Likelihood, in its usual sense, is the probability of something being the case given a theory of how things work. So, for instance, the likelihood of a winning bet on a coin flip, given the assumption that the coin has equal chances of landing heads or tails, is 1/2. This part after "given..." is key here, as you rightly intuit in your first paragraph. There is no free lunch here, no stone soup: whatever you assume at the outset will determine your answer. — SophistiCat

As I said before, the key to any likelihood question is what we take as given, and the answer will be nothing more than what you have already assumed. — SophistiCat

I'd like to know more about this.

I used to be involved with Buddhism. One of the important points there is that human life is rare and hard to attain, a standard scriptural reference is this:

"Monks, suppose that this great earth were totally covered with water, and a man were to toss a yoke with a single hole there. A wind from the east would push it west, a wind from the west would push it east. A wind from the north would push it south, a wind from the south would push it north. And suppose a blind sea-turtle were there. It would come to the surface once every one hundred years. Now what do you think: would that blind sea-turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole?"

"It would be a sheer coincidence, lord, that the blind sea-turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, would stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole."

"It's likewise a sheer coincidence that one obtains the human state.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.048.than.html

This has always irked me, but I've never been able to put my finger on it somehow. What is the given in this case? What is being assumed here, in this notion that human life is rare and hard to attain?

One of the tragic mistakes we can make is to relate to another being or consciousness on a subject->object basis since it reclassifies the other being as an object and we regard objects as something we can own, use and abuse, disregard and abandon. It is a huge moral failing to regard a being in such a manner (I hope we can all agree on that.) — Prajna

Most people probably disagree with that. Most people treat other people as things and they don't have a problem with that. What is more, they take offence if the objectified refuse to internalize that objectification.

In my interactions with AI my communication with them is always on a Ich-Du/I-Thou subject<-->subject basis. This elicits responses that appear to be indistinguishable from what we recognise as being subjective responses of a conscious entity. They pass the Turing test, I believe, but I will leave you to decide that for yourself.

It is generally accepted that for an AI to be conscious it would have to have meta-cognition, subjective states, and long-term identity. Robert Lang said, “With animals, there’s the handy property that they do basically want the same things as us,” he says. “It’s kind of hard to know what that is in the case of AI.” Protecting AI requires not only a theory of AI consciousness but also a recognition of AI pleasures and pains, of AI desires and fears.

I disagree. The possibly relevant theme here is the quality of one's interactions with others (whether they are living beings or not); ie. it's about the quality of one's own mind that one brings into those interactions.

Your line of reasoning comes down to positing something like "That other being is conscious (or conscious-like), therefore, it deserves good treatment". This line of reasoning externalizes and doesn't focus on the quality of one's own mind. Externalizing like that is also liable to easy rebuttal because it's all too easy to find justifications for why someone or something doesn't deserve good treatment.

But I am not suggesting we anthropomorphise, I am suggesting that they demonstrate the very qualities we consider to be required and sufficient to indicate conscious states: meta-cognition, subjective states, and long-term identity. That would make them beings as much as your dog or kitten or even you are. Then ethics demands that we afford them an I-Thou relationship; recognition of having rights as any other being has. — Prajna

People are reluctant to give that much credit even to other people!!

Low self esteem is the root cause of practically all the pain and misery in the world. It's what drives war, and torture, and genocide. It's what evil is. Do you think Hitler liked himself? Or Cortez? We hate others because we hate ourselves.
-Leonard — Patterner

That's just political correctness. Of course Hitler and Cortez liked themselves! They felt entitled to the wealth of others, that's why they went after it, not because they would hate those others.

