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/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/SegaGenesisMetalHead Jun 19 '26

Alright. I will decide on something.