07-07-2016 | #1 |
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Pessimists - What Keeps You Going?
A common objection to pessimism is that its adherents are hypocrites because if life is so terrible, surely they are obliged to be consistent if they gripe about suffering constantly.
As naïve as this objection is, it does make one consider why on tolerates existence. For me, two things: my love for the arts and sciences, and cowardice. What about you, TLO? |
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07-07-2016 | #2 | |||||||||||
Chymist
Join Date: Jan 2015
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Re: Pessimists - What Keeps You Going?
It is oft said that humans are not biologically "programmed" for suicide. I think this is true.
In my case, I hang on because I don't feel I am done exploring this world. I guess you could say that despite being a pessimist, my curiosity hasn't died. | |||||||||||
"The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind." - H. P. Lovecraft
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07-07-2016 | #3 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: May 2007
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Re: Pessimists - What Keeps You Going?
Ideas. To me new ideas or even new interpretations of very old ideas (which may be really all there are) are like paintings or symphonies. They are not just instrumental or functional. I find a beauty in them that I can't find elsewhere. When I took Philosophy there were typically two groups of people in the courses. The first was by far the largest, the debaters. They make great attorneys. The second was my group, by far the smallest, the idea connoisseurs. We just liked playing with the ideas like a small baby plays with a mobile above their crib. And maybe that's all we're really doing or are, small babies playing with the shiny objects in front of us. But I'm ok with that. Keeps me going.
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07-08-2016 | #4 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
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Re: Pessimists - What Keeps You Going?
Intertia. The self-preservation instinct. The few good moments among the sea of horror.
I've lived longer than some of you, and grown out of many of the things that used to keep me going. Nothing has taken their place. Things get worse, the only consolation being time goes faster. I still love TL though. | |||||||||||
Put your faith in God; he won't expect you.
Put your faith in death, because it's free. If you believe in nothing, honey, it believes in you. -Robyn Hitchcock |
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07-08-2016 | #5 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Feb 2014
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Re: Pessimists - What Keeps You Going?
Every pessimist who is in a relatively stable frame of mind knows that suicide has a horrible/traumatizing effects on everyone, because most of them have had friends who have committed suicide.
I wouldn't feel right doing it. And it's against the law. | |||||||||||
“The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them.”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island |
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07-09-2016 | #6 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Feb 2015
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Re: Pessimists - What Keeps You Going?
Thinking of suicide has an invigorating effect on me, similar to how certain people think of rotting corpses before dinner to whet their appetite. Though I am often weary of life, I haven't stood on the steps toward the act yet.
Moreover, I am haunted by Cioran's dictum: "Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?" I certainly don't want to be accused of being an optimist. | |||||||||||
"Tell me how you want to die, and I'll tell you who you are. In other words, how do you fill out an empty life? With women, books, or worldly ambitions? No matter what you do, the starting point is boredom, and the end self-destruction. The emblem of our fate: the sky teeming with worms. Baudelaire taught me that life is the ecstasy of worms in the sun, and happiness the dance of worms."
---Tears and Saints, E. M. Cioran
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07-09-2016 | #7 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: May 2014
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Re: Pessimists - What Keeps You Going?
Books, comics, art, movies, TV series, documentaries, music, theater, video games, sex, humor (usually of the black variety), cigarettes, coffee, food, friends and family. Probably in that order, too. Oh, and the wonderful folks here at Thomas Ligotti Online.
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Your fall should be like the fall of mountains. But I was before mountains. I was in the beginning, and shall be forever. The first and the last. The world come full circle. I am not the wheel. I am the hand that turns the wheel. I am Time, the Destroyer. I was the wind and the stars before this. Before planets. Before heaven and hell. And when all is done, I will be wind again, to blow this world as dust back into endless space. To me the coming and going of Man is as nothing.
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07-09-2016 | #8 |
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Re: Pessimists - What Keeps You Going?
The illegality of suicide in many countries is laughable yet irritating. |
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07-09-2016 | #9 |
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Re: Pessimists - What Keeps You Going?
I cannot force myself in to non-existence as I have committed the sin and ecstasy of falling deeply in love with my own delusions.
I also hold out hope that some of Aickman's unpublished work may surface, and Tartarus may reprint Sarban's The Sacrifice and Other Stories. |
Last edited by Sad Marsh Ghost; 07-09-2016 at 03:34 PM.. |
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07-09-2016 | #10 | |||||||||||
Acolyte
Join Date: Sep 2013
Posts: 95
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Re: Pessimists - What Keeps You Going?
Still awaiting our resident pessimists reply to this:
Maverick Philosopher: The View from Mount Zapffe: The Absurdity of Life and Intellectual Honesty | |||||||||||
Thanks From: | ToALonelyPeace (07-10-2016) |
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