The individual is more godlike beneath an empty sky. — jellyfish

My jam! :up:

I think you mentioned Nietzsche in some post, so I'm not surprised. That's my jam too. When I'm (godlessly) up, I'm way up. 'I' am 'God' (along with everyone else who knows they are.) It's all connected in my mind with personal mortality, the facing of death. Clinging to the afterlife is clinging to the petty ego. But anti-ego talk is often suspect. It's more like a larger ego eating a smaller ego. Magnanimity from a sense of power, the ability to ignore parasites, the spirit as a stomach than can digest difficult experience. 'Our god is a devouring flame.'


So I guess I see only transformations of the concept of God (an image of transcendence and autonomy) along with what the community appeals to in order to ground its violence.

↪180 Proof
I think you mentioned Nietzsche in some post, so I'm not surprised. That's my jam too. When I'm (godlessly) up, I'm way up. 'I' am 'God' (along with everyone else who knows they are.) It's all connected in my mind with personal mortality, the facing of death. Clinging to the afterlife is clinging to the petty ego. But anti-ego talk is often suspect. It's more like a larger ego eating a smaller ego. Magnanimity from a sense of power, the ability to ignore parasites, the spirit as a stomach than can digest difficult experience. 'Our god is a devouring flame.' — jellyfish

Quite evocative, well said ... :cool:

So I guess I see only transformations of the concept of God (an image of transcendence and autonomy) along with what the community appeals to in order to ground its violence. — jellyfish

I'm the mirror image gazing into this glass darkly: immanence and ecstasy ... grounded by solidarity in sisyphusian struggles. :death: :flower:

Amor fati, baby!

Thanks for the kind reply. I love that skull next to the flower. To me that really gets it.

'm telling nobody to "get over it." I'm simply noting that the spiritual crisis is due to an assumption, and that the assumption need not (and i think should not) be accepted.

That it need not be accepted is established by the fact that millions of people, some of them very wise and highly intelligent, some of them very accomplished, some of them happy, lived before the advent of Christianity and other religions which posit the existence of a personal God who must be accepted if life is to have any significance and without whom all is meaningless Probably, such people live now as well.

This indicates there is nothing about being human which requires us to experience a spiritual crisis of the kind which, it seems to be claimed, must result in nihilism. And this understanding presents us with an opportunity to assess, as others have, being human free of the assumption from which the spiritual crisis derives. — Ciceronianus the White

Those who never had their brains hardwired with the structures and beliefs of theism are in a very different position, than those who have. I am not suggesting that reality minus God = nihilism. It is my experience that having been raised staunch catholic and actually truly endorsing that belief system sets one up for a serious sense of confusion and disorientation with our reality once the myths break down through reasoned focus. I am looking for experiences from those who have shared this experience but have found a path out of it.

eah, I feel you. But a pack of wolves has a certain cohesion. So maybe we're more complex wolves. We love and hate. We assert status with words. We're never done inventing ourselves or figuring out our place. Everyone cobbles together their own post-religion. Some go to more trouble articulating a philosophy or an anti-philosophy.

Even if everything is 'really' empty, our animal minds mostly distract us for this. If we do remember, then there are some twisted pleasures to be had. The individual is more godlike beneath an empty sky. — jellyfish

Maybe I'll be more descriptive in what the conceptual breakdown or deconstruction looks like in my mind.
The real muddle comes with the breakdown of the self.
I previously believed I was a soul made by God in his image who would live eternally.

I now believe that I am a biological process, who's primary driver is a brain. I am no means a coherent whole but rather a collection of competing desires, interests and emotions. These are ultimately the causal forces that result in my behaviour. And you can see the incoherence of this collection in the incoherence of my thoughts and behaviour.

And so when the brain described as "I" is faced with options it previously used reason to arrive a reasonable decision, relying on deep theistic structures to reason a way through. And I was pretty good at this kind of reasoning, a public speaker and debater who sometimes won!

But now I am a muddled mess, there is no underlying deep structures that the brain can rely on to reason its way out. There is no room left for "ought", just "is". I have recognized my brain to be the animal brain it always was. But the animal brain really ultimately only pursues self interest.

So I try to avoid those confused states, I practice mindfulness and stay in the moment and in the micro. But this doesn't leave one very engaged in a deep level in life. It's all just process, I am part of it, but it has no clear direction and no underlying principles. It's just random causality let loose.

