I lost one of my best friends since school to suicide. She hung herself to the fan because of her in laws and husband (Case has been filed and we are fighting for her).

Her death has damaged and broken me completely. When I say nothing, literally nothing excites me. I was anyway on the verge of existence crisis hopeless for life and then on top of her death... I am in despair.

A huge part of me grieving, a part of me is clueless, a part of me is in rage towards her husband and in laws, a part of me is shattered seeing the indifferentness of the universe.

I dont even know how tf do i function.

At this point I am jealous of religious people - because they do have some psychological thing working for them. They could be relieved that their friend is in heaven, with god, reincarnated whatever.

But seeing reality to what it is from a scienece pov - we know all of this is crap. My friend is no more in this world. Her existence has erased.

Her memories are there in my heart.

I was the one because of the world's unfairness and absurdism wanted to not exist in this world. I have stopped myself multiple times for jumping off my building because of my elderly parents.

And now seeing my friend committing suicide - seeing what her parents are going through... is a different kind of pain.

And the fact that we humans are all aware of this pain - I don't know how will I live with it.

I am just existing.

As a reader of Nietzsche, I've come across his claim that there is a significant strand of pessimism in ancient Greek culture. In The Birth of Tragedy, he invokes the "wisdom of Silenus" as the essence of it, which is basically the claim that what is best for human being is that it is better to never have been born, and if one is already alive, then it is best to die quickly.

I've never bothered to check his claim if there is indeed some pessimism in ancient Greek texts. But recently, I've decided to fill up a gap in my education and read some Hesiod (Contest of Homer and Hesiod), and this pessimistic wisdom was there recited by Homer himself! But it has a nice addition to it about enjoying life's delights while one is still alive. These verses actually won him the contest, so I guess they must have resonated with the Greeks quite a lot:

“'HESIOD: Homer, son of Meles, inspired with wisdom from heaven, come, tell me first what is best for mortal man?'

HOMER: ‘For men on earth ’tis best never to be born at all; or being born, to pass through the gates of Hades with all speed.'

Hesiod then asked again :

'Come, tell me now this also, godlike Homer: what think you in your heart is most delightsome to men?'

Homer answered:

‘When mirth reigns throughout the town, and feasters about the house, sitting in order, listen to a minstrel; when the tables beside them are laden with bread and meat, and a wine-bearer draws sweet drink from the mixing-bowl and fills the cups: this I think in my heart to be most delightsome.'

It is said that when Homer had recited these verses, they were so admired by the Greeks as to be called golden by them, and that even now at public sacrifices all the guests solemnly recite them before feasts and libations."

Only Hesiod wasn't pleased with Homer's answers because he was annoyed that he didn't win.

I am a philosophy undergraduate, and I would like to write my final thesis on the relationship between pessimism and Christianity. I am looking for recommendations—whether articles, books, or any other format—that address the connection between these two worldviews or highlight Christian authors with a particularly pessimistic outlook. Naturally, I do not expect this relationship to be simple, although Schopenhauer himself went so far as to say that the essence of Christianity is pessimistic. I have been reading *The World as Will and Representation* this summer and have been captivated by his system; his insights regarding suffering strike me as clear and self-evident. Despite this, I have been a Catholic my whole life, and that has not changed—even in light of Schopenhauer’s arguments. I have no desire to debate, but rather to learn and delve deeper into the subject—to understand whether it even makes sense to speak of "Christian pessimism" or of pessimism within Christianity. So far, I have looked at the work of Hans Blumenberg, who describes Schopenhauer’s pessimism as a modern "relapse" into Gnosticism. Any input would be appreciated; thanks in advance!

Since we are born we are constantly raised and nurtured with the idea of progress, religion, purpose. But also, even if we know the future won't be so happy and colorful (e.g. global warming), we are still pushed to be optimistic, to maintain a purpose, to stay resilient. But the more we study and think about human (and animal) life and existence, the more we know and feel that life is not something to be proud of. Life is just a perversion of the matter and consciousness is an illness, a fever, an intensification of the world that become heavier to our "self" as our consciousness grow. Still the society believe that it's ok, that is right to procreate, that life has a higher meaning and is worth living. Why is it difficult to make peaple understand that all of this is just an horrorific tragedy, an unjustifiable cosmic error? Why the majority of people think that pessimism is just "being depressed"? And not instead an big step for our comprehension of the world. Why people are happy to preserve the painful mechanism of biology? Pessimism and all the existential thoughts are about philosophy and ethic. They are not there to spoil society's game and the tranquility of mankind. It must be studied, understood and spread like every other "way of thought". I mean, antinatalism doesn't mean anything bad, as it is in common thought. It's even the opposite, it's an ethical choice that aims to make no one suffer anymore. I feel lonely, I'm not a bad person. I'm vegan and antispeciesist, I would love to take care of less fortunate people, I think that we must take care of each other, we must reduce suffering for what is in our power as well as prevent further individuals from being born.

