Philosophy prevents me from getting job, what are my options?

[enamdar]

Ok so I know on a Darwinian level its simple. Humans are just selfish-gene survival machines designed to ensure that chemical information in DNA survives and is self-replicated.
If I don't get a job, I don't eat, and I'm a malfunctioning program. The thing is sometime along the Darwinian process, critical thinking proved beneficial for one ape over the other. And for 99% of the population it is a pure benefit to the gene's goals. In my case though the monster has turned on the frankenstein creator. I'm just not motivated to work in 2009 USA. I'd rather just mooch of my parents as long as possible and after that the deleuge. Why affirm existence?

Anyone have info about living in Info about living in an insane asylum or psychiatric ward?

I don't really want to be treated, I just want to be commited to one, and live out my life there.

Seriously, does anyone have any real advice on how I can just drop out of society and the rat race? Its not healthy for me. And keeping a malcontent like me among society can't be good for society either. For my own good and society's I just need to be isolated from my "fellow" humans. they will only harm me, and I will only harm them. Thats what the Lutheran Kierkegaard thinks the Catholics got right and the Protestants are missing. The monasteries were a safety valve that allowed people antagonistic to this world, to escape it without disrupting the system. We really don't have that in our age, other than the "choice" to starve on the street, which is where I'm headed. There really is no safety valve or escape hatch. I don't know maybe there are some deserted islands out there in the Pacific, where I could literally be a Robinson Crusoe. Probably not realistic though. Well if those islands exists, I suppose its possible I could somehow get there with a few thousand dollars. I probably wouldn't last long in the wild. But nature is a less cruel enemy than man. Nature will kill me but not enslave me. Or being a hermit somehow, but that takes capital. I just need to get
away from it all. I reject all social relations. I never want to see another human again. The very sight and smell of them repulses me. I've really lost touch. I just don't get humans. I used to think I did. But the more I study them, the less I understand them. Or maybe I understand them empirically, I know what they actually do and on an intellectual scientific level I can understand their motivations partially. But I can't get inside their heads. Their endless cruelty just escapes me.
I mean I guess part of it is the Hegelian recognition, the master must enslave to be recognized. And Nieztche elaborated on it as the will to power. And you can try and make it scientific by just transmitting the Will to Gene. The human fascination and lust for cruelty just escapes me. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that is what you need to survive, and I'm just a Darwinian miscarriage. Or maybe I have too much of Freud's superego. I've internalized too much of what society SAYS is good and become that. In that sense I am the society I hate so much- personified.
I'm the materialization of the spiritual imagination of society. I'm the Feurbachian God made flesh. I can understand the mind of God, which is the spirtitualization of society, more clearly than that of man. The regret at what man could have been and what he actually is before the flood. I suppose the God's eye view of the universe, is a curse and burden to us worm, dust, dirt.

I belong in solitary confinement. The prison population of course is the embodiment and hyperdistortion of man's will to power, although I would say the difference with the general population is only quantitative in nature. So obviously prison itself is no utopia. But solitary confinement in the "hole" would be my paradise. To be free from all human contact and all activity. To just sit in an empty cell 24 hours a day. And to have guards slide in the food. It has come to the point where my only conception of freedom is liberty from humanity. And so freedom becomes a prison cell. IDK, I guess at the rate I'm going I will probably end up in an insane asulym believing I'm Napoleon Bonaparte. As long as I make the leap of faith and truly believe I'm the Emperor, then nothing can imprison me. The insane asulym is in its own way a utopia, and it beats the streets. It is kind of like Plato's Republic. With the Golden Guardians. Maybe I will memorize Napoleon's memoirs and not let anyone convince me that I'm not Bonaparte. What could be a better life than living in Plato's Republic convinced you are the Emperor.

I think for my personality relative isolation would be far worse than total isolation. I'm a spiteful resentful person who can not bear having my social betters above me. I'm in a period of relative isolation now having dropped of school and not seeking a job. Just living off my money which should last .5 to 1 year. I was friendly and jovial with my housemates at first, but now I try to avoid seeing them. The thing about my depression and need for social isolation, is it stems more from existential metaphysics than anything personal. So I'm basically getting a taste of what living on a fixed income would be like now. And the USA has one of the worst welfare states in the world, we love the struggle to the death.