I don't think Stoicism is a religion, as typically conceived, but I do think a Stoic can be religious.

It's hard to judge Epictetus, as it happens he wrote nothing and what we read is from the notes of his student Arrian. But it's particularly hard to judge him from the Enchiridion, which you quote. His God can sometimes seem almost personal rather than detached, now and then. I think the Stoics sought tranquility rather than detachment (I think there's a difference). The comparison of a child to a cup may be in the nature of a spiritual exercise as Pierre Hadot speculates, to prepare oneself to accept the hazards of life without despair.

Some of the ancients thinkers had more sense than we do; they were more sensible than we are when it comes to considering how to live. They didn't allow speculation regarding the transcendent to clutter their thought. It's that speculation, and an inflated sense of self-importance, which creates despair when shown to be dubious at best.

Consider: We exist, and are part of a vast universe that is wondrous; fearing and desiring what is outside of our control causes us pain, and causes pain to others, and is to be avoided. That, for me, is the essence of Stoicism. Most if not all of what we consider bad or evil conduct results from the fear of or desire for things or people which we do not have but want or want to avoid. The only thing we can know (not that we know, completely), that is worthy of reverence is the universe, which we can experience. A simple ethics, and a simple "religious" feeling.

Consider: We exist, and are part of a vast universe that is wondrous; fearing and desiring what is outside of our control causes us pain, and causes pain to others, and is to be avoided. That, for me, is the essence of Stoicism. Most if not all of what we consider bad or evil conduct results from the fear of or desire for things or people which we do not have but want or want to avoid. The only thing we can know (not that we know, completely), that is worthy of reverence is the universe, which we can experience. A simple ethics, and a simple "religious" feeling. — Ciceronianus the White

So simple and yet boundless. :fire:

I think the Stoics sought tranquility rather than detachment (I think there's a difference). — Ciceronianus the White

Tranquility through detachment perhaps? What I was aiming at was the ideal human for the stoic against a background of the ideal human of other life philosophies and religions. Stoicism seems like one response to the breakdown of community among others.

Some of the ancients thinkers had more sense than we do; they were more sensible than we are when it comes to considering how to live. They didn't allow speculation regarding the transcendent to clutter their thought. It's that speculation, and an inflated sense of self-importance, which creates despair when shown to be dubious at best. — Ciceronianus the White

I'm not opposed to this insight. As I mentioned in the beginning, it's all quite reasonable and respectable. I'd just say that humans are haunted by the transcendent. It's not just God or Tarot cards. It's drugs, sex, revolution, conspiracy theories. We can also be freaked out by boredom. A life with sin and magic can cause suffering, but a life without sin and magic isn't obviously worth living.

'Fitter, happier, more productive.' There's an emptiness in Epicurus' happy animals. It's like the end of history in Kojeve. Or 'man would rather have the void for his purpose than be devoid of purpose.' So man is a sick animal, a wicked animal, a fascinating animal. I'm not trying to argue against prudence. I'm just suggesting that 'nihilism' is related to the dreariness of a reasonable post-religion of prudence.

Consider: We exist, and are part of a vast universe that is wondrous; fearing and desiring what is outside of our control causes us pain, and causes pain to others, and is to be avoided. That, for me, is the essence of Stoicism. Most if not all of what we consider bad or evil conduct results from the fear of or desire for things or people which we do not have but want or want to avoid. The only thing we can know (not that we know, completely), that is worthy of reverence is the universe, which we can experience. A simple ethics, and a simple "religious" feeling. — Ciceronianus the White

Thank for you sharing this. I'm not against it. It sounds great in the abstract. Perhaps it presupposes a certain level of affluence. An animal that has its biological needs met will mostly be bothered by 'irrational' itches for status or titillation. I do like the 'negative glamour' of stoicism, epicureanism, and cynicism. We can go against the flow of our culture, assuming individual liberties, and judge ourselves and others by alternative standards. The philosopher can be counter-cultural figure. He can be proud of his can of beans and look down on those who think they need a $50 steak. He can work a less respectable job for more free time and/or freedom of thought, etc.

Wonder is of course a great attitude. I love philosophy for tending to lift us above the petty issues of the day and mere utility.

