/lit/ - Literature

>>17508066
Positive psychology is a whole field anon. Stop building your worldview on this or that book

>>17508066
Or lets say somebody has honest deep insight and meditation about his personality and sees the jealous, violent, evil, greedy or whatever attributes in his will and recognizes that these lead to harm, pain and a miserable life. Now he acts differently. Does this mean only his behaviour changed but not his personality?

>>17508083
>Just be happy! No thinky the bad thoughts!
That isn't psychology. It's an ideology

>>17508066
>Characters are determined by nature, not by the environment.
The whole nature versus nurture dichotomy is a misconception. There is no clear boundary between them, they blend together and interact. People can change their ways, but only within a prescribed range allowed by their genetic endowment. On the flips side people are built different and aren't infinitely malleable.

>>17508066
this has nothing to do with scientific ignorance, it's just Schopenhauer's worldview. Aristotle for example is more in line with what you say, that you can voluntarily adjust your character by habit and other means.

>>17508066
>everything is as it is
>nothing changes
>everything is mostly shit
This droopy fuck needs to get laid - and fast!

>>17508124
Interesting thanks anon

I think it depends where you think the "locus" of personality/character is. If you picture how a person acts as the result of obeying a script or code that precedes the action, you've separated cause and effect into two layers, which might not even be true of how the soul/mind works ultimately.

If you do stick with this two-layer view, you can think of a few basic dynamics. One is that the cause layer (whether it's genetic coding, "innate character," the arrangement of humours a person has, or whatever) completely determines and influences the effect layer, and the effect has no influence on the cause layer. On this view, my actions in any given situation are just the application of a pre-set function to the contingent situation.

Another way to see it is that the function itself changes as a result of its interactions. Maybe the function can "soften" in certain ways, for example if I am innately inclined to be selfish but I receive horrible feedback from my actions, I might eventually conclude that I need to re-write or suppress the "be selfish all the time" sub-routine. You could thus divide the causal layer, the function layer, of character into simple sub-routines ("when x, do y" or simply "always do y when possible") and self-reflective or recursive subroutines ("when some sub-routine 'x' encounters excess of feedback 'a', suppress/modify 'x' in proportion to.. [etc.]").

This view basically makes the human personality into a completely contingent thing. There is no soul or ultimate point of integrity, the human is a process, and processes can change when they meet circumstances capable of changing them, like a change in brain chemistry from drugs or simpy enough feedback from the environment. Similarly, once the basis of the process (the brain) is destroyed, the process is destroyed.

This is I think how most scientifically oriented people would view the matter these days. They would say that our genes are functions which determine our brains, and our brains are functions which have algorithmic sub-functions for modifying behaviour "intelligently" in response to stimuli. But you will notice that none of this needs to have conscious deliberation or choice. Everything I am saying could easily be applied to an unconscious computer program. In fact, this is how simple AIs are designed. So on this view, we are just highly complex AIs, with many meta-functions for regulating functions, and meta-meta-functions for regulating meta-functions, etc. But that doesn't explain where "consciousness" (subjective experience) enters into the picture, what its specific nature or function is. And it doesn't allow for any free will. We are machines, just very complex ones.

If you believe in a soul and free will, then character is an interesting mystery. Certainly the soul has "tendencies" (character), but how do these relate to the soul's freedom? What does it mean for the soul to have "stable" (determinate, unfree) AND free parts? How do they interact?

>>17508066
So, is it the jews fault for getting kicked out of 109 cities/countries, or is it the goyim's fault for kicking out the jews 109 times?

>>17508207
Lets take me for example. All my life until now i followed mainly carnal desires, any sorts of pleasure and always longing for any sort of external stimulation, be it lifting weights, validation, materialism, relationships, sex, love etc. I was always dependent on anything but myself.

Now at 25 i concluded that this sort of life leads to extreme pain and misery because there is no end to it and you always want more and are met with tolerance and your baseline standarts for stimulus being skyhigh so eventually you crash and drop everyything. I deconditoned myself and became clean, i dont have any desires anymore because i can see through all illusions and that pleasure leads to pain. I dont have to feed an ego anymore.

The problem now is that i am met with boredom and restlessness and i dont know if my nature allows me to live a quiet calm life in literature, philosophy and any peaceful activity solely with myself.

So do i have to pick between boredom and pain? Schopenhauers says yes because i cant change who i am.

