No, I was directing 41 at you. Do you avoid the test of casting off the chains?
A too stupid answer.
I think you never know what you are talking about.
“What is happiness?— The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.”
Ascolo Parodites
Here are some quotes form Frankl but you needn’t take anything from them. But if you don’t at least read them, I might question your stubborness. 
What is to give light must endure the burning.
Our attitude towards what has happened to us in life is the important thing to recognize. Once hopeless, my life is now hope-full, but it did not happen overnight. The last of human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, is to choose one’s own way.
A human being is a deciding being.
It is reserved for man alone to find his very existence questionable, to experience the whole dubiousness of being. More than such faculties as power of speech, conceptual thinking, or walking erect, this factor of doubting the significance of his own existence is what sets man apart from animal.
Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it-likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.
For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
Man’s Search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a ‘secondary rationalization’ of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning… Man, however, is able to live and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values!
Gee, I can certainly understand how you despise Frankl. Such truth and wisdom to dwell upon coming from one man (as I glean it) – how can you even endure such a thing!! But some of us do despise what we cannot endure and understand, right, Ascola?
Do *not *box me in with the people who do not question life. I have agonizingly questioned life plenty and am still doing it - there are many times within my own suffering that I have questioned the value of life and probably still will. Nevertheless, intrinsically, I have come to intuit that all Life does have value. But I think it is only through living that life that we find true and rare meaning within it, each for ourselves… or we don’t. Value isn’t like something that we wear like a patch or carry within us all of the time. It comes to us in moments, some rare and some not so rare. And value is like beauty - it is in the eye of the beholder, and some never see beauty unless it is surface appearance.
Ha - *grant that I may not judge my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his/her moccasins. I don’t justify or excuse my suffering or the world’s. It is part of the world, it is part of evolution and part of growth…or we become part of entropy. I would also say that rising above and overcoming suffering, shedding it (at the proper time) and not wearing it like a tattoo is also a part of growth/evolution. I realize of course that you will not want me to quote Ecclesiastes (since you have memorized it 
) but still…For everything there is a season, and a time for very purpose under heaven - what this means is that there is also a time to shed our skin…you know, so much dust in the wind. And it is ultimately so much dust in the wind. And how do you even know at this moment that there is not some part of suffering within me? But do I justify it or excuse it? No, but it gives me an inner awareness of its value – oh, my goodness, I actually do see suffering as having intrinsic value. So I suppose you are correct in your assumption.
The book of my life, Ascola. How else would I have come to that? By the borrowed works of someone else? Ha! Those are thoughts which can lead us to other thoughts and affirm our own and they can lead one into more self-awareness. But it is only through living our lives, and diving into everything terrible that life sends to us as deluges and yes even diving into sometimes wonderful things too, that we are able to eventually affirm that life can at times have meaning and value, though oftentimes we question this value and meaning and roar and howl. Once I was an existentialist and then swam in the shallow waters of nihilism and then swam in the deep and dark and mysterious and wonderful waters of this ocean called life and am still swimming in all of that and discovering that within these waters, though there is terror/fear and suffering, I, the masochist, choose to swim in all that life has to give me, because there is also something called love/growth…which flows through the former. As far as I am concerned, we have been created for love and growth/evolution, everything else is indeed meaningless and valueless.
I am not interested in giving you anything but maybe I can show you something…just as you can me, but you don’t have to look at it and neither do I have to look at what you have to show.
I do realize this, I have felt it, flowed through it, cried for it and then at times had to detach from it…unless I could in some small way do something about it…which we always can but just a dip in the ocean.
I don’t think that you are being mean and I haven’t actually read everything you have said on the boards. But I do agree with you insofar as saying that all of us have to take the time to question our life – to questions its value and meaning. I do realize that many of us do not want to do this because if we do, it can begin such a terrible and downhill journey into very dark depths, can send us really into this black hole, which I have always know is not really an empty because it is filled with so much that has to be dug up, so much of what we feel is value and meaning and which is not. At that point, we will question life’s meaning and value – does my life really have meaning and value…is my suffering worth anything, is anything in life worth anything or is it all for nothing, just some stupid trick that is being played on us. And then we have to start answering those questions for ourselves – or rather we begin to live in whatever way we can and this is when those questions are answered. We don’t come to those answers by answering them so much as by living them. If that makes any sense. I seem to have gotten carried away here.
This is addressed at Ascolo Parodites. I was reading back on my posts on this board out of interest in my own development - when I hit on this thread that deals with suffering as a basic condition which has to be embraced. It reminded me of what you have written. I wonder if there are similarities in what this guy writes to what you think.
Please, pay me a respect and read this post in its entirety.
Apparently the moderators do not share my sense of humor, so I will be posting from now on with this account after having been terminated.
