Darkover
Archangel
- Jul 29, 2021
- 5,504
We are born into a system we didn't choose:
Biology: Our bodies come with built-in limitations and vulnerabilities—disease, decay, aging, death.
Psychology: Our minds carry traumas, biases, compulsions, fears. Some of these are hardwired or shaped by early experience and hard to unlearn.
Environment: We're placed into social, economic, and cultural systems that may be unjust or harmful—and often beyond our individual control.
When the system itself—life—is what's broken, it's not just a matter of fixing one issue. The whole foundation feels unstable.
We try to solve or alleviate life's problems—medicine, therapy, philosophy, art but some issues persist no matter what:
No amount of knowledge stops death.
No level of success guarantees peace of mind.
No ideology or belief system can erase suffering entirely.
This creates a tragic tension: we are creatures wired to strive for improvement, yet we face limits we cannot overcome.
Suffering Isn't Just an Accessory It's Baked In
Pain isn't a bug of life. In many ways, it's a feature:
Emotional pain comes from attachment, which is part of love.
Physical pain is part of survival, but it also haunts people unnecessarily.
Loss, uncertainty, and fear are inevitable because change is constant and control is partial.
So if we can't fix these intrinsic aspects of being alive, it's not unreasonable to conclude that life itself is the problem.
Self-Awareness Makes It Worse (and Also Deeper)
Animals suffer too—but humans understand they are suffering. We anticipate loss. We dwell on meaning. We mourn futures that never came. We're machines with ghosts in them, and those ghosts ask impossible questions.
That awareness leads to existential dread:
If we know things are wrong,
If we try to fix them,
And if we still can't,
Then yes life itself becomes the source of the problem.
No Escape Hatch
Unlike a malfunctioning machine, we can't just step outside life, reboot, or upgrade the hardware. We are the hardware. And if we're trapped in it with no tools to fully fix its deepest issues, then the problem isn't a part of life, it is life.
Biology: Our bodies come with built-in limitations and vulnerabilities—disease, decay, aging, death.
Psychology: Our minds carry traumas, biases, compulsions, fears. Some of these are hardwired or shaped by early experience and hard to unlearn.
Environment: We're placed into social, economic, and cultural systems that may be unjust or harmful—and often beyond our individual control.
When the system itself—life—is what's broken, it's not just a matter of fixing one issue. The whole foundation feels unstable.
We try to solve or alleviate life's problems—medicine, therapy, philosophy, art but some issues persist no matter what:
No amount of knowledge stops death.
No level of success guarantees peace of mind.
No ideology or belief system can erase suffering entirely.
This creates a tragic tension: we are creatures wired to strive for improvement, yet we face limits we cannot overcome.
Suffering Isn't Just an Accessory It's Baked In
Pain isn't a bug of life. In many ways, it's a feature:
Emotional pain comes from attachment, which is part of love.
Physical pain is part of survival, but it also haunts people unnecessarily.
Loss, uncertainty, and fear are inevitable because change is constant and control is partial.
So if we can't fix these intrinsic aspects of being alive, it's not unreasonable to conclude that life itself is the problem.
Self-Awareness Makes It Worse (and Also Deeper)
Animals suffer too—but humans understand they are suffering. We anticipate loss. We dwell on meaning. We mourn futures that never came. We're machines with ghosts in them, and those ghosts ask impossible questions.
That awareness leads to existential dread:
If we know things are wrong,
If we try to fix them,
And if we still can't,
Then yes life itself becomes the source of the problem.
No Escape Hatch
Unlike a malfunctioning machine, we can't just step outside life, reboot, or upgrade the hardware. We are the hardware. And if we're trapped in it with no tools to fully fix its deepest issues, then the problem isn't a part of life, it is life.
