/lit/ - Literature

It's too much to handle for some.

>>16718733
too hot

>>16718733
And the most scary thing is the writer didn't even offered any solutions.

Escape from evil is even better. Becker is a genius.

Is my death possible?

Can we understand this question? Can I, myself, pose it? Am I allowed to talk about my death? What does the syntagm “my death” mean? And why this expression “the syntagm ‘my death’”? You will agree that it is better, in this case, to name words or names, that is, to stick with quotation marks. On the one hand, that neutralizes an improper pathos. “My death” in quotation marks is not necessarily mine; it is an expression that anybody can appropriate; it can circulate from one example to another.

>>16718720
>people die and don't want to accept it
woah dude

still trying to cope myself

>>16718798
t. haven't read the book

>>16718720
So what's this about ?

>>16718720
Death is nothing to me.
Well, really, it's nothing to everyone, even if they don't realize it yet.

>>16718872
Humanity's construction of reality to avoid thinking about death, essentially.

>>16718720
Bland psychoanalytic gibberish.

>>16718884
t. a really smart and cool guy who posts on /lit/

this sounds cool. monitoring this thred

>>16718852
You're right. I haven't read the book. I barely skimmed through the wikipedia page. This was enough to let me know that not only will I never read the book, but more importantly I will always pretend I have (but a long time ago). And I will look down on people who talk about this book, I'll let them know than I think they're pseuds. Because I have the luck to have had a classical education people tend to believe me when I behave like this. I'm the most patrician pseud and you can do nothing to prevent it. Enjoy losing your time reading uninteresting books.

>>16718883
well duh

What makes this so "brutal" and "too much to handle"? I've only read the Wikipedia summary, but unless the book is drastically different I don't understand why you guys react like this. I'm no expert on existentialism, but its premise doesn't seem to be that new or life-changing
I'm not trying to knock the book, I just want to understand (I'll read it eventually)

>>16718899
yea you and 90% of the people here buddy

>surely THIS generalized explanation for every single human behavior is the right one

>>16718904
People don't like thinking about their death. When confronted about their mortality, they act differently. Human activities, by and large, are a means to distract from death-thinking; culture is created to avoid death-thinking. When people are confronted with the notion that it's actually all in vain, it's immediately excused because, again, the obfuscation of death is better than acceptance of it.

Hero worship, religion, internet-posting, etc. means to avoid death-thinking. Yes, we're talking about it right now, but the majority of your time isn't because it's obfuscated by other activity. Even Existentialism obfuscates death -- being-in-itself, essences, etc. Philosophies are a means to lessen the blow of mortality.

>>16718892
yeah i am thanks, babe

>>16718954
The author's beliefs, were they held in a true place, with true understanding, would have better been served by suicide than writing a gay book whining "death is existence stopping and there's nothing you can do about it" in so many words Herman Melville would choke on them.

>>16718954
My problem with this idea is that it presupposes a constant awareness of death that needs to be constantly dealt with, therefore making everything we do explicable in relation to our awareness of death, when I think awareness of our own mortality actually is something that happens fairly infrequently, it is not constantly present beneath the surface, repressed, it just only occurs to us at all once in a while, and when it does then we do indeed make stuff up to feel better and avoid thinking about it, but that doesn't mean it's the origin of everything else we do.

>>16718954
People avoid thinking about unpleasant realities what no way.
The book had little to say other than what you've written. Most of the rest devolves into Freudian nonsense about sex that try as he does to rehabilitate and make sensible I couldn't understand either because I'm borderline retarded or because it's incoherent.

>>16718912
Yep. That's what makes /lit/ great, you can look down on any pop-sci book like this one without having to care, because even the people who read it don't have much to say about it.

There's some really good stuff in there but as others have pointed out, he spends so much time engaging with Freudian nonsense that no one should give a shit about in 2020. Escape From Evil might be better.

>>16718954
>religion means to avoid death-thinking
If anything religion requires you to think about your own mortality and contextualize it. It's impossible to even have a frame of reference for an immortal soul if you didn't recognize that you were going to die.

>>16718974
The author is a Jew, and the rare type of Jew who spent time as a soldier.
I'd imagine his neurosis lends itself well to an unhealthy obsession with death.

