drews

The only answer to existential angst is 'distract yourself with bullshit'. That's it. There will never be an answer to the human predicament. We are animals headed nowhere when we die, and we will never have justice, paradise, eternal life, or complete understanding of the universe.

All we can do is distract ourselves with bullshit until we die. That's it. Just distract yourself by playing with a bright red bouncy ball until you die.

This sucks.

QuasiMondo

You're not distracting yourself. You should read another Paris Hilton news story.

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"Like it or not, change has come. O.J. is in prison, and a black man is in the White House. Is everybody happy now?"

-Tim Reid & Tom Dreesen

mixedmedia

Try distracting yourself with stuff that's not bullshit.

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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus

Jetée

I like where this is going.

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The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. —M. Scott Peck

drews

There's no such thing.

Kadath

Then get on with fulfilling your biological imperative! Your unborn children don't want you to whine, they want you make them so they can experience life.

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it's quiet in here

mixedmedia

Then I guess you're screwed.

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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus

DaveOrion

Your life is what you make it, freewill exists almost everywhere. If we all agree together to have a Paradise here on Earth, thats exactly what we'll get. To bad most are too self absorbed, emotionally distracted, hell bent on riches, or otherwise unable to see the big picture, to see the possibilities all around them.

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The world cares very little about what you know; it is what you are able to do that really matters.

mixedmedia

But everyone's idea of paradise is different. I don't think we need paradise. Just more love.

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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus

Jetée

Not for nothing, but I could have 100% seen a reply to this as calling you out on BS.


I'll leave this thread simmering in my mind for awhile, then spin it to healthy discourse of true existentialism.

I'd rather have it left on idle for a bit then to have one-cocked responses littering what could be a great discussion point.

__________________
The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. —M. Scott Peck

Humanitarismus

i think someone read too much nietzsche...

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"I have no respect for the passion for equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy" Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

albania

Why can’t we have those things? How do you even define those things? I believe that in some form or another most of what you mention is attainable. Oh by the way I won’t respond to the things you mentioned in order; I could, but I choose not to. For those that don’t want to read skip to the last paragraph.

First of, justice is a subjective thing; it’s roots lie in the moral system which you impose on yourself. So it doesn’t seem too farfetched to assume that some people believe they live in a just world or one that can change to become a just world.

Next, I personally don’t believe in a complete understanding of the universe. I see the inherent quantum nature of subatomic particles as limiting what we can possibly know. What man should strive for is truth, you don’t have to completely understand the universe to be able to formulate truisms about its nature.

Paradise, I believe that’s a construct in one’s mind. It is the wish to only feel and do the things that make you happy. As long as humans are equipped to feel pain, sadness, and all the rotten emotions that you can name, they will create and live in a world where they will have to feel those things. However, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad world or that paradise is any better. I’d personally find paradise more limiting.

I wouldn’t want eternal life. The present does not become sweeter with a longer past. The only thing that eternal life gives you is more memories. Each second passes by just as slowly(I’m talking about actual time not psychological time) if you’re 10 years old or a thousand years old. I wouldn’t mind a longer, healthier life. It is often the case that we feel that we don’t have the time to do all the things that would please us in life. However, to me that only makes it more exciting.

So to sum up, for all you lazy readers: I believe, justice is attainable, complete understanding is unattainable, and that paradise and eternal life are things that shouldn’t be reached for. Why have angst about these things? Why not think them through to your heart’s content? I think everyone can come up with answers that are satisfactory to their own way of thinking.

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My fairest child, I have no song to give you; No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey: Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you For every day.
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever One grand, sweet song. -Charles Kingsley

Jetée

Nice complete answer to the other thread about existenstalism entitled 'JPELCU'.

__________________
The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. —M. Scott Peck

albania

Hehe...didn't even really notice it. I suppose it is.

__________________
My fairest child, I have no song to give you; No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey: Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you For every day.
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever One grand, sweet song. -Charles Kingsley

Hektore

Distracting yourself isn't even an answer let alone the answer. It merely avoids the question, so that you no longer feel compelled to answer it, because trying to resolve existential angst on your own is....well, depressing. At least until you find the answer, at which point you realize it's only as depressing as you want it to be.

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Existence precedes essence.

Nimetic

On that third point... which is important to me personally.

QM (as I recall it) limits our knowledge of a particular particle's location vs momentum. But there is nothing which says that we cannot aim to understand all the rules that relate to that particle.

So I would maintain that it's still a valid goal, for humanity to seek to understand the rules that govern reality. I would suggest that this is supported by the breakthroughs that have occurred since after the uncertainty principle was discovered.

Baraka_Guru

Life is only eating, fucking, and shitting if that is all you see.

Distracting yourself with bullshit is not the answer to existential angst. This is because existential angst is the distraction.

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"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. [...] In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."

—"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

—"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

Infinite_Loser

I'm so glad my life is more fulfilling than the rest of yours

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I believe in equality; Everyone is equally inferior to me.

tecoyah

If, it all seems bullshit to you, then it is...primarily because you do not want it to be important. Any frustration you feel may very well be self imposed, which is fine with me. Hope you don't mind if I decide to learn from your "Bullshit", and make myself a little bit better than I was.

drews

Let me guess, the 'answer' you speak of me finding is 'stop wanting the metaphysical things you want.' So basically, there's distraction and then there's copping out and pretending like you don't desparately want what you want.

