/lit/ - Literature

What are the odds that anhedonia can be genetically engineered out of the population in the far future?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx3rdVQZ3mo

>>21563319
>Doesn't that invalidate his philosophical worldview?

No, it enhances it. Instead of taking Ligotti at face value, view him for what he says he is: a mentally ill person but with a perspective worth listening to. It IS true that the world is pretty much a shit place for most humans in the sense that humanity can be cynically described as "A small percentage of leeches party hard and explore themselves while everybody else works the mines and never even had a chance."

He is not wrong in general that a lot of people are just coping/delusional when they say "Life is... le good!" when this planet is actually a dark and cruel place and those who have never been depressed or anhedonic will never get it. But after you cure your depression it's easy to see the folly in this thinking.

t. headcase who bootstrapped

>>21563352
books on bootstrapping?

>>21563409
idk shit's impossible to explain. speaking of which, the tao te ching or daodejing(in which the author(s) constantly bitches about how nobody will understand this stuff lel)/daoist thought in general helped me out a lot. i like red pine's translation and recently picked up a new one that looks cool by brook ziporyn.

be careful if you go down this path though, lest you end up trying to learn classical chinese and find yourself reading autistic right wing nationalist chinkposting about the yellow emperor @ 2 a.m.

>you're mentally ill!! nothing you say matters!!
bro I love the 21st century

>>21563319
Can you refute the bird though?

>>21563526
>you're mentally ill!! nothing you say matters!!
Yea, and that applies to trannies as well. A tranny thinks he's a woman. Doesn't mean he's right. Delusions and worldviews that come from mental deficiencies or illnesses have no bearing in reality.

>>21563546
wrong dummy if only sane people were worth listening to we'd still be huddled around campfires and hunting mammoths. a shitload of the people who made the technology you are using to post nonsense with were mentally disturbed.

>>21563567
>b-but le heckin mentally ill geniuses! think of them!
Meme archetype but even then, technology is a positive. Whinging about the world like a bitter incel for hundreds of pages just because you can't feel pleasure is a negative. You're also wrong into thinking all creations are by mentally ill people such as trannies or Ligotti. It's statically impossible.

>>21563587
>implying a thousand implications

it's not that deep you're just a dumb faglord who doesn't understand literature or art and has some spastic view that depressed people aren't worth listening to because they are ineffectual in their personal lives. which is idiotic because this can easily be refuted by many artists and innovators throughout history.

>Meme archetype

just because it's exceptional does not mean it doesn't exist, which is the point.

>>21563605
I like depressive artists. I simply don't care about what Ligotti the Incel Worm or retarded trannies have to say in real terms because they are defective. Clear enough?

>>21563319
If the things he says are just the drivel of an invalid mad man it should be easy enough for sane people to refute his points. So why not just do that instead of worry about what brand of insanity he has? His points are either valid on there own merit or they aren't.

>>21563631
It's clear that you are in error because what Ligotti is trying to explain affects millions of people and it's only going to get worse. If you don't care about such a massive issue that has real world consequences then you are an ostrich with your head in the sand.

>>21563650
>The human race shouldn't exist because I can't feel pleasure
He should kill himself and leave the rest alone. Retards are welcome to follow his steps and do the same.

>>21563526
completely right.

>>21563660
I already told you not to take him at face value. Obviously anti-natalism and pessimism in general are gay nonsense that nobody should take seriously as a guiding principle. But if you actually try to understand Ligotti as a person and why so many people are becoming like him you might learn something instead of continuing to be a crass nerd who can't even engage with an idea beyond a surface level.

>>21563645
He talks about pleasure a lot. A man who is unable to experience pleasure is not to be trusted on the matter. Especially not when it's a fundamental part of his worldview. It's like trusting a blind with a movie report. His information will not be accurate because he lacks a sensory dimension.

>>21563335
He looks reptilian...

>>21563675
Are the arguments that he makes based on the pleasure he apparently can not feel coherent? If so then they should be easily refutable, unless he makes a good point. If not than they can be disregarded as incoherent, though I doubt that anyone would spend any time talking about his views (even if it is just speculation on how his mental health colors those views) if they were incoherent. Either way speculating about his brand of insanity is a waste of time and says nothing to the validity of his arguments. It screams "I don't want to engage the arguments because they are scary" to me when people play this kind of game. Like I said, if his arguments are the incoherent drivel of a mad man they should be easily refutable based only on the merit of the arguments.

