Chasing Cheese is All We Need

I've been watching some of the debate (or row, to be more accurate) between LudditeReturns and Inmendham on YouTube. It's raised a few interesting issues which I thought I'd bring up here. I may simplifying the positions somewhat, but even if I am my outlines will serve as a general delineation of a standard quarrel between ANs and their opponents.

As far as I can make out, LR defends life on the grounds that the hedonistic chasing mechanism that constitutes our existence provides enough pleasure for its participants to justify itself. Or in other words, people find fulfillment in pursuing desires and find pleasure when those desires are fulfilled. That's just what human life is and to desire it to be otherwise is misguided. LR claims that Gary is judging human life from an unjustifiably third-person perspective and finding it wanting. LR claims there is no need for "meaning" and that Gary is making all sorts of category mistakes when condemning the process as a whole. People in this camp also state that the activity of pleasure seeking is in and of itself enough to provide meaning if someone feels the need for it.

In reply, Gary is arguing that the hedonistic wheel is turned entirely by a fundamental lack or deprivation in our existence. As Schopenhauer pointed out, we are fundamentally incapable of being satisfied as every desire leads to a new one and all satisfaction is but temporary. So consequently anyone who realises this is therefore bound to realise how futile and undignified the whole cheese-chasing process is, and will also most likely suffer a loss of appetitie for the game as a result.

More importantly, (and as far as I know LR has failed to address this so far, but I could be wrong) the perpetuation of this hedonistic chase causes an enormous amount of unjustifiable and unredeemable suffering. The question for anyone then becomes how can the perpetuation of the chasing game be justified?

Of course, there are those who claim it doesn't need to be: party on, and if there's "collateral damage" that's just tough and let's barrel on until the axe falls. This is the position Gary rages against and terms 'nihilism'.

In conclusion, it strikes me that LR and all of his ilk willingly put on the blinkers and ignore the bigger picture of suffering in order to revel and wallow in their own egos. Regardless of the issue of meaning, anyone who enjoys the cheese-chasing is surely obliged to acknowledge that the issue of whether it is right to create a new cheese-chaser/boulder-pusher is a legitimate one that demands justification. Can the creation of a new consciousness destined to go through all the usual stages of life, and all the accumulation of suffering that necessarily entails, and which ends in a return back to the Nothingness from whence it came really be as unproblematic as the Yea-Sayers claim?

I think not.

Spreading the Disease from "Love"

Thanks to the Anonymous who posted this a few days ago!

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-angelina-jolie-mastectomy-first-person-20130515-dto,0,5217359.htmlstory

"Article is about a woman who rushed to have TWO children after finding out she carried the same mutation Angelina Jolie did that led her to get a double mastectomy. She did it so she could enjoy as many Mother's Days as possible with her daughters (what a thoughtful and considerate woman). She did actually think a moment about the possibility that she could pass the same deadly mutation on to the girls, but that appears not to have figured largely, if at all, into her decision whether to have them in the first place. Well, at least she gratified her selfish "needs" by breeding. Here's how she closes the article:
"Sadie and Twyla are too young to know the full extent of our family history, or what they might face. They each have a 50% chance that they inherited the deadly mutation from me, but they won't get tested until they are at least 18. I try not to think about what those results may be."
That's right, lady. Just bury your head in the sand. After all, they'll have to deal with the fallout... not you."

Is it Moral to be Happy in a World of Suffering?

"'Making the best of it' and 'enjoying the small things' is, alas, probably the best that anyone can come up with as a solution for coping with life. In spite of all their thinking and writing, it's all that, say, Schopenhauer and Camus could ever prescribe. But to complicate matters, when we do feel content or happy it's generally unplanned and the feelings come and go of their own accord for no real reason.

A serious problem comes when we realise that in order to actively achieve any sort of equilibrium, not to mention contentment or happiness, we are obliged to put on the narrow blinkers and shut out the almost unquantifiable misery of the world. For a serious person, trying to forget that we live in a world where 25,000 people die of hunger every day, 1,000,000 people a year commit suicide, wars rage endlessly, global poverty exists etc etc in order to enjoy a good novel, piece of music or a movie can be a bit forced.

Is it moral to be happy in a world like this?"


http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=7148&page=4

A Poem by Carlo Michelstaedter

Carlo Michelstaedter may be a name known to some. Author of Persuasion and Rhetoric, a work that places itself in the genealogy wherin reside Ecclesiastes, Sophocles, Leopardi, Schopenahuer and other great pessimists, Michelstaedter mercilessly exposed the delusions through which humans convince themselves life is worth living. One day after mailing the manuscript of the work to his university in submission for his doctorate, Michelstaedter shot himself. In addition to his great work, he also wrote occasional poetry, an example of which (addressed to his sister Paula) I present here.



