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You can't blame philosophy for making you drop out of college and move home. You made those choices.
Once you admit that you do actually have control of your life, it will get better. You are currently choosing to wallow in pessimism and it's clearly not working, so do something different.
Don't read philosophy for 6 months- you're clearly misinterpreting it. My dad has a Ph.D. in philosophy and I know that a lot of the names you've dropped, especially Kierkegaard, are not all gloom and doom.
You are clearly very self involved, so go out and volunteer. Help other people and see if behaving differently causes changes in your life. I bet it will.
I don't blame philosophy for the decisions I made. You could say I thank philosophy for it. I think there is a feedback loop between the personal and philosophical aspects. Personal factors were part of the reason pure doom and gloom philosophers like Schopenhauer appealed to me because they matched the world I observed empirically. But while personal factors may have been the cause, once grasped philosophy took on a life of its own. For better of for worse. I suppose I was seeking the ultimate purpose. Get a job, to make money to have family etc, but for what ultimate purpose? And I didn't have an answer to that. I just couldn't work for the sake of work, or survive just for the sake of brute physical existence. So I basically went on strike against life. Stopped working or going to school, and self-imprisoned behind 4 walls.
Sociobiology and the more pessimistic readings of Darwin had a very strong influence on me as well. Even if the authors themselves were not pessimistic, chest-pounding Darwinism (which is often found in PUA literature), further confirmed my dark worldview.
I guess when you get down to it humans are very sadistic beasts, more sadistic than they are hedonistic even. And sure you can chest-pound and affirm that world for what it is. Thats what Nietzsche and Social Darwinism are all about. But for me success in a work like that, still doesn't make up for the fact that a work like that would be better not existing.
Bottom line is you are too high maintenance and cerebral for the casual pick-up artist. You're exhausting and just suck all the air and life out of the room.
1. I've come to understand human nature more clearly. Seeing them as biological creatures with quite sadistic tendencies. Living in a world surrounded by merciless sadists, can make a guy pretty depressed.
2. There are some historical periods, people, and ideas that I greatly admire but all ultimately gave way to something new, which I didn't like as much. So it seemed like the "bad guys" always win. But I grew more sophisticated and saw that the new comes out of the old and doesn't just drop from the sky. So the world we live in today, is the sum total of all the "good times", in history fulfilling their natural development. True freedom means understanding the laws of the world and making decisions based on that understanding.
3.Therefore I realized that as a man living in 2010 USA, my "duty" was to pursue what a young man is "supposed to" desire. Sex, drugs and rock. In that sense PUA is a kind of duty for me.
4. Despite point 2 and 3, point 1 still has a powerful influence over me, and I'm not sure its been totally refuted which is why its hard for me to fully commit to PUA.
Check my status, that should sum it up for you.
This is the spoiled rotten selfish brat, it's all about me, get the hell out of my way generation. Thank God for free love and bongs, did wonders for us.
Sorry, but get use to it, it's not going to get any better. Modesty is a thing of the past. Personal responsibility??? What the hell is that nowadays? Self-sufficiency???? Ask a teenager to give you the meaning of that.....
Teenagers demanding lavish baby showers, teenagers expecting brand new cars, high school grads expecting mom and dad to cover their entire college expenses........... well maybe you were talking about something else .........
Surely the ultimate purpose in life IS to exist ?
We are not on this earth to be happy, or successful, or anything else.
We are on this earth to make babies, and ensure the survival of the species.
It could be argued that anything beyond that purpose is futile, and questioning our existence, and consciousness is ultimately pointless.
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Originally Posted by enamdar
I don't blame philosophy for the decisions I made. You could say I thank philosophy for it. I think there is a feedback loop between the personal and philosophical aspects. Personal factors were part of the reason pure doom and gloom philosophers like Schopenhauer appealed to me because they matched the world I observed empirically. But while personal factors may have been the cause, once grasped philosophy took on a life of its own. For better of for worse. I suppose I was seeking the ultimate purpose. Get a job, to make money to have family etc, but for what ultimate purpose? And I didn't have an answer to that. I just couldn't work for the sake of work, or survive just for the sake of brute physical existence. So I basically went on strike against life. Stopped working or going to school, and self-imprisoned behind 4 walls.
Sociobiology and the more pessimistic readings of Darwin had a very strong influence on me as well. Even if the authors themselves were not pessimistic, chest-pounding Darwinism (which is often found in PUA literature), further confirmed my dark worldview.
I guess when you get down to it humans are very sadistic beasts, more sadistic than they are hedonistic even. And sure you can chest-pound and affirm that world for what it is. Thats what Nietzsche and Social Darwinism are all about. But for me success in a work like that, still doesn't make up for the fact that a work like that would be better not existing.
Last edited by bobman; 01-14-2010 at 11:38 AM..
Reason: changed my mind
Surely the ultimate purpose in life IS to exist ?
We are not on this earth to be happy, or successful, or anything else.
We are on this earth to make babies, and ensure the survival of the species.
It could be argued that anything beyond that purpose is futile, and questioning our existence, and consciousness is ultimately pointless.
Officially Darwin and the other guy developed it independently at the same time. Although its irrelevant for my purposes whether Darwin founded Darwinism. And I'm more influenced by Dawkins selfish-gene than Darwin directly. Actually much of this science is the basis of PUA. So PUA ironically played a major role in fermenting my pessimism.
