Overcoming Zapffe

[Anonymous No.19359124]

I'm destroyed and losing sleep because of Zapffe's insight, /lit/

I have read a great a great deal of philosophy but have never encountered an idea so disturbing as consciousness being a mistake, something that should have never been. This being true would remember all philosophy irrelevant as well as any possible pursuit. The paradox that is implied by this is that everything is just a desperate distraction. Is it possible that one Norwegian thinker attained the absolute truth?

I'm asking for a possible refutation or at least criticism of this flavor of pessimism and anti-natalism because it's impossible to accept and dwell on for a long period of time without going insane or taking my life.

[Anonymous No.19359133]

>>19359124
Wait until you grow up and graduate high school.

[Anonymous No.19359144]

>>19359133
I'm 21 and work with children for a living, anon.

I'm surrounded by everything that Zapffe would consider vanity.

[Anonymous No.19359149]

Honestly, the moment you realize that philosophies such as his are evidence of bourgeois malaise, life gets a lot better. The reason these people think the way they do is because they have lived privileged existences and have never struggled a day in their life for the simplest of things, such as just having enough food on the table.

[Anonymous No.19359165]

>>19359149
Doesn't this just reinforce his premise?

Striving for something is just a weak distraction of the meaningless meat thrasher of a world. As soon as we begin to think, it becomes our downfall

[Anonymous No.19359191]

>>19359165
It doesn't reinforce his premise because there is tremendous meaning in the little everyday things. The question you should ask yourself is not whether Zapffe was right, or not it is what so many people who actually are alive right now do that actually makes them happy and content and gives their life meaning and purpose.

[Anonymous No.19359200]

>>19359149
>>19359191
The idea that poor people are happy is bourgeois myth itself. Besides, pessimism is as old as humanity itself

[Anonymous No.19359211]

>>19359200
I never said poor people were intrinsically happy, I said that being a bourgeois privileged retard is what made it possible for Zapffe to be a depressed and pessimistic sperg.

[Anonymous No.19359222]

>>19359191
>>19359200
I'm pressed to understand how most people function. I see hundreds of people a day at my job, smiling with their children and family as if something like anti-natalism would be an extreme to them

I don't know, maybe I'm just depressed..or copium is a stronger drug than I assumed

[Anonymous No.19359230]

>>19359222
>maybe I'm just depressed

Ding ding.

[Anonymous No.19359233]

>>19359211
Zapffe lived in a small remote cabin and was an avid mountaineer

He didn't live a bourgeois lifestyle despite having a wealthy family

[Anonymous No.19359240]

>>19359233
That's not the point. The point is that normal people don't have time to dwell on the absurdities of existence, this is literally a privileged position to be in by default.

Even Aristotle 2300 years ago acknowledged that if the slaves didn't till the soil, philosophy wouldn't exist.

[Anonymous No.19359258]

>>19359240
I suppose but that doesn't mean you can go back to ignorance after realizing the absurdity of existence

[Anonymous No.19359271]

>>19359240
>Isolation is "a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling".
He adresses this state of lack of engagement in the questions of existence, Its not a terrible way of coping to he honest.

[Anonymous No.19359283]

>>19359124
literally just stop giving a shit

[Anonymous No.19359288]

OP here

I'm moreso interested in a criticism of his premise that consciousness is somehow malignant.

[Anonymous No.19359299]

Also, can someone explain to me how he arrived at the ethical claim of anti-natalism after ruminating about the world being meaningless and morality being a cope? I used to want children but I don't know if I can after discovering this

[Anonymous No.19359306]

philosophy is a ghoul that haunts only ruins

[Anonymous No.19359321]

>>19359306
What do you mean by this?

[Anonymous No.19359338]

>>19359288
>a criticism of his premise that consciousness is somehow malignant.

im happy and grateful for being alive. my life is like a warm light in the darkness. i consider consciousness to be a miracle of a system. i think the way my life has been is a thing of fundamental beauty and its very definition. can you refute that? perhaps the problem is you think the happiness and the beauty is unattainable for you - that there are situations in which you would be happy and complete, but for some reasons you don't think you can get there? then the curse is weakness, not consciousness.
if i died now and had the option to relive my life again from scratch without past memories i would consciously and eternally choose this option. i think life on earth, the way it has been for me, was paradise, with every rain bringing its rainbow.

