/so/ - Ronery
NEET is not a label, it's a way of life!

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12224 No. 12224 [Edit]
Don't you see? You've fallen into the pit, and you are staring longingly at the comfortable people in the light at the mouth of the cave. You want to join them, but that is not your destiny.

You must go deeper in.

It is in this solitary venture that you will discover a life in measure with your sense of dignity.

Everything which defines you now contributes to your confinement. Even when you say you have embraced your alienation, you are still looking toward the light and defining yourself against it. Within you is a conglomeration of forces conspiring to maintain you in a condition of paralysed longing.

Escape has to come in the form of rejecting everything which has led to a paralysed life. It has to be the death of this life. You must reject the value of their comfort, the value of these so-called loving relationships, which in truth are built on sloth and mutual exploitation, the value of their ideas of success - everything. You have to understand, you've been enthralled by life for which others were intended.

You have to become master of yourself, master of your own world, and the only way to do that is to cease to create yourself in reference to their world. You fail in imitating them because you are destined for something else, and what that is may be greater than anything their docile lives could produce.

You are constitutionally incapable of joining them, because you don't want to. You want something else. What that is, you don't know yet, but you'll only find it by travelling further in.
Expand all images
>> No. 12226 [Edit]
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12226
>> No. 12227 [Edit]
>>12224
I am going to say this to my therapist as if I was talking about myself. I want to see how someone normal reacts to it.
>> No. 12228 [Edit]
>>12227

They are going to pull a lever and you will fall through a trapdoor into a pit full of spiders
>> No. 12230 [Edit]
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12230
Except from your saying it might be destiny, I thoroughly agree with you OP...

Let's go look for the Holy Mountain inside this inescapable platonic cave.
Let's dig deeper into the pit to get really out of the inscrutable "out".
Let's become "Emperors Of Exegesis based on Self", who are:

Themselves and nothing but themselves
Sailing with outspread sails of self.
Each shuts himself in a cask of self,
The cask stopped with a bung of self
And seasoned in a well of self.
None has a tear for others' woes
Or cares what any other thinks.
We are ourselves in thought and voice
Ourselves up to the very limit


Let's stop trying to refer to that unreachable otherness and think by ourselves, look into ourselves and finally be ourselves...
...

Problem is, however, there might be no deep end into the cave; no such thing as the core of a man, no such thing as the-thing-in-itself; only layers and layers of endless posts, as we discovered that we actually lived like trolls.
>> No. 12232 [Edit]
>>12230
There is no thing-in-itself Hegeloid.
>> No. 12233 [Edit]
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12233
I didn't understood a word of what you posted but I Agree
>> No. 12234 [Edit]
I remember when I was 17, one of my friends brought me and another friend to his college for a day. We were planning to hang around the rec room and shit while he went to class.

I ended up feeling really sad for some reason. By the end of the day, I decided that it was because I realized I was never going to have a normal life, like the people I was seeing. By this time, I was already a drop-out, and I was starting to end up with a habit of being reclusive. It wasn't as bad as it was today, but it was beginning to gestate.

When I mentioned these feelings, my friend told me that I didn't need a normal life to begin with. He said that I was just so far gone, or so unique, that it would have been impossible for me to achieve one by that time.

I thought he was insulting me, but I can see that he meant well by that. It's true. Some people just can't ever achieve that normalcy. There's nothing wrong with that. It's simply the way life goes sometimes. That doesn't mean we/I can't find happiness. It might just mean that we have to look a little harder.
>> No. 12236 [Edit]
I am not in the pit, I am on the top of the world. That's why I am able to despite others. Like they say, it's lonely at the top.
>> No. 12237 [Edit]
I don't know how to exactly react to this OP but I feel the same way. What I'm looking for doesn't exist in this world but I can certainly feel it sometimes whatever it is. I'm getting closer to it, it comes in short periods of disconnected bliss. I've always felt it my whole life trying to find the source, I became obsessed with music and certain places because I found traces and shadows of it in them. Even when I'm as high as I can possibly be I can only feel a powerful shadow of it. I want to know what it is, I want to live in it.
>> No. 12239 [Edit]
>>12230
I know what you're thinking. Destiny is not some otherworldly, Haruhi-like force. Destiny is what you really, truly want. Destiny is your desire.

