I thank you for such a lengthy and erudite post, which I have no real idea as to how to respond to other than to beg a question by asking you if you can, in good faith, claim that you really perceive the fate of our environment as being more important to you than your bucketlist of life experiences. It's not just about going to Paris or something; it's about not letting your limited time on this planet go to waste. Perhaps, at least, attempting to avert ecological catastrophe is somehow worthwhile, but, though I don't ascribe some form of Psychological Egoism or whatever, I can't really say that I would trade the life of an effective environmental activist for something like genuine love or a life of whirlwind adventure. Perhaps that's selfish of me, but, I don't know that I believe that there are too many ascetic self-sacrificing types really out there or that such martyrdom isn't somehow instilled out of a kind of communal desperation. I think that if I was put into a situation where I could have to die for my ideals, I'd be willing to, but I don't think that there's anything that I would trade my experience of the world for otherwise. It's all very complex, though, I guess.

Well, to voluntarily euthanize yourself, you do have to receive some sort of assessment from a psychologist or another, and, so, somewhere down the line, someone has to okay your suicide. Who's to say that these people don't have some sort of economic tie-in with the manufacturers of lethal injection devices or haven't come to their chosen profession out of some form of latent prejudice against the so-called "criminally insane". They could fetishize photographs of people in jumpsuits with black upside down triangles on them for all that we know.

Those are very facetious statements, but, I think that we should ask as to just who could possibly be making such assessments.

I also don't think that suicide is at all liberatory. In ways, it is an autonomous act, but, to my experience, attempting to go through with the whole thing only ever happens in acute distress undergoing fits of mania. It's just desperate and tragic, in my opinion.

If someone is dead set on committing suicide, sure, an opiate is preferable to a revolver, but, I guess that the offered solution doesn't adequately consider as to what produced the situation wherein a person was brought to that level of psychological duress or what other options they have. For a psychologist to recommend that someone commit suicide also seems to bear an inherent set of predicaments in its own right. I'm not sure that I really trust mental health professionals not to just sort of do away with some people.

What I'm suggesting about the theatrics is that most suicides probably occur during a momentary lapse of reason. Going through with whatever formal process there is probably alleviates that to some extent, but I think that there's a real danger of letting a momentary spell of depression become a person's final hours.

The two of you can carry on about this if you like, but I don't really feel like getting into my personal kvetch against psychologically motivated assisted suicide.

I guess what I'm wondering is whether the unknowable unknown of death, the absence of existence, has any bearing on much of anything at all. We know what life is like, the experience of it, and maybe that is enough to make some value-judgement one way or another. — ChatteringMonkey

Perhaps it really is just me who thinks about death, but I do feel like the angst that it inspires is something that people have to cope with.

If you watch it all at once, it does seem to last for a near eternity, but is considerably better than most television.

I'm not going to do this because of that I just don't use this website, but, now that I brought up internet gatekeepers, I kind of want to make that claim that it is requisite for a true media "patricianship" to watch the television series, Heimat, in its entirety on /tv/ so as to put some other lonely soul through all fifty-nine and a half hours of that sad and strange West German melodrama.

I don't know. I think that, even in my personal life, I still find something or another to gain from just about everyone. Perhaps I'm just too willing to entertain certain ideas, though? For instance, I recently had a conversation with someone at work who was opposed to getting vaccinated on the grounds that the pandemic was born out of an ecological response to the destruction of the environment on the part of humanity. I can't say that I agreed with this at all, but did feel like they were kind of vindicated by that defense. I even saw a certain degree of heroism in it.

I've never met another person who calls themselves an Existentialist. It's a wildly unpopular philosophy today. Sartre is so particular that I kind of wonder if anyone has really engaged in serious study of his philosophy. There is a certain Parisian chic that comes with the claim to be an Existentialist, and, so, it's probably par for the course for just about all of them to know very little about Sartre, but he is just kind of difficult to understand. Despite his obvious attempts at being more clear, I found Being and Nothingness to be much more perplexing than Being and Time, though I can't really say that I paid active attention throughout either of those two texts.

I think that his conception of nothingness as being at the heart of being is the most evident flaw to his philosophy and, perhaps, why I can't bring myself to engage in serious study of his entire methodology. We always exist within a relationship to an existent world. A total lack of existence seems completely unfathomable to me. It's highly speculative on Sartre's part to have situated nothingness as he did. I was kind of with him when he talked about nothingness and reflexive self-consciousness, but he lost me when he seemed to cast nothingness as consciousness itself. He only sort of does that, but I think that it just throws his entire methodology ever so slightly off.

