I don’t think this is the case and I would be interested is seeing how you know this is the case. Not via deduction alone, preferably, since this often seems misleading to me. When I was three a friend of my died of leukemia. I was immediately curious about how this could happen, what it meant that a child could die and I didn’t die, what it said about the universe, how it could be OK, etc. My parents were not religious, though I suppose they could somehow have filled my head with notions of justice. I am somewhat skeptical however that this line of questioning and the underlying yearning was nurture based. I even suggested that there was reincarnation, in response to her death, and this definitely was ńot an idea imposed on me by may parents or anyone they or I can think of. (none of this means I was correct that there was meaning, I am here arguing against this idea that we have to be sold notions of meaning and other religious ideas)
For me it has always been nothing natural in the idea that the universe is primarily dead and not even unconscious. This seems the contrived and trained notion. A notion the Abrahamic religions paved the way by positing a transcendent God, and sucking much of the life out of the universe conceptually. Science arose out of this emptiness as did their default position.
The above is two separate issues: 1 contesting the source of the idea of meaning and then 2 challenging the conclusion about their not being any meaning already present.
In the theory I’m working with (experimenting, again) in this thread, I believe the shaman taught the tribe to ask the question, for before such a teaching, the tribe was incapable of formulating such speculative thoughts: it was not their function.
Indeed, though I’m still unwavering in my belief that many people expect life to be meaningful, which is essentially what the question implies. There are, of course, many people already following someone’s teachings of meaning (i.e., Christians, etc.), and so they need not ever ask the question themselves, but they nonetheless expect/accept that life be fundamentally meaningful.
Ah, I imagine this is causing some confusion. If we expect life to be inherently meaningful, then the meaning of living comes from life itself, and not from us, that it is out there, and not in us: this is all I mean when I say we expect life to “give us the answer”. Note, as well, the many people that ascribe to this or that religion: they believe life’s meaning to be at least as readily accessible as the morning news (for what could be more accessible than Christianity?)
No need to apologize: that’s what these threads are for. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, I’m trying to do philosophy (and remember, that no philosopher has ever been proven right, so philosophy must be about something else altogether). As for Nietzsche, I recommend Beyond Good and Evil after the Gay Science. Be careful, though: there are often at least two fundamental layers of meaning in his writing. A major part of his philosophical project is dedicated to eradicating from philosophy the use of metaphysical oppositions (good/evil, true/false, real/apparent, etc.), oppositions which he proceeds to use himself. These words begin to take on entirely different meanings for “the few”, while retaining their traditional meaning for “the many”. Further, Nietzsche’s own vocabulary (Will to Power, Nihilism, Overman, Eternal Return, etc.) wholly eludes conceptual logic: his terms call forth such an explosive plurality of meanings that they undermine, out of hand, any principle of identity. Insofar as they are concepts at all, they are literally bursting at the seams. However, be most careful and read slowest his aphorisms.
“I look down because I am elevated…In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak; but for that one must have strong legs. Aphorisms should be peaks – and those who are addressed, tall and lofty.” And, as Zarathustra will add, “I am building a mountain range out of ever more sacred mountains.”
I don’t know how this is the case, but I did propose a theory: that early man had no reason to expect life to be meaningful. Such a concept would have been entirely outside his capacity; hunter-gatherers died of speculation, and so speculate they did not. The speculators, then, the priests, must’ve spread such a question. But why? To benefit themselves. And how should they have done that? They taught us to ask the question so that they may provide their answer. Such is my theory.
A meaningful life is like eating wholesome food. You get hungry, you eat food and feel satisfied. How we go from that to McDonald’s (obesity) let alone drugs (addiction) would make an interesting story. But it’s not one that I’m capable of telling.
It must be said though, I think, that it’s better to know about wholesome food and good diets than to just eat some berries, or bison, and expect the best. I’m not sure how wide you cast this “priest” net. In other words, knowledge is better than autopilot. As such knowledge is not necessarily easy to come by, teachers may be required. But it’s not about converting people to something, it’s about teaching people to live their own authentic life, without falling prey to “conversion” (or fad, or marketing, or whatever).
Indeed. Though I believe the question of the meaning of life was first taught by those who would directly profit from its being asked. In this case, the “knowledge” is hopelessly self-serving.
