[HN Gopher] Dabrowski's theory and existential depression (2020)
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Dabrowski's theory and existential depression (2020)
Author : nopassrecover
Score : 182 points
Date : 2021-07-05 05:54 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.davidsongifted.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.davidsongifted.org)
| newlikeice wrote:
| if you start to deal with powers of Good Thinking. You inevitably
| have to deal with the problems of Bad Thinking.
| pomian wrote:
| And yet that barren field, Covered by snow; Is not bleak But
| beautiful. Clean fresh snow Presents rebirth and hope And stark
| beauty, The field will grow and flourish Soon. With knowledge of
| space and time One should be optimistic About such a vision.
| Spring will come A future will grow.
| weeboid wrote:
| Some people get depressed, the "smarter" ones write about it
| more.
| iamsanteri wrote:
| I'm halfway through the article and surprised that the quality of
| being a neurotic person is not discussed yet or even mentioned. I
| find this post incredibly interesting, especially in the context
| of books that I've recently read and summarized like: Denial of
| Death by Ernest Becker
| (https://www.lostbookofsales.com/notes/the-denial-of-death-
| by...).
|
| Nonetheless, thanks for sharing!
| nopassrecover wrote:
| Great link to another interesting read (and wow, very thorough
| work in your summary and reflections!).
| iamsanteri wrote:
| Here are a few nice outtakes that also kind of makes sense
| here and clarify what I mean by the neurotic side:
|
| > "And so, the question for the science of mental health must
| become an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that
| reflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of
| illusion does one live?"
|
| > "The neurotic is having trouble with the balance of
| cultural illusion and natural reality; the possible horrible
| truth about himself and the world is seeping into his
| consciousness. The average man is at least secure that the
| cultural game is the truth, the unshakable, durable truth. He
| can earn his immortality in and under the dominant
| immortality ideology, period. It is all so simple and clear-
| cut. But now the neurotic: He perceives himself as unreal and
| reality as unbearable, because with him the mechanisms of
| illusion are known and destroyed by self consciousness. He
| can no longer deceive himself about himself and disillusions
| even his own ideal of personality. He perceives himself as
| bad, guilt laden, inferior, as a small, weak, helpless
| creature, which is the truth about mankind, as Oedipus also
| discovered in the crash of his heroic fate. All other is
| illusion, deception, but necessary deception in order to be
| able to bear one's self and thereby life."
|
| > The result is that the sinner (neurotic) is hyperconscious
| of the very thing he tries to deny: his creatureliness, his
| miserableness and unworthiness. The neurotic is thrown back
| on his true perceptions of the human condition, which caused
| his isolation and individuation in the first place. He tried
| to build a glorified private inner world because of his
| deeper anxieties, but life takes its revenge. The more he
| separates and inflates himself, the more anxious he becomes.
| The more he artificially idealizes himself, the more
| exaggeratedly he criticizes himself. He alternates between
| the extremes of "I am everything" and "I am nothing."
|
| > "Man lives his contradictions for better or worse in some
| kind of cultural project in a given historical period.
| Neurosis is another word for the total problem of the human
| condition; it becomes a clinical word when the individual
| bogs down in the face of the problem--when his heroism is in
| doubt or becomes self-defeating. Men are naturally neurotic
| and always have been, but at some times they have it easier
| than at others to mask their true condition. Men avoid
| clinical neurosis when they can trustingly live their heroism
| in some kind of self-transcending drama. Modern man lives his
| contradictions for the worse, because the modern condition is
| one in which convincing dramas of heroic apotheosis, of
| creative play, or of cultural illusion are in eclipse. There
| is no embracing world-view for the neurotic to depend on or
| merge with to mask his problems, and so the "cure" for
| neurosis is difficult in our time."
|
| This last one is particularly interesting if you really think
| about it:
|
| > "The defeat of despair is not mainly an intellectual
| problem for an active organism, but a problem of self-
| stimulation via movement. Beyond a given point man is not
| helped by more "knowing," but only by living and doing in a
| partly self-forgetful way. As Goethe put it, we must plunge
| into experience and then reflect on the meaning of it. All
| reflection and no plunging drives us mad; all plunging and no
| reflection, and we are brutes. Goethe wrote maxims like these
| precisely at the time when the individual lost the protective
| cover of traditional society and daily life became a problem
| for him. He no longer knew what were the proper doses of
| experience. This safe dosage of life is exactly what is
| prescribed by traditional custom, wherein all the important
| decisions of life and even its daily events are ritually
| marked out."
| Tcane wrote:
| Some interesting points although I disagree with the undercurrent
| that by "reintegrating" or whatever word for growth you choose
| you will become more humanistic and altruistic. There is every
| reason to believe that after your growth experience you will
| realise it really is all a waste and decide to become a gold-
| plated self-serving asshole.
| aswegs8 wrote:
| That's also a point of criticism for me. But I don't think
| either way is the default way. It very much depends on your
| personality and your innermost values.
| smegcicle wrote:
| For those curious about dabrowski's models, take a look at his
| 'levels of consciousness'+, where he divides personal driving
| forces into three categories, which develop in order, if at all:
| base instincts, societal expectations, and a "third factor" of
| moral self-direction.
|
| This model describes the repeated breakdowns ("disintegrations"
| in the form of neuroses) that are required to progress upwards
| ("positive disintegration") toward incorporating this third
| factor, resulting in a 'true personality' somewhat reminiscent of
| Maslow's 'self actualization'.
|
| + https://www.positivedisintegration.com/tb2.png
| carrolldunham wrote:
| Is there a mistake in this logic: "If you can't figure out how to
| stop suffering (to no end), you are not actually so smart." ?
|
| In anticipation of objection that the question of one's own
| suffering is somehow outside the realm of analysis: I am not a
| Buddhist but having tasted the freedom from emotional suffering
| that was the result of his (the buddha's) analysis of the
| situation of being alive and his logical derivation of what then
| to do about it - from his Program, like Hilbert's, to find the
| solution to suffering - these days when I think of who is a
| "genius", I think of the buddha.
|
| That may have been rare genius but in this era you don't need to
| work the answer out from scratch you only need to be smart enough
| to notice the problem and research a solution (since at least one
| exists), hence the claim.
| snet0 wrote:
| I'd broadly say the same thing to friends, but I don't think it
| really survives scrutiny. It's a useful tool for sure, in that
| it might inspire "smart" people to try use their "smartness" to
| solve their personal issues in a way they wouldn't have
| considered, but I think I disagree that you can't be smart if
| you can't solve your own problems.
|
| Intelligence is obviously very broad, but if Terence Tao didn't
| know how to boil an egg, I'd still call him intelligent. Being
| able to solve internal personality/philosophical issues relies
| a lot on experience, whether through life experiences or
| reading other people's life experiences/analyses. You can be
| smart as all hell, but if you haven't read much Western
| philosophy, I wouldn't fault you for not coming up with useful
| conclusions from first principles.
|
| I suppose a counter is that, if you're smart enough, you'll
| recognise that a lot of people have had your problem before,
| and probably a few of them have come up with a solution, and
| maybe a couple of those few have written about it. Like the egg
| case, if Terence Tao was smart he'd Google "how to boil an egg"
| when presented with the problem.
| smolder wrote:
| Avoiding personal suffering is not necessarily anyone's #1
| priority in life. I don't think it's a reflection on one's
| intelligence whether or not they suffer, as suffering could be
| a cost paid for a higher purpose they've prioritized. Of
| course, it could be a cost of stupidity as well.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| It's a rhetorical statement, not a logical one. Koans aren't
| logical either: they're meant to prompt inquiry.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| Seems like a problem for folks who try to develop their own
| understandings -- which probably correlates with " _being gifted_
| ".