>What are we to make of creation in which routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types - biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one’s own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses residue. Everyone reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him. The mosquitoes bloating themselves on blood, the maggots, the killer-bees attacking with a fury and a demonism, sharks continuing to tear and swallow while their own innards are being torn out - not to mention the daily dismemberment and slaughter in “natural” accidents of all types: an earthquake buries alive 70 thousand bodies in Peru, a tidal wave washes over a quarter of a million in the Indian Ocean. Creation is a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all creatures. The soberest conclusion that we could make about what has actually been taking place on the planet about three billion years is that it is being turned into a vast pit of fertilizer. But the sun distracts our attention, always baking the blood dry, making things grow over it, and with its warmth giving the hope that comes with the organism’s comfort and expansiveness.

So based.

>>16718954
So it's basically Buddhism without talking about Buddhism?
I ask because the hardest part of realizing no-self/not-self stuff in Buddhism is stopping denying death. In commentary to the English translation of Bardo Thodol the "death is real" part seemed the most profound one to me.

>>16719024
>reductive materialism
Wow, truly revolutionary and frightening these days

>>16718720
>>16718899
I, too, skimmed the Wikipedia page and it seems like instead of directly proving the mortality of the soul, Becker tries to explain our belief in its immortality by inventing psychological explanations for it. I wouldn't be surprised if this is how Becker would respond to an argument for its immortality:

2+3=6

>No, it actually equals 5. Maybe you didn't read the left-hand side correctly.

"Cope."

>>16718720
does this nigga even knows about Sein zum Tode

>>16718899

>skim book
>barely understand it
>forever act like its trash and anybody that agrees with it is dumb
>women think I'm smart as fuck
>if anyone ever calls me on it I physically intimidate them

Fuck it feels good to be an alpha

>>16718720
On a scale of 1 to 'bottomless abyss', how blackpilled is this book?

>>16719035
Not-self is more of a training, rather than a truth to be realized. We recognize that laying claim to anything as part of ourselves will only lead to suffering and so we practice disidentification from these things.

>death is scary
woah... deep...

>>16719017
Even he should realize that eg. the sexual drive or hunger are not created by awareness of mortality since they are present in basically all animals no matter how dumb. You could argue that these drives as we experience them are mediated by said awareness but we do not eat food or have sex because we are afraid of dying, not principally, the impulses just exist in and of themselves.

>>16719080
Accidentally posted without finishing my thought, which was that the higher order social and cultural behaviors we have also evolved for various purposes, they exist also in and of themselves to some degree, they were not randomly invented by people who were afraid of dying, and there are countless structural reasons why certain behaviors come to dominate a population that emerge from large-scale interactions rather than from any individual proclivity.

The scope of this denial of death mechanism would have to be severely limited.

>>16719024
pretty cool but also neurotic reductionist trash. death is an important part of traditional cultures and they sure as hell didn't think for a second that the death around them was so unusual or bad to warrant pedestalling.

also from a human perspective none of this means anything if it doesn't involve you and yours, certainly trees and insects competing is meaningless.

>>16719069
This one is 8. The sequel to it is bottomless abyss, and on the last page talks about his skeptical hope for Marxist China (written during their propaganda crusade about how great communism is).

>>16719100
>and on the last page talks about his skeptical hope for Marxist China
lol oh boy

>>16718899
based retard

>>16719024
Here is a similar thought but more based

>>16719024
This is just a lamer version of that de Maistre quote

>>16719122
>>16719133
demaistremind

>>16719068
>he actually believe this is what people think of him

Pic related smug motherfucker presented the same thesis in 20 pages 50 years before Becker

>"One night in long bygone times, man awoke and saw himself. he saw that he was naked under cosmos, homeless in his own body. all things dissolved before his testing thought, wonder above wonder, horror above horror unfolded in his mind. then woman too awoke and said it was time to go and slay. and he fetched his bow and arrow, a fruit of the marriage of spirit and hand, and went outside beneath the stars. but as the beasts arrived at their waterholes where he expected them of habit, he felt no more the tiger’s bound in his blood, but a great psalm about the brotherhood of suffering between everything alive. that day he did not return with prey, and when they found him by the next new moon, he was sitting dead by the waterhole"
― Peter Wessel Zapffe, The Last Messiah

>>16719133
>>16719122
no atheistbros... they retroactively preempted us...

