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originally posted by: Nechash
a reply to: introspectionist
You only live once.
originally posted by: introspectionist
To me it feels like there is something very perverted, unspiritual, about being happy. Hatred is purity. Kind of like winter in the arctic is pure and white whereas the tropics is a cesspool of poisonous insects, dirt, viruses and foul smell. I feel the same about being alone vs being around others. Whatever I do with others feels perverted.
originally posted by: introspectionist
I see a lot of offended people in this thread. Glad that I could help highlight some of your fears.
Today when I was on the train home from work, Friday evening, there were three young hot women. Probably on their way to some party or something. Perhaps to go clubbing. They were very happy. When I saw and heard them I thought about this thread. No, I was not day dreaming when I posted this thread. This kind of people really is a universe away from me. I remember when I took a course at university. It was the same. Everyone was very happy. I remember listening to an audio recording I had made and the class was chatting before the teacher came. Felt the same when I listened to that.
I am convinced that optimism is a poison for the soul.
originally posted by: introspectionist
I am convinced that optimism is a poison for the soul.
originally posted by: Painterz
Most of the responses to this thread have brought a smile to my face.
Keep spreading the joy!
Obviously my posts tickle some form of inferiority complex in you, whatever it might be. Otherwise you wouldn't be so eager to push me down. Again, I'm glad I could help highlight some of your fears. And as I said before, that's good, that means you're not so mindlessly happy. Mingling of souls. Nice to meet you.
originally posted by: opethPA
originally posted by: introspectionist
I am convinced that optimism is a poison for the soul.
You need to try harder to be a loaner, to be grim and brooding.
Right now it just reads like a weak imitation of a character from one of the Crow films.
I'm willing to bet that to this point your suffering has been no worse then what anyone else has experienced but you are trying to make it seem that way, have at it and enjoy feeling you are different than anyone else just because you think being happy is poison.
Zohar
The sum of man’s desires is referred to as his heart. Since the nature with which we are born is absolute egoism, man does not feel the spiritual point in his heart. However, at some point in one of his reincarnations, man begins to gradually strive towards attainment of the causes of life, its evaluation; he yearns to attain himself, his source, just as you do right now. Man’s aspiration to the Creator is precisely this aspiration to attain his origin. Man’s discontent in life often helps him in this search, when there’s nothing that appeals to him in his surroundings. Such circumstances are sent from Above in order for man to start feeling an empty point in his heart, and to stimulate in him the desire to fulfill it.
www.huffingtonpost.com...
One night it was some Somalian Muslim girls in hijabs, who instead of helping us with directions, turned to us and seethed, "Put a dick in your ass!"
www.mindreality.com...
We may regard those who hurt us as our adversaries, yet they are also our friends, because they force us to grow wiser. Our adversaries are the impetus or impelling force that helps us evolve. These adversaries bring awareness to our deepest fears and unconscious beliefs. When we can bring awareness to these hidden parts of ourselves, the things which we avoid can become our gateway to growth and healing. Our antagonizer is our helper. The people who you struggle with will only be forcing you to dig deeper into your inner wellspring of lightness, love, and inner peace. The gems you find inside yourself will bring an even higher awareness, allowing others to respond from a more empowered loving space. When you start recognizing the divine within yourself and in everyone, then everyone you meet becomes a divine teacher showing you exactly what you need to learn next on your life journey.
Carl Jung
Everything that irritates us about others can lead to an understanding about ourselves.
Note that it doesn't say "Whoever was not abused by his father and mother cannot be my disciple.".
Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate father and mother cannot be my disciple, and whoever does not hate brothers and sisters, and carry the cross as I do, will not be worthy of me."
This is the rant forum. Taking anti depressants is the last thing I would do. God save the souls that are stupid enough to take them.
originally posted by: woodwardjnr
I'm not really understanding the point of this thread. It's like a plea for help or for others to agree that they also hate happy people or its effort to try and make everyone who reads it a miserable as the op. I would go see a doctor and tell them your depressed, maybe give you some anti depressants. Cheer you up a bit. They do work, so maybe worth an effort
You could say pessimism is a mental disorder. But that's a good mental disorder. Makes me think of when Bernard dated Lenina in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
originally posted by: WhiteAlice
a reply to: introspectionist
If optimism is a mental disorder, then wouldn't its exact opposite--pessimism--also be a mental disorder? Pragmatism--both a mix of realistic optimism and pessimism--would probably be the healthiest point of view in that case. Probably why Buddha talked about the "middle road".
