Perhaps if we were to give some thought to our responsibility to others we might find aother purpose in life than the mundane. We all have a second chance if we are men and women enough to take it.
Quote: “All men, like all nations, are tested twice in the moral realm: first by what they do, then by what they make of what they do. The condition of guilt, a sense of one’s own guilt, denotes a kind of second chance. Men are, as if by a kind of grace, given a chance to repay to the living that it is they find themselves owing the dead.”
“Coming to Terms with Vietnam,” by Peter Marin, Harpers, Dec. 1980.
I’ve been drinking all night, coberst, so forgive if this comes out more negative and nihilistic than it should, BUT…what responsibility does one shambling, dying mound of meat have to another? We’re all creatures of a day. What we do doesn’t really echo in eternity…It’s more sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I don’t want to get carried away and risk getting up in the pulpit, but for me, life is first loving, and second, sharing. To that end, I must arrive at that state of being that is complete in itself. To put it another way, I have nothing to share with others until I am just me doing what I do in contentment. I’m happy to be alone doing, and I’m happy to share whatever that might be with others. The content of what I do is irrelevent. The critical issue lies in doing whatever we do with passion, and knowing and understanding that we are celebrating the gift of life. Not living life AS life, but living. In that realization we are capable of sharing with others. Am I responsible to others? No. I am responsible to myself. From that, I will spontaneously project genuine empathy and caring for others, but it begins with me.
A second chance? I guess one can look back and say I should have seen all of this sooner, but I see no second chance. We simply begin from where we find our realization. In that sense, there is only chance, not second or sixth.
A purpose in life past mundane? As to purpose, I find only one. To live and to pursue my passions. If I am doing that in honesty and sincerity, then all else will follow. The issue of mundane confuses me. My passion may be your mundane and vice versa. I do understand what you are implying, but each of us must attend to our mundane as well as our passions. It finally comes down to our intent; to remain curious and alive or to sink into living death. Sadly, those who are truly alive walk about in a graveyard of the living dead. Has it ever been different? Has modern society made it better or worse? I don’t know. I can only be where I am at this moment.
Phaedrus,
Perhaps you are right, but there is no way of knowing, is there? Your statement implies that our doing echoing into eternity would be a positive thing. Some would argue that there is nothing we can do that doesn’t affect everything in the universe, but that is another issue. I would suggest that it doesn’t make any difference. What I do in the here and now does affect not only myself, but others as well, even if I don’t know with any precision what those effects might be. Eternity must care for itself. What we do in the present is our proper focus. Indeed, it is really all we have. All else is hypothetical. What I do, what I share with others is all within the process of being alive and simply living. Isn’t that enough?
If you think about humans as letters in a huge book, and what those letters mean to the book. You can have lots of misplaced letters and still get the idea behind the book, but it would certainly be great if those letters got it together.
I can’t tell if we’re in the middle of an Anti-Renaissance or not. I agree with the sentiment - complacency is the poison of the West right now. The problem I see, and it really frustrates me, is that there really ARE many people out there today with ‘bright’ minds thirsty for enlightenment. But, there’s an overall lack of ACTION by them to utilize skills/talents in a way that contributes back to society.
Do any of you think there will be the equivalent of another Renaissance (like the European, Egyptian, etc…) again? Soon??
Can we anticipate another Renaissance (rebirth) happening? I think that is a good question.
I am not a teacher but I am very concerned about education in its extrinsic and intrinsic values. Most parents, justifiable so, are concerned that there child goes to college and thereby achieves a higher standard of living, i.e. makes more money. This I think is a worthy goal but I think we are not sufficiently conscious of the cost of concentrating on this aspect of learning.
Learning has also an intrinsic value that our society has pushed so far into the background that most people cannot any longer understand the meaning of education and intrinsic value.
If we examine the Renaissance we will see that the rebirth that happened at that time was a rebirth of learning that had been lost during the Middle or Dark ages. This rebirth of learning gave rise to the term Renaissance Man. The Renaissance Person, as I prefer it, was one who had a critical understanding of many domains of knowledge. This is what I think our society badly needs. We need vast numbers of people accepting the responsibility for carrying forth the great legacy we were given by those generations who came before us.
Our society has the longevity and wealth to develop a modern Renaissance but it presently lacks the will. I hope it is possible to arouse the curiosity, care and will to achieve such a Renaissance but it is discouragingly remote.
I consider my life to be very absurd and meaningless. But that doesn’t stop me from thinking I’m doing a lot of what I’ve wanted to.
This is bunk, but it’s true bunk:
Tony Robbins, or any other bogus motivational-guru will tell you the same thing: "make a list, write it down, of your goals, then do them, that will make you feel very actualized.
