Episode #099 - Transcript

Hello, everyone. I’m Stephen West. This is Philosophize This!

I hope you love the show today.

So, last episode Schopenhauer presented us with a picture. It was a picture of what he thinks is the metaphysical reality that we all navigate. Turns out it’s a pretty grim picture—scary picture, in fact—not exactly the kind of picture you’re going to be posting up to all of your friends on Instagram. Look, if you got a bad picture on Instagram, it’s easy. Right? You just put 18 filters on it until it looks halfway decent, but there’s no filter out there for this picture. You can have the world’s greatest filter. You can have that one where it superimposes bunny ears on everyone. You’re not posting this picture. If you post this picture, you’re getting three likes: one from your mom, one from your dad, and one from some 80-year-old dude that liked it by accident.

I mean, think of what Schopenhauer’s saying with this picture. Although things appear to be separate in our human experience of the world, the reality is, we’re all manifestations of a single thing—a force that he calls the will to life. We exist in this realm with a subconscious motor constantly driving us forward where the only way to move forward is to interfere with or destroy the other manifestations of this force that surround us. You know, as I said last episode, we’re condemned to a life of neurotically, restlessly striving for things, and we’re forced to self-mutilate just for the luxury of being able to continue restlessly striving for things.

This is the picture of your life. And Schopenhauer thought, many of us may tell ourselves a story. We may put our own Instagram filter or 10 filters on this life to try to make the picture look better for us. But look, the reality is, figuratively speaking, yes, you do have dark circles under your eyes. Yes, your skin does look disgusting in that picture. And the whites of your eyes do look like you have jaundice. It’s a bad picture. Just delete it. Speaking from years and years of personal experience here.

So, Schopenhauer paints this picture for us of our lives, but we haven’t really heard much about what he thinks this means in terms of how we should be behaving. And I think a good place to start is to take a look at how most of us typically behave, talk about why Schopenhauer thinks we behave this way, and then, after we do that, we’ll talk about what he thinks the greatest way to live our lives is. What do you say? Let’s do it!

Schopenhauer thinks that because we’re all manifestations of this will to life, from the moment we come out of the womb, we’re in this constant state of restlessly striving for things. Now, it’s one thing to speak about this in terms of generalities. But in practice, what does this restless striving for things actually look like in our everyday experience of the world?

Well, the good news is, everybody listening to this can relate because everybody listening to this is currently restlessly striving for something. And look, if you’re that guy, if you’re out there saying, “No! No, no, I’m not restlessly striving for anything,”—I’ll say it this way. Look, even if you are some monk listening to this on top of a mountain somewhere while you dust off the giant buddha statue, please extend your friend Stephen an olive branch. Alright? You can at least look around you and relate to the fact that people don’t spend their lives in some perpetual state of contentment, right?

Human beings live their lives moving from one state of discontent to the next. This is nothing new. We’ve talked about it several times on this show before. Everybody listening to this currently wants something that they don’t have. And most people listening to this tell themselves a story, maybe not consciously. It’s not like some mantra you’re repeating to yourself every day. But at some level most of us believe that once we get enough things that we want or we achieve some level of status in the world, then I’m going to be satisfied. Then I’m going to be happy and just live out the rest of my days smiling constantly. You’re going to have a six pack on your cheeks because you never stop smiling.

Now, there’s almost endless possibilities of how human beings engage in this behavior. Some people do it with material possessions. You know, “Once I get my dream car, I’m done! I’m done. I’m just going to spend the rest of my life driving around in my new car, waving at people. That’ll be my legacy.” “Once I complete my extensive collection of Star Wars memorabilia, then I’m just going to sit around the rest of my life and look at it, saying things to myself like, ‘Well, would you look at that?’”

People do it with jobs, friends, romantic relationships, weight-loss goals, Twitter followers. People even do it where they’ll close their eyes, and they’ll imagine the best version of themselves they can possibly imagine. And they’ll say, “Look, if only I can get rid of these bad habits that I have and replace them with this ideal collection of good habits, then I’m going to be satisfied. Then I’m going to love the person that I am. Once I get to that point, I will be so proud of what I’ve accomplished so far, I won’t ever feel the need to improve anything ever again.”

