“Man wants, man needs this or that.”

Often, one gets this from theologians, sociologists or psychologists. Rather trite example: “We all want to be happy.” Even if true, “happiness” can take many forms.

However, back in my late teenage years and my early twenties—my whole twenties actually—I wanted to kill myself. (And hanged myself at age 23.) Would have done it a second time had I not become a Christian. Obviously, most don’t do that, even if it’s true that every forty seconds there is a suicide taking place somewhere in the world.

I am one of the few who apparently lack any “zest” or “lust” for life. Which means that most of those boiler-plate philosophies don’t apply to me; I find them repugnant. A good example is the hierarchy nonsense, but any philosophy really that simply presupposes that “life”—whatever that entails or even means!—is beautiful, wonderful and whatnot.

I started feeling this way around puberty. As far as philosophy goes, I only value thinkers who also take into account the wickedness possible on this horrible earth, and who refrain from uncritically praising “life” or “existence”, which really boils down to praising one’s own life (and healthy mental state), since “life” can only be experienced subjectively anyway.

It also boggles the mind that there aren’t more people who seem to take issue with our origins and how we come to be, how we enter this questionable world. After all, that drive and even what leads up to it surely is chock-full of lies, deceit, egotism, vulgarity and is in itself repulsive and disgusting, denigrating and demeaning. Or as Andy Nowicki writes in his Confessions of a Would-Be Wanker:

[…] sex is dirty […] (p. 22)

[…] sexualization IS degradation. (p. 23)

[…] because sex is degradation. (p. 23)

I kind of understand—but am perplxed—that most or at least many people seem to be content with life—I am not, though.

Dixit Gómez Dávila:

In the social sciences one generally weighs, counts, and measures, to avoid having to think.

Superficial, like the sociological explanation of any behavior.

There is no sociological generalization that does not appear inadequate to the man to whom it applies.

The psychologist dwells in the slums of the soul, just as the sociologist dwells on the outskirts of society.

Ever since Wundt, one of the classic places of ‘disguised unemployment’ is the experimental psychology laboratory.

Only churchmen’s hands knew, for a period of a few centuries, how to beautify conduct and the soul.

To have good taste is above all to know what we should reject.