Ethics

"If the sleep of mortals were continuous and identical with life; if under the star of day all living beings languished on the earth in utter rest, and no work was wrought; if the oxen ceased bellowing in the meadows, the beasts roaring in the forests, the birds singing in the air, the bees buzzing, and the butterflies skimming over the fields; if no voice nor motion except-that of the waters, winds, and tempests anywhere existed, the universe would indeed be useless; but would there be less happiness or more misery than there is to-day?"

"O Death, thou one eternal thing, That takest all within thine arms, In thee our coarser nature rests In peace, set free from life's alarms: Joyless and painless is our state. Our spirits now no more are torn By racking thought, or earthly fears; Hope and desire are now unknown, Nor know we aught of sorrow's tears. Time flows in one unbroken stream, As void of ennui as a dream. The troubles we on earth endured Have vanished; yet we sometimes see Their phantom shapes, as in a mist Of mingled thought and memory: They now can vex our souls no more. What is that life we lived on earth? A mystery now it seems to be, Profound as is the thought of death, To wearers of mortality. And as from death the living flee, So from the vital flame flee we. Our portion now is peaceful rest, Joyless, painless. We are not blest With happiness; that is forbid Both to the living and the dead."

"The human being is endowed with a great sensibility together with a strong knowledge of his limitations and conditions: with this, one has the right "recipe" for a suffering being. That is to say, a being who is fully aware that he will die, that he will be regularly attacked by organisms, who gradually and inexorably advances towards decrepitude, who knows that he will most probably have to suffer the death of his parents, his father and his mother, as well as the death of other family members and friends, and who cares very much about all this, who wishes he did not have to go through those experiencies, who feels harmed by all these necessities of his life."

"I found myself desperately bored with life, with a very strong desire to kill myself, and had an intimation of something bad, which frightened me at the very moment that I wanted to die, and placed me immediately in a state of apprehension and anxiety. I have never felt so strongly the absolute conflict of the elements that form the present human condition, forced to fear for its life and to seek at all costs to preserve it, just then when it was most burdensome, and when it could resolve to be ended by its own will (but by no other cause)."

"What about contentment (acquiescentia) during life? - For the human being it is unattainable: neither from the moral point of view (being content with his good conduct) nor from the pragmatic point of view (being content with the well-being that he intends to secure through skill and prudence). As an incentive to activity, nature has put pain in the human being that he cannot escape from, in order always to progress toward what is better. . . . To be (absolutely) contented in life would be idle rest and the standstill of all incentives, or the dulling of sensations and the activity connected with them. However, such a state is no more compatible with the intellectual life of the human being than the stopping of the heart in an animal's body, where death follows inevitably unless a new stimulus (through pain) is sent."

"All is nothingness in the world, including my despair, which any man who is wise but also calmer, and I myself certainly at a quieter time, will see as vain, irrational, and imaginary. Wretched me! Even this pain of mine is vain, nothing. After a certain time it will pass and turn to nothing, and leave me in a universal emptiness, a terrible apathy that will not even let me lament."

"His future existence is materially very long and the vast empty space that he still has to cross horrifies him, especially if he compares it with the little way he has come with such difficulty. Faced with this consideration, a young man can become excessively afraid and desperate, and the future seems longer and more terrible than an eternity. What's more, his whole life consists in the future. His early years were no more than an introduction to life. So he was born without being meant to live. The young man feels mortal despair at the thought that he will pass this way only once, and that in his time on earth he will not enjoy life, will not live, and his unique existence will have been wasted and useless. Every moment of his youth that passes in this way seems an irreparable loss inflicted on an age that can never return."

"No kind of activity or diversion gives any real pleasure to men. Nevertheless it is certainly the case that the man who is busy or being distracted in some way or other is less unhappy than the man who has nothing to do, or the one who lives an unvarying life without any distraction at all. Why is that? If neither the latter nor the former are any more superior than the other in enjoyment and pleasure, which is the only good for man? It means that life in itself is an ill. When it is busy or distracting, you are aware of it and recognize it less, and in appearance it passes more quickly, and for that reason alone, men who are active or distracted, without having any more good or pleasure than anyone else, are less unhappy. And men with nothing to do and without any distractions, are more unhappy, not because they have good things of less account in their life, but because of an increase of ill, that is more feeling, more awareness of life, and life is (seemingly) longer, although it is without any other particular ill. To feel life less and to make it seem shorter, that is the greatest good, or rather the greatest reduction of ill and unhappiness which man can obtain. Boredom is clearly an ill, and the experience of boredom brings unhappiness. Now what is boredom? No particular ill or suffering (in fact the idea and the nature of boredom excludes the presence of any particular ill or suffering) but simply life itself fully felt, experienced, recognized, life fully present to the individual and taking him over. Life therefore is simply an ill: and not to live, or to live less, whether in duration or in intensity; is simply a good, or a lesser ill, or rather absolutely and in itself preferable to life."

