/lit/ - Literature

that no one thinks other than he who responds, and fails to listen to and heed that which is.

>>17206206
https://voca.ro/1ig6yC1v6RHW

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
https://youtu.be/Fzp7iCaWNvE
IIII''''',,,,,,MMMMMM RREEEEEEEEEEEECCCUUURRRRRRROOOONNNGGGG!!!
I''',,,,,,MMMMMMM LOOOOOOOOOVVVVIIIINGGGGGG!!!!!
I'''',,,,MMMMMMMMMMMMMMA FFFAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTIIINNGG@@!!!!!

Interesting fan fiction

>>17206206
brilliant. if the idea fills you with dread and sounds like hell, you're fucking up. should be a call to arms; make the change so the remainder of your life will be great, so that your entire distance isn't misery.
it inspires me immensely. it's basically a way of saying "this is the only life you get" but it communicates the weight of it so much more effectively and profoundly than anything I've heard. It's also far better than any other concept of an afterlife or reincarnation.

>>17206484
Good post. I agree. Do you embrace Nietzsche's "Amor Fati" ideal as well?

>>17206268
fúc u bro stfu

>>17206206
Its one of those thoughts that when understood intuitively will give you a massive sense of being jailed in time, like a prison you cannot escape even upon death.

I don't like it

>>17206761
This. It's also what makes me think it's the truth. The world is fucked up enough for it to be true.

The one thing that gets in the way is the fact that we can't help but think in linear time, but the concept of an infinite God without beginning or end or even the fact of an absolute beginning to the world (regardless of God) is just as non-intuitive.

>>17206206
BTFO by Derrida

>>17206206
It's not meant to be taken literally, and if it is it's just schizo nonsense.

when in true motion is zen enlightment.

when for forced is rapine.

when bought or sold is brand

>>17207290
In what way?

>>17207299
t. Last man

>>17206484
>if the idea fills you with dread and sounds like hell, you're fucking up
Imagine being born with chronic pain that is so bad you wish you were dead and can't even think straight most of the time. The eternal return is literal hell.

>>17207312
There is no metaphysical self or unified consciousness in Nietzsche nor hard determinism (contrary to certain narrow readings). You could just as well come back as something or someone else.

>>17206206
Abstract descriptions of things typically only discovered via the realm of science is the sign of a true genius

>>17207330
>he fell for the Nietzsche isn't determinist meme

When he refers to things being relative, he is meaning the human comprehension is limited to where you could never discover the answer and therefore you exist in a psuedo-relative situation given that you are always right and wrong. This is only on the human level. There is an objective reality, humans just lack access.

>>17206658
yes, completely. I often fantasize about if i could go back to when I was young with my current knowledge, what I would do differently, and while it's a great and powerful fantasy, it is never anything more than that. I didn't always, but I love my life, and I know that it is all that which happened before, all the mistakes and suffering and anguish and despair, that got me to where I am currently. And as my life goes on I'm sure more mistakes will be made and more suffering will be had, but this will not cause the despair I felt then, it won't make me hate life like it did in the past. And should some event come so much more horrible than I have experienced that it should produce that despair, or one stronger, I know that even if I don't appreciate it at the time, I will be privileged to experience something of such intensity, and to have experienced everything else before it.
I used to view myself as sisyphus, like my life was nothing but misfortune; it would be nice to punch my past self in the face and let him know what a fucking retard he is for resenting a life of nonstop excitement. My life is never boring, who could ask for more?

>>17206206
It was compelling when I first read it but now it doesn't mean anything to me. I feel like even if I end up a failure and my life turns out to be nothing but suffering and then I have to live that over and over again it still won't matter, if each time I forget I lived through it the last time and I'm not aware I'll live through it again it's basically the same thing as only living through it once. And I don't feel like i need to reduce the amount of suffering in my life as much as I possibly can because suffering is a part of life that you can't get rid of and it isn't necessarily horrible to have to go through it considering that while you are not suffering you don't feel or care about any of the suffering in the past.

>>17207330
Even so, why am I localized here and now, and through time as well? Even after general anesthetic I always come back to the same experiential localization. Eternal return really does, intuitively and without trying to be optimistic, seem like it would have to be true. I've actually tossed up in my head whether eternal return or reincarnation would be worse and I ended up deciding that I'd prefer eternal return, mainly because of all of the gore and cartel videos I've seen. I don't think this was what Nietzsche intended, but whatever.

>>17207432
M8 consciousness is just a tool to keep the ball rolling it has nothing to do with being special in the universe

Tbh the eternal recurrence is basically one of my shower thoughts baka senpai.

>>17207312
You're missing the point. The eternal return effectively is the reality of life; this is all it is, what you're given is what you will always get, and what you make of it is what you will always have made of it.
While chronic pain is an exceptional situation, it is not at all excluded from this philosophy. You're going to have chronic pain no matter what; are you going to become a pessimist and spend your life cursing the day you were born, or are you going to live as much of a life as you can not in spite of but with your condition?
Nietzsche himself was gravely ill for most his life and spent much of it bedridden. Nowhere does he say that all life is pleasurable and fun, but the suffering and ugliness are just as much a part of life as the joy and beauty.

>>17207501
>You're going to have chronic pain no matter what
No. Chronic pain is a medical condition that usually leads to young people begging to be euthanized (there was a US kid living with it who campaigned for legalized euthanasia until he eventually just killed himself illegally).
And you've misinterpreted what it explicitly means in favor of what you think it "effectively" means. He states quite clearly that it is the exact same life, over and over, it is not "approximate." There is the obvious problem of whether he meant it as a mere test of strength, literally, or both, but I don't think it's stated anywhere explicitly by him.

>Nowhere does he say that all life is pleasurable and fun
That's not what I'm arguing.

>>17207367
His views on will make it pretty clear that he didn't agree with either free will nor hard determinism, but rather opted for a mix of the two where something can be determined yet chaotic (I haven't read him in ages so I can't remember where the quote I'm thinking of is form exactly, maybe The Gay Science?). You could argue that it was just a thought experiment on his part rather than a belief, but it's pretty clear that he wasn't just referring to a subjective failure of knowledge that obscures determinism.

