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[Anonymous]

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[_Chap]

Of course.

I am skeptical about your claims because I am blind and stupid. Clearly a dialog with someone as insightful as you will inevitably be a one-way learning experience.

[_mikwut]

Hi Stak,

I'm confused about your criticisms concerning Existentialism is a Humanism, when I referenced Existentialism and Humanism. I’m not clear if that was a tangent or if we are talking about different books.

No we are not, the book you linked is a publication of Sartre's 1945 lecture in Paris that I was referring to.

My point though, as not to bother the Chap's of the board further or to derail the thread, is simply I accept that life is meaningless is a more persuasive position, eventually, without God then I can make my own meaning. The plausibility structures of today's society make phrases like "I can make my own meaning" satisfying initially but they don't hold. Whether I am correct or incorrect about Sartre is not the issue.

regards, mikwut

[_EAllusion]

I don't think people can make their own meaning in the trivial sense of sitting down and writing up a list of things that they decide will be their life purpose. I do think people make their own meaning in the more complicated sense of having a brain that has a nuanced set of competing drives and potential fulfillments they interact with that ultimately determines what gives them meaning. In other words, while people can influence and explore their internal drives, they can't just arbitrarily decide them.

I don't think teleology supplies meaning in any sense we ought to care about. As I've pointed out before, if we found out that we were designed with the intent to be tortured for all eternity, we wouldn't rejoice for having found meaning in life. If we were designed by an alien race to be slaves on the spice mines of Acturus 9, we wouldn't be happy about this situation. The only kind of teleological purposes people generally seem to want and are made happy by are those that comport with their subjective drives. Knowing God has a plan for you is only a desirable state of affairs if you think that plan is fulfilling. People tend to put up with the idea that God's plan for them involves negative things only when they also think that it all ultimately comes out in their best interest. In other words, what is really meaningful to those seeking a designed purpose is what is meaningful to me.

[_mikwut]

Hi E,

I don't think people can make their own meaning in the trivial sense of sitting down and writing up a list of things that they decide will be their life purpose. I do think people make their own meaning in the more complicated sense of having a brain that has a nuanced set of competing drives and potential fulfillments they interact with that ultimately determines what gives them meaning. In other words, while people can influence and explore their internal drives, they can't just arbitrarily decide them.

Sure, I think I agree with most of what you said. I simply place most of what you said in a theistic background while you do not. As I have already stated making ourselves is consistent and part of my theistic background as well. This is in simple terms what I was saying to Stak. I am not trying to trivialize an atheistic view I accept it for the nuance it is. The issue to me is like an airplane flying over a jungle that is able to see roads laid out by people, that disappears when the pilot lands. If we are following those roads we might be challenged and fulfilled to where they lead. But, from overhead we see they end up nowhere that matches our longing or desires. Without context of an afterlife and God nihilism ultimately prevails over whatever temporary fulfillment's one finds themselves in. Eventually, all of us remove the focal awareness of being in the jungle and take the overhead view from the airplane. That view ultimately dashes and destroys human purposes because it trivializes them to such a degree if transcendent reality and purpose is removed.

The only kind of teleological purposes people generally seem to want and are made happy by are those that comport with their subjective drives. Knowing God has a plan for you is only a desirable state of affairs if you think that plan is fulfilling. People tend to put up with the idea that God's plan for them involves negative things only when they also think that it all ultimately comes out in their best interest. In other words, what is really meaningful to those seeking a designed purpose is what is meaningful to me.

When we are fulfilled that fulfilled state is subsidiary to our awareness of it, we don't obtain it from simply seeking out our best interest. Seeking our desirable states of affairs leads us to certain states of comfort and pleasure even pride and joy but we (in my experience) always long for something we never obtain which also is subsidiary to our focal awareness. At least to me, I am relatively successful, have a small practice that returns a relatively lucrative income. I have family and friends, hobbies, excitement outside of work and fulfillment within it, I have challenges that I attempt to overcome but I am never able to ignore completely at least in the corner of my minds eye that I am not completely fulfilled and probably never will be. This might be my mental disorder but I find it with many of my friends and colleagues as well - anecdotal as that is.

People tend to put up with the idea that God's plan for them involves negative things only when they also think that it all ultimately comes out in their best interest. In other words, what is really meaningful to those seeking a designed purpose is what is meaningful to me.

Theistic nuance is also appropriate. The only background framework I am concerned with is a loving God that created me with intent and purpose. None of your examples apply to that and I imagine we both agree on the states of affairs you provided. Your examples also imply a sort of freedom to recognize the point your making but deny that the all knowing God creator intentionally allowed for that. But, a loving God would include my freedom, my ability to make myself within a framework of meaning he created. That allows for me to hope in the longing that my reality also consists of.

