Houllebecq argues that the decline of the western civilization is a consequence of the society suddenly realizing that...

just do yourself the favor and read Being and Time. Not that guy btw. You have a juvenile understanding of existentialism and ontology

>the fact of the bear unintelligence and indifference of the Universe and from that the lack of fundamental motivating force available to us outside senseless pleasure
that is not a fact. there is no way you can justify it. feel free to try. you are parroting shit like a moron,

>However I could argue that the universe is neither indifferent nor unintelligent

You could. You could also squirt ketchup up your arse

>whacky nazi pseudo-buddhist

No thanks

>why bother?

Love and a good time is all that matters t b h. There's no point in worrying about what happens after you die cause nobody will ever know. If you really thought life had no value or meaning and you weren't deriving direct pleasure from it like a hedonist you would've killed yourself by now

oh you really are just retarded. My b

being and time is just one of those books where the nerd has travelled so far away from savagery that he becomes a savage again (along the lines of love's body or something)

We've already established hedonism is the only response to continueing life

Convert to Islam.

Not even memeing. Islam will take over the West by the end of this century. Best to get a head start and make sure they don't behead you.

I'm a hedonist, but not willingly.

I can't stop myself.

look for the good and act in accordance with it

I'll wait til I'm older and then convert to get a qt muslim waifu

OP here.

I know that there is no possible way to prove that life is meaningless.
What is 'meaning', by the way? Life was created by random(?) interactions between atoms, there is nothing magical in that, there is no possible way gods are a real thing and emotions are nothing but my brain releasing chemicals.
It just makes me sad to know that there is no reason to do anything.
If I want to live for the pleasure then I can just OD on dopamine because I'm going to die anyway later.

>Houellebecq argues...
is enough for me to stop reading...
just like
>Zizek says...

Protip, if you read Hollebecq you'd know the pursuit of pleasure is itself a fools errend. Continueing from the logic of Schopenhauer a truly rational hedonist doesn't seek the maximization of pleasure but rather the minimalization of suffering

>emotions are nothing but my brain releasing chemicals.
you're looking at the world from an overly scientific perspective. remember that science was created to serve man, not to rule over him. the reality of your subjective experience is primary to all the discoveries of science. the essence of everything you feel (all qualia) is totally beyond the grasp of science.

>there is no possible way gods are a real thing
>there are people who unironically believe this
Nice proof you have there.
>inb4 hurr *insert reddit-tier atheist response*

Stop being such a retard and give me a reason to believe in the existence of a god.

I really want to be able to say deus vult.

>no possible way gods are a real thing
Dat proof

I can't do it through a single post. For most people, to acquire true faith takes a lifetime. Read some philosophy/books on the topic (and obviously the bible first if you haven't).
Ultimately no one can convince you to take the leap of faith but yourself. Also, it is just that, faith. You will never find logical proofs of God's existence.
Godspeed user.

fedorashaming isn't a valid argument, senpai.

He's right. The gen Z people sound like they are directly quoting him when they talk about why they live and what motivates them. In short, YOLO

Personally, once you find out that nothing really matters post-life it makes the time you're alive very important. Since you're a social creature, things that bring value to your peers (makes them happy or more fulfilled) are the only things that will bring any meaning to your life in the present moment. I think you should aim to improve the life of your friends, family and find a career you can enjoy to find give your life a sense of fulfillment. It's fortunate that people who can do this are considered valuable by society and as you improve the lives of your close peers you should notice that the way your treated and given responsibility/influence gets better.

What a massively unfounded assumption that is, both in the sense that one can "know" what happens after death, and in the sense that he claims to know what the majority of people both then and now feel about it.

I'd throw it in the garbage. It's a brain fart worthy of David Foster Wallace.

Do you want your grandkids to live on mars? Or at least have a habitable earth? A functioning government? There are still goals to achieve. However I'm of the opinion that we should all have the decency to neuter ourselves and try not to let the door hit us on the way to extinction. But not everyone's going to be convinced of that. So goals it is.

I'm pretty sure you can measure brain activity as someone dies and can see that none occurs postmortem. Consciousness is something that took a long time to develop, some animals are already semi self-aware, it's not something that a God created and put into our heads

We can also create life in a petri-dish, so the ability to create a being that will one day achieve consciousness isn't special either.

