Are we too pessimistic towards life or...

[noname223]

...or does the world think to positive about life? We probably all experienced very bad stuff in our life. Or at least many of us. I went through horrible things and this shaped my worldview. When I am on this forum i am often very pessimistic. Do you think we have a kind of wisdom that other people do not have?
Slavoj Zizek denies that. He rather thinks people like us only get bitter and resentful. David Benetar speaks about a cognitive bias many humans have. A positive shift in order to deal with life better and so on. I rather suspect that i have a negative bias when i am depressed. But to an extent it is rational.
My life is quite shit. I am often questioning myself if my suicide would be rational. Maybe I am thinking too much about it but this would be important to me. I don't think I should ctb if I had better options.

 

[Life_and_Death]

this is kind of a biased question based on ones experiences in life. i have a feeling youre not going to really get an accurate answer. well an accurate average.

 

[Mentalmick]

I've definitely become bitter and resentful over time. I feel it every time I come across anything supposedly happy. And it's only getting worse.

 

[Superdeterminist]

I don't know if we have any kind of 'wisdom', I think that's actually quite a loaded term. As you alluded to, I do think that our experiences heavily influence our views. I wouldn't say we're "too" pessimistic or that others are "too" optimistic, because what are we comparing it to? We only have other humans to compare to, and no human can serve as an objective standard. I know that I'm totally justified for being as pessimistic as I am, based on my lived experience. And I believe the same for everyone else, including the extreme optimists. I think it's all just about what your brain makes you feel. We might be able to say that suicidal people are too pessimistic to sustain life, but I don't know how insightful that really is.

 

[noname223]

this is kind of a biased question based on ones experiences in life. i have a feeling youre not going to really get an accurate answer. well an accurate average.

I think some people can try to question their experience and compare it to others. If I compare my beliefs to the ones of my healthy friends I am more pessimistic towards the world. However when I watch the news I think why on earth should we not be pessimistic.

 

[Life_and_Death]

I think some people can try to question their experience and compare it to others. If I compare my beliefs to the ones of my healthy friends I am more pessimistic. However when I watch the news I think why on earth should we not be pessimistic.

i wont disagree. im just saying that asking a bunch of people that were fucked over in life might not yield accurate results and youd be better off asking an array of people. as for the news, yeah avoid that shit like the plague. wont disagree, why isnt the world pessimistic, i myself wouldnt mind the extinction of the human race. however its probably also good to keep in mind that a lot of news places are biased as well so their "news" probably isnt 100% truthful in order to sway the viewers.

edit: also unless its an extremely heartwarming story they most likely wont report it. they get more views for the more destructive stuff....only making people more destructive but i wont go into that

 

[noname223]

i wont disagree. im just saying that asking a bunch of people that were fucked over in life might not yield accurate results and youd be better off asking an array of people. as for the news, yeah avoid that shit like the plague. wont disagree, why isnt the world pessimistic, i myself wouldnt mind the extinction of the human race. however its probably also good to keep in mind that a lot of news places are biased as well so their "news" probably isnt 100% truthful in order to sway the viewers.

edit: also unless its an extremely heartwarming story they most likely wont report it. they get more views for the more destructive stuff....only making people more destructive but i wont go into that

Lol. I love the news. I always was interested about them. There is a lot of shit going on in the world. I don't like the feeling of looking away. On the other hand I should not lose myself in negativity. And I am not the only one who has a shitty life. However suffering and pain is real. And only because other people have it worse I do not have to experience my personal hell.

 

[Life_and_Death]

And only because other people have it worse I do not have to experience my personal hell.

may i ask you to elaborate?

 

[noname223]

may i ask you to elaborate?

I think some people in the psychiatry state that people in Africa have it way worse. They say this suffering is relatively mild when we compare it with the suffering of people in developing countries. A psychologist I know always told in the Philippines they chain mentally ill on houses.(and other stuff. He compared their suffering with mine)
I think this does not work properly. It is bullshit so that they don't feel too bad about people who ctb.

 

[Life_and_Death]

I think some people in the psychiatry state that people in Africa have it way worse. They say this suffering is relatively mild when we compare it with the suffering of people in developing countries. A psychologist I know always told in the Philippines they chain mentally ill on houses.(and other stuff)
I think this does not work properly. It is bullshit so that they don't feel too bad about people who ctb.

i certainty wont disagree. treating people inhumanly just because you dont understand is stupid and one of the many reasons i wouldnt mind the extinction. however this doesnt change what you have gone through now if your entire thing was "mommy didnt buy me the new $2000 phone now im gonna kms" then youd have a good point and should probably be quiet now lol

 

[BeansOfRequirement]

One relatively consistent theme I see on here is people thinking for themselves and coming to their own conclusions. This in combination with a willingness to take in unpleasant information, like spending your free time reading about childhood sexual abuse stories and self-harm descriptions, might lead one to understand the superiority of negative utilitarianism over positive utilitarianism. This is obviously linked to suicidality.

 

[Hirokami]

I've had many experiences which jaded me. Doesn't help that I realized how fucked up the world can get at a very young age. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than utterly disappointed, hence why I am a pessimist. Why get my hopes up?

 

[Life_and_Death]

One relatively consistent theme I see on here is people thinking for themselves and coming to their own conclusions. This in combination with a willingness to take in unpleasant information, like spending your free time reading about childhood sexual abuse stories and self-harm descriptions, might lead one to understand the superiority of negative utilitarianism over positive utilitarianism. This is obviously linked to suicidality.

you see a theme? i thought the majority so far was just us talking lol.

i personally find a problem with this. you can spend your time reading about all the bad in the world but then that is all you will see and of course become pessimistic. same goes the other way if you only surround yourself in good. it really is a balance of things. i dont think the world is really pessimistic or optimistic. its all in what you surround yourself with.