No, the post to which you have directed me bears little in common with my philosophy. I will say, however, that I find it extremely aggravating that Sauwelios- preeminent scholar as he is, would have taken the time to post such a thoughtful response to it as he did, never minding the fact that I have touched upon the subject of suffering to a far greater effect than this pseudo-mystic, and he has never done the like for me. Perhaps I know why: he cannot argue me, none of you can. Your greatest argument, my friend Jakob, was that life would have no impetus if suffering was of a more primary order than pleasure-- at least this was your argument before you promptly took your leave. Arcturus, well, she resorts to even less than this. Her dictum: that which is to give light must endure the burning, haha! And that which is to receive light must endure it all the more… If I impute the slightest critique of one of Sauwelios’s foundational premises, namely, his Nietzschean premises, he leaves- and if he sees me doing it, he surely will not chime in against me. Very well then, but after being banned I cannot help but to feel a bit liberated. Certainly I will have less reservations about myself on this new account. The pseudo-mystic to which you referred me does not actually explore the concept of suffering itself; to my mind, he begs a lot of questions, nothing more. I will then take this as an opportunity to address Sauwelios’s longer post in that thread.
He begins with this:
[size=85]“Only decadents want to live without pain. They want “only pleasure”; but without pain, what remains is not pleasure but painlessness.”
“[P]leasure counts as being more primeval than pain: pain only as conditioned, as a consequence of the will to pleasure (of the will to become, grow, shape, i.e., to create: in creation, however, destruction is included). A highest state of affirmation of existence is conceived from which the highest degree of pain cannot be excluded: the tragic-Dionysian state.”
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 853.] [/size]
In point of self-knowledge let me say this, the question of life with or without pain is of no relevance to me. I do not want to live "without pain,’ and I have no desire for pleasure. In fact, I might be incapable of it. At any rate, I couldn’t tell you what it is. The question rather, is one of an extra-human sense. When we pay for goods, we ask ourselves: is this worth what I am paying for it? What else do you think morality is? To judge rather or not a particular pleasure is worth a particular pain; that is all morality amounts to. Suffering, this is the value, that is the only value-- it is what is at stake in all of these types of moral equations. Designated strictly within this human sphere of merely practical relations, morality amounts to a kind of power of “conceptual transformation.” The question, to be more to the point, and to leave the sphere of my humanity, is this: is any pleasure in life, any amount of it, worth that suffering which has been endured by the world throughout all of time? This question has essentially nothing to do with me, or our personal suffering and pain.
To address Nietzsche now, to whom Sauwelios points. Man, and all of bestial life, is born in a state of need. This particular state we designate, in some sense, suffering. In compensating this need; satisfying hungers of both spiritual and physical natures, man (unlike the beast) attains to this “happiness” of which one hears so much of. But this happiness exists only as an oppositional counter force to a force that is much more primary, namely the suffering of need. When that need is mitigated, happiness vanishes. Then man suffers from the lack of happiness; this is a higher order of suffering, and accounts for the basic state in which man spends his life. From these two vantages it is obvious that suffering is indeed the primeval state; and that, from the former conceptions of morality I gave, also the very thing at stake in all moral equations and therefor the essential value.
Sauwelios goes on, as is usual:
[size=85]
"But why should a healthy man seek to eliminate pain? Again, Nietzsche has the answer: "
“Man, the bravest of animals and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far”.
[Genealogy of Morals, III, 28.]
[/size]
Nietzsche answers! Oh, and what shall this answer demonstrate– tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus, a question that too often overcomes me and, like a pain, lurks uncompromising in my breast. For could we not spin this quotation around the other way? Is it not the essential meaninglessness of suffering which, rather than the curse, was the very sanction of life for man, because it served as the sanction for his madness, self-compromising, his illusions, his beauties? Did it not move man to first begin contriving for himself excuses for the suffering of life, a profound kind of suffering, a suffering from the lack of happiness-- and all of this in the name of attaining to it yet again? This meaninglessness is quite the contrary to the bane of his existence, it is the very binding to the Parnassus ad Gradum of his life. This meaninglessness… What is that saying? “If language did not have so many expressions of nonsense and madness, then I should go mad.” Yes, that is it.
Let us continue along with the eyes of this scholar, Sauwlelios, and trace out the pale and trembling beauty of wisdom. And, by the by, I only hope my series of invectives will move him to a response.
[i]
“The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far—and the ascetic ideal offered man meaning! It was the only meaning offered so far”.
[ibid.]
