Timeline of The Most Important Philosophical Ideas, I guess
We're all pretty used to rain. We're either prepared for it with an umbrella or raincoat, or just get wet. Rarely does it genuinely upset us. But what about when it rains for days and the streets flood so you can't go outside? Or when you realize you can't afford the interest rate on that home you want to purchase?
How do you react when your investments plummet in value or you're laid off without severance? These are genuine modern problems that plague us at every turn, problems that haunt our nights with nightmares and fill our days with despair. But it doesn't have to be this way. We can learn to remain grounded despite all the problems plaguing our society today.
This is how to become stoic in the modern world. Stoicism is, of course, an ancient Greek philosophy that aims to take us from being vulnerable to the chaotic nature of the universe to being calm and indifferent to it. It's a way to fortify yourself for lasting peace of mind. But as with every practice that involves changing your attitude or disposition, work is involved, and often sacrifice.
The stoics' work is to recognize what's in our control and what isn't, and the only thing in our control is our reaction to what happens, not the event itself. Obviously, we can influence what happens, but nothing is entirely in our control. Misfortunes are unpredictable and often inevitable. The stoic philosopher Zeno of Citium used an analogy of a dog being tied by a cart to clarify the stoic position.
When a dog is tied to a cart, if it wants to follow, it is pulled and follows, making its spontaneous act coincide with necessity. But if the dog doesn't follow, it'll be compelled. So it is with men, too. Even if they don't want to, they will be compelled to follow what is destined. The cart represents anything beyond our control, all the various happenings of the universe. A leash attaches us to this universe; our options are to run with it or to resist and be dragged.
To become stoic is to run with the cart. Imagine you're at work and your supervisor informs you that the espresso machine you rely on is being removed. Your free daily coffee is suddenly gone. For most of us, this would be pretty devastating. Your reaction here is what's up to you. You have no control over whether the machine is there or not. You can either run with the cart by accepting that the change is beyond your control, or wallow in the misery of no more free coffee.
You can be dragged. The ultimate goal is to improve upon your inner self, as relying on external things for happiness leaves you at the mercy of a turbulent universe, a universe that is outside your control. Stoic philosophers subscribe to a semi-deterministic worldview or compatibilism. Everything that happens has a cause, but sometimes we can't control that cause, only the action we take.
For example, we can choose not to give in to an impulse to eat cake, but the existence of that impulse is beyond our control. Let not this suggest we shouldn't try to improve our external circumstances, but that we can't rely on desirable outcomes. If we want the result of fixing our car, we still have to pick up the phone to book an appointment. It's not going to fix itself. Still, we can measure how much effort we're putting in because that's what is in our control.
If the mechanic happens to be a charlatan who runs off with your car, you shouldn't blame yourself; that was beyond your control. Discussing the ancient philosophy of stoicism is one thing, but what about tangibly implementing it into our modern lives? After all, at the time of its conception, stoicism was for everyone—from slaves to the emperor of Rome—so why not today? Most of us get caught up in material things, and we expect them to bring us joy.
We tell ourselves that the next purchase is what will finally make us happy: a new car, the latest smartphone, the expensive watch. When we're unable to get these things—because, well, we can't afford them—we feel bad, like the universe is opposed to us being happy and that there's nothing we can do about it. But the truth is that material things only bring temporary happiness. Your car will break down, and your phone will eventually freeze up.
And even when our possessions still work perfectly, hedonic adaptation steps in, and we start to want something newer and shinier. It's a never-ending cycle. To escape the trap of consumerism, we need to adopt a different attitude towards our purchases and the dopamine hit we get from them. To do this, you can practice what the stoics call voluntary discomfort.
This is when you subject yourself to discomfort in something you typically enjoy. The most common way people do this is by taking a cold shower instead of a warm one. But you could also hold on to your new phone until it's no longer usable, suffer through the cracks and lags, and let each new phone launch pass you by. If that's too much, start small.
Next time you go to the bathroom, leave your phone on your nightstand or your desk or wherever. Sit with your thoughts on the toilet instead of trying to amuse or torture yourself by doom scrolling. Driving somewhere on a hot day? Roll up the windows and drive with the AC off, or better yet, walk. Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome, was a practitioner of stoic philosophy. He ruled the empire from 161 CE until his death in 180 CE and was widely considered a great philosopher-king, although that may be a historical exaggeration.
As a leader, he wrote down his stoic influence, "Meditations," likely as a way of assuring himself while handling significant responsibilities. They were intended for his own use and not meant to be published widely, but fortunately, we have access to them today. The collection is called "Meditations," also called "The Inner Citadel." In it, you can see how Marcus Aurelius applied his learned stoicism to his daily life as emperor.
Here are some of those quotes that might be able to help get you into a stoic mindset: "Thus we should employ the mind in all parts of life. When things occur which at first seem worthy of high estimation, we should strip them naked and view their meanness, and cast aside these pompous descriptions of them by which they seem so glorious." Marcus Aurelius would routinely reflect on the nature of his food as devoid of the pleasures and sensations he instinctively derived from it.
"A fish is just flesh necessary to sustain you." Ignore the pleasing tastes and satisfaction of filling up. When you bring your favorite lunch to work, break it into its most basic components. The salad is just leaves and the fruit of a plant. Croutons are just wheat smashed into flour and combined with yeast to make bread. Bread is then cut into pieces and dried.
By doing this, when you're stuck with a lunch you don't love or the waiter gets your order wrong, you won't be as burdened by the thought of eating it or feeling the absence of something more delicious. Lunch is just raw materials to give you energy. Marcus Aurelius wrote a great deal about how we interpret and interact with others. He adopted the metaphysics of stoicism as a way of thinking about our interactions and emotions.
For stoic philosophers, the universe is made from intelligent design. Humans, too, are part of that same intelligence. It doesn't make sense to hate the same intelligence in another because it's the same intelligence in you. It's similar to the Hindu concept of Brahman, the deity that permeates everything. "I can't be angry at my kinsman or hate them. We were naturally formed for mutual assistance," as the two feet, the hands, the eyelids, and the upper and lower rows of the teeth oppose each other against nature.
All anger and aversion is in opposition. We may think of ourselves as in competition with others. We compete for better grades at school and put down others to get a leadership role at a company, but that's a surefire way to live a life of envy and malice. If you see everyone as part of the same intelligence trying to put others below you, that would be foolish. You are the same, and treating others as lesser is contrary to nature.
Seldom are any found unhappy for not observing the motions and intentions in the souls of others, but such as observe not well the motions of their own souls or their affections must necessarily be unhappy. This reminds us to focus on what is in our control—our attitude. Trying to analyze others will often lead to misery. We spend too long considering why people behave the way they do in a state of resentment, questioning their motives and success.
Most of us know someone who can't stop complaining or gossiping about others at their job. They're obsessed with what their co-workers have and never seem particularly happy. Their time would probably be better spent addressing their own mind, as the minds of others are outside of their control. "Let us," as I said, "be on our guard without suspicion or enmity." Aurelius is cautioning himself to be prepared for any attack or betrayal while at the same time not presuming that others have bad intentions.