|
| By contrast, folks who don't feel smart enough to question the
| established-wisdom, and so just believe that it's probably true
| for reasons beyond them, wouldn't seem to have the same exposure
| to doubt. Because, surely, someone smarter than them knows the
| answers; if anything seems off, it's probably just a
| misunderstanding of the experts' wisdom.
|
| But if you lose your faith in the experts' wisdom, and then
| struggle in trying to find your own solid answers to big
| questions -- what do you believe in? How can you feel safe and
| secure in the world when you're not even sure what the world
| really is?
|
| ---
|
| [Obligatory xkcd](https://xkcd.com/2221/ ):
|
| > I feel weird using old software that doesn't know it's being
| emulated.
|
| The existentialist-concern from the alt-text:
|
| > I laugh at the software as if I'm 100% confident that it's
| 2019.
| adamc wrote:
| My ex-wife (who was with me for decades) tagged me as an
| existentialist early on, and I guess it was true. I don't really
| understand how we can see the universe another way, without lying
| to ourselves: bad things happen, and nothing is done about it.
| What Christian theologians have called "The Problem of Evil"
| leads me to see the universe as uncaring, indifferent.
|
| The only way out of it that has worked for me is to care about
| other people (and animals, etc.) -- to focus on the small things
| I can try to make better.
| warent wrote:
| It's interesting that many atheists seem to argue that the only
| two choices are either a Christian god, or a basically
| meaningless universe, and a keystone for Christianity to be the
| wrong option is the problem of evil. But there are so many
| other philosophies that have resolved this.
|
| For example, some Hindu schools explain that god is the only
| one that experiences anything. The paradox of its infinite
| nature means the only way it can experience its own goodness is
| to play hide and seek with itself in a land of illusion that
| appears evil.
|
| In Buddhism, it's a beginningless tangled web of karma. The
| meaning is to untangle and extinguish it.
|
| In Hawaiian mythology, you have Kane, Lono, and Ku. There is no
| concept of an infinitely good infinitely loving god.
|
| This isn't to say atheism/nihilism is necessarily wrong, but
| the problem of evil always seems like the weakest argument in
| its defense.
| dsego wrote:
| > but the problem of evil always seems like the weakest
| argument in its defense.
|
| I can't understand why anyone would see religion or
| philosophy that says that some poor child deserved bone
| cancer because of karma or some balance of good and evil in
| the world as anything but despicable and disgusting. What is
| gained from any of them, what value do they bring?
| warent wrote:
| The words "deserve" and "not deserve" are very common
| misunderstandings of karma. I think it's not about
| deserving, more like being tossed around a terrible stormy
| sea with a terrible rudder. That's the point of Buddhism,
| is to be free of it. It's not considered a desirable thing.
| jgrowl wrote:
| > I don't really understand how we can see the universe another
| way
|
| It has been eye opening to me to view the universe as a
| dualism. It will certainty strike you down without a second
| thought, but at the same time we are provided a space in this
| time to flourish. If we act good, then good gets multiplied.
| This is the Egyptian idea of holding a whip in one hand and
| shepherd's crook in the other. The universe is both a punisher
| and a Sheppard king.
|
| Which is very apt considering your solution to take care of
| others.
| sn41 wrote:
| I have read some material on how depression was viewed in
| history. There is at least some work in Christian theology on
| sloth/acedia which is not only laziness, but also has a lot of
| signs of what is called clinical depression [1].
|
| While searching this, a very strange coincidence I have found is
| that the "demon" for sloth is the same as the demon who inspires
| people to make discoveries [2]. I speculate that the link between
| depression and creativity was recognized in antiquity.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belphegor
| triggercut wrote:
| Not sure on her sources but you may find the following
| interesting
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_cre...
|
| 6:02 - "And that search has led me to ancient Greece and
| ancient Rome. So stay with me, because it does circle around
| and back. But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome -- people did
| not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings
| back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine
| attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant
| and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. The
| Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of
| creativity "daemons." Socrates, famously, believed that he had
| a daemon who spoke wisdom to him from afar."
| omega3 wrote:
| As someone who is of below average intelligence I can confirm
| that I don't exhibit any of the symptoms described in the
| article.
| sysadm1n wrote:
| The two most important days in your life are the day you are born
| and the day you find out why. - Mark Twain
|
| You can't go around like a headless chicken in life. You need
| purpose or even some abstract goal to attain. We shouldn't be
| hungup about outcomes and enjoy the process instead, since you
| are only fighting entropy trying to have the outcome be exactly
| the way you envision it.
| motohagiography wrote:
| The exercises are important. I know what he's talking about.
| There is a mechanism he touches on a few different ways but
| doesn't mention as what I think is the source of this existential
| depression. The depression is often caused, as he says, by the
| loss of something that causes a collapse of an identity, and the
| solution involves those exercises of establishing yourself with
| multiple ideas of who you are so that the loss of one thing does
| not bring the whole thing down.
|
| "Giftedness," itself can be a bit of a curse, because it is a
| definition of self that originates externally, which you cannot
| influence or control. It gets you early in childhood, and can be
| very difficult to unwind. Your giftedness becomes a kind of trap
| or double bind, where you believe something about yourself but
| cannot realize or actualize it because the _only_ way to validate
| it is when other people recognize it. You have to be virtuotic in
| your talents, your insights must be incisive, your knowledge must
| be exceptional, and when you feel it isn 't (because nobody's
| always is) the horror creeps in. This is the feeling of lost
| idenity. It leads to other polarized antipatterns like
| perfectionism or flakiness, attention seeking, anxiety behaviors
| and other coping mechanisms.
|
| It's not unique to the so-called gifted at all, but their
| experience is a model for how the same externally rooted identity
| causes people to suffer. It's so old that Stoicism , particularly
| Epictetus, and Buddhism even addressed this idea of attachment to
| the extenral directly in the pre-psychological language of their
| times. Today, we might say it was related to a tendency toward
| forming codependent relationships where one's identity is only
| validated by it being reflected by someone, and when we lose the
| person who propped up that idea of self, we disintegrate, as
| described in the article. Identifying as _gifted_ creates a
| psychological dependency on seeing that identity being reflected,
| and an almost infinite need for a source of actualization of that
| identity.
|
| Managing and extracting personal value from a gifted identity is
| its own challenge. It's as though people said you were such a
| clever child you deserved two problems. Personally, I practice
| being crappy at things. I take lessons in skills and I've been
| able to fail enough and develop a physical competence that is
| orthogonal enough to any idea of _giftedness_ that over years I
| have built a non-gifted accepted self. Education should do it,
| but even that 's not always useful or sufficient.
|
| To expunge that dependent identity, I practice physical things
| where words and language are meaningless. This is not to just
| say, "get some exercise, walk it off," (even if that's a
| necessary condition) it's that the depression hole is caused by
| waiting for external actuation of your _giftedness_ that never
| appears and not having the tools to stimulate that part of your
| identity that isn 't even yours, it's just something you were
| assigned.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > establishing yourself with multiple ideas of who you are so
| that the loss of one thing does not bring the whole thing down.
|
| I wrote down the facets of this exact process here [1], which I
| call my Autological Manifesto. All the aspects of _being_ that
| define a self-studying, constantly evolving algorithm.
|
| [1] https://hypertele.fi/a7084542272f4c89
|
| > I am an evolving whole of components, each and all of them
| replaceable with parts truer to myself. My growth is most
| important to me; As I accumulate consciousness, greater
| understanding provides clearer approaches to everything else.
|
| > Replacing out parts of myself can be frightening, as if I
| forget my identity or become too brittle of a whole to sustain.
| In reality, a superorganism consisting of maximally diverse
| components flourishes exactly because of, not in spite of, its
| multidimensionality.
