/lit/ - Literature

>>16857133
Go back to Facebook you fucking retard. Jesus.

>>16857186
Look beyond the reddit prose and try to argue something.

>>16857133
It seems fairly true. Like trying to think of nothing. I'm sure if we dove in very critically we could find some flaws those.

>>16857133
>Unrefutable

Whew lad.

>>16857133
Reminds of a bit in DFW's This is Water.

>>16857133
seems like he's just saying that your perspective frames your experience, which is of course true. he's correct that desire creates negative feelings because you're yearning for something that you cannot obtain, but that being said I don't think the cessation of desire is as easy as just 'accepting a negative experience'.

>>16857133
sounds like a question for psychologists, not pseudointellectual not-philosophers.

>>16857307
I am esl and brainlet, hence my post.

>>16857133
It's true.

Chasing dreams means chasing something that cannot be caught.

>>16857458
>we live in a society

>>16857133

Getting what you want is the worse possible thing that could happen to you. Material happiness is a category for slaves and suckers.

Watts is based in spite of being loved by pseuds and midwits.

It's only true if your desires are extremely strong and destructive, but that is obvious.
>wanting a positive experience is a negative experience
Not necessarily, especially if you have a reasonable expectation of achieving it. Rember when you were a child and it was the day before Christmas, you wanted it to be Christmas as soon as possible and get your presents, but was that really a negative experience? I would say it was a way more exciting day than an average boring day.
Even if it were a negative experience, the eventual feeling of success, and all the other benefits could make that temporary negative experience worthwile.

Also accepting a negative experience feels good, but you are still suffering. When you have a headache and you accept it, you feel better, but you would feel even better if you went to the pharmacy and got some medicine,

Hey anons, isn't this off Good old neon?

>>16857133
>Wanting positive experience is a negative experience
not always
>accepting negative experience is a positive experience.
not always

>>16857133
'Wanting more happiness' is a thing that everyone wants, but attaining it is another story. Happiness is a synthesis of work and fun, and if you can accomplish this then, yes, it is pseud babbling.

Only true for irrational desires.
Fucking retarded for spiritual ones.
It's called labor pain and midwifery for a reason.

>>16857133
>Good goy, be complacent and lazy!

>>16857133
Isn't this just a dumbed down secular version of Buddhism?

>>16858093
>>16858643
It seems like a bit of a cop-out just to say "Well sometimes yes but also sometimes no". Is that really all we can gleam from this? Is it just a nothing statement or is it actually possible to define concrete conditions under which the statement would be true or false?

>>16858128
>>16858643
It seems like a bit of a cop-out just to say "Well sometimes yes but also sometimes no". Is that really all we can gleam from this? Is it just a nothing statement or is it actually possible to define concrete conditions under which the statement would be true or false?

>>16858693
>>16858698

Whether something is positive or negative will always depend upon the specific circumstances. There is no way to give a definitive answer one way or the other. How someone experiences something is almost entirely subjective.

>>16857133
I like to think of it as moving the mountain to you (reducing desires) rather than moving yourself to the mountain (fulfilling far-off desires).

>>16857133
Refutable. Acceptance is a slow death. If everyone was like that we had no genius. Most people have to rely on acceptance though as pursuing something bigger will inevitably break them.

>>16857458
>the catching is all that matters

I remember being 12

>>16858675
this and its as pathetic as buddhism is
>don't try
>don't fight
>don't struggle
>give up
>nothing matters anyway

it's just nihlism with a different spin on it. The things we do in life matter, and there is joy in accomplishing things.

Making the world a better place for yourself and others in honorable work, and to do so requires you to fight, and struggle, and dream, and strive to win.

philosophies like this are thought up by losers whose resentment drives them to rationalize their failures as "not really failures at all" because "nothing really matters anyway so who cares if im pathetic."

I can tell you with 100% certainty that Alan Watt's wife/oneitis is getting fucked by a real man right now and Alan cries while he jerks off to the thought of it

>>16859100
>Alan jerks off
He has been dead for a long time

>>16859100
I think you pigeonholed Buddhism. Where does the religion say "don't try" (in the sense of don't try anything)? If that were the case, why did the Buddha bother to teach for the remaining 50 years of his life?

>>16857133
It's pseud babbling, with some small merit. The idea that actively searching for a positive experience is something inherently negative is retarded. If you go to the amusement park with your family or good friends, you're not going to be having a negative experience related to that at all. You're not going to crave the experience again, and if you do, the positive that comes out of it will vastly outweigh any negative (that is, having had a lifelong memory with those close to you vs. maybe wanting to have gone on the dropper one more time are completely incomparable).

Do you think people that read Aristotle to learn about virtuous ethics, then apply these to their life, are having a negative experience? No, of course not. This is where the "small merit" comes in. They're confusing the terms "positive experience" and "negative experience" with excess and lack, respectively. If you swap those, then it's ~almost~ correct. Seeking pleasure excessively will be a negative experience, but seeking the lack of it will also be a negative experience, unless you're doing it for some, say, spiritual reasons - in which case the fullfillment gotten from doing it will outweigh, vastly, the negative experience you get from the lack of pleasure.

I enjoy desiring that which I cannot attain. Checkmate, Watts.