Unless your droooing on yourself staring at a wall or talking aloud and having impassioned arguments with your imaginary friend or attacking people at random, etc you probably shouldn't be called mentally ill. It's really sad that people think they can just dismiss everything someone says because of some bullshit vague definition

>>21563853
>I am a deaf man and I say all songs suck and music should be destroyed forever and no one should be able to enjoy it!
Would you trust such a person?

>>21563867
You don't even have proof that he is anhedonic. You don't even have proof anhedonia exists

>>21563884
Ligotti has said it himself in interviews. I don't need to have "proof", redditor.

>>21563895
Ligotti isn't from America. He doesn't understand dsm.

>>21563867
He definitely doesn't just make statements like that. He makes arguments, which should be judged on there own. If you can't refute coherent psychobable then there is value in analyzing why you can't.

>>21563884
it definitely exists, i've had it myself. it's when you are so depressed that even when something good happens you don't even give a shit. it literally removes the joy from music and the good taste from food, because at that point you are so clocked out of hoping for good things that the good things you do experience don't even register. this is different from just depression and you can be depressed without anhedonia. so i would say it counts as "mentall illness" in the sense that if you are so fucked from depression that you don't even perceive food the same way as a normal person, you probably need some kind of intervention.

>>21563898
>Ligotti isn't from America.
>Thomas Ligotti. Born: Detroit, Michigan, United States (July 9, 1953)
No need to lie, faggot.

>>21563914
This. I used to see Ligotti out on the lakes. He had this sweet pontoon boat. He was always blaring some Seger or some Nugent, all kinds of fat-tittied hoes hanging off his shit. He'd buzz by and toss you a natty sometimes. I think Kid Rock was there once.

>>21563921
what did he mean by this

>>21563926
Two words: Ligotti Fucks

>>21563926
Probably the same faggot trying to deflect from his mistake.

>>21563667
No it isn't. Once you start thinking that way certain worldviews become associated with mental illness, and then people are accused of being mentally ill for having the wrong beliefs. We already see a lot of this.

>>21563945
He's sucking your dick, not disagreeing.

>>21563319
>In such a world we can wonder what horrors are in store, but we might not need to look too far for Ligotti shows us a universe that is dysphoric and nihilistic, one that is fascinatingly revealed in the story of The Clown Puppet, where the protagonist receives certain visitations from a puppet clown (agent of the Big Other?) at different junctures in his life. None of these strange encounters is every very revealing, instead they seem to be both banal and utterly absurd in their marked propensity to undermine any meaning whatsoever.

>The protagonist is working in a medicine shop one night when the clown suddenly appears handing him a small book, a passport - the passport of his boss, Ivan Vizniak. This intrusion surprises him because he had never thought that anyone else would become a part of the visitation. The puppet floats before him with its dead eyes hollowed out of some hellish mind, bound to strings that vanish in a blur above it in the ceiling where some invisible puppeter of the abyss hides, withdrawn in his dark objecthood, while the clown puppet like some sensuous artifact of wood and string dances on the hollow thoughts of a mad god.

>Just as protaganist is about to lose his mind and do something rash, the puppet turns its head toward the back of the store where a curtain covers a small store room. The puppet moves off in that direction just as the proprietor who has been sleeping above raps his knuckles on the front door of the shop

>The protagonist assumed that he was alone, that he'd been singled out:

"Who knows how many others there were who might say that existence consisted of nothing but the most outrageous nonsense, a nonsense that had nothing unique about it at all and had nothing behind it or beyond it but except more and more nonsense - a new order of nonsense, perhaps an utterly unknown nonsense, but all of it nonsense and nothing but nonsense"

>>21563914
He isn't really American. Calling Ligotti American is like calling Nabokov Russian. Ligotti isn't from the part of the place where he'd understand dsm intuitively. You can't respect a self diagnosis from someone who barely understands the word

>>21564343
He was born and raised in America and writes in English.

