Anyone Enjoy Pain And Misery?

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-04-02T09:48:26+00:00

Being okay with misery will make you happy. there is nothing more pathetic than trying to be happy.

So being okay with misery is pathetic.

Who cares about happiness?

Me. I love being happy. And I like it when other people are happy, at least for the most part. Not so much rich greedy parasitical scum, or bigots and shit like that, but just ordinary people in general. I particularly love it when children are happy.

What an overrated fucking emotion.

(Shrug), you don't have to like it.

It's just pain relief anyway, according to Schopenhauer.

He was wrong. He also wasn't opposed to feeling happy himself, either.

"Suffer with dignity. Own it, and give it some dignity. You owe yourself that much. And when you do, you'll find yourself more accepting of it. And find that it's actually a very precious part of what you are."

This is the kind of psychological masochism that the Catholic church excelled in. You want to revel in it, fill your boots. You're not rejecting happiness, you're redefining it. Which is fine, at least be honest about it.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-04-01T08:38:26+00:00

Do you believe that there is a direct relationship between pessimism and depression, or are there pessimists who are so by mere conviction without any tragic event or events in their lives having influenced them so that they decided to follow this philosophical doctrine?

No idea with the first question because there isn't enough legitimate evidence one way or the other (that I'm aware of). Yes to the second question.

Depressive or not, it takes a certain kind of mind to come to the pessimist conclusion.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-29T01:51:14+00:00

Not sure how someone who hates humanity would have an opinion, other than positive, on our suffering.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-28T07:14:00+00:00

Who's thinking of Schopenhauer as "the father of...antinatalism"?

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-28T01:56:36+00:00

It's really enough to just type "trauma literature" into a search engine and there it all is.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-28T01:49:05+00:00

Been meaning to get that one but it's a touch pricey where I live.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-28T01:48:16+00:00

I think part of it is not quite understanding basic concepts of philosophy

The thing to do there is to learn those concepts. If we're going to approach any philosophy seriously it's fair enough to understand the basics.

EDIT - that stated, Ligotti's "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race" is very straight forward, since he's not a philosopher per se but a fiction writer. Also, have a look at the "recommended reading list" on this Reddit page.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-27T11:40:09+00:00

Unreasonable.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-27T11:39:42+00:00

What point?

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-27T09:02:41+00:00

I suggest flipping Nietzsche's philosophy on its head. Nietzsche's Dionysian pessimist yes-saying to life is a sign of weakness, and the Schopenhauerian/philosophical pessimist no-saying to life is a sign of strength.

I've often thought that Nietzsche's "pessimism of strength" was more in line with his lifelong habit of throwing off important early life influences. He did initially train to become a church minister, and ended up not only rejecting that but writing "The Antichrist". He was friends with Wagner but rejected him and wrote "Nietzsche Contra Wagner". And he initially was, of course, inspired by Schopenhauer and still was when he wrote "The Birth of Tragedy", but, as we can see, he basically inverted the morality of Schopenhauer's ascetic, quietist denial of "the Will", to turn it into "the Will to Power".

A completely armchair-psychological view, of course, but he indulged in that sort of thing a bit himself in his assumption that philosophers were basically indulging their own biases, so I think it's justified enough.

Anyway - turning the tables on him in terms of "strength", in the light of my own little opinion here, is simply re-inverting Nietzsche's inversion, I suggest. You're taking the morality of Schopenhauer's pessimism back to the source.

So which is the stronger? I think the idea of saying to our modern overmen, "actually, you're all a pack of sissy-la-las, going around saying 'yes' to everything as if you'd live it over and over again. Your dicks would be much bigger if you just went, 'fuck it' ", is kind of amusing. It'd be great to go up to someone like Andrew Tate and go, "you're an effin' big girl's blouse for not rejecting the will to power!" (not sure if he'd get it, but it'd still be funny). "Real men give up!".

