Why did the western religions not share in the Hindu / Jain / Buddhist notion of existence being a problem we need liberation from? That seems like a pretty obviously true starting point for conceptualizing the world we're in, even more so the further back in the past you're born into.
Why did the western religions not share in the Hindu / Jain / Buddhist notion of existence being a problem we need...
Lucas Rogers
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Camden Carter
>what is Gnosticism
James Rodriguez
I almost mentioned Gnosticism just to keep people like you from bringing it up. I don't think it really matters, it isn't something that caught on very much. The vast majority of western religious adherents (Christian / Jew / Muslim) today don't subscribe to it.
Jacob Nelson
No, see, given that Western religions don't come from India, and aren't surrounded by enormous piles of shit everywhere, we don't start with the notion that existence is a problem, because existence is pretty good.
Grayson Taylor
I hope you get multiple sclerosis and then reflect about why you were wrong on that one day back when you made this shitpost on Veeky Forums.
Michael Moore
How does Christianity specifically not see existence as a problem we need liberation from? I can see how you could make this argument about Judaism or maybe Islam which I'm less familiar with but pretty much all of Christianity is "the material world is fallen and shit and you need to prepare for death when you will be alleviated of these evils"
Tyler Peterson
And if I don't? After all, MS only affects some 0.12% of people in the U.S. (not sure about other countries). You really think all of existence is obviously evil and wrong because of a painful condition that afflicts a tiny minority of the population? What about all the people who DO enjoy their lives, even enjoy their lives in spite of whatever material problems they have?
It's almost like that such a defeatist, irredeemable worldview comes out of places where the vast majority of people live like shit and see no other hope.
Aaron Martinez
The following doesn't directly answer the OP's question, but simply affirms it.
I got a copy of Jurgen Habermas' "Theory of Communicative action", volume 1 of 2. Just flipping through it and reading wiki is enough to know that it is a dense two-volume work where Habermas talks about communication among human beings, couching same in terms of European philosophy and history, with occasional references to stuff outside Habermas' expertise.
This brings me to my point: Habermas makes, in terms of a little chart, the same basic idea of a value-system split between western and eastern religions. In pic related, I reproduce the table I am referring to. Now, without surrounding context, anons are quite free to call bullshit on this chart, but it's simply a sociological schema which suggests the same sort of thing that the OP is asking about, which is why I post it here.
Henry Bailey
>And if I don't?
>MS only affects some 0.12%
It's almost like there are countless other horrible chronic illnesses and infectious diseases that exist and your chance of getting each specific one is much lower than your overall chance of being afflicted with one or more of them.
I wish there were a way to watch smug idiots who think the world is nice and comfy suddenly have a horrible thing happen to them and realize their own previous lack of problems didn't actually capture the majority of human experience. e.g.
>Heh, life isn't suffering, it's great, just be yourse- oh god, what the fuck, why can't I stop vomiting, please just kill me, it hurts so bad, god no, fecal matter is leaking into my scrotum from a fistula that just opened up, why do my legs keep giving out, oh fuck my chest, now I need a pacemaker
>inb4 b-but this one guy with cancer says life is still worth living!
The fact they're saying that means they've been dealing with how bad life is and are doing their best to convince themselves otherwise.
Jordan Bell
Because nihilism is childish and weak.
Jacob Howard
Because life and entire existence are a gift from God
Benjamin Murphy
Cool, nice to know there's something of substance to that idea that others have already recognized and written up.
Nihilism is something different from recognizing life as a problem and working on ways to resolve it. They're extremely different in fact since nihilism is about nothing mattering and general sect independent Buddhist ideas for example are premised on the notion everything matters a great deal and that you need to take things seriously if you want to resolve the problem.
Christopher Price
Maybe because eastern religions were just made by emo faggots?
Samuel Lopez
>a gift
I'm assuming you're using that term in the same way gays refer to HIV.
David Cook
t. doesn't understand what nihilism is
Go read more farty sarty, fgt
Hudson Price
It's almost like the overwhelming majority of the population does not in fact horribly suffer every day and THAT forms the zeitgeist, not your bizarre misanthropic fantasy.
>I wish there were a way to watch smug idiots who think the world is nice and comfy suddenly have a horrible thing happen to them and realize their own previous lack of problems didn't actually capture the majority of human experience. e.g.
[citation seriously needed] Come on, if it's so obvious and prevalent it should be easy to prove that it's the "majority of human experience".
Jeremiah James
Not really, my view on the world is not that distorted
You make what you want of your life, if you see no purpose for it then you shall have no purpose
Connor Thompson
>emo
It's not like these religions are telling you to sit around crying about how bad everything is. It's more like they're telling you that you're in a troubled situation and need to work on certain initiatives to get yourself out of that situation. If you imagine a heroin addict by analogy, the Eastern religion take on his situation would be that he has a problem and needs to break the cycle through disciplined cultivation of better mental habits while the Western take on it would be that heroin is a gift from God and he should just enjoy it. The emo position would be to cry and write songs about your heroin addiction.
Aaron Ramirez
>[citation seriously needed] Come on, if it's so obvious and prevalent it should be easy to prove that it's the "majority of human experience".
>Over 95 percent of the world's population has health problems -- with over a third having more than 5 ailments
Jose Cruz
Non-argument.
Daniel Miller
>You make what you want of your life
Not really, no. You're not omnipotent. What you want isn't always the same as what you'll get.