Despair

Recently I finished watching an anime called Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and it got me to thinking about all the depressing and perverted things in this world. Now given the audience, you all must be thinking about sexual perversions, but keep your mind out of the gutter people! Anyway, I started this thread to let others share what they hate most about the darkness that craws about inside of a humans mind and world, but I also want you to try and provide an answer of some sort as to how we can solve these modern dilemmas. You can also talk about personality traits, but this is not for anger, it’s for sorrow, so don’t insult anyone. Ever. Especially me for creating this thread.

Please keep in mind that this is a serious discussion, so try to provide some sense of good grammar and spelling. (What ever you do, DON’T JOKE! I MEAN IT!) Just kidding!

Also I don’t want anyone to start saying “(Enter your choice complaint here) HAS LEFT ME IN DESPAIR” or any other stupid catch phrases from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.

P.S. Failingking is not responsible for any depressing thoughts or overpowering urge to burst into tears after reading these posts.

You know, it's the same thing I like about goth kids, I always feel good when I talk to them. People with sunny dispositions depress me.
You know a show that left me feeling really depressed? Gantz. Seriously, I felt depressed after every episode, and even more so at the very end. But I still liked it, so...either that says something about me, or about the show. Probably the show.
Really, though, I'm not a sullen person, despite my typically pesimestic/cynical veiw of things.

well...imo the most depressing fact of life is the lack of any intrinsic meaning to it, and as somewhat of a nihilist i consider the existentialist notion of giving the world (life, and everything) meaning by simply imagining it delusional. but i tend to say...whatever makes you sleep at night, right?

I hate how its more expensive to buy a flight ticket and rental car than it is to buy a rental car, flight, and hotel when I only want the two things because a condo is being provided for free.

Stupid people don't often listen to reason anyway.

@discordia: unless you are religious, there really isn't ay point to life, other than to exist. But that shouldn't be too depressing, because it just means you can do whatever makes you happy, and you only have to deal with the consequences of this world. No great meaning, just the meaning in your actions themselves.

@dante
thats exactly the kinda thing i meant by the existentialist delusion, i.e. pretending there to be meaning in ones actions.
either way, i m not really that depressed over that, i just consider it to be the most depressing thing about life and all the other "perverted" things in this world pale in comparison, since they are thus by definition meaningless anyway.

It depends on your basis for meaning. As in having some place in the universe or some spiritualistic shite like that, of course there isn't meaning in anything, it doesn't matter what you do.
But your actions cause reaction and effect your imediate reality. I suppose that could be considered existentialist, but I don't really see it any way other than observationalist and logical.
I guess the dualiy of a nihilist's existance is believing nothing to have any meaning, but still wanting to not die.

but thats exactly my point, if it doesnt matter what you do, then it doesnt have any meaning...
meaning in my actions would be that my actions mattered...


they would matter or have meaning if we would at least have some sort of a free will, but as things stand now we most likely do not, or it would disprove the notion that every effect is caused by another effect (which in turn is a cause itself...and so on).
as a nihilist i consider life being pointless, but i also realise its the only thing i have.
might as well enjoy it while it lasts...
as i said, i m not really depressed or anything (although this line of thinking had me long preoccupied)

Free will does not disprove cause and effect. If you don't control your actions, and there is no guiding force in the universe, then why does anything happen at all? Does the fact that existance came to exist predetermine all events that happen? As far as life being all there is, your logic i fairly sound. If your current existance is all there is in the universe, then, logically, you should do everything you can to prolong and enjo it, without mind to any consequence outside of what is a direct response to your action. But again, without the ability to choose what you do, then you don't even have your life, and noone should exist. Which is not logical.

NOT BEING ABLE TO SAY "____ HAS LEFT ME IN DESPAIR!" HAS LEFT ME IN DESPAIR!

Wait . . . Shit. I fucked up. Oh well, that's life. Don't like it? Well, then feel despair once more.



I can understand that. I really like shows with downbeat endings, as long as it makes sense and isn't just an excuse to make the viewer miserable, but I think I like them mostly because the majority of them say something important. Like, "Life's a bitch who will never give you a second chance" and "People are ruthless and will tear you apart if it helps them in some way, and sometimes they'll do it even if it doesn't help them." Those are harsh lessons, but they are true, and people need to see that shit. They need to understand that life is shit.

That said, I love life. The thing that brings me the most despair is, I'd say, the fact that people can be horrible. But I don't just mean that people can kick puppies and not feel bad. People are stupid. Mistakes are okay, but when a person makes the same sort of mistake for the fifth time, it stops being a "mistake." It's a "problem," and the person is the reason for it. I'm not saying we should kill the people who keep making horrible problems; those people simply need to learn how to act.

