The Absurdity of Existence

chiknsld

Considering that there could very well just be an existential plane of nothingness, involving no mathematics or random evolution of organic molecules. No mysterious dark matter expanding an infinite universe. No hopes of interstellar travel, no expeditions to the moon and neighbor planets. No satellite orbits, no dangerous solar flares. No red giants and blue dwarfs, no comets and asteroid clouds, no extraterrestrial visitors implanting lifeless planets with exotic DNA.

No viruses and blood diseases. No oceans and beaches. No rollercoasters, no battleships, no kites flying in the sky, no malaria, no brain-eating infections, no famine and poverty and homelessness, dying children, no common cold.

No Julius Caesar, no Greek mythology, no astrology, no Copernicus, no battle between good and evil, no yin and yang, no soccer moms doing yoga on Sundays, no pets and snacks, no pools and grass, no rain, no dark clouds, no car collisions, no history, science, language, art, theology, socialism, politics, capitalism, no dictators, no protests, no genocide, no endangered species.

Just nothing.

Why is there existence at all? This is truly absurd. This is the absurdity of existence. There is no reason that existence should exist. There should just be nothing. Nothing existing for all of eternity. Nothing on top of nothing on top of nothing...on top of nothing. And there should never be existence after that.

That is what truly makes sense. Existence does not make sense. It is merely a ball of crumpled mathematics trying to make sense of itself. The idea of a mad genius with nothing to do. A truly bored genius that with the flick of his finger says, "Today, I will start a world", and this world will be logical and have rules and laws, and there will be up and down, and far far far far far down the line there will be a tiny blue planet with people dying and mating and playing and crying and eating and defecating. And in their tiny pile of waste, they shall have little heroes and champions that everyone can look to with aspiration and admiration.

This is the absurdity of existence. It makes no sense. Tis the crumpled paper ball of a mad genius, bored and lonely, ruminating math equations to himself for eons of time, no longer able to laugh at the pithy jokes of his celestial goddesses.

And now, we casual debaters having tried for millennia to solve the trite existential dilemma, compliant, defeated, failed, beaten, misused, war-torn and servile. We have no dignity, no honor, no hope, no pleasure, no joy...Yes, it has come full circle, now we truly do have nothing.

How will we ever justify our existence? Our entire existence is absurd, it does not make sense, logically, mathematically, scientifically, historically, reasonably, ontologically, teleologically, phenomenologically, nor illogically for that matter. Even absurdity fails to truly capture the utter uselessness of existence.

What progress is there in an infinite universe? What change? What desire? What creation?

We are walking, talking, vermin infested, disease-ridden mammals. We fight, kill, argue, steal, mistreat, persecute, torment, and shame each other, every day, every week, every month and every year, until we all die. It's a rat race to immortality, a stewing pot of opinion, belief, superstition, lifestyle gurus, fake icons, pathetic soothsayers, and attention-seeking mavericks.

This existence truly offers nothing substantial for any life that it is plagued to bear, or that is plagued to bear it. We are prisoners of illogical nature, of discordance, hopelessness, agony, despair and destruction.

An existence born of some strange-wielding, corporeal mathematics. It's magic. We are all stuck in this forsaken magic. A self-created mathematics that somehow spawns tiny little particles of energy with stupid electrons and protons and positrons, and nucleons, all the known leptons, and now gravitons, invisible bosons. And quantum fluctuations and absurdity.

Angelo Cannata

Then?

Philosophim

Yes, I've had that line of reasoning before as well. I'll respond more in depth when I have time later, but here I fall into agreement with you in the logical sense. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12098/a-first-cause-is-logically-necessary/p1

Because it is logically necessary that there eventually arrive something in causality which has no prior cause, then it serves to reason that there can be no rules as to why, or why that thing should, or should not have been. It simply exists. As such, our entire universe is here, because it is. I DO believe we can obtain a morality from this, but again, I'll need more time to write it up than I have now.

Ciceronianus

Things just are. 'Nuff said.

Banno

The chooks laid two eggs for my breakfast. That'll do.

apokrisis

A self-created mathematics that somehow spawns tiny little particles of energy with stupid electrons and protons and positrons, and nucleons, all the known leptons, and now gravitons, invisible bosons. And quantum fluctuations and absurdity. — chiknsld

You keep mentioning maths and then just as fast dismissing it. Couldn’t the cosmos have mathematical necessity and thus corporeal inevitability?

There are so many reasons, for example, why three spatial dimensions are the self-optimising outcome if there is any dimensional structure at all.

Only in 3D do the number of directions of rotation match the number of directions of translation. And thus only in 3D do we have the closure of Noether’s theorem and Newtonian mechanics where spin and straight line motion are “inertial” - an intrinsic symmetry or invariance of the geometry.

Meanwhile in other news….