>>21564354
only Florida could give birth to someone like Ligotti

>>21564354
what are you trying to convince yourself of? a foreigner self diagnosed in a language he doesn't understand to have a disease that doesn't exist in a system that only exists in some parts of the United States?

>>21564368
All that Florida gives birth to is orange people and crocodiles.
>>21564389
Quiet, whore.

>>21564396
How did you know I'm a girl?

I've had anhedonia for 10 years. Honestly, yes, it invalidates pessimism: His world view is a post-hoc justification for his experience. But to healthy people, his world view is innane, it doesn't apply to them, just as wisdom for the healthy doesn't apply to him. Sickness distorts human nature; the foundation of happiness is good health. After my life went to hell, I went to Schopenhauer, read Houellebecq and many other pessimists. There's nothing deep in it. If my life hadn't turned out this way, I wouldn't have gone down this path. Truly healthy people don't engage with this stuff: Life and happiness are self-justifying. Pessimism is debunked by the happy.

I could write about how awful the anhedonia is, but probably no one cares

>>21564396
orange people?

>>21564405
Lucky guess, I suppose. I simply called you a random insult became you were being annoying.

>>21564389
his wikipedia article goes into detail about him growing up and working in the US. stop baiting.

>>21564422
but what i am trying to say is that's not quite true. like he's not quite american

>>21564408
i'm here to read heinous shitposts anyway so let's hear it

>>21564424
HOW?!

>>21564432
Listen this whole thing is just frustrating and I'm literally stimming at my computer desk right now. What would you do if I defined everything about you as mental illness and now all your ideas are worthless for all time

>>21564435
stop deflecting and explain how thomas ligotti who grew up in america is "not an american"

>>21564451
He's Floridian which doesn't have dsm

>>21564456
floridians are peak america

>>21564426
Imagine if a couple years after puberty, you lost interest in most things. Movies? Fuck that. New games? Look boring. At first, you think it's a sign of maturity. But one day, you realize with a shock that all this stufff isn't "meaningless" -- you physically lost the ability to enjoy them. But you still have your passion for music, so everything is okay. Music cuts to the bottom of your soul, it gives life meaning when nothing else does. Then even music stops working: it just sounds like noise. This isn't an episode, it's your life now 24/7. No breaks.

For years you attempt to communicate what happened, but literally no one gets it. You try all kinds of cures, nothing happens. Even your senses are dead - smell doesn't work, see less color than you used to, dick isn't sensitive (still get hard though), hearing went to shit. You try over and over to make friends, but with this disease it's just not possible. Connecting to other people becomes literally impossible. From age 16-24 you are a hermit, nearly all your youth is gone and you have nothing to show for it. Now and then, you seem to pick up clues about the illness, but they vanish into thin air. You're truly lost.

So now and then, you blog about it in threads like this. c'est la vie

>>21563409
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJMwBwFj5nQ

>>21564495
>>21563523
>>21564498
dr Anonymous prescribes chinkshit

>>21564495
Clown puppeted

>>21564558
wat

>>21563911

Is this not more to the point that "good things" do not exist, that they are reactively, and desperately, deemed as such by the Subject, and that it is precisely said deeming that is pathological?

>>21564414
yea

>>21563319
Why not, simply, snort cocaine?

>>21563319
Pessimissm and antinatalism is evolutions way of excluding the anhedonic from the gene pool.

>>21566593
you cant use cocaine these days its full of fentanyl.

>>21563546
>trannies not even mentioned
>still seething about them
starting to think that it's just one guy on here that calls everyone a tranny

>>21566604
That's the problem with the misrable, this self-defeating attitude prevents them from doing the very things that will bring them joy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-mLIdLZZeI

>>21565667
well i choose to pathologize it simply because without help, such a person has a slim chance at recovery. imo pathology is useful when it means the individual really does need somebody elses's input and actions to address their mental state. who exactly should be the one to help them is another can if worms because the mental health industry is so fraught.

>>21563319
Of course it does. Most theorists are gigantic copers. You should only trust those that found a way out or at all least those that struggled but refused to build a philosophical coping system where they're based and others are idiots.

>>21563319
>his views are bad because he is defective
Then why would the world give him anhedonia? I suffer from anhedonia too, but I don't subscribe to pessimism outright. He has opinions.

