It seems to be a common conclusion that those with physical or mental disabilities are unable to lead a happy life, but every bit of research I've seen strongly suggests the opposite.
Ok sure but I was using them as examples of how people might be unhappy. Just because some people can be happy in bad circumstances doesn't mean everyone should be. Telling someone there's someone worse off than them doesn't make their situation better, it's just an attempt to make them feel guilty.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chucker
Humanity strives on the achieves of individual men which are remembered through centuries, if not millennia. To believe that your life will never amount to anything can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I've seen that answer come up a lot before. What difference would it make to the individual if they are remembered centuries on? Do you think it makes a difference to Isaac Newton how he changed the scientific world? We appreciate it but it's unlikely that he would have known the impact his work would make.
Now you might say that the world would be far worse off if he had killed himself but no one would ever know. That's what I was saying about limitations in the human condition. It doesn't matter what we do because nobody really cares. Irrespective of our personal choices, others live out their lives in their own way because we are all disconnected.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chucker
Because it doesn't make you come off as a particularly willful and powerful person.
Do you know how much willpower it takes to kill yourself? It's different for everyone of course. Living is easier for some people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chucker
Climbing a mountain is tough, but ending up at its peak and being able to look down is an irreplaceable moment of joy.
And that's all it is. A moment of joy. When you break it down, it's just your body forming chemical reactions in a nice way. There's nothing far reaching about it.
The hill was placed there as was gravity, making it difficult to climb. As human beings, we have been designed to appreciate only relativism. You can't be happy without sadness, you can't have tall people without short people, otherwise we have no way to define them. But because we have been designed that way, how can there be any true achievement?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chucker
Walking away from meaningless fights, sure. Walking away from challenges? No.
Again it depends on what you view life to be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chucker
You can't tell someone else the answer to this question, because it is completely individual. You won't know until you've lived the better part of your life what purpose it had.
I agree that you might not know until you are older but I presume people would have an idea of what they'd want their purpose in life to be. I also have to assume given that there are old people around that someone must have shared their opinion on the matter but I've never heard a reasonable one. Everyone asks the question what is the meaning of life but no-one ever answers it in a way that they or anyone else believes that there is an answer, personal or universal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chucker
Because there are times and situations where it is a whole lot easier to keep whining about how horrible one's life is, rather than trying to constructively find the things that are right and wrong about it.
But if nobody presents any solutions then what else is there to do?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chucker
That depends on what they can do. Can they read books in prison? Write journals?
Yeah but there you are reverting back to the idea that people can find meaning in anything. The same goes for modern art. Some people put up work made out of rubbish and to some it's rubbish, to others it's art. People sometimes present ambiguous pieces and leave it up to the audience to find something in it. You can't criticize some members of the audience for not seeing what other people see. That's another analogy of reality being between gullibility and cynicism. Are people who see meaning in rubbish gullible or are people who see nothing in rubbish cynical?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chucker
There is no such thing.
Maybe not an inescapable prison but an emotional prison certainly exists.
Quote:
Originally Posted by giant
That philosophical systems based on idealized hypotheticals don't work in the real world like they might appear to in theory, and how screwed up it is to learn that the hard way.
Ok, I managed to get hold of it. It sounds quite interesting. I understand that purely philosophical ideologies don't always apply to the real world but I form mine from my observations of it rather than the converse.
Sorry Marvin to leave you all alone in this fight. I'll get back to it soon. But let me say that at least Chucker is talking constructive ideas and debating the situation. He is acknowledging that perhaps people should be happy and he is atlking about situations where they are not happy. Giant just through in a few insults, a few "you're deluded"s, and a few "you're way to simple"s.
This just goes to show how completely naive you are. I don't know how old you are but you must be under 25.
Pot, kettle...and it's not an "insult" to point out fatal flaws in an argument.
Secondly, what's really interesting about the words you attribute to me in quotes here
Quote:
a few "you're deluded"s, and a few "you're way to simple"s.
and here
Quote:
But you say I am talking in "vague childish terms"...
and here
Quote:
You say "What, we shouldn't help people out? We should just let them kill themselves?"
and here
Quote:
You vaguely called my "simple"...
is that I never used those phases, nor did I even use any of those words at all.
I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that someone who invents a personal philosophical system supported by imaginary, prejudice-revealing 2D hypotheticals would also fabricate and falsely attribute quotes to try to mischaracterize and dismiss criticism.