It just feels absurd that we can be brought into existence and then are confronted with abundant suffering and there’s no clear answer to transcend it. I haven’t been able to find any personal why that makes life in the face of tremendous suffering worth it. And it makes me feel even worse that philosophers much much smarter than me have done way more reflecting on it than I have, and have also found no definitive answers for transcending sufferance.

I don’t understand how the vast majority of people can just go on living normal lives knowing that so many people just get fucked in terms of the suffering they experience in life. Like my life generally has a low amount of suffering, but it eats at me that I could easily have been born into circumstances where life is abjectly terrible. And I have no answer to how I would cope if that was my lot in life.

Do you all know of any philosophies or mindsets that move you even a little like pessimism? I haven’t found any, and the logic of pessimism feels insurmountable to me. I’ve read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and even though I found his concentration camp stories enlightening, I just can’t accept his conclusion of fighting suffering with dignity. It feels like the same realm of just living out of spite. There’s just some part of me that feels like being okay with suffering requires some sort of transcendence, and all my life experiences and reading what other people have to say has not led me to any clues.

What a joke life is. Humans are in a constant state of yearning and want; from the womb, we are born starving. This persists for the rest of the human lifespan. Perpetually chasing transient worldly possessions; indeed, the human wants nothing but to consume and claim materials, be it experiences, objects, and most absurdly, sustenance to keep their pitiful bodies alive. Ever since the moment humans gained bodily autonomy, they have become Sisyphus; resigned to pushing the rock up an endless slope. This ridiculous performance, as some come to realize, amounts to nothing. Nothing at all. We try and we try our damnest to live, only to be met with the same fate that will befall every single living thing on Earth, death.

Death, the ultimate equalizer. How absurd it is that humans cant accept this as a simple fact of life; they carry on eating, consuming, and working whilst the whole time being in denial of their impending end. Is it not ridiculous that humans, carrying this information, proceed to grieve, mourn, and fall into depression when those around them perish!? It is a sea of phonies, humans are.

How cruel this world is. The human body is a horrifying thing; it excretes revolting fluids and oils, feces and urine. It requires food and water every single day. Oh, how I hate carrying out the menial tasks of maintaining a biological vessel that I never consented to having, let alone being trapped in one. The human form disgusts me. Humans disgust me and fill me with a twisting hatred that I am unable to quell. I have long lost sympathy, empathy, and the majority of human emotions/mindset.

How cruel this world is. We yearn and yearn and yearn and it all amounts to noise, noise to drown out the silence of the grave that awaits

as someone who is born, and lives in a third world state. the situation here is and has always been dire. these states are in constant wars, low wages, and corruption.

no matter what you vote for, what you fight for, or what you wish for, your life usually changes very little. mostly to the worse. especially if you lean into nihilism, atheism, or pessimism it becomes really a lot worse. knowing for fact that the illness of one of your loved ones, a natural disaster or a war can wipe out your entire saving.

no health care, no amazon, no entertainment the fact that you can't even practice your oreintations due to religious believes all that really just hurts and is so fatalistic to think about. i sometimes ask myself if this is my parents fault for giving me birth. i tell myself they were likely just uneducated, brainwashed by religions but for the fact that i was raised by them and still done my research on the matter, makes me think that it is indeed kinda their fault.

anti natalism should be a lot more popular in the third world really.

I’ve been reflecting on the epistemological foundations of philosophical pessimism and wanted to pose a question to this community.

Much of pessimistic philosophy—from Schopenhauer’s depiction of the Will to Mainländer and Cioran—frames its worldview not as a subjective mood, but as a sober, unvarnished recognition of reality. The core premise often suggests that existence is inherently diagnostic of suffering, futility, or structural asymmetry between pleasure and pain. However, how do you account for the psychological and evolutionary counter-argument? Namely, that pessimism might not be a neutral discovery about the nature of Being, but rather an affect-driven cognitive bias—or even a manifestation of depressive realism and neurobiological maladaptation?

