| The realization [CLOSED THREAD]
Posted: 7/27/2009 11:28:34 AM | From the very beginning, we are given goals to aspire toward, socially acceptable markers of success with which to broadcast our competence to those around us.
It begins as a teenager. Get your drivers' licence, so you can have a car. Have a car, so you can gain independence, and impress the opposite sex. Go to college, because you need college to get a good job. Get a good job, because you need it to afford a house. Get a house to attain further independence. Then what? Work some more? Retire? Support your utterly worthless descendants? Piss away the last remnants of your fading, failing life span pursuing the things you wish you did earlier in life, but lacked the initiative to follow through on?
Is that the sum total of our existence? To endure labour, to exert effort, to perform work, to jump through hoops, in order to justify a few bursts of wanton pleasure just as death clenches its grip around our miserable, withered throats? No. All the things this world demands of us, all the things we feel we have to do to impress others are irrelevant.
No. No more. This is what I have realized. I will do what I want. What I want, and nothing else. I will do only what feels good. I will drink. I will smoke. I will snort. I will fuck and not call the next day. My goals are simple: Be drunk most of the time, be high whenever I can afford it. To hell with what anyone else thinks. At the rate I'm going, I've got 30 years more of this left, tops - and starting now, I'm going to use the time I have on thoroughly selfish pursuits, rather than trying to forge myself into something I am not in order to impress peers.
In a century we will all be dead, and when we both lie on our death beds, I can tell you right now that you will regret not doing the selfish things I am about to do, whereas I will die content. | |
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| The realization
Posted: 7/27/2009 12:06:02 PM | Ah, but will you?
If you live like you say you are going to, you wouldn't get 30 years. You may get ten, but I'm sure your body will start to fall apart and fail you long before that.
I won't regret living the rest of my life like that because I've done it when I was younger. It's out my system. It lasted a few years, and I realised there was more to life than getting out my head.
Everything in moderation. Go wild now and again if that's what you're crying out for, but don't forget to come back before too much damage is done.
Maybe a sickie for 6 months is what's needed with no responsibilities,
wish you well,
S | |
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| The realization
Posted: 7/27/2009 12:40:24 PM | Then it will.
Why would I choose 30 years of miserable existence before 10 years of shameless pleasure seeking?
I'd rather die young and live well, than extend my existence as far as it can stretch, and hate myself for what I did with it. | |
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| The realization
Posted: 7/27/2009 12:46:34 PM | Might be nice if you can afford it...but it'd get boring after awhile. Life needs some spice...like a trip somewhere else, chatting with friends, a bbq, some fishing....all those things that make life worth living. These may not be the things you may like, but there is something besides partying like a 18 yr old who just got their trust fund.
Sounds like the OP is somewhat jaded....perhaps a tad depressed and angry with everything.
As told to Ceasar during his triumphant parade through Rome..."All this too shall pass..." | |
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| The realization
Posted: 7/27/2009 1:33:41 PM | Ah, Hellgremlin. Ethical egoism is perhaps one of the most abhorrent and misguided philosophical views I have ever laid eyes upon, and yet one of the most common in this day and age. What would such a life really be worth? Sure, you might experience every physical pleasure under the sun, but what will you have to show for it at the end? Probably little more than a corpse showing how much damage a person can do to themselves in a lifetime by abusing drugs and alcohol. That's assuming that the inevitable suffering you'll experience as a result of focusing on self-indulgence lets you live that long. After all, with each physical high eventually comes a fall, and the desire for more. The high points may be good, in a strictly physical sense, but the unavoidable time in between will be characterized by depression and suffering as a direct result of insatiable and poisonous desires. Trying to hide from the harsher side of reality through self-indulgence is like trying to flee Mercury's cold side by moving to the hot side; the appearance of the problem changes but you are still suffering in the end.
