is central to this image, then we have an especially volatile dialectic, since we experience facing criticism as a duty. — t0m

Well, music, lyrics, and poetry, do seem to get to the essence of things.

I agree that 'irony' is most naturally understood this way. I take the term itself from Rorty, without completely intending the same thing.

Ironist (n. Ironism) (from Greek: eiron, eironeia), a term coined by Richard Rorty, describes someone who fulfills three conditions:

She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered;

She realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts;

Insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself.
— Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p.73
— Wiki — t0m

Right, the pragamtist/post-modern stance. All is fictions upon fictions. Truths are just tools. Doesn't change the reality whether you think this or not >:O .

Respectfully, I think there's a tension here between 'rationalization' and 'closer.' The rationalizating (for me) is our understanding of the situation. — t0m

Right, there is nothing to behold outside of conceptualizations- pragmatist/post-modern stance. As I've said, procreation deflates this totalizing of contingency. You can be neutral, but others will not, forcing you to have to make a move. You cannot languish in language-games as the trickster-poet in the economic structures of life and the restless instrumental nature of the self. Language games come out of it, not the other way around. Your liquid turns back to ice :p.

Indeed. 'Everyday Dasein' is lived by the 'they.' Only the top-layer is sophisticatedly non-contingent. — t0m

I'm not hip to all of Heidegger's (plethora of) neologisms. Please enlighten me of the "they" versus whatever other dichotomy he thought up.

Right, so we feel a common restraint or duty to respect the other's freedom. I think Hegel applies here. The 'master' can only be satisfyingly recognized by another 'master.' For me we have something like incarnate freedom that wants a very high notion of friendship (that of 'kings' who recognize the limits of their realm and co-participate in a notion of virtue, allowing for non-central differences.) For Blake this is the 'forgiveness of sin,' which I read as an embrace of difference. An old line: we are bound by our desire to bind. — t0m

Agree. We have to provide the space for the kingdom of ideas, in order for ideas to be admitted freely and to be truly embraced versus simply accepted from just being a norm or coerced by force.

Well I won't claim that my stance is perfectly liquid. It melts at the top, with a foundation of the undeniable common sense that we call sanity. Language is received like the law. I can't get behind my past completely. I suppose I don't think in terms of a crystalline set of systematic propositions but rather in terms of a network of metaphors. I was just re-reading Kaufmann's translation of Hegel's preface to the phenomenology and (with new Heideggerian notions at hand) saw it in a fresh light. — t0m

The first part must have influenced Heidegger. For me 'liquidity' refers (as a start) to the instability of the concepts that we tend to 'compute' with as fixed points. For me it's not a crystalline network but something slimy, more or less liquid.

Then there's this, a little further down:

The life of mind is not one that shuns death, and keeps clear of destruction; it endures death and in death maintains its being. It only wins to its truth when it finds itself utterly torn asunder.
— Hegel — t0m

Language might have a liquidity to it, but the concepts that are being spoken of can have a force beyond the mere description of the words. Thus if I say we are always "deprived" "goal-seeking" and trampled under the wheel of instrumentality where we are always rushing forward, of course there is a poetic element of this. But the point I am trying to make is the mere description is revealing some forces going on internally behind the scenes- even if it simply capturing it in mere description. There is a reference there. There is a there there. Not all is liquid that melts. Thus the structure holds. Perhaps we cannot capture it with words- perhaps music is a better translation or poetry or aphorisms rather than strict propositional "crystalline" language games. But again, there is a there, there of what I am talking about. I know by actively debating this you are trying to prove your point- it is just a contest of language games trying to subsume the other language. We will both walk away thinking that our language games have indeed won out. We will both say that despite your rhetoric, my argument was self-evident in what was said. Mine because your lived-life will thus prove it, yours because this little repartee of back and forth proves that it's all just truth-tools.

I don't deny a certain 'divine malice,' but for me it's not primarily ironic teasing. That would be a 'hardening' of the position into something fixed and mechanical. I think the anxiety of influence (Harold Bloom) is central here. We might say that there is no ironist-in-general but only the type of the 'strong poet' waging the 'war against cliche.' The strong poet is exactly he who does not want to be just a type. (Of course I wouldn't be 'ironic' in my own terms if 'ironism' was important to me as a label. There is a behind-word-ness here that is central for me. The terms are draped over something like an intuition --but this intuition is maybe just a liquid-network of concept. It's a table with hundreds of legs. If it's ultimately conceptual, no particular term is too precious to abandon. The 'feel' of the whole is what's important.) — t0m

Yeah I sort of get it. But you have to eat. Word games or not. Calculations cause things to happen. Calculations are based on axioms that can lead to elaborate maths. Things can be communicated clearly and with little metaphor. Of course, we are talking existential truths, which indeed does allow for a large dose of such things as metaphor, intuition, feeling, and a kind of aesthetic intuition. However, as long as the languages can be translatable to common language in a certain way, there are ways to make some sense of people's preferred metaphors. Then it is up to the individual to evaluate them and make sense of it. This does not mean that what is trying to be referenced, even if it is a rather ambiguous feeling, is not something that is the case. It is just going to be a bit harder to cross the boundaries than straight-forward logic which has applications in technology and much more practical to continuing the goals of survival and entertainment.

Since for me rational frameworks have ultimately irrational or rhetorical foundations, I understand poetic descriptions to be primary. 'Poetry' or 'productive logic' institutes the very frameworks in which arguments can take place. For instance, Popper's falsifiability criterion for science. I love it. But is this criterion itself science? Or something like pre-science? — t0m

It is not science, but getting at the definition of science. What makes science science versus something else. Science has an outcome which can be measured. Existential claims of life are more felt. I will agree with that. However, it can still be conveyed.

It's true that parents throw their children into struggle. They plop them down on the roller coaster without asking them first. Some will give you a metaphysical answer to the why. Others will give the esthetic answer. I'm not a parent so this is theoretical for me. But isn't sentimentality in terms about an overall feeling about life central here to either position, yours or theirs? I think there's a dialectic between thinking and feeling. We might agree that 'reason is rhetoric' or 'rationalization' in the hands of something darker. Representation is the tool of will or care. But this must be haunted by irony, since the notion that 'reason is rationalization' calls itself one more rationalization.

Note that I'm not saying you are wrong. I defend/present a certain undecidability, but I don't present this undecidability as binding on others but (with a certain distance) as a first-person report. I don't deny that there is a sort of imposition in all philosophical dialogue. There is a wanting-to-convince, something imperial, a 'fight for recognition.' But awareness of this gives it a different flavor. — t0m

So I'm not really convinced of this ironism. Don't get me wrong, I like irony in its employ to an end- the rationalization if you will, but trying to construct a worldview as Irony (with a capital "I") just does not stand up to me. Your decisions still have a real affect on yourself and others. Procreation is the definition of a decision that affects another. These decisions are also caused by real viewpoints. Irony does not erase suffering. I see irony as more a literary tool. It has little impetus outside provoking a humorous response from a reader in a literary/artistic setting. It is a rather impotent in its employ in real life. It is a defense mechanism for sure if taken to the extreme. No pain no gain, if everything is slippery and defies any point of view or set logic.

I agree that we were forced into duties, trouble, vulnerability. But for me we are also forced into 'post-facto sentimental gymnastics.' As I see it, I 'confess' that that's what my position is. As I read you, you half-way confess this. Perhaps you can clarify. Is it the metaphysical truth or do you understand it as the best 'rationalization'? — t0m

The best rationalization, but the one closest to understanding our situation. Everything is interpretation, but I think there are ones that hit more closer to the truth. Nietzsche and ironism would be in a wider circle, perhaps have some various good points, but does not quite hit it. It has an air of hipness and coolness, it gives you perhaps a persona of lithe story-maker, but it lacks the depth of the human condition. Pardon my French, but trying to be "slippery as fuck" so that everything is contingently spiraled out of a point of view into simply liquidity, is not taking into account the structures, only the contingent paths. And as you admitted, not all is contingent.

Note that I'm not saying you are wrong. I defend/present a certain undecidability, but I don't present this undecidability as binding on others but (with a certain distance) as a first-person report. I don't deny that there is a sort of imposition in all philosophical dialogue. There is a wanting-to-convince, something imperial, a 'fight for recognition.' But awareness of this gives it a different flavor. — t0m

I agree in a sense that you can posit your point of view, but you cannot make it a law. I liken it to passive vegans. They may try to convince you that eating animal byproduct is wrong, but they are not going to force you, or harass you about it. So in the democracy of ideas, it is important to note that we can present our views, even if we have a lot of conviction without being an ahole about it. Of course, my rhetoric in this setting is going to be ramped up here more than in everyday life, as it is a philosophy forum where views like this can be tested, contested, and argued about endlessly.