I think that voluntary euthanasia is fine in cases where someone is suffering from physical pain, but neither trust nor think a psychologist can assess as to whether a person really wants to go through with a psychologically motivated suicide. To be quite honest, I kind of suspect for the whole thing to function like a litmus test for a person's attitude towards the insane. Perhaps this is just paranoia, but I just kind of suspect for advocates of psychologically motivated suicide to be closet Eugenicists who consider for those who have been declared to be "insane" to be a societal burden. People talk about suicide like it's some sort of heroic act, but it's really just kind of desperate and tragic. There ought be a certain degree of respect for a person's final autonomous decision, but, unless you're in the French Resistance and have to swallow a capsule of cyanide, it's really just born out of fits of mania and acute despair.

There's no negation of the negation of death. I'm rather confused by what you're saying. I think that death, quite radically, is unapproachable. It's an unknowable unknown. We can actually not fathom what it is like not to exist, as all that we know is from our experience of the world, namely as existents. You could philosophize about death, but, I do actually think that it delimits a threshold to even the potential understanding. The Tibetan Buddhists who read from Bardo Thodol probably have a greater understanding of death than I do, but I don't think that even they can know what death is like.

I take the opposite view. There are some people who are actively not worth listening to and should be avoided at all costs; they have nothing to teach. Of course, you could get tricky and say that they can teach you tolerance or patience - perhaps, but I prefer banishment. — Tom Storm

Eh, the entire cultural climate is ruled by this logic and is fairly poor because of that. Not everyone can, perhaps, can relate to this, but take anime gatekeepers for example. Sure, the original FLCL series, Serial Experiments Lain, and xxxHolic are considerably better than kind of a lot of shows and it is kind of vexing for people in their twenties to only really ever want to talk about Naruto, but there's also a certain set of absurdities that come with a pretense of aesthetic superiority. The cultural climate of anime fans is also afflicted by assumptions such as that, in order appreciate, let's say, Ruroni Kenshin, you would have had to have also have read the magna, rather in spite of that it was serialized in Shōnen Jump, which tends to streamline manga for animated production, or that, in order to appreciate Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, a good enough show in its own right, you would have also have to had seen an extraordinarily lengthy set of other Gundam series, potentially even having had to have built a model mech, which do make an appreciation of the art form less enjoyable to participate within. As much patience as it required to withhold judgement for this or that conspiracy theory during the Occupy, a generalized assumption that everyone ought to have a voice really did kind of provide for a better forum than most.

I sometimes thought that Sartre hinted at Daoism in some of his more cryptic utterances - I prefer this one:

"We have to deal with human reality as a being which is what it is not and which is not what it is.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness — Tom Storm

I could never tell as to whether Sartre was just talking into air or if I just didn't quite get Being and Nothingness at moments similar, at least, to this. It becomes so much more perplexing when he makes statements like this with his particularly defined philosophical vocabulary. This, I think, is a good cryptic statement to express his philosophy of nothingness at the heart of being, but, there were definite times when it seemed as if he had made a litany of completely irreconcilable contradictions that, for me, at least, didn't really seem to approach some sort of higher truth via his critical approach to the dialectic or whatever. I would find myself occasionally rapt and often losing focus while reading that text, though, and, so, probably only really absorbed what I paid good attention to, which kind of misses the general gist of it, as you kind of have to accept his entire methodology to really appreciate it.

Granted, I just think that negation delimits Ontology, and, so, in the Sartrean sense, is important for reflexive self-consciousness, but would place less emphasis on nothingness were I to write a seminal philosophical tract.