I now believe that I am a biological process, who's primary driver is a brain. I am no means a coherent whole but rather a collection of competing desires, interests and emotions. These are ultimately the causal forces that result in my behaviour. And you can see the incoherence of this collection in the incoherence of my thoughts and behaviour. — dazed

Right. You might like wrestling with Nietzsche's work (who saw the self this way), not as a cure but as a profound exploration of the 'disease.' IMV there is no cure. The 'disease' just becomes more entertaining, even a show for 'the gods' (our infinitely ironic consciousnesses.) ' The jokes on us, but it's an endlessly fascinating joke.

And so when the brain described as "I" is faced with options it previously used reason to arrive a reasonable decision, relying on deep theistic structures to reason a way through. And I was pretty good at this kind of reasoning, a public speaker and debater who sometimes won! — dazed

This is a great theme too. IMV it's a familiar and comfortable illusion that we use reason explicitly to make decisions. To me it looks like most of it happens in the dark. Our animal knowhow does most the work. Explicit reasoning steps in where auto-pilot needs help.

I can see how your success at public reasoning could add to the burden of losing God. In the beginning was the word. It's the dream of conquering existence with a bulletproof system of words.
To me God is the human fantasy. I want to be God. I want to be above the meat-grinder of Nature. I want to be self-sufficing and invulnerable. I want to always know better, win every argument. Or part of me does. Another part of me wants to be in love, which is to say dominated by some beauty that is out of my control. Being a mortal puts me in the middle of these opposed projects.

But now I am a muddled mess, there is no underlying deep structures that the brain can rely on to reason its way out. There is no room left for "ought", just "is". I have recognized my brain to be the animal brain it always was. But the animal brain really ultimately only pursues self interest. — dazed

Here I'd just say watch out for taking self-interest as the simple truth. We are radically social animals. The 'self' is a bunch of group memberships. So self-interest is other-interest. When I first embraced atheism, I felt quite alienated. I also thought selfishness was the truth. But slowly I realized that reasoning itself is inherently other directed, social. The concern for truth is always already social. To hold the truth sacred is to still believe in something above utility.

So in my view your are going through a necessary freak-out as you transition from an old sense of who you are and what existence is all about to a new one. I don't want to sound too positive, because life will always be terrible at times. And a person can feel like a wise man one month and end his life the next. It's almost as if words are always spoken from moods and situations. The characters in the play are states of mind. Actual human beings are sequences of states of mind. That's why (IMO) Shakespeare and others need an entire cast to express themselves. Too many voices, too many feelings to fit behind one mask.

So I try to avoid those confused states, I practice mindfulness and stay in the moment and in the micro. But this doesn't leave one very engaged in a deep level in life. It's all just process, I am part of it, but it has no clear direction and no underlying principles. It's just random causality let loose. — dazed

I agree that it's largely random, but I also think the mind finds structures. For instance, people tend to have 'spiritual' projects, vague images of what they should be. Occasionally we are lost in the white noise between channels (if anyone remembers old TVs.) That's like a creative void. If it doesn't drown you, you'll starting finding patterns in the snow. (And lose them again, and find them, and ...eventually turn off the TV forever while others are just turning it on.)

[I'm a clown though, so what do I know? I do wish you luck.]

:victory:
Your thoughts have definitely impacted my consciousness. But how do you make sense of the world with ourselves as ultimately incoherent random states of mind? How do you navigate social discourse with a loss of the concepts of agency and selfhood that permeate all our human political and social structures? If there really is no one integrated "self" that we can hold responsible, then what becomes of all of our structures that rely on the concept of "self"?

I simply retreat every time I start that thought, it seems to me that if you follow it too far, it will all erode. So I turn on a soccer game instead. Essentially I rely on distraction to navigate the world. I am just hoping that maybe there's a way out of that approach to life...one that offers a level of deeper engagement.

But how do you make sense of the world with ourselves as ultimately incoherent random states of mind? — dazed

Well I do have a grim sense of humor. It seems that existence is a strange dream, but it does have a continuity (it mostly coheres). It's a story. We are thrown into a play without an author, or that's what some of the characters say.

