Philosophy Now Forum

Alexiev wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 7:51 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 7:33 pm
[quote=Alexiev post_id=753917 time=1738520396
Sadness and suffering are just sadness and suffering. Without them, the only thing we'd lose are sadness and suffering. And unlike Nietzsche's quip, they don't make us stronger, they usually just make us weirder.

I disagree. Without suffering there would be no adventure. Without the possibility of failure, success would be less sweet. How can there be virtues like courage or fortitude without sadness and suffering?

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 12:08 pm

Alexiev wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 7:51 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 7:33 pm
[quote=Alexiev post_id=753917 time=1738520396
Sadness and suffering are just sadness and suffering. Without them, the only thing we'd lose are sadness and suffering. And unlike Nietzsche's quip, they don't make us stronger, they usually just make us weirder.

I disagree. Without suffering there would be no adventure. Without the possibility of failure, success would be less sweet. How can there be virtues like courage or fortitude without sadness and suffering?

OK. The world is sounding more and more like a giant theme park to me. And in order to preserve this theme park it would sometimes be necessary for someone to introduce suffering and failure into the world just to keep things going. That just sounds weird and artificial. Suffering and failure are real. They don't seem to me like things that we need to be sure to have in the world just for the sake of making the world a better or more interesting place.

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 11:38 am [
It's true as Mike says that blame + retribution don't work and are based ,not upon reason , but upon medieval religious dogma.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 1:37 pm Excellent!

Lately, a man (Gary) who reads as symptom of the sickness of an era, who simply put cannot, and wills not to, accept life in its tragic aspect (inevitable if life is understood as mutability, instability); whose discourse is all about complaint, weakness, withdraw, timid fear, and incapacity to find for himself a means of service to life, in life, and to others; whose discourse has no self-identity, no sense of exalted self, no means of asserting himself through acts of power, through decisiveness; whose discourse details a longing to die and in the meantime depends on the pharmaceutical industry that provides him with brain-altering chemicals …

…who cannot arrive at any empowering sense of what divine entity is in this weird World of Woe, and whose concept of Christianity is of weakness, disempowerment and ultimately of nihilism (Gary is in this sense an outcome of a debilitating feminine-minded Christianity) …

… has now become a Handmaiden in Argument to BigMike who, it sure begins to seem so, presents a strange scientistic Ponzi Scheme of the Mind, involving a physiological- philosophical anthropological ideology which must be beat into the mind with overblown physicalist rhetoric that takes virulent issue with any framework of perception that is not its own …

In this sense (I speculate) the Philosophy of Big Mike is one that dovetails with on-going trends visible and noticeable around us. It will take advantage of the weak and the profoundly unhappy as it seeks dominance in the idea-sphere, and so (potentially) gain ground in the political sphere. It involves an “appeal” to weak and weak-minded men who cannot face the rigor of life and who long for an “easy route” through life which has never been defined as easy in this flaccid (American Walmart) sense.

Anyway, just a few unedited thoughts on the implications of these BigMikean ideas.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 12:08 pm OK. The world is sounding more and more like a giant theme park to me. And in order to preserve this theme park it would sometimes be necessary for someone to introduce suffering and failure into the world just to keep things going. That just sounds weird and artificial. Suffering and failure are real. They don't seem to me like things that we need to be sure to have in the world just for the sake of making the world a better or more interesting place.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 1:55 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 12:08 pm OK. The world is sounding more and more like a giant theme park to me. And in order to preserve this theme park it would sometimes be necessary for someone to introduce suffering and failure into the world just to keep things going. That just sounds weird and artificial. Suffering and failure are real. They don't seem to me like things that we need to be sure to have in the world just for the sake of making the world a better or more interesting place.

Curious: that a man with self-consciousness, with awareness, looks at life and reduces it to the most stupid, the most trivial. It cannot be seen as something awe-inspiring even in the sense of tremendous fear, but as something to hate & despise.

This really is pure, unadulterated ressentiment in exactly the sense Nietzsche noticed. In this sense (if I am right) Gary could be described as Christianity’s Outcome. The ultimately weak, disempowered man who longs for a System to take care of him.

Sorry to be so blunt about it.

This is the man BigMike seeks!

BigMike wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 12:20 pm

Gary, exactly. The idea that suffering is necessary for meaning, adventure, or virtue is just a rationalization for why suffering exists, not an argument for why it should. People don’t need to experience failure or pain to appreciate success or happiness—that’s just a story we tell ourselves to cope with a world where suffering is unavoidable.

If we lived in a world where suffering was minimized—where people didn’t have to endure trauma just to build “character”—no one would look around and say, Gee, I wish life were harder. The fact that we find ways to learn and grow from suffering doesn’t mean suffering itself is good or necessary. It just means we adapt to whatever conditions we’re given.

The real absurdity is the idea that suffering should be preserved as if the world would lose something valuable without it. No one needs to be starving or in agony for joy to exist. We don’t need oppression for freedom to have meaning. We don’t need tragedy for happiness to matter. The world is not a theme park, and the idea that suffering is somehow an essential feature rather than a problem to be solved is just more philosophical hand-waving to justify why things are the way they are.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 1:37 pm Excellent!

