What’s the point of despair? There seems to be a given assumption in the original post that:
1) there is no protection, universe is allowed to be horrible --> 2)lets despair
But number 2 doesn’t change 1 one bit. This is not a clever argument to disprove number 1. I’m just saying despair is pointless if it changes nothing. It’s like when babies cry automatically when something isn’t the way they like because they are programmed to by evolution because this reliably attracted the attention of adults. Despairing about the universe will not attract the attention of adults to make it better. We are the only adults, that’s it. I would rather reason along the lines of:
1) there is no protection, universe is allowed to be horrible --> 2)what can I do to make it better
Agreed with everything else except the part where this is really sad news that’s supposed to make us unhappy.
Agreed. Despair is an unsophisticated response that’s not adaptive to the environment in which we’re using it—we know how to despair now, it isn’t rewarding, and we should learn to do something more interesting that might get us results sooner than “never”.
You could argue that some feelings do change things and have an effect on actions; sometimes in a negative direction (i.e. anger leading to vengeance and war) sometimes in a positive direction (i.e. Gratitude resulting in kindness and help.) Anger in this example can be considered “pointless” not because it has no effect upon the world, but because it’s effect is negative and not endorsed intellectually. I think that’s the sense in which despair is pointless in the original example. It does have an effect on the world; it results in people NOT taking actions to make things better.
You could argue with the use of the word “pointless”, I suppose.
What’s the point of despair? There seems to be a given assumption in the original post that:
1) there is no protection, universe is allowed to be horrible --> 2)lets despair
But number 2 doesn’t change 1 one bit. This is not a clever argument to disprove number 1. I’m just saying despair is pointless if it changes nothing. It’s like when babies cry automatically when something isn’t the way they like because they are programmed to by evolution because this reliably attracted the attention of adults. Despairing about the universe will not attract the attention of adults to make it better. We are the only adults, that’s it. I would rather reason along the lines of:
1) there is no protection, universe is allowed to be horrible --> 2)what can I do to make it better
Agreed with everything else except the part where this is really sad news that’s supposed to make us unhappy.
Agreed. Despair is an unsophisticated response that’s not adaptive to the environment in which we’re using it—we know how to despair now, it isn’t rewarding, and we should learn to do something more interesting that might get us results sooner than “never”.
What’s the point of having feelings or emotions at all? Are they not all “pointless”?
I suggest that you research the difference between instrumental values and terminal values.
I understand the difference. Perhaps I wasn’t clear. You can’t just call feelings “pointless” because they don’t change anything.
You could argue that some feelings do change things and have an effect on actions; sometimes in a negative direction (i.e. anger leading to vengeance and war) sometimes in a positive direction (i.e. Gratitude resulting in kindness and help.) Anger in this example can be considered “pointless” not because it has no effect upon the world, but because it’s effect is negative and not endorsed intellectually. I think that’s the sense in which despair is pointless in the original example. It does have an effect on the world; it results in people NOT taking actions to make things better.
You could argue with the use of the word “pointless”, I suppose.