"The Sorrows and the Shade"

[Mr. Veech]

Quote Originally Posted by Cnev

Lastly, I don't see how pessimism really has anything to do with your tristessism. Pessimism doesn't involve itself with seeking meaning, joy or any experience from any element of life. In my mind pessimism has no ultimate goals other than deriving ideas from observation. I think it's possible to be a contented, functional and successful pessimist.

I hate to be "that guy," but I feel that a genuine pessimist is somewhat of a contradiction. Despite various arguments to the contrary, I feel that a pessimist is obligated to commit suicide at some point in his or her life.

I also think that people such as David Benatar feel obligated to make a distinction between "a life worth starting" from a "life worth continuing" in order to simply wash their hands clean of the act itself. Even Schopenhauer did the same thing.

Having said that, suicide can be physical or spiritual. Someone who converts to a "religion" such as Christianity or Buddhism commit spiritual suicide. Pessimism stands near the precipice of hope as well as despair.

[Cnev]

I don't really know where the leap from being a pessimist to certainty in suicide came about, to be honest. Everything worth talking about is a contradiction in life and nothing is absolute. So saying that a pessimist must adhere to a certain something in order to be true to his or her pessimistic nature is too simplistic and singular. I've always viewed life as a very complex and paradoxical thing, so even though I'd consider myself an extremely pessimistic person I'd also concede that I find a curiosity, perhaps morbid, in this whole ridiculous deal called life or whatever. I like that and I don't want to kill myself at this moment. Other times, I do. So, what does that make me? I can't explain it, but it's there. A genuine like. Do I find ultimate joy in life? No, but I find an odd contentment with the predicament I'm in and I don't find ultimate horror either. Nothing has ever been simple to me and all these terms like, "Yo, dude! I'm totally a pessimist because XYZ and because of that I must do ABC to be legit" are just arrogant and assumptive. But, that's how we are as humans. We love to box everything into neat little packages so we can discern, judge and think we actually know something about life. There's nothing anyone can really claim to know about ultimate reality. You might think you do, but you don't. It isn't possible. Not yet. Not ever. I don't know.

I personally don't find anything interesting in "spiritual" conversion. What exactly is such a act? Trading one illusory ideology for another? One bull#### identity for another? Where, in any belief, is there any foundation built upon things that cannot, in an ultimate sense, be refuted? What we know is what we think we know in any moment, or what most closely aligns us to the idea of what we want ourselves to be in any moment.

Really, I'm just not impressed with what the human mind tries so hard to offer in relation to reality. Human "intelligence" is extremely overrated and causes more problems than it thinks it can solve.