I’ve been in a pessimistic outlook for a few months now and I’m a bit sick of it. I read Arthur Schopenhauer and began to see the world and life as mostly bad.
My problem with pessimism is that when something good happens, you are so focused on the negative that you don’t get much enjoyment from it. I also feel that life is short, most of us have 80 years, at best, so being pessimist just saps our life energy and wastes time.
Does anyone have advice for how to turn into an optimist?
Well, your Pessimism should make your Lapsed period all the more meaningful meaningful, almost Romantic.
There is a guy on this site named Sauwelios, PM him and tell him your a lapsed Catholic, who read Schopenhauer, and feel all sorts of pessimistic. He will tell you some stuff to do… just don’t mention me.
And after you do that, coincidentally, they have a sale on BDSM Leather Masks here, it will come in handy for you.
Trick is, to disregard what the Priest says- he wasn’t trained to be a philosopher, and read the church fathers instead… and seek out the intellectuals and doers. The Catholics and Jews dominate the intellectual community for a reason… we had a few thousand years tradition of deep thinking and exploitative living… pondering the nature of the Soul and God in every change of thought and season. You likely just got bored with the candles and mass, and scripted lectures on whatever topic was being discussed that week. Like… alot of that stuff is choreographed to serve a billion people world wide, its to the highest common denominator of effect. It isn’t our fountainhead however. You could be having a “dark night of the soul” episode, or general malaise specific to rite, argument and logic, or local culture. So be it, shit happens. Free Will.
If you don’t want to stick with it, like I said, Sauwelios and the mask sale… or you can look into why some reexamined who they were, and what they wanted, and returned. We produced a number of philosophers over the years who did just that.
I personally am bored with the mass. Not my style. But Jesus was much more than a mass. Its a ritual in our system, but not the defining aspect of a Christian. We are… so very much more than that.
Leo Tolstoy figured this out, after being ran down by Atheism and Nihilist. The work had a hugh effect on Wittgenstein. I think he talked to Nietzsche… he said someone broke his faith, and Lou Salome visited later on. He said fuck it, I see the Christians are happy, and I am not… and wrote a philosophical translation of the bible.
Feel free to respond tomorrow but the reasons I left the Church was that I read the “other” side; atheism, and philosophy and found those arguments much, much more convincing than the Catholic Church. I deeply believe that Jesus was a man and not a god form.
That, and the fact that Christianity “borrowed” certain things from paganism and Greek mythology, like the resurrection and immaculate conception, makes me think Christianity is completely false.
Some might say it is easier to be an optimist with God around. After all, the faithful are assured of [among other things] 1] eternal life 2] a scripture from which to differentiate right from wrong, good from evil 3] an explanation for…everything 4] Salvation 5] devine justice.
I wouldn’t mind believing in the Lord myself truth be told. After all, without God, any and all behaviors can be rationalized; and this can indeed precipitate all manner of terrible consequences.
Which is why many of the faithful eschew philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. It seems that, without God, one is indeed confronted with practical consequences of nihilism—and that disturbs them.
So, sure, pessimism can be derived from their philosophies. No doubt about it.
But then believing in God is not at all the same thing as demonstrating that God does exist. Let alone that the God YOU happen to believe in is the One True God.
I suspect then that the belief many have in God is derived more from the manner in which human psychology can predispose some to go in this direction. Religion as a psychological defense mechanism?
But so much about being optimistic or pessimistic is tied up instead in the life that you actually live. If things are going really well for you [circumstantially] then you are more likely to be upbeat about life. If you’re in a world of pain though [from any number of sources] it can be a miserable experience to say the least. Most of us are somewhere in the middle at any given point in our life.
For me, nihilism seems to be the most reasonable manner in which to understand human existence. No God and there is no way in which the things we think and feel and do can ever be more then points of view rooted in a particular world construed from a particular point of view. At least related to this: How ought I to live?
It’s all just noise. Get above it and be satisfied with keeping the ball rolling every day. Every day that comes is another success with another opportunity to get to the next. The goal is simply to add to the integral sum of joy in your life. The longer you live satisfied that you have lived, the more that integral sum increases.
The mistake is in presuming there is anything greater to live for. Get above that primitive thought, “ascend”.
Actually, if you have the discipline to keep a dairy, I would strongly suggest that you construct and keep a “Joy Dairy”, wherein you track how many minutes each day you felt a smile, perhaps along with why. Also (on the other half of each page) keep a count of how many minutes you felt badly along with why. Each day sum the total of the prior day, and plan ahead. The objective is to fill as many books as possible with the greatest number of minutes of felt joy.
If you could keep that up for a year or two, you would become the “Smiling Buddha”.
One implies the likely possibility of the other. To avoid that cycle, start noticing what’s right in front of your face; reality, without any emotional bias.
Then just leave that part out until you feel strong enough to deal with it. Ignoring any part of reality isn’t typically wise, but your mind and heart are limited. Focus on what is increasing the perception of Joy. After you are comfortable and confident in that (perhaps months or even years), look to see what is decreasing it, no rush.
The point is the chase the hope, and stop merely running from the threat.
And take a lesson from Science; “If you want to improve something, learn to measure it.”
