/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21724203]

what an idiot.

[Anonymous No.21724212]

>>21724203
this is your brain on conservatism

[Anonymous No.21724225]

>>21724203
Lmaooooo

[Anonymous No.21724236]

>>21724203
Benatar bros...

[Anonymous No.21724237]

>>21724203
See all those sick people not killing themselves?

Yeah.

[Anonymous No.21724252]

>>21724203
It's strange I was suicidal and depressed but after suffering an extremely painful illness for the past year it made me appreciate life more and realise that I don't want death but life

[Anonymous No.21724320]

false dichotomy

[Anonymous No.21724334]

>>21724203
Antinatalistsisters, the life affirming man is being mean again.

[Anonymous No.21724357]

>>21724203
Buddhists on suicide watch

[Anonymous No.21724375]

>>21724357
Pain is not the issue, self imposed suffering because of it is. Pain is just another sense perception for the gristmill. Not to mention dhukka has some seriously shit translations and few who aren't scholar-practioners understand the nuance at all.

[Anonymous No.21724399]

>>21724203
t. bugman on antidepressants

[Anonymous No.21724406]

>>21724203
Based. The suffering that is common to all by simple virtue of being alive is the only path by which to better understand what it means to be alive. Anti-natalists are retarded.

[Anonymous No.21724423]

>muh souf

[Anonymous No.21724433]

>>21724203
How did he get so based?

[Anonymous No.21724443]

>>21724320
Obviously it’s not a real dichotomy but it is intentionally constructed to prove a point, nobody thinks that this is actually the choice.

[Anonymous No.21724446]

Give someone a life of extreme unceasing incurable pain from the moment of birth until death - but with the option to check out instantly at any time.

People like to sound tough but how long would they really last, and why?

[Anonymous No.21724447]

>>21724203
He says that but he had sex unlike us.

[Anonymous No.21724449]

>>21724433
Not so sure about this one. It must be later Faulkner, after he became too self-conscious and did retarded shit like add the appendix for TSATF. Faulkner was always at his best when he spoke from his heart and not his head.

[Anonymous No.21724456]

>>21724446
>One must imagine Sisyphus happy
Don't be retarded. Choosing pain over nothing is not choosing eternal demonic torture

[Anonymous No.21724459]

A bunch of SSRI addled minds in this thread.

[Anonymous No.21724461]

>>21724456
Well what level of pain are we talking here?

[Anonymous No.21724478]

>>21724456
>Given the option between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain (but only as long as the pain wasn't too bad and didn't last too long, you know, don't be silly I didn't mean it like *that*).

[Anonymous No.21724524]

Depends if it's pain inflicted on my ass and maybe testicles by cute girls.

[Anonymous No.21724541]

>>21724478
>t. the eternal autist
go outside

[Anonymous No.21724563]

>>21724541
>don't ask me to put my money where my mouth is, just let me enjoy my cool tough guy mustache man quotes

[Anonymous No.21724621]

>>21724563
>Mr. Faulkner, you said, "Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain." But, like, what if that pain was constant from your birth, like if you were being mutilated and flayed and hung from your feet with hooks and drawn and quartered and beat to a pulp and eaten alive by rats but like kept alive too, cause you just are okay, I say so, so you wouldn't die, see Mr. Faulkner ur so dumb, nothing would be the more logical choice
>well I'll be durned I guess ur right

[Anonymous No.21724659]

>>21724621
>how dare you distill the choice and ask questions, I didn't want to really think about what my words entail I just wanted to sound badass

[Anonymous No.21724863]

>>21724203
What he really means is he chooses the respites of pleasure and happiness over not experiencing at all. Which is fine, and perhaps admirable, but he doesn't mean what he thinks he does.
>I would choose pain
Pain is never desirable in itself. If say a masochist enjoys a pain then the perception is of pleasure. As soon as the "pain" stops being pleasurable i.e. is actually perceived as pain, they'll want it to stop asap. Applying meaning to pain or suffering can make it bearable or even desirable, but this by no means makes the pain or suffering itself desirable. Not only that but the worst pain is more painful than the best pleasure is pleasurable.