>>21563319
Psychiatry fags like you should be shot and thrown into mass graves.

>>21563319
>Asceticism is a mental illness, according to Science™

>>21567418
im getting mixed signals, can you clarify what you mean?

>>21567418
They should be confined to the hell they want to throw others in.

>>21567643

>>21567418
And give the pessimist what they want? No way, Jose.

>>21567743
kek

>>21563911
I had severe anhedonia too, many people really don't understand depression and anhedonia. I remember being in a restaurant eating steak and drinking wine with friends and it was not that I was thinking the situation sucked, the taste of the food didn't even really register in my brain, it tasted like cardboard. Those things go much deeper than just negative thoughts.

>>21563352
Most people aren't coping. They are enjoying themselves, sometimes not enjoying themselves, and not stressing/fussing about it that much. Anyone who says otherwise is obviously far removed from reality. And trying to make a law out of their problems. Problems that worsen themselves further by leaving you to sink into self-absorbtion and fantasy. Conceited inferiority.

bump

Licotti is a failed writer and grifter

>>21563645
based

>>21569875
based on what?

>>21569883
based on a true story

>>21564408
You are literally me. Anhedonia is hell on earth. I don’t know how i’m still alive now.

>>21563319
That you must ask others if he's wrong, which is really an attempt at solidarity, means that 'invalidation' is a technique out of it's depth in our reality. You would have to suspend your own ability to make judgements to favor a pleasure consensus. There's no way that it isn't just shutting your ears - invalid because it's inconistent to itself. Radical Amor Fati is the only answer for hedonist optimists who wish to maximise pleasure and apocalyptic pessimists who wish to exhaust dependence alike.
>>21567293
>theorists are gigantic copers (they're idiots)
>only trust those that... refused to build a... system where they're based and others are idiots
Kamikaze reasoning

>>21563352
>this planet is actually a dark and cruel place
No it isn't
>those who have never been depressed or anhedonic will never get it.
That's because the view that the world is "a dark and cruel place" is due to mental illness and nothing more.

>>21564435
>I'm literally stimming
Lmao autists
When will they ever learn
Kindly kys yourself

>>21564408
Pic related really

>>21563843
>"I don't want to engage the arguments because they are scary"
What arguments
Ligotti doesn't make any arguments
He just writes spooky stories to give you a fun thrill when you're winding down at the end of the day
He's just a performing freak for our amusement

>>21570153
Only if you view it from the perspective of a relatively lucky westerner. There is a lot of horrible stuff in this world.

>>21570176
Wow nice interpretation fanny redditman

>>21570153
Hurr durr, mental illness. If you haven't seen the dark and cruel places of this world you haven't lived, cinderella. Now go be "happy" somewhere else.

>>21566593
Natalie on the left.

>>21570187
Are westerners even the lucky ones? Suicide rates and stupid polls on overall happiness and fulfillment tell another story.

>>21570187
>There is a lot of horrible stuff in this world.
Oh yeah? Name three horrible things

>>21570192
>>21570187
You're taking issue with the state of affairs of the world in the 21st century. That's not Ligotti's position at all. His position is that existence is fundamentally a nightmare no matter how externally "good" things may be.

>>21570216
>His position is that existence is fundamentally a nightmare
That's an exaggeration that stems from his mental condition. I'm generally having a blast in this world.

Kek, doesn’t everyone suffer from this? You guys actually still enjoy things? Movies? Books? Sex? You have to be joking.

>>21570216
I haven't even read Ligotti. Too whiny for me. I just got triggered by the "life is good" people here.

>>21570222
>I'm generally having a blast in this world.
You aren't really having fun, you only think you are. Fun doesn't exist.

Existence is only good for normies. Normies are literally children. When I was a child, life was unbelievably great. I’m regretfully not a child anymore so I suffer. I really wish I was a normie. Everyone here once was. You have to try to get back there.

>>21570241
Life is wasted on the living.

>>21570216
I'm not sure if the world is a nightmare, but if you want to think about those things, you first have to consider the perspective of someone who isn't a healthy, middle class, American anon. I don't think we really disagree that much, my point is that if people only focus on on the "externally good" things, that they are lucky to have at the moment, they won't have a clear picture of the world as a whole.

