Status Updates From The Essential Schopenhauer

I'll pause this one cause I don't seem to be paying much attention when I read it at this time.

Natural suffering, along with man-made suffering (ex. Negro slavery) disproves the “best of all worlds” theodicy. If life were so great, death would not need be gatekept with fearful emotions; death is presented as a positive, not negative evil. Optimism is cope, an artifact of the will to live. The fine-tuning argument surprisingly proves if the world were any worse, it couldn’t exist. Hence the worst possible

Our lives are defined by striving toward something better, and we are never satisfied. Once we get what we want, it comes not as sustained joy but relief, and then everything we do manage to build up becomes a greater burden until we die and lose everything. We feel loss more deeply than gain, and most happiness is only recognized in the absence of suffering; hence why entertaining stories must have conflict.