This adds considerable nuance to the discussion that I should hope that I won't dismiss by putting to question as to whether the ultimate negation in death can be considered a part of the natural process of decay. I think that the quiet comfort of that death is a natural part of life encompasses a decaying body already. The absolute finality of death delimits a threshold to human understanding. We can and should cultivate a life philosophy wherein people age well. We also have to consider and understand the effects of decay, particularly late in life. It'd be indicative of a certain degree of cruelty otherwise. All of that, I think, plays part and parcel into coming to terms with the human condition, and, so, is something that philosophers can cultivate the wisdom with which to cope. Death, however, I think, because of that it expresses such a radical negation, is totally unapproachable. In the introduction to Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov writes of a "young chronophobiac" who developed a sense of anxiety at seeing film images of his empty carriage before musing upon the abyss before and after life. He, later, asserts, "I rebel against this state of affairs. I feel the urge to take my rebellion outside and picket nature." Confronted by an absolute abyss, what I'm positing is that it is not only natural, but, also, as adequately as anyone can cope with death, a total lack of existence, to undertake such a rebellion.

I am still relatively young, however, and, so, perhaps haven't considered well enough another biological fact, that of decay.

That's all well and good and all, but all that I was trying to explain was that I had confused this thread with the thread on philosophical pessimism and nihilism, which you took as a confusion because of your usage of the first-person singular, but was merely because of that I was tossing ideas around about nihilism and whathaveyou in my head at the time.

Before my grandfather, whom I lived with, died, I had a psychotic episode where, looking into the mirror, I hallucinated myself in old age dying. It was one of the most terrifying experiences in my life. He was the first person that I have known to have died that I have been somewhat close to. On some level, I, at least, like to think that I remember him well and take comfort in that. Being said, however, his death certainly produced acute anxiety within me faced with the fact that I will someday die. I hadn't really appreciated life enough until both attempting and failing to come to terms with what his death revealed to me. What I question is as to whether terms can even be come to. Perhaps, I'm just at a stage in life without certain wisdoms concerning death, but I do suspect that it is natural for people to fear it. It's kind of the only true unknowable unknown.


That seems to be a very healthy approach to death, contrary to my somewhat nebulous conclusions to have been drawn from my musings on it. I could just be in kind of a mood because of that I'm reading Cioran as of now, but I am somewhat taken by his concept of lyricism, perhaps, particularly because of that I am a poet. Existentialists are likely to occasionally invoke the human condition. I'm not sure what base facts can be ascribed to it other than that of death. It seems kind of like the condition to me.

It could kind of just be best not to really dwell on it, though. Nothingness is nothingness, and, so, there isn't really anything to fear, I guess.

I think that I might've confused my reply to this thread with another one or have mixed the threads in my head up somehow. Your usage of the first-person singular is fine.

On the Heights of Despair by Emil Cioran

It's exactly like what you'd expect for it to be like.

I'm surprised that so many people get banned from this site and that I haven't been banned. I barely ever even read the entire threads that I post in and almost everyone abandons them once I say anything whatsoever.

I'm not sure that academic formalism, despite that I like this idea of teaching religion as culture, is really all that great of an approach to spirituality. I'd bet that there are practicing Buddhists who are plenty more wise than those engaged in academic research. Sure, it'd go the other way as well, but there's something to the individual pursuit that gets lost in a more formal inquiry.

I am sure that various religions and spiritualities have plenty to contribute to Philosophy. For my own relationship to spirituality, however, I honestly feel like I've gained more from J.D. Salinger than anyone else, including some of the actual religious texts that I've read.

There's also that, as inclined as I am to support what could be considered to be veritable of the United Nations, we should be willing to put to question the effectiveness of such organizations, as, if you were to assess the League of Nations, you could only conclude that it was a failure, given the catastrophic Second World War. Today's risks are quite different, but, even considering the famines, that we can still have conflicts of such scale and scope as the First and Second Congo Wars or atrocities such as the Rwandan Genocide is indicative of that the U.N. can only really do so much to effectuate its primary mission, that of retaining peace between nations, and establish human rights. My only real solution otherwise, though, is activism, which can also be argued does all too little all too late.

The last intelligent woman I met didn't want to date me because of that I am an academic. Not always, I guess?

Truly free spirited dancing doesn't actually help you pick anyone up either. People usually go for people who move with and they meet in the crowd. Maybe I just thought that I was good at dancing, though?

I'm not quite so sure that I see a clear distinction. Nihilism and philosophical pessimism both posit that the human experience, for the most part, is ultimately negative. Perhaps I'm confusing what people call philosophical pessimism with what they do "nihilism" however?

I like your sentiment, but I don't know about your strategy.

@ssu, despite not adding quite enough drama to the First and Second Congo Wars, which resulted in, according to Wikipedia, 5.65 to 6.25 million casualties, seems to have some good ideas.