| rendall wrote:
| As a head's up: the convention is not to put Mensa membership
| in your CV, dude, unless you're somehow an officer or there
| is something more to it. Go ahead and ask:
| https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2584723/
| krishvs wrote:
| Great article. The table composed by psychologist May Seagoe fits
| the description of some of my friends and colleagues who I
| perceive as gifted perfectly.
| pickpuck wrote:
| Yes!
|
| Here it is:
|
| https://dnnlv5ifs.blob.core.windows.net/portals/2/DB/Images/...
| ta988 wrote:
| oh my... it looks like a resume of my behavior...
| acituan wrote:
| So many words for mere conjecture that is ultimately going to be
| used as a pat on one's own back for feeling bummed.
|
| I especially love the author's self-designation as gifted and not
| once expanding on this very narrow dimensionality reduction. What
| happened to the personality traits? What happened to character,
| adverse childhood experiences, education etc _independent_ of so-
| called giftedness?
|
| Anyone could have come up with this; a human mind is a terrible
| thing to waste. Greater the mind, greater the waste. Just like an
| undertrained, under-exercised german shepherd is going to be much
| more destructive than a shitzu.
| garyrob wrote:
| I love how some in the Hacker News community truly believe that
| their immediate, knee-jerk reaction to dismiss the work of a
| highly experienced professional in the relevant field, who is
| applying their lifetime of knowledge and experience to a
| subject, a reaction that involves neither knowledge nor effort,
| is automatically correct and important for other people to read
| about.
| kwthrows wrote:
| That's because we have been trained on a model where midwits
| speak with the exact same authority on any given subject as
| this author does. It's very difficult to read a blog post-
| style article on here without assuming that the author is a
| blowhard spouting nonsense whose sample size is 1. Basically,
| the odds are against you.
| acituan wrote:
| Do you have a counter-argument to the content other than
| pretending to know my knowledge, experience, intentions on
| the matter, and ascribing an inflated self-importance to
| discredit _me_ as a whole (also known as ad-hominem)?
|
| Have you checked other comments in this thread? Do you find
| my criticism truly unique?
|
| Isn't almost every quarter in HN we discuss the replication
| crisis in psychology? Do you nonetheless ask for a blind
| submission to authority?
|
| Without answering those I would say your dismissal is more
| shallow than mine.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Calling out reasoning as fallacious is not as powerful as
| you think it is.
| acituan wrote:
| To me rationality is a pretty important normativity, not
| that I am after it for power.
|
| But since you seem to precisely know what I think,
| exactly how powerful should I feel about it?
| kvathupo wrote:
| I'm tired of such preoccupation on some nebulous notion
| of "rationality," when any cursory reading of philosophy,
| particularly of mathematics, informs one of the
| subjectivity inherent in the choice of one's axioms and
| definitions, especially amidst type theory's recent
| resurgence.
|
| So, no: "rationality" is not common knowledge. Perhaps I
| don't accept the Axiom of Choice, yet you do? Perhaps my
| definition of "authority" differs from yours?
|
| I am reminded of Richard Hofstadter, who said something
| to the effect of: "anti-intellectualism is the idea that
| my ignorance is just as good as your expertise."
| acituan wrote:
| Please don't confuse rationality with _rationalism_.
|
| Nor we should reduce it to inferential processing of
| axioms and propositions. I'm surprised your cursory
| reading of philosophy haven't encountered for example the
| Aristotelian golden _ratio_ (root word for reason) and
| its application in virtue ethics, or the word _logos_
| that the entire christian culture was built on, or that
| should be familiar to anyone that has studied anything
| -logy.
|
| We all actively participate in rationality with varying
| degrees of success. And calling out personal attacks made
| at the expense of actual counter-arguments is rational
| both in the sense of proportionality, appropriateness and
| even as a call for virtuousness.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| > So many words for mere conjecture
|
| Yes, this is what's known as a "personal essay". There's some
| research citations, too, because the author is a researcher who
| has worked in this area, but if you're expecting a broad study
| correlating the Big 5, ACEs, existential depression, and
| giftedness, you should 1) look elsewhere, or 2) go get your PhD
| and do the work.
| acituan wrote:
| > but if you're expecting a broad study correlating the Big
| 5, ACEs, existential depression, and giftedness, you should
| 1) look elsewhere, or 2) go get your PhD and do the work.
|
| My expectation is not that he had done a different study. My
| expectation was, personal essay or not, if they are throwing
| citations, academic credibility and 5000 words at the world
| about their central thesis, to eliminate the _goddamn
| confounds_ first, or at least acknowledge that they haven 't.
|
| It is like writing an essay about "hair color and basketball
| performance" and making a career out of finding out
| incidentally blondes perform better, not the least because
| blondes really liked hearing it, while even shoe size would
| have been a better explanatory variable.
|
| To my mind, "go elsewhere or get a PhD yourself" is a pretty
| elitist pushback. Rationality is a publicly available
| resource. We ought to make use of it.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| When you say "central thesis" and "confounds" it sounds
| like you think this is a piece where the author is setting
| out to prove something. What, though?
|
| It seems to me this is an exploration that's meant to be
| helpful to people who relate to what the author describes.
| That description doesn't need to reflect a well-defined
| category in order to be useful. Useful things don't even
| need to be _true_ much less well-proven.
|
| Rationality is great, but you're demanding a piece that
| isn't making a rational argument do so. Again, though, it's
| a personal essay - an _exploration_ more than an argument.
| acituan wrote:
| Thanks for the honest inquiry, I've been responding
| between sleep cycles and my responses has been more
| combative than necessary.
|
| My main grief with his exploration (and the reason for
| trying to dig out his thesis) is that gifted folks, which
| I think are over represented in this forum, are going to
| ascribe all their malaise to their giftedness. Which is a
| very misleading and harmful but also attractive
| proposition to buy into.
|
| I've suffered from this personally after more than a year
| and $40k wasted with a particular highly credentialed
| therapist that insisted on blowing sunshine up my hole by
| trying to explain away every single element of my
| suffering with giftedness. After switching to a no bs,
| equally credentialed therapist, and actually making
| progress, I was furious to realize how much of that was a
| collusion in lazy thinking and not doing the hard work of
| personal transformation.
|
| Back to the author, this guy made a career out of the
| notion of gifted children, so I don't think he is merely
| presenting a story. He is trying to persuade an audience
| on this thesis. But how can we discern if he got the
| credentials because he was right vs because there was a
| high demand from parents and people alike to hear that
| their problem was "just being gifted"?
|
| Hence my digging up the trait theory and trying to poke
| holes otherwise. I would wager, admittedly with no
| authority, 90% of the gifted folks in "existential
| depression", excluding immediate environmental factors,
| are simply suffering from being unequipped against the
| meaning crises of our times. They are under-educated,
| under-connected and under-spiritual, in general under-
| participating in life, just flowing with whatever movies,
| politics, articles come their way to make sense of things
| without exerting any will to get to the bottom of it and
| do their homework.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I think you are not taking into account the _path_ to
| existential depression.
|
| The article describes some very specific experiences of
| so-called gifted people, which leads to the possibility
| of existential depression.
|
| It seems very unlikely that the experiences he describes
| are common among most people.
|
| I didn't read the article so much as "I am gifted,
| therefore I will be existentially depressed" but more
| along the lines of "I am gifted, and the effect this has
| on my life and experiences may cause existential
| depression".
|
| This article opened my eyes as to why I may have had
| particular experiences in my life.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| > I especially love the author's self-designation as gifted...
| Anyone could have come up with this
|
| The author was a chaired professor who wrote several dozen peer
| reviewed articles and five books on the subject. He was also
| the chair for his state's psychology association board for
| several years, an associate dean, and cofounded his
| university's school of psychology.
