4chan archive /lit/ (index)
similar threads
2014-01-28 08:28 4513378 Anonymous (deathconsciousness.gif 1000x995 355kB)
Within the hierarchy of fabrications that compose our lives—families, countries, gods—the self incontestably ranks highest. Just below the self is the family, which has proven itself more durable than national or ethnic affiliations, with these in turn outranking god-figures for their staying power. So any progress toward the salvation of humankind will probably begin from the bottom—when our gods have been devalued to the status of refrigerator magnets or lawn ornaments. Following the death rattle of deities, it would appear that nations or ethnic communities are next in line for the boneyard. Only after fealty to countries, gods, and families has been shucked off can we even think about coming to grips with the least endangered of fabrications—the self.

6 min later 4513395 Anonymous
>>4513378 As the ego-dead, so we might imagine, we would continue to know pain in its various forms—that is the essence of existence—but we would not be cozened by our egos to take it personally, an attitude that converts an individual’s pain into conscious suffering. Naturally, we would still have to feed, but we would not be omnivorous gourmands who eat for amusement, gorging down everything in nature and turning to the laboratory for more. As for reproduction, who can say? Animals are driven to copulate, and even as the ego-dead we would not be severed from biology, although we would not be unintelligently ruled by it, as we are now. As a corollary of not being unintelligently ruled by biology, neither would we sulk over our extinction, as we do now. Why raise another generation destined to climb aboard the evolution treadmill? But then, why not raise another generation of the ego-dead? For those who do not perceive either their pleasures or their pains as belonging to them, neither life nor death would be objectionable or not objectionable, desirable or not desirable, all right or not all right. We would be the ego-dead, the self-less, and, dare we are, the enlightened

9 min later 4513403 Anonymous
>>4513378 The only problem is that we're chained to our countries and communities by our need to participate in the economy in order to survive. Also, if you go "against the grain" too much, you'll be thrown in prison. That's why you can't be free, even if you can be enlightened.

10 min later 4513405 Anonymous
>>4513395 And I disagree about pretending that you don't care about whether you feel good or not. That's the pussy way out. Instead, acknowledge what you want and then try to get it, and if you don't, at least you didn't sit on the sidelines until you were too old to do anything about it

33 min later 4513443 Anonymous
>>4513405 I don't want anything

36 min later 4513451 Anonymous
>>4513405 Nature proceeds by blunders; that is its way. It is also ours. So if we have blundered by regarding consciousness as a blunder, why make a fuss over it? Our self-removal from this planet would still be a magnificent move, a feat so luminous it would bedim the sun. What do we have to lose? No evil would attend our departure from this world, and the many evils we have known would go extinct along with us. So why put off what would be the most laudable masterstroke of our existence, and the only one?”

1 hours later 4513509 Anonymous
>>4513451 edgy

1 hours later 4513522 Anonymous
>>4513509 The point that in the absence of birth nobody exists who can be deprived of happiness is terribly conspicuous. For optimists, this fact plays no part in their existential computations. For pessimists, however, it is axiomatic. Whether a pessimist urges us to live “heroically” with a knife in our gut or denounces life as not worth living is immaterial. What matters is that he makes no bones about hurt being the Great Problem it is incumbent on philosophy to observe. But this problem can be solved only by establishing an imbalance between hurt and happiness that would enable us in principle to say which is more desirable—existence or nonexistence. While no airtight case has ever been made regarding the undesirability of human life, pessimists still run themselves ragged trying to make one. Optimists have no comparable mission. When they do argue for the desirability of human life it is only in reaction to pessimists arguing the opposite, even though no airtight case has ever been made regarding that desirability. Optimism has always been an undeclared policy of human culture—one that grew out of our animal instincts to survive and reproduce—rather than an articulated body of thought. It is the default condition of our blood and cannot be effectively questioned by our minds or put in grave doubt by our pains. This would explain why at any given time there are more cannibals than philosophical pessimists.

1 hours later 4513525 Anonymous
>>4513451 jesus christ, i beg you to actually read what you're writing. >bloviate harder

1 hours later 4513527 Anonymous
>>4513525 >neo/lit/ considers this shitpost insightful make and argument or fuck off

1 hours later 4513530 Anonymous
>>4513527 an argument against what? this pompous, pseudo-absurdist nonsense? >existential computations > terribly conspicuous >a feat so luminous it would bedim the sun give me a fucking break.

1 hours later 4513531 Anonymous
>>4513530 >more /b/-level shitposting: empty buzzwords edition *slow clap*

1 hours later 4513534 Anonymous
>>4513531 buzzword is a fucking buzzword, dipshit.