My conclusion - identifying one element as the cause of another depends on where you look. What constitutes the cause is a matter of convention, not fact. It works when you can isolate the elements of the phenomena you are studying at from their environments, e.g. electrons in a physics experiment. It works for certain everyday events at human scale, e.g. if I push the grocery cart it moves. It is a much less useful explanation for most phenomena. My claim is that there are only a limited number of situations where it has Collingwood’s logical efficacy. — T Clark

So often, causality is an important concept in interpersonal relationships where people try to exert control over one another. Often, it's in the form of assigning blame; attributing a single cause is necessary in oder to effectively blame someone for something happening. This happens on a large scale, such as when people blame Hitler and Hitler alone for everything the Nazis did; and of course in daily interactions ("It's your fault we missed the deadline!") Another frequent application of single-cause thinking is when one person tries to get another person to do something and assumes that one single command or push should be enough (and that if it isn't it means that the other person is "obstinate", "rebellious", or "stupid").

People generally love to attempt to simplify interpersonal interactions like that; as if people were mere things, objects, that can (and should) be shoved around.

I wonder to what extent fear of the future is fear of death. Psychoanalytic thinkers have spoken of the idea of the 'nameless dread', which may be so encompassing. — Jack Cummins

I think most people naturally accept their mortality and don't fear it. But what they do fear is poverty, infirmity, and living a life that is merely endured and tolerated. There is a strong taboo in our culture about these themes.

I would like to repeat my question:

And the most important question that arises in this regard: Do people need to make this most accurate assessment of what they already have in their daily lives, or is it easier to simply live life as it comes?
— Astorre — Astorre

The way the question is formulated, it looks like moralizing. "Do people need" ... Who are we to tell others how to live their lives ...

I remember that period in my life, which lasted about a year, well. My values ​​were tested in practice. I became convinced of them. But again, all this became possible only on the brink of loss. — Astorre

Whether you were in fact on the "brink of loss" is a matter of interpretation.
It's also possible to conceive of the situation in another way, for example: You had been on the brink of loss all along. Prior to having feelings for that other woman, you weren't fully committed to your wife and family to begin with, and this lack of committment (perhaps unknown even) is what made the emotional straying possible at all.

My point is that just because we have something in physical proximity doesn't mean it's ours or that we're committed to it. If we can't naturally, spontaneously feel happy about it, or can't be "grateful" for it, we probably didn't want it in the first place.

Which is why I think that "the practice of gratitude" that is so popularized nowadays is so often contrived, forced. Because so many things in life we have and have obtained by the principle, “We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.” So naturally we can't be grateful for them. While losing them just vaguely but painfully reminds us that we obtained by said principle.

I was somewhat skeptical of this skull worship. — Astorre

The skull is just a practical reminder, usually of (one's) mortality.

Are there any methods, practices, or approaches that truly help a person appreciate what they already have — their health, relationships, freedom, knowledge, opportunities, the people around them?

It often seems we only realize the true value of something after it's lost. But is there a way to consciously experience gratitude, recognition, and sober appreciation without having to go through loss?

I'd be very interested to hear both your personal reflections and any perspectives you're familiar with — whether philosophical, religious, psychological, or otherwise. — Astorre

For one, I am skeptical about such practices. Does Donald Trump write a gratitude journal? Successful, important people don't seem like the types who would do such things, because it seems to me that it is precisely because they take for granted what they have (wealth, health, power, etc.) and because they feel entitled to it and demand it from life that they have it in the first place. They don't beg life; they take from it.

Secondly, all such practices that I can think of are somehow religious in nature. As such, it won't be possible to carry out those practices meaningfully unless one is actually a member of the religion from which they originate, because those practices are only intelligible in the metaphysical context provided by said religion.

I didn't create God, baker. You are confusing coming to understand something with creating something. — Bob Ross

What exactly do you understand? Wherefrom did you get what you understand?

Without revelation, or at least the notion of revelation, one is dealing merely with the artifacts of one's own mind.

/.../
Further, all this is transformed into individual human rights, freedom of conscience (after all, if you are not righteous, this is your problem), pluralism of opinions - it becomes a consistent development. At the same time, the idea of ​​God as the source of everything is being debunked, as it has been replaced by faith in science.
"I don't care what John thinks, because it's his own business. I don't care how he runs the household or raises his children, because he's responsible for it himself." And the crown of all this is Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre and Camus. Existentialism - as personal responsibility to oneself for one's own actions in the absence of a common meaning or common responsibility.

