You might have fun in life, but eventually everything will revert to the baseline (suffering).

[Deleted member 23885]

I'm planning to go to the waterpark with my family this week & go to a concert. But, as soon as the fun is over, life will probably revert to being suffering. Do you think that's true? Buddhism claims that life- for the most part- is suffering as we are stuck in a cycle of endless craving. What do you think?

 

[ThrownAwayTom]

Those are the kind of things I try to use as checkpoints in life to reach. Like, if I have a ticket to a concert 6 months away I have to hold on til then so I don't let people going down. But sure enough straight after I feel even worse cos it's back to the baseline of grey.

Where are you living where you can hit up a waterpark and concert atm?

 

[Deleted member 23885]

Dubai, on holiday.

 

[greebo6]

I find if I do ever have a rare 'happy moment' I always feels even worse when its over and its all back to 'normal' .
Any low always feels so much worse and raw when it has just been preceded by any high.

 

[Ghost2211]

I use moments like that as a break and a chance to breathe. Yeah, the suffering will come back, but it's also ok to focus on and enjoy good things that come along while we have them. They won't be the last good things in life, and the little things like foods you like can be stepping stones as well. It's a coping tool for me at least.

 

[EmptyManForever]

Buddhism claims that life- for the most part- is suffering as we are stuck in a cycle of endless craving.

This is the reality of life, according to buddhism there are 3 marks of existence, namely anicca(impermanence), dukkha(suffering)and anatma(no self) meaning that all phenomena is not permanent, nothing lasts forever, and also it says that life is suffering , we are born to this world, we go through both physical and mental illnesses, we grow old and sick and finally we die, that is suffering and last one is anatma which means there is not anything called "I" or in other words there's not a self , as in we dont own anything in this world, we dont even belong to us ,not even the mind or our body belongs to us, because we have no control over ourselves, mind and body always changing, and we all die one day and nothing can stop that from happening, if we owned our body we could control it and so is the mind, and after death we become like a useless log ,not moving, just nothing , and it will decay and become dust, so according to buddhism these three things is what life is basically, you can read more in the link below

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence

 

[Deleted member 23885]

Do you think most ppl view life as suffering- or is this a minority view. Or do most ppl find life to be smooth sailing?

 

[WornOutLife]

Those are the kind of things I try to use as checkpoints in life to reach. Like, if I have a ticket to a concert 6 months away I have to hold on til then so I don't let people going down. But sure enough straight after I feel even worse cos it's back to the baseline of grey.

Where are you living where you can hit up a waterpark and concert atm?

I do the same! My check point now is to have fun during these months!

And op, you're right. Life is mostly suffering. Aging sucks.

 

[EmptyManForever]

Do you think most ppl view life as suffering- or is this a minority view. Or do most ppl find life to be smooth sailing?

Most people are blind, they dont realize the reality of life, they are not that intelligent, they go on with life working, paying bills, spending time with family, doing things they love, but never realize the truth , that life is suffering, only the intelligent ones view life as suffering, so yeah only a minority is intelligent

 

[Deleted member 23885]

Oh, so I'm not the only person who thinks this way. Do most philosophers think this way & most emotionally sensitive ppl? I know Avicii was miserable & ctb'd. And, of all the hedonists who followed rock n roll, Mick Jagger & Keith Richards were some of the only happy ones. Anita Pallenberg, Keith's girlfriend, was unhappy deep down. It tells all in the biography. Jim Morrison was miserable, so was his fiance, Pamela Courson.

Most people are blind, they dont realize the reality of life, they are not that intelligent, they go on with life working, paying bills, spending time with family, doing things they love, but never realize the truth , that life is suffering, only the intelligent ones view life as suffering, so yeah only a minority is intelligent

So, are most ppl too insensitive to realize that life is suffering? Is it only the sensitive & thoughtful minority who reach this conclusion? Like Jim Morrison, Avicii. Also, writers Ursula Le Guin, Freud and Orwell said similar things.

"Suffering comes from three quarters: from our own body, which is destined to decay and dissolution, and cannot even dispense with anxiety and pain as danger-signals; from the outer world, which can rage against us with the most powerful and pitiless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations with other men." ​

- Sigmund Freud, Civilization & Its Discontents

"Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes you know it. You know it as the truth. Of course it's right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of its existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering - unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality." ​

― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

"A normal human being does not want the Kingdom of Heaven: he wants life on earth to continue. This is not solely because he is "weak," "sinful" and anxious for a "good time." Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise. Ultimately it is the Christian attitude which is self-interested and hedonistic, since the aim is always to get away from the painful struggle of earthly life and find eternal peace in some kind of Heaven or Nirvana. The humanist attitude is that the struggle must continue and that death is the price of life." ​

George Orwell
Thanks for the replies :)

 

[Deleted member 23885]

Life is suffering, even for hedonistic ppl who go to nightclubs & party hard. You know, the kind of ppl who appear to be living it up. Otherwise, why are ppl like Jordan Peterson so popular?