Right. That’s a case of completely externalising meaning, which is what we need to protect against. That’s what drug dealers do. You need this, because your life is impoverished.
Agreed. To borrow your metaphor, our lives were never so impoverished to warrant the drug-use in the first place. We must abandon such a harmful notion.
We should perhaps consider this from a very strict utilitarian perspective. Why did the meaning-sellers sell meaning? To what end (what kind of power?) The answer seems to be quite simple: to control. Large populations run rampant when they are left to their own devices - a kind of anarchist economy of force where every moment, another power may dominate.
Leaders have generally imposed meaning, as in “The Glory of Rome” to make a population obedient, subservient, if not to specific people, then at least to an institution from which certain bloodlines benefit.
In a hunter-gatherer society, such a conception of meaning does not present itself, as it is not a means to power. But as we see in primitive tribes (who may psychologically be relatively healthy) meaning does not only exist in terms as a monolithic signifier such as God or Caesar - it may also be given in a playful matter to the world around. The Shaman attributes souls to plants and animals and such meaning-valuation is given to in relation to use-value, but meaning is not restricted to use. In the abundant psyche value is not only in practicality.
“Dry” practicality as we know it in our scientific age, is not necessarily the most realistic or life enhancing kind of practicality. But it enforces itself when masses grow, when experience of the world is no longer one of diversity but of monotomy, when the soul becomes hungry and dried out, then meaning is separated from practicality and both become become instruments of alienation (drugs).
In this light I object to the notion that teaching meaning is necessarily like selling drugs - it is like painting a picture which one might be giving something instead of selling it. Again we must make the distinction between tyranny and grace. Sometimes, meaning is offered, provided as a surplus of life, instead of as a supplementing speaking to a lack. To flat out reject such things is also to impose meaning - to impose meaninglessness of existence. And that is precisely the compulsion born of lack from which we seek to disentangle man.
Yes, a distinction does need to be made between bestowing and forcing. I wish not to reject, out of hand, the offering of meaning; rather, I want to do away with the expectation that life give us meaning, for when it does not, we descend inevitably into nihilism. I also want to distinguish further between two types of meaninglessness. First: the type you speak of, the compulsion to denounce life as worthless that is born of lack. Second, however: the artist’s fresh canvas, the existentialist’s blank slate, the Dionysian’s fertile soil. This second type of meaninglessness need not be a lack, but rather an impetus to creation, to creativity, to valuation, and ultimately and finally: to meaning itself.
Chicken or the egg kind of thing. The question I would ask is if the shaman did come up with the idea how, how did he have he idea of meaning of life himself?
And if the people weren’t asking the question and were’nt interested how did he get them to listen?
Why would anything be “inherently meaningful”? That doesn’t even make sense. Meaningful supposes necessarily a to whom and why.
Without-music, I think what you identify in this thread is not the error or salesmanship of sages and philosophers of old, but rather you identify the way in which meaning is created in the human mind, and an essential contradiction contained within that process; meaning is experienced, as meaningful, imminently and immediately, powerfully and irreducibly. To have a meaningful experience is to be captivated and enraptured by that experience, that our being becomes at least in that moment a function of it, so to speak. In otherwords, we understand that nothing is inherently meaningful, obviously, because this notion is nonsensical - however, the way in which meaning is naturally experienced as meaning is precisely an inherent manner, as if one’s meanings were “inherent”, immediate, eternal, and irreducible (that there is no “why”). There is a disconnect in so far as the brain constructs meaningful experience qua meaningful in such a way that the subject experiences meaning in a manner which is an illusion, or a fiction, or a-rational, a-cognitive. This touches on why meaning is essentially intuitive-emotional, and not cognitive-rational. This also touches on why explanations of meaning slip away from language and evade the possibility of intricate or careful understanding.
The supposed “teachers of the meaning of existence” were perhaps among the first to really begin to understand this essential fictional-self-deceptive nature of how the human mind/brain creates meaningful experiences - a consequent of this deceptivity is that human meaning can only be “deconstructed” to the extent that it is also equally lost or rendered meaningless. So I say, don’t blame the teachers, if you want to blame something, blame the human being, blame the way in which the human mind/brain exists and operates. But I do not think there is any need for such blame: there is beauty here, divinity, grace, art and wonder. What would life be like if man could not lie to himself, could not create and sustain himself through beautifully constructed delusions of meaning? We ought to weep with gratitude for our capacities of self-deception.