To be clear, I never asserted that everything is contingent. Only the 'upper levels' of interpretation have such freedom. The daily world of trucks hurtling down highways is no place unbounded fiction. It's the 'global' interpretation that's contingent. I focus especially on the image of virtue at the heart of an interpretation. I'm very Nietzschean in this regard. Look at how a system/interpretation places the individual in a hierarchy. For me this tends to be the gist. I'd interpret both of us as variants of the 'knowledge-hero,' since we esteem ourselves and others in terms of what they understand. I can't really speak for you, so I'm just sharing a perception. — t0m

This is kind of true, but what of it? I don't think this characterization negates the pessimist's stance, it's just descriptive. Okay, the pessimist is the clarion call, providing the Promethean tragic knowledge. So what if that is what is going on? Does that affect the message? It's just that this Promethean message is closer to what is going on ;). The other Prometheans are just false prophets :p.

1) We agree that life is forced- it was not a choice.
2) We may agree that life is structured for instrumentality- that is, we do to do to do, there is an endless goal-seeking cycle of maintaining survival and boredom. Forced into some socialized economic/survival system and restlessness needing to be entertained (e.g. you are entertained by trying to thwart other philosophies with irony ;)).
3) We may agree that life has contingent harms- ones that depend on circumstances of life (genetics, disease, past decisions, etc. etc.).
4) You may agree that to not think about instrumentality, our own restlessness, forced economic/social dependencies we'd otherwise not choose to be a part of, we have psychological mechanisms to distract us.

If you believe any variant of these, it is a very real thing, and does not become the slippery fodder for ironism.

This is dead on. Some will sugar it up, but there is an 'evil' march to the future that leaves the 'wounded' behind. — t0m

Indeed.

For me the 'we' here deserves analysis. If I show up to work, I've decided to play the game, be good, do my duty, maintain the structure of my life. The same applies to my coworkers. A dark joke can go over quite well (I've tried it), as long as it doesn't have the 'feel' of compulsion. If I doggedly attempt to convert someone on the job (to pessimism or ironism), they'll experience this as a violation. Work is 'not the place.' But the resistance is individual. There's no sense of the we apart from the shared insistence of individually not-having-to-hear-it at work. That kind of talk belongs between trusted friends. It's too intimate for work. It's fraught like discussion of one's sexuality. — t0m

Isn't it funny that the closer you hit to what's really going on, people do not want to hear it? Existential matters are to be avoided at all costs. This is the very thing I think should be obliterated. Existential matters should always be at the forefront. So knowledge-hero perhaps? Yes, but at the employ of getting to the heart of what is really going on. Let's not distract, anchor, ignore, and sublimate.

This is the basic metaphysical move, the distinction between illusion and reality. The countermove would be to present pessimism as a nightmare. I'm neutral, or rather my dream is that it's all dreams a the contingent/optional apex of a worldview. But I believe my dream, and the distinction of dream and non-dream is part of the dream of metaphysics. All these terms 'melt' upon analysis. They aren't fixed. The are caught in the 'liquid' dialectic.

(Again, the foundation of the worldview is non-optional immersion in a common-sense that makes metaphysical theorizing possible.) — t0m

Well, your little parenthesis here kind of negates your previous liquid stance. We are thrown into the world to make our grand viewpoints (or to choose to try to ignore/distract/anchor/sublimate such existential contemplation). Instrumentality, contingent harm, the goal-seeking cannot be dreamed away. Group think, can however, try to stabilize the current situation. After all, survival needs optimism. It's just that once you have self-reflective creatures such as ourselves, things must be justified. It is not enough to just saying, "well it's been going on for such and such time". I have presented some justifications. Others may well, and I may counter them, and so on. There has to be convincing because that is all we do as humans. Just because you can convince on any point, does not mean that any point is true.

I like the theory of anchoring. It's vaguely what I mean by 'image of virtue.' Stressing the social aspect seems to align the pessimist with the 'Satanic'/Romantic individualistic rebel. I love the old rebel. My own philosophy evolved from the image of the rebel. But language being so social suggests to me that any earnestly presented metaphysical position (including Zappe's) is a claim on the norm. Earnest metaphysics attempts to justify the imposition of a new norm (ethical socialism.) — t0m

I see what you mean. How can you be the gadfly, if everyone becomes the gadfly? How does the rebel revel in his ironic teasing, if everyone embraces the ironic teasing as a truism? I don't know how to answer that other than, if it's truly closer to the truth, it doesn't matter if 99% or .0001% of the population agree with it. The truth is the truth, whether it's ironic or earnest. I don't agree with forcing others though. It must be through channels of democratic dialogue. It should not be law, it should not be coerced, it should not be imposed by public shaming, or group think. It is up to the individual. Coercion out of social pressure would be awful for a philosophy of life. Just as the Ligotti quote alludes to about optimism's hold on group think, the same would be for pessimism if it was to force people to conform through social means of suppression. It doesn't mean the aesthetic vision it represents is wrong though. It just should not be imposed in any collectivist fashion. If that means the outcome is more birth, less people who adhere to it, etc. so be it.

I respect Zapffe for understanding himself to be one more 'poet.' But for me this is just an inch from ironism. If I myself am poetic sublimation-anchoring-rationalization, then how can I cling to the dream versus reality distinction in the traditional way? — t0m

The work itself is sublimation as he is redirecting his thoughts through art. It isn't denying what is causing this though. It is a coping mechanism. I'd have to read up more, if he is trying to say sublimation is the best kind of coping mechanism or it is the same as the other ones.

For me the success of these happy little coping strategies would endanger the 'life is no good' position. — t0m

But we agreed it is more aesthetic, not utilitarian calculus. It is a vision of what is going on, not something that dictates contingent positive or negative experiences.

Yes, accepting the 'guilt' or the 'evil.' I can't speak for you, but I think lots of dark positions are 'righteous' in a certain sense. I sense in them a frustrated desire for purity and innocence. Accepting guilt and finitude is accepting the bloody hands and not-having-chosen-one's-self that comes with life. I understand resenting the burden of accepting/adaptation/adjustment. The dream is to be one's own father, self-created. I think God is a pretty good image of the massive pride in man. It's an indignity to be vulnerably and needfully embodied, but we only dreamed of God from within this indignity of finitude and guilt in the first place. (As always, this is just-my-adaptation, even I try to convey it persuasively.) — t0m

Interesting, though I don't have much to say to it. This isn't an argument so much as a poetic description of perhaps our situation. We are indeed embodied and forced into the situation. We must deal and cope with it. Indeed we are not in ideal preferences, but always adjusting to the given. Maybe you can flesh this out a bit more.

I think we can agree on the absence of a "metaphysical" answer to this "why." It seems to me that conscious procreation at least involves at least an implicit decision that life is good --or that the child's life will likely be good. Probably lots of secular types think in terms of the rollercoaster metaphor in the movie Parenthood. Life is a ride, an experience. It's a mixture of bad and good. It's likely "worth the trouble," a parent decides. This roller-coaster metaphor arguably includes the absurdity-consciousness. Life is not "fundamentally" about anything in particular. It's a piece of music that some think worth hearing, even though some of it really sucks. (I stay neutral for reasons already mentioned. I don't defend life-in-general. I currently like the "music" I hear more than I dislike it.) — t0m

Of course the parent is going to sentimentalize it. But that is one perspective. Where is the other? For example, this is just one reason, and it's not even the main one- children will become economic units for the society/state. Most likely the child will need to find some institution (we all can't be CEOs of our own economic destiny here) and deal with all the trappings and BS of contemporary workspaces. Then they have to be consumers- obtaining goods, reevaluating them, and maintaining their own wellbeing through this and that economic means. They have to maintain themselves, entertain themselves, all the while encountering negative interactions along the way. Why create these circumstances of dealing with, producing, and consuming for this new person? Sentimentality of life doesn't seem to justify this at all. Anyways, the negative features of being a worker in the economy is enough to at least give pause to throwing another person into this. It becomes a product of the social order, and must endure the already existing setting that is not set up for any ideal preference. Just because it's not slavery or poverty-stricken state, doesn't negate that being a part of any economic system is not good from the start for the individual- utility maximizers, good Communist workers, or otherwise.