>>12228
lols
>> No. 12248 [Edit]
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12248
Agree with OP, also relate to >>12234 a lot

You know how people learning a second language often say it's exhausting to converse with native speakers? That's how I feel when trying to maintain conversation with normals, even online and even (especially?) with small talk. So physically draining.

I don't have anything important to add, but thanks everyone for posting your thoughts... I don't feel alone with you guys here...
>> No. 12249 [Edit]
>>12234
I realized I was way past normal when I went to Vegas a few years ago and preferred to stay in the hotel room and watch MASH alone than go out and do anything. Oh well
>> No. 12253 [Edit]
I know what you mean. I've always had these hunches. I'll be browsing imageboards, fapping, playing games, and out of the blue, a tiny little idea gets inside my mind. I try to fight it, but it doesn't go away. It fills up all my thoughts every second I'm not sleeping, and keeps growing. It spreads like a ravine and makes me feel useless for not doing anything with it. Finally, I set out and start working on it until a new idea pops in, and the cycle starts over. These hunches are my "way further in"
I don't know where these ideas come from, but they have total control over me, and I don't like it. My latest idea is dangerous and expensive. It wants me to throw everything out the window and move to Africa. I did something similar in 2008 and deeply regretted it (I joined the army) but I know I'll regret it for the rest of my life if I don't give it a shot. It's eating away at me.

Maybe I'm just imagining things. My mind could be trying to fill the void in my life by coming up with grandiose projects before I can consciously anticipate them. But I want to believe it's real. It's not a pit, it's a road. There's something wonderful at the end, I know it. Something that will make me look back at my life and say "I would gladly do it all over again"
I get this tingly feeling in my back everytime I think about it. One day I'll take the plunge and find out.
>> No. 12255 [Edit]
>You have to understand, you've been enthralled by life for which others were intended.

>the only way to do that is to cease to create yourself in reference to their world. You fail in imitating them because you are destined for something else, and what that is may be greater than anything their docile lives could produce.

>You are constitutionally incapable of joining them, because you don't want to. You want something else. What that is, you don't know yet, but you'll only find it by travelling further in.

I used to believe this when I first became a hikikomori. That I was better than everyone else and that I was "destined" for great things than everyone else, and all I had to do was sit in my room and wait. I felt so superior to all those other normal people going about the world and living life, I was convinced that I was better than them, that I would somehow end up greater and better than them, despite having spent so much time in isolation.

So I waited, and I waited and I waited. Convinced that at some point "my REAL life would start" and the destiny would happen. But it didn't. And I've been a hikikomori for 10 years now and my health is starting to get bad. All those years I could have lived life when I was young and in good health and full of energy and I didn't. I was delusional. I thought I had destiny. I didn't. Further inside the cave there is nothing there, just more bleakness and emptyness until you die.

OK, deep down, I still llike to hope that I have some great destiny waiting for me. It's my only hope. The alterntaive is very bleak: getting older, worse health and more pain with no hope or youth, no young memories to look back on. No life to have proudly lived. Nothing but a future of bleakness and punishment for having been a hiki and wasted my youth and good health.
>> No. 12260 [Edit]
>>12255
10 years? really?...

But fuck it: you're right. It's not that their normal life is any less despicable; it's that this one, in the end, might be even worst. The total waste; the total loss of values, principles and any sense. This is just too stupid... how does one even get involved on something like this? and even worst, believing that that it holds any meaning...

Crap. Crap to me and crap to everything. Worthless piece of shit. Wishing every single night to be done for. I have no fucking answer to anything.
>> No. 12265 [Edit]
>>12255
>>12260
In the end life don't have any meaning, be it a normal's, hikiko's, or any other life. Neither have any sense or transcendence, for all that means. What is really important are the things you do, and what they signify to you.

There is little to gain of that what-if question, for best or worst we are stuck with our past decisions. Its better to ask: "whats the good side of my situation?" And start from that point.

Also I find good to have low expectancies, so in the future you don't have to say: "I have failed" The simpler the life, the less things to worry about, and the easier to be happy.