Again, we shouldn't dwell too much on the intentions of others, but we shouldn't blindly assume that no one will mean harm. As any experienced student knows, when working with peers on a group project, be prepared for someone to not pull their weight. At the same time, though, you should never assume and judge that someone won't; you can needlessly cause dysfunction in the group while allowing others to occupy too much of your mind.
But seriously, if you're working with three others, one or more of them statistically won't do their fair share—be prepared for it but without suspicion or hostility. "When you are angry at the mistakes and wrong actions of men, for all are carried toward what appears to them their proper good," but say you, "it is not their proper good." Well, instruct them then and teach them better, and don't be angry with them.
Basically, we can disagree with others, knowing with near certainty that we're right, but getting angry with them invites more pain and is an ineffective mode of persuasion. They have what they think is the right way in mind, so we shouldn't think poorly of them. We should try to educate them rather than show our frustration.
This quote from Aurelius speaks to the ongoing culture war; both sides have an idea of what's right and allow themselves to get angry and insult the other party. This isn't to suggest that both sides are correct, but that especially on social media nowadays, genuine attempts at persuasion have taken a backseat. There are plenty of attempts to educate in the culture war, but they often come dripping with condescension and likely serve a purpose other than genuine persuasion.
They seem more about scoring likes, shares, and validation from existing believers than extending an olive branch. If we treated others like parts of an intelligent design, we wouldn't feel the need to mock them; we would try to help them see the right way forward. With these mental tools, stoicism can guide you through the pain of life so that you face it with a temperament people would describe as stoic.
Regardless of what the universe has in store, your goal is to remain emotionally indifferent. You've reinforced your inner citadel and are prepared for both good and bad fortune. Now, stoicism isn't a philosophy to take ourselves off the hook for the problems we can influence, but it does acknowledge that so much is beyond our individual control. We can only judge ourselves based on our effort.
If we consider the world's biggest problems, the solutions are far out of reach for the average person. We can only do our part, make moves where we can, and judge our efforts. We can only change what is in our control. If you're wondering why bother with any of this when the universe itself doesn't make sense, click the video on your screen right now to understand the philosophy of absurdism.
Life is meaningless.
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In 2012, Drake made a song titled "The Motto," but what most people remember from it is "YOLO." YOLO tells you to live in the moment, enjoy life you have today, and not worry too much about tomorrow because at the end of the day, you only live once. While Drake certainly popularized the motto, he wasn't the first to use the phrase, and he certainly wasn't the first to come up with the idea of enjoying the pleasures of today without worrying about tomorrow. This idea has been around since the 4th Century BC as what philosophers call Hedonism—a school of thought that was created by Aristippus of Cyrene, a student of Socrates.
Hedonism is the idea that the end goal of all of our actions in life is to (1) pursue pleasure and (2) avoid pain. Aristippus believed that the only good cause worth pursuing was one that would ultimately bring you pleasure. In today's society, we're taught that the way to succeed is to suffer today so you can enjoy tomorrow, to save for the rainy day. Once we get out of college, we're encouraged to find a job and work hard at a 9 to 5 for many years, live modestly, and save as much as possible so we can enjoy our retirement 50 years later.
Aristippus didn't believe in any of that. He didn't believe in the idea of delayed gratification, and he always advocated for people to simply get pleasure from what is present and available. He was completely against the idea of suffering in the present in order to get something that only might be pleasurable in the future. So instead of telling students in college to study hard for their exams so they can land a good job after school, for example, Aristippus would encourage them to fraternize, drink, and party lavishly because these are the pleasures that are readily available to them.
On the one hand, you can see him as stupid and lacking foresight. After all, if you squander everything you have on the pleasures of today, you'll quickly run out of resources, and all of that pleasure will turn to pain—from people losing everything they had due to addiction to people living in poverty as a result of their own laziness.
We've seen the results of solely focusing on the present pleasures. But on the other hand, there's some wisdom to the school of thought because, truly, tomorrow isn't promised to any one of us. What's the point in working hard at a 9 to 5 for 50 years, ignoring all of the pleasures of the time, only to die a few years before retirement? And let's say you do make it to retirement; the sad reality is that one in four people will have a disability by the age of 60, and the older you get, the chances of that happening increase drastically.
Knowing all of this, is it still foolish to think that we are all better off just enjoying the pleasures that we do have in the present? Socrates and other philosophers at the time certainly believed so. A lot of philosophers hated the idea of Hedonism because saying that the end goal of the entire human existence is simply to pursue pleasure and avoid pain just sounded vain. This opposition combined with the rise of Christianity in ancient Greece at the time meant that this extremely rash idea of Hedonism died with Aristippus many years later.
Epicurus, who was considered the father of modern Hedonism, redefined what Hedonism was, and to do that he had to start by redefining a certain word: pleasure. For Aristippus, pleasure was a state of ecstasy and excitement—the amazing feeling you have after biting into your favorite food or after that first sip of coffee in the morning. And for most of us, this is how we define pleasure. But not Epicurus.
For Epicurus, pleasure was a state of tranquility. Instead of encouraging people to indulge themselves in constant gratification, Epicurus believed that the true meaning of pleasure was to kill the fear of both death and God because only then would you truly be able to fully enjoy what this life has to offer. While Aristippus simply encouraged people to pursue pleasure, Epicurus believed that all human beings do everything to gain pleasure and absorb pain. He didn't encourage it because, according to him, that was our natural state anyway.
To defend this point, Epicurus asks everyone to look at how babies view the world around them. They don't really understand how the world works yet, but they do understand two things: when something feels good and when something feels bad. When something feels good, the baby is joyful and happy. When something feels bad, the baby cries because it wants that pain to stop and it wants to return to said pleasurable state.
I'm sure at this point you're wondering, if we're solely pursuing pleasure, then what about selfless acts done solely because they are virtuous or valuable for other people and not ourselves? How do we describe those? Well, in hedonistic ideas, it's simply because those things make people feel heroic, which ends up being processed in your brain as a pleasurable feeling. So at the core, it is still pleasure they're chasing, just not the kind we might be thinking about.
According to hedonistic teachings, there are two types of pleasure: moving pleasure and static pleasure. Moving pleasure is when you're in the process of satisfying a desire. When you're hungry, you eat; when you're thirsty, you have a drink; when you need a timeout, you take a nap. Static pleasure is the tranquility you feel once you're done satisfying those needs. At this point, the adrenaline has finished coursing through your veins, and you're left with a sweet feeling of satisfaction.
In that moment, you feel a sense of tranquility, and you keep feeling it until it is sadly replaced by pain because, according to Epicurus, there is no in-between; the absence of pain is pleasure and vice versa. But even with this more modest way of explaining Hedonism, a lot of people still disagree and even frown at the idea. This is because of one thing: the idea that pleasure is the only source of intrinsic value.
