Is life nothing more than suffering?
Whatever we do to keep ourselves happy, are we doing it to mitigate the suffering that is life? Or, perhaps is life neither suffering, nor happiness, but a thing we choose to make ourselves?
Does life have any potential to be anything beyond suffering, or is that too much of a pessimistic stance? I cannot see life as anything other than this, but it could also be something that we simply create out of life.
I am leaning more towards the former, however, as I believe whatever I am doing to keep myself happy is to decrease the suffering that life inherently is. I would love to read arguments refuting this, so feel free to join the discussion if you'd like! Thank you!
Does life have any potential to be anything beyond suffering, or is that too much of a pessimistic stance? I cannot see life as anything other than this, but it could also be something that we simply create out of life.
I am leaning more towards the former, however, as I believe whatever I am doing to keep myself happy is to decrease the suffering that life inherently is. I would love to read arguments refuting this, so feel free to join the discussion if you'd like! Thank you!
Comments (45)
Quoting Arnie
I don't think so. Sex and love bring so much joy and happiness, they are more than mitigating; they hugely contribute to a wonderful life. I suspect the vast majority of people live happy lives.
A few percent of people on the planet (in the hundreds of millions) don't have these things in their life, and live a sad and tortured existence. Maybe 1% (80 million) have lives of unbearable suffering.
Empathy in this world is often likened as a curse or burdensome quality, despite lack of it being the main definitive tenet of clinical psychopathy/sociopathy.
The average person worries about his or her self and those immediately around them that offer tangible benefit or utility - or, conversely - would incur some detriment or drawback if they were to not be around or to view the person in a negative light. You wake up, eat, say hi to your kids or pets, feel validated and useful to others, earn a living, go home without incurring serious bodily injury, experience pleasure, and repeat. This is a good life. At least, all that can be reasonably expected to consider oneself "fortunate". All well and good. Now, for those who happen to care about others the same they do themselves or who refuse to remain ignorant of what tomorrow could very well hold, not just for themselves and the homeostasis of their own detached social sphere, but others, life becomes a bit more burdensome. In short, ignorance is bliss.
In a simple, if not crude way, the following can be often observed in most all societies past and present. A good woman takes on the burdens of her children. A good man takes on the burdens of his household. A good leader takes on the burdens of all. If, as a good person of any position, suffering is not a constant dynamic in the back or forefront of one's mind, a persistent, ominous fog on the horizon, and a mere stone's throw away, that person is either extremely lucky, extremely foolish, or both. I'd say so anyway.
Furthermore, one man's good time is another's punishment. Intellects may enjoy a half-day museum or scientific lecture. Others may prefer a firm beating in place of such an activity. Introverted and extroverted come to mind and seem to be a reliable archetype of mental identity, more so than not. Some people could be perfectly content reading a novel in a room for days on end without seeing as much as a soul. Others might become depressed or even unhinged. Some people love social gatherings, being around people, or being the center of attention, etc. Others abhor the idea and consider it a chore they wish to avoid at all cost. Neither are without their distinct advantages and drawbacks. Still, something I like to tell others, if not as a shameless defense of my own social disinclination: "If you can't make yourself happy, how can you (or others) expect for you to make others happy". Seems fair.
Well to be alive is to be sensitive, and to be sensitive is to be vulnerable. That which lives must die. As I get older, I find myself subject more and more to aches and pains of knees and feet and stomach and so on.
There is certainly no shortage of suffering, if one sees the news, or spends a little time in a hospital, one can feel overwhelmed by it. But I think that suffering is pain compounded by rejection, the attempt to escape, and fear of continuation. Athletes speak of 'the pain barrier', as something to be overcome as a necessary step on the way to excellence. This attitude, that accepts pain, and moves towards and through it serves to greatly reduce suffering, by making pain a price one pays willingly for some other thing, which I will call "love".
You may have heard that love hurts, and that is true, because to love is to be sensitive and vulnerable, and to be so willingly. One is painstaking in the service of that which one loves; one takes the trouble and suffers for one's art - or one's wife, or one's sport, or in my case, my garden.
I have. I hope you do.
Nope. It's suffering, alright. All of it. Every last bit. Suffer, suffer suffer. Sufferin' succotash, as Sylvester the cat would say. In saecula saeculorum..
