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I think a lot of people would rather have a functioning society, built on a lie, than the alternative. I don't think Nietzsche was ever really able to come up

I think a lot of people would rather have a functioning society, built on a lie, than the alternative. I don't think Nietzsche was ever really able to come up with a great alternative to religion, and he certainly didn't seem happy about its end. > God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

rramadass 5y ago
Reminds me of this passage from The Sea-Wolf by Jack London. [Wolf Larsen] “Do you know, I sometimes catch myself wishing that I, too, were blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and illusions. They’re wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and live illusions gives greater delight. And after all, delight is the wage for living. Without delight, living is a worthless act. To labour at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead. He who delights the most lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to you and more gratifying than are my facts to me.” He shook his head slowly, pondering. “I often doubt, I often doubt, the worthwhileness of reason. Dreams must be more substantial and satisfying. Emotional delight is more filling and lasting than intellectual delight; and, besides, you pay for your moments of intellectual delight by having the blues. Emotional delight is followed by no more than jaded senses which speedily recuperate. I envy you, I envy you.” He stopped abruptly, and then on his lips formed one of his strange quizzical smiles, as he added: “It’s from my brain I envy you, take notice, and not from my heart. My reason dictates it. The envy is an intellectual product. I am like a sober man looking upon drunken men, and, greatly weary, wishing he, too, were drunk.” “Or like a wise man looking upon fools and wishing he, too, were a fool,” I laughed. “Quite so,” he said. “You are a blessed, bankrupt pair of fools. You have no facts in your pocketbook.” “Yet we spend as freely as you,” was Maud Brewster’s contribution. “More freely, because it costs you nothing.” “And because we draw upon eternity,” she retorted. “Whether you do or think you do, it’s the same thing. You spend what you haven’t got, and in return you get greater value from spending what you haven’t got than I get from spending what I have got, and what I have sweated to get.”
Barrin92 5y ago
But it's also not really functioning is it? Once you've eaten the forbidden fruit, taken the redpill (the movie one, not the political one), you can't go back, you're screwed. Living on a lie that you know to solely exist for comfort is not the same as genuine belief, and it is fundamentally broke. If you just run back into the matrix and pretend it's real because it's pleasant, in a sense you've managed to be more nihilistic than the nihilist and in a way schizophrenic because you have to live something you actually know not to be authentic. There is a lot of figures in our culture today who basically advocate this. People who declare themselves to be atheists but tell disoriented youth to just 'pretend to believe'. And it really has the quality of LARPing. It will not move anyone forward philosophically.
- WatchDog 5y ago
  > There is a lot of figures in our culture today who basically advocate this. People who declare themselves to be atheists but tell disoriented youth to just 'pretend to believe'. And it really has the quality of LARPing. It will not move anyone forward philosophically. I think you can come up with your own (stretched) interpretation of Christianity that doesn't require belief in the divine, and I think that approach, taking an existing societal value system that works pretty well, makes a lot more sense than trying to build a new one from scratch and getting everyone to buy into it. Personally speaking, I used to be somewhat of a militant atheist. I was really engaged with the whole new athiest movement of 00's. But I've distanced myself from that, I certainly don't try anymore to persuade people away from their belief. I don't describe myself as a Christian, although I do think that western society is built upon it's values. Maybe that's LARPing, inauthentic, not philosophically rigorous, but it's good enough for me.

rramadass 5y ago

Reminds me of this passage from The Sea-Wolf by Jack London. [Wolf Larsen] “Do you know, I sometimes catch myself wishing that I, too, were blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and illusions. They’re wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and live illusions gives greater delight. And after all, delight is the wage for living. Without delight, living is a worthless act. To labour at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead. He who delights the most lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to you and more gratifying than are my facts to me.” He shook his head slowly, pondering. “I often doubt, I often doubt, the worthwhileness of reason. Dreams must be more substantial and satisfying. Emotional delight is more filling and lasting than intellectual delight; and, besides, you pay for your moments of intellectual delight by having the blues. Emotional delight is followed by no more than jaded senses which speedily recuperate. I envy you, I envy you.” He stopped abruptly, and then on his lips formed one of his strange quizzical smiles, as he added: “It’s from my brain I envy you, take notice, and not from my heart. My reason dictates it. The envy is an intellectual product. I am like a sober man looking upon drunken men, and, greatly weary, wishing he, too, were drunk.” “Or like a wise man looking upon fools and wishing he, too, were a fool,” I laughed. “Quite so,” he said. “You are a blessed, bankrupt pair of fools. You have no facts in your pocketbook.” “Yet we spend as freely as you,” was Maud Brewster’s contribution. “More freely, because it costs you nothing.” “And because we draw upon eternity,” she retorted. “Whether you do or think you do, it’s the same thing. You spend what you haven’t got, and in return you get greater value from spending what you haven’t got than I get from spending what I have got, and what I have sweated to get.”

Barrin92 5y ago

But it's also not really functioning is it? Once you've eaten the forbidden fruit, taken the redpill (the movie one, not the political one), you can't go back, you're screwed. Living on a lie that you know to solely exist for comfort is not the same as genuine belief, and it is fundamentally broke. If you just run back into the matrix and pretend it's real because it's pleasant, in a sense you've managed to be more nihilistic than the nihilist and in a way schizophrenic because you have to live something you actually know not to be authentic. There is a lot of figures in our culture today who basically advocate this. People who declare themselves to be atheists but tell disoriented youth to just 'pretend to believe'. And it really has the quality of LARPing. It will not move anyone forward philosophically.

WatchDog 5y ago
> There is a lot of figures in our culture today who basically advocate this. People who declare themselves to be atheists but tell disoriented youth to just 'pretend to believe'. And it really has the quality of LARPing. It will not move anyone forward philosophically. I think you can come up with your own (stretched) interpretation of Christianity that doesn't require belief in the divine, and I think that approach, taking an existing societal value system that works pretty well, makes a lot more sense than trying to build a new one from scratch and getting everyone to buy into it. Personally speaking, I used to be somewhat of a militant atheist. I was really engaged with the whole new athiest movement of 00's. But I've distanced myself from that, I certainly don't try anymore to persuade people away from their belief. I don't describe myself as a Christian, although I do think that western society is built upon it's values. Maybe that's LARPing, inauthentic, not philosophically rigorous, but it's good enough for me.