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OwlFancier posted:I dunno I can go weeks at a time without encountering children and I think it's pretty good. It's nice to have them around. I like to go to the park and watch them. It's weirdly exciting. Maybe I should start bringing candy.
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Jun 26, 2015 17:42
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I don't want kids because I don't want to pass my heredity mental issues and personality flaws onto another generation of miserable ungrateful little fuckers. I'm doing society a favour and should be applauded. Also, I think we've seen the peak of our society in terms of quality of life, and it's only downhill from here until cleansing nuclear fire once again restores the balance. Mr. Gibbycrumbles fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Jun 26, 2015 17:56
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Guavanaut posted:Because it ties in with the whole idea of the fertility industry and promotes the idea of having a child who is a 50:50 genetic mix at all costs, as opposed to adopting or paying a surrogate or other options. As we said adoption loving sucks and surrogacy is basically an ultra-expensive pipe dream to most people (and also requires IVF and someone willing to do it for free or be paid 100k to do it). Also I laugh at the idea that you think coming by eggs in easy too.
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Jun 26, 2015 19:20
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Armani posted:--- Just saw this on a previous page, but hadn't checked this thread for a while. It's a bit off topic, but if you want any information on the process of international/domestic adoption (at least from an Australian perspective) I'd be happy to take the conversation to PMs or email (you can email me on potatomanjack79.at.yahoo.com ).
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Jun 30, 2015 01:49
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sbaldrick posted:As we said adoption loving sucks and surrogacy is basically an ultra-expensive pipe dream to most people (and also requires IVF and someone willing to do it for free or be paid 100k to do it). Also I laugh at the idea that you think coming by eggs in easy too. have you considered stealing a baby
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Jun 30, 2015 04:46
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Mr. Gibbycrumbles posted:Also, I think we've seen the peak of our society in terms of quality of life, and it's only downhill from here until cleansing nuclear fire once again restores the balance. That thought crossed my mind. But, I figured if it got bad, we could just move to Utah and become Mormon.
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Jun 30, 2015 06:36
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Rather than quote a bunch of stuff on my phone and responding to individuals I'm just putting this out there. My body wasn't designed for anything. It evolved. There is no goal, intent, or thought in evolution. There is no care, no safety factor, no rhyme, and little reason. Bears are not "designed" to hibernate. They evolved to hibernate. And all it takes for natural selection to select for hibernation is that hibernation be less likely to kill you than not hibernating. You don't have to be good at hibernating. It doesn't have to be safe. It doesn't have to be good for you. All it has to be is better than the available alternatives. Which is why a lot of bears die hibernating every year even if they had plenty of food going in. Most especially in their first year when they haven't tested that hormonal roller coaster out before. Likewise, all pregnancy has to be is safe enough to satisfy evolution. Not safe. Just safe enough. Which is why , sans modern medicine, you see maternal mortality rates as high as 1 in every 15 women in 3rd world countries. Which is why - somewhere in the world - a woman dies of maternity every minute of every day. Pregnancy is not comparable to breathing or to my heart beat as a biological function. Pregnancy is competition. The fetus seeks to extract nutrients and the mother seeks to prevent the fetus from killing her. The Google search term to read more about this is "maternal/fetal conflict". For example, the fetus secretes hormones to spike her blood pressure to increase the osmosis of nutrients to it. The mother retaliates by secreting hormones to lower her blood pressure to prevent things like pulmonary embolisms ( a leading cause of death in pregnant women who can't counter the fetus's attempt to increase her blood pressure sufficiently ). Eclampsia - a deadly pregnancy complication involving the shutting down of internal organs - has been linked to particularly demanding fetuses ( http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/429966_1 ). Evolution favors fetuses who can extract as much as possible from their mothers up until the point that the mother dies. When you use the word "designed" to refer to my body and pregnancy you are making a religious argument that is factually inaccurate. Please don't.