Or you might agree with Epictetus and conclude that we're not disturbed by things, but by the view we take of them, and act accordingly.
No and Yes. All living organisms must be able to sense both positive and negative environmental impacts on Self. So, focusing solely on the negative is Pessimism, unbalanced by Optimism. Such an attitude only adds to the suffering, by ignoring the soothing. The Good is not beyond the Bad, but parallel to it. :smile:
No. Life seems to be suffering plus *temporarily better or worse conditions / interpretations* ... I think one sustainably reduces one's own suffering one flourishes¹ by acquiring habits of preventing or reducing the suffering (i.e. dysfunctions, miseries, agonies, fears) of others. Btw, "happiness" is just like a full belly, more a memory than a lasting experience; many miserable persns make themselves "happy"² momentarily via addictions or criminal / sadistic acts which inevitably only compound their miseries.
https://lisamarieblair.medium.com/eudaimonia-or-when-human-beings-flourish-b9c5943bad22 [1]
(i.e. beneficial growth and deveopment)
https://bigthink.com/thinking/how-to-measure-happiness-hedonia-vs-eudaimonia/ [2]
(i.e. merely momentary comfort)
It would be a performative error to conclude that life doesn't have the potential to be anything beyond suffering. Yet, when one engages in such black and white thinking, there's bound to be so many cherries one can pick to justify the argument.
It is well known that the 'four noble truths' of Buddhism begin with the observation or axiom that life is suffering - the Buddhist term is 'dukkha' which is difficult to translate, but which is usually represented as suffering or sorrowful (the word actually comes from a badly-fitted axle hole). In a forum post such as this it would probably be unwise to try and spell out all the remaining 'noble truths' in detail, save that they say that suffering has a cause and so also a solution or ending, which is the purpose of the Buddhist eightfold path.
Many people have come to this conclusion. But 'suffering' wouldn't make sense if we didn't also experience contentment. So for me, whether life is predominately suffering or not, depends on experience, disposition and culture and upon how you understand the notion of suffering itself. My own life experience is too complex or multifaceted to be reduced to a single concept like this.
I realize people have different degrees of chemicals in them. Hormones, neurotransmitters, what have you. And people have very different experiences in their formative years. These things play a big role in how we feel. We can look at the same thing, and feel exactly opposite about it. But my first paragraph should be the lens through which we try to view our lives. Not the lens of "Everything is suffering." We probably can find a reason to think we are suffering at every moment, it we choose to. I can look at the aurora borealis, and call it suffering because it makes my floaters stand out. But we can choose the things we think to a much greater degree than many realize. I can direct my thoughts to the gorgeous display instead.
There's "good news" at the end.
If you indulge me to dissect "life" for humans into two parts: organic life, life proper; and the human experience, life constructed...if you go with that for 30 seconds, might I suggest the following answer briefly?
And note, these are my understanding of "things" from my very possibly heretical take on what I have gathered from voices, text, and coincidence. Im not an authority on any subject I address. Though I might present ideas as if I am regurgitating what is true to some source(s), I am not. I do not keep an academically responsible track of my sources, though like everyone, I am not unique from my sources, but at "best/worst", a unique by-product thereof.
Organic Life: not suffering. Its natural state is bliss; but within that context there is struggle. Life, because blissful, is driven to survive, and necessarily struggles to satisfy that drive. Inevitably there will be instances of fear, fatigue, hunger, pain, solitude (we naturally bond). But these feelings arise in our organic being without dissatisfaction, anxiety, angst, resentment, hatred, anger, strife, jealousy, misery. Life, already blissful, is not in perpetual becoming, not incessantly reaching and grasping, but rather, being, maintaining being. There is no "something." There is only being/doing-in-(successively)present-reaction-to-being.
Human experience: is suffering. But suffering is not real. Mind having displaced the drive to survive the present bliss, with desire to construct "something" and be heard (projection), has also displaced the natural bliss of being with incessant becoming. Because desire is necessary for becoming, dissatisfaction is necessary in order to perpetuate desire, which, in turn, perpetuates becoming, the manifesting of our projections. Desire cannot cease in Mind's world. And so we must suffer in order to desire the constructions we "pretend" are desired to end suffering; an ineluctable loop, which displaces natural fear, hunger, fatigue, with what we construct as anxiety, anguish, misery, all of it flawlessly perpetuating our becoming.