In short, enjoy the little things you can have and don't worry for the ones you cannot.
Carpe diem.
>> No. 12315 [Edit]
>>12265

I would say that the meaning of life is the avoidance of suffering. When I first became a hiki, I was avoiding the "suffering" of social anxiety and of having other people judge me negatively or having people laugh at me. For the first few years this was good. I was in my bedroom where I was safe, in my safety haven where nobody could get to me. In my fortess. Safely hidden away from the world.

But 10 years on, there is the realization that I cannot stay in this safety haven forever. There will come a point where I will have to leave the safety haven, probably forced out of it by circumstances. Awful circumstances.

I should have spent the last 10 years preparing for that. Making myself more robust and able to navigate the future suffering without being overwhelmed by it. That is what normal people have been doing all their lives. They get a job so they can pay for a nice place to live, a wife to look after them when they are ill, children to look after them when they are old. But if I don't have a job or a wife or children or freinds, then who will look after me in the future?

That is the question. Who will look after me in the future? Sometimes you will hear hiki's scoffing at the thought of jobs and wives and children, claiming that these things are needless status symbols and people only want them because everyone else has them. But it turns out these things have a purpose afterall: to look after you in the future.

But when I first became a hiki when I was 18-19, the future seemed so far away as to be irrelevant. I was young and had always being young. Being young was all I knew, I thought it would last forever. But now I've been a hiki for more than 10 years and now I'm not young. The future is not so distant anymore. The normal people have prepared for the future suffering, I haven't because I put the short term avoidance of suffering ahead of the long term avoidance of suffering.

>Also I find good to have low expectancies, so in the future you don't have to say: "I have failed" The simpler the life, the less things to worry about, and the easier to be happy.

One of the things I did wrong was having high expectations. Even though I was a failure, I always told myself that it was only a matter of time before I would become a millionaire. Somehow a miracle would happen and my "real" life would start. The problem is the older generation of parents and teachers lied to me and told me I was destined for great things when actually I wasn't. Those lies and high expectations were probably a big factor in me becoming a hiki.
>> No. 12336 [Edit]
>>12255
>I used to believe this when I first became a hikikomori. That I was better than everyone else and that I was "destined" for great things than everyone else, and all I had to do was sit in my room and wait.
I think the ideal isn't waiting in expectation of your own resurrection, but pursuing the things you enjoy separate from what others expect of you.

>>12315
>Who will look after me in the future?
It's possible no one will, regardless of whether you have children (assuming you can raise them without divorce custody battles and without losing fights with your spouse about raising them) or a spouse (assuming you stay married with at least one of them). Even if they do end up caring about you, you might still be sent off to a nursing home and have everything you value sold off when you get too old and sick to take care of yourself.

It might be worth thinking about the question "what will I do when I'm old and have no one to care for me?", but it's also worth categorizing the line of thought as one originating from fear and insecurity. By the time you're that old, infirm, and weary, will it even matter if you live longer? It feels greedy. Your life's been spent. You've not really got much good ahead of you anyway. Why bother thinking about whether you'll be eking out another dismal sliver of years? They're not going to be any better than those that've already passed; they'll likely be much worse.

And why would you want someone to take care of you? What's that but clutching at someone's feet as you're lowered into the grave? You'll start to feel like you're a burden to your family because that's exactly what you'll be to them: a burden, completely superfluous. They'll forget what you've done for them, they won't know much of what you've suffered for their sake, and when you die they'll forget most of what you were to them in the course of a month, a year if you're lucky.

Maybe the worst of what I listed won't happen to you. Maybe everything'll end up peachy: you'll be content at your job until retirement, your wife and kids will take care of you when you're old, and you'll die in your sleep of natural causes surrounded by those who truly love you. But, looking at all that, doesn't it sound like a modern day fairy tale? You might as well be searching for a princess you can wake up with a kiss. Expecting marriage and children and a job to happen in a way that satisfies your pit of fears is just as delusional as waiting for someone or something to happen that pulls you from your self-created tomb.

