/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16603651]

I've been thinking about it, and the belief that the highest moral duty is to reduce pain and suffering is about as anti-life as you can get.

Life is suffering, and everything that makes one successful in life is painful and causes suffering. Hard work, exercise, child birth, responsibility, etc, etc. They all cause pain and suffering because pain and suffering are the price of greatness.

Also the reduction (or elimination) of pain and suffering can't be an end but a means. What is the purpose of life without suffering? To be happy? Happiness is an emotion. You can choose to feel happy regardless of your circumstances, so if you're unhappy it's because you're choosing to be unhappy, and that's your own problem. Nobody has the power, let alone the duty, to make you happy.

Evolution/Darwinism/Natural Selection is not pretty, but it works. competition and creating winners and losers is how humanity rose above other animals, how empires shaped the world, and why you're reading this on discord instead of making cave-paintings with your feces.

Lastly, there are several alternatives that don't create moral duties on others if your goal is to reduce pain and suffering. These include:
- The "Brave New World" solution where you give people drugs to make them feel happy and not feel pain.
- Remove the parts of someone's brain that causes them to be sad or process suffering so they can be blissful idiots.
- Eliminate all lifeforms that are capable of feeling pain and suffering altogether, thus eliminating pain and suffering itself (especially humans)
- Develop a masochistic fetish where you train yourself to process pain as pleasure and get into the cock and ball torture scene.
- Kill yourself

Note that their solution seems to always be welfare though? Isn't that weird?

[Anonymous No.16603679]

>>16603651
The notion that we have a moral obligation to reduce pain is central the moral theory. But pain, as I see it, arises from a series of cognitive processes that, among other things, are the result of the interaction between the mind and the body. Thus, moral theory is nothing but a description of a kind of cognitive process that is at the origin of such pain. It is a description of pain that has nothing to do with any 'moral obligation' to reduce pain.

[Anonymous No.16603827]

>>16603651
This is not a novel view although I admire it anon. You should read Nietzsche and Ernst Jünger, especially his book "On Pain" to make your argument more rigorous.

[Anonymous No.16603842]

>>16603651
fucking edgy cope
life is misery because of human fault, not inherently. As humans are now, a more or less perfect society is possible. There's enough space, enough food, enough material, the technology.
The reason it doesn't work is human greed.
"oh, life is suffering"
no, life is people doing harm to each other and spending the rest of the time justifying it.

[Anonymous No.16603872]

>>16603651
Based. I cannot realize how anti-natalists don’t realize suffering is inherent to life and is therefore a part of it; those anti natalists embrace suffering like the rest of us, only to come out on top the better man. Why strip such a feeling from their potential offspring?

[Anonymous No.16603911]

>>16603651
>Life is suffering, and everything that makes one successful in life is painful and causes suffering. Hard work, exercise, child birth, responsibility, etc, etc. They all cause pain and suffering because pain and suffering are the price of greatness.
God I wish I was in high school again.

[Anonymous No.16604068]

>>16603651
There is no such thing as true highest duty, at least we don't know which is. When they failed to find the objective truth, first thing they do is fall back to the world of the inner mind, that they can sense and feel, then they claimed they found the truth and stop there. They are wrong, not because they live this way (implying they aren't suck at that), but because they don't realize there are alternative.
I just hate these smug stoicism bloggers so much bro

[Anonymous No.16604106]

M-mr Peterson what are you doing on Lit

[Anonymous No.16604150]

>>16604106
Peterson is a tradcuck

[Anonymous No.16604879]

based

[Anonymous No.16605201]

>>16603651
>They all cause pain and suffering because pain and suffering are the price of greatness.
So, if I capture someone, and torture him, and he proceeds to crack completely becoming a husk of a human. How is he great? Surely, since he has suffered he has become great, even if the pain was for no reason.

[Anonymous No.16606310]

>>16603651
>Life is suffering
wrong, existence is suffering, because it is the denial of the eternal life.

[Anonymous No.16606412]

>>16603651
Based but you're going to make hedonists seethe.

[Anonymous No.16606426]

>>16605201
>So,
Filtered.

[Anonymous No.16606468]

>>16603872
>Based. I cannot realize how anti-natalists don’t realize suffering is inherent to life and is therefore a part of it
The smarter ones will come to realize that this universe is comprised of faultiness from its conception and this faultiness is what gives rise to suffering in all things and beings

[Anonymous No.16606492]

Every advancement of mankind steers towards reducing/eliminating suffering.

Competition breeds better solutions -- but that goal is still to make things easier and less painful.

[Anonymous No.16606506]

>>16606492
Yet at no point in time have felt more alienated from our Being. Civilization is a self-repeating mistake that will only stop short of ecological collapse.