People without God often substitute moral and/or scientific progress (humanism, a rationalized notion of incarnation.) Then another project is just the infinite extension of consciousness, in the face of absurdity and mortality. MacBeth suits up for the last battle, knowing that all his charms and prophecies have failed him. A little before that he says:

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. — Shakespeare

There are equally dark lines in King Lear and Hamlet. So a grim sense of humor and a realization that I'm not alone helps me. In some ways I'm less alone than ever. Our common fate is to live this absurd dream without foundation or excuse. It's hard to talk about, because it's dangerous. Even though our culture pretends to respect Shakespeare and so on, all this 'high' culture is creepy. It puts one outside of life, with one foot in the grave.

Check out the ending monologue of American Psycho.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__BBylQ6srM

There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this, there is no catharsis. My punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing. — A P

Now Bateman is a villain in his fantasy life, so the feel of this ending is just so strange. But 'this confession has meant nothing' captures the sharp edge of 'existentialism.' We throw ourselves into Hell for our own amusement, and this Hell-for-atheists is the experience of life as disgusting noise, random and incoherent. Consciously it's something unfortunate that happened to us, but unconsciously (so runs my dream) it's a larger, more ferocious consciousness clawing its way out. Profound suffering is something we even crave. 'I am a sick man. I am a wicked man.'

I don't know if you'll find my blanket as warm as I do.

A last quote:

289. In the writings of a recluse one always hears something of the echo of the wilderness, something of the murmuring tones and timid vigilance of solitude; in his strongest words, even in his cry itself, there sounds a new and more dangerous kind of silence, of concealment. He who has sat day and night, from year's end to year's end, alone with his soul in familiar discord and discourse, he who has become a cave-bear, or a treasure-seeker, or a treasure-guardian and dragon in his cave—it may be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold-mine—his ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight-colour of their own, and an odour, as much of the depth as of the mould, something uncommunicative and repulsive, which blows chilly upon every passer-by. The recluse does not believe that a philosopher—supposing that a philosopher has always in the first place been a recluse—ever expressed his actual and ultimate opinions in books: are not books written precisely to hide what is in us?—indeed, he will doubt whether a philosopher CAN have "ultimate and actual" opinions at all; whether behind every cave in him there is not, and must necessarily be, a still deeper cave: an ampler, stranger, richer world beyond the surface, an abyss behind every bottom, beneath every "foundation."

...
292. A philosopher: that is a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if they came from the outside, from above and below, as a species of events and lightning-flashes PECULIAR TO HIM; who is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentous man, around whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping and something uncanny going on. A philosopher: alas, a being who often runs away from himself, is often afraid of himself—but whose curiosity always makes him "come to himself" again.
... — Nietzsche

Gotta throw in this one, too, in its own box.

Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! Not long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, so full of thorns and secret spices, that you made me sneeze and laugh—and now? You have already doffed your novelty, and some of you, I fear, are ready to become truths, so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, so tedious! And was it ever otherwise? What then do we write and paint, we mandarins with Chinese brush, we immortalisers of things which LEND themselves to writing, what are we alone capable of painting? Alas, only that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odour! Alas, only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments! Alas, only birds strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves be captured with the hand—with OUR hand! We immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer, things only which are exhausted and mellow! And it is only for your AFTERNOON, you, my written and painted thoughts, for which alone I have colours, many colours, perhaps, many variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds;—but nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude, you, my old, beloved—EVIL thoughts! — Nietzsche

Don't mind my ramble :smirk: (or gfy) ...

Well I do have a grim sense of humor. It seems that existence is a strange dream, but it does have a continuity (it mostly coheres). It's a story. We are thrown into a play without an author, or that's what some of the characters say. — jellyfish

For witless or thoughtless "Last Men", vapid days & nights without consolation of the fetish-rattle of a liturgical g/G reduces their vacuous lives to, in effect, just killing time on a chinese water-torture rack till they expire. Or worse: nothing but g/G-shopping like an interminally bored trophy-wife who sloppily stumbles along in the always-fading light from one pharma pill mill to another pronouncing each new fix "holy" ... until the next PCP dealer* comes along and scripts a new fix. Either scenario: the nihilism of decadence (Freddy N. as my witness!) just like the OP - a g/G-jones as incurable as the user's incorrigible.