It might be an iota from impossible to stop becoming. If you were born into a world post prehistoric human animals, if you were born in History, you are programmed to displace being with becoming. Existentialism, thinks it has brought us methods of authentic being, but it only provides reasonable ways to navigate becoming. And though Zazen might appear as a means to bring one to the "silence" of being, and the extinguishment of the "I" of becoming, it doesn't last. You cannot delete, nor press "reset". The program automatically kicks back to the "Factory setting," and becoming continues on autonomously. Besides, you cannot "know" that being, you can only be "it," and the second you succeed at "returning" through Zazen to being, you desire to "know" that being, triggering you right back into the programmed becoming. The locus of inevitable suffering.
The"good news," it's OK. You are not that thing, the "I" (of) becoming. You are really that blissful being.
You wonder, is Life just suffering? No.
Human existence has suffering built in. It's how we grow. In a strange way of putting it, but it is no less a fact, without suffering, there would not be Shakespeare, the Eiffel Tower, Socrates, DaVinci, Icecream, Mozart, Billie Holiday, Charities, and Volunteer Firefighters, and as you know, we could fill this forum with the list of good which we get to experience, albeit constructed by us, and requiring, as one of the ingredients, perpetual suffering; good which we can choose to recognize, by simply incorporating it into each of our Narratives, as at least balancing the suffering. And we can choose to do so with gratitude.
Why? Because our being, that which matters, is bliss. And the becoming, well, we construct it, we can put effort into which projections surface upon our narratives.
It's not a bad deal, at all.
I am enjoying a banger protein shake right now without any reference in my mind of suffering.
I think Schopenhauer best encapsulates the inherent nature of suffering with this quote:
He makes an interesting distinction between positive and negative properties. He argues that what we call "happiness" is a negative property, as it is really the pursuit of a desire for a change of state. Happiness is not what is intrinsic, but rather dissatisfaction is. What follows is a desire for change, which temporarily puts "relief" on the dissatisfaction, only for the ever-gushing willing nature of our existence to go back to another desire for a change of state. Boredom is seen as the ultimate revealer of a ground-state of dissatisfaction as he argues this to be the "proof" that we are not simply satisfied existing, but always rather dissatisfied. We are always struggling and looking for ways out of our dissatisfaction. We chase flow states, hedonistic ends, entertainment, chit-chatting, and all of it as a result of the dissatisfaction.
Much of life is maintenance, the upkeep of one's lifestyle, not even getting to the game of satisfaction-fulfilling.. Just maintaining the lifestyle to get there.
Then there are contingent externalities that puts people in a deficit. People with various diseases, or unfortunate situations happen to them, might put them at a perpetual deficit in their baseline of what they must contend with while overcoming the dissatisfaction.
Birth puts us on this dissatisfaction trajectory.
He has aged well/was farsighted. I'm inspired to read further. Honestly, my only brush with Schopenhauer has been in those large philosophy readers. Yet, I knew I was compelled by his thinking. I sense there is a (subtle) propaganda campaign against him?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Right, it negates (or settles) dissatisfaction the built in mechanism driving the desire! I like this. (Extremely sorry if I'm taking any liberties in my (potentially mis)interpretation of your text. But i sure hope Im not. Im grateful!)
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes! I really liked his description of boredom. A fresh lesson for me. And impactful. Thank you. I know I am out of bounds not having read Schopenhauer remotely enough to make assertions. But he's involving Boredom, not as a metaphysical state etc, but because the fact of its epidemic manifestation in human experience "reveals" the "real" "metaphysicsl" thing of it, the built in mechanism of dissatisfaction-->desire. Very insightful. I "believe" that.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes. That "appears" to be the only fact, and so, in the "world" where "appear" is "fact", how can we avoid suffering. And so on as you go on to say, since birth, uniquely for humans, life is suffering.
Thanks again for the opening into Schopenhauer.
