Discussion Is it bias?

[whatevs]

This has been bothering me for a long time now. It started a few years back. I just got this very concise, very illuminating conception of life as Hell.

Now let me explain, I like many others, come from a christian background. At least one of my siblings has a name that literally means "God (El) with us". I was very young when I shattered in my mind the flimsy and child-like stories that comprise christian cosmology that my parents half-bakedly tried to instill into me. So I am not proposing Earth like the "dominion of Satan, the enemy of God, the righteous bearded man". However, for me there is something very poignant about the idea that this place is hellish and we are all fiends that torment each other. The analogy is further perfected by the pitiful apologetic efforts of Saint Augustine, that proposed a solution to the infinitely immoral nature of God casting sinners into a place of infinite torment: God didn't create Hell or sends us to it, but it is WE that do it to ourselves, since we die without loving God and we never accept him, so just like gravity, Hell pulls us away from the everlasting, unconditional love of God. The hell of life is just like that, we definitely do this to ourselves, by choosing to exist.

My question is, is it bias that I feel like we literally are in some sort of "hell" and that there is something wrong with life? Have I had just bad luck, dealt a lousy hand and confuse my unusually bad experiences with reality? I am 30 years old and I have met enough people and seen or done enough things to confidently say that (we) people are quite evil, and constantly pile shit unto another and then go bitch about it somewhere where we can be treated as the victim. Most of the time, when you look closer, victims either aren't that blameless or have/will victimize someone else when they can. If you look at how chimpanzees act you might see a terrifying resemblance. These are ruthless, ruthless omnivores, that do their own type of warfare, absolutely love hunting and eating meat and routinely kill even members of their own clique if they become too dysfunctional. Rape is rampant too.

It's non-stop. Every time I interact with people or just hear them passing by my garden, bantering or telling their children bullshit with a dumbed down soft tone, I have to face how much people lie to each other, fight for resources and praise or feel comfortable attacking someone if he/she looks defenseless enough. I live just in front of a school.

The problem of course, goes back to life itself, because humans aren't this way for no reason, they just manifest the very essence that brought them forth. Is this essence conflict, lust, fear? Is that the essence of life that everyone works so hard to maintain? Where is all this shit going, I have to ask? Nobody cares about that? What are we fucking doing here?

Death, with this disposition, seems like a great way to leave whatever the hell this experience is behind.

 

[Nightmare Painting]

I don't believe you're any more biased than people who were dealt a good hand in life. Regardless of personal circumstances there are things in this world that can't be argued against. Nature doesn't care about concepts of good or evil; it cares about survival and reproduction with no regard for the suffering of sentient beings. This fabric of existence is fundamentally broken at its core because you always have to take or consume from others in order to survive.

https://sanctioned-suicide.net/attachments/e119554-png.23361/

 

[whatevs]

I don't believe you're any more biased than people who were dealt a good hand in life. Regardless of personal circumstances there are things in this world that can't be argued against. Nature doesn't care about concepts of good or evil; it cares about survival and reproduction with no regard for the suffering of sentient beings. This fabric of existence is fundamentally broken at its core because you always have to take or consume from others in order to survive.

Exactly, exactly. In philosophical terms I am an essentialist (just made that up, it might have a Wikipedia page or not lol). Essentialism isn't a crazy new idea, it's just like the widely known concept of the "Platonic world of ideas". These greeks already had pinned down the idea that there is a blueprint from which instances are born. This is huge in programming or coding, since some nerd decided to use this concept to create Object Oriented Programming, and really cements one's understanding of it when you use it. When many instances of something share a trait or a behaviour, we are looking at an ESSENCE, at the blueprint. All apes have a blueprint, which inherits from the mammal blueprint, which inherits from larger taxa, until we find life itself.

So, since as you said and can't be argued, all lifeforms have in common that they have to take from each other, is that the essence of life? What can really be expected of such essence?

