”Our time in this inevitable but temporary life is brief, so what is there to do, but to enjoy it while it lasts.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I am not convinced by the inevitability argument.
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There’s more than one answer to that:
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1. If you’re a Materialist, then, according to that metaphysics that you believe in, your life wasn’t inevitable. But, in the unparsimoniously brute-fact physical universe, randomness of events was inevitable, maybe with the generation of biological life on some planet, and a randomness of resulting lives, which turns out to have resulted in your life.
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If it’s like that, instead of your life having been inevitable, does that really give us more to productively protest?
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Your life is still without reason, purpose, meaning or agency—an accomplished reasonless fact. What good can it do, and in fact, what can it even mean, to protest it or complain about it if it’s agentless and reasonless?
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2. Even under Materialism, maybe there’s an infinite physically-inter-related multiverse, containing infinitely-many universes with every possible system of physical-laws, in every possible configuration and state, in which case it’s inevitable that there would happen somewhere the life that is your life.
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3. To believe in Materialism is to believe in an unparsimonious brute-fact, an unverifiable, unfalsifiable proposition. …and, more generally, to believe in a metaphysics/ontology. I don’t believe in one, and if someone does, then ask them what they mean by context-less, unqualified, objective “Exist”, “There is…”, and “Real”.
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In my previous reply in this thread, I quoted Faraday, and mentioned (as a truism) the logical structural relation among a system of abstract implications that are to some extent about eachother and about some of the same propositions, and about some of the same hypothetical things that the propositions are about.
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Among the infinitely-many logical-systems that I spoke of in that previous post, it’s inevitable that they include a system in which the logical and mathematical structural-relations are those of your experience of your physical surroundings….without any claim of their objective, unqualified, context-less “real-ness” or “existence”.
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Of course, as a truism, there are your life and surroundings in their own context, where the meaning of “There is…” is contextually limited.
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Maybe a good briefer reply would be to just point out that, unless objective, absolute, contextless, unqualified “Exist”, “There is…”, and “Real” mean something, then your life (as a hypothetical logical system that can be called an “experience-story”) is inevitable as one of the infinitely-many hypothetical systems of inter-referring abstract implications.
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So, all of this has been in answer to your saying that you aren’t convinced about the inevitability of your life.
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The problem is that it is not always on our power to enjoy life. I think the optimistic position that everyone could enjoy life is part of the Just World fallacy.
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Of course not all of life is enjoyable. That’s what I mean when I refer to our inevitable “Shit!” moments.
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I often find myself saying (to myself, but sometimes to others) “Shit!”. …or “I’m so tired.” (…not referring to physical tiredness, but to being tired of all that happens to us.)
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It can be because of some local hardship such as minor physical discomfort (such as being out on a freezing winter day, or stubbing a toe, etc.), or social discomfort, or anxiety or insecurity (both of which I consider normal and appropriate), or regret about past mistakes (whether recent or long-distant).
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Absurdists emphasize the absurd drastic difference or contrast between human wants and needs, vs the things that actually have happened and continue to happen.
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(Kentucky Buddhist Ken Keyes emphasizes that we have likes, but needn’t believe that we have needs, or even wants.)
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I’ve learned much from the Antinatalists and Absurdists here. What they say, and what I’ve read from Absurdists confirms my own sentiments, when I say:
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I didn’t ask or choose to be born, and I didn’t have a chance.
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I like the Absurdist response to that fact.
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(I don’t know all of Absurdists’ beliefs, and I well might not agree with all of them (e.g. many of them are Materialists), but they’re right about some significant things.)
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I just found it difficult to embrace something so unjust.
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I don't either.
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Unjust, of course. But without agency there’s no one to blame.
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Inevitability isn’t anyone’s fault.
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It seems better to be a psychopath narcissist where one might only be concerned with ones own desires.
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That’s still unnecessarily taking it seriously, taking it up, and acting it out…and digging oneself deeper in it.
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Participating in it hardly sounds to me like something that would do oneself any good.
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Michael Ossipoff
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10 Su
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0001 UTC