Do you want to explain what you mean? Hereabouts in this forum, most people probably don't like his metaphysics (idealism, and in my opinion, a sort of neoplatonism whereby reality arises from Will being "objectified" into Forms which then get mediated by time, space, and causality). @Wayfarer tends to have more interest in his philosophy on this forum. If you want a good thread on his metaphysics, try following this thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/830498
Quoting ENOAH
That's about it. He thought that our will-to-live (manifestations of Will) as this "force" that simply desires but has no aim, and is sort of trapped in its own representation of itself, with the appearance of objects. In this template of time, space, and the illusion of objectification, Will tries to find satisfaction, but generally does not realize that it cannot, because its whole essence is dissatisfaction.
This is my attempt to distill the philosophy:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/830493
Quoting ENOAH
Yes.. Boredom is an important marker as to what is the case. He elevates it from a passing emotion to THE emotion par excellance.. As it reveals the vanity of existence.. That in the end, we are not satisfied being. It is an endless onrush of satisfaction-fulfillment because we cannot just be.
I meant more generally. My exposure, as I said, were from those Histories (like Bertrand Russell, et. al) and Anthologies. My sense comes from those, and likely I'm reading in those "presentations" preamble, Histories, biographies, etc., an extremely subtle skepticism toward his interest in Eastern Religions (theirs, not mine) And its left a trace in my Schopenhauer file. Its not that reliable.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Thank you
Quoting schopenhauer1
I find that compelling, if not metaphysically (and yet, there, is precisely where I do), then for certain aesthetically.
Quoting schopenhauer1
True, but, (though I may be misreading) for me, it's not so blue. I would uses as "hopeless" a hue, as Schopenhauer, if that was Schopenhauer, not me misreading a subtle melancholy into "because we cannot just be". Because that afterall is tge fact I accept.
Anyway, I accept wholeheartedly that human existence is an endless movement driven, as Schopenhauer brilliantly reduced down to its base code, by dissatisfaction.
But Im not so gloomy. One, I can work with that, I do anyway. Why fight it. Loosen the first person Narrator's grip on the endless pursuit; receive satisfaction (though fleeting) rather than pursuing it, And it will ease the tension of the dissatisfaction. And then, just carry on with management of boredom-->desire (Schopenhauer's implicit definition of the human condition, right?).
And Two, I'm alive (as in that's what I really am). And that by definition is the only "satisfaction" required. Satisfaction in being.
Again, Schopenhauer is an inspiration I'm eager to read that thread. Thanks again
Yeah so basically the idealism aspect... whether Eastern or not, is pretty denounced by the materialism/naturalism of analytics like Russel et al. Also Schopenhauer was a system builder, and this is generally disliked in modern philosophy where problems are solved on a discrete basis.
Quoting ENOAH
Yes, Schopenhauer was considered a "philosophical pessimist" because of his emphasis on suffering. Quoting ENOAH
I think Schopenhauer would answer that you cannot help but pursue it; it's not a choice.
Quoting ENOAH
Again, his "test" is that you cannot simply "be". Survival alone negates that point. But beyond that, your own inability to sit still in an empty room. No one is faulting you for that. In fact, it is quite impossible for fully functioning animals, to do so. The human animal must have its ends, or literally, nothing would get done. We are habituated for anticipation for what we must do next.
It's all instrumental. What is valuable becomes consumed and is in the end a temporary gap in the gushing forth of one's will.
People pretend as if you can extricate the objective existence from one's evaluation of it, but you cannot. It is always you situated in the world, not just the world. Believing that the world "is", and you are just there putting your spin on it, matters not, as you will never extricate the two.
[quote=Schopenhauer's Compass,Urs App] In order to always have a secure compass in hand so as to find one's way in life, and to see life always in the correct light without going astray, nothing is more suitable than getting used to seeing the world as something like a penal colony. This view finds its...justification not only in my philosophy, but also in the wisdom of all times, namely, in Brahmanism, Buddhism, Empedocles, Pythagoras [...] Even in genuine and correctly understood Christianity, our existence is regarded as the result of a liability or a misstep. ... We will thus always keep our position in mind and regard every human, first and foremost, as a being that exists only on account of sinfulness, and who is life is an expiation of the offence committed through birth. Exactly this constitutes what Christianity calls the sinful nature of man.[/quote]
Notice from the SEP entry on Schopenhauer:
So, important to register that while Schopenhauer recognises 'to live is to suffer', he also sees 'the end to suffering', albeit perhaps 'through a glass, darkly'.