>>16718768
To me the solution was to take Zapffe´s Last Messiah and instead of seeing his "solutions" as tragic copes I started reading them as a manual.
Maybe these men are right. Maybe like Zapffe says, our consciousness is like the giant antlers of a deer that are too heavy for him to carry.
But instead of just letting yourself die in agony like a dumb deer, you must find a way to keep those horns in check, to give them another shape.
A shape that allows you to live a little longer, it doesn't matter what that shape is like. No matter what your beliefs are in life, this is the best (and only) thing you can do as you pretend you can come to terms with your own death.

>>16719156
Whatever you choose to do, just don't have children are thus entrap even more people in this nightmare.

>>16719142

the fuck you say to me punk?

>>16719156
Beautiful lines

>The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by overevolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment. In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground.

The real important part of the book is how literally every single ideology, every single way of thinking is revealed to be nothing more than tribalist cope.
Racism, nationalism and sexism and all the -isms are constructed around the fear of death.
What's happening right now in the US elections right now at the core is not about muh freedoms or muh democracy or even muh money and power or muh niggers, it's all an elaborate game to escape from death, to forget about oblivion, to pretend that there's something other than the last seconds of existence awaiting for us at the end og the ride, in any way we possibly can.

>>16718720
Death is not fearsome, if by death what is meant is the end of some form of existence, for this is extremely common to finite forms like ourselves. Every change in our form is such an end to a form of existence. We are saddened by the mutilation of our body which is inevitable because it harms us in fulfilling our values. But even in death we can rejoice if there is a form of existence which involves desiring where we are not affected by sadness in such mutilation. The pursuit of knowledge, in considering forms of existence truly, is one such form of existence, since it involves mental eternity. The more true ideas we have of the eternal, the more the essence of our mind is eternal, and therefore the more we ourselves are eternal.

The answer to all of this bullshit is suicide but no philosophers has enough balls to admit it and tries to keep everyone bound to the spook of life.

>>16718720
I was planning on reading this but now I'm getting a little too scared. I'm already in a dark place right now and my copes are precious.

>>16719057
No, it's more like

1 - 1 = 0
>Zero? Really? No, it can't be, There has to be another answer! There must be some way to solve this to make it something other than 0. Maybe this isn't the way math works! Maybe we need to invent another type of mathematical operation, maybe we just can't understand it :)

"Cope"

>>16719206
mega cope

>>16719035
Yes, but in order to realize the three characteristics you have to overcome their unpleasantness. One purpose of samatha meditation is to gain stability to be able to penetrate three characteristics without triggering fear response to dissolution of world and self and derailing insight. The panic response of untrained mind seeing the three characteristics got even the name of "The dark night of soul" in western communities.

>>16719094
> death is an important part of traditional cultures
He says so in the book. He argues that culture is the result of coping with that shit world he described.
> none of this means anything from a human perspective
It means that we live on the same plannet where all that nasty shit is the norm, and nothing can seprate you from the nakedness of it.

>>16719210
2nd, 3rd in top row and 2nd in middle killed themselves as an endpoint to their pessimistic philosophies.

>>16719240
The only one those three I know if Mainlander who I can't read because he isn't translated.

>>16719216
I have literally never heard someone argue like this for immortality. It usually goes like:

>We will be granted everlasting life, for men have a natural desire for this and no natural desire is in vain.
>Cope! You obey pedo priests! God doesn't exist! Cooming is okay aaaaah

>>16719240
Is that what they advised others to do as well?

The book truly gets better at the end. It dwelves a fucking lot on psychoanalisis and it can get tiring. Some anons here posted a few pearls, which are truly amazing, very poignant quotes. Those and many more are scattered through the book, making it a pleasant reading even if you don't agree with the arguments.