The chooks laid two eggs for my breakfast. That'll do. — Banno

…chickens come before eggs! Another deep metaphysical paradox neatly solved.

Tom Storm

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is already within yourself, your way of thinking. — Marcus Aurelius

Banno

↪Tom Storm

Yes! But not being bombed by Russians helps.

180 Proof

Why is there existence at all? This is truly absurd. This is the absurdity of existence. There is no reason that existence should exist. — chiknsld

The "absurdity" comes from the demand for, or expectation of, there to be a "reason that existence should exist", and is especially so because, upon reflection it's clear, the only "reason for existence" which does not precipitate an infinite regress of reasons for reasons ad absurdum is that there is not any such "reason that existence should exist". Furthermore, It's absurd both to deny this ineluctable limit of reason and to devalue the indispensability of reason on account of this existential limit (e.g. platonism, finalism, objective idealism, fideism, super-naturalism, subjectivism, magical thinking, etc).

Banno

↪180 Proof

If any such explanation be given, one can ask that that explanation be explained... and so on.

One can stop where one likes. I stop at the eggs. They made a decent omelet. That'll do for a meaning of life, until I get hungry again.

schopenhauer1

Things just are. 'Nuff said. — Ciceronianus

And thus ends philosophy.

schopenhauer1

The chooks laid two eggs for my breakfast. That'll do. — Banno

Even pragmatism is a role you decide to play. But you are on a philosophy forum, apparently the eggs just weren't enough. Mans' main problem.

schopenhauer1

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is already within yourself, your way of thinking. — Marcus Aurelius

And yet, the fact I exist at all was because two other people weren't happy enough with themselves.

schopenhauer1

↪chiknsld

At all levels, the systems of life - from sociopolitical systems to solar systems - are repugnant and should be negated as MALIGNANTLY USELESS.
Fact is, nothing can justify our existence. Existence of any flavor is not only unjustified, it is useless, malignantly so, and has nothing to recommend it over nonexistence. A person’s addiction to existence is understandable as a telltale of the fear of nonexistence, but one’s psychology as a being that already exists does not justify existence as a condition to be perpetuated but only explains why someone would want to perpetuate it. For the same reason, even eternal bliss in a holy hereafter is unjustified, since it is just another form of existence, another instance in which the unjustifiable is perpetuated. That anyone should have a bias for heaven over nonexistence should by rights be condemned as hedonistic by the same people who scoff at Schopenhauer for complaining about the disparity between “the effort and the reward” in human life. People may believe they can choose any number of things. But they cannot choose to undo their existence, leaving them to live and die as puppets who have had an existence forced upon them whose edicts they must follow. If you are already among the existent, anything you do will be unjustified and MALIGNANTLY USELESS. — Ligotti, Conspiracy Against the Human Race

Banno

↪schopenhauer1

You accusing me of pragmatism? Wanna step outside to discuss this? Or take your insult back.

apokrisis

Even pragmatism is a role you decide to play. — schopenhauer1

You must mean instrumentalism, or Jamesian pragmatism at a pinch.

The proper answer to the chicken and egg riddle, as any Peircean knows, is first came the pansemiosis, then came the biosemiosis. First there was the entropy gradient, then the genetic code that entrained it. :wink:

schopenhauer1

You accusing me of pragmatism? Wanna step outside to discuss this? Or take your insult back. — Banno

Surely not. I mean the degraded form we use today when we say, "That is pragmatic".

dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations. — Google

Banno

↪schopenhauer1

Hmm. I'll take that as an apology.

schopenhauer1

The proper answer to the chicken and egg riddle, as any Peircean knows, is first came the pansemiosis, then came the biosemiosis. First there was the entropy gradient, then the genetic code that entrained it. — apokrisis

But humans can choose not to bring more life into the world. So they can choose nothingness in terms of a POV that another would otherwise take on. We are a species that can choose nothingness, contra the rest of the universe, perhaps, which can't help but follow its necessary path, coupled, with its contingent interactions.

chiknsld

You keep mentioning maths and then just as fast dismissing it. Couldn’t the cosmos have mathematical necessity and thus corporeal inevitability? — apokrisis

Well we are here aren't we? :snicker:

There are so many reasons, for example, why three spatial dimensions are the self-optimising outcome if there is any dimensional structure at all.

Only in 3D do the number of directions of rotation match the number of directions of translation. And thus only in 3D do we have the closure of Noether’s theorem and Newtonian mechanics where spin and straight line motion are “inertial” - an intrinsic symmetry or invariance of the geometry. — apokrisis

Fascinating :)

apokrisis

Well we are here aren't we? — chiknsld

Yep. There is something. And so that is a fairly severe constraint on talk about “absolute nothingness”. We can already rule that out, leaving us just with relative nothingness as something that might possibly need explaining.