>>16857133
There are certain cases where anticipation of a good experience is in and of itself a good experience and it’s possible to enjoy the desire itself rather than its fulfillment. Emotions are more complicated

>>16857133
This is why Jesus blessed the poor.

>>16859205
>why did the Buddha bother to teach for the remaining 50 years of his life

because he was a self aggrandizing asshole who loved the attention and didnt believe a fucking word he was saying

pic unrelated

This is why investing your time in doing/learning things you love is much better than doing those same things for money, status, fear, etc.

Like think about the successful YouTube channels. I bet that 90% of them started with a "I am going to share my stuff on this video platform for fun and see what happens" instead of a "I am gonna become rich and popular by being a YouTube creator". So, taking small risks just for fun seems like the correct mindset.

>>16857133
It depends on what the thing your pursuing is. admittedly "feeling better" is vague and if u define gratifying earthly lust as "feeling better" then sure, but to say spiritual growth in Jesus Christ can be classified under this is false. the pursuit of a destination can be the enjoyment of itself. "the reward was the moments you made along the way" is unironically true for alot of things

>>16857133
>wanting positive experience is a negative experience
>accepting negative experience is the REAL positive experience you want!

Same metaphysics

>>16857133
>When a midwit can't wrap his mind around a juxtaposition and rejects it outright rather than considering it

>>16857133
>imagine thinking this basic concept is 2deep4u and demands more than one reading
Normal people are fucking idiots

>>16857133
>Wanting too much is a bad thing, be content with what you do have.
>"OMFG THIS IS LIKE, A TOTAL MINDFUCK. DID I JUST WALK INTO THE HECKIN' TWILIGHT ZONE OR SOMETHING?!"

>>16857133
R3ddit moment

>>16859617
This but unironically.

>>16859617
Wanting too many funkopops isn't a bad thing bro. Wanting too many coffees from my local independent coffee shop is bad though, I can't stop shaking and I can't play smash on my switch man

>>16859100
watts did not say you should not pursue happiness: only that wanting it will cause you suffering.

>>16857133
woooah what a total mindfuck, this perfectly comprehensible and straightforward idea that a 12 year old could understand is really fucking me up wooooooah

Watts' stance boils down to "Schizos are never happy"
What a story, Mark!

>>16857133
I agree wholeheartedly with that passage. Our society teaches us to put forth this image of always being happy, which in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem emerges when you start believing that you should actually BE happy always, because the implication is that you should feel good when bad things are happening. The reality is that as long as we physically retain the mental mechanisms of unhappiness, feeling unhappy in response to negative stimuli will be an irrefutably rational response. To feel happy when you should feel unhappy is as far from reality as is feeling unhappy when you should feel happy. This is one of the fundamental components of mental illness in its most objective, culture-blind implementation: the misalignment of subjective experience with objective reality. What we should strive for in order to be actualized human beings is not to pursue happiness at all costs and in any context, but to allow space for both the good and the bad. By refusing the negative its space in your life, you attempt to refuse the negatives out in the world. Unfortunately, the world's evils won't just go away if you hide your head in the sand. You've got to look the negative in the eye and figure out what you can do about it—this is the evolutionary function of the response, after all.

This is conjecture, but I think the reason why we have such an epidemic of mental illness in developed societies vs. undeveloped (look it up, this is well established) is in the fact that our brains aren't equipped to deal with the negatives in modern society. Our brains today are essentially the exact same organs that they were four thousand years ago when we lived in 120-person, hunter-gatherer tribes. In that context, an unhappiness response would have much simpler, more concrete environmental factors, with a commensurately concrete action to correct. In the modern age we find ourselves born with our primitive brains into these enormous social structures with abstract problems and solutions which might be incomprehensibly large and complex, if a solution exists at all. If you were hungry 4000 years ago, you would move around and look for food. If there is no food, you're still hungry, but there is a concrete reason for it. Because of the immediacy of your connection to the problem at hand, you can do nothing but involve yourself in its solution and therefore have no impetus to disconnect yourself entirely from the reality of your predicament. I don't believe that's so in modern society. In a modern, developed country, we have mostly solved for the base of Maslow's pyramid, and now have the "luxury" of pursuing higher-order needs. For many, I don't believe this is actually a luxury at all, because it involves minor and major feats of abstraction, which a lot of people aren't capable of. I believe most of us would be better served by a lifestyle with a hell of a lot more immediacy.

>>16860772
No, it really doesn't. I hate these hot take shitposts.

>>16861359
Yes it really, really does. Anyone with any sense understands the concept of moderation and self-control. To not want something like food is just as maladaptive as wanting too much food.
Read Aristotle and stop trying to invalidate your own existence.

>>16857133
Is this Eckhart Tolle?

>>16860782
The complexity of our culture definitely causes me some psychological pain. One example of this are politics, when I am really thinking hard about the problem I realize that there are way too many variables to find any optimal solution, even if I had unlimited power I would not actually know what to do. I still feel obligated to think about those things, even if not thinking would make me happier.

>>16857133
Wanting happiness and striving for something is part of the human experience.
Think who are the people most revered in history, people who propelled humanity forward. What made them great? Their unrelenting struggle and desire to attain something that was in the realm of the impossible.