 

[EmbraceOfTheVoid]

"I don't think there's a motive, atleast not one that is operating at a conscious level, per-se. People in any civilization are inculcated with a set of beliefs just as members of a cult - they are raised with a rather static lens they are taught is the "correct" way to experience, perceive, and make sense of reality; this can be something as simple as "things fall down because of gravity", to "money is a very important pursuit in life", or "communism is evil". Taught repeatedly both explicitly and implicitly, one begins to lose themselves in these messages, and the differentiation between "self" and this static perception becomes very fluid - an attack on this perception, even in the form of a piece of information that creates a stark juxtaposition, triggers a fear response, much like that of an animal encountering a predator. The idea is, we may have incredibly advanced technology, but we still operate psychologically at the level of tribespeople; we become incredibly attached to cultural belief systems the same way we attach to our mothers and fathers as children, even if they abuse and berate us.

This comes to the heart of the problem, in my mind. Our cultural apparatus no longer seems to have answers for us, and the chase of money, status, materialism, et al - the hollow idolatry of late capitalism - is failing writ large to satiate our existential fears, if in large part because the system pumping it out has become so corrupt and inequitable that it is losing its legitimacy, and with it, its ability to hold us under the "civilized" spell. But even so, you have billions who have been raised to believe in its wicked fairy tale, to see and judge themselves and others through its objectifying, atomizing, reductionistic lenses, and for the most part know no other way to perceive reality. This is a large part of why "mental illnesses", suicide, and childlessness have skyrocketed and continue to - these are perhaps natural reactions to perceiving reality accurately, beyond any cultural spell.

This said, how does one continue to exist in a world that is not only rapidly changing for the worse - where an extinction crisis is looming large not so far over the horizon, where one is more likely than ever to be socially isolated, exposed to toxic levels of pollution, live in a terribly unhealthy fashion, work an unrewarding, mundane job that barely pays enough - and NOT want to kill yourself, or at the very least be chronically depressed?

Well, the answer, which also includes the answer to your question, is to double-down and become even more insane in the ways of the culture. The role of culture itself is transcendence - to deny death itself and give life a sense of permanency; culture becomes the self and the self becomes culture, but by becoming so intertwined, one becomes a part of its hypervigilant immune system. The problem is, no one really benefits from this arrangement in the long run; but in the short run, the constant denial of reality keeps one in a state of blissful, willfully ignorant cognitive dissonance. To anyone not insane in the ways of our culture, anthropogenic climate change is the Sword of Damocles hanging over life itself, making everything we need to do to sustain life in modern civilization seem absurdly Sisyphisean.

And yet, the denial of reality serves a dual purpose - it allows one to sink into learned helplessness, and it allows one to avoid the existential crises that come with awakening to the fact they are utterly codependent and individually helpless (much like an abused child who ultimately conforms to its treacherous parents' whims, once it realizes they're the hand that feeds and it has nobody else). To illustrate, right now it is estimated some 60% of the world's population lives near a coastline, with nearly 2.4 billion people living and working within 100km, and some 634 million living only 10m above sea level. The majority of these individuals live in the mega-cities that themselves are the major arteries of modern civilization. These cities are neither sustainable nor self-sufficient, and depend on a fragile global logistics chain to continue functioning.