People without God [ ... ] in the face of absurdity and mortality. MacBeth suits up for the last battle, knowing that all his charms and prophecies have failed him. A little before that he says:

"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."
— Shakespeare

There are equally dark lines in King Lear and Hamlet. So a grim sense of humor and a realization that I'm not alone helps me. In some ways I'm less alone than ever. Our common fate is to live this absurd dream without foundation or excuse. It's hard to talk about, because it's dangerous. Even though our culture pretends to respect Shakespeare and so on, all this 'high' culture is creepy. It puts one outside of life, with one foot in the grave. — jellyfish

Yes! Proper despair. A sisyphusean ergo: I(n) spite, therefore we exist. :death: :flower:


(*) re: U.S. for-profit sickcare system

For witless or thoughtless "Last Men", vapid days & nights without consolation of the fetish-rattle of a liturgical g/G reduces their vacuous lives to, in effect, just killing time on a chinese water-torture rack till they expire. — 180 Proof

Now that's poetry! And such a fascinating tonality is only possible with one foot in the grave. Here's a nice passage that comes to mind.

The presentation of itself, however, as pure abstraction of self-consciousness consists in showing itself as a pure negation of its objective form, or in showing that it is fettered to no determinate existence, that it is not bound at all by the particularity everywhere characteristic of existence as such, and is not tied up with life....
And it is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; only thus is it tried and proved that the essential nature of self-consciousness is not bare existence, is not the merely immediate form in which it at first makes its appearance, is not its mere absorption in the expanse of life. Rather it is thereby guaranteed that there is nothing present but what might be taken as a vanishing moment — that self-consciousness is merely pure self-existence, being-for-self. — Hegel

Or worse: nothing but g/G-shopping like an interminally bored trophy-wife who sloppily stumbles along in the always-fading light from one pharma pill mill to another pronouncing each new fix "holy" ... until the next PCP dealer* comes along and scripts a new fix. — 180 Proof

This too. Yes.

And, related:

For this consciousness was not in peril and fear for this element or that, nor for this or that moment of time, it was afraid for its entire being; it felt the fear of death, the sovereign master. It has been in that experience melted to its inmost soul, has trembled throughout its every fibre, and all that was fixed and steadfast has quaked within it. This complete perturbation of its entire substance, this absolute dissolution of all its stability into fluent continuity, is, however, the simple, ultimate nature of self-consciousness, absolute negativity, pure self-referrent existence... — Hegel

Seems to me that the pills and the therapist will tend to cover all of this up. A free consciousness (which can only speak of itself with some measure of irony) is well beyond the neo-spiritual 'authority' of the therapist. To keep both feet on this side of the grave is to be a slave. Self-preservation at all costs is slavery --and absurd, since death gets it all. To merely extend life, project an enviable lifestyle on social media, collect objects,...a kind of living death because (strangely) it does not live death. I too, still alive, am an ambivalent slave that dreams of mastery, or merely partially 'incarnates' it. I project an enviable lifestyle here, even if or because I label my medicine bottle with an XXX.

I'm grateful to engage with you, by the way.

Your attitude is of course reasonable, but it's also familiar in terms of the emotional comfort it offers. I don't know exactly how far the idea goes back, but justifying evil in terms of a future to come goes back at least to Hegel. — jellyfish

I'm afraid my worldview would not be very comforting for most people. It doesn't "justify" evil, but merely accepts that both Good and Evil are inherent in a dualistic dialectic universe. It's the bible-god who needs some rhetorical help to justify a world that goes off the rails after a perfect beginning. No sooner than the first moral agents exercise their free choice, they discover that knowledge of good vs evil doesn't mean that they have the wisdom to see the long-range consequences of their choices.

Hegel acknowledged the BothAnd nature of the natural world. Although he saw progress in evolution, his dialectic proceeded, not in a straight line, but in a heuristic zig-zag search pattern for the best compromise in an imperfect world. His interpretation of that struggle between Good & Evil was optimistic for the long-term, and pragmatic in the short-term. Like him, I get no emotional comfort from imagining that my personal interests are being served by a loving Father in Heaven, but a modicum of intellectual satisfaction that the system is not rigged against me, so I have as good a chance of happiness as anyone else.

