Glass half full. /Topic.
Let’s start with Kant.
Kant’s work was to separate the experiential word from a kind of pure consciousness, therefore allowing an understanding of existence that isn’t circumstantial or subjective, through which one could construct a new philosophy (once you define existence concretely then the rest can be built on top of that). This already in a way responds to your existential idea, which once again, is straightforward and superficial. Then there’s Nietzsche, who critiques Kant’s system because understanding existence outside of experience is ultimately meaningless towards understanding anything. His whole superman theory is that the systems of values, and more importantly logic itself, are meaningless and our attachment to them is harmful, so we must be able to refuse them, but that act of refusal (lets call it cynicism) is incomplete because no new values are generated, so therefore the destructive aspect must be abandoned. I’m totally butchering this since it’s hard to explain Nietzsche and how he is in fact not a nihilist to people that didn’t read him, but the Narrator/Tyler relationship in Fight Club is based on this idea.
But anyways, the whole point is that nobody disagrees that existing values are hypocritical and the concept of existence is irrational (that’s the whole project of 20th century philosophy), but abandoning them is not the end goal because it’s just as irrational to think of life ONLY as the system of values we already have. It’s circular logic because the argument being presented is “I don’t believe in what I used to believe about life, right now, so therefore life is meaningless”, you’re just as attached to what you used to believe because your definition of life is still flawed. The goal of deconstructing these things is to offer the possibility of more profound systems of thought, and Nietzsche is probably the most influential philosopher of the 20th century because he offered the possibility of post-modern philosophy.
In all honesty, if you care enough about this to troll yourself in two separate threads, read up on it at the library. Your read might be better than mine, but don’t just throw around stuff you wiki-ed an hour ago
Life is temporary, death is permanent.
Nope not seeing how this evens out yet.
OP is emo
OP needs some pussy. ASAP.
OH HEY THIS IS A REVELATION
Life consumes resources!!!
Somebody teach this guy what “zero sum” is before he continues to post; right now, abuse of a generalization of it has created a monster.
Once we get past that part, we can split “zero sum” away from “meaninglessness”. TC might be depressed at the world because of how there are plenty of cases where gain can only occur at equivalent loss (see: any sport involving two teams), but right now this topic is incoherently mashing together notions of nihilism/absurdism with a misguided “zero sum” mentality.
LOL
you seem like a misguided existentialist…read more imo
The only thing I’ve learned from this so far is that the OP is pessimistic because he’s afraid of disappointment.
haha, is it possible to act like more of a cartoon villain than this guy does? This whole thread is hinging one on motherfucker’s inability to distinguish being alive as a state of being from ‘life’ as a metaphorical concept.
And deprive us readers of a debatable useless, although interesting read to see some random people’s view points?
That is exactly why the rep system was terrible for the forum.
Even weird discussions like this, that don’t even really need to be discussed, are what forums are all about. And with the rep system in place, people wouldn’t put out opinions of their own, or would be quick to dismiss or devalue someone else’s, due to the rep system in place and join dates.
People still devalue other opinions…there’s like two posts in this topic worth reading and that’s it.
Hoaxium did not use “zero-sum” incorrectly. Instead, he destroyed it, and recreated it. Hoaxium made it his own!
Alas! Hoaxium realized he had freedom. He had freedom, therefore, he became self-aware and made “zero-sum” a term he made for himself. Hoaxium is an artist. A remixer of words. You understood what he meant, even though he was ‘wrong.’ He’s just trying to tell us that everything is a social construction, it is a le pewzation of everything there is. Therefore, nothing can make sense, and he has created a word, and in creation has become a GOD. W3RDZ (a word I have created myself, therefore I am truly gdlk) aren’t part of an objective quantum reality, and are interpreted by the subject, therefore my object is to tell you that the subject that is embeded in an objective world, is subject to experiencing itself to itself.
Here is a graph equating the feminism to global warming:
| /
| /
|/____
As you can see, as feminism rises, global warming rises too. Warmth and love in the world increases as feminism rises.
You all fail.
AMIRITE AMIRITE?
What is your point?
Whenever opinions are dropped, someone’s going to devalue/value/ignore/agree/disagree, anyhow.