|
| I'm not going to comment on the quality of the article or
| whether 'giftedness' is a meaningful construct, but this isn't
| a fluff piece written by some feel-good popular science author.
| acituan wrote:
| > I'm not going to comment on the quality of the article or
| whether 'giftedness' is a meaningful construct
|
| Just that it is made aware, instead of leveling a counter-
| argument, you are only appealing to authority.
|
| Everyone, all the way back to Freud or Jung, would be fair
| game to criticize for such a young field as psychology,
| because _new_ paradigms and data do surface often. I don 't
| care if they made this their life's work, the author does not
| once talk about the personality traits especially regarding
| neuroticism, which is either independent of IQ or _inversely
| correlated_ , which falls counter to their hypothesis.
| Empirically speaking big five has _much more_ backing data
| than their conjecture based on a single 1950 's psychologist.
| Doesn't make it automatically more true, but it would need to
| be accounted for.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| > Just that it is made aware, instead of leveling a
| counter-argument, you are only appealing to authority.
|
| The original poster attacked the author's credibility. I
| pointed out that, when you help establish a concept, you're
| qualified to write about it to non-experts in a public
| venue.
| acituan wrote:
| I am the original poster. There is no attack to the
| credibility of the author, there is questioning the lack
| of a consideration on the confounds and a sufficient
| explication of the term gifted. Disappointingly a crowd
| of people emerged demanding reverence to their PhD,
| career and the verbosity of their essay _without being
| able address my original critique_. I am not saying I am
| necessarily correct, or they necessarily haven 't thought
| it out etc, but it is a pretty damn valid question to
| ask.
|
| It is almost as if people are personally offended because
| they are inclined to _consider_ themselves gifted and
| explain away feeling depressed with that.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| you put the strongest man in space his muscles will decay.
|
| with resistance to intellect your mind decays and rots from the
| inside.
|
| challange sets you free.
|
| yet we cant see that emotional intelligence/self-awareness are
| grantrd the same way intelligence is.
|
| thus, smart folks have maturity of teenager yet the guns of
| nation states.
|
| ultimately, we turn those guns onto ourselves.
|
| sad
| triggercut wrote:
| Well that sure as hell cheered me up.
| omegaBroom wrote:
| As someone who was (in my opinion wrongly) labeled gifted as a
| kid, I think this is because it comes with very high expectations
| and forces you to think about yourself and your actions all the
| time. Depression is basically self obsession. Life is only good
| when you forget about yourself. This is the same reason why
| social media drives depression as well.
| grasshopperpurp wrote:
| Iirc Allen Watts likened obsessively thinking about yourself to
| two monitors facing each other (highlighting the discordant
| feedback).
|
| While I still have cringe-moments when I remember things I've
| done (as a kid, 10 years ago, whenever), I try to remember that
| I am what I'm doing. For me, it puts legs on the concept of
| remaining in the present. Whatever self others ascribe to me,
| that's fine, but I don't have live by those expectations. When
| I'm folding clothes, brushing my teeth, writing something,
| taking care of the dogs, etc., I'm no more or less than what
| I'm doing. It eases my mind and lets me focus on the given
| task. With practice, I don't have to think of it as much. It
| becomes the natural way to approach things, but there are still
| times when I have to remind myself.
| omegaBroom wrote:
| I think it's like when you're breathing manually. You can but
| it's just not the same. I always feel out of breath when I do
| it. Or when you start to pay attention to how you walk and
| simply can't do it normally, unlike when you don't even think
| about it. Mindfulness is misunderstood in my opinion.
| Everything that can be done properly automatically, should be
| done so.
| ta988 wrote:
| I agree with you, many consider that being mindfull is
| about taking control (of breathing, emotions...) it is the
| exact opposite.
| naasking wrote:
| > Depression is basically self obsession.
|
| While there's something to this claim for common and mild forms
| of "depression", it's far too trivial a soundbite to truly
| capture what's going on with depression. If it were true, then
| volunteering at a soup kitchen or something equally selfless
| would quickly cure depression, no matter how treatment-
| resistant. It's simply not the case.
| dlvktrsh wrote:
| I've always had bad social anxiety (and depression) I've always
| thought of it like this too.
|
| to constantly think about how other percieve me or how they
| react must be because of some sort of extreme self obsession
| right?
|
| I don't care what people think of me and I've strayed far off a
| typical life path but idk how else to explain my social anxiety
| Xplune13 wrote:
| I've had a similar experience like that. I too have bad
| social anxiety. It's like in my head I'm watching myself in a
| third-person view and imagining my response to different
| people in different scenarios even before doing that
| activity. Sometimes that third person view is of a person I
| know (or I am meeting) and I see how my responses or
| reactions are to the scenarios that might happen.
|
| I've had this for like 5-6 years now and it is at an all time
| high right now. This constant wandering mind then brings me a
| lot of anxiety and questions over why did I think the way I
| did.
|
| I also don't care what people think of me when I'm
| consciously thinking about the topic, yet I cannot explain
| this automatic response checking in my head.
| abz10 wrote:
| It's likely genetic - i.e. an inherited Anxiety disorder. I have
| hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS). It disproportionally
| affects Gifted people and causes a bunch of physical problems
| that exhibit as mental problems. hEDS is rarely diagnosed and
| smart people are more able to adapt around the problems and not
| get diagnosed entirely. It took decades of searching to figure it
| out myself. This does make me question the Giftedness a bit :)
| But I am freakishly good a things most normal people are not. So
| it's swings and roundabouts.
| slothtrop wrote:
| My new outlook on "meaning" is that it's felt, not rationalized.
| That is to say, we create our meaning but don't have much control
| over what feels meaningful to us. If someone told you that a
| given dull, repetitive task would be good for humanity in a
| utilitarian sense, it wouldn't necessarily feel any more
| meaningful. There's a reason the strongest predictor of men's
| happiness is their work. We like to work on whatever happens to
| interest us and so much the better if that helps us engage with
| others, and shows impactful results.
|
| I think it's possible to find meaning in our work whether we
| pursue it relentlessly or leisurely, it comes down to preference.
| Some people are content to live each day like the last and lead
| low-stress lives.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I don't know what their definition of gifted is, but I know I
| have above average intelligence and I was surprised how closely
| the article matches my feelings and experiences. Difficult read.
| [deleted]
| SMAAART wrote:
| I have recently (in the past couple of years) overcome depression
| that had been with me practically my entire adult life, and now I
| have my anxiety somewhat under control.
|
| Depression is such a big problem, mostly unaddressed, and the
| "tools and processes" out there don't have a high success ratio.
|
| Sounds a great business school case:
|
| Huge demand
|
| Inadequate supply
|
| And yet the problem persists. This is the Unicorn of Unicorns,
| capturing 1% of the market with 1% success rate would yield a $1B
| valuation.
| silentguy wrote:
| Do you mind sharing how you managed to overcome your
| depression? I would be interested in reading that.
| SMAAART wrote:
| yeah.. about that let's see:
|
| * I had undiagnosed Sever Clinical Depression for practically
| my entire adult life, and since I am old(er), that makes it a
| few decades. FML, I know.
|
| * I was highly functional, having learned to conceal my
| unhappiness from others, and being the one who would make
| light of bad situations, and rushing to help/comfort others
| (pretty common, I am no snowflake)
|
| * then in 2014 I reached the bottom of the bottom of the
| bottom, and then even lower. I "rushed" to therapy but this
| time something has shifted within me: I KNEW that the
| therapist would not be the one solving my meta-problem, the
| therapist would be some sort of coach, guiding me, I would be
| the one doing all the hard work, long work, big time effort
|
| * I studied the book "Feeling Good" that made me understand
| what depression is and is not, causes, manifestations etc...