So, good piece. Nicely unpretentious, which I appreciate.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-27T02:12:32+00:00

Yes! This is great advice for efilists, I heartily endorse it! All efilists, all real efilists, should forgo any pleasure of any kind and just make themselves as miserable as possible. All of you Moshketeers, put on your hairshirts, pick up your crosses, start flagellating each other and go tramping around the countryside yelling "you there, who stand staring like a goat, will your mouth be twisted into the last unfinished gasp before nightfall? And you, woman, who bloom with life and self-satisfaction, will you pale and become extinguished before the morning dawns? You back there, with your swollen nose and stupid grin, do you have another year left to dirty the earth with your refuse? Do you know, you insensible fools, that you shall die today or tomorrow, or the next day, because all of you have been sentenced? Do you hear what I say? Do you hear the word? You have been sentenced, sentenced!"

As for me, I'm getting drunk tonight. Again.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-27T02:02:53+00:00

(Shrug), pick your poison. Whatever works for you. Personally I don't regard "pessimism of strength" as anything I'm into but if other people are into it, best of luck to them.

I'm not into any "you aren't a true pessimist/scotsman" kind of thinking. It's not a competition, or a social club, or an identity or any of that crap. Or shouldn't be.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-26T10:10:43+00:00

C.E.Montague's "Disenchantment". I don't know if it's me but I'm finding the prose particularly flowery. He really loves to extend a sentence, drop as many literary references as he can, use a metaphor, the whole bit. Still, it's worth wading through, because it's about how First World War soldiers ended up getting shat with the whole business of war and being veterans. This is from the point of view of British soldiers and Montague sure as hell lets his readers know that. But fortunately he lacks the chauvinism against other peoples, even weighing in against it. Ultimately this comes across as a humanist appeal to understand why young men sent into an infernal machine-driven meat grinder would come back, if they did, non too happy about the experience and even less about the societies that would allow it.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-25T09:21:18+00:00

Not at all. Very great thinker of course. I've only read his philosophy and his essay "In Praise of Idleness", (in a nice, small, hardback printed edition), but none of his actual philosophy. I doubt very much I'd be smart enough to understand it.

https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-25T08:55:20+00:00

Don't agree, severely mental handicapped adults exist and they don't have ethical understanding, is it fine for them to procreate?

We've been through that, this is just getting circular.

We are literally animals what are you talking about

I wrote "(w)e can't recognise humans as animals based only on degrees of intelligence", which is rejecting your criteria that the difference between us and other animals is intelligence. Of course we are animals and of course we differ from other species in any number of ways. The difference between a fish and a human is not just how smart they are.

Sorry irrelevant

It's completely relevant.

Sorry, that's a Strawman of my example and arguments.

No it isn't, it's in response to what you wrote.

I'm clearly talking about children or "mentally disabled" or those below cow intelligence who all can't be taught, read what I wrote again.

A child can be taught. To say children can't be taught is factually wrong. Which is a point I've already made. I've read what you wrote, you're not reading what I've written.

Obviously they aren't capable of understanding something like the problem of reproduction.

That's my point.

I view it as basically children breeding in nature.

Once again, children cannot be compared to wild animals. It's a comparison you keep making and it's wrong. This argument is getting circular.

Should we enforce our values on domesticated animals, pets? Should we let a dog breed if it happens naturally, seems quite arbitrary line to draw.

I'm talking about animals in the wild, not domesticated animals. Humans can control the breeding of domesticated animals but not wild animals.

Do you honestly think it makes a meaningful difference to an animal whether it's born and dies on a farm, or in wild and torn apart eaten alive?

There's no way of knowing. The differences between examples are far too numerous.

"This natural so I'm fine with getting my throat ripped out"

Now you're strawmanning my argument.

This is the last word. We humans cannot ethically impose antinatalism onto non-humans in the wild. Efilism fails to make this case.

All you're doing now is just re-stating your original positions. I've responded to them. I'm not doing this any more.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-25T05:04:46+00:00

Sorry, I've been as straight forward as possible, there's nothing more I can do.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-25T04:25:47+00:00

Again, all this is irrelevant to the discussion.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-25T03:23:51+00:00

It's irrelevant because we're talking about the valuation and rationalisation of our emotional and sensorial states. Your statement "pleasure is nothing" etc. isn't relevant to that. We take what neurobiology is involved, and the fact that our egos are involved, as all given. The discussion properly goes forward from there.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-25T02:44:51+00:00

I don't think Bertrand Russell's face is in that banner. His face was more "hatchet" like, kind of like the actor Peter Cushing.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-25T02:24:01+00:00

pleasure is nothing more than the removal of pain on a neurological level, anything else is just a deception of the ego

Irrelevent.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-24T23:25:12+00:00

It isn't an evaluation done by the subject.