My main point is that you shouldn't let yourself be motivated by these abstract fears of possibilities in the future. If you love someone, marry them. If you want kids, have them. If you want a normal job, a normal life, go right at it. Just don't do all that stuff because your fear of dying alone is driving you to do it. The overall problem is you're trying too hard to minimize pain. Focusing on that will only give you a tolerable life, not a good one, no matter what you do.
>> No. 12345 [Edit]
I like to think to think people like us want everything or nothing. Perfection or nothing.


We ended up with nothing.
>> No. 12346 [Edit]
>>12345
I can't accept anything but perfection. I just won't lower my standards in life even though I've hit rock bottom. Nothing will ever change me.
>> No. 12349 [Edit]
>>12345
Yeah.
I dreamed too much, so I got brought down with hefty dose of reality.
>> No. 12627 [Edit]
>If you want a normal job, a normal life, go right at it.
But that's not possible. I am not normal. I have been a hiki for 10 years, how could I ever possibly live a normal life now? If I become normal in my 30's people will ask me what I did in my 20's and what answer coudl I give to that? Tell them I was a "hikikomori"? I cannot, that is an embarassing shameful secret that must be kept hidden at all costs.

>Just don't do all that stuff because your fear of dying alone is driving you to do it.
Not so much a fear of dyign alone, but living alive and having to strive and fend for myself. Not having anyone to look after me. Having to face up to the future punishment for having lived as a hikikomori for so long. When you are with other people, you are in a team and they help you out to make life easier. But my insistance on being alone means I am not part of a team, there aren't any other people to lighten the load of life. I will have to take the full force of life on my own rather than having other people to share the load with, which is what happens with normal people.

It turns out that having friends has a purpose afterall, to share the load of life with. But it's not possible for me to have friends, How could I possibly and do I even want to? Why am I doing this to myself? What have I been doing all my life? How could I have been so stupid? Why did I do this to myself? Why am I still doing it? In the past I might not have been aware of the damage I was doing to myself, but now I am aware but I still keep on doing it. Which makes things even worse.
>> No. 12628 [Edit]
I'm sick of being in the pit, but there's nothing on the surface I want either so what's the point of even crawling out. I just want to die
>> No. 12636 [Edit]
I think becoming a neet is the forceful rejection of everything that leads to the perception of suffering in an individual who is highly sensitive to his feelings and has a strong urge to rid himself of this suffering. When people in the past had those urges to become free of their suffering, they would go into monasteries or live as a hermit.
Sadly this is not possible now and not even desirable as monasteries are a refuge for "normal people" now and living as a hermit will have you arrested or killed sooner or later. Even the Buddhist monasteries in the east are now a tourist attraction and maintained just for outward appearances and rituals.

This leaves us with no choice but to isolate us from the source of our suffering, which is not other people, but our interaction with them.
We are striving to be perfect and free of our human limitations in communication and by that we give way to our anxiety and insecurity. The only logical conclusion is to stop interacting with other people at all.
Similarly, we strive to achieve perfection in our work and in finding a suitable mate, and being unable to achieve it due to our inability to communicate, we reject it also.

We don't accept anything that is not perfect. This is not a character flaw. We saw that life leads to suffering, we reject it and we have the urge to end this suffering. Normal people are able to ignore it. We are free from this ignorance. We have a great opportunity and responsibility to free ourselves from everything that is empty and leads to suffering.

We reject status symbols, relationships, work, money and popularity. We see them for what they are, devoid of meaning, devoid of existence, making you happy for a short while and then leading to suffering once again. But you have to continue chasing those empty forms until you are left with nothing but. You have to see that everything in life is empty and leads to suffering. You have to see that your very personality itself is empty, that even your pursuit of meaning is empty.

Start by yourself, see that there is no inherent existence to what you call yourself, you are a collection of data, conveniently referred to as a person. But there is no inherent existence in the person you call yourself, you are empty. Continue with your body, your feelings, your perceptions, your thoughts and your consciousness. Free yourself from ignorance and end suffering.