1 hours later 4513535 Anonymous
>>4513378 Your prophetic tone makes you sound like a faggot, you are aware. >So any progress toward the salvation of humankind Why does the saving humanity from destruction come from denying the reality of gods,countries, communities, families? Not giving a fuck about yourself or others seems like a more likely way to get killed. >Why raise another generation destined to climb aboard the evolution treadmill? What a clunky metaphor. >We would be the ego-dead, the self-less, and, dare we are, the enlightened *tips virginity*

1 hours later 4513538 Anonymous
>>4513535 I want /b/ to leave. What happened to you, /lit/?

1 hours later 4513540 Anonymous
>>4513535 not the OP, but you've misunderstand most if not all of what he is trying to say, and you did it spewing childish insults all the while conclusion: you are the faggot

1 hours later 4513543 Anonymous
>>4513540 What's to understand? OP thinks we should collectively end our existence. I request he lead the way.

1 hours later 4513552 Anonymous
>>4513451 >a feat so luminous it would bedim the sun. lel. Get this guy a YA fantasy series. >So why put off what would be the most laudable masterstroke of our existence, and the only one?” >Talking about ending humanity >This post is probably completely sincere I'm dying, I'm choking on edgy. What have you been reading that has caused you to think like this, and worse write like this? Nietzsche? Shakespeare? Poor bastards. I'm imagining some dude stuttering, trying to explain the luminous feat of killing everybody to his mother, she's thinking about how he used to be such a nice boy, and wondering how he turned out like this.

1 hours later 4513555 Anonymous
>>4513540 Sorry, it's hard to take someone seriously when their prose is so sickeningly purple. Please do explain what he's talking about, I'm sure it's as revelatory as he's making it sound.

1 hours later 4513556 Anonymous
>>4513543 >>4513552 these aren't argument by the way. you're having an emotional reaction to his idealogy and you're activating your lousy defense mechanisms like well-oiled machines. it'd be beautiful if it wasn't so depressing

1 hours later 4513558 Anonymous
>>4513556 see >>4513555 it seriously reads like warmed-over nietzsche as read from a microwaved digest that had every other page missing. i can't even into it a little bit. there isn't any substance here.

1 hours later 4513560 Anonymous
>>4513555 Read the posts I made, it's all there. If you can't grasp it I don't understand how you would expect me to change that.

1 hours later 4513561 Anonymous
>>4513558 what parts in particular do you not understand? it's all fairly clear to me, although it's mostly a re-hashing of schop and cioran (with a modernised air to it)

1 hours later 4513562 Anonymous
>>4513558 Oh fucking get over yourself. You sound like you're comprehensively impaired

1 hours later 4513563 Anonymous
>>4513562 dude, just use the word retarded. it's okay.

2 hours later 4513565 Anonymous
>>4513561 so you think something innate is inhibiting us from taking what would be the rational and probably more glorious or at least authentic route of suicide. so what?

2 hours later 4513571 Anonymous
>>4513565 i'm not him. but that's a very simplified and maybe even incorrect way of putting it

2 hours later 4513572 Anonymous
>>4513562 >Writes OP and other obtrusive posts about the grandness of ending human existence >Talks about getting over yourself Bedim the sun somewhere else bro, I can't handle your luminosity.

2 hours later 4513575 Anonymous
>>4513558 None of those posts are nietzsche-esq at all. you either misread him or didn't read him at all

2 hours later 4513576 Anonymous
>>4513571 how would you put it then. three sentences or less

2 hours later 4513580 OP
>>4513572 That poster wasn't me. He was just another individual who agreed you lack comprehension, it appears.

2 hours later 4513582 Anonymous
>>4513571 Post an image with the (You) responses. You're not fooling anyone OP.

2 hours later 4513583 Anonymous
>>4513572 >op argues against the illusion of the self >people infer he is self-aggrandising how far /lit/ has fallen

2 hours later 4513585 Anonymous
>>4513575 > warmed-over nietzsche as read from a microwaved digest that had every other page missing >digest that had every other page missing sounds like someone trying to sound like nietszche is what i meant. clearer? OP himself thinks he's invoking schopenhauer. take that as you will.

2 hours later 4513587 Anonymous
>>4513583 Yeah, because from all these frustrated and defensive posts he's making, we can see he's not concerned with self image at all.

2 hours later 4513588 Anonymous
>>4513583 it's his writing style, not the content, that we're disparaging. though the ideas are pretty threadbare, as well.

