Imagine a life where you have never had to excel at anything. You have never desired success or felt admiration for someone great. There has been no desire to surpass the great, nothing beyond mere existence.
You are bored as per usual, posting about how you look and never deriving any happiness from these posts. All you do is feed your need to denigrate your equals and superiors. The past year has been dull and mundane, spending your time reading about people's lives, people you have never met. You sit there, developing a smell, posture and outlook.
Then you see the exoteric man, exerting his will. Something you have yet to experience. Externality is no issue, he does not see a conflict between desire and reality. They witness the desired, think upon the desirable and attain that which they desire. The bitterness, detatchement and irony is entirely absent, as they congratulat each others prowess and success. They feel the moment with such passion and sincerity.
You reflect again, you realise that which is absent. You will never acheive such externality.
So you get up and leave, their inviting eyes remain unoticed. They shrug their shoulders and forget you, they have eradicated you whilst you fantasise about a scenario in which you wittily dismiss such contentment. That is happiness for you.
>>7464535
>Imagine
>exertion of will is inherently virtuous and therefore desirable
Oh, you poor guy. It must be hard being you.
>>7464535
I do not think I have felt actual ambition in my life. To me I am just a thing that happens. My friend is deeply saddened by this, she considers me talented. She is somewhat talented herself, albeit not terribly, but moreso ambitious. I think we compliment each other. She envies me for my potential, I envy her for her will.
But wait, how in the name of fuck is this literature?
>>7464864
Deeply saddened, huh? Sounds like something out of a Russian novel. You know we don't really care about others' success.
>>7464888
She is saddened about how my lack of ambition affects my life. Empathy is an actual thing, anon.
>Imagine a life where you have never had to excel at anything. You have never desired success or felt admiration for someone great. There has been no desire to surpass the great, nothing beyond mere existence.
>You are bored as per usual
lost me right here wee laddie buck, being free of desire and admiring of all things will unshackle your mind
>>7464896
Her sadness is desire, my fren. Her empathy is frustration.
>>7464907
Desire for what? For me to have ambition?
So you postulate that every empathy is just a human's frustration about someone else not being like oneself?
>>7464919
Desire for ambition of her own, like a dad's frustration at the son's not realizing his own failed dreams.
>>7464931
But she is ambitious by herself. None of her dreams have failed, we are both very young people in our early to mid twenties.
>he does not see a conflict between desire and reality
>>7464944
Oh, I meant to say desire for the thing she lacked, which would be potential in this case. Also, the dad analogy was only an analogy, my fren. She would only be feeling--roughly--what the dad might feel; the circumstances and causes and such would vary, of course
>>7464957
I know it was only an analogy. I mentioned our age to showcase that we both have our entire lifes ahead of us, a point at which no dream can have failed yet.
She envies me for my talent, yes, so much I have told you (but in a positive way. I don't like the word envy for its negative conotation, but I don't find a more fitting word. Maybe admiration, but that word was also already used differently in the context of this thread.)
Likewise, as I said, I envy her ambition, her will to do.
I usually tell her that I consider ambition more important than talent, because if you have a lot of talent and no ambition it gets you nowhere, but if you have a decent amount of talent and an equal (maybe slightly bigger) amount of ambition, you are actually going places.
But on top of that envy she also feels genuine empathy for me. I am a sad sack of shit. I could do better if I had something to look forward to, something to set for myself as a goal or even an idol. She sees that and is saddened that her friend is like that.
Her envy of my talent and her sadness for me as a person maybe intervened to some extent, but they are different entities.
>>7464948
But my conflict is a lack of desire and apathy towards reality.