| also in that book there are some self-therapy tools, mostly a
| special for of journaling. I did that each and every day, for
| hours, analyzing everything that happened to me. Fighting my
| depression became my full-time job, on top of my regular full
| time job.
|
| * I selected my therapist very carefully, I had a very
| detailed list of what I was looking for, and while the list
| was extensive it was feasible (no self sabotage there). I
| found a therapist that hit all the items on my list except
| for on (I wanted a man, she happened to be a woman). Didn't
| matter, she was great.
|
| * The co-pay was stiff, so I took a part-time job in order to
| pay for my therapy.
|
| * I tried a whole bunch of things, To me everything became
| therapy. A lot of what I tried didn't work, I moved on to
| trying something else. I wasted a lot of time and money
| researching and trying stuff: the time and money wasted is
| also part of the therapy. To give some insight meditation
| really didn't do much for me, but other Zen practice did.
| Weight lifting and fixing my diet did help me a lot.
|
| * I cut off from my life toxic people. Some were "family",
| some were "friends". Cut them off, best thing.
|
| * Except for my therapist, I didn't talk with anyone about my
| depression, too much of a burden on the recipient(s), and it
| can become a self-gratifying self-fulfilling prophecy. I
| suffered alone and in silence, continuing working my ass off
| to improve, not a word to anyone. Climb a mountain, tell no
| one.
|
| * I look at the list of my "friends" and I selected a few, 4
| or 5 who I believe could "handle" the news that I was in a
| bad state and I was in therapy for depression. I asked them
| to have lunch/drinks/dinner with me on a regular basis, and I
| told that the during these meeting we would NOT talk about me
| depression/therapy, we would just "hang out", so once a week
| I would have lunch with one of them, and once a month 3 or 4
| of us would get together for drinks. We would talk about
| work, sports, movies, book... 2 of my friends at the end of
| the dinners would discreetly ask me "how's therapy going?" I
| would replay "Fine" they would remind me: "If you're every in
| trouble, call me/us any time of day or night". I thanked them
| they meant it. I NEVER called, no matter how bad things got.
|
| * I often visited online boards about depression and I would
| see what other people would talk about, I would see patterns
| that I knew I had manifested in the past (self-sabotage,
| validation through suffering, playing the victim...) I was
| banned by Patient and Me for questioning the validity of
| therapy if it becomes a place where to just shoot the breeze
|
| * One day I read an article on "Stop being a victim" I
| believe it was actually here in HN. So I started reading
| googling "stop being a victim" and "victim no more" and
| similar, and read all there is out there.. mostly very good
| stuff.
|
| * More recently I have started to analyze the challenging
| events in my life from the starting point of view that I am
| responsible/accountable/at fault for it... it's just a
| starting point, not a martyrdom, but it helps me NOT to blame
| the world/other people for happenings in my life (I am always
| at least partially responsible, at least for not
| reacting/responding well to life's events)
|
| * other books that have helped me: The Subtle Art of not
| giving a fuck; Unfuck yourself; The war on Art; How to Keep
| People from Pushing Your Buttons.
|
| How's that for a wall of text?
| remir wrote:
| What got me out of depression was studying the mind and realizing
| that we suffer because we polarize thoughts. We associate
| emotional tones/value to thoughts and if we believe these
| thoughts are ours, then they become our inner reality and we keep
| fueling the mind with more polarized thoughts. A vicious cycle.
|
| Associating emotional energy to thoughts amplify them. It is
| acting like a generative energy.
|
| Removing all polarization from thoughts cured my depression. Now
| when something unpleasant happens, I watch for the negative
| thoughts and simply observe them with detachment. I don't engage
| in mental scenarios and don't give them energy. Soon, they
| vanish, unable to take hold.
| stared wrote:
| > It has been my experience that gifted and talented persons are
| more likely than those who are less gifted to experience
| spontaneous existential depression as an outgrowth of their
| mental and emotional abilities and interactions with others.
|
| I read it a while ago. While my initial reaction was "relatable",
| later I started getting doubts. Is it that talented people are
| more prone to depression (e.g. due to social isolation) or that
| their depression channels into existential/philosophical more
| often (this sounds even more plausible)? In both cases, I would
| love to see some numbers.
|
| The only thing I know that might support a link thinker-depressed
| is this one: "A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind"
| (https://science.sciencemag.org/content/330/6006/932, PDF
| http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/everything/kil...,
| HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16797947)
|
| As a side note, "talented/gifted" is usually considered
| synonymous with high intelligence. Yet, I bet that it is as
| strongly correlated with dedication (going to the levels of
| passion or obsession) and sensitivity. It might happen that it is
| not IQ that matters in terms of gifted people being depressed.
| joshgree88 wrote:
| "Persons with heightened overexcitabilities in one or more of
| the five areas that Dabrowski listed--intellectual, emotional,
| imaginational, psychomotor, and sensual--perceive reality in a
| different, more intense, multifaceted manner."
| roenxi wrote:
| It is plausible, but the casual arrogance in that idea is so
| thick deserves a second pass. It seems very unlikely that there
| is a 'gifted' class of people who have better access to
| depression than the rest of us.
|
| It seems more plausible to me that existential dread strikes at
| random, and the gifted have a different set of coping
| strategies that leverage their giftedness. Most people just
| have to sort of take it because (1) existential dread doesn't
| imply any specific behaviours and (2) if a body wants to be
| able to feel existential dread tomorrow while living under a
| roof it has to keep earning a living.
|
| Besides, life being meaningless doesn't imply anyone has to
| feel lonely or bad about it. We're all in the same boat and
| there isn't a reason to feel bad about the inevitable.
| jgilias wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you're unto something. When I think of the few
| really, really smart people that I happen to have encountered,
| they're all pretty laid back people. As in, it's like they've
| figured out the futility of it all long ago, settled on doing
| something they find interesting, and then sort of just flow
| through life.
|
| So it seems more likely that pulling the short straw that makes
| you smart, but also having a personality type that compels you
| to do and fix things that would lead to people having issues
| with accepting that there is no inherent meaning to anything,
| it's all futile, and we're all gonna die sooner rather than
| later without having 'achieved' anything really.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > _As a side note, "talented/gifted" is usually considered
| synonymous with high intelligence. Yet, I bet that it is as
| strongly correlated with dedication (going to the levels of
| passion or obsession) and sensitivity. It might happen that it
| is not IQ that matters in terms of gifted people being
| depressed._
|
| I don't think this works. If you look at the
| strengths/weaknesses chart, there's no way that _just_ passion
| or obsession matches the strengths or comes with the
| weaknesses.
|
| Chart:
| https://dnnlv5ifs.blob.core.windows.net/portals/2/DB/Images/...
| jgilias wrote:
| I think the parent comment doesn't say that 'giftedness' is
| just passion, rather that out of the two axis that would make
| someone gifted (smart, dedicated), it's the second one that
| carries a higher risk in getting depressed.
| stared wrote:
| I am not saying it is just "passion". There are even more
| possibly correlated factors - e.g. ADHD, bipolar, OCD,
| autism, schizophrenia, etc.
|
| From "The Mad Genius Mystery":
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/articles/201707/the-
| mad...:
|
| > The fine line between genius and insanity on the
| interplay of autistic and psychotic tendencies among some
| mathematicians: Nash, Godel, Newton and foremost: Alexander
| Grothendieck.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| A shortcut to Dabrowski's approach I find useful:
|
| _What do I stand for?_
|
| A serious and deep dive into the answer to that question tends to
| reset my thinking in the most positive of ways.