[Anonymous No.19359355]

>>19359321
what i wrote above, and perhaps i might add that i used to be a very hardcore pessimist, nihilist, and all that, very suicidal and passive. i saw a 4chan pasta that said something like "you're suicidal? that's great! the world is now your oyster" and decided to change my life and reach for all the beauty i could imagine.

you might consider this to be self-delusion. i can never prove i'm truly happy and not just coping. but, if i could live this life again, i would do so, and i would wish those i love to have such a beautiful adventure. i think the difference is in treating life as a prison or as a playground. there is no point in being in a playground. but it's fun, and a good memory.

[Anonymous No.19359364]

>>19359338
I have so much that I love and am attached to, anon.

It's just the idea that's it's all meaningless and in vain that is eating away at me. The world is just material and the void, the love for my girlfriend and family is just biology. There's no soul and my loved ones will just rot after death.

[Anonymous No.19359366]

>>19359338
Yes, but you see anon, that's a lie.

[Anonymous No.19359378]

>>19359364
The joy on the face of the children I work with is soon to be broken. They themselves are just ashes in time..

[Anonymous No.19359383]

>>19359366
>Lie

Explain

[Anonymous No.19359407]

>>19359364
maybe you should get out of language for a bit.
>the love is just biology
>there's no soul
these are meaningless statements. biological systems are beautiful and experiencing them while being one of them is insanely fucking cool, i cant find the words to explain how miraculous that is. maybe you have come to the point in philosophy where it's good to try and stop using words. "it's just biology" "im just ash". stop finding words to describe yourself or the world. words are prison. can you imagine a beautiful world? how would it be different?
>lmao it's all just atoms nothing makes sense
this is trivialism. there is beauty in this world. there is happiness. it doesn't need to be eternal, in fact, that could be impossible.
if philosophy and language brought you into this shit maybe the esoteric can help you out.
tl;dr you say life cannot be happy; i disagree by saying i have felt truly happy. you cannot convince me otherwise.

[Anonymous No.19359417]

>>19359407
I have felt extreme happiness is the past as well, anon.

Again, I could be clinically depressed. I'm unable to tell if this is a philosophical or mental problem.

[Anonymous No.19359418]

>>19359366
Why is it a lie? Why is being a depressed NEET who lives in the mountain who thinks life is a mistake more true than someone who thinks life is beautiful and full of happiness?

And that's the point about this entire discussion, the emotivism of it all isn't something people choose. Marshalling rational arguments for why life sucks means that you think life sucks to begin with and you're just looking for excuses for w0hat you already believe.

[Anonymous No.19359439]

>>19359418
Well, it would love to see someone make a rational argument for life being good. Lmao

You must live in a different world

[Anonymous No.19359442]

>>19359364
>I have so much that I love and am attached to, anon.
Great!

>It's just the idea that's it's all meaningless and in vain that is eating away at me
Doesn’t this contradict your experience? Do you think eating is meaningless, because you have to do it again tomorrow? What about sleeping? Do you think friends are meaningless, because one day they will die?
You’re human. You have natural desires. There’s no real way to overcome those. That’s completely okay and a source of meaning. If you were perfectly rational, like a computer, you’d have to have someone tell you what to do.

>The world is just material and the void, the love for my girlfriend and family is just biology.
You seem to be an avid subscriber to scientific-materialism. It’s just one perspective though. Science can’t explain qualia (qualitative experience). The world is what it is. There’s one perspective through which it (including you) is dead matter and void interacting based on set laws. There’s also a perspective, where you are alive. Which corresponds more to your experience?
There is a perspective in which the love you feel for your girlfriend and family is a real feeling, connecting you to another soul. There’s also a perspective in which you are a biological machine just carrying out orders from random mutations that happened to work out for your ancestors. Which corresponds more to your experience?

>There's no soul and my loved ones will just rot after death.
Since scientific materialism can’t explain consciousness you might as well believe there is a soul. That your loved ones will rot after death is also a kind of flawed assumption. Sure, their bodies will, but they are very real right now, so enjoy the time you have with them, while they inhabit the earth.

When it comes to such abstract ideas your better of believing those that do not lead to you wanting to an hero. There’s no way to prove any of them, just ramblings of varying coherence.

[Anonymous No.19359451]

>>19359417
Again, you’re caught up in scientific materialism. It is both.
There’s a reason talk therapy and exercise are more effective than “antidepressants”.
Your thoughts are physically represented in your brain. Philosophy can readjust it.

