The thing about this response is that it isn’t really honest. We have had interactions in the past where I have told you that you are using the fundamentalist perspective as quasi a strawman that you proceed to burn, whereas there are a multiple of other perspectives that you ignore.
Frankl’s perspective on dealing with suffering may not be something that we can all pull off, but the discovery of methods of finding meaning is quite profound. In many cases it is like the ‘just do it’ campaign by Adidas (I believe), and many things are not effective from outside. Just like swimming can’t be learnt without getting into the water.
Work can give us a sense of purpose, especially where creativity is involved (which is seldom unfortunately), and his method of imagining he was preparing a lecture on his experiences, shows that our ability to imagine helps us access areas of life that are otherwise veiled. Even Einstein has said that imagination was his access to many of his theories.
However, if you are unwilling for whatever reasons, then it remains unaccessible. Then you are reduced to putting your pessimistic comments on books that you probably haven’t fully read, given how many you post.
You know me, Bob. It’s one thing to think or to believe or to “just know” that something is true “in your head” regarding cosmic meaning. And another thing altogether being able to demonstrate that in fact all reasonable – virtuous? – men and women will be inclined to share it with you.
From my own frame of mind “here and now”, the following…
1] my own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless
2] human morality in a No God world revolves largely around a fractured and fragmented assessment of right and wrong rooted existentially in dasein
3] oblivion is awaiting all of us when we die
…seem entirely reasonable to me.
On the other hand, if you or anyone else here disputes them in regard to their own life, by all means, share that with me. After all, a part of me wants to believe in something – in anything – that will allow me to scramble up out of the debilitating hole I’ve dug myself down into.
Bob:
And how on Earth would you go about demonstrating that? Other than in suggesting that if I were being truly honest, I would agree with you?
Bob:
I don’t really use or focus in on the perspective of any particular religious denomination. Instead, I challenge those who do embrace a religious perspective, to explore their convictions given the following factors:
1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed…but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual’s belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path
…who will assure us that, on the contrary, it is actually their own One True Path that allows mere mortals to achieve…enlightenment? And then all those religious denominations noting further that if mere mortals wish to achieve both immortality and salvation in turn, they really do only have but one option. And take a wild guess regarding which path that will be.
Just do it? Just do what? In other words, if you want to be absolutely certain that your own behaviors reflect both an objective morality here and now and immortality and salvation there and then.
Bob:
Okay, which of the One True Paths above reflects the most astute embodiment of imagination? Or might almost all of them insist that, of course, it is their own imagination that assures us “the best of all possible worlds”?
Bob:
Books? What books? Or do you mean all of the articles from Philosophy Now magazine? The ones I post at PN and at ILP? Well, I have in fact read them from start to finish.
Finding Meaning in Suffering
Patrick Testa on the extraordinary hope offered by Viktor Frankl.
In fact, for a number of hedonists among us, gorging themselves on any number of things – food, sex, dope, etc. – is all the meaning they’ll ever need. Then the sociopaths…?
There’s another rendition of this…mine. Only my focus is less on existential meaning and purpose [which is everywhere] and more on the assumption there is no essential meaning objectively applicable to everyone. Let alone immortality and salvation.
Then the part where millions are now addicted to pop culture, to mindless consumption, to the quest for their own 15 minutes of fame.
On the other hand, it’s not like the “will to power” is an entity that can actually be pinpointed in the brain.
Or in the soul?
At least not to my current knowledge. Instead, it becomes whatever you need it to become…philosophically or otherwise. And how is meaning itself really any different here? What does it mean? Well, what do you need it to mean in order to sustain your own dogmatic assessment of the human condition?
Metaphysical Skepticism
Jacob Bell argues that we can’t determine the ultimate nature of reality.
Then the part where a distinction is made between the metaphysical and the ontological. Also, the part where many objectivists among us insist there is a teleological component as well. And five will get you ten it’s their own.
Or, as Ayn Rand interpreted it…
“For Rand, metaphysics tells us that entities have definite natures, epistemology tells us how to investigate those natures, and the special sciences then do the actual investigating.” SEP
And this all revolves around her own rooted existentially in dasein assumption that to the extent mere mortals are rational, they are…metaphysically moral? Just as my own uniquely personal set of subjective assumptions has led me “here and now” to believe that moral nihilism is a reasonable frame of mind.
Call it any Ism you want…as long as you are willing to note how, given your own day to day interactions with others, you can defend it pertaining to, among other things, conflicting goods.
And if they don’t?
Cue the epistemological nihilists? Or, perhaps, the metaphysical nihilists? Click, of course.
On the other hand, how is demonstrating the validity of the above working out for you?
The term ‘meaning’ is another one of those words, moderns/postmoderns have managed to define out of existence.
Existence is full of meaning, if by meaning, we …mean, how phenomena interact, or inter-relate.