>>16718883
why does it take him 300 pages to say this? feels like the ideas of the book could be condensed into an essay

>>16718954
>culture is created to avoid death-thinking
If culture is created to avoid death-thinking, then how does that explain the specific path that culture has taken? For in order to avoid death-thinking, it would only be necessary to avoid those things which indicate death. Shit-flinging is an escape from death. If culture is just a result of escaping from the idea of death, then why are musicians composing symphonies, and not throwing shit-flinging parades everyday?
But even if that immediate problem is adressed (even though it can't be, because it is obvious that desire directs culture far more than escaping from the idea of death does), there now comes the second problem that activities that indicate death are not avoided at all by culture. If anything, such activities are embraced, since they affect us with great pleasure and pain.

>>16719202
>oblivion awaits us

Proof?

>>16719240
I thought the pic of Cioran was a young Trakl for a second. He offed himself too, though he didn't exactly have a coherent philosophy I guess. If you read his poems you wouldn't be very surprised by that result

>>16719248
I have heard that an Australian redditor is translating him from his PhD thesis or some shit

>>16719255
Not directly

>>16719253
1 - 1 = 0
>We will be granted everlasting life because want it
>And because we want it, it is real
I hope you're right though. The book also said faith is good so I'm open to all ideas.

>>16719240
Schopenhauer, ???, Mainlander
Zapffe, ???, Cioran
Ligotti, ???, ???

Fill me in please

>>16719202
>Racism, nationalism and sexism and all the -isms are constructed around the fear of death.
They're also constructed around people noticing differences between races, nations, and sexes. Our AI programs are consistently racist and sexist because they too notice differences, I dont think they're doing it because of death denial.

>>16719266
Hell, I don't even think it's only about oblivion, is about how life is just a road to death and pretty much what Eclessiastes says. Regardless of what your spiritual beleifs are, dying is something ugly, scary and horrifying and everything around us is impermanent, nothing.
>Proof?
Proof of the contrary?

>>16719273
I have read his translated work in English. His poetry is difficult to understand. And my English is also weak.
Can you suggest me some way to get into his work? Any translation that you prefer?

>>16719284
Michelstaedter
Albert Caraco
David Benatar
Eugene Thacker

>>16719218
A solution to a problem is always the greatest coping with the probelm, since it ends the problem.

>>16719297
That I agree with. I thought you held to a sort of mortalism, but if that is not your actual view, my apologies. I asked for proof because the people who share the sentiments of Becker almost never provide any proof for their belief that our souls are annihilated upon death, if they're even willing to grant the term 'soul.'

>>16719322
Hmm, I knew all of them except Caraco. Just never knew what they looked like.

>>16719286
>Our AI programs are consistently racist and sexist
Source for this?

Tribalism is a coping mechanism, it lets you feel part of something bigger than you are, it also allows you to simplfy your worldview greatly and reduce it to binary terms: us (the good people that deserve to live) and them (the bad people that deserve to die). You are surrounded by confirmation bias and echo-chambers, you're surrounded by other tribes with their own upbringing and conditions that see you as the enemy as well. Without knowing any of those people, they are already a menace to your group, and thus to your continued existence.
The book argues that our cherished values are the main things that keep us afloat in this chaotic fucked up world. These pillars require constant nurturing and they are also very demanding on imposing themselves in reality: when you see someone going against your cherished values, living against everything that is good in your life, everything that you're part of, your brain doesn't take it lightly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3N88xIWujE
You are designed to live in a hostile world, an INHERENTLY hostile world, designed to stick to a group of people that will let help live a little longer.
But you also have the intelligence to tell that this world is too fucking much, it's too savage. So you start adopting the values that your tribe has: ooga booga the god of thunder protects us, we hunt when it rains and you just eat that shit up because now the world has a thunder god.

>>16719322
I don't speak German so i can't help you really. I read all his poetry on a site online which has the German translation available so you can see how literal they're being(it's not hard to see which German words are which in English). Trakl is so extremely abstract and opaque that the images and ideas do quite a lot of the work as opposed to lyricism, and he uses a lot of very simple easily translated word: pond, animal, sister, colours, etc. but obviously it is still translated poetry.

