Philosophy Now Forum

Bill Wiltrack wrote:.







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tbieter wrote:I suspect that despair, rather than causing change, has a paralyzing effect on the actor, precluding constructive actions, and often ending in the actor's suicide.

The Voice of Time wrote:The quanta of despair with the quanta of any promised further despair is equal to the rate of necessary investment in experimentation (testing/research/exploration), because despair comes out of limited options to satisfy needs, and therefore, one must seek out new options to improve the situation. In the same way, the quanta of negative despair, that is, the quanta of dependability of goods and any promised further dependability of goods, is equal to the rate of necessary investment in current means to preserve a state of affairs.

Knowing the quanta of despair and negative despair is the real hard deal, because it comes from in turn a limited understanding of the world and a recognized finiteness of our minds. But working based upon the known despair, is a real start.

This limited understanding, however, also means there is a despair of despair, as such the value of despair is multiplied by two, because any existence of despair must be despaired over twice, to recognize that it does not only stem from an inability to satisfy needs, but an inability to know the cause of this dissatisfaction and our powerlessness. As any despair is a proof of the lack of knowledge of the entirety of the world and a proof of the danger this lack of knowledge poses, and one must therefore despair over despair, because if not, the danger is not taken seriously, for it is the only reason to be afraid of the unknown, anything else is paranoia, and to not be afraid of it (the proofs of the unknown, or the proof of the unreliability of not knowing which is the actual thing), is to set upon oneself an illusion that disregards the reality of a problem.

Conversely, however, the quanta of dependability of goods, of negative despair, is also seeing a dependability of dependability (a negative despair of negative despair), as the sources we depend on proves to be valuable assets that secures us and gives us reason to be sceptical of change.

The net result is that the worse off your are, the greater the absolute value difference (the numerical difference in quanta) there is between the value of your despair and the value of your negative despair, meaning if you are in deep shit you must work acceleratingly much at clearing yourself out of the deep shit, whereas a perfect life gives you double incentive not to disturb it, and double incentive to effort extra little in removing shit from being shit.

One would think that the more you have, the more you have to sacrifice, but the problem with this way of thinking, is that one must presume the world to be bad without a reason, because if there were a reason it would certainly show up as despair, not as mental despair, but as a despair in the system of satisfying the state of good life in people. It would appear as a threat in the calculations, like a looming debt that has to be paid and which people may not be aware of because maybe they are not paying the bills, but the ones who are paying the bills are not showing the real threat they are under. And presuming things to be bad without reason, is paranoia, and leads to losses instead of gains... it leads to people wasting, instead of gaining.

So unlike our world, where people spend more and more on research the more they have (let's think political states and governments and their revenues), in fact, the more they have, the more relatively the should spend on maintenance. It is only the threat of competition, which gives incentive to not spend on themselves. It is only the threat of demographic challenges or geological challenges or any such threats, that could drive anyone to not spend more effort on maintenance, the more they have. In fact a driver for spending more on Research and Development the more money you have, is a greater realization of what problems lay ahead of you. The poor does not know the challenges of the wealthy, and from their perspective, it would be good to invest in maintenance (for instance high wages) when an economy booms with wealth, however, should they realize that their economic boom begins a legacy of wealth-problems (new lower standards, higher high standards, growing pension obligations, calls for wealth distribution), they would be presented with a new world of new problems that resets this outlook and perspective, setting up new frontiers with new threats to the economic balance.

This is my explanation of the despair as an imperative for change. Please tell me what you think of it in critique of its whole content or elements of its content.

madera wrote:Have you gone from despair to overcoming the cause behind it?
Madera

The Voice of Time wrote:

madera wrote:Have you gone from despair to overcoming the cause behind it?
Madera

There is no single cause for logical despair (see my last post prior to your post), except the category of bad things that threaten your future and which aren't solved for, where logical despair can be infinitesimally small, or infinitely big, or anywhere between.

In emotional despair, infinitesimally small despair translates into despair that we do not feel on ourselves and therefore do not "experience" as such, whereas extreme amounts of despair can paralyse us and can equally be more trouble than it can be aiding, whereas more moderate amounts merely expands our horizon of thought to figure out more ways to deal with a problem.

In logical despair, we can more rationally weigh the opportunities for solving despairing situations of any quantity. In a way, to get to your question, you can better overcome despair by applying a logical rather than an emotional perspective of it. I cannot overcome that bad things will happen as a generality, but I can become aware of the bad things as early as possible, I can socialize it by bringing it into language (thereby possibly extending available manpower to solve the problems), and I can mathematize it to extend my ability to calculate solutions and optimizations.

And, I can recognize, that despair is an imperative for change! And that the more despairing I am, in a logical sense (or derived logically from an emotional sense), the more change is needed to statistically be able to solve the situation! This last realization CAN be a way of overcoming despair, yes, and it has happened to me, yes, that drastic change has solved drastic situations.

madera23 wrote:

The Voice of Time wrote:

madera wrote:Have you gone from despair to overcoming the cause behind it?
Madera

There is no single cause for logical despair (see my last post prior to your post), except the category of bad things that threaten your future and which aren't solved for, where logical despair can be infinitesimally small, or infinitely big, or anywhere between.

In emotional despair, infinitesimally small despair translates into despair that we do not feel on ourselves and therefore do not "experience" as such, whereas extreme amounts of despair can paralyse us and can equally be more trouble than it can be aiding, whereas more moderate amounts merely expands our horizon of thought to figure out more ways to deal with a problem.

In logical despair, we can more rationally weigh the opportunities for solving despairing situations of any quantity. In a way, to get to your question, you can better overcome despair by applying a logical rather than an emotional perspective of it. I cannot overcome that bad things will happen as a generality, but I can become aware of the bad things as early as possible, I can socialize it by bringing it into language (thereby possibly extending available manpower to solve the problems), and I can mathematize it to extend my ability to calculate solutions and optimizations.

And, I can recognize, that despair is an imperative for change! And that the more despairing I am, in a logical sense (or derived logically from an emotional sense), the more change is needed to statistically be able to solve the situation! This last realization CAN be a way of overcoming despair, yes, and it has happened to me, yes, that drastic change has solved drastic situations.