I'm thinking of committing myself, but not being cured. In a way it is utopian. Like Plato's Republic being watched over by authoritarian all-powerful guardians who are trying to fix you. There is complete equality among inmates, all your needs are met without work, and no private property. The trade of security for freedom. But that is the nature of utopia, nearly all since Plato's time have acknowledge the need for both the sacrifice of individuality and freedom, and a strong authoritarian bureaucracy. That is the type of power the asylum has over you, their power is institutionalized and bureaucratic like in a utopia. There is the loss of the human element. It is mechanical machine like. But it is precisely the human element of subordination, domination, and power that makes it so humiliating and unbearable. I would prefer to be a patient over an employee. A prison can be a utopia. Bentham's utopia is designed as the perfect prison system. And of course the mental institution itself is the petproject of a plethora of progressive enlightenment reformers overcoming the dark of superstition with the light of science. It is itself a utopian project.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Get a puppy. That would cheer you up. And stop reading existential philosophy. It is useless in regard to puppies.

 

[user43770]

Get a puppy. That would cheer you up. And stop reading existential philosophy. It is useless in regard to puppies.

Definitely useless in regard to puppies.


enamdar, you should pick up fishing as a hobby. Also: drink beer.

 

[plkachu_69]

Dude you really should be admitted to a sanitarium.

 

[Luthor Rex]

I've read philosophy since I was in high school. It never kept me from getting a job.

The real problem is you're looking for a reason outside of yourself for being nuts. Take your own advise and get professional mental help.

 

[Wiesman44]

I had a tough time comprehending most of what you're saying. You've got quite the vocabulary. Why don't u write a book and reap the profits ?

 

[speakeasy]

This is what happens when people become Philosophy majors.

 

[Don Israel]

I agree with some you points. However, do you have any idea what mooching off your parents will do to you self-esteem, your views of self-worth or even your success with girls?

So what if you see the flaws of capitalism, religion or anything else?
Existentialism defeats it's own purpose if you decide to not look after yourself to an acceptable since taking care of yourself is what existence is about : reasonable contentment of all aspects of your life, and genuine happiness (none of that fake smile crap, although some DO use fake smiles to get girls ).

I don't like this rat race either, it's s*** - But I use my views to motivate me in not losing the race, I ain't goin down the bottom at the expense of the 'powerful'.




.

 

[theunflushables]

You're not having a metaphysical crisis, you're just a lazy sod who has decided instead of blaming yourself for your sh1t situation to blame society. Drop the megalomania and sort yourself out.

 

[WhitePimp]

I didn't read all that sh!t, but some part deep down wonders how freeing and liberating it must be in a sense to be homeless. You are not accountable to anyone anymore, have no responsibilities, no bills, etc. Unfortunately you have to eat garbage and sleep in filth, but I wonder if there's a homeless guy on a beach somewhere in Belize just living by the ocean loving his freedom.

[/insanity]

 

[wolf116]

If you like philosophy so much why don't you study that further so you can write papers and teach it in exchange for money? Then you can sit in your apartment, pay for people to look after you and think about nihilism for the rest of your life in your utopia without forced drugs and prison bars.

It's strange that you seem to have given up on any desire of female contact after one post. University life will help with that if you're still interested.

 

[Alle_Gory]

And how did you get to such radical decisions?

Why do you feel you need to be committed to an asylum?

I'm also curious how you see yourself. Tell me more. I'm trying to understand what you're trying to say.

 

[Dust 2 Dust]

If you like philosophy so much why don't you study that further so you can write papers and teach it in exchange for money? Then you can sit in your apartment, pay for people to look after you and think about nihilism for the rest of your life in your utopia without forced drugs and prison bars.

Best advice so far. Get a degree and then you can live and preach from an ivory tower on campus somewhere.