I understand that, and, think he may be
right.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Interesting. Yah, makes sense. Explains the inability not to follow the chatter, even by [thinking you can/are] trying to employ only the Body in that [cessation of] pursuit.
Hmm. I don't want that to be the case. But c'est la vie.
Quoting schopenhauer1
A very important point I'll have to [re]consider.
I've been enriched. I know it sounds cheesy, but I can't but express my gratitude.
Yes, and of course, this will open up the conversation we had previously about what Schopenhauer meant in the idea that the ascetic "overcomes" and the notion of Will as noumena.
That we strive in the first place, is where I like to start. The hope of redemption is the part that is speculation.
:up:
Yes I think I'd go along with that. I think Plato would recognise it as the initial stirrings of anamnesis.
Oh, sorry. You were perhaps looking for something more uplifting, upbeat, and positive sounding?
Actually, I don't think life is all suffering. Some of it is suffering--more for some people, less for others--but life is also joy and festivity--not all the time for anybody, but once in a while for most people. Life is mostly the reasonably pleasant area mid-stroke of the pendulum's sweep between simply marvelous and fucking awful.
That's as cheery as I can manage. So spend as much time as you can living in the moderately pleasant middle zone.
:up:
No, why would I, if my original stance itself is that I perceive life as nothing more than suffering?
Thank you for your insight.
Thank you for this. I really appreciate the intricate details you went into in order to answer my question. I will be contemplating over your comment for the next few days and expand my viewpoints on certain aspects of life. Thank you!
Please feel free to bow out without notice, as this goes beyond the scope of discourse on Schopenhauer that I should reasonably expect from one who is both informed and seems to have a natural understanding. Plus I don't want to exploit your courtesy.
I realize I've shared less than an iota of my current path regarding how, from my explorations, suffering belongs to Mind, but not Reality. And I add the second caveat tgat I am admittedly in nursery school re Schopenhauer. Plus, I take convenient liberties, or a reasonably broad reading of most, which is unfair.
My liberal use doesn't prohibit my interest also, in learning the proper one, so please clarify when I misunderstand Schopenhauer.
Given "mind is a process of projections and so all our narrative experiences are just projections to the real aware-ing being, the Body, brain and all," are our experiences ultimately meaningless? Nihilism? And, per the OP, is there no relief from suffering?
The condition of Mind being artificial projections is not nihilism, nor even a thing to lament.
1. Meaning only matters to the projections. Mind is meaningful. Thats all it is, a dynamic system operating to displace the present aware-ing with constructed and projected meaning. Anyway,
2. There is a Real Being: your body. It is one with its doings in the natural real world. It neither has meaning nor therefore suffering. When feed-ing its feed-ing, when pain-ing, pain-ing. The fact that the projections code real feeling and action is not evidence that the projections are real, it's evidence that the body is real. The projections affect nature, but they are not nature.
And heres where Schopenhauer has shellacked my thinking. Not only is incessant construction of meaning (Signifiers coding feeling) what Mind does. It must. Dissatisfaction is necessary to give rise to desire of Signifiers to project continuously, in order to resolve the built-in condition driving the system forward (Narrative/Time), Boredom. But it is not built into the Body, it is a foundational mechanism in mind.
Body must provide the feeling to drive boredom, hence we think boredom, a pure construction, is an immutable reality in nature. There are the projections boredom leading to projections desire to projections suffering. These correlate to/trigger/are triggered by feelings, but we experience the images, the Narrative, not the feelings (anymore)
How do the projections of boredom trigger the (restless) feeling which causes aware-ing Body to project dissatisfaction triggering in cycles desire?
I think you were right a few back, animals are restless, it drives them to move for the herding, hunt for the predators, gather for the whatever. We are driven by this restless feeling whenever not paying attention to the drives and the (status of the organism/group in the) environment.
Mind projects this, once restless feeling driving survival, to insufferable boredom, a fiction which triggers desire, triggering more projections and attachments to same.
I'm not sure what to make of this, but I can provide you a comment I made:
Quoting schopenhauer1
So just "knowing" that your evaluations are "not the world itself", doesn't even matter, because you as a subjective being will always be in the equation, as you say, "making the projections". And yes, boredom does seem like the psychological state that brings us to more drive to get away from the restless nature of dissatisfaction.