Think about it for a second: if pleasure is the only intrinsic value, then what do we make of things like finding meaning in life, achieving great things, building and maintaining long-lasting relationships, becoming a legend in a particular field, or even something as simple as living religiously or upholding a set of moral beliefs that we hold dear to our hearts? This might try to argue that all of those things do not hold any value in themselves and that they're only valuable because we get pleasure from them.
But something like upholding religious beliefs isn't always pleasurable. In fact, most times it restricts the kind of pleasure you can get. But still, it gives people a sense of fulfillment that for them is better than the pleasure they're forsaking. If self-pleasure alone is the aim of human existence, the people who benefit from the wrong that happens in our society will never fight against it.
People would never fight for the common good when it might affect them negatively. Yet every day we see people put their own desires on the side to help other people. People get excommunicated from their families, rejected by those they love because they chose to speak up and fight for what's right, even if the issues don't affect them directly. If we're all chasing our pleasure, that would never happen.
We'll all be too busy enjoying our broken society because it benefits us and not worrying about trying to change it for someone else. Another huge stumbling block that Hedonists face when trying to argue their beliefs is the worth of reality. If pleasure is the ultimate goal, then it shouldn't matter whether that pleasure is real or imagined, right? If we say that people always intrinsically pursue things that are pleasurable, then if there is an option for unlimited pleasure, they should never choose anything else, right?
To answer these questions, Robert Nozick created a thought experiment, giving people two options. He asked them to choose between being plugged into a pleasure-giving machine for the rest of their lives and living their current reality with the pain that exists in our world. People always picked this reality because, in the end, living a life that's not real is pointless and meaningless.
And even with the option of the most pleasurable thing in the world, people would rather have pain that's real, whatever "real" means. As I've said previously, the best memories are the ones you remember with both pleasure and pain. 20 years after he left his childhood home, Abraham Lincoln came back only to see the entire place in ruin. As he looked at it with tears in his eyes, he said, "My childhood home, I see again and am saddened with the view. And still, as memories cloud my brain, there's pleasure in it, too."
This beautiful mix of pleasure and pain is something that the hedonistic view of the world simply does not account for. When you're graduating high school, you're excited for the adventures that await you in college. You'll probably be leaving home for the first time, and you'll finally be alone, able to enjoy what the world has to offer. That feeling is pleasurable, but the feeling is also painful. You'll miss your high school friends and the simplicity of childhood.
You'll miss your parents, your siblings, and the community that you grew up in, and though these painful thoughts cloud your brain, there will be pleasure in it, too. Hedonism is frowned upon in modern-day society because it opens the door for a trap that you can easily fall into. Pleasure is an insatiable desire. If you get hungry and fill your belly, it only takes a few hours, and you're looking for something else to eat.
It's an unending pursuit. So if that becomes the entire reason for your existence, it can quickly become difficult to control. This is how most people become addicted. It starts out as just a fleeting pleasure, and before you know it, the reason you're doing those things stops being the pursuit of pleasure and starts being an unquenchable and uncontrollable thirst for those things—a trap that's very difficult to come out of, one that many people get stuck in for the rest of their lives.
But this isn't to say that we can't learn some things from hedonistic principles because, as much as we might not like to think about it, it's true that tomorrow is not promised. So we might as well make the best of today. Things like making a conscious decision to enjoy the little everyday pleasures can help us lead a happier life. If your car breaks down and you have to walk to school, don't be in haste. Embrace the journey; walk with a friend, make jokes with them, and always leave each other on a good note.
Craving a cup of coffee? Head out to your favorite coffee shop and order your favorite drink; you've earned it. You don't have to wait until you're retired before you can start reaping the fruit of your labor. Take those vacation days; the promotion can wait a few more months. Stay on that call with your friends for an extra hour. Missing an hour of study probably won't make you fail because even if seeking pleasure might not be the ultimate goal of human existence, it's certainly a worthwhile pursuit.
Have you ever heard of blue zones? These are areas in the world where a large number of centenarians live—that's people who are over 100 years old. Many people have studied these areas to try and discover the secret to longevity. The thing they found is "ikigai," the Japanese secret to a happy life. Ikigai literally translates to "your reason for getting up in the morning." It's a state of well-being that comes from pursuing your purpose in life.
Ikigai is a part of traditional Japanese thought—it's a culturally ingrained concept inseparable from the Japanese understanding of well-being. Although there's no single Western concept that encapsulates ikigai, most of us chase some aspects of it daily. The Japanese psychiatrist Kamada Miko was one of the first to study the ikigai concept. She understood it as being somewhat ambiguous in nature—less philosophical and more instinctual.
More recently, Japanese psychologist Micho Kumano wrote a detailed account of ikigai. He described it as the concept of achieving a better and more fulfilling life. It's the feeling of a life worth living, a life of meaning. The state of ikigai commonly comes from devoting yourself to activities you enjoy—the kind of activities that bring a sense of fulfillment.
This satisfaction comes from that activity's connection to your larger sense of purpose in life and what you consider the meaning of existence. Kumano distinguishes ikigai from momentary pleasures, whereas hedonistic pursuits bring you happiness that feeling is fleeting. Ikigai produces joy—something more long-lasting. Aristotle had a similar concept he called eudaimonia—a sense of life that is lived well. It could more simply be described as flourishing, which Aristotle considered something desirable for its own sake.
As psychologist Kamada Miko suggests, ikigai is supposed to be felt in positive and negative moments alike. When you experience something challenging or painful, ikigai can get you through it by recognizing it as part of your higher purpose. For example, let's say you're writing a novel, and you get devastating feedback from a potential publisher. Would you just quit? If you strongly believe that writing was tied to your purpose in life, your sense of a more meaningful pursuit keeps you going.
Ikigai is felt even in these difficult times, and ikigai is what makes flow possible. In psychology, a flow state is a mental state where you're completely focused on the task at hand. You're not distracted by your phone or even thoughts about yourself and how you're doing with your task; you are completely immersed in the project. Hopefully, most of us experience this somewhat regularly, although TikTok probably isn't helping any.
A key part of achieving a flow state is that you have to be working on something that feels meaningful to you, and this is where it connects back to ikigai. To enter the flow state, you need to feel ikigai; otherwise, it's too easy to be distracted. Ikigai also aligns nicely with a cognitive-behavioral therapy approach to alleviating depression. CBT therapists often recommend you participate in activities that give you enjoyment and a sense of mastery—very much in the spirit of ikigai.
While ikigai is most relevant in Japan, the concept has taken off around the world. Its recent surge in popularity comes from a Western interpretation of the blue zone research I was talking about earlier. Longevity researcher Dan Buettner investigated these blue zones and focused significantly on the residents of the Japanese island region of Okinawa. In a famous TED Talk, he used Okinawa's concept of ikigai to understand how its residents live such long happy lives.
During his time there, he noted that the people had strong social connections, a good diet, and most notably lived with a strong sense of purpose. This TED Talk was then turned into an almost famous Venn diagram by blogger Mark Winn. The diagram has become almost synonymous with ikigai in the West. The Venn diagram is intended to help you find your purpose by suggesting four main criteria represented as circles.
