Stop being nihilistic

"“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless."
damn this really helps

It helps to read past the second verse.

lmaoing @ lyfe

Ecclesiastes is the capstone of the pagan worldview, forcing all who read to realize the futility of life without faith.

Life is equally as futile with faith except you're deluding yourself.

Perhaps. But at least you're living.

And living is somehow impossible if you're faithless?

I must say, there are an awful lot of very convincing corpses pretending to be real boys these days, then.

I mean that under the pagan worldview - "There's nothing new under the Sun", "All is vanity" - the soundest wisdom is that of Epicurus: "Live anonymously".

Those who live on faith are undaunted by life's assaults, because they force themselves to believe that all things work together for good.

He wasn't concerned with engaging nihilism, as Dostoevsky was. He was more concerned with challenging self-professed Christians to live authentically.

>But the ASIATIC manners(Polygamy) are as destructive to friendship as to love. Jealousy excludes men from all intimacies and familiarities with each other. No one dares bring his friend to his house or table, lest he bring a lover to his numerous wives. Hence all over the east, each family is as much separate from another, as if they were so many distinct kingdoms. No wonder then, that SOLOMON, living like an eastern prince, with his seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, without one friend, could write so pathetically concerning the vanity of the world.*90 Had he tried the secret of one wife or mistress, a few friends, and a great many companions, he might have found life somewhat more agreeable. Destroy love and friendship; what remains in the world worth accepting?

I don't think Ecclesiastes was actually written by Solomon, my man...

...

That isn't really an edgy opinion...

Rejecting millennia of the patristic teaching in favor of modern and secular scholars is pretty dam edgy

You've lost me. Paganism is wide and varied and does not fall under some sort of umbrella "pagan worldview", except that it is all rooted deeply in faith. Just not Christian faith.

It is the nihilists who reject faith altogether.

Nihilism and paganism cannot be conflated.

What I mean by "pagan worldview" is the belief that every life is a battle of gigantic, inhuman forces, which only comes to a subjective end when a man dies (except in those religions which espouse reincarnation; in them, the battle goes on). In this view, there's no room for faith: only stoicism or nihilism.

Judaism was the first religion to imagine that the world could be redeemed. Christianity was the first to put redemption into people's everyday lives.

teleologically suspend the ethical

That's not really what he said

It's impossible. Once you find the rational truth, you won't be able to close your eyes from it

>I would prefer not to.

>What I mean by "pagan worldview" is the belief that every life is a battle of gigantic, inhuman forces, which only comes to a subjective end when a man dies (except in those religions which espouse reincarnation; in them, the battle goes on). In this view, there's no room for faith: only stoicism or nihilism.

What. No, you have it wrong. There is the beauty and wonder of life and the beauty and wonder of death, which are both gifts of equal value. There is no battle. There is survival, yes, but in survival there is elegance and grace and fury and passion and depravation, hunger and thirst and exhaustion and desperation, which are all marvels. Redemption can be found without difficulty, or with great struggle, but struggle is also beautiful and reverent.

There is no room for stoicism or nihilism for the acknowledging the tremendous vista of the world around you, and the stars beyond it, leave no room for such stuckness.

That's very nice, but I feel that if it were true, the pagans wouldn't have lived in a state of incessant anxiety (see The Illiad for the most perfect example of this), and their philosophy wouldn't have consisted in preparing oneself for pain, suffering, and death (see Platonism, but also Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Indian theosophy).

Pain, suffering, and death are inevitabilities. Anxiety is a useful survival mechanism. Death is the final gift. Through death, life prospers. There cannot be one without the other.

I cannot think of a greater cruelty than eternal life.

Sour grapes really. If life were eternal we would live in four dimensions instead of two as we do, since without a real comprehensible understanding of time we are limited to linear time, our abstractions of the third dimension are bound up in our two dimensional understanding of past--->present--->future. I know this sounds ridiculous but it explains why we thought the world is flat because in all ways we look at the world in images which are two dimensional.

>I cannot think of a greater cruelty than eternal life.

Then you cannot think of life.

Perhaps one day, you will feel the vanity and hollowness of the things of the world. If so, I pray that you will not resist the flood of the Holy Spirit, which is a pure joy and eternal energy, established from everlasting to everlasting.

Then again, perhaps the things of this world will continue to suffice for you, and you will go down to Gehenna with a smile in your heart. If so, I will not begrudge you on that day.

Holy shit Epicurus fuck off.

>Just not Christian faith.
Largely they are, the roots I mean, if they were formed in Europe or North America. Do not trust their claims. They do not sacrifice to their gods.