welcome to #unpopularopinionsihave. if you know me in person, then you are already well acquainted with the sort of content that will be hosted here.
it is unlikely that you will agree with anything that is posted here, unless you have already had similar thoughts.
first and foremost, i am a pessimist. if you are not, it is probably because you are an intellectual featherweight.
i think it’s fairly evident that life is not intrinsically good without qualification. that is not to say that there can be no good, fun, happiness, but rather that the total sum of pain and suffering in this world weighs far heavier than the amount of pleasure.
think about this clietzsché* argument: each being struggles to survive and in doing so, must devour other beings. life eats life, and so on.
while this is certainly true, i don’t think it includes all the salient facts about the various forms of suffering.
next time you see a pigeon stumbling around with a frostbitten stump of a leg (one currently roosts around the second cup at parc and milton, another at the bus station in toronto) be aware of how much you suffer watching it suffer. it may quickly become evident to you that the world would include less suffering if the pigeon was to cease existing.
the way that pigeon struggles to survive is different in kind and quality from the other pigeons and the suffering imposed upon us is another sort altogether, miraculously available to us because of our large and capable brains.
it may be an #unpopularopinionihave but i think one can be realistic or an optimist, but not both.
further #unpopular reading: No Life is Good by David Benatar
* clietzsché /klēCHə/ noun — portmanteau of cliché and Nietzsche
- A nihilistic phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought
- – the old clietzsché: “god is dead.”
- A very predictable or unoriginal thing for a nihilistic person to say
- – the record store employee spoke in clietzschés
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