 

[enamdar]

Well I didn't graduate college, I just stopped going just short of graduation, and got straight Fs for the semester. I'm currently living on my own burning through my savings. I'm not supported by my folks except to the extent that a large part of my saving came from them originally. I suppose its a game of chicken. I'm just not going to act from any self-preservation. I'm not willing to take conscious action to struggle in the Darwinian struggle for existence and reproduction. Of course females prefer men with a job, and so-called independence. (Although I enjoy the maximum possible independence short of Walden, my only master is the ticking clock, so perhaps "independence" is not the admired trait afterall?) It is pointless to begrudge the mechanical genetic programming of Dawkin's survival machines. The ape-rapist best able to secure resources passes on its genes. There is nothing "conscious" about it. It is simply a tendency most likely to be preserve. If one is to be anthropomorphic one can call such behavior "cruel" or "sadistic", but it is simply a natural tendency to be preserved, even in humans. As Hume said one can not get ought from is. At first I was mystified by the human obsession with sex. For a long while I took a Calvinistic Puritan view that valued the reproductive values of sex against pleasure. Only a biological view, that it was indeed the genetic motive itself that produced such sex-cruelty made it comprehensible to me. So I'm pretty dismissive of the idea that a girlfriend offers any solution to metaphysical despair. Although I understand the genetic origins of such reasoning.

Which is insecurity, employment under the at-will principle which means I can be fired for any reason whatsoever, including doing anything whatsoever, including doing too good a job, filing a complaint, being a Dolphins fan, any reason whatsoever so long as it is not sexual or racial. That is independence? That is the definition of dependence, living at the whim of a master. Now the only thing that makes Choice A free, is Choice B, the option to opt out. But how real is Choice B? This all thread is about Choice B, and not one considers it very real. My postmodernist epistemology is that power is truth. So without making any attempt to find things as they objectively are, I would agree with the truth of power, that the free-market serves DNA. This is what the sociobiologists like Dawkins, Pinkard, Wilson, and Red Queen assume. Of course in the workplace it is precisely the primordial DNA of the caveape-rapist's sadism that is allowed to assume its natural form. Considering the cruelty inherent in man's DNA, it is amazing that for so many centuries man was able to mask his demonism under such heavenly rhetoric. Now the mask is thrown off. We have the most cynical rhetoric of any generation in history, yet in-spite of ourselves this is perhaps the gentlest time in history. Perhaps we slander ourselves with all the chest-pounding of how proud this age is of its cruelty and sadism. If human nature DNA is what Matt Ridley's Red Queen says it is, then Levin is of course right in saying that our current age is most in line with DNA having stripped away all beautiful noble lies. Why did man bother to come up with noble lies? In our current age, in what little remnants that remain, it is clear that it serves simply as a supplement to physicalist hedonism, another pleasure to be enjoyed. IS that the same purpose it served throughout history? Perhaps. Darwinian economist, Veblen showed how religion is a form of atavistic tribal hierarchy used to demonstrate status. If Veblen is right about religion it could also serve as the Darwinian-sadistic basis of all forms of virtue. BUT that does not mean there are no independent praiseworthy acts of virtue. Philosophy is also a creation of the selfish-gene and yet it can turn against is creator.

Again there is no reason to challenge the empirical world. And what the biggest ape says is "truth" is truth. All I can do is in Kierkegaard's way ask where is the role of the concrete individual in this grand scheme? The values of this society are not ones that contribute to a fulfilling life. They subject me to far more torment, than nature would. It maybe that society alone is what keeps me alive. That I'm simply not physically adapted to the Robinson Crusoe life. In fact I have no doubt that short of a Garden of Eden, a Crusoe life for me would be short, nasty and brutish. But what pain would I know? Hunger, thirst, disease, injury. And yet no wild lion, no virus, no storm may enslave me, dominate me, impose hierarchy. In this the Crusoe life is absolute freedom. And to the extent that I enjoy that life in my self-made prison of 4-walls, I'm free. Humans are biological, and biology is a pretty dark thing if Matt Ridley is right. For my part if escape and isolation is the best I can hope for, so be it. It can't last long, it must lead to my destruction. My parents can support me for a while, and I feel that burden is upon them for forcing me into an unchosen birth and life. But I have no illusions that that can last indefinitely. Perhaps an insane asylum. All my basic needs would be met without work, a prison cell is not much different than where I'm now. And a combination of bad behavior and a retreat into delusion, could perhaps secure me a great degree of isolation.