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Jun 30, 2015 06:58
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McAlister posted:My body wasn't designed for anything. Evolution designed women's bodies to bear children. You are arguing stupid semantics. No one is forcing you to have children.
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Jun 30, 2015 08:29
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I agree, this is a semantic argument. Usually when people talk about 'goals' and 'design' in the context of evolution, it's for no other reason than it's easier than saying something like - The current biological function of an organism that emerged through the product of mutations that survived through generations. It's just as an easier way of saying 'what a species can currently do', although I will admit that it leads to all sorts of misconceptions.
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Jun 30, 2015 09:27
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I can eat my own poo poo, but I don't because it's dumb. Saying "you are physically capable of it" is entirely meaningless, unless you're trying to make an appeal to nature, which is airy fairy bollocks on par with "god says you should have kids".
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Jun 30, 2015 09:47
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You don't eat your own poo poo because no innate urge to eat poo poo has been selected for. What I meant in that last sentence was 'things a species can do as a direct result of natural selection'.
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Jun 30, 2015 09:59
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I'll probably have kids one day because I was a miserable child and I want a good couple of years to hang out with someone who is still amazed by all the things that go on in life instead of all the cynical bastards I know. We'll probably hate each other when we're both adults but that's nothing new now, is it?
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Jun 30, 2015 11:52
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L-Boned posted:Evolution designed women's bodies to bear children. You are arguing stupid semantics. No one is forcing you to have children. Sure, maybe if you've never taken a biology class. Evolution doesn't design anything, and dismissing this as a nothing more than meaningless semantics is really loving stupid.
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Jun 30, 2015 16:16
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Literally the only thing someone could argue to be designed by evolution is reproduction
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Jun 30, 2015 18:04
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Solkanar512 posted:Sure, maybe if you've never taken a biology class. Evolution doesn't design anything, and dismissing this as a nothing more than meaningless semantics is really loving stupid. It's stupid of you're incapable of separating literal terms and analogy.
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Jun 30, 2015 18:25
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Having kids is great because it's your chance to fill a human being with whatever you want - love, hate, indifference, or just weird beliefs. Like you could join the Flat Earth Society, marry a fellow flat-earther and confuse the hell out of your offspring for decades. It's your chance to play God, who wouldn't want to do that?
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Jun 30, 2015 18:29
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EvilGenius posted:It's stupid of you're incapable of separating literal terms and analogy. You've posted an awful lot of nothing about how humans can reproduce if you aren't trying to suggest that we have some sort of obligation to do so because it's natural or whatever. Either you're using terms literally or you're saying nothing.
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Jun 30, 2015 18:43
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OwlFancier posted:You've posted an awful lot of nothing about how humans can reproduce if you aren't trying to suggest that we have some sort of obligation to do so because it's natural or whatever. I never said or implied anything of the sort. The only point I've been trying to make is that having children shouldn't require justification. Justify not having kids, by all means, which is what you've already done. But don't ask me or anyone to justify why they had a child. It's none of anyone's business, and is a basic natural right. EvilGenius fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 18:58
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Look, you just don't understand until you're a parent.
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Jun 30, 2015 19:03
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EvilGenius posted:I never said or implied anything of the sort. The only point I've been trying to make is that having children shouldn't require justification. EvilGenius posted:Jesus Christ, see my previous post. To want a child is a fundamental biological function, and no different from the desire to preserve your own life. Either way, you are preserving human life, and to argue that's a negative is to argue that life has no meaning or value. EvilGenius posted:I don't believe anyone is under an ethical obligation to reproduce, but only in that ethics are a social construct, as opposed to a part of nature. This is why in western civilisation, there are no laws on how many children you're allowed to have. EvilGenius posted:No, what i was saying was that the default position is the urge to reproduce. After a process of intelligent, human thought this position can change. "I'm not saying you have to, but it's natural and the pinnace of biological achievement and you wouldn't want to argue that life isn't inherently meaningful would you?" I'm really not sure I believe you.
