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People Do Not Want to Be Alive: Change My Mind
“Most people seem to just want to get on with it.” Or so a friend advised me when I complained about how most people do not want to really understand something, or stand up to do the right thing in the face of adversity.
And he has a point. Most people I know want a low-challenge education, an easy marriage, easy children (if any at all), a low-risk career, a safe retirement, and then an easy death. They want to be told what to do, and they are content to follow instructions, even if those instructions are, on their face, laughably irrational and senseless. (e.g. TSA, Covid, etc.)
This tells me that most people are just trying to pass through this world as painlessly as possible. That means they don’t really want to be alive at all.
What a depressing thought.
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I agree. I’m here to find a community that thinks otherwise and doesn’t accept just being depressed and living with it.
You and I may agree on 1000 things and disagree on 42, but we both have the same goal.
Thanks for explaining why I avoid most people. The ignorance, complacency, and docility are too much to countenance.
Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap.
Why should people be different? It’s the 10% that make life interesting.
I think you want to be alive. I think most of the people on this site want to be alive. I know some people who want to be alive to continue their joy in grieving others, but these very, very broad statements invite endless speculation about niche cases. Had a conversation with a workmate today about “The Boys”. She wasn’t sure why she was watching it. I suggested the Criterion Channel. As toxic as this culture is, from Fat Thor to reality television to the cable news drumbeat of doom. My own mother, after a lifetime of dismissing anything any politician past or present had to say, started citing Joe Scarborough as a credible source. That maggot has a lot to answer for. Illness made her the screen captive she had never countenanced before, through the eyes comes the darkness.
I think the newsreaders love life, and their massive incomes and greater variety of sexual adventures that come with Biden’s 10-fold plus increase in human trafficking. And send us your children, we have great opportunities for them, he says. Yeah, that’s well documented thanks to Hunter. Just read the script and all of the seedy underside of society is theirs to experience. There is an endless train of Epsteins, and they want to live, too.
Ironically, the karens who chase the maskless, hectoring, on nature trails and rock climbs, want to live, too. They are just damaged from trusting the wicked. Like Eve.
There are plenty who meet your criteria, and when I encounter them I try to reach out and help them out of the hole. Others are just stuck in the web of lies from an evil government. Pick them up, dust them off, wipe the scales from their eyes, and let them work and prosper. They will cleave their bonds asunder and rise again as the worst nightmare of their victimizers.
That day is coming. They know it as they tremble behind their walls. Ladders are coming.
Happy thought. There are always more of us than there are of them. They will always fear us, and we should make sure that they continue to fear us.
That gives US more power.
Though it may seem like carrying coal to Newcastle, I offer:
Joel,
Thanks for this wonderful verse; I don’t remember it.
I found out it is from Deuteronomy 30:19.
I have learned in life not to make judgements about the inner lives of people based on their actions. People pick their battles. I would agree that most people do not want perpetual conflict and they like some order. So sometimes we decide not to fight city hall (note that I put myself with the masses). But not always.
I agree that people seem to be as you describe. And my efforts to increase civic engagement in my own community often left me frustrated with my fellow human beings. “What does it take to get people to stop what they are doing and help make things better?” :-) But I don’t think that’s the whole picture.
A few winters ago, I watched some of the Ken Burns documentaries from the Depression and World War II. The programs are selling pieces for the Democrats, :-), but I enjoyed seeing the original footage from those eras. Fascinating to see it for myself, not through someone else’s eyes. What jumped out at me was that people were depressed in the 1930s. You could see it in their posture and facial expressions. But when America mobilized for World War II, it was obvious that people suddenly found a purpose. They had energy and direction. One of the things that really impressed me, that I hadn’t really thought about before, was the tremendous amount of education that occurred during the mobilization period. I couldn’t help thinking that people working together on the war effort inspired the GI bill: There but for the grace of a college degree, my buddy would be a teacher or a lawyer or a doctor. He’s really smart.
Then there’s the effects of socialism. It is smothering. And it is pervasive. And getting worse. I loved the Trump years. Everyone’s regulatory load was a little lighter.
I read a wonderful story in the Atlantic that might restore your faith in people: “China’s Gilded Age.” The CCP lifted its foot off the backs of the Chinese people ever so slightly, but even that tiny bit of relief created tremendous wealth for individuals and some measure of happiness.
If people are just going along with things, it’s either because they actually believe the things, or they have obligations that prevent them from arguing or resisting. People’s obligations affect their behavior enormously. And I think that’s a good thing about people. :-)
You sound like Lucifer when I met him in Colorado.
Was it at a crossroads? Please tell me you scammed him.
What is the argument that underlies this conclusion? I don’t think that it follows, but the proposition seems to be:
If you want to avoid pain, then you don’t want to be alive.
Do you believe that this is true? I don’t, but I don’t know how I could possibly talk you out of it, if you believe it.
Perhaps I misunderstand your argument.
How about if the first sentence is (more or less) true but the second sentence is not? That’s about where I am in life. I disagree that this means I don’t want to be alive, but I’ll admit to a certain low-level ennui.
Apparently it was Mammon who likes blues music. Also, Robert Johnson was a musical genius before Mammon gave him the ability play any instrument.
I think that many people choose a life that takes them along the most care-free route. They will get plenty of challenges whether they seek them or not. I know lots of people who are satisfied to just get by; they can’t imagine why people would live any other kind of life.
But I think that is their choice. They are not driven by a desire to serve G-d or serve others. They probably just want to make sure that they can feed, clothe and house their families. I don’t think that suggests that they don’t want to be alive, though. I know someone who thought, after he retired, that he would lead an ideal life if he could just not have to work. Golfing was on his agenda. He ended up dying of cancer, but he did realize his dream.
Folks want to be alive and enjoy life. They pay attention to and care about different things and different people with different enthusiasms and energy. The principle difference between today and when I was a young professional, over 50 years ago, is the concentration of power in government and giant companies who benefit from government. They don’t know that what they’re doing is going to destroy the country and the economy. They’re probably no more rotten than the rest of us but they have power and use it, the way we all do, to serve their own interests and the few folks they care about. Our founders knew this and set us up to avoid the natural implications of human nature. Ordinary folks who don’t pay a lot of attention and don’t pursue life and knowledge with vigor, use to live in a system run by vigorous folks bottom up. Now they live in a country that is run by vigorous people in a top down place. The difference is that top down concentrates and eventually dies. That will happened very rapidly in the US as we’re much to big and diverse to be run top down.
Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the anticipation of a better world after death.
Just to purposely misconstrue, there are some deaths that would certainly make for a better world.
I doubt that this is true. There are many more of them than there are of us. Maybe in the U.S. it is close due to what it took to get this culture started and the types of folks that were willing to get here but genetics took over after that. Most of the progeny of those founders were just like most humans in most cultures throughout the ages. Most humans seek the path of least resistance.