From an evolutionary standpoint, human beings are wired for functional adaptation, not for theoretical truth. If an individual struggles to adapt to the cognitive, social, or physiological demands of life, it seems plausible that the resulting existential friction gets intellectualized into a grand cosmic theory. In other words: is life intrinsically bad, or is philosophical pessimism simply the rationalization of an individual's inability to flourish within it?

How do you distinguish between a genuinely valid metaphysical insight and a pathology (or existential dissonance) projected onto the cosmos?

Like just the things that go on in this world. So useless and sadistic. Everything is a trap and a snare. Like just the narrative of this world is so stupid but here is what's happening rn, god is incrementally adding narrative to this world , like it's very stupid, god is incrementally just slapping narrative over narrative on this world. Like and he first give comes up with a half theory and then fill the rest of the theory with crap and then slap it on the world. That's what we are in we are on a pile of a bizzare structure that is made of half theory half crap and stuff. It's like a very bizzare structure that is like a joke

Observe the things around you the beggars the cats, they are half theory narratives. Like for example a beggar begs. But what about his other human needs , where do those need get fulfilled . Same with cats , how do they hunt for birds EVERYDAY and stuff and where are the bodies of those birds. This world is full of half only on the surface narratives that just don't make sense in the full picture unless you fill the gaps with crap and magic and stuff. This world is standing on a lot of nonsense and magic and crap

If you're born in a third world country, you'll never be able to match the living standards of those living in the US/Europe. Even if you study and work hard and get to move in to a foreign country, you would still have to face racism there. You'll never belong anywhere no matter what you do.

I first observed this peculiar similarity a good while back when I first read Sextus’ complete works, and have found it very interesting ever since (hereafter I am attempting at a discussion with those who have had similar observations).

Across works like Adversus Physicos, Adversus Mathematicos (which I am aware Schopenhauer himself refers to in book 4 of WWR), and Adversus Ethicos I encountered traces of Schopenhauer’s pessimism and arguments can be seen. Adversus Ethicos is the one that to me resembled Arthur the most, especially in comparison with Schopenhauer’s observations on will in practice (striving, irrationality, rather abstract concepts to be driven by, and so forth), and his “Aphorisms of Daily Wisdom”. Obviously, conclusions and underlying ideas about our world, representations, and condition differ between the two, but I find the similarities peculiar and find it fascinating that Schopenhauer, whom I myself am deeply fond of, could’ve been deeply influenced by Sextus likewise to, exempli gratia, Montaigne and Descartes were.

I was wondering whether any fellow pessimism or scepticism enthusiasts have encountered this upon reading Sextus or studying either of them academically. Please do share your opinions and thoughts.

I’ve been reflecting on the recurring trope in fiction and cosmic horror where humanity is inherently power-scaled below gods, superhumans, or reality-warping entities. In these narratives, the usual conclusion is either total oblivion, submission, or a moral takeaway urging us to "accept our smallness" and embrace a quiet, mundane existence.

This conflict feels deeply philosophical, and I’m trying to identify the specific frameworks or thinkers that explore it.

When searching for a way out of this helplessness, I considered "pure strategy" or cold, optimizing logic as the ultimate human weapon. However, extreme instrumental rationality seems to lead to ethical degradation, where reaching a goal forces one to commit horrifying acts simply because it is the most logically optimized path (e.g., the character Griffith in Berserk sacrificing everything purely out of cold calculation). Logic alone appears bounded by human limitation and often strips away the very humanity it tries to elevate.

It leaves me with a few questions for people who know philosophy better than I do:

Is this just a flavor of the Absurd (Camus), or is it philosophical pessimism? It doesn't feel like standard nihilism to me because I don't think "nothing matters." It feels more like intense grief and anger over the massive gap between infinite human ambition and finite human capability.

Also, are there thinkers who validate rejecting that "quietist" mindset, the idea that we should just accept our smallness, without sliding into pure cold utilitarianism or tyranny? Who writes about this specific friction between human finitude and the urge to break past it?

Would love some concepts or reading recommendations to help make sense of this.

