/lit/ - Literature

Of course you can be purely hedonistic if you want, but personally I can't help my constant existential rumination, it's part of who I am.

No thing can be all good or all bad all the time. Men and women and life are no different.
The 'meaning of life' notion comes about after you've had a lot of Good Times.
Sort of like the question of what you'll talk about next during a lull in conversation or the wondering of what you and a friend will be doing after returning from a party.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QPBMyP8uFo

Because we're not babyboomers anymore.

"Having a good time" is a fleeting state of being. It comes and goes, leaving a chasm that must be filled by more "stuff." Having "meaning" or doing meaningful work relates to a state of being that is more constant as it relates to your way of life rather than what you have.

>>6038663
I don't know if I need to start coming on /lit/ more often or what. That was an amazing post. I hope this website never dies.

>>6038608
having a good time IS the only reason to live, but having a good time is not what most people think it is.

Having a good time is YIN AND YANG. You work, you revel in overcoming the challenge, then you have a good time.

Work without reward = not a good time. Reward without work = not a good time. Work followed by reward = having a good time, inner peace, fulfillment, etc. Feel me dag?

The meaning of life is to have a good time

Childishly simple: to live for pleasure is to be a child.

In other words, all pleasure ceases to be pleasurable once you have had enough of it. This happens when you reach physical maturity (around age 25) or shortly thereafter, unless you are borderline retarded.

most of us don't have the resources to be constantly having a good time

and not having a good time in between times of having a good time where you can't have a good time because you need money/whatever in order to have a good time wouldn't be having a good time

>>6038852

"all pleasure ceases to be pleasurable once you have had enough of it. This happens when you reach physical maturity (around age 25) or shortly thereafter"

what an utterly ridiculous statement. stop trying to be edgy.

Because "having a good time" for the sake of it with no regards for consequences is destructive and harms humans as a species.
Besides, this:
>>6038663
Having mindless, destructive fun is a stupid move. Contentment is more lasting, more stable and more realistic.

Bitches, booze and vidya can be taken away. The pride of having done things you consider good cannot.

Self-actualization is more fulfilling then pleasure

>>6038864
>all novelty is but oblivion
You just haven't graduated yet

>>6038608
Because the "I live to have a good time" gets stale fast. Humans are wired to CREATE, otherwise we cant enjoy.

>>6038952
>called edgy
>replies with "all novelty is but oblivion"

Just because you're feeling anhedonia from your mental illness doesn't mean it holds true for humanity as a whole.

Because other people have tricked us into helping them have a good time.

>>6038608

Having a good time is an adequate reason to live. Who told you otherwise?

>>6038868

How did you go from "Having a good time" to "mindless, destructive fun."

>>6038725
>work
Challenge, more like it. Work is the normal drudgery shit that every normal person does.

>>6038608
Finding meaning is a good time m8
If u really want constant pleasure fine but it's empty and you likely will wreck others' lives, which most people can't do without ultimately wrecking themselves nawmsayn

>>6038935
Pleasure is fulfilment.

>>6039553
ding ding ding

>>6039555
If it doesnt benefit anyone but you, its a waste of time.

>>6038608
>implying they're not one and the same thing

>>6038608
I'd say both, and many other reasons, to be equally valid.
No matter what we strive to live for, it won't stand the test of true time. Sure, it might be remembered for the rest of humanity's lifespan, but anything we do or live by will not matter once humanity's end comes. It might not be now, or in thousands of years more to come, but eventually all humanity has done will be lost to eternity.

>>6039615
nice little collectivist thinking, ant

>>6039625
nice selfish and worthless live, degenerate.

>>6039623
>all humanity has done will be lost to eternity
How can you prove this?

i don't want meaning, i guess

i live to eek out the bare minimum needed to maintain the life that i want

i don't think that this life will inherently have meaning, but i also don't think that it's purely for pleasure either

>>6039636
My individual pleasure is worthless, and the same goes for everyone else? How have you thought this through?

>>6039644
I can't. Just some reasoning based on flawed induction, but it seems like a likely possibility.

>>6039615
>If it doesnt benefit anyone but you, its a waste of time.
Hence the orgies.

>>6038608
You lose your personhood and you don't know what happens after that so it's fear of the unknown up to the level of death. This is why people feel they need work, resistance stands to affirm the Other, no Other no self.

I imagine this is what Hegel would say. Maybe Lacan too but idk.

>>6038608
>meaning
I roughly take meaning to be function. People want to find meaning so they can perform a function and tarry in the world and so avoid the existential dreadedness I talk about above. When people talk about meaning it's just a heuristic for what I've described here >>6039950, so they're on the money with that.