[Anonymous No.19359452]

>>19359439
there is no rational, philosophical problem here.
there is a feminine, emotional problem: you feel sad.
there are ways to influence your emotions and stop being less girly. "i feel sad" are we supposed to logically prove this wrong using fucking maths lol? if i tell a girl that she's emotional because of her period, will that make her less emotional?

[Anonymous No.19359459]

>>19359418
Anyone that has ever thought life through to it's end has either continued coping or hung/shot/poisoned themself.

The brain must only exist so nature can have a nightmare. Look around you! A person goes from the nursery to the morgue and all their sorrow goes with them! Something like beauty is feeble way of coping, simply choosing to look at something else. Everything we know is suggesting that consciousness is a result of the brain. Nothing immaterial is real, it's all a lie. All of this is obvious when written out, right?

[Anonymous No.19359496]

>>19359459
You must be over 18 years old to post on this site anon. Stop cringeposting.

[Anonymous No.19359498]

>>19359496
Cringe, maybe..but he's not wrong

[Anonymous No.19359501]

>>19359124
You’re depressed because of a chemical imbalance in your brain.
I too felt nihilistic when I was eating junk food and browsing /gif/ every day.
Then I decided to eat fruits and vegetables every day and not jerk off, taking advantage of NNN.
Now I’m much more motivated and in a positive mood.
If you surround yourself with trash your life will be trash and lead you to erroneously conclude that consciousness is a mistake.

[Anonymous No.19359527]

>>19359498
He is cringe precisely because of the affectation. He claims this is what life is, objectively speaking, and yet hundreds of millions of people live a completely different life, full of love, friendship, honor, respect and contentment.

And the only response someone like you has to that, is that they are deluding themselves, and what kind of arrogant shit philosophy is that?

Zapffe's philosophy is literally just malignantly depressed narcissism, and doesn't reflect the life of a normal person *at all*.

[Anonymous No.19359529]

>>19359501
>Everything is chemicals

This shallow Bugman ideology is what is deteriorating his mind

[Anonymous No.19359560]

>>19359527
I recommend you read Zapffe

He goes in to the mechanisms people use to live those 'good' lives

[Anonymous No.19359581]

>>19359501
I eat well, go outside, lift, have a girlfriend

I still want to kill myself

[Anonymous No.19359598]

>>19359124
Inaction makes consciousness grow, engulf everything. It's true, there's no escape from it. Does that make consciousness a mistake? Can't you bear a strong consciousness? Is action an escape from consciousness?

Honestly you would be much better reading something like Spinoza.

[Anonymous No.19359674]

Being conscious always mean being conscious of something. If this something is good, or perhaps if this something is Paradise, why would consciousness be something negative? There is nothing new in Zapffe, he's just another pessimist who thinks the world is le bad.

[Anonymous No.19359706]

>>19359560
>He goes in to the mechanisms

Yes, which is exactly what I argue against retard. Everyone else are deluding themselves if they are happy through "mechanisms" but he is the smart guy who wrote the Last Messiah who sees through all normal people's pleb delusions.

Give me a break. If anything, the philosophies of people like Zapffe is the cope of failed intellectuals, everything about their own life is a failure therefore life itself is a failure.

[Anonymous No.19359727]

>>19359124
I know anons use this as an insult all the time for some reason, but really - why don't you just cope? I have a lot of hobbies and interests where I can experience the feeling of power and control. I'm coping and it rules. Why not cope? Why depressionmaxx?

[Anonymous No.19359739]

>>19359706
Cope

Zapffe was incredibly successful in Norway. As soon as we get an English translation he will be more well known than Nietzsche and Kierkegaard

[Anonymous No.19359751]

>>19359727
What cope is working for you?

I have a lot of hobbies and interests as well but it's hard to enjoy them if you know it's all useless

[Anonymous No.19359758]

>>19359739
Well I am Norwegian and I am not surprised by that at all, because Norway is a through and through middle class country full of people with chronic D-vitamin deficiency who have to cope with 8 months long darkness every year.

[Anonymous No.19359767]

>>19359751
For example, I work on art projects like 10+ hours a day. I like the stuff I make, I make money with it, it's an all around positive feedback loop. I know that I'm going to die and at that point none if it will have mattered, but that's not a solvable problem; in the meanwhile, while I'm alive and capable of feeling moods, my moods are good because I fill my life with these positive feedback loops. I think coping well makes a lot more sense than not coping.

[Anonymous No.19359808]

>>19359767
Based, anon.

