Reader embraces Schopenhauer’s pessimism

A READER WRITES: “You have talked on your site about the pursuit of happiness and even stated that the purpose of the site was to 'help people overcome their problems and to improve their enjoyment of life'. Although this idea sounds very appealing, I would suggest that it is impossible and unattainable. Life in my humble opinion is a horrible, painful journey which, at times, is interrupted by periods of relative calm, which we then refer to or mistake for happiness. Every problem that we have the ability to overcome is quickly replaced by another more perturbing barrier. Happiness is an ideal, a human creation alluded to by philosophers and 'wise men', in order to confuse the masses and to trick them into believing that there is something worth living for. In reality such bogus nonsense only serves to highlight how miserable we really are and therefore should not be referred to as something real or attainable. It should be left on a dusty shelf somewhere along with all of mans other bogus creations, such as Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Sasquatch and God"

BB SAYS: Thank you for your thoughtful and intelligent post. Many great philosophers agree with you. In particular the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who has been mentioned before on this site, and who is sometimes known as the Philosopher of Pessimism. The ideas in your post are remarkably similar to his. Here is a quote from Schopenhuaer:

“To our amazement we suddenly exist, after having for countless millennia not existed; in a short while we will again not exist, also for countless millennia … That human life must be some kind of mistake is sufficiently proved by the simple observation that man is a compound of needs which are hard to satisfy; that their satisfaction achieves nothing but a painless condition in which he is only given over to boredom; and that boredom is a direct proof that existence is in itself valueless, for boredom is nothing other than the sensation of the emptiness of existence. For if life, in the desire for which our essence and existence consists, possessed in itself a positive value and real content, there would be no such thing as boredom: mere existence would fulfil and satisfy us. As things are, we take no pleasure in existence except when we are striving after something - in which case distance and difficulties make our goal look as if it would satisfy us (an illusion which fades when we reach it). Even sensual pleasure itself consists in a continual striving and ceases as soon as its goal is reached. Whenever we are not involved in one or other of these things but directed back to existence itself we are overtaken by its worthlessness and vanity and this is the sensation called boredom. We shall do best to think of life as a process of disillusionment: since this is, clearly enough, what everything that happens to us is calculated to produce”.

“There is only one inborn erroneous notion - that we exist in order to be happy. So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence - hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of disappointment.”

Nevertheless, according to Schopenhauer, wise men and sages can achieve a state of blessedness, by giving up on their attempts to be happy. If you want nothing, then you have everything you want. Life involves suffering; suffering is caused by desire; the extinction of desire is the only means to salvation. This, according to Schopenhauer, is the only way to cope with life. He says that the great ascetics have accomplished this. He also says that the aesthetic experience of great art temporarily lifts us beyond desire. Aesthetic contemplation is a temporary way to escape the pain of existence, by permitting the disinterested contemplation of reality.

Reading great philosophers like Schopenhuaer can help to liberate us from propaganda and myths – by escaping from those myths, we attain salvation - we free ourselves from the false hopes that inevitably lead to despair, and which serve only to increase our suffering and pain. It sounds to me like you are well able to see through the myths that lead us astray, and I am confident that you have the strength within you to approach the blessed state that ascetics speak of.