The first criteria is something you love. The second is something you're great at. The third is what the world needs, and the fourth is what you can get paid for. In the intersection of these four things, you get ikigai. This Venn diagram has probably helped a lot of people reorient their lives, but it's not fair to equate it with ikigai as it's known in Japan.
And if I'm being completely honest, it seems a bit unsound on a philosophical level. The weakness of this Venn is that it ties this feeling of meaning tightly to the external world. It makes our happiness dependent on material conditions that don't always match reality. And for a lot of people, the intersection of these four circles simply isn't possible.
How many people have you met who don't get paid enough for doing the things they love to do or find most meaningful in their lives? Many of us have passionate goals where financial success is just too far out of reach. We pursue lofty dreams like becoming great writers, actors, or performers, but very few of us get paid well in these pursuits, and most of us don't get paid at all. Does that mean that all of those who don't get paid enough aren't chasing their true purpose?
To assume that would be ridiculous. The reality is if we remove financial compensation from the equation, we might actually find more satisfaction in our pursuits. We can find contentment by acting in smaller roles in local plays or performing stand-up comedy routines in our basement for our friends. The other three circles of the Venn diagram were also unnecessary additions to their traditional notion of ikigai.
You don't have to love something for it to give you purpose or satisfaction, and you don't have to be skilled at it either. Most of us don't have extraordinary skills, but that doesn't mean we're not worthy of pursuing ikigai. Ikigai doesn't need to be something others need either. Your purpose in life doesn't have to be tied to your economic value, nor should it be.
It's just not possible for most people to have a perfect career that gives them purpose. The material conditions have to be just right for this to be possible. Now, CEOs tend to love this diagram. They're often in the perfect position to make their Venn diagram ikigai possible, but then again, they'd probably be confusing what other people want for what they need.
Most CEOs oversee the production of a want and not something essential. Stoics have rightly pointed out that we can't rely too heavily on the external world for our happiness. The events of the universe are out of our control, so we're better off focusing on what we can control. Unlike the Venn diagram, the Japanese take on ikigai explored by Kamada and Kumano doesn't rely on financial compensation for satisfaction, and it doesn't agree that your purpose has to be something others need.
It's more open and less corporate-minded. Now, for the sake of being comprehensive, there's something else about ikigai I wanted to share. The average person in Japan doesn't necessarily think of ikigai in terms of a larger purpose. Some say it has to do more with small joys rather than aligning your activities with a grand purpose or success in your career. Their idea of ikigai ranges from living with a sense of purpose to enjoying the small things in the here and now.
It's a bit more similar to zen Buddhism in focusing on a pure present. It's difficult to pinpoint the exact meaning of ikigai for everyone, but there's clear value in thinking of it simply as your reason for getting up in the morning. Studies do support that living with a sense of purpose adds years to your life. It can also help alleviate depression and the physical conditions that come with it.
That's why in Japan, policymakers are making efforts to improve ikigai for elders. They've established programs to give the elderly the option of flexible part-time work. Although we often think of retirement as a glorious end goal, it can compromise our ikigai in a big way. One in three retirees report being depressed—a much larger percentage when compared to the rest of the adult population.
The reason is likely that retirement removes our sense of purpose and our reason for waking up in the morning. Finding a reason for getting up in the morning isn't going to be as obvious as analyzing a Venn diagram. French existentialist Albert Camus considered the task of finding meaning to be like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill for eternity. But maybe the promise of a long, happy life is good motivation to keep pushing that boulder. If you keep searching for ikigai, you may just find it.
It might not be found in the perfect career but in the smaller activities we enjoy. Who knows, maybe you've found it already. But finding ikigai is still only one side of the struggle. How we pursue it is another. Kamada documented her own struggle with ikigai in her diary.
She wasn't able to pursue work as a writer and scholar for a long period of time and felt a deep lack of ikigai in her life. When she was able to write, she still had her teaching, translating, and domestic responsibilities to attend to. The writing brought its own challenges. She was occasionally filled with self-loathing and boredom. She questioned whether she should abandon writing and just focus on making money instead.
But she persisted with writing and found a profound feeling of ikigai in it. It was the only thing that gave her a strong sense of purpose—her reason to get up in the morning. Your ikigai will never be without struggle, and your ability to fulfill it may be limited. But if you're going to get out of bed in the morning, you might as well have a good reason.
We all know how it goes: one day we're born, one day we die. Everything that happens in between, we know and understand, but everything that happened before and will happen after, we know nothing about. As a result, it's really difficult to say what exactly the meaning or importance of our being here is. If we can't tell how we came or where we came from, how can we know why we're here?
In the same vein, if we don't know where we're going or what we're going to become, how can we tell if any of our present actions have any significance at all? It is this uncertainty of both our collective pasts and futures that has allowed the question, "What is the meaning of life?" to plague humanity ever since we became sentient. We've never been able to objectively answer this question as a species.
However, a lot of us have found comfort in many different ideologies to at least subdue the anxiety that it causes. In many different religions, a deity made the entire universe, put us all in it, and whatever we do on this Earth will be used to determine when and how we spend eternity afterward. For some, others believe the meaning of life is the love we share with friends, family, and our loved ones. Some others believe the existence of life in itself is what makes it worth living.
But for nihilists, life is meaningless. All action, suffering, emotions—both good and bad—are entirely senseless and meaningless. This is nihilism—the belief in nothing. At some point in our lives, many of us have been faced with nihilistic thoughts or hit by a strong sense of purposelessness, like our lives have no meaning and we have no intrinsic value. Usually, this happens when we begin to question our old beliefs but also just before we get new ones to hold onto.
It's in that phase where you're growing out of your parents' beliefs, learning new things, getting new experiences, and forming your own views about the world. And usually, all of these thoughts begin with one simple question: why? A three-letter monosyllabic word that's capable of making anything and everything that feels like the rock of your foundation start to become slippery, like quicksand, dragging you into the misery that may be. Just maybe your whole life hasn't been what you thought it was.
Just pause and take a moment to think about your core values and just ask the question: why? Why do you believe those things? Where did they come from? Who did they come from? Keep asking, and eventually, you'll arrive at a point where there's no longer an answer. You'll arrive at nothing. All the religions of the world, all of our scientific discovery, but yet the question "why" is one that we still cannot answer. And so, for the nihilist, it is at this point that they come to the conclusion that there is no why, there is no answer, there's simply nothing.
As Alan Watts once wrote, “Life is nothing more than a trip from the maternity ward to the crematorium.” It's really in the name—the term nihilism comes from the Latin word "nihil," which translates to "nothing," and "ism," which translates to "ideology." It's the ideology of nothing. But that doesn't really help us in understanding it completely. Usually, people confuse nihilism for pessimism, but they are very different from each other.
Pessimists believe in the worst outcome. They have a down-trending view of the world and tend to focus on the negatives in life because they believe that in the end, evil will always overcome good. And this is what makes them different. Pessimists believe that there's good in the world, but they just don't think humans are capable of doing it, at least in its entirety. Nihilists, on the other hand, do not believe in anything.