180 Proof

↪Banno

:smirk:

apokrisis

But humans can choose not to bring more life into the world. So they can choose nothingness in terms of a POV that another would otherwise take on. We are a species that can choose nothingness, contra the rest of the universe, perhaps, which can't help but follow its necessary path, coupled, with its contingent interactions. — schopenhauer1

Sure, you can choose oblivion I guess. But that would be a different thread - the absurdity of non-existence (as a “choice”, when all you have to do is wait - entropy may take its sweet time, but it will track you down eventually!)

180 Proof

But humans can choose not to bring more life into the world. — schopenhauer1

This is absurd, of course, because even human extinction neither solves nor, for that matter, even addresses the problem of suffering (i.e. entropy).

Agent Smith

@schopenhauer1

But humans can choose not to bring more life into the world.
— schopenhauer1
This is absurd, of course, because even human extinction neither solves nor, for that matter, even addresses the problem of suffering (i.e. entropy). — 180 Proof

Maybe the more people there are, higher the entropy.

chiknsld

there is not any such "reason that existence should exist" — 180 Proof

No, there certainly is not. Perhaps one day there will be, and that shall change the whole of history of this very discourse. Looking back, we might see that it was not all in vain after all.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is already within yourself, your way of thinking.
— Marcus Aurelius — Tom Storm

Seems sensible enough, indeed.

At all levels, the systems of life - from sociopolitical systems to solar systems - are repugnant and should be negated as MALIGNANTLY USELESS.

Fact is, nothing can justify our existence. Existence of any flavor is not only unjustified, it is useless, malignantly so, and has nothing to recommend it over nonexistence. A person’s addiction to existence is understandable as a telltale of the fear of nonexistence, but one’s psychology as a being that already exists does not justify existence as a condition to be perpetuated but only explains why someone would want to perpetuate it. For the same reason, even eternal bliss in a holy hereafter is unjustified, since it is just another form of existence, another instance in which the unjustifiable is perpetuated. That anyone should have a bias for heaven over nonexistence should by rights be condemned as hedonistic by the same people who scoff at Schopenhauer for complaining about the disparity between “the effort and the reward” in human life. People may believe they can choose any number of things. But they cannot choose to undo their existence, leaving them to live and die as puppets who have had an existence forced upon them whose edicts they must follow. If you are already among the existent, anything you do will be unjustified and MALIGNANTLY USELESS. — Ligotti, Conspiracy Against the Human Race

Surely it is easy to say that we can always go back to nonexistence, but there is no way to prove this is so. We could come from an entirely different lifeform or plane of existence before having entered into this one. Aside from that small chance though, It is certainly true that we only know of this hemisphere of reality.

How could we ever wager on anything other than this bodily realm of natural reality. Though when we look at the minerals of life it seems to be entirely made of the most strictest of chemical reactions. From a distance it may give the appearance of artwork, but we are far from a wireless society; the cables are always showing.

chiknsld

Yep. There is something. And so that is a fairly severe constraint on talk about “absolute nothingness”. We can already rule that out, leaving us just with relative nothingness as something that might possibly need explaining. — apokrisis

The mere fact that existence persists beyond the cold and dark, empty void tells us that we know little about its mysterious origin. Our intuition is that it defies all logic. Therefore of course nothingness can never be taken from the proverbial table. It is just the same that we cannot imagine how existence relies on self-creation, or otherwise an inexplicable permanency, as it is its separation from nothingness. And of course a third party will always be the consolation.

"The absurdity of existence" is an exhortation that nothingness is proper. The culprit is thus not of nothingness but rather of interjection. Existence requires us to return back the perfection which was borrowed. Life is a chance to declare innocence.

Agent Smith

problem of suffering (i.e. entropy). — 180 Proof

:up: Très bien!

schopenhauer1

This is absurd, of course, because even human extinction neither solves nor, for that matter, even addresses the problem of suffering (i.e. entropy). — 180 Proof

But why should the human predicament care about the impersonal entropic suffering? It seems perfectly reasonable that a human is concerned with human suffering and recognizing its source and stopping its perpetuation (onto yet another).

schopenhauer1

Sure, you can choose oblivion I guess. But that would be a different thread - the absurdity of non-existence (as a “choice”, when all you have to do is wait - entropy may take its sweet time, but it will track you down eventually!) — apokrisis

Same as 180, humans are the only beings (we know of) that can make a choice of perpetuating a POV of the absurdity. Entropy may have created our species, but it is us who choose to keep it going, each instance of procreation.

schopenhauer1

Maybe the more people there are, higher the entropy. — Agent Smith

True enough, but mere existence need not be mere self-aware existence. We are not only being, but willing/becoming creatures with POV. But we are not only that, but self-aware versions of willing creatures with a POV. We are two steps removed from merely being in the, “just being there” sense of a universe that is something rather than nothing.

The Absurdity of Existence

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