So thats the question i ask myself

>>17508303
Find ways to help others?

>>17508066
Rhetoric aside you cannot say a person's tendency towards good or evil is part of their nature without it having some scary implications, including the fact that a child can be born evil, which would justify any abuse that falls upon him, or that some groups can be born evil, which would justify prejudice against them. I get that this is 4chan, but in the real world any ideology that can be used to justify an ethnic genocide is a flawed ideology, if it's impossible to agree on that debate will be difficult.

A child is born innocent and becomes good or evil due to what he lives through, a person's personality is mostly decided by "reality", which is a stream of consciousness lasting some 16 to 20 hours a day and 4 to 8 hours of sleep, any event that happens during "reality" has the potential to shape a person's personality, this includes not only physical events but also thoughts and images that appear in a person's head.

>>17508207
you should read the darkness that comes before, it's all about that

>>17508478
children can obviously be born evil, some people are born psycopaths and have good upbringings, or decent one's at least and become serial killers

>>17508478
>but in the real world any ideology that can be used to justify an ethnic genocide is a flawed ideology

not if it is true

>>17508066
>Would you agree in general?
Yes.
>If somebody was a dirtbag in his youth, comitted pety crimes, was the bully in school etc does this mean he will forever be a dirtbag in his life and only acts as a good person and doesnt comit crimes anymore not because his moral improved but he learned that crime doesnt pay and being unfriendly closes doors to his wills goals and motives?
Yes.
What about somebody who has a bad temper, is impatient and has a greedy unsatiable will because of some neural deficit like its the case with dopamine and adhd. Now if the medication calms him doesnt this mean his personality as a whole have changed?
No. His behavior changed, not his personality, take the circumstance of medication (or punishment in your first example) away and the person will go to his default setting again.
>>17508098
>Recognizing destructive character traits
Let's take jealousy for example, most of the harm done by jealousy is because a person thinks not of himself as jealous, because to think so would be to admit one's inferiority, the feeling is rejected and the destructive behavior (harming the person he feels jealous towards, passive-agression or whatever) that results from that is rationalized in a way as to dodge the reality of things, but if he destroys/harms the person the feeling goes away. Now the same situation, but the person conciously recognises and admits to himself that he is jealous instead of pushing the feeling away, now the person can use the anger towards lifting himself up into a superior position instead of trying to get the person he feels inferior (jealous) towards down to his level, so he lifts himself up and the feeling of jealousy goes away. The personality of jealousy does not disappear, but the individual changed the way of acting it out, in both situations the individual could not stop himself getting jealous, and could not stop trying to make the feeling disappear, but he could choose the method with which to make the feeling disappear.

These things get infinitely more complex as you add more layers of personality traits, and the mixing of them can result in all kinds of fucked up things that can not be treated as the trait collective forms a perfect self-defense mechanism that can not be penetrated, as seen for example in Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Just observe the people around you, it is unbelievably rare that someone changes his character, probably only happening as a result of some drug abuse or brain damage, but some deep self-reflection can make most people change for the (egoistical, but also social) "better".

>>17508117
>>Just be happy! No thinky the bad thoughts!
>That isn't psychology. It's an ideology
Why do you comment on things you neither know or care about? Fucking inbred manchild

>>17508478
>Rhetoric aside you cannot say a person's tendency towards good or evil is part of their nature without it having some scary implications, including the fact that a child can be born evil, which would justify any abuse that falls upon him, or that some groups can be born evil, which would justify prejudice against them.
Why is that a terrible implication? It seems obvious to me that some people have more depraved natures than others. I know I have a strong tendency towards sexual depravity and addiction. Always had, since I was a child, and probably always will. Thank God I don’t coom or do drugs anymore, and am much happier like this. It seems much healthier to recognize one’s own depraved nature —the sin that lives within, as St. Paul put it— and act accordingly than to live in denial. The latter will only lead you to blame your own bad nature on something else (capitalism, patriarchy, etc.) and acquire that insidious victim mentality lefties are sick with.

>>17508739
>Thank God I don’t coom anymore

how does one accomplish this. Christchad here.

>>17508551
That's not a very positive attitude! You need to escape your negative cycles. Don't you want to be successful? Buy my self help book and discover the secrets of happiness!

>>17508303
Schopenhauer also says that you can't know what you are, except that your real ultimate self comes from a shadowy realm you can't access directly, the realm of the Will. The Will is somehow "behind" all of its representations.