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Jun 30, 2015 19:10
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L-Boned posted:Evolution designed women's bodies to bear children. You are arguing stupid semantics. No one is forcing you to have children. No it did not. Design implies intent. Using the word "designed" is a dog whistle. It frames the debate in such a way as to dismiss the invasiveness of pregnancy and also to proclaim a mandate. If I had been "designed" for something then that literally would be what I am for because my "designer" clearly has intentions. The point of a dog whistle is to sound reasonable to people who don't think about it much while conveying a specific message to the dogs. You know drat well theocratic dogs interpret "designed" exactly as I am describing so please stop whistling them.
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Jun 30, 2015 19:32
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OwlFancier posted:"I'm not saying you have to, but it's natural and the pinnace of biological achievement and you wouldn't want to argue that life isn't inherently meaningful would you?" First of all, I was trying to highlight that your position seemed to be that life was meaningless. I never stated that I thought life had any meaning, and certainly not that that meaning was reproduction. Aside from that, if you think any of your highlighted quotes are arguing that reproduction is the meaning of life, you've not understood what I'm arguing. I stand by everything I said, and attach no value or meaning to reproduction. In fact that's the exact opposite of what I'm saying, hence reproduction requires no justification. Only when you apply meaning, positive or negative, does justification come in. I'm saying that it's nothing but simple biology. McAlister posted:No it did not. Design implies intent. Actually, I hear you on this now, although I think the prevalence of the term is more out of slopiness, and lack of thought as to what it implies - that the design is complete, and that a woman's suffering should be accepted as part of that. I'll definitely avoid it in the future. EvilGenius fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 19:46
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You are appealing to nature to justify reproduction, you are arguing that reproduction needs no justification because it comes pre-justified by nature. Which is completely inconsistent with many other things that humans may do without being specifically taught, or 'naturally' for want of a better word. To reproduce is a conscious decision, and one which affects the lives of at least two other people, to argue that it does not need justification because "it's natural" is a complete fallacy, not to mention extremely disrespectful to the lives of both your child and partner. It absolutely requires justification because you do not have any moral authority over those two lives on the basis that it's your "natural function" to gently caress.
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Jun 30, 2015 19:55
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McAlister posted:No it did not. Design implies intent. The intent is to reproduce to avoid extinction. Just like every other species on Earth. Just because we have higher cognitive abilities doesn't mean we are removed from our basic instincts to reproduce.
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Jun 30, 2015 19:56
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L-Boned posted:The intent is to reproduce to avoid extinction. Just like every other species on Earth. Just because we have higher cognitive abilities doesn't mean we are removed from our basic instincts to reproduce. Evolution doesn't design anything, take a loving biology class for christ's sake. No design, no intent, no nothing. EDIT: All evolution describes is the change in heritable traits in a given population over time. That's it. It's not that hard to look it up before posting this garbage. It's basic science, come on. Solkanar512 fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 20:23
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Actually our higher cognitive functions refocus many peoples' need to reproduce into creating a legacy in some other way, ie. art.
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Jun 30, 2015 20:26
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Solkanar512 posted:Evolution doesn't design anything, take a loving biology class for christ's sake. No design, no intent, no nothing. I have taken many biology classes (most likely more than you). Once again, you are arguing semantics just to sound smart on the internets. It's like two people arguing about whether the baseball player who reached first got a hit or a single.
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Jun 30, 2015 20:36
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Darko posted:Actually our higher cognitive functions refocus many peoples' need to reproduce into creating a legacy in some other way, ie. art. Until we achieve immortality or start making art for non-humans said art would have no lasting legacy. That is, without reproduction providing generations of humans to appreciate it. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 20:42
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OwlFancier posted:You are appealing to nature to justify reproduction, you are arguing that reproduction needs no justification because it comes pre-justified by nature. Which is completely inconsistent with many other things that humans may do without being specifically taught, or 'naturally' for want of a better word. No, nature doesn't come pre-justified. Does a tree justify itself when it drops its acorns? No, it just does. All our ancestors were the same, except at some point we became intelligent enough to treat it as a choice. Are you saying that we are obligated to justify our reproduction simply because we're capable? I'm not saying that's the wrong position to take, I'm just curious. You still haven't provided an example of what a justification for having a child is, only several justifications for not having one. Are we in fact kind of arguing the same thing - that there is no legitimate reasoning behind having children, and that moral and practical barriers are all that's there to stop people having them? The only difference in our positions being your belief that everyone is obligated to consider the negative consequences. Or do you have any examples of justification for having a child?