 

[fox_wannabe]

I might not be able to answer you fully but I give you what I think about It.

For me life is like purgatory. If we look at things objectively, world is average to bad to most people, but only because they are not so self aware of It, they may not know they are in this purgatory. Most people live in poverty or slightly above poverty with little to no chances of upward mobility (China, India, South America). They might suffer though they are not that aware of It, they don't compare their future to the one they would like to have.

Maybe they do not make statements like: "life is such and such". Maybe they think about It, but repression of such thoughts is as important to survival as eating. I heard that nature prepared us with defense mechanisms against that type of thoughts. We ignore them, repress them, we create art with suffering in our minds. We work ourselves not to feel or we drink. Or we find coping mechanisms to avoid questions like: why and how.

So Imo It is not bias.
(rest is rant) I have to say that I hate how we breed children and than lie to them. I also need to add that i hate idea of being slave to the system that uses my fear of death against me. Society just breeds you into existence than brainwashes you and sends you to work on the threat of being homeless and poor. You have to ask If 5 seconds of orgasm was worth It, not worth It for me. I just want to spend my last days hiking in mountains before I leave this place. It feels like I am in ant hive, I am too individualistic to enjoy It.

I am Gnostic. In my world view world was created by unwise and selfish god we call jehowah, or demiurge. It is imperfect world and mocker of natural order, this is why imo things are so scuffed in here. Prey and predator, decay, death. Imo this world is not worth living in unless you want to experience It all. I have my own beliefs but I do not advise you to believe me. Don't believe me. It is my way. I want to exit this fallen world.

 

[Nightmare Painting]

Exactly, exactly. In philosophical terms I am an essentialist (just made that up, it might have a Wikipedia page or not lol). Essentialism isn't a crazy new idea, it's just like the widely known concept of the "Platonic world of ideas". These greeks already had pinned down the idea that there is a blueprint from which instances are born. This is huge in programming or coding, since some nerd decided to use this concept to create Object Oriented Programming, and really cements one's understanding of it when you use it. When many instances of something share a trait or a behaviour, we are looking at an ESSENCE, at the blueprint. All apes have a blueprint, which inherits from the mammal blueprint, which inherits from larger taxa, until we find life itself.

So, since as you said and can't be argued, all lifeforms have in common that they have to take from each other, is that the essence of life? What can really be expected of such essence?

It seems like you're trying to find meaning or purpose to all the suffering and I frankly don't have the answer. You're basically on the border of asking for the meaning of life and I don't believe in any grand meaning or purpose to this shithole. This post from the antinatalism subreddit sums existence up fairly well:

for countless of hundreds of millions of years (maybe even more than that). With humans or without humans. With capitalism or without capitalism. Why? One of the laws of thermodynamics some people don´t know exist but maybe is one (if not **the**) most powerful in our universe is **entropy**. What is it? Well, it basically consists of the fact that it is easier to break something than fix something. It´s easier to create and spread a plague than cure it. It´s easier to write a corrupt law for your own benefits than to create a good one with no loopholes. It´s easier to take a good life than a evil life. You see this in action in our universe constantly because shit breaks contantly, but nothing **ever** miraculously improves. Have you ever noticed that?


This, collaborating with the existence of natural selection and game theory, has given birth to a psychopathic (evil) and psychotic (delusional, strongly prone to optimism bias, wishful thinking, false beliefs, etc) species. We enslave those weaker than thus, both [animals](https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko?t=3315) and humans, the majority of which are forced to work shitty labor jobs, with a childhood involving neglect, trauma, ostracism, bullying, and a generally poor quality of life. This is the 'pulse' of our species, we abuse our children, teenagers and the weak and traumatize them to have the same evil, systematic nature we have. Note: this is **not** exclusive to humans; you can see this sort of behavior in lions, tigers, and other great predators that exhibit this kind of evil behavior, even if irrationally. And the worse is that I believe if another animal species raised to sentience and became "advanced", they would be the same as us.