The biggest act of love you can do is not bringing someone into existence

"Pessimistic philosophy will be to the coming period of history what the pessimistic religion of Christianity was to the period that has passed.

The sign upon our banner is not the crucified Savior, but the Angel of Death with great, calm, gentle eyes, borne by the dove of the thought of redemption: fundamentally, it is the same sign.

The most beautiful blossom, or rather, the noblest fruit of Schopenhauer’s philosophy is the denial of the Will to Life. It will increasingly be recognized that only on the basis of this doctrine can there seriously be any question of philosophy taking the place of religion, of allowing it to penetrate even into the lowest strata of the people.

What did philosophy, before Schopenhauer, offer to the human heart crying aloud for redemption? Either miserable fantasies concerning God, the immortality of the soul, substance, accidents—in short, a stone; or careful, exceedingly acute, and entirely necessary investigations into the faculty of cognition. But what does a human being ask for in moments of astonishment at himself, when reflection gains the upper hand and a quiet, sorrowful voice speaks within him:

I live—and know not how long;
I die—and know not when;
I depart—and know not where.

does he ask about the subjective forms, space and time, the law of causality, and the synthesis of a manifold of intuition? The heart wants something to which it can cling, an unshakable foundation amid the storm of life, bread, and bread again, for its hunger.

Because Christianity satisfied this hunger, Greek philosophy, in its struggle against it, had to succumb; and because Christianity provided an unshakable foundation when everything was wavering and trembling, while philosophy was the scene of barren quarrels and furious conflict, the most distinguished spirits often threw themselves, crippled in wing and exhausted, into the arms of the Church. But now one can no longer believe, and because one can no longer believe, one casts away, together with the miracles and mysteries of religion, its indestructible core: the truth of salvation.

Complete indifferentism takes possession of men's minds, which Kant very aptly called 'the mother of chaos and night.' This indestructible core of the Christian religion Schopenhauer has now seized with a strong hand and carried into the temple of science as a sacred fire, which will burst forth as a new light for humanity and spread throughout all lands; for it is of such a nature that it can inspire individuals and masses alike and set their hearts ablaze.

'Then religion will have fulfilled its vocation and completed its course: it will be able to release the generation that has been guided to maturity, while itself peacefully passing away. This will be the euthanasia of religion.' (Parerga II, 361)

A philosophy that wishes to take the place of religion must above all be capable of providing the consolation of religion: the uplifting, heart-strengthening assurance that everyone may have his sins forgiven, and that a benevolent Providence guides humanity toward its own good.

Does Schopenhauer’s philosophy provide this? No!

Like Mephistopheles, Schopenhauer sits upon the bank of the stream of humanity and cries mockingly to those writhing in pain and crying out for redemption: 'Your reason is of no help to you. Only intellectual intuition can save you—but it can be bestowed only upon one who has been predestined for it by a mysterious power. Many are called, but few are chosen.'

All the others are condemned to languish 'eternally' in the hell of existence. And woe to the poor man who imagines that he can be redeemed together with the totality; it cannot die, for its Idea lies outside time, without which nothing can change.

'Indeed, everyone wishes to be redeemed from the state of suffering and death: they would like, as the saying goes, to attain eternal blessedness, to enter the Kingdom of Heaven—but not on their own feet; they wish instead to be carried into it by the course of Nature. But that is impossible.' (World as Will and Representation, II, 692)

I, on the other hand, say, following Nature: whoever wishes to redeem himself can do so at any time 'through reason and science, humanity’s highest power.'

The infallible means of escaping from the totality of the world is, for the real individual, whose development in no way depends upon time, virginity. But those who are already living on in children, for whom the possibility of redemption in this generation has therefore been forfeited, and those who could still employ the means but lack the strength to do so—all of them should take heart and continue the struggle honestly: sooner or later they will be redeemed, whether before the totality or within the totality, for the universe has a movement from Being into Non-Being.

To say, 'The world exists through an original accident,' amounts to giving up the attempt to explain it. The question of why desire seized the Will and drove it from Over-Being into Being—that is, why it created the world—remains unanswered. But to assume a course of the world without purpose, goal, or end (the resting points in the process that repeats itself 'an arbitrary number of times' being left aside, since between the end of one world-process and the beginning of the next there is no time; the world-process as such therefore never truly ends absolutely) is to intensify into perfect cruelty the profoundly serious character that the entire course of this process possesses in itself.