I enjoy making art as well

[Anonymous No.19359941]

>>19359124
A question that might be worth asking is why, as an outcome of his own philosophy, did Zapffe not take his own life? Ultimately, if anti-natalism is taken to its logical extreme, perpetuating your own life is ethically unacceptable. Yet he persisted. His work is riddled with assumptions that are extremely vulnerable to criticism but which critically support the entire project, such as the idea that the human race must inevitably succumb to nihilism. What evidence is there that the Last Messiah is ever going to arrive? Zapffe himself loved mountain climbing and photography, he himself surrounded himself with "distractions" as he would put it, and drank fully of life. Zapffe might have had an interesting insight into consciousness as an evolutionary phenomenon, but the sort of anti-natalism he proposed as a project is totally inconsequential: he didn't have any kids but lots of people don't have kids for all sorts of reasons and he absconds the responsibility for spreading his own philosophy to some kind of "False Messiah." He got to enjoy his distractions but the next generation doesn't? His philosophy of nihilism is ultimately a philosophy of "nihilism for thee, but not for me," and ironically, he relies upon a future generation to actually implement anti-natalism. Overall, a strange project, but it remains interesting for its suggestions about the evolutionary nature of consciousness.

[Anonymous No.19359965]

>>19359941
You have a point, I suppose.

Zapffe lived to be 90 and died with his wife next to him. He was a talented artist as well.

It's hard to dismiss his thought, though. He had a PhD in philosophy and read all the greats from Aristotle through Kierkegaard yet his exact conclusions are unique.

[Anonymous No.19360051]

Bump

[Anonymous No.19360094]

You can't its over read cioran he's a good cope

[Anonymous No.19360103]

I'm very familiar with the text so i can probably help.

The issue with TLM is this; Its just his take. Its up to you to hold it up against a personal evaluation and decide whether or not it all jibes. Its not the perennial truth.

The weakness in the text is as others have pointed out, you have to be careful when the mindset relies on most people being complete sheep. To assume there is nothing more to learn but cope sounds like a mistake, at least to me.

[Anonymous No.19360106]

>>19359124
going with no Zapffe under my belt on those points, it is a privilege we have consciousness. Ignorance is a curse. Besides, what enjoyment would we derive from said "distractions" if they were not distractions?

[Anonymous No.19360477]

Bump

[Anonymous No.19360602]

Bump

[Anonymous No.19360684]

>>19360477
>>19360602
Engage with some of the points.
That's better than bumping.

[Anonymous No.19360736]

>>19359124
>I have read a great a great deal of philosophy but have never encountered an idea so disturbing as consciousness being a mistake, something that should have never been.

Well epiphenomalism is halfway there, whether or not you go on to say that it's a curse depends on how much of a faggot you are. I used to be a pessimist gaylord myself and think that the "well why don't you kys?" arguments against pessimism were ill-founded, but really, they're perfectly fine. If you have decided that consciousness is gay and retarded then you should at least kill yourself if not feel a moral obligation to commit some kind of mass murder. Anything else is cope. If a thing is bad then you stop engaging with it, or get rid of it, or destroy it, simple as.

The only exceptions are people who are simply too scared to kill other people and/or themselves out of fear of possible consequences and the actual violence of dying yourself, but then you're just a coward with consistent beliefs.

[Anonymous No.19361034]

>>19360736
Well, are you still a pessimist?

Are you going to kys yourself or kill a ton of people?

[Anonymous No.19361121]

I'm yet to meet a single person that has read Zapffe and managed to dismiss him and go back to ignorance.

He's a monster

[Anonymous No.19361135]

>>19360103
Appreciate this, anon.

What is your take on TLM? Can you recommend anything that challenges it?

[Anonymous No.19361159]

>>19361135
It doesn't need to be challenged. Its just one interpretation. When Zapffe says that consciousness is a useless mistake, that's his consciousness talking. All the the truth, all the motion, all the range of experience filtered through one little man and his opinion.

It should be taken as such.

Even if you think he's right, are you right? You have to be careful with sweeping indignation just like we dismiss sweeping praise.

[Anonymous No.19361164]

>>19361034
>Well, are you still a pessimist?

obviously not

[Anonymous No.19361241]

>>19361159
You're absolutely right, anon. It's hard to square this idea with the world when it's dependant on 'only a select few that really see the truth'

Your comment snapped me out of giving so much weight to one way of interpreting reality.

[Anonymous No.19361262]

>>19360103
>It's not the perennial truth

Pessimism literally is the perennial truth

[Anonymous No.19361303]

>>19361241
Good. I mean you'll never be in full-blown denial of the shittiness that comes with living, but Zapffes picture does eventually look more like a piece than the whole.