Even as swallows year by year return
Back to the nests that held them featherless,
So man goes back in the course of his days,
Time after time to the thought of his cradle.
And as every year he keeps that day,
That to hunger and thirst, to sorrow and grief,
That to this mortal life did him awaken,
Every year he persuades himself again
To love his life.

And the parents who in the newly-born,
In the fragile and helpless little being,
Saw the fruit of their hopes;
And holding out to him with timorous love
All that life gives to him who asks to live,
Made of his tears a veil for their own eyes;

Trusting that clothes and food
Could make him live his life;
Year after year revive their ancient hope,
Their ancient grief,
And with a veil still cover their tired eyes,
Offering thanks to him for being born,
That he may thank them for his life,
and that The dumb grief be forgotten,
and the vain Promise be ever present.

But may the wish, that, what he never had,
Even for an instant,
Should come to him through long luminous years,
Lend the light that it borrows from the future
To the day of his birth,
and multiplying Illusions,
may it persuade him
That his hunger is good,
and life sufficient
Is this our daily death.
May gifts and kisses and the table spread,
Sweet words in plenty, plenty of sweet things,
Blithe promises and glances full of trust,
Make the familiar room joyous and bright,
And shield it from the terrors of the night.

Paula, I cannot say sweet words to thee,
And things that might be dear I do not know,
Because dumb grief has spoken unto me,
And told me that which every heart suffers
Unknowingly, unconfessed to itself.
Beyond the window-panes of the bright room,
Which the accustomed images reflect,
The darkness I can see, still threatening,
And stay and rest I cannot in the desert.
O, let me go, Paula, through the night,
There to create my own light by myself,
Let me go through the desert, to the sea,
That I may bring thee back the gift of light. _
more than thou thinkest, thou art dear to me.

Another Oxymoron

                                             Peace of Mind

Thomas Hardy on Life

"Where he differed from so many of his contemporaries was in the absoluteness, the literalness, with which he believed that not to be born was best, that consciousness was a curse, and that while death might be distressing to the bereaved the dead were not themselves to be pitied. 'Heu mihi, quia incolatus prolongatus est!'; so wrote Hardy inside the back of his copy of The Missal for the Use of the Laity, marking also the passage and its translation ('Woe to me, that my sojourning is prolonged!') at the point at which they occured withing the volume. In February 1896 he insisted in conversation with Clodd that he wished he had never been born, and 'but for the effort of dying, would rather be dead than alive'; on Christmas Day 1890 he made a note for a poem: 'The amusement of the dead - at our errors, or at our wanting to live on'. He told the grieving Rider Haggards that a child's death was 'never really to be regretted, when one reflects on what he has escaped', and when writing to Mrs Henniker about the fighting in South Africa, at a time when her husband was on active service there, allowed himself to remark: 'It is sad, or not, as you look at it, to think that 40,000 will have found their rest there. Could we ask them if they wish to wake up again, would they say Yes, do you think?'

                                                                                                                                                  Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy: A Biography (1982), 410

Parents driven to eat Children from hunger

Just a quick post to demonstrate the kind of world we live in and the possiblities pronatalists expose their progeny to. Famine in North Korea has reached such proportions that there are now cases of children being eaten by their parents:

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269094/North-Korean-parents-eat-children-driven-mad-hunger-famine-hit-pariah-state.html?ICO=most_read_module

Yes, this is the magical world full of wondrous possibilities that breeders give the thumbs-up to and are happy to perpetuate due to their ignorance and egotism.

Notice also the contrast between the main material and the stories in the sidebar. This is the world we live in. Ain't it great! Also, in the comments we see many 'I would never do that no matter what the circumstances!' remarks, foolish, of course, given that History provides ample evidence that people will do anything to anyone in order to survive a few minutes longer.

Of course, in spite of this, we'll still see the same old excuses trotted out, the same old, 'this is just unfortunate', 'this can be fixed', etc etc. Pronatalists, as we all know, believe, just like Peter Pan, that if they close their eyes and wish hard enough everything will be ok. Try telling that to those Korean children.

(Thanks to Victor for bringing this horrendous story to my attention. His fuller post can be read here:

http://njvictor712.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/north-korea-and-its-famine.html )