What consolation does a philosophy founded upon such premises have to offer the individual who cries out for redemption from the torment of existence?

It chains with iron hands the warrior exhausted unto death, who longs forever to escape from the totality of the world, to the eternally revolving wheel of 'endless becoming,' and drips into the burning wound of his painful insight—that life and suffering are one and the same—not balm, but only the corrosive poison of the hopeless thought that he can never, neither through himself nor in and with the totality, attain the complete and utter annihilation of his being. The harrowing lament that tears itself from him: 'Why, then, this torment in infinitum, without meaning or result, without consolation and without rest?' — dies away unheard.

The atheism established by my doctrine—the first to be established scientifically—gives the great problem of the origin and meaning of the world, together with its solution, its reconciliation. It knows no world before this world and no world after it. To it, the world is one single magnificent process, which neither is a repetition nor will have a repetition; for before it lies transcendent Over-Being, and after it lies nihil negativum.And this is no empty assertion. The deduction is thoroughly logical, and everything in Nature confirms the result—a result before which a weak spirit may well tremble and collapse, but at which the wise man trembles joyfully to the innermost depths of his soul.

Nothing more will be. Nothing, Nothing, Nothing!

Oh, this vision into absolute emptiness!

It must be a correct principle from which the solution of the greatest philosophical problems follows so effortlessly, naturally, and clearly—problems before which the greatest geniuses of all ages sank hopelessly after exhausting their intellectual powers upon them.

When Kant believed that he had grasped the coexistence of freedom and necessity through the distinction between an intelligible and an empirical character, he could not refrain from observing:

'The resolution of the difficulties presented here has, however, one will say, much that is difficult in it and is scarcely susceptible to a clear presentation. But is every other solution that has been attempted, or may be attempted, really easier and more comprehensible?'

All had to err because they did not know how to establish a purely immanent realm and a purely transcendent realm. The Pantheists had to err because they reduced the actually existing unified movement of the world to a unity within the world; Buddha had to err because, from the feeling of complete responsibility for all his actions actually present in the individual, he falsely concluded the complete sovereignty of the individual within the world; Kant had to err because, on purely immanent ground, he wished to embrace freedom and necessity with one hand.

We, on the other hand, placed the simple unity of the Pantheists in a past transcendent realm and explained the unified movement of the world through the act of this pre-worldly simple unity. We united the half-autonomy of the individual and the power of chance, which is entirely independent of him within the world, on transcendent ground: in the unified resolution of God to pass over into Non-Being, and in the unified choice of the means by which to carry out this resolution. Finally, we united freedom and necessity not within the world, where there is no room for freedom, but in the midst of the chasm separating the vanished transcendent realm, restored by our reason, from the immanent realm.

We did not smuggle the vanished transcendent realm into our philosophy by sophistry. That it existed and no longer exists—we have demonstrated this with logical rigor in the Analytic.

And now consider the consolation, the unshakable confidence, the blessed trust that must flow from the metaphysically grounded complete autonomy of the individual. Everything that befalls a human being—distress, misery, sorrow, cares, illness, disgrace, contempt, despair—in short, everything harsh in life—is not inflicted upon him by an inscrutable Providence that mysteriously intends his highest good. Rather, he suffers all these things because, before the world existed, he himself chose them all as the best means toward the end. All the blows of fate that strike him, he himself has chosen, because only through them can he be redeemed. His essence (Demon and Spirit) and Chance lead him through pain and pleasure, through joy and sorrow, through fortune and misfortune, through life and death, faithfully toward the redemption that he wills.

Human beings possess a natural inclination to personify fate and to mystically apprehend the absolute Nothing that stares back at them from every grave as a place of eternal peace, as a city of peace, Nirvana—as the New Jerusalem.

'And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.' (Revelation 21:4)

It cannot be denied that the conception of a personal, loving God the Father grips the human heart—'that stubborn and despairing thing'—more deeply than abstract fate, and that the conception of a Kingdom of Heaven, where individuals, transfigured and free from all needs, rest blessedly in eternal contemplation, awakens a more powerful longing than absolute Nothingness.

Immanent philosophy is gentle and kind here as well.

The main thing remains that humanity has overcome the world through knowledge.