Let us say, just imagine if having actual concern for humanity or life is even possible with the idea of extreme success as a CEO or high-ranking corporate figure. It's just complete fantasy. The degree to which this is a fantasy, is like someone saying "An antelope could be just as successful being a carnivore as a Lion can." You simply don't arrive at the positions in those places without being 'carnivorous' towards human beings. Because if you were, you would suffer from the same thing that natural selection punishes a Lion that sucks at killing things would suffer from-- you'd just starve and die, because this is a [**competition**](https://youtu.be/95c5GTp__AU). A kind, benevolent, caring, concerned, charitable CEO would just get eaten alive. The laws of biology(which, **reminder**: Human beings are subject to) and the laws of physics, **prevent** good people from becoming CEO's or high ranking corporate figures. It's simply the way the universe works.


Evil **always** works its way to the top in **any** system given enough time-- there's no other way for it not to, in a competition game which says, "The *sneakiest*, most *dominant*, selfish person climbs, while the most *honest*, most *humble* and *selfless* person gets climbed on."
Entropy constantly empowers that which is empowered by virtue of being the perfect distillation of evil, like the Lion, like the predator, like the apex psychopath who is, has always, and will always sit on the throne of all sentient systems in this block of spacetime moving towards greater entropy. Evil thrives once it achieves power because the powerless must work against entropy, where evil only plows forward exhibiting its nature effortlessly. Good must go *against* nature to be good. Evil does not need to do anything special to go *with* nature.


I know this is gonna be a long read, but it is needed to explain the hellish conditions we are in this universe. The problem is **not** capitalism, the problem is **not** humanity itself, the problem will **never** be what the majority of people tell you the true cause of all problems and all the suffering in this world the is nature and the laws of the universe we exist in. It uproots evil and gives it a way to conquer good and use it for its advantage. **This** is the reality that Disney and most media tries to obfuscate to you with systematically spread happy ending stories, even politics and other distractions are there to obfuscate the hellworld that we live in. People have always been trying to find a problem, when the problem is simple: we are in *Hell.*


Almost no one holds this reality up for examination daily. We are allergic. Most of us have near-zero understanding of the gravity, and those who have glimmers, ignore this fact about the quality of our reality because it's not conducive to living another day. Why must we live another day? Because genes which give rise to culture, all of which is determined by game theory which more or less says, "Psychopathy wins and holds dominion over this game". Natural selection is a game where evil wins, not good. Good is kept around for the purpose of evil wearing it's skin like a mask. Good is not adaptive, in the precise way that the cow in cow hell has no adaptive trait. It's alive. It will bear children. Those children will bear children. But nothing "adaptive" is going on. How? The fact of the matter is, a psychopathic species has kept the herbivore alive for its own gain. This is the precise relationship that evil has to goodness. Goodness is kept alive. Buddhism is kept alive. Any genuine benevolent religious idea, is kept alive. All because evil, which is powerfully [camouflaged](https://i.imgur.com/ri1sTPL.gifv),dominates reality and presses onto it in a way which goodness can never overcome.


There´s *even more* material that I could just keep elaborating on, but the true information is that this life is some kind of evil dystopian hell with no winning moves, because almost all of them empower evil. The worse is that we are delusional evil apes that evolved with brains to blind us to the true, *crushing* gravity of the situation we found ourselves into in this spherical concentration camp.

If we were to take our delusional apes glasses off and truly take enough time to analyze our circumstances here on Earth, we would just yell **HOLY FUCKING SHIT** and jump off a window. If everyone was truly aware of *how* bad things are, suicide rates would skyrocket worldwide. Everyone would be killing each other, and everyone would be killing themselves. It would be a suicide epidemic of *biblical* proportions. And everyone would be doing it, not just the poor people, but the CEO´S and other powerful "kings" of Earth, because even **they** would be horrified with the revelation.