"It seems as though death were the essential aim of all things. That which has no existence cannot die; yet all that exists has proceeded from nothing. The final cause of existence is not happiness, for nothing is happy. It is true, living creatures seek this end in all their works, but none obtain it; and during all their life, ever deceiving, tormenting, and exerting themselves, they suffer indeed for no other purpose than to die."

"Observe too, says Philo, the curious artifices of Nature, in order to embitter the life of every living being. The stronger prey upon the weaker, and keep them in perpetual terror and anxiety. The weaker too, in their turn, often prey upon the stronger, and vex and molest them without relaxation. Consider that innumerable race of insects, which either are bred on the body of each animal, or, flying about, infix their stings in him. These insects have others still less than themselves, which torment them. And thus on each hand, before and behind, above and below, every animal is surrounded with enemies, which incessantly seek his misery and destruction."

"All the goods of life united would not make a very happy man; but all the ills united would make a wretch indeed; and any one of them almost (and who can be free from every one?) nay often the absence of one good (and who can possess all?) is sufficient to render life ineligible."

"Pleasure, scarcely in one instance, is ever able to reach ecstasy and rapture; and in no one instance can it continue for any time at its highest pitch and altitude. The spirits evaporate, the nerves relax, the fabric is disordered, and the enjoyment quickly degenerates into fatigue and uneasiness. But pain often, good God, how often! rises to torture and agony; and the longer it continues, it becomes still more genuine agony and torture."

"So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around. That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware."

"But the disease of feeling germed, And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong; Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed How long, how long?"

"Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow."

"If one had an imagination vivid enough and a sympathy sufficiently sensitive really to comprehend and to feel the sufferings of other people, one would never have a moment’s peace of mind. A really sympathetic race would not so much as know the meaning of happiness."

"Answer without flinching: if there existed a solution that could abolish the totality of all evils inflicted on disastrous humanity, if it was possible, by some simple remedy, incredibly cheap, immediately accessible, scrupulously inoffensive, of absolute and definitive efficiency, to stop all distress, all cries, all cries of pain, all pathologies, all protests of ill-being, all despair, all cataclysms, all anxiety, all unhappiness, in short all tortures afflicting the human species, would you have the macabre stupidity to reject such a remedy, to disdain such a miracle cure? No, that goes without saying. Well this solution does exist, and the mysterious is thereby delivered to us: it consists simply, in its saintly simplicity, to not procreate."

"But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days; Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays; And one by one back in the Closet lays."

"It may be a blessing that most younger people regard old age as very far away for themselves, but it is certainly an illusion that it won’t happen to them. The gradualness of time passing means that we can feel shocked to find ourselves ‘suddenly’ so old, with many of the above-listed unfortunate features. Time tricks us, passing slowly during empty days but seeming to rush by in annual terms. It is a commonplace to warn the young of the importance of saving and preparing for old age but it really hits home only when the time actually comes, when the wrinkles, liver spots, cataracts, sarcopenia, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s and other horrors are theirs. Only first-hand experience of the mixed difficulties of living and aversion to dying really cuts it. We now speak often of Holocaust denial and climate change denial but rarely do we speak openly of denial in regard to old age. But the young deny it in themselves, optimists often deny that it’s really so bad when it happens (exceptional cases are always available) and the depressing nature of the topic is generally skirted around: it will happen to you, it will probably entail some increased misery, it does mean that most of your life is behind you and you are closer to your own complete extinction. It may not be exactly a taboo topic but it is avoided or minimised in conversation, and precisely because it is universal, inescapable and depressing."

"So we see, what decides the purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle. This principle dominates the operation of the mental apparatus from the start. There can be no doubt about its efficacy, and yet its programme is at loggerheads with the whole world, with the macrocosm as much as with the microcosm. There is no possibility at all of its being carried through; all the regulations of the universe run counter to it. One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be ‘happy’ is not included in the plan of ‘Creation’. What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree, and it is from its nature only possible as an episodic phenomenon. When any situation that is desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged, it only produces a feeling of mild contentment. We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things. Thus our possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution. Unhappiness is much less difficult to experience. We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body; which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful to us than any other. We tend to regard it as a kind of gratuitous addition, although it cannot be any less fatefully inevitable than the suffering which comes from elsewhere."