[Anonymous No.16607008]

>>16603651
>I've been thinking about it, and the belief that the highest moral duty is to reduce pain and suffering is about as anti-life as you can get.
This is negative utilitarianism, which ultimately leads to the belief that all life should be whipped out because that would be the best way to reduce suffering in its extreme versions. Most utilitarians are not negative utilitarians.
>exercise
Has multiple health benefits. Lifting weights will create a more durable body for your old age, such that you will suffer less. Running preserves your mind longer as well. Not to mention the other benefits of good health ranging from being less likely to get cancer or being more likely to have a hot gf.
>child birth
We need to produce children, otherwise we overburden the retirement system as is happening in aging populations. This causes more suffering. We could argue
>responsibility
A trait of conscientiousness. People who are conscientious are more financially successful and income has a significant correlation with life satisfaction.
>You can choose to feel happy regardless of your circumstances, so if you're unhappy it's because you're choosing to be unhappy, and that's your own problem.
Doesn't matter if some people will choose to be happy. All that matters to utilitarians is what circumstances in fact make people happier. Wealthier nations, as a matter of statistical fact, are generally happier than less wealthy nations. Most people are less happy when they experience violence, food scarcity, or have no shelter to reside.

>Evolution/Darwinism/Natural Selection is not pretty, but it works. competition and creating winners and losers is how humanity rose above other animals, how empires shaped the world, and why you're reading this on discord instead of making cave-paintings with your feces.
So you're saying competition makes society better off? That perhaps it makes people, hm..., happier? Congrats, it does. That's why having markets is justifiable. Because no one would care about said empires if people thought they would be more miserable in them.

>Brave New World Solution
Such a drug does not exist. There are drugs that can make you feel temporary good sensations that in the long term cause harm. Tell me all about how alcohol makes people happy when their liver fails. Anti depressants also have big side effects while things as simple as meditation have a comparable effect size.
>Make people blissful idiots
Society collapses. Life spans revert back to pre civilization days. Total happiness over a life time decreases in proportion.
>Kill off everyone
Only negative utilitarians believe this, which is why it's dumb. Under normal utilitarianism killing off the entire population deprives people of future happiness.

[Anonymous No.16607025]

>>16603651
>You can choose to feel happy regardless of your circumstances
How?

[Anonymous No.16607029]

>>16603651
>>16607008
>bdsm
Not even anything wrong with this. I think you have it in your mind that bdsm = degeneracy ergo you can't be financially successful and into bdsm. Who do you think is more likely to be able to afford that expensive equipment?
Or I hope you don't think people can develop a fetish for *any* pain OP. Please don't be this stupid.
>Kill yourself
Only if you reasonably think your future suffering outweighs your future happiness. This is why euthanasia is justified.
>note their solution is always welfare though?
Milton Friedman was a consequentialist libertarian and seemed to think reducing the welfare state would maximize the good. Same with Hayek. Same with most right wingers trained in economics. They tend to believe they can justify their beliefs on consequentialist grounds because they do their homework and don't just base their positions on memes like "taxation is theft." They leave those simple memes to the simple minded so they can form coalitions with them. Generally speaking, everyone wants to be able to say their preferred society would make people better off. Imagine saying, "I want a society where people suffer more than they have to with no long term benefit being conceivable." Of course no one would go for it. People only reject the idea that society should be improved for the people who live in it when they're too stupid to make that case.

[Anonymous No.16607042]

>>16605201
A steak dinner will cost you $35. Flushing $35 down a shitter doesn't get you a steak dinner. Dummy.

[Anonymous No.16607100]

>>16607029
>Milton Friedman

[Anonymous No.16607206]

>>16603872
That is precisely what antinatalists recognize. You're just going to suffer and die, it's all for nothing eventually, so why should you subject people to this when they don't feel deprived of anything?

[Anonymous No.16607222]

>>16603842
So why isn't it being made? Doesn't the fact that we can make utopia but won't prove that to son extent we don't want utopia?

[Anonymous No.16607258]

>>16607042
Still, this suggests that there is a such thing as unnecessary suffering. Is this perhaps the goal of civilisation and progress? Doesn't the existence of unnecessary suffering bring this dichotomy - that suffering is either good or bad - into question?

[Anonymous No.16607601]

>>16603651
>and why you're reading this on discord instead of making cave-paintings with your feces.
nice crosspost discordfag

[Anonymous No.16608902]

>>16603651
There is only virtue in suffering. Become Christian.

[Anonymous No.16608906]

>>16606468
>believes in the "Big Bang" and aliens instead of the power of his own god
No I don't, why would I? I never saw it happen.

[Anonymous No.16608915]

>>16606310
retard nihilist shit.

[Anonymous No.16608917]

>>16604150
>Peterson is a tradcuck
On what planet? Nothing he advocates is "traditional", he's a sterile modernist all the same.

[Anonymous No.16608986]

>>16604150
*coping milquetoast neoliberal shill

[Anonymous No.16609007]

>>16603651
>moral duty
I wish /lit/ was adult-only