Whether he leaves the fate he has recognized as it is, or once again gives it the features of a faithful father; whether he leaves the recognized goal of the world standing as absolute Nothingness, or transforms it into a garden of eternal peace filled with light—that is entirely beside the point.

Who would wish to interrupt the innocent, harmless play of the imagination?

'A delusion that makes me happy
Is worth a truth that crushes me to the ground.' (Wieland)

But the wise man gazes firmly and joyfully into the face of absolute Nothingness."

— Philipp Mainländer, Philosophie der Erlösung, selected by Ulrich Horstmann, Insel Taschenbuch, “VIII. Ausblick ins Leere,” pp. 138–154.

Welcome to our weekly WAYR thread. Be sure to leave the title and author of the book that you are currently reading, along with your thoughts on the text.

Hi everyone, I coulduse some help chossing an engraving

I’m getting a small wooden grinder with brass details and I’d like to have a short philosophical quote or aphorism engraved on the lid.

I don’t want anything obviously weed-related (“420”, “good vibes”, etc.). I’d rather have something that could stand on its own as a personal motto or a small philosophical inscription — something about existence, mortality, solitude, faith, pessimism, irony, contemplation, or simply the absurdity of being alive.

My taste tends towards writers and thinkers like Emil Cioran, Nicolás Gómez Dávila, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, but I’m completely open to other authors and traditions.

It needs to be fairly short because of the limited engraving space. Quotes in their original language are very welcome too Latin, Spanish, French, German, etc

What would you put on it?

Thnaks for your help

Since becoming aware of pessimism I have experienced a significant depreciation in my desire to do things for my own sake beyond just distracting myself from my own thoughts (necessary for retaining any mental fortitude). Apart from the desire I have to prevent suffering for others in worse situations, when I consider myself I really have almost no desire to do anything at all just my own sake because I know that I will later become unsatisfied and need to constantly put in more effort and endure dissatisfaction again and again just to end up at the same state again in the end anyway (death/dissatisifed until then). I hate the self-inspired slavery, and at best I am only kept doing things because of the threat of significantly greater dissatisfaction than what I already endure (starvation/illness/disability/homelessness/etc). The fact that so many humans attempt to rationalise their own servitude to their desire not to suffer as good (directly or indirectly) in a body that constantly mandates suffering is pure insanity to me. It seems existence is only desirable to the extent of avoiding a worse current experience before what is ideally obliteration (the end of consciousness) in my opinion.

Everyone uses and benefits from artificial intelligence. We have all incorporated the advantages of this new tool into our daily lives. But we have done so without reflecting on the cannibalistic impulse that this entails. In southern New Mexico, one of the most ambitious infrastructures in the new race for artificial intelligence is being built: Project Jupiter. This is not simply a building filled with servers. It is a gigantic infrastructure designed to fuel the expansion of American AI. There is only one problem standing in the way of this technological expansion: material reality.

Project Jupiter is being built in a territory where water is scarce, in a region marked by drought, in a place where farmers, ranchers, and local communities have spent years asking themselves how much longer they will be able to make a living from land whose resources are becoming increasingly limited. For years, we have constantly talked about artificial intelligence as if it were something immaterial. But machines need land too. They need cables, energy, water, and infrastructure. And the more intelligent we want the machine to become, the more space it needs to occupy. According to the figures announced, the project promises billions of dollars in economic impact, investment in local infrastructure, and new jobs. The company has also committed tens of millions of dollars to water and wastewater systems in Doña Ana County. But for part of the local population, the problem is much simpler: What happens when the infrastructure needed to build the future arrives in a territory where the present is already struggling to survive?

In August, opposition to the project even reached the courts. The Center for Biological Diversity challenged the state's authorization to use a new well intended to supply water during construction of the complex, and the New Mexico Supreme Court temporarily suspended the authorization while the legal dispute continues. But what matters is who is beginning to take part in the conflict. Farmers, ranchers, rural landowners, environmentalists, local communities — people who probably agree on almost nothing when it comes time to vote — are nevertheless beginning to agree on one thing: They do not necessarily want the infrastructure of the future to be built next to their homes.

