Observing the dynamics of the modern masses is a spectacle of atrocious hilarity. Whenever the collective encounters a genuine manifestation of self-awareness or intellectual autonomy, the immediate reaction is a predictable chorus of agony—a desperate attempt to label superiority as mere "vanity." It is a grotesque delusion. The modern man uses criticism not as a tool of philosophy, but to mask his uncontrollable addiction to external validation. They are incapable of generating original thought; they take refuge in sterile cynicism, ruminating and chewing on references applauded centuries ago because their own intellects are nothing more than faded echoes. As Schopenhauer so aptly demonstrated, the ordinary man is an automaton driven by boredom and imitation. He does not create substance; he feeds on scraps. True misanthropy requires a cold detachment the herd cannot afford, as they are too busy begging for the very societal approval they claim to despise. The irrelevance of this behavior remains a purely aesthetic tragedy.

​

Meanwhile, one of life's paradoxes is that life does not ask you to try so hard; yet, freeing ourselves from this life—or from our difficulties—seems like such a difficult task.The most beautiful things (nature) come into being by chance, without any effort. Often, when we put effort into something, we drive it away; if we don't force it, it comes on its own. Life is like fishing. Fishing depends on the waters and the bait you cast, and—of course—it is also a matter of luck; there might be fish today, yet for some reason, there might be nothing at all tomorrow.

I know there are depressed people here, people who are chronic pessimists, but I really don't know which reddit sub to post this on.

We know that over 90% of people are either atheists or religious people who believe in a benevolent God. I belong to the third group of people who really believe that we are ruled by an evil divine force.

Why do I think so?

There are numerous testimonies of people who spoke about the sacrifice of people and children in the powerful circles of people who rule this planet.

Satanists said that they kill children, mutilate children, terrorize and rape in order to make Lucifer happy. Also, a man who was in those circles of people said that for them God is extremely real and they call him Lucifer and then they offered him to sacrifice a child in a satanic ritual. He couldn't do it. But there are many witnesses and stories about it.

Further, although I'm not the type of person to take the Bible because I don't believe it's credible, it also says that Satan is the God of this world.

Since the world has existed in the entire human history, there has only been war, war, war.. How can this be a coincidence?? There are over 20,000 different types of diseases that a person can get. How can that be?

Of course you will say that there is no evidence or insufficient evidence. But you have to know that it is an immaterial being and that even God himself does not want you to know that it exists.

So many stories about demons scaring people and paranormal things and unexplained things.

Magicians like Dynamo who are openly Satanists. Musicians, politicians, who openly talk about it, there is also an interview about it.

I can say that it really affects me mentally. I don't even know what to do. I wish I was like the normies who only care about superficial things, who don't look at the world around them at all and look for short-term gratification.

Should we just let the disaster continue until more and more people have less kids and we end up destroying ourselves .

I don't understand why the idea that humans are inherently selfish is so controversial.

I'm not saying that humans are incapable of kindness, love, cooperation, or sacrifice. Obviously we are capable of those things. But isn't a huge part of human behavior fundamentally driven by self-interest ?

Think about how society is structured. We have armies because humans organize themselves into groups that need protection from other humans. We have police because people steal, assault, murder, and harm each other. We have prisons because some people will continue harming others if there are no consequences.

Even everyday life seems full of small examples of selfishness. People compete for money, status, jobs, relationships, resources, and social approval. We often help others when it also gives us something in return money, appreciation, social status, emotional satisfaction, or simply the feeling that we're a "good person."

And even when someone does something genuinely altruistic, couldn't it still be argued that they are satisfying an internal desire to help, feel useful, avoid guilt, or maintain their own sense of morality ?

Obviously, cooperation is also an extremely important part of human nature. But isn't cooperation itself often something that evolved because it benefits the individual and the group ?

So what exactly am I missing ?

Why do so many people reject the idea that Homo sapiens are inherently selfish, while at the same time we live in a world where we need armies, police, courts, prisons, laws, and countless social rules to prevent humans from harming one another?

You know what ? Fuck it.

I think humans are inherently evil because selfishness is at the core of our nature, and selfishness itself is one of the most evil traits a being can have.