They don't believe that there's evil in the world; neither do they believe that there's good in the world. In the mind of the nihilist, the world simply exists, and humans created morality, thereby creating good and evil. Let's take the glass cup metaphor, for instance. Optimists say you should see the glass as half full, while pessimists say we should see the glass as half empty. Nihilists say throw the entire cup away because what does it matter if it's full or empty? Full, empty, good, bad—all this is irrelevant.
We're all going to die anyway. Nihilism is also often compared to several other philosophies like cynicism and apathy, but again, they are all very different from one another, and correctly categorizing your thoughts in these baskets may be harder than you think. Cynics believe that people are always motivated by self-interest. They don't believe that anyone can have intrinsically good motives. They have no faith in the human species and believe that we're all entirely selfish—only fighting for our own benefit.
However, the idea that humans are not good means that in the mind of the cynic, good exists out there somewhere—just not in humans. In the mind of the nihilist, nothing exists out there. There's no good or evil. They don't see people as evil; neither do they see them as good because they don't believe either of those things exist. They're simply traits we've applied to things.
Apathetic people just don't care. They believe that there's meaning to life but they simply don't care about it. Nihilism, on the other hand, is the idea that there’s no grand design or purpose—nothing to believe in and therefore no meaning. This brings to mind the paradox of nihilism: if you believe in nothing, then that nothing becomes something that you believe in.
But since you now believe in something, then there is no nihilism, because nihilism is the belief that there is nothing. Nihilism is quite different from other philosophies because it was first a literary invention before it ever became philosophical. As a result, it's not clearly defined like many of the other philosophies that exist. Many different people have explained it in many different ways, but eventually, these different definitions got categorized, forming many different kinds of nihilism.
There's political nihilism. Political nihilists believe that for humanity to move forward as a species, all political, social, and religious order must be destroyed. Then there's ethical nihilism; it rejects the idea of absolute ethical or moral values. With this type of nihilism, good or bad is only defined by society, and as such, it shouldn't be followed. If we as a species will ever attain absolute individual freedom, we can kind of just do whatever we want.
Then we have existential nihilism. It's the understanding that life has no value or meaning. It's the most popular kind of nihilism, and the one we've been talking about for most of this video. For nihilists, the existence of things like the state, religious bodies, and even communal morality is a breach on our freedom as individuals. If we can't do absolutely anything we want to do, then are we truly free, or have we simply bound ourselves by some kind of invisible mental chain for reasons we can't explain?
One night, I was scrolling through Reddit and I came across the question: if you had the chance to save your pet or a stranger, who would you save? An overwhelming number of people said their pet. Pretty obviously, when one commenter was confronted, they simply asked the question, "Why do you think a human life is worth more than that of an animal?" No one really had an answer.
Of course, people tried to beat around the bush, but the question "why" was never answered. And that right there is the point of the nihilist: if we can't answer why we bind ourselves by these rules, then why do we choose to do it? Well, it might be because of the existential horror and the emotional anguish that comes with agreeing to the fact that life is meaningless.
Think about it for a minute: if life is truly meaningless and everything we're doing has no value, then all the feats of science, the wonders of technology, things like space exploration and human rights movements—look at how far we've come—and then think about the fact that it all might just be a waste, a blip in time with no consequence whatsoever in the grand scheme of things. Knowing that all the things we experience, the ups and downs we go through, that in the end, it's all for nothing, we aren't obligated to understand the chaos of reality, just to laugh at it.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a strange philosopher because he argued both for and against nihilism at the same time. Arguing for, he explained that there is no objective structure or order in our world except for the one that we create for ourselves. He once said, "Every belief, every considering something true is necessarily false because there is simply no true world." He believed nihilism would expose all of humanity's beliefs and truths as nothing but a symptom of defective Western mythology.
As he famously said, "God is dead." Now, he wasn't talking about the actual deity of religions; he was talking metaphorically about the power that religious orders held at the time and how people were starting to chart their own paths and find their own meaning in life, denying what the status quo was at the time. But then, in the same breath, Friedrich argued against nihilism, saying that in the coming centuries, the advent of nihilism would drive civilization towards catastrophe—a disaster waiting to implode.
If you look at the most destructive civilizations in human history, we can clearly see that this is true. Long-standing cultural traditions, beliefs, religious institutions, and even financial systems are broken down, and nothingness starts to creep in. Think about it: if nothing matters and we're all just a random combination of transient atoms, how can we call Hitler objectively one of the worst humans to ever live for trying to wipe out an entire culture?
At a fundamental level, most of us understand that all of these things are indeed terrible, but the danger is that because we cannot explain why we feel that way logically, we can never convince another person to follow the same path. And that is exactly what Friedrich feared. Some people still blame him for the Nazi era because although he saw all of these dangers, he still continued preaching nihilism.
He believed that if we could work through the breakdown of civilization that nihilism would eventually cause, we can then create a new course of action for mankind. He believed that to move forward as a species, we must create a new morality—one that does away with the prejudices of what existed before. Because at the end of the day, tearing down your old house shouldn't make you homeless; rather, it should present you with an opportunity to build a bigger and better home.
Pause and look around you for a moment, observe everything that's going on—particularly on social media—and you can see that we as a species might just be heading for another nihilism outbreak. Religion no longer holds any saying what is morally acceptable. People are destroying long-standing beliefs and cultural practices and are instead charting new courses for themselves. Anything, no matter how despicable you think it is, now has a loyal fan base defending why they have a right to do whatever it is they want to do. And in reality, why not? That's the question no one can answer.
Humanity will keep shifting the needle forward ever so slightly until one day none of us will be able to tell the other that they're wrong, because why are they wrong? William Shakespeare once wrote, "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing." If life is truly meaningless and we have no purpose for being here, our response should be to make the best out of a bad situation.
Instead of seeing the glass half full or half empty, we can simply throw it out and drink directly from the faucet until we're satisfied. Because at the end of the day, life alone is reason enough for living. Sisyphus was a great king of Greek mythology, so clever that he was able to outwit the gods themselves twice. He cheated death first by capturing Thanatos, the god of death, then by tricking the goddess of the underworld, Hades, into releasing him back into the lands of the living. The gods weren't happy with this, and so for his arrogance, Sisyphus was given a deceptively simple punishment: roll a boulder up a hill.
The problem was that the boulder had been magically enchanted to fall back down to the bottom every time Sisyphus managed to get it to the top—effectively condemning him to an eternity of repeating the same impossible and meaningless task. Classical interpretations of the myth view it as an allegory for the futility of trying to escape death. No matter how powerful or clever a person is, we're all doomed to meet the same fate.
More modern audiences have found something more relatable about Sisyphus' struggle, seeing it not as a simple parable about the inevitability of death, but more like a metaphor for the drudgery and monotony of their own lives. Every day we wake up, make coffee, take the train to work, stare at a computer for hours, get yelled at by our boss, stare at the computer some more, then take the train back home, binge Netflix or YouTube while eating dinner, go to bed, and then wake up and do it all over again. Just like Sisyphus, we seem condemned to repeat the same meaningless tasks over and over and over.
