@TheMadFool

Cogito ergo sum.
— Descartes

Again Nietzsche (BGE, 16), I couldn't resist:

Let the people suppose that knowledge means knowing things entirely; the philosopher must say to himself: "When I analyze the process that is expressed in this sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove—for example, that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and, finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking—that I know what thinking is.

I think that's what @Banno is getting at. It's a bit of a rabbit hole, and might not be that productive when taken seriously.

@Michael Zwingli

to the Christian, these powers of their religion are very real

I agree (having been raised Catholic). I'll need to go and read the Zapffe essay but so far I think my interest in philosophy comes from viewing it as a "more legitimate" (more structured and less dogmatic) enterprise, in comparison to precisely religion.

@TheMadFool

Camus is trying to eat the cake and have it too

You might be onto something there. "We must imagine sisyphus happy" always struck me as a bit abrupt, and it's even harder if, at some point, the poor bloke kicks the bucket and nobody is left to roll his silly boulder around. I need to read more Camus, but there are a few things I find weird with his ideas. First, the line he draws at where things start to get weird is the atomic model, of all things. Like, Newton was OK but once we're at electrons its suddenly "poetry", despite being just as rational. That's less of a gripe, because I think what he wanted to shoot at was the lack of normative guidance as to what we should do with all this bloody rationality, hence "the absurd". Second, he's not very clear about how sisyphus could be considered "happy" -- is he content only in the comfort of an "eternal bliss"? Third, the image of sisyphus is lacking in that he is alone, isolated. What if he had a brother, complete with his own hill and boulder. And what if that brother was not granted immortality, and died. Would he still be happy? The myth of sisyphus doesn't tell us about how Camus views the problem of justice/fairness... I probably just need to read more though.

I recently began thinking about it a bit like this: Both "injustice" and "suffering" (in my mind somewhat decoupled, I might elaborate once I've organised my thoughts on this) occur in life. Therefore, the "meaning of life" must somehow explain these two things. Why do we suffer? Why is life unfair?

Although we now like to say that "life is short, use it well", we also seem to be quite keen on having an immortal "soul". Certainly there are very few religions or historical traditions (that I know of) where some sense of afterlife does not play a significant role. It seems to me that this is often an attempt to justify the injustices of mortal life. I recall a sermon I heard when I still attended mass, the priest said something like "death doesn't seem right, it doesn't seem like the end -- that's because it isn't". I no longer believe, but I can see the appeal there.

On the other hand, I agree with @Tom Storm that immortals would probably struggle with finding the meaning in life, although I'm not sure if it would be a more "popular" subject. I also agree with the reasoning: I think that the problem of suffering would dominate. In a mortal life, suffering can sometimes be explained as the price of growth or development. Does an immortal being "grow"? If not, then how can they explain suffering?

So, broadly speaking, maybe mortals struggle to justify "the injustice of life" more, whereas immortals would struggle to justify "the suffering of life" more. After all, there is no injustice in immortality, right? At least, that's what most ideas of the afterlife seem to build on? If I have more apples now, you can always make up for it by getting more apples later. And you have infinite time.

@TheMadFool
Hopefully I don't derail this too much, here goes:

I'm of the view that the abolishment of suffering is/should be our primary objective, first order of business, for the simple reason that it (suffering) is, among feelings, the most potent in terms of its capacity to hinder/impede our judgment and, that would basically gum up the works, every and all plans we make would be of such poor quality that it would've been better to simply let the chips fall where they may. Suffering is, I mean to say, incapacitating - our first port of call is to reduce/eliminate it.

I'll bite:

- Suffering impedes judgement.

Does it impede or does it shape judgement though? I'm neck deep in Nietzsche at the moment, I'm sure there are better references, but:

[A]lmost everything we call “higher culture” is based on the
spiritualization of cruelty, on its becoming more profound [. . .].
Consider that even the seeker after knowledge forces his spirit to
recognize things against [its] inclination [. . .] and thus acts as an
artist and transfigurer of cruelty [. . .]. In all desire to know there is
a drop of cruelty. (BGE 229)

- Our first port of call is to reduce/eliminate it.

So we want to reduce suffering, unconditionally, in general. Is there no suffering that has value, at all? Worse: is there perhaps some pleasure that derives from suffering. How should we measure suffering in general? What if my suffering is pleasurable to others, i.e. reduces their feeling of suffering. Some recent short story about it, I forget. Point is: suffering, like beauty, could be in the eye of the beholder.

How about "I hate myself because I am weak". To reduce suffering, I desire a feeling of strength (will to power). The most obvious (only?) expression of strength is the overcoming of resistance. How can I find reliable resistance to overcome? By causing suffering...

More generally, "reducing suffering" is prone to turn into redistributing suffering.

I'll leave it there. First post on here (second but who's counting) so don't hesitate to be cruel :) Just in case mercy turns out to be finite.

@Ciceronianus

I see you like Stevens, have you read "Sunday Morning"? I wonder what you think of it. I'm just stumbling into philosophy here, so I'm missing a lot of background as yet. I took one elective in undergrad and then I've been trying to read things when I get time. I've found a weird kind of comfort in thinking about existentialism, of all things. I saw part of Sunday Morning quoted in Reginster's "Affirmation of Life" (a Nietzsche interpretation):

She says, “But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.”
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. [...]
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?

Looks like a fairly straightforward naturalist (?) anthem:

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?

But the last stanza goes a bit wild:

We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Can't quite pin that down. Ah well, I'm easily entertained by the lyricism :)