The Atlantic Ocean

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.

(This body of water goes all the way to Africa)

Hear me out.

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.

Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way by Kieran Setiya

 

Your Kindle Notes For:

Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way

Kieran Setiya

Last accessed on Monday December 12, 2022

There is no cure for the human condition.

Note: No salvation either

 

It’s wrong to justify your own or others’ suffering, to mute pity or protest in that way.

Note: Only in a relative sense; there are no moral absolutes.

 

Our task is to face adversity as we should—and here truth is the only means.

Note: Even relative truth. "Death is the only fact we have." - James Baldwin

 

The flaw in Aristotle’s view is not that he draws this distinction, which makes perfect sense, but that he concentrates on the life you should want to live, if you could live any life at all—not on the realistic range of good-enough lives.

Note: Relativism!

 

 

debating the philosopher Peter Singer, who believes that parents should be able to “euthanize” infants born with her condition. Her reply to Singer is a pithy expression of my argument. “Are we ‘worse off’?” Johnson asks. “I don’t think so. Not in any meaningful sense. There are too many variables.”

Note: As Hume says, we can never account for all the variables.

 

The projected bliss of painlessness is accessible only to those in pain: it’s a finkish experience, one that recedes just as you hope to reach it; you are missing less than you think.

Note: Heaven is a finkish concept!

 

What makes loneliness bad for us, then, is not that solitude subverts our self-awareness. It’s bad for us because we are social animals for whom society is not a given. The harm of loneliness springs from human nature, not the abstract nature of the self.

Note: Im starting to understand Jungian "collective"

 

When one is dead, one’s activities are circumscribed.

Note: "One" isnt. There are no activities of one because one ceases to exist.

 

(It is a puzzle, on reflection, how one could lay unqualified claim to land, or sea, or sky, whatever the needs of people to come.)

Note: Chief Seattle: who owns the sky?

 

A protest may not change the world, but it adds its fraction to the odds of change.

Note: The beauty of relativism

 

Even the final generation can find value in their lives.

Note: No, they don’t FIND value, or discover value; they CREATE value...sculpt and mold it...

 

We shouldn’t welcome imminent extinction; but we shouldn’t let it lead us into nihilism.

Note: I don’t brood over death, I’m too busy living. Leo Buscaglia

 

The afterlife it calls for is collective. The meaning of life—the truth that tells us how to feel about the whole residual cosmos—would lie in our halting, perhaps perpetual, progress toward justice in this world.

Note: Tell the Abrahamic religions.

 

The virtue of hoping well is a matter of belief, of standing with or searching for the truth, attending to what’s possible.

Note: What to do when truth is relative?

 

There’s no surviving death by natural means: it takes something transcendent, like reincarnation or the will of God. If you’re not religious, you can’t hope to live forever. Nor can you hope your loved ones will. It still makes sense to grieve their deaths: a form of rational despair. Each relationship is archived, each ability lost, one at a time or all at once but finally and forever. In the end, it seems, there is no hope: the lights go out.

Note: Death is the only fact we have. James Baldwin

Your Kindle Notes For: The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think by Robert Pantano

 Your Kindle Notes For:

The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think

Robert Pantano

Last accessed on Thursday January 26, 2023

35 Note(s)

A helpful philosophy first realizes and admits the sad, troublesome, and often tragic conditions of our life, and then attempts to grapple with and overcome them so that we might live in spite of those conditions.

Note: "With," not "in spite of."

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In the dirt of life, it is up to us to plant the seeds, watch the flowers grow, and enjoy their beauty, even in spite of the fact that we know that they will die.

Note: A fellow thanatist I see.

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Platonic idealism, Plato would separate the realm of truth from the material world, distinguishing the world of things as we perceive them from the world of things as they really are.

Note: Yuck

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Plato creates the distinction between the shadows and the objects they are cast by to parallel the Forms and the material world we experience—how we are all caved inside our own senses, restricted from and ignorant of the true forms of things.

Note: And we begin the problem of parallelism

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‘Human’ is part and parcel of nature, and so, how could humans act in any other way? How could manmade material or action ever not be natural?