But what actually happens? Again, it’s nothing new, but what actually happens is, you get the dream car, and, yeah, you ride around in it smiling and waving at people for a couple weeks. But then, eventually, it just becomes your car, at a certain point. Then, inevitably, there’s something else you’re desiring every day. You improve things about yourself as a person. And, yeah, you feel proud for a couple weeks. But then, inevitably, there’s something else you want to improve about yourself.

You could have it all. You could have just used your brains, cleverness, pattern recognition, relentless hard work, and you could have just killed it for 40 years in the private sector—sitting out on your yacht, glass of chardonnay, just gazing out at the world you essentially just conquered—but is it enough to essentially conquer the world? No. No, it’s not. At that point, you have to run for president and actually conquer the world.

This is what we are as human beings, to Schopenhauer, manifestations of this will to life that are constantly, restlessly striving for things in a perpetual state of discontent. Schopenhauer compares it to running through a sunny field. There’s sunlight all around you. But there’s a single dark cloud in the sky that’s hanging directly over your head. You can see sunlight in every direction. You can see happiness, is what he means. It seems within reach, but no matter how fast you run, this dark cloud is going to follow you around, and you’re never actually going to get to the sunlight. This is what it means to be a human being in our default state, to Schopenhauer.

Now, understandably, some of you may be asking out there, “Really, Schopenhauer? Nobody ever gets to touch that sunlight even for a brief period of time? I mean, look, maybe you’re right. Maybe I do just have these goals that I’m restlessly striving for that are never going to bring me long-term happiness. But look, the fact is, when I get my dream car, I really do feel great for a couple weeks. Aren’t I experiencing happiness there? Aren’t I just feeling it for whatever little amount of time I can in that scenario?”

Schopenhauer would say, no, no, you’re not. Look, your default state is to suffer and restlessly strive for things. When you get the car, it’s not that you’ve ascended to some new plane of existence known as happiness. It’s that suffering has been temporarily removed from your life as you normally experience it. That really great way that you feel when you’re in that place getting your dream car, feeling on cloud nine, Schopenhauer thinks that’s the way you might potentially be able to feel like all the time if the reality of your existence wasn’t that you are a manifestation of this will to life condemned to restlessly strive and suffer. It’s not that happiness has been added when you get the car, but that suffering has been subtracted.

Now, another thing you might be saying is, “Okay, so, I suffer. Okay, so, I’m condemned to a life of restlessly striving for things. But, you know, I’m confused right now, Schopenhauer. Why don’t I feel as miserable as you’re making me feel like I should be? Like, what if I love my life? This suffering that you’re talking about, yeah, it’s there, but it’s not something that I’m thinking about on a daily basis. Like, why am I not miserable if I’m truly in this dark, depressing universe that you’re talking about?”

Well, imagine a war vet—stepped on a Bouncing Betty in WWII, blew off part of his foot. He gets medically discharged, sent back to the states, gets surgery. Doctors do all they can, but there’s always limitations, of course. Let’s say there’s permanent nerve damage to his foot. And let’s say that, no matter what they do, for the rest of his life, whenever he puts weight on that left foot of his, whenever he takes a step, there’s just going to be a little bit of pain in that foot. Can’t fix it.

Well, what does the veteran do in that situation? Does he sit around for the rest of his life agonizing about it? Does he hyper focus on the pain every time he takes a step? Does he let this injury make him miserable every single day of his life? No. He just accepts this unfortunate condition that he’s in and tries to sort of just tune out the pain as he’s walking. Eventually gets to the point, he doesn’t even notice it anymore. This pain is just what life is to him.

But is that pain not there just because he’s taught himself a neat trick where he doesn’t pay attention to it? Of course, it’s still there. And Schopenhauer thinks we’re not so different from this war vet. Just because this suffering is the only life we’ve ever known, and we’ve learned to accept it and not allow it to make us miserable doesn’t mean that the suffering isn’t there. Most of us are so good at tuning it out that we just accept it as the only way life could ever be.

