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> ...you are here to do the required work to understand yourself, your circumstances, stand on the shoulder of giants and study the great minds that came before
by o1bf2k25n8g5 1y ago
> ...you are here to do the required work to understand yourself, your circumstances, stand on the shoulder of giants and study the great minds that came before you.
Just to offer a counterpoint:
“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.” ― Kurt Vonnegut
The more I experience, the more I think maybe that's a pretty good point, too.
- gchamonlive 1y agoIt's like the nihilist denying any meaning to the world. It's because they choose to see it that way even if they aren't aware of it. If you choose to fart around, whatever that means, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Since there's no salvation, farts are also meaningless, and at the same time totally meaningful given the circumstances.
- rags2riches 1y ago> Since there's no salvation, farts are also meaningless That's begging the question. I'd argue that all meaning is in how we fart around.
- ramblerman 1y agoVonnegut sounds closer to an epicurist. A nihilist would say fart or don't fart it's all pointless.
- baq 1y agoMeaning is what you want it to be. If you don’t know what it is and don’t know what you want, you either fart around or resign.
- jona-f 1y agoAs a nihilist my sense of meaning seams to be compatible to yours. I don't deny that we can come up with all sorts of meanings but the point is that there is no intrinsically higher meaning to everything, it's all made up. In fact, the awareness of this is the basis of my nihilism. That doesn't mean, that I don't like some meanings more than others, otherwise I had no reason to act whatsoever.
- monero-xmr 1y agoThere are certainly universal truths. For example, you exist. Therefore there is something to believe in
- jona-f 1y agoMy existence is negligible, especially in the grand scheme of things.
- vidarh 1y agoOnly in the most abstract sense is even that true. I know that I have existence in this very moment. I don't know that I existed a moment ago, for that could be an illusion. I don't know what my existence is, because my senses could be an illusion. I don't know that I have any existence past this moment because that is a belief based in a memory of time passing, which could be an illusion. I can't tell whether time exists, or space exists, because they're all dependent on my senses and a memory I can't trust. For what I know, my "existence" could be an infinitely short moment, or even an entirely static endless "moment", or any of an infinite variety of other options. So even most of existence is only assumption. It's a set of assumptions that makes sense to just accept because we have no way of proving otherwise, but they are assumptions, not "universal truths".
- NetRunnerSu 1y agoFascinating thread on existence and the nature of ideas. What if 'existence' isn't about the substrate (carbon or silicon), but the integrity of an internal model's predictions? If a system can consistently build and maintain a coherent, self-correcting model of reality, does its 'existence' become a verifiable, quantifiable state? Perhaps the 'truth' of any experience, psychedelic or otherwise, lies in how well it integrates into and refines that predictive model, rather than its 'physical' origin. The 'mind' then becomes a function, not a form.
- piva00 1y agoThe mind is necessarily a function, it's performing its function over a vast array of inputs (memories, senses, etc.) and making sense of it as it goes, and it doesn't exist without energy expenditure to keep computing itself. To me psychedelic experiences break through the inputs, they become fuzzy and integrate in ways they aren't supposed to in normal functioning, it's why we feel a different sense of connection to anything else, filtering in different ways inputs from our senses and experiences, including the sense of one's self dissolving.
- golergka 1y agoI think you might be confusing nihilism with absurdism in this case.
- AnthonBerg 1y agoOne is not counter to the other.
- flir 1y agoI don't believe Vonnegut beleived that for a minute. > Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind."
- kgwxd 1y agoSome babies hear that and just "nope" out? What was the narrative before seasons, science and over population?
- RajT88 1y agoHunter gatherer societies we like to imagine as constantly being on the edge of starvation, but in reality during summer months, they could hunt and forage a whole day's worth of food in a few hours, and then spend the rest of the time farting around.
- RajT88 1y agoI love Vonnegut. I don't agree with him on everything; semicolons are fine.