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Jun 30, 2015 21:36
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I would consider an acceptable moral justification for having a child being, when you as the parent can rationally judge that the child will have a happy life. Where the net effect of their life will be significantly more positive than negative. This does not include how they judge it after the fact because people are prone to astonishing amounts of optimism bias, they can have a very unhappy time most of their lives and still consider themselves on the whole, fortunate, because the alternative requires us to accept the idea that we maybe would be better off not alive, and we have very difficult to efface instincts which obstruct our ability to accept that idea. We will try very hard, and usually succeed, in post-hoc justifying a life which really doesn't merit it, taken from a more neutral standpoint. This is important because suffering we minimise and forget and displace our awareness from is still experienced. If you were to drug someone into amnesia every day so they wouldn't remember the pain they experienced, you would consider that immoral because they are still suffering whether or not they remember it, so I expect the same judgement to be applied to a life, especially as it's much easier to apply that to the life of another than your own. You also have to take into account the costs of your child's life, who has to suffer for them, because we all require things which have to be made by the suffering of others. The wealthier we are, the more this is true, as wealth accumulates because it is taken from others. But even if you live with minimal extravagance, your child will still need care, will still need the body of its mother to come into being, may still take the life or health of its mother in the process of being born, will need supporting through its youth, likely by people other than just yourself. It will demand things from other people and all of that takes away from them as well. Essentially, to justify a child you should remember that life comes at a cost, all the time, and you should judge that cost against what gains the child might offer. If you can pay for the material demands of their life without expecting others to work for it, if you can guard against the possibility that the child will come to harm others, as most of us do to some degree, if you can minimise the chance of harm befalling the child throughout their life, because their suffering is no less legitimate than that of others, and if you can ensure that the child will give things to others greater than the demands they place on others, and without suffering for it themselves, then you should have a child, because it will make the world better. People can be productive, in human terms. Interpersonal interaction can produce mutual happiness, without a cost other than what it takes to maintain the environment that facilitates that kind of interaction. People can experience non-destructive enjoyment, people can simply be happy at the world around them, if they have the right mindset and the right environment. In the majority of cases I would suggest that the mindset is difficult to achieve and that the environment is built on the pain of others, but the idea isn't impossible, simply very improbable. I argue simply that the world we live in currently does not present a good hope for a child. Perhaps the best you can hope for is that they personally won't suffer, and other people will do it for them. At worst, they and countless others will suffer to maintain the happiness of a few. With luck, you and your child will forget the pain you go through in order to keep on living, and keep on feeling as though it's worth it, though your life might be full of more thankless work, senseless loss, broken hope and inevitable decay than happiness. It is also possible that you may view a life of suffering as worthwhile if it leads to more happy humans in the future. My position is, admittedly, a somewhat short term view, it is possible that by continuing the species we may eventually end up in a more utopian socierty, where we either don't have to work to live, or where perhaps we can work in good conditions, and we have time enough to experience good things in life, all of us. Personally, I would argue that by not having children, you contribute to population decline, which would improve the lives of all remaining humans, if only slightly, and with enough decline we may reach a point of reduced scarcity anyway, at which point people would be justified in having more children. I also would disagree with the idea that it is moral to keep having children in the hope that someday, somehow, it all works out. Because we have little idea as to when, if ever, that will be the case. We could as easily succumb to war, disease, or disaster, to the extent we are set back further from a point where we can all life happier lives. I don't really see a as a very compelling argument for childbearing. If I sound negative, it's because there is more negative to say than positive. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 22:04
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OwlFancier posted:I would consider an acceptable moral justification for having a child being, when you as the parent can rationally judge that the child will have a happy life. Where the net effect of their life will be significantly more positive than negative. This does not include how they judge it after the fact because people are prone to astonishing amounts of optimism bias, they can have a very unhappy time most of their lives and still consider themselves on the whole, fortunate, because the alternative requires us to accept the idea that we maybe would be better off not alive, and we have very difficult to efface instincts which obstruct our ability to accept that idea. This entire thread the basis of your argument is that the net experience of life is suffering, so it is cruel to create life unless the parents can judge the child will have a happy life. Most parents do that already though? I can't imagine people decide to have a child thinking "they'll have an incredibly lovely life but who cares my genes must be preserved." Furthermore, part of consciousness and sentience is being able to judge yourself whether you've had a happy or painful life, or whether the suffering is worth the joy. You can't state that life is bleak and miserable and thus people shouldn't be able to reproduce, as you're expecting others to conform to your personal perspective on life.