>>17207432
Spacial identity, while a very compelling logical approach overall (for example to the mind-body problem, clones, teleportation, etc.) nonetheless doesn't have to be a part of the Eternal Return in a "rigid" form. Let's not forget that Nietzsche was a philosopher of Becoming who didn't value metaphysical identity all that much.

Also, in your example you might be conflating phenomenological continuity (that you're the same person roughly when waking up from being unconscious) with spacial identity which doesn't even need consciousness in order to be true, but maybe I'm nitpicking.

>>17206206
Not great but not terrible. Not even memeing. Envisioning the concept gives me a sense of relief and makes me feel less bad about my life. All of the worst stuff has been completely out of my control (people dying) and the only thing I can say I did wrong wasn’t in my actions, just in the fact I wasn’t aloof or detached enough when I made my decisions.

>>17207523
Not the anon you replied to but I highly doubt Nietzsche meant it literally. It was a thought experiment meant to demonstrate his affirmation of life.

In essence: Accept the reality that you will live this same life, no matter how much you're suffering, over and over again. In this case, why would you resent the past and be stuck in endless self-pity? Your only other option is to not only accept it, but proudly embrace it and live your life from that point forward realizing this is the only way it will ever be. Hence a great man should not wish to change the past but rather wish that it were no other way - because it can't be and otherwise eternal recurrence would be absolute hell. Hence "amor fati"

>>17207630
So it's literally just a cope.

>>17207550
Anon he speaks in terms of humans he does not equate the human capacity for perception with absolute reality

>>17207359
He wasn't making a scientific claim as in suggesting literal reincarnation. It was an extreme premise meant to emphasize his views on life affirmation.

>>17207578
I'm not really sure exactly what the meaning is of those two terms, but it seems I referred to phenomenological continuity. Feel free to explain or elaborate.
>>17207630
Yeah, I understand all of that and mostly agree, but I'm referring to a far more baser problem of someone who, against all choice, has essentially lived a life of continuous, extreme pain, with barely any chance to even "will" at all, except essentially their own death in the hopes that they can at least have some rest from the torment.

>>17207637
Every philosophy is a cope, especially when you're dealing with suffering. But Nietzsche wanted a more aggressive approach to dealing with life as opposed to the passive approach of the weak-minded stoics, whom he heavily criticized.

>>17207523
why are you explaining chronic pain retard? and don't disingenuously say "usually", there's varying degrees to chronic pain
> He states quite clearly that it is the exact same life, over and over, it is not "approximate
yes. I never said otherwise.
>a mere test of strength
complete brainlet take
>That's not what I'm arguing.
You're arguing that an extreme outlier example (the worst of chronic pain) to disprove the idea in bad faith. Obviously it doesn't disprove anything, and I'm sure you know that, but I imagine you're expressing a want to justify your pessimistic defeatism.

>>17207722
I'm not sure that he's trying to find proof against the idea so much as showing how horrible it can be. And there are plenty of extreme examples, not just chronic pain. Especially today when the priority is to save everyone even if they can barely stay alive to begin with due to chronic illnesses.

>>17207722
>yes. I never said otherwise.
This is what you said in response to my assertion that ER was "literal hell": The eternal return effectively is the reality of life; this is all it is, what you're given is what you will always get, and what you make of it is what you will always have made of it.
You're trying to imply that it is somehow not literal hell by deflecting the pure posit of ER into a modified "effective" version.
>complete brainlet take
This is only the main basis of the idea. It's not the sole purpose.
>to disprove the idea in bad faith.
I don't really care whether the idea is "proven" or not, I'm just questioning its validity in various cases. Chronic pain, the more severe type, is just one example. When you said this:
>but the suffering and ugliness are just as much a part of life as the joy and beauty.
I'm asking: what about a life with no joy or beauty, and only severe pain, for eternity? The implicit assumption of course that you are not a masochist.

>>17207750
>how horrible it can be
"if the idea seems like hell, you're fucking up" very obviously doesn't apply to those extreme examples, such as severe chronic pain. The philosophy behind eternal return does, though. Regardless it's like hearing somebody say "everyone should walk a mile every day" and shrieking "NOT EVERYONE CAN WALK". Just annoying brainlet need to disagree and find an exception to an otherwise truthful maxim, which like I said I'm sure is a pathological need to justify their negativity.

>>17207819
Are thought experiments considered pathological negativity now? Settle down champ

>>17207812
>what about a life with no joy or beauty, and only severe pain, for eternity?
What about it? Yes, it is still life and yes it should be embraced just as the joy and beauty, however in such an extreme case it's improbable that they would, and I wouldn't blame them for it. I do not expect someone with extreme chronic pain to want to live, but if you were to say their life is bad or evil because it is only suffering I would say you're an idiot, and you will surely ascribe the same label when you next experience extreme pain.
You seem to think that embracing suffering means labelling it "good". It is not good, and it is not bad, in some cases it is so extreme that it drives people to suicide, in others it drives people to accomplish great things, and everything in between. It should be understood as it is, accepted, and embraced, so that when you are suffering you know it for what is is, and with that knowledge do what you can. If you're unable to overcome it and it kills you, so be it, but you didn't die out of cowardice.
>>17207876
i hate whattaboutism, especially when dealing with a topic as broad as "life" and how to approach it.

>>17207917
>Yes, it is still life and yes it should be embraced just as the joy and beauty
I disagree and think that life deprived of any joy and beauty (totally, this isn't to say that suffering should or could be eliminated in itself) should be terminated. And there, the difference in view is easily seen.
>but if you were to say their life is bad or evil because it is only suffering I would say you're an idiot
I'd say you're an idiot for believing the opposite. If hell existed and I pointed at it, would I be an idiot to call it bad or evil? Who knows if I'm correct, but I don't think it's fair to call someone an idiot for labelling something as it appears.