Right. But "apparent" necessity is just that, apparent. For me, for instance, anti-natalism as an 'objective' position is optional, contingent. It's a form of ethical socialism, the projection of a duty-for-all in terms of a truth-for-all. — t0m

Not really, because being born was not a choice. That decision was made for us. Even the choice itself- accept what exists or kill yourself is part of the necessary structure. So while antinatalism may never be considered "duty-for-all" it is preventing what, does in fact make objective reality, your very birth. You were forced into the duties of daily life or into the decision to kill yourself. That is a fact. Thus the alternative to antinatlism is creating this situation for a new person, and then having all the post-facto sentimental gymnastics (like the ones you are using, including Nietzschean style equivocating).

I think we agree that life is 'care' or 'will,' but I interpret that care or will to have a height-seeking nature. So I look at the general tendency of a world-view or personality to assert its dominance or priority. My own theory of transcendence is of course one more move in this game. For me it is"freer" than other positions. Root-seeking is maybe the general structure of 'deep' thought. What is the deepest truth? The most basic nature of man? We seem to agree that 'will' is a word that points at this, though we disagree on the structure. Both of us interpret the other in terms of our own fundamental concept. This is of course compatible with my concept, since it is a theory of the dialectical/rhetorical clash of contingently established worldviews. (It's ironic because it recognizes its own contingency or groundlessness without thereafter becoming 'faithful' or 'objective' again.) — t0m

I get your MO :). The last sentence encapsulates your style here on the forum I can see. Again, we agree it is more of an aesthetic affair. Once the pessimist sees it in those terms, it makes sense. If others don't see it, despite hard-fought arguments to the contrary, it goes back to the Cioran quote about how others suffer, whether they recognize it or not. Birth forces the need for contingent worldviews, so yet again necessity of life's circumstances bypasses your idea of contingency. We disagree, not all is contingent. If Will- the ongoing goal-seeking is true, it is also true we cannot stop it. We must embrace it. Also, I just had to provide this quote. It is probably the most pessimistically searing ones, I've read, and I've read a lot of them. It goes with your idea that its all interpretation.

In the workaday world, complainers will not go far. When someone asks how you are doing, you had better be wise enough to reply, “I can’t complain.” If you do complain, even justifiably, people will stop asking how you are doing. complaining will not help you succeed and influence people. You can complain to your physician or psychiatrist because they are paid to hear you complain. But you cannot complain to your boss or your friends, if you have any. you will soon be dismissed from your job and dropped from the social register. Then you will be left alone with your complains and no one to listen to them. Perhaps then the message will sink into your head: If you do not feel good enough for long enough, you should act as if you do and even think as if you do. That is the way to get yourself to feel good enough for long enough and stop you from complaining for good, as any self-improvement book can affirm. But should you improve, someone must assume the blame. And that someone will be you. This is monumentally so if you are a pessimist or a depressive. Should you conclude that life is objectionable or that nothing matters–do not waste our time with your nonsense. We are on our way to the future, and the philosophically disheartening or the emotionally impaired are not going to hinder our progress. If you cannot say something positive, or at least equivocal, keep it to yourself. Pessimists and depressives need not apply for a position in the enterprise of life. You have two choices: Start thinking the way God and your society want you to think or be forsaken by all. The decision is yours, since your are a free agent who can choose to rejoin our fabricated world or stubbornly insist on…what? That we should mollycoddle non-positive thinkers like you or rethink how the whole world transacts its business? That we should start over from scratch? Or that we should go extinct? Try to be realistic. We did the best we could with the tools we had. After all, we are only human, as we like to say. Our world may not be in accord with nature’s way, but it did develop organically according to our consciousness, which delivered us to a lofty prominence over the Creation. The whole thing just took on a life of its own, and nothing is going to stop it anytime soon. There can be no starting over and no going back. No major readjustments are up for a vote. And no melancholic head-case is going to bad-mouth our catastrophe. The universe was created by the Creator, damn it. We live in a country we love and that loves us back. We have families and friends and jobs that make it all worthwhile. We are somebodies, not a bunch of nobodies without names or numbers or retirement plans. None of this is going to be overhauled by a thought criminal who contends that the world is not doubleplusgood and never will be. Our lives may not be unflawed — that would deny us a better future to work toward — but if this charade is good enough for us, then it should be good enough for you. So if you cannot get your mind right, try walking away. you will find no place to go and no one who will have you. You will find only the same old trap the world over. Lighten up or leave us alone. you will never get us to give up our hopes. you will never get us to wake up from our dreams. We are not contradictory beings whose continuance only worsens our plight as mutants who embody the contorted logic of a paradox. Such opinion will not be accredited by institutions of authority or by the middling run of humans. To lay it on the line, whatever thoughts may enter your chemically imbalanced brain are invalid, inauthentic, or whatever dismissive term we care to hang on you, who are only “one of those people.” So start pretending that you feel good enough for long enough, stop your complaining, and get back in line. If you are not as strong as Samson — that no-good suicide and slaughterer of Philistines — then get loaded to the gills and return to the trap. Keep your medicine cabinet and your liquor cabinet well stocked, just like the rest of us. Come on and join the party. No pessimists or depressives invited. Do you think we are all morons? We know all about those complaints of yours. The only difference is that we have sense enough and feel good enough for long enough not to speak of them. keep your powder dry and your brains blocked. Our shibboleth “Up the Conspiracy and down with Consciousness. — Thomas Ligotti

For me it's about accepting the entanglement of the 'the divine' in the thorns 'down here.' It involves accepting the 'guilt' of being alive. In Siddartha the ferryman contains the murderer and the prostitute as 'subselves.' I think in terms of harmonization as opposed to purity. We agree on 'coping,' but this word does have a non-neutral slant. 'Play' is appropriate for many ways of being. 'Play' collapses into 'coping,' and successful coping leads back to play. — t0m

The fact that we have to cope to begin with is the problem. You can call it play or whatever you want. You used the word accepting. Of course we must accept, there is no choice but slow death or fast death. The philosopher, Peter Zapffe thought we used four mechanisms of coping with the dissatisfaction of the human condition (I would assume things like instrumentality, Will nature, and death) From Wikipedia:

Isolation is "a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling".[3]
Anchoring is the "fixation of points within, or construction of walls around, the liquid fray of consciousness".[3] The anchoring mechanism provides individuals a value or an ideal that allows them to focus their attentions in a consistent manner. Zapffe also applied the anchoring principle to society, and stated "God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the laws of life, the people, the future"[3] are all examples of collective primary anchoring firmaments.
Distraction is when "one limits attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions".[3] Distraction focuses all of one's energy on a task or idea to prevent the mind from turning in on itself.
Sublimation is the refocusing of energy away from negative outlets, toward positive ones. The individuals distance themselves and look at their existence from an aesthetic point of view (e.g., writers, poets, painters). Zapffe himself pointed out that his produced works were the product of sublimation.

We agree that existence is goal-seeking, I think. You experience your view as a universal truth that at least suggests the duty to abstain from procreation, while I am neutral or agnostic about the value of others' lives in general and therefore apolitical on this issue. More locally, I believe that those in my peer group are more happy than unhappy, but I like to think they are above-average in terms of coping-play. It's arguable that there is an inherited baseline emotional valence that invisibly distorts this whole issue. What if pessimists tend to be wired for less pleasure? That could be an unrecognized truth as you mentioned above. I don't know. — t0m

Or wired to see things how they are beyond the coping strategies. I've also heard of happy-go-lucky pessimists. Ones who say that life's contingent and structural harms are real, and thus life itself is no good. However, they have their happy little coping strategies. Temperament may steer those towards pessimism, but it could be the inherent logic of beings whose natures are structurally harmed and who experience contingent harms as they experience the world. It is not necessarily a matter of utilitarian calculus.

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Yeah, this nails a theme in Being and Time. Apparently Heidegger switches from angst-dread to the attunement of profound boredom in Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. These attunements "open" the world in a certain way (or just the abyss?) — t0m

Yes, I think it was Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics that I was drawing from more-or-less. I may have specifically looked at this: http://janslaby.com/downloads/slaby_heideggerboredom.pdf

As I understand it, Dasein is mostly not subjective. We are lived by the "they" for the most part. Not only that but our sense of ourselves disappears in the task. Dreyfus uses the example of driving. We become the driving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaGk6S1qhz0 The subject-object paradigm is inherited from Descartes and conceals/obscures a more basic revelation of what is. — t0m

I'll try to watch. However, that part about the subjectivity, was not so much a reference to Heidegger but the recognition that this is not about scientific concepts but the human condition, what it means to experience life as a human. Of course, what else can we know? But this is definitely in the realm of existential issues, as you say, "the deep stuff".