"It is incomparably easier to be unhappy on this planet of incessant struggles than to find happiness on it. Doing nothing is enough to overwhelm us with sufferings, while in contrast stubborn efforts are not always enough to guarantee us bliss! This law alone ruins, and definitively, any optimistic pretension."

"Science ... cannot conceive of any means of achieving that escape from desires we call "contentment" otherwise than through the satisfaction of those desires; it has not yet learnt that there is no limit to the multiplication of desires, nor that, since different people's desires are often mutually incompatible, an indefinite multiplication of desires increases conflict as well as discontent."

"To my mind, the "big picture" is unfortunately fairly simple, if hard to stomach. We evolved haphazardly within a random universe; no purpose underpins us, no God watches over us, and no assured glorious future awaits us. We are saddled with a dualistic consciousness that weighs us down and plays tricks on us. We have built and seem unable to dismantle a dehumanizing and destructive civilization and mindset that perpetuates deceit and greed. We can make ourselves as comfortable as possible, as doctors tell their terminally ill patients, but we are sadly incurable."

"There is no human unhappiness that cannot increase. There is, however, a limit to what is called happiness. A man may be wholly fortunate, with nothing left to desire, whose happiness cannot be extended any further. This was the case with Augustus. But a man so unhappy that a greater unhappiness cannot be imagined, an unhappiness which is not only fantastical, not only possible, but very often actually realized in one individual or another, in one way or another, such a man does not exist. Fortune may say to many, "I have no greater power to bestow upon you," but no one can ever boast and say to fortune, "you do not have the strength to harm me further and to increase my troubles." One can fail to hope, but no one will ever fail to fear. Despair in itself is not enough to reassure man. No one can truthfully boast or say in anger: I cannot be unhappier than I am."

"To be human is finally to be a loser, for we are all fated to lose our carefully constructed sense of self, our physical strength, our health, our precious dignity, and finally our lives."

"If you are in enough pain, you may not remember who or what you are; you may know only your suffering, which is immense."

"As a way of living, ataraxia is an illusion. Epicureans try to simplify their life so as to reduce to a minimum the pleasures they can lose. But they cannot secure their tranquil garden against the turmoil of history. The Stoic sage insists that while we cannot control the events that happen to us, we can control how we think about them. But this is so only within a narrow margin. A fever, a tsetse fly or a traumatic experience can unsettle the mind at a crucial moment, or for ever. Disciples of Pyrrho try to establish inner equilibrium by a suspension of judgement. But sceptical doubt cannot banish the unrest that comes with being a human being. Even if ataraxia could be achieved, it would be a listless way to live. Luckily, deathly calm is not in practice a state that humans can maintain for very long. All these philosophies have a common failing. They imagine life can be ordered by human reason. Either the mind can devise a way of life that is secure from loss, or else it can control the emotions so that it can withstand any loss. In fact, neither how we live nor the emotions we feel can be controlled in this way. Our lives are shaped by chance and our emotions by the body. Much of human life – and much of philosophy – is an attempt to divert ourselves from this fact."

"It is as if a curtain had been drawn from before my eyes, and, instead of prospects of eternal life, the abyss of an ever open grave yawned before me. Can we say of anything that it exists when all passes away, when time, with the speed of a storm, carries all things onward,—and our transitory existence, hurried along by the torrent, is either swallowed up by the waves or dashed against the rocks? There is not a moment but preys upon you,—and upon all around you, not a moment in which you do not yourself become a destroyer. The most innocent walk deprives of life thousands of poor insects: one step destroys the fabric of the industrious ant, and converts a little world into chaos. No: it is not the great and rare calamities of the world, the floods which sweep away whole villages, the earthquakes which swallow up our towns, that affect me. My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature. Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself, and every object near it: so that, surrounded by earth and air, and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart; and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring its own offspring."