>>17207653
That doesnt debunk what I said

>>17207963
>If hell existed and I pointed at it, would I be an idiot to call it bad or evil?
pic is literally my face right now
if hell existed it would negate nietzsche's entire philosophy and affirm the objective existence of good and evil you fucking retard.
> should be terminated
Why should? I don't disagree that it should be able to be terminated on the basis of freedom of choice, but why ought life with only suffering be terminated? How can you justify the ought?

>>17207917
>suffering so bad you think of dying day in, day out, till the point you actually do it isn't "bad"
You don't believe that. You're just saying it because it's consistent with the argument you're making and you feel obligated to be consistent. But yes, a life of nothing but suffering is bad. You know that, I know that, everyone knows that. Philosophies about "taking the bad with the good" and "finding the good in little things" are very important and applicable in 99.999% of cases, but there are definitely people who were born suffering, entirely beyond their control, and will continue suffering until the day they die. And yes, that is bad.

>>17208023
>if hell existed it would negate nietzsche's entire philosophy and affirm the objective existence of good and evil you fucking retard.
You missed the point I was making. The hypothetical was merely a symbol to be transposed. You can replace "hell" with "the worst possible reality" if you desire, maybe then you won't short circuit.
>Why should?
Because the ought is implicit in the factual reality of pure suffering. Suffering is a normative term. Of course, I never suggested that suffering per se is grounds for pessimism or suicide.

>>17208021
I thought you implied Nietzsche was using abstract philosophy to discover some new scientific phenomenon. What were you trying to say then?

>>17208052
>You don't believe that. You're just saying it because it's consistent with the argument you're making and you feel obligated to be consistent.
I unironically do, fully and without a doubt.
You cannot explain to me why it is bad. It will be bad because it is suffering and because suffering is unpleasant and unwanted and that no good comes from it, to which I will say only in the purest, most total form of suffering, the non-existent, indescribable suffering found in fictions like hell can you say with honesty and assurance that it cannot beget "good", and your other reasonings are circular and without clear definition. This is how it goes every time.
This does not mean I enjoy that existence, but to say it is bad would be nothing but sophistry.
>>17208056
If all life was misery and pain and nobody alive wanted to live then yes I would say life was bad, but it isn't and your hypothetical is pointless because it has no basis in life. You clearly haven't read Nietzsche, the eternal return is a great hypothetical is because it affirms the truths of life. Your hypothetical negates them by creating nothing sensible or applicable to our existence. Basically "dude but what if everything was awful! wouldn't that suck? bet you wouldn't have such a positive attitude then huh?"
> Because the ought is implicit in the factual reality of pure suffering
You're completely dishonest. You know that my answer (people who only suffer should be able to die) is sensible and nothing to quarrel with, but you fucked up your wording and now you're stuck trying to prove that people who only suffer ought to die, which is obviously refuted by the very real possibility of someone who only suffers but wants to live.
This is why you should avoid oughts unless you're absolutely assured in your reasoning.

>>17208201
>This is why you should avoid oughts unless you're absolutely assured in your reasoning.
What? No, I am perfectly justified in stating that ought. I don't see how you think I'm dishonest. You haven't given me anything to warrant me changing my mind yet
> which is obviously refuted by the very real possibility of someone who only suffers but wants to live.
If they want to live, then clearly they are not suffering and there is joy there. Suffering is inherently subjective. The only gray area is with those who can't express their subjectivity, in which case we have to decide.
>If all life was misery and pain and nobody alive wanted to live then yes I would say life was bad, but it isn't and your hypothetical is pointless because it has no basis in life
It does have a basis in life, as we've just discussed. It's not ALL life, but it is some life. We can't address life as a whole, because that turns it into a meaningless abstraction, which I'm sure Nietzsche would not have supported anyway.

>>17208241
>If they want to live, then clearly they are not suffering and there is joy there.
how can you say this? What if there was a man who decided he would live to be 80, and lived the first 74 years of his life fully and developed a profound appreciation for it, before developing a chronic pain as terrible as any could be--but he still wanted to live until 80. Are you saying this is an impossibility? That the man must not be suffering? Or that he must die regardless? How does your ought apply?
> It does have a basis in life, as we've just discussed. It's not ALL life, but it is some life.
This is not your hypothetical. Your hypothetical is "if we lived in a reality where there was only profound suffering". If it isn't, then I can refute the alternative on the exact same basis as the other guy:
> only in the purest, most total form of suffering, the non-existent, indescribable suffering found in fictions like hell can you say with honesty and assurance that it cannot beget "good"
Only if all is suffering can there be no chance of good. Without that there is no way you can say without a doubt that suffering is bad, unless you are to lie or ignore this uncertainty.

>>17206206
In some sense, eternal recurrence is probably true. We have evolved to experience time as something that flows from past-present-future and categorize it as such, but in reality it is probably more like it is just sitting there, all time "at once". Our language can't really capture the concept, because it is based on our experience of temporality.

>>17208201
>You cannot explain to me why it is bad
Because you've never come even close to experiencing the situation we're describing. I have gone through months where I was in so much pain and discomfort, I got no pleasure from anything. I couldn't enjoy anything because the pain made nothing enjoyable. I couldn't enjoy a conversation, or a meal, or a movie, or a book, or anything. The best days were neutral, where nothing particularly bad happened, but nothing good either.

You seem to also be missing the crux of the issue. The problem isn't that suffering is unbearable, it's that lack of joy or any positive emotions is unbearable. A completely flat existence would be just as bad -- but a completely flat existence could be fixed, because you could find something to bring you joy. However, if you have physical pain so bad that it is always in your head, you are always aware of it, there is no way to get any pleasure out of anything whatsoever.

>>17207617
You completely misunderstood.

>>17206206
It's not meant to be taken literally. It's a device for getting people to take their lives seriously.