Ah, yes, I remember that. I think he was on to something profound. As a philosopher who took music and sex very seriously, he drilled deeper than most. I first read about him in Durant's Story of Philosophy. I loved him right away. I still do, though I can only make sense of the world as will and representation along Heideggerian lines. Life is interpreting care or caring interpretation, a whirlwind of embodied passion-driven conceptualization (and maybe also a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, [ultimately or finally] signifying nothing [while otherwise signifying all kinds of things].) Music mirrors the caring aspect, while philosophy perhaps meta-thinks.

Schopenhauer thought music so profound he wrote: — t0m

Music … stands quite apart from all the [other arts]. In it we do not recognize the copy, the repetition, of any Idea of the inner nature of the world. Yet it is such a great and exceedingly fine art, its effect on man’s innermost nature is so powerful, and it is so completely and profoundly understood by him in his innermost being as an entirely universal language, whose distinctness surpasses even that of the world of perception itself, that in it we certainly have to look for more than that exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi [“an unconscious exercise in arithmetic in which the mind does not know it is counting”] which Leibniz took it to be… We must attribute to music a far more serious and profound significance that refers to the innermost being of the world and of our own self.

Music is as immediate an objectification and copy of the whole will as the world itself is, indeed as the Ideas are, the multiplied phenomenon of which constitutes the world of individual things. Therefore music is by no means like the other arts, namely a copy of the Ideas, but a copy of the will itself, the objectivity of which are the Ideas. For this reason the effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence. — Schopenhauer

I suppose my theory is pretty similar to yours, really. We enact a fantasy role, just because. It's a brute fact of our nature, as I see it, that we wired to transcend/dominate. Maybe most of behavior is just "animal." There is only so much "spiritual eros" as the apex of a less glorious foundation. I continue to read the "slave" metaphor as embedded within a particular crystallization of this desire --one I can mostly relate to. Here's the "master" as opposed to the "slave." — t0m

Rather we are programmed via language to for survival. As I've said in another thread: Linguistic brains that are socialized to learn habits of survival in a historico-cultural setting. So we are enculturated to pick up habits- first of language (I, you, they, object, subject, emotions, coordinated intention, goal-seeking, learning any cognitive skill in general), then of economy, lifestyle, and navigating the larger social context etc. in order to maintain our bodies and comfort levels. One ironic habit is to pretend work has value in itself (a good way to keep people from questioning or going into despair). Hence, like good cultural caretakers, psychologists and self-help gurus want to make sure you find "the right job" that fits your temperament and personality.. It's all quite individualized now and neverending in its snowflakness. Anyways, this is supposed to make up for the fact that the entropy of keeping yourself, and the social unit alive is a given that must be dealt with (i.e. is a given burden) saddled on the next generation that is born.

But even if survival wasn't a thing, as we agreed upon, the underlying restlessness is there keeping us unsatisfied and doing, doing, doing. Always becoming and not being. We can't be, we must become until death- the final not be for our little socially-constructed selves that once existed and had to do all that doing! So why do we need to create more socially-constructed selves to view the world and run around restlessly? There is none. It is creating more doing socially-constructed selves for the sake of it. This is aggressive absurdity that has to be enacted through incarnation of yet another individual who has to take the mantle of living an aggressively absurd life of instrumental doing.

This can be taken more or less literally. It implicity includes 'ironism," as I see it, although Hegel the system-man tried to downplay "The Irony." For me transcendence is the (theoretical) death of every "fixed idea" of the self. Man is incarnate/mortal freedom potentially dialectically revealed to himself as such. But "freedom" is the dying of the apparently necessary into the contingent. The metaphor works because that which is understood as necessity is therefore non-optional. Freedom-death discloses possibility buried in false necessity. — t0m

Ah, but somethings can never die into contingency and will stay necessary. Survival, restlessness, and discomfort are necessary roots at the bottom of our ever-convoluted (seemingly removed) contingent goals that, in reality, derive from them in our linguistically programmed minds (whose development I have described earlier).

I should have acknowledged that admission more. I like the framework of comparing coping mechanisms, of "shopping for personality" as I call it. We create, discuss, and compare "operating systems." — t0m

Yep, but I did also say one framework cuts closer to what is going on for the linguistically-minded human dasein. Instrumentality, restless nature of a self-reflecting animal would be the briefest way to encapsulate it.

I read Siddhartha first and loved it. I was locked up as a troubled teen when a Buddhist white-guy-teacher recommended it. I also read Anne Frank's diary and Catcher in the Rye. Of course I was a poet then, typing what I could remember of the notebook I lost when I almost drowned alone in muddy creek. The banks were slick mud. I had to plunge my hands into this mud to grab at tree roots. That was the second time that muddy water almost claimed me. Fuck brown water. — t0m

Interesting.

I don't deny that this plays a role, but the above also plays a role in your own defense of your interpretation as a better coping mechanism. I'm not claiming to be beyond investment in my own role, just to be clear. William James wrote about the inertia of belief systems. We all prefer to tinker rather than revolutionize. We evolve varying systems within our varying lives. As I see it, there's no reason to insist that any system is objectively right, though some hero-myths are founded on making these kinds of claims. My "ironism" is strongly connected to the making-contingent of what Spengler called "ethical socialism," which has nothing to do with economy. It's just the usually assumed "scientistic" framework that understands the spiritual-metaphysical in terms of finding and sharing a single truth-for-all. I now think in terms of offering sentences as tools/options that may or may not be useful to others. — t0m

I see. Again, everything might seem like content, but there is structure that is underlying your content-tool-making. It can go both ways. The content of words as tools is still within the context of structure that you are thrown into. That is where much of my focus lies. Rather than being a lithe spirit floating on the content of this or that belief system, what is it that is going on with the human condition at its root. The instrumentality of the human condition- the very aesthetic understanding of all this goal-seeking.

This is the dark truth at the heart of the question: is life good? I have lived this question. I continue to live this question. It is constantly answered and asked again. Answering it for others strikes me as a stretch. For me life is justified, if it is justified, in terms of feeling, or aesthetically. Existence shines and screams against the foil of nonexistence. Suffering is certain. Pleasure is certain. The computation of what it all means or is worth is less certain--as I see it. — t0m

But did you see the rest of his quote? As Ligotti also stated:

While no airtight case has ever been made regarding the undesirability of human life, pessimists still run themselves ragged trying to make one. Optimists have no comparable mission. When they do argue for the desirability of human life it is only in reaction to pessimists arguing the opposite, even though no airtight case has ever been made regarding that desirability. Optimism has always been an undeclared policy of human culture—one that grew out of our animal instincts to survive and reproduce—rather than an articulated body of thought. It is the default condition of our blood and cannot be effectively questioned by our minds or put in grave doubt by our pains. This would explain why at any given time there are more cannibals than philosophical pessimists. — Ligotti

I just can't agree with you here, though I have a sense of what you mean. I like the idea of the old man picking his moment, doing it to avoid the indignity of melting away cowardly from a hopeless disease. Or maybe his bodily frailty is such that the game is no longer worth the candle. Or maybe in a fight that he knows he will lose, striking at his enemy nevertheless (the stuff of movies.) — t0m

I am not saying suicide is not an option, just that the pain of life might end, but life has already occurred for that individual. The wound was already stung. Death does not get rid of that. What may be going on is a wish of never being born, an impossibility. Thus it is the ideation of suicide. As Cioran said:
[quore=Cioran]The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.

I can relate to this. We seem to agree that life is justified aesthetically. — t0m

I always said my pessimism was an aesthetic one. It is seeing an image of the structure of the world and finding consolation somehow in understanding this. There is no embracing the absurd (pace Camus) or Eternal Return (pace Nietzsche).

Yeah, I understand myself as a "dark" thinker who "goes there." I do see that we are thrown into brute fact. We don't possess our own foundations. It is "shameful" to have a body in a certain sense. It makes us vulnerable to others. We are gods "trapped" in dogs. That's the crucifixion myth for me. The "divine" only exists in a context of suffering and humiliation. The given that you mention is what we interpret. That's why (for me) it's interpretation rather than pure fiction. It is constrained. It must cope, affectively justified if at all. I think we agree on that. — t0m

It seems so. What is the human condition is the question much of this lies on. The goal-seeking, restless nature is there, whether you have the aesthetic view of it or not. It still happens, even if people cannot see it or interpret it like that. That is where we probably differ. You don't have to recognize it for yourself for it to be happening, to be a truth if you will.