"Unlike any other animal, [humans] are ready to die for their beliefs. Monotheists and rationalists regard this as a mark of our superiority. It shows we live for the sake of ideas, not just instinctual satisfaction. But if humans are unique in dying for ideas, they are also alone in killing for them. Killing and dying for nonsensical ideas is how many human beings have made sense of their lives. To identify yourself with an idea is to feel protected against death. Like the human beings who are possessed by them, ideas are born and die. While they may survive for generations, they still grow old and pass away. Yet, so long as they are in the grip of an idea, human beings are what Becker called ‘living illusions’. By identifying themselves with an ephemeral fancy they can imagine they are out of time. By killing those who do not share their ideas, they can believe they have conquered death."

"Oh wearisome Condition of Humanity! Born under one law, to another bound: Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity, Created sick, commanded to be sound: What meaneth Nature by these diverse laws? Passion and reason, self-division cause. Is it the mark, or Majesty of Power To make offences that it may forgive?"

"[P]eople call me a pessimist; and if it is pessimism to think, with Sophocles, that 'not to have been born is best,' then I do not reject the designation. I never could understand why the word 'pessimism' should be such a red rag to many worthy people; and I believe, indeed, that a good deal of the robustious, swaggering optimism of recent literature is at bottom cowardly and insincere. I do not see that we are likely to improve the world by asseverating, however loudly, that black is white, or at least that black is but a necessary contrast and foil, without which white would be white no longer. That is mere juggling with a metaphor. But my pessimism, if pessimism it be, does not involve the assumption that the world is going to the dogs, and that Ahriman is winning all along the line. On the contrary, my practical philosophy is distinctly meliorist. What are my books but one plea against 'man's inhumanity to man' — to woman — and to the lower animals? (By the way, my opposition to 'sport' is a point on which I am rather in conflict with my neighbours hereabouts.) Whatever may be the inherent good or evil of life, it is certain that men make it much worse than it need be. When we have got rid of a thousand remediable ills, it will be time enough to determine whether the ill that is irremediable outweighs the good."

"'I know people say I'm a pessimist; but I don't believe I am naturally; I like a lot of things so much; but I could never get over the idea that it would be better for us to be without both the pleasures and the pains; and that the best experience would be some sort of sleep."

"If I can reconcile myself to the certainty of death only by forgetting it, I am not happy. And if I can dispose of the fact of human misery about me only by shutting my thoughts as well as myself within my comfortable garden, I may assure myself that I am happy, but I am not. There is a skeleton in the closet of the universe, and I may at any moment be in the face of it. Happiness is inseparable from confidence in action; and confidence of action is inseparable from what the schoolmen called peace -- that is, poise of mind with reference to everything I may possibly encounter in the chances of fortune. Now this perfect openness to experience is not possible if pain is the last word of pain. Unless there is something behind the fact of pain, some kind of mystery or problem in it whose solution shows the pain to be other than what it pretends, there is no happiness for man in this world or the next; for no matter how fair the world might in time become, the fact that it had been as bad as it is would remain an unbanishable misery, unbanishable by God or any other power."

"The whole earth, believe me, Philo, is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want, stimulate the strong and courageous: Fear, anxiety, terror, agitate the weak and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish to the new-born infant and to its wretched parent: Weakness, impotence, distress, attend each stage of that life: and it is at last finished in agony and horror."

"Rest for ever (heart) enough Hast thou throbbed. Nothing is worth Thy agitations, nor of sighs is worthy The earth. Bitterness and vexation Is life, never aught besides, and mire the world. Quiet thyself henceforth. Despair For the last time. To our race fate Has given but death. Henceforth despise Thyself, nature, the foul Power which, hidden, rules to the common bane, And the infinite vanity of the whole."

"Marry, and you will regret it; don't marry, you will also regret it; marry or don't marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world's foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world's foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it [...] Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don't hang yourself, you'll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy."

"Human suffering is so great, so endless, so awful that I can hardly write of it. I could not go into hospitals and face it, as some do, lest my mind should be temporarily overcome. The whole and the worst the worst pessimist can say is far beneath the least particle of the truth, so immense is the misery of man. It is the duty of all rational beings to acknowledge the truth. There is not the least trace of directing intelligence in human affairs. This is a foundation of hope, because, if the present condition of things were ordered by a superior power, there would be no possibility of improving it for the better in the spite of that power. Acknowledging that no such direction exists, all things become at once plastic to our will."

"We are as forlorn as children lost in the woods. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours? And if I were to cast myself down before you and weep and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell."

"Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment."

"I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? How did I obtain an interest in this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I should like to make a remark to him. Is there no director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint?"