As for understanding Trakl well nobody really agrees what his poems are about, and trying to tease a definite meaning out of them is probably missing the point to some degree. That being said Richard Detsch has a book titled George Trakl's poetry in which he discusses Jungian, Heideggerian, and Novalis type Romanticist interpretations of his work. Also mentions Nietzsche and Goethe. Basic theme is union of opposites. He is contrasting this to earlier prominent interpretations(which is the one that considers him fundamentally ambiguous/chaotic) of Trakl so it is a good overview of ways of looking at his stuff. Here is an excerpt:

>Today, anyone undertaking an interpretation of Georg Trakl's poetry must come to terms with the decisive turn which Trakl criticism took in the late 1950s when a dispute arose between the proponents of two diametrically opposed critical approaches. The lines of this dispute were drawn by Eduard Lachmann and Walther Killy in their conflicting analyses of Trakl's poem "Passion."Lachmann stressed the Christian elements of the poem, especially the hope of redemption which it expressed, and attempted to interpret the entire poem from the Christian perspective, as he had done with all of Trakl's poetry. Taking issue with this type of interpretation, Killy emphasized instead the so-called Orphic aspects of "Passion"-the attempt of the artist to gain a purely aesthetic mastery over a world in hopeless disarray, a world without redemption.
>Since that time, following Killy's interpretation, critics have generally abandoned the search for a possible area of coherent significance behind the often illogical flow of images and have concentrated instead on matters of lyrical style and structure.
...
>The issue is not whether this poetry gives evidence of the poet's religious inclinations or whether it is a purely aesthetic endeavor. Several critics, notably Klaus Simon in his Traum and Orpheus, have acknowledged that both aspects are represented in Trakl's poetry. The question should be rather whether this poetry, both in style and content, gives evidence only of a world in hopeless disarray, or whether, even within this chaotic world, there are signs of the dawning of a different reality-a reality which is neither strictly Christian nor merely an aesthetic creation.
Here I attempt to show that Trakl's poetry does indeed contain indications of the poet's perception of a different reality, the nature of which is unity.

>>16719379
Do you honestly think it is simply impossible to notice differences between races/sexes just because they're there and kind of obvious? It has to be motivated by some ulterior motive?

Here is Nature kvetching about racism and sexism in AI, their take is of course that the programs are biased because society is biased and society made the programs.

nevermind 4chan thinks the link is spam, so just search racism sexism AI on google it'll come up.

>>16719265
>why are musicians composing symphonies, and not throwing shit-flinging parades everyday?
Because coping mechanisms come in a great variety of shapes: from drawing furry pornography to peeling the face of a person as he screams to researching the cure for COVID-19.
>desire directs culture far more than escaping from the idea of death does
Dead wrong: politics and religion are completely focused on escaping from death. Look at the ideas that make the world go round and differentiate them from the ideas that individuals choose. In any case, the persecution of desire overlaps with coping with death.
>activities that indicate death are not avoided at all by culture.
That's because those activities are also powerful escapism. Not a lot of people are killing themselves for fun because death means the end of fun and no one wishes for that. But even if smoking will kill me, I'm still going to die, right?

lol just read a journey to the end of the night bro

>>16719006
you'll be interested to know that becker in a later work actually reasoned that the only "solution" to the denial of death was a return to religion or spirituality. not in the sense of that we should all become catholics tomorrow, but that humans need to cultivate something outside and higher than themselves as the healthiest way of coping with death.

>>16719509
Which book of his can I find this in?

>>16719519
"escape from evil" is the title I believe.

again, his main argument and the preoccupation of his career was the idea that all the misfortune of man and his societies is due to this inherent need to cope with death, which we do by engaging in "immortality projects" of various kinds.

>>16719459
>impossible to notice differences between races/sexes just because they're there and kind of obvious?
No one is saying that there are no differences. What happens is that those differences become poison to you the moment your mind starts developing mechanisms to belong to a group. The ulterior motive is always there, otherwise racism and sexism and all the -isms wouldn't exist: immortality, survival, goodness. The things everyone wants but now you can't have because of those fucking low iq niggers who also hate you because the white man is the devil and responsible of all his misery.
The Hutus and the Tutsi also are very different you see, one side is clearly superior and the other deserves to die. There's a lot of evidence to this.

I'll check out the videot thanks anon, I'd love to see what's the most racist picture a deep learning AI can generate.

