Why is living a constant torture?
Translated from Italian by me (WTFPL).
Why is living a constant torture?
r/Italia, u/W17CH3_R
You have to look for a job, but you need a home, yet if you don’t have a permanent job you can’t get a home, and if you don’t have a home you can’t get a job.
If you don’t have economic stability, you don’t have the psychological strength to maintain mental stability, and if you lack mental stability, you can’t preserve yourself with discipline, avoiding smoking, alcohol, junk food, drugs, and porn. And once you hit your forties, health problems start to pile up, you begin to soften, and fixing all of this becomes increasingly burdensome. And without discipline, you can’t complete long-term projects like getting a degree, creating income, paying off a mortgage and owning a home, etc…
When you study, you have time, strength, and freedom, but no money. When you work, you don’t have strength or time, you have a bit of freedom and a bit of money. Money that disappears due to all possible unexpected expenses, including those caused by a life of stress treated with poor nutrition and bad habits.
And even if you find a partner, someone you love and who loves you, over time, if you keep balancing your life like this, interest fades, fat increases, attraction decreases, you grow old before your time, trying to take care of everything and everyone, and in your partner’s eyes you become a stranger, because you’re no longer who you were in your prime. A good step toward getting cheated on.
Moreover, by always living the same life and doing the same things (your job and daily routine), your brain gets dull and when you’re old, you’ll be so stubborn that even if you’re shown the facts, you’ll keep shouting your crappy opinion. Programmed dementia becomes my greatest fear!
You try to improve yourself in one area and problems pop up in another. You practice some sport, but then you don’t have time for other things. You work, and you don’t have time to take care of your health or to improve professionally.
A cycle begins:
- You notice the situation isn’t working so
- you try to do something to fix it
- you fail because the result is poor or ineffective and/or you think it would require plans and resources you don’t currently have
- you keep living in frustration, comforting yourself the way you always have, going back to step 1
And even knowing that this cycle of stress is draining your health and rounding off your hours more than doing nothing already does, thinking that you might go before your partner makes me sad; but even worse than that, knowing that in old age, illness could make you a burden on your loved ones, and turn your life into hell.
The awareness that you could actually do more because this isn’t what you want, but still always ending up not wanting or not being able to act, is a real infernal loop, and it serves as punishment no matter which damn god is involved.
And then there’s also the fact that time is limited, that every second could be the last because your LAN cable disconnects and you quit the server of life (aka “I die”)… Meh.
Then I realize that, on average, humans are stupid, and that they’re always chasing:
- pleasure
Which always breaks down into the subcategories of:
- drugs
- food
- novelty or stimulation
- sex and fetishes
- entertainment
[…]
Every day, everywhere, I constantly feel mocked by society like a cow to be milked, like during the Black Friday period when online stores were selling refurbished used laptops to “save the environment!” (“It’s the best choice for the planet!”), or ads that plaster boobs everywhere because sex sells. I don’t know, I just want to live in peace in a tiny apartment, set my own schedule and manage my own things, read and work out, and live a sober life; and I just can’t.
The confusion of this post sums up well the furnishing of my brain (the mess in my head), but I wanted to hear the opinion of someone with more experience, or someone who’s living through this, how you react to life, and how you manage to face each day of this life in Italy.
Comments
u/ElectronicDon4316
The first post I see when opening Reddit after staring at the ceiling all afternoon:
[…]
u/LuckyRowlands25
Unfortunately, this is the human condition, and somehow it has to be accepted to try to suffer a little less. It’s all due to an unfortunate side effect born with the evolutionary development of the brain that gave us consciousness, the ability to realize we exist and how terribly complicated, vain, fleeting, and risky everything is. But at least life passes in a flash: 80 years are nothing. And then we’ll return to the eternal oblivion from which we came, without further problems, anxieties, frustrations, and whatever else there is.
u/ElectronicDon4316
Then I wonder why we have to wait 80 years to stop feeling bad.
u/LuckyRowlands25
Because we’re already born, and killing ourselves would cause pain to our loved ones. It’s a prison; we have to try to decorate it to endure it better. Then, if someone suffers so much that he reaches the point of suicide, well, utmost respect from me, because clearly he couldn’t take it anymore, and it’s not his fault. The survival instinct is so strong that suicide is rare, even though many people suffer terribly.
u/gym_aly05
After studying Leopardi all afternoon, this post feels like an echo of his thinking and that of Schopenhauer, who both prove to be relevant despite having lived in the 1800s. It seems that from then until now, the pessimistic view of life has remained exactly the same.
u/MyNameIsChuggle
There are philosophers who expanded on the pessimistic/antinatalist thought, like Cioran and Zapffe. They’re not studied in school, but they’re very interesting.
u/W17CH3_R (OP)
I used to think they lived unhappy lives for whatever reasons, but now I realize they simply lived lives, and unhappiness is part of it regardless of external factors.