What I was basically saying, is now stuff can go back to being discussed more on the forum pages, instead of on someone’s rep userCP. There’s much more impact when someone disagrees in a thread of discussion, than through rep points. And let’s face it, if someone’s rep bar wasn’t to someone’s liking, a post could just as easily be skimmed over before read. But that rep could’ve been where it was due to someone with repping power being the real moron.
IMO There’s 2 key things that watered the forum’s quality down, rep system, and IRC becoming more populated. Most things getting discussed, get discussed on anywhere but the forum pages as the years go by.
We could say what we want about hoaxium, but if the rep and join date was in broad daylight, then this whole discussion would’ve been avoided. But is that a good or bad thing? Personally I think it would’ve been a bad thing, because random discussion of any kind on the forum would be slightly watered down even more.
Can’t hate on having alot of silly things to read.
That people still devalue other peoples opinions. Duh! It was a simple post. I didn’t think it was confusing or anything. Certainly not enough that it needed a follow up question.
Really all that’s happened is more stupid topics like this one are popping up and it’s whats really bringing down this forums quality. There are plenty of other forums on the net to discuss retarded shit on. Go find one of those.
Good clip. Thanks for posting.
I understood what you were saying. I asked you because I thought the point sucked.
The forum already has shit quality, and I’m going to go ahead and assume you are a testament to that.
Thread: I also thought life was pointless when I tied the ultimate fate of the universe to my life. Once it was explained to me how irrelevant the universe and where it’s going is to my life I stopped being a douche about it.
Slide: Get an avatar please.
Late Night: Who cares about either.
Well don’t ask questions you already know the answer to dumb ass. Your assumption is pretty much you using a mental rep System. Way go to hypocrite.
I don’t know about your life, but “eliminating all suffering” isn’t the best thing that can happen in my life.
edit: hm. unless you consider unfulfilled desires “suffering”. that’s a depressing way of looking at things
Responding to your post in the previous thread (which I avoided cuz I didn’t want to get teh infractionz)
wow dude you fail at reading comprehension. please show me where in my posts in the other thread that i said life was a wonderful disney movie. i specifically said that life is not fair. do i need to highlight it in bold and reiterate it a dozen times? life is not fair. a lot of crap happens to people that sucks. a lot of this crap is completely beyond their control. what is in their control is how they choose to respond to it, and that makes all the difference.
conan is right, a cynical attitude gets you nowhere. it accomplishes nothing. a much more productive mentality is one that sees negative circumstances as opportunities and challenges. i hate to use cliched examples such as martin luther king and the civil rights movement, but hey, there’s a reason they’re cliched. they perfectly demonstrate what i’m talking about. they could have been cynical and QQed about how shitty life is, but instead they made the best of their situation, and changed the world in a immensely beneficial way.
for fucks sake, there’s a guy out there with no arms and legs. if anyone out there has a right to be cynical, its him:
[media=youtube]nQPmY4nIjVE"[/media] but he’s not. because he makes that choice.
There is tons of suffering and injustice in the world. Instead of being cynical, which doesn’t help those suffering, and annoys everyone around you, you could choose to help.
As for religion, it does play a role in this discussion. Those who believe in a higher power feel that there is an intrinsic meaning to life, much more than just reproduction and eating. When crap happens to them, they see it as part of God’s perfect plan. This makes them able to overcome all sorts of hardship. Now, as a guy who doesn’t believe in God, does that mean life is pointless? Nah, it just means I’m free to come up with any meaning I want to. That’s the beauty of existentialism. Its premise is that life is meaningless. We just exist and the universe is completely indifferent to our existence. It’s up to each individual to find their own meaning and purpose in life. Its immensely liberating.
There’s a section in the movie, Waking Life, that sums up what I’m trying to say pretty eloquently:
well, my life is about as fucked up and depressing as you could possibly imagine. at any second i can drop dead, and thats not some kind of vague get hit by a bus shit, im so sick that the health problems i have are equated to cancer metastasis. my wife abandoned me while i was dying in the icu for three months, and ive caught people breaking into my home to steal my medication twice this week. i am, however, still enjoying being alive as much as i ever had, which if you were to ask people who know me, is a lot. why? because for all the suffering and indignation people have to deal with, it is, actually, just fun and fulfilling to be alive. anybody who says differently is either clinically depressed, or just wishes they were because of some romantic ideal of sadness.