>>16719166
>...entrap even more people in this nightmare.
Anon you're right in calling it a nightmare. But complete your analysis man. If it is a nightmare, then it is afterall, just a nightmare. You don't need to wake up from a nightmare to realize your own safety. You merely have to know it as a nightmare. You have to realize the unreality of it. I'm not denying your experience, I'm only denying its reality.
Time to find out what's real.
Time to find the true courage that is the real you. The righteous. The eternally free. The infinitely strong. Free will is not the freedom to will what you want. For that is still bondage. That is you being bound by your own wants. The truly free men are the ones who can will and do what _needs_ to be done. The choice to choose the right. Only courage and strength can take you to these heights. At this point, forget religion, even science is mere superstition.
Know that even when nothing exists for you to experience, _you_ exist.
Know that no matter what object you're experiencing. You the awareness is unscathed. You are neither the mind nor the body anon. You _are_ the universe looking back on itself. Your body is merely one speck of the innumerable that manifest in your awareness. Worlds come and worlds die in your awareness---you are untouched. Galaxies are born and burnt---you are untouched. Bodies take birth and die---you are unharmed. Minds are moulded and destroyed---you are unchanged. You the _self_ are infinite existence, eternal consciousness, and unbounded bliss.
The only thing remaining is to merely realize this. To know the real. The movie playing on the screen, no matter how terribly nightmarish can still be enjoyed if only you know yourself as separate from the images on the screen. Godspeed you beautiful me.

>>16719538
I'm interested in the guy but my fear is that reading his work will make me want to kill myself. But if Escape from Evil has a solution then I guess it would be best to start there.

>>16718768
What do you mean?
>Thus, since humanity has a dualistic nature consisting of a physical self and a symbolic self, we are able to transcend the dilemma of mortality through heroism, by focusing our attention mainly on our symbolic selves.

>>16719459
I can't find the exact video but is it something like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO6ljjYYi5Q
https://time.com/5520558/artificial-intelligence-racial-gender-bias/

They are saying it's raycis and sexist cause face recognition algorithms prioritize white people and male because that's what they train the AI on. It's not like AI has intelligence of its own and decides nigger bad it's more like umm us black folk also deserve to have our pictures used and stored in a database forever fucking cis men
These people are fucking retarded and I hope AI replaces us as fast as possible.

>>16718954
Surely I'm not the only one here who has no fear of my mortality? I don't get this at all. My fear of death is nothing more than the fact that I'd rather get to keep living. Knowing I'm gonna die one day doesn't cause me any distress that I feel a need to distract myself from, like you're saying. I forget about my mortality because I don't give a fuck, not because I'm hiding from it.

>>16719573
Fuck yes, this is a what a real whitepill is. If everyone in the world understood this, there would be world peace. And maybe everything would finally come to stand still.

>>16719585
It was a Nature article. What I mean though is stuff like algorithms telling store owners which products they have to lock up because of high risk of theft, and it will be the black version of a product while the white version isn't locked up. Then someone comes along and sees the two versions next to each other and it looks obviously like racism to them, because it basically implicitly is.

>>16719594
It's from the wiki article on Denial of Death. I haven't read the book, but it appears to be only the beginning of Becker's argument.
>Becker argues that the arbitrariness of human-invented immortality projects makes them naturally prone to conflict. When one immortality project conflicts with another, it is essentially an accusation of 'wrongness of life', and so sets the context for both aggressive and defensive behavior. Each party will want to prove its belief system is superior, a better way of life. Thus these immortality projects are considered a fundamental driver of human conflict, such as in wars, bigotry, genocide, and racism.
To me it seems like the guy put into words a tremendous insight into the human condition, then went beyond that and in doing so created a lot more confusion.

>>16719597
I think AI will one day put an end to the race thing for good.
"Racism is true" is a way to interpret those numbers in the algorithm if all you take into account is the color of the skin. Because that's basically what racism does, you see a skin color instead of a myriad of other issues that also exist at play there. Some of those issues is better not to even acknowledge because they come too close to your immortal ideals.
This is only racist if your mind is programmed to see it one way or the other, but the computer is just running a face recognition software, it's not a 4chan shitposter screaming NIGGER SPOTTED LOCK DOWN LOCK DOWN.
A computer without an identity will work through literally all the variables and will finally give us the final solution one day.