But just imagine if it was different. Imagine if it was possible for you to feel that way that you feel when you first get your dream car or you accomplish some lofty goal. What if it was possible for you to feel that way a lot more of the time or all the time? This contrast just goes to show how much suffering we all accept as just the only way life can be. It’s this constant hum in the background we’ve learned to ignore and deal with much like the war vet’s learned to deal with that pain in his foot.

Now, the absolute last thing that I would ever want to do when talking about Schopenhauer’s philosophy is to alienate someone out there. And it just so happens, there’s a type of person out there that we haven’t talked about yet, a type of person that’s probably feeling a little bit left out right now. So let’s let them ask a question.

“Thank you, Mr. Schopenhauer, for taking my question. So, I was wondering, what about me? What if there’s somebody that just doesn’t have any goals or even the slightest inclination to strive for anything, really? What if you pretty much just have an overall feeling that you don’t care about anything or anyone on this godforsaken planet and that all this is meaningless? What about people like me?”

Schopenhauer would say, yep, that’ll happen. That will happen, especially in these modern times when we have this cushy thing we call civilization that makes it so that we really don’t have to strive for anything if we don’t want to. Didn’t always used to be that way. In hunter-gatherer times, if you’re not restlessly striving for something, you’re dead in like a week. Nowadays, it’s an option for a human being to just not have any goals or to sit around lost, wondering what you want in your life, and never really take action on anything.

Schopenhauer says that what this type of person’s life becomes is either a life of boredom or depression or anxiety. When they’re bored, they’re bored because they’re manifestations of this will to life, and they don’t have anything to restlessly strive for. They’re not doing the very thing they were put into this universe to do. When they’re depressed it’s because, again, they don’t have anything to strive for. There’s this sense of purpose that’s missing when you don’t have any goals that you truly care about.

When they’re anxious, it’s because, instead of striving for some goal that they want to achieve, they just sit around—this engine that’s redlining. Subconsciously this will to life is making them feel like this meth addict. “Ooh, I gotta strive today. How am I gonna strive today? What are we going to do?” And when they don’t have anything to put that energy into, they end up turning that energy inward and restlessly striving over all these little things that they have no control over.

People find themselves in this situation for a lot of different reasons. But I guess the point is, after you’ve worked hard and achieved some goals and expected happiness to be on the other side of them and you don’t get it, an alluring trap to fall into is just to not do anything. What good is doing all this work anyway? It’s not going to bring me happiness. Schopenhauer says the only way out of this trap that’s available to the general public is, you have to find some way to go back. You have to find some way to delude yourself into believing that once you accomplish a goal, it’s going to make you happy.

Now, if that sounds scary, the good news is, no matter how extreme of a case you are in this place, there’s hope for you. Because remember, you are a manifestation of the will to life. You at your core want to restlessly strive for things. It’s part of your nature. You just have to be openminded and work hard actively searching for the things that you want. You grind long enough, you stay openminded enough, and eventually you’re going to find something. Eventually you’re going to come across a picture of, like, a white, sandy beach, beautiful people frolicking around. And you’re going to say to yourself, “You know what? It has been ages since I’ve had a good frolic. I want to do that.” And then off you go.

So, two broad classes of people to Schopenhauer. You have the people that are going to ceaselessly strive and desire things for the rest of their life, and they’re just going to do their best to try to tune out the suffering along the way. And you have people that won’t have meaningful goals, and they’re all going to end up bored, anxious, or depressed. Schopenhauer thinks 99.9% of people are going to find themselves in these two categories, and they’re going to die in these two categories.

We’ve talked about his prescription for the people who are bored, depressed, or anxious, but he also has a tactic for the other group if they ever want a temporary respite from the otherwise constant suffering they’re going to be experiencing on a daily basis. I want to ask a question right now. And bear with me. At first this question may seem like it’s kind of tangential, but I think it’s a good way to illustrate his point here.