TL;DR: Life´s even worse than you think and we are in Hell.

 

[fox_wannabe]

@Nightmare Painting
That better existence, the image mentioned in last paragraph. Is worth, for me, dying for. Even If it might not happen. It is something I keep to myself. But I am totally sure things not supposed to be as they are.

 

[Al Cappella]

In a word, yes. How we feel about our existence has to do with genetic predisposition and our experiences to date. Highly sensitive people raised in toxic environments come to see the world as dangerous, and people as untrustworthy, for example. Now I'm not saying objective shittiness doesn't exist—but who we are/have become determines whether we cherry-pick from that to form our worldview.

 

[Sanva]

if this really was hell, wouldn't everyone want to ctb? All I know is that this world is definitely my own personal hell.

But I think calling this world in general hell is assigning meaning where there isn't any. We're just very evolved monkeys. I used to be religious but the older I get the more I suspect that there is just no meaning. The fact that we're here is just a big coincidence. We live a few decades and then we're gone forever. Some of us have good lives, some of us don't. There is no heaven or hell. Sorry if that's depressing. I wish I was able to believe there was a higher power or something.

 

[whatevs]

It seems like you're trying to find meaning or purpose to all the suffering and I frankly don't have the answer. You're basically on the border of asking for the meaning of life and I don't believe in any grand meaning or purpose to this shithole. This post from the antinatalism subreddit sums existence up fairly well:

Yeah, I agree, but although we, efilists/antinatalists and gnostics are brothers in how we accurately perceive reality, people in my camp see something metaphysical or mysterious, "grander" in our reality. I doesn't change THIS reality, because we already agreed that is is "hell", but for people with a mystical penchant something epic and hard to grasp gave birth to this hellhole and whatever that created us doesn't stop at death. So it changes whether there is something else "wrapping" this hellscape existence, but not that we both reject or would want to reject life and can explain our position with hard facts.

So I would be closer to fox_wannabe than Nightmare Painting, but we bump fists regarding life being "cursed" or "wrong" in its fundamental design, be it created or birthed at random.

if this really was hell, wouldn't everyone want to ctb? All I know is that this world is definitely my own personal hell.

But I think calling this world in general hell is assigning meaning where there isn't any. We're just very evolved monkeys. I used to be religious but the older I get the more I suspect that there is just no meaning. The fact that we're here is just a big coincidence. We live a few decades and then we're gone forever. Some of us have good lives, some of us don't. There is no heaven or hell. Sorry if that's depressing. I wish I was able to believe there was a higher power or something.

I hardly think anyone can make my views on life MORE depressing hahaha.

I oppose life being birthed from nothing/coincidence from an intellectual point of view, but my lifestyle doesn't diverge much from a nihilistic atheist. That's because I don't derive from my abstractions any viable religion or hope. Gnosticism makes more sense to me just on the ground of how life doesn't seem like something that can occur at random. And I mean the general idea of some deranged entity creating a defective world that is a copy of something that is perfect. There is a touch of artistic irrationality there too, that's cool.

 

[Nightmare Painting]

Yeah, I agree, but although we, efilists/antinatalists and gnostics are brothers in how we accurately perceive reality, people in my camp see something metaphysical or mysterious, "grander" in our reality. I doesn't change THIS reality, because we already agreed that is is "hell", but for people with a mystical penchant something epic and hard to grasp gave birth to this hellhole and whatever that created us doesn't stop at death. So it changes whether there is something else "wrapping" this hellscape existence, but not that we both reject or would want to reject life and can explain our position with hard facts.

So I would be closer to fox_wannabe than Nightmare Painting, but we bump fists regarding life being "cursed" or "wrong" in its fundamental design, be it created or birthed at random.

I hardly think anyone can make my views on life MORE depressing hahaha.