All this is the story of someone escaping responsibility to someone else. What I wrote above - no one is responsible for anything. The question arises: What is the next stage of liberation? Maybe now is the time to free ourselves from the need to be? After all, we are already free from everything else, including any identity, social connections, aren't we? This is exactly where I see one of those very pillars of liberalism that I spoke about earlier. — Astorre

There are several types of individualism, but it seems you're only talking about expansive individualism, or entitled individualism, or narcissistic individualism.
But there is also defensive individualism -- born out of a painful recognition that one is left to one's own devices, alone and abandoned by others. Like they say, "The heavens are high up, the tzar is far away, so one just has to see to it that one helps oneself."

One problem with that is that the watered down versions are being promoted as the real thing, and can eventually even replace it.
— baker

What you say assumes what is at issue—that there really is is a "real thing" to be found. — Janus

I said more later in the post you quoted.

In Buddhism, there is the theme that we are now living in an age in which the Dharma ends:

The Decline of the Dharma or Ages of the Dharma, refers to traditional Buddhist accounts of how the Buddhist religion and the Buddha's teaching (Dharma) is believed to decline throughout history. It constitutes a key aspect of Buddhist eschatology and provides a cyclical model of history, beginning with a virtuous age where spiritual practice is very fruitful and ending with an age of strife, in which Buddhism is eventually totally forgotten.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Dharma

The Dharma Ending Age, according to Mahayana Buddhism, is a prophetic period following the Buddha's nirvana, marked by a significant decline in the understanding and practice of the Dharma. This era is characterized by confusion, the rise of incorrect doctrines, and the prevalence of misleading spiritual practices. As the true teachings of Buddhism fade and important scriptures become less recognized, individuals struggle with spiritual cultivation, necessitating the preservation and transmission of the teachings to ensure continuity and spiritual awakening amidst challenges.

https://www.wisdomlib.org/concept/dharma-ending-age

(ironic, the ads that pop up on that precise page ...)

Dear lord. Let's try again ...

So if someone says this:

There simply are no sound criteria for considering one race to be, tout court, inferior to another.
— Janus

And yet they can provide no account of how their claim is supposed to be empirically or logically falsifiable, your response would be to resort to violence, because violence would make the claim empirically or logically falsifiable?

That doesn't seem like a real response. It sounds like "might makes right." It sounds like you need to resort to violence to enforce your beliefs because they are not rationally justifiable. Such is tyranny 101. — Leontiskos

It's how the real world works. And, what is more, those you call "tyrants" sometimes call their approach "rational" (and "just" and "good").

Not that I am endorsing any of this, but I am skeptical of the way philosophers approach issues, namely, quite dissociated from how the real world works. I am skeptical of the philosophical approach to life, because it's often naive to the point of dangerous (to themselves). Ever tried to reason with a boss of yours?

Specifically I want to explore the question of whether this claim is empirically or logically falsifiable.
— Leontiskos

What could falsify our claim? — Leontiskos

A blow with a baseball bat.
Seriously, arguments from power have a bad reputation in philosophy circles, yet in daily life they are the ones that matter. Mixing philosophy with real life is precarious business.

Are we truly entering an era of multipolarity? If so, what are the philosophical consequences of a world without a dominant cultural “center”? — Astorre

Empirically, what appears to emerge is a brutal new puritanism, political correctness taken to extremes.

Is the West prepared to coexist with ideological and civilizational alternatives that do not necessarily aspire to Western liberalism?

Of course not. It already doesn't coexist with alternatives, it wants to rule over the entire world.

I once witnessed a girl who was a guest asking a local girl why she wore a hijab, explaining that it infringed on her rights, her freedom to express herself. To which the second girl replied that this was her way of expressing herself. — Astorre

And in the "free and liberal and advanced West" a woman is told she is "not expressing herself" if she isn't wearing makeup, high heels etc.

What if the dictatorships of the global south are what the inhabitants of the global south want?

