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VersaceEauFraiche t1_j64rmf4 wrote

Reply to comment by BonusMiserable1010 in Cosmic nihilism, existential joy | Human consciousness, and our need for meaning in a meaningless world, is the source of both tragic pessimism and the intense joy we take in life. by IAI_Admin

Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy cribs from Schopenhauer the notion that life is inherently painful, tragic, full of suffering. This is a metaphysical view (as all views are) that I simply do not accept. The notion that life is valueless or meaningless (and from this meaningless arrives suffering) is itself a valuation. It's language games all the way down.

Nietzsche in the revisions of Birth of Tragedy writes about how he was still operating with the framework he learned from other philosophers and how he regrets this. Nietzsche's later work does preach about about having life-affirming values, which I agree with and support.

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salTUR t1_j677s3z wrote

At the risk of potentially sounding like an early 70's hippy pseudo philosopher . . .

I feel like anyone who thinks that life is inherently meaningless needs to unplug from social media and withdraw as much as they can from the modern machine. Maybe they should even try some psychedlic substances (in a responbile way). The notion of human life being inherently "meaningless" is a thoroughly modern idea, and it's exacerbated by our consumerist tendencies toward excessive (or even exclusive) digital interaction.

Before the advent of existentialism, you would be the odd-one-out if you posited that life had no inherent meaning. The subjective life experience is so full of inherent meaning. The only way it's not is if you believe in a mind-body duality (a la Descarte) that separates the subjective observer from the objective observed. In truth, our subjective minds are a part of objective reality. What you feel matters. All you'll ever have is what you feel. Just because we can't find an objective "proof" that the universe was made specifically for mankind doesn't mean the subjective experience of that universe is automatically devoid of intrinsic meaning. The more we distance ourselves from a natural state of being, the more compromised of meaning our subjective experience becomes.

I believe nihilism is only explicable when viewed as a product of the modern dynamic - Baudrillard's "simulacra and simulation" thesis. We're so thoroughly distracted from a natural state of being that we have spent centuries now bending over backwards looking for a reason for existing when a reason for existing was never required. The universe is not a question that needs to be answered! The universe simply is. And so are we.

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Maximus_En_Minimus t1_j6836do wrote

Persoanlly from several of my psychedelic experiences I came to the conclusion that existence has no intrinsic meaning or purpose. And - while in the West you are correct: you would be the odd one out if you believed as much before the advent of social media - in the East, Hinduism and Buddhism, perhaps Maya, especially the idea of Sūnyata, would indicate meaninglessness.

I hold now more to the notion, less of Intrinsic meaning, but of Intricate meaning: that meanings and purposes are suspended, and substantiated by their relationship to one another. This at least gives me the clarity to investigate the subfocal valences affecting my behaviours.

I think the difference between Modern Nihilism and Spiritual Nihilism can be grounded in the above: the former is a lack of participation with life and relationships to others, which would have interwoven into one another, leading the person to literally feel empty or lacking; the latter is a realisation of relational interwoveness which allows the person to disentangle and detach themselves egoistically from fictional construals - such as ambitions, expectations, reactions, hate - which often lead to suffering.

While I agree that social media has ostensively sucked meaning from people’s lives; I also think it is due to what I coin as vacuity: the distance and separation between things, increasing time to arrive, such as a relationship or even a gym, leading to alienation and eventually emptiness.

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lizzolz t1_j67k46t wrote

Why does mind-body dualism make life meaningless?

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salTUR t1_j68xf6w wrote

I don't think mind-body duality makes life meaningless by itself, I just think it helps create the conditions for nihilism. It causes human beings to think of their subjective experiences as something separate and removed from the rest of reality even though those experiences are as inherent to reality as anything else. It's easy to drop into nihilism when the fundamental framework you use to think about your place in the world is built on the assumption that you're somehow removed from it. Descarte's mind-body duality is just another aspect of modernity that further removed the Western World from the innate, transcendent experience of being. Seeking objectivity in all things inhibits our ability to simply experience reality.