Meaning of life
Significance of life
Relevance of life
Importance of life
Why would anyone want to know of these things that are all the same thing?
How does one make a decision if not by choosing the path that leads to what is more important to them in some way?
When people are struggling, they crave a means to find better ways to make their own decisions and paths that might lead to a better tomorrow.
They crave, by necessity a better understanding of the relevance of any thought or concern.
They crave even to ask, “why am I concerned with the meaning of life?”
They desire to change something, but not just anything.
So they seek out what is most important so as to not change the wrong things that just makes it all worse.
If you don’t know what is relevant to you, you cannot make a rational decision in your own favor except by accident.
The “conspiracy” is not those who promote the question, but rather those who blind you from it, fore then you are helplessly persuadable.
Priest: “The meaning of life is given to us by God. Don’t worry about it… and btw, I speak for God.”
Scientist: “The meaning of life is evolution… don’t worry about it… and btw, I speak for evolution.”
Socialist: “The meaning of life is what is best for society. Don’t worry about it… and btw, we decide what is best for society.”
Philosopher: “The Meaning of life… don’t worry about. Rationally think about it for yourself.”
I think I’m aiming at understanding why and how meaning became a question, which is to say: why and how it became cognitive-rational, when it was first intuitive-emotional. Insofar as meaning is a question, it is cognitive. And insofar as it is cognitive, it is “unnatural”: this is perhaps more aptly what I was getting at with my use of the term. You’re right, of course, in that “inherent meaning” is a contradiction in concepts. I’ve been rather inarticulate throughout this thread, but you’ll have to forgive me: It was an idea happened upon in a moment of inspiration. I do think, however, that the expectation of life’s “inherent meaning” still exists for some people, namely for those Christians holding to the belief that their ideal applies across all people.
I blame the teachers for turning what you’ve identified as “essentially intuitive-emotional” into a question of cognitive-rationality. For it is only as a question that such a concept is allowed to pave the road to nihilism. We are in agreement, however, on the topic of man’s capacity to “lie to himself”. It is only by way of such a capacity that man is permitted to live the way he does.
Here’s strength in both meaning and conception.
Our morality is an ethics calling for abandonment of restriction. Immediately the danger of our position reveals itself. One must seek means that do not restrict - but that contain.
“This I taught myself: the people have given themselves all morality: even though they believe now that they have only received [taken] it. Well now! We too can give ourselves a good and an evil!”
-1883 5[161]
[size=85]“To only take into account the knowns in an equation - and considering the unknowns, until they are known, as negatives.”
“A white void is possibility, a black void uncertainty, unreliability - danger. A white void sustains [positive change, growth], a black void threatens to take away. The constant challenge is to react to the white void even if the black void seems more reasonable.”
“The thought […] is not about setting people free from their dogma, but about liberating God from people’s dogma. If anyone is trapped here, it’s God.”
“When the void is taken to mean ‘meaninglessness’, as it can be, then the first real reaction to the void in western philosophy came in the form of Nietzsche’s idea that life can only justify itself, that there is no predefined context, no purpose, no structure to relate it to and to provide it with substance”
"Zarathustra’s observation that God is dead means that the void is again the void - As frightening as this void is - so encouraging is into the mystery - A challenge, which can only be answered proudly, boldly - I will [create] meaning. […] -impossibly naive: "the first thought existence had when it came into existence was; “if I am going to exist anyway, there is point in holding back!”
“That’s the only explanation I can think of for existence not to be a mass of nano-goo.”
[/size]
Philosophical meaning (just as life, contrary to scientific speculation) as attained, at least not logically given - thinking commands reason (things following from things by inference, a causal view of history) and is in no way dependent on it.
The Greek gods pertaining to what we call science were respected as sons of Zeus, who is the empty canvas of fate. Not-knowing ruled reason: Greek imaginings and conceptions were great because nature learned to trust herself in a specific fortunate (Zeus) place and time.