 

[bigjohnson]

Go someplace less luxurious than the USA, where you don't have so much time to jack off mentally. I suggest a long stay in Cambodia. Your savings will go further and you won't get a hand out once you become terminal.


PS - Attention *****.

 

[Outsider]

Okay Jean-Jacques Roussseau...

Do you really think Plato's Republic is possible? Do you really believe that people will believe they are made from gold or silver? It's all nonsense and some people believe that Plato on a esoteric level is trying to say this. The Noble Lie is pish. Res Publica is non-sense. And I'm sure if you've read The Politics and Nichomechian Ethics you'll see Aristotle gives a devastating critique of Plato's thoughts from the Republic.

 

[enamdar]

Okay Jean-Jacques Roussseau...

Do you really think Plato's Republic is possible? Do you really believe that people will believe they are made from gold or silver? It's all nonsense and some people believe that Plato on a esoteric level is trying to say this. The Noble Lie is pish. Res Publica is non-sense. And I'm sure if you've read The Politics and Nichomechian Ethics you'll see Aristotle gives a devastating critique of Plato's thoughts from the Republic.

Well I remain agnostic neutral on whether or not Plato's Republic possibility is "actually" true. But power decides truths. And the worldview of power in 2009 USA would say that any utopian schemes are against human nature. Like I said, I accept what power says is true is true. Which is why my earlier posts are largely focused on a pessimistic biological theory of human nature and the despair and misanthropy it causes in me.

In my reference to Plato's Republic I was referring metaphorically to a mental institution. In the sense that freedom is sacrificed absolutely in exchange for the meeting of basic needs without work, harmony and the steady stasis. And to the extent that the doctors acts as "golden guardians", trying to "cure" those they are above. In this sense I think a case can be made that mental institutions are Platonic Res Publicas in miniature.

 

[Outsider]

Don't you see that your own self-denial is your own will to power.

 

[enamdar]

Don't you see that your own self-denial is your own will to power.

Well, if all possible actions are manifestations of the will to power then the term becomes meaningless. I'm suffering greatly from Heidegger's sense of flungness. We are just flung into life, not in a time and place of our choosing. We are never given the choice is this the existence I wish to accept? We are just flung in. And when someone like me stops and starts questioning the flungness, I'm idiotic. Why is the rest of the world so ok, with the world they are thrown into? I dont think self-consciousness is very useful for the selfish gene. If you just had rationality the ability to calculate like a computer, then sure logic gives an ape an advantage. But what good is sense of self? Well I suppose it serves the great majority very well. Self gives rise to the sense of pride in sadism, which seems to be very useful to reproduction. The drive for domination is accelerated by self. So I guess it makes sense. But the possibility is there for the universal self to revolt against the particular self. But I guess it is so rare that genetics can afford it and simply weed out the few malcontents that malfunction the program.

Why am I the crazy one? Is it irrational to think out why one acts? Why do we romanticize living in the moment, embracing life? The gene again. But thats a tautology again. Can we not for a moment think outside the box of genetic survival-reproduction machines? I have no real drive to pursue sensual pleasure. Pleasure is the bait life offers. If the bait holds no appeal, then the decision to embrace life becomes a truly logical decision. When the choice is thought over rationally, what is so commonsensical becomes a rather poor looking choice. I have no drive and I don't have any desire to acquire any. I don't want to be cured of apathy and nonaction.

Instead of having ideas serve me, I became their slave and prisoner.

