Can philosophy help these people? — Athena

Not sure what that would look like but I would say that for many people it would not. Quality counselling might help.

AA groups speak of our higher selves — Athena

Not a big fan of AA based on what I have seen, but obviously social support groups do work and AA does work for some people. I prefer SMART Recovery. I am not crazy about hierarchical ideas like 'higher self' but some people find the frame useful.

Pessism keeps you from an untimely death, optimism keeps you from a full life. — TheMadFool

Being clinically paranoid could also keep you from an untimely death. But the question for me isn't just whether you survive, it is what kind of life you live and what else you might be missing owing to such tendencies.

And then there's the issue of the jungle metaphor. Is that really a useful analogue for what we call real life? What is the equivalent of a dangerous jaguar? I can see some potential contenders but I really can't see a great advantage to pessimism. Advocacy for pessimism often sounds to me like the teenager who says, "I'm not going to fall in love so I can never get hurt.'

:up:

Ok. So no hints for general approaches?

55

Good point.

I usually say "Yeah, back in the good old days when black people couldn't vote and we could beat up gay people. — T Clark

Yeah... I do pretty much the same.

What you say is wise and useful TC. I like the present time too, but I have met very few people in my extended circle who do. I'm particularly fascinated by young people who talk of the good old days they have not known - when products were better made, when music, art and writing was better, when the world was cleaner and free. They sound like baby boomers. But it's just possible I have made too much of this...

pessimistic thoughts can give rise to a sense of hopelessness. — Jack Cummins

Yes, and many of the people I have met who claim to be pessimists are just dignifying hopelessness with a more classy term. I think hopelessness is often a faith based position - in as much as there are folk who believe that human destiny is one of inevitable doom, as opposed to the more obvious point that we are all destined to die.

Here, I am suggesting that even though postmodernism comes with potential problems, in that it can give rise to a collapse of values, the insights of modernity and postmodernism are important for enabling critical analysis. — Jack Cummins

Out of interest, Jack - what do you think are a couple of useful insights post-modernism has given us?

So, in a way pessimism can even be contagious as an underlying factor permeating social life and perhaps the ones who experience the profound states presenting in mental health care do so because they are the most sensitive ones. — Jack Cummins

Sure. There is also a difference between pessimism and hopelessness.

I was asking another question.

Understanding Kafka.
Have you read his 'Letter to His Father' ? What do you think of it ?
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/05/franz-kafka-letter-father/
— Amity — Amity

I didn't have a comment on the letter.

Pessimism or optimism? I think which one is best depends upon the toll your choice takes on your mental health.

Talking of a blend. Cellist Pablo Casals had a great quote - 'The situation is hopeless, we must take the next step.'

Tips for resisting the recurrences of pre-modern atavisms.

You what ? What people, where...? — Amity

That was a joke - about people turning the clock back to before the modernist project, hence pre-modern.

You don't seen an inconsistency in light being a particle AND a wave — TheMadFool

I thought light was a wave not a particle.

This is not aimed at you Mad Fool but I am always fascinated how many qualified theoretical physicists there are on this forum poised and ready to disprove science.

I'm just describing what I see. If you don't see it, great. What do you see?

Isn't that true of any generation ?
You call that music ? You call that dancing ? — Amity

No question but generally old farts. I am hearing this from people too young to be able to look back - in their twenties.

A book called the Authenticity Hoax taps into this idea too. Andrew Potter.

He is more intriguing than I first thought. — Amity

Reading Kafka after the Holocaust gives it a different flavour and I can't unread that particular tragedy in the work.The Trial and Josef K's 'guilt' plays totally differently. We're back to a sinister cage looking for a bird.

I was taught that the motto of modernism was Ezra Pound's Make It New - this:

It's always seemed to me that modernity is a rejection of the past as much as it is confidence in the future. — T Clark

It has struck me for several years now how many people in the West seem fixated on a mawkish form of nostalgia. There's a prevailing view that things were better in the past. A Golden Age.

This sentiment fills the speeches of public officials, the plots of movies and longform TV and the comments on social media. People keep presenting the view that we have lost something, that we need to regain it. The new mansions built in my city are nostalgia structures - pretend Victorian or grotesque 18th century pastiches called French Provincials. There's the now mainstream hipster-lite aesthetic, a fetishisation of early 20th century workwear and an ardour for old school crafts and multifaceted 'authenticity'.

Politically, aesthetically and emotionally, no one seems to much like the present time, no one seems to praise the modern and most folk seem afraid of the post-modern and the future. People seem to be going for pre-modernism.

:up: If you have any tips for the non academically inclined, let me know.

don't add insult to injury by helping them. — Valentinus

I agree. Josef K should just have lain down that morning and offered them a butcher's knife... :joke:

'Modern' period - commenced with publication of Newton's Principia 1687.
'Post-modern' period - commenced with publication of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity 1915.

