If life is too short for you to go around being unhappy, then existence is also too short for you to go about being happy. You can’t have it both ways. Instead of wasting your time feeling this or that transient sensation, maybe you ought to spend your days trying to figure out the purpose of being alive. Happiness is one of those emotions that will keep you from understanding what is truly happening.
All that good cheer will keep you from recognizing the extent of the tyranny around you. Whenever some do-gooder comes up with a particularly nasty attack upon your freedom, the liberal always claims that the legislation gives him a good feeling. The altruist always says that his totalitarian charity makes him feel happy. You can be absolutely certain to avoid every communitarian assault upon your independence if you scrupulously avoid anything that makes you feel content. We exist at a moment in history when you need to be suspicious of any mass amusement.
The happier the man, the more stupid he is. The more a person enjoys his life, the more superficial his personality. Just as the most disgusting woman always laughs the loudest, so the most obtuse fellow will always be the most outgoing. The higher a fellow’s spirits, the lower his IQ. The retard always has a smile on his face no matter what.
At this point in Western civilization, enjoying yourself is a complete waste of time. Misery is something you want to be achieving. A personality gains depth only when the individual gives way to despair. An enlightened man is always the most uneasy.
In much of this post, you could have substituted "sociable" for "happy". Shallow people love any kind of get together. And as the great Schopenhauer said, all knaves and rogues are sociable.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny to me how so many ideologies, religions, salesmen, and bureaucrats promise happiness. It is as though people think that this is the point of life, flitting around from place to place searching for it.
ReplyDeleteI applaud you. Bang on again. "They're all going nowhere and you're standing in the line."
ReplyDeleteHappiness is like a fart in a tornado; it goes as quickly as it came.
ReplyDeleteYou also see loads of job ads where you have to be: "Be upbeat, proactive and positive, with a ‘can-do’ attitude". No doubt plastering a smile on your face, while an irate customer threatens to stick the item up your ....!
There is no happiness in this slaughtehouse called Earth. We delude ourselves thinking about happiness. Mankind will attain happiness when it ceases to exist. Greetings from Paraguay.Raul
ReplyDeleteYes Raul, that is true. I too wish for this, but it seems to be a long way away
DeleteJust as nothing ever gets better in this life, so everything will only be worse in the afterlife. Just as there is only pain in this existence, there will only be greater suffering in “non-existence.” No relief for the wicked in this world or the next.
DeleteThat doesn't make much sense. Perhaps metaphorically if an afterlife existed, it could indeed be just as bad or worse, but non-existence is by its very definition the absence of anything so there couldn't possibly be any suffering or anything at all there.
DeleteUnless you're using metaphors to imply that suffering will continue existing for others, but surely any dead individual is forever devoid of anything resembling suffering.
"Life is a disturbing episode in a blissful repose of nothingness" just about sums it up
Whatever you call that condition that follows death – “afterlife” or “nonexistence” – those circumstances are going to be far more unpleasant than anything you might experience in this life. Whether it is termed “hell” or “oblivion” – the anguish in the hereafter will still be just the same.
DeleteI would caution you not to get caught up in the semantics – there is not going to be any “nothingness,” blissfully reposed or otherwise. A strict “negation of being” ain’t going to happen – it’s too late for you, my friend; you are already part of existence. A state of “non-being” will not be possible for you. All this weird philosophical terminology is merely designed to make you feel better about the horror that awaits you in the realm beyond.
That doesn't make any sense though. You yourself said in another post that you will be dead soon so it doesn't matter what happens to your "distant descendants" and now you're saying this?
DeleteSure, nonexistence is not a state as such so you will no be aware that you're in bliss or anything, nor of course it is preferable to not being born at all which is obviously, as per Cioran, the best fate that all of us were robbed off.
However, even though objectively I came into existence in the universe as an unfortunate byproduct of a sexual intercourse (a sperm that should have lost in that lottery for sure), once I cease to exist, my matter will dissipate. Sure, it will become nourishment for Earth or what have you and even if no one ever remembers me, I would have still existed as a biological process in the universe for "x" number of years, there would be nothing more left of me as a sentient creature and the suffering will end.
There cannot be any "horror that awaits me in the realm beyond" and its strange to hear something like that from you, who I would assume is an atheist (any rational person would be). What horror can await non-sentience? None.
'I say so, so it is so'
ReplyDeleteHappiness exists for the purpose of making you unhappy. Someone said that. I dont mind if im happy which I am not but another happy person especially one that is oblivious to the fact that he is boring and dumb as fuck is a pain in the arse. Stop laughing at your own statements dumbass! They are not funny! The clever and happy guy? He is annoying too but on a jealousy level, refer to first statement.
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