What Are You Living For?

Except for my mother, classmates/professors, and grocery store employes I rarely see any other human being more often than once every other month. If I died tomorrow "everybody else" in my life wouldn't even notice for over a month.

You think this view is pathetic, I think it's just as pathetic that some people need to fabricate an overinflated sense of their own importance in the world. If I died tomorrow aside from my immediate family nobody would even notice I was gone for over a month. Having specific tangible reasons instead of a sickeningly cloying hallmark inspired fantasy about how "important" and "special" I am isn't pathetic, it's being realistic.

I just recognize the only reason I'm still alive is because right now is because of my own choice, determined by the rules and moral code I was brought up with, and nothing else. I don't need to lie to myself about that. Some people do, just like some people need to be happy to live.

 

So, the only reason you're alive is because you haven't killed yourself? Either you fell out of a Philosophy 101 class at a community college where black nail polish is in vogue (emo) or you're the one with the weird fantasy life (confused).

The sickeningly cloying Hallmark-inspired fantasy you have about how you've got a handle on how not-important and not-special you are says enough. You're bored. Maybe you're lonely. Perhaps you're just tired of your job.

I think you need something to kickstart your heart. People in first world countries that don't value their lives aren't really living them. Nihilistic gobbledygook. Solipsism is a disease fabricated by the Sims generation.

Go eat some ice cream. And get a blowjob. Do both at the same time. Let us know how it feels. It's why you're alive.

/threadjack

 

Yep. Couldn'ta said it better myself.
--- merged: May 4, 2014 at 2:27 AM ---

People do act and react for countless different reasons, and what appears to be ennui on the surface is often just a symptom of a lot of underlying factors. Well-said. I knew there was a reason I liked you other than your looks.
_
--- merged: May 4, 2014 at 2:47 AM ---

Brilliant, and an excellent point. I was feeling angry at life a few weeks ago, then on Facebook I saw a video someone posted of some Syrian Rebel guys who had been defending a hospital and had been captured by some kind of Syrian terrorists, and they were lined up on their knees, and the video depicted them being systematically executed in horrifying detail, it look exactly like those videos of sociopathic rednecks systematically killing baby cows and lambs in the slaughterhouse. I mean this shit caught me off-guard and fucked me up for a couple days.

This is it, but I warn you, do NOT watch this unless you really want to feel sick, and appalled - I found it on YouTube but I literally cannot bring myself to watch it again:



And I know it's a pathetic thing to see this kind of horror and have it be a reason to live, like "Hey, at least I'm not those guys," but it definitely made me not care so much about being born short, poor and ugly. Jesus fucking Christ. So, @Shadowex3, watch that and tell me you're still depressed. And then DO something with your life. Because you can.




On a lighter note so we don't all get suicidal, here's first-world depression summed up very well by Jim Jeffires. I fucking LOVE this guy.

 

You're both assuming I must be depressed or there has to be something wrong with me just because I've got a pink-cloud-free view of why I'm alive. If instead I'd told you I believed that when I died that was the end of my existence you'd accept it and move on... but when I tell you that being alive is no more or less mundane than that, that I'm here because I haven't chosen to kill myself in violation of the moral code I was raised with, you get offended. Why is that? Why is death allowed to be as mundane as the cessation of a biological process, but life can't be as mundane as the continuation thereof?

Why do I need to have some narrative about how grand and transcendent the act of living is to satisfy you? Why is living because not-living isn't an option and for the pursuit of specific, tangible reasons so unacceptable?

You say that's emo and reminiscent of black nail polish wearing philosophy studying freshmen, that I must be "bored" and need a blowjob and some icecream. I say that needing to concoct reasons for living that sound like they belong in a commercial for the lifetime movie network sounds like they're trying to convince themselves than anyone else. If you're filled with self-actualized satisfaction, spiritual revelation, and joy from the act of living and think there's some vast cosmic duty for you to continue living and that works for you great. But don't pathologize me because I put more significance in the personal choice we all have over our lives than platitudes and mystic narratives of cosmic self-importance. To paraphrase Mr. Herbert: It is by my will alone I keep my life in motion, a will which is to uphold a personal code which follows the one I was brought up with, forbidding suicide. Therefore I am here because I choose to be here in keeping with the covenant of my people.

And as long as I'm here i'm damn well going to get one over on the people that tried to shove me out before I'm bloody good and ready to go.

 

Pah! Far from it. I'm pretty pessimistic, nonreligious, etc. I just try and have perspective. Like, if we all die alone (a-la Grandma Death from Donnie Darko), all the more reason not to live alone. Try to see the glass as half-full, even if your general impulse is to smash it into the face of someone that pisses you off. That kind of shit. Like, just because I realize I have it better than 70% of the world doesn't mean I'm going to stop clawing my way onward and upward until life kills me.