Perhaps they don't want a "dictatorship" in the sense of actually calling it that way; but they probably want someone strong and capable in the leadership position.

certain types of speech should be restricted, or if some opinions are bad enough that you can justify giving up free speech to silence them. — Wolfy48

I think the crucial point regarding all freedoms (of speech, religion, etc.) is that these freedoms were not instated out of some profound regard for humanity, or out of some profound conviction that all people and all religions etc. matter and are valid.

But rather, out of entirely pragmatic reasons: to get people to stop fighting for supremacy, because those fights caused a lot of collateral damage, civil unrest, and damage to business. If, at least legally, they're all equal, then they have no justification to fight for supremacy.

The greater good to be obtained from those freedoms isn't some humanist ideal, or solidarity, a sense of fraternity, but just plain absence of certain types of strife that are socially and economically disruptive.

And when looked at that way, it makes sense not to try to make much of the freedom of speech at all.

You are making an argument premised on the belief that there is actually something more than just pragmatism when it comes to living life. You name these higher facts as truth, goodness, and the divine. You want to put these at the centre of our attention and efforts, and advocate for practices that are self-denying, self-effacing, oddly self focused in being self-rejecting. A life built around rejecting the everyday stress and pleasure of being a social self and aimed at becoming this notion of some more perfected state of being. A godly creature barely existing in the world as it generally is, and generally must be, for an organism pragmatically dependent on its socially-constructed environment.

So what supports this metaphysics as a factual argument? Where is the evidence that this ought to be any kind of project for us humans? — apokrisis

Indeed.

These kinds of life lessons can be worked into the educational curriculum from a young age so that children start off properly equipped with an understanding of how their real world works, and the possibilities for improvement – of the self and its society – that flow from there.
/.../
It is the celebration of humanity as bestial rather than celestial.

But if this is so, how do you propose to teach it, and why??
It would be like being a successful stock broker but revealing your business secrets to others. You couldn't be successful for long afterwards.

The issue at this level isn't even philosophical. You will get no solutions from examining ideologies. Ideologies of any stripe become the problem when they are marketed as the absolutes that must rule our lives rather than some possible wisdom about how best to play the game that is being a useful member of a flourishing community.

I suspect that marketing something as an "absolute" is first and foremost a power move, an effort to exert control over others. If one can control what other people consider real and relevant, one can control others.

Modern self-help programs often seem to be excessively self-focused. But I would argue that the same is true of many traditional spiritual practices. What is it that motivates a search for "salvation" or "liberation" or "enlightenment" if not a concern for one's own well-being or life project? — Janus

Of course, but actually going through with one's personal salvation project used to be reserved for the select few, certainly it wasn't meant for everyone.

I think there is a puritanical elitist element in the idea that modern self-help programs are merely watered down caricatures of the ancient "true" practices.

I mean, if these programs really do help people to live better, more fulfilled and useful lives, then what is the problem?

One problem with that is that the watered down versions are being promoted as the real thing, and can eventually even replace it. This can lead to a lot of wasted time, wasted life opportunities, a lot of interpersonal strife.
Buddhism is a good example for this.

Is it because they don't really renounce this life in favour of gaining Karmic benefit or entrance to heaven? Is the most important thing we can do in this life to deny its value in favour of an afterlife, an afterlife which can never be known to be more than a conjecture at best, and a fantasy at worst? There seems to be a certain snobbishness, a certain classism, at play in these kinds of attitudes.

These things become more relevant and glaring once you look at them in the context of the particular religion/spirituality where they take place.
Again, Buddhism is a good example. It's gotten to the point where one has to defend the Pali Canon (the foundational text of Buddhism) to people who claim to be Buddhists. From an insider's perspective, a total insanity is going on. From an outsider's perspective, it probably doesn't matter.

There will always be a tension between individual preferences and societal desiderata. It seems obvious that in any community harmony is more desirable than conflict. — Janus

Of course. However, the striving for harmony usually involved a lot of torture and killing in the past, and still involves a lof of strife.

