Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Find meaning in meaningless
I am thinking about, what I always seem to think about; the meaning of life, why are we here, what is it all about, what does it all mean? Our greatest fear is that life is meaningless,we fear that life is meaningless or pointless and so we seek for something outside of ourselves to validate our existence, and if we cannot find something we will create it whether we call it a god or a tribal affiliation, we want life to have significance. Yet we don’t think an ant's life has a meaning. If we did would we put down insecticide? I have read Thomas Nagel’s argument that if you ask: what’s the point of anything; you find that really when it’s all said and done probably there’s no point to our existence, if we think about it in a million years? Will there be a species on earth called Homo sapiens (i.e. human beings) what are we evolving towards? Is this just a blind and inevitable process, nothing else? Is our existence the conclusion that Thomas Nagel, Albert Camus, and Soren Kierkegaard has come to that life is not only meaningless but absurd? What is the point of a god creating anything, what is the point of creating anything if you’re omnipotent, omniscience, and omnipresent what pleasure would I get if I already know that a black man from North Carolina would be asking these questions and his whole life, actions, everything that he will fail at or accomplish, is already known? What pleasure would such a being get from this? What’s the point of it all? If there’s a point may be that there isn’t a point and I should not take it serious, but yet I do? If I live tomorrow, I will still get up and go to work even though it’s perhaps meaningless. What is meant by meaning? According to The American Heritage Dictionary fourth edition; Meaning is defined 1a. to be defined as: denote b. To act as a symbol of; represent 2. To intend to convey or indicate 3. To have as a consequence 4. To be a specified importance: It comes from the Old English maenan, tell of. I am reading Alan Watts transcript entitled "Sense of nonsense" which covers the meaning of life here's the conclusion of Alan Watts: "It is this participation in the essential glorious nonsense that is at the heart of the world that is not necessarily going anywhere, that is a dance. It seems that only in moments of unusual insight and illumination that we get the point of this, and find that thus the true meaning of life is no meaning, that its purpose is no purpose, and that its sense is non-sense. But still, we want to use the word "significant." Is this significant nonsense? Is this a kind of nonsense that is not just chaos, that is not just blathering balderdash? But rather has in it rhythm, fascinating complexity, and a kind of artistry. It is in this kind of meaninglessness that we come to the profoundest meaning." Alan Watts was so true in his sense of nonsense, he concluded that life’s rhythm, it’s ebb -and- flow, like a dance that isn’t going anywhere but it is the dance that in itself significant and to seek for something outside of would be diminishing to life itself. Life is what it is, which is incomprehensible to put it words, however it means to me (and I could be wrong): life is to be lived, replicated, as I often think, whatever a thing do, that is its purpose. Life to me is a self-replicating matter-energy that is neither created nor destroyed but changes dance partners (in a metaphysical sense) or as science would say it changes from one form to another.In other words, Life is a mean to its own end, there’s nothing outside of it to get to. The meaning to ones life exists in life itself and not outside of it, this is why I feel to subjugate this meaning to an unknown force is not only irrationally but fails to add or give any additional meaning. In others words, if I can't give my life it's meaning; how can a belief in an invisible deity give it meaning? Think about it...
Labels:
absurdism,
Alan Watts,
Meaningless,
purpose
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment