salTUR

salTUR t1_j68xf6w wrote

Reply to comment by lizzolz in Cosmic nihilism, existential joy | Human consciousness, and our need for meaning in a meaningless world, is the source of both tragic pessimism and the intense joy we take in life. by IAI_Admin

I don't think mind-body duality makes life meaningless by itself, I just think it helps create the conditions for nihilism. It causes human beings to think of their subjective experiences as something separate and removed from the rest of reality even though those experiences are as inherent to reality as anything else. It's easy to drop into nihilism when the fundamental framework you use to think about your place in the world is built on the assumption that you're somehow removed from it. Descarte's mind-body duality is just another aspect of modernity that further removed the Western World from the innate, transcendent experience of being. Seeking objectivity in all things inhibits our ability to simply experience reality.

Jose Ortega says it best: "I am I and my circumstance."

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salTUR t1_j677s3z wrote

Reply to comment by VersaceEauFraiche in Cosmic nihilism, existential joy | Human consciousness, and our need for meaning in a meaningless world, is the source of both tragic pessimism and the intense joy we take in life. by IAI_Admin

At the risk of potentially sounding like an early 70's hippy pseudo philosopher . . .

I feel like anyone who thinks that life is inherently meaningless needs to unplug from social media and withdraw as much as they can from the modern machine. Maybe they should even try some psychedlic substances (in a responbile way). The notion of human life being inherently "meaningless" is a thoroughly modern idea, and it's exacerbated by our consumerist tendencies toward excessive (or even exclusive) digital interaction.

Before the advent of existentialism, you would be the odd-one-out if you posited that life had no inherent meaning. The subjective life experience is so full of inherent meaning. The only way it's not is if you believe in a mind-body duality (a la Descarte) that separates the subjective observer from the objective observed. In truth, our subjective minds are a part of objective reality. What you feel matters. All you'll ever have is what you feel. Just because we can't find an objective "proof" that the universe was made specifically for mankind doesn't mean the subjective experience of that universe is automatically devoid of intrinsic meaning. The more we distance ourselves from a natural state of being, the more compromised of meaning our subjective experience becomes.

I believe nihilism is only explicable when viewed as a product of the modern dynamic - Baudrillard's "simulacra and simulation" thesis. We're so thoroughly distracted from a natural state of being that we have spent centuries now bending over backwards looking for a reason for existing when a reason for existing was never required. The universe is not a question that needs to be answered! The universe simply is. And so are we.

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salTUR t1_itt5vkj wrote

Reply to comment by dgblarge in The philosophy of Martin Heidegger who argued that the Technological mindset has destroyed our relationship to the world so that Nature is seen as so many resources to exploit. He presents an alternative: a poetic relationship to the world by thelivingphilosophy

It's possible that this opinion about social media is shared by many, many more people than one might expect. We only hear from the humans who use it. Maybe a mass exodus from social media is in our best interest. Including from Reddit.

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