Now, there is a difference between repeatedly making the same mistake and having different beliefs. If you think a man should be allowed to cheat on your wife or girlfriend, you need help, but not as much help a person who thinks that cheating is wrong but nonetheless cheats repeatedly. If we could all get at least to where the former is, the world would be a better place.

You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupidity.

I'm in despair! Your indecisiveness has left me in despair!

From what I'm reading of this thread it seems to be extremely open ended so I guess I'll just talk...

I do find the human psychology to be incredibly messed up. As a child you instinctively think only for yourself, and are taught to feel for others. Selfishness is instinctive but many question if its possible to ever do something without an self motive.

An example is that someone can save a child because they want to, they don't get anything out of it. They do, however, get the chance of a reward or personal gratification. Another example is you find a random animal stuck, you're guaranteed not to get a reward since it doesn't belong to anyone. No one cares about the animal and you're saving it so there's no gratification in it. So basically you're only doing it because it would bother you if you didn't save the animal. So...if you could erase your memory of the incident such that you never know that the animal existed, whether you saved it or not, would you still waste your time doing so? Most people would say they would save it, but if they said they didn't they would be viewed negatively by the people they are speaking to. I can say honestly, behind the veil of the internet, that I would not save that animal. I wouldn't be bothered by its suffering, nor would I waste my time. It's cruel, but that selfishness brings me into despair!

Also what is with all the people who attain a role in power abusing it? It seems if anyone is given the opportunity to do something and get away with it, one shall. Like they say, there is no story of the perfect crime, because if the crime was so perfect, no one would know about it. I mean, if you could do a crime that no one knows about, would anybody honestly feel negatively about it? If used in a slippery slope, then of course it is a bad suggestion, but could the pleasure you get out of the reward override the displeasure people never knew they had from a crime they never knew was committed? Does it still make it wrong if no one is suffering from it? It's almost as if one is rewarded for one's skill through material values they grant themselves.

I'm in despair! The fact I feel I can talk about more depressing things, even though I can't think of them at the moment has left me in despair!

I like animals better than people. There is satisfaction for your ego, because you were awesome enough to help that poor animal.

This just once again agrees with my point. You get satisfaction of helping it because you like it. If you didn't like it then you wouldn't want to save it as much. This is like a Beautiful vs Ugly comparison

Of course. People are all self-motivated. They just like to pretend to care about other people so people will like them.

@dante

well, free will to be free...would have to be independent (i.e. unaffected) from cause and effect which our will is not.

there is a "guiding force" and that force is cause and effect. its just not a personal guiding force and it isnt written in stone either, for knowledge of what is to happen would change the predosposition of the universe and hence change it yet again which in turn would alter the outcome.
given that existance is the way that it is it things will happen the way they do and its impossible for them to happen any differently. it does sound rather tautological, and it probably even is...but thats just the way things are.

to understand the impossibility of a free will one has to understand what a will actually is. the will is the to us conscious function of the bodies needs. our will does not decide our bodies actions but rather our bodies and their needs and the circumstances they're in decide our will...and so on.

So your point is that what we have is a simblance of will, and whatever we do we would have done and couldn't have done any other way. And to try and change that, say by killing yourself to prove your will, was not, in fact, an action of will, but a response to the learning of that fact, and something that could not have been changed. Basicly, without being able to know what is going to happen, we have to base our actions on what has happened, and as such can't change what we are going to do, removing any free will from our actions.
It's logic that you can't really argue with; We only know what has happened, and we can't change the past, so it could not have happened any other way. We HAVE to do what we are going to do.
This, however, is only different from destiny in that there is no grand scheme to it, no point.
But it does make it make sense that only what people are going to do is interesting, and the past is only interesting because it tells us that. Makes people predictable.

Still... I don't know, there is a problem with this, I just haven't figured it out yet.

think of it this way. imagine yourself in a past situation where you had to make some sort of decision but are restricted to the knowledge and circumstances of that exact moment, my bet is that you would make the exact same decision. time and again.

and although we can make projections on what is going to happen given certain circumstances this projection is again based on your knowledge and experience up to that point. so yes, we can only know what happened in the past.

i always thought that crowley summed it up pretty nicely with his

do what thou wilt

its not like you could act any different anyway...

it makes people predictable as long as they dont know they are being predictable, tell them they are predictable and they will try to prove you wrong...which of course you could predict as well and so forth...its an endless regression of sorts...

similar to laplaces demon imagine some sort of entity that would have acccess to all the information in the whole universe and capable to calculate every single piece of information but in doing so would not affect the universe at all (i.e. its a hypothetical entity) it would be able to predict the outcome of a great many deal of things...if this kinda knowledge were to be passed on to the universe itself it would however affect and alter the outcome of the prediction and so on...

I'M IN DESPAIR! THE TRUTH OF THAT STATEMENT AND THE FACT THAT I CAN DO NOTHING ABOUT IT HAS LEFT ME IN DESPAIR!