As I understand it, Heidegger doesn't think in terms of the "core" or the true entity --with the exception of the 'core' or most deeply explanatory kind of time. He (at first) just describes the different ways that entities appear or disappear for us (the ways that Dasein reveals and conceals them). His big picture purpose in The Concept of Time is (unsurprisingly) to offer a new analysis of time. He offers 'primordial time' or 'originary temporality' as an otherwise un-timelike irreducible explanation of world-time and physics-time. This primordial time is (as I read it) just left as the brute fact of Dasein's (our) basic structure. The metaphorical "future" of this primordial time is something like (?) a not-necessarily conscious 'ego ideal'. Or that's how Blattner interprets what he calls Heidegger's 'temporal idealism.'

So far Blattner's sense of the big picture gels most convincingly with what I've read. The "existential" stuff in B&T about living one's death is some kind of metaphorical portrait of the most Dasein-like mode of experience time. It's the hardest part to make sense of, but it seems to involve the 'poetic' revelation of reality. It's opposed to routinized idle talk and the crusty pre-interpretation of the world that one inherits from the they and mostly lives as the they. I think Kuhn's normal versus abnormal discourse is somehow analogous. Dasein is most Dasein-like (its 'own' or authentic) when in this revolutionary mode. Anyway, the 'authentic' mode of experiencing time is anxiously or soberly joyful. This 'authentic' mode is the hardest thing to parse, though, so that's just my tentative interpretation. — t0m

Yeah, I'd have to read more into that. I definitely linked his broken tool concept with my own philosophy- it was not necessarily his spin on it. It was simply using his terminology. This is partially taken from my original post on Heidegger:

Heidegger may have had an analogous term for this which was that of being "Present-at-hand". Of course, this is not the case that we can see ourselves objectively. We are always viewing things from our subjective "I" self. Our stream of conscious inner world. Heidegger might have referred to this as "Ready-at-hand". This subjective world is the world of daily life that we all live in. Referring back to Heidegger, it seems our inner world can be seen as what we focus our attention on. In our day to day lives, we focus our attention on certain things to get things "done" or to entertain ourselves. The hunger-gatherer may focus on hunting the buffalo, or learning a tribal dance, the Westerner may focus on playing poker, or reading the newspaper. When our attention goes smoothly, we are very much "of the appearance of things" that everything is "all right" in our world. However, when our attention is not focused on a specific task, or is not consumed with something to take its mind off existence itself, boredom comes seeping in. The feeling of boredom may be analogous to Heidgger's idea of "broken tool". No longer does the world seem to run smoothly as it did in when our minds were focused or attentive to some task. Now the world itself seems to lack significance. The void of nothingness stares in our face and forces us to flee. The feeling of existential dread is that all consuming feeling that at the heart of the world there is nothingness, at the end of the day there is blankness. When we are focusing our attention we stay at the surface of things. Life makes sense.. things seem logical. Boredom breaks this barrier and shows it for what it is really. We cannot describe what the world is because there are no words. As stated before, it is ineffable. We can only describe the feeling, and that is one of existential dread. — schopenhauer1

On the other hand, I think that interpretation changes what it interprets. Our interpretative 'software' steers feeling itself. Apart from the structure which we both agree on, there's just ineffable feeling. Coltrane's 'Afro Blue' can be heard as a portrait of a more pleasant mode of this 'fending off' disorder. I'm very into music. I think it 'says' what concept can't say about feeling. — t0m

Schopenhauer thought music was somehow a representation of the Will itself. Though other forms of art also had an ability to bring about aesthetic pleasure by "stopping" the Will momentarily, music's flowing quality was most like Will.

For me any particular 'big picture' also gets sucked into "instrumentality." I like to think of pragmatism as descriptive rather than normative. Coping just is the fending off of disorder. Or more completely it is just as much the institution of new order. We get more complex as individuals and societies. I like the widening, ascending spiral as a metaphor. The circularity of the spiral acknowledges the repetition. — t0m

Moving forward for what? Moving for rest? Sounds like the same instrumentality. Progress is really instrumentality. It also gets trampled. Why must it be carried out by yet more humans in the first place? Novelty in technology and science and projects. Slaves to our own curiosity and goals.

Anyway, I can only see the theory of instrumentality itself as one more coping strategy. I view it as a form of transcendence. It imposes an 'essence' or 'understanding of being' that allows the imposing individual a distance from the 'devouring mother.' — t0m

But I admitted as much just a bit further down. A better coping strategy as it is unflinching, closer to what is going on. Interpretive perhaps, if everything is, but interpretative par excellence ;)!

The theory can no longer be asserted so innocently. It puts its own game in question without extinguishing that game. The role of the objective-knowledge-hero becomes optional, although it evolved from understanding this role as necessary. "Transcendence" is a newfound distance from every game, except from the game of perceiving the game as game. — t0m

But it does- the advocacy and focus of antinatalism. A game, but a game at the heart of all games.

Have you read Steppenwolf by Hesse? There's a great analysis of the "the suicide" as a type. It's a great book generally. Then there's Dostoyevsky, the master. The Possessed, for example, is just so wickedly, darkly funny. "Divine malice" and the "laughter of the gods" are choice phrases. I have been in extremely dark modes and suddenly burst out laughing. "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness" (Sam Beckett). Last but not least, there's Blood Meridian. Ol' Cormac knew the devil in man. The will-to-power is nightmarishly incarnate in "the judge," a radically dark philosopher who practices what he preaches. — t0m

I've tried Steppenwolf, but couldn't get into it as much. I can try again. I always liked Siddhartha though.

On the last part, I understand the "hindsight" argument, but I don't find it conclusive. I think I addressed that in the biased interpretation that can actually steer the situation it interprets. — t0m

What I mean is tremendous pain in the present, is washed away as "not so bad" in hindsight. It is the perception in the present vs. the tendency to Pollyannize after-the-fact. We would probably go mad otherwise. It is yet another coping strategy, but this time automatic and unconscious. Past events made brighter, future events overestimated. Then there are other mechanisms like adaptation. We adjust to less ideal circumstances and compare to those less fortunate. This is all related to the contingent physical/mental harms we face. The structural harms of existence as I said are more subtle and grinding- the instrumentality.

Well said. I haven't looked at Ligoti, but I've been deeply moved by Schopenhauer and Cioran. I especially like Schop's essays. — t0m

Ligotti wrote a delightfully pessimistic book, Conspiracy Against the Human Race.

Here's a quote from it that should probably be read in a tone of intense sarcasm. He eats at his own tail as a pessimist here, reflecting on what a non-pessimist would say about the pessimist but somehow indicting the non-pessimist in its very critique:

Perhaps the greatest strike against philosophical pessimism is that its only theme is human suffering. This is the last item on the list of our species’ obsessions and detracts from everything that matters to us, such as the Good, the Beautiful, and a Sparking Clean Toilet Bowl. For the pessimist, everything considered in isolation from human suffering or any cognition that does not have as its motive the origins, nature, and elimination of human suffering is at base recreational, whether it takes the form of conceptual probing or physical action in the world—for example, delving into game theory or traveling in outer space, respectively. And by “human suffering,” the pessimist is not thinking of particular sufferings and their relief, but of suffering itself. Remedies may be discovered for certain diseases and sociopolitical barbarities may be amended. But those are only stopgaps. Human suffering will remain insoluble as long as human beings exist. The one truly effective solution for suffering is that spoken of in Zapffe’s “Last Messiah.” It may not be a welcome solution for a stopgap world, but it would forever put an end to suffering, should we ever care to do so. The pessimist’s credo, or one of them, is that nonexistence never hurt anyone and existence hurts everyone. Although our selves may be illusory creations of consciousness, our pain is nonetheless real. — Thomas Ligotti, Conspiracy Against the Human Race

I largely agree with the first part. I won't say that there is no choice. Some do put that shotgun in their mouths. But generally we are thrown into caring and needing, and we don't leaving willingly, even when it hurts like hell. I occasionally contemplate suicide, not as a live option these days but what it means. I allow my mind to go there. I even keep it open as an optional response to brain cancer or other personality-melting diseases. Suicide can be noble, IMV, and I don't judge suicides generally. Who I am to judge? What do I really and certainly know of the feelings of others? I've had acquaintances who did it. Others overdosed on drugs. Yes, they are missing out on some amusing "ripples in the nothingness," but they also have fewer problems than I do (the usual taking-care-of problems of life). Yet I'm glued to these problems/projects. And I'm also glued to women in general and one in particular. And the pleasure of writing. A dead man has lost everything, both the agony and the ecstasy. — t0m

Yet suicide vs. life is the only choice we are given. However, despite this meager dichotomy we are always thrown in, it is true that we always kill ourselves too late. We are one step behind. But through aesthetic sublimation we are putting that idea of not-being-born in the first place into the consolation of pessimistic understanding and aesthetics. Contingent and structural suffering as an idea might need not always be on the mind, but when existential matters of life THE MEANING OF (pace Ligotti) comes into play, this aesthetic understanding is there for those of us who see this aesthetic vision of the human condition.

