As good as it gets

[Gary Childress]

I'm in my late 40's. I'm a bachelor, no children, and I'm currently unemployed due to a health issue that intervened in my last job.

If I am to believe the word of someone I was once acquainted with, I believe he told me the Philosopher Donald Davidson mentioned something about reaching a stage in life where everything is the "wrong" choice? Has anyone else seen this quote in Davidson? And if so, does anyone have information as to which book or source it may be from?

I haven't had a very "successful" life in terms of what most people would think of as "success". I'm not independently wealthy (thank God, because that would probably earn me an enormous amount of ire from many). I have no children. Few if any "friends". And yet I feel like I am getting close to a point where nothing I do anymore really "matters" in a "good" way. It seems like everything I say or do is "wrong". Even to relate to others in the outside world is maybe the "wrong" thing to do because it is perhaps a "complaint". I have nothing to truly "complain" about relative to so many others out there who are suffering.

I titled this thread from a Jack Nicholson Movie I once saw.

Here I am. Bored almost to tears and yet this seems to be the pinnacle of existence. For me, Gary Childress, this is perhaps as good as it gets...

BTW: Thank you so much to the editors or whoever of the magazine "Philosophy Now" for creating this forum for those of us who maybe don't really fit in so well anywhere else out there.

[Wyman]

That's my all time favorite movie.

[Gary Childress]

That's my all time favorite movie.

It has a rather "somber" message to me though. To me it is perhaps a very "memorable" movie but not a "favorite". I guess to put it in "American Bandstand" parlance, I couldn't "dance" to the movie.

In some senses, I suppose from a "philosophical" standpoint, I clawed and scratched my way out of what seemed to me to be a deep pit (that was my personal feeling about my life growing up) only to find that life is no better outside the pit than it was inside. What a disappointment. It would be like Plato climbing out of the cave only to find that the sun was in an eclipse that day and that people on the surface were dancing around a campfire with shadows of various objects flickering all around them.

[Wyman]

It has the opposite effect on me; I laugh all the way through the movie. Nicholson's best performance ever.

Well, this probably won't help - just a passing thought - but when I think of depression, I think of Melville:

Moby Dick Melville Chapter 16
A noble craft (the Pequod), but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.

Moby Dick Melville Chapter 114
There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause - through infancy's unconcious spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescent's doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in the grave, and we must there to learn it.

Moby Dick Melville Chapter 106
While even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heart-woes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic granduer; so do their diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the geneologies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad, haymaking suns, and soft-cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birthmark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.

[Bill Wiltrack]

.



Number one, I would like to thank the original poster of this thread for being so open & honest. That is rare here upon this forum.


Second, I want to say I have recently felt EXACTLY as you do now. Matter of fact, I often would use the phrase, every thought I have is wrong. Everything I do is incorrect.



Don't know what to say after that. Words fail...Words always fail.




.

[Gary Childress]

It has the opposite effect on me; I laugh all the way through the movie. Nicholson's best performance ever.

Well, this probably won't help - just a passing thought - but when I think of depression, I think of Melville:

Moby Dick Melville Chapter 16
A noble craft (the Pequod), but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.

Moby Dick Melville Chapter 114
There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause - through infancy's unconcious spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescent's doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in the grave, and we must there to learn it.

Moby Dick Melville Chapter 106
While even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heart-woes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic granduer; so do their diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the geneologies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad, haymaking suns, and soft-cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birthmark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.

Hmmm. Maybe I need an interpreter because none of that really rings "true" to me after a cursory read, at least in significance to my life.

I am "diagnosed" with "mental illness". If I had one American writer and book that I could identify with at this point it would be Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter". Only instead of "A" for adulteress I have an "M" for "mentally ill" branded on me. It's an interesting experience. I'm sure more than a few lurkers here may have read the first sentence of this paragraph and at that point, stopped reading any further.