>so the ability to create a being that will one day achieve consciousness isn't special either.
This shows you have no clue what you're talking about and are spouting random shit.
Humans have pretty much no idea on our consciousness and how it works. To assume nothing happens post mortem due to measuring brain "activity" is terrible logic.

Not him but how is that terrible logic? The brain ceases functions, no activity = no consciousness. Unless you define consciousness as something more than a harmony of brain waves, if so fucking lol m8

We have no idea about how consciousness works, but we know if we mix a human sperm and egg in a testtube we can get a being that will one day achieve consciousness. We also know our DNA is, I think, something like 98% the same as a chimps, so at some point between having a common ancestor with chimps and today,consciousness as we call it was developed.

We can definitely assume nothing happens post mortem. We have brain activity when we're awake, less brain activity when we're asleep and no brain activity when we're dead. The way we perceive and act on the world is entirely based on biology. So if the biological system is no longer functioning why should the mechanism that is based off of it continue to exist.

>Unless you define consciousness as something more than a harmony of brain waves
This is the thing, humans have no understanding of consciousness. You're defining it as something when we don't know what it is. It is much more complex, this is just massive reductionism.

>We have brain activity when we're awake, less brain activity when we're asleep and no brain activity when we're dead.
This is implying that activity is the same thing as consciousness. You cannot know whether or not something happens post mortem because you have yet to experience it. Science can't explain all phenomena. Just because activity ceases does not imply you don't go to the afterlife.

You didn't read the second part of my sentence. The way we act and perceive the world is entirely based on biology. If the biological system dies, why should the system that is based off it it continue to survive as well?

Mars is empty of oxygen.

The world has become uninhabitable so we must find elsewhere to live.

We migrate to Mars.

We need to create oxygen on Mars.

We artificially create an atmosphere and terraform the planet to eventually naturally produce oxygen.

Now Mars has oxygen.

Something has been created that once did not exist, out of necessity.

Meaning is an human necessity.

So we create it.

Mature, user-kun.

>Houllebecq argues that the decline of the western civilization is a consequence of the society suddenly realizing that death is imminent and that there is no possible afterlife, which leads to a meaningless life based on instantaneous pleasure and a cult of the youth.
He was wrong, it was both natural decadence which follows in the wake of decline and the work of Jews. Death doesn't factor into it much, on the contrary, people live such wasteful and superficial lives exactly because they've forgotten about death. Death is no longer a part of most people's lives in the way it used to be.

We don't know that consciousness is a product of biology either. The reigning theory is that it's an inherent property of matter, "Epiphenomena" is the word they like to throw around, which is still just materialism for "ionno"

Houllebecq is right. People need their illusions, and this is in the same vein of what Durkheim discovered; i.e. people need their illusion and cohesion.

Capitalism can only be controlled by a system of virtue and a cohesive, homogeneous society, lest it turns into an evermore rapacious system whereby materialistic, hedonistic values become orthodoxized. The alternative, the controlled economy, leads to starvation and religion being replaced by state worship.

Couple our current, secular, materialistic state with women's liberation and the stark decrease in monogamous behavior and we have the recipe for a civilization that has lost its impetus and purpose.

I'm not really sure the solution but I think it can be done through Christianity. And don't be an ass and walk around calling yourself a cultural Christian even if you are one. The escape from nihilism, for the average person, hinges on belief. Belief engenders other virtues, such as industriousness (will to find a vocation) and monogamy.

I used to be a new atheist progressive in every sense of the word. I've come to absolutely detest them and their unironic dogmatism. To be fair I was 14, and I'm 22 now.

Be that as it may... how much of the general population 'knows' that?

I don't know what houellebecq means precisely by "Western Civilization"- the people who make up the majority of our civilization, or the people who lead it? Or is he talking exclusively about our popular culture when making this description?

Because there's a lot about our civilization that's improving rather than declining. Granted it's all technology based, but as a result of info tech I'd say you could safely argue that millenials are the smartest generation of all time.

>Because there's a lot about our civilization that's improving rather than declining.

I've really taken issue with this sort of Pinkeresque view as of late.

Yeah, crime is dropping, less people are starving, standards of living are up and corruption is, generally speaking, on the decline.

Yet none of this can be metrics by which we can reliably estimate a civilization's lifespan.

What about our stark degree of political polarization? I believe it's now quantifiably worse than it was during the outbreak of the civil war, except that the polarization also extends to Europe (with a less stark degree).

