We Are All Willing On The Catastrophe

[version]

Because I don't really want to die.

 

[vimothy]

Who? Me?

yeah

 

[version]

I probably do agree with luka, I just think droid has a point about doomerism too.

 

[vimothy]

Because I don't want to die.

so even if ecological disaster of one form or another is inevitable ("doomerism"), there's still a strong argument for trying to delay it for as long as possible

 

[version]

so even if ecological disaster of one form or another is inevitable ("doomerism"), there's still a strong argument for trying to delay it for as long as possible

There is, but it's very hard to convince people to delay something they don't feel that they will be directly impacted by. A lot of people currently living will be dead before the consequences of climate change really hit us.

 

[version]

How do you convince someone in their 70s getting rich off something to hamper their own wealth for the sake of something they can't experience firsthand and likely never will?

 

[vimothy]

seems reasonable but it's more of a mundane explanation / motivation than the one explored in the OP

 

[droid]

There is, but it's very hard to convince people to delay something they don't feel that they will be directly impacted by. A lot of people currently living will be dead before the consequences of climate change really hit us.

Ha! The joke's on them.

 

[version]

seems reasonable but it's more of a mundane explanation / motivation than the one explored in the OP

I think that's because I'm talking about trying to persuade the general public to do something practical about climate change. You probably wouldn't get far chucking Ballard references at people and telling them they secretly want to die.

 

[droid]

Quotable!!

 

[vimothy]

true that sounds like a bad idea. still it seems reasonable to discuss whether there's an (innate or contingent) drive towards destruction, as you have been in other comments on this thread

 

[version]

Yeah, I agree but I think droid was making the point that that can be somewhat fruitless and counterproductive given the urgency of the situation and I could see that argument so decided to run with it.

 

[version]

I think what you said on the first page made sense...

but anyway there's a heideggerian aspect to ballard: disaster brings us closer to death -> disaster brings us closer to reality -> disaster brings us closer to the possibility of genuinely living.

... and makes me wonder whether the death drive is really about dying at all. Do people actually want to die or do they just want to come as close as possible to death in order to somehow reinforce life?

 

[vimothy]

idk death drive according to freud might be something different. in ballards novels the protagonists gain a sort of freedom from bourgeois existence when it all goes to shit and I was connecting that to heidegger's idea that death or finititude is what gives life meaning, so that when you live with the reality of your own death, or somehow become closer to that reality, your life becomes more meaningful.

 

[vimothy]

so that would be a yes, in answer to your question, exactly that

 

[luka]

Atrocity Exhibition is the wrong one to start with, yes. Literally any other one would be better.

 

[luka]

Vimothy is attuned to the thread. He gets it. The death drive is fascinating but yeah, different. The death drive often disguises itself as life as eg Eros and lures us on, grinning, and only reveals it's true face once it's too late.

 

[luka]

What bothers me about the thread other than the unnecessary personal aspect is that this is essentially doomerism. A variant on the 'just lie down and die' kind of comments you see under every story and tweet about climate. I must've seen it tens of thousands of times by now. Humanity is a virus, undeserving of existence, there is no hope, our end is fated, and not only that, we are unconsciously willing it on.

Well bollocks to that. There are billions of people, trillions upon trillions of organisms on this planet who do not deserve or desire this fate, and doomerism is just another form of denial that makes it more likely to happen.

It's not doomerism what is posited in this framework is a self composed of conflicting drives desires directions. Or instead of the self, selves. We want all sorts of incompatible things.

 

[luka]

They're two separate things arent they? you can discuss the possibility of a subconscious drive towards catastrophe whilst maintaining a commitment to fighting climate change

Ah right yeah you said it. Not difficult is it?

 

[version]

You don't actually want it once you come face to face with disaster, imo. In the moment of any sort of incident the only thing I've ever felt is either total confusion or total terror and it's only afterward when you realise that you've made it that you get any sort of feeling about it beyond that. I remember being stood on a sinking boat in the middle of the night and feeling like I was looking into the abyss.