Modernity is characterised by the idea of progress, trust in science, confidence in civilized values, the idea of destiny.

Post-modernity is characterised by nihilism, distrust of meta-narratives, cultural relativism, rejection of universal values, a plurality of competing cultural and social constructs. — Wayfarer

This is certainly a standard academic construct of the ideas. I wasn't sure the OP was wanting to explore this side of the street, although maybe. Modernism wasn't optimistic for long. It may have begun this way but after World War One it became drenched in pessimism and ideas of absurdity, regress and doom. And Duchump's Fountain (1917 urinal sculpture) kind of anticipated the postmodern project and Tracy Emin by some years. Incidentally when you read Don Quixote 1605, you find a book that is like a post-modern pastiche, dripping with irony and self-reflexivity. It could almost be John Barth (except readable). I'm not confident that categories like this really work.

I think I've mentioned before that I find the inability of so many Americans to think in terms of a common wealth... puzzling. — Banno

Lots of Americans are surprised by this too. Michael Sandel is good on this.

Pierre Whalon, Bishop in charge, Episcopal Churches in Europe. — Wayfarer

You know what they say about Episcopals? It's the bland leading the bland....

can one say they are indifferent? — Warren

I think I am largely indifferent to this. Many categories are ineffable. I have no idea what modern is meant to mean. Is postmodernism simply hard modernism? Is sticking 'post' in front of something just a sign you have run out of ideas? Is modern the same thing as contemporary? Can a Buddhist monk in rural Thailand be modern; or do you have to be an ironic atheist working in IT in a big city? Is it situational, or is it a state of mind? Or is it simply a word; misused, abused, a usage in search of a meaning?

God would have to be outside of the whole universe, which seems scientifically impossible given that nothing is outside of the universe by definition. — scientia de summis

Doesn't God defy the laws of physics and can do what it pleases? I never quite get that God can be limited by the impossible.

I'm a bit worried about myself, seriously, because I've never had the experience that seems to lie at the foundation of theism viz. that desire, even desperation, to need an explanation for the universe. In short, the question, "why all this?" never crossed my mind. Is there something wrong with me? — TheMadFool

No. I share that too. I really don't care.

And that contradicts Biblical Cosmology. — Dharmi

True. But all the Christians I know see the Bible as allegory.

t concerns me that people want to see behaviors and thus create people to see them carried out. A bizarre political move. But it is political as it is one person affecting another, and it deals with the superstructure. I am very concerned people want to see X from another person because they have a vision that just needs to happen for the other person. — schopenhauer1

Human beings are behavior.

And, what do you think? — schopenhauer1

People being born doesn't really concern me. I am more interested in behavior once they are here.

Less people who suffer and forced into X system that can be negatively evaluated. If one cares about the ethic, then one advocates strongly for it. There's also a justice thing.. Unjust to bring more laborers, suffering, extend the superstructure because you want it. — schopenhauer1

I'm curious why this matters so much to you. Do you feel you were thrown into the world (apologies to Heidegger) and that this is unfair and has lead to suffering?

Why is a movement against perpetuating the package of social structure and negative evaluation of human activities needed to survive condemned off the bat, but the perpetuation of this package is condoned and praised? Can't there be another point of view? — schopenhauer1

Yes, I remember these points. This is obviously very important to you. The argument seems lacking in focus to me.

I don't think the 'package', as you put it, is praised - the world, our country is in constant tension, disagreement and nascent revolution. And doesn't it make sense that the powerful in a status quo oppose change? Also many if not most people are afraid of radical change for good reasons. You can always make things worse. No one really knows how to make things better. Just look at the culture war over taxation reform or a simple thing like health care.

People see having children as a way to escape from the system. For many people having a child recalibrates who they are and rebuilds the world.

I am saying that by procreating people, you are willing (or unwitting) participants in perpetuating your socio-economic-cultural institutions (including governments, etc.). — schopenhauer1

I understand you think this but why is it a problem?

If you know the right things. I'm hopeful :) — TaySan

How do you know you know the right things?

My thinking is based on Cicero and the notion that we choose the right thing when we know what that is. If you disagree, it would help me form an argument if you say why you do not agree.

Why bother with considering a world without matter? I don't think I would like a world without matter. — Athena

The idea that we 'choose the right thing when we know what it is' strikes me as problematic. I don't understand why someone would say this unless there is a vast scaffolding of philosophy underpinning the phrase 'when we know what it is'.

My understanding of human behavior is that we consistently choose short term pleasures and strong tribal positions and junk food along with junk ideas when we know there are better options and even know most of the time what these better options are.

