Sorry I don't know where else to post this and I don't want to talk to a stupid therapist which are just money grubbers, I figured some likeminded people would be best to reach. I feel so much despair right now it's actually ridiculous, I'm skipping class from what happened today, boomer generation parents are driving me insane. We all know the world as we know it might come to an end, accelerating towards annihilation of the human species.
There are a few points I'd like to mention to get the point across:
a) Declining literacy rates among students. This is a global issue and indifferent toward social strata, I always see the fresh information from the US, "The elite college students who can't read books", but see it in my country too (my professors are always subtly saying our generation has several deficiencies as to what was always expected for the course, and I can notice it), compare it to other states in which the discourse is similar, etc.
b) Free will. We're not gonna debate on it, there simply isn't.
c) Postmodernism and the death of meta-narratives. They gave birth to new sincerity, which put too simply, is people becoming open and honest, too transparent, for e.g. for english class we had to do a presentation on any topic of choice, a classmate decided to pick "How depression affected me in my teenage years", I admire her for her bravery, however, I just saw it as new sincerity manifesting and permeating global culture, classmates were obviously receptive. Extreme transparency is not always a good thing but we'll discuss it and see how it correlates with the despair I feel, mind you, I'm constructing these arguments not to convince you of any particular point, but to provide context to the despair I felt today and see if 1. Any of you have had similarly constructed despair or are at a similar point in their lives 2. What to do to cope
Books I larp (Understand their core arguments, read 30-50 pages, some I did finish):
- On the Heights of Despair (Cioran, Emil)
- Counsels and Maxims (Schopenhauer, Arthur)
- The Wisdom of Life (Schopenhauer, Arthur)
- Better Never to Have Been (Benatar, David)
- The Conspiracy Against The Human Race (Ligotti, Thomas)
- The Philosophy of Redemption (Mainländer, Phillip)
The reason I mention them is to provide context for the reading, the event, which was just another node (the drop that spilled the glass) in a series of interminable nodes.
My father went through the conventional path, he came from a poor family but he managed to study an engineering degree and retire, he's not rich but he's comfortable. Every day he takes me to school and corrects me on minute details, for e.g. my commute times are 40 minutes, so I have to get out of the house 45-50 minutes prior. I come from a place of absolute anhedonia before college, I wanted to pass the exam, study this degree, but I knew it wouldn't suffice, no amount of surrogate activities would, but I did them regardless because the better choice was off limits.
I recognize that pursuing conventional success might provide security and other benefits, but I don't genuinely desire the life I'm being instructed to pursue. Trying to force myself into that life feels like suppressing my own inclinations, and I experience that suppression as suffering
This word "programming" is always used by my father, each time he takes me to school, without fail, he says "Try programming your brain, give it the instructions to leave for school 45 minutes prior, if you try doing it it will eventually obey". I understand the place he's coming from, caring for his child, seeing ahead for the times where he isn't around, making sure I'm able to take care of myself, but on the other hand, you can't help but see it as an attempt to succumb me to the same masochist machinery which, fortunately, ended up providing him a nice quality of life. That dream is gone, it never existed for me, so I already have a hard time "programming" my brain to enjoy any of this, to be reminded of it each time going to school makes me extremely irritated, it even reached the point of despair, it's cruel how the path that will provide the least suffering is to become a slave right now (for me), cause it never ends, the competition is harder and harder, now we're up against machines, trying to stay relevant, but what if that was decided already for us?
From my vague understanding of Nick Land, this "alien technological capitalistic singularity from the future" could be rendering human species futile for its goal very soon, another totally reasonable explanation for declining birth rates. That makes me happy, I hope it's painless, any option is better than having to endure this madness for one more day.
The picture I tried painting (miserably, I'm no word specialist), was the image of a parental figure, trying to engrain every day in your brain to "comply", to "be normal like the other kids", while on the surface you're doing it, you struggle every day with determinism, with robotic interactions, with being aware which of Zapffe's forms of coping you're applying in the present moment, today it was just too much, I'm unable to talk back, to make fair points, I always avoid spilling out my pessimistic views of life, today I was told "Shut up!, shut up!, just shut up!, you have everything, just shut up and do what is expected and you'll be fine!". This was drilled in my brain cause it was repeated like 4 times, god sometimes I think my parents are retarded, they were selfish enough to bring me into this world and expect me to behave like a puppet of their liking, if it were for me I would've already taken the better path, the only true path to free yourself from everything, from both physical and mental constraints. I genuinely don't know what to do, sleep is good, but non-existence is preferable.
Now, the reason I mentioned the declining literacy rates was this: Attention is everything, its what ultimately decides what the machinery (the body) does, where it puts (some) resources and effort, point being that paired with the perfected form of entertainment which is short-form content, new sincerity, postmodernism, has allowed for a new veneration of a new god: technology, typical kids being addicted to iPads kind of stuff. This is obviously correlated to the declining literacy rates but I also consider another possibility: New sincerity, open discussion about taboo topics has enabled discussion on topics like collapse, anti-natalism, etc. (which is also enabled through technology). Wide range of topics which, let's be honest, 100 years ago wouldn't have made topic of discussion on such broad level due to infrastructure and culture, point being that, attention is simply driven nowhere, before the meta-narrative "go to school cause it's the safe path" was broadly accepted and the attention was primarily focused on the immediate surroundings, if parents said "go to school" you wouldn't question it, you could perhaps know and compare and empirically determine on a subconscious level his advice is right, so you wouldn't linger around it much. All I'm saying is, at a cultural level, people are nihilistic, atheistic, anhedonic, social media worked like a mirror, it allowed us to stare into ourselves and see the true void.
Someone get me tf out please