I have realised that a lot of the time, whenever people choose to follow idealistic philosophies, here meaning any philosophy that strives towards some form of higher ideal or purpose in life, the restrictions that this way of life poses ends up corrupting the individual from within and strengthening their urges and desires to a point that they become unbearable. Usually this happens when a person is in a very bad stage in their life, for example if they have had a lot of stress, problems with their relationships, bouts of nihilism and a lack of belief in their own philosophy, etc. This strengthening of desire, be it lust, sloth, greed, passion or melancholy, leads to cognitive dissonance: because most idealistic philosophies limit specifically the animalistic nature of humans, when people start to desire the very things they are limiting, they start to subconsciously question their own ideals and act against them. Once a person does what is considered "sinful" for long enough, they lose the light that was once guiding them, and become numb to the ideals that once drove them and light a spark within them. They become nihilistic, seeing life as inherently meaningless and they no longer feel guilt for "tripping" or going against their ideals.
Nihilism, however, is only an in-between stage, for it eventually leads to hedonism: no individual can stay perfectly sane in nihilism, for without purpose, one doesn't know how to act and can't see any purpose in living, which goes fundamentally against our animalistic nature, our desire for self-preservation. Thus to combat the feeling of meaninglessness and the pessimism inherent to it, the individual begins to find more joy in the hedonistic actions that they once were shameful of. The hedonism turns into a light at the end of the tunnel that brings purpose to life and satisfies the animalistic urges of humans. It's a win-win situation: not only do you now have a purpose, but the purpose in question also agrees with your very nature.
However, the core problem with hedonism is that it loses its value after some time: the individual soon ends up questioning what they are doing, wondering whether it is correct or good. The pleasure no longer feels pleasurable and suddenly their idealistic urges start to creep up on them: the individual suddenly becomes desperate, as if they awoke from a coma realising that they have wasted all their time on nothing. This panic and fear leads them to try and somehow prove themselves to the world and repay their sins: they don't want to end up in hell, whatever hell means to them, so they try to be a good person again. I must quickly state that this text is by no means religious, I merely use words like "sin" and "hell" metaphorically. Anyway, suddenly the individual gains back their consciousness and seeks to be idealistic again, pushing away their hedonism. However, this sudden surge of power doesn't usually last long, since it comes back in the form of an extreme and considering people don't like change, especially drastic change, the idealistic will quickly degrade back into nihilism and hedonism.
What I am trying to get at here is that idealism and hedonism are strongly connected to each other when you consider the dual nature of humanity: humans are simultaneously both idealistic and hedonistic. We have moral and intellectual qualities, such as intelligence, rational thinking, wisdom, creativity, deep and spiritual emotions, altruistic characteristics, empathy and compassion, but at the same time we also have deeply animalistic qualities, such as the need for self preservation, sexual love and pleasure, the desire for power and submission, and the need for physical and emotional closeness. I must state here that by idealistic qualities I simply mean the qualities we usually associate with high intelligence and thus consider "humane", while animalistic qualities are those characteristics we share in common with other animals and that don't require especially high intelligence. The core issue here is that humans try to separate themselves from the animal kingdom and thus argue that those qualities that fundamentally separate humans from other animals, idealistic qualities, are more "humane" and thus "better", while animalistic qualities have nothing to do with humanity at all and are "sinful". Therefore anyone who seeks to be idealistic and practise "human virtues'' is considered "good" or even "divine", while anyone who dares to practise animalistic, hedonistic qualities is considered "bad" or even "sinful". The problem is that these animalistic qualities are just as much part of our humanity as idealistic qualities, and thus we can't fully avoid them. Humans are very aware of this fact, and because we all know deep down that we are animals, we try our hardest to forget this fact so that we can maintain our egoism and narcissism. We assume that everyone is good. We project this optimism oftentimes to the entirety of the animal kingdom, depicting animals as "innocent" and "pure". And whenever we do anything animalistic, instead of feeling guilt or hatred towards ourselves, we call it "humane weakness" and don't attempt to confront it in any way, simply accepting it and moving on with our lives. Thus the entirety of the human race (slight exaggeration) is in a constant state of cognitive dissonance. What does this mean in terms of the cycle I originally presented? It simply means that because we chose to be ignorant of our animalistic nature, we constantly overestimate ourselves in seeking idealistic highs, and thus end up falling into the cycle of idealism and hedonism when our animalistic subconscious comes creeping up on us. As long as we stay blind to our hedonism, we will continue to suffer indefinitely.
