Name: WHY DO WE FIGHT TO LIVE?
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WHY DO WE FIGHT TO LIVE?

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The story of Run the Jewels is, above all, a story of greatbranding.Type their name into YouTube and you’ll see what I mean.Their first album, ‘Run the Jewels’, begins with a song called ‘Run theJewels’, the chorus to which goes ‘Run the jewels, jewels, jewels…’. There’sthe acronym – RTJ – that crops up whenever there’s three syllables going spare.Then there’s the gun-and-fist hand-symbol that both forms the basis of allthree album covers and serves as a get-out-of-jail-free card for anyone unsurewhat to do with their hands at a gig. RTJ have turned brand recognition into anart form.But the songs are pretty decent too. They provide for young people what the priesthood provided in previous generations: a comprehensive vision of the world and a sense of purpose. They paint a picture of a world in which all thelies, violence and corruption have finally come to a head and it’s now or neverfor all the would-be saviours of humanity. The overriding impression is of thisfinal battle between good and evil in which you’re never quite sure exactlywhich side the RTJ boys are on.Angel Duster sees Killer Mike questioning not just authorityfigures but the very point of life itself:‘Somewhere between love and lust a nut get bust and a babyget made,It seems that trouble trouble us and follow us like all ourdays,In every holy book it says we suffer, that’s what it is.So riddle me this from the womb to the tomb why do we fightto live?Why do we fight to live? It’s a question that a lot of philosophers have addressed,but none have done so with as much miserable panache as this man here.Arthur Schopenhauer was born in 1788 in the city of Danzig.A brooding and serious child from the very start, he later wrote this in hismemoirs:“Even as a child of six, my parents, returning from a walkone evening, found me in deep despair.”At the age of seventeen, he was packed off to boardingschool in Wimbledon where he spent his time learning to hate the English andfear attractive women. When one of his friends at the time suggested they flirtwith some girls, he is reported to have replied:“Life is so short, questionable and evanescent that it isnot worth the trouble of major effort.”He went on to become a lecturer in philosophy at theUniversity of Berlin where he was a colleague of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,the intellectual superstar of the day. Everyone loved Hegel but Schopenhauerwas not a fan. He wrote this in his magnum opus,&nbsp;The World as Will andRepresentation:“Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as thecertified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiteratecharlatan who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together anddishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense.”And this:“If I were to say that the so-called philosophy of thisfellow Hegel is a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provideposterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is apseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking,and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest,most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, moststupefying verbiage, I should be quite right.”And this:“Further, if I were to say that this Great Philosopher ...scribbled nonsense quite unlike any mortal before him, so that whoever couldread his most eulogized work, the so-called Phenomenology of the Mind, withoutfeeling as if he were in a madhouse, would qualify as an inmate for Bedlam, Ishould be no less right.”And this:“...that clumsy and nauseating charlatan, that perniciousperson, who completely disorganized and ruined the minds of a wholegeneration.”And this:“…a commonplace, inane, loathsome, repulsive and ignorantcharlatan, who with unparalleled effrontery compiled a system of crazy nonsensethat was trumpeted abroad as immortal wisdom by his mercenary followers…”And this:“The height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, instringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had beenonly previously known in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and becamethe instrument of the most barefaced, general mystification that has ever takenplace, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, as a monument toGerman stupidity.”Now if you like Schopenhauer and hate Hegel, you could viewthis diatribe as a real triumph. You could see it as Schopenhauer zapping poorHegel with zinger after zinger, exposing the charlatan for who he is andleaving him stupefied and unable to respond. Or you can view this tirade as thebitter ramblings of a sad, sad man, shouting desperately into an unhearingvoid, railing against an old rival