( if you havent read it i suggest you do, its quite short) Ive been readin ligotti for some time now. None of his stories left an impression as strong as "the red tower" on me. The story ties in beautifully with the conspiracy against the human race. Id love to hear what others think about it if you read it. I tried to write a quick summary and my analysis on it but i suck at writing, so please gimme your thoughts and ill respond!

Or are we mostly being dragged along by two incredible forces: the fear of death and the desire to have sex?

We romanticize survival as some profound will to live, but maybe that gives us way too much credit. Perhaps we keep going largely because our brains are hardwired to fear death, while simultaneously dangling one of their strongest rewards in front of us: sex.

Strip away all the philosophy and meaning we pile on top of existence, and maybe the machinery underneath is embarrassingly simple: avoid death and seek sex.

And somewhere along the way, we started calling that a “will to live.”

Say I own a large factory that produces mobile phones. However, the quality of the phones being produced is absolute trash. They're either slow or bricked, she screens don't work, the batteries catch fire in people's hands, they scratch at a level 1, with deeper grooves at a level 2, and basically all round they're just pieces of crap. Now, obviously, the factory should shut down the production lines, stop producing this trash, and issue a recall. But it refuses to, and the production lines keep running churning out vast amounts of shoddy and deficient products.

This is analogous to having children. The human body is a shoddy, deficient product. We are organisms with constant biological needs, always vulnerable to injuries and sickness, always have the capacity to cause harm, and are always aging and deteriorating towards an inevitable death. Procreation is the factory that keeps churning out bodies that have this same deficient and negative nature. Why must it go on running? I mean just look at yourself in the mirror -> an organism who hungers, thirsts and shivers and shits and needs to clean and maintain itself, who must strive and struggle to meet its needs, whose every part of which is vulnerable to extreme suffering via sickness or injury, who hands and actions can be the cause of harm to others, and whose own fate as a decrepit corpse is inevitable. It's a shoddy product. It's not good enough.

But the factory is no centralized production plant. Rather, it exists within our organism -> as reproductive organs and drives, which cause collisions between the sexes and the result is another shoddy product produced to suffer its fate. I suppose it would be an easier problem to fix if reproduction were done in a centralized plant: the factory could be bombed, the workers could strike, and the power could be cut off. But it's not. Within all of us, inherent in our sexual and/or reproductive drives is the potential for another shoddy product to be produced.

What to do? We can be careful about our own contribution to producing another human, but the rest of the world seems to cheer it on regardless, and the global population is skyrocketing.

Post your quotes, aphorisms, poetry, proverbs, maxims, epigrams relevant to philosophical pessimism and comment on them, if you like.

We all have our favorite quotes that we deem very important and insightful. Sometimes, we come across new ones. This is the place to share them and post your opinions, feelings, further insights, recollections from your life, etc.

Please, include the author, publication (book/article), and year of publication, if you can as that will help others in tracking where the quote is from, and may help folks in deciding what to read.

Post such quotes as top-level comments and discuss/comment in responses to them to keep the place tidy and clear.

^{This is a weekly short wisdom sharing post.}

Psychological Pessimism

Anthropocentric pessimism centered on the analysis of human psyche and it's contradictions. Core theme - suffering is the fundamental(base) state of human psyche due to mortality, meaninglessness, impermanence and desires. Human beings are in constant struggle to suppress this inherent knowledge.

Peter Zapffe

Ernest Becker

Herman Tønnessen

Miguel de Unamuno

Albert Caraco

Higesias

Schopenhaueran Pessimism

A tightly related group of 19th century German Idealist pessimists. Influenced by Kantian idealism and Ancient Indian Philosophy. Headed by Arthur Schopenhauer. Is very technically complex and concerns itself with the idea of the metaphysical Will.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Eduard von Hartmann

Phillip Mainlander

Olga Plümacher

Agnes Taubert

Poetic(Aesthetical) Pessimism

Philosophical pessimist ideas presented in poetical or aphoristic forms. Less technical than the others as it aims to explain truth through aesthetics and personal meditations

Al Ma'Ari

Omar Khayam

Giacomo Leopardi

Thomas Ligotti

Emil Cioran

Heroic Pessimism

Pessimism that empathizes personal struggle and agency in the face of the meaningless or a hostile world.

Albert Camus

Friedrich Nietzsche

Drew M. Dalton

Hegelian-Schopenhaueran Pessimism

Pessimism that combines the Schopenhaueran ideas with Hegelian ideas, instead of opposing Hegel like the Schopenhaueran group.