Or mass immigration -- in juxtaposition with the decline of religion -- meaning group cohesion is decreasing, has decreased, dramatically but is only being held together by ethnic strife -- not backed by any system of morality. Group cohesion is essential for any civilization.

What about monogamy? A byproduct of the decline of Christianity has been increasingly looser sexual restriction on women. This is disastrous. Men have no reason to marry. More men strain over women who give few access. We are killing the impetus of men towards vocation. Our institutions are falling apart. States are fathering children.

This is top zezzle material

The deeper I get into the sciences the more humour I get out of how full of shit leddit tier atheists are.

I think the only thing that really threatens the west right now is equatorial migration. Civil unrest due to economic contraction feels like a distant second.

Unfortuantely, our generation has known nothing but opulence and safety, and kind of takes it for granted. It's hard to foresee how we're going to meet these problems, and what that's going to look like.

Whoever makes that decision is going to be only a million times more educated in the topic than you or I, so I think political action only has the potential to fuck up whatever the plan ends up being.

>Unfortuantely, our generation has known nothing but opulence and safety

What's more, they have no concept of the kind of barbarism that is commonplace outside of the West. No concept of evil or even the indifference of nature.

I HATE being "le generation is awful" guy, but it's what I've become. Their solution to everything is more hand-holding and John Lennon singing -- or worse, government is invariably the solution to any problem.

w2c

It's eerie how much of Calhoun's mouse city experiment is coming true. All those countrymen and women slaughtered in terror attacks, and they're just living in isolation like the beautiful ones, completely oblivious to the health of their tribe.

This is just what happens to a society when you remove plague, famine and war. People become devalued and depressed.

...

>and kind of takes it for granted

definitely. the general attitude mixes with a total ignorance of the suffering of the poor in their own society :poor who have to eat a loaf of bread and canned sardines or a pot of oatmeal for the day, or walk all day to get groceries or to arrive at other basic necessities, or experience the various other struggles of poverty, especially violence and predation.

it's not only taking for granted but ignoring the realities outside of their own small context;it's pure narcissism.

On 7 January 2015, the date of the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the novel Soumission was published. The book describes a future situation in France (2022), when a Muslim is ruling the country according to Islamic law. On the same date, a cartoon of Houellebecq appeared on the cover page of Charlie Hebdo and the caption, "The Predictions of Wizard Houellebecq."

>u cant no nuffin

I always hated that ''it's all chemicals'' argument.

By doing this you're simply describing what things are. Why does that make you sad? I assume it's because of the trauma of post metaphysical belief; like the entire universe must be a film with a purpose and an end. And how do you derive what you ''must'' do from all of these observations of reality? Why must you do anything? There is no *must*, you're just getting spooked because you think you'll be doing things ''wrong''.

>I think you should aim to improve the life of your friends, family and find a career you can enjoy to find give your life a sense of fulfillment.

Holy shit, fucking why? To hell with all of them

>philosophical idealism
plz

I think the general population probably knows about nihilism and atheism, because it has become part of popular culture, but they don't know the reasons behind why it got popular. Like I think it's the same as the guy who criticizes some minute point in the bible as if it was a textbook without understanding what the main purpose behind the whole thing is (a guide to morality)

>i'm not even poor
>i've done all of those things

As I've already stated, in that post I believe, human beings are a social creature. Even when your sitting in your room, shitposting all day, you're still having social interactions with us. I think you're hardwired to get a sense of fulfillment from positively working inside a social group, it's something related to being descended from monkeys who's entire reality is based in being within a social heirachy.

My monkey brains also makes me want to murder, rape and force you to lick my asshole. Your argument is pathetic and naive

I will not reproduce.

>life based on instantaneous pleasure
Applies less to this generation than the others preceding it
>cult of youth
Was around in Ancient Greece

Houllebecq is talking complete bollocks

This. Clitskin clone orgies now.

Durr nothing has ever changed forever because I can draw vague parellels with any statement about the present

Yeah, but you don't. Our society is made up of millions of people but still continues to function. Whatever insane, retard desires you have is kept in check by how everyone else around you is behaving.

Please, go up to a girl and tell yourself to rape her in broad daylight and you won't. You won't be able to force yourself to do something that would ostracize you from all levels of society because deep down you're monkey brain knows working within a group is necessary for survival and reproduction.

Please speak English

Just because one has to get creative doesn't stop it happening. You need to get out more, there's nothing harmonious about society

I didn't say it was harmonious, I just said it continues to function for the benefit of the general population. Plus, obviously some areas of the country are far better than others but in that case what happens, people try to move there and integrate into that community, following it's norms and customs, so that they can benefit.

