"This be the verse" Larkin

[jewel]

THIS BE THE VERSE
"They **** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were ****** up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself."

Philip Larkin

A great Antinatal poet.

[LovelyLadyLux]

We, as humans, were given the ability to think and reason, observe and consider and put our lives into perspective. We have the ability to make choices and unless there is something severely mentally incapacitating most of know right from wrong.

As adults we make our own choices and in making our choices the consequences of said choices are ours. I don't buy blaming your parents. Playing the blame game is a copout.

And - life is as it is. Larkin can bemoan what is and lament what isn't but he isn't barking up a tree I'd want to put much energy or stock in.

Can't change City Hall but you can make it work for you.

[jewel]

OK LLL...how bout this one then?

More perfect cynicism in a world weary voice.

phpBB [video]

[Scottishtourist]

Please read "Mid Term Break"by Seamus Heaney,Jewel.

Maybe then,you will understand the horror of death.The total desolation.The anti-rejoicing!The realization!

"A four foot box?"

You ain't the only one on forum who reads poetry!

[jewel]

The horror of life comes first though ST

Ah yes ST another classic....the finality of death


I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

A great poem from the great Seamus Heaney

[LovelyLadyLux]

I'd think if you can appreciate the finality of death it would make one want to live each and every day to the fullest and to appreciate all that life IS now. Death will ultimately arrive in due course regardless of what we do now so relax, enjoy, appreciate, find happiness.

[jewel]

LLL we have no choice unfortunately

[LovelyLadyLux]

LLL we have no choice unfortunately

But if we did I'd chose life

Do you think if all us had eternal life we'd grow tired of each other and fight more? Or would we have figured out how to get along together in perpetuity? Wouldn't eternal life be boring after a couple thousand years?

[jewel]

"It is best not to be born at all; and next to that, it is better to die than to live."
Silenus
To give life is always worse than taking it, because you can guarantee suffering with the former; the latter is unknown.

"There is no hope in death. Life is just a more complex, a more ordered putrefaction than the simple rotting of death. But that is the only difference, complexity, otherwise life and death are one and the same. Still, I have got used to decay in life; the devil may know how I'll deal with the other one."
Georg Büchner, Dantons Tod


Whoever claims that existence is a wonderful and miraculous phenomenon is not only beyond deluded and a naive servant to their enslaving programming, but it is also conveniently forgetting about an easily discernible, rational truth.

And that truth is that this planet is currently holding a repulsive and distasteful event that we call sentient life, in where sophisticated organic creatures are needlessly born to spend an entire lifespan locked up in what irrefutably is just one big existential slaughterhouse, set to participate in a worthless game of suffering and futility as they brutalize each other mainly to gain power over resources and strive against one another to guarantee the future survival of other perceptive fleshy vacuities like themselves who are also bound to repeat the same vain cycle of biotic inutility until the very end;
besides, it gets even worse when it comes to the reality of advance primates, as while not having absolutely anything better to do with their useless empty moments of consciousness, they will end up engaging in the many different forms of social cannibalism where they will start a mindlessly repetitive competition to win a few big, juicy slices of absolute nothingness illusory disguised as valuable, comforting achievements so that they can stay relatively content and distracted enough until they finally die and begin to dematerialize as their lifeless bodies rot away in order to eventually go back inside the pitch-black emptiness of space vanishing for all eternity.

[carrie]

Jewel honestly if I felt about life as you do I think I would very rapidly put an end to it. Life is for living not dwelling on death and misery. Do good where you can, never intentionally harm anyone or anything, I realise that death comes one day closer every day I live that is why I intend to make the most of every day remaining to me.

[jewel]

"Putting an end to it" as you say, is far easier said than done. No once we are condemned to exist we must endure it and hope the end I'd not too painful or protracted.
"Life is for living" seems obvious, as you cannot do otherwise.
I believe in "enjoying" what we can when we are here. Or at the very least, grabbing whatever you can to ease the misery of it as much as possible, especially if you are physically ill or, were not handed the necessities in life and have to do **** that you don't necessarily want to or maybe even loathe, just to fulfill those needs to maintain an existence, as I said, with as little misery as necessary. You could easily call me a hedonist in that respect. Why deprive yourself of anything to appease an imaginary god? What you do while you are in the flesh, only matters when you are in your flesh and, only matters to those who decide it does. Nothing exists outside yourself. :mrgreen

Consider the Christian who justifies procreation because they genuinely believe that there is an afterlife filled with goodies and pleasure. Now consider the atheist who justifies procreation because we should enjoy our "brief moment in the sun".

[Dusak]

The lady of the shroud.

The Lady of the shroud stands proud,
Living a life of expectant demise,
as she berates life aloud,
making tempers hot and rise.

She craves the sleep of sleeps,
the final curtain to fall,
knowing that no one weeps,
for a life of not at all.

Unable to make the final cut,
her vitriolic words a blunting force,
digging herself a life consuming rut,
then filling it with her own remorse.

Heads turn in unison, away from her bleakness,
seeds of support fall on fallow ground,
for she stands alone in her weakness,
even though kind hands reaching forth abound.