There is a term I rather like that we know well- "the human condition". One can expand it to "the animal condition", but what is this "condition"? That is the condition of being psychologically, enculturated beings. You cannot extricate the "world as it is" or "the body" from the psyche here. This actually goes back to Schopenhauer's notion that subject and object are always intertwined. Your thought of a dead, lifeless universe, is still a thought. And even if it is a representation of some "reality", that reality will never be YOUR reality, which is NOT simply "lifeless universe" but a psychologically embodied being THINKING of the lifeless universe, and projecting it, Signifying it, as you might say.
As for "salvation", Schopenhauer does hold out some sort of salvific state for certain characters who have this innate ability. He thought aesthetic contemplation brought us temporarily out of the will. The observer gets a small dose of this looking at an object or landscape painting (or more strongly with certain music, and even architecture, and other arts...) as to Schop, we are observing a sort of Form of the thing, rather than striving for it as an end. He also thought compassion and saintly goodness towards others was a way of trying to overcome one's own ego. But his highest recommendation was to become a complete ascetic in the denial of one's very will-to-live. Similar to a Nirvana-like state (he admired Buddhism and Hinduism very much), he thought this was reaching some sort of noumenal state of Will that transcends subject-object, and is ineffable, and only described in the negative sense. I am not saying I necessarily go along with this soteriology, interesting as it is, but I think you wanted to know if there was some sort of salvation there.
And, yes, I can't deny that. I'm providing poor to no clarity on how it isn't anyone putting there spin on it. And same goes for the "world".
But I sought information, not intended to address my hypothetical anyway, but to inform me on Schopenhauer "proper".
And I read through your comments, the ineluctable Subject, the Body/Mind unity, etc. And I won't continue to burden you with my "take".
The salvation part, yes, is fascinating and helps soften the pessimism rep. I wouldn't say I would expect or require that the "salvation" in a philosophy be transcendent, and definitely not spiritual. That's beyond philosophy. That's where I would look for Moksha. But I think Schopenhauer philosophy can follow into a "salvation " derived from "knowing" and accepting the inevitability of suffering rooted in boredom and "seek" ethical and constructive ways to ride it out. Could that be squeezed into at least a reasonable position issuing from Schopenhauer?
Not a burden.. we are here to discuss!
Quoting ENOAH
Schopenhauer wrote a whole essay on compassion being the basis for morality. It unfolds from his metaphysics.. If we are but illusory Will, trapped in subject-object, then the saintly person is able to be moved beyond this to see all as universally the same Will and thus helping with another's suffering and easing their burden is to them a delight as it is helping themselves. It is as if there was no separation..
Mind you, Schopenhauer can be construed as an innatist, and perhaps even an elitist. Why? Because he didn't think everyone had this kind of agapic/philial love capacity. He thought most people operated out of some reward, even if it is to pat one's self on the back. He thought to a large extent, people's rootedness or "character" as he called it was fixed, and thus there were simply some (a very small minority of) people endowed with the capacity to truly be moved to alleviate suffering with little to no regard for one's own suffering. This is a sort of saintly, idealized suffering.
As for my own opinion...
I think we discussed this a while ago.. But human consciousness with the secondary aspect of Signifying/linguistic and self-reflective capacities complicate our place in the world. Everything is instrumental.. all the way down. One can say, everything is radically instrumental. Thus, Schopenhauer resonates because Will is ultimately the idea of this radical instrumental nature to existing as a self-reflective animal in this world. Except we get the um, "joy", of knowing it. Seeing it first hand and close up.
As long as you have a body to maintain, and the trappings of the tools and objects you need to maintain your lifestyle in whatever setting, you will always contend with instrumentality. Most people put several categories as "intrinsic"..
1) Physical pleasure
2) Human or animal connections- friendships, romance, meetings, group activities, significant others, bonding, nurturing, etc.
3) Flow states- getting "caught up" in something challenging
4) Aesthetic pleasures- reading, painting, nature watching, music, etc.
5) Learning a new concept or skill, participating in a hobby
6) Achievement
There's probably more, but they seem to more-or-less fit into one or more of these categories. Do I think that begetting more people and the usual dissatisfaction that these things try to placate is worth it? I think you know my evaluation of that...
