hedonistic meaningless living As if a life embedded in asceticism was supposed to be any more meaningful
Anon reads nihilist philosophy
Submitted 2 weeks ago by sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz to greentext@sh.itjust.works
https://sopuli.xyz/pictrs/image/abadabf2-f84a-4980-bff5-e26cc38b1316.webp
Comments
wrinkle2409@lemmy.cafe 2 weeks ago
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Right! I’m glad to see someone thinking critically about what hedonism to fundamentslly means, rather than relying on the more pejorative usage of the term.
I realised once that, even tho I was a drug free tee totaller who didn’t party or have sex much, I was still a hedonistic at that time because I played videogames as much as possible.
cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
What would be considered hedonistic back then? Talking a walk in the woods and climbing mountains for pleasure?
Juice@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
Nietzsche was explicitly, spitefully against asceticism. On the Genealogy of Morals is largely about how church clerics valorized ascetic lifestyle in order to trick the public into always believing they are not doing good, when actually the church has explicitly created two moralities because the rich, powerful, and aristocratic were not expected to (and Nietzsche was not in favor of) living ascetic lives.
The whole point of this meme is that Nietzsche was a life-affirming philosopher. He absolutely did not advocate for an ascetic lifestyle because he believed the joy was the highest pursuit of human life.
Now, if you find this contradictory, well Nietzsche is an extremely contrary and frustrating writer. His writing is beautiful and prosaic, but he’s endlessly skeptical In one line he is saying something so profound and affirming, and the next line ascerbic and devastating. He flatters you, makes an airtight case for the flattery, then rips it to shreds; then he rips that to shreds and he is back to flattery. I’m sort of unconvinced that he even is a philosopher, but I love his writing and prose.
Leviathan@fedinsfw.app 2 weeks ago
I mean, hedonism isn’t the only option, what about Epicureanism?
DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Having kids (one of whom is special needs) plucked me out of the nihilism well that I was drowning in. I’m so thankful for them. Now, I don’t even have time to think or contemplate life. lol
Carnelian@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If you accept that caring for the wellbeing of your kids is inherently meaningful then you must also accept there is meaning inherent in taking care of your own self :3
baines@lemmy.cafe 2 weeks ago
only while the kids exist as you forced them into existence thereby incurring the responsibility
for a thought experiment, imagine you could see your entire life and decide to be born or not based in your mind at the point of death
what would be the point of living a ‘bad’ life?
DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I love this. And this is precisely what I started doing. In my mind, the better I am the better they are, and that’s proven to be true. They’re everything in my world and I’m so freaking happy I decided to have kids, genuinely. My son is 13, and he’s entering that phase of “I’m a good dude and can be so much fun”. He and I are like best friends. We do almost everything together. He’s like the little brother I never had.
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I’m sure they’ll be grateful for their chance to pick between being a soldier in the Water Wars, or maybe getting lucky enough to find a human job that pays in food and living accommodations.
Sorry to be that nihilist but I am so grateful for finding a partner that agrees that reproduction is wildly irresponsible to both the world, and that future being who you KNOW and cannot deny that existence will likely be worse for in basically the first time in human existence outside of the world wars and the Black Death.
If I were forced to switch places with a child today I would be pretty upset about the future I had been subject too. But they’re just so cute right? And all my friends are having them too!
Downvote away!
DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What you’re saying sounds more like doomerism to me than it is nihilism. It’ll get better. Hang in there ❤️
Ibuthyr@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
You’re the absolute worst and completely useless. Fuck off with your bullshit opinions and grow the fuck up.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Nihilists can have, and love and care for, children.
It’s all about making your own meaning, and I imagine having kids is one way a lot of people do that.
DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
True
vegafjord@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Paganism is good though. Praise wilderness!
sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
(my body is devoid of worldly power but I low-key agree because physically building personal meaning and protecting the wilderness trumps all)
Archimedes@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
First time? - Epicuros
Akasazh@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Partly, he’s neither a nihilist nor that embraced by teenagers afaik.
He is considered more hedonist than he actually is, though.
TheStaffmaster@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
“That’s Cute.” -Machiavelli
sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Ooh. Very stigmatized ethos surrounding that one. Guess I need to find out what the heck happened there
TheStaffmaster@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The short version is that Machiavelli is a rather profound Stoic philosopher, but everyone misses that in a lot of his work he is being slightly sarcastic to throw the “powers that be” off the scent that he was criticizing them. When you hear how he suggests that “Princes should be feared rather than respected.” he actually calling out the despots of his day. It’s kind of how Stephen Colbert portrayed a right wing pundit on “The Colbert Report” as a way of satirizing right-wing pundits.
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach you 'bout the raising of the wrist. (Socrates himself was permanently pissed).
dontbelievethis@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Spitting fire!
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Not mine. Monty Python “The Bruce’s Philosophy Song”.
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant Who was very rarely stable Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy little beggar Who could think you under the table David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel And Wittgenstein was a beery swine Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya 'Bout the raising of the wrist Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed John Stuart Mill, of his own free will On half a pint of brandy was particularly ill Plato, they say, could stick it away Half a crate of whiskey every day Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle Hobbes was fond of his dram And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart “I drink, therefore I am” Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This also skips on how his sister edited his yet-unpublished works after his death, to include her German ultranationalist and antisemitic views, while he was opposed to them.