Note: The dichotomy of dichotomies

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we tend to extract our identities out of our beliefs and ideas, and thus, our minds work very hard to hold onto them.

Note: "extract" our identities

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Psychologically, the individual is able to think and consider everything beyond the mere urges and physical conditions of their body and environment.

Note: I disagree

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Once one has done everything that is rationally and realistically preventative, one should work to revert their attention back to the present,

Note: What is rationally and realistically preventative???

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we must live not as if we are one of the ones who will live into old age, but rather, one of the ones who might not. Only in such a case can the finitude of life begin to reveal itself.

Note: Christianity prevents this en masse

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In a lot of ways, for me, philosophy is like music. It is often less about what it says and more about how it sounds and makes me feel. I don’t come away from listening to a beautiful piece of music having learned anything concrete or academic about the world, but nonetheless, with the right song, I often feel I have learned all there is to know.

Note: Just a killer capture here.

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with a limited intelligence, like our own, comes a limited ability to see the larger picture of which we are truly a part of.

Note: PERSPECTIVE! Any moment you take a point of views, other views are blocked.

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Building on his interpretation of Kant, Schopenhauer essentially suggested that the world as we know and experience it is exclusively a representation created by our mind through our senses and forms of cognition.

Note: I prefer "synergy."

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The pursuit of universal objectivity or meaning in the world beyond this one took the spirit out of the present, earthly human experience of meaning, which is inherently subjective, independent, and expressive.

Note: Today, it is a public health issue. Embrace relativism.

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And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

Note: Tina Fey: say yes.

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The Trouble with Being Born, he discusses how since death necessarily follows from birth, it is actually the memory of our birth that is the tragic problem of life, and not death in and of itself.

Note | Page: 109

Consider The Worm At The Core.

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The process of forming meaning, it seems, can perhaps not be escaped,

Note: Meaning and values are subjective; built in with our human experience. What would experience be without meaning? The issue is lack of objective meaning.

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Cursed with the gift of consciousness, we are all inescapably forced into a beautiful confrontation of the void and the absurd inevitability of creating meaning and somethingness out of it.

Note: This is existentialism, not nihilism.

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How many Kafkas have lived and died without ever sharing their voice with the world;

Note:But he did share his voice w/the world. Just the written voice.

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Kafkaesque refers to the bureaucratic nature of capitalistic, judicial, and government systems—the sort of complex, unclear processes in which no one individual ever really has a comprehensive grasp of what is going on, and the system doesn’t really care.

Note: Maybe Kafka is the or a key to our understanding or excusing of anything as SYSTEMIC.

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To have been born into a faulty family, a bad place in the world, or a weak body or brain; to live and die having never recognized one’s potential; to have been stuck in a bureaucratic cog of a business organization or government system; to have felt the guilt and anxiety of existence for no clear reason; we have all, at least at times, experienced the Kafkaesque.

Note: Geworfenheit

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We each have our little flickers of time here.

Note: Consider geologic time

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Unlike anything else in the known universe, we are able to consciously observe, consider, reason, and act. As a result of our unique abilities, we ask ourselves why.

Note: A being such that its being is in question

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In the acceptance of our absurd human experience, we realize that the point is not to eliminate absurdity or find and defend some ultimate truth, but rather, it is to be conscious and appreciative of the things within the absurdity—to look for, find, and create things that are interesting and personally meaningful.

Note: And what do I say to the christian? Yes you can choose your paradigm, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum - there are social and public health repercussions.

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Is it even possible to live well without being able to live well with others (in at least some sense)?

Note: No. Psychology (and biology ans sociology) show us we are social beings through and through.

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But it could be argued that a certain compassion is still applicable even if a conflicting response is necessary.

Note: Carrying this out in praxis is a Herculean task.

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This problem is made even more difficult when trying to understand what is experienced in other people’s minds, which is the concept known as the explanatory gap. And so, even here in this simple, everyday example, we cannot confirm that anybody is objectively right.

Note: A reason to embrace relativism?