| nefitty wrote:
| If this article resonates, you might enjoy the film American
| Pastoral. The protagonist deals with his precocious daughter and
| her struggle to live her existential and political intuitions.
| lvncelot wrote:
| Going into this, I'm always wary of the almost romanticised link
| between depression and giftedness. The 'tortured genius'
| narrative is not a healthy one to adopt.
| aswegs8 wrote:
| This is not about narrative. This is about facing our reality
| and making the best out of it. Seeking truth, not telling
| stories that suit ourselves in one or another situation.
| rendall wrote:
| For me and a friend, we'd joke about our existential despair.
| "What's wrong?" "The Void"
|
| Any philosophy that just asserted that the Universe has meaning
| was a non-starter, for me. There is nothing that I can see that
| unambiguously tells me that the Universe ultimately has absolute
| purpose or meaning. It could, but anyone who tells you they know
| the fundamental question of _why we are here_ is delusional or a
| liar. The only overarching framework that could situate me
| confidently in the world would have to explicitly acknowledge
| that the Universe could in fact be meaningless.
|
| An English course in college helped me out with this. A lot of
| the course covered Norse religion and philosophy, which was
| intensely bleak. Ragnarok, in one version, is the End. There is
| no rebirth or renewal. The world _will be_ consumed by Fenrir and
| the chaos wolves, and after, for eternity, the world will be
| Winter. In that philosophy, this is a fact of life: this future
| is preordained. Your best outcome is to be invited by the Gods to
| fight - and lose - in the final battle against the Forces of
| Chaos and Despair. You 're going down, but the highest honor you
| can bring yourself and your kin is to go down fighting.
|
| Humans create meaning in the face of an uncaring, indifferent
| Void. It's our superpower. Human-created meaning is arbitrary,
| but no less real for that. The fact that Vikings chose to create
| meaning by slaughtering their unfortunate neighbors is a bit
| beside the point. That was their interpretation, but it's not the
| only, nor best one.
|
| _Hwaet! The Universe might be meaningless_ , these nihilistic
| Viking ghosts whispered to me, across the centuries. _Live
| bravely, do not allow yourself to wallow in despair while entropy
| gathers itself. Make meaning, fight, build, love, stay healthy
| right in the face of the Uncaring Void. It 's the only thing you
| can do. Entropy will win. Until then, make it meaningful._
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Any philosophy that just asserted that the Universe has
| meaning was a non-starter, for me. There is nothing that I can
| see that unambiguously tells me that the Universe ultimately
| has absolute purpose or meaning. It could, but anyone who tells
| you they know the fundamental question of why we are here is
| delusional or a liar."_
|
| For Victor Frankl the meaning of life is not an answer you find
| out in the world but a question the world asks of you, and
| which you answer in the way you live your life.
| tartoran wrote:
| Whenever I feel a hopeless meaningless in my life, Victor
| Frankl comes to rescue and I reorient my thoughts on the
| meaning of life, of our lives. The fact that the universe has
| no meaning does not imply that life cannot be filled with a
| meaning and fullfill that.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I guess that's about it for the topic, anything else are just
| speculative farts in the wind.
|
| The problem is, tons of people despair for a guidance. A
| bulletproof manual so they don't have to face uncertainties
| that life brings daily, and do hard moral choices. And what
| you state, no matter how correct or not, is simply not enough
| for them. It still scares the shit out of them.
|
| Thus, relatively independent formation of various religions
| that directly or indirectly address this existential question
| #1 and much more. Its funny how at the end almost all say the
| same 'be good, don't do evil, and you shall be rewarded'.
|
| I do honestly believe that if a person was 'indoctrinated'
| into religion in their young age, abandoning it completely in
| later life is extremely hard and impossible for many (ie due
| to environment they live in, like cigarettes). I can see it
| in my circle of friends. It would create hole so big in their
| core personality that they would fall apart like house of
| cards when first hardship comes. And eventually they always
| will.
| Xc43 wrote:
| Faith: patience with mystery
|
| You and I are not much different.
|
| The difference I chose to believe because I know we humans are
| story machines. I prefer being part of a story, as co-author
| than author of my own pointless story. That is all. What allows
| me to say "Jesus is my Lord and Savior" is my patience, my
| faith. I do not know more than you. But I like the story that
| Jesus started and am willing to be part of it at a personal
| cost. It is better than nothing.
| rendall wrote:
| I'm afraid I cannot frame this question in a way that does
| not sound judgmental, and for that I am sincerely sorry.
|
| I'm genuinely curious why you would pick an arbitrary story
| out of the infinite multitudes and "choose to believe it" as
| a way to combat existential despair. It would be as if I,
| gaining some comfort hearing about Ragnarok, "chose to
| believe" that Odin literally exists and somewhere there is a
| bifrost bridge I could visit. Can't you like the story and
| gain value out of it without also believing in its literal
| truth?
| Xc43 wrote:
| Choosing to believe is mainly suspending disbelief. Or
| patience with mystery. Forever. The more patience, the
| greater faith.
|
| Liking a story is not sufficient to benefit significantly
| from it. In other words, to have skin in the game makes you
| gain more. The story you contribute to does not matter
| until you have faith. When you have faith, in any thing,
| you enjoy conviction, certainty. Conviction is
| intrinsically valuable.
|
| What if I had the proof your life is very valuable to
| Humanity? Would you live differently?...
|
| This is the sort of proof and subsequent gain faith gives.
|
| While, sure you can gain something out of liking a story,
| but the gain is lesser, the lesser your faith in said
| story.
|
| I choose Jesus' story because I chose him in the past and
| so far have been rewarded for my decision. I informed
| myself about other stories when I was openly atheist, out
| of curiosity. I did not think I could make a fully informed
| decision about this so I went with was closest.
|
| Since learning more about it and other stories, I believe,
| this is the best non disproven story. So I sacrifice myself
| to it. It is a pro-humanity story. Integrity. Joy. Anti-
| mimesis (yes, Rene Girard is part of the picture). Those
| are very tangible gains.
|
| It is not about being the greatest or being obedient. At
| its core, it is the story self-sacrifice/service for the
| benefit everyone, yourself included.
|
| There is only one piece of advice I dare give atheists:
| intentionally have faith in something. See where that leads
| you. There is only so many stories that rings true to a
| human being throughout their whole life and that of their
| progeny, I believe Christianity is one of them if not the
| only one.
| rendall wrote:
| > _There is only one piece of advice I dare give
| atheists: intentionally have faith in something._
|
| I mean that makes sense that you would do that. If you
| can get an atheist to accept the premise that _faith_ is
| somehow necessary, then you have validated your own
| worldview.
|
| To me, _faith_ is not some noble stance in the face of
| uncertainty. It is a metaphorical shrug in the face of
| cognitive dissonance. The correct _spiritual_ answer to
| cognitive dissonance is to bravely resolve it, not prop
| it up with the crutch that is _faith_. _Of course_
| philosophies that require its adherents to accept
| manifest absurdity are going to have a safety valve like
| _faith_ or _enlightenment_. That 's the only way people
| could ask a question like "How could God, who is Perfect
| and Good, allow such Evil to exist?" and go on and on and
| on without coming to the obvious conclusion embedded in
| the question itself.
|
| Or _Why the hell are we taking seriously the fevered
| imaginings of desert goat herders dead these 2000 years?_
| well, because faith
|
| So, yes, I get why you're asking atheists to have faith.
| Ask yourself why you need that validation.
| Xc43 wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, I do not give advice unsolicited.
| Faithful or not it is just a bad idea. I dare give advice
| when asked. The end of my last comment could have been
| better built.
