In this scene a crucial factor in what is occurring is presented in an indirect form...
If we place it within the contexts of a War Like No Other, where the enemy is a parasite spreading a memetic virus that zombifies - metaphors galore - then one way to survive is to inject yourself with the virus so that the diseased cannot sniff you out as an uninfected one, and be driven to tear you apart.
See how this mind altering mental virus is turning on anyone exhibiting "symptoms" of healthy.
We can only use allusions - metaphors, allegories - so that the infected do not detect our presence and be driven by madness to chew us to shreds.
Interesting that a mental disease spreading semiotically from mind to mind, necessitates linguistic concealments.
In my opinion - returning to the case of Schopenhauer - is that he was infected/affected by an eastern strain, identified as Buddhism.
Buddhism is to Hinduism what Abrahamism is to...Hellenism.
The issue is an absence of accessible frontiers, creating a "Behavioural Sink" scenario.
Life must survive, by any means...and nobility, intelligence, or even dignity is not its primary goal and will be sacrificed if need be.
Schopenhauer's "pessimism" was a product of spiritual fatigue.
A common factor for many males who are confronted by these modern/postmodern state of affairs. His age had not progressed as far down the rabbit hole as ours has. We are sitting with the
Mad Hatter in this alternate reality. But Abrahamism was still a factor.
Don't know what personal events triggered his "turning away"....but I know that Nietzsche found among the pre-Socratics an intoxicating antidote, a pharmakon, which he could not find personal healing in drinking himself....since it is also toxic. He too died childless and miserable, having identified Christian symptoms but not daring to go to the source of this infestation that goes all the way back to Socrates, through Plato, and is rooted in an emerging self-awarness...in my view.
The theme of the medicine being as dangerous than the disease it purports to heal, continues through...
With Nietzsche there's the protestant paternal factor to consider when trying to understand his polemics against Christianity, rather than the entire Abrahamic triad.
Another factor is high IQ and how individuals - primarily females - on the upper 3% find it difficult to make the necessary sacrifices, in time and effort, and to settle for what is available. Males have an easier time with it.
I've explored how and why high IQ - top 10% - females tend to not settle, and why high IQ males - top 3% - are also hampered reproductively, unless the process is made as easy as it was during periods of Paternalistic dominance.
In this age, when males are expected to adopt feminine seductive and reproductive practices, this has made the sacrifices impossible to accept rationally, and so irrationality is demanded as a requirement for reproduction.
Nihilism serves as an empowering excuse.
In the absence of absolute one then absolute nil is divine, i.e., omnipotent.
Uncertainty, poor odds, squash what will is left to reaffirm life.