>>6039950
>>6039953
And a person's specific meaning in life is what fulfils them and allows them to tarry in the world just the right way, not too hot and not too cold and this wouldn't only be based on their physical characteristics but their beliefs about the world and of course others and the world around them which all vary and thus looking for the 'one true meaning of life' is tip top lmao.

cont:
>>6038868
>>6038852
>>6038935
>Because "having a good time" for the sake of it with no regards for consequences is destructive and harms humans as a species.
Stuff like this is stupid and talks about the phenomena on the level of heuristics.
>>6038663
This isn't stupid, but is inadequate for the same reason - although this anon may have not been bothered to give a full explanation of his meaning.
>>6039553
This is important but doesn't directly address the issue.
>>6039647
Enlightened maybe?

>>6038608
define "good time"

>>6039950
The little mango Ano No Ko Ie taught me this. ;3

>>6038654
underrated post

>>6038608
It's not that having a good time is not a worthy goal, it's that when the effort expended to acquire that goal is trivial, it upsets the balance between reward and effort.

What happens to cultures that with a surfeit of leisure is pitiable, one of two things happen to the population, they become hedonistic, continually seeking new thrills or they turn introspective, concerned with esoteric issues like: the meaning of life.

>>6039555
I assumed the definition of a good time was hedonistic in this case. It is destructive in the sense that it includes little more than enjoying what is already there and does not concern itself in creating anything. It's not destructive in the sense of actuallly, literally destroying material things and killing people.

>>6039975
Sorry, I know shit about heuristics, could you please explain how that works and why you say that?

>>6040448
A heuristic is when you don't know the solution to a problem and have difficulty getting at it and so use a simpler method that roughly fits. It happens in the way people talk and think about things and it gets passed on in language and becomes common place thinking, when I say on the level of heuristics I'm talking about what Aristotle means by endoxa, a common place and seemingly truthful opinion that hasn't been worked on philosophically to give a concrete understanding. Not penetrated to depths or foundations.

>>6038608
All happiness can pass in a moment.

Who was the philosopher who talks about a man having a great life and a wife and children but then he loses them and it erases all the happiness? Is it shoppy?

>>6038608
>Why is Having a Good Time not an adequate reason to live?
It is most of the time for most of us. The world does run on hedonism. To go radically beyond this is really to go outside the society in terms of thoughts, speeches and acts. Imagine not to be a hedonist when your biology and all other people push you to higher pleasures and lesser sufferings... it becomes harder unless you become an official member of some religion/cult where your difference will be respected.

In all cases, hedonism is necessary for our society. It does not mean that there is nothing else, that this other is not interesting or worth it. What you solely know about this is that is remains far more undocumented, far less intuitive.


>>6040399
>It's not that having a good time is not a worthy goal, it's that when the effort expended to acquire that goal is trivial, it upsets the balance between reward and effort.


Our overall goal is to ease our existence, our survival but what goes beyond this, let's call it our life remains in the unknown. You cannot blame us for this. We create and develop things from drugs to beds to contraceptives and so on. The human nature is truly hedonistic. To create is to go to an unknown territory where you experience fear of loss, pleasure of adventure, pleasure of discovery, pleasure of loss and so on.

>>6040550
The notion of reward is a bit unbecoming. Why do you focus on this one ? The yield = pleasure/suffering in hedonism is always increasing but it gets harder and harder to increase it as our science of biology has just been born, compared to our physics. Nowadays, the best hedonistic life still requires quite a lot of money for instance. If you are in the middle class, it will sucks great time as all you desire comes from a compromised between your time/money invested and the pleasure retrieved. But again, this is what drives the society and there is nothing wrong with this. And to create as always existed : we create scientific models, novels, cures, companies (very trendy today obviously), ads, jobs and so on. Creation going beyond its usefulness for our direct survival has always been here.

The problem with the trivial hedonism, that is to say, with the hedonism without the creation, is that you do no longer have constraints on your pleasures, beyond the constraints of diversity or rather repetitivity if you do not have enough money. In other words, we decrease our sufferings without even thinking about it : it would be reckless for us not to treat our cancer as soon as we discover it.
However, there is no upper bounds to our pleasures. Why would somebody limit his own desires and pleasures (especially nowadays) ?

The point of the creation, the point of its pleasure is that by definition, to create is the most difficult thing in the world since what you are doing has not be done. This is the upper bound for our pleasures, this is why it is good hedonism.

To choose the path of not to create, but equally of not to remain in a trivial state of hedonism where you puke only to eat even more is the most uncharted territory as it goes against your human biology. We are meant for action, for creation, for invention, for adventure. When you refuse the hedonism, the trivial one plus the creative one, you are in a state of unease, at least at the beginning, but it opens a new path for the humanity.

At the time having a Good time means create suffering for lower clases, certain people or yourself. Joy is fugacious but uncertainty remains.
Thats why

>>6038725
>Reward without work = not a good time.
I didn't do shit last year and played vidya and listened to music all day and had a GREAT time
keep telling yourself that
nearly as retarded as saying being mortal is a good thing

>>6042159
Literal manchild. Your parents are gonna die and all you'll have left to do is throw yourself off a bridge

Because constantly "having a good time" is countereffective.

t. anxious NEET

>>6042176
nah I just took a break of studying and procrastinated a lot, I'm continuing to study now
still was a great time tho
but honestly: by living in a first world country and being very talented in mathematics I'll probably have a nice life without having to do very much for anything
I mean yea I'll have to study and go to work later on but boohoo that's nothing compred to what other people go through
enjoying a shitload of YIN for a minimal amount of YANG is pretty awesome and I'd always prefer it to the satisfaction of getting a lot of work done as long as this work is not needed in my current position

>>6039636
why are you posting on /lit/ instead of ending human suffering if you really believe that?

