I'm one of those a-holes that gets all ponderous every time I get a sense/scale of the Atlantic ocean. We recently visited the Outer Banks, Kitty Hawk to be exact, and the horizon line of that body of blue water always shrinks me. I become nothing, well, at least insignificant. Now trust me, I don't always need to see the vastness of the ocean to feel this way. But this vastness always guarantees this feeling.
Here's the rub though. I don't see/feel it as necessarily negative.
Now this ethos that our insignificance, our meaninglessness, our absurdity (if you will, and I know you will) is unabashedly, unaduleratedly (neologism), categorically negative...is well, debatable.
Wow, hot take to challenge a premise. So bold.
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| (This body of water goes all the way to Africa) |
Hear me out twice.
"Yeah but, I've gotta find meaning."
(BTW, I think the voice of the alien IS Woody Allen - if you listen close, before the alien says, "Listen, you're not the missionary type..." there is the tongue click Woody does.)
You, yes you, and me, we've got to find meaning.
BUT we frame it all wrong. We contextualize it WAY out of proportion. Meaning is a math problem. We need meaning during our paltry existence. We need meaning for 70 years, if we're lucky.
What we don't require is COSMIC meaning.
Holy fuck I love Woody Allen.
You, yes you, and me, and Woody, need meaning in Brooklyn, and Barberton, and Akron, and Athens, and Rhode Island. We need meaning with Barb, and Mom, and Dad, and Jr. and the cat, and the dog. We need meaning "while we're here."
I know, trust me, it is tempting to seek the cosmic. Like a moth to the flame it is.
But reign it in. Bring it back. Finitude my friends.
What Woody Allen has done, and what I'm trying to do, is create my meaning, create my purpose, create my significance...HERE and NOW.
The existentialists hammered this home, we are responsible for our choices...even though, cosmically, they are pointless.
Just recently I saw this here: https://www.npr.org/2023/08/20/1194628971/religion-atheism-chaplin
But I think that the absence of God can be really beautiful. It means it's our responsibility to take care of each other on this earth. And everything courageous and beautiful that we do is on us. And so I see my atheism very much as an act of optimism, that it is our job to make this world as good of a place as possible for as many people as possible.
God = cosmic.
God is a context problem. God is a scale problem. God is a ratio problem.
So I shrink on the shore of the Atlantic. So I'm insignificant under the moon. So I'm pointless in an expanding universe.
But what is that my business!?
I'm not going to stop doing my homework...and neither is Alvy Singer. I'm going to get up, participate, and be responsible for my meaning, finite though it be.
Will you join me?
I could use the company.