Lately, a man (Gary) who reads as symptom of the sickness of an era, who simply put cannot, and wills not to, accept life in its tragic aspect (inevitable if life is understood as mutability, instability); whose discourse is all about complaint, weakness, withdraw, timid fear, and incapacity to find for himself a means of service to life, in life, and to others; whose discourse has no self-identity, no sense of exalted self, no means of asserting himself through acts of power, through decisiveness; whose discourse details a longing to die and in the meantime depends on the pharmaceutical industry that provides him with brain-altering chemicals …

…who cannot arrive at any empowering sense of what divine entity is in this weird World of Woe, and whose concept of Christianity is of weakness, disempowerment and ultimately of nihilism (Gary is in this sense an outcome of a debilitating feminine-minded Christianity) …

… has now become a Handmaiden in Argument to BigMike who, it sure begins to seem so, presents a strange scientistic Ponzi Scheme of the Mind, involving a physiological- philosophical anthropological ideology which must be beat into the mind with overblown physicalist rhetoric that takes virulent issue with any framework of perception that is not its own …

In this sense (I speculate) the Philosophy of Big Mike is one that dovetails with on-going trends visible and noticeable around us. It will take advantage of the weak and the profoundly unhappy as it seeks dominance in the idea-sphere, and so (potentially) gain ground in the political sphere. It involves an “appeal” to weak and weak-minded men who cannot face the rigor of life and who long for an “easy route” through life which has never been defined as easy in this flaccid (American Walmart) sense.

Anyway, just a few unedited thoughts on the implications of these BigMikean ideas.

Alexiev wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 2:03 pm

BigMike wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 12:20 pm

Gary, exactly. The idea that suffering is necessary for meaning, adventure, or virtue is just a rationalization for why suffering exists, not an argument for why it should. People don’t need to experience failure or pain to appreciate success or happiness—that’s just a story we tell ourselves to cope with a world where suffering is unavoidable.

If we lived in a world where suffering was minimized—where people didn’t have to endure trauma just to build “character”—no one would look around and say, Gee, I wish life were harder. The fact that we find ways to learn and grow from suffering doesn’t mean suffering itself is good or necessary. It just means we adapt to whatever conditions we’re given.

The real absurdity is the idea that suffering should be preserved as if the world would lose something valuable without it. No one needs to be starving or in agony for joy to exist. We don’t need oppression for freedom to have meaning. We don’t need tragedy for happiness to matter. The world is not a theme park, and the idea that suffering is somehow an essential feature rather than a problem to be solved is just more philosophical hand-waving to justify why things are the way they are.

More nonsense from Mike. Suffering clearly is necessary if certain virtues (courage, fortitude, etc) are to exist. This is not a "rationalization", but a self-evudent truism.

There's no point in arguing about whether suffering "should be preserved". We can't avoid it. "Der tod ist gros," wrote Rilke. Death is huge. We can whine and whimper about it, but it ain't going away. So we should look at the sunny side of life: courage and nobility (which would be impossible without suffering) are admirable. Adventures (impossible without danger and suffering) add spice to life. Since suffering and death are unavoidable, shouldn't we try to see their values as well as their negatives?

For mountaineers the world IS a theme park, and suffering and the possibility of death add piquancy to life. Are they deluded? Should we all sit at home contemplating our lack of free will, afraid to have adventures because we fear suffering? If we do, our attempts at safety will betray us in the end. Like everyone else, we will suffer and die. So, per Andrew Marvel, "Now let us sport us while we may, and now, like amorous birds of prey rather at once our time devour than languish in his slow-chapped power."

BigMike wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 2:04 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 1:37 pm Excellent!

Lately, a man (Gary) who reads as symptom of the sickness of an era, who simply put cannot, and wills not to, accept life in its tragic aspect (inevitable if life is understood as mutability, instability); whose discourse is all about complaint, weakness, withdraw, timid fear, and incapacity to find for himself a means of service to life, in life, and to others; whose discourse has no self-identity, no sense of exalted self, no means of asserting himself through acts of power, through decisiveness; whose discourse details a longing to die and in the meantime depends on the pharmaceutical industry that provides him with brain-altering chemicals …

…who cannot arrive at any empowering sense of what divine entity is in this weird World of Woe, and whose concept of Christianity is of weakness, disempowerment and ultimately of nihilism (Gary is in this sense an outcome of a debilitating feminine-minded Christianity) …

… has now become a Handmaiden in Argument to BigMike who, it sure begins to seem so, presents a strange scientistic Ponzi Scheme of the Mind, involving a physiological- philosophical anthropological ideology which must be beat into the mind with overblown physicalist rhetoric that takes virulent issue with any framework of perception that is not its own …

In this sense (I speculate) the Philosophy of Big Mike is one that dovetails with on-going trends visible and noticeable around us. It will take advantage of the weak and the profoundly unhappy as it seeks dominance in the idea-sphere, and so (potentially) gain ground in the political sphere. It involves an “appeal” to weak and weak-minded men who cannot face the rigor of life and who long for an “easy route” through life which has never been defined as easy in this flaccid (American Walmart) sense.