"Your own death, or the death of your near and dear ones, is not something you can experience. What you actually experience is the void created by the disappearance of another individual, and the unsatisfied demand to maintain the continuity of your relationship with that person for a nonexistent eternity. The arena for the continuation of all these “permanent” relationships is the tomorrow—heaven, next life, and so on. These things are the inventions of a mind interested only in its undisturbed, permanent continuity in a “self”-generated, fictitious future. The basic method of maintaining the continuity is the repetition of the question, “How? How? How?” “How am I to live? How can I be happy? How can I be sure I will be happy tomorrow?” This has made life an insoluble dilemma for us. We want to know, and through that knowledge we hope to continue on with our miserable existences forever."

"The whole order of things fills me with a sense of anguish, from the gnat to the mysteries of incarnation; all is entirely unintelligible to me, and particularly my own person. Great is my sorrow, without limits. None knows of it, except God in Heaven, and He cannot have pity."

"The majority of people live according to habit, without pleasure or real hopes, without sufficient reason for continuing to live or doing what is necessary to stay alive. If they thought about it, apart from religion they would find no reason for living and, though unnatural, it would be rational to conclude that their life was absurd, because although having begun life is, according to nature, justification for continuing it, according to reason it is not."

"The fact is that when the soul desires a pleasurable thing, when it desires the satisfaction of an infinite desire, it really desires pleasure, and not a particular pleasure; now, when it finds, in fact, a particular pleasure, not an abstract one, embracing the full extent of pleasure, the result is that, since its desire is far from being satisfied, this pleasure is scarcely pleasure, because it is a matter not of a small but of a vast inferiority to our desire, not to mention our hopes. And therefore all pleasures must be mingled with displeasure, as experience shows, because in the process of obtaining them the soul is desperately searching for something it cannot find, that is, an infinity of pleasure, or the satisfaction of an unlimited desire."

"As soon as the child is born, the mother who has just brought him into the world must console him, quiet his crying, and lighten the burden of the existence she has given him. And one of the principal duties of good parents in the childhood and early youth of their children is to comfort them, to encourage them to live, because sorrows and ills and passions are at that age much heavier than they are to those who through long experience, or simply because they have lived longer, are used to suffering. And in truth it is only fitting that the good father and the good mother, in trying to console their children, correct as best they can, and ease, the damage they have done by procreating them. Good God! Why then is man born? And why does he procreate? To console those he has given birth to for having been born?"

"Happiness is nothing more than contentedness with one's own being and with one's own way of being, satisfaction with, perfect love of, one's own state, whatever that state may be moreover, and even if it is the most despicable. Now from this definition alone you can understand that happiness is by its nature impossible in a being who loves himself above all else, as all living beings naturally do, the only ones furthermore capable of happiness. A love of self that cannot cease and that has no limits is incompatible with contentedness, with satisfaction. Whatever good a living being may enjoy, he will always desire a greater good, because his own self-love will never cease, and that good, however great it is, will always be limited, and his own self-love cannot have limits. However lovable your state is, you will love yourself more than that state, therefore you will desire a better state. Therefore you will never be content, never in a state of satisfaction with, of perfect love for, your way of being, or perfectly pleased with it. Therefore you will never be and can never be happy, not in this world, nor in another."

"It were more reasonable that you [Nature] made happiness a necessity; or this being impossible, it were better not to bring men into the world."

"I assert that man loves and desires nothing but his own happiness. He therefore loves his life only inasmuch as he esteems it the instrument or subject of his happiness. Hence it is happiness that he always loves, and not life; although he very often attributes to the one the affection he has for the other."

"Old age, with all its bitterness, and sorrows, and accumulation of troubles, is already near to me. This worst of evils you [Nature] have destined for us and all created beings, from the time of infancy. From the fifth lustre of life, decline makes itself manifest; its progress we are powerless to stay. Scarce a third of life is spent in the bloom of youth; but few moments are claimed by maturity; all the rest is one gradual decay, with its attendant evils."

"It’s possible to argue that depressive realists are cursed with the kind of consciousness that isn’t automatically guarded against the horrors of life—that their consciousness sees a meaningless universe for what it is and apprehends the struggle of daily life with the jaws of death at the end. In other words, depressive realists may not be eccentrics or party-poopers but people who are born without the common anti-horror filter, who discern hopelessness—with all manner of denials produced against it—as our unavoidable lot. Their perception may not be due to clinical depression projected outward, but to an all-too-naked perception and understanding of what life holds."