 

[BeansOfRequirement]

you see a theme? i thought the majority so far was just us talking lol.

i personally find a problem with this. you can spend your time reading about all the bad in the world but then that is all you will see and of course become pessimistic. same goes the other way if you only surround yourself in good. it really is a balance of things. i dont think the world is really pessimistic or optimistic. its all in what you surround yourself with.

I don't think you have a problem with what I said, since I agree with what you just said and what I said simultaneously.

 

[Life_and_Death]

I don't think you have a problem with what I said, since I agree with what you just said and what I said simultaneously.

sorry i didnt mean a problem with what you said. i meant the whole thing lol

 

[BeansOfRequirement]

sorry i didnt mean a problem with that you said. i meant the whole thing lol

Oh, gotcha. It's getting late over here.

 

[Sprite_Geist]

...or does the world think to positive about life? We probably all experienced very bad stuff in our life. Or at least many of us. I went through horrible things and this shaped my worldview. When I am on this forum i am often very pessimistic. Do you think we have a kind of wisdom that other people do not have?
Slavoj Zizek denies that. He rather thinks people like us only get bitter and resentful. David Benetar speaks about a cognitive bias many humans have. A positive shift in order to deal with life better and so on. I rather suspect that i have a negative bias when i am depressed. But to an extent it is rational.
My life is quite shit. I am often questioning myself if my suicide would be rational. Maybe I am thinking too much about it but this would be important to me. I don't think I should ctb if I had better options.

I cannot answer the question in the title, because it differs from person to person - their life experiences, trauma (or lack of), et cetera. To your 2nd question: I believe that the world is neither too positive or negative, it is just indifferent.

 

[SuicidalSheep]

I think that if your body is in a static state in which no matter how positive you are, things are quite shitty, pessimism isn't the problem, their bodies are.

Otherwise, I think people are generally positive about the world precisely because their emotions are functioning properly, giving them rose tinted glasses, but ones that are valid. They're able to not just see the nice things, but experience them and feel subjective meaning. In this case yes, pessimism could cloud you from seeing and experiencing the good in life.

But that said, Life is simply not kind to the individual and is filled with disadvantages completely outside of the control of said individuals where only a small fraction are on top of the chain. Life is pretty fucking brutal and there is no objecive meaning that humans could comprehend. People ignore how fucked up the world is on a daily basis, and are prone to call people who can't accept it crazy, which I personally find crazy.

Even fundamentally, if you think away all the fucked up shit human beings endure, living beings in general consume and destroy just to continue to be. It's just that modern soceity has made it so most humans don't get the short end of the survival stick (unless its capitalism related) , except for disease and natural disasters. There's a false sense of safety people view the world through. Somehow their equally irraional positive bias is considered more valid than my negative bias.

 

[WornOutLife]

I think we're not pessimistic, we just see the reality as its: life is absurd and nonsense.

Normal people see life as something quite simple and joyful. I mean, who created us? Some bearded guy. What is life's purpose? Just study, work, get married, have children, keep working and die as an old grey man. What's happiness? Have some money and children. What's the universe? Something the same bearded guy created.

I kinda admire normies. I wish I could be as simple-minded as them but I just can't ignore how ridiculous (and impossible) the fact of existing in this world is.

 

[BeansOfRequirement]

I think we're not pessimistic, we just see the reality as its: life is absurd and nonsense.

Normal people see life as something quite simple and joyful. I mean, who created us? Some bearded guy. What is life's purpose? Just study, work, get married, have children, keep working and die as an old grey man. What's happiness? Have some money and children. What's the universe? Something the same bearded guy created.

I kinda admire normies. I wish I could be as simple-minded as them but I just can't ignore how ridiculous (and impossible) the fact of existing in this world is.

 

[BornofDust]

The world just is. Our perspective of it is a combination of our life experiences and the events that was around us. And that's how we end up formed our perspectives. We may seem pessimistic people a lot of us here experience life in its most harshest, cruelest and pointless. So that's how we end up viewing things. The world though, just is, and how we go about it is based on our subjective and unfortunate experience with the world.

 

[jesse]

This world has a lot of systems that rely heavily on exploration and misery. Let's take my shoes for example... we don't have to be aware of how goods are produced for the horrors to be real. Slave labor still exists. People working for nothing in massive, racist camps. Children working long hours in poor conditions, choking on industrial air, just so they can survive. Resources and land being cheated away from poor owners. Businesses treating people as numbers. The more powerful extorting the weak at every stop. Massive manipulations from start to finish... That's just for some shoes. That's not even getting into violence, cruelty or existential meaninglessness.

The negative parts don't take away the positive parts, but our positives, like the negatives, are not equally distributed. Love is a good example. It is, without question, a wonderful thing. Yet, not everyone has access to it. Not everyone in this world is loved. Not everyone has clean drinking water. Not everyone has a safe place to live. These are not opinions. These are just observations. When people tell me the world is not so bad, that is an opinion. Am I a pessimist? Maybe. It's impossible to know objectively if my own thinking is delusional... but, it seems like it's not to me.

 

[Largeletters]

I'd like to think I'm a realist in terms of my outlook on life.

 

[FuneralCry]

I am a pessimistic person, but I see that as being realistic personally. If you have been through a lot of negative experiences you are bound to see the world in that light. Any hope would just be a delusion for me. I guess it is different for everyone really, we all see the world in a different way.

 

[OceanBlue]

Something should not have to happen to you to make you care or at least notice it.

I don't understand the concept of happiness, it does not seem like a rational response to what's going on in the world, what others have to go through.. including historical mass cruelties.

We live in hell. Depression is a natural reaction to this world, I don't consider it an illness to be cured. The normies are the insane ones, blinded by positivity bias, destined to harm and damage because of it.