greenfist: "Who says we are overpopulated?"No one. I made it up as a joke. We need way more people on earth.
???
Your friend is nothing like me. I wish no one to suffer, ever.
What kind of monster do you have for a friend?
Actually that’s not what it’s saying:I read the whole thing. I know what it said. Did you read the book snowman?
I have read snippets of it but it seems to essentially nullify everything people have said on here
greenfist said; You say there needs to be a reduction in the population. Im not understanding you. I definitely say the world is not over populatedAnd how do you know that?
Why are we on about culling when the thread is addressing the reality of nihilism?
Greenfist is not suffering, so there’s no problem.
- If he understood that wars over territory to supply growing populations are a real thing, he'd see the problem.
- If he were starving in a country where there was too little food due to too many people, he'd see the problem.
- If he were saw the millions of tons of garbage we dump into holes in the ground or pour into the ocean, he'd see the problem.
- If he saw how humans are crowding out species after species, he'd see the problem.
- If he couldn't breath because he lived in a place where humans destroyed the air, he'd see the problem.
- If he knew how we need to fertilize the heck out of crops, ruining lakes and rivers in the process, to maximize yields, he'd see the problem.
- Basically, if he had empathy, he'd see the problem.
Nihilism.
Why are we on about culling when the thread is addressing the reality of nihilism? --snowcityBecause everyone is tired of saying things about that, only to have you tell them they are wrong, then have you switch from one philosophy to the next because your previous argument failed. It's an open forum. There is no specific rule about staying on topic. If someone was posting all over trying to make every topic about them, I'd shut them down. You've seen me do that. That's not happening on this thread. 3point stayed on topic.
To me, this thread had run it’s course ages ago.
If Xain wants to know what we think, he can spend a month rereading all our posts to him. Honestly, a rereading of all the threads he started would be worth it.
Since there’s nothing to be said to Xain that he hasn’t ignored many times already, I don’t waste my time doing so.
If Greenfist or anyone else wants to go on a tangent, I’m game.
Nihilism.
Rat if you or anyone else were honest you guys would look back at all your posts and see that you haven’t addressed nihilism but ran from it. This thread still hasn’t been solved in the slightest, all you guys did was avoid dealing with it directly.
The point of writing such a book is to clarify a dilemma. On one hand, there are plenty of people prepared to embrace living without a point: living is warranted by the accumulation of interesting or pleasurable experiences. On the other hand, there are people who maintain that there are reasons for living, which are ethical, cognitive, political, or a combination of all three. My point was that in the former case the warrant is not rational, because it boils down to the valorization of sensation, and this requires the sacrifice reason; while in the latter case, the credibility of the reasons invoked is increasingly undermined by methods of explanation in the natural sciences, whose explanatory comprehensiveness renders appeals to meaning, purpose, and value redundant. The point of the book was to point out the full extent of this aporia and to suggest that those who claim to have overcome it, whether by cheerfully embracing purposelessness or resolutely maintaining the irreducibility of value, cannot provide philosophically convincing grounds for doing. Of course, the intelligibility of this aporia is supposed to point to the way in which thinking can make sense of the absence of sense, and in this regard the book not only endorses philosophical rationality but seeks to defend it. The point of charting the full extent of the aporia is to try and generate the resources for overcoming it without relapsing into either of the two unsatisfactory alternatives mentioned above. This is what I have been trying to do since writing that book over fifteen years ago and I am now working on a second book which I hope points beyond the deadlock described in the first. If I thought that everything was really pointless I wouldn't have bothered writing a book about it: the pointlessness of pointing out pointlessness is self-evident. But I don't think everything is pointless. My conviction is that purpose is generated by us; not through existential choice or commitment, but through collective ways of thinking and talking rooted in our social practices. Purpose can't be individually selected, it can only be forged collectively. But doing so requires cognitive and political resources which are currently lacking and which must also be produced.As the author I quoted makes clear that your help isn’t rooted in reason or logic, it’s all a dodge:
cannot provide philosophically convincing grounds for doing.Define “philosophically convincing”
I’m going to leave this as a separate post, because it’s really important that it be addressed. I’ll lay out my personal worldview later, but the problem with Xain has always been that he doesn’t use the English language very well. He doesn’t pay attention to auto-correct, he inserts words that are not clear. Things like “you can’t counter it”. Counter it how? So, I doubt he’ll offer a definition of the above. Maybe it will give him something to think about.
Lausten, he has proven so many times that he doesn’t care what you have to say. He doesn’t read or think about anything said to him. This is simply a blog for him to post his thoughts, not a place to learn to think better.
Language may have a part to play in how he communicates his thoughts, but the fact he puts no thought into what we say can’t be blamed on his writing skills.