Imagine yourself to be a decently well-off middle class resident in one of these coastal regions, or cities. You have an advanced degree and a great white collar job - let's say you're a family practice physician at a small doctor's office and although you don't save much, you do make ends meet, have an alright social life, overall things don't seem too bad. You never struggle to put food on the table, you're relatively happy with your life, more or less. You feel "successful" in the eyes of your culture because of the two letters after your name, the size of your paycheck, the fact you "own" your property and a nice car from the last 5 years. You're the envy of your less fortunate friends and peers, who are struggling in the gig economy and paying $1100 for a bunk bed in a small room; they look at you and tell you, "you've made it, man!" - its a similar admiration you experience with the opposite sex, who perk up after you mention your career. So, things seem relatively stable in your life. Economic crises seem to come and go, the world seems to be getting scarier by the day but you don't notice much - sure, groceries are always getting more expensive and the packaged goods keep shrinking, sure, you keep seeing friends from your peer group drop off the map or appear in obituaries you scroll past on Facebook, regardless more and more of them are speaking openly of their "mental health" struggles, and sure, people seem to be driving a little crazier, more of your patients are uninsured or on Medicaid, and the weather seems to be more chaotic than ever. But for the most part, you get up in the morning, get dressed and drive to work like everyone else, and although you can't dismiss this tickle in the back of your mind that something isn't quite right, your life seems rewarding enough to keep the tickle repressed. You might get a surge of anxiety now and then - or maybe that's just another pothole on the slowly degrading, neglected highway you take to work, but eventually you forget it until the next time, and the next.

The point is, if you live in any measure of comfort like the above story, belief in the status quo IS your "self", it not only enables your life, it provides you a stable sense of identity and status. To consider climate change is to collapse that lens upon itself, reveal it as a dream, an illusion, and with it, everything you have come to see as fixed and rigid and sensible about your life, every answer you've ever had to those late night existential questions that keep you up. It is to awaken to the stark reality you are a helpless cog in a massive mechanism, who operates a machine you don't understand, that runs on a fuel you can't create yourself, to work a job that is only possible because of a global logistics chain, to shop at a grocery store full of food and drink from who knows where, made by who knows who, to return to your domicile in the evening powered by who knows what from who knows where - all you know is as long as you keep your bills paid, the lights will magically turn on, the food stays cold in your fridge, and you can veg out to the latest sitcom on Netflix after a long day at work. Besides, what could you really do about rising sea levels or a splitting polar vortex, individually?

If we return to the story, imagine yourself that person again - and you've brought up similar subjects with your friends, or your professional-class colleagues, but they tell you you're being a downer, so you eventually drop it, and maybe even begin doubt it's even real or that it matters at all. "The scientists will figure it out," you tell yourself, clutching the Bible that's actually a cellphone streaming the latest climate denial or techno-hopium to your eyes, as you drift off to a dreamless sleep. Anyway, you've got work in the morning and the clocks always ticking and the bills aren't gonna pay themselves.

It's far easier to accept the one reality that is farcical and mundane and be united with your atomized peers in that, to feel the power your status and money grants you, to do the steps of the dance of "normality" - than to stand completely alone in the other reality, in which you are a dependent child in an adult's body, subsisting in a world that is not only bewildering and complex beyond your imagination, but utterly terrifying and unpredictable beneath it all. In that reality there are no answers, only the fact that there doesn't seem to be a place for you in it, and your life is virtually unimaginable without the forms of modern civilization - the grocery stores, the gas stations, cars, two day shipping, fire and police departments. Most would sooner forget that is the world that is threatened and fading than imagine living in a world without it." -Suicidal stranger from the internet.

Here's another from the same person:

"Living happily" itself is a myth. Nobody on this floating rock is consistently "happy" every single day unless there is something seriously neurologically wrong with them that makes them that way. Life itself is inherently suffering - this isn't some edgy edict, it's the fundamental nature of the human condition; we are animals, and moreso social animals, which, not unlike elephants, zebras, dolphins, cows, or donkeys, are biologically wired and adapted to chasing short-term fulfillment, and avoiding pain and suffering - to the degree we experience and remember negative feelings and experiences far, far deeper and longer than we do positive experiences. This is the telltale sign of our inescapable animal nature - the hardwiring that makes suffering so inherently unavoidable, and pleasure seemingly so elusive.

Boiling the phenomena of NEETdom down to "mental health" is a reductionistic fairy tale that completely ignores the context of modern life in favor of hyperindividualizing the consequences of that context down to the individual and leaving it there. Speaking of context - the factors you mention are not as much of an immunological force as you imagine. Our society is one rife with celebrity suicides, who so many see as the "winners" of our silly game - they have money, prestige, recognition, fulfillment, endless fancy toys and achievements - and yet still cannot escape the call to the void - which, if anything, speaks to the fact we spend our lives chasing things that really do not make our lives all that worthwhile in the end. Sure, it's nice to be clock in to your 9-5 every day and pat yourself on the back and tell yourself you're doing the right thing like everyone else, but this is the life of an obedient somnambulant - one we are conditioned for in this society. You know the script - go to school, work until you're old, save and scrimp the whole way through, retire, and go rot in an old folks home using the money you've hoarded your whole life. This might be a fulfilling life for an inanimate machine part that cannot feel and is not alive, but for a social animal that needs environmental enrichment and belonging and meaning to feel any kind of consistent fulfilment, it is a slow death.