*I appreciate the friendliness. I enjoy our conversations. I respect that you are knee-deep in the "real" stuff like your namesake. — t0m

Thank you. It looks like you think deeply on this as well. Everything is interpretation for you. It's all a postmodern thing. However, your birth preceded your interpretation of everything as an interpretation. You may be putting the cart before the horse. Everything is not just content for the author. Some things you cannot author yourself but are authored for you.

At the moment, though, Heidegger's analysis of time is really impressing me. — t0m

Yeah, I've read some of his ideas on this and wrote about it in the past. I've linked the concept of broken tool with boredom. When we are at the surface of things, and they are running smoothly in flow, we do not see things at their core. But, when we are profoundly bored, it is like a broken tool experience. This is where the reality lies, beneath the veneer of our usual goal-process driven stance. If you want to add any more Heideggarian to what I am saying, please do.

For me it's like conspiracy theory to understand a report of experience as a "spin." I don't deny that one could spin things this way, but the possibility of spin doesn't annul the actuality of amused absorption. It feels good to do something well. You can call that a flight from boredom. I'll even acknowledge that there's some truth in that. We are "programmed" for flow, for action, for productivity. Boredom is arguably a form of pain that directs us away from an unhealthy stagnation. — t0m

But the point of the post was the inherent/forced need to maintain the order. We have to put energy into the system to keep it at order. We have to keep the system going for fear of decay, stagnation, destitution. There of course is no choice here. Either stave off disorder or die.

A "bad" flow would be an overwhelming challenge, more pain than pleasure. The you could say that we bounce between boredom and a painful taking-care-of. That's true, too, in its way. Those are the extremes, boredom and too-much-challenge. But between those extremes are non-negative and sometimes very positive states. We can imagine integrating a pleasure-pain function over time. Do you think this integral is always negative? — t0m

First, there are contingent pains of circumstances along the way- disease, disaster, temperament, character traits, other people's agendas, annoyances, etc. that make this ideal of integrating the most optimal challenge more complicated than just finding a happy mean. But, the actual goal-seeking is itself flawed. Again, we are forced into this situation and thus burdened into a beggar's choice of either putting forth the energy to maintain or suicide. There is no third option of not being put in the situation in the first place. It is the incessant nature of being burdened with having to do the process in the first place that I speak of. The wheel that must be spun. Of course we are going to find coping strategies in this forced situation of staving off disorder and then trying to find the best way to see it in a positive light. Logotherapy, Nietzschean optimism, self-actualization slogans, positive psychology, neo-Stociism, cognitive behavioral therapy, you name it.

From my point of view, you are very good at describing what is especially sucky about life from the perspective of a philosophical type. I always relate to what you're talking about. I'm just surprised that you insist that this is the whole story or the final description. — t0m

Thank you. As far as final description, I admit there are a handful of common goods we experience (i.e. achievement, relationships/connections, learning/discovery, aesthetic pleasure (including humor), physical pleasure, and being absorbed in stimulating mental/physical activities). But eventually, even these get trampled in the wheel of instrumentality. If one focuses narrowly and not on the big picture, this would seem all that is justified in existence. If seen in totality, not so much. It becomes the Aristotlean balancing act- the Golden Mean. Just another coping strategy. More energy to put into the system. The joke is on us. Pragmatism, another coping mechanism.

Yeah, we "must" do it (except for the few with the nerve for suicide). I'll grant that. But doing it isn't always bad and is sometimes quite good. As far as aphorisms go, it's true that there are imperative platitudes like "enjoy the process." These can function as tools to get the flow back on track. If life is "meaningless" and one is nevertheless going to survive, it is only "wise" to learn to enjoy it. So that's the kind of thing one says to the unhappy. A less responsible person might encourage suicide, but who wants to get tangled in other people's deaths? — t0m

I advocate that if we are going to use coping strategies, have one a bit closer to what is going on. That is to say Philosophical Pessimism. One can still live be a pessimist. One can live and even experience the normal "goods" that come about in the course of time to the non-chronically depressed. That is to say, we can see the pendulum swing, the forced choice of putting more enthalpy into the system, our restless natures, the instrumentality and be consoled in it. Reading a Schopenhauer or Cioran or Ligotti and having a turn of phrase that matches the insights into the human condition consoles without distracting/repressing/ignoring. It is sublimating in works of writing/art, but it provides connection without flinching.

There's a certain amount of friction-frustration. But it's a net-good. I keep going back for more. I also just finished about 6 hours of statistical inference homework. Not all pleasure, but an absorbed struggle with the thoughts and symbols punctuated by victories. Then there's the satisfaction of writing out a nice final draft. Yes, I have to do it to pay my bills. But that's part of why it felt good. That "having to" gives a weight to the game. Living up to that having-to feels good, as long as it's not too difficult. — t0m

Ah yes, weight to the game. Pragmatic extolling of balance and integration of pain with pleasure. It is all instrumentality, my online friend. Weight, no weight, you need to need. There is no choice. Put forth more enthalpy, that wheel does not turn itself.

P.S. I do appreciate your thoughtful responses, I just don't agree much with some of the pragmatic slogans.. it's a balance, no pain no gain, etc. The main rebuttal is the forced nature of it, the instrumental nature that keeps deprivation at a premium, the innumerable number of contingent pains that are unwanted/unexpected but must be overcome (to only be played down in HINDSIGHT if it's not a lifetime debilitation), the need to get caught up in a flow and get back to the surface of things, and the constant need to maintain order from disorder and put more energy into the system.

You use the "slave" metaphor. Are we slave though? Suicide is an option. We choose to keep fending off this disorder. I suggest that a certain kind of this fending-off is what we love about life. — t0m

Right- Nietzsche, got it and I don't buy it. Life is not necessarily a sharp pain, but a grinding one, the structural kind. Sometimes it is punctuated by almost unbearable contingent pain, but we always have hope of getting better and reaching for the next goal and the next, etc. Suicide is not an option due to instinctual and culturally enculturated responses that make it very unlikely. As I said with the Cioran quote- it is the IDEA of suicide, not the actual suicide- the ideation, not the actuality. Also as I've said previously: Fear of death, the "unknown", pain, and the unsettling idea that there will be no future "self" that we are so used to chattering with, are sufficient enough reasons to me for why people do not commit suicide often outside of extremely painful circumstances.

We love imposing order on disorder. We are this imposition. If we fantasize about killing disorder, we fantasize about killing ourselves. I think this is the "death drive." Part of us wants to freeze time. That which is present is always slipping away. We don't have time. We want to grab the wheel and stop it, to have time to think and be. — t0m

Hmm, I don't think so. Rather, we flee from that which abhors us more than anything- our own restless. This is the root of our very need for need- the lack, the deprivation.

Part of us wants to freeze time. That which is present is always slipping away. We don't have time. We want to grab the wheel and stop it, to have time to think and be. — t0m

Rather time is something we want to cover up with "flow" activities. Get caught up in the process. We need to get caught up, because of our discontent with just being. Seeing time in its essence, means boredom, one of our greatest motivators. We are always becoming and never being.

We are absorbed in the process. We with all our vanity and ambition dissolve into the worked-over object. — t0m

I've already had many discussions on how we value flow activities- getting caught up as to avoid being. It is our way of moving forward.

From my perspective, you are maybe being still-too-metaphysical in "missing" a justification for human activities that exists outside of the pleasure in these activities themselves. We only occasionally "notice" the futility of our battle against disorder. To notice this we have to slip out of our usual un-self-conscious enjoyment or contentment in waging this "war" that is at best experienced as play. — t0m

Yeah, I don't think so. We are burdened with keeping disorder at bay. We are burdened with building order and moving forward. It is a wheel that is placed upon us in instrumental fashion. Saying things like "it's the process not the goal" is just trying to justify what is essentially a truisms of how we "spin" our burden into a positive in order to tell ourselves it is okay. I say, why try to make this spin? See it for what it is, something we must do, that just keeps going and going and going over and over and over. What other choice do we have but to make up pleasant aphorisms like yours "enjoy the process", "embrace the struggle"? We don't, unless you see the pessimistic axiology...Then you can make a turn to have consolation in the understanding of the burdens and instrumentality of being born.