A kinda similar situation to that of Kafka, wherein Max Brod, who was supposed to burn all of Kafka’s manuscripts, instead e.g. rearranged the chapters of ‘The Trial’ for no good reason, such that it probably reads way more surrealistically. I’ve recently listened to some kinda restored edition that attempts to put back the intended order, and while it’s still a mess at times, the happenings are pretty understandable.
Leviathan@fedinsfw.app 2 weeks ago
I always found his frantic fest if nihilism to be a little adolescent, like “how could humanity possibly survive the death of God? How will we live a life without inherent existential or moral purpose?” You just do, Freddy.
cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Yet here we are, celebrating people whose moral purpose is evil at best.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There is a quote from Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits that I think of every time this comes up.
“You can lie to yourself, say that you never had a choice, that you weren’t cut out for this. But deep down you’ll know. You’ll know that humans aren’t cut out for anything. We cut ourselves out. Slowly, with a rusty knife. Because otherwise, here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to die and you’re going to stand at the gates of judgment and you’re going to ask God what was the meaning of it all, and God will say, ‘I created the universe, you little shit. It was up to you to give it meaning.’”
“You really think God uses that kind of language?”
“Yes.”
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Love me some quality David Wong.
ZMoney@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah and Kierkegaard already solved this decades before him, in exactly the way you describe (although he didn’t personally think it was possible).
jangyik@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
my take on life is that yeah it doesn’t have inherent meaning, but you don’t need a meaning for everything you do. you can just enjoy being alive despite the meaninglessness, it actually gives you a lot of freedom to do whatever you want to do for the sake of it.
for the morals: just don’t bring in needless suffering, nobody choose to be here and nobody wants to suffer, the only thing we can do is to make the existing lives better
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You just do, Freddy.
A lot of people don’t.
There’s a whole superstructure to religion - culture, ethics, public infrastructure, social networks, financial networks, a common history and language - that you need to supplement as you dispose of the older system.
What the European socialists discovered at the turn of the 20th century was that you can’t just burn down all the churches and start over from scratch. Anarchism without some new common social foundation just ends in civil war and foreign occupation.
Subsequent generations still need a scaffolding to cling to as they mature. And if that scaffold isn’t rooted in some new existential or moral foundation (or if it’s rooted in a rotten one) you end up with ultra-nationalism, or Victorian mysticism, or whatever paint Ayn Rand was huffing.
Leviathan@fedinsfw.app 2 weeks ago
And yet in almost every one of those examples the problem was people sticking to the existing religions and culture being too terrified to let go or incapable of accepting that others have moved on.
mortemtyrannis@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Active vs passive nihilism
majster@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Some author I read said that nihilism can only be temporary and then natural evolution will be towards stoicism/pragmatism. Later she argued that pragmatism isn’t so awesome either, but no concrete arguments were put forward. Quiet pragmatic
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
I don’t think nihilism and pragmatism are mutually exclusive
Juice@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
If you have an interest in philosophy or Nietzsche, Rick Roderick is one of my favorite commentators. He has a whole series on Nietzsche which is very good. But he covers Nietzsche in the first episode in his “Self Under Siege” philosophy series
sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Fuck yeah I am. I’ve got a living playlist of lectures I can add this into, thank you!
Actually I see a yt video at the top of the page here, can I watch all the episodes there as an option?
Juice@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
Here’s a playlist of his Self Under Siege lectures.
These videos were such a good foundation for my own learning! And Rick Roderick was a real one. Hope you enjoy!
DrStanleyGoodspeed@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
lessthanluigi@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
“Must be exhausting!”
mo_lave@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Lol what even is this?
mo_lave@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
Anon after reading nihilist philosophy.
jangyik@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
i’m pretty sure gods and religions were invented exactly because of people were thinking there is “no higher meaning”
meaning that religion had to be a response to nihilism
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Teenagers are dumb.
csolisr@hub.azkware.net 2 weeks ago
flandish@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
yeah. didn’t he get turned down on a proposal, he had someone else make, and kinda get cucked? he was prob an incel of his time, huh?
sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
I can see the argument for that. It kind of fits the narrative of “slave morality”. Can I read these philosophers statements? I kind of want to know what they’re about
csolisr@hub.azkware.net 2 weeks ago
On the rationalist hub per excellence, LessWrong: lesswrong.com/posts/NxYgL5nPMT…
Criticism of Nietzsche has been out there for a good while. Bertrand Russell, for example, wasn't a fan of Nietzsche, calling his ideology "an appeal to the emotions": reddit.com/r/Nietzsche/comment…
Calling Nietzsche's philosophy "irrationalist" is still a common trend: monthlyreview.org/articles/on-…
Even Marxists hammer on Nietzsche's hardcore individualism: queer-bolshevik.medium.com/a-c…
lung@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The fun thing is that if the universe has no meaning then it has no meaning that it has no meaning so you might as well relax and be positive since that has many obvious benefits. Not that I’m a nihilist