Unless there's a third 'answer' you'd like to tell me.

tecoyah

There is actually. In fact if you look carefully at the post you placed above....you might find a few options. In my opinion you are far too uptight about something that literally requires you to be calm to understand. Desperately seeking a metaphysical pathway is akin to forcing someone to hurry up and wait. Wanting a thing does not mean a need to worry about getting it, anymore than Loving a thing entitles you to be loved back.


Your original post:
Pretty much explains why you are pissed off at the world rather than happy to be in it. What you see as Bullshit Distraction, I see as opportunity to become something more than I am right now. If that means to you, that I'm playing with the bright red ball....thats cool with me. At the very least I am playing, while you sit on a bench and wonder why I am smiling.

roachboy

i dont know if this is intentional or not but the op is mostly a mangled restatement of one of pasal's pensées--we do no keep to the time that is proper to us, we always get lost in dreaming of the past or future. the "real drama"--that of the soul and its relation to its god-buddy is that of the present. god---you know, the Big Inflatable Fellow. for pascal, there's probably an actual god back there somewhere--but you cant know that god either way because you're stuck in human cognition and with its limits and one of them is you think this god character and you see only the Big Inflatable Fellow. this is a Problem. there's no way out of it. so pascal says people squirm about, pretending that this is not the State of Affairs.

but the thing is that the pensées are not descriptions of the world but a long sequence of arguments about what constitutes a description of the world involving a voice that claims to know something of that condition and another that doesnt believe him.

the angst-schema (the game that explains angst) works much the same way in kierkegaard except its scarier somehow. heidegger connects angst to the effects of this profound boredom he pulls apart in his lecture course on the notion of "life" on the one hand and to "being-toward-death" on the other--so they are elements of "authentic being" the orientation that causes dasein to vibrate...this is about the least interesting dimension of his earlier work if you see in its displaced christianity an obstacle to understanding rather than a tool. anyway, you can play this game in a parallel manner with sartre and camus, but for original sin substitute a range of passivities from accomodation-to-collaboration with the nazi occupation of france during world war 2.

i am not sure that i understand the appeal of this--and particularly not the existentialism-lite that seems to animate the op. its structure is basically christian (well, it's nominalist, which is the most interesting variant of christianity, one that it'd be nice to find fundy-type discovering, of only so they would stop talking as if they know what they cannot possibly actually know--one can dream). so unless this christian framework at one level or another resonates with you--perhaps because of your family background (which makes this an aesthetic matter)----why would you accept it as legitimate, much less as given as self-evident, requiring no argument or justification?

so the basic problem with the op is that it is a potted summary of one dimension of existentialist theory that is fobbed off as a description of this illusion called "the human condition."
having taken on this curious framework, the op proceeds to whine about the consequences.

well, following the logic of these texts--you would choose committments arbitrarily, knowing they are arbitrary. but the frame itself puts you in a position of not being able to make these committments precisely because you know they are artificial. it's straight pascal again. the wager.

but this is all a frame-effect.
the notion of angst is a response to a restatement of the problems generated (for christians) by the absurd notion of original sin. if you think about it in terms of original sin, of course you cant do anything about it because you did not commit it--original sin is imputed to you by way of adam and the microchip of adam that augstine claims every human being carries with him or her because they are human. so unless you accept a fundamentally christian claim as a description of the world, what you outline above is not a description of your responses to "the human condition" at all. but the "dilemma" is entirely christian: for augustine, the way out is faith--for the existentialists, way out consists of arbitrary committments.

but why would you drag something as ridiculous as the notion of original sin from its already equally ridiculous religious framework and into the secular world?

if you believe this, you might as well just revert to being christian--its not like you are escaping its basic traps, so why bother pretending you are outside of it?
or if you dont want to work that hard, you can always watch tv and feel bad about doing it.
same thing.

so you choose to enter the intellectual game that results in claims about angst and the heap of poop this notion of angst reduces your life to. it's hard to feel much of anything in response to your running in textbook manner the effects of this framework. you must derive some sense of pleasure from it--perhaps from the illusion of Singularity it provides you, that of being a Great Hero Exposing Himself to the Cruel Winds of the Absurd.

james thurber once either recieved or made up a letter which said:
"dear sir: i have 100 cats."
to which he responded:
"dear madam: t's hard to tell from your letter whether you are complaining or bragging."

so it is here.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

drews

how about giving me a brief message of support or a brief argument against existentialism, rather than a long-winded, pretentious, incomprehensible, condescending one that basically just accuses me of being an egotistical troll who enjoys his angst?

Shit.

tecoyah

Funny...thats exactly what I did for you in the post right above. The simple fact you bypassed it in favor of claiming martyrdom where most would find none, pretty much points out that Roach was quite accurate in his comments. If you want someone to tell you you are right...then OK.

You are absolutely right!

For you, but pardon the rest of us if we might look at life as something more than a carnival game.