[avgcorrection]

> Thread parent posited an axiom. I'm just interested how far people are willing to carry it before they admit it isn't viable.

Viable. Thinking that most things in life (that you have to do) sucks is perfectly viable. Plenty of people could be of that opinion.

> "Work sucks" is great as a relatively common shared experience. It is not, however, a great presumption to carry around as if it's a natural law.

The great danger of proposing that something universally sucks is that the chronically happy will get upset. Maybe even unhappy.

[BobbyJo]

> Thinking that most things in life (that you have to do) sucks is perfectly viable. Plenty of people could be of that opinion.

I share this opinion. This, again, isn't what I'm arguing against.

I'm arguing against the notion that having to do something means doing it sucks.

Even if I take the most generous possible meaning of the parent be: "If you're being forced to do something, it's because it sucks, otherwise you wouldn't need to be forced."

That's still not true. I had to be forced to exercise, but then I enjoyed exercising. When I was little, I had to be forced to bathe, but once I was in it was hard to get me out because I enjoyed it. I was effectively forced into my current career, but I also enjoy that.

> The great danger of proposing that something universally sucks is that the chronically happy will get upset. Maybe even unhappy.

And the flaw is most often that it does not universally suck. Some people are into getting their testicles stomped on, so be careful throwing around your experiences as a base truth.

[avgcorrection]

> I share this opinion. This, again, isn't what I'm arguing against.

No no no. This isn’t what you said.

> > Isn't life composed almost entirely of this? Cooking, eating, sleeping, using the toilet, taking care of love ones... If every responsibility you have in life is automatically absolutely horrible by nature of being a responsibility, why live?

An answer to that could easily be “no reason”. Then where does your argument go? Nowhere.

And could you find a person who has always hated having to take a bath, or their careeer (lol)? Probably.

> And the flaw is most often that it does not universally suck.

Your reply to someone who says that something universally something has the same problem! Yeah, of course things could be all-bad for someone. No kidding. So the “why live” question is useless.

[BobbyJo]

I honestly was unable to parse a single claim or counterclaim from this other than "I disagree".

> An answer to that could easily be “no reason”. Then where does your argument go? Nowhere.

Well yeah. Generally, when people's reason for holding a belief or performing and action is "lol idk", that isn't conducive to a continuing discussion. Not because it invalidates anything, but because it's the vocal equivalent of saying nothing at all.

It's fine if you think everything that needs doing is awful by definition. I disagree, and have a counterfactual experience. If that means nothing to you, that's totally fine.

[avgcorrection]

> Generally, when people's reason for holding a belief or performing and action is "lol idk", that isn't conducive to a continuing discussion.

That’s not what I meant. I didn’t explain it properly.

You could easily have no reason to live and yet continue living. I guess I’m gonna be forced to say the s-word: living is something that happens while not living (your question: why live?) takes deliberate action, i.e. suicide. But someone could be terrified of killing themselves.

Thus they have no reason to live, and yet no way to end existence as they know it.

Which is again different from “idk”. They know that they have no reason to live. It’s not a mystery.

[BobbyJo]

> You could easily have no reason to live and yet continue living. I guess I’m gonna be forced to say the s-word: living is something that happens while not living (your question: why live?) takes deliberate action, i.e. suicide. But someone could be terrified of killing themselves.

If you sit down and do nothing at all for a week you will die, no work required. To continue living takes work. I believe that was my original point. To do anything more than nothing at all requires some reason, be it reptilian drive, fear of death broadly, or otherwise.

In any case, I don't see much value in this line of conversation because it's so far from common reality as to be useless in support of the central claim I disagree with. Most well adjusted people will plainly agree that a lot of necessary things are enjoyable. Some people will say their jobs, which they need to do for money, are enjoyable.

It's really not some crazy deep philosophical idea that necessity equals suffering. We don't need to go ten layers down into some core of human experience to say yes or no. It's just inaccurate, and somewhat hyperbolic, on the face of it.

[avgcorrection]

> If you sit down and do nothing at all for a week you will die, no work required. To continue living takes work. I believe that was my original point. To do anything more than nothing at all requires some reason, be it reptilian drive, fear of death broadly, or otherwise.

Now you’re changing the goalpost to “reason”. My god. There’s a reason for everything. But it might still suck. You might try to kill yourself by “doing nothing” (very hard and difficult but okay), and yet (as you say) that survival instinct part of you might kick in and “save yourself”. So does that counter any claims about everything you have to do sucking? Not at all.

Say you get to the point where you are about to starve to death. Then the Survival Instinct kicks in and you get something to eat. Does this prove that, actually, you like living? Not at all! It probably sucked to almost starve to death, it probably sucked to get that sudden fear of dying, and things probably suck now (not close to dying) just like they did before you tried that arduous suicide attempt.

> In any case, I don't see much value in this line of conversation because it's so far from common reality as to be useless in support of the central claim I disagree with. Most well adjusted people will plainly agree that a lot of necessary things are enjoyable. Some people will say their jobs, which they need to do for money, are enjoyable.

I guess suicidal people are famously well-adjusted? Well, some are and yet they didn’t think that life was worth living despite that.

Who cares what “well-adjusted” people think? The only claim that I care about is if it is possible to think that basically everything that you have to do sucks. And it seems like there is.

> It's really not some crazy deep philosophical idea that necessity equals suffering. We don't need to go ten layers down into some core of human experience to say yes or no. It's just inaccurate, and somewhat hyperbolic, on the face of it.

No it is not.

Didn’t Schopenhauer claim that life sucked and that we only lived because of a kind of “will to live”? Maybe our old pal “survival instinct” as well as some others?

If Schopenhauer’s philosophy is so easily refuted, why is he one of the more famous philosophers? Just as a beginner refutation practice.

Come to think of it. Don’t people claim that Schopenhaur was inspired by one of the major world religions?