This isn't to say NEETdom is some grand alternative - it is the final consequence of this meaningless life program - narcissized depression and almost total alienation, whereby one practically declares themselves dead to the outside world and escapes deeper and deeper inside themselves as a solace, until the crushing emptiness of isolation and loneliness destroys their ability to experience pleasure and often their will to live. This is typically because of the self-isolating shame that attaches itself to the status. As social animals, we need people in our lives to feel any degree of worthwhile. Interpersonal interaction injects our lives with a kind of meaning and fulfilment that all the technology, distractions and drugs cannot. Unemployment and NEETdom would not nearly be as bad if not for the immense social stigma, and if we could all expect to live in communities we felt a part of, or at the very least had friends who cared about us outside of our job title. Unfortunately, this is not the nature of our hyperindividualized, materialistic, and vain society whereby one increasingly derives their (narcissized) sense of self-worth and status from their ability to consume and brag about said consumption. Instead, we live in a time where over half of the population reports always feeling lonely and having few if any friends, 1/6 of us are on psychotropic drugs, and the suicide rate hasn't been this high in 30 years.

All the same - this doesn't make "successful" people failures. But it also doesn't make NEETs "failures", at least in any individual sense. The failure is society itself - in providing an insane sociocultural script that makes people incredibly sick; if I could call NEETdom anything, anything at all, I'd call it the canary in the coal mine for a society that is providing an age old lifescript that is no longer worthwhile, rewarding, or even meaningful in any sense - nor does it even guarantee the barest physical necessities for participation anymore; recall that wages have been stagnant for 40 years and we have wealth inequality levels that mimic those found prior to the Great Depression, what becomes all the more clear is that modern life is the new Great Depression. This is a dreadfully sick post-meaning society where mass shootings, panoptic surveillance, suicide, opiate abuse, loneliness, and alienation have become as commonplace as psychotropic drugs and psych diagnoses; which, if anything, says nothing more than that the very concept of "mental illness" is a desperate attempt by the system to hold on to it's collapsing validity by pointing at dissidents and shouting "they have some inherent biological illness that makes them this way!" As such, the realm of modern day psychology/psychiatry has become no more than another long arm of the corporatocratic, neoliberal police state, which has a part in allowing modern-day quality of life to continue it's decades long slow bleed to the sociopathic class - the wealthy and powerful.

We must think of NEETdom, depression, and a wide scope of psychological maladies as meaningful signals our bodies are sending us about the ways we conduct our lives nowadays, not as noise that is to be ignored and medicated away." -Stranger from the internet

 

[Yasuke]

Most people are blind, they dont realize the reality of life, they are not that intelligent, they go on with life working, paying bills, spending time with family, doing things they love, but never realize the truth , that life is suffering, only the intelligent ones view life as suffering, so yeah only a minority is intelligent

 

[Teal_Blue_Dreams]

Life is suffering, even for hedonistic ppl who go to nightclubs & party hard. You know, the kind of ppl who appear to be living it up. Otherwise, why are ppl like Jordan Peterson so popular?

i'd never heard of him before. now, i'm watching him on youtube. thanks!

 

[DivineMedicus]

I find if I do ever have a rare 'happy moment' I always feels even worse when its over and its all back to 'normal' .
Any low always feels so much worse and raw when it has just been preceded by any high.

Yeah same here. My mood is basically like being on a trampoline; when you're on it and not doing anything, the trampoline is depressed by default. It takes more effort to jump higher and achieve bliss (as temporary as gravity may allow it to be), but the depression afterwards will be greater. Life for most people is jumping on the trampoline over and over again in an effort to be at least content, but as for me, my legs are broken and I cannot jump anymore.

Sorry for this inane rambling.

 

[greebo6]

Yeah same here. My mood is basically like being on a trampoline; when you're on it and not doing anything, the trampoline is depressed by default. It takes more effort to jump higher and achieve bliss (as temporary as gravity may allow it to be), but the depression afterwards will be greater. Life for most people is jumping on the trampoline over and over again in an effort to be at least content, but as for me, my legs are broken and I cannot jump anymore.

Sorry for this inane rambling.

It wasn't rambling ,you were fine.
Its all part of the depression curse. You can't even enjoy the very little very rare lighter moments. Or at least not properly anyway.
Its a horrible thing really.