Id say Ive always been of a pretty existentialist bent, but its only recently since really digging into the works of Alan Watts, Sartre, Nietzsche, Heidegger et al that the meaningless of life really dawned on me. For a while I felt I had a grey cloud over my head which I didnt really know the root until recently I have decided to diagnose this as an existential funk at the realisation of the meaninglessness of existence. My thoughts have been bordering on nihilistic. I have been thinking ‘why bother continuing in a world with no inherent meaning’. This has been my outlook for quite a few months now, but I have just been coming around to the possibility of salvation. I thought…I have FELT meaning before, meaning DOES exist, its just that the underlying things I found meaningful before were taken out from under me. The fact that I have found things meaningful in the past means that meaning does exist therefore it is merely a case of shifting my values to firmer ground.
Realising the plasticity of meaning can now then become a positive thing. It means that in effect absolutely anything could hold meaning. My main problem has been that I have nothing to ‘fight for’. As tyler says in Fight Club (paraphrased)- ‘We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives.’
I can then chose ANYTHING to be my pillar of life, my wellspring for which I fight for and live by. As I left my house, I thought ‘This piece of tissue could be my upmost pillar of meaning, this piece of dirt on the floor’ etc. People’s faith in religion is no different. Their faith is as real as any other, it is just that they dont realise that what they pray for is ARBITRARY. So then, I think knowing this, I can create whatever I want and as long as I follow it in earnest and truly have faith in my cause then it is as legitimate as any religion.
My only problem coming out of this nihilistic stink is that since being in the cloud of despair I have lost faith in everything I used to enjoy. I even lost my taste in music. I have very few hobbies. I found myself slowly but surely dropping all these passtimes as they seemed to me useless in light of my realisation of the absurdity of it all. Now though, I think things are turned on their head. No one thing has more meaning than another, and thus I am free to choose which hobby or life goal I take up over another. There are some decisions which will weigh up one thing as better than another though in my view. I am pretty much of the bent of nietzsche’s will to power. Those things which are most pleasurable are those which will increase my will to power or my will to life. Sex is fun for this very reason, so too eating nice cake is pleasant for example. So I guess my goal should be to seek out and follow my bliss, this is the only option other than suicide in light of this position.
Let me hear- thoughts, comments, critiques, additions!