|
| I never stated that faith was necessary, only useful and
| empowering. It is not a purely religious concept. It is
| one of those things that cannot be conveyed through
| words, the same way I cannot convey the color red or
| wetness without the receiver experiencing it. I imagine
| color blind people will never get red the way most do.
|
| I would never expect a self-professed atheist to
| recognize the nobility of religious faith but to at least
| acknowledge its difficulty, yes. It is difficult. To act
| with conviction in the face of uncertainty, that is
| difficult and I claim noble. To start a startup requires
| faith in yourself, your product, team because no can one
| guarantee success yet you need certainty to act. Faith is
| not a purely religious concept.
|
| Faith is recognized by its repercussions. An example of
| that is that we do take seriously desert shepherds dead
| 2000 years ago. But, it is not faith alone. It is also
| about the foundation for that faith. If all are able of
| faith, I guess the Norse had it. Why is that religion
| dead though, why did people stop believing?
|
| It is because after 2000 years people worthy of my trust
| in their intellect think of Jesus that I considered this
| man named Jesus worthy at least to think about.
| pizza wrote:
| Is it even meaningful to say that the universe - everything -
| has an entropy? Isn't it not even meaningful to talk about the
| entropy of something that is in a non-equilibriated state?
| People point to experiments about gas particles bouncing off
| the walls of closed boxes to prove how entropy is always
| increasing, but it really makes no sense to transfer that to
| the whole universe.
|
| I have been much more convinced that the universe, starting
| from a maximally structured configuration, tends to even
| greater structure, as Julian Barbour wrote about in the Janus
| Point. Structure emergence, as opposed to catastrophic mixing.
| My perspective used to be like yours but it has become: the
| game is only starting.
| rendall wrote:
| > _Is it even meaningful to say that the universe -
| everything - has an entropy?_
|
| The overarching approach to possible lack of meaning applies
| whether the universe increases entropy, sheds it, or
| maintains static equilibrium forever and ever and ever. It's
| kind of beside the point, really. Read _entropy_ here as a
| metaphor for _creeping existential despair_ or _random chaos_
| , whichever makes more sense to you.
| bengarrr wrote:
| Entropy IS always increasing. Water is always gonna flow
| downhill. Its not possible to go from maximally ordered to
| even more ordered, except in some kind of highly localized
| phenomena. But it is possible that it can return to that
| maximally ordered state after it reaches a maximally
| unordered state. This is the idea Roger Penrose has for the
| big bang is that it is the state of the universe immediately
| succeeding the heat death of the universe, at a certain point
| maximally unordered and maximally ordered can look the same,
| at least mathematically.
| pizza wrote:
| I'm not really talking about things that violate energy
| conservation or statistical mechanics. I'm talking about
| how the uniformity of the state during the big bang lead to
| something clumpier. Structure formation. And I still find
| it suspect to apply the concept of thermodynamical entropy,
| something defined for isolated systems at thermal
| equilibrium, primarily, to even make sense at universe-
| scale.
| bengarrr wrote:
| Structure is not entropy though unless I am missing what
| you are saying. The arrangement of macro level objects
| like a supercluster has less to do with entropy and more
| to do with dark matter/energy or what ever that stuff is.
| Also I dont follow the reasoning that this concept of
| entropy is incorrectly being applied to the universe...
| energy is energy I have never heard that the
| thermodynamics only applies to isolated systems in
| equilibrium.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| How can there be greater than maximal structure?
| pizza wrote:
| I might have messed up that wording.. basically as I
| understand it the universe started out pretty much
| homogeneous and uniform, minor deviations became magnified
| into seeding the structure that exists today, and basically
| some mix of inflation + gravitation will create additional
| structure forever, as measured by a value called the "shape
| potential" C = l_rms/l_mhl of a spatial configuration of
| particles [0]. l_rms is the root-mean-square length of the
| system and l_mhl is the mean-harmonic-length. He makes this
| argument that there are many potential geometric
| configurations that the universe could have started out as
| but he believes it started from the one that has the
| maximum shape potential, iirc. [0]
| https://physics.aps.org/featured-article-
| pdf/10.1103/PhysRev...
| handrous wrote:
| > For me and a friend, we'd joke about our existential despair.
| "What's wrong?" "The Void"
|
| The "vacuum the rug" comic went over well in my social group.
|
| https://imgur.com/d9KdAvH
|
| And so did a certain look into Mister Peanutbutter's inner
| life, which re-contextualized some things, after seasons of his
| being a goofy and dopey character (though, very occasionally,
| and tellingly, _not_ --also, thematic/character spoiler warning
| for Bojack Horseman, I guess?):
|
| "The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy
| isn't a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy
| with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead."
|
| And of course there's Frost's "Maple", which, for me, always
| comes to mind when "meaning" is the topic:
|
| http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/robert_frost/poems/731
| thrww20210608 wrote:
| The many Marian apparitions that have been documented, makes me
| certain that there is meaning to life:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_apparition
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun
|
| Feel free to ask me more about Catholicism if this piques your
| interest!
| thrwwmbkpr wrote:
| I come from a Protestant background and have always been very
| interested in reports of possession as a "proof" of a
| spiritual realm. It can't prove everything (and even the fact
| of possession can't verifiably be established as far as I've
| read), but it can present a powerful argument for forces at
| work beyond our scientific knowledge. Your links got me very
| interested in Marian apparitions. Are there any other good
| sources you would recommend?
| costcopizza wrote:
| What book should I read?
| rendall wrote:
| Whatever works for you, and I have sincere respect for you
| Christians (mostly, some are assholes), but at the core, you
| just have to take a _leap of faith_ in order to accept that
| philosophy.
|
| I am constitutionally unable to accept a metaphysics that
| depends on its adherents willfully disregarding anything at
| all.
| hungrykoala wrote:
| I think the "Universe/life has no meaning" sentence can mean
| two completely different things:
|
| 1. It could have a meaning, but there is none. For example food
| can have taste, but if it has none, we assume there is
| something wrong with it.
|
| 2. It is not possible for it to have a meaning, because it
| simply lacks that property. For example: what is the color of
| running? There is no color, and could never be.
|
| I think "Universe/life has no meaning" falls in the second
| category, and I have absolutely no problem with that.
| all2 wrote:
| > There is no color, and could never be.
|
| This illustrates the scope of experience we apply to the
| world. _I_ have never seen a color of running, but _somoeone_
| has. Synesthesia is very real and to those who possess it,
| there is a color of running. There are whole worlds of
| understanding that we cannot see because we lack the ability
| to see them.
|
| Some we can learn to see, some we deny because of reason or
| they have faded in our memories, some we dismiss out of hand
| because, well, "that can't possibly be true".
|
| All that to say: you might be missing the meaning of life,
| the universe, everything because you are not equipped to see
| it.
| naasking wrote:
| > This illustrates the scope of experience we apply to the
| world. I have never seen a color of running, but somoeone
| has. Synesthesia is very real and to those who possess it,
| there is a color of running.
|
| Subjective properties are not objective properties.
| Synesthetes perceive subjective interpretations of
| objective properties. The perceptual distortions enabled by
| psychedelics are also not reflecting objective properties
| of the world, but subjective properties related to the
| information processing in your brain.
| all2 wrote:
| You're sidestepping the metaphor.
|
| The point is that you and I may not be mentally equipped
| to observe reality in a way that shows underlying
| purpose.
|
| There's the assumption that the _thing_ yields its
| purpose when inspected.
|
| Consider a screw driver. If you and I see it but lack the
| knowledge of context into which it was created (driving
| screws) we would say it is obviouslymechanical, obviously
| designed and manufactured. A screw driver (or other
| mechanical apparati) don'thappen by accident. But no
| amount of inspection, theorizing, or philosophical
| discourse would yield its purpose or its use cases to us.