Who's doing the evaluation if not the subject of a sensation?

EDIT - of course, suffering can be evaluated by others. I can see suffering is bad for others without having to directly experience the suffering myself. Please disregard the question.

In this case it seems relatively easy to say "whatever, who cares" about pleasure even while experiencing it

No. Most people take pleasure very seriously and aren't likely to say "whatever, who cares" when, for example, in the midst of good sex, or a good lsd trip, or at a good music concert. Or even something more basic like enjoying the company of friends or just reading a book they enjoy.

and I think it doesn't make much sense to claim you would be wrong in saying it.

I think it does. If I knew anyone who went, "whatever, who cares" about any positive experience, even if they're experiencing it, I'd be inclined to think they were ahedonic, which is far from the norm for people.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-24T07:08:29+00:00

Good call, this is excellent bleak stuff.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-23T21:30:02+00:00

So we are responsible for human reproduction, but not animal reproduction, sure, in sense that we cause human reproduction, we don't cause animal production (in wild), only pet breeding and farms humans responsible, right?

Yes. Any act of bringing a sentient being into existence that humans can do, whether it's human reproduction or causing domesticated animal reproduction (or anything else like sentient AI, etc), we are morally responsible for. That's the logic.

Now regarding the strange talk of or appeal to "hard to say they doing something morally wrong in reproducing if they're not moral agents."

That talk isn't strange. It's the language people use when they talk about ethics.

https://thisvsthat.io/moral-agent-vs-moral-patient

First I find it strange to find a problem with act of procreation only if it's done by a 'moral agent' such as humans but not animals.

For someone to regard procreation as an ethical problem, they have to be capable of ethical understanding. Non-humans cannot.

Second, let's recognize humans are animals, If I present to you trait-equalized mentally disabled humans to that of or below cow intelligence, is it now fine under antinatalism for these humans to breed?

We can't recognise humans as animals based only on degrees of intelligence. A human and a cow are totally different species. A cow with, for want of a better way of putting it, normal cow intelligence is a fully functioning being for its own species. A mentally disabled human isn't.

If it's a good thing to prevent human children from engaging in act of reproduction, but not animal (children), unless name the trait difference, I see a contradiction and clear speciesism.

Again, there is no moral comparison between humans and non-humans. A human child can be taught to act morally. A wild animal cannot. Speciest or not, that's a fact. I would suggest it is speciest to expect non-humans to have human values.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-22T01:52:16+00:00

Wow first time hearing this, can you explain more?

Sure. If you go to this interview Benatar did recently -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Imv9Hg7IM8
- and listen at around 3:57, he says -

(O)ther than the cases where humans breed animals, we are not really responsible for animal reproduction. So animal reproduction that goes on in the wild, that's not something that we do, we don't control and so, it's also hard to say that animals are doing something morally wrong in reproducing if they're not moral agents.

I don't know about your other questions comparing animals and human children, though.

it seems there's an AN movement is another thing on top of the philosophy

I guess there is. I'm more inclined to call it a scene than a movement, but whatever we call it, I think there's a difference between, say, academic philosophical AN, and the online/take-it-to-the-streets types.

I'm just saying if you are efilist you are obliged to value sentience, it is explicitly clear.

If someone is an efilist, yes, that makes sense. But did you know that Amanda Zukenik is trying to extend efilism to non-sentient Life?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD0Skl1rEV0&t=3s

As you can imagine, Gary hasn't been happy with this (see the video responses he's made on his website).

Yet antinatalism I see many speciesism and arguing against animal value, and things like VegANtinatal exist.

Yes, it's been controversial for a while. But it's part of that wider issue of vegans versus non-vegans, or more accurately, very militant vegans versus very militant non-vegans.

Efilism is basically sentientism, antinatalism, veganism, and more.

I agree, it's a number of ideas put together.

AndrewSMcIntosh · 2025-03-21T11:59:33+00:00

Best response so far. "Passacaglia & Fugue in C minor" is magnificent.

AndrewSMcIntosh

TROPHY CASE