TheJadedNihilist t1_iw6vqwp wrote
Reply to /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | November 07, 2022 by BernardJOrtcutt
I have realised that a lot of the time, whenever people choose to follow idealistic philosophies, here meaning any philosophy that strives towards some form of higher ideal or purpose in life, the restrictions that this way of life poses ends up corrupting the individual from within and strengthening their urges and desires to a point that they become unbearable. Usually this happens when a person is in a very bad stage in their life, for example if they have had a lot of stress, problems with their relationships, bouts of nihilism and a lack of belief in their own philosophy, etc. This strengthening of desire, be it lust, sloth, greed, passion or melancholy, leads to cognitive dissonance: because most idealistic philosophies limit specifically the animalistic nature of humans, when people start to desire the very things they are limiting, they start to subconsciously question their own ideals and act against them. Once a person does what is considered "sinful" for long enough, they lose the light that was once guiding them, and become numb to the ideals that once drove them and light a spark within them. They become nihilistic, seeing life as inherently meaningless and they no longer feel guilt for "tripping" or going against their ideals.
Nihilism, however, is only an in-between stage, for it eventually leads to hedonism: no individual can stay perfectly sane in nihilism, for without purpose, one doesn't know how to act and can't see any purpose in living, which goes fundamentally against our animalistic nature, our desire for self-preservation. Thus to combat the feeling of meaninglessness and the pessimism inherent to it, the individual begins to find more joy in the hedonistic actions that they once were shameful of. The hedonism turns into a light at the end of the tunnel that brings purpose to life and satisfies the animalistic urges of humans. It's a win-win situation: not only do you now have a purpose, but the purpose in question also agrees with your very nature.
However, the core problem with hedonism is that it loses its value after some time: the individual soon ends up questioning what they are doing, wondering whether it is correct or good. The pleasure no longer feels pleasurable and suddenly their idealistic urges start to creep up on them: the individual suddenly becomes desperate, as if they awoke from a coma realising that they have wasted all their time on nothing. This panic and fear leads them to try and somehow prove themselves to the world and repay their sins: they don't want to end up in hell, whatever hell means to them, so they try to be a good person again. I must quickly state that this text is by no means religious, I merely use words like "sin" and "hell" metaphorically. Anyway, suddenly the individual gains back their consciousness and seeks to be idealistic again, pushing away their hedonism. However, this sudden surge of power doesn't usually last long, since it comes back in the form of an extreme and considering people don't like change, especially drastic change, the idealistic will quickly degrade back into nihilism and hedonism.
What I am trying to get at here is that idealism and hedonism are strongly connected to each other when you consider the dual nature of humanity: humans are simultaneously both idealistic and hedonistic. We have moral and intellectual qualities, such as intelligence, rational thinking, wisdom, creativity, deep and spiritual emotions, altruistic characteristics, empathy and compassion, but at the same time we also have deeply animalistic qualities, such as the need for self preservation, sexual love and pleasure, the desire for power and submission, and the need for physical and emotional closeness. I must state here that by idealistic qualities I simply mean the qualities we usually associate with high intelligence and thus consider "humane", while animalistic qualities are those characteristics we share in common with other animals and that don't require especially high intelligence. The core issue here is that humans try to separate themselves from the animal kingdom and thus argue that those qualities that fundamentally separate humans from other animals, idealistic qualities, are more "humane" and thus "better", while animalistic qualities have nothing to do with humanity at all and are "sinful". Therefore anyone who seeks to be idealistic and practise "human virtues'' is considered "good" or even "divine", while anyone who dares to practise animalistic, hedonistic qualities is considered "bad" or even "sinful". The problem is that these animalistic qualities are just as much part of our humanity as idealistic qualities, and thus we can't fully avoid them. Humans are very aware of this fact, and because we all know deep down that we are animals, we try our hardest to forget this fact so that we can maintain our egoism and narcissism. We assume that everyone is good. We project this optimism oftentimes to the entirety of the animal kingdom, depicting animals as "innocent" and "pure". And whenever we do anything animalistic, instead of feeling guilt or hatred towards ourselves, we call it "humane weakness" and don't attempt to confront it in any way, simply accepting it and moving on with our lives. Thus the entirety of the human race (slight exaggeration) is in a constant state of cognitive dissonance. What does this mean in terms of the cycle I originally presented? It simply means that because we chose to be ignorant of our animalistic nature, we constantly overestimate ourselves in seeking idealistic highs, and thus end up falling into the cycle of idealism and hedonism when our animalistic subconscious comes creeping up on us. As long as we stay blind to our hedonism, we will continue to suffer indefinitely.