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consequently, is not attempting to think and talk in generally true, objective terms also impossible? Not useless, but impossible in the absolute sense. If we cannot arrive at any grand, fundamental, objective truths in life, but we must build all conclusions, ideas, and discourse on top of some sort of sufficiently shared subjective foundation, then this places discussion, thinking, and believing on a constantly shifting, unstable, and wide-spanning ground of various types of subjective, ideological worldviews.

Note: Ah behold, the reason for and power of RHETORIC.

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Our wellbeing depends to some degree on the quality of our social relations,

Note: A large degree

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For Sartre, we naturally identify our sense of self through what he referred to as the look, which essentially refers to the experience of knowingly being in other people’s gaze or perception. In a sort of self-reflective function of consciousness, Sartre argued that a full comprehension of our self forms as a result of our perceiving that we are being perceived by others. He would refer to this construction of self as the other.

Note: The looking-glass self; the world is a mirror.

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Emerson argued that all of nature is an expression and permeation of one metaphysical essence of the universe, or God, and that we are all both the expressions and expressors of this singular oneness.

Note: Sounds like pantheism.

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systems of convention.

Note: There IS a sense of systemic!

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As a result of each generation of human offspring essentially imitating the behaviors of the previous generation (to at least some degree), an unbroken chain of psychological imitation has formed, going all the way back to the beginning of human history.

Note: ACCUMULATIVE!

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In all cases, this sort of self-realization requires an effort of radical self-acceptance;

Note: Yikes

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Becker essentially argued that all efforts toward this causa sui or heroism or immortality project are futile and destined to fail. With the belief of religious afterlives and solutions increasingly being eclipsed by modern knowledge and understanding, man finds himself unable to do anything ultimately significant or immortalizing as the universe is revealed to be utterly chaotic, indifferent, and meaningless.

Note: Entropy wins.

Existential Authenticity in Bruce Springsteen's Growin' Up

You probably don’t believe it. Bruce Springsteen and Existentialism? You’re probably furling your brow and looking askance.

To which I plead “hear me out.”

Let us understand a coupluh existential concepts right here at the ole get-go:

Authenticity - You, yes you, are more than an inescapable accident, a person born at this time in this place of these parents...oh no, much more. But how you ask? By being a being such that you, yes you, are capable of questioning what you are. You, yes you, are a being such that your being is in question. And when you, uh-huh you, question your being, you transcend, your mere facticity. Ah, the power of questioning and especially questioning the ole self. Now when you recognize your facticity and your degrees of freedom to choose your life beyond your facticity, you are being...ta-da...authentic. And this my friend is no easy task. There are pulls and tugs and roads more travelled and the avoidance of heavy lifting via Bad Faith.

Bad Faith - is denying your own freedom...to choose...and by doing so failing to take responsibility...

 for. your. life.

As the saying goes, denial isn’t just a river in Africa. Think of the denials and forfeitures over the course of your life, the cowardice, the oh so blemished humanity pepering all those years and acts. Speaking of humanity, one way we, the royal we, subtly act in bad faith is succumbing to the man. We all know the man, or in German Das Man. What you don’t know the man? C’mon, everybody who is anybody knows who the man is. Oh, you mean specifically, can I name the man? We can’t name the man because we like it that way, need it that way. The man is no one and everyone. A blend of individual and mass/mob to which we place blame for our bad faith and inauthenticity.

Das Man - the ‘they’ that serves as the amorphous part of social reality that functions to effectively displace freedom and responsibility through intangibility. Everyone is doing it...but they said it was ok...they had it out for me.

Geworfenheit - the state of being thrown, of being born in the world with no choice...at this time in this place to these parents; the specific facticity you find yourself with and from which you must, MUST!, define yourself and separate yourself with an authentic existence.

Whew!

Now the fun stuff. Neither Tony Danza nor Judith Light wrote the song Growin’ Up that appeared on the album Greeting From Asbury Park, N.J. in 1973. No, the song was penned by Bruce Springsteen.

I stood stone-like at midnight, suspended in my masquerade

I combed my hair till it was just right and commanded the night brigade

I was open to pain and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch

I strolled all alone through a fallout zone and come out with my soul untouched

Right off the bat The Boss hits us over the head and lets us know that he’s hip to the influence of Das Man - combed just right according to whom? The powerful they who determines cool hairdos. But we also know he’s open to the pain that comes with authenticity and that he faced his fears and came out untouched. Oh but then...