>>21570239
For you.

>>21570241
Nah, I'd rather suffer for eternity

>>21570244
we literally live in a natural world based on consuming the flesh of other creatures, untold billions dying painfully in the wild and in battery farms daily, and that's before you get to all the human suffering and literal or metaphorical slavery. every day, people are mentally or physically destroyed by the darwinian meat grinder while a tiny percentage of other people reap absurd wealth and pleasurable benefits from the whole ordeal.

if that is not a nightmare to you, then you are a nightmare to me. it is disturbing that so many humans who share my biology are wired in such a way that they have so little care for others, man or animal. this doesn't mean one should become a pessimistic pussy, but it does seem to imply that a larger percentage of people than would like to admit it are just borderline psychopathic.

>Thomas Ligotti

>>21570404
I don't think that's Ligotti's problem. His trouble seems to derive from determinism. He feels painfully convinced that free will doesn't exist - all that raving about "puppets". He's not really thinking about suffering as such.

>>21570331
>I’d rather suffer
What you’re saying is logically impossible, like a triangle with four sides.

>>21570225
You're right, it's pretty pathetic to enjoy things. But it's even worse to be unable to come to terms with the world and continually whine about it. I'd take a goyslop normie over Ligotti any day.

>my dopamine to cortisol ratio is above a certain level therefore life is...le good
Ligotti is trash but this is just as bad.

>>21568544
Most people are absolutely retarded. Most people took the covid injections.

>>21563319
>Doesn't that invalidate his philosophical worldview?
His philosophical worldview is immediately outed as invalid by the fact he hasn’t killed himself, which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he prefers to exist than to not exist, that even were life purely characterised by suffering, it must be worth it. This is just icing on the cake that proves even his perception of life as suffering is flawed. Retards in here will be like
>it makes you see how it really is without the distractions of joy
Yeah, well how about we use drugs and surgery to remove your ability to feel pain and displeasure? That would also give you a biased view quite obviously.
Life is the most strange beautiful gift there is, it is as painful and cruel as it is pleasurable and joyous
>>21563352
>those who have never been depressed or anhedonic will never get it.
I have been depressed and I can tell you, it’s a mental illness and doesn’t reflect the actual nature of the world, most of depression is intense recursive narcissism

>>21571201
He is not worth reading but why pretend you did?
Ligotti is a fatalist, which is retarded but not what you are referring to. There is no room for "dude just kill yourself" in this worldview.

>>21571201
>doesn’t reflect the actual nature of the world

>>21570404

>>21571226
>good things don’t happen because bad things do
Having empathy for literally everything is not only maladaptive, it is self endangering, not every being makes it perfectly and a lot of the ones that don’t, shouldn’t. People experience triumph and beauty every day, few people are truly unloved. I agree that factory farming is awful, but defining the world by an industry we created barely before a current human lifetime is hopelessly narcissistic, though narcissism colours pessimism deeply so that’s hardly a shock. Consider that just about every country that is supposedly impoverished is populated by people significantly happier more often than people in the developed world. And the fact that followers of this worldview are now admitting to anhedonia reveals that this discussion of suffering is sophistry, that because they cannot experience pleasure they feign worldly empathy to pretend their belief isn’t rooted in narcissism and the inability to relate to the rest of us.
I have been unhappy and lived a life without meaning and it is solvable by improving your situation. And that is what we should do to the iniquities and cruelties of society, try to improve them, not wallow in misery at how awful it all is

>>21563645
>If the things he says are just the drivel of an invalid mad man it should be easy enough for sane people to refute his points.

Except of course that his "points" are just a sentimental disposition about life and not based on sound reason or good arguments. The fact is that you can't convince someone who thinks the world is bad that it is in fact good and vice versa. People either just view Being as fundamentally good, or they don't.

>>21571261
bro i literally said multiple times already that being pessimistic is bad. that does not make the world... le good! like you seem to be implying. i can view the world as the shithole it is AND remain an optimist.

>>21563546
Man you chuds are sooo fucking close to actually getting it

>>21571319
explain, tranny.

>>21567643
underrated

>>21563319
Your mother suffers from Anvilania