# Is it possible to reduce a person to the fewest parameters



## kant (Dec 6, 2005)

I believe the whole range of my personality, behavior and motivation can be reduced to 4 atomic traits

1) sleep 
2) sex
3) work

When i reflect upon myself, i can not help but feel how pathetic i am. I feel i am trap in a two dimensional flat sheet of paper. I don t understand the concept of happy. I don t belief in human goodness.  I am also god damn sleepy 24/7.


----------



## David Baxter PhD (Dec 6, 2005)

> 4 atomic traits
> 
> 1) sleep
> 2) sex
> 3) work


What's number 4?

It doesn't sound like you have a very balanced life. What is your diet/nutrition like? Are you sleepy because of insomnia or do you sleep a lot and still wake up tired? What, if anything, do you do for fun or relaxation? When was the last time you had a medical/physical which included standard blood tests like thyroid function, iron, B12, and the like?

Has anyone ever suggested you might be depressed?


----------



## kant (Dec 6, 2005)

> What's number 4?




Typo.



> you sleep a lot and still wake up tired?



yes



> What, if anything, do you do for fun or relaxation?



Atomic 1, and atomic 2



> When was the last time you had a medical/physical which included standard blood tests like thyroid function, iron, B12, and the like?



zero.



> Has anyone ever suggested you might be depressed?



i wonder about that. Perhaps my depression is due entirely to some type of chemical imbalance, or perhaps i realized the truth, and the truth is depressing.


----------



## David Baxter PhD (Dec 6, 2005)

Nihilism is just what people who are depressed and either don't realize it or won't admit it call depression or dysthymia.


----------



## kant (Dec 9, 2005)

David Baxter said:
			
		

> Nihilism is just what people who are depressed and either don't realize it or won't admit it call depression or dysthymia.



Well, i don t think i am one of those people.


----------



## Daniel (Dec 11, 2005)

BTW, a true nihilist wouldn't value truth or even his own nihilism and would believe that pain and suffering is never a bad thing.  Therefore, I have never heard of a philosopher that was a true nihilist.  Even if nihilistic thinking could be separated from depressed thinking, it would still be guilty of the all-or-nothing, overgeneralized thinking that is typical of depression:



> Melancholics write philosophy...but...shouldn't we have a different philosophy?
> 
> Myths of the Blues: Why it's a bad idea to romanticize depression - US News



In Western philosophy, Nietzsche is probably the most popular example of a positive philosopher who counters the negative thinking of pessimists like Schopenhauer.


----------



## Pilonea (Dec 11, 2005)

> In Western philosophy, Nietzsche is probably the most popular example of a positive philosopher who counters the negative thinking of pessimists like Schopenhauer.



Even though Nietzsche owes much to Schopenhauer.  When he first read "_World as Will and Idea_," Nietzsche said something to the effect, and I must paraphrase since I have lent this particular book to a friend, "I felt that Schopenhauer was speaking directly to me."

As for nihilism, Nietzsche is often wrongly branded one by the unknowing or those who have never directly read him.  As you mention, he was (in his later years) somewhat of an optimist.  Just because he gave the Christian church its best philosophical beating it would have until Russell, doesn't mean he was a nihilist.  Nietzsche was ultimately a militarist and believed that a modern version of Plato's Republic was the best form of government (even though Nietzsche loved to thrash Plato).  Nietzsche also combined Schopenhauer's Will and Spencer's Natural Selection and incorporated them into a new philosophy.  Was he a Christian? Hell no.  Was he a nihilist?  There is no reason to believe he was.  When he said "God is dead," the phrase is usually taken out of context.  It was a shot at the Christian church, not necessarily an atheistic comment.

It's interesting, and I have posited this opinion before, many of the renown philosophers I have studied all have one thing in common: an early death of a parent and subsequent wealth as young men.  This, no doubt, allowed them the free time to become good philosophers.  

Schopenhauer was a notorious misogynist, no doubt due to the fact that his mother virtually despised his existence.  Goethe was friends with Schop's mother (his mother was somewhat of a well known intellectual in her own right), and informed her that little Arthur was a precocious child and certainly would became a legend one day.  His mother resented such comments about her child from such a renown polymath and genius as Goethe, which resulted in many verbal lashings.  Schop's mother resented the possibility of being upstaged by her son in the intellectual arena.  She and Arthur once got into a fight, she threw him down some stairs, later Schopenhauer informed her that she would be known to posterity only through him.  After this incident, he never spoke to his mother again.  Indeed, Schop was right, she is known only through him.

Interestingly, Schop later lived in a boarding house and did the same thing to an older woman -- that is, he threw her down a flight of stairs for "making too much noise in the hallway."  He had to go to court and subsequently ended up having to pay her a monthly settlement for the rest of her life.

The point is, although I am not a Freudian, it is clear that childhood interaction with the mother mirrored his relationship with women in adulthood.


----------



## Daniel (Dec 11, 2005)

Since Schopenhauer's father probably committed suicide, Schopenhauer may have also had a genetic predisposition to depression.   Nietzsche certainly had full-blown, clinical depression.


----------

