Does philosophy eventually lead to misery?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Agreement with Martian Bigfoot. Moral Philosophy is supposed to explore how people can be happy, and the other major branch of Philosophy is supposed to explore what is true, and how we know it.

If these make you miserable, it is only because you will have concluded, somehow, that existence itself is miserable. That’s one valid way of thinking! One can argue that life is miserable, we’re all screwed, when we aren’t hungry we’re bored, and that “All’s for the worst in this worst of all possible worlds.”

Shrug. Why not? It’s as valid as Panglosseanism, ultimately. As is usual, the real truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, and the value of Moderation is probably the most valuable thing to be gleaned from classic/ancient philosophy.

42

Yeah? Well Immanuel Kant was a real pissant.

43

On the plus side: Sufficiently advanced hunger will make any later boredom indistinguishable from happiness.

“How am I feeling today? I’m bored. Wait, I’m only bored? Score!” Does backflip, clicks heels.

44

Grin! Gotta admit, boredom beats the hell out of outright terror, an emotional state not uncommon in human history.

Also, for boredom, there is a cure. An easy one! Tell a story, write a song, paint a picture, bake cookies (list goes on nigh unto forever.)

45

Indeed! So fun.

What do you think of Rousseau?

46

Rousseau could be mastered
as he was constantly plastered

47

Yes thanks. Seriously. He represents, what, rhetoric and populist aspiration over anything real.

48

There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya bout the rising of the… what?

49

Oh, I got to the sing-along part now. N/m.

/Emily Litella

50

Hey all, first post here. Just was thinking about this stuff this morning actually! Interesting thread.

First off, I’ll say that I’m not really well read on the classics and philosophy etc. I prefer to slowly absorb/test philosophies against the real world. So I do read from time to time, but then take time to apply it and see what sticks. I’m going to give an unequivocal NO to the OP’s question.

Being uninformed doesn’t make you happy, although contemplating all this existential stuff can be somewhat overwhelming at times. Still, I think taking time to understand on a deeper level is (as one person posted above) ultimately the gateway to a much more satisfying life (I’ve tested this one personally, and it checks out for me).

I think the main issue is that too many people aren’t asking the right questions.

Instead of “does this make me happy?” I ask something more along the lines of “what am I willing to suffer for?” (I don’t mean suffer in the sense that you always have to be suffering, but rather, “what is so valuable to me that I would sacrifice a lot to get it/keep it?”). I think when we can answer that question (honestly), we’ll know what really matters to us and really satisfies us. I’ll give an example from my own existence. I worked a 9-5 job for years because I thought it was what I was supposed to do to get “happiness”, but I hated it. I was never cut out for it.

So I just quit, and backpacked Asia for years.

I’ve spent a lot of time more or less broke. But you know what? I’m satisfied as hell with life. I’d never go back. The adventure is way more valuable to me than the discomfort or lack of $$$. I think that’s what I mean. I’d rather live “poor” (I still have a computer after all, I’m not really poor) than be stuck with something that crushes my spirit (which is naturally adventurous).

In the words of a mentor: “Spend lavishly on the things you value. Cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t.”

51

dblenks, beautiful first post. Welcome! The squid will be along shortly.

I first encountered this idea in a blog article and it really stuck with me. There is nothing we want in life that comes without a price. I love fiction writing. The downside of fiction writing is hours of painstaking, thankless labor. I’ve spent easily 2,000 hours on my current novel, and about a month ago, one of my writer friends sat back and said of my lovingly crafted female protagonist, ‘‘She’s such a bitch.’’ This comment unraveled me. For a full month, I couldn’t even touch the thing. My point is, the writer’s path includes neurotic obsession with the quality of your work, boredom, crippling insecurity, very little financial reward, and having people routinely mistake your life’s passion for a cute little side hobby. Three years of effort and I’m not even finished, have nothing published, have, on the surface ‘‘nothing to show for it.’’

If you can read all that and still want to write, you’re a writer. Because there is nothing in the world like the creative process, there is nothing so deeply satisfying as breathing a character to life, as crafting a compelling arc, as finding that one turn of phrase that fits the moment. I can’t not do it. I have found this thing worth suffering for.

The ‘secret’ to happiness is to find your thing.

I have a long history of reading self-help and self-improvement books, but my view has taken a radical turn in the past several months, starting with the aforementioned The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman. It seems the pursuit of happiness, which is, in all honesty, a pretty narcissistic endeavor, is the very thing that takes us farther from it. We are most satisfied when we are busy, working, engaged, living. The act of creation is liberation. In Faces at the Bottom of the Well, critical race theorist Derrick Bell acknowledges that racism is inherent to the human condition, that it can never be eradicated. But that it is the struggle itself that liberates the human spirit.