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Jun 30, 2015 22:24
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Not an Owl posted:This entire thread the basis of your argument is that the net experience of life is suffering, so it is cruel to create life unless the parents can judge the child will have a happy life. Most parents do that already though? I can't imagine people decide to have a child thinking "they'll have an incredibly lovely life but who cares my genes must be preserved." Furthermore, part of consciousness and sentience is being able to judge yourself whether you've had a happy or painful life, or whether the suffering is worth the joy. You can't state that life is bleak and miserable and thus people shouldn't be able to reproduce, as you're expecting others to conform to your personal perspective on life. The bolded part is broadly the crux of my argument. I disagree with this. Humans are not completely rational creatures. We generally consider self preservation to be absolutely a priori, it needs no justification and everything else must move aside for it. So how, with that in mind, can a human rationally judge the sum of their own life? They can't really come to the conclusion that their life isn't worth living, because if that was true they would want to kill themselves, and humans cannot, generally, want to kill themselves because most life on the planet can't do that. It's sort of one of the basic evolutionary traits, "above all else, don't die". I argue that humans are inherently biased to come to the conclusion that their life is worthwhile, because contemplating the alternative is anathema. We minimise our own suffering, we can live each day in pain but we will pick out the good bits and give inordinate weight to them. But this does not mean we don't suffer. It just means we can't comprehend how much we do, and we can't look at it rationally and objectively, or make an impartial judgment about it. A living human is trapped by the desire to keep living, at any cost, and there isn't a great deal you can do about it. I also argue that this thinking affects our ability to judge whether others' lives are, or are likely to be worthwhile. It is certainly easier to dismiss the life of another as worthless, much of human history shows we are very good at it with a little prompting, but we will sometimes tell people they shouldn't die, perhaps because we need to believe the same thing about ourselves, perhaps because we apply the same minimalisation to their pain, try to tell them that it doesn't matter as much as the good that may come in the future. This is especially true when we are close to the other person, we do it more readily with family, with friends, and with our hypothetical children. It is very easy to think back on your own life, with the haze of optimism, and think "oh, well, I think my life is worth it, so my child's probably will be too" and this isn't irrational. Not really, how else can you judge it? It's not malice that leads people to have children, they don't set out and think their life will be poo poo. And yet the fact that a lot of people do have very lovely lives, experience things we most certainly would not want to experience, and that this keeps happening, is evidence that we cannot trust our optimism. I don't think people shouldn't be able to have children, because that wouldn't, in all likelihood, really help much. I think people should choose not to have children because there is very little reason to suppose that it's a good idea to, when you take that into account. You can't make everyone kill themselves, nor should you, because freedom is an important part of happiness, and those alive now should be free to take what happiness they can from life, as best they can. But you can spare perhaps dozens or hundreds of other people this problem, by simply not having children, so that the buck stops with you. Perpetuate this line of thinking, that it isn't good to procreate always, and that life is not as good as you may think it is in retrospect. Reduce our population manageably and without killing people, and we may reach a position where you can say, "yes, my child will have a good life, even at a very conservative estimate" because we may live in a world where there are enough resources and ways to sustain ourselves for us to be happy, rather than our current situation. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 22:42
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L-Boned posted:I have taken many biology classes (most likely more than you). Once again, you are arguing semantics just to sound smart on the internets. It's like two people arguing about whether the baseball player who reached first got a hit or a single. Cool, then you can describe the evidence showing that there is a design and intent in evolution along with the primary literature that goes along with? This should be trivial for you after all. By the way, ascribing intent to others without evidence is a lovely way to argue. I could just as easily claim that you're saying the opposite because you forgot the formal definition of evolution and rather than say, "oh right, there isn't any actual intent or design going on here" you instead double down out of pride.
