Schopenhauer+(death+good)

The only thing that makes life not mindlessly boring is the achievement of our goals, but then again, if we do achieve them they become burdens. Schopenhauer in ‘1851 (Arthur, Quals are Life-Affirming, Essays of Schopenhauer, the Emptiness of Existence, @http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/chapter6.html ) The scenes of our life are like pictures in rough mosaic, which have no effect at close quarters, but must be looked at fro+m a distance in order to discern their beauty. So that to obtain something we have desired is to find out that it is worthless; we are always living in expectation of better things, while, at the same time, we often repent and long for things that belong to the past. We accept the present as something that is only temporary, and regard it only as a means to accomplish our aim. So that most people will find if they look back when their life is at an end, that they have lived their lifelong //ad interim//, and they will be surprised to find that something they allowed to pass by unnoticed and unenjoyed was just their life—that is to say, it was the very thing in the expectation of which they lived. And so it may be said of man in general that, befooled by hope, he dances into the arms of death. Then again, there is the insatiability of each individual will; every time it is satisfied a new wish is engendered, and there is no end to its eternally insatiable desires. This is because the Will, taken in itself, is the lord of worlds; since everything belongs to it, it is not satisfied with a portion of anything, but only with the whole, which, however, is endless. Meanwhile it must excite our pity when we consider how extremely little this lord of the world receives, when it makes its appearance as an individual; for the most part only just enough to maintain the body. This is why man is so very unhappy. In the present age, which is intellectually impotent and remarkable for its veneration of what is bad in every form—a condition of things which is quite in keeping with the coined word “Jetztzeit” (present time), as pretentious as it is cacophonic—the pantheists make bold to say that life is, as they call it, “an end-in itself.” If our existence in this world were an end-in-itself, it would be the most absurd end that was ever determined; even we ourselves or any one else might have imagined it. Life presents itself next as a task, the task, that is, of subsisting //de gagner sa vie//. If this is solved, then that which has been won becomes a burden, and involves the second task of its being got rid of in order to ward off boredom, which, like a bird of prey, is ready to fall upon any life that is secure from want. So that the first task is to win something, and the second, after the something has been won, to forget about it, otherwise it becomes a burden. That human life must be a kind of mistake is sufficiently clear from the fact that man is a compound of needs, which are difficult to satisfy; moreover, if they are satisfied, all he is granted is a state of painlessness, in which he can only give himself up to boredom. This is a precise proof that existence in itself has no value, since boredom is merely the feeling of the emptiness of life. If, for instance, life, the longing for which constitutes our very being, had in itself any positive and real value, boredom could not exist; mere existence in itself would supply us with everything, and therefore satisfy us. But our existence would not be a joyous thing unless we were striving after something; distance and obstacles to be overcome then represent our aim as something that would satisfy us—an illusion which vanishes when our aim has been attained; or when we are engaged in something that is of a purely intellectual nature, when, in reality, we have retired from the world, so that we may observe it from the outside, like spectators at a theatre. Even sensual pleasure itself is nothing but a continual striving, which ceases directly its aim is attained. As soon as we are not engaged in one of these two ways, but thrown back on existence itself, we are convinced of the emptiness and worthlessness of it; and this it is we call boredom. That innate and ineradicable craving for what is out of the common proves how glad we are to have the natural and tedious course of things interrupted. Even the pomp and splendour of the rich in their stately castles is at bottom nothing but a futile attempt to escape the very essence of existence, //misery//. The affirmative’s identification of nuclear war as something to be avoided dooms us to hell on Earth. The end of existence is not something to be feared but should be recognized as nirvana. Dolan in ‘2 (John, The Case for Nuclear Winter, Iss. 139, April 21st @http://www.exile.ru/2002-April-21/feature_story.html  Suicide is unpatriotic; that's why it offends them. It deprives the vampires of a jugular to sip. How can you not like this boneyard? This is the finest torture-chamber in the universe! How dare you opt out of it! But since 1945, the vampire lords have had another, much stronger reason to fear the idea of suicide: individual suicide is only Nuclear Winter writ small. Nuclear Winter is universal Nirvana. And that makes it utterly different from individual suicide -- because there will be no survivors to mourn and grieve. There will be no mourning and grief at all, ever again. Thus nuclear winter offers a true cure for suffering -- which the sermons against suicide do not. OK; you decide not to kill yourself because it will hurt your parents, friends, pit bull, roommates, chess club pals, whatever. So what? You're gonnna go anyway, and in some way much more agonizing than a bullet to the head: cancer, car wreck, genetic glitch, rafting accident, heart valve pop. And when you do, that suffering of the survivors will begin, the ten billionth wail of grief heard on Earth. And the grieving die in their turn, and when they go another wail sets up....It's not just horrible -- it's silly. Just plain dumb. Squint at it -- draw your head back just a little and squint at it -- and it's truly "laughable, man": these creatures whose life consists of a ride down a conveyor belt towards a meat grinder, making a continual wail of surprise as another one goes over the edge. Every one a surprise. "Oh! He went in! How could this happen?" "Ah, she fell! My God!" Well Duh. What'd you expect? That's what suffering is: going over the edge one at a time. The experience of individual death while the world grinds on. What would happen in the Nuclear Winter scenario is utterly different: all jump into the meatgrinder at once. No one is left to suffer or mourn. When some die and some live, there is suffering; when all die, blown out like a candle, there is no suffering. There is something else, something for which we have no name. But one thing is clear: it is not suffering. "We shall not suffer, for we shall not be." It has been done on a small scale -- communal suicide, oblivion. The Old Believers; Jonestown; and some of the tribes hunted for sport by the Europeans. The Carib -- the last Carib jumped off a cliff rather than be taken. As did the last few bands of Tasmanians. They saw the suffering of their children ahead, and took the kids with them over the cliff. Are they were right. Imagine the prospects of a Tasmanian child in the hands of the /British colonists who had killed its parents for sport. Life as a souvenir, mascot, bum-boy or -girl, stuffed exhibit in a museum...for what? So that in ten generations, one of its partial descendants might live to collect a guilt-dole from the Australian government? So that in another two generations, an even more attenuated descendant could pen a jargon-stuffed "indictment" of the crime, hoping for publication and a tenure-track affirmative-action job at a new regional polytech? The cliff-edge has more dignity and sense. We have given other species the gift of oblivion, sent them over the cliff: the Mammoth, the Moa Eagle, the Tasmanian Wolf...all the finest species, really, are going or gone. A hundred years from now, when all the big cats are gone, no one will understand how we thought the life of a hundred million Tamils worth that of even one Bengal Tiger. Life on earth hit its peak during the Ice Ages, and we are now killing off the few species from that period who survived our first coup, ten thousand years ago. We have very little to lose, destroying the remaining fauna, now that the best is gone. The lives of all the horrible humans in Houston are not worth even one Columbia Mammoth. So we have guides sent ahead of us into oblivion. When we pull the plug, press the button, drop the nuclear dime on ourselves, we will suffer no more than the Mammoth suffers. We owe them; let's join them. We can make our first act in the afterlife a formal apology to the Tasmanian Wolf, the Cave Bear, the Mammoth. But at least their suffering is over now. The Mammoths' suffering ended when the last calf, watching its mother being hacked to death by ugly apes wearing caribou skins, trumpeted in shock and pain and tried to run -- and was hacked to death, screaming, then silent. And when its life went out -- the blowing out of a candle -- the suffering of all Mammoths ceased, gave way to something entirely different: Nirvana. The Nirvana of the Mammoths, where they wait for us now. But we have to be sure of one thing: that it will be oblivion, death for all, rather than another partial slaughter.