>>17208872
>it is just sitting there, all time "at once"
You can think of it that way if you choose, but even if that is a potentially accurate way of viewing it, it doesn't mean anything -- the reason the idea is appealing is because now you can view time spatially, like we do with the first 3 dimensions -- eg you can visualize a world with 2 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension the same as 3 spatial dimensions. But the thing spatial dimensions provide us is the ability to see and move freely. We can walk forward or back, and we can see forward and back (because light can travel forward and back). With time, it is not so -- we cannot see forward, for sure, and back, we can /arguably/ see a very small amount of time back (basically, however much time it takes light to travel between you and the object you are seeing), but not in any meaningful sense -- an object is either close in which case the time it takes light to travel is imperceptible, or incredibly far away, like a star, in which case we don't have nearly the detail necessary to see anything useful in the past (beyond astronomical inquiry). And we can move forward in time, but not backwards, and only at a fixed rate.

So even if time exists "all at once", that doesn't actually provide the benefits one immediately imagines when they picture time spread out spatially.

It's also worth noting that because of quantum physics, it might not be possible to predict the future, even with 100% complete data (assuming electron position is actually truly random and not explicable in some other way), which would completely disprove the "all at once" idea.

>>17208179
You can abstractly and accidently uncover a truth, thereby describing a truth without the intention of doing so. In many ways this makes it more legitimate.

>>17208915
Nietzsche was perhaps using it as a device, even though he is very explicit and explains the concept in literal terms.

But regardless of what Nietzsche thought, it may be a closer description of reality than our subjective experience of time.

It very much throws a wrench into the Camus claim about the only philosophical question being suicide. Suicide wouldn't be a way out, if death just ends our subjective temporal experience, which is biased in the sense that it views things which have passed as no longer existing. But it might be the case that the past exists equally as much as the present and that which has not yet happened.

>>17208942
what benefit are you talking about? it doesn't matter if it provides any benefit, my entire point is that our subjective experience of time may not accurately reflect reality. And a deterministic universe isn't required either, since you can have a branching multiverse that is all equally real.

>>17209038
>benefits
By benefits, I mean "changing how you think about it". The version of time as "all at once" has absolutely no practical consequences compared to happening linearly. If there are no practical consequences, then there's absolutely no reason to view it the way you're describing. Claiming that it might be the "actual" reality is meaningless, because, as I pointed out, the version of "all at once" that you described is identical to literally except insofar as how we as humans think about it -- there is no difference in objective reality between those two ways of viewing it.

But as my last paragraph points out, it most likely actually inaccurate to view time the way you described, because it would imply that the future is somehow predetermined, which it couldn't be if it were dependent on truly random processes.

>>17209077
>If there are no practical consequences, then there's absolutely no reason to view it the way you're describing.

you are making a value judgement that you haven't justified. whether or not there are practical consequences to viewing things differently is completely irrelevant to the nature of reality.

and you didn't read my last point, you don't need a deterministic universe. it might be a branching multiverse where each thread has the same ontological weight.

>>17208882
>Because you've never come even close to experiencing the situation we're describing. I have gone through months where I was in so much pain and discomfort, I got no pleasure from anything. I couldn't enjoy anything because the pain made nothing enjoyable. I couldn't enjoy a conversation, or a meal, or a movie, or a book, or anything. The best days were neutral, where nothing particularly bad happened, but nothing good either.
Nobody is debating how painful and miserable and horrifying suffering can be, we're discussing wether or not it's bad.
This is not a philosophical argument, it's an account of an individual experience and it seems like you're just attempting an appeal to emotion. Hume says all philosophical reasoning must be a combination of experience and pure reason. You aren't even attempting to reason, you cannot even explain why suffering is bad; your argument is that "it brings no pleasure" which is evident and inherent to suffering and proves nothing. Nietzsche wasn't a hedonist and neither am I.
>However, if you have physical pain so bad that it is always in your head, you are always aware of it, there is no way to get any pleasure out of anything whatsoever.
You haven't read Nietzsche, this has become very clear, and while it's a complete waste of time to argue when you're still locked into (hedonist) moralistic objectivity but I'm bored.
Pleasure=/=good and pain=/=bad.
The suffering of someone, including the complete absence of any pleasure, any comfort, any hope, the most unbearable suffering and lack of joy and positive emotions, can still beget "good", something beneficial can come out of that situation. This does not mean we have to like this suffering, that we should smile and rejoice knowing that a man has spent his life in such pain, but to paint it with the brush of "bad/evil" is to lie, and will lead you down a path of life denial that ends in nihilism.
It seems I was right that you responded to express your defeatism. You should really read Nietzsche, I was arguing with you under the assumption that you had but you're never going to be able to grasp this stuff unless you read it from him first. Transcending these moral values of good/evil is a primary principle.

>>17209136
What I mean is, there's no reason to think that there is an objective reality that depends on how you view it. The two ways of viewing it, all at once or linear, are just things humans use to think about reality. But the underlying thing is neither linear nor all-at-once. It's just reality.

>>17209276
right, but my original point was that the "all-at-once" view may be closer to reality than the commonsense linear view

I do not personally "believe" the all at once view, but I think we give too much weight to our subjective experience of time. So, I would disagree that there is no practical consequence to which view you take. The commonplace linear view devalues the past, whereas the "all-at-once" view gives past, present, and future equal ontological value. Something isn't "gone" because it is in the past. If someone had lost a loved one, for example, they might have a very different outlook depending on which view they leaned towards. The good times with their loved one are "over", or the good times with their loved one exists just as much as the present moment, even though their subjective experience of it is over.

>>17209157
I'm saying that your philosophical argument is entirely detached from reality. You're just redefining "good" and "bad", or rather, undefining, because you're removing their meaning altogether by saying nothing can be good or bad.
>This does not mean we have to like this suffering, that we should smile and rejoice knowing that a man has spent his life in such pain, but to paint it with the brush of "bad/evil" is to lie
See, you're just messing around with definitions. This is why no one likes philosophy except a small number of semanticists who get off on technicalities based on rules they themselves invented. I'm not going to use adjectives anymore because you are just going to twist them. This is all I'm saying: There are cases where a human would be better off not existing or ever having existed than existing. Everything else you're trying to discuss is pointless and masturbatory, as it has absolutely no bearing on human life.