But perhaps I can answer your charges with some more Cioran:

My mission is to suffer for all those who suffer without knowing it. I must pay for them, expiate their unconsciousness, their luck to be ignorant of how unhappy they are. — E.M Cioran

Of course that's just another (particularly extreme) instance of pursuing a false hope. ...choosing to immediately achieve the ordeal at the end of a life, in hopes of gaining......what? Nothing? For one thing, we never reach Nothing. — Michael Ossipoff

“It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”


― Emil M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born

But perhaps Noble Dust's point is another quote from Cioran:

“I live only because it is in my power to die whenever I want; without the idea of suicide I would have killed myself a long time ago.”

If there's reincarnation, then the good things and the adversity average out over many lives (good along with bad experiences), and the inclinations or un-discharged consequences will eventually be satisfied, and the lives will be done. In the meantime, maybe we can usually realize the temporariness of the bad parts. — Michael Ossipoff

More than one lifetime- one of many lives seems pretty horrifying. Maybe good timing for Halloween?

death. — Noble Dust

Nothing wrong with describing an interesting picture. It also had a reference to another thread I wrote: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1800/ever-vigilant-existence/p1

I know. I intuited that you meant something negative by saying "coping mechanism". But that's not always the case; sometimes experience presents us with unimaginable shock; PTSD, for instance, or sexual trauma as a minor. In these instances where the offense is incalculable, a coping mechanism isn't a balm to unwilling eyes; it's a balm to an uncomprehending mind. The balm, here, is categorically good. — Noble Dust

I agree, for traumatic incidents, that is a positive. But let's not conflate what is an obvious difference. One is used in an everyday sense of estimating life itself, birth, and existential questions in general, the other is dealing with severe psychological suffering. So it would be very different parts of the spectrum, or perhaps just different ways of using that term.

Since when?? — Noble Dust

Either the parent knows its offspring will face challenges, is willfully ignorant, or ignores the fact and underestimates the challenges (and the many unknowns as to quantity and quality). Any of those are not great.

I'm using it via my interpretation of what you're saying specifically in this thread. — Noble Dust

I don't usually go by the term nihilism, so it is not by my thread. I associate my positions more with Philosophical Pessimism (e.g. Schopenhauer, Zapffe, Cioran, etc. etc.).

Why? — Noble Dust

I already explained it. This was an adequate answer: It is instinctual to not want to harm your body and to be afraid of the unknown (death), even if intellectually as an exercise we can view death from "afar" as simply like what it was like before we were born (or non-existence, or dreamless sleep, etc. etc.). I can add that it may be cultural as well.

Most my thoughts are about antinatalism (Is life worth STARTING) which is a different question than suicide (Is life worth CONTINUING). Also, usually Pessimism is a consolation while still being alive- one that is more aware of the structural and contingent suffering. You can even say it is a coping strategy, but one that does not ignore what is going on, or try to diminish it, etc. but directly face it head on, and promotes free discussion that is suppressed under slogans.

What is metaphysical rest? — Noble Dust

Death. Non-existence.

How does saying "the challenges of life make one better" equate to a coping mechanism? What is a coping mechanism? — Noble Dust

A coping mechanism is a way that humans deal with negative emotions, negative experiences, negative situations. How does one turn the frown upside down? Try to make what is negative a positive. Thus, instead of simply saying negative is negative, people try to "spin" it as a positive. What do I mean by spin? Have you ever heard of a "spin doctor" in politics? Here is a definition: a person (such as a political aide) responsible for ensuring that others interpret an event from a particular point of view.

Why do people need to be born to face challenges? They aren't. People are born. Challenges crop up. There's no epistemology as of yet, given those two circumstances. — Noble Dust

No No. This is from the parent's point of view. If parents know life has challenges (assuming most do), then an odd outcome of them having children is knowingly setting someone up to face challenges.

What? — Noble Dust

Post-facto: After the fact reasoning- more emphasis on people "spinning" it to look a certain way, to themselves or others.. maybe we can talk our way out of it, like so many motivational calendars.

Why champion nihilism and then say this? — Noble Dust

I don't know. Maybe I'm not championing nihilism (or whatever interpretation of that loaded word you are using)? Suicide is not an option because most people have a strong impulse to live despite pain or negative view of life. It is instinctual to not want to harm your body and to be afraid of the unknown (death), even if intellectually as an exercise we can view death from "afar" as simply like what it was like before we were born (or non-existence, or dreamless sleep, etc. etc.).

So what's the point for you? The telos? — Noble Dust

I'll have to explain that later. Too much gathering of my thoughts for that right now.

Perhaps this can be solved thus: (I think you are intimating at this) In renunciation and compassion willing does continue, but willing-to-live ceases. Both renunciation and compassion require the denial of individual egoistic willing, but in both cases willing goes on. If one's body exists, it must will! — jancanc

Yep seems to be along the same lines as I was saying.

Also, all the ascetic saints Schopenhauer talks about in WWR are very compassionate beings, Jesus, Buddha, etc. — jancanc

Perhaps self-denial means you can still walk the Earth telling others. However, in my personal opinion, if you are living, you are willing. The only thing that he can maybe have a point on is the people that starve themselves to death. But they are no longer willing because they are dead. Though somehow, dying by starvation means you made it big time in his philosophy. So can the ascetic saint still be living after he stops willing? Was Buddha really not willing? Schopenhauer seems to be more Jainist, the extreme versions where at some point, they starve themselves to death.

Apparently Schopenhauer's theory of compassion is mutually antagonistic with his theory of salvation.
Briefly stated: compassion requires stimulation of the will (to help another) but salvation requires cessation of the will.

However, Schopenhauer said that both compassion and renunciation come from the same source (intuitively recognizing that all beings are metaphysically one) and they have the same result (denial of the individual egoistic will).

Thus how can two things which are "mutually exclusive" both come from the same source and have the same result? Seems strange — jancanc

One way to solve this is that he somehow thinks that true compassion/empathy has an element of self-denial to it, to the point where one is actually not using will, or only using will to divert efforts away from oneself and towards another, thus "getting out" of the state of individuation that the subject/object relationship of being an embodied will usually entails. This is probably why complete renunciation is what he considers a step better than even compassion, as there is complete denial of the will and turning away. However, I do see a contradiction in that ethics is based on dealing with other people, but by removing oneself and being ascetic, one is only renouncing one's own will. Perhaps in some metaphysical way the self and the world are the same for the ascetic, as the world is an illusion anyways perhaps in this line of thought. However, that doesn't sit right either. So it is true that the helping others vs. self-directed asceticism is a challenge that I'm not sure if Schop addresses.

The execution is the most important bit. What use - as Epictetus said - that you have read all those books, if you cannot execute? — Agustino

Well, I was not trying to question why activity is more important than studying books or vice versa. My point was why does activity matter in the first place? Why does anything need to get done?

? — Agustino

Okay, I guess make exalted. Fill in word for making something more important than it should be.

No, just that thinking is irrelevant to actually climbing. It takes will, not thinking, to do that. Too much thinking paralyzes the will. — Agustino

Why do you reify the execution of any activity? This seems arbitrary.

Family life and downtime? No, I think in this economic world, family life and downtime figure into the economy as much as buying that can of sardines. — Bitter Crank

Good point.

J+L are here not talking of course, about gene expression but inheritance systems in evolution more generally, but the principle is the same: that life itself may be considered as something entirely separate from the biotic. Life would thus be a formal principle rather than a material one: so long as the process and its organisation are kept in place, the exact ‘instantiation’ of the formal principle is - from a very specific perspective - a matter of sheer indifference (I take inspiration also from Robert Rosen and Nicholas Rashevsky’s imperative to "throw away the matter and keep the underlying organisation”, when speaking about biological systems). — StreetlightX

Are there any known philosophies that DO think that biological constituents must be in the picture along with the process and its organization (i.e. contra Rosen perhaps)? If so, what is their reasoning? I'm just trying to kick off a dialectic to ensure you are not overlooking counter-examples.

I might add to my last statement above a consideration on Schopenhauer's oft-repeated line about how the world "ought not to be." This is a curious statement, for it directly challenges the notion that the will is an "aimless" striving that exhausts objective reality. Rather, such a phrase suggests that the world, and therefore the will, must have an end beyond itself and that the will does not exhaust the real.

In order to resolve this contradiction, there are two options available to the follower of Schopenhauer. One option is to reject the statements that imply the will has an end. This negates the possibility of salvation and so tends to impel one toward atheistic materialism, nihilism, and negative utilitarianism (and thus anti-natalism). The other option is to reject his statements that the will does not have an end. This tends to impel one toward religion, Platonism, asceticism, and virtue ethics. I can admit that both are valid reactions to Schopenhauer, but as you noted, I lean toward the latter. — Thorongil

I can agree with this assessment.