>>16719438
Thank you for elaborating

>>16719565
Universal sets don't exist in ZF Theory. This is just human cope. Scientific epistemology is terribly limiting. It is only concerned with reproducible experiments, that is, shared experiences where who is experiencing is irrelevant. As long as the experience is the same the ones experiencing can be as unlike each other as fancied. This makes introspection irrelevant. The observer observing itself is the purest form of subjective experience and by definition it is outside the scope of scientific epistemology. _You_ are not a reproducible excitement. _You_ are not plagiarisable literature. _You_ are no becoming, but pure being. Know that only courage and strength can give you what you want. Godspeed you beautiful me.

>>16719573
That's not a solution but a pathology.

>>16719673
That's an opinion that depends on your attitude.

>>16719633
It's a matter of correlation, but I have a feeling you know that. Probably sounds like a copout on my part but we are off topic in this thread, it's about Denial of Death not race.

>>16719682
What else is the purpose of heroism then?

>>16719024
>it’s another “neurotic loser ramblings thinly veiled as intellectualism” episode
Tired of this meme

>>16719688
What do you mean? What else than what, being pathological?

>>16719685
Read the book friend, it's also about race.

>>16719632
This is just condensed Leopardi with a little bit of Heidegger on top. Girard is more interesting and relevant on conflict imo

>>16719716
being an immorality project. calling that line a pathology is a pessimistic perspective.

>>16719736
redpill me on Girard

I'm convinced that the majority of authors, philosopher, and the majority of people on this board, are legitimately low IQ and incredibly overestimate their own intelligence.

In fact, I would even be so bold to say that I'm smarter than they are.

Leaving this here. I may come back at a later stage with concrete evidence proving this (if my evidence can even be comprehended by you people, or even by the vast majority of so-called intellectuals out there).

>>16719024
>a tidal wave washes over a quarter of a million in the Indian Ocean
umm bros wasn't this book written in the 70s? how did this kike know about the boxing day tsunami

>>16719741
Yeah it's a pessimistic perspective, that's why I said it being a pathology depends on your attitude.
I didn't say heroism is not an immortality project. I disagree with what I understand Becker's premise to be, that it's the source of human conflict and is therefore insufficient as a solution to the reality of death.

>>16719770
go fuck yourself redditor
leave and never come back

>>16719700
>I'm fed and comfortable so everyone and everything else must be too

me too

>>16719122
>>16719133
sounds like this guy had a case of the mondays

>>16719790
The Jews have a little Dreidel-shaped machine they stick in the ocean to cause tsunamis, it spins and spins until the Federal Reserve print exactly 6 million shekels and enter it into the Dreidel's interior forge whereupon it combusts in an unbelievably violent manner known only to arcane Qaballistic Physics

>>16719842

History should be our immorality project, I thought Hegel already dealt with this issue (though on somewhat different terms)

>>16719794
>that it's the source of human conflict and is therefore insufficient as a solution to the reality of death.
retard, at least skim through the book.
heroism isn't the only thing.

>>16719880
>>16719122
here's your history bro

>>16719897
Yes and? Violence is a creative process, sometimes.

>>16719913
Creative process, yeah the process of total planetary annihilation. Well that's beautiful.

>>16719024
>and then excreting with foul stench and gasses residue.
NOOOO NOT THE STINKY POOPIE FARTS !!! ITSSO EVIL THE WORLD IS SO FUCKT UPP !!!DONT TURN ME INTO POOPIES AND SMELLY BRAPS NOOO!!!!!!!!!

>>16719229
Which "three characteristics" are you speaking of?

>>16719897
Also De Maistre is wrong on the degree to which human history and the natural world is the way he describes, while omnipresent entropy is in human history, periods of reconstruction and creation are just as common.

>>16719024
The world is like a big poopie toilet shit, with the stinkiest dump that ever was pooped into it(the toilet) , not to mention all the FOUL SHARTY FARTS. Its simple, life is like being chewed up by teeth (ouchie!) and then POOPED OUT !!!!!

>>16719929
see
>>16719952
There is no annihilation without reconstruction

>>16719935
NOT THE BLOOD AND POOPPP!!PLEASEA ANYTHING BUT THE BLOOD AND POOOP!!! THE EVIL SHARTS ITS DRIVING MY CRAZY IDONT WANNA DIE AND BECOME DIHARREAAAA STINKY POOP PLSSSS NOOOOO AAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

>>16718720
I couldn't have been more disappointed by this book. I love the thesis, I was thrilled with the prospect of a full book arguing it competently.