>>17209343
>may be closer to reality
That's what you're not getting. Neither one can be "closer" to reality. They are just ways of thinking about it. Reality is just the series of properties the thing has. Both linear and all-at-once ways of viewing it reflect all the properties the reality has, so they are accurate. Everything else is how we choose to visualize it as humans.

The point of the stuff here >>17208942 was to show that a linear visualization is just as accurate as an all-at-once visualization, since none of the objective properties of the reality are better represented by the all-at-once visualization than linear.

>>17209391
>Both linear and all-at-once ways of viewing it reflect all the properties the reality has, so they are accurate. Everything else is how we choose to visualize it as humans.
Well I simply disagree. If there is an objective reality separate from our experience, than some ways of thinking about it will be more accurate than others, even if they both do a good job of describing its properties.

>>17209460
In what ways do you think all-at-once better reflects reality?

>>17206206
“The Gay Scientist” or Frederick Niche’s concept of the eternal piss current can be described as so. The current scoured the concept of eternity is not only direct but also to our understanding of the nature of that radical urine. We understand from the plane of the circle or urine happen rivers empty future description and urine. Always generate new, allows urine from the kidney to live among us continually urinate, which allows the creation of novelty.

>>17209460
>>17209469
Keeping in mind of course that "at once" already is a reference to our human view of time as linear.

>>17209357
Why are you in this thread if you can't into philosophy?
I'm not "twisting" anything, you're using vague, meaningless words that you yourself are unable to define. You haven't been able to tell me why suffering is bad; your answer is "suffering is bad because it's bad to suffer".
Don't be mad because you're a brainlet. You know you don't understand the words you're saying, you believe your argument because it's what you've believed your whole life and now you're coping with the knowledge that you might be wrong and might have spent your whole life believing nonsense because you didn't care to actually try to understand it.
> This is all I'm saying: There are cases where a human would be better off not existing or ever having existed than existing.
kek look through the thread and see the amount of times you've summarized "all that you're saying" and how its changed. I never argued against that, I even said that people should be able to die if they want. I argued first against your dumb whataboutism, then your supposition that suffering is bad, then your assertion that suffering people ought to die.
> Everything else you're trying to discuss is pointless and masturbatory, as it has absolutely no bearing on human life.
Absolutely rich. Nietzsche's philosophy is as practically applicable to human life as they come, and will completely change your life if you try to understand it. But you're stubborn and dull, as evidenced by the fact that you actually tried to argue that suffering people ought to die instead of just admitting that it should be their choice and there may be suffering people who don't want to die, which any sensible person would agree with.
You don't want to have your mind changed, you only want to prove that your defeatist, pessimistic worldview is the correct one because there's comfort in a lack of agency. You didn't come into this thread to argue about ideas, you came here to cope.

>>17209357
Mmm, not anon. Existing and not existing isn't within the realm of choice. Now, if you are an antinatalist the choice falls onto the progenitors, though indirectly, and is still removed from the individual's existence. My point is: Ontological arguments posing questions to things that aren't within the scope of action and decision are devoid of meaning. This isn't to say they can't be the objects of our musings, only that we have a well-defined endpoint from the onset and that we needn't be applying our time to further examination.
>There are cases where a human would be better off not existing or ever having existed than existing.
I suppose -- In retrospect. But existence can't be measured back-to-front because we would be undermining the two fixed, arbitrary, of course, properties of stationary beings: potential in the face of the infinite, and holding onto hope when the odds are stacked against you. These are important enough, I think, to offset a linear prognosis of life, rather than a hindsighted, albeit coherent, grim outlook of the big picture.
>There are cases where a human would be better off not existing or ever having existed than existing.
And another thing, perhaps this is a fair assessment with regard to happiness vs. suffering, but I think life is much more than that; total experience, good or bad, and having the ability to see through Nature's eyes is enough for me. If you want to measure your existence through degrees of excitation you need only heed Solon's words to the Lydian king Croesus and at the time of your expiration be able to look back and say "I am a happy man and the people will say 'he was a happy man'"

>>17209534
>You haven't been able to tell me why suffering is bad
Because I don't care if it's "bad" in the terms you're using or not. In the terms a normal human uses, if something is worse than not existing, it is "bad". That's why I called it "bad". However, I've since learned that something being worse than not existing is not necessarily "bad" using philosophical terms, so I stopped saying it is "bad". I said, "There are cases where a human would be better off not existing". I'm sorry you don't speak English.

>>17206484
What if you just don’t care. I have read his illustration several times and I feel nothing. No sense of dread or inescapable consequence, not even joy. My life is a mess, and I want to be better but I can’t never accomplish anything beyond arousing a feeling of misery.

>>17209482
Yes, and I had made that clear in my original post on the topic that it is difficult for language to describe it.

It may better reflect reality if it gave equal ontological value to past, present, and future. Compared to the commonsense linear view which devalues the past (and the future to some extent), overvaluing the present. I doubt that the past stops existing after our subjective experience of it, although of course I don't know the objective nature of reality. And the linear view of time biases our attitude towards the past in this way, only giving the past significance insomuch as it has shaped the present.

Again, I don't know the objective nature of reality, I am just putting forward the idea that the "all-at-once" view may be a better way of framing it, since it doesn't introduce the biases that the linear view does.

>>17206206
I think the fundamental aspect of the idea is total nonsense. An infinity of time does not imply a repetition of any phenomenon, just as the infinite series of positive integers does not contain a single duplicate. So taking it as a serious metaphysical proposition is absurd, and anyone who does so should be referred to Kant immediately.