who has long since packed up and moved on toother things.One diatribe, two possible interpretations. But know thisbefore you pick: during his time in Berlin, Schopenhauer insisted on schedulinghis lectures at the same time as Hegel’s. Over two hundred students went toHegel’s. Five went to Schopenhauer’s.No wonder that Schopenhauer made ‘life is terrible’ thefoundational premise of his philosophy.It’s quite admirable in a way. One day Schopenhauer took along hard look at his life, realised it was bad, and then made this fact intothe cornerstone of an entire intellectual system. Life gave poor Schopenhauerlemons and Schopenhauer made awful, awful lemonade.Why is life so bad? According to Schopenhauer, it’s becausewe’re all manifestations of a thing he called the will-to-life (also knownsimply as the Will). This will-to-life, he says, is both the true realitybehind all appearances and the mindless force that powers everything in theuniverse. As mindless force, it drives all our instincts and desires – forcingus to suffer in our pursuit of new things – but it has no ultimate goal orpurpose and so it can never be satisfied. Getting what we want provides onlytemporary relief from pain. Before long we get bored and the thirst returns. Weneed more love, more money, more status, and so we suffer again. Schopenhauerthus takes life to be a pendulum swinging between pain and boredom.So why do we fight to live? Not, Schopenhauer says, becauseit’s rational to do so. He reckons that if we could see things clearly we’d allcome to the same conclusion: we’d be better off not existing. We fight to livebecause it’s the will-to-life – not the intellect – that decides how we act.Schopenhauer compares the situation to a lame person riding on the shoulders ofa blind giant. We can kid ourselves that our intellect is in charge, but it’sreally the Will that dictates where we go.The will-to-life supposedly manifests itself most stronglyin our desire for sex. Schopenhauer writes that “the genitals are the focus ofthe Will” and “sex is the ultimate goal of almost all human effort.” Eventhough we’re unconscious of it most of the time, the will-to-life is alwaysdriving us to pair up and reproduce. It drives us to pair up with people who’llhelp us create what Schopenhauer calls ‘well-balanced children’ (three wordsquite unremarkable in isolation but very creepy when strung together). Theproblem is, these people who’ll balance our children out are almost never agood match for us emotionally. Not only does the Will load us up withunattainable desires, it hitches us to someone we’ll soon hate. He writes:“Love…casts itself on persons who, apart from the sexualrelation, would be hateful, contemptible, and even abhorrent to the lover. Butthe Will of the species is so much more powerful than that of the individual,that the lover shuts his eyes to all the qualities repugnant to him, overlookseverything, misjudges everything, and binds himself for ever to the object ofhis passion.” – SchopenhauerLike Killer Mike, Schopenhauer thinks that baby-makinghappens somewhere between love and lust. Only after we’ve been sexually satisfied can we truly see things as they are. Only then can werealise that we’ve been duped by the will-to-life. He writes:“Directly after copulation the devil’s laughter is heard.”So when life is awful and even sex won’t fix it, where doyou turn?Schopenhauer turned to Eastern philosophy. In fact, he wasone of the first Western philosophers to draw on Hindu and Buddhist traditions.He borrowed heavily from the&nbsp;Upanisads, an ancient set of writingson which modern Hinduism is based, particularly the idea that the world has twoaspects: inner reality and outer appearance. What the&nbsp;Upanisads&nbsp;calledBrahman and Atman, he called Will and Representation.From Buddhism he borrowed the idea that the only way we canrid ourselves of suffering is to first rid ourselves of all desire. We have tolearn, however difficult it may be, to overcome the will-to-life. We have torenounce all our striving and craving and learn to be satisfied with the barestnecessities. We should, in short, learn to live like Buddhist monks, seekingsalvation through resignation. Unlike Buddhist monks, though, Schopenhauer seesthis kind of lifestyle not as a triumph but as damage control. He writes:“Nothing else can be stated as the aim of our existenceexcept the knowledge that it would be better for us not to exist.”When the problem is stated in such bare terms, the answerseems obvious. But suicide isn’t a solution for Schopenhauer because of anotherdoctrine he adopted from Eastern philosophy: reincarnation. Schopenhauer writesthat the will-to-life cannot be extinguished. When we die, the Will in usexpresses itself through some other object, plant, animal or human being, wherewe are doomed to suffer all over again. Even death