I've worked with former prisoners over the years - hard core criminals - almost all of them knew the right thing to do. The consistent theme is that they did what they did because something mysterious came over them or 'the knife just went in' or 'before I knew it my fists were hitting her' or 'I snapped'. Their more righteous self temporarily went 'off line'.

I am not big on making all encompassing conclusions from this, but I will say that the difference between choosing to do the right thing and choosing to do the wrong thing is often located in person's sense of self rather than the nature of the action.

Not sure how "subversive" that is. It is contributing, just in a different way and would make the country stronger in the long-run. Don't see how that contradicts the point. — schopenhauer1

I'm not contradicting your point, I am contributing to your point, just not in full support.

What do you think you are trying to achieve in general terms?

Most likely they will contribute to the economy in some way, even if they write some "revolutionary" blogposts and social media posts :D. — schopenhauer1

For sure, but they may do more than play around on social media - they might work in politics, in unions, in activism, in medical care, in civil rights law, in drug law reform, in a range of subversive activities.

when a parent decides to procreate a new child, they are also becoming a witting (or mostly unwitting) participant in keeping that society/state's structure perpetuating and maintained. They become the literal bearers of their country's/state's progeny and duplication. — schopenhauer1

I've known a number of parents who are hoping their child becomes an iconoclast who will help bring down the state's structure. Don't underestimate the revolutionary projects of some would be parents.

Food for thought...why are educators so bent on making learning "fun" and why does "fun" in this case resemble marketing tactics? — TheMadFool

Hmmm.... I can't think of examples of educators making learning fun. I know they try sometimes. For me there's an issue with people only being aware of the things that are marketed at them and almost totally ignorant about anything else. So their choice, partly because of this, is almost always based on a tiny slither of potential experience that is mainstream and foisted on them.

Marketing creates... markets. Often for things of dubious quality. Hence the money spent on it. I learned early on with children that if they see it on TV they want it. If they hear it on the radio, they want it. If it has a cool clip, they want it. If it is in a movie, they want it. Etc.

Western philosophy has a deep concern for logic, an aspect of the mind that's of preeminent importance if we are to, according to it,discover any knowledge worthy of the name. Western philosophers have developed rigorous and exact logical systems (categorical logic, sentential logic, predicate logic, etc.) to the extent that such can be achieved with the aim of perfecting logic so that we can be reasonably confident in the results when it's employed. With logic now more or less under its belt Western philosophy brings it to bear on any and all matters, one of them being the mind/the self. The way this is done is by resorting to a divide and conquer tactic - the mind is broken up into "manageable" chunks like personhood, consciousness, understanding, intelligence to name a few, probably because these facets of the mind are worlds in themselves and need undivided, dedicated attention and study.

In addition, Western philosophy has science as an important collaborator as the latter has constructed a library of empirical knowledge which can't be ignored or, more accurately, must be given due consideration when philosophizing about anything, the mind/the self included. It might seem that science is more of a hindrance than a help in this regard because it seems to invariably place empirical obstacles for philosophers of mind but what we should not forget is that science provides instruments like fMRI, EEG, etc. that can be very useful in probing the brain - the seat of consciousness. Plus, the brain could be "it" you know.

Buddhism and Taoism, on the other hand, lacks these features in their philosophies. Logic is not treated to in-depth analysis and has only a functional role i.e. it's used but not studied. This was probably because logic as it existed back then during the times of the Buddha and Lao Tzu could comfortably handle the ideas of Buddhism and Taoism - there was no felt-need to put logic under the microscope. Science didn't even exist those days and neither its opposition nor its assistance were available to the Buddha and Lao Tzu. Perhaps it didn't/doesn't matter but I recall Wayfarer saying:

He (the Dalai Lama) made the memorable statement in his book on philosophy of science, Universe in a Single Atom, that any Buddhist principles overturned by scientific discovery must give way.
— Wayfarer
.

I don't have anything on Taoism along similar lines and that's what's interesting - Taoism has no beef with science and the question of how Taoism is incompatible with science never ever came up.

Last but not the least, returning to your comment, "...awareness of internal experience...", it's quite clear that all three - Western philosophy, Buddhism, and Taoism - have achieved this milestone in human thinking viz. meta-cognition but there are differences as I attempted to, as best as I could, outline in the preceding paragraphs. — TheMadFool

I found this extremely interesting and intriguingly phrased. Thank you.

I suppose with the decline of religion and spiritualism and the rise of the materialstic spirit musicians have had to adapt and explore other avenues of clicking with their audience - politics, social issues, romance, philosophy, etc. all are now game so long as there's a willing audience ready to listen and, most importantly, ready to pay the price for the performance. — TheMadFool

Yes, and I also think that marketing - which has infested everything, including religion and spirituality - plays an instrumental (no pun intended) role.