But the ascetic ideal was a negative ideal - an antinatural ideal (the ideal of “sainthood”, of “pure spirit”, of incorporeality (like an angel)). Schopenhauer’s ideal was the ascetic ideal: he also regarded “incorporeality” as the meaning of life: namely, death. Death, according to him, was the goal and the meaning of life. [/i]
Again, this meaninglessness of suffering; the impermanence of creation which seemed to be so profoundly reflected in the permanence of human life- namely, sorrow, misery, pain-- this meaninglessness was the very sanction of life for man, it sanctioned the madness, self-compromising, and illusion necessary to go on living after the greater part of the soul’s breadth had been surveyed. This ascetic ideal is but more of the same; madness. It has no mark on me.
All of that being said, I leave here three aphorisms of the highest feasible caliber as an offering to indulge me in further conversation and reasoning; a little lene tormentum or gentle torment which, after all, I cannot seem to forbid myself, as is only right: for, as I have often questioned myself-- it remains to be seen how much of the philosophical conscience is merely mulierum in tormentis constantia, [the constancy of women in face of pain] to speak with Tiraquellus.
–
[size=85]
625. As is the case with original sin, there is no less an original innocence. The latter, however, is tied not to sexuality, nor even to the mode of its denial, but rather solely to its antipode, the spirit. Accordingly, the mode of this denial, as it is and must be presented in terms of the moral virtues, namely, self-abnegation, self-privation, chastity, is far from being the sole basis of the spiritual life’s existence; indeed, strictly speaking, it is ultimately not a constitutive element of the spiritual life at all. Here we have Damian’s old distinction between the restoration of purity, innocence, and virginity in the moral order and the like restoration in the order of nature; juxta meritorum plenitudinem and juxta carnis integritatem. A born psychologist cannot avoid wondering to what extent the same distinction may be applied to the philosophical conscience. Where are my antipodes?- Thus speaketh always the conscience of the philosopher.
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Just as the ancients used the bitter oil of the cedar to preserve their writings, namely, by warding away moths, the soul, too, requires its own bitter, all too bitter oil in which to preserve its testament from corruption by new experiences, attractions, feelings, or dreams, lest its expression become at last worm-eaten and illegible; for this end it may make use of God, other men, or- in point of true pessimim, (I speak here of lovers) la mort n’y mord, 1 to use that motto which concludes the Epigrammes of Clement Marot. Perhaps the conditions of our own age so approach dereliction, and wisdom lies so ridden by moths, that is, by such an accumulation of new expectations, fears, and unrealized hopes, that with possession of a true intellectual conscience and a quite purer soul, which could itself never bear to deal in these bitter oils, one cannot help but risk a sort of moral illegibility even in one’s supremest most acts as well as conceptions. For us, lonely philosophers, who have it within us to assume this as a truth, the sole possibility of a good conscience lies in what that poet Alain de Lille so beautifully expresses: nobilis conscientiae thesaurus secretis penetralibus mentis innascitur. 2
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Marot’s definition of love, the mordant sting of death.
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The conscience is a compendium of all the secrets of the heart which, learning to fathom, the chief dignity of man consists.
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The antlions of the soul.-- Every religious sect has its own Christ, Judas, and all the moral hunger as well as gluttony of a Paul; I mean, namely, three different varieties of moralists. The first finds a piece of tractable sand in those fierce deserts of the soul; I mean, of course, the most insecure piece of shame and misery in man, the second works at building a pit therein, until it finds that blessed ‘angle of repose,’ of which the slightest disturbance will cause the sand to fall and bring with it the prey, no matter to what extent it puts up a struggle; the third conceals himself inside this pit that he may lay in wait for the unsuspecting prey which ventures a step too far before it. Lo! Instead of trying to find a way out of this accursed desert, he has found rather a way to live there quite permanently.[/size]
Um. I don’t think you really understand the point of banning.
If you can’t keep up with the conversation, it is best to keep out. I won’t be addressing you again Coatless.
You shouldn’t be adressing anyone. That’s what being banned means.
Parodites,
You have accurately represented my position, that life would have no impetus to continue if suffering was the basic value. I have previously understood that you object to this idea on the basis of the standards Darwinist-scholarly claim that suffering is what drives organisms to eat and such. I have refuted this as well, by observing that since man is conscious and capable of terminating himself, he would have done so if suffering really is the deepest, most basic drive.
I already know you will not accept my very basic and simple logic because your premise is your epistemic touchstone. But you have certainly not said anything to make me question it, and this is natural, because what I say is perfectly true by all logical standards.
I would also like to bring to your attention that I have followed you in your logic and gave you my interpretations of it, whereas you have not responded to the ideas I have put forth - at best you have given some charitcaturesque simplifications of them as they appear to you - in the context of your idea-realm. Where they are, as it appears, grossly out of place. The ontology of action is something which is understandably beyond the comprehension of a shut-in, but it is the only ontology which is applicable to the world. Not that even the nororiously diseased Nietzsche states that the only thoughts of value arise while walking - i.e., in action.