This is your duty as a neet, not only to yourself, but to humanity.
>> No. 12643 [Edit]
>>12636
youre jealous of people who have material wealth, good relationships etc. so you rationalize this away as "its all shit anyway".
>> No. 12644 [Edit]
>>12643
That's how we gotta live or at least how I have to. I rely on being delusional and insane to keep myself from being to heavily depressed. Locked in a dead area, brain fucked, and getting older. There's no satisfaction for me. Right now I don't really feel alive or dead, I'm just locked in this state of misery I can't get out of alone.
>> No. 12645 [Edit]
>>12643
I didn't say that it is shit, quite the opposite actually. I said it is neither shit nor not shit.
>> No. 12652 [Edit]
>>12645
sorry was paraphrasing. replace "shit" with "devoid of meaning, devoid of existence, making you happy for a short while and then leading to suffering once again"
>> No. 12663 [Edit]
>>12627
>If I become normal in my 30's people will ask me what I did in my 20's and what answer coudl I give to that? Tell them I was a "hikikomori"? I cannot, that is an embarassing shameful secret that must be kept hidden at all costs
The only occasion where you would have to answer that would be to an employer. Believe it or not, most people don't care about you or anyone else outside their immediate circle of family and friends. They won't really give a flip what you did or didn't do in your 20s because most of them have their own problems to worry about. Your turning what's at most a small problem into an insurmountable one.

>Not so much a fear of dyign alone, but living alive and having to strive and fend for myself.
In essence, I think it *is* a fear of dying alone, though. You've already lived alone for over ten years, so that isn't in and of itself fear-inducing. You do fear living alone even longer, but it seems like it's the "even longer" part that bothers you more than the "living alone" part: the fear of growing older, the fear of dying slowly and being without anyone to help or take care of you (or care about you). I mean, if you could live without aging or dying, do you think your views on living alone would have changed? Personally, I doubt it.

>In the past I might not have been aware of the damage I was doing to myself, but now I am aware but I still keep on doing it. Which makes things even worse.
Because you keep on thinking things will magically just "happen" to you: that you'll magically become a millionaire, that you'll magically have something happen to you when you've done nothing for a decade, and (now) that you'll magically change just because you realized something you believe important. Without effecting any change in the way you live, you'll forever be mired in the same lifestyle you've been living.

Can't you see it? You're already making excuses as to why you can't do anything, talking about how impossible it is for you to live a normal life and have friends and so on. You don't want to live normally; you want to live comfortably, now and forever, and you're afraid of anything that might cause you greater discomfort. I agree with one thing you wrote earlier: you probably won't change until "awful circumstances" force you to.

If you truly believe that living a normal life will be good for you, then find a way forward and pursue that life you want rather than make excuses to some asshole on the internet about how you can't.

And my point from before still remains: you're trying to minimize suffering rather than enjoy life. If you're constantly miserable, being less miserable is only going to lead to a state that is at best neither enjoyable nor painful. The best you can achieve by purely minimizing misery is a life hollowed out of both the good and the bad. It strikes me as similar to Agamben's conception of ζωή: bare living that lacks any worth or value. That, I think, isn't how a person should live.


>>12643
>youre jealous of people who have material wealth, good relationships etc. so you rationalize this away as "its all shit anyway".
This type of thinking isn't restricted to shut-ins. People like to be reassured that they've made the right choices in life, or, failing that, the only choices they could've made in the circumstances. When people see others doing "better" than they are (socially, financially, and so on), they can't help but pose reasons to explain why that is. Sometimes they're right, sometimes the reasons are more self-serving, but there's no real way to divine such a thing beyond how our own predispositions and beliefs mesh with a given explanation.

Typically we generalize from our own experiences, so if life to us seems "devoid of meaning, devoid of existence, making you happy for a short while and then leading to suffering once again," then it will seem to be so for everyone (regardless of the truth of the matter). The truth of the world is roughly equivalent to the truth as we see it. We're solipsists at heart.
>> No. 12690 [Edit]
>>12663
>And my point from before still remains: you're trying to minimize suffering rather than enjoy life. If you're constantly miserable, being less miserable is only going to lead to a state that is at best neither enjoyable nor painful. The best you can achieve by purely minimizing misery is a life hollowed out of both the good and the bad. It strikes me as similar to Agamben's conception of ζωή: bare living that lacks any worth or value. That, I think, isn't how a person should live.

