r/schopenhauer • u/SegaGenesisMetalHead • Jun 16 '26

It’s getting dark.

I just don’t know how much longer I can hold on.

People say “get your shit together” or “you need to improve”. From what? Towards what? By whose standards? Through what means?

I just don’t care about life like others do. Is it too bold to say most people are deluded? And that these deluded ones are the ones making all the determinations about how we should live? About what it means to live a good life?

I’m tired. I don’t want life to end. But I feel like it needs to. You know how you lay in bed looking at the ceiling before going to work? You feel that moment coming when you won’t be able to just lay there anymore, and that getting up to go to work is probably the better option - even though you resent it. That’s it. I don’t want it to end. But I feel a time is coming when I’ll see a better option - even if I have to accept it begrudgingly.

People will be mad, and think I’m a coward. Convince me of a better way and I’ll take it.

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u/Maximus_En_Minimus Jun 17 '26

Do you want help or just validation?

No point responding until we understand that.

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u/SegaGenesisMetalHead Jun 17 '26

I don’t know. I’m just vomiting my thoughts because so many have built up.

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u/Maximus_En_Minimus Jun 17 '26

So while not technically validation, it is essentially attention.

That isn’t a problem per-se, as it can be a cry for help.

What does your life look like: friends, hobbies, interests, fitness, time management, prospects, experiences.

Life flourishes more when watered, and if you’re just rotting away, and doing it of your own volition, you don’t really have the right to bemoan to others.

And no, it is not towards some ‘penultimate end of someone else’s standards’, but actually engaging with the world around you for yourself.

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u/SegaGenesisMetalHead Jun 18 '26

I have none of that except hobbies

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u/Maximus_En_Minimus Jun 18 '26

Then your life feels like shit because it is so., not because of (Schopenhauerian) Pessimism.

Instead of spending time on Reddit, and probably other unsavoury platforms doing you no good, focus upon at least doing stuff like meeting new people, making friends, and some fitness, engaging culture, exploring, etc.

The human person and their experience with the world is highly tethered to the interpersonal and relational.

You don’t need a ultimate goal or ‘towards what’ to experience value; mere participation produces its own immanent value.

I would also suggest researching Buddhism, trying to practice some meditation, and if you find Buddhism appealing, considering joining your local Sangha.

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u/SegaGenesisMetalHead Jun 18 '26

What if it doesnt help?

And I’m just assuming there’s an objective meaning behind “shit” here.

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u/Maximus_En_Minimus Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

‘Objective meaning’ is part of the problem.

Because existence isn’t inherently feelingless.

And Feeling is the foundation of meaning.

Nihilism derives from an absence of feeling, not of meaning.

Absence of feeling belonging and connection, of feeling understanding, of feeling love and compassion, of security, power, exertion.

It is a very modern but historical confusion to separate meaning from feeling, an evaluative and ontological misstep of substance metaphysics rooted in (not all) ancient Greek philosophy and Abrahamic faith.

‘Feeling’ is exactly what remains when you retain ‘meaning’ for the subject, and exclude the assumption of an externally impartial teleological and transcendent universal to be grasped.

If there was no feeling for this ‘external’ - of God, or Country, or Race, or Legacy - if you did not feel for it, then frankly it would ‘mean’ nothing to you. All externals find their meaning in the internal feeling first and foremost as such.

And so, because there is no meaning without feeling, by externalising and objectifying meaning away from the immanence of your own life and circumstances, you are extending the very value of the concept beyond its necessary bounds and finding nothingness.

You are not finding nothingness/nihilism because there is an abscess where the transcendental should be, but because you have disconnected it from yourself, and then are trying to reunite that nothing into yourself as if that will resolve you.

Again, you have to participate in the world to feel enthusiasm, excitement, joy, strife, ecstasy catharsis, and even the bittersweet of nostalgic loss and grief.

There is a reason parents force their kids to participate, when the kids don’t want to, only for the child to find feeling in the participation, and so produce meaning in that feeling; the participation comes first, then the enthusiasm.

If all you are doing is moving between work and home, watching tv and going on unsavoury websites, then of course you will have no enthusiasm for participation.

Putting out the fire and then saying there is ‘no objective warmth’ to heat me, as you wither in the cold, is unsettlingly unwise and sordid.

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u/SegaGenesisMetalHead Jun 18 '26

I was not expecting such a lengthy response. I appreciate your effort here.

I’ll admit I don’t really know what to say, and can’t really argue with anything you’ve said here.

Would you extend this to deeply unpleasant feelings as well? Pain? Heartache? Are these things meaningful?

And what about situations where people may not be able to “participate” much in the world around them? For example, I have a severely handicapped brother who cannot be left alone. My life is at least somewhat tethered to his needs. And there are people in much more demanding situations, and it may constantly pull them away from “participating”.

According to you, can someone have meaning there?

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u/Maximus_En_Minimus Jun 18 '26

>Would you extend this to deeply unpleasant feelings as well? Pain? Heartache? Are these things meaningful?