I hid in the clouded wrath of the crowd,

 Das Man...safety in numbers...bad faith rears its ugly head...until...

but when they said, "Sit down, " I stood up

 You go Bruce. Fuck em’. Authenticity or death!

Ooh...growin' up

The flag of piracy flew from my mast, my sails were set wing to wing

I had a jukebox graduate for first mate, she couldn't sail but she sure could sing

I pushed b-52 and bombed them with the blues with my gear set stubborn on standing

I broke all the rules, strafed my old high school, never once gave thought to landing

They want you to fall in line, oh yes they do, be a good little boy and do as you’re told but  no, Bruce isn’t down with bad faith (oh and nice shout out to aesthetically authentic music, i.e. the blues - as George Carlin said “all music is blues music.”)

I hid in the clouded warmth of the crowd, but when they said, "Come down, " I threw up

Again, ‘they’ invite you in for some nice warm safe anonymity but what does Bruce do? Vomits on them. Niiiiice.

Ooh...growin' up

I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere

They want you to clock in and clock out but Bruce, nah, months with his head in authenticity and true living

and you know it's really hard to hold your breath

I swear I lost everything I ever loved or feared

 Authenticity has its price; Bruce is willing to pay it. Are you?

I was the cosmic kid in full costume dress

Well, my feet they finally took root in the earth, but I got me a nice little place in the stars

This is so beautiful, he has transcended his facticity here and in so doing has achieved the heaven on earth status of fully authentic

And I swear I found the key to the universe in the engine of an old parked car

 Unlock it for us Bruce, show us how, unlock the universe...

I hid in the mother breast of the crowd, but when they said, "Pull down, "

A last ditch effort of das man urging Bruce to come down, land back here where it’s safe and anonymous but...

I pulled up

 Nope, heading back up to the heaven of authenticity. Who’s with me?

Ooh...growin' up

Ooh...growin' up

I Have Seen The Enemy

Ah, the ole meditation and near death experience connection. Two peas in a pod as they say.

“…the transformative effects it had on their lives…”

Actually, this is not as preposterous as it seems.

Don’t get me wrong: somebody is selling something.

But aren’t we all selling something in the end?

We are.

But consider the time-perception work of David Eagleman.

To me, Eagleman is creating a pseudo near-death experience to tell us that TIME SLOWS DOWN.

Not yet 21 years old I just missed a bad car accident and I can still remember with great detail the moments prior - the maroon colored car, my friend Jimmy Bell yelling, his hands on the dash, the field in the distance, the chrome bumper -because it seemed to be going in a slow motion.

Can Eagleman and his work lead to treatments for mental illness?

Maybe.

Maybe it can be tied to athletic performance to SLOW DOWN the opposition or the baseball or…?

You see where this is headed...MONEY.

This isn’t to say Eagleman doesn’t have altruistic intentions. He may.

That’s not really important.

What is important is our relationship with time.

Consider this sentence from Proust and The Squid: “Reading changes our lives, and our lives change our reading.”

Why should time be any different?

Time changes our lives and our lives change time.

Yes?

No?

Maybe?

Another thing I’ll never forget is my existentialism professor talking about time and how time will change for you when the doctor tells you its cancer.

Relativity isn’t the enemy folks. Be it time or ethics. Relativity is the truth that will set you free.

Time

This article from NPR about the movie Groundhog Day reminded me of my Existentialism Class where we read Heidegger's Being And Time.

I can clearly remember the prof talking about time in this sense and how it changes when your ownmost possibility (death - the possibility of you that ends the other possibilities) and you can read it in this line from the article:

But it definitely changed my relationship with time. 

We love to think of time as outside of us and unchangeable.

It isn't.

Isn't that wonderful? To know that you can change time.

There's an old Leo Buscaglia bit where he asks: what would you do if you knew you had a week to live?

Would you tick away the moments that make up a dull day? Fritter away the hours in and off-hand way?