Right, but I don't think that's a good defense.

It's like hating Kirsten Dunst, y'know? She's even been in a number of independent films. It's like some fucked shit like that.

To consider their perspective, okay, so, I resent some things. I have never been offered a certain kind of life by my dating prospects and therefore am unhappy. I resent that. I'm willing to admit it, but I don't fault with anyone else. It's just some circumstantial shit. It's like anything else. I don't know. There's a lot of piled up shit, y'know? I mean, I don't think that I've ever had genuine fun, y'know? Fuck everyone for that. That's just some circumstantial shit, though, and they can't accept that. I don't accept it, either, but I riot in different ways. I don't know. This world leads us to riot. It's all about how you do it, y'know? Some people drive Aston Martins at 125 miles per hour and some people write the word, "motherfucker", on the subway wall. That's all alright. When you go about slandering some fifty percent of the populace for your personal angst, though, that's just fucked. We can measure the relative figures, but it's the same with race, class, and whatever else. It's all just shit, y'know?

I don't know. I almost needed a car as of late and found myself feeling jealous of people who drive Volkswagen Jettas. What kind of life is that!? A Jetta is like a company man whose soul is in question. I'd like to drive a vintage Beetle. That's something to harbor jealously towards.

I was just pointing out that it is absurd to identify as an "incel" in the first place. It's like saying, "don't fuck me; I'm a weak misogynist." Honestly, those Christians even have it better. Someone wants to quote unquote corrupt them.

Incels are definitely hella nuts, though. I am aware of the trend.

I don't know that that truly defends incels, though.

I suffer from psychosis, which is the worst of all dating maladies. I'm invariably passed by, should I disclose this, by more or less all women by that account. Sure, they have implicitly accepted what they've learned from Hollywood, but I don't really feel like it's them to blame. There's so much shit that comes with being a woman. Men used to bitch about how they'd spend so much time in the bathroom on the shop floor because of that that was the only space that they had to organize. It sucks, but it's our world that has created our situation. They fetishize young urban professionals because of that that is the easiest way out. Sure, I could rend assunder some yuppie's worldview, given a chance to have a conversation, but what can I offer in the ways of a house, things to do, and to be considered of place in this world? It's a petty jealousy that these men have of others. It's like hating people purely because of that they are famous. It's a shit working-class resentment that ought to somehow be overcome. Nothing good will come from so-called "incels".

Yes and yes, but I feel like you haven't seen what I mean about these virginity hoodies. Various Christian groups make these proud to be a virgin hoodies which say something to that effect and I do feel like no teenager wears one without parental advisory. It's kind of an angle in college, as someone will quote unquote corrupt you, but really the sort of thing that's indicative of a humiliating form of repression characteristic of, particularly, evangelical forms of Christianity. Sex is whatever, y'know? It's like coffee. It's always pretty good, but never truly outstanding, no matter what gets put into it.

You seem to have this kvetch about the Kantian stealing example, but I do think that we are in agreement, though my perhaps too sensational example was more from their perspective than otherwise. It's an oft-levelled charge against various forms of Ethics, usually with the quote unquote masochist, which I don't think really holds up.

It's not just about being in shape, though; it's also about not having cultivated any form of personality whatsoever. I don't mind a mindless fuck, but I do really not want to date someone whom I can't hold a conversation with for more than five minutes.

I'm not saying they're not out there. I'm just saying that it's like the equivalent of those poor young men who have to wear those hoodies that say that they are proud of their virginity because of their Christian parents.

What is the point of so-called "compromise", though!? I've been on OkCupid and Tinder. The people who, without my exploitation of the aggregate, express interest have, in varying ways, let themselves go to a considerable degree. That would seem to be terribly thoughtless, if not cruel, on my part.

It's entirely absurd for a man to voluntarily identify as being involuntarily celibate, as there is another party. It's also absurd because of that it is just kind of embarrassing. I haven't had sex in over two years and I am not proud of that, nor to I do feel a need to wage some sort of revolt online.

As far as a critique of seemingly Feminist inspired ways of digging at men in general go, I feel like we have come a long way from "nice boys" to "simps". They'll figure whatever out in good time, y'know?

