I am always curious why one continues to believe the beliefs that lead to pain, suffering, and unhappiness. Even if correct is being miserable worth it?
You're looking for pragmatism. Look up William James' Will to Believe.
A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)
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Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)
#12I am always curious why one continues to believe the beliefs that lead to pain, suffering, and unhappiness. Even if correct is being miserable worth it?
Maybe the belief gives meaning which avoids confronting nothingness and meaninglessness.
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)
#13Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)
#14Can "nihilists" stop conflating rejecting objective meaning with having no meaning (nihilism).
This topic interests me, but I've never really studied it.
Would you mind sketching out your take on it?
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)
#15I am always curious why one continues to believe the beliefs that lead to pain, suffering, and unhappiness. Even if correct is being miserable worth it?
It's morally repulsive to me to believe something just because it makes me feel better.
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)
#16> This may be nihilism, but at least it's good-humored. Whiffed on the fact that humor itself here is meaning. Explaining away positive experiences as "illusory" (which is, without evidence that it IS in fact "illusory" instead of just being conjecture based on currently-known facts, simply "gaslighting" to me), is the problem of nihilism (IMHO). Anyone ever consider the odd fact that every nonliving thing in the uni…
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Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)
#17> In lieu of meaning, I mostly adopted the attitude of Alan Watts. Existence, he says, is fundamentally playful. It's less like a journey, and more like a piece of music or a dance. And the point of dancing isn't to arrive at a particular spot on the floor; the point of dancing is simply to dance. Vonnegut expresses a similar sentiment when he says, "We are here on Earth to fart around."
Ikigai[0] is worth exploring if you find yourself questioning the grand meaning of things:
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai
> The Oxford English Dictionary defines ikigai as "a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living". More generally it may refer to something that brings pleasure or fulfilment.[1]
> The term compounds two Japanese words: iki (生き, meaning 'life; alive') and kai (甲斐, meaning '(an) effect; (a) result; (a) fruit; (a) worth; (a) use; (a) benefit; (no, little) avail') (sequentially voiced as gai), to arrive at 'a reason for living [being alive]; a meaning for [to] life; what [something that] makes life worth living; a 'raison d'être'.
Personally though I've found the pursuit of this philosophy very hard to integrate into life. It's one of life's hard problems. It means somehow intersecting 'play' with 'work', but as many people say: 'work is something people don't do voluntarily'. Hence its name: 'work', we don't naturally want to do it. But if you can make work as a form of play, you already are living in Ikigai.
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a new one to me, so forgive me if this is answered, but wouldn’t solipsism require that the individual be able to manipulate their own reality as it posits reality is personal in construction? Similar to a lucid dream state.
Not really, for all intents and purposes we are a brain in a jar with a bunch of electrodes sending signals.
Ok, that perspective makes more sense. Thanks!
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)
#19> In lieu of meaning, I mostly adopted the attitude of Alan Watts. Existence, he says, is fundamentally playful. It's less like a journey, and more like a piece of music or a dance. And the point of dancing isn't to arrive at a particular spot on the floor; the point of dancing is simply to dance. Vonnegut expresses a similar sentiment when he says, "We are here on Earth to fart around." Ikigai[0] is worth exploring…
I don’t think making work a form of play is feasible (perhaps easy is a better word) for most people, simply because of the nature of their job. Without some creative and exploratory aspect, it’s just menial, boring, devoid of any stimulation.
I am lucky enough that my work is such, but I got extremely lucky and basically made it my reality.
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)
#20> I have a degree in philosophy, but haven't read any of the classic literature on this subject, so I'm almost certainly reinventing the wheel. This shows when you call both Watts and Vonnegut a nihilist. Absurdism for example is not the same as nihilism.
That quote is weird. In technical fields you wouldn’t read the classic literature (mechanical engineers don’t read Euclid), but there’s no fear of reinventing the wheel since modern books take account of fundamental works; if not by name then for sure in content.
I’m surprised how you can get a philosophy degree and then be afraid of “reinventing the wheel”. I suppose the author is self-aware enough to know what he doesn’t know… but still. It’s odd.