Lenina shrugged her shoulders. "A gramme is always better than a damn," she concluded with dignity, and drank the sundae herself. On their way back across the Channel, Bernard insisted on stopping his propeller and hovering on his helicopter screws within a hundred feet of the waves. The weather had taken a change for the worse; a south-westerly wind had sprung up, the sky was cloudy. "Look," he commanded. "But it's horrible," said Lenina, shrinking back from the win dow. She was appalled by the rushing emptiness of the night, by the black foam-flecked water heaving beneath them, by the pale face of the moon, so haggard and distracted among the hastening clouds. "Let's turn on the radio. Quick!" She reached for the dialling knob on the dash-board and turned it at random. "… skies are blue inside of you," sang sixteen tremoloing falsettos, "the weather's always …" Then a hiccough and silence. Bernard had switched off the current. "I want to look at the sea in peace," he said. "One can't even look with that beastly noise going on." "But it's lovely. And I don't want to look." "But I do," he insisted. "It makes me feel as though …" he hesitated, searching for words with which to express himself, "as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More on my own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body. Doesn't it make you feel like that, Lenina?" But Lenina was crying. "It's horrible, it's horrible," she kept repeating. "And how can you talk like that about not wanting to be a part of the social body? After all, every one works for every one else. We can't do without any one. Even Epsilons …" "Yes, I know," said Bernard derisively. "'Even Epsilons are useful'! So am I. And I damned well wish I weren't!" Lenina was shocked by his blasphemy. "Bernard!" She protested in a voice of amazed distress. "How can you?" In a different key, "How can I?" he repeated meditatively. "No, the real problem is: How is it that I can't, or rather–because, after all, I know quite well why I can't–what would it be like if I could, if I were free–not enslaved by my conditioning." "But, Bernard, you're saying the most awful things." "Don't you wish you were free, Lenina?" "I don't know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays." He laughed, "Yes, 'Everybody's happy nowadays.' We begin giving the children that at five. But wouldn't you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else's way." "I don't know what you mean," she repeated. Then, turning to him, "Oh, do let's go back, Bernard," she besought; "I do so hate it here." "Don't you like being with me?" "But of course, Bernard. It's this horrible place." "I thought we'd be more … more together here–with nothing but the sea and moon. More together than in that crowd, or even in my rooms. Don't you understand that?" "I don't understand anything," she said with decision, determined to preserve her incomprehension intact. "Nothing. Least of all," she continued in another tone "why you don't take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You'd forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you'd be jolly. So jolly," she repeated and smiled, for all the puzzled anxiety in her eyes, with what was meant to be an inviting and voluptuous cajolery. He looked at her in silence, his face unresponsive and very grave–looked at her intently. After a few seconds Lenina's eyes flinched away; she uttered a nervous little laugh, tried to think of something to say and couldn't. The silence prolonged itself. When Bernard spoke at last, it was in a small tired voice. "All right then," he said, "we'll go back." And stepping hard on the accelerator, he sent the machine rocketing up into the sky. At four thousand he started his propeller. They flew in silence for a minute or two. Then, suddenly, Bernard began to laugh. Rather oddly, Lenina thought, but still, it was laughter. "Feeling better?" she ventured to ask. For answer, he lifted one hand from the controls and, slipping his arm around her, began to fondle her breasts. "Thank Ford," she said to herself, "he's all right again."
thepessimist.com...
It’s not hard to justify our selection of George Orwell as our Pessimist of the Week. All you need, in fact, is one quote from his novel Nineteen Eighty-four:
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
en.wikipedia.org...
Metaphysics
Main article: Platonic realism
"Platonism" is a term coined by scholars to refer to the intellectual consequences of denying, as Plato's Socrates often does, the reality of the material world. In several dialogues, most notably the Republic, Socrates inverts the common man's intuition about what is knowable and what is real. While most people take the objects of their senses to be real if anything is, Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real. In the Theaetetus, he says such people are eu amousoi (εὖ ἄμουσοι), an expression that means literally, "happily without the muses" (Theaetetus 156a). In other words, such people live without the divine inspiration that gives him, and people like him, access to higher insights about reality.
Socrates's idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and this idea is most famously captured in his allegory of the cave, and more explicitly in his description of the divided line. The allegory of the cave (begins Republic 7.514a) is a paradoxical analogy wherein Socrates argues that the invisible world is the most intelligible ("noeton") and that the visible world ("(h)oraton") is the least knowable, and the most obscure.
Socrates says in the Republic that people who take the sun-lit world of the senses to be good and real are living pitifully in a den of evil and ignorance. Socrates admits that few climb out of the den, or cave of ignorance, and those who do, not only have a terrible struggle to attain the heights, but when they go back down for a visit or to help other people up, they find themselves objects of scorn and ridicule.
According to Socrates, physical objects and physical events are "shadows" of their ideal or perfect forms, and exist only to the extent that they instantiate the perfect versions of themselves. Just as shadows are temporary, inconsequential epiphenomena produced by physical objects, physical objects are themselves fleeting phenomena caused by more substantial causes, the ideals of which they are mere instances. For example, Socrates thinks that perfect justice exists (although it is not clear where) and his own trial would be a cheap copy of it.
The allegory of the cave (often said by scholars to represent Plato's own epistemology and metaphysics) is intimately connected to his political ideology (often said to also be Plato's own), that only people who have climbed out of the cave and cast their eyes on a vision of goodness are fit to rule. Socrates claims that the enlightened men of society must be forced from their divine contemplations and be compelled to run the city according to their lofty insights. Thus is born the idea of the "philosopher-king", the wise person who accepts the power thrust upon him by the people who are wise enough to choose a good master. This is the main thesis of Socrates in the Republic, that the most wisdom the masses can muster is the wise choice of a ruler.
Theory of Forms
Main article: Theory of Forms
The theory of Forms (or theory of Ideas) typically refers to the belief that the material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only an "image" or "copy" of the real world. In some of Plato's dialogues, this is expressed by Socrates, who spoke of forms in formulating a solution to the problem of universals. The forms, according to Socrates, are archetypes or abstract representations of the many types of things, and properties we feel and see around us, that can only be perceived by reason (Greek: λογική). (That is, they are universals.) In other words, Socrates was able to recognize two worlds: the apparent world, which constantly changes, and an unchanging and unseen world of forms, which may be the cause of what is apparent.
www.gnostics.com...
Dearest friend, do you not see All that we perceive - Only reflects and shadows forth What our eyes cannot see. Dearest friend, do you not hear In the clamour of everyday life - Only the unstrung echoing fall of Jubilant harmonies. - Vladimir Soloviev, 1892
originally posted by: introspectionist
Obviously my posts tickle some form of inferiority complex in you, whatever it might be. Otherwise you wouldn't be so eager