BothAnd Principle : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html

These vast congeries of volitions, interests, and activities constitute the tools and means of the World Spirit for attaining its purpose, . . . on the part of individuals and peoples in which they seek and satisfy their own purposes are, at the same time, the means and tools of a higher and broader purpose of which they know nothing, which they realize unconsciously. — Hegel

Sounds like Adam Smith's theory of the "invisible hand" of free-market Capitalism. So, is G*D a capitalist? I don't know, but freewill Agents, serving their own interests, inadvertently serve the general interest. This is an intrinsic principle of the potential order within randomness : that free individual "choices" add-up to a stable pattern when viewed as a whole : The Bell Curve. So, in the game of life, some players are winners and some are losers, but the game goes-on, and the "house" (G*D's plan) always wins in the end. Unfortunately, you and I didn't choose to play the game, but maybe like fatalistic Greeks, we accrue honor by playing nobly. "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game". So, "live for the moment", nobody has promised us an after-party in heaven.

Therefore, I have concluded that the game designer is fair-but-indifferent (amoral) regarding individual players, and is serving He/r own ultimate interests -- whatever that might be. G*D treats me fairly in a statistical sense, but doesn't tip the scales in my favor via miraculous intervention. Nobody is G*D's darling. So, judgements of Good or Evil don't apply to the designer outside the game, but only to the players. In our space-time world, all things are relative; but in eternity-infinity, all things are absolute. Hence, unlike the dueling deities of the Bible, in G*D's "world" there can be no Good versus Evil, but in an all-things-are-possible sense, you could say that G*D is BothAnd, i.e GoodEvil .

Rationalism versus Fatalism : http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page67.html

I'm afraid my worldview would not be very comforting for most people. It doesn't "justify" evil, but merely accepts that both Good and Evil are inherent in a dualistic dialectic universe. — Gnomon

Thanks for the post. I'm thinking that we share a sense that the world is aesthetically justified, if it all. From my perspective, your philosophy (and Hegel's) is a kind of conceptual art. I think Hegel was actually religious, whereas I don't get that from you.

Hence, unlike the dueling deities of the Bible, in G*D's "world" there can be no Good versus Evil, but in an all-things-are-possible sense, you could say that G*D is BothAnd, i.e GoodEvil . — Gnomon

I also see 'God'/reality as good-and-evil -- and beyond and before good and evil. There's my ordinary life in the world where things are good and evil in the usual way and my philosophical self that knows better or knows differently.

Sounds like Adam Smith's theory of the "invisible hand" of free-market Capitalism. So, is G*D a capitalist? I don't know, but freewill Agents, serving their own interests, inadvertently serve the general interest. — Gnomon

That's a fun relationship to point out. I never connected the two before.

But how do you make sense of the world with ourselves as ultimately incoherent random states of mind? — dazed

I suspect that you suffer from the Philosopher's disease : you overthink things. If you focus on the minor details, you'll miss the big picture. If you are insane, with "incoherent random states of mind", then of course the world won't make sense, and you need to be institutionalized. But, you seem to be only slightly insane, in the sense that a depressed brain can cloud your thoughts. You are obviously sane enough to write lucidly, despite the clouds. So you need to allow your rational "self" (ego) to regain control over the emotional reptilian brain (id). That won't be easy, and many people drown, sinking into despair. It will take motivation (your posts indicate that you have enough insight and ambition to seek text therapy), self-discipline, maybe some drugs, and perhaps the discipline of others. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help slightly insane people to think more rationally about their negative thoughts. And to take responsibility for their own agency. Look it up.

How do you navigate social discourse with a loss of the concepts of agency and selfhood that permeate all our human political and social structures? — dazed

Many philosophers also tend to compare their life conditions negatively against an ideal model. But that's not realistic, by definition. Who told you that you are not a freewill agent, and that, not only do you not have a Soul, but not even a mundane Self? Have you been reading Daniel Dennett? His analytical methods dismiss the obvious fact that all of us behave as-if we have a subjective perspective and clearly exercise some agency in the world.

