"Even the extent to which our desires and goals are fulfilled creates a misleadingly optimistic impression of how well our lives are going. This is because there is actually a form of self “censorship” in the formulation of our desires and goals. While many of them are never fulfilled, there are many more potential desires and goals that we do not even formulate because we know that they are unattainable. For example, we know that we cannot live for a few hundred years and that we cannot gain expertise in all the subjects in which we are interested. Thus, we set goals that are less unrealistic (even if many of them are nonetheless somewhat optimistic). Thus, one hopes to live a life that is, by human standards, a long life, and we hope to gain expertise in some, perhaps very focused, area. What this means is that, even if all our desires and goals were fulfilled, our lives are not going as well as they would be going if the formulation of our desires had not been artificially restricted."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
pp. 80-81
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Benatar
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
David Benatar
63 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by David Benatar →
Related Quotes
"I shall argue that although suicide is always tragic (because it always involves serious costs), we ought to be less …"
"Suicide is sometimes morally wrong, and it is sometimes the consequence of psychological problems. However, it is not…"
"Humans inflict untold suffering and death on many billions of animals every year, and the overwhelming majority of hu…"
"Killing people or helping them to kill themselves is usually wrong, because continued life is, we assume, usually in …"
"A few of my critics have claimed that I am committed to the desirability of suicide and even speciecide. They clearly…"
"The question is not whether humans will become extinct, but rather when they will. If the anti-natalist arguments are…"
"Each one of us was harmed by being brought into existence. That harm is not negligible, because the quality of even t…"
"It is these very conditions that facilitate the emergence of new infectious diseases and that also inflict horrific h…"
"Creating new people, by having babies, is so much a part of human life that it is rarely thought even to require a ju…"
"The argument that coming into existence is always a harm can be summarized as follows: Both good and bad things happe…"