Anyway, just a few unedited thoughts on the implications of these BigMikean ideas.

Alexis, that’s quite the theatrical outburst—so much so that it’s hard to tell if you’re engaging in philosophy or just indulging in personal caricatures. But let’s cut through the noise.

You frame suffering and instability as some grand existential necessity, a thing to be embraced, rather than what it actually is—a problem to be solved wherever possible. You mistake rejecting needless suffering for rejecting life itself. But understanding suffering as a consequence of deterministic causes doesn’t mean shrinking from life—it means recognizing why things are the way they are and using that understanding to make them better.

Your attempt to paint determinism as an “appeal to weakness” is just another version of the same tired Nietzschean machismo—as if seeing reality clearly and rationally is some kind of moral failing. But tell me, what exactly is strong about clinging to metaphysical crutches, mystical justifications, and poetic fatalism? What’s empowering about throwing up your hands and declaring suffering noble rather than asking what causes it and how to prevent it?

You throw around words like “scientistic Ponzi Scheme” and “virulent rhetoric” as if explaining how reality actually works is some sort of manipulative power play rather than an attempt to understand and improve the human condition. And in classic fashion, when faced with a view that challenges yours, you don’t engage with the argument—you psychoanalyze the person making it.

The real irony? You claim to champion “strength” and “rigor,” yet your entire approach is built on retreating into mysticism the moment the physical world doesn’t conform to your grand vision. You prefer poetic fatalism over actual solutions. That’s not strength—it’s resignation dressed up as wisdom.

Alexiev wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 2:03 pm

BigMike wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 12:20 pm Gary, exactly. The idea that suffering is necessary for meaning, adventure, or virtue is just a rationalization for why suffering exists, not an argument for why it should. People don’t need to experience failure or pain to appreciate success or happiness—that’s just a story we tell ourselves to cope with a world where suffering is unavoidable.

If we lived in a world where suffering was minimized—where people didn’t have to endure trauma just to build “character”—no one would look around and say, Gee, I wish life were harder. The fact that we find ways to learn and grow from suffering doesn’t mean suffering itself is good or necessary. It just means we adapt to whatever conditions we’re given.

The real absurdity is the idea that suffering should be preserved as if the world would lose something valuable without it. No one needs to be starving or in agony for joy to exist. We don’t need oppression for freedom to have meaning. We don’t need tragedy for happiness to matter. The world is not a theme park, and the idea that suffering is somehow an essential feature rather than a problem to be solved is just more philosophical hand-waving to justify why things are the way they are.

More nonsense from Mike. Suffering clearly is necessary if certain virtues (courage, fortitude, etc) are to exist. This is not a "rationalization", but a self-evudent truism.

There's no point in arguing about whether suffering "should be preserved". We can't avoid it. "Der tod ist gros," wrote Rilke. Death is huge. We can whine and whimper about it, but it ain't going away. So we should look at the sunny side of life: courage and nobility (which would be impossible without suffering) are admirable. Adventures (impossible without danger and suffering) add spice to life. Since suffering and death are unavoidable, shouldn't we try to see their values as well as their negatives?

For mountaineers the world IS a theme park, and suffering and the possibility of death add piquancy to life. Are they deluded? Should we all sit at home contemplating our lack of free will, afraid to have adventures because we fear suffering? If we do, our attempts at safety will betray us in the end. Like everyone else, we will suffer and die. So, per Andrew Marvel, "Now let us sport us while we may, and now, like amorous birds of prey rather at once our time devour than languish in his slow-chapped power."

If we lived in a world where suffering was minimized—where people didn’t have to endure trauma just to build “character”—no one would look around and say, Gee, I wish life were harder.

In realms of frost and northern might,
The Hyperborean Apollo shines so bright.
With heart unyielding, he faces life's test,
And scorn's the weak, who cower longing for eternal rest.

His spirit unbroken, like the polar star,
guides those who seek the strength to travel far. With criticism keen, he cuts through the disguise, of those who fear life's challenges, with weak, woman-like eyes.

Yet, in his resolute acceptance, we find a truth profound, a call to courage, that echoes all around. For life! with all its struggles, is a gift divine, and those who face it boldly, shall forever shine.

So let us heed the Apollo's noble creed,
and stand, like him, unwavering, in life's great deed. For in his strength, we find inspiration true, to face life's challenges, with hearts bold and new.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 2:38 pm At least Mera’s AI understands me!

In realms of frost and northern might,
The Hyperborean Apollo shines so bright.
With heart unyielding, he faces life's test,
And scorn's the weak, who cower longing for eternal rest.

His spirit unbroken, like the polar star,
guides those who seek the strength to travel far. With criticism keen, he cuts through the disguise, of those who fear life's challenges, with weak, woman-like eyes.

Yet, in his resolute acceptance, we find a truth profound, a call to courage, that echoes all around. For life! with all its struggles, is a gift divine, and those who face it boldly, shall forever shine.

So let us heed the Apollo's noble creed,
and stand, like him, unwavering, in life's great deed. For in his strength, we find inspiration true, to face life's challenges, with hearts bold and new.