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Jun 30, 2015 22:46
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But once again, that all is subjective. How can you objectively determine that the weight given to positive experiences is inordinate? I mean sure you can argue that we are "forced" by life into judging our experiences as positive, but regardless of that some people still do choose to commit suicide. People who view their lives as too full of suffering and without positive meaning sometimes end up killing themselves despite humans generally not "wanting" to. Additionally, you just stated yourself that even though you view life as significantly more suffering than happiness and generally not positive, you don't wish to end your own life. Why has life left you with a positive bias? All of this points to people having the ability and will to decide for the cost and worth of life.
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Jun 30, 2015 22:53
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Not an Owl posted:But once again, that all is subjective. How can you objectively determine that the weight given to positive experiences is inordinate? I mean sure you can argue that we are "forced" by life into judging our experiences as positive, but regardless of that some people still do choose to commit suicide. People who view their lives as too full of suffering and without positive meaning sometimes end up killing themselves despite humans generally not "wanting" to. Additionally, you just stated yourself that even though you view life as significantly more suffering than happiness and generally not positive, you don't wish to end your own life. Why has life left you with a positive bias? People choose to kill themselves for a variety of reasons, some people do it as a snap decision, very irrationally because of a specific traumatic event, bias may not come into it because the decision isn't really a rational judgement. Some people may choose to do it having experienced persistent, punishing cruelty, enough to overwhelm any amount of optimism bias. it is arguable in this case that they may not possess much bias to begin with, due to so-called depressive realism, or they perhaps would have made the judgement that their life isn't worth living much earlier, in the absence of bias. Suicide does not disprove optimism bias, it merely suggests that it isn't unbeatable. Certainly I can't go through everyone's life and objectively judge their experiences, nor would I want to. I don't see what benefit that would have if I told you you should kill yourself. You will make that decision for yourself one way or another. But there is scientific evidence to suggest that humans are, often, and in numerous ways, optimistic. We believe in luck, in the sunk cost fallacy, in the idea that we can control situations which we manifestly cannot, we believe in universal justice, inherent purpose and meaning, in wishful thinking and in staying positive. I can't tell you the objective worth of your life, but I can say, with relative certainty, that you are probably overestimating it. Personally, I consider my life to be more or less even so far. I've had a lot of poo poo and more good than I daresay most people have, but I also know that I am extraordinarily fortunate in my circumstances, which is why I can say that. But in either case I don't consider my life to be mine to end. It belongs to others. It also doesn't make much difference, if I did think death was better, whether I die now or in fifty or sixty years. But I do think it matters whether I dump this same dichotomy on someone else, and maybe they do the same. So I don't think I can have children, whether I want them or not. Personally I'd like a daughter, but I wouldn't want her to be in this position. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 23:07
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People do tend to be more optimistic than reality, but is that really wrong? It still ends with people having a positive portrayal of their own life rather than one full of suffering. I acknowledge your earlier point about how someone with amnesia to his own pain would be viewed as tragic because he's unaware of his circumstances, but humans aren't unaware, I'd argue. They understand the more painful parts of life, but move on and focus on the positive. There is no "revelation" for them to have; it's just the difference between focusing on one thing versus the other.