u/Primary-No
Existing is exhausting, don’t trust anyone who says otherwise.
u/datfreeman
Because we’re made to survive and reproduce, not to be happy.
u/OkEgg5223
[…]
u/-Necros-
[…] @u/OkEgg5223 Just because it seems strange to you, doesn’t mean it’s not true… The foundations of life are similar for all living beings. Birth, growth, reproduction, and death. In our case (evolved monkeys, although we don’t seem all that evolved), we just adopt more complex behaviors to basically do the same thing: increase the chances of survival for ourselves, our groups, and especially our offspring.
u/OkEgg5223
The fact that seeking and enjoying happiness is just a “side effect” of evolutionary mechanisms doesn’t mean we aren’t made for it too.
For example, sex serves for reproduction, but our species doesn’t have sex just to reproduce, it also does for the pleasure that comes from it (which is a side effect, but it exists; in fact, we do it far more for pleasure than for procreation).
u/-Necros-
But that’s the point: the primary purpose of sex is reproduction. That we have the ability to use it purely for pleasure is, as you said, a side effect, but structurally we’re not really made to be happy. We’re only made to experience happiness for very limited periods of time.
I’m pretty sure quite a few philosophers have written about this topic in one way or another, but I’m too ignorant to name them. At most, I’d say we’re made to chase happiness.
u/hallcourtney
In my opinion, this isn’t a problem tied to our times, and the “mal de vivre” has always existed. It’s something that unites us all. Even the persons who seem the luckiest, most stable, and most successful, still have to fight with themselves and the rest of the world to be happy.
[…]
u/RedPillAddicted
Welcome to the “Matrix”. You’ve perfectly framed the fictional reality that surrounds us but no one sees, partly because no one truly wants to see it, preferring to live in the illusions promoted by society, and partly out of fear of facing reality head-on. I know how you feel; I feel the same way. Only those who manage to see the fundamental illusion at the root of everything can understand these things; the rest will keep thinking everything is fine and problem-free, continuing to be driven by their impulses, social collectivity, and the higher ranks.
u/W17CH3_R (OP)
That’s exactly what I was referring to: the alienating reality of society. Living becomes self-deception, and those who survive end up needing mental care. And society has already arranged to meet that demand. 1984, Mr. Robot, Matrix, they all seem more meaningful to me now than I ever thought before.
u/PerformanceNo9279
Because that’s just how it is, there’s no reason. We’ve always been told that life is a gift, a celebration, something to be grateful for, but unfortunately, it’s not. Some people have it less bad than others for various reasons: money, better parents, a quality social life, a good job aligned with their interests, low susceptibility to addictions or mental and physical illnesses. But for everyone, life is a problem; even for those who are always smiling and say human life is the best thing in the universe. We have to accept that existence has no meaning, and that if you were born human, you got the worst life possible on this planet. Once we accept our condition, the next step is to not bring any more innocent souls into this miserable floating ball in space. In the meantime, we should enjoy the things we like and the people we connect with, without becoming slaves to what society expects from us.
u/W17CH3_R (OP)
But living like that means living without a reason, steering your course toward pleasure; but pleasure becomes fleeting in the long run, because you build up a tolerance.
u/PerformanceNo9279
Everyone lives without a reason; you can fool yourself into thinking there’s a purpose, but it’s still something subjective you created to feel less bad. Anyway, I wasn’t referring to a life based on hedonism, which, as you rightly said, is fleeting. I meant enjoying what we like in a deep way, having deep relationships, not just fun and sex, to be clear. I’m for long-term serenity: feeling good about yourself and liking who you are. Pleasure is momentary and illusory, and we shouldn’t obsess over it. The pleasure from sex and drugs, for example, is intense but short-lived. The well-being that comes from a passion, a fulfilling job, or a circle of like-minded people is more lasting and less unstable. That’s what I meant. According to science, the most genuine and profound well-being comes from people who have stable, deep relationships (friendships, family, and romantic), and from those who help others or feel useful, if I remember correctly. [ed. see Veritasium – What The Longest-Running Study on Happiness Reveals[🡕] – schizoids are fucked, kek] Then of course, we can also enjoy the lighter things, sex, food, etc., but they should be the side dish to an already existing solid foundation.
u/Licdom
life is shit
u/W17CH3_R (OP)
Concise and honest 🤙
u/Lea9915
Living is torture because life has no meaning; we are cannon fodder inside a cage that tries every possible way to distract itself from thinking about the inevitable.
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u/1010110110110001
It’s literally worked like this for at least 4,000 years, long before Roman civilization was born.
u/Gnomo81
I’m not religious, but I hope god exists, so when it’s my turn, I can tell him to fuck off in person.
u/Alexbonetz
The point is, you’re right, unfortunately.
u/t_u_r_o_k
The West has fallen, billions must perish.