He gets this from Kant and Fichte. Kant and Fichte both said that when we normally look at ourselves, as things in the world, we can only "see ourselves" as fixed objects obeying fixed laws, because our normal way of looking at things sees ALL things as fixed objects obeying fixed laws. If we look at a basketball, we see a physical thing that can't change what it is, just a thing obeying physical causes. If we look at a human, we see a physical thing that can't change what it is, basically a more complex version of a basketball.

But Kant, Fichte, and even Schopenhauer all agree that the difference between a basketball and a human being is that if we want to explain ALL of the basketball's actions, we will always come up with PHYSICAL causes, dead meaningless laws of matter. Why did it fall, or bounce this high, or move? Because something/someone moved it. This isn't the case with a human being. Sure, you can physically affect a human too. But if you ask questions like: "Why did he choose to do good, even when it would have felt more pleasurable to do evil?," you have to answer in terms of a soul, or at least another realm that is higher than the material.

Nobody has an exact answer to what is in this higher realm. Fichte says it's the "I," the pure self. Schopenhauer says it's the pure Will. Kant is implying that it's your soul. The specific answer doesn't matter (at least for now, since we can't know it right now), but the basic idea that you are more than a machine, that something in you "points beyond what you see" to another realm, I think is important. You need to have a little faith in yourself. You have already transcended mere sensuousness, you have transcended being a human basketball. A human basketball would be a pleasure-seeking/pain-avoiding "machine." Its law of attraction would be pleasure, its law of repulsion would be pain. The very fact that you are not subject to those supposed laws right now, that you are troubled by them, and you are even troubled by the fact that you are troubled, points to your soul having higher possibilities, higher demands, even higher "pleasures," like moral or intellectual pleasures (the pleasure of knowing the truth, as opposed to just feeling good or bad). Whether you like it or not, you are living evidence that you are not a pleasure/pain machine, not a human basketball.

>>17508972
>>17508303
You should read about Plato's views on this. Plato thinks that ALL good, including low-level sensuous pleasure, exists as an extension of the ultimate Good, which is also the True, and the Beautiful. Truth, Beauty, and Goodness all unite at the highest level and reveal themselves as one. We're all on the path toward that realisation. The farther we get, the less interesting the basic pleasures seem. You are experiencing the classic platonic "eros," desire or love, for something "higher," something that seems like it's outside you. You are not satisfied with what is inside you, what you have already known and even conquered, i.e. meaningless hedonistic pleasure and mere bodily satisfaction. You have already realised that all such "base" pleasures are somehow lacking, they are only fit for animals and people "sunk" in blind animal behaviours. But you don't yet have a satisfying replacement.

That's what Plato is all about: you are on a path, halfway between being an animal and being a wise man. The halfway point on a path is the loneliest part, and of course you will wonder whether you are even getting to where you're going. But Plato says, just by knowing instinctively that the path is there, knowing that you have to leave from meaningless animal pleasure and seek something higher, you've already proven that something is "in you" that KNOWS, instinctively, where it's going, knows instinctively (and thus desires: eros) something "out there." You're already on the way. The way is just painful because it's new.

>"It is better to be a dissatisfied human than a satisfied pig; better to be Socrates dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied.
>And if the fool, or the pig, think differently, it is because they only know their side of the question."
JS Mill

>>17508802
By grace brother. Pray, fast and flee from inflaming your desire. Pray for forgiveness with full accountability every time you fall without fail. At some point I was gifted this heart-deep awareness of how “pointless” it is. I don’t know how to explain it, because I did not acquire it intellectually, but whatever it is, it’s stronger than my desire. It’s as if God grants you a constant post-nut clarity.

>>17508528
Sorry I forgot to respond to this, thanks for the recommendation. This actually looks neat, I think I'm gonna check it out. The name reminds me of Aristotle talking about whether we "remember being" the universal mind that partly makes us up, or whether it "remembers" us when we break down. Obviously going against Plato's memory/immortality doctrine. I think Plato won that one. Would be neat to see where Bakker falls or whether he leaves the ambiguity.

>>17508972
Didn't Schopenhauer say that the Will is something to be avoided and suppressed because it causes pleasure and pain? How can the Will make us achieve transcendent "pleasures?"