I always appreciate your insight.
my regards, mikwut

[_Chap]

Without context of an afterlife and God nihilism ultimately prevails over whatever temporary fulfillment's one finds themselves in. Eventually, all of us remove the focal awareness of being in the jungle and take the overhead view from the airplane. That view ultimately dashes and destroys human purposes because it trivializes them to such a degree if transcendent reality and purpose is removed.

As the Nehor would put it: "No, it does not".

Take my word for it so far as my own example is concerned, or if that is not good enough for you consider the fact that there have been numbers of thoughtful and aware people at different historical periods, and in different cultures, who have not shown any signs of 'nihilism' despite not being theists and despite having no significant belief in an after-life.

Other people's cosmic tastes may differ from yours ...

[Guest]

Hello Chap,

mikwut wrote:
Without context of an afterlife and God nihilism ultimately prevails over whatever temporary fulfillment's one finds themselves in. Eventually, all of us remove the focal awareness of being in the jungle and take the overhead view from the airplane. That view ultimately dashes and destroys human purposes because it trivializes them to such a degree if transcendent reality and purpose is removed.

As the Nehor would put it: "No, it does not".

Now there you go Chap, doing the very thing you chastised me about - relying on an authority figure rather than your own personal thinking. ;)

Take my word for it so far as my own example is concerned,

I don't have to you fit the mold quite nicely, Turgenev said that Jeremy Benthem would not have had any disagreements with his prototype of nihilism. The quaint skeptical mood of atheism today is exactly what he had in mind.

or if that is not good enough for you consider the fact that there have been numbers of thoughtful and aware people at different historical periods, and in different cultures, who have not shown any signs of 'nihilism' despite not being theists and despite having no significant belief in an after-life.

My position is more collective than individual. Just like you accept from a previous post on this thread that most people believe in God because of their parents I extend that same imposed plausibility structure to society as well. I don't think it is determinable outside our subjective personal judgment who is believing which paradigm based on imposed thinking. We can only answer that ourselves. But I do see the signs within my paradigm.

I think history (although again personal judgment weighs heavily) demonstrates the nihilism I am speaking of. There are stages to nihilism, the first includes an individualistic self determined without beliefs and obligations type. But it is an unstable form of nihilism. Nietzsche and Stirner influenced a generation of these types in 1910 to 1930 but these solitary unstable nihilists begin to hunger for meaning that the nihilism can't satisfy. This is how all social ties, even family, was able to be completely disturbed and inverted by the German youth movement. The next stage of nihilism is conversion to a fierce and narrow political creed. But it is the lack of a demand, an intuited and understanding demand for morality in the name of morality that allows for the nihilist to be converted. American History X is an example in an individual context of this. I don't demand that every atheist face a nihilistic shudder before their earthly demise. But I can demonstrate examples of it.

Other people's cosmic tastes may differ from yours ...

Of course. I hope my previous tone you dismissed didn't diminish the emphasis I placed on what I consider to be a modest epistemology. Is yours? I readily accept and respect (even when that isn't mutual) an atheistic position. I consider it plausible and possible, I just consider theism the same. If anything I have always found the conversation fascinating and interesting.

kind regards, mikwut

[_Chap]

I'm afraid that your mode of discourse is sometimes a bit too diffuse for me to get a grip on. Are you a native English speaker? Sometimes I think I see signs of French speech habits in your writing. But I may be misleading myself.

If we met in a public in real life situation where I knew you to be an authority on the political and ethical thought of the 19th/20th centuries, then I might want to pay careful attention to your statements about the thought of Turgenev, BenthAm, Nietzsche and Stirner. But on an anonymous discussion board such as this I would be a lot more interested in hearing what sense you can make of the universe unaided by references to the stars of Wikipedia.

[_mikwut]

Ok Chap, I didn't look to wikipedia.

You attempted to reduce my argument to an individual like yourself, I responded with a historical argument that allows for your individual situation as you stated it, then you ignore that because I am an anonymous poster on a message board and so couldn't actually have read anything that I am talking about. Maybe you should let me know all the topics that are considered by you non genuine unless someone holds the chair at oxford. What book have you read or thought do you possess that isn't susceptible to your trite wikipedia charge?

Let's try this, your ridiculous life in a godless universe is BS, your dark lies of value you feebly place on your life is meaningless a noble dark lie you tell yourself and others but really deep and rich in runny BS it remains. Any purpose you wikipedied for yourself or created for yourself out of whole cloth is a dark abyss of foolishness as ever there was - it is all BS. There is nothing that you can say regarding meaning, value and purpose that a rational response of BS would not provide substance in response to. That's from the heart for you.

my best, mikwut

[_MrStakhanovite]

Yikes.