agoraoptera
Can't the statement also mean simply that "Given this instantiation of my existence, I am glad for its existence." without making any judgements on possible worlds ?
It is a contingent matter as to just how much pain some life will contain, and it's a contingent matter too as to whether it contains pain at all. As a matter of fact, all of us living anything like a normal life will undergo some degree of pain, but we can perhaps imagine for ourselves a pain-free existence (the possible world), or even persuade ourselves we'll have such an existence in the afterlife. In reality, most of us will agree that there is pain, but object that only rarely is it so bad as to make non-existence preferable. Typically, one could argue not about the detail of the amounts, but insists that any painful episode is enough to warrant the downbeat stance. We need simply to buy into that utilitarianism perspective that acknowledges that there are both pleasures and pains but counts the former for nothing. So the smallest amount of pain is sufficient to make our lives not worth living, and cannot be countered by any degree of pleasure.
Can we appeal ? I think that while there is no obligation to start good lives, there is an obligation to preserve such lives, at least once they’re well under way. This isn’t always an overriding obligation, but if someone close to hand is dying for want of food, I should at least sacrifice a slice of pizza to help him.
Albeit not being able to accurately evaluate possible worlds, I believe we can still imagine more bearable ones, where something in particular is different and objectively better regarding your experiences. However, one does not ought to prefer the better instantiation for he can already feel contented with his current existence. In that scenario, I believe it is then impossible for him to consider possible worlds.
After all, just like how the neverborn can't judge life, it's nigh impossible for us to accurately evaluate possible worlds. I might be glad to be in this world, but also acknowledge that I'd not be happy to be born as, say, a quadruple amputee (though I also might!).
The neverborn can't judge life simply because he doesn't have to cope with the possible world he could have been living in. However, the coming into existence of a sentient being is always a harm to that being no matter how good the life is as long as it contains some pain. If human beings did the right thing in this respect, which means refraining entirely from procreation, the consequence would be the extinction of the human species. One can then maintain that this would be a morally desirable outcome given that it would not result in pain for the individuals.
Regarding the actual judgement, someone can reasonably wish they'd never been born, reasonably judge their life to have been best not lived, even while they have no wish to die, and want to live on. Perhaps 20 years ago they were ordered to kill all the people in some village. Or, and here more relevant, perhaps for their first 20 years there was nothing to their life but the enduring of a series of painful operation. But what's done is done, the past is the past and right now, and for foreseeable times ahead, life promises to be more than merely tolerable, right ? We might be untroubled, then, simply by nothing that even if the value of a whole life is the sum of its parts, those parts are unlikely to be uniform. So a life might be overall not worth living, worse than nothing, whilst parts of it that are worth living, are better than nothing. And when those parts are present and future it's perfectly clear how someone might regret having been born, yet have no wish to die.
The matter therefore feels a little too mercurial to focus too much on this, a bit too insubstantial.
Yes, I admit it's not rocket science inasmuch as it highly depends on individuals' emotional state. However, I still believe we can agree on the anti-natalism argument in that it provides a consistent framework in respect to the asymmetry of pain (as I said before, you still have to believe that there is an equal amount of pain and pleasure, but that the latter does not count for anything.).
What's your experience with the feeling of cosmic unity? I don't think I've ever had that experience, though I have read about it many times.
The kind of unity which one thinks to find in nature can vary from a very strong metaphysical oneness which excludes all diversity or difference, to a much looser systematic complex of distinct but inter-related elements. In general, we can think about 4 different sorts of cosmic unity:
- The unity of all that falls within the spatio-temporal continuum under a common set of physical laws.
- The reductive unity of a single material out of which all objects are made and within which no non-arbitrary divisions can be made (mereological nihilism)
- The unity of a living organism (how a cluster of cells can induce an actual living organism)
- The more psychological unity of a spirit, mind or person (the substance of ego)
I don't think I have ever experienced this feeling but you can read about such descriptions linked to egodeath in buddhism literature :
- « Enlightenment occurs when the usually automatized reflexivity of consciousness ceases, which is experienced as a letting-go and falling into the void and being wiped out of existence. When consciousness stops trying to catch its own tail, I become nothing, and discover that I am everything. »
Ligotti is not discounting a grand scheme of things but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti’s idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely.
If anything, comprehension might have the ill effect of causing you to be too self-aware of yourself in relation to it to sufficiently immerse yourself, popping you back out of the stream and unable to shuck off your individual identity for a group identity. Excess self-consciousness sabotaging your efforts to quell said self-consciousness, as it were.
I guess most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness. The main problem, as I see it, is the question of consciousness as an emergent property. We project our individuality as a system independent of causality, whereas the social structures we create are no different from the emergent phenomena we witness in nature.
