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>Sorry, using a collection of meaningless words to justify thoughts or actions is irrational. Any action we take is irrational at its root. If you remove emoti
by Bakary 9y ago
>Sorry, using a collection of meaningless words to justify thoughts or actions is irrational.
Any action we take is irrational at its root. If you remove emotions, there's no compelling rational reason to do anything or favor one action over the other. In that case, a person can very well decide to reject Icarus as being meaningless, but they will not be able to remove all such meaningless thoughts from the way they live their lives, or even a small fraction of the stories they live by.
There will always be numerous narratives and mental models of varying accuracy that will determine our choices and actions. Anything from a sense of our own self and memories, to beliefs in some exterior entity or cause, to even abstract thoughts about the world itself that we came up with or received from others. On this basis, we use reason to move towards our goals but the goals themselves are still irrational.
Icarus itself isn't even a bad story, as far as tales go. There are several examples in human history where our ambition and drive caused enormous suffering. Looking at the twentieth century or even the last six thousand years can make you wonder whether it wouldn't have been better for us to stay in small tribes until the Sun burns the planet to a crisp. Is the current and marginally less awful world worth all the misery that came before it? Hard to say for sure, even if I do fully agree that we should be as hubristic as possible in today's circumstances. It's too late to go back so we must move forward.
- Retric 9y agoExcept such stories are meaningless because they are random in nature. Unlike in the Icarus story, air gets colder with altitude so does that suddenly reverse the meaning of the story? Now, we can use a real world example like car accidents as traveling 35+ MPH is unsafe. But, now the counter arguments are obvious because in the real world there are trade offs and meaningful stories are more open to interpretation.
- Bakary 9y agoI don't know why people take the Icarus story at face value instead of seeing it as a colorful metaphor. I'm not sure how the Greeks considered their own stories but it seems doubtful they would believe them in as literal a sense as the monotheists who succeeded them.
- Retric 9y agoAs an abstraction it does not demonstrate hubris being bad. You can say it's discouraged in a culture with slaves etc. But, again that does not mean it's actually bad just not a norm for a very different culture. You can find plenty of stories that use it as a plot device, but the world does not work on narrative causality making that rather meaningless. So, if you look at it as a metaphor then bringing it up is just saying: Hubris is bad, because hubris is bad. Which adds nothing to someones argument.
- Bakary 9y agoI see what you mean. I interpreted a little differently, as another poster here mentioned in the sense of "avoiding extremes" or overconfidence in general. So all in all a rather basic notion that people are familiar with from culture, historical events or their own life experience but dressed up in a way that ticks a lot of satisfying mental boxes. But if you interpret it in the way you mentioned then I agree that it's not very useful.
- coldtea 9y ago>Except such stories are meaningless because they are random in nature. Unlike in the Icarus story, air gets colder with altitude so does that suddenly reverse the meaning of the story? Obviously not, because the meaning of story lies in how things work in the context of the story. Only if the general point (devoid of storytelling flourishes) was invalid it would invalidate the story as a cautionary tale. But the general point still holds as general advice: "Avoid extremes" [1]. [1] https://thetaoofwealth.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/lessons-for-life-from-the-tale-of-icarus-and-daedalus/ https://thetaoofwealth.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/lessons-for-...