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No offense to anyone who is all "yay, life!" but as people learn more, as the blinders fall off, as we are encouraged to question tradition and establishment, w

No offense to anyone who is all "yay, life!" but as people learn more, as the blinders fall off, as we are encouraged to question tradition and establishment, what we see at the end of the line doesn't look great. Miserable health if you make it to retirement, disposable marriages, your social institutions crumble. Forget the church and the Elks lodge, we can't even keep bowling leagues and book clubs together. Life starts seeming absurd and has for a long time. Think of that bit in Con Air, where the too-aware serial killer says ""What if I told you insane was working fifty hours a week in some office for fifty years, at the end of which they tell you to piss off? Ending up in some retirement village, hoping to die before suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time." Everything has been first chisled, then jackhammered, and finally bulldozed away. No rocks to fall on us and hide us from the grim end of Terror Management Theory, no sense in planting a tree which we might never sit in the shade of if it will be scorched to a stick in some kind of global warming furnace. We ought not to be surprised, then, if so many elect to reach for non-thought, for entertainment and distraction, because staring into the abyss can get old. We used to have protections, elaborate and impermeable to questioning, which protected us from seeing how unappealing the inevitable decline and end can really be.

thenerdhead 3y ago
It is possible to find meaning in the absurd. That is what Camus and other nihilists propose. We have sadly lost our values as people. We don’t value community in the same way as it was before the internet for example. We should not give into despair, although many already have.
- at_a_remove 3y ago
  Not exactly. It was proposed that we assign meaning. It is not there to be found. Unless you are a virtuoso of self-deception, you will be aware that you have arbitrarily assigned meaning. It is no less hollow than an atheist with a communion wafer. That is the crux of my point: all of the constructs we had, including whimsy and distraction, become reduced to so much translucent -- at best -- mist once we're aware.
  - thenerdhead 3y ago
    Not sure we read the same book then. Because I was commenting on the idea that “life is inherently meaningless and absurd, yet we can find purpose and significance by embracing and confronting this absurdity.”
shrimp_emoji 3y ago
Protections? In like the Great Depression, for example? Or just in a thin strata of 20 years from the '50s to the '70s thanks to the spoils of WW2 + pre-computerization? And now we have no child labor, no draft (or even civil service to get people out and mingling with a diverse range of their fellow citizens for the good of the country), the weekend thanks to unions, civil rights, entertainment and knowledge at our fingertips... it's horrible. Why plant the tree, especially if I don't get to enjoy its shade? :c I'm picking up my toys and going home!

thenerdhead 3y ago

It is possible to find meaning in the absurd. That is what Camus and other nihilists propose. We have sadly lost our values as people. We don’t value community in the same way as it was before the internet for example. We should not give into despair, although many already have.

at_a_remove 3y ago
Not exactly. It was proposed that we assign meaning. It is not there to be found. Unless you are a virtuoso of self-deception, you will be aware that you have arbitrarily assigned meaning. It is no less hollow than an atheist with a communion wafer. That is the crux of my point: all of the constructs we had, including whimsy and distraction, become reduced to so much translucent -- at best -- mist once we're aware.
- thenerdhead 3y ago
  Not sure we read the same book then. Because I was commenting on the idea that “life is inherently meaningless and absurd, yet we can find purpose and significance by embracing and confronting this absurdity.”

shrimp_emoji 3y ago

Protections? In like the Great Depression, for example? Or just in a thin strata of 20 years from the '50s to the '70s thanks to the spoils of WW2 + pre-computerization? And now we have no child labor, no draft (or even civil service to get people out and mingling with a diverse range of their fellow citizens for the good of the country), the weekend thanks to unions, civil rights, entertainment and knowledge at our fingertips... it's horrible. Why plant the tree, especially if I don't get to enjoy its shade? :c I'm picking up my toys and going home!