[QUOTE=giant]Pot, kettle...and it's not an "insult" to point out fatal flaws in an argument.
QUOTE]
All you did was insult me and vaguely say that I didn't know what I was talking about, without citing any evidence. You never responded to the scenarios I brought up. You just said I didn't know what I was tlaking about. Here is your quote:
"This is just so ignorant of the reality of suicide. It's great to disconnect yourself from the reality of it and get pseudo-philosophical about it from afar, but the reality is that in most cases it, like murder, is fucking stupid and not a reasonable, calculated "solution." There is an argument to be made for suicide in cases of terminal disease, but for people who are just unhappy?"
ignorant, disconnected from reality, etc.
Did you provide any evidence that you know why people are unhappy or what it is like? Did you answer any of my scenarios. No. that is what Chucker is doing. He is responding to the SPECIFICS of the scenarios I raised. Just saying I am ignorant of the "reality of it" isn't a substantial argument.
I realize it is an emotional topic, but you still haven't responded, even once, to the question I raised several times about hopeless, chronic mental illness.
[ You never responded to the scenarios I brought up.
As in:
Quote:
Originally Posted by spindler
What if you are 45 and your husband has left you, and you have aged badly and you are just plain ugly and know you will never have another date in your life?
There's nothing to respond to. It's just a stream of prejudices packaged in an invented, shallow, imaginary and completely two dimensional hypothetical character. You might as well say, "well, what about Little Miss Muffet?"
In the real world people are complex, dynamic, unpredicatable, emotional, rational, have thoughts, feelings, likes and dislikes, occupations, interests, families, friends, acquantances, enemies, histories, dreams, pains, bodies, responsibilites, vices, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. Imaginary scenarios based on your own prejudices are completely and totally irrelevant in the real world.
There's nothing to respond to. It's just a stream of prejudices packaged in an invented, shallow, imaginary and completely two dimensional hypothetical character. You might as well say, "well, what about Little Miss Muffet?"
In the real world people are complex, dynamic, unpredicatable, emotional, rational, have thoughts, feelings, likes and dislikes, occupations, interests, families, friends, acquantances, enemies, histories, dreams, pains, bodies, responsibilites, vices, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. Imaginary scenarios based on your own prejudices are completely and totally irrelevant in the real world.
Um, this sounds nice. I wish it could be completely true and the overriding factor in everyone's life.
In the real world, people who are good looking get drastically more attention then people who aren't. If you are a 38 year old woman who is good looking, you'll have lots of friends and dates. If you're really bad looking, you might not get a date for a year, especially if you are really overweight. I'm not saying how life SHOULD BE, I am stating how life IS. There are 2% on the end who just look really bad, and men are largely attracted to looks and will pass them by. Sorry that's the way it is, I'm simply reporting it. That's the dismal science of economics.
Um, this sounds nice. I wish it could be completely true and the overriding factor in everyone's life.
In the real world, people who are good looking get drastically more attention then people who aren't. If you are a 38 year old woman who is good looking, you'll have lots of friends and dates. If you're really bad looking, you might not get a date for a year, especially if you are really overweight. I'm not saying how life SHOULD BE, I am stating how life IS. There are 2% on the end who just look really bad, and men are largely attracted to looks and will pass them by. Sorry that's the way it is, I'm simply reporting it. That's the dismal science of economics.
And this makes their lives not worth living? This completely baffles me.
I wasn't saying that this in itself makes someone's life not worth living.
- I initially gave a bunch of reasons why people could be really unhappy.
- giant said these were are "invented, shallow, imaginary and completely two dimensional hypothetical character"
- I used the above to point out that sometimes depressing things are straightforward. He said people are "complex, dynamic, unpredicatable, emotional,". I'm pointing out that in the real world sometimes there are straightforward factors that overwhelm a person's life that there is no solution for: poverty, mental illness, inability to have happy relationships, unattractiveness, emotional instability a psychiatrist just can't treat, etc.
Sorry Marvin to leave you all alone in this fight.
Thanks for coming back but I'd like to clarify, I don't really want this to turn into a fight, assuming it hasn't. As I mentioned, I'm not the fighting type. Just like any other discussion, this thread is merely a means of sharing various viewpoints. I'm sure that like most people, we all form our opinions over a number of years and through personal experiences and I highly doubt those ideas would change significantly on viewing a thread on an internet forum consisting of posts from relative strangers.