I applaud your patience. I care as much about Xain as you, but I know everything I say is being wasted, so it’s too frustrating to continue to do so.
3 - I use his posts as an opportunity to work out my own thoughts. I do something called restorative justice. We got a kid recently who doesn’t care about much of anything. He doesn’t argue about nihilism, he just sits there and shrugs his shoulders. He’s a nihilist but probably doesn’t even know the word.
the pointlessness of pointing out pointlessness is self-evident. But I don’t think everything is pointless. – I assume this is a Brassier quoteDo you even read the things you quote Xain?
As always, I can’t tell what you think the goal is. Earlier you quoted Brassier saying,
Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity.”Something I’ve said. Maybe not in so many words, but definitely what I’ve meant.
Here’s how I arrive at the same place, and how that place is exactly where humans were before written language.
I do what I want, what feels good, just like they said to do in the 60’s. In the 70’s I, and many others, found out that what we were doing was hurting innocent people. Buying drugs from cartels in Colombia was creating a society where the families of police officers were getting killed. That’s not the world I want. Some of us went on to help younger people avoid our mistakes. Some went on to work on other ways to support families and the health of the community. Some decided not caring was the way to go. That would be the “dodge” you are talking about.
What many found was the long term goals and hard work that go in to taking whatever little bit of happiness you find, and spreading it around, has a much better return on investment than the short term highs we were seeking before. I avoided the trite sayings that describe what I just described, but I’m sure they are coming to mind. They sound very much like what your grandmother might have told you about, a Protestant work ethic, a moral life, the joy of job well done.
What those old fashion values fail to do is acknowledge the place where they come from, which is where I started, from doing what feels good. The philosophical argument is that this is selfishness. I don’t care. If it feels good to me to clean up a river or to take care of a baby for an evening while a mother gets some rest, then I’m doing it. What does it mean? It means there will be clean water and a rested mother. I don’t need it to mean anything to a star trillions of years from now. Nihilism, as a reason for how to live, fails in the same way those old values do.
For some strange reason, thinking about those stars dying at the end of the universe bothers some people. They wish they didn’t know about them. They make that mean something. They take nihilism, the belief in no meaning, and turn it in to a belief system. Do they think that a man on the savanna didn’t look at a turd floating down a river one day and wonder what is wrong with people? What had the world come to? That led him to consider what he was doing there anyway? Of course there were people who had thoughts. But if they sat there thinking about too long, they got eaten.
I have some apathetic people in my life. They aren’t nihilists, but they act so much like they are that you’d have a hard time telling the difference. Xain isn’t a nihilist either, and I say this because he sounds like the people in my life. All of them want there to be no meaning so their feelings can be justified, but they know it’s not true, so they do what most people do and dig their heels in deeper and try to shut out the world even more. Human nature is a tough nut to crack.
My interactions with Xain did help me sort out my ideas. Putting thoughts to paper (pixels?) is a great way of making a nebulous feeling/concept into something useful. But over time my frustration level started to overshadow the benefits, so I pulled the plug.
Stopping my attempts to help Xain is hard because I do care. It pains me to see someone suffer needlessly, especially when I see the problem and try with all my (limited) ability to help. But there are limits to how many times I’m willing to have my hand slapped away by the guy reaching out for my hand.
When he wants help I’ll be here.
Greenfist: "How do you suggest population should be dramatically reduced and by how much is enough?"You misunderstood something I've said in a big way.
I simply said that there are too many humans for the planet. To ensure current and future generations have the best possible world to live in, we need to start slowing population growth. Nowhere did I mention culling or killing people that are alive today.
We need to care for everyone who is living as best we can.
Nihilism.
greenfist: "HOW??? HOW MUCH??"Seriously? You're shouting at me because I didn't state specific methods or target numbers?
I will give you no numbers because I don’t know them.
As for how, there is no method I can think of other than reduce the reproduction rate by an amount that prevents a crazy shift in demographics that would cause even more problems.
We are already doing it by bringing better health and wellness and stability to the world. Yeah, I know I’m going to if for that. It’s still true.
greenfist: "I see. Youre pissing in the windReduce how?. Fertility rates are in decline in western countries, so what exactly are you propsing?"
Why am I the target of your comically pointless anger?
Your posts are full of strawmen*. So no matter what I write you’ll pretend to not understand.
* [No, I’m not claiming you literally have strawmen hiding in your posts. Look it up. It’s the name of a fallacy.]
Since developed countries are hardly where overpopulation is a problem, I’m sure you’ll understand why that’s irrelevant.
There. I talked about it.
Now it’s your turn to pretend you don’t understand and claim I said something I didn’t say.