Certainly, a life of mediocrity spent pursuing material goods in the belief that they will bring you a better life is not really one worth living either. But that's not the only other possibility. Most of my teenage years were spent thinking somewhere in between, and I suffered for it. But once I had hit eighteen, I realized that a life spent pursuing higher goals was far better. I rejected hollow materialism and embraced altruism over egoism, and I have not regretted it since. There was no lasting pleasure in self-indulgence, but there is lasting happiness to be found in the joy of others. So when we both lie on our death beds, I can tell you that I will be happy and unafraid knowing that the world is a better place for my being in it and that my legacy will continue to make the world better. I can't say for sure what you'll be thinking, but I doubt it will be a sense of contentment. | |
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| The realization
Posted: 7/27/2009 1:45:46 PM | | When I'm on my deathbed, I assure you I'll be so fucked up on morphine and assorted futuristic painkillers as to be incapable of regret. | |
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| The realization
Posted: 7/27/2009 2:09:06 PM | I kind of understand this and feel the same way -.- Only I'm more of an optimist.
The whole go to college, get a job, get a car, get a wife, get descendants, retire, die is kind of........mundane. Why not piss ones life a way in a haze of drugs and holographic happiness? On the flip side the pursuit of a goal or dream makes the mundane...less mundane. Don't get me wrong it will always be mundane but at least with a dream or impossible goal there will always be the entertainment of trying to accomplish it. Mix that in with a selfish attitude to obtain happiness in whatever form and things don't seem that bad. As a matter of fact its quiet liberating. | |
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| The realization
Posted: 7/27/2009 2:16:25 PM |
When I'm on my deathbed, I assure you I'll be so ****ed up on morphine and assorted futuristic painkillers as to be incapable of regret.
My point exactly. | |
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O.B.I
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Joined: 6/20/2009
Msg: 10 | |
| The realization
Posted: 7/27/2009 2:26:03 PM | Most of my teenage years were spent thinking somewhere in between, and I suffered for it. But once I had hit eighteen, I realized that a life spent pursuing higher goals was far better. I rejected hollow materialism and embraced altruism over egoism, and I have not regretted it since.
This is almost precisely how I was going to respond. Why merely exist and expire when you can enrich and inspire? By devoting the later years of your life to hedonism when you have only achieved very little - or indeed nothing - that is of any real significance, you will leave only a corpse and a few hard feelings. Your existence will have been almost worthless.
Then again, the counter-argument to that would be: "But how can I accept and abuse the reward for my efforts when I'm dead?"
The whole go to college, get a job, get a car, get a wife, get descendants, retire, die is kind of........mundane.
Whilst I do agree (to an extent), I also believe that hedonism is not the answer, as I suggested above. But that's my opinion. I will not criticise your life choices providing that your frivolity does not bring harm to others. | |
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| The realization
Posted: 7/27/2009 2:26:50 PM | Close to my own life so far. Well at least the fun parts, I've only worked when I wanted to and kept my cost of living down, had a damn good time no wife, no kids, no car, ride a bike everyday, used to skate like a demon, surf when there was waves, played my own songs and got high everyday. The slacker life for me I live in a resort city so I see people from all over the world and would never inflict myself as a tourist on anyone. Did I say where I live is beautiful? Ah hell if your in town give a shout and we'll party it up.  | |
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| The realization
Posted: 7/27/2009 3:42:58 PM | | Delete my post if you want - it will not change the fact that you are fat. | |
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| The realization
Posted: 7/27/2009 3:55:14 PM |
Is that the sum total of our existence? To endure labour, to exert effort, to perform work, to jump through hoops, in order to justify a few bursts of wanton pleasure just as death clenches its grip around our miserable, withered throats? No. All the things this world demands of us, all the things we feel we have to do to impress others are irrelevant.
I agree, they are irrelevant. So what is relevant?
No. No more. This is what I have realized. I will do what I want. What I want, and nothing else. I will do only what feels good. I will drink. I will smoke. I will snort. I will **** and not call the next day. My goals are simple: Be drunk most of the time, be high whenever I can afford it. To hell with what anyone else thinks. At the rate I'm going, I've got 30 years more of this left, tops - and starting now, I'm going to use the time I have on thoroughly selfish pursuits, rather than trying to forge myself into something I am not in order to impress peers.
Welcome to the dark night of the soul, my friend, a prerequisite for existential thinking.
It does not have to be this way.
To paraphrase what someone said to me, you do not have to marinate in your own bitterness.
As a philosophy, don't burn all of your bridges.
I am not sure if you are wanting advice, endorsement, or a helping hand... | |
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| The realization
Posted: 7/27/2009 4:26:55 PM | I don't want anything anymore.
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