After the debacle I fell to my knees and was willing to take the lowliest position in US society if only I could be free of such intensity. Now it is the calm which disturbs me. Jealousy, spite, resentment. Well if greed is just, we need not, ought not, discriminate against envy. Who is to say envy is worse? Is not envy morality itself as Nietzsche would say. Master morality, morality free of envy, is a contradiction in terms. The master simply is and is powerful. To speak of morality is meaningless. Strength defines him and strength alone can oppose him. Only envy can judge him. Slave morality. IE all morality. The idea that I could have both slave morality and master power. Strike fire with fire. In the end as in Hegel, the slave consciousness overwhelmed the master pragmatics. Morality must be absolute. The moment you have a moral perestroika the gates are opened and reform opens all cracks in the dam, and the trickle must become a flood and morality washes away. Relative morality is mere caprice the essence of immorality. It is the spirit of MEphisto that moves history. All that exists deserves to perish. Evil has always won at every historical juncture. The evil of every past historical era has always triumphed in the end over morality and become the new dogma. So when I complain that I live in an evil age, am I not complaining simply that history exists? I can't help but regret that Fukuyamaist history must end with these particular set of values. But that is simplistic of me. Are not the evils of a past history contained in this one? Certainly on a mechanistic level, the science and technology of all past ages are present in today's wealth. And in history even simplistic negations are Hegelian. For even the pure negative contains the refutation of the positive and thus the positive. The logic to negate contains the affirmation. Hobbes is wrong to say that the war of all against all is every settled, it simply takes on more sophisticated weaponry, and temporary truces. The social contract is a continuation of all-war by other means. In that sense one can be a Panglossian. Considering that billions of devils are waging ruthless merciless war upon me, things are not as bad as they could be.

Ok so how do we turn metaphysical speculation into an concrete answer of what I should do in 2009 USA? Is the answer simply take your place in line? In a conservative Aristotelean sense if it is your place to work at McDonalds, then learn to master your trade. In the mechanical arm movements of preparation in the social interaction of service, there you have the totality and unity of life? From a Oakeshottian (or rather Aristotelian) point of view:"happiness is much more based on virtue, than circumstance. For me the most important thing about a political-economical system is to get the incentives right, to incentive people to engage in productive behaviour and to try to do it well. Basically, it's something along the lines that usually the first incentive is a "consumptionary" one: one engages in productive work because one has desires to get, buy, acquire some nice things. But in the longer run, one discovers that excellence - even if it's just that prosaic kind of excellence that of a factory worker, whose excellence lies in dutifully putting up with tedius, boring tasks and yet never ceasing to do it right, to it in a way he can be proud of his work - is a reward in itself, that producing, creating something of value is a great satisfaction in itself. " Of course in an age of economic instability even such simply harmonies are not secured. And so instability must be integrated into a concept of security. The recession has even made it hard to get spots in hippie communes, which is one escape hatch from modern alienation. The goals of all societies whatever their mouthings has been production. In that sense any job whatsoever serves that role in the economy. Greek and Rome are models of patriotism an fidelity. But who am I to tell the fatherland what it needs of me? Our fatherland too has its patriotic posters and hymns. In our advertisements and pop culture we have the same commands of service to the fatherland. The self-sacrifice is of a different nature than the Roman citizen-soldier. But did I not learn harshly that despite my pretensions, I'm simply unfit technically. The patriotism of our age is consumerism. Is hedonism anti-moral? But does not historical patriotism in the Hegelian sense collapse all morality into itself. Is that not the true civic republic? As for envy. IS that not easily answered by the collapse of morality? If there is a war of all against all, and no morals to constrain me then what anger can I have when I have shown no mercy towards the enemy? When no morality but bruteforce has constrained me from the most vile evils? There is no use in jealously towards brute force. There is the question of the missed opportunities of the past. In which morality has stood in the way of gain. But that must simply be taken as a lost gamble. A legitimate loss. Or in a more Panglossian sense, a necessary evolution. It was necessary to evolve through stages of morality in order that the current pure amoralism could truly be understood. Human immoralism is different from animal amoralism or even hypocrisy.
The hypocrisy of our current age with immoral rape of morality is not sophisticated. It is in fact part of animal hedonism. Spiritual pleasures are appropriated in a physicalist sense without any of the burdens of morality. And so hypocrisy is simply another sensual pleasure our manimals rewards itself. Thus our devils have a hypocritical revulsion towards immorality that our immoralist evolutionist lacks. And that is why evolution towards immorality is superior than simply animal hypocritical hedon-amoralism.

 

[Outsider]

I don't think we are going to see eye to eye on this. If doing nothing and critically analyzing stuff makes you happy, do it, no sarcasm at all. Whatever makes you happy do it and don't let anyone stop you. Keep up the good fight brother.

My advice is this... happiness is out there, you just got to find it and how to get it. Be a man of action, not just contemplative in life.