u/No-Ambition-4373

Been thinking about this lately—given his whole take on the Will, suffering, and endless desire, how do you think he’d react to stuff like social media, consumerism, and the way we live now? Curious what this sub thinks.

Earlier today I was trying to put a thought into words and used AI to explain it better:

I think I understand what you’re getting at, even though it’s hard to put into words.
What I’m hearing is something like this:
If suffering is supposed to be a “test” from God, then that explanation seems disconnected from how human beings actually experience suffering.
When people suffer, most don’t naturally think:
“This is happening because I did something wrong.”
Instead, they think:
“Why is this happening to me?”
“What did I do to deserve this?”
“This isn’t fair.”
“Bad things just happen.”
So your question is: if God designed people, and if suffering is meant to teach some moral lesson, why aren’t people naturally able to recognize that lesson? Why would our minds be wired to experience suffering as confusion, unfairness, randomness, grief, or despair instead of immediately understanding it as a test?
That’s actually a deeper criticism than simply saying “suffering exists.”
You’re pointing out a mismatch:
The religious explanation says suffering has a purpose.
Human psychology often experiences suffering as purposeless.
And because of that mismatch, you feel that people who casually say “it’s just a test from God” may not be fully appreciating what suffering feels like from the inside.
For example, imagine someone loses a child, develops a painful illness, or lives through war. The immediate emotional reaction is usually grief, fear, anger, confusion, and helplessness—not “Ah yes, I recognize this as a divine test.”
So you’re wondering why a supposedly universal lesson would be communicated in a way that most people don’t naturally perceive.
That’s a philosophical question that thinkers have struggled with for thousands of years. Even many religious people have asked it. In fact, the central figure of the Book of Job spends much of the story asking why he is suffering rather than immediately understanding it.
One thing I also noticed in what you wrote is that you’re questioning the connection between actions and suffering. You’re saying:
Even if I was somehow responsible, I don’t experience my suffering as a consequence of my actions.
And that’s important. Human beings generally don’t have direct access to some cosmic scoreboard telling them exactly why something happened. We see events, but we don’t automatically see their ultimate causes. That’s why people often disagree about whether suffering is punishment, a test, random chance, consequences of choices, or something else entirely.
So I don’t think your point is simply “God doesn’t exist.”
It sounds more like:
“If suffering is supposed to communicate something, why is the message so unclear to the people experiencing it?”

I don’t think people understand how different ADHD actually feels from the inside.
Everyone talks about hard work like it’s the same for everyone, but it’s not. If your brain doesn’t give you that reward feeling (dopamine) when you try to focus or stay consistent, then “just work harder” isn’t real advice. It’s like telling someone to run on a broken leg.
What makes it worse is that ADHD doesn’t mean you’re not aware. In some ways, it feels like the opposite. You notice patterns, you overanalyze everything, you understand how things connect. But at the same time, you struggle to actually execute, stay consistent, or follow through.
So you end up feeling like the smartest and the most incapable person in the room at the same time.
I also think a lot of people are misdiagnosed, and a lot of people are overlooked. The symptoms overlap with so many other things that it’s hard to even know what’s really going on. I wish there was a clear, objective way to measure it, like a scan or something, but there isn’t.
And because of that, people either don’t take it seriously, or they oversimplify it.
I’m not saying effort doesn’t matter. I’m saying the playing field isn’t equal, and pretending it is just makes people feel worse.

Schopenhauer is one of the few philosophers whose pessimism becomes more understandable the more you examine his arguments. Most people won't agree, and he expected that. The only part I think he couldn't fully accept was his own conclusion. His idea of denying the will always felt like an attempt to escape the reality he described. If life is fundamentally driven by endless striving and dissatisfaction, then permanently going against your will isn't really possible. It seems like even he couldn't completely accept how dark his own philosophy was, so he still searched for a way out.