I watched the movie Rope and I agree it was an excellent film but as I suspected not entirely relevant. The biggest difference between the subject matter of the movie and what we are talking about is that that the movie concerns people who think they have the right to end the lives of others based on their superiority over others' inferiority. One man having the philosophy that it would solve some problems and two people agreeing and thinking they can pull it off.
This is vastly different from a person taking their own life because there is no conflict between superior and inferior entities except in the sense of mind over matter and I know which of those is superior. The natural instinct the body has to exist is greatly exceeded by the mind's desire to do so. You could say that desires are only formations of the brain, which being constrained by the laws of nature would not try to kill itself given that nature tries very hard to encourage survival. But that lowers the value of human life to no more than that of animals. If so, animals are killed every day without the thought that such an act is significant in any way so why is it the case for humans?
So if we are just animals then we have no more purpose in life than animals do and dying is equally insignificant. If we are more than animals and our minds supercede our natural instinct then we have the right to choose which path to take.
As for the proposition that philosophical systems based on idealized hypotheticals don't work in the real world like they might appear to in theory, I would partially agree. However, as I explained above it depends on the hypothesis. Believing that suicide has a place and is a valid choice is no more idealised than the opinion that it doesn't. I actually believe it is less so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by giant
There's nothing to respond to. It's just a stream of prejudices packaged in an invented, shallow, imaginary and completely two dimensional hypothetical character. You might as well say, "well, what about Little Miss Muffet?"
Little Miss Muffet hung herself in the spider's web because she was arachnophobic but no one would help her because they were put off by the way she dressed. She lived an unhappy and lonely existence and she decided to take her own life when she realised it was but a pointless fairy tale full of constraints and fears that she did not invent. The only purpose she found was that inevitably the story would have a conclusion and this would merely be regarded as entertainment for future generations; nothing that really helped resolve her situation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by giant
In the real world people are complex, dynamic, unpredicatable, emotional, rational, have thoughts, feelings, likes and dislikes, occupations, interests, families, friends, acquantances, enemies, histories, dreams, pains, bodies, responsibilites, vices, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. Imaginary scenarios based on your own prejudices are completely and totally irrelevant in the real world.
I don't think any of the scenarios presented in the thread have been irrelevant because I'm sure all of them have happened. As you say, human beings are complex, which is why I don't see how it's possible to say that they have to conform to any set of arbitrary standards. Just because it's hard to understand how someone can be so unhappy as to see suicide as the only option does not make it an option that should not exist in the sole interests of complying with an idealised point of view.
Comments
It seems to be a common conclusion that those with physical or mental disabilities are unable to lead a happy life, but every bit of research I've seen strongly suggests the opposite.
Ok sure but I was using them as examples of how people might be unhappy. Just because some people can be happy in bad circumstances doesn't mean everyone should be. Telling someone there's someone worse off than them doesn't make their situation better, it's just an attempt to make them feel guilty.
Humanity strives on the achieves of individual men which are remembered through centuries, if not millennia. To believe that your life will never amount to anything can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I've seen that answer come up a lot before. What difference would it make to the individual if they are remembered centuries on? Do you think it makes a difference to Isaac Newton how he changed the scientific world? We appreciate it but it's unlikely that he would have known the impact his work would make.
Now you might say that the world would be far worse off if he had killed himself but no one would ever know. That's what I was saying about limitations in the human condition. It doesn't matter what we do because nobody really cares. Irrespective of our personal choices, others live out their lives in their own way because we are all disconnected.
Because it doesn't make you come off as a particularly willful and powerful person.
Do you know how much willpower it takes to kill yourself? It's different for everyone of course. Living is easier for some people.
Climbing a mountain is tough, but ending up at its peak and being able to look down is an irreplaceable moment of joy.
And that's all it is. A moment of joy. When you break it down, it's just your body forming chemical reactions in a nice way. There's nothing far reaching about it.
The hill was placed there as was gravity, making it difficult to climb. As human beings, we have been designed to appreciate only relativism. You can't be happy without sadness, you can't have tall people without short people, otherwise we have no way to define them. But because we have been designed that way, how can there be any true achievement?
Walking away from meaningless fights, sure. Walking away from challenges? No.
Again it depends on what you view life to be.
You can't tell someone else the answer to this question, because it is completely individual. You won't know until you've lived the better part of your life what purpose it had.