[Anonymous No.19361307]

>>19361262
I'm trying to say its incomplete knowledge interpreted one way because all human thought is like that. Zapffe doesn't get a pass. He doesn't know the big news of existence more than any other man.

Nor so the other thinkers down through the ages.

[Anonymous No.19361361]

Life is a joy

[Anonymous No.19361393]

>>19361361
wtf i love life now!

[Anonymous No.19361400]

>>19361393
Just be happy, theres no one stopping you. Except yourself, AHAHAHAHAHH

[Anonymous No.19361412]

[Anonymous No.19361434]

>>19359124
>consciousness being a mistake
The mistake is sin. God is "righteous in all His ways and Holy in all Hos works" (Psl 145), its humans who are deceived by Satan or willful evil that are the problem.

Its okay though. Christ will save you and through the intercession of Holy Mother Mary we can all be saved. No one is abandoned. God loves us all and desires out deliverance, you have to want it too though.

[Anonymous No.19361508]

>>19361434
>Just believe in God and this slaughterhouse of a world is justified!

[Anonymous No.19361520]

>>19359222
>I see hundreds of people a day at my job, smiling with their children and family.

We are all called to be a part of a family, both human and Divine. We all share one Father and one older brother who died to save us and one Spirit that we can unite with.

Remember: "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us." (First epistle of Saint John 4:8-12)

Its not that your depressed either. Its as Saint Augustine wrote: "You have made us for Yourself O Lord and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." (The Confessions iirc.)

[Anonymous No.19361526]

>>19359124
Gathas, Yasna 30:

"There are two primeval spirits, twins who are revealed
[to us] through dream.
In mind, in speech, and even in deed they are better and bad:
The good choose between them correctly, not the evil."

Note the "revealed in dreams". This indicates that creativity and phenomenal experience are connected to the Twin Mainyus. Mainyu has the dual meaning of both spirit and state of mind. We can further extrapolate how engaging in certain creative activities such as writing can manifest instances of fictional worlds that are more aligned with either Spenta ('sacred') or Angra ('destructive') Mainyu. If Zoroastrianism were to spread, we would have discussions on what are the metaphysical and phenomenological properties of Spenta and Angra Mainyu and how they manifest in this world as dualistic struggle.

This picture is an expression of Spenta Mainyu.

When we go into deep reverie, preferably in solitude within natural scenery, and open our hearts, we can feel the light of Spenta Mainyu pour into our souls from the joyous singing of the birds, the warm magnificent sun, the play of the otters in the soothing river, and so forth. Likewise, we can manifest spenta or angra in our own artwork or dreams.

We are told dreams can be a gateway to either Spenta or Angra Mainyu. From my own dreams, some of which are blissful and others nightmarish, I have come to deduce that individuals that appear within its seamless space are manifestations of its oneiric fabric. However, while there may be a unifying character underlying the dream, the dream's instantiations of its salient mood are defined by an irreconcilable antagonism since some fabrics are blissful and others nightmarish. The instantiation of a serene dream is one expression of the substance of Ahura Mazda that has a determinate line separating it from ∀hriman's nightmares. A dream of absolute bliss, a dream where all beings are happy, this dream is real and one. The unreal can become real, they can blur, but good and evil can never blur because the dream itself can be wholly benign in a manner that is untainted by any defilement, by any darkness. God's substance, thus, becomes a timeless, unchanging, blissful dream, and his antithesis is a timeless, unchanging nightmare.

There are self-contained fictional or oneiric worlds, but trying to place this in a unified metaphysical theory is excruciatingly difficult. This is my goal.

[Anonymous No.19361540]

>>19361520
This made me start crying

I really wish I could have the faith you have, anon. If Christianity is a cope, it's the most beautiful cope ever conceived. Maybe in time I'll cultivate faith and be able to give myself to such a beautiful idea.

[Anonymous No.19361574]

>>19361520
>>19361540
>samefagging

surely jesus said something negative about this

[Anonymous No.19361639]

>>19361540
I'll pray for you anon. If you have even the faith of a mustard seed you can be redeemed. Make sure to cultivate the word that has been sown here today all you who read these words. I plead that you talk to the Church. We love you, we care for your souls, we want you.
>>19361574
I swear by the eternal Father, His Son Jesus the Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Madonna and all the Saints that I would not do that.

[Anonymous No.19361651]

>>19361574
I can just do this and show you the (You)s.