>>17509065
The will to contingent life is, i.e. the finite creaturely will to base pleasures, but that is similar to what Plato is saying. It has a basically platonic structure. You should contemplate beauty and the sublime, and ultimately ascend to the highest nullification of the "this-worldly" and contingent, transcending your own finitude. For Schopenhauer, this would mean cancellation of the phenomenal Representation in favour of the noumenal Will, I think? But for Plato it would mean coming into contact with, ascending to, higher spheres of existence, the natural dwelling of the soul (which is why the soul is so eager to get back there).

I think all these doctrines have their limitations, imo Plato devalues nature one-sidedly and Schopenhauer ends up with a beautiful but incomplete quasi-Buddhism. Again in my opinion the particular contents of what they said are less important than the basic recognition that we, as human beings, feel naturally tugged "upward," away from merely sensual living, even away from evil and toward good, we feel ourselves always on that path toward something higher and greater, even though we can only have a general idea of where we're headed. That to me is an objective sign of goodness in the world.

>>17509167
So Schopenhauer is saying that the Will and the Will-to-Life are two different things?

VIRTUE CAN BE TAUGHT; WHAT CANNOT BE TAUGHT IS NOBILITY.

CHARACTER IS MUTABLE; WHAT IS IMMUTABLE IS PERSONALITY.

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER'S DISCERNMENT WAS MARRED BY HIS MULTIPLE MORBID AFFLICTIONS.

>>17510166
>HIS MULTIPLE MORBID AFFLICTIONS.
such as?

>>17510166
It'd be a good idea to apply the same criticisms towards urself
You're insufferable

>>17508972
>>17508983
Thanks alot anon.

>>17508066
>If somebody was a dirtbag in his youth, comitted pety crimes, was the bully in school etc does this mean he will forever be a dirtbag in his life
yes
and its easy to know when a person is good or evil
when someone is "evil" he/she will always make troubles with someone else, be a bad employee etc
I know persons with 70+ years that didn't change a bit from its youth
others just pretend to change and make evil things by more subtle ways
a person "spirit" doesn't change, good and bad people are born that way

Psychology has found that a person's proclivities towards the following five traits are almost always relatively stable over long periods of time*:
>Agreeableness
>Conscientiousness
>Neuroticism
>Extraversion
>Intellectual Curiosity
However, the way these traits are expressed during different periods in one's life could look very different.

Here's a famous example: David Wood was very disagreeable growing up. Disagreeableness generally means not giving much weight towards how others feel when making decisions, primarily relying on your own logic. It usually also means a tendency to look for trouble. As a teen, David decided that there is no God, there is no value in anything, and that morality is just disguised weakness. He bashed his dad’s face in with a hammer (with the intent to kill, but apparently his dad survived) and was sent to prison for about 8 years (where he was diagnosed with sociopathy). He was cellmates with a devout Christian with whom he constantly debated, and eventually, David actually converted to Christianity. Upon being released from prison, he earned a PhD in philosophy, started a small family, and now runs a very popular Christian YouTube channel.
Even though his worldview changed dramatically, he did not lose his personality. To this day he frequently derides and argues with other religious teachers, to the point that some of these men have publicly called for his death. His beliefs changed wildly (murderous materialist sociopath to father/husband who spreads the Christian gospel is quite a transition!), but the personality traits with which he EXPRESSES these beliefs (beliefs CAN be subject to change over time, unlike personality), have not changed. During these two periods of his life, he relied on similar disagreeable behaviors to convey his beliefs, even though his beliefs during these periods were worlds apart.
Schopenhauer says that "the means change, but not the ends". I would argue that it's almost always the other way around.


*personality has been found to change from extremely impactful (usually traumatic) events or literal brain trauma, but these are both quite rare. Also, as you mentioned, psychiatric medication can create apparent personality changes, but artificially numbing certain functions of the brain isn't true temperamental change.

>>17508066
What about people who manage to experience some mystic enlightenment or simply being so mindfull that they stop thinking in their day to day live and relationships and just live in the self. Wouldnt this alter their personality? Apparently mediation and mindfullnes has been proved to change some brain pathways

Would you guys see some truth in it or is it bullshit?

>>17512838
Maybe NPCs can never change their personalities, but Player Characters can?

>>17508066
>>Virtue cannot be taught.
false but you need a buddha for this

>>17512838
Yes, there have been studies that suggest that long term meditation practice can significantly lower neuroticism and trait anxiety for some people.

