Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Challenge for Fun
The finer points of Russian language. I was informed today by one of my teachers that the words "fun" and "challenge" do not necessarily exist in the Russian language. Well I've been told a hundred times if I've been told once, "Life is hard in Russia". Always with a pitiful face. So my guess is that the word "challenge" is just translated as Жизнь, or life. And "fun"? Well what room for that word can there be in a culture of perpetual challenge.
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So, Schopenhauer (who's German, but wevs) says that pleasure is actually a negative affect. That is, given a threshold of pain that is life, what we experience as pleasure is just the momentary dulling or lessening of the pain of living. It is not something added-to experience, but a subtraction-from the condition of existence.
Of course, he also was an absolute idealist and thought that everything was a manifestation of will willing itself. The only way out is the negation of the will. Royce will take the exact same line but finds existence ameliorated by love and loyalty to community. Schopenhauer finds no consolation, except the possibility of non-being. That is why no one likes him.
So, what I wonder is why aren't more Russians Buddhist?
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