I think that we must confront Schopenhauer to get passed any of this, and many are not willing to do that as it disturbs their peace. When people are living out those (roughly) six things to some extent, and going about their daily instrumental existence surrounding those things (just to achieve them in the first place!), they don't want to be disturbed with the idea of if it is worth it. They don't want to lose the gains they have made by second-guessing. For those rare people who can always think of this, even if they have the gains (perhaps depressive realists of sorts), or for those perhaps who have lost a bit of something in those six above, these ideas might become more apparent.
I think the Stoics to a point, have it right in the mindset that one has to put forward the "worst" version of events.. But not for the sake of virtue, as the Stoics would have it, but because it is therapeutic to the soul to confront one's Willing and suffering nature.
Was that Schopenhauer or yourself extrapolating? Either way, for those like me,
sometimes reckless with details, this statement is exactly the Bodhisattva (sp?) in Mahayana Buddhism.
My (reckless) extrapolation in these discussions leads to the same conclusion. Assume you accept my extrapolation, that the boredom and suffering "exist" only as projections, and thus that reality "exists" in being the living organism, without regard to those projections, then a hypothetical being aware-ing "organic reality" yet "aware of" the projections, would want nothing but to alleviate that suffering; one so simple to alleviate.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sorry. Because he didn't go beyond that discovery about boredom; he assessed it from the perspective of the slave to boredom. Had he encountered the idea, he'd have found the universality of that bonding love in the same place we found "restlessness", the organic human being, not displaced by its own projections.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes. I hope Im not confused; I use "functional". The projections have evolved such a "requirement." Yes, nature too is "functional" but (wish I knew the term/fallacy) this coincidence between projections and nature both evolving functionality as its engine, doesn't make them one, or even the same.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'm not confident I follow
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes. The Stoics I have only had brushes with. But there is wisdom in both there version, because it is virtuous; and yours, because it is therapeutic. Maybe they are views of something similar. Maybe virtue is "therapeutic."
Oh. Are you suggesting that because we are radically instrumental in nature, and also are self-reflective, Will is. I.e. will is self being instrumental. (?)
It is the self-recognition (unlike other animals) of how everything is ultimately instrumental. The peace created by roughly those 6 categories are temporary stop-gaps. You labor to survive to survive, etc. etc. You buy shoes that "fit just right" because it will be the best option to make it you feel more comfortable, but this is instrumental. You hunt and gather to use the meat and skins and organs and bones to keep the village going. You plant the seeds and irrigate the crops to be able to harvest to eat. But whatever endless form it takes, it's these needs and wants and basically WILL playing out in space and time. And Boredom (purposely using capital letter here), is but the "feeling" of the instrumental, even if one is not intellectualizing it, though certainly with people like Schopenhauer, the ancient Wisdom literature, etc. it can be put into words as well.
And again, to reiterate, we find mechanisms to try to get around this feeling/knowledge and I think Zapffe's model lays it out well (distract, ignore, anchor in some value or reason, and sublimate).
This is very interesting. I'm not certain about the "psychology" of Schopenhauer. perhaps because it is more difficult to relate to an individual from the early 19th C. But it is easy to imagine the desperation driving Zapffe to lay out such a model.
This, I state rhetorically because I can anticipate the "orthodox" answer. Such desperation, coupled with a plan that involves at its essence, urging us to "deny" our "Truth" (given our condition is, as you and Schopenhauer and, presumably, Zapffe, conclude real and not "taking place/driving us" as a process of "fictions.") seems surprising, even cowardly. Perhaps it is the dissonance of that which drives me to prefer a model where we are exhorted to deny it, because it is not our essence nor our truth.
Anyway...I will move on, armed with much new information thanks to you.
No no, he is not saying this is what we should do. It's not prescriptive, but descriptive. These are some ways we prevent ourselves from thinking about it too much without going into some depression or madness, or some such. It is a way of keeping negative thoughts about our existential situation at bay. He's not recommending it.
Oh. Ok. Makes way more sense. Damn. :smile:
I found this...
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/3648
Might want to start with this essays, but his magnum opus that explains his whole philosophy and its basis in Kant is The World as Will and Representation.
If suffering was all we knew, there would be no desire for pleasure or joy as these concepts would not exist and there would be absolutely no evidence subjective or otherwise of such a possibility.
Suffering is that which we actively avoid, desire to ignore, minimise etc on the basis that we have previously experienced the opposite.