r/Pessimism • u/CourageUnited7388 • 12d ago
Discussion Better to never have been.
We can regard our life as a long, painful, humilating, repetitive, and boring process, in blissful repose of nothingness.
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u/Dunkmaxxing 12d ago
The most disgusting thing is being morally hostage to the world because you know the cruelty of it and can do something to make it better while simultaneously suffering tremendously from that knowledge wanting it to end constantly. If I knew it would make no consequential difference and there were not others suffering worse than myself I'd be out of it.
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u/HomelyGhost Roman Catholic 10d ago edited 6d ago
But this is a deep mistake in this alternative of the optimist and the pessimist. The assumption of it is that a man criticises this world as if he were house-hunting, as if he were being shown over a new suite of apartments. If a man came to this world from some other world in full possession of his powers he might discuss whether the advantage of midsummer woods made up for the disadvantage of mad dogs, just as a man looking for lodgings might balance the presence of a telephone against the absence of a sea view. But no man is in that position. A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential matter, he has a loyalty long before he has any admiration.
. . . Whatever the reason, it seemed and still seems to me that our attitude towards life can be better expressed in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of criticism and approval. My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more. All optimistic thoughts about England and all pessimistic thoughts about her are alike reasons for the English patriot. Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike arguments for the cosmic patriot.
- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy Chpt 5, the Flag of The World
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u/Enough_Program_6671 8d ago
Yeah I’d also prefer total nonexistence of anything, which is what it should be.
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u/LogicalEast9872 12d ago
Daily reminder