Apathy as the Final Expression of Nihilism

When a person is first faced with the "threat" of nihilism, they seem to always feel great anxiety. The world around them seems suddenly foreign and ambivalent (or perhaps even malignant). They may feel disconnected and isolated from society, or sense their life is kind of exile.

If the person doesn't manage of overcome this initial angst by compartmentalizing or some other method, then they may feel despair and hopelessness. Their dreams, their impressions, their fantasies of what reality is like have been torn down. There seems to be no way to recover.

A human being cannot exist in an extended period of anxiety, though. Sleep may be the escape for some, and for others, drugs or other distractions are a way to ease the anxiety. But ultimately the anxiety does not permanently pass. It's physically exhausting to feel anxiety of any type for an extended period of time, and depressing to believe that the source of one's anxiety will not pass.

Hence why I believe apathy is the final expression of nihilism. For to act upon nihilism is to attempt to make meaning in a meaningless universe. To construct or destroy is to try to take control over a world outside of your control. It's to not accept that the world is what it is. To be apathetic is to neither deny the reality of nihilism nor embrace it - for it's useless to fight nihilism, but equally uncomfortable to embrace it.

Being smart and an asshole still makes you an asshole

And being an asshole doesn't mean you're smart - it just means you're an asshole.

This isn't going to be a philosophical post. Just a vent.

There is nothing that I hate more than a smart-ass. You know the type: the one with an obscene confidence in their views, the smug smile in light of their cheap victory, and the dismissive and pretentious "holier than thou" attitude. The one who preaches open-ended discussion but nevertheless rolls their eyes when you try to argue your point.

I don't claim to be able to read minds but I suspect the source of smart-assery is a need for recognition (insecurity), a deep and pervasive anger, and a bigoted intolerance masked as acceptance. Oddly enough the smart-ass tends to ends up just being an ass and isn't very smart.

You know who fits this description well? Donald Trump. Richard Dawkins. Radical Christian evangelicals and teenagers who just got done reading their first apologetics book. Etc.

There is no excuse for being a smart-ass. Nobody likes when you act like it. Nobody is impressed by your finesse and aggression. Nobody cares. 

You know what people do care for? Genuine understanding. Compassion. Empathy. A willingness to relate. Humbleness (it's not not-humble to say you are humble unless you are proud of the fact and advertising this virtue to others). The willingness to compromise. Adherence to the principle of charity. BASIC KINDNESS.

tl;dr: DON'T BE A DOUCHE, EVERYONE FUCKING HATES IT

On Emotions and Moods

Typically we tell other people that we are in a good mood or a bad mood. Moods are generally accompanied by other feelings, such as pain or pleasure. Moods also tend to be transitory.

Emotions often accompany moods, but are more specific. Instead of a good/bad distinction, we have emotions that can flip-flop between being good or bad. Sometimes we don't even know what the hell we are feeling.

But what are moods and emotions anyway, and what causes them? Why do we have moods and emotions?

For example, let's say you're a business executive who has spent a good portion of your life dedicated to your company and rising the ranks. Suddenly and unexpectedly you are let go. As you walk out of the building that was your former workplace, you feel an immense surge of anger, regret, despair, and your mood becomes negative.

This may sound like a silly question, but why would you feel these emotions? Why would you have a bad mood? Why is it that we don't walk around all day happy-as-a-clown with a smile on our faces and a spunk to our step?

Emotions and moods seem out of our control. If something truly bad happens to us, it seems impossible to smile (genuinely). And if something hilarious or great happens to us, it seems impossible to cry out of sadness. All those self-help books claim to be able to show you how to control your own mood and emotions just out of pure "will" - but why should you have to be trained to control these emotions? How likely is it that you can "naturally" become the dictator of your own emotions? You might as well tell me to tell myself to see a pink ocean, or feel sandpaper as a pillow. It's out of my control.

Although emotions and moods are transitory, they still last for a certain amount of time. Something sustains them. From the biological view, the sustainment might be dopamine (or the lack thereof), or perhaps serotonin or adrenaline. But typically we don't say "I'm sad because I have a low amount of dopamine firing in my synapses." We say we're sad because we lost our job, or a pet, or something like that. In other words, we have reasons for feeling the way we do.

But this leads back to the previous issue: why do these issues cause us to feel this way? What are the triggers?

