The Schopenhauer Problem

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was very pessimistic about human relationships. Schop liked to use an illustration to describe the futility of relationships. The illustration involved two porcupines. The porcupines are alone but could cuddle together for warmth. But when they got close to each other, they pricked each other with their quills. The result was a Catch-22. You could either be cold or pricked. Likewise, in human relationships, you can choose to either be alone or aggravated by the company of another. That is a very dismal view of relationships, but I find it accurate.

If you are going to be in any sort of close relationship, you are going to have to learn to tolerate bullshit. If this bullshit is too much, then you need to accept the cold emptiness of loneliness. We might imagine being in a pleasant relationship, but this isn't possible. People are human. They fart and snore. They have opinions that conflict with our own. They have terrible habits from biting their fingernails to much worse things involving substance abuse, gambling, and infidelity.

I don't have a satisfactory answer to this hedonistic dilemma. The reason I call it a hedonistic dilemma is because pain and pleasure matter to the hedonist. They are the essence of happiness. What Schopenhauer pointed out here as in countless other issues is the fact that life is a series of trade offs. Ultimately, life is either pain or boredom. You are either suffering, or you are bored because you aren't suffering.

I agree with just about everything Schopenhauer writes. But I'm not a pessimist. I think happiness is possible in life. The reason for this is because I am not a hedonist. Hedonism is a dead end. If Schopenhauer does anything for us, he shows us that the surest path to increasing pain is to believe that pleasure is happiness.

I am indifferent to pleasure and pain. This indifference is not the same as what the Stoics believed in. I have studied the Stoics in depth, but I came to the conclusion that their path was impossible as well. They attempted to create within their minds a psychological fortress that was impregnable. This can't ever happen. We are human, and there is no changing this.

Happiness comes from flow. Happiness is flow. This is what Aristotle referred to as eudaimonia or "flourishing." In this state of flow, pain and pleasure become meaningless. I can attest to this as I often end my day puzzled by the injuries I have sustained unknown throughout my day. Gashes on my arms and legs are a routine thing for me, but I don't actually feel them until I see them. I don't suffer from any kind of neurological disease that is paralyzing my senses. But I am too deep in the flow to notice the pain.

I have the same issues with sleep and hunger. I ignore those things for the sake of some project. They hit me later pretty hard. Usually, this is being famished at midnight and trying to decide between food and sleep.

If life is supposed to be either pain or boredom, I have to admit that I have neither. I get hungry like any other person. But it doesn't cause me grief. Similarly, I am almost never bored. I would say absolutely never except I had to take a trip to the DMV the other day to comply with some stupid new regulation. I just know that I don't live in Schopenhauer's world of endless suffering.

With relationships, I don't have a problem with tolerating other people's bullshit. I could point to all sorts of annoyances from my previous girlfriends, but that stuff really never bothered me. What did bother me was their ability to disturb that sense of flow. I'm not sure why things are this way, but women seem to have this unique ability and desire to quench the flow. It seems a woman is never happy until her man has reached the absolute point of misery at her hands. Women resent a man's job, his work, his projects, and the rest. Words like "neglect" and "workaholic" pop up. I call these women the "diminishers." They diminish flow.

I have zero interest in living with a diminisher. I am proud of the fact that I sent all these women sailing ass first to the curb. This is why being alone in the flow beats being in company with the misery. No warm arms or loving embrace can ever substitute for flow. Flow is everything.

I think two people who live in flow can certainly be together especially if they share projects. But even if they don't share projects, they can at least support each other in those things. The couples that I see who go the distance and have enviable relationships share this flow. Rose and Milton Friedman are the best example that springs to my mind. They both had a great love for economics and shared projects.

The Schopenhauer problem is a hedonistic dilemma, and I am not a hedonist. It isn't a problem for me. I am too happy to notice the pain or the boredom. For me, the only pain is anything that comes between me and that sense of flow. The only pleasure would be anything that enhances that flow.

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