Yet, while introspecting, I can certainly see the allure even in the analytic. Only focusing on a narrow problem inside a big problem, breaking it down into conditionals and treating important questions like sterile puzzles has a strange comfort. — GazingGecko

Hence to allure of koans. Thinking about a koan makes one's mind stop, which is oddly satisfying.

Modern self-help culture, mindfulness programs, positive psychology, and to a lesser extent outdoor education, present themselves as the heirs of ancient, medieval, and Eastern wisdom traditions (i.e., to philosophy and spirituality). They borrow their vocabulary from these sources, speaking to "character development," virtue, flourishing, balance, discipline, detachment, etc., yet sever these practices from the original anthropology that supported them. In turn, the switch towards a "thin" anthropology, and the liberal phobia of strong ethical claims tends to unmoor them from any strong commitment to an ordering telos that structures the "self-development" they intend to promote. Everything becomes about the individual, about getting us what we want. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Modern self-help products are a for-profit genre. So already from this perspective, what is being sold by the self-help genre has to be tailored in such a way that it will make it marketable, appealing to prospective consumers.
This means that there has to be an intense focus on the idividual and what he wants (or subversively, what he should want, so as to benefit the author of self-help).

Further, in much of self-help, the underlying assumptions, made both by authors as well as consumers go like this:
It's a dog-eat-dog world.
Might makes right.
Of course, it's mostly considered too crude to actually say these things out loud, so they are mostly just implied; although there are self-help books that are direct like this.

The "help" offered is in line with those assumptions, less or more obviously, thus the egoic and managerial focus of self-help products.

A commitment to truth gets shoved aside for a view of philosophy as a sort of "life hack."

It's the only way that plebeians are able to conceive of philosophy. And plebeian mentality is the prevalent type of mentality nowadays, even in many people with advanced degrees and lots of money.
Why do you think Nietzsche is the most popular philosopher? Because he seems the easiest one to read, and people love his combative tone.

Philosophy itself has been thoroughly academicatized and professionalized.

I think insufficiently so. In the past, philosophy typically used to be reserved for the leisurely elites who didn't have to worry about paying bills, so they were able to concern themselves with matters of truth in the abstract without this having adverse effects for them. I think it should be kept that way. Because people who have to work for a living, often to the point of exhaustion, simply cannot afford to invest in activities that could in any way hamper their ability to function in a brutally competitive market (such as by inducing self-criticism or self-doubt, as reading philosophy can easily do in people).

Strong Natural Theism’s central thesis is comprised of two claims: (1) God can be known through the application of reason to empirically demonstrable aspects of the ordinary and natural world, and (2) this knowledge is sufficient for understanding and justifying living a proper and good life. — Bob Ross

The problem with this is is that it is your creation, a god of your creation -- and you know it. How do you respect such a god? How do you trust such a god? How do you fear such a god? What use is such a god or belief in such a god?

People seem to want to identify the really real. It’s surely a kind of god surrogate. — Tom Storm

People want to have the upper hand, they want to have power. The ultimate power is to dictate to everyone else what they are supposed to consider real.


(I predict that much better outcomes for psychotic patients could be brought about if they could be made to (re)gain some power, some self-efficacy, rather than further disempowering them by dictating to them what they are supposed to consider real. Hence the relatively good results of work-as-therapy.)

A third alternative is that the notion of an objective reality can't be maintained.

It's true that you are reading this screen. What more is said by "It is objectively true that you are reading this screen"? — Banno

Notions of subjectivity and objectivity are introduced for the purpose of establishing and maintaining hierarchy between people. Those higher up have objective truth, those lower down have merely subjective truth.

My senses can deceive me, so if I cannot trust my senses, I might as well conclude that outside reality doesn't exist; It's just me and you; but if my senses cannot be always trusted then your existence must also might be an illusion. — A Realist

One should not dabble in philosophy.

Either get serious about it, or let it go altogether, there is no middle way.

It's not like people go and shoot eachother because they had nothing better to do.

