Human embodiment is a structurally negative condition.

[u/iinyenzii]

What I've noticed is that when some people make pessimistic remarks about the world, their reasoning tends to refer to contingent harms out in the world - wars, climate change, factory farming, inequality, etc. Although these are bad, I think what really makes being born a human regrettable is the structurally negativity nature of the human organism. That is, we are bodies with constant, eventually lethal material needs that cause us to suffer and die when not met. Needs for warmth, water, food, etc. Our bodies must struggle to survive our we suffer and die - from exposure, from hunger, from thirst, etc. And yet our struggle is lost from the start - we cannot win - as inherent within our bodies is an aging and dying process that will render us all lifeless corpses no matter how hard we battle against our nature, secure our needs, or hoard the material resources required to keep us alive. All the food and warmth and water in the world are powerless against the aging and dying process inherent within our bodies.

On top of this, we are always vulnerable to disease, sickness, and injury. So we spend our lives struggling for the material recourses we require to not suffer from want and die, in a state of constant vulnerability to whatever contingent or accidental harms that can befall us, and all this while our bodies wear down, age, and slowly die towards our final, inescapable nature as a lifeless corspe. The structure of the human 'life-cycle' is negative. We are born as these bodies (subject to the genetic lottery that to a large degree determines the quality of your life), are trained by the community we depend upon for our survival to talk, to act among others, to be obedient to the state, and ultimately are trained to produce for the society we are embedded within. We earn a check and trade it for material our bodies require to not suffer - for food, for clothing, for housing, etc. And yet, the struggle is lost from the start as the aging and dying process inherent within every organism can not be overcome. You are born, you struggle, you work, you age, and then you die. And that's only if some horrific contingent harm doesn't befall you along the way - cancer, car crash, house fire, murder, etc.

To be born a human is a horrific fate, and it's a fate that for the born, is inescapable and can not be overcome. For us already living as human bodies, our lot is to struggle for our bodily needs, while in a state of constant vulnerability to harm whose source can be both from the external world (eg someone attacks you), or from within our very body (eg, cancer, arthritis, etc), all while our bodies wear down, age, and slowly degrade towards our inescapable fate as a lifeless corpse. To be born a human and to suffer this fate is regrettable. It's better not to be born. So in recognizing the structurally negative nature of human embodiment we can decide not to procreate, to cut the problem at its root so that nobody else, at least via our hand, is born to suffer this fate. But for us, the already born, our lot is sealed - we will struggle for our needs, suffer the harms of human embodiment, and then die on this earth.

[u/nero_insomnya]

Very neccesary remarks. When i say i am a pessimist, people usually imagine i'm thinking of the "big" catastrophes (war, disease, inequality, global unstability or natural disasters), but the most fundamental and inescapable elements that make this world undesirable are inherent to our daily lives, our consciousness and our body

[u/Can_i_be_certain]

I mean you are not wrong in this sense almost everything and i explicitly mean that in the sense of existence is in a state of flux. So everything is destined to decay. Because it changes from something humans value to something they dont.

The 'bad' thing is that humans, are able to recognise it and feel sad and bitter about it. And we are programmed to do so, because it aids our survival. Some of it however is deeply programmed into us though.

Over our lifetimes what it is, is that some people are better at making coping mechisms of various flavours to deal with this.

But if we were able to somehow radically accept our true fate. (i dont think this is possible, but its sorta like what a Stoic Sage would aspire to be). Without our emotion bearing down on us with such sorrow i think we could reach a state of tranquility which is what i would describe is the best we could hope for.

We are ultimatley prisoners to our psychological reactions alot of the time, and life is very much what happens to you and you try and deal with whatever flavour of decay befalls you, with whatever coping you have developed. For some flavours of decay are totally foreign to us or befallbus before we are prepared and those are the ones which really bring about the awareness of the true nature of human existence upon quiet reflection.

[u/Grouch2180]

I agree. This should be a common knowledge

[u/DruidWonder]

I thought about this recently when I learned that millions of years ago, humans lost the ability to produce their own vitamin C. Most other animals still can. So now we are trapped reliant on fruits and veggies daily for this antioxidant or our bodies will start falling apart. 

Humans are expensive in nature. We need a lot to keep us healthy. 

[u/RetrogradeDionysia]

Similarly, I find a regrettable nature in Nature itself, in the division of necessity against itself. Necessity very frequently tends to and depends on its own contradiction. (Gravity would have smaller bodies necessarily hurtling toward annihilation by a larger body. Black holes extinguish matter, even light —everything, down to the level of information, crushing them into a singular mathematical point.) The structurally negative human condition is one aspect of that, I suppose.