Alone in isolation does she dwell,
only the darkness will offer her succour,
living in her imagined hell,
stopping, finally, the nightmares that recur,
when finally hearing the welcomed chimes of her death-knell.

Dusak 2014.

[jewel]

A worthy attempt Dusak, if a tad prosaic.
Keep practicing and you too may reach the denouement of Philip Larkin. He is truly inspirational.
It reminds me of George Bataille somewhat;




(Picture taken from George Bataille's book Erotism, Death and sensuality)

"We can conceive of nothing except in terms of our own life, and beyond that, it seems to us everything is wiped out. Beyond death, in fact, begins the inconceivable which we are usually not brave enough to face. Yet the inconceivable is the expression of our own impotence."

I am also a fan of Thomas Ligotti and can recommend his death poems.
Many of our greatest writers are antinatalist.

When anyone asks what my greatest achievement is, I always say not replicating my DNA, not bringing another suffering sentient being into this world, not playing the silly game of procreation and giving a thumbs down to the Gladiator War that is our existence.

[Dusak]

Sorry about the end result, but it was all I could manage on my 'pass the time away as you pass' scratch pad in the loo. Will try harder next time.

[newcastle]

"Putting an end to it" as you say, is far easier said than done. No once we are condemned to exist we must endure it and hope the end I'd not too painful or protracted.

Actually, nowadays, it's not that difficult if you seriously want to. You need to admit to yourself that you don't actually want to "end it all" that badly although this would mean admitting that your posts are a load of contradictory, self-centered ********. You simply don't have the courage of your (alleged) convictions. Nobody buys the "it's too difficult/risky/painful" excuse, Sorry.


"Life is for living" seems obvious, as you cannot do otherwise.

Life isn't "for" anything....anymore than "yellow" is. What is it with people seeking a "meaning" to existence? That sounds very much like the result of a deist philosophy.

I believe in "enjoying" what we can when we are here. By telling anyone daft enough to give your views the time of day how pointless their existence is? Not nice.

Or at the very least, grabbing whatever you can to ease the misery of it as much as possible,Oops..were struggling to maintain the rationality here
especially if you are physically ill or, were not handed the necessities in life and have to do **** that you don't necessarily want to or maybe even loathe, just to fulfill those needs to maintain an existence, as I said, with as little misery as necessary. You could easily call me a hedonist I can think of other adjectives more applicable...
in that respect. Why deprive yourself of anything to appease an imaginary god? What a cop-out ! What you do while you are in the flesh, only matters when you are in your flesh and, only matters to those who decide it does. Nothing exists outside yourself. :mrgreen


Consider the Christian who justifies procreation because they genuinely believe that there is an afterlife filled with goodies and pleasure. Now consider the atheist who justifies procreation because we should enjoy our "brief moment in the sun".

I can't speak for christians, but, as an atheist and darwinist, the idea of justifying procreation is meaningless. Again...what is it with the need to "justify" procreation. It's a simple act compelled by the complex chemistry of our genes.

[jewel]

As a nihilist Newcastle I do agree that there is no meaning to life other than replication of DNA. Nihilism is about having the maturity and intelligence to realise the pointlessness of all life, no just my own personal existence.

The funniest thing about the supposed importance or necessity of organic life, is that it's only an illusory and subjective concept brought into the world by deluded modern primates who are under the control of the brainwashing schedule dictated by their perverted and sadistic instinctive nature who pointlessly desires continuation and survival of a wretched and failed impractical venture.
It's an indisputable rational fact that if everything alive were to be wiped out from the face of the planet, nothing in the cosmos would be affected because it truly doesn't care about the possible trivial outcomes produced by any animal; it remains absolutely unconcerned about all human achievements, creations, productions and affairs who really are monumentally irrelevant outside their false created sense of stellar self-importance; if sentient life were to disappear completely, the dispassionate astral vacuum that reigns over the universe, would just continue with its indifferent inanimate existence like it did for billions of years before this repugnant and chaotically absurd existential zoo even developed.
As for suicide...the options, certainly pain free ones are becoming less, not more.

[newcastle]

Rather than cutting & pasting excerpts from articles on nihilism. anti-natalism etc. for our delectation (surely there are other forums whose members might be more interested?) why not seek counselling for your mental state and see if it can be changed, if only for the reason that it must put you at odds with almost everyone you encounter?

If not, then painless suicide is actually very simple. A large dose of intravenous heroin (readily available nowadays) will see you off to sleep & oblivion.

[jewel]

There are more nihilists/anti natalists around than you may imagine Newcastle, even if they're "closet" ones, and haven't actually "come out" as such. That is why I read a lot of the existentialist writers, there are many more than you would imagine.
Philip Larkins excellent poem is just one small example, there are so many more, from Aristotle to Nietzsche, Beckett to Thomas, many of our great writers and poets are nihilists.

As heroin (Diamorphine) is primarily a painkiller, it is not a reliable suicide method and can leave one in a worst state. Nembutal ( a barbiturate) is more reliable but not easy to come by in a lethal dose. This is what is used at Dignitas.

But, as this guy (Doug Stanhope) says...I leave no litter behind, so I don't care, I treat life as a rental car..

phpBB [video]