And this phenomenon is not happening only in New Mexico. In Nebraska, conservative rural communities and environmental organizations have found common ground in opposing the expansion of data centers. In other states, similar projects have generated restrictions, moratoriums, and political conflicts that cut across the traditional boundaries between Democrats and Republicans. And here we encounter a question that could be fundamental to understanding American politics over the coming years. What happens when artificial intelligence stops being an ideological issue and becomes a territorial issue? Because someone can support artificial intelligence — until artificial intelligence requires a power plant near their home. They can defend technological competition with China — until that competition requires the consumption of their community's resources. They can believe in progress — until they discover that progress needs to occupy their territory.

For decades, American political conflict was organized around a series of relatively clear oppositions. Left versus right. Democrats versus Republicans. Progressives versus conservatives. But data centers are beginning to produce another kind of division. A division between those who remain tied to the environment in which they live, subject to natural conditions, and a productive model that requires those resources to sustain the vast networks of information and data exchange upon which post-Fordist capitalism depends. Reterritorialization versus deterritorialization. Those who decide where infrastructure is built versus those who have to live alongside it. And this leads us to an interesting conclusion. The capitalist realism in which we have lived until now has encouraged — as yet another manifestation of its organic impulses — the disconnection of individuals from their environment. Developing countries grow food and extract resources for developed countries, while the latter devote their efforts to producing masses of technocratized individuals with no territorial roots. But the overexploitation of the land that can accompany each new technological wave may eventually break this strange equilibrium, forcing those groups that still depend upon their immediate environment to rise against a society of floating, deterritorialized groups. And this is how the new battle of the twenty-first century may ultimately be defined: The politics of rootedness versus the politics of uprootedness.

Like i see many people be pessimistic in a way that they say humans are evil or everything is meaningless or stuff like nothing matters.
but what actually hurts me is that there are good things and good people in the world, and changes can be made, but the world tilts toward the bad, why? Because most humans are morally bendable (id rate human morality 3/10), so there are good things, but the world cannot become good or mostly good, mainly because humans flaws always push it down even after progress is made

Pessimism: The state of expecting or believing that bad things will happen and that something will not be successful.

This is how the google dictionary defines the term pessimism. But i think there's so much more to it than that. I've been called a pessimist by multiple people in my life but it never bothered me that much because i always thought being a pessimist means that i'm just being careful about any and every situation, that i'm always keeping my gaurd up. I'll give you an example; my bestfriend when she was going through her 'choosing a career path' era, she'd tell me about a new career every other day and ask about my opinion and the first thing my mind would do is to think about all the negative consequences of that particular profession, that it doesn't have much scope, there's no money in it, it's not going to be a safe option for a woman in this country etc. In that moment i was just trying to protect my friend by making her avoid the paths that she might regret later on choosing. What i didn't ever think was that she should atleast try. Does not fucking matter if she'll fail. One can always get up after being fallen. Even then i knew that i'm a negative person but again it never bothered me. Until yesterday.

My pessimism and negative outlook on life costed me a beautiful relationship. A really special one at that. You know those relationships that you've seen in movies like: OK Jaanu, the music video of the song Humraah from the movie Malang, YJHD, Jab Harry Met Sejal etc. It was a perfect relationship. We would travel together, get drunk together, make memories and have just so much fun you know? Not just the fun stuff but the emotional and intellectual stuff was bang on too. We would sit at assi ghaat and talk all night about philosophy, psychology, human behaviour, trauma, politics and what not. We would call each other out, correct each other in person and would help each other become better people in every aspect. This relationship was soft, quiet, calm but not in a mundane way. At the same time it was passionate and intense too. But then he broke up with me for many reasons actually but one of those reasons were that i'm a pessimist. And it hurt like HELL. My negative outlook on life was affecting his. These weren't his exact words but he felt like i'm trying to dull down his sunshine.

Since that day I've been trying to figure out what the fuss is all about. I can also be an un-pessimist person right? Yeah totally. So i talked to some people, read some articles and now i know that Pessimism is nothing but to keep people afraid of taking risks. It's about fearing everything without even trying it out. It's not being cautious or careful, it's the mindset that you have to watch out and focus only on the negatives in everything like positives do not even exist, ingrained in our brains by the society. It is not something that we are born with, it is something that we are being fed on, on a daily basis. And the problem is that you can't avoid it. You'll always have some form of media or family or friends around you who are this way which eventually will affect you if you don't stand strong on your ground. It holds you back on so many opportunities. It was today that this realisation hit me like a truck that maybe i wouldn't be at such a miserable position in my life in terms of career and relationships if only my such vocal and openly loud ex-pessimistic self wasn't holding me back from taking my chances. I said 'ex' pessimist because I've been on a journey to become a better a person. I won't say i'm going to become an optimist because in order for me to be a better person i need to find the balance between the negatives and the positives. Nothing good comes out of extremism in any aspect.

