A Thread for Posting Brutally Pessimistic Quotes by Anguished Philosophers

he's so right

I don't think existence is a mistake, because we don't really have much of a choice in it; even committing suicide has biological roadblocks to it. Enjoy the ride, then you die, because it's going to happen anyway. What else can ya really do.

bitch about it in beautiful prose.

just going by that quote, the answer clearly is to commit suicide before you hit middle age

I've seen people have ball into their 80s. If Schopenhauer took the stick out of his ass and partied a little, maybe he would've had a different view of things.

* a ball

idk if u read enough about gnarly living conditions anytime pre-second half of 20th century, life really become intolerably painful a few decades in, i could see rational suicide just in that 'fuck it' mode. but middle age is much less troubling and old age much less infirm and miserable now than it was in Schope's day, so imo we ought not complain

If there's one thing I know, it's life in excruciating pain. Not only that, but there's a good chance I'm going to die a horrible death in my 40s or 50s, which is coming soon. Schopenhauer has no idea what he's talking about as far as that goes; Nietzsche was a thousand times worse off than him and somehow found out how to have a better attitude.

you're a lot less funny than schopenhauer

I'm a lot less a lot of things than Schopenhauer. Big deal.

i wonder if schopenhauer would feel so down in the dumps if he ate more fibre or took up badminton

Who knows, maybe his philosophical viewpoint was caused by a bad diet. That's about how deep and meaningful things are in life, I've found.

lots of things with simple causes can still be articulated spectacularly & profoundly, and something having a straightforward cause doesn't necessarily make it any more straightforward to deal with

"You've got forever; and somehow you can't do much with it. You've got forever; and it's a mile wide and an inch deep and full of alligators."

Jim Thompson

oooh I like that

I was curious about the regard for Cioran in his homeland:

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/45/36/9f/45369ffa1a48d1120144c62425fcb2ea.jpghttp://www.sculpture.ro/photos/1_1382548347.jpghttp://static4.evz.ro/image-gal-604/2014-11/bustul-lui-emil-cioran-in-rasinari.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ro/thumb/7/79/Emil_Cioran-bust.JPG/675px-Emil_Cioran-bust.JPG

Seriously doubt this would bring him any real pleasure, but perhaps a puckish chuckle.

Top right is brutal. It's like the Eiffel tower with his head stuck on top.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/scholarly-advice-for-dark-times

From a James Wood essay about Bohumil Hrabal:

Hrabal sometimes said that he rooted his comedy in one of his favourite findings, a dry-cleaner’s receipt, which read: ‘Some stains can be removed only by the destruction of the material itself.’

Ha

Been reading Thacker's "Infinite Resignation"--and while I wasn't very impressed at first it has grown on me. Hopelessly "academic" (as that needless academic qualifier in the title gives away, even fucking resignation has to be xtreme now!), since it's as much about reading the great pessimists and thinking about pessimism as a form of thinking as it is an instance of the thing itself. Sometimes quotes from Cioran or whoever come up and they are bracing in their directness, which Thacker by contrast often places at a kind of theoretical remove--as if he's asking what it means to see the world this way rather than directly feeling it, maybe he's only tempted. Not always, of course,...though T's pessimism is very different from his (our?) heroes because it's so damn secular and prosaic...no "tears of the saints" here...Raises the question if there could be a "Book of Disquiet" for the hyper-connected 21st century...I think the disgust is there but not often those quiet solitary lost hours which seem to be the necessary environment for, say, Cioran envying the freedom of the stillborn...

Nope, 37:40 evolved into Jackie Moore - This Time Baby (1979)

Wrong thread, sorry.

Satiation is the point at which you must face the existential revelation that you didn’t really want what you seemed so desperate to have, that your most urgent desires are only a filthy vitalist trick to keep the show on the road. If you can’t replace the fear or the thrill of the chase why stir yourself to persue yet another empty kill? Why carry on with the charade?

Nothing matters very much and few things matter at all

Arthur Balfour