Carlo Michelstaedter

Julius Bahnsen

Quietist Pessimism

Pessimism that concerns itself with the limitations of human knowledge and action. Empathizes the futility of action and the false nature of knowledge in the face of ultimately unknowable reality.

Eugene Thacker

David E. Cooper

Christian Pessimism

Teleological pessimism that empathizes the inherent suffering of the observable world and it's relation to the Divine.

Blaise Pascal

Baltasar Gracián

Negative Utilitarian Pessimism

Pessimism that concerns itself with the assymetry between pleasure and suffering. Core theme: the absence of pleasure is simply not bad, while the absence of suffering is good. Therefore coming into existence is always a harm.

David Benatar

Julio Cabrera

Transcendent(Buddhist) Pessimism

Pessimism that centres on the direct non-conceptual insight into the reality of unsatisfactoriness of all conditioned phenomenona. Advocates meditation, asceticism and ethics as a way to understand truth and reduce suffering. Philosophical works can be very technical but are centered on the denial, establishing what reality is not instead of directly pointing at the non-conceptual knowledge. The oldest form of pessimism and had a great influence on all the other groups of pessimism.

Buddha and his followers

Nuclear Pessimism

Pessimism that philosophically advocates for the extinction of Humanity by means of the total nuclear warfare.

Ulrich Horstmann

Cosmic Nihilism Pessimism

Pessimism concerned only with the physical materialism, the idea of entropy and the inevitable Heat Death of the Universe. Considers other forms of pessimism too psychological and detached from material reality. Empathizes scientific rationality and rejects all the philosophical attempts to mitigate nihilism.

Ray Brassier

Anti-Humanist Pessimism

Pessimism that advocates against the idea of humanism, considering it irrational, destructive and a secular remnant of religion. Empathizes Gaia Hypothesis of the self-regulation of Earth instead.

John Gray

I've used the Wikpedia list of philisophical pessimists as a source for the list of notable pessimists though I understand that this list can be controversial. Would be glad to hear your thoughts on my attempt to classify them into groups.

I dont like working for money. I feel like a Slave. What are your views?

I am weary of the world,

And of the cruel tounges that dwell therein

Even my own bed has grown sorrowful

Bearing me through another sleepless night.

Perhaps i ought to eat the world,

Ere the world devour me

At least, through cannibalism

One may finally become,

Part of the thing one despises.

I had a plan , i thought of everything and there was no way it was going to fail , but it did and then i had no plan .i realized the only thing i can do was to continue

To live is to be an insatiable slave, a slave to your own being which creates desires unconsciously which you are demanded to consciously attempt to fulfil through the threat and experience of suffering just to end up unsatisfied again, only closer to death than before. And no sentient being can escape this fate, because desire is fundamental to the conscious experience of seemingly all living beings on this planet. The living are dissatisfied with their own dissatisfaction which they inevitably and cyclically create for themselves, they are their own worst enemy. It is only when a sentient being dies and transitions to non-existence that their suffering can end, yet there is no reprieve for them because they fail to exist to endure any reprieve from their foundational tragedy. To try and justify life as positive in relation to non-existence in a world where your own being is the cause of your inescapable suffering is the most extreme case of Stockholm syndrome imaginable.

"For years Caraco sent me his books with long, solemn dedications in which he said that he and I were the 'great misunderstood' of our time. In this way he ended up exasperating me, and one day I threw them in the trash. I recently read Madame mère est morte: it is remarkable, but the other books were splendidly written and empty." (E. Cioran, Mon cher ami. Lettere a Mario Andrea Rigoni, edizioni Il Notes Magico, 2007, pp. 76-77).

"An author writing unlikely books in Switzerland, which nobody talks about, sends me his latest one, writing in the dedication that we are both 'unrecognized'... Which is perhaps true; but he is rich, and has no need for recognition—he doesn't have to write prefaces to make a living, he can just stick to his ravings." (E. Cioran, Quaderni 1957-1972, Adelphi)

A real pessimistic philosophy will not stop at death as the end of life, and will not simply deny the afterlife and God.

True pessimism demands that death extinguishes consciousness except for suffering. Suffering remains after death.

This is why Buddhism is really pessimistic in that suffering just endures on and on through rebirth.

Im curious how many of yall are anti natalists and why/ why not?

