Schopenhauer was quite right --"On the Sufferings of the World" -- wise essay.

[lisa needs braces]

Schopenhauer coldly saw the reality of human suffering and its meaninglessness. Whenever I'm feeling down I listen to this essay and, ironically, end up feeling better about my life and situation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7pwItrhEZo

The reader's world-weary tone absolutely fits the content.

[zamyrabyrd]

Lord Buddha said 2500 years ago that life is "dukka" or suffering.

[Jo498]

Schopenhauer actually got this mostly from the Buddhist writings that became available in translation in the early 19th century.

Fun factoid: Max Mueller, the son of the poet who wrote the poems for Schubert's "Schöne Müllerin" and "Winterreise" became one of the first professors with a focus on indology (in Oxford) in the mid-19th century. His name is still so famous in India, that the institutions for the spread of German language and culture that are called "Goethe-Institut" everywhere else are named after Max Mueller in India.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_M%C3%BCller

[vandermolen]

Scott Peck in his popular 'The Road Less Travelled' adapts the Buddha quote stating:

'Life is difficult but when we accept that it is difficult it no longer matters that life is difficult ' (or words to that effect).

I find that very helpful and it echoes Lao Tse's statement that ' True words are paradoxical but no other  form of teaching can take its place.'

You didn't realise that I was so philosophical 

[drogulus]

     I am unimpressed. It reminds me of the debt phobes in economics who boohoo constantly about how we are leaving a gazillion dollars in debt to the grandkiddies. It's maximally bogus. We leave everything to them.

     So suffering outweighs joy for some people and they kill themselves, I get it. And the knowledge that life has suffering in it isn't pleasant and may affect the balance. Oh yes, there's a balance. As much as I can't stand "meaning of life" philosophy I can't leave this one alone. Also, a philosopher that isn't funny and isn't having fun with ideas is no good.

[Xenophanes]

Schopenhauer coldly saw the reality of human suffering and its meaninglessness. Whenever I'm feeling down I listen to this essay and, ironically, end up feeling better about my life and situation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7pwItrhEZo
I don
The reader's world-weary tone absolutely fits the content.

Well, the reader has a soft, calm voice, for the most part, relaxing to listen to, though he gets more excited in a passage near the end. The effect is mostly independent of what he reads it is relaxing to hear as long as I don't listen to closely to the content.

Different people find all sorts of things to be comforting and uplifting. If Schopenhauer does it for you, more power to you. I don't personally find the philosophy convincing.  For one thing, evil can only exist in something good, whereas there can be good things which are not evil.

[drogulus]

     

Different people find all sorts of things to be comforting and uplifting.

     I feel about this understanding of philosophy the way any lover of classical music feels when a numbskull says "Oh, it's so soothing!".

     

[zamyrabyrd]

     I am unimpressed. It reminds me of the debt phobes in economics who boohoo constantly about how we are leaving a gazillion dollars in debt to the grandkiddies. It's maximally bogus. We leave everything to them.

I prefer the short, succinct Sayings of the Buddha.
Moreover, he did say there is a way out.

[Karl Henning]

Different people find all sorts of things to be comforting and uplifting.

I find that observation comforting.

[Karl Henning]

I prefer the short, succinct Sayings of the Buddha.

Concision is a virtue.

[lisa needs braces]

Schopenhauer actually got this mostly from the Buddhist writings that became available in translation in the early 19th century.

Fun factoid: Max Mueller, the son of the poet who wrote the poems for Schubert's "Schöne Müllerin" and "Winterreise" became one of the first professors with a focus on indology (in Oxford) in the mid-19th century. His name is still so famous in India, that the institutions for the spread of German language and culture that are called "Goethe-Institut" everywhere else are named after Max Mueller in India.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_M%C3%BCller

That is a fun factoid. 

[lisa needs braces]

     I am unimpressed. It reminds me of the debt phobes in economics who boohoo constantly about how we are leaving a gazillion dollars in debt to the grandkiddies. It's maximally bogus. We leave everything to them.

     So suffering outweighs joy for some people and they kill themselves, I get it. And the knowledge that life has suffering in it isn't pleasant and may affect the balance. Oh yes, there's a balance. As much as I can't stand "meaning of life" philosophy I can't leave this one alone. Also, a philosopher that isn't funny and isn't having fun with ideas is no good.

Hmm any opinions on THIS book?

https://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265

[drogulus]

Hmm any opinions on THIS book?

https://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265

     I never heard of it. From reading about it, it advances the thesis that everyone is better off dead because being dead no one misses pleasure while being alive pain outweighs it.

     There isn't much of an evolutionary basis in what I've read. It looks like religious arguments featuring logical consequences of overpowering unexamined priors.

     The problem of philosophy is what there is and how we know.

     ""It is not only the ratio of pleasure to pain that determines the quality of a life, but also the sheer quantity of pain. Once a certain threshold of pain is passed, no amount of pleasure can compensate for it."

     This is shallow. Isolated instances of pleasure and pain rarely have the power to overcome the long run verdict of intermediate states. As for pleasure overcoming pain generally, most valuable experience has some of both. We retro- and prospectively value life on more than one axis. Am I feeling pleasure? Is my pain bothering me? If I'm otherwise occupied, by what?

[lisa needs braces]

     So suffering outweighs joy for some people and they kill themselves, I get it.

More like: "The depth of suffering, which pervades life more than joy, is deeper than the depth of joy for most people -- nay, perhaps for most beings capable of feeling those emotions."

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

I have never read all that much of Schopenhauer, but one quote really resonates with me--something to the effect that a person's intelligence is inversely related to their ability to withstand noise. This works for me as I detest nearly all man-made noise (incl. babies, kids, movies, dogs, power tools, alarms, phones (smart or dumb) and anything that BEEEP BEEEP BEEEPs! etc). I am a peace and quiet fanatic. There is some truth in Schopenhauer's ideas on this topic, but sometimes I wonder whether the even more intelligent/enlightened have figured out a way to not be bothered by noise. In meditation (which I try to do regularly) one is supposed to accept the world as is and not judge sounds and the like. Hard to do, but I'm making progress. Nevertheless, I could not live without my earplugs, nature sounds (ocean, rain, etc) and getaways to various vacation cottages!

As for philosophers with practical wisdom, my favorites are Seneca, Marcus Aurelius (which I have been reading for decades before they became popular), Alan Watts, Buddha, and LaoTse. Nassim Taleb and Werner Herzog have some very worthwhile things to say as well.

[drogulus]

More like: "The depth of suffering, which pervades life more than joy, is deeper than the depth of joy for most people -- nay, perhaps for most beings capable of feeling those emotions."

     Yeah he's just pissed off that people don't hate life because a philosopher says they should. I think philosophers should spend more time reverse engineering the world to see how it really works than trying to boss the world around with their preconceptions. Also, a few jokes wouldn't hurt.

[bwv 1080]

Always a narcissist, Nassim Taleb has become an anti-science crank