I have some tentative answers:

Since humans are a product of natural selection, and since the mind is (likely, stfu epiphenomenalism) a product of natural selection, and since emotions and moods don't seem to be solely under our conscious control, it would seem that emotions and moods serve a function. Although I can try to limit the influence of my mood or emotions (and thus counteracting the function of them), I have no control over the actual experience of these moods and emotions. I still feel this way and I can't just "stop" feeling this way. It's quite strange actually.

Functionalism and representationalism often get flak for not being able to explain qualia, and although this is a separate issue, it is quite phenomenologically obvious that the anger (a qualitative experience) I felt caused me to punch a hole in the wall. The anger was perhaps caused by me losing my job. It built up, and up, and up up up up UP until I presumably lost control and made a hole in the drywall.

So the self can be seen as a kind of executive decision-maker. The self is influenced by all sorts of things, including emotions and moods. It has no control over these emotions or moods because in fact these are part of the self itself. 

The self is not "free", it's just a necessary component for a decision. It's the body's way of enslaving itself.

A human may feel depressed after losing their job because losing their job meant a loss of an ability to survive. The sadness and anger involved in this serve a functional role as an internal motivator - you're feeling depressed, getting a job will restore your ability to survive, having an ability to survive will end this depression, you don't like feeling depressed, so go get a job! Let it be known that the source of the depression is the body itself - so it stands that the body is hurting itself to motivate itself.

Similarly, a person who has a good mood and positive emotions will perform jobs (and thus survive) more efficiently. They will want to continue to survive because this means they will continue to feel good. Thus this is the way the body rewards itself for doing productive things.

Emotions and moods are also usually quite irrational but nevertheless poignant and persuasive, almost in a tyrannical way. People do stupid shit because their emotions got the better of them. They may punch a hole in the drywall simply out of anger - an anger that in the evolutionary past would have allowed them to release their strength against an opponent but in today's day and age makes it nuisance. It nevertheless is a force that causes us to release it - like a spring primed for release.

Since these emotions are generally irrational and primal, and thus not under the influence of the rational self directly, things can go very wrong when someone has a psychological disorder. In mood disorders, this means that people can have bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, or the like. They don't have direct control over what they feel, just like everyone else, but their moods and emotions are going haywire. They require medication and therapy. It stands, then, that the only way to truly change what you are feeling is not by pure "will" but by changing what you encounter on a daily basis (thus emotions and moods are motivators).

"Final" remarks on Benatar's asymmetry

EDIT: if you're here from Francois Tremblay's blog The Prime Directive, I have written a response to his own response. You can find it here. Also make sure to check out my post here, which I talk extensively on value-voids and the inability to ascribe value to non-existence. Unfortunately, Tremblay is an intolerant asshole who censors bans anyone who disagrees with him. So let it be known that I genuinely tried to have a discussion with him but it was his own fault that it fell apart. Check out those other links as well as this post and let me know what you have to think.

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When I say "final", what I mean is that I think I finally have come to rest upon a coherent and satisfying position but probably will end up changing it again at some point in time, whether that be by my own admission or by a critique from another individual.

Anyway, here goes!

The first point to be made here is that I believe pleasure to be supererogatory. This means that the lack of pleasure is not a bad thing in itself. However, what I think tends to get looked over is the fact that even if the lack of pleasure is not a bad thing, the presence of pleasure is surely a good thing.

Now, many times the lack of pleasure is accompanied by a feeling of deprivation. We often feel desire for a pleasure and a sense of being incomplete without it. This is a kind of "suffering". But pleasure is not what eliminates this suffering - what eliminates the suffering is the act of obtaining pleasure. We can also eliminate this kind of suffering by focusing our attention elsewhere.

Pain is pain. Ignoring the cases of masochism and BDSM, I think it's pretty damn obvious that pain or suffering of any kind is a bad thing. Hopefully this isn't a controversial point.

Now, Benatar states that the lack of pleasure is only a bad thing if there is someone that can experience its deprivation. I'm apt to agree. However, he goes on and says that the lack of pain is a good thing regardless of whether or not there is anyone actually there to experience the relief. There are some issues with this. I will attempt to break them down:

First, I do not usually proclaim that it is a good thing that I am not experiencing a headache. It's only apparent that this is a good thing when I compare myself with counterfactual, possible me's. In which case, the real me who is not experiencing a headache is not in a good state just because I'm not experiencing a headache - I'm merely in a better state than if I were.