How Much Fun Is This?

https://aeon.co/essays/how-evolutionary-biology-makes-everyone-an-existentialist

Pascal My Pal

You probably know about Pascal's Wager. If you don't, here it is in a shell of nut:

If you believe in god and turn out to be wrong - no harm no foul.
BUT, if you don't believe in god and turn out to be wrong, well then say hello to eternal damnation.

So, the safe wager, is to bet on believing in god, and that the Browns will lose.

Until now, I did not know that Pascal had any ties to existentialism.

Low and behold, thanks to William Barrett's Irrational Man, I have been corrected.

It turns out that Pascal's view of human existence and nothingness laid some major groundwork for the philosophy.

Try this on for size from Blaise:

"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished being here rather than there, why now rather than then."

Holy shit! How's that for  fragile and contingent? Sheesh, I thought Mondays were bad. Might need a cocktail tonight.

But seriously, I entitled the post Pascal My Pal because I appreciate the honesty, the brute, "it sucks but it's true so I have to say it," honesty. Honesty, when it makes you uncomfortable, when it frightens you, deep down when it's dark and you aren't tethered, trying to find not your home but a home...this is the honesty above.

Can you handle it?

The Opposite of Michelob Commercials

I’m sorry what I said back there. I hope you don’t get your big brain going on that and think that I am, existentially unhappy, because that is not the case. I think it is a matter of perspective. Kinda like the old Michelob commercials, some days are better than others. And back there, when I said that stuff, I was not happy but if you back the lens out, say more existentially, of course I am happy…and grateful. Very appreciative of what I have. Maybe just that my lack of achievements get in the way some days. Like back there when I said that stuff I was thinking about my achievements, in comparison to others and let’s be honest, I come up short. Now please don’t get your big brain going on how this relates to you. You are not a loser like me just by association. Well again, loser is not in an existential sense, just in comparison to everyone we know. I mean sure we could take into account people that are more of a loser than me, like prisoners and terrorists but I think we both think we want to stay within the bounds of sensible and realistic. But again, being honest and thinking about the things others have done, it’s like I’m a trailer park in a neighborhood of mcmansions. Just sorta depressing…today…it’s getting to me today but I am again, very appreciative of everything I have, especially you. I don’t deserve you, especially after what I said back there, when I was having my opposite of a Michelob day. But that’s over with. I am done feeling sorry for myself because I am a loser. It’s like when Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear were afraid of everyone knowing that were conjoined twins and Eva Mendez said “don’t deny, embrace.” Well I am here now in front of you a new man, a man who is very appreciative of all the things he has, aware of all the things that matter in his life, even if he is a loser who has accomplished little to nothing in the big scheme of things. 

Existential Hangover

The morning sun beat down on his bed as if attached to a fire house siren inside a continuous thunder clap. Gooey throbs of pain pulsed at his temples in different intervals allowing no girding; only wincing ex post facto. His barren mouth yenned for liquid but that would require movement and movement increased the pain –everywhere. His pulse could be found in his throat driving straight up and out of his skull bending his brain and shoving it out of the way for escape. He was stuck in the fetal position as this seemed to be the safest position, something about going back to how you were in the womb was obvious. Here he would stay for another 6 hours, motionless but fiercely battling alcohol poisoning. 

After six hours he could move and he needed to as now the vomiting commenced. A white hot retch after retch above a cold, calculating orifice was his price. While the old pains waved and beat in his body like a flag in a storm, a new more physical, structural, in-the-bones pain surfaced, burning his throat and punching his abdomen and back retch after retch, heave after heave. Blood began to show in the vomit, at first droplets, followed by splotches, puddling into half cups in the desecrated water. He’d been sick before but never this much blood before. At last retch, only blood spewed from his mouth leaving a heinous blood film on his teeth, the taste there, in his mouth, like some horrible infinite regress. 

He could have called 911. He probably should have called 911. Didn’t they say that time heals all wounds or was it that time wounds all heals? This tautology, this axiom, this objective truth melding into a nihilism in his body, born from fermentation, from rotting, from time (there it is again) could not be outstripped. He could not fallacy his way out of it, there was no cognitive dissonance, and there was no forced dichotomy to appeal to, for help. There was death from the poison or there was recovery, then death. The variable was time.