At many times I wonder if philosophy is divided into two categories; the blindingly obvious, always known if not spoken, and the unknown, and creative. Concepts like the principle of sufficient reason, and Occam's razor, as I understand them, are present in most of our uneducated debates and writings without anyone ever knowing that they have been codified and solidified. There are two sides to this; One, that these principles are so ingrained through unconscious inheritance of thought patterns in western thought-society that they are only there because they were integral in ye olde days, or (2) that they are more fundamental to our Kantian thought-framework, and even if we didn't know how to express them, they were always at work. Then on the other hand, there are concepts like the more modern linguistic theorists, and logic-hagglers, and their principles aren't usually intuitive, and don't usually seem to be present in some unconscious format in our minds already. When Occam wrote about not multiplying entities without cause, did he really add anything very new to the body of philosophy? Don't we already know the principle of simplicity without needing to be told it? And as for principles of logic, in harsh light they're just nigh-arbitrary rules for a constructed system made up by a bunch of hairless apes on a ball of dirt in a big ol' vacum. How do they matter? Why bother? What possible cause for significance do they have? Furthermore, what are criteria for significance? Why those? POINT- Are our instinctive senses of truth-sense and false-sense nothing more then inheritances from a dead age? Or willows bending to mood and emotion or delusions of faith?
What are the ramifications if Wittgenstein was right with his tractatus? If all philosophical propositions are meaningless, (including his own) what then are we to do with our inherited senselessnesses? Discard them, and live without meaning? Create our own?
How could we possibly create our own meaning, from scratch? Isn't that the ultimate arrogance, the perfect hubris? Yet- if we live in a world without our old boundaries. If what we know is senseless, and internally contradictory- then where might we go from here?
The Fremen fear the realm of alam-al mythal, the realm of myth, without boundary, because without boundary, it is impossible to point at some place and say "I am here- I am a person, I have existence"
Do we open our eyes to see this world around us? We are told that nothing ever changes here, that one day is much like the rest, that nothing lasts forever, and all the rest. Is change so impossible? Is the new so hard to come by?
Can we become active in creating our own lives, become active players in our own world? Fight the Cassandra effect? My mind shrinks from this challenge, and wants to return to the world with bills and friends and games and little farces of life that make it tolerable to forget that I live in a world without meaning. But why not? Why not sleep forever, lost in the waking utopia of the middle-class suburban life, die with deathbed wisdom and peace with the universe? My truth-sense tells me all truth-sense is meaningless. My instincts are therefore meaningless, or not, and my instincts tell me a slow and sleepy death of life is repulsive and should be fought at every opportunity. Why listen to instinct, when the easy route is so much easier?
In its own system, there is no counter-argument to this. Truth-sense is out the window, and counter-argument and argument are farcical dolls jerked by whims of mood. There is no meaning, so why go to all the bother of creating some?
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2 comments:
I admire your worldview.
I don't believe in God, freewill, morality, etc., and yet practicality necessitates that I still live as though I am free, still live by some moral framework, still retain an idealistic sense of hope, and above all, still find meaning. It is my body, enslaving me; it is my genes, telling me I must live on to spread seed, spread seed--only then will they care less if I continue to decide to live or not. But the insinct will still remain.
And indeed, the more I have found myself trapped in the prospect of meaninglessness, the more I am tempted to ignore it: Why should I be the one to live in the angst of knowing? There is so much fun to be had... And yet we know that alternative would somehow be worse... So does it come down to pleasure? Get as much enjoyment as you can before you die; intellectual enjoyment superior to physical. How many others have said that? How many others aren't convinced by it? Does it not imply that suicide, as you suggest, is the ultimate act of intellect defying instinct? But so what if it is? What is "defiance"? Defiance means nothing.
"Why listen to instinct," you said, "when the easy route is so much easier?" The paradox is, you're always listening to (survival) instinct; it's inescapable. Instinct is always trying to show you the easiest path to survival. Paradoxically, then, when someone ends their own life, it is an act of survival. Are the genes driving their vessel to suicide, knowing it tends towards activities useless to the survival of the species, such as--extensive philosophizing?
So it's an excellent question you pose. Why should we continue to live if we have the intellectual ability to decide we don't need to? Death--lack of consciousness--disturbingly resembles "nirvana," "Enlightenment."
When it comes down to it, philosophy is hopelessly useless without a practical counterpart. It is arrogant to treat the Earth as the centre of the Universe, but then again--why should the Universe matter so much? Just because it's "big"? (Again, instinct--telling us what's bigger is better.) The fact is, humans have become more intelligent than is biologically necessary. All we can say for sure that we, humanity, have accomplished up to this point is survive. All we can say for sure that we will do in the future is survive. We will survive to survive some more. Meaningless. And survival instinct is telling us to forget about that Universe. The universe is not important. It is irrelevant stimuli. Stay in your own body, for God's sake--it's all you have! You will never see the universe, so you might as well treat it in the same realm as heaven. How disatisfying!
Once we recognize the lack of meaning, suddenly we have the ability to see meaning everywhere. We see absurdity, we imagine. A striking thought, an idea. Meaningless. But interesting, perhaps. We must find balance between theory and practicality, even when our practical needs are so granted that we never need worry about them.
So perhaps the answer to defying meaninglessness is to recognize that the only reason we find "meaninglessness" meaningless is because we expect meaning. So what if there's no meaning? So what if everything's an illusion? If that's the case, then you can make meaning from whatever you want. Ignore the hypocrisy in the world, don't bother yourself feeling guilty about morals and poor people. Just try to do whatever the fuck it is you want to do. Bother with others only as long as they contribute in some way to your own dreams.
*shrugs, walks off*
Interesting perspective- I don't remember if suicide (of a physical sort) was really what I had in mind when I wrote this, but maybe instead a permissiveness of idle sleep-living through life. I admit the concepts are nigh-indistinguishable to me as an aware (so I like to think) person.
As to your conclusion, I wonder if I may have addressed your thoughts in the previous post, "Acts of creation at last". Or perhaps I was simply incoherently rambling again. And, may I ask- your profile states you are a dropout- from what field, I wonder? Genesis.
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