I oppose life being birthed from nothing/coincidence from an intellectual point of view, but my lifestyle doesn't diverge much from a nihilistic atheist. That's because I don't derive from my abstractions any viable religion or hope. Gnosticism makes more sense to me just on the ground of how life doesn't seem like something that can occur at random. And I mean the general idea of some deranged entity creating a defective world that is a copy of something that is perfect. There is a touch of artistic irrationality there too, that's cool.

I actually don't agree with most antinatalists because many of them make the assumption that there is only nonexistence after death and that this is the only plane of existence. I do believe there is some kind of superior being or creator and the possibility that there is another form of existence but trying to find some grand meaning to it all seems futile.

 

[fox_wannabe]

There is no need for any purpose or meaning to anything when things are good. Happy people never ask that questions. We use meaning and purpose too justify suffering of us and others. So both of those things imo are just way of coping with things.

Life is fundamentally an experience. If nature created consciousness It is because It was fundamentally needed for something, otherwise evolution would not bother. It cannot loose spare calories on sustaining unneeded things. If consciousness is fundamental and we more than just flesh then we might be just to experience this. Not that I can stand It or I want to justify It. It is horrific. But It so happened that we are here. Maybe we just need to experience this and be done with It.

I do believe there is some kind of superior being or creator and the possibility that there is another form of existence

I would not call ANYTHING that created this mess, or allowed this mess superior to You, and do not call It as that either.

 

[whatevs]

There is no need for any purpose or meaning to anything when things are good. Happy people never ask that questions. We use meaning and purpose too justify suffering of us and others. So both of those things imo are just way of coping with things.

Life is fundamentally an experience. If nature created consciousness It is because It was fundamentally needed for something, otherwise evolution would not bother. It cannot loose spare calories on sustaining unneeded things. If consciousness is fundamental and we more than just flesh then we might be just to experience this. Not that I can stand It or I want to justify It. It is horrific. But It so happened that we are here. Maybe we just need to experience this and be done with It.

Schopenhauer said the same thing, that on a rational, evolutionist line of thinking consciousness is just something that complex life forms developed to manage their increasingly complicated needs.

Although my gripe is more with life itself and why it exists. I understand the argument that explains why consciousness as humanly understood exists and it makes sense.

 

[Gsvko]

I think we are no different than any other animal. I think universe is a coincidence. Look at the damn viruses, they're not even alive, they just kind of happened to form in a way that enables them reproduction and here they are. You get to exist if you can fit well enough into the given environment. Is that cruel? Depends who you ask. Can't get into a club with wrong shoes. I'm more useful as dirt I guess, nice try parents.

 

[fox_wannabe]

I'm more useful as dirt I guess, nice try parents.

You can't call yourself useless in universe that has no use in anything in the first place.
But you might feel this way.

 

[whatevs]

I think we are no different than any other animal. I think universe is a coincidence. Look at the damn viruses, they're not even alive, they just kind of happened to form in a way that enables them reproduction and here they are. You get to exist if you can fit well enough into the given environment. Is that cruel? Depends who you ask. Can't get into a club with wrong shoes. I'm more useful as dirt I guess, nice try parents.

Viruses are very interesting, one of the things that motivate me slightly to want to go through the hassle of learning shit. I think they hold answers regarding life.

 

[Gsvko]

Viruses are very interesting, one of the things that motivate me slightly to want to go through the hassle of learning shit. I think they hold answers regarding life.

They are weird, they've played a huge part in evolution. Like there's 10 million of their particles in 1 mL of surface ocean water rn and they are parasites. I sometimes think it's funny when I hear people jump to some covid conspiracies so quickly because I'm more surprised we don't have even more of them with people as hosts. I'll shut up now.

 

[Blondi]

Life is fundamentally negative because there are plenty of losses
(Getting eaten alive , starving, living with disabilities) , but no real gains .
Eating for example is only good because it relieves hunger.
Drinking is only good because it relieves thirst.
Being rich is only good because being poor is bad.
Good looks is only good because being ugly sucks.
Etc.