I agree that you might not know until you are older but I presume people would have an idea of what they'd want their purpose in life to be. I also have to assume given that there are old people around that someone must have shared their opinion on the matter but I've never heard a reasonable one. Everyone asks the question what is the meaning of life but no-one ever answers it in a way that they or anyone else believes that there is an answer, personal or universal.
Because there are times and situations where it is a whole lot easier to keep whining about how horrible one's life is, rather than trying to constructively find the things that are right and wrong about it.
But if nobody presents any solutions then what else is there to do?
That depends on what they can do. Can they read books in prison? Write journals?
Yeah but there you are reverting back to the idea that people can find meaning in anything. The same goes for modern art. Some people put up work made out of rubbish and to some it's rubbish, to others it's art. People sometimes present ambiguous pieces and leave it up to the audience to find something in it. You can't criticize some members of the audience for not seeing what other people see. That's another analogy of reality being between gullibility and cynicism. Are people who see meaning in rubbish gullible or are people who see nothing in rubbish cynical?
There is no such thing.
Maybe not an inescapable prison but an emotional prison certainly exists.
That philosophical systems based on idealized hypotheticals don't work in the real world like they might appear to in theory, and how screwed up it is to learn that the hard way.
Ok, I managed to get hold of it. It sounds quite interesting. I understand that purely philosophical ideologies don't always apply to the real world but I form mine from my observations of it rather than the converse.
Giant just through in a few insults,
This just goes to show how completely naive you are. I don't know how old you are but you must be under 25.
Pot, kettle...and it's not an "insult" to point out fatal flaws in an argument.
Secondly, what's really interesting about the words you attribute to me in quotes here
a few "you're deluded"s, and a few "you're way to simple"s.
and here
But you say I am talking in "vague childish terms"...
and here
You say "What, we shouldn't help people out? We should just let them kill themselves?"
and here
You vaguely called my "simple"...
is that I never used those phases, nor did I even use any of those words at all.
I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that someone who invents a personal philosophical system supported by imaginary, prejudice-revealing 2D hypotheticals would also fabricate and falsely attribute quotes to try to mischaracterize and dismiss criticism.
QUOTE]
All you did was insult me and vaguely say that I didn't know what I was talking about, without citing any evidence. You never responded to the scenarios I brought up. You just said I didn't know what I was tlaking about. Here is your quote:
"This is just so ignorant of the reality of suicide. It's great to disconnect yourself from the reality of it and get pseudo-philosophical about it from afar, but the reality is that in most cases it, like murder, is fucking stupid and not a reasonable, calculated "solution." There is an argument to be made for suicide in cases of terminal disease, but for people who are just unhappy?"
ignorant, disconnected from reality, etc.
Did you provide any evidence that you know why people are unhappy or what it is like? Did you answer any of my scenarios. No. that is what Chucker is doing. He is responding to the SPECIFICS of the scenarios I raised. Just saying I am ignorant of the "reality of it" isn't a substantial argument.
I realize it is an emotional topic, but you still haven't responded, even once, to the question I raised several times about hopeless, chronic mental illness.
[ You never responded to the scenarios I brought up.
As in:
What if you are 45 and your husband has left you, and you have aged badly and you are just plain ugly and know you will never have another date in your life?
There's nothing to respond to. It's just a stream of prejudices packaged in an invented, shallow, imaginary and completely two dimensional hypothetical character. You might as well say, "well, what about Little Miss Muffet?"
In the real world people are complex, dynamic, unpredicatable, emotional, rational, have thoughts, feelings, likes and dislikes, occupations, interests, families, friends, acquantances, enemies, histories, dreams, pains, bodies, responsibilites, vices, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. Imaginary scenarios based on your own prejudices are completely and totally irrelevant in the real world.
As in:
There's nothing to respond to. It's just a stream of prejudices packaged in an invented, shallow, imaginary and completely two dimensional hypothetical character. You might as well say, "well, what about Little Miss Muffet?"
In the real world people are complex, dynamic, unpredicatable, emotional, rational, have thoughts, feelings, likes and dislikes, occupations, interests, families, friends, acquantances, enemies, histories, dreams, pains, bodies, responsibilites, vices, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. Imaginary scenarios based on your own prejudices are completely and totally irrelevant in the real world.
Um, this sounds nice. I wish it could be completely true and the overriding factor in everyone's life.