You can enjoy life, if you do, death will be misery to you and death is inescapable. You can have temporary enjoyment if you ignore this. You can choose not to enjoy life, death will be pointless, but life itself will be pointless too. It's like a fire, burning the very thing that gives you nourishment or glowing coals that are neither burning nor extinguished.

Both alternatives don't seem that different to me.

Do you assume that enjoying life to its fullest is the better path because you are a neet yourself and can't do that? Because the grass is greener on that side? People say that the successful pursuit of happiness is the measure of a good life and from that position I can understand why you value enjoyment. I obviously don't think so and if that is how you want to measure your life you also have to accept that your ageing and death will be misery to you, because you will lose that which you enjoy.

One wants to minimize suffering, the other wants to maximize enjoyment. I can't say which one of them is better. General opinion says that burning out is better than fading away. But I think that it's not possible to measure the worth of a life anyway. At least not from a human perspective. If you are unhappy, then change. But then again, being unhappy with the current state is a normal human emotion. So change if you want or don't.

Think about if a normal life would make you happy. But be sincere, if you think gaining money will make you happy, think about losing that money and the responsibility that comes with having investments, property and having to maintain your wealth. If you want friends, think about losing them, fighting with them, having to be there for them when they need you, having them betray your trust and sacrificing your freedom to make them happy. If you want to have a family, think about losing them, think about them falling ill, think about them leaving you because of a misunderstanding, think about sacrificing your freedom to make them happy.

If you lead a "normal" life, you will still be unhappy with things. Maybe you are overwhelmed by all the responsibilities you have and you will want to be a neet again. You will still want more money, more wealth, more enjoyment. There is no "normal" threshold where life is without problems.

If you want to get rid of misery, trying to live a "normal" life is not the right way.

>youre jealous of people who have material wealth, good relationships etc. so you rationalize this away as "its all shit anyway".
>sorry was paraphrasing. replace "shit" with "devoid of meaning, devoid of existence, making you happy for a short while and then leading to suffering once again"
So you think such a person exists? One with material wealth and good relationships? There is no such thing. No one man has material wealth, you gain it and you lose it, it's not an intrinsic part of yourself. Just like no man has good relationships. You have to acquire them and you have to let them go, relationships will flourish and go bad, that's the way it is. You assume a man that is rich, no matter what. A man that has good relationships, no matter what. But things don't work that way. That is why I'm not jealous.
I didn't want to generalize a meaning into them, that's why I chose to call them devoid of meaning. It's not to qualify them.
>> No. 12697 [Edit]
>>12690
go ask an old person if their life is misery and they wish they killed themselves when they were 20. I'm guessing most will say no.
>> No. 12698 [Edit]
>>12697
you can't compare the 20's of the elderly to the 20's of today, each takes place in very different eras with different expectations and responsibilities.
societies can change a lot over the course of 60 or 70 years, in both good and bad ways. try comparing the life of a 20 year old black man today to around 60 years ago.
>> No. 12702 [Edit]
>>12690
>You can enjoy life, if you do, death will be misery to you and death is inescapable. You can have temporary enjoyment if you ignore this. You can choose not to enjoy life, death will be pointless, but life itself will be pointless too. It's like a fire, burning the very thing that gives you nourishment or glowing coals that are neither burning nor extinguished.
Death itself won't be misery; it will be nothing because that's what nonexistence means, having neither happiness nor pain. Also, all enjoyment is "temporary enjoyment," and between a life of temporary enjoyments and one that ends as pointless and unhappy as it was lived, I'd take the former every time.

Anyway, your death being miserable if you enjoyed life is far from certain (a trivial example of a death that could never be miserable would be dying instantly from something like a car crash smashing your head in, since, without contemplating one's death, one can't be miserable about it). Some people do come to terms with death and dying in some way. People who believe in an afterlife certainly think they're going to live with Haruhi, thus are probably not discontent with the prospect of death (and going to heaven and such). It may not be true, but that doesn't mean they don't believe it's true. Emotionally, the existence of heaven and believing in the existence of heaven amount to the same thing.

