Female pessimists?

[Bleak&Icy]

Quote Originally Posted by Nicole Cushing

Most women have children, which makes it difficult to be a pessimist. Can you really look down at the bundle of joy in your arms and say that it would have been better if he or she had not been born?

I was once a bundle of joy, but now I am all grown up. Whenever I look my parents in the eye I wish that none of us had been born. Once upon a time I was a Nothing, not even a speck in the Aether. How wonderful it must have been to be a Nothing. But my parents took me from Nothing and made me a Something, a Something that is constantly in pain and knows that one day, perhaps one day very soon, it will return to being a Nothing. My mother wanted a Something to call her own, a Something to alleviate her own loneliness, a Something that would always be bound to her, a Something she could torment as she had been tormented. My father, of course, never wanted a Something, because a Something would ruin his wife's figure, interrupt his sex-life and cripple his finances. But in the time-honoured fashion, my mother got her way and my father reconciled himself to the arrival of a Something that would carry on his genes and his name, a Something he could torment as he had been tormented. So a bundle of joy was born. Did it all work out, did all parties get what they wanted? I do distinctly remember my mother glaring at me with demented hatred and lashing out at my father, at herself, and at me. My memories go back to the age of two-and-a-half, and very few of them are pleasant. "I never asked to be born!" I often argued, as most children do. "How dare you say that!" answered my parents in unison.

Now and then one one hears a news story about a young mother who, in a fit of post-natal depression, shook her bundle of joy to death, or smothered her bundle of joy under a fluffy pillow, or drowned her flailing bundle of joy in a bathtub or a fishtank, or locked her wailing bundle of joy in the family car and then waited calmly in the kitchen for the noise to stop. "I just wanted my bundle of joy to stop screaming," she says in her own defense. Women who kill their own bundles of joy are never called murderers by the media; rather, they are monsters, mythically evil creatures who belong in fairy tales and not next door. "Monster!" they scream from the gallery. "Lock her up and throw away the key." From a legal standpoint, it is better to be a monstrous marionette: "She was a puppet of her own haywire emotions," argues her solicitor. "She was a victim of childhood neglect, of abuse at her husband's fist. She was too young to care for a bundle of joy on her own and she failed to receive the necessary support from her community. It is a failure of society. What we need is infrastructure, damn it! She was driven temporarily insane, and she must be nurtured back to health, not punished." The gallery is touched by the tragedy of it all, moved by the plight of the young monster, I mean mother. But the state prosecutor reminds them that a bundle of joy is dead. "Where there was Something, there is now Nothing. We cannot have people making Something from Nothing and then returning it back to Nothing. Even if the Something in question has only been a Something for a matter of days, of hours. Need I remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that this young woman deliberately drowned her bundle of joy in a goldfish bowl, she did away with her bundle of joy, and why, oh why did she do it? In her own words, by her own admission--and let me get this exactly right"--he says, ruffling some documents theatrically and reading aloud--"she did away with her bundle of joy because she 'wanted it to stop screaming.'" The gallery now forgets about the tragic failure of infrastructure and wants the woman punished.

But the marionette show must go on. Can you really look at the screaming, red-faced bundle of joy in your arms--a bundle of joy that you have created for purely selfish reasons, a bundle of joy that will grow up to hate you (if it is wise) for making it a Something that knows it will one day be a Nothing--and wish it had never been born?

If only it would stop screaming.

Postscript: Of the two Nicoles on this website, I can say without hesitation that one of them is a female pessimist of the highest order. And she is not in the least bit monstrous. So they do exist; albeit, they are rarer than mothers who murder their bundles of joy.

[Gray House]

Quote Originally Posted by Bleak&Icy

Once upon a time I was a Nothing, not even a speck in the Aether. How wonderful it must have been to be a Nothing.

Statements like this are puzzling to me. Saying "a Nothing" rather than "nothing" seems to express "nothing" as a something. Saying that it must have been wonderful also seems to give it a positive quality. (I mean positive in the sense of "consisting in or characterized by the presence or possession of features or qualities rather than their absence"--my dictionary definition). I'm not questioning your wish to be nothing (or a Nothing). Perhaps this post might seem hair-splitting, but I am only making it because I have seen the capitalized "Nothing" before, in various places, and have wondered, why the capitalization? It seems, to me, contrary to the meaning of the word.

[BlackCatSophie]

Quote Originally Posted by Gray House

Quote Originally Posted by Bleak&Icy Once upon a time I was a Nothing, not even a speck in the Aether. How wonderful it must have been to be a Nothing. Statements like this are puzzling to me. Saying "a Nothing" rather than "nothing" seems to express "nothing" as a something. Saying that it must have been wonderful also seems to give it a positive quality. (I mean positive in the sense of "consisting in or characterized by the presence or possession of features or qualities rather than their absence"--my dictionary definition). I'm not questioning your wish to be nothing (or a Nothing). Perhaps this post might seem hair-splitting, but I am only making it because I have seen the capitalized "Nothing" before, in various places, and have wondered, why the capitalization? It seems, to me, contrary to the meaning of the word.

Forgive me for saying so, but I have often observed that humour involving irony is lost to humans. I am a cat, and I suspect that the post from which you quoted was not meant to be taken at all seriously. I suspect that this Bleak&Icy character (preposterous name, by the way) meant the post to be read as an exercise in meaninglessness, inspired possibly by the overused phrase "bundle of joy." Humans, in my opinion, should not take themselves so seriously. I don't mean to disparage your entire species; I once met a cat--an American cat, it must be noted--who failed utterly to appreciate irony and didn't giggle at any of my jokes, not one!