In the real world, people who are good looking get drastically more attention then people who aren't. If you are a 38 year old woman who is good looking, you'll have lots of friends and dates. If you're really bad looking, you might not get a date for a year, especially if you are really overweight. I'm not saying how life SHOULD BE, I am stating how life IS. There are 2% on the end who just look really bad, and men are largely attracted to looks and will pass them by. Sorry that's the way it is, I'm simply reporting it. That's the dismal science of economics.
Um, this sounds nice. I wish it could be completely true and the overriding factor in everyone's life.
In the real world, people who are good looking get drastically more attention then people who aren't. If you are a 38 year old woman who is good looking, you'll have lots of friends and dates. If you're really bad looking, you might not get a date for a year, especially if you are really overweight. I'm not saying how life SHOULD BE, I am stating how life IS. There are 2% on the end who just look really bad, and men are largely attracted to looks and will pass them by. Sorry that's the way it is, I'm simply reporting it. That's the dismal science of economics.
And this makes their lives not worth living? This completely baffles me.
- I initially gave a bunch of reasons why people could be really unhappy.
- giant said these were are "invented, shallow, imaginary and completely two dimensional hypothetical character"
- I used the above to point out that sometimes depressing things are straightforward. He said people are "complex, dynamic, unpredicatable, emotional,". I'm pointing out that in the real world sometimes there are straightforward factors that overwhelm a person's life that there is no solution for: poverty, mental illness, inability to have happy relationships, unattractiveness, emotional instability a psychiatrist just can't treat, etc.
Sorry Marvin to leave you all alone in this fight.
Thanks for coming back but I'd like to clarify, I don't really want this to turn into a fight, assuming it hasn't. As I mentioned, I'm not the fighting type. Just like any other discussion, this thread is merely a means of sharing various viewpoints. I'm sure that like most people, we all form our opinions over a number of years and through personal experiences and I highly doubt those ideas would change significantly on viewing a thread on an internet forum consisting of posts from relative strangers.
I watched the movie Rope and I agree it was an excellent film but as I suspected not entirely relevant. The biggest difference between the subject matter of the movie and what we are talking about is that that the movie concerns people who think they have the right to end the lives of others based on their superiority over others' inferiority. One man having the philosophy that it would solve some problems and two people agreeing and thinking they can pull it off.
This is vastly different from a person taking their own life because there is no conflict between superior and inferior entities except in the sense of mind over matter and I know which of those is superior. The natural instinct the body has to exist is greatly exceeded by the mind's desire to do so. You could say that desires are only formations of the brain, which being constrained by the laws of nature would not try to kill itself given that nature tries very hard to encourage survival. But that lowers the value of human life to no more than that of animals. If so, animals are killed every day without the thought that such an act is significant in any way so why is it the case for humans?
So if we are just animals then we have no more purpose in life than animals do and dying is equally insignificant. If we are more than animals and our minds supercede our natural instinct then we have the right to choose which path to take.
As for the proposition that philosophical systems based on idealized hypotheticals don't work in the real world like they might appear to in theory, I would partially agree. However, as I explained above it depends on the hypothesis. Believing that suicide has a place and is a valid choice is no more idealised than the opinion that it doesn't. I actually believe it is less so.
There's nothing to respond to. It's just a stream of prejudices packaged in an invented, shallow, imaginary and completely two dimensional hypothetical character. You might as well say, "well, what about Little Miss Muffet?"
Little Miss Muffet hung herself in the spider's web because she was arachnophobic but no one would help her because they were put off by the way she dressed. She lived an unhappy and lonely existence and she decided to take her own life when she realised it was but a pointless fairy tale full of constraints and fears that she did not invent. The only purpose she found was that inevitably the story would have a conclusion and this would merely be regarded as entertainment for future generations; nothing that really helped resolve her situation.
In the real world people are complex, dynamic, unpredicatable, emotional, rational, have thoughts, feelings, likes and dislikes, occupations, interests, families, friends, acquantances, enemies, histories, dreams, pains, bodies, responsibilites, vices, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. Imaginary scenarios based on your own prejudices are completely and totally irrelevant in the real world.
I don't think any of the scenarios presented in the thread have been irrelevant because I'm sure all of them have happened. As you say, human beings are complex, which is why I don't see how it's possible to say that they have to conform to any set of arbitrary standards. Just because it's hard to understand how someone can be so unhappy as to see suicide as the only option does not make it an option that should not exist in the sole interests of complying with an idealised point of view.