Second, if we are to use counterfactuals for pain, then we really ought (and need) to use counterfactuals for pleasure. For I can imagine myself experiencing pleasure - in fact, this imagery is often the cause of desire (which causes suffering in some sense). Regardless of the fact that this imagery causes suffering, since pleasure is good then a possible me experiencing the pleasure is better off than the actual me who is not. This does not mean that the actual me is in a bad state, though, just as the lack of a headache does not mean that I am in a better state.

Third, counterfactual, possible if-me's do not hold the same good-ness or bad-ness that actual me's do. This was already explained above. For example, we typically don't throw a party because someone avoided a really, really bad situation - we throw a party because a person is experiencing or is about to experience a lot of pleasure. And we typically don't mourn the loss of pleasure - we mourn the subsequent gain of pain.

Because of this, I believe that if we are to use counterfactuals for possible unborn people in regards to the pain they will experience, we need to use counterfactuals for the pleasure they will experience.

Now, like I said before, I think pleasure is largely supererogatory. So it's intuitive that the lack of pleasure is not really a bad thing. But the trouble is that Benatar holds that the lack of pleasure is not bad if there is nobody there to experience the deprivation. But if there's nobody there to experience the deprivation, then how can we possibly say that it is a good thing that a person is not experiencing pain? There's nobody there to experience the relief.

Furthermore, like I said before, Benatar conflates the "good" of the lack of pain with the GOOD of pleasure. His entire argument hinges upon his equivocation of the two. He specifically states that it is difficult to calculate how much pleasure or pain someone experiences (and yet he goes on later to explain why our lives are really bad which is calculating pain but whatever). Because of this avoidance of calculation, Benatar avoids the issue that would break his argument apart: that we often do plan things to do based upon how much pleasure or pain will be experienced. Benatar openly embraces the idea that a pinprick disqualifies all pleasure by making the "good" of the lack of a pinprick equal to the GOOD of a million orgasms. He also seems to ignore the fact that even if pleasure is supererogatory, it's still good. He's appealing to states of affairs without considering the composition of these states of affairs - I liken it to saying there is flour in the cookie mix without actually stating how much flour is in the cookie mix. All Benatar is concerned with (at least with his formal argument) is that there is pain in existence and no-pain in non-existence without actually considering how much pain is in existence and how much pain is avoided in virtue of non-existence.

So in conclusion, I believe that Benatar's asymmetry, although being intuitive, is not logically sound. The intuitiveness of his asymmetry is derived from his material argument and other evaluations of pain and pleasure.

Ultimately, I do not accept Benatar's asymmetry, although I do accept the conclusion of it. More on that later though. I think I've enough deconstruction for a while: time to actually construct something of my own.

Quick thought about the relationship between antinatalism and pro-mortalism

I made a post on this topic before, but it utilized Benatar's asymmetry which I have come to reject (see previous posts).

Nevertheless, I still consider myself an antinatalist of some sort, and I still maintain that antinatalism does not lead to pro-mortalism.

Setting aside other arguments for antinatalism, such as the awesome risk associated with birth or the utilitarian argument, I will focus purely on a pessimistic argument that would have been utilized by Schopenhauer and co. Basically, the sum the view up, life sucks.

Because life sucks, we shouldn't have children. Plain and simple.

However, a common response might be that if life sucks so much, why shouldn't we kill ourselves, or at least be suicidal?

There are a few ways the antinatalist can respond.

They can say that they really are just clinging to life. Barely making it through the day. They affirm that they really would want to die, if they could get around the inherent fear of death and the irrational impulse to continue to live. Many of the YouTube antinatalists come across this way.

However, I doubt that most people are suicidal. I doubt that most people actually wish to die (including these YouTube antinatalists). But how can a life worth living not be worth starting?

The trick here is that our lives possibly aren't worth continuing. But they certainly aren't worth ending either. There is no dichotomy here. We can all have mostly mediocre lives that don't warrant a creation of another one but nevertheless don't warrant the end of the ones that already exist. There's not enough pain to warrant a suicide. But life generally isn't that fun either. meh

Of course, this by itself "tones down" the fierceness of many antinatalists and their views. If life is merely mediocre, they it's not worth being born into but it's not a horrible, terrible tragedy either. The tragedy only comes along when life is romanticized.