>>17512911
>>17508550
Some buddhists say that if you look at the nature of your jealousy and greed directly to its core without trying to judge yourself or trying to force yourself to be different but by simply looking at it and meditating on it, understanding what made you jealous and greedy, getting to the root and understandting the mechanism behind those traits then you will be free from it

>>17509065
>Didn't Schopenhauer say that the Will is something to be avoided and suppressed because it causes pleasure and pain?
No. Schopenhauer's conception of Will is noumenal - utterly inexplicable, lying outside of time and space, therefore not subject to the principle of sufficient reason, as our a priori forms of knowing (i.e. time, space and causality) are indiscernible with the fundamental principle and its fourfold root. The principle of sufficient reason was first posited by Leibniz, he proposed that everything in existence is a product of causality and therefore subject to rational explanation, in other words, everything necessarily must be a consequent of a ground, nothing can exist groundlessly, so to speak. Schopenhauer reformulates Leibniz's, albeit irrevocably true, however insubstantial proposition and names it the fourfold root, our four classes of explanation which govern four objects. For example, the second root, the principle of sufficient reason of knowing, subsumes all judgements and abstract concepts, which the subject knows though conceptual, discursive reasoning, which has it's ground in the same principle, Schopenhauer provides a plethora of examples regarding the second root, he posits four ways of inference, logical, empirical, transcendental and metalogical. An empirical truth, is one that has its ground in experience, meaning somebody claiming that a cat is lying on a mat is only true, insofar as the subject is able to cognize the cat and it's relation to the mat, as spatio-temporal representations. A transcendental truth, similarly, is one that has it's ground in the possibility of experience, an example could be the claim that matter is permanent.

As representations (i,e. phenomena, objects residing in the external world) are governed by the aforementioned principle, they are subservient to Schopenhauer's conception of the primordial Will, these representations can only cognized by the subject insofar as the Will has objectified itself. To elucidate, Schopenhauer takes Kant's proposition of the things-in and of themselves (things that exist independently from our mind) and deems it Will, the Will objectifies itself through varying grades of phenomena, the grades of which are all subordinate to man, of course. Because the thing-in-itself exists outside of our forms of knowing, it is inexplicable. In Kantian philosophy the phenomenon is the non-causal product of the noumena (thing-in-itself), it is the same in Schopenhauer's philosophy, however he claims the noumena can only be that which we cannot apprehend, he deems it Will, the driving force behind all phenomena, we cannot avoid the Will, nor can it be suppressed, it is constantly striving, objectifying itself in the form of representation, whatever the subject achieves via Will, is fleeting, finite, insatiable, meaning the Will cannot be satisfied, life is suffering insofar as the will only strives, never achieves, never fulfils itself.

(1/2)

>>17508551
Not that guy, but you're a midwit if you honestly believe in positive psychology (and probably a wine aunt too).

https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/negative-side-of-positive-psychology/

>>17508739
My personal belief is that sins can be categorized and that people have inclinations towards certain sins. It is also my personal belief, backed by culture and my readings, that wet dreams are no sin, and neither is it to take drugs although they are both poison, I deal with this by saying poison in low amounts can be medicine, and indeed medicine is simply diluted poison.

What I said about reality was mostly trying to stay grounded, I believe sinful thoughts and actions are caused by demons trying to influence us, we inevitably still have free will, but can be tricked into ceding it, the easiest trick is believing demons do not exist, over time this leads to believing free will does not exist, and that leads to sin.

Characters are determined by nature, their expressions are determined by environment colliding with their nature.

>>17508066
i dont know. i realised i am different when that plane hit that building on live tv and i didnt feel any emotion as a child whatsoever while everyone was crying. 20 years later still dont have any empathy for anyone but myself and my parents. so it is what is is

>>17513949
>and neither is it to take drugs
But addiction is. Like all sin, it is a type of slavery.

>>17508066
I agree with the second quote, but in regards to the first characters are determined much more by environment than a priori natural traits, this is practically self-evident

>>17515456
This is true. Environment and societal pressure exert a powerful influence on people. Europeans and white Americans who come to live here in Latin America quickly become lazy, disorganized, and unpunctual, particularly if they have come alone and married a local. Their natural intelligence and such is still there, of course, but it’s amazing how fast they pick up bad habits and abandon good habits.