2 hours later 4513594 Anonymous
>>4513522 >The point that in the absence of birth nobody exists who can be deprived of happiness is terribly conspicuous. What - if nobody is born, you can't make people unhappy? I'm sure I can torture a dude, make fun of him, even if babies aren't being made. >Our self-removal from this planet would still be a magnificent move, a feat so luminous it would bedim the sun. That's an aesthetic judgement. I think colonizing the galaxy would be cool.

2 hours later 4513609 Anonymous
OP describes Zen Buddhists enlightenment (as he tells us in >>4513395 ). For a while I puzzled over the problem that Buddhists face: that what they seem to desire is death. ...not that, taken on their own terms, this is a problem at all! Historically, the suicide cult wouldn't have survived if it weren't for someone to come along and slap the doctrine of reincarnation on top of it. Once you do that, you get an extremely viable world religion, I guess. A very life-affirming one at that! Kinda bizarre!

2 hours later 4513612 Anonymous
>Family more durable than national or ethnic affiliations Sounds like you came from the suburbs. I don't think you have a complete understanding of the concept of god either to call him below the self. God is the creator, perfecter and absolute apogee of the self. Also why is your goal to do away with "fabrications" just to get to the "least endangered of fabrications - the self". Seems contradictory. And if your willing, could you explain further what your trying to say by using the words "least endangered".

3 hours later 4513641 Anonymous
>>4513612 >I don't think you have a complete understanding of the concept of god either to call him below the self. God is the creator, perfecter and absolute apogee of the self. He's clearly an atheist. I think he meant conceptions and/or worship of a god are more easily cast aside than conceptions (or, indeed, worship) of the self. Hopefully that also answers your question about 'least endangered'.

3 hours later 4513647 Anonymous
That's all well and good--for an individual. But for a society? I'm pretty skeptical. I mean, does societal "progress" like this really exist? While gods might be the lowest in the "hierarchy," they seem to be pretty firmly fucking entrenched into people's thinking. Humans have been doubting the gods for probably about as long they've been believing and worshipping them. ...And those same kinds of people (individuals) have taken the next intellectual steps that OP describes for thousands of years. But the thought never seems to *really* spread beyond the minds of a few strange individuals. Even when the idea becomes a major world religion (in the form of Bhuddism) with millions of followers for thousands of years, the members of that religion don't seem to ACTUALLY think and behave the way OP describes. Maybe i'm just impatient? Maybe a few thousand years simply isn't long enough for this kind of idea to really propagate? Maybe we can talk after a few million? I don't even want to predict what I'm going to have for supper tomorrow evening, much less what society will look like in a million years!

3 hours later 4513668 Anonymous
>>4513647 Most members of a society are unintelligent. I am certain you'll conclude the rest yourself.

4 hours later 4513727 Anonymous
>>4513647 there won't be a society in a million years

4 hours later 4513734 Anonymous
>>4513641 If he is, all the more reason that he should have a proper concept of God if he is going to reject it. If you're going to acknowledge God, acknowledge God truthfully. I don't think op mentioned anything about ease of abolition. What I read of the post, it seemed like he was just valuing things, and then stating that things he thought of lesser value should be destroyed, in order that this thing of higher value to him may 'be'. I do think I have a clearer understanding of least endangered, but it still doesn't seem to make any sense or fit into the rest of anything that was written. >>4513668 Lol.

4 hours later 4513744 Anonymous
>>4513403 I'm not OP, but your comment is more of an argument for OPs statement than against it. Actually, you hit the nail on the head. Those chains of economic dependancy are not actually there, nor is there an actual grain. The power of fabricated chains lies in that elusiveness, combined with the great influence it has on the human consciousness. Your post is a testament to this strength as it implies great fear for economic or judicial repurcussions, which in OPs world, aren't even real things. So in truth the chains you describe are the same chains OP refered to as 'fealty to countries'. What OP suggests is a life in which first those chains that you say shackle us to our countries are to be broken, after which mankind can start hacking away at the chains of ego, which work in the same way as the bonds of nation or family but are more deeply engrained into our thoughts. Atleast that's what I think OP means.

5 hours later 4513770 Anonymous
>>4513734 >If he is, all the more reason that he should have a proper concept of God if he is going to reject it. If you're going to acknowledge God, acknowledge God truthfully. what does this gibberish mean, exactly?

5 hours later 4513772 Anonymous
>>4513744 you nailed it

10 hours later 4514373 Anonymous
>>4513744 >>4513772 more of OP talking to himself, of himself, by himself. really unshackling yourself from the chains of your own ego there, buddy. absent the "ego" you have no experience, period. it goes far beyond pain or false consciousness. here's claudio from measure for measure, facing execution: Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thought Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death. maybe enroll in a creative writing class. in the meantime, let me suggest E. B. White's Elements of Style.