Also your line here
>Just because one has to get creative doesn't stop it happening.
I think Crime and Punishment touched upon this idea. But even if you think, intellectually, raping someone is okay, if you're a normal, intelligent person you'd be driven insane with the guilt of what you've done.

Also, America isn't Brazil or Liberia yet so don't act like you're dodging rapists and murders every day. The majority of the country fairly safe unless you go out of your way to seek dangerous situations..

he's right though, it's basic psychology,

>there's nothing harmonious about society

The fact society is exists implies some level of harmony

>vain pleasures like sex
confirmed virgin

Find your faith you filthy heretic.

Yeah this wtf

>you'd be driven insane with the guilt of what you've done.

If you were conditioned initially to think anything like that was wrong, then maybe.

But guilt isn't the word you're looking for, it's paranoia, fear of being lynched and fear in general. Humans base their communities on trust, those who damage this trust, and by doing so damage the functionality of the group; are cast out. Even in shitty areas you can see tribes (gangs) form and attempt to cooperate based on trust and identity and so on. And of course it's all rooted in self interest, everything is.

>you have no proof of your lack of believe
>grand so user show me some
>no takes a lifetime to develop faith
When will you religious doos realise that isn't enough for some. Not tipping over here but do you honestly think this constitutes an argument for the existence of a god. If there was something to show that a god existed I would believe but no you speak of faith as a virtue. I believe what I know and I know what I believe I'd ask anyone who believes in a god why do you, without the religious traditions you're raised in or adopt at some point without these mythologies and stories do you think you'd still believe in a god. I know most shit on lit is soaked in irony but from any believers I'd love a sincere answer

>I always hated that ''it's all chemicals'' argument.
true. are movies on a screen only pixels therefore they are useless?

>are movies on a screen only pixels therefore they are useless

Yes.

>still hasn't read Nietzsche and Stirner

>implying entertainment isn't quantifiable useful

> a meaningless life based on instantaneous pleasure and a cult of the youth.

This isn't a problem in itself. It's plain ol' nihilism, and it can be fun.

The trouble with nihilism is that it's a philosophical dead-end. People may end up trying to assuage this via hedonism/etc, but this is nothing more than running away from the problem.

The real problem with nihilism is that a people consumed by it will invariably be conquered by a people who believe in something. A negative cannot stand against a positive. The void created by atheism/nihilism/etc in the West will almost definitely be filled by Islam.

We could have listened to the likes of Nietzsche, and found something better with which to fill the void, but now it's too late.

It won't be in our lifetimes probably but one day there will likely be something like Carlos Wu's Autodoc made that will allow at least the rich and powerful to live indefinitely. I think theoretically nano machines could achieve something like this eventually with the main limiting factor being money.

kek that ending was a hilarious troll

>The real problem with nihilism is that a people consumed by it will invariably be conquered by a people who believe in something.
You're real spooked user.

I believe in myself.

Sure if you're a degenerate with no aspiration of betterment of society

>I believe in myself.

Do you really?

the people who aspire to better society are the people who cause society to be so awful in the first place.

The real aspiration is the betterment of oneself.

>The real problem with nihilism is that a people consumed by it will invariably be conquered by a people who believe in something.

This is incredibly naive. If you actually read the history you'd find Western Colonialism was coloured especially by its soldiers by a misanthropic nihilism. Its only in retrospect they were told as spreading God or manifest destiny, in the beginning its pure greed and bloodthirst.

>If you actually read the history you'd find Western Colonialism was coloured especially by its soldiers by a misanthropic nihilism. Its only in retrospect they were told as spreading God or manifest destiny, in the beginning its pure greed and bloodthirst.

That's partly the point. If there misanthropic nihilists, they didn't let it show where it counted.

Misanthropy/nihilism/etc are the luxuries of the moribund.

The other day I was waiting for my jalapeno cheddar scone at the local coffee emporium and a guy with a keffiyeh and half-shaved head behind me said "HOO-la-beck" to his blue-maned romantic partner of ambiguous genitalia. I whirled right around on my heel and said "it's pronounced well-BECK okay?" and stormed off without even getting my scone. The whole coffee shop stood up and applauded as I stormed out with Ode to Joy playing over the loudspeakers.

are you this guy?

No, i've never played Rome: Total War