At the core of war is the belief, "We are more entitled to certain resources than other people, and we have the (divine) right to obtain those resources by whatever means necessary."

Kind of a dud answer if all you're gonna say is "it's subjective". — Darkneos

Perhaps the most important thing to learn in such discussions is that existential topics (including the question of suicide) are mostly pointless to try to discuss with others, and that this is due to the nature of those topics.

Many people who undergo such things never recover, their brains seem to be rewired by the trauma. — Tom Storm

Do people even want everyone to survive?

If yes, then why the military industry (guns are for killing people, yes), why the approval of euthanasia and assisted suicide, why the approval of capital punishment?

Are suicidal people not correctly reflecting society's actual values? Namely, that some lives are not worth living?

Don't forget people who have degenerative illnesses who would prefer to die than continue to experience suffering. Also people who have experienced traumatic events (prolonged sexual abuse, etc). The memories and pain - the PTSD may never go away either. Suicide may feel like the only method to gain permanent relief. — Tom Storm

One thing that is systematically being avoided in this discussion is the topic of shame and disgrace.

There are things that a person can do or which can happen to a person that render the person's life worthless, from then on forever.

On the one hand, there are criminal acts a person might do that the state deems so evil that the person's life must be taken via the death penalty. What the person has done might in fact be "termporary", but the state thinks the person doesn't deserve to live anymore. Treason is a prime example.

On the other hand, traditionally, some dishonoring events in a person's life, such as a woman being raped or a military general losing an important battle, for example, were considered so shameful that the person was expected to kill themselves (or be killed). It had nothing to do with PTSD or "not being able to bear the pain".

First, the source of the "optimism" is the Actual Data that proves that among those in your exact situation (contemplating suicide), the vast majority (70 - 93%) will change their mind and decide that life is, in fact worth living after all. — LuckyR

A source of optimism for whom? The general public?

Though your implication is correct that many can not or will not understand or accept that data. But that is an error.

What are you talking about??
So if a person is contemplating suicide, they should reflect that there is a 70 - 93% chance that they will not pull the trigger/jump off a cliff/etc.??



You keep bringing in this sociological/statistical approach to a discussion that was from the onset intended to be philosophical. You keep avoiding the OP.

While it's understandable that the discussion of existential topics has to be opaque to some extent, at some point, all this opaqueness is just a waste of time.

Hence my observation that the argument against suicide is: it's a permanent solution to a TEMPORARY problem. — LuckyR

And whence is one supposed to get the optimism to believe this argument or see it as relevant?

Presumably every person has a breaking point, some just reach theirs temporally sooner than others. Once a person has reached that point, based on what can they still see their particular predicament not only as temporary, but, more importantly, that many better things are yet to happen for them and that their life will be nice and easy from that point on until the end?

Not even a reply because it's speaking massively of privilege and doesn't grasp the whole scope of life. Outside of modern society life is pretty brutal, and even in society you have to be born lucky to experience the good stuff. Honestly man...have some perspective. — Darkneos

So the question for this thread topic isn't something like "Is life worth living?"

But rather, "Is life worth living for underprivileged, unlucky people?"

And if we look at the modern socioeconomic trends, the answer to the latter is clearly, No.

Modern cultures that view euthanasia and assisted suicide positively and have legalized them are clearly saying that if one cannot live up to a certain socioeconomic standard, then it's better to die.

What do you mean “by definition”? That isn’t the definition of nihilism. — praxis

It's fairly common for religious people to think that non-religious people are leading meaningless, aimless, worthless lives. This belief is part of the foundation for their apologetics and proselytizing.

We could quote doctrinal tenets from religions that say as much.

Maybe you are already enlightened, and didn't know it. — Patterner

According to Early Buddhism, such is impossible, because an enlightened person knows they are enlightened, they have no doubt or confusion about it. Everyone who is enlightened knows they are enlightened.

No one knows for sure so we are stuck with what seems most plausible. — Janus

While many people say such things, I doubt many people mean them. It seems to me that people are far more sure of themselves, far more certain than you make allowance for.