Presumably, the animal is determined by the accidents, so bringing up determinism doesn't seem relevant either. Anyway, there are several ways to answer your question. — Thorongil

What I mean to say is that the accidents of nature are not determined by pre-determined Ideas that are substantiated in nature. If all is contingent, then there could have been a counterfactual situation where the "Ideas" could have went a different way. There was no set outside of time/space that was a blueprint or template- it came about through contingent scenarios that played out based on circumstances, survival fitness, environmental changes, and happenstance. If anyone of those factors changed, then it could have been different, thus negating some sort of other-worldly Ideas as something atemporal. So the patterns that exist, exist out of purely contingent circumstances of historical courses of events. If you want to say that we have the ability to idealize particular patterns into universals, that is a cognitive feature we do that definitely does not lead straight to "see there are Ideas that we are perceiving as Plato said!"

I don't know about you, but I've had experiences in contemplating both art and nature that seem to correspond to what he describes as the contemplation of the Platonic Idea. — Thorongil

While we may get aesthetic pleasure from beautiful works of art, or music, this does not then necessitate that we are "seeing the Ideas more clearly without willing" or something like that. It is a rather inventive and imaginative notion, but certainly our reactions to art may be better explained through other frameworks than this whether they be cognitively, neuroscientifically, pyschoanaltically, culturally, developmentally, etc. etc.

Well, maybe the first Westerner.

But that's impressive, that someone was saying that in 1818. — Michael Ossipoff

Good point Michael Ossipoff!

The reason species extinction and the Ideas are compatible is found in the nature of the Idea, which exists outside of time, space, and causality, and so exists irrespective of whether it happens to be instantiated in physical particulars at a particular moment in time. The Idea of a mammoth exists, even though there are presently no particular mammoths physically manifesting that Idea. And what physically appears as speciation, or the change from one species to another, is metaphysically the change in accidents of a particular species, which can eventually lead to the disappearance of one Idea's manifestations in time and the emergence of another's in its place. — Thorongil

I just think this is tenuous. There are thousands of small genetic changes that happen in evolutionary changes- is the essence of genetic or phenotypic change also in the Ideas? When does one idea leave another begin? These seem arbitrary at best.

Biological species can change in time without this entailing the non-existence of Platonic Ideas. — Thorongil

I don't really see how, or why it's even necessary to postulate in the first place. Species and animals are contingent. There are patterns in nature, but why would there need to be universal patterns of each species? The animal is accidental all the way down. There is no necessity or determinism to it. In fact,if all is really process, this more substantive picture we have of species (or objects altogether), is much fuzzier. To take what we see in a species to be its Idea, is to reify the human aspect. Forms are forms to us, not beyond our perceptions of them as substantiated in the forms we form in our mind. An even weaker essentialism also may break away as we understand the mutability of genetics, epigentics, and the plasticity of species over a life and over large epochs of time.

Now you may acknowledge this and have reasons for adopting such a position, but I merely wish to point out that I have a different perspective, one that is anti-positivist and anti-realist with respect to scientific claims (which isn't to say that I'm a social constructivist or epistemological relativist, mind you). — Thorongil

I understand, but if we are strictly talking of the Platonic Ideas and specifically, Platonic Ideas in relation to the species, I don't see the entailment of the two.

I respect your Idealism and understand your stance, especially if it is going to align with Schopenhauer.
If you were going to be an Idealist, at least it's based on Schopenharean metaphysics, which has the essential theme that I've come to call the "aesthetic vision" of willing. Though, I know you may take it a step further to a more theological/spiritual level. Though, we can debate metaphysics to our hearts content and I am more or less game.

As for my take on metaphysics, I really am not much of an Idealist in the strictest sense. I can entertain the notion of a subjective nature to reality, especially as a possible answer to philosophy of mind, but that still doesn't sit well with me. Rather, what I do see is a certain striving principle throughout reality, and especially the animal. This striving does seem to be a principle, but it is hard for me to substantiate in words what this could mean. It is certainly something to me that is immanent in nature- something akin to the principle of entropy. This principle does not "mean" much until evolutionary forces contingently happen to bring about self-reflective creatures such as ourselves. We can understand the restless nature of reality in our own very existence, the instrumentality of being. There is no satisfaction at the end of any goal. There is swinging from goal to goal with a measure of hope. There is trying to Zen our way out with a form of religious experience, there is trying to rake up as much utility as possible from what we see as goods. However, throughout the process we are driven by this restlessness through enculturated survival-strategies, discomfort, and boredom. We are restless beings that are kind of sitting here in limbo, with no completion to our goals. It is goal after goal after goal, as if the goal was really what matters, meanwhile we are contingently suffering from this or that.

And THIS idea most is what I think Schopenhauer wrote so elegantly about- the idea that our goals are moving us "onward and upward" progressing in any way other than more more more do do do, need need need, desire desire desire, deprived deprived, deprived. And in it all is the aesthetic vision of instrumentality- which is this deprivation seen from afar. This absurd striving.

I think this is a bit unfair being that you indeed seemed to be talking about life based on your last paragraph there, but if your topic is different than I guess I misinterpreted what you were aiming at with your OP. Here is what you said (I bolded what I took most important):

Now, what's philosophically interesting to me about all this is that, if I understand the implications correctly, it throws into question the specificity of life itself, or rather what does and does not count as 'alive'. That is, if we think in terms of networks,how is it possible to think the specificity of life itself, insofar as the dynamics of genome networks are defined as much by extra-biological factors as they are biological ones? Because extra-biological factors are as just as important as biological factors in the process of gene expression, it becomes very hard to draw any kind of hard diving line between the two. This also follows, as a matter of principle, from the fact that networks are simply indifferent to the 'content' of the nodes which constitute them: it's all just a matter of the organization and threshold levels.

There's alot more to say, but as usual, I'm going to stop before I go on too long. — StreetlightX

But this is just circular then: biological systems are systems with biological constituents... — StreetlightX

I don't think so, do other systems reproduce, metabolize, using the same unique set of tools (biological molecular parts)? Do other systems evolve in the unique way biological systems do? No and no, and thus we start making distinctions between this system versus other systems. But I know, this is not what you thread is supposed to be about.

I don't understand what you're asking with these questions. Could you be more specific? — StreetlightX

It sounds like you're asking things like "What makes an ecosystem different than an organism?" and I wanted to see what your thoughts were about what makes an organism an organism.

This description would apply to literally any complex system, living or not. — StreetlightX

I don't think so because you are forgetting the part about biological constituents with the unique evolutionary ways that the organism uses to solve problems in the environment.

but whether one can discern whether or not such a criteria would apply to begin with. If you keep ignoring the fact that at issue is a question of individuation (what does and does not count as 'a' system), you'll miss what I'm trying to say. — StreetlightX

I think though these two problems are related in the case of your problem. Where are the limits of biological systems? Should there be limits to any system which is open and sharing some form of information? Do you accept that there can be discrete units that relate with other discrete units? As i said there is a hierarchy for each discrete unit of organism.

But this would include say, ecosystems and river catchments. In any case I'm not arguing that we can't distinguish between biotic and abiotic processes: my point is rather that life itself traverses both such that life cannot be defined in strictly biotic terms. And to be extra clear, I'm also not arguing that we can't distinguish between life and not-life, only that such a distinction cannot be 'read off' the phenomena themselves in any straightforward way, if only because what exactly would and would not count as 'a' phenomena is precisely what is in question: a question of individuation. — StreetlightX

Again though, biological systems are a series of networks that are hierarchical. They are relational, and if some important components of the "nodes" are taken away, the system stops functioning. However, the core constituents and their evolutionary development are what matters here to distinguish it from any old system.

It is no use, as such, in simply speaking of individual entities like 'organism', 'environment', etc - none of these capture of processual specificity of what is at stake here. — StreetlightX

I think perhaps this is a mountain out of a molehill. While there are some processes that are abiotic mixed in with the biotic (like the networks with biotic molecules and environment), this does not mean that we cannot distinguish abiotic and biotic processes altogether. Biotic processes are ones that have a mix BUT have the known constituent parts that comprise biological molecules. Thus if ATP is going, DNA sequencing, etc. etc. then more than likely this is biological. As we discussed biology is not just the networks abstracted but instantiated in the very evolutionary way it has "solved" the problems of the environment. This is something that has not been replicated and can perhaps be mapped, but mapping it in abstraction is not the same thing.