Most of us do this every day for the rest of our lives, as though we're sleepwalking, never waking up or stopping to ask why. For some of us, one day we're standing on a street corner preparing to go to work when in an instant, we're struck by the strangeness of it all. Suddenly, nothing appears to have purpose. Life is haphazard and meaningless. You look around and you whisper to yourself, "Why are all of these people even in such a hurry? For that matter, why am I? What's the point of all this? Why am I even alive?"
There's a modern-day problem with absurdism: money—or the lack thereof. The reason many of us never pause to ponder our meaning is because we don't have the economic stability to do so. It's difficult to think about the meaning of life when you're worrying about keeping a roof over your head, which is why we're getting to a point where financial stability may just be the first step towards embracing the absurd.
Human beings crave meaning. It's part of our biology; we're evolutionarily programmed to search for patterns in chaos to try and understand why things are happening. It's how we learn. The problem is that existence is at best random and irrational. Nothing really seems to matter. Your loved ones die, stars explode, natural disasters wipe out entire cities, millions of people spend half their day on TikTok— and for what? Yet we keep going, constantly striving to create order by giving these things purpose despite the universe denying it.
This conflict is what the French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus referred to as "the Absurd." It's an irreconcilable paradox: we yearn for meaning in a meaningless universe. Camus uses the myth of Sisyphus as an allegory to describe this relationship. We can try to push the boulder to the top of the hill, but inevitably, it will roll back down. More often than not, the effects of this are intense feelings of anxiety, alienation, and hopelessness. We shout into the void but are met only with deafening silence—not even an echo.
For most of history, people have turned to religion for answers. You didn't need to worry if your life had meaning because some higher power was there to provide it. This all changed in 19th century Europe as new forms of science and philosophy threatened to replace Christianity as the central axis around which people's lives revolved. Notable texts such as Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species" challenged previously held beliefs about the nature of humanity, leading to a radical shift in society away from religion.
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche noted this famously, declaring "God is dead, and we have killed him." Despite what some may think, that statement wasn't claiming that God had literally been murdered, nor was Nietzsche celebrating. Rather, it was an observation that without Christianity, society had lost the foundation upon which it had built centuries-old systems of morality, metaphysics, and meaning. Nietzsche felt a great deal of anxiety about this, fearing that without a clear replacement, people would succumb to nihilism.
I've talked about nihilism before in another video, so I won't go into depth here, but to give a brief explanation: nihilism is the belief in nothingness—a belief that rejects the idea of objective truth. According to Nietzsche, nihilism was a necessary step on the journey away from religion, but it wasn't the destination because it presented a very real problem. If people viewed life as having no inherent meaning, it would likely lead them to despair. Because of this, he sought to speed up the arrival of nihilism so that he could in turn speed up its departure.
He believed that after nihilism had passed, humanity could finally arrive at the true philosophical foundation on which society could thrive. Unfortunately, while he successfully expedited nihilism's arrival, he failed to do so with its departure. In fact, Nietzsche's philosophy was taken up by many of the violent ideologies that define the early 20th century. Well over a hundred years later, nihilism remains rampant throughout global culture. Trust in both secular and religious institutions is at an all-time low. Our governments are corrupt.
There are CEOs with more money than some countries, and our spiritual leaders often appear ineffective and out of touch. Most people today report that faith plays little to no role in their lives. Instead, we've begun looking to science and reason for answers, but these haven't been able to offer a sufficient solution to the problem of meaning either. So what are we to do? Should we just simply accept our fate, conclude that our lives were without purpose, and allow the boulder to roll back over us?
Well, 20th-century philosophers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre didn't think so. Both argued that in the absence of objective meaning, we as free and rational beings must fight to create our own purpose. Sartre is credited as the father of modern existentialism—a philosophical school concerned with our plight as individuals forced to assume responsibility for our lives without certain knowledge of truth. Though its roots can be traced back to 19th-century figures like Søren Kierkegaard and Fyodor Dostoevsky, Sartre differentiated himself by rejecting the idea that humans are reliant on an external power like God to provide us with meaning.
He claimed that man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself, and referred to those who would outsource this responsibility to a higher power as acting in what he called "bad faith." In Sartre's view, "existence precedes essence." We are conceived, and only after being born do we figure out what our purpose in life will be. This might seem like an uncontroversial opinion to us today, but in the mid-20th century, this was a radical idea.
For most of human history, it was assumed that essence precedes existence. Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, it was widely believed that our purpose as individuals was assigned to us before birth; the meaning of your life was ready-made by the gods, prepackaged before you were even born. Sartre's claim was a direct contradiction of this widely held belief—a declaration that we as humans aren't beholden to gods or kings to provide us with meaning, only to ourselves.
For Sartre, the only problem of existence wasn't its lack of meaning, but rather its absolutely terrifying level of freedom. After all, without an objective meaning or morality, every one of us is responsible for designing our own purpose according to our own ethical code. Camus largely agreed with Sartre's diagnosis that we live in a meaningless universe where we as humans are, in his own words, "abandoned to freedom."
However, he didn't agree with the cure to that. For Camus, the solution to the problem of meaning wasn't as simple as making up your own. The universe would naturally rebuke our attempts to do so. No matter how hard we tried, we can push the boulder up the hill, but it will always fall back down. This, in turn, would still give rise to feelings of the absurd, as well as the associated sense of anxiety, alienation, and hopelessness that accompanies it.
For Camus, there were only three possible reactions to this. The first of these is suicide, which Camus famously wrote is "the one truly serious philosophical problem." Rather than grappling with the absurdity of life, you can simply refuse to play the game. The only issue is when you're gone, you can no longer enjoy life, however meaningless it may be. It also doesn't actually solve the problem; it only allows the absurd to decide your fate. It's essentially admitting defeat.
The second possible reaction is the solution of faith, which Camus dubs "philosophical suicide." Similar to Sartre's concept of bad faith, it's when a person rejects the burden of creating their own meaning by shifting the responsibility to an external ideology. This amounts to a kind of denial, where the individual deludes themselves into thinking they've conquered the problem when, in reality, they're just avoiding it. It's simply an attempt to replace the absurd with a set of man-made beliefs.
The consequence of which is the abdication of existential freedom. Importantly, Camus doesn't limit this to religion; any ideological system can serve this function—nationalism, capitalism, or even the values of our own family. When we allow external systems to dictate meaning to us, we give away the potential to determine our life's purpose. How many of us took a job or studied for a degree solely because our parents told us that we should?
In a world as complicated and confusing as ours, it can be tempting to contract out our thinking and just go along with what we're told. But the risk of ruin we run in doing this is ending up in a situation where we're unhappy and unfulfilled. That's why many of us pause on that random Tuesday afternoon and ask ourselves, "Why am I doing any of this?" If instead we make our own choices, we can decide meaning for ourselves and follow a path that calls to us instead of one that's just prescribed.