>>17515531
>Environment and societal pressure exert a powerful influence on people.
it is THE MOST powerful influence on people. I can easily spot a man of great character by the amount of resistance he has towards societal influence

>>17515420
Addiction is not a sin, it is a disease, the sin that caused it is different from the addiction.

>>17515560
*the vice that caused it.

>>17515560
What is the sin behind addiction then?

>>17508066
I was a bully in school and now I'm a bully on 4chan, so I guess not

>>17515631
It's better to ask it in terms of, why would you do something against your will ? If you don't want to drink why would you drink ?

>>17516213
You can do whatever you want, but you can't want whatever you want to want.

>>17508066
If character is determined by nature does this mean simply hormonal imbalances or complete different brain structures whlch are untreatable? I mean nature means genetics or not? Cant a deficent character be treated by medication?

>>17518051
Schopenhauer believed in reincarnation therefore soul so he was not a materialist that thinks everything is genes and hormones, "nature" could mean soul

>>17519011
Got a source for that anon? Nowhere did i read about a soul in his aphorismen and i never heard about it in wwr either

>>17508124
This. Look up twin studies and GWAS to see the heritability of human traits and you'll see just how right they both were.

>>17508478
Yes, this will always be denied because the real world implications are "scary". It's why I don't really care if experts have an IQ of 200, it doesn't matter if they can't accept their own findings, or if those findings put their reputation, career and friendships etc at risk due to "scary" implications.

>>17519401
in metaphysics of death he said he wished to know more about it, but he believes that after you die you reincarnate just like Plato, Pythagoras and other great thinkers did, its more an intuitive feeling than rational minded thought, he said that his heart rebelled against more materialistic thoughts, that you are gone after you die
in the end of aphorisms on wisdom of life in the last paragraphs he mentions that too

>>17508066
>Virtue cannot be taught
>Would you agree in general

No, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle believed that justice is a matter of "techne", that is of practice and that humans can reflect on their behaviour and notice mistakes. Schopenhauer was just a grumpy german autist.

>>17508066
i think it's true. I'm the same sort of person i've always been, but more social and extroverted because I know it's more fun to live life that way as opposed to to an anti-social shut-in.

>>17508266
Jews have always been a persistently tiny society that resided in the shadows of vast empires. Because of this, their moral system is determined geographically and in order to survive they had to subvert the strength from sentiment to resentment. Master morality towards slave morality. Thank ethno nationalism different tribes cannot get along

>>17508083
>psycholo-
PFFFFFT HAHAHAHAHA

>>17515239
You were a kid with 0 life experience that is why you did not care. Why are you letting this memory determine you in the now however?

>>17508066
What is character? What is someones character besides the way that they act, aka their behaviour? With vague, ill defined concepts you can prove anything (as shopenhauer was doing with his character to absorb the noumenal "intelligible character" of german idealism).

>>17517679
Wanting something is thinking you want it, it's not an action but it's still possible to just not think something. As I said the reason for quitting is more important than quitting itself.

>>17519473
So, you're either in favor of genocide or willing to admit the premises are flawed, you could probably come up with a quick patch that makes the theory work, but the fact it came as an afterthought is worrying enough as it is.

>>17513871
>non-causal product
How can something be a non-causal product? Is that not a contradiction?

>>17508066
I think most people lack character and are influenced by their environments drastically. Some people are inherently good or shit though. I'm speaking generally obviously, but I don't think it's as simple as good or bad. There are definitely a lot of drones involved. People definitely possess agency to different degrees (this could probably be influenced by environment as well).

Absolutely fucking wrong. What a total brainlet.
My character changes very often. I admit that there's a core personality, but even that can change, as I have experienced myself. Aside from personal experience, I have never witnessed other people change. Maybe Schopenhauer never tried self reflection and simply came to the conclusion that everyone is like him. But that's wrong. Correct would be to say that almost everyone cannot change.

I'm a brainlet and possibly retarded. I started reading The World as Will and Representation and I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the whole object - subject thing. Basically, as far as I understand Schopenhauer for any object to exist there needs to be a subject whose mind or senses can "see" said object and create it as an representation (in their mind?) Am I understanding this correctly? What is with the vast expanse of time where there was no life, thus no subject? What is with the millions of planets that we can't perceive? I'm pretty sure I'm just a brainlet and I don't get what this dude is hinting at.