Pendulum of Suffering – The Universe As Will: Schopenhauer’s Pessimism

Rust’ denies any affiliation (other than for the purpose of mere meditation), and asserts that he is in philosophical terms “what’s called a pessimist”. Understandably, many people, including Martin himself, upon hearing this term for the first time, were inclined to ask ‘What’s that?’ The answer is at first evasive: “That means i’m bad at parties” but with a little more non-verbal coercion from Martin, Rust spills out his world view:

 

“I believe human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labour under the illusion of having a self. The secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody. I think the honourable thing for our species to do is deny our programming: stop reproducing. Walk hand in hand into extinction. One last midnight, brothers and sisters, opting out of a raw deal”  Rustin Cohle, Episode 1: The Long Bright Dark.

“pessimistic.” But if a pessimist is someone who:

(1) asserts that existence is a mistake

(2) that there is no meaning or purpose to human existence

(3) that the best thing for humans is not to exist

(4) the next best is to obtain a state of being in which the world becomes nothing

(5) life is essentially suffering and suffering is evil

(6) and this is the worst of all possible worlds

“The ability to contemplate the past and anticipate the future makes humans subject to new forms of suffering. Humans can be haunted by the past and have feelings of remorse and regret”

Schopenhauer ranked sexual love as humans’ strongest and most active drive. It promises delight, but it ultimately brings despair. Satisfying the sex drive was the goal of almost all human effort, he said, and it claims half the powers of human thought. Sex confuses even the greatest minds, and it interferes with humans’ most serious occupations, disrupting the activities of politicians and intruding in the investigations of scholars. Under the power of sexual love, humans engage in fights with their friends and family, breaking the ties of the strongest and most valuable relations.

To satisfy their sexual urges people will sacrifice their wealth, health, social position, and sometimes even their lives. Yet sex is the means by which the will continuously affirms itself. For this reason he regarded lovers as the traitors who perpetuate the wretchedness of life, because they produce new individuals to be thrown into this world of suffering, despair, and death.

Nietzsche claimed he had suffered through the sickness of Schopenhauer’s “romantic pessimism” and overcame it by turning his own will to health into a philosophy of life, one strong enough to embrace life, despite the fact that life is essentially suffering. So in opposition to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche claimed that his philosophy was a pessimism of strength, a world view that said yes to life in full consciousness of what is terrible and questionable about existence, doing so in full consciousness of all the miserable, evil, ugly, and absurd. Thus Nietzsche viewed his “Dionysian” perspective as saying “yes” to life in contrast to Schopenhauer’s “no’.

---

Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy challenges our conviction that life is inherently good. Life, Schopenhauer argues, is actually inherently bad. We may occasionally have good moments, but those are brief exceptions to the rule of otherwise constant suffering.

The Argument

At some point in your childhood, there was probably some toy, video game, or other item that you wanted more than anything else in the world. If you were lucky, you eventually got it. After a few days, though, that object seemed to lose the luster that it had before you owned it. Pretty soon, something else caught your eye, and the cycle repeated itself. Schopenhauer felt that this is an accurate description of all existence. We want to own things and achieve certain goals; in other words, we have a will. So, we work and struggle to own those things and achieve those goals, but, shortly after we succeed, the fun wears off. Getting a perfect score on the SAT may make you feel great for a few days, but pretty soon, you’re going to forget about it, even though you may have spent months or years suffering as you studied and prepared for the test.

Your choices, then, are either struggling or boredom, both of which result in suffering. Schopenhauer used the analogy of a pendulum swinging back and forth, going between struggle and boredom. There are occasional moments of genuine happiness, but those are brief in comparison to the extensive time spent either struggling or bored. You waited weeks for the toy, but lost interest after a few days. You spent months studying for the SAT, but now it just doesn’t seem to matter that you aced the test. In each instance, the cycle repeats itself: struggle, momentary happiness, boredom.

Maybe you can take some comfort knowing that this is only how humans are. Even if we’re condemned to this pendulum of suffering, the rest of the universe is still beautiful and admirable, right? Wrong. Not only are humans built this way, but so is all of reality.

The only analogy we humans have for understanding “force” is “will,” or, that part of us which wants and desires things. The idea of force is, Schopenhauer believes, literally inconceivable to us without the idea of will. When we see a rock breaking a window, the only way we can make sense of the interaction between forces is if we think of them like ourselves. The rock “wants” to go through the window, and the window “wants” to stop it. The two collide, and the rock wins. If everything is force, and force is will, then everything is will. And, as established above, to will is to suffer. Therefore, everything is suffering.

---