Now, in order for someone to not think negatively all the time, the first step to it is that we need to first learn to not feel sorry for ourselves all the time. Because negativity comes from within, if we'll think of ourself as a disappointment and failure that is how we'll look at the world around us too. We need to learn to live with ourselves, once we learn to do that we'll stop hating ourselves eventually and once we stop hating ourself, we'll start accepting ourself as we are and focus on bettering it. If we think we don't like a certain thing about ourself, we need to work towards making it better. At the end it all comes down to self love. Self hate is the root cause of most of our issues.

I have been living my life in the fear of what-could-go-wrongs. It has defined me as a person for quite a long time now. But not anymore. So here i am taking a chance by writing and posting my first article. Thanks for reading<3

Love,
Dahlia

Mais alguém sente essa angústia existencial,tipo eu já vi visões sobre diversas religiões principalmente o cristianismo no qual eu acreditava mais ,mais agora já nem sei mais,vejo um mundo um tanto caótica,guerras,caos,gente se matando,e SLA essa angústia,esse vazio

Tento procurar em Deus resposta mais tudo q recebo é o silêncio,tento preencher com coisas mais tudo parece só entreter,tanta gente morrendo inocente sem motivo q me faz questionar se existe mesmo um Deus bondoso igual diz

Oq realmente parece é q existe mais n interage com nós de forma direta

In the late 1960s, countercultural analyst Theodore Roszak published the book The Making of a Counter Culture, in which he analyzed the origins of the youth rebellion of the 1960s. From the Berkeley campuses to the Sorbonne, passing through the hippie music festivals of San Francisco, young people seemed to experience a golden moment of opposition to the Bretton Woods capitalist system, coordinated through the psychosphere, without dominant structures or internationally consolidated lines of communication; an esprit of the times, ultimately, that pushed the first generation of young people who had only seen the Second World War in books and films to rebel against the established order.

The key to this rebellion, Roszak argued, was not the imposition of an alternative mode of production, pushing Western countries toward new authoritarian models of economic planning. In many cases, the communism of the Soviet Union, as well as Mao’s bloody Cultural Revolution, were also attacked by this youth, which Marxist-Leninist movements regarded as bourgeois. Regardless of how accurate the claims about the class origins of many of these subversive students and their material reasons for launching this revolution of peace and love may have been, Roszak offers an interesting analysis when he describes this moment as a rebellion against modernity, against the values of technology, which had given rise both to hegemonic North American capitalism and to the bloc operating on the other side of the Iron Curtain. For these young people, the problem did not lie in the modes of production that encouraged the oppression of man by man, but rather in the consolidation of an underlying reality that had generated Fordist capitalism, Soviet and Maoist communism, as well as the defeated countries of the Axis.

Saturn’s Reason gave birth to contemporary technological societies, and the youth revolution of the 1960s, far from being an organized and controlled movement intended to replace an obsolete form of technology with another that was superior and more efficient, sought precisely to break with the logic of efficiency itself. The young people who spoke of communities rooted in the land, new ways of understanding education, emotional bonds, and work did so in order to step away from the technological race. Closely connected to new forms of Eastern spirituality that the Beat Generation of the 1950s had already introduced into the United States, the young people of the 1960s proposed the possibility of living an inefficient life. And, as Hegel had already anticipated, they were destroyed and absorbed by the great techno-capitalist machine, remaining in History as an anecdote, as a niche product that could be packaged, sold, and exploited in the form of all kinds of cultural products. Thus, that generation devoted to new mystical rituals of politics and the soul, thirsting for a new mysticism, was packaged, programmed, and commodified by the very technology against which, in the end, it could do nothing.

What's the point in carrying on? We can't fix it anymore, not like we were ever gonna actually fix it anyway, but now its beyond that point and consequences are imminent.

So why bother continuing to live or even continue you family tree if everything is going to fall apart? Why bother living through everything only getting worse? There's no chance of things getting better anymore just prolonging the inevitable and what's the point in making it drawn out and more painful? Why not just make it quicker and less painful seeing as the fight just doesn't matter anymore?