Our time - what greatness does it permit?
We’ve realized that with the will to greatness as terrible - therefore we hace labeled it as evil. But it was not the terror but the the horror - the lack of beauty, sense, proportion - of it that made us feel that it is bad, and that therefore we must change respectively of it. Both the modern concepts evil and terrible came to us after we had sensed the badness in war in the industrial, scientific way.
We would wage war in a Nietzschean way - the spiritual endeavor to interpret the interpretor, not just of the matter he interprets. But we have enclosed spirit in a box accessible only through womens chambers.
Wouldn’t it be just as valid to say the shamans/elders (which seem to have become a social ‘class’ in the era of proto-man) did so in order to survive? Couldn’t the least able to survive in a society where killing meant survival–whether it was killing what we now call ‘dumb beasts’ for food or killing each other for food–not at least try for another way to survive? Add to that, an ability to manipulate thought such that the Shaman can always ‘explain’–either because he’s lived longer than other people in his tribe or because he’s predicted things that actually happened (or could explain away his predictions that didn’t happen. There’s always a 50-50 chance either way) in such a way that he was believed. I think the living longer probably had a lot to do with it, along with using motion to induce a transcendental state no one else was able to achieve.
In any event, primitive tribes of today are nothing like proto-man, no matter how isolated they’ve been from modern society. They can only be an approximation. Even as an approximation, I question the ability of the shaman/elder to become the ‘leader.’ That title, in my opinion, was–very early on–given to the best hunter. The best hunter provided food for the tribe; the best shaman answered questions for the tribe. But, to me, the questions had to come first. A leader became a king; a shaman became an adviser to the king.
BTW, I’ve tried to search for the meaning of “monotomy” and I think you meant to write monotony–an ‘n’ rather than an ‘m’. It can sometimes be difficult to tell when people so often invent words they think come closer to what they mean than does the original word.
I also hope I have some understanding of your final statement–especially your implication that there’s a distinction between ‘tyranny’ and ‘grace,’ but I doubt it. Of course there’s a distinction! Where’s there ever been a similarity? Beyond that, I really don’t understand. IOW, you stopped my mental images–my way of understanding your words–by your introduction of that thought. Once stopped and left wondering what it was you were saying, I lost connection with your post.
Naturally, members of a tribe have to make themselves useful to that tribe. It is not said however that this explains anything in particular, just that the activity of the shaman was, apparently, perceived by the tribe as useful…
Regardless of how these elders arrived at their ideas, their power followed from these ideas. They were perceived by the tribe as useful, as leading to some kind of improvement, as wisdom. The question now is: can the ideas of our elders still be perceived as wisdom? I think it is clear that they can not. But the elders have hidden behind the ideas, as if the ideas exist of themselves - as if they are beyond function or tribe. We must learn to know ourselves again as a tribe, instead of as some kind of definitive and comprehensive totality of knowing-capacity from which a knowledge of “The Facts Of The Universe” has emerged.
What kind of questions do you have in mind? How and under which conditions would they arise in the tribe? Do you think a hunter just stopped in his tracks and asked “but - what is the meaning of this?”
I meant monotony.
I was well aware when I typed those words that they would be a barrier to some readers, but I had no time to think of a better way to phrase it. These terms are arrived at from a different world-view than the one of good-evil, positive-negative, yes-no, etcetera. They arise from a view where no Thing is designated, in- or excluded on a moral basis, but Activities are identified as to the function of power they pertain to. To make that work, the term function has to be understood more comprehensively - not just in utilitarian way, also in terms of the kind of human responses they evoke (a meaning to which morality is “the long road”). The term “grace” has to do with terms like “mercy” “generosity” “love”, the kind of qualities one may express from a state of abundance. The term “tyranny” has to do with terms like “severity” “limitation” “violence”, the kind of qualities one may express from a state of lack. But tyranny is severity/limitation/violence exerted beyond any function, to be severe, restrictive, for its own sake. This is the way scientific “law” is blindly imposing lack and suffering on the world.
It is here where we differ, lizbeth, for I contend that the shaman had to teach the question of life’s meaning to the rest of the tribe, so that he may provide his answer and its conditions. Here, I envision the priest: the way to heaven is paved by subservience to me.