But it's not that. It's a long long essay comparing a psychoanalysts pontification with a philosopher's pontification, as if the two agreeing means anything at all.
Only made it about halfway through but the logic about childhood trauma and casual classing of personality types horrified me in its thinness and trivial falseness. Godawful. Does anything make this case WELL?

>>16719952
while entropy is omnipresent*

>>16719981
Yes see >>16719148
Read the essay The Last Messiah

https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah

>>16719981
Maybe Zappfe, maybe The Worm at the Core, but I haven't read that one.
Maybe these documentaries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK4ztZ4tzQY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PudZNM276CY

>>16719952
>>16719968
Now I can see your point.
Can you elaborate this?

>>16719122
W-w-wait.....y-y-ou mean....l-l-ife is just...... j-j-ust POOP??? ITSBLOODAND POOPP??? THE WORLD IS COVREDERER IN STINKY POOPP AND BLOOOD NOOOO AAAAA ITSSO MENINGLESS NOO!!!! NOT THE DEATH !!!! ITS SO STINKY ACKCKKKK AAA ITS SO SMELLY DEAD POOPS NOOO NO MORE PLEAE!!! DONT BLACKPILL ME MORE IM NOT A POOPIE IMNOT POOP !!!! BLOOD AND POOOP ITS SOFUCKED UP AAAACRRGRGRGKK!!!!!

>>16719935
>>16719978
you kids are so tiresome

>>16719812
Way to miss the point retard kun, I’m not saying that he’s wrong, just that it’s the most basic bitch level pessimism imaginable. The passage we’re discussing ultimately amounts to
>nature is cruel and unfair
Wow, what a fucking revelation, can we get this guy another Pulitzer?

>>16719994
>>16719997
didn't expect to get quality recs so fast. Thanks bros, I'll check these out.

>>16720012
NOOO NOT POOP OF DEATH NOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAHHH IM DROOWNIG IN DIHARREAAA !!!!!!!!!

>>16720016
He won a Pulitzer for the book not for that passage retard

>>16719946
impermanence (aniccā), non-self (anattā) and unsatisfactoriness or suffering (duḥkha)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence

>>16720012
They're actually kind of a good example of the thesis of the book

>>16720004
Alas anon I doubt I am intelligent enough to do so properly, but I will try. I imagine what I was saying might have reminded some of Spengler, but my point isn't that there are cycles of civilization as Spengler would envision it, but rather than any an all periods of violence, while they may have caused human strife, where necessary in that contradictory social relations had to be "solved" (it isn't nearly as clean and simple as that, it's more a solution in the chemical sense of the word than like an ideal fix for an issue). Collapse is simply the resolution of contradictions, and whatever may come from that, the contradictions that had previously allowed only for a certain path forwards will have dissolved and further historical progress can be made. Mind you I don't mean progress as in the vapid liberal meaning of the word, but rather that our very relations to the material world and each other will become able to create new systems of meaning as a result. This isn't s unique or particularly sophisticated take but I am a brainlet so it's what I've been able to conjure up.

Is death (dying) going to be the scariest thing I will ever experience?

>>16720182
Maybe at first, but towards the end I bet it gets simply confusing.

>>16720182
some people who had near-death experiences report a tremendous feeling of peace

>>16718973
>death scary
>kys then
Negative IQ detected

>>16719240
Put a poet-philosopher in your list too
(Someone who actually did it)

>>16719240
Put a poet-philosopher in your list too
(Someone who actually did it)

>>16718720
Already refuted by the jolly heretic.

>>16719286
>Our AI programs are consistently racist and sexist because they too notice differences
Based AI

>>16719122
Was he a gnostic?

>>16719240
I find solace in knowing that Zapffe, despite writing something so depressing and truly soul-crushing, seemed to live a happy and fullfilling life into old age. He liked to climb mountains and I like to imagine he was happy while doing that and thinking about his wife waiting at home.
I know Cioran also lived a long life, but he strikes me as more bitter than Zapffe

>>16720182
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nmLp_u8_luc

>>16719212
hard relate