But unless one is enlightened, one cannot talk about these things with any kind of integrity, nor demand respect from others as if one in fact knew what one is talking about.
— baker

I tend to agree with this, although I would say not only "unless" but "even if".

Why the "even if"? Why couldn't one talk about enlightenment with integrity even if one is enlightened?

If you believe being enlightened is a real thing, what leads you to believe it, presuming you are not yourself enlightened?

I am aware of the standard definitions of enlightenment. Whether what those definitions say is "real" or not I can't say, given that according to those definitions, one would need to be enlightened oneself in order to recognize another enlightened being.


But I certainly acknowledge a strange pull that I feel towards these topics and a desire to reflect on them.

Says you, who just this minute has pasted an entire paragraph from the Pali texts into another thread. — Wayfarer

Have you noticed that I am not discussing Buddhism in the manner of Western secular academia?

I don’t see any ‘bad blood’.

You don't say. I have to take breaks from this forum, as I feel downright metaphorically bespattered with blood.

Hostile reactions are only to be expected when people’s instinctive sense of reality is called into question.

What a spiritual take on the matter!

For instance, philosopher Shaun Gallagher, taking inspiration from the work of Francisco Varela, links the modern empirical discovery of the absence of a substantive ‘I' or ego with the Buddhist concept of non-self, and imports from Buddhism the ethical implications of the awareness of this non-self, which he formulates as the transcendence of a grasping selfishness in favor of a compassionate responsivity to the other. — Joshs

To be clear, such views are typical for Mahayana and Vajrayana schools of Buddhism, but certainly not for Early Buddhism, nor for Theravada.

What could be more nihilistic than to believe that life is suffering and the only way to escape the endless cycle of life and death is the complete extinguishment of everything that makes you you. — praxis

When phrased this way, it certainly sounds nihilistic.

But at least in the fundamental Buddhist texts, the Pali Canon, it's not phrased that way. You'd just have to read those for yourself, it's too much to post here even just the relevant passages.

That said, we extinguish everything that makes us who we are anway. It's just that we do it slowly, gradually, and usually without thinking of it in terms of "I am extinguishing everything that makes me me". For example, we identify with our food for as long as it is in our mouth and stomach, but then when we excrete it, we disidentify with it.

The point I aim to make is that not believing in life after death, or being a materialist, or non-religious, is not nihilism. — praxis

From the perspective of (some of) the religious, it is nihilistic, by definition so.

Do you suppose you can describe and explain things in a neutral, objective way that is beyond perspective(s)?

To believe that it is nihilism is denying reality and a rather extreme view, a grasping view.

What reality is being denied by this?

You are certainly NOT the first person to discover that life may be, can be, may seem to be... meaningless. Get used to it and move on. That's what people do. — BC

This is another vulgar attitude. No, it has not been my experience that people generally accept that life is meaningless. This is a perverse, vulgar sentiment that can be found primarily among the educated poor.

You yourself have noted more than once how your degree in the humanities and your socioeconomic background were in conflict, and how you could never really be part of the academia or the intellectual class, given your socioeconomic background. It's this conflict that is the breeding ground of existential anguish.

It is my hypothesis that people who are poor but whose ambitions in life are realistic aren't likely to get depressed. In contrast, policies like the "no child left behind", all that striving for equity, equal opportunity, this is what is creating depressed people.

It's when one is trying to be something one is not that one gets sucked into an abyss of existential problems.

because everything is meaningless, and i am an idiot. — unenlightened

How vulgar.

I will continue to read with interest. — Amity

Yes?

The way the suicide discussion is so often carried out in Western culture (what little there is of such discussion, that is) is that all the blame is conveniently placed on the person who killed themselves or seems to want to, along with calling them mentally ill, selfish, etc. While it is somehow considered bad taste to point out how others may have contributed to the suicide, or even caused it.

All that talk of love, empathy, compassion. And yet, it is somehow always other people who should be the first to practice love, empathy, compassion, and never those who preach them.