As for its self-help use in making you think about joy in your moment-to-moment life, this to me seems like folly and cope. Yes, "joy wants eternity," but so too does "suffering want oblivion," and in the end suffering gets what it wants, while joy loses everything it loves. Nietzsche was smart enough to have been a realist, but he couldnt handle it; he had to invent an artifice in which he could go on living, and in the end the contradictions drove him mad.

>>17209578
You don't get it. I'm not changing the definition of bad. I am highlighting that its definition is obscure, and your supposed "normal human" use of it is completely without meaning. You don't understand it. You use the word because it has an intuitive feeling to you, but you cannot define it because at its best it's just "I dislike".
>worse than not existing
I want to ask you how you can justify this but I know you won't be able to, so I'll just leave it out there to give your cognitive dissonance something to play with.
Don't believe things you don't understand. Fictions of good and evil are dangerous.

>>17209592
Hmm. But I don't see how your view changes whether or not the past continues to exist. In a "flat" view (going to use that instead of "all at once"), any moment in the past still exists as exactly one point, the same as it would in a linear view. Your objection is that in a linear view, the present is the only thing that matters -- but that's because the present is the point we are experiencing in time. On a flat view, at t=10 there is a snapshot of a moment in time. At t=20 there is another snapshot of a moment in time. For the snapshot at t=10, t=20 is the future. For t=20, t=10 is the past. So neither point considers the other to be real, given equal weight to itself, since neither is the present.

No matter how you view it, linear or flat, each moment in time only gets its one moment, and no other moment gives equal weight to any other moment. So I don't see what a flat view gains us here.

>>17209629
>An infinity of time does not imply a repetition of any phenomenon
I'm not sure that Nietzsche believed that infinity alone caused repetition. I think it's his combination of circularity and infinity that implies repetition.

Also, the "self-help" part you're describing might not be doing it justice. It's not just a matter of joy, that's more his source of inspiration. If anything it's more an exercise in self-consistency, which brings him closer to many other philosophers since he's basically asking us to act in such a way that we would do so for all eternity. It's not quite the categorical imperative, but it involves a kind of personal universality I suppose.

>>17209686
I could make an attempt to define what I mean by "bad", but I suspect my definition is so similar to almost every other human I interact with that I find it unnecessary. I don't enjoy these sorts of philosophical arguments because they spend so much time dwelling on definitions and absolutely no time on anything meaningful. That is why I stopped using the word "bad", which you are correct, is vague, and just said what I wanted to say. The only reason I participated in this discussion was because you interjected your own masturbatory use of technical definitions here >>17207917 in response to someone who was clearly looking to discuss something much more meaningful and not get into a semantic argument with an autist. The point that was being made is that there are existences that are worse than non-existence. It is a necessary outcome in the end for all of us, anyway, so if the only thing left to a person is pain and suffering and no joy or pleasure or even the ability to help others or do good in the world and absolutely no positive feelings can come into them and no positive effects can flow out of them, then yes, death sooner is preferable to continuing to exist for no benefit and only experiencing suffering until you meet your natural end.

>>17209717
the flat view at least recognizes that all of the moments have ontological equality. The past exists just as much as the present and future.

Whereas the linear view sees the past existing only insomuch as it has shaped the present.

Perhaps a thought experiment could illustrate the difference. Imagine that there was an advanced civilization the existed on the earth 100 million years ago. They had a jolly time, but for whatever reason, it all collapsed, no trace of them survived, and they had no lasting impact on the earth. To the linear view, since it is "over" and nothing "came of it", it is given less ontological weight, and may as well had never even happened. Whereas the flat view would recognize that yes, it may be over and nothing of it lasted until now, but that civilization was just as real as our own.

>>17209820
>but that civilization was just as real as our own.
Sorry, I should have said "but that civilization IS just as real as our own."

>>17206206
>fuck woman once in your life
>have sex an infinite amount of times because of eternal return
u man bro?

Can anyone explain what it is to me in a simple way? I really like this song

https://youtu.be/8BqEfHBzIFg

And I know it's supposed to be based on this but I don't read philosophy and I'm not gonna just pick up a random Nietzsche book without any background and hope to understand it just to understand this song.

>>17209754
I'm almost certain I remember reading somewhere, maybe Kaufmann, that Nietzsche came to the idea of repetition from the idea that time, being infinite, must sooner or later (and endlessly) come to the same state again and again. Circularity then is his metaphor for this notion. But I disagree with that notion because an infinite series need not ever take on the same shape. Some do, some do not.

>>17206206
Accurate to reality in some sense and also the best thought experiment to contend with fatalistic determinism and the nihilism that comes with it.

>>17209932
Based

>>17210182
I find it hard to make up my mind on that. If you assume that there are infinite universes, it would probably be true I guess. I think it is easier to conceptualize eternal recurrence from the perspective that time isn’t real and that we at any given moment occupy a single static instant that makes up the unchanging 4+ dimensional sculpture that is the universe. If each moment is eternal, we have been here forever and will be here forever, so while it is neither recurring forward or backward, the linearity of our experience here would make the result more or less what Nietzsche described.

>>17209932
this should unironically be a new /lit/ banner

>>17206206
>eternal recurrence
Makes sense to me, though you only just brought it to my attention. The thing is it defeats the arguments for the necessity of a eternal God. Why couldn't the world itself been eternal.

>>17210279
you can always go one step farther back though. why is there something rather than nothing? and then fill that gap with a god.

>>17209820
I literally just responded to this point. It's relative -- even on the flat view, it's only flat if you look at it from the outside. The same is true of a linear view -- if there were a way to get outside time and look at the linear view, it'd be the same. There's no way with either or flat view, because we are always inevitable in a single moment -- in the flat view, you are not able to be observer, because you are present only in some number of points on the view, you cannot exist outside it.

>>17206484
If you believe the idea the only logical thing to do is to kill yourself.

>>17209629
>>17210182
Not him but given infinite time and a finite amount of matter and therefore possible interactions in the universe, the concept is scientifically possible.