52

I guess there is some point to what is being said. But the way I process information and what I give credence to is what does me in. I take reading as absorbing knowledge and truth, which I guess is a mistake. It didn’t matter when it was science, but for more abstract thoughts I ran into trouble.

Especially in the link I posted with that book written by a PHD and in the reviews you find people agreeing. So I’m thinking something must be right and true if people agree with it.

53

Plus what was also mentioned was how it was a response to the flood of optimistic philosophy from all the previous centuries, claiming it was based on nothing but blind faith. Like the fact that ignorance was the cause of suffering. There is the saying that ignorance is bliss. So which is it?

54

No. Just no.

Reading, especially reading science (and philosophy), IM not so HO, is not passively “absorbing knowledge and truth” - it is interacting actively with what is being read critically in an ongoing process to more closely figure out and approximate knowledge and truth, even if sometimes some wrong turns are taken.

Spice Weasel, good luck with your novel but I must ask: what’s wrong with a character being responded to as a bitch? Given that real women who get called that by many in the real world are often the most interesting, complex, complicated, and strongest people I’ve known, I’d take that as a compliment about the nature of the character you lovingly created!

55

I think what they meant is that the character was just treating people poorly. There is a difference between being “strong” and being a bitch.

But I don’t know what to do about knowledge.

56

YMMV but I personally see assertive and strong female characters who are not treating other characters any more poorly than main male characters do (IOW in complicated ways but with their own clear motivations, agency, and with some degree of self-interest) described as bitches. Personally I’d guess that a female character who no one calls a bitch is likely a fairly uninteresting one.

As to your second paragraph … I’ll pass on responding to that. :slight_smile:

57

Wimp! :slight_smile:

I’ll take a whack at it.

“Knowledge” about human nature is mostly opinion. What we can see of other humans’ behavior is but the tippiest tip of the iceberg. What we as science know about the physical world is likewise the tippiest tip of the iceberg. Some things, e.g. the mass of an electron is well known to umpteen decimal places. Other things, such as why gravity happens, is unknown beyond pure guesswork. Biology is particularly opaque; far more so than physics. Remember that every statement by every human over all time was/is accompanied by error bars. Sometimes gigantic error bars. Even this one.

Yet writers write confidently of their understanding. Why? Because confidence sells books and indecision doesn’t.

As to the innards of human behavior we can only offer general directions that mostly work most of the time. It’s kind of like advice to a wandering tribe of primitives: “Don’t head North; it’s too cold up there.”

That’s undeniably true in the extreme,. But perhaps 100 miles north of the barren desert they’re wandering through now they’ll find a river valley rich in edible flora and fauna. The advice isn’t *per se * wrong; it’s just not universally applicable at all scales.

Intellectual efforts are subject to fashion just like any other field of human endeavor. Rousseau-ish musings were all the rage in the mid 1700s. By the early 1800s he was recognized as utterly blinkered by the limitations of his times. Folks today are less blinkered; but they’re still blinkered. Just differently. And in a way that’s especially invisible to the rest of us since we share the common blinkers of our era.

Rousseau was smart and thoughtful. Yet there were contemporaries of his who were similarly smart & thoughtful yet who disagreed with nearly everything he said. And so it goes throughout the ages. Select any philosopher of any era and his/her detractors are legion. This isn’t simple stuff; rather the opposite.

The good news is that an ordinary citizen has no need of capital-P Philosophy. Get through your days, don’t be a jerk, leave the planet and your society a bit better than you found it. Maybe make some kids who’re similarly inclined. That’s the practical definition of success for a sentient biological unit. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.

You *can *make a rock so heavy you can’t lift it. But why? How are you or the world better for that effort?

58

None of that seems correct to me, especially that about Rousseau. The man seemed like an idiot upon closer inspection.

59

Yep! There are (horrible) ways of doing things that you can’t undo. Chain an anchor to your ankle and jump overboard in deep water…

And yep, again! Philosophy is a luxury, like muscle-cars or birthday cakes. Philosophy is the art of asking really basic questions, waiting for answers, and then asking questions about those answers. It’s something civilization came up with…like beer.

I’ve never read a word of Rousseau, but I thought he was respected in his time, if not so very much today. I don’t agree with his ideas (as I understand them) but I won’t sneer at him. Newton believed in astrology.

60

The academic term is “stupid fuckface.”