>Do you assume that enjoying life to its fullest is the better path because you are a neet yourself and can't do that? Because the grass is greener on that side? People say that the successful pursuit of happiness is the measure of a good life and from that position I can understand why you value enjoyment. I obviously don't think so and if that is how you want to measure your life you also have to accept that your ageing and death will be misery to you, because you will lose that which you enjoy.
I didn't say enjoying life and being a shut-in were mutually exclusive. The person I responded to wanted a normal life, so I said he should go out and do that very thing as long as it wasn't fear that was motivating him. Maybe it will be better for him; I don't know and neither do you.

>One wants to minimize suffering, the other wants to maximize enjoyment. I can't say which one of them is better. General opinion says that burning out is better than fading away. But I think that it's not possible to measure the worth of a life anyway. At least not from a human perspective. If you are unhappy, then change. But then again, being unhappy with the current state is a normal human emotion. So change if you want or don't.
If all you do is minimize suffering, you have nothing at best. You're not happy nor are you sad, and that's all. By maximizing enjoyment, you can strive for happiness which can result in an outcome above the zero of minimizing suffering. For whatever reason, you seem to think that our happiness must be equal to or less than our unhappiness, and that the times we feel joy will likewise match the times we feel pain.

How do you even know if that's true? It's almost as if you think there's a karmic version of Maxwell's demon that keeps particles of happiness and sadness in an exact ratio, letting happiness particles out of people that are too happy and sadness particles out of people that are too sad. It stretches credulity to suppose that the apportionments of happiness and unhappiness in life are basically the same in each person. Not only that, but it's impossible for anyone to know such a thing.
>> No. 12703 [Edit]
>People who believe in an afterlife certainly think they're going to live with Haruhi, thus are probably not discontent with the prospect of death (and going to heaven and such). It may not be true, but that doesn't mean they don't believe it's true. Emotionally, the existence of heaven and believing in the existence of heaven amount to the same thing.

except christians are still scared of death and they still get sad when somebody they love dies. they know heaven isnt real.
>> No. 12704 [Edit]
>>12703
I don't think it's that they know it's not real, they just aren't 100% sure. It's like if there were 100 buckets, 99 filled with marshmallows and 1 filled with spiders, and someone was going to throw one of them at you. the odds of it being the evil spider bucket are pretty unlikely but you'd still be nervous
>> No. 12709 [Edit]
>>12703
I thought about that after I wrote it down, but I think the fear of a believer is relative to how much they believe. Of course most are scared because they still don't know, but belief does mitigate the fear of death and gives courage to face it to some degree. The hypothetical true believer who has never doubted the existence of a deity will probably be much less afraid (if he's afraid at all) than someone who has no idea what will happen after death and refuses to come to terms with it.

The overall point didn't have anything to do with whether heaven's real or not, though. It's about whether dying is necessarily miserable for someone who enjoyed life. I don't think dying's completely miserable for someone who believes he's going to live forever in heaven. Does he fear dying to some degree? Probably. Is he sad? That's also likely. But is he completely miserable? I really doubt it.

There are many other cases where dying isn't such utter misery that you regret enjoying what you did when living, but the case of religious people offered a simple illustration of one that didn't involve a freak accident.
>> No. 12710 [Edit]
>>12709
>I don't think dying's completely miserable for someone who believes he's going to live forever in heaven

Suicide bombers, sure.
>> No. 12715 [Edit]
I know that my life is worthless, that I'm already dead for the rest of the world and it only makes me feel better because i'm not measuring my success and happiness in the same way they do, and that means more power to me. every time i go deeper in this hole it means success to me

I want to reach the bottom. i'm only 22 but i expect to reach the bottom in a few years, there, where you can't even see the light.
>> No. 12781 [Edit]
>>12715
thanks XxSasukexX
>> No. 12782 [Edit]
File 135502261845.jpg - (44.52KB , 420x319 , madsakura.jpg )
12782
>>12781
DON'T YOU TALK ABOUT MY SASUKE THAT WAY
>> No. 13035 [Edit]
>>12636
This is quite possibly the best thing that I've read on the internet in all of my years.

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