>>17206206
Even if the universe somehow repeats itself like a pendulum between big bang and big crunch or whatever, why would that be still you experiencing it? If the consciousness is after the bodily formation, then it would just be another self, not you. It is rather problematic to read it in this way then. I think Neetch thought it like a way to affirm your actions to live in the best possible way, in that regard it is more like self help cope.

However what bothers my mind is that, if time and space is infinite, then the probability that this moment exists would be zero. Yet it does. Human mind cannot comprehend these concepts of infinity. So I would say it is totally pointless to dwell on these things

>>17210433
>If the consciousness is after the bodily formation, then it would just be another self, not you
That's where the vitalist part comes in I think. It assumes some kind of life inherent in matter regardless of whether it's organic or not. The weird part is that it's not necessarily panpsychism, it can be unconscious life up to a certain level of complexity. I guess Nietzsche would presuppose some kind of identity at that level.

>>17210323
>if there were a way to get outside time and look at the linear view, it'd be the same [as the the flat view]
That is exactly the point. The flat view is supposed to be a more accurate representation of reality because it is an approximation of "stepping back" and seeing time from outside of the linear experience.

>>17207523
Sucks for the guy but the thought of suicide being illegal is kind of funny

>>17210317
>why is there something rather than nothing?
There was an interesting take in Bergson about this. He said something along the lines of the fact that this "fundamental question of philosophy" presupposes that something that is not in experience or is there as abstraction (nothingness) must precede Being (which is experienced in some sense by mere tautology) even though you could just as well presuppose that Being is eternal rather than nothingness.

>>17208896
I feel like this whole fucking board is people waiting around for someone to post so they can act like they know better. Why dont you post your thesis on Eternal Recurrence if your so fucking smart?

>>17206206
>Before Nietzsche, personal immortality was no more than a blundering hope, a hazy plan. Nietzsche postulates it as a duty and gives it all the ghastly lucidity of insomnia. "Waking, by reason of their continual cares, fears, sorrows, dry brains," (I read in Robert Burton's antique treatise) "is a symptom that much crucifies melancholy men." We are told that Nietzsche endured this crucifixion and had to seek deliverance in the bitterness of chloral hydrate. Nietzsche wanted to be Walt Whitman; he wanted to fall minutely in love with his destiny. He adopted a heroic method: he disin terred the intolerable Greek hypothesis of eternal repetition, and he con trived to make this mental nightmare an occasion for jubilation. He sought out the most horrible idea in the universe and offered it up to mankind's delectation. The languid optimist often imagines himself to be a Nietz schean; Nietzsche confronts him with the circles of the eternal recurrence and spits him out of his mouth.
Nietzsche became madman when he presented this idea. At the end of his life he became what once he hated the most.

>>17210534
But neither is more objectively correct. They are two (human) ways of looking at exactly the same thing. The thing itself is equally both, since they are the same. Are you going to the East or from the West? The only difference is the way we're talking and thinking about it. The thing itself is the same.

>>17209932
>die a virgin
>never have sex for eternity because of eternal return

>>17210550
4chan is just for shit posting and occasionally engage in some smart discussion although not too deeply. Some subreddits might be better for this, it depends if they suffer from the hivemind phenomenon over there

>>17210897
I can't experience objective reality and neither can you. So you can't make that assessment.
The advantage of the flat view is that it attempts to eliminate some of the subjective biases in our linear experience of time. I don't know if it more accurately reflects how reality is. I'm just explaining that this is the way in which it could, depending on what objective reality is.

Of course objective reality is the same no matter how we choose to describe it. But one way of describing it is loaded with subjective bias, and the other way is attempting to correct for that. They are two DIFFERENT ways of describing it.

If one blind man feels an elephant's leg and describes it as a tree trunk, while another blind man feels an elephant's leg and describes it as an elephants leg- well, one of them was more accurate, even if neither will ever know the objective reality of what it was that they felt.

>>17206206
It's what the overman wants most of all, and what the last man wants least of all. Not much else to say.

>>17210987
Go back

>>17211101
What does overman do? I mean on a daily basis.

>>17211154
What he wants, which is to create the world in his own image.

>>17211154
whatever she wants

>>17209761
why are you so adamant about proving your coping belief? You haven't read the philosopher at hand, and you've done nothing to further the discussion, just made a handful of statements as if there was some identifiable truth in any of them (there wasn't) and then refused to attempt to justify them. This is an embarrassing level of seething brainletism.
This post is just you repeating yet again your same meaningless assertions. You can lie to yourself about "masturbatory use of technical defintions" (fucking lmao, read the post and ask yourself which technical definitions you're talking about) but the fact of the matter is you haven't been able to go beyond your original statements, not even an inch, to explain them. This is not because your statements are so true and so evidently true that they cannot be explained, it's because you don't understand them.
This is not an issue of "philosophy is too technical waaaa" it's the basic foundation for debate: make a claim and support it.
Seriously dude this is embarrassing, I just knocked out for a few hours and woke up to see that you still replied. What a retarded waste of time for you, lying to no one but yourself on an anonymous forum.

On the surface it appears like a compelling argument but it is rendered rather pointless just like the theological heaven or hell. No matter how great you lived our life or terrible you lived it, upon repeating it ad nauseam your joy and pain at every interaction would slowly travel to zero until you felt nothing at all. If you didn't maintain memory between recurrence it is also a rather pointless statement as it has no effect on your experience as being in the moment and again is little different than some theological abstraction. I think it is more useful to examine the effects of a proposed eternal heaven on the utility function to affirm very simply that a limited mortal life is a blessing.

>>17206206

In a teleological worldview, the behavior of an event is dictated at root by one or many natural / intrinsic / divine causes, regardless of how many subordinate / extrinsic causes are embedded within. This means that objects and events change over time in a determined way, owing to the nature of something superior to them or by their own nature. It seems obvious that if the behavior of events in general is governed by some superior natural / intrinsic / divine causes then the world itself would have a definite trajectory of change. And this manner of change would itself be determined as a whole since it is comprised of determined events.