Well you have a "people," that's more than I have. What exactly do you mean by "people," just out of curiosity?

Wait, so you just live for revenge?

 

To quote Otto von Bismarck: "The Jews, your majesty, the Jews", or as we're called in today's Politically Correct world "Argument Americans".

Revenge implies that my primary goal is going after them somehow, and personally I've always thought it's better to get ahead than to get even. That getting ahead happens to pull double duty and spite some people is an added bonus. For example defending an undergraduate thesis was it's own goal and helped me get into graduate school, but it also makes for a great "fuck you" to someone who once tried to convince me I shouldn't take the AP English test because I was the worst writer she'd ever seen.

 

Wow, you are pissed at the world. I didn't know Jewish people were so seethingly angry, you certainly defy the stereotype. Why bother even remaining religious if you so blatantly contradict their whole ideology? Wait, I actually don't know anything about Jewish ideology, are you guys optimists, or all guilt-ridden like us (former) Catholics?

 

From my perspective Jews are the strongest mix of pessimist and optimist you will ever find.
Every Passover ends with "Next year in Jerusalem." Most Jews work to build a future that is better. They were in the vanguard of the civil rights movement and the ACLU. There's a reason they are so active in the art, science and politics.
But a Jewish mother makes a Catholic mother look like an piker for laying on the guilt. Pogroms, the Holocaust, antisemitism, are all part of casual dinner conversation.
I went to synagogue in AK where Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and Orthodox Jews worshiped together.
We called ourselves The Frozen Chosen.
I thought that was normal until I got to NJ and found out that often the groups turned their backs to each other to a point of mourning when one of their children went to another.
The Jews are complex and wonderful people.
They don't fit into any one mold.

 

^^^ This.

 

If you want to understand the Jews start with the story of Rabbi Eliezer and the Oven of Akhnai, the Town of Chelm, and the Universal Jewish Holiday Formula: "They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat."

 

Rogue, that's precisely what I am doing. I defended a thesis because I wanted to, that it also happens to be an enormous neon lit "Go Fuck Yourself" to someone just made it even better.

 

Really though, are you angry at life in general? Or just... Apathetic?

It seems like you're saying "Suicide is my would-be exit, but it's blocked by the ideology/religion I (sort of) accept, so I'm just basically stuck in this nonlinear playground of life." Like most people have a linear life, a "story arc" to their lives, a series of progressive goals, but your life is just like, "Well... Can't die so I guess I'll hang out in this big open sandbox and drift from wherever to wherever, doing whatever entertains me in the process - sometimes with more or less passion involved based on whether or not said activity allows me the pleasure of metaphorically gut-punching some person or group who's on my shit-list - until I finally croak." Is that sort of close?
_

 

Ya know, the only problem real problem I have with life is that I can't attain mortality by powering myself with the souls of those that can't figure out what to do with a quiet Tuesday night, those that spend their 30s binge-watching TeeVee and playing asinine video games, and chunky, zit-faced teenagers that kill themselves because life is. so. hard. As our savior Pink Floyd once said, we're in a world awash of people that traded a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage. Or, uh, something.

Every waking moment can be terrifying and wonderful. Pretty sure I'll be an angry wrinkled old fuck dying in a hospital bed some day in 2050 going, "Naaooh! Not yet, goddamnit! I haven't finished throwing pies in the faces of dangerous animals!"

Life is all about building up momentum: once you get it going, it can do some pretty gnarly things. There is little instant gratification, but it's that way for a reason.

So, yes, souls. @The_Jazz, do you still have Satan's business card? I've got a question for the dude...

 

That assessment is analogous to accusing an athiest of having no morals since they don't believe in a higher power. You're still trying to pathologize my outlook like it's the product of some kind of mental defect rather than just being honest about things. A majority of the world's population has the same cultural/religious prohibition on suicide, it's why they look down on it so much. The only difference between me and them is I recognize it rather than trying to cover it up with pink clouds.

 

Western privilege. The comfort of money. Fat bellies full of shitty food.

All of these things, and more, give us the comfortable position to even have this conversation. I have to frequently remind myself of this.

Fuckers who go on and on about poor old me... and I can include myself in that bunch from time to time, need a reality check. Get your head out of your ass. Things could be a lot worse.

Life is what it is and most of what it is, was handed to you at birth. Life isn't complicated or at least is isn't any more complicated than you make it.

 

Most of you are probably tired of reading me making this very same point in thread after thread.

 

Saying you can't be down because somebody else has it worse is like saying you can't be happy because somebody else has it better.

 

Of course you can be down. But people will roll their eyes if you get really bitter about a situation that half the world would kill to have.

When I was a kid, my father answered my complaints by saying "Some people have real problems."