once more with feeling
Feelings suck. For some reason we feel guilt, anger, sadnesss, etc. Surely some of these have evolutionary adaptations. But you’d think that we would be able to avoid feeling guilt over stupid things we can’t change, or feeling angry over things we can’t change, or getting depressed enough to shoot ourselves in the face. No, if there were an invisible hand guiding evolution, it was not concerned with the world of hurt that that would bring. Bring on the mass suicides or something. Is it more tempting to kill yourself if there were a religious belief you’d get rewarded for it, or simply a worldly imperative and a lack of fear? The “loneliness ” of suicide is mostly combatted by Epicurus: “If I am alive, I am not dead, and if I am dead I do not care”. For that matter, regardless of the hate left behind by those who you abandon by shuffling off the mortal coil, you won’t be haunted by the guilt of it when you’re dead. You just have to get over the guilt of it while alive. Does this make suicide as an impulse reaction a win-win? Maybe, if your ethics are seriously attuned to self-interest. Or maybe if you have a really awful life where your loss would affect no one but yourself. I’m sure people have been, are in situations like that. Maybe some of them die, and some of them live on. Myself? When I’m in a good mood, I am enjoying too much the stupid vices of life. Masturbating furiously, eating lazy food, sleeping on comfortable beds, getting drunk. Well, these things are all things that one can do. But they provide not the least bit of edification, and it gets boring fast. Life is full of pain though. Mostly psychosomatic. Pains of guilt and pains of regret and pains of anger. Bullshit, all. Curiousity and fear are strong counterindications. Curiousity of the future is somewhat edifying. But the future will probably be too boring or painful. Fear is more permanent.