Of course, there's no guarantee of success. In fact, according to Camus, you are destined to fail again and again. What he argues, though, is that this is the only true solution to the problem—to acknowledge the meaninglessness of life and continue living anyway. Or, as Camus puts it, "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
The universe will always reject all attempts by the individual to create meaning. Just like Sisyphus, we're doomed to forever push the boulder up the hill, knowing that no matter how hard we try, it will inevitably roll back down to the bottom. Yet we must fight back against the absurd because it is by virtue of our struggle that we empower ourselves to live life the way we want. It's not about the destination; it's about the journey.
This philosophy effectively rejects nihilism as nothing more than a stepping stone on the way to absurdism. Life is meaningless, sure, and the only rational course of action is to behave as such. There is no plan, no objective truth, and everything happens purely by accident. But this doesn't necessitate nihilism. If we instead choose to embrace the absurd, we can view our circumstances as an opportunity to change our perspective.
Camus notes that it's not meaninglessness that hurts; rather, it's the desire for meaning being continuously rejected. If we can put aside our desires and simply accept life for what it is, we open up ourselves to experiencing it fully, living as passionately and as intensely as we like. In a world without meaning, we are free to constantly invent and reinvent our life purpose, changing it as often as it suits us.
Today you may be stuck in a redundant dead-end job, but tomorrow you could easily quit and go about completely redefining your existence. Maybe you want to be a chef or a classical composer. Maybe you want to spend the next year backpacking through the wilderness or volunteering with an aid organization. All you have to do is find the courage to acknowledge your own freedom, and you can be whoever you want to be.
Knowing this, we can abandon any expectations for the future and instead choose to live in the present moment. It isn't necessary that our actions lead to something bigger. There's no goal we have to reach, no afterlife to prepare for. And then we can find joy in every situation, no matter how unpleasant or absurd, because, well, it doesn't really matter.
Although we may be fated to fail, there's no reason we can't be happy while we do it. This might lead to greater empathy for our fellow humans as we recognize that every person alive is fighting the same fight that we are. We can feel a sense of camaraderie in knowing that we're all in this together. We'll never make it to the top of the mountain; the meaning of our lives will forever elude us. But as Camus says, "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart." It's because of this that one must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Suppose there is a couple, the Joneses, who just gave birth to a baby boy named Sammy. As they stand together in the hospital, gazing down at their newborn, they share an awareness that the life ahead of Sammy will be filled with an indeterminable amount of both pleasure and suffering, happiness and heartbreak, miracle and tragedy.
Then, in an instant, the harsh reality of their baby's future hits them, and for a fleeting second, they look into each other's eyes and think, "If we hadn't given birth to him in the first place, he wouldn't suffer anything." Right there, they both make the decision to give Sammy the best life they can and to prevent him from experiencing as much suffering as is humanly possible. The Joneses are great parents for thinking this, but in the words of David Benatar, "It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one and only guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is to not bring those children into existence in the first place."
This is the philosophy of anti-natalism. It's the thought that human procreation is unethical—the belief that any action with suffering as its byproduct should not be encouraged, no matter how much pleasure will follow. Although the roots of anti-natalism can be traced all the way back to ancient Greece, the philosophy has experienced a particular spike in popularity over the last decade or so.
This recent resurgence can be accredited by and large to the South African philosopher David Benatar, who authored what may be the most widely known literature on the subject in his book "Better Never to Have Been." Benatar argues that his anti-natalist views come from a place of compassion, stating that the only way to truly prevent the suffering that comes with existence is to not exist in the first place. And he isn't the first person to have this thought.
The Greek tragedian Sophocles once said, "Never to have been born is best." The 19th-century German poet Friedrich Hölderlin wrote, "Sleep is good; death is better. But of course, the best thing would have been to never have been born at all." And the preacher in Ecclesiastes said, "So I have praised the dead that are already dead more than the living that are yet alive. But better than both of them is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun."
So, as you can see, the school of thought that non-existence is inherently better than existence isn't a new one. In recent years, though, these ideas have given rise to the anti-natalist belief that seeks to end human procreation. There are two different schools of thought under the anti-natalism umbrella. The first is the philanthropic argument that we should spare the unborn from suffering—that is, life.
This argument centers around the harm in which existence poses on the baby being born. On the other hand of the spectrum, there are misanthropic arguments for anti-natalism that center more around the harm that babies being born will go on to inflict upon one another, other animals, and the environment as a whole. To put it into context, consider this: the average carbon footprint for a single person in the United States has been estimated to be around 16 to 20 tons per year.
This means that just fulfilling daily necessities—such as driving, showering, eating, and using electricity—has unimaginably damaging consequences toward the environment we live in. So to anti-natalists, the most ethical way to solve this problem is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Both anti-natalist arguments, whether philanthropic or misanthropic, are centered around one core problem: suffering, and one proposed solution: to stop giving birth.
And you might say, "Well, what about all the good things in life? Why would you not want a child to experience all of that?" Well, anti-natalists believe that in human life, there is an inherent imbalance or asymmetry between pleasure and suffering. Let's take Sammy, for instance. Because Sammy has been born, he would experience pain—which is bad—and pleasure—which is good. However, if Sammy was never born, then he would never experience pain—which is good—and he also wouldn't experience pleasure—which is not bad.
The argument, therefore, is that the presence of pain will always be objectively more harmful than the absence of pleasure. And so it makes sense to preserve the absence of pleasure rather than introduce the presence of pain. Everyone suffers from being human, but no one suffers from not existing in the first place.
A second argument that the followers of anti-natalism bring forward is the hypothetical consent argument. This states that no one can consent to being born. Consent is simply defined as the act of giving permission for something to happen, and according to the anti-natalist hypothetical consent argument, the unborn cannot give permission to be brought into the world. And so, as a result, the act of procreation should be seen as non-consensual and therefore unethical.
If we're focusing solely on the information we have about pre-birth that is scientifically provable, then the hypothetical consent argument is pretty difficult to argue against. But of course, as we know, the full extent of our pre-birth experience isn't yet known by scientists or even anyone, for that matter.
I am a psychologist, and I know that there are depths of the mind that have remained untapped for most of us in our normal business of going about our affairs. This uncertainty opens up the door for a wide array of pseudo-scientists who seek to explore the nature of our pre-birth experience using methods which, although can't be definitely proven by science, still add some thought-provoking counterclaims that are worth considering.
One of those pseudo-scientists is Helen Wambach, who hypnotized 750 subjects in the 1970s and asked them the question: did you choose to be born? The responses she aggregated were quite staggering; 81% of Wambach's subjects reported that they did choose to be born, while 19% reported that they were either unaware of the choice, or they got no clear answer to that question. Of course, again, research and findings gathered from hypnosis can't be scientifically proven, but in the face of the seemingly unknowable, studies like this pose at least some perspective that should not be disregarded entirely.
