Are you high right now?

Jokes aside, the implicit messages that society is trying to convey about life is that it's simultaneously a good thing and a dangerously violent thing, a thing filled with suffering and yet also worth living, a silly charade and yet an important silly charade. It's a contradiction. The advertised optimism is shallow and the social critics don't go deep or far enough, because nobody wants to expose just how absolutely stupid most everything is.

Are you high right now? — darthbarracuda

It was meant to be an open-ended sophomoric question (as I eat my munchies).

a silly charade and yet an important silly charade. — darthbarracuda

So why is it important? What makes it a charade? Charade from what?

So why is it important? What makes it a charade? Charade from what? — schopenhauer1

I think both you and I have a fairly similar understanding as to why it's a charade. It's pointless, scary, harmful, absurd, hilarious, enjoyable in some respects and uncomfortable in many others...an actor on an empty stage facing an empty audience is practicing a charade just as much as any of us are.

It's important only insofar that we continue to view it as important. From my view, the preservation of culture is of utmost importance because culture is a manifestation of our collective subconscious fear of death and a need for comfort. If nothing else society offers us little distractions in the form of consumerism. The creation of needs. The subsequent dependency on conglomerates to satisfy our cravings. The reverence and worship of cultural demigods celebrities and politicians.

There's not a single monolithic society attempting to convey any particular message. What you glean as being sacred in whatever society is most pervasive in your life might be interesting from a self assessment prospective. If your society has vacuous and shallow goals, then instead of ridiculing it because you can't control it, leave it. That you can control.

I don't mean to pack your bags necessarily, but I do mean to not count yourself among those who live in ways you disagree with. I mean that you need not worship those things they find sacred and that you don't. Your society, defined by those you choose to identify with, doesn't need to be so vacuous.

If you come to the conclusion your life has no existential worth, then I don't see an ethical justification not to change.

I meant society as a whole, not as my personal social bubble. To a certain extent, I can leave the broader society and I do. But it's pervasive and I'm not able to escape it unless I go into complete isolation or asceticism, which are not practical.

But that was my point. "Society as a whole" (as you use it) identifies a particular society, but not the society you're required to be in. Kim Kardashian lives in a different society from me and an Amish guy another. Which of these people lives in the "society as a whole" you've identified? You don't need to be a monk to avoid the impact of Kardashian's social values. You just don't need to live in her society. If your question is simply "what is the message of the vacuous social group in the US," it's obviously vacuousness.

I think both you and I have a fairly similar understanding as to why it's a charade. It's pointless, scary, harmful, absurd, hilarious, enjoyable in some respects and uncomfortable in many others...an actor on an empty stage facing an empty audience is practicing a charade just as much as any of us are. — darthbarracuda

By being born, it's telling us that various projects of life are supposed to be followed through and carried out. Thus, suicide, though an option, is not preferred. What is preferred is finding coping mechanisms within the structural and contingent constraints.

By being socialized to find reproduction as worthwhile, it is telling us that these projects must continue in perpetuity. The reasons to have others and have them pursue projects is tricky as it ranges from "having a little one that one can influence" to hoping for the possibility that future people may discover more scientific and technological understanding (which itself may be a reification of forms of knowledge).

By being taught to sublimate and concentrate on various tasks-at-hand one is socialized to avoid feelings of angst or dread. One cannot have time or inclination to see our nature striving-at-nothing if one has something to concentrate on. All the better if the concentration embodies the socio-economic values of the embodied culture, as at least it will probably give one a good reputation- mine as well pursue that which provides status and good health if one is going to pursue anything (good worker, good family man, good performer, good athlete, healthy eater, healthy habits, etc.).

Of course with all this is the notion that life is instrumental. We do not want to think goals are chosen out of a desire to not face angst. Rather society, which gave us this language-brain, (which comes with it the ability to feel angst) wants us to then take that feeling and sublimate it with goals that are supposed to be taken as given (guilt is a great tool to ensure this sticks). Do not look passed the socially prescribed goals (of family, work, legally-deemed entertainment, and maintaining one's living environment) as this may then see the angst itself below the surface.

Now, people will mention the awareness of instrumentality, and then go on to discuss how the notion of absurdity and embracing the charade is the mentality one needs to carry on. Sometimes that just does not do the trick.

But that was my point. "Society as a whole" (as you use it) identifies a particular society, but not the society you're required to be in. Kim Kardashian lives in a different society from me and an Amish guy another. — Hanover

Post-industrial society is about choosing an identity. It's just window dressing. Your comparison to the Amish is more effective, but disliking one of the window-dressings in post-modern/industrial societies does not mean one flees to the Amish (even if that was a feasible and readily available option). However, since we are already socialized in a post-modern society, by "choosing" to live with the Amish, this too becomes another window dressing.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

What is the implicit message that society is trying to convey about life? — schopenhauer1

I doubt that this is "the implicit message", but in some cases perhaps an implicit message":

Where's the lie which means I've been lied to?

Meow!

GREG

(as per frickin' usual, I stole that from a song that I misheard the lyric... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWwBkA0GqaY )

Hey that was supposed to be my line! ;)

What is the implicit message that society is trying to convey about life? — schopenhauer1

Society is not, for me, the sort of entity that sends, conveys or implies messages. But then, I'm cursed somehow by the Sartre I probably misunderstood as a youth: that once one understands the constraints 'societies' of one kind or another place on oneself, then one is free, in that melancholic way of his, either to live the inauthentic life of the socially-constrained, having seen through it, or to make the leap into freedom, however lonely and unmoored that might turn out to be.

Now that I'm quite old, I suppose I think of this existential life as something like living by the Socratic notion, that the unexamined life is not worth living. The positive implication of that: the examined life may well be worth living, if you have courage enough, and character to withstand dark times (not a character I've found it easy to cultivate, but I daresay no-one does).