10 hours later 4514385 Anonymous
>>4513378 Foucault suggests that "man" is a recent invention (humanism) actually nations (not modern nation states but geographical areas under supreme rule of some entity) and gods have had much longer reigns.

11 hours later 4514403 Anonymous
>>4514373 > >>4513744 > >>4513772 or maybe just read over this essay by orwell: >https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/int rel/orwell46.htm

16 hours later 4515331 OP (op.png 792x140 8kB)
>>4514373 You really should stop predicating your arguments with lies.

16 hours later 4515346 Anonymous
>>4514385 Except the OP isn't addressing humanism, he is attacking the illusion of the self.

16 hours later 4515364 Anonymous
I once achieved total disassociation by doing an extreme dosage of acid. It was a completely ineffable experience: not having any conception of self. Everyone should experience it at least once in their lives.

16 hours later 4515382 Anonymous
>>4515331 if there was not some more-or-less unified "subject" capable of recognizing the flurry of perceptions as it's own than it isn't worth talking about those perceptions as "experience." they would be free-floating, detached--basically "unperceived." that's poorly put, though. it would be more accurate to say that the the unification of the manifold in an originary apperception is a necessary condition for the possiblility of experience.

16 hours later 4515417 Anonymous
>>4515331 >>4515382 Here's a decent outline: http://userpages.bright.net/~jclark e/kant/concept3b.html the argument can be tweaked to get rid of the transcendental hullabaloo, but Kant unmodified gives you a decent enough impression

16 hours later 4515502 Anonymous
>>4515331 and if it really wasn't you in both of those posts then i can only express regret that you've encouraged at least one other to adopt your pretentious, ponderous style.

17 hours later 4515584 Anonymous
>>4515502 >le empty buzzwords face seems that its a growing tendency in /lit/ to dismiss posts without actually saying anything

17 hours later 4515600 Anonymous
>>4515584 see >>4515382 >>4515417 and common adjectives are not buzzwords, you colossal idiot. especially when they accurately describe what they're modifying.

17 hours later 4515694 Anonymous
>>4515600 obviously haven't been on this site much if you don't know what people use 'pretentious' as a defense mechanism for anything they don't understand

17 hours later 4515732 Anonymous
>>4515694 well that isn't the case here. it is definitely pretentious to affect such a pontifical air, as if relating pronouncements secured from on high, when dishing on something as mundane as the ego. now, if you're actually interested in engaging with this subject, please see >>4514373 >>4515382 >>4515417

18 hours later 4515803 Anonymous
those computers sure work

18 hours later 4515807 Anonymous
>>4515732 arbitrary value judgements of prose doesn't equal an actual argument

18 hours later 4515828 Anonymous
>>4515807 once again, see >>4514373 (You) >>4515382 (You) >>4515417 (You) just look past the comments on style.

18 hours later 4515853 Anonymous
>>4515828 but i'm not smart enough to refute you and i have no idea where OP is

18 hours later 4515890 Anonymous (images.jpg 246x205 4kB)
>Having David's Death of Marat saved as deathconsciousness.gif

18 hours later 4515940 Anonymous
>>4515890 >Having a photograph of Natalie Portman saved as images.jpg

18 hours later 4515941 Anonymous
>>4515890 i'm so proud that you could identify such an obscure work of art

18 hours later 4515945 Anonymous
>>4515940 i'm so proud that you could identify such an obscure actress

19 hours later 4515978 Anonymous
>>4515890 blep

19 hours later 4515984 Anonymous
>>4515945 i'm so proud you could imitate such an obscure 4chan post

19 hours later 4516052 Anonymous
>>4515890 you've revealed your plebness by thinking that's the original artwork. it was altered a lot for the album cover. it would be totally incorrect to label it anything else. you're as pleb as plebs get, pleb

21 hours later 4516259 Anonymous
regardless of whether or not the self is an illusion, it's not something we can 'break free' of, short of mind-altering drugs

23 hours later 4516601 Anonymous
>>4516259 Wrong.

23 hours later 4516604 Anonymous
>>4516601 oh. okay, then.

24 hours later 4516643 Anonymous
>>4516604 That's right, bitch.

24 hours later 4516659 Anonymous
>>4516052 you mean like cropped and had its hue adjusted?

25 hours later 4516734 Anonymous
>>4516659 yeah

9.269 0.191