How can you have goals when everything is absurd? Just make them up damn-it!
You’ve gotta do something with the few dacades you have left, so do something. Most of your time will be difficult, so bloody well accomplish something difficult to achieve.
Maslov is an egotistical quack. There are no levels of being. Just people who think they’re not doing anything and people who are happy doing “nothing.” If you don’t want to do anything, just imagine that the little you’re up to is very important. Two peole are doing the exact same thing today, one is depressed and thinks it means nothing, the other is also depressed, and knows it means nothing, but believes it means a great deal. Hell, didn’t that little blurb from the BBC make you realize that even your activities here are highly significant and elevated? You’re a philosopher! How many people attain that? You are one of the most elite, enlightened people living in our time, doesn’t that in itself make you feel actualized?
You’re not getting it. Self-actualization is about doing something just because the spirit moves you. It’s like an artist or a musician that just needs to create and hardly even thinks why.
The subject is also being looked at from the perspective of a very small afluent community. Half the world can’t even read, expecting Global-Actualization is rediculous.
Every poster in this thread is well capable of Actualization. Now is the greatest Renaissance in all of human history. Philosophers are a gloomy lot, but come on! These are amazing times, and you are amazing people!
Actualization is the triumph over superfluity. If you can’t overcome being useless, go down the ladder to the level you’re comfortable at. Raise a family, join a club and volunteer, or live off the land. Actualization will just come naturally to you once you get tired of regreting absurdity.
I think that nihilism is a large bump in the road of any individual attempting to become critically self-conscious. It is a bump that can be surmounted if a person can move beyond the negativism inherent in that state of mind. To move beyond that situation requires that one develop habits that are positive toward developing a purpose in life that is independent of apriori western traditional philosophies.
Nihilism is distinctly a western concept. It is all based one the assumption that a lack of ‘something’ is nothing. There are some points of view that suggest that something and nothing are simply two sides of the same coin. They would posit that no ‘something’ can come into being without creating it’s opposite. Even further, they would argue that ‘something’ must have nothing to become determinate; a co-creative, co-dependent relationship. When they say good, they do not see evil as nothingness, it is merely absent.
Lots of words. Let me try another way. There is the indeterminate (all that is) and the determinate (being and not being = duality) In some systems of thought there is no ‘nothingness’.
Coberst,
I’m not sure that nihilism is necessarily negative, even though it is often portrayed that way. Nihilism is the logical conclusion of the decidedly Western POV that God created all out of nothing -ie- if it isn’t ‘there’, God didn’t create it, and nothing is nothing, amen. Nihilism denies the possibiltity that all is always all but is indeterminate till manifested.
I found nihilism to be negative and my impression is that it is almost universally so. I think that anyone with a Western cultural background faces almost automatically a negative reaction.
modern architecture sucks, its like no one is trying . societys overall lack of spirituality probobly has alot to do with it. cathedrals and churches have the best aesthetic, i wonder why. what happens when artists arent in graphic design? A :signs and billboards suck. what happens when signs and billboards suck? A. people stop caring. people realize they are smarter then colleges. what happens when people realize they are smarter then colleges? they drop out. i mean how can i go to a graphic design college when the pamphlet they send me isnt balanced? not to mention movies suck. i mean its fucking rediculous when you and your freinds could literally film shoot edit and direct a better movie then the blockbusters, all without any school or training or studying. i think were at a point where the genius’s just have to go around all this make believe training. schools are teaching music style from hundreds of years ago. ITS BORING! and flat. when people get close to enlightenment , they can just touch a keyboard, and you will be able to hear more then a symphony of math.
I agrre with your assessment, but it is really an over-reaction the the actual definition. Most folks do go negative with nihilism. I suspect it’s disappointment in finding out there isn’t any Santa Clause, so it’s curse God and die…
That’s the downside of the democratization of the world- mediocrity. We’ve told generations now that they’re all bright beautiful stars and that everyone is special. We tell them they can do anything they want. Well, they really can’t, at least not do it well. As Zeno said in his sig “when you earnestly believe you can compensate for lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there’s no end to what you can’t do.”
As for nihilism, it’s not negative. To even think it could be negative is to not really understand it. The Universe isn’t good or bad, it simply is. Same with life. I feel it has only the meaning we arbitrarily assign to it. Does the fact that all our dreams and aspirations are purely arbitrary and irrelevant to the Universe mean life is bad? No, just that it’s absurd.
I understand your position, but you have to admit, nihilism has garnered a reputation. It’s the same for me being an agnostic. A ‘fence sitter’. Grrrrr…
