Purpose & Purposelessness
Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2012 3:55 am
Hey there, it's been a while since I've been here. This time I'm here to (eventually) talk about purpose and purposelessness in human behaviour.
One of the premises I'm starting from is that science cannot give us purpose or values. Science can certainly help our values thrive, but fundamentally, no, science cannot give us purpose. At the very core of meaning and purpose, science is only there to fill in details as we see fit.
If you disagree on this point, this is not the thread to voice your opinion. This issue has been brought up, undoubtedly, in dozens of threads on this very forum. If you wish to thrash it out one more time, go for it, but not here please.
In relation to purpose, what I wish draw your attention to is human suffering. And no, I'm not talking about the gross examples of human suffering that Sam Harris might bring up in his ethical thought experiments. Genocide, injury in combat, homicide - these are all horrible things, but their horribleness is so obvious that I'm going to assume you all know better than to engage in these things.
Instead, the suffering I would like to focus on is "psychological suffering", or more specifically, the tension of anxiety and despair most of us feel to varying degrees.
It's my contention that these emotions of anxiety and despair are, in the average person, of great intensity. In fact, the unpleasantness of inwardness is of such a high tension that it provokes a potent fear response, and it is this fear that acts as the cause of the much grosser ethical transgression of homocide and war.
In other words, it's less stressful to die in military combat than it is to look inward at one's own consciousness.
The levels of anxiety and despair suppressed in the average person have a potential to send one's entire life into catastrophe. On some level, the average person knows this, at least vaguely, and it is from this apprehensiveness (an escape from anxiety) that human beings organize the innumerable absurdities that define our daily existence.
It is from this premise that I have established my life purpose: to document the process of "overcoming anxiety." I am not the first to do this, and each individual will vary in how he documents this process of overcoming. The ideal way to document this process would be through writing, speech and daily conduct. Daily conduct is largely about "walking the walk" and not just indulging in words.
Aside from writing and speech, one could use the more diluted forms of art - painting, music and poetry. I think most of histories greatest art (didactic art) is born out of an exploratory inwardness and overcoming, conquest of anxiety.
I'm going to stop there. If anyone would like to discuss this or take it further, then by all means.
One of the premises I'm starting from is that science cannot give us purpose or values. Science can certainly help our values thrive, but fundamentally, no, science cannot give us purpose. At the very core of meaning and purpose, science is only there to fill in details as we see fit.
If you disagree on this point, this is not the thread to voice your opinion. This issue has been brought up, undoubtedly, in dozens of threads on this very forum. If you wish to thrash it out one more time, go for it, but not here please.
In relation to purpose, what I wish draw your attention to is human suffering. And no, I'm not talking about the gross examples of human suffering that Sam Harris might bring up in his ethical thought experiments. Genocide, injury in combat, homicide - these are all horrible things, but their horribleness is so obvious that I'm going to assume you all know better than to engage in these things.
Instead, the suffering I would like to focus on is "psychological suffering", or more specifically, the tension of anxiety and despair most of us feel to varying degrees.
It's my contention that these emotions of anxiety and despair are, in the average person, of great intensity. In fact, the unpleasantness of inwardness is of such a high tension that it provokes a potent fear response, and it is this fear that acts as the cause of the much grosser ethical transgression of homocide and war.
In other words, it's less stressful to die in military combat than it is to look inward at one's own consciousness.
The levels of anxiety and despair suppressed in the average person have a potential to send one's entire life into catastrophe. On some level, the average person knows this, at least vaguely, and it is from this apprehensiveness (an escape from anxiety) that human beings organize the innumerable absurdities that define our daily existence.
It is from this premise that I have established my life purpose: to document the process of "overcoming anxiety." I am not the first to do this, and each individual will vary in how he documents this process of overcoming. The ideal way to document this process would be through writing, speech and daily conduct. Daily conduct is largely about "walking the walk" and not just indulging in words.
Aside from writing and speech, one could use the more diluted forms of art - painting, music and poetry. I think most of histories greatest art (didactic art) is born out of an exploratory inwardness and overcoming, conquest of anxiety.
I'm going to stop there. If anyone would like to discuss this or take it further, then by all means.