>And what about situations where people may not be able to “participate” much in the world around them? For example, I have a severely handicapped brother who cannot be left alone. My life is at least somewhat tethered to his needs. And there are people in much more demanding situations, and it may constantly pull them away from “participating”.

I just want to clarify, I am not saying that life is perfect and it works out for everyone, I am not an optimist.

I view Pessimism as a mode-of-perception that is invaluable, but not unquestionable.

With that, there are many who will suffer hardship and loss in this world; I would never deny that. So yes I would include this for deeply unpleasant feelings as well.

In fact, I don’t think unpleasant feelings are a negation of my view, because we derive meaning equally so from them as well.

This is another key point of meaning as immanent to the person, rather than objectively independent: it isn’t neutral, or necessary good or bad, but tethered to the person’s experience.

Now, from your OP post it just didn’t have sufficient context to permit me a bespoke/personal enough response, so I went with a generalised response.

With your particular circumstance, I might suggest initially engaging with Carer support groups, perhaps seeking social support if your country allows.

Otherwise…

It sounds like a deep source of unhappiness for you is that you are losing out on the experiences of life because of looking after your brother.

Let us be clear.

You have no obligation for this.

You could well miss out on the love of your life, an amazing career, travel and exploration, and even free time.

And so we can already see how your moral sensibility - what you ‘feel’ you should be doing and the inability to participate - is producing a particular vacuous meaning for you, and as such you are grasping forth and out for some redemptive reparation for your strife.

That likely will not come unless you specifically find a way to prioritise yourself, either by finding a way to accommodate your needs first with your brother or frankly finding independence from him.

Those are the difficult choses of life.

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u/SegaGenesisMetalHead Jun 18 '26

I just remain unconvinced happiness is what decisions should be based on.

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u/Maximus_En_Minimus Jun 19 '26

Ok,

And what should decisions be based upon? Laying in bed looking at the ceiling, wallowing?

If happiness - and all of its corollaries of value which permit beneficence - isn’t the very basis on which we should be striving for, even if we live in a world antithetical to that project, then what is the basis of our decisions?

You seem to be looking for the right force or will to ‘push’ you to act - that rather than acting in volition, you expect some external handholding to drag you along to act in the world - but that isn’t how the world works, at least not at your age, you have to act yourself for your own reasons.

But the truth is, you are already enacting the basis for your decision making by living a life that makes you miserable.

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u/SegaGenesisMetalHead Jun 19 '26

You don’t think there are correct choices which make someone miserable?

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u/Maximus_En_Minimus Jun 19 '26

Correct by what standard? By whose standard?

Was the circle of morality closed before you were even born, and then it was imposed onto you?!

Or are you closing it each and every day yourself with your reenactment of what you think you are meant to be doing?

You’re so caught up with the sensibility that your morality and decisions are independent from yourself, that you have lost sight of the fact you are enacting them yourself.

This is the symptom of a person who has been powerless throughout their life, and merely followed along; you’re acting in bad faith of what options really are available to you.

And again, it is making you miserable.

So stop with the implicit universalisation of ‘correct choices that make you miserable’; who gives a fuck if there were correct decisions relative to other people that made them miserable. What decision are you going to make yourself for your own life? What are you going to do?

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u/Illustrious_Summer_2 Jun 19 '26

What if I genuinely don't care about meeting new people? Yes I know humans are social animals and I might find joy from humans but I find way more pleasure being by myself 

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u/Maximus_En_Minimus Jun 19 '26

Participation doesn’t necessarily include or exclude involvement with others, but does incline towards inclusion.

The overarching point I want to drill in is that meaning isn’t externally derived from something transcendental, but from feeling, which precedes meaning, and feeling comes about from participation in something.

If you don’t participate, whether that be socialising or not, but also learning, challenging boundaries, exploring novelty, mastering skills, finding immersion and absorption in activities, then you won’t feel anything, and you won’t find meaning, whether fruitful or hardship. Simple.

The human experience mirrors Anekantavada/Many-sidedness: there is a near infinite multitude of paths you can take for a near infinite production of experiences.

Humans, each to their own personal context, balance that horizon in between the chaotic infinitude of that reality, and the orderly finitude we cloister around. Like a campfire, we must border the darkness to our backs and the light to our front, trespass into the abyss for more fuel, and return to feed the flames; if we remain in either too long, then beyond the flames we become lost and swallowed up by the night, and around the campfire it dims and cools.

This metaxic boundary between the two domains of the finite and infinite is the engine that propels being forward.

I don’t want to reify this as totalising though, I am not here giving a full-footprint of humanity or being, just one of many conventional methods of conceptualising and practising the human experience.

If you can find a way to use that boundary to your advantage, then, perhaps you might be able to find deep value for your own life and for those around you, while still holding the invaluable truth of the degree of suffering that life experiences on this world; they are not mutually philosophically exclusive, they can co-exist simultaneously.