"He who is 'mentally ill' has no knowledge nor wisdom. Why listen to a 'disease' of the mind speak?", or so most probably think. Alas there are so many "rocket scientists" out in the world, professionals who know everything and have nothing more to learn, especially from those sitting on the sidelines watching the game. If only I could tell my last employer (make him truly see with his own eyes) what a blunder he was making in something he was doing to some of his professionals on staff and why it was a blunder and what it will lead to. But he was most likely ignorant, or else downright nasty. As far as I can tell he only knew how to make money and agreeable friendships. Nothing more and nothing less...

EDIT: Sorry for the spite in this post. I am still a little jaded from my last employment experience which is still fresh in my mind.

[Gary Childress]

.



Number one, I would like to thank the original poster of this thread for being so open & honest. That is rare here upon this forum.


Second, I want to say I have recently felt EXACTLY as you do now. Matter of fact, I often would use the phrase, every thought I have is wrong. Everything I do is incorrect.



Don't know what to say after that. Words fail...Words always fail.




.

You have seen something in the world I have it sounds. My empathy is with you my friend.

[Gary Childress]

I saw somebody quote George Carlin: “Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.”

Well along those lines maybe someone could say:

Inside every person who laments that they always do/say the "wrong thing" is someone who wishes they could always do/say the "right thing"? Maybe?

Just a thought...

EDIT: Thinking back to the original Cynics, Diogenes of Sinope and others I would say that Carlin's use of the word "cynical" does not ring true (at least of what I have read of the Ancient Cynic movement). Sorry George. It sounds nifty though.

[cladking]

Most of what happens to a person in life is just luck. If you have good luck you're successful and if you have bad luck you aren't. Yes, by preparation, planning, and hard work you usually can improve your odds but it will still be luck of the draw.

Don't worry so much about what happens to you and try to save your concern for what happens to the world because of you. There are always people far worse off no matter how bad you have it.

You have lots of time to get back on track. Follow doctors' orders, exercise, eat right, and socialize and this might all get even better.

Best of luck.

[Impenitent]

"No victor believes in chance" - Nietzsche

-Imp

[Gary Childress]

"No victor believes in chance" - Nietzsche

-Imp

Heraclitus seems like he may have been a truly wise man. I don't think Heraclitus would have made Nietzsche's statement above. Probably not cladking's either. But they are "good" sentiments. Thanks.

[cladking]

"No man ever steps in the same river twice"

Life is change.

Heraclitus spent too much time trying to understand the Egyptians I would think.

http://www.aldokkan.com/art/proverbs.htm

It takes a knowledge he lacked to understand this I believe.

[Gary Childress]

"No man ever steps in the same river twice"

Life is change.

Heraclitus spent too much time trying to understand the Egyptians I would think.

http://www.aldokkan.com/art/proverbs.htm

It takes a knowledge he lacked to understand this I believe.

Why do you think that Heraclitus did not understand what he wrote?

[cladking]

Why do you think that Heraclitus did not understand what he wrote?

I'm not very familiar with him but love some of his quotes. I have little doubt he understood his own quotes which could be quite wise but just suspect he was reading a lot of the Egyptian work because it was so common at that time. Most of Egyptian material was, I believe, largely misunderstood by everyone of that time.

[Gary Childress]

Why do you think that Heraclitus did not understand what he wrote?

I'm not very familiar with him but love some of his quotes. I have little doubt he understood his own quotes which could be quite wise but just suspect he was reading a lot of the Egyptian work because it was so common at that time. Most of Egyptian material was, I believe, largely misunderstood by everyone of that time.

Being misunderstood by others was not uncommon to philosophers and mystics of almost any era or culture, wouldn't you say?

It's sort of interesting. When taken as a single sentence the Egyptian proverbs you linked to seem almost like a comedy of errors. But when read in a succession, which I assume is the way they are meant to be read they do seem to tell a story from someone who has perhaps "seen" with their own ideas some things I have seen in my life. Is that the way you see it? That the proverbs were NOT meant to be read or contemplated individually (one sentence or two at a time)?