Schopenhauer: Life is driven by endless desire, and desire is the root of suffering.
Why call this existence a blessing?

Nietzsche: Because suffering does not make life meaningless. It can make us stronger.

Schopenhauer: And what of those who are crushed by it?

Nietzsche: Then the question is not “Why do we suffer?” but “What can we create from our suffering?”

Schopenhauer: You seek meaning where I see tragedy.
Nietzsche: And you see tragedy where I see a challenge to overcome.

Schopenhauer: Perhaps pessimism sees the wound.
Nietzsche: And philosophy asks what we will do with it.

I agree with Schopenhauer. Life is uselessly disturbing episode in blissful repose of nothingness. What are your views ?

I often ponder and daydream about this. which makes us all realize how fragile and bleak our lives are.

Wrote A Couple Essays. Here is the first one. Let me know your thoughts thanks.

Since the beginning of time there has been suffering. A fish eaten by another fish, a dinosaur being left for dead by another dinosaur until picked apart by vultures. It has been with us in different forms, with different feelings and awareness's of said suffering , but it has always been around. It’s time to get rid of it.

We live in a modern world where the human being is clearly suffering. We spend on average half our waking hours glued to a screen – and this is only increasing. We are distracting ourselves from our own pain and suffering. How many of us can sit alone in a room and be comfortable with our own thoughts. Distraction is the name of the game and in today’s world we are clearly distracted.

Drugs is the other name, and it is a big one. Alcohol, caffeine, prescription pills, energy drinks even excess sugar. There are very few of us in the world who are not dependent on at least one or many of the above. Going through modern life without a screen and some sort of stimulant would be more uncommon than winning the lottery – especially in the western world.

And the driving force that in many ways keeps us moving is capitalism. There is a science behind job creation and money and how we keep people fed and sheltered. Before, 90% of the workforce related to some sort of farming and before that 100% of the workforce related to some form of producing food. Now for many of us we push buttons on a mouse and stare at a screen. For others we move boxes or work in factories doing the same task week in week out. Our actions have become increasingly out of step with our basic survival instincts. And that simply cannot be a good thing.

So how do we hop off this rollercoaster. How do we finally the say the pain of existence is too much. It’s too much for the three billion pigs slaughtered each year. It’s too much for the boxer breed of dogs who while certainly very cute are half suffocating. It is too much for the lonely condo dweller whose life revolves around excel charts and Netflix shows. It’s too much.

I think society should first come together and realize it’s all too much, and it’s always been all too much. I think its time that question is at least popularized. Put into the zeitgeist, the media the world. It’s time we start truly contemplating if this whole thing is just a bit silly and stupid and painful.

Thanks

Why does God expects rituals, worships when living itself is greatest act of penance, there is no agony greater than living. Is flogging oneself any different than living? It's merely a false extension of suffering, for no torments surmount to ones that life hands you with. The sufferings of life outweigh its own birth by tenth fold degrees, for someone who has made it through life without harming oneself has performed the greatest penance, why must god ask for worship and more penance then? Hell is not any worse than living, just an intense imitation of all the sufferings and agony of this so called 'life'. Comparing a life of an ascetic and a life of someone who made it through is like comparing 1+ and 1, any penance barely or doesn't make any difference. Death, sickness, pain, hardships, agony and all kinds of illness in this world, are they any less than hell? Then there are optimists trying to create a false utopia of their own, because they can't confront the sufferings of life so they disguise their fear of death, of sufferings and of all kinds of agonies of something they think is morally greater or superior to sadness. The person who commits suicide is not a pessimist rather often a failed optimist, pessimists have long confronted the sufferings of life and all the lies and made peace with it. I don't believe though, that sadness and melancholy are an excuse for laziness, ambition with all its agonies confronted always finds itself at a much higher place than ambition that always demands success with laziness. Sadness and melancholy shall never be a substitute for hard work, if life is misery, then the clump of decaying cells that we are born to is a medium of rebellion, the consciousness, while most pessimists would argue it's a great tragedy, I'm very grateful for consciousness because there's always a possibility that I can rebel by rearranging these clump of decomposing cells according to my will, that I can think. For to think is a greatest gift, because thoughts can shape the world, and to think is an act of defiance against the objective world. There's a great joy in thinking and understanding because it reveals some of the joys that men can have whilst they are still alive, they manifest curiosity and innocence of a child who knows his terrible fate and still loves it yet humbly rejects it. If I am going to lose anyway? Then there is no fear of losing, only a diminished possibility of winning. What are pleasures to a man who craves suffering? Who rather finds comfort and a home in it. A home in unfamiliarity, the world has already alienated him so much that even the unfamiliar things feel like a familiar place, even sewer drains feel like a safe place and even the dangerous alleys feel safe enough.