However, focusing back on the data that we do have definitive answers to, consider the story of Goldman, written by Siana Shiffrin, which is used by anti-natalist as an example for the hypothetical consent argument. Goldman is a wealthy man who lives on an island and decides one day for reasons unknown that he wants to donate some of his wealth to his neighbors on an adjacent island. These neighbors are comfortably off, but would still objectively benefit from his donation.
Unfortunately, though, due to historical tension between the governments of these neighboring islands, Goldman and his agents aren't able to physically go to the adjacent island, nor are they permitted by law to even communicate with the people living there. But still determined to donate, he handcrafts several heavy cubes of gold, each worth $5 million. Then he flies his plane over the neighboring island and drops the cubes down to the civilians underneath.
He tries to avoid hitting people with the cubes, knowing that it could cause injury. But eventually, after gifting several people the wealth, he hits one person with the story aptly named "Unlucky." The impact of the cube breaks Unlucky's arm, yet at the same time, grants them $5 million. Shiffrin acknowledges that on the one hand, with all the elements of the story considered, Unlucky was an overall beneficiary of Goldman's actions, as the $5 million that they received is enough to cover the cost of the broken arm and then some.
Yet on the other hand, Shiffrin argues that an objective wrong was still committed by Goldman since the harm he inflicted on the unlucky wasn't consensual, despite how much the payout might have outweighed the harm. Unlucky was living a decent life before Goldman came into the picture. His life wasn't pleasurable, but he didn't suffer any pain either. After the cube dropped on his arm, he experienced both pain and pleasure. In light of all this, we have to ask the question: which then is better—to have experienced pain and pleasure or not any at all?
I think to answer that, we have to define what pain, or in this case suffering, is. For millennia, philosophers have traveled to great depths to dissect what this experience really means and why it corresponds so closely with human life. One of those philosophers was Fyodor Dostoevsky, the infamous Russian novelist whose work contemplates the spiritual dimensions of human psychology in extraordinary depth and who invented the genre of existentialist literature.
Dostoevsky's final book, "The Brothers Karamazov," tells the story of three brothers—Dmitri, Ivan, and Alyosha—whose opposing spiritual and worldviews are forced into question when they're tasked with solving their father's murder. The novel's most theatrical ideological clash occurs between Ivan, the middle son who has broken away from his religious family in pursuit of a more Western and rationalist education, and Alyosha, his spirited younger brother, who has chosen to remain attached to his family's faith.
Ivan claims that due to the existence of suffering—and more specifically the suffering of innocent children—believing in the omniscience of God and the goodness of people is illogical, impossible, and impermissible. He laments, "Listen, if everyone must suffer in order to buy eternal harmony, pray tell me, what children have got to do with it?" It's quite incomprehensible why they should have to suffer. Through the character of Ivan, Dostoevsky paints a clear picture of a man whose compassionate intellectualism supersedes his faith in humanity so far to the point where he rejects the idea of human life altogether.
Sound familiar? Several parallels can be drawn between Dostoevsky's Ivan and Benatar's anti-natalism, as both believe that if suffering is so synonymous with human life, then non-existence is the better alternative. This argument Ivan poses is more broadly referred to as the problem of evil, and it is one of the most ancient and compelling defenses against the belief of God that exists in philosophical literature to date. The argument's possible origins have been traced back to Epicurus, an ancient Greek sage who famously asked, "Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he isn't omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence comes evil?"
The last question, "Whence comes evil?" or in other words, where does evil come from, is yet another heavily debated subject, which is, of course, ultimately unanswerable. However, anti-natalists would likely argue that whatever origin or meaning suffering may carry matters little as it is irrelevant in the face of suffering's devastation. And in a sense, I completely agree, as searching for meaning to assign to suffering can so easily become a slippery slope that leads people to excuse, disregard, or gloss over the objective reality of both their own suffering and the suffering of others.
Yet at the same time, the practice of assigning meaning to suffering can also be a powerful coping mechanism that can transform the internal world of a person who is tasked to live with these heavy burdens. The answer, like most things, possibly lies somewhere in the middle of these two extremes and differs from person to person. In a way, both anti-natalist philosophies and the ideas of Dostoevsky’s Ivan challenge us to come to terms with the reality of human suffering.
Every day we're faced with things in our existence that are so factually unanswerable to the point that they can only be addressed through the lens of hypotheticals or faith. However, suffering, unlike these elusive unanswerable existential questions, is very much real—tangible, devastating, overwhelming, and ever-present. You turn on the TV and hear one bad news story after another. You go online, and you're reading stories of corruption, human rights violations, and wars all around the globe.
With humanity's suffering even more prominent now that we have access to world news at our fingertips, it's no wonder then that arguments for anti-natalism are becoming more and more compelling, seeing a rise culturally. In the end, we're faced with one question: in the face of all that we know to be concretely true about the reality of suffering, should you choose to believe that human life is not worth creating or that it would have been better if you hadn't been born? Or do you choose to still have faith in that intangible sliver of hope that there's some larger reason for your coming to this Earth in the first place, despite the suffering that your existence entails?
No matter which side of the fence you stand on, I think it's important to acknowledge questions of this nature—questions of faith. It's because our attitudes toward and surrounding all that is unanswerable about our existence ultimately forms the philosophical bedrock of how we view the world and how we'll go on to act in our lives. Although Alyosha, Ivan's faithful younger brother, doesn't pose a very compelling counterargument to Ivan's lament during their famous fight that I mentioned earlier, the subsequent actions he takes throughout the rest of the novel go on to demonstrate Dostoevsky's final illustration of how one should conduct themselves even in the face of suffering and in relation to the problem of evil.
Alyosha's direction has him working on the ground directly with the impoverished schoolchildren of his community, doing the tedious work of actually making their days more enjoyable and infusing their lives with a sense of meaning. Alyosha becomes an active participant, helping out in every instance of suffering he encounters. This is made particularly clear through his mentorship of a young impoverished boy whose suicide Alyosha prevents with his compassion. Meanwhile, Ivan spends the second half of the story dissolving into a state of delirium after realizing that his intellectual arguments against human life led to the murder of his own father, as they gave another man the confidence to abandon his faith and carry out an act of evil in the world.
Dostoevsky's final message was that ultimately, the actions we take in the face of suffering matter more than the intellectual beliefs we hold and preach to others about the nature of suffering. To me, whether or not one chooses to believe that human procreation is ethical matters less than the quality of the subsequent actions which that belief system guides them to take in the world. Like the Joneses, would you be aware of the harsh reality of human suffering and prepare yourself to do everything in your power to protect the ones you love from it, or will you simply throw your hands in the air and say, "I didn't choose to be here anyway, so I don't care what happens?"
In the end, one should only feel confident holding beliefs against procreation after they can assess whether or not these beliefs can serve them with an effective means of coping with and helping others to cope with the suffering directly within and around them. Because again, whether we realize it or not, our beliefs about the nature of existence hold great power over who we are and how we act in the world. As Dostoevsky's final novel boldly states, "Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams." It's the only meaningful resource we have to combat the reality of suffering that comes with our existence.