I might need to bring to your attention as well that the mechanism of running away from pain, i.e. eathing and such, was not seen by Darwin as the explanation for molecular organization and it’s consequence, evolution - as which it is commonly taken now by scholars. It is merely a mechanism which explains diversity, not evolution itself, much less, life.
You have not even began to probe below the surface of your perception of my posts to you. I do not expect that you will, as you appear to me as what I would call ‘‘a brother of the abyss’’ - one who has fallen between consciousness and the Real. This is no doubt an interesting perspective to take notice of - but also one which is naturally rejected by all that is operative.
Why were you seemingly banned?
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire
I have addressed this. Man suffers with animals insofar as suffering, designated in its first order, is need. In mitigating this, in fulfilling need, man attains to happiness; but this happiness exists only as an oppositional force to the basic suffering or pathos of need. When that suffering vanishes, so does happiness. And here man begins to suffer strictly as man-- he suffers from the lack of happiness. Here the basic meaninglessness of suffering gives him a sanction to life; in this point he begins to learn how to justify to himself his suffering, in the name of the happiness he has lost. Here marks the ring that has bound him to life, as a Tantalus.
If you read my post more carefully we could have avoided that. But I have addressed that clearly, so you might want to re-read it.
Your reduction of my position to Darwinist tripe only accounts for that first order pathos and suffering of need, and nothing else; not the elaboration of the second, human order of suffering which I have pointed out.
What you have done is defined suffering as joy.
This is in essence correct, as suffering is a form of existential rapture, which is the ground on which life persists.
Of course you do explerience this rapture as well, but it comes mainly in the form of suffering, which is what leads you to believe all rapture is a form of suffering.
What you have done is defined existence by your own experience. The depth of this is also the depth of your error. Perhaps you are one who has misunderstood as fundamentally as possible the nature of life. Of course this is much more admirable than to superficially understand life correctly, for on different levels it provides you with real insights - it gives you great rapture.
Instrumental here is the depth, not the error. Your understanding is a means to an end - the end is experience, consciousness - of which your valuation is through and through positive, which shines through in some of your aphorisms, which I must say are more interesting than most things published on this site at this point.
This is my perspective on your thinking, which is to say, on your personality. I find it always regrettable when the moderators here choose to ban someone - invariably it’s one of the rare members who have an original perspective.
There’s a thread, here, on the various issues around people being banned.
IMO, if a person is banned for repeated infringement of the rules, their ‘original perspective’ is no mitigation whatsoever.
your use of ‘…’ with original perspective says it all!
Yes, rules are there to be obeyed, we should use them as the standard for everything.
Where is the praying-to-Allah emoticon?
I hardly think you’d enjoy this place if there were no rules.
Why are you even in this thread? Do you have anything to say? What is your rationale for interrupting this very interesting discussion?
I despise the moderators standards for closing threads and banning people. I think they should ban people who parasite on threads, making idiotic, mindless oneliner jokes to draw attention to their social adaptability, away from the topic of the thread.
Why are you in this thread? Why are you fouling it up with your comments on banning? This is a great thread, a lot of teaching is in here. I know most moderators will probably snicker at it - because it is too out there - not simple enough, not social, general, normal enough. But this is one of the few occasions that a thread got interesting, that someone actually comes to saying something. That is cut off now by some evaluation of proper behavior by some people with no interest in what they person they banned had to say. That is obvious enough.
It seems I cannot answer your comments without risking upsetting you by discussing an issue tangential to the subject of the thread- even though you’re instrumental in that tangent yourself, by responding to my post regarding it and by asking me to respond to your response. Drat.
This banning business really is a violation of my rules. What transgression of ILP rules could possibly be horrible enough to ban members who contribute valuable content? I mean certainly no powerful government would be so stupid - as we know the US pardons the worst warcriminals if they possess knowledge that is useful. It’s just indifference, it must be - estimation of Ascolo’s contribution as useless. Or just ‘rank stupidity’, to use Fausts terminology, if it was deemed useful. Anyway, this ethic of banning people who are so deeply involved with philosophy that they have actual knowledge to share surfaces rarely, because it is rare that someone is involved so deeply. It is somewhat clear now that mainly the posters with some weight behind them get banned.
I think I’ve done much worse to Ascolo then he to anyone else here in this thread - but I did it less openly - it was veiled in philosophical terms, as most ‘crimes’ here are committed. It slipped by the censors - the censors are mindless machines, incapable of judging content, only seeing form. I think I’d enjoy this board more if social judgment and numb indifference were punished and passion was a positive criterion.