It's only tragic when life really does suck in the horrible, terrible way. But since most of our lives are merely mediocre and not horrible and terrible, a better argument for antinatalism that maintains our general wish to continue to live (not being suicidal) is that there is an inherent risk associated with birth, and that the worst-case scenario is always worse than the best-case scenario, even if the best-case scenario is itself a good experience.

Composition as Identity

I am of the view that there are only two serious candidates for a theory of composition - universalism and nihilism. Between the two, there is also very little difference. We all agree that we use the concept of an object in everyday life. The universalist just simply reifies this concept in reality and the nihilist rejects this application onto reality.

The difference becomes even more difficult to assess when we see composition as identity. That is to say, an object/thing/substance/etc has an essence that is defined by the existence and relations between all of its mereological parts. Because of this, composition as identity is an essentialist theory, one that makes every property of an object essential (therefore no parts are accidental).

Composition as identity also means that there are no natural kinds in the strict, static sense. There are no strict boundaries between one "kind" of thing and another "kind" of thing. Things are not "ontologically placed" within these boundaries as if there exists a metaphysical "spice rack" with little ontological containers where things can be organized.

Instead, natural kinds are fluid constraints on the very being of reality. A thing belongs to a natural kind just if it has a family resemblance with other things. Natural kinds evolve. We can see this in the biological classification scheme, as well as the burgeoning amount of elements - in the far past, there was only hydrogen and maybe helium and lithium. Because of stellar fusion, we now have much heavier elements.

These elements are natural kinds, characterized by things that act in a similar way. But these things, these atoms, can be changed. They can be fused with each other, thus losing the essences of both and creating a new essence. Similarly, biological creatures are in a long path of evolution, where there are no strict boundaries between species. No-one is a "human" in the ontological realist sense - they are just unique things that happen to operate and appear in highly similar ways. As a heuristic, natural kinds help with communication. But they cannot be used as an actual metaphysical device.

Composition as identity also brings up some tricky things with persistence and self-hood. Since objects just are their identity, and since their identity just is their composition, then any change in any of its parts and the relations between them constitutes a change in identity. Nothing persists through change.

This does not bother the universalist too much, though, as it means that although by scratching a skin cell off my arm makes a new, unique organism, it does not mean there exists a totally different organism in the looser resemblance sense (although it is a totally different organism in the stricter ontological sense). Thus persistence in the strict sense is impossible through change, but persistence in the looser sense is possible. I certainly was not the same person psychologically five days ago - I acquired new memories, experiences, etc. But I still sense that I persist in some structural way. Although the structure has been modified, the overall appearance and function hasn't changed much.

A theory of ethics: a fusion of consequentialism and deontology, with affirming thoughts regarding antinatalism

The absence of pleasure is not-bad, and the absence of pain is not-good. The absence of pain is only good (and the absence of pleasure is only bad) when utilizing counterfactuals. By doing so, we put the interests of possible beings into consideration.

Would they want to experience [insert medical condition here]? Would they want to experience desire and endless striving? Would they want to experience death? Would they want to experience the limitless sufferings of Hell (if it exists)? Of course not - in which case, the absence of these negatives is good only because they have been avoided.

Would they want to experience [insert joyous occasion here]? Would they want to experience orgasms? Would they want to experience the limitless omega-sequence of Heaven (if it exists)? Of course they would – in which case, the absence of these positives is bad only because they have been avoided.

So this is the logical symmetry. But something doesn’t feel right. Is the absence of pleasure really a bad thing? Logically, it must be a bad thing. But intuitively, it’s not. We don’t feel compelled to give someone pleasure, but we certainly feel compelled not to give someone pain.

But hold on, again!  This isn’t quite right, either. For what if you could, at a press of a button, bring millions of people into existence that experience limitless joy. You only have five minutes to do this, and then your chance is over. It’s intuitive that by not pressing the button, you’d be preventing these individuals from experiencing pleasure. You might even feel a bit of guilt for not allowing these people to experience this joy. By not pressing the button, you have taken away all chance of their happiness.

Now of course, nobody is actually there to experience this deprivation. Objectively nothing has changed. The universe continues on like nothing has changed.

Let’s take this issue from another angle. Say if you press a button, millions of people will be thrown into the pits of Hell to suffer forever. Obviously you would not press this button. The absence of pain here, though, is objectively neutral. Nobody exists to be saved of this horror. The universe continues on like nothing has changed. There is no sigh of relief, except by those already existing.