Why is it that, pretty much unanimously, every human being loves a good view? Why do we love views? Why do we pay so much more for property that has an amazing view of something in the back yard? Why do we love going on a hike, coming to the edge of a ravine, and looking out at a vast expanse of trees and lakes and snowcapped mountains? People call it breathtaking. Why? Why does it do that to us?

Now, there’s a lot of different theories about this. Some philosophers say that everything we think is beautiful is ultimately derived from some aspect of nature and that, when we find ourselves on the edge of a cliff from a vantage point that human beings don’t typically get to see nature, we’re sort of hit with this tsunami of beauty. And it becomes kind of like an overload to our systems. That’s a theory. But there’s many others.

I heard a theory on a podcast one time that I actually thought about for years after. It was that maybe the reason we all love a really nice view is because, well, we have these complex reward systems set up in our brains. And that maybe over the course of hundreds of thousands of years of our ancestors trying to subsist, we’ve inherited a feel-good response when we come to the edge of a ravine and see all the fresh water and the trees and all the life flourishing—that whole scene giving our ancestors the message that they’re going to live another day, in theory.

But then I thought about it, and that’s not entirely consistent, right? I mean, there’s places like the Red Rock Conservatory in Nevada—undeniably gorgeous views. It’s a barren, desert wasteland. I mean, I’ve been there. I can assure you, life is not flourishing out there. It’s like 180 degrees every day. If I got lost for 20 minutes out there, I’d come back one giant freckle. That’s all I’d be.

But it’s still a beautiful view. Schopenhauer would say that the reason we all love a good view is not for any of these reasons. We love it because it allows us, if only for a couple of minutes, to escape this state of constantly striving and desiring and reaching for things. I mean, think about it. When you’re on the edge of that cliff and you’re looking out at this amazing view, what are you thinking about in that moment? Are you thinking about getting that promotion? Are you thinking about the leopard interior that you want in your dream car? No. You are totally consumed by that moment, totally present. We all love a good view because for just a couple minutes we’re not thinking about anything but the beauty of what is right in front of us.

But Schopenhauer didn’t think that we only have this sort of experience when we’re staring at a beautiful view outdoors. He thought we could have this moment with anything beautiful enough to captivate us like this. Music—you ever had a song where you’re feeling it so much that, when it’s playing, you’re not thinking about anything but the song and singing into your hairbrush in the mirror? Or how about a great movie? You’re just totally immersed in it, so immersed you almost forget that you’re in the middle of a movie theater. Even our super modern forms of art—what about a video game that’s so good you can’t put the controller down? You’re just in tunnel vision.

It's in these moments, to Schopenhauer, that great art and even great philosophy can captivate us to the point that we can briefly escape this otherwise constant striving for things that is our default state as a manifestation of the will to life. You know, it’s funny, culturally speaking, at least in the United States, working really hard every day striving towards your goals—that’s one of the most virtuous qualities you can have. Somebody that spends the vast majority of their life listening to music and watching movies and playing video games—when that person’s at the end of their life and they’re 80 years old sitting around the poker table at Shady Acres talking about what they did throughout their life, that’s not a person their peers are going to have a lot of respect for.

Here's Schopenhauer saying that maybe there’s some wisdom in that kind of a lifestyle that might not be immediately evident. Another interesting thing to think about is, in the same way we shouldn’t relegate our teachers just to people who work at a university or people that look a certain way or talk a certain way—and that if you’re looking for it there’s wisdom in potentially every situation that you’re in. I mean, just like three days ago I learned something that changed my view of myself from Sesame Street. Seriously, the great philosopher Big Bird has bestowed upon me wisdom that’s made me feel really great about my life. What I mean is, in the same way that there is wisdom in every situation, there’s beauty in every situation too.

Now, if by appreciating beauty we can temporarily escape from this default state of restless striving, is it maybe possible that if someone had like an extreme hypervigilance towards the beauty in every moment—in other words, if they actively sought out and appreciated the beauty all around them every second of every day—could they maybe permanently escape this default state that Schopenhauer talks about? Just interesting to think about.

So, that’s your lot in life, people. Get over it. Schopenhauer has spoken. Sorry it wasn’t the answer you were all hoping for. But the reality is, 99.9% of us are going to be stuck in this type of existence until we all die someday.