Jose Ortega says it best: "I am I and my circumstance."

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lizzolz t1_j6c96pn wrote

Interesting take. For me, mind-body dualism conjures up anything but nihilism. It suggests to me the excitement of the possibility that not everything can be described in materialist terms, though that may be incorrect. There are tons of arguments both for and against. But it's damn cool to ponder that perhaps consciousness exists outside that pink organ in the vault of our skull.

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yearsofpractice t1_j67n23c wrote

Hey u/VersaceEauFraiche - your answer has fascinated me as I’m living with depression and anxiety and I’m coming to terms with life through the lens of Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) - I think your comment extends on that framework, but I don’t have the experience or academic background in philosophy to fully understand it. Could you reframe it for someone who doesn’t have training/education in philosophy? Context - I’m a 46-year-old married father of two in the UK who has recently been able to start really living again due to (in part) the aforementioned ACT which has given me the following mental tool “Yes, u/Yearsofpractice, this situation or emotion does feel unpleasant, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad. Celebrate the fact that you’re feeling something and remember that things change. You’re alive, you’re living to your values, so just accept the experience and look to the future”. Anyway - any feedback welcome.

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VersaceEauFraiche t1_j694gpl wrote

I wouldn't say that I have an academic experience with these topics necessarily, I've just been interested in history, philosophy for a long time. Honestly what you have said of yourself is great and I think trying to provide these "simple life philosophies" with an intellectual veneer is unnecessary and detracts from the potency of such an outlook.

As for myself, one thing that I feel that I had happened upon during my readings and interactions with others is the notion that, bluntly put, sadness confers intelligence. It feels that many people heard the phrase "ignorance is bliss" and took the contrapositive to heart: "to be sad is to be smart". You can see this notion in alot of media (something like Wednesday the show comes to mind). Again this is my interpretation of the matter, but there seems to be this implicit notion floating around our societal ether that you are intelligent if you find reality to not be sufficient - if you are irritable, if you are morose, if you find life unsatisfying, if you yearn for true meaning yet cannot find it. This interpretation is always taken as meaning that life is inherently boring, full of suffering, meaningless, etc, and instead of these qualms with reality prompting a deeper introspection into one's outlook, investigating why they find aspects of life to be melancholic and valueless, they assign the insufficiency to the external world rather than asking themselves if the insufficiency is internal, in how we view ourselves, life, reality.

This is the conceit of the philosopher, that only simple people can be happy with their station in life while they (Schopenhauer for example) have apprehended the true nature of reality and that reality is one of sorrow and suffering. But these are all metaphysical interpretations of reality, not reality itself. The language games that I refer to in my OP is that as soon as one puts words to reality, it becomes an interpretation and not an accurate description (metaphysics is unavoidable) and in these interpretations is the value judgement that these people would rather cultivate a sense of intelligence than cultivate joy (again, this is operating under the assumption that ignorance is bliss, sorrow smartness). You can be both intelligent and joyous!

There probably is something to the notion that intelligent people are more likely to suffer from some kind of mental illness, and that the more intelligent you are the increased likelihood of it occurring and the more profound its impact upon the person. But these might be just-so post hoc rationalizations, and even if they were immutably true we can still choose our outlook. We are bound by our biology in many ways, but we still have choices in the matter of outlook.

This is a long-winded way of saying that we can/probably have memed ourselves into melancholic dispositions. I did so myself at one point, as all young men are prone to do (Napoleon writes about this in his journals during his time at artillery school). I slowly realized that I didn't have to entertain such a disposition to be actually intelligent, well-read, educated. The Stoics are excellent on this, but their wisdom is lost on young men with few life experiences, as it was lost on me when I read it young and unappreciative.

"You dwell on the vastness of the Cosmos and think yourself small. I realize I am a part of the universe and think myself big. I am up in this bitch."

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