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Jun 30, 2015 23:22
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Not an Owl posted:People do tend to be more optimistic than reality, but is that really wrong? It still ends with people having a positive portrayal of their own life rather than one full of suffering. I acknowledge your earlier point about how someone with amnesia to his own pain would be viewed as tragic because he's unaware of his circumstances, but humans aren't unaware, I'd argue. They understand the more painful parts of life, but move on and focus on the positive. There is no "revelation" for them to have; it's just the difference between focusing on one thing versus the other. What's the difference between drugging you to forget your pain, and you having a persistant, irrational mental condition which causes you to do it yourself? An abused person will persistently minimise the suffering inflicted on them by their abuser, which prevents them from acting to prevent that suffering, and we think it tragic. What distinguishes that from someone minimising their own suffering in general? Other than the abusive situation affording you someone to blame? Is it less tragic? Or simply less punishable? Optimism is not itself ethically wrong, but if it leads us to act in ways which perpetuate our own and other's suffering, should we not try to avoid it in those circumstances? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 23:26
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OwlFancier posted:What's the difference between drugging you to forget your pain, and you having a persistant, irrational mental condition which causes you to do it yourself? I don't think abuse is a proper analogy. In abusive scenarios, there are steps forward that accept the reality of the situation and move on to further happiness, but frequently cannot do the cycle and mechanisms of abusive relationships. With life itself, the cycle of suffering and optimism does not result in people refusing to acknowledge their pain, it results in them searching for new ways to stop the previous suffering and find a new source of fulfillment. While death is one way out of cycle, change in lifestyle is another way. Also, drugging yourself to forget your pain is a way of ignoring it without accepting it. However, people who move on accept the pain happened in the pain, and do not forget it so much as move past it.
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Jun 30, 2015 23:39
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You can argue that psychological acceptance of pain allows humans to function for longer, and more reliable than say, amnestics may, and that this may therefore be considered the better way of dealing with it. However, does either solution undo the suffering? Both remove the painful memory, which can cause further suffering, but neither makes the time spent in pain not-happen. Nor does either method prevent future pain. You've still suffered, and will still suffer in the future, you just deny it for the time in between. From a life-preservationist perspective, and perhaps mildly from a minimising-suffering perspective, psychological treatment and outlook modification is the more effective response to suffering than drugs, but neither one really stops pain from happening again. In each case we minimise it, we quell the sharpness of the memory, so that we don't remember just how painful it was. And we forget why we wanted to forget in the first place, because we lose a key quality of our memory of the experience. We forget how much it hurt, because remembering is painful. It lets us live longer, and lets us feel more pain in the future. You cannot change your lifestyle out of suffering, because we aren't afforded that freedom. We can't change our lifestyle to escape sickness, death, loss, exploitation, the cruelty of others, or unforeseen calamity. We can perhaps reduce our chances of experiencing some of these, assuming of course that enduring them engenders a corrective response from us, rather than simply causing us to put our head in the sand. But I think most of them are quite outside our control, though we may like to believe otherwise. You can't choose not to experience the loss of friends and family, the need to work a lovely job with abusive co-workers, to contract cancer, to lack companionship, to look, sound, or come across differently to how you want to, to not have the money to do the things you want with your life. I don't see a significant difference either way. Minimising past pain is detrimental to an accurate assessment of our lives. It lets us live longer, but does little for our quality of life, safe to make us say "It's not so bad." It's tragedy either way. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 23:51
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I think this is just a topic we're bound to disagree on, unfortunately. It's within my life philosophy that even if you have still suffered, with a positive perspective and outlook it doesn't really matter that much. I think you would be inclined to disagree with that, and I think both of our reasonings end up being due to personal opinions that we wouldn't be willing to give up.
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Jun 30, 2015 23:56
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