The self-gene survivalmachine of Dawkins will go on getting jobs and competing in zero sum games. With billions doing it, I'm sure the universe does not need an extra redundancy. There are so many substitutes competing in the ratrace, what is the point of me personally doing it? Someone else will take that place for me. So why make it seem so logical? What you are saying is that I ought to value self-preservation more. But one has to be convinced by logical argument to struggle to exist, one has a poor chance against the billions it is instinctual first nature to. Affirmation of life is not even second nature to me. Why cease to be a thinking being, why become a mere chemical process? Does life for the sake of life have any value in and for itself? Life is not magical or sacred. It is just a chemical process. There is nothing inherently superior in life as opposed to a vast empty vacuum of a lifeless universe. If current cosmology is correct and there will eventually be a Big Crunch that ends all life and existence in the universe, that is a good thing. Of course it will not be a apocalyptic end of times. The universe will remain eternal, but lifeless and without energy. The journey from atoms to rocks to life to complex human society, involves more complexity. But is complexity a mark of superiority? Who is to say the life and tumble of earth is superior to the lifeless moon. Someday earth will be as dead as the face of the moon, and that is a good thing. Humans are just sadists with the capacity to suffer. Life began as the expansion and reproduction of crystals. There is nothing inherently immoral in expansion of matter. And what is wrong with the gene? It is just a bunch of chemicals. Some compounds continue to exist other information is destroyed. Is it a good or bad thing that some chemicals had the ability to self-replicate? There are some great works of art, literature philosophy. A few great historic deeds. Is it better that it never existed? Why is there something rather than nothing? To speak in thought-experiment, what is the point of hypothetical God in creating the universe? The God of Aristotle is pure abstract universal that comprehends nothing specific. In a Hegelian sense this pure being is also pure nothing. What is the point of perfect nothing creating imperfect something? Existence is inherently imperfect. The theodicy justifies it with free will. Is free will good? All actions are determined. And we do not freely chose our inclinations nor our abilities to resist inclinations. Free will burdens us with responsibility without giving much freedom in return. And we never have the most important free-willed choice, that of rejecting existence and free will. The highest act of freedom is the random act. And yet nothing is less rational and uncontrolled. Is one more free in flipping a coin rather than thinking out a problem and deciding rationally? The very act of thought and memory creates determinism. Boo-hoo is a big deal.
I'm suffering greatly from Heidegger's sense of flungness. We are just flung into life, not in a time and place of our choosing. We are never given the choice is this the existence I wish to accept? We are just flung in. And when someone like me stops and starts questioning the flungness, I'm idiotic. Why is the rest of the world so ok, with the world they are thrown into? I dont think self-consciousness is very useful for the selfish gene. If you just had rationality the ability to calculate like a computer, then sure logic gives an ape an advantage. But what good is sense of self? Well I suppose it serves the great majority very well. Self gives rise to the sense of pride in sadism, which seems to be very useful to reproduction. The drive for domination is accelerated by self. So I guess it makes sense. But the possibility is there for the universal self to revolt against the particular self. But I guess it is so rare that genetics can afford it and simply weed out the few malcontents that malfunction the program.
Why am I the crazy one? Is it irrational to think out why one acts? Why do we romanticize living in the moment, embracing life? The gene again. But thats a tautology again. Can we not for a moment think outside the box of genetic survival-reproduction machines? I have no real drive to pursue sensual pleasure. Pleasure is the bait life offers. If the bait holds no appeal, then the decision to embrace life becomes a truly logical decision. When the choice is thought over rationally, what is so commonsensical becomes a rather poor looking choice. I have no drive and I don't have any desire to acquire any. I don't want to be cured of apathy and nonaction.
Bottom line is you are too high maintenance and cerebral for the casual pick-up artist. You're exhausting and just suck all the air and life out of the room.
Sad, but true. Cut back on the navel-gazing and take a genuine interest in other people, and you may get better results.
I'm well aware of the state of the world as it actually is, the biological impulses that drive human nature etc. And that is the source of the pessimism that freezes me. I understand what qualities would lead to success in 2010 America, but on a gut level I'm kind of repulsed both by the qualities and "success" itself. For a long time philosophy was used to back such feelings up. Schopenhauer for example perfectly expressed my feelings of despair. Only by a rather intense study of Hegel, could I become even moderately reconciled to the world-as-it-is, in an intellectual sense. Its a recent development that philosophy is showing me some of the good in the world as opposed to only the negative.
Hi enamdar,
You do realize that Schopenhauer despised Hegel. Schopenhauer believed that nature was a randomly expressed happenstance and that Hegel considered that his dialectic was a process of achieving idealism. In other words, Hegel cannot help you reconcile Schopenhauer.
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On a deep level however I do feel like I live in a demon haunted world, and the more I understand humans as biological gene driven creatures, the more utterly utterly alone I feel in this vampiric age, as though I've been thrown into a den of lions.
I suppose I agree since we have dismantled the traditional intercourse of dating. If I were to bed an 18 year old, I would not be hotly pursued by her outraged brothers, cousins and father. All I need to do is sweep her off her feet. It certainly is a notch closer to baboon culture.
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OF course what I posted earlier was not a list of pick-up lines I use, so I don't think its fair to use my internal intellectual debates, to assume that I make speeches of that sort in order to pick up. I understand "keep it simple" and the values of 2010 US pop culture. Its just that those values are so alien to me innately, that it takes a strong dose of Hegelian philosophy in order to reconcile me.
As others have noted, you are putting erudition on display rather than driving it towards a purpose. I certainly do not hesitate to use something other than 5th grade English because I would be bored stiff, and there is nothing like adding a little pomp in satire or a particularly bright star added to the Christmas tree of buffoonery. Still, I would tell you that you must choose an ivory tower where the ladies you will find are two dimensional images of Renaissance art, or create an affectation so as to hide the fact that you came from a race of learned men buggered by Vikings.
Last edited by cricket_factor; 01-15-2010 at 02:30 PM..
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