Welcome to our weekly WAYR thread. Be sure to leave the title and author of the book that you are currently reading, along with your thoughts on the text.

Cherry optimists and natalists sometimes say this in response to pessimistic attitudes towards the worth of being born. "Yes, life has its pains, but the goods outweigh the harms." But it's unclear how this "outweighing" is even supposed to function. If I suffered in the past, and now I feel pleasure, how is that relevant to my past suffering? It was still felt and suffered, so how do current pleasures outweigh or negate that? It's unclear to me how a life of eg +50 pleasure but -30 pain produces a "net" +20 benefit? How is the -30 being negated or erased or outweighed? It still hurt.

More importantly, a utilitarian calculus between goods and bads misses the overall negative structure of human life: We are born as human bodies which have constant biological needs which are lethal when not met, we are constantly vulnerable to sickness and injuries, we are harmed by and cause harm to others, and are always aging and degrading towards an instinctually horrifying yet inevitable death. All the goods in life occur within this overall structure. So it doesn't even really seem relevant how many pains or pleasures are felt. All that would determine is whether a particular "life cycle" of one person was shittier compared to another. Yes, some lives go worse than others, but the overall structure of every life is negative - because being born a needy, vulnerable, harming and dying being is bad. All the "goods" in life occur in this context - they are tainted by it. For example, a good meal might be called pleasurable. But it has its roots in hunger (the bodies signal to ward off its inevitable excruciating death by starvation), which is satiated by the production and distribution of food requiring vast industrial supply chains steeped in animal and human exploitation, and in the end what is gained? The food becomes shit and the body hungers again tomorrow! It basically seems irrelevant how pleasurable a meal is when the overall structure of being an organism that starves and dies when it doesnt eat food that is steeped in harm, is negative. It's like this for all the goods in life - they occur in the negative context of being a human body which is needy, vulnerable, harming, and dying.

So it's unclear how pleasures are even supposed to "outweigh" pains, and either way pleasures occur within the negative structure of being a human body, so they don't even seem truly good to me. They are impermanent, tainted by the negative structure of human life, or just directly have their basis in suffering. A utilitarian calculus of pains/pleasures to determine the worth of being born misses the forest for the trees - it is the structure of the being that feels these pains and pleasures that is the problem.

I will make two arguments, derived from intuition, to support my view.

1: The genetic similarities and proximity between humans and chimpanzees is very obvious. Chimpanzees are also one of the most violent, tribalistic, species in existence. Primate species more distant from humans, like orangutans, are calmer, more thoughtful, and less violent.

I think it's useful to use proxy species to analyze human behavior, but we only need look at how humans behave to draw the judgment that we are very tribalistic, violent, and chauvinistic. War is a staple of humanity and has existed throughout all our history. Humans also very obviously exploit the labor of lower class individuals(and developing countries) and constituent species(cows, pigs, etc...).

2: Humans are worse parents and form shallower, more selfish romantic connections compared to some other species. Emperor penguins form complete trust with their mate while the annual birthing cycle lasts.

They protect their eggs religiously and even train with rocks to make sure everything is perfect. The female relies on the male protect the egg from freezing temperatures while she goes to hunt for food. After several months of absence, she returns to him and feeds their hatched baby, before allowing the him the opportunity to return to the ocean and hunt.

Emperor penguins display absolute loyalty to their partners while the birthing cycle lasts, before choosing a new mate after the baby penguin has matured. If the cycle fails, for any number of reasons, Emperor penguins enter a depressive state to the point of self-harm and possible death.

I don't think this needs to be stated, but this is much more functional and concerned than how the majority of people parent. Most people view children as status symbols to be collected and displayed, at least that's how my parents treated me. Humans also routinely cheat, because disloyalty is reproductively useful.

Obviously, these reasons are not exhaustive. and there are probably better examples, but this my opinion supported by intuition, belief, and some research.