Even pathetic You can reach-out and pick up an object by intention, so there is some kind of agency associated with your mortal flesh. So, take credit for it. Dennett thinks that you and he are zombies (in his case a very smart, yet short-sighted, zombie). But, if so, join the club, if you are half the agent that he is, you're doing pretty good for a mindless automaton. His notion that your actions are predestined by your genes is a product of acute reductive thinking, and portrays genes as little zombie demons. But how could an ancient organized social structure of soul-dead mummies build pyramids without any goals or agency? Did their genes make them do it? Did an accidental Big Bang predestine the emergence of monolithic mountains of stone billions of years later? If so, it sounds like good planning. :smile:

So you need to allow your rational "self" (ego) to regain control over the emotional reptilian brain (id). That won't be easy, and many people drown, sinking into despair. It will take motivation (your posts indicate that you have enough insight and ambition to seek text therapy), self-discipline, maybe some drugs, and perhaps the discipline of others. — Gnomon

You wrote this to @dazed, and it made me think of our conversation.

You pose the rational self against the old lizard. If only we are rational enough, then surely we'll be happy. Nothing is essentially wrong with reality itself. It's just that some individuals malfunction and need to be repaired. To me this presupposes that the goal is survival and comfort. It shrugs off mortality, lets go and lets God.

It's probably good advice. But it can look complacent and Panglossian, especially to 'nihilists' who have already absorbed that message, the standard message of sanitized buying and selling. It reminds me of Brave New World. We ourselves are pieces of the machine, to be treated by technicians for our glitches. The machine is good. The world is good. God is good. All else is unreasonable, sickly. But then the great books we like seen on our shelves are sickly. (Let us purge the canon of toxic masculinity !)

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choice already made in production and its corollary consumption. The spectacle’s form and content are identically the total justification of the existing system’s conditions and goals. The spectacle is also the permanent presence of this justification, since it occupies the main part of the time lived outside of modern production.

The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than “that which appears is good, that which is good appears. The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance.

The basically tautological character of the spectacle flows from the simple fact that its means are simultaneously its ends. It is the sun which never sets over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the world and bathes endlessly in its own glory. — Debord

I quote Debord not as an authority but just to throw a wrench in the theodicy. I don't think the 'nihilist' is mad or sick, or not in a simple way. I'm suggesting that theodicies allow us to hide from ourselves as a species. We fantasize that we are rational, that the world is good, and that dissatisfaction is a malfunction rather than a virtue. Implicit in casting the dissatisfied as malfunctioning is the comformist as hero.

I don't mean to take sides in a simple way. I largely comform. But is that rational or something else?

I'm suggesting that theodicies allow us to hide from ourselves as a species. We fantasize that we are rational, that the world is good, and that dissatisfaction is a malfunction rather than a virtue. — jellyfish

Quite evil, isn't it, to rationalize atrocities and needless suffering "in the name of" some other cunt's CAUSE or PLAN? (All is forgiven - "I was just following ends-justifies-means Commandments, sir".) Fuckin' theIDiocy ... :shade:

My take on this is that the feeling of “meaningfulness” (what I’ve coined as ontophilia in its most profound version) not only feels pleasant and alleviates personal suffering, but also makes us more insightful and creative and better motivated to get things done. It not only feels enlightening and empowering, it functionally is. In converse, feelings of existential dread or horror, ontophobia, not only make us feel awful about things that we would otherwise be able to accept and live with or move past, but also floods our minds with clouds of stress and drowns us in despair, so we are functionally less able to think clearly and act decisively. It is pragmatically better to have that ontophilic feeling that the bad things are not such a big deal and they can get better and everything is fundamentally okay, so that we can stop worrying about everything and get on with actually making better what we can and enjoying it what we’ve already got.

Quite evil, isn't it, to rationalize atrocities and needless suffering "in the name of" some other cunt's CAUSE or PLAN? (All is forgiven - "I was just following ends-justifies-means Commandments, sir".) Fuckin' theIDiocies ... :shade: — 180 Proof

Indeed. I do think the situation is complicated. Doesn't every community have its blind spot? Its plan and scapegoat? In practice I muddle through, try to choose the right team while also keeping a foot in the grave, making peace even with the extinction of species itself, the actual end of history that troubles all of our causes and plans. Reason reveals contingency, mortality, and even the absurdity of mortal things. That's why I object to reason as (only) happy self-preservation.

The saner part of me agrees with all of that. The wilder part of me remembers the connection of ecstasy with the terrible. Why do groups wage war when resources aren't scarce (when they don't really need to)? Then there's hard drugs and risky sex. Danger is part of the appeal. Intensity of experience is prioritized over the duration of experience.