Nietzsche was highly critical of teleological thinking, especially that found in Judaism, Christianity, and Kant. To not risk getting any more spergy, but the transition between events in the world across time is ascribed a purpose because the world as a whole (the universe, all of reality) perhaps has causes that originate from God, or perhaps as a single mass body has intrinsic overarching causes in relation to itself, i.e. the world causes its own change, thus the component parts which constitute the world (including the past and future) are subordinate and determined by this supra cause. So that things must happen for an ultimately determined reason, thus time, the chronology of events, and a historical and religious cosmology find their inspiration. Eternal recurrence is a system that takes away all of that, where there is not an ontological or structural transformation occurring across time leading to a conclusion and fulfillment of existence. Events in time are not finally succeeded one after another in a naturally or divinely ordained way. Past, present, and future are selfsame. Questions of origins and ending are misguided and hold no meaning

>>17211413
You are missing the point. If you believe that each moment you experience is gone forever after it passes, the lightness of consciousness informs your actions in a certain way. If you (correctly) conceptualize consciousness as something eternal, each moment of your life is infinitely heavy and matters much more than it would if the alternative was true.

>>17211575

Oh, and I forgot to add that Nietzsche likely found the idea of eternal recurrence appealing because it opens ones mind to the whole totality of reality, rather than an eschatological view of succession and elimination towards a drawn conclusion. i.e. "other worldliness", resentment. Like, imagine your body. Your face, your skin and fat. Imagine if it had the divine qualities of the soul and were actually eternal and endless, as it would being governed by a world which has no beginning or end. Or is only beginnings as the present is eternally reconstituting and rearranging its parts

Can one use the eternal recurrence as inspiration to make the rest of one's life interesting, unpredictable and fulfilled?

>>17211285
>expecting me to read all that
lol bud

>>17211969
at least you're finally admitting you don't read

>>17212003
I only read coherent prose, as a rule.

>>17210987
>Reddit
I'd rather die

UHHHHHHHH IM RECURRING

>>17210326
Would be to kill yourself right when you think life couldn't possibly get any better, wouldn't it? Then each life is just a sweet, sweet ride to the top

>>17212069
>the 55 year old recurrer

>>17212084
>Oh no Recurbros! I recurred too hard and went insane over a horse!

>>17207312
>The eternal return is literal hell.
For you

>>17211666
Whether you strive or don't your being is quantified as a mortal sequence in the overall eternal monad, it will make no distinction, time will eventually erase all trace of your actions and it will just be one more sequence of actions along the grand causal chain, there won't be any grand judgement, or rating, and the sequence of your life will be no more notable nor less quantifiable then the movements of a single grain of sand across the course of entropy. If the monad had deigned to arrange your like in an endless repetition this would still be the case.

>>17212099
who's the guy on left

>>17206206
It is a crude extrapolation of the concept of infinity. Reality generates infinite more variations than a recurring finite time-period.

In short it is a fallacy, propagated by materialists trying to base their fatalism on something superficially inescapable.

>>17212232
You are assuming that the monad is bound by time the way we are. We occupy a specific part of existence and the things that occur before and after do not matter because we most likely won’t be there. What has happened is happening, always will be, always has been. Who you used to be occupies a small portion of the monad in either direction, experiencing things as if they are linear.

>>17210326
>Eternally killing yourself
>Eternally overcoming the misery and redeeming your past mistakes

Yeah I'll choose the latter, thanks.

This thought use to scare the shit out of me as a teen. Especially when you come upon it organically (without reading about it first or having it explained to you by someone else)
I had taken Salvia as a teen and this thought came to me as the best description to what I had experienced in the trip, an eternal recurrence of the same. I thought I was going crazy because nobody in my life had any idea about this thought and what it implied. I thought I had found a thought that was worse than hell, not because my life was shit, but because so many trillions of other lives were just going to be suffering from birth to death, repeating infinitely and this is an actual possibility since the probability of this universe occurring is at least greater than 0.
I had kept trying to find out if anyone had thought about it before because the thought was making me nihilistic and depressed, and that's when I found Nietzsche.
He not only thought about it but actually came up with a viable response to such a feeling. My life will forever be separated between before and after I read Nietzsche and Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

>>17212583
This stuff comes to mind tripping for me too. The one that stuck with me was that there is no reason consciousness would be isolated in each person. It is probably the same entity experiencing every individual’s life simultaneously, only separated by memory.

>>17211413
>until you felt nothing at all

You're not understanding what eternal recurrence means.

>If you didn't maintain memory between recurrence it is also a rather pointless statement
> it has no effect on your experience as being in the moment

This is wrong though because such a thought can drive one to kill themselves. That seems like a very real effect that one can have over a simple thought. (and what is heaven or ER or god but just another thought) The alternative is that the idea of ER can also drive one to overcome their suffering to such an extent that not only do they accept the life they have, but they wouldn't want it any other way. That's no insignificant effect.
The idea of a heaven can cause man to build cathedrals and the idea of a god can cause man to build statues depicting the ideal human form, so eternal recurrence can cause men to look at the world differently and overcome immense suffering and create a stronger, robust mind and body through the perspective of amor fati, redemption, coupled with ER as the backdrop for their actions. When you act as if every action you make is permanently sealed in time or when your idea of redemption means that not only do you accept the mistakes and ill fates, but you welcome them, because they've led you to a place where you are now where you are stronger, sharper and more wise than you previously were. I don't see that as pointless.

>>17206206
Does the existence of entropy disprove it?

>>17212771
It's not necessarily meant to be taken literally. It's a useful thought experiment and framework from which you can address certain things like the seeming permanence of time and the past. This is why Nietzsche coupled it Amor Fati and his idea of redemption. As humans, we can't help but feel like our fate and our past is permanently sealed, so he took it to the extreme and said what if it's not only permanent, but it's eternally recurring? How should we act in the world and address this? Whether life is a one off fluke or it's eternally recurring you'd still be faced with those problems.

>>17212771
Things can be disproven?

What's your standard for proof?