If he means an "experience of nothing" as in simply doing nothing, he's actually saying he doesn't like the boredom which is a kind of pain. But if not, he's most likely reifying nothing into an "experience of nothing" and then interpreting that imagined experience as something boring or undesirable, but not existing/experiencing is neither boring nor exciting, painful nor pleasurable, undesirable nor desirable, nor can you really say it's the opposite or absence of experience. To imagine "nothing" as like something and then to say you don't like what you imagine is to misunderstand "nothing".
This also seems to me like a flaw in some anti-natalist reasoning: Faulkner is wrong because you can't prefer something over nothing, but you also can't prefer nothing because there's nothing to prefer.

[Anonymous No.21724890]

>>21724863
>Not only that but the worst pain is more painful than the best pleasure is pleasurable.
How could we even begin to assess this kind of question? If it's an empirical question of human behavior, it seems to me that people will endure a great deal of torment to get certain forms of pleasure, e.g. heroin. The fact that people will destroy almost everything good in their life in pursuit of heroin says something about the power of pleasure.

[Anonymous No.21725054]

>>21724890
You're right, it's only speculation and hard if not impossible to quantify. It was a last second statement that's not too relevant to my main point. But this thought experiment may at least provide some intuition of what I mean:
Would you accept 15 minutes of the maximum possible pleasure and happiness, if you then had to spend 15 minutes in the maximum possible pain and suffering? If you without hesitation say yes, I think you don't acknowledge just how painful pain can be. Even if you didn't then experience the maximum pain, the potential for intense pain caused by the mere cessation of the maximum pleasure should give pause. It seems highly likely too that desirable long term effects of the pleasure, if any, will be much less than the undesirable long term effects of the pain. Also, theoretically pain can keep getting more painful, whereas pleasure reaches a point where it gets so intense or incessant that it starts becoming painful. Of course, this isn't conclusive but it's interesting to me nonetheless.
>The fact that people will destroy almost everything good in their life in pursuit of heroin says something about the power of pleasure.
The pleasure of heroin might be better than the pain of the comedown, but that just means it's not the most pain possible. Just to illustrate the point: I imagine if the pleasure of a heroin high is 10/10 then the pain of not being high is "only" a 5. In any case, I think the desire for the pleasure of heroin is rather an aversion to the pain of not being high.

[Anonymous No.21725185]

Which book is this from?

[Anonymous No.21725189]

>>21725185
The Wild Palms

[Anonymous No.21726686]

>>21724320
Are you retarded?

[Anonymous No.21726776]

>>21724433
i love it when writers can't follow logic so they start throwing around words like soul and god

[Anonymous No.21726778]

>>21726776
t. soulless

[Anonymous No.21726792]

>>21724203
I am not a masochist therefore I do not agree.

[Anonymous No.21727321]

>>21724203
Poor man's Joyce

[Anonymous No.21727333]

>>21724252
Same: I suffered a strange viral infection in my nervous system over the past 6 months and now I feel like I embrace life much more. I used to not really care if i lived or died because I just figured it would happen quick and easy. But having this long drawn out suffering, where the next big symptom might arise at any moment, where I spent sleepless, writhing nights wondering if this would be my last breath, where some days I thought death was better than this hellish torture, made me appreciate life way more than before. It's like the moment I had to face death, I couldn't meet it face to face, I couldn't accept it despite all the pain and agony. Sometime in my mid-twenties I realized I would never give in to temptation and off myself, I could never end my own life; and somehow that meant I could never give in if there was still a fighting chance to stay alive.

[Anonymous No.21727347]

>>21724203
i would too

[Anonymous No.21727385]

>>21724203
It isn't even a choice. You cannot experience nothing.

[Anonymous No.21727438]

>>21724237
that has more to do with the biological imperative of self preservation evolved over 500 million years. i mean, technically they have a choice, but not really

[Anonymous No.21728083]

Given the choice between someone else experiencing pain or nothing, I would chose to make them experience pain.

[Anonymous No.21728107]

>>21727385
It's not like you can choose anything, you can't even choose to be born.

[Anonymous No.21728134]

>>21724357
> I
> Buddhists
he simply admits that blind would have fallen