But what moderns mean, by ‘meaning’ is ‘purpose.’
Another way of saying ‘telos.’
Though existence is full of meaning, it is certainty void of a purpose, since purpose implies intent…Will.
The cosmos is not alive.
Only life can have an intent, and so only life can give itself a purpose.
This is another way of evading responsibility…which is the underlying motive of many moderns.
Responsibility is a burden they wish to unload upon another…if not god then the cosmos.
With great power comes great responsibiltiy…the price of power.
As man gains power he is burdened with greater and greater responsibilities.
He can no longer blame something or someone else, but must accept that he participates in the determination of his own fate.
The more power, the more freedom.
The more freedom, the more responsibility falls upon the one with power.
Freedom = power.
Denying free-will is an attempt to deny oneself power - to become impotent…meaning innocence.
Modern man’s greatest loss was that along with the god of Abraham he lost his scapegoat - which was what Christ and the god of Abraham was.
Who, then, will now be blamed to preserve his innocence?
His victim status.
Slaves refuse to leave the plantation when they realize the price of freedom.
The meaning of meaning is perhaps the deepest question not yet given attention by the philosophical vanguards and silly professorial aesthetes.
Freedom does indeed equal power, but the power for what? For living, for reality, for being.
Then we must begin to reconcile with deeper philosophical questions. But I’ll leave that off for now, in part to see if you have any sense of what I mean…
If you stop crying about “abraham” every single time you write something, people might take you a bit more seriously.
By that I mean both that you may become more serious, and also that others might find you less annoying/repetitive/boringly derivative.
Since I can’t recall a single meaningful, interesting and intelligent person I ever knew who gave one little fuck about “abrahamism” or any such nonsense things.
The answers to the simple questions you ask, are given in the post I made about free-will…but it was over your head.
The ‘what for…’ asking for a purpose…defines you.
Time does not help a man grow…it actually shrinks him.
Gravitas…
In your case, mental midgetry is a bad starter package.
Yes it’s possibly true. I may indeed have been wrong that you are an addition even to ilp…
but naw. Given the deplorable, wastelanded state of this boring place, even you are a nice addition! Even if all you do is repeat the same old stuff you always said for the last 10+ years.
I mean, I can’teven imagine being that consistently unproductive. Read my books or posts from 10 years ago, sure they still have value over your head but Ive already moved WAY beyond such things.
In any case, very glad to have you back
It has been, how do I say this politely, boring as fuck around here lately.
Appreciate your energy, if nothing else. Maybe I am the only one who realizes you are really seeking truths. For that, you deserve some value and attention. If not also a bit of trolling because and I mean bro. How long has it really been? and you STILL on this same stuff as before?>?
…bro. did they put you inside a time capsule or what?
Go out and live a life. Then adapt your ideas, find your errors, and reinvent your truths on a higher level.
And yeah, I know you wont do anything like that. But hey, never say you werent told.
Honestly, one could be forgiven for thinking youre an AI bot.
All you ever do is regurgitate the same exact same stuff as you always did. Odd.
I will need to rethink my ideas about being and its livingness in terms of adaptability and truth-seekingness even at the more basic and base levels. It seems like at least one being in the world, you, is incapable of growth.
Well that isn’t exactly outside the range of evolutionary expectations. It just means you are far more hypocritically NORMAL than you could ever be capable of acknowledging.
You mean like how they charged up the wazoo and made it impossible to survive? You mean like how they don’t even pay a living wage still to this day—and as soon as they increase your pay, they increase the prices? You mean like how they can’t even go live off grid in very large numbers without somebody cattle prodding them to scrape to survive like everybody else?
Finding Meaning in Suffering
Patrick Testa on the extraordinary hope offered by Viktor Frankl.
And now the 21st century’s totalitarian political movements. Although, admittedly, for many, it’s far less totalitarian and far more just plain old “show me the money”. And, for those such as myself, a cynicism that now knows no bounds.
In the interim, however, those ghastly “acts of God” continue to pummel us, making life a virtual hell on Earth for men and women around the globe. California today but natural disasters can pop up any where at anytime. Think the Yellowstone super-volcano or the next extinction event coming down out of the clouds.
Still, aside from existing theocratic states, much of the pain and suffering these days revolves around the trials and the tribulations embedded in the autocratic state capitalist policies of those like Putin and Xi and Trump.
More like authoritarian regimes. It’s not ideology or philosophy that prevails these days so much as the quest for cheap labor, natural resources and markets. This and the “strong man” mentality of those who want to turn the govenment into their very own piggy banks.
Right, right, “intrinsically meaningful values”. In the form of, say, one or another “industrial complex”? And what about the Nazis’ and the Communists’ search for meaning? They don’t count?
How about in sustaining the “will to power”? How about in “making American great again”? How about in one or another One True path?
because and I mean bro. How long has it really been? and you STILL on this same stuff as before?>?