But what is this 0.1% of people that we keep talking about? Who are they? Schopenhauer thinks there is a third type of person out there, an extremely rare type of person. I’m certainly not one of them. It’s a person that’s so special they are capable of living a life that’s in keeping with what he sees as the pinnacle of human virtue—a sage in his philosophical system. This sage is somebody that uses their intellect to arrive at several conclusions that naturally follow from each other, if you’re Schopenhauer, conclusions that lead this person to a single lifestyle that they share with other sages.

To Schopenhauer, the first reality that a sage has to arrive at is that everything in the universe is ultimately one. And when you arrive at that conclusion, what happens is you take a look around you, and you see all of these individual aspects of the will to life interfering with and encroaching upon other aspects of the will to life. You see a cat eating a mouse. You see a mother and her baby getting hit by a drunk driver. You see an asteroid hitting a planet. You see the absolute maelstrom of suffering that’s visited every day in this universe. And at that point, the sage realizes something. They realize that this suffering is ultimately them suffering because we’re all one thing.

Now, at this point, the sage searches for what’s causing all this suffering so that maybe they can do something about it. What is the force responsible for this entire existence and, therefore, all the suffering within it? The will to life. From there, there’s only one path forward for the sage. Much like waging an inner jihad against vice or not being the best person you can possibly be, Schopenhauer says that the sage wages an inner war against the will to life, totally rejecting all the things it compels people to do: never having sex, not eating good food just because it tastes good, living in solitude, denying any desires for fame and fortune.

The sage in Schopenhauer’s system wages a war against the will to life by refusing to participate in the game that it put us here to play. The life of this sage, as you can imagine, starts to resemble the life on an ascetic monk. This is the pinnacle of human virtue, to Schopenhauer. Now, did he live this way? No. But he did live more this way than most people do. He did, famously, live out the rest of his life alone in an apartment with his pet poodle.

Now, look, regardless of how you feel about never having ice cream again, selling all your stuff, spending the rest of your life sitting in your empty living room, resisting this urge to strive for things, Schopenhauer does make some really valuable insights, I think. Yes, he uses some melodramatic language at times to express himself. And, yes, if you accept his world picture you may not feel as excited as you are now about getting dressed up in your suit-and-tie outfit and going and giving a presentation on Monday.

But I think Schopenhauer does do a really good job of pointing out how easy it is for us to be like that war veteran that we talked about—to find ourselves born into this existence where suffering is an inexorable part of life, and to just tell ourselves a story and try to do our best to forget about how much suffering we’re actually going through. Should we be just accepting it? Or should we be doing more to try to eliminate that suffering? Should our ultimate goal in life be to never experience any suffering ever?

Now, on the other hand, if you’re Nietzsche—who spent much of his work responding to the work of Schopenhauer—Nietzsche agrees that suffering is an inexorable part of life, but he has a slightly different view of it. Like we talked about in the Nietzsche series—go back and listen to it if you want—the goal shouldn’t be to completely rid yourself of any kind of suffering. You should embrace suffering. If you’re somebody that’s been through a lot of bad stuff in your life, feel privileged to be a person fortunate enough to have gone through that immense suffering. That’s a resource not everybody has. Because now, because of it, you’re a more powerful person than somebody else that just had it easy their whole life.

One of the biggest mistakes people make in their life is constantly trying to run from things that make them uncomfortable. Instead of trying to get rid of suffering altogether, try to recognize it for what it truly is. As his famous line goes, “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”

But anyway, whether you agree with Schopenhauer’s pessimistic worldview or not, he does a great job, I think, of getting us to think about our human experience of reality, our place within the universe. And I guess I’ll close today with my absolute favorite Schopenhauer quote ever that I think just perfectly encapsulates his work. He’s talking here about the biggest assumption—the biggest error that he thinks people make when they’re looking at their existence.

He says, “There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy. So long as we persist in this inborn error, the world will seem to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of being happy. That’s why the faces of almost all elderly people are deeply etched with such disappointment.”

Thank you for listening. I’ll talk to you next time.