so much to chew on here, or part of a greater doctoral thesis.
I did not know there was an innocent time between
'drop and dive under desk' and grunge.
I came up in the late 50's thru the late 60's and existentialism,
a form of nihilism I would maintain, was in its heyday.
Nothingness was celebrated, hell was other people, God was dead.
The Psychology of the day vacillated between B.F. Skinner's behaviorism,
everything was rooted in cause and effect blind responses (Pavlov's dog),
and Humanism which defined everything with only Man at the center,
two mirror images but both wrong.
After many years
I interpreted existentialism as a form of reductionism, collateral damage from seeing
life through the narrow lens of only science. Art was busy doing minimalism.
Instead of the monument of Iwo Jima, we got the abstraction of the Vietnam memorial.
Pirsig provided one glimpse into that Ghordian knot, offering value or quality or
excellence as a way out. He was more than half-right. Part of the problem is
our invention of "zero" as a concept in itself (about 5000 years ago):
from AI on DuckDuckGo- journey to the West:
"The concept of zero traveled from India to the Islamic world during the 8th and 9th centuries. Scholars translated Indian texts into Arabic, incorporating zero into their mathematical studies. By the 12th century, Italian mathematician Fibonacci introduced zero to Europe through his book "Liber Abaci," which popularized Arabic numerals."
But I wager that nothingness is a construct of the human mind, not a definition of reality.
Science also gave us - "Nature abhors a vacuum". In the universe there is no stillness; only
a constantly morphing, constantly changing series of phenomena. Dark matter is beyond our perception, and may be the greater part of what little we can perceive. Between the emptiness of the Void and the fullness of life, most humans have to choose to make Meaning a choice, either becoming a 'believer' in hope and faith, or an 'atheist' or nihilist, a believer in nothing.
If you embrace a strict logic, a belief in nihilism is also a belief system, so logically impossible. The problem for young people without any positive values is they have not or cannot make the leap of faith into accepting they are part of a greater thing than just themselves. So then a descent into the abyss of seeing no Value, no context of relationship with the greater cosmos, or at least with no context of relationship to other humans. Without acceptance that you are part of a greater something ( we use God as a shorthand or symbol for that), the descent into total
Some wicked (in the Bostonian sense) answers lie in the concepts elucidated by Joseph Campbell. We find meaning as we uncover our place in the cosmos and play the role set before us, and perhaps even do something novel and create new realities. My purposes may not be grand or memorable to anyone, but they can be known by me. I don't know why nihilism appeals to people although emotional pain and life crises and possibly despair will be familiar to anyone alive. How do we make the jump from 'this sucks' to 'I will play a role in making life suck for others rather than making it a little better'? I see a hint of an answer in a simulation I use in my work; when people see that they've caused another some harm, they anticipate not being able to rebuild a good relationship, so they double down on 'defection' in the game theoretic sense. It makes no sense when they see the outcome is a shit show of a self -fulfilling prophecy but I see it a lot. I enjoyed moving through this essay, Adam. I will have to read it a few times more, too.
I think you've hit on this before, but often the value emerges only in the face of adversity. It's like the Kingsbury quote: “Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back.”
This ties in with Chesterton's Fence, where it takes intentional analysis to identify whether something is helping or hindering (or by hinderin,g it's helping). Right now, I feel like we got rid of all of our value-inducing traditions because they were perceived as hindering and lost everything, but haven't faced something existential enough to force us to remember the value.
I've been wrangling with this topic for a while as I try to establish meaning for my kids sans the organized religion I grew up with (which never really gave me meaning though) It's a wicked problem for sure.
Is the absence of the author’s name intentional or a machine glitch, Adam?
Good stuff.
Thanks for noticing that, I had to manually add my name, not sure why. Nice catch.
so much to chew on here, or part of a greater doctoral thesis.
I did not know there was an innocent time between
'drop and dive under desk' and grunge.
I came up in the late 50's thru the late 60's and existentialism,
a form of nihilism I would maintain, was in its heyday.
Nothingness was celebrated, hell was other people, God was dead.
The Psychology of the day vacillated between B.F. Skinner's behaviorism,
everything was rooted in cause and effect blind responses (Pavlov's dog),
and Humanism which defined everything with only Man at the center,
two mirror images but both wrong.
After many years
I interpreted existentialism as a form of reductionism, collateral damage from seeing
life through the narrow lens of only science. Art was busy doing minimalism.
Instead of the monument of Iwo Jima, we got the abstraction of the Vietnam memorial.
Pirsig provided one glimpse into that Ghordian knot, offering value or quality or
excellence as a way out. He was more than half-right. Part of the problem is
our invention of "zero" as a concept in itself (about 5000 years ago):
from AI on DuckDuckGo- journey to the West:
"The concept of zero traveled from India to the Islamic world during the 8th and 9th centuries. Scholars translated Indian texts into Arabic, incorporating zero into their mathematical studies. By the 12th century, Italian mathematician Fibonacci introduced zero to Europe through his book "Liber Abaci," which popularized Arabic numerals."
But I wager that nothingness is a construct of the human mind, not a definition of reality.
Science also gave us - "Nature abhors a vacuum". In the universe there is no stillness; only
a constantly morphing, constantly changing series of phenomena. Dark matter is beyond our perception, and may be the greater part of what little we can perceive. Between the emptiness of the Void and the fullness of life, most humans have to choose to make Meaning a choice, either becoming a 'believer' in hope and faith, or an 'atheist' or nihilist, a believer in nothing.
If you embrace a strict logic, a belief in nihilism is also a belief system, so logically impossible. The problem for young people without any positive values is they have not or cannot make the leap of faith into accepting they are part of a greater thing than just themselves. So then a descent into the abyss of seeing no Value, no context of relationship with the greater cosmos, or at least with no context of relationship to other humans. Without acceptance that you are part of a greater something ( we use God as a shorthand or symbol for that), the descent into total
narcissism obliterates both meaning and belief.
There is a lot to chew on.
One of your best Adam (and the mouse in your pocket made me legitimately laugh out loud). Lots to chew on here.
Some wicked (in the Bostonian sense) answers lie in the concepts elucidated by Joseph Campbell. We find meaning as we uncover our place in the cosmos and play the role set before us, and perhaps even do something novel and create new realities. My purposes may not be grand or memorable to anyone, but they can be known by me. I don't know why nihilism appeals to people although emotional pain and life crises and possibly despair will be familiar to anyone alive. How do we make the jump from 'this sucks' to 'I will play a role in making life suck for others rather than making it a little better'? I see a hint of an answer in a simulation I use in my work; when people see that they've caused another some harm, they anticipate not being able to rebuild a good relationship, so they double down on 'defection' in the game theoretic sense. It makes no sense when they see the outcome is a shit show of a self -fulfilling prophecy but I see it a lot. I enjoyed moving through this essay, Adam. I will have to read it a few times more, too.
I think you've hit on this before, but often the value emerges only in the face of adversity. It's like the Kingsbury quote: “Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back.”
This ties in with Chesterton's Fence, where it takes intentional analysis to identify whether something is helping or hindering (or by hinderin,g it's helping). Right now, I feel like we got rid of all of our value-inducing traditions because they were perceived as hindering and lost everything, but haven't faced something existential enough to force us to remember the value.
I've been wrangling with this topic for a while as I try to establish meaning for my kids sans the organized religion I grew up with (which never really gave me meaning though) It's a wicked problem for sure.