Still, something seems a little funny. I will attempt to explain more:

No sane individual will argue that it is not-bad to bring great suffering into existence. Quite clearly, we would be extremely guilty for throwing even just one person into the pits of Hell forever.

But presumably we will also be willing to accept that it is a bad thing to exclude potential happy people from existence.

Now for my more fleshed-out argument.

I am of the opinion that, ceteris paribus, we have a duty to bring pleasure into existence. By itself, without any other variables, we have a duty to bring as much pleasure into existence. Of course, no scenario is without variables. To bring pleasure into existence would require me to do work and take time out of my own day (spent experiencing pleasure, myself). Since when do I have to ignore my own desires and give pleasure to other people?

But again, there’s another catch. If my existence is acting as a preventative wall against pleasure, then I have a duty to eliminate my resistance. For example, say I park my car in the middle of an intersection (for no important reason), and there is a group of people trying to get across to get ice cream. I am preventing them from getting their ice cream. As a good fellow of society, it’s my duty to get out of the way so other people can experience pleasure, just as it’s other people’s duty to maintain a low resistance to other people’s desires (so long as they don’t conflict with their own non-harmful desires).

In a nutshell, what this all means is that we have a duty, ceteris paribus, to not prevent (obstruct) the pleasure of other people, but we have no duty to give pleasure to these people (unless we have no more important obligations - namely, the pursuit of one's own desires).

So let’s turn to the negative side, that of pain and suffering. It’s the mirror of pleasure. We have a duty, ceteris paribus, to not impose pain upon another individual. But we have no duty to prevent pain from being imposed upon another individual (unless we have no more important obligations - namely, the pursuit of one's own desires).

Now, how do we evaluate obligations? Ta-dah! Consequentialism! 

If I’m a SWAT team member who has their vehicle in the middle of the intersection during an armed robbery at a bank, I am indeed preventing people wanting ice cream to get this ice cream. But I’m also preventing pain from occurring (in the bank), and since it’s my job as a hypothetical SWAT team member, I have a duty to prevent this suffering. The people wanting ice cream also have a duty to put aside their desires for ice cream for the greater good.

If I’m a potential parent, wondering if I should have a child, then duties still apply. I have no obligation to bring pleasure into existence, because this would require me to set aside a ton of time and effort raising this child. But I do have an obligation to not bring pain into existence (unless for good reason), and birth is a completely unnecessary activity (spawned from the primal desires of people) and thus does not have good enough reasons to support its actualization.

I’d also like to point out how this duty and calculus-based system recognizes heroism and sacrifice. To be a hero means to go beyond the expected duty for the sake of the greater good. And to be a sacrifice requires one to go beyond the expected duty for the sake of the greater good. Let’s look at some examples:

Say I am the same SWAT team member during the bank robbery. Say I rush in courageously and save the bank, but in the process get shot in the leg. I would be a hero for doing this. This is typically why we see soldiers and rescue-workers as heroes (even if they haven’t done anything particularly heroic).

Say I am a parent who brings a child into existence in a world in which not much suffering exists at all, perhaps just a few aches and pains and a few disappointments (if that). To bring such a child into this possible world of beauty and pleasure is not necessary at all, and yet I took time out of my life to raise this child and give them a pleasurable existence. Clearly, this is a sacrifice because I could have abstained from having a child in this near-perfect world.

But like most of you will probably sense, this world that we live in is not perfect. Suffering abounds. Pleasure is intrinsically contingent. The sacrifice of the parent is not really something to be praised, then. Although it is a sacrifice indeed, it’s also quite ethically dubious, as the parent would have imposed a sufficiently large amount of pain unto another person without the appropriate amount of pleasure.

We have no way of knowing the exact amount of pleasure or pain experienced by a person. It’s entirely subjective and variant. But we can know that birth is ethically dubious by at least two ways (assuming my prior ethical stance):

1.)    Life has structural problems, chinks in its very being. Schopenhauer identified this to be the Will, Buddhists identify this as tanha, Cabrera identifies this as moral disqualification. We can also see how pleasure is not a fundamental structure to life – it is a contingent phenomenon that depends on the aforementioned structural issues.

2.)    We have a duty to take into account the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario, in this world at least, is always worse than the absence of the best case scenario. The best case scenario is not even remotely common or easy to obtain, while the worst case scenario is, in comparison, easier and far more common.

I hope I have given an intuitive and easily-applicable ethical system, as well as a persuasive case for antinatalism.