is no escape from thehorrors of life. Only the destruction of reality itself could put an end to themeaningless suffering that pervades all existence.Looking back on Schopenhauer’s philosophy today, it seemsalmost laughably childish. You might say that his greatest achievement wasfinally making compatible the two defining philosophies of teenage life. Nolonger do angsty fifteen-year-olds have to choose! Thanks to old Schopenhauer,they can have the best of both worlds. Everything is terrible&nbsp;and&nbsp;everythingis sex!But that’s a bit harsh on poor Arthur. The fact is that,although his philosophy hasn’t gained widespread acceptance today, itprefigured a lot of the big ideas to come. It’s easy to forget that&nbsp;TheWorld as Will and Representation&nbsp;was published in 1818. That meansthat his will-to-life – a subconscious drive to create healthy children –prefigured Darwin’s&nbsp;On the Origin of Species&nbsp;by forty yearsand Freud’s ideas by seventy five.&nbsp;&nbsp;He was the first Western scholarto seriously engage with Eastern philosophy and one of the first to thinkseriously about sex and love.He deserves to live on in the hearts and minds of moodyteenagers. It’s the only kind of life he wanted to live anyway.As soon as he sticks the arm out, you know this thing has been rehearsed. I mean, of course it’s been rehearsed. It’s&nbsp; Kanye . He’s been practising for this moment in front of bathroom mirrors since he was thirteen-years-old. His very first Grammys and his very first Grammy, off the back of his very first album. You know how it goes. Start with the throwaway line. First impressions might be everything but a speech is something you ease into. You gain nothing by catching your audience by surprise. And the throwaway is something you can’t mess up. You’re just warming up here. Speak slowly. Especially at the beginning. You’ll speed up naturally as you go along so adjust for that now. Weigh your words and savour the silences. It’s the silences that mark the difference between a speech and a lecture. Make it personal. This is your moment after all. But give your audience something to chew on too – a secret, a lesson, a shout-out. It wouldn’t be much of a moment wiLudwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a century-old this year. It deserves its reputation as one of the most difficult books in modern philosophy. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Part of the difficulty is down to its subject matter. The book is about how language represents reality: how sentences like ‘The cat is on the mat’ manage to tell us something about the world. Exactly because we’re so accustomed to using these kinds of sentences, it can be hard to grasp just what Wittgenstein’s worry is. We’re like fish reading a book about the nature of water. Another part of the difficulty can be chalked up to self-reference. Wittgenstein uses language to conduct his investigation into the nature of language. The book is thus a kind of ouroboros eating its own tail, with all of the trouble that involves. A third part of the difficulty stems from the book’s length. It’s just 80 pages of cryptic, tweet-length remarks – sometimes precise, sometimes vague – covering everythingNOTE: citations for this post can be found here . *********************** Robinson Crusoe begins with a disagreement. Eighteen-year-old Crusoe is full of ambition. He’s determined to leave home and set sail for some faraway continent: Africa, perhaps, or South America. After all, the year is 1650, and the seafaring life promises the quickest route to fame and fortune. But Crusoe’s father is set against it and he pleads with his son to remain at home. One morning, the elder Crusoe calls his son into his chamber. In a final attempt to dissuade his son, he sings the praises of a peaceful life, in which people are not enraged with the passion of envy, or secret burning lust of ambition for great things, but in easy circumstances sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of living, without the bitter, feeling that they are happy, and learning by every day’s experience to know it more sensibly. Crusoe is touched by this speech and he resolves to re

The story of Run the Jewels is, above all, a story of greatbranding.Type their name into YouTube and you’ll see what I mean.Their first album, ‘Run the Jewels’, begins with a song called ‘Run theJewels’, the chorus to which goes ‘Run the jewels, jewels, jewels…’. There’sthe acronym – RTJ – that crops up whenever there’s three syllables going spare.Then there’s the gun-and-fist hand-symbol that both forms the basis of allthree album covers and serves as a get-out-of-jail-free card for anyone unsurewhat to do with their hands at a gig. RTJ have turned brand recognition into anart form.But the...

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