[Steve Dekorte]

Quote Originally Posted by Gray House

Saying "a Nothing" rather than "nothing" seems to express "nothing" as a something. Saying that it must have been wonderful also seems to give it a positive quality.

There's a place on the spectrum of depersonalization just north of Unity but south of the Void that one might call the Nothing. There's some conscious thought left there but the strings of emotion have been cut and there's a lingering sense of freedom and bliss. Perhaps they are just the last strings.

[Evans]

Going along pessimistic lines I would suspect, that unconsciously, many parents want a child to rear and shape in a way that pleases them. They may sincerely want it to be happy (in fact, I'm sure many of them do) but because of the nature of this world and humanity it will inevitable lead to unhappiness and pain. There needs be no desire to torment on anyone's part, it happens anyway.

Quote Originally Posted by BlackCatSophie

Life is meaningless. That is one of the differences between humans and cats, and it makes us vastly supurrrrior (I mean superior) to you.

But surely in a world without meaning concepts like ''better'' or ''worse'' can not exist? Your ancedote seems more of an arguement for objective nihilism than pessimism(not that there is anything wrong with that)

[Freyasfire]

Quote Originally Posted by Nicole Cushing

Most women have children, which makes it difficult to be a pessimist. Can you really look down at the bundle of joy in your arms and say that it would have been better if he or she had not been born?

There are also plenty of women who not only don't have children, but do not want them either. Surely, amongst this group, there has to be at least a handful of females with a pessimistic view of life. Perhaps they don't write philosophical treatises about their beliefs, but they do exist. However, like male pessimists, they only represent a tiny fraction of the population. There is also the fact that in most cultures, there is still a slight stigma attached to those females that do not want children, so more of them are less vocal about their beliefs. "You don't want children? Your biological clock has not started ticking? You don't have a maternal instinct? Whatever is the matter with you dear?"

[Gray House]

Quote Originally Posted by Steve Dekorte

Quote Originally Posted by Gray House Saying "a Nothing" rather than "nothing" seems to express "nothing" as a something. Saying that it must have been wonderful also seems to give it a positive quality. There's a place on the spectrum of depersonalization just north of Unity but south of the Void that one might call the Nothing. There's some conscious thought left there but the strings of emotion have been cut and there's a lingering sense of freedom and bliss. Perhaps they are just the last strings.

Thank you for this clarification. It sounds like a nice place.

[Eternal Returner]

I myself ran into a pessimist woman who, despite the odds we are potentially discussing here, agreed with me that Antinatalism is the only tenable personal decision for her concerning children. She is a self-identified VHEMT member, though not necessarily as much for the planet as for the sake of unborn persons. I consider myself lucky to have met such a person, otherwise I'd only have a collective sausage party to talk Doom N' Gloom with, haha.

But yes, she's the ONLY female pessimist I know who is also Antinatal, but I know one to two other female pessimists. They aren't common.

[Acutely decayed]

Off topic unfortunately, but related to the link Thomas cited, the very lucid and fascinating Sister Y wrote in response to a question as to why philosophers treat the default position as against suicide;

"I don't know why this should be. I haven't come up with any explanations for this that I find compelling. Perhaps it's the psychological salience of the act of suicide, or the ubiquity and ancientness of the prohibition, although philosophy is usually able to get behind such things."

One theory for this may be that society recognizes retrospectively in the person who has committed (or attempted) the act, an individual who was of relative greater worth to the maintenance of the society. Thus the victim of a conventional act of violence is still commiserated, of course, but in a very different way. A hypothetical explanation for this would be that it is because the individuals who attempt to remove themselves from existence are more likely by their actions during life (Sublimations in the CATHR sense, I think) to provide Distractions (in the CATHR sense) to needful members of society, (almost everyone else). (As another aside their greater intensity of feeling may also correspond to a spirit of self-sacrifice useful to the society, but this is another issue).

Another way of phrasing it is: the group in which suicidal propensities occur strongly overlaps the group with an ability to provide a society/culture with meaning. Their suffering is a terrible by product/consequence of the ability to be so close to meaning and to communicate it (or its lack). They see the palette or toolbox for what it is – others see the created picture. If this were recognized probably unconsciously by society it may explain part of the "ancientness of the prohibition". These same individuals may be more likely to posses a creativity vital to others -

I am thinking along the lines of this

Wikipedia (Links)

Creativity_and_bipolar_disorder

and Kay Jamison’s "Touched with Fire" book - I am not sure the correlation between bipolar and creativity is proven concretely by science (Honestly though, I declare non-objectivity - I will probably believe it exists, faithfully, forever) but the bipolar suicide connection is quite clear I think and has also been my anecdotal experience. Please note: I am not inferring that creativity requires this, just that the state which has been termed "bipolar" has a correlation within it, with creativity. I am also not arguing there is an identity betwween pessimists and individuals with the bipolar state, just some overlap - I am also not arguing many other things and probably I am incapable of sharing my thoughts sufficiently clearly, for which I apologise.

I have probably communicated these ideas poorly and none of the connections I hypothesize, even if correct, are going to be absolute, just some thoughts, still reading CATHR.

	CATHR The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[Odalisque]

I would like to stand this thread on its head, and ask why so many males are pessimists. Is it connected with a (usually unacknowledged) awareness of belonging to an inferior (and largely disposable) sex? Consider the peafowl. What message is evolution sending out with the conspicuous peacock? It seems to me to go roughly as follows:

Predators! If you really must eat a peafowl, make in one of these conspicuous ones. The species can got along well enough with fewer of those.

Of course, in humans, this message is easier to miss... But why did the average human male develop as significantly taller (and therefore more conspicuous) than the average female? It's nature's way of setting males up to be eaten, that's what.

No wonder the boys are so pessimistic. Selected by evolution as dinner.