What is the point of this? I can also watch ethical porn and masturbate. In fucking some stranger, I'm after a hedonistic confidence boost. In fucking anyone else, I do want for them to have qualities that I can somehow appreciate. Lowering your standards is just simply unethical. You can fuck for fuck's sake, but, otherwise, there's some aspect of manipulation on the part of whoever does so, aside from that it happens to be completely dissatisfying.

It's all a question as to whether Camus was a nihilistic existentialist or an existential nihilist. Cioran talks about how death is nothingness agonizing life. We, even Cioran, revolt against this, despite its truth. Camus was the first person to express this form of revolt. Personally, I prefer the former, but considering the latter, perhaps some form of Buddhism would be more apt?

It doesn't boil down to Ethics. The general gist of the Socratic dialogues is that philosophers should evince a humility of thought. His whole ish is that the truly wise recognize what they do not know, which is just about everything. It's effectively a form of skepticism, but, as Plato is our source for Socrates, it's difficult to say as to what he actually thought.

For me, though I am loathe to cite this philosopher, it's all about authenticity. People should just cultivate veritable ways of life. The "examined life", then, is what you create in order to do so. It necessitates coming into a relationship with one's experience of the world that is genuine.

There's a certain degree of pretense to Sartre's notion of false consciousness, though. No person who waits tables wants to be doing so. The purpose of the act is to cope with having to settle for a life that you believe to be beneath thy star. Cultivating such acts becomes pathology in its own right to a certain extent, but his assumption that most people, i.e. those who don't have the privilege of writing philosophical texts, live inauthentic lives is only indicative of a certain prejudice on his part. The Parisian cafes probably had a better social ecology than the bars in the city that I live in, but there are still existent arbitrary social orders that arise within any given cultural climate.

By the same token, however, he's spot on. Within the service industry, there's an archaic wisdom that, if you are asked to stay until seven-thirty after being scheduled from noon to four, you should clock out at 7:55 P.M. on the dot, quite deliberately. That only makes sense to do the first time you do it. Otherwise, you're just setting yourself up to never get out of having to wait tables for the rest of your life.

Information is very boring, bookish, and formal. When we start to talk about other things, we're talking about energy. Information is that which ought to approach truth in writing.

I feel like BDSM is sort of like a certain clientele to a certain bar that I've been to, who dress in all black, stand in the back, and blow cocaine behind a curtain. Did they really want to do that with their lives or was their doing so just born out of some form of cult pathology? I don't know that I really believe that people can within the full breadth of their reason and autonomy, want to mildly torture one another during sexual intercourse. It seems to be both rather cliquish and cultish to me. I don't know, though. Maybe it's just not for me?

If you consider BDSM within a situational context, I don't think it really violates the Golden Rule. Someone who works with someone else at a psychiatric institute couldn't really hook some electric device up to someone's nipples and claim that there was nothing wrong with their doing so because of that it is what they derive sexual pleasure from. The caveat, in bed, aside from the arcane order established through BDSM, eliminates any ethical predicaments.

I think that the problem of natural evil posits that God can not be omniscient, all-powerful, and omnibenevolent simultaneously. If God is merely omnibenevolent, then, he doesn't have to prevent global catastrophes, as he may neither know of them nor be capable of doing so. If God is all of those things simultaneously, then it doesn't make any sense for them to happen.

It goes a bit further in begging the question as to what good a god is who does not possess all of those qualities simultaneously. If a god is omniscient and all-powerful, but not omnibenevolent, then it could be evil. If a god is only all-powerful and omnibenevolent, then it wouldn't know what to put into effect. If a god is omnibenevolent and omniscient, then, what can it do?

It pretty much holds up to this very day. Epicurus was a genius. He even advocated for peace, the freedom from fear, and the absence of pain. Everything is good about Epicurus.

I'm not going to follow what happens next, but am just going to bump this thread so as to leave you with this one. So long everyone!

So, gradualist nonviolent Anarchism is just sensible Anarcho-Pacifist praxis. I have still, as an Anarcho-Pacifist, left the movement to get my life and mind back together, but have decided to rescind having done so in protest. That's all that I wanted to explain.

Victory! ☮︎!

Until this happens, I would just recommend that independent acts get on and surf bandcamp. You can have a Spotify as well, I guess, but bandcamp is really where it's at.

Anyways, Cya whenever or whatever. 'Til then!

I've always been more of a Beyond the Valley of the Dolls man, myself. It is a cult classic, though.