>>6038608
Good news! Meaning is gradually going by the wayside for my (our?) generation.

You can be an avowed, public Communist now because it means nothing. Paradigmatic political change is even more illusory than it once was -there's no exit. Might as well enjoy the ride.

>>6038608
Happiness is a social construct.

>>6038608
because that's ambiguous as shit.

depending on the definition of "good" you could say that is true. you could also interpret good to be synonymous with meaning.

do a bunch of heroine, become homeless and smell like piss.

get married, have kids, and slowly grow to hate them.

>>6038608
you will also not be able to dedicate your life to having a good time because this will is juissance and it is excessive in nature. you need boundaries to cross in order to get real fulfillment of your desires,

>>6038608
>>6043531
also if you had any taste in reality and having a good time youd be a total junky

>>6039644
I fucking hate retards like you.

I've done pretty much every drug someone can name, I've taken acid alone around 200 times, I've been in a long term relationship for 10 years, I party regularly and attend festivals in the summer, I have a handful of incredibly close friends. my favorite authors are Swift, Gaddis and Pynchon; imo, life is entirely meaningless. Everything is an illusory construct of those before you. It is no less significant, it just is. Stripping the past ideology and mining out the nuggets of truth from the years are indespensible. It's really funny watching this board shitpost memes against anyone who doesn't agree with all aspects up-to-and-including "radical" leftism, with strawmen and intentional retardation. I love Gaddis and he had some amazing insights, but he was a trust fund kiddie with a businessman daddy and got thrown out of Harvard for getting shitfaced drunk and fighting people in his parents' dime. Perspective, people. Wasting billions of dollars of resources on the mostly untapped southern hemisphere under the naive belief they will somehow adapt despite having never done so in 160k years, is retarded.

Even if it's "all relative" and "every culture is valid", if your culture has produced nothing but subjugation, charity, whining, and historical manipulation, with no tangible actual benefits, and continues to uphold marginally successful people who have done nothing of any real merit to The Human Race; maybe there is a reason your retarded, backwards-ass, unadaptible culture is dying

>mfw inarticulate europoors shitpost incessantly about the USA's "lack of culture"
>mfw the USA is the culture of the western world
>mfw the rest of the planet is literally stuck on "le wrong generation"
>mfw the USA will continue blowing muslims off the map for at least decades to come

>>6038608

Come back when you're not 19.

>>6043715
Agreed. The worst part is that they believe their fart-sniffing is profound, somehow, despite being the same mentality of an inquisitive youngster prior to puberty. It is absolutely unreal that society is at the point these people expect exagerated and in-depth arguments against their sophistry. Just because you have read thousands of pages of bourgeoise pontification, does not mean you require a more thorough refutation than "okay well every instance of history shows you are wrong and that's the end of it". Re-asserting positions that demonstrably end in catastophy and waxing poetically about the USSR just demonstrate how disconnected, and again, brainwashed, so-called "academics" really are.

>I spent my life reading manifesto's so they're true
>Fuck reality, I'm not popular

It's pathetic. The only thing more pathetic is the masses who are being les by the puppet strings of the media and public education. Growing up in that environment and not understanding the indoctrination is inexcusable. You would have to be actually retarded. I'm sure some dumb faggot from tumblr will imply education is somehow still right wing and oppressive, despite dedicating entire years of primary education to: nationalism is bad no matter what, everyone is equal despite the obvious fact that we aren't or we would be, all cultures are relative even if their only accomplishment is literally sucking cow ass, etc

This is some serious rambling, but god damn I am just so tired of mindless, unconstrained leftism. You pass, yes, good job. A bunch of fat dykes land skinny faggots have brainwashed you into believing their assinine bullshit with eloquency, so you therefore believe that arguments against you must be lengthy and in depth. They needn't be. You idiots pretend that history happened for no reason. The reality is non-western cultures are weak, non-capitalistic societies are weak, matriarchies are weak, etc.

You snakes in the grass who rely upon redifinition, vague statements of nothing, and being the devil's advocate, had better pray that your dreaded "oppressive western society" that allows such backwards, delusional idiots to exist ever falters, or you will immediately lean what "true struggle" really is, and as useless, professional "le xD"ers, get to see the real and tangible results of voting away your rights and resources for vague and fallacious concepts.

>>6040530
All everything can pass in a moment.

I'm with OP.

Having a good time and being good are two different things

>>6043800
Nice try.

>>6038608
>Good Time
Define 'good'. Everything that you judge to be a 'good time' will end in tears sooner or later. (And usually sooner than later.)