I find meaningfulness inescapable. I suggested in a previous post that nihilism can be interpreted as an unconscious role-play where the nihilist faces the black dragon of meaninglessness. This apparent self-mutilation simultaneously makes the infinitely lonely ego a supreme hero. The truth in this case is the face of God. Most mortals cannot bear to look at it, since it's the death of all of their comforting illusions. In short, facing meaninglessness is, in my eyes, part of a 'religious' quest. The living sacrifice is the nihilist himself, as he wades into the acid or the devouring flames of God/Truth.

I suspect that this is the path for only one type of personality. Someone on this path who realizes that they are playing such a dark game unconsciously will perhaps become an ironist. 'Infinite jest' depends on the acid bath.

:up:

You pose the rational self against the old lizard. If only we are rational enough, then surely we'll be happy. — jellyfish

Maybe "rational" was the wrong term. Perhaps I should have proposed that the "conscious" self (pilot) should retake control from the "subconscious" (autopilot). That's what Cognitive Rational Therapy (or Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy) attempts to do. Most people think their conscious mind is in control of all they do, when in fact most of our behaviors operate on cruise-control, so we don't have to pay attention to what's going on. When the "pilot" is weakened by stress (doubts, depression, drugs, etc), it's easier to "veg-out" and offload your responsibilities to a mindless machine ("let go, and let God"). But, even when he is handicapped, he needs to see the danger signs that "autopilot" is about to get him into trouble, and know when to take-back the controls. After disaster has been averted, he'll be happy to still be alive.

Depression overwhelms the conscious mind with pain & paranoia, causing the pilot to cede control to negative emotions. So, it takes great effort to resist giving-in to the demon on the shoulder, urging you to give-up on life. That's why suicide is often viewed as the easy-way-out. It also takes heroic (or Stoic) Character to take charge of a bad situation. :cool:


"people are rarely emotionally affected by external events but rather by their thinking about such events" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_emotive_behavior_therapy

"for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" ___Shakespeare, Hamlet
[actually, it's automatic thinking that makes in-appropriate knee-jerk responses]

"Precursors of certain fundamental aspects of rational emotive behavior therapy have been identified in ancient philosophical traditions, particularly Stoicism".
The ultimate goal may be eudaimonia, but calm cognitive self-control is the method.

I see too much of Frantic Freddie Nietzsche in this thread. The man who lambasted the Stoics and yet shamelessly borrowed from them the concept of amor fati, which he then seemingly failed to accept (being too much a devotee of Dionysus, perhaps, as opposed to Apollo).

Nobody is born a nihilist, I think. Nietzsche was perpetually disappointed in us, and makes a poor guide to life, to living.

And what else can you tell a person wrestling with a spiritual crisis but some version of 'get over it.' — jellyfish

I don't think that "get over it" is the right thing to say. I mean, that's pretty callous. Of course, you don't really want to talk about it with many people, do you? They won't understand.

You don't just get over an existential or spiritual crisis; you have to get through it. There is no way over, under or around it. We arrive at points in our lives when the truth, as we are understanding and perceiving it, is so raw, so devastating that... fill in the blank: life becomes meaningles; man's inhumanity to man creats a continual holocaust; the brainwashing, utter stupidity and lack of authenticity make it impossible to relate to relate to people, etc., etc.

In converse, feelings of existential dread or horror, ontophobia, not only make us feel awful about things that we would otherwise be able to accept and live with or move past, but also floods our minds with clouds of stress and drowns us in despair, so we are functionally less able to think clearly and act decisively. — Pfhorrest

It's true, but sometimes it's there and we can't pretend it's not. And at least for me, it takes time to snap out of.

:cool:

...a rather disengaged citizen. — dazed

Listen to Horace before Nietzsche, and others. Ode I. 11, Tu ne quaesieris (Do not ask):

Leucon, no one's allowed to know his fate
Not you, not me. Don't ask, don't hunt for answers
In tea leaves or palms. Be patient with whatever comes.
This could be our last winter, there could be many more,
Pounding the Tuscan Sea on these rocks.
Do what you must, be wise, cut your vines,
And forget about hope. Time goes running,
Even as we talk. Take the present
The future's no one's affair.

Two thousand years and we're none the wiser.