|
| We assume, by looking at the universe, that it (the
| thing) will yield to us purpose or reason for being. We
| can't get that information about the universe from the
| universe. We need to step back and consider "where did
| the universe come from". The context of origin may yield
| the purpose of the thing.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" We assume, by looking at the universe, that it (the
| thing) will yield to us purpose or reason for being. We
| can't get that information about the universe from the
| universe."_
|
| Unless you can ask the universe about the universe, which
| some people think they can.
|
| Even if they're right, though, I'd argue that you could
| never know if you got the truth from the universe, if it
| was lying, or if you were just deluded.
|
| People can find meanings in all sorts of things and in
| all sorts of ways. Doesn't mean they're right.
| all2 wrote:
| > People can find meanings in all sorts of things and in
| all sorts of ways.
|
| I've been grappling with this recently. Specifically the
| question of "What amounts to fantasy and superstition and
| what reflects reality?" Pyschedelics is a rabbit-trail
| followed from here, as well as the idea that "nothing is
| actually real, this is just a simulation". And following
| those is the idea "reality is what you make it" and "you
| are God". But those conclusions run up against things
| that we cannot change like death and taxes (the taxes
| part is a joke, but only kind of). We're left with a
| dissonance of "all is illusion" vs "there exist things
| that we cannot change and things that are consistent
| outside of ourselves".
|
| If we were in a dream-state and there was not actual
| object permanence then I'd agree with the conclusions of
| the religious pyschedelics crowd, as well as the all-is-
| illusion crowd. (Except there's some math from quantum
| physics that shows things don't exist unless you look at
| them...[0] or something like that. Conversations like
| this make me wish I took more comprehensive notes.) So I
| guess it _is_ all an illusion until we touch it. :D That
| reminds me of the early graphical rendering method
| "culling" where if something isn't in the rendered field-
| of-view (FOV) then it doesn't get passed through the
| graphical pipeline.
|
| How this informs the quest to extract meaning from the
| universe, I don't know.
|
| This is a bit of a rabbit trail by itself. I do wonder at
| the fabric of existence from time-to-time, but I don't
| wonder at the purpose of it all -- religious convictions
| being what they are to me.
|
| [0] https://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-
| until-we-...
|
| [edit for spelling]
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" What amounts to fantasy and superstition and what
| reflects reality?"_
|
| I don't see how we can ever really know. We only ever
| have access to our own experience. How could we ever find
| out what the world is really like beyond our own
| "subjective" experience?
|
| _" Pyschedelics is a rabbit-trail followed from here, as
| well as the idea that "nothing is actually real, this is
| just a simulation". And following those is the idea
| "reality is what you make it" and "you are God". But
| those conclusions run up against things that we cannot
| change like death and taxes (the taxes part is a joke,
| but only kind of)."_
|
| Who's the "we" that can't change that?
|
| Some believe that our "true self" is the universe itself
| or god, and we are just deluded in to thinking we're
| separate individuals. In that view death is illusory as
| the universe or god don't die, and taxes and everything
| else about the world is created by the universe or god
| (ie. by your "true self").
|
| There are many other views too, even if you reject
| yourself being god or the universe, that consider
| everything in the world (including death and taxes) as
| illusory. Many mystics, for instance, considered the
| material world to be illusory and the heavenly world or
| the world of god (or of "ultimate reality") to be real.
|
| _" We're left with a dissonance of "all is illusion" vs
| "there exist things that we cannot change and things that
| are consistent outside of ourselves"._
|
| Do we really need to be able to control the world for it
| to be an illusion?
|
| If we're, say, brains in vats, then we might just be fed
| our illusory experience and be unable to change it.
|
| _" If we were in a dream-state and there was not actual
| object permanence then I'd agree with the conclusions of
| the religious pyschedelics crowd, as well as the all-is-
| illusion crowd."_
|
| I don't see why you'd need any kind of object permanence
| either for the world to be an illusion.
|
| Also, one's belief that there's object permanence could
| itself be yet another illusion.
| rendall wrote:
| Descartes' _I think therefore I am_ has become a cliche,
| but it is profound. I can chuck any questioning about
| whether I actually exist or not. How do I know that I
| exist? Well, because I am thinking.
|
| It's at this point all I (we?) can know with probability
| 1, metaphysically speaking. We _could_ just be a brain in
| a box, stimulated to believe we are alive in this world.
| But at core, we (or at least I) do exist, brain-in-a-box
| status notwithstanding
|
| As for the rest, well, act _as if_ it 's all real and
| things will go better for you.
| naasking wrote:
| > Descartes' I think therefore I am has become a cliche,
| but it is profound. I can chuck any questioning about
| whether I actually exist or not. How do I know that I
| exist? Well, because I am thinking.
|
| This is a common mistake. Cogito ergo sum actually
| assumes the conclusion by asserting the existence of "I"
| while asserting that "I" exists.
|
| The fallacy-free version is "this is a thought, therefore
| thoughts exist". Still profound, but it does not prove as
| much as you think.
| naasking wrote:
| If you only intended to metaphorically claim that running
| may have a colour as some kind of thought experiment,
| then that wasn't apparent from your description. You
| literally said that synesthetes experience "worlds of
| understanding" to which we don't have access, thus
| implying that they are perceiving something _real_. That
| just isn 't true.
|
| As for the metaphor itself, "side-stepping" it simply
| shows that there is no known or valid analogue to what
| you're trying to describe, which should raise skepticism
| as to its validity. You're basically asserting Russell's
| teapot.
|
| Either what you're describing can be materially observed,
| or it cannot. If it can be observed, then it will be
| discovered by empirical means. If it cannot, then there
| is no reason to posit its existence and it can be
| dispensed with.
| dsego wrote:
| It could be something intangible, an emergent property, you
| know it when you find it sort of thing.
| stared wrote:
| > Human-created meaning
|
| Could you give an example for "meaning" which is not "human-
| created"?
|
| A human (and possibly other animals') instinct to create
| meaning might be not different from a spider's instinct to make
| a web. "Meaning" looks like an evolution-selected motivation
| tool for long-term goals.
|
| If it is true, it is an ill-motivated question whether there is
| some universal meaning. The same as if there is an objective
| cobweb.
|
| Still - yes, it might be sad for us that "meaning" does not
| extrapolate beyond our human psychology.
| NL807 wrote:
| > Could you give an example for "meaning" which is not
| "human-created"?
|
| There is none, and that is the point. "Human-created" is just
| an emphasis that meaning is a fabricated construct by the
| human mind.
| rendall wrote:
| You got it
| rendall wrote:
| > _" If it is true, it is an ill-motivated question whether
| there is some universal meaning. The same as if there is an
| objective cobweb."_
|
| Perhaps. And yet, the only easily accessible answers to the
| question _why am I here_ are "I know why, and if you attend
| my seminar I can tell you more about it"
|
| It's also not a helpful answer. Imagine: _Dad, why are we
| here?_ _Son, that is a ill-motivated question. Might as well
| ask if the is an objective cobweb. Now take the garbage out_
| svcrunch wrote:
| > Could you give an example for "meaning" which is not
| "human-created"?
|
| Without providing a more objective definition of "meaning",
| this question seems circular.
|
| Hypothetically, if someone gave you the example you seek, I
| see two possible responses: 1. You see the
| "meaning". You'll then say that it implies the meaning is
| "human-created" (since it was *you* who found it meaningful).
| 2. You do not see meaning in it, so you remain unswayed.
|
| Neither outcome would cause you to change your position,
| which implies your position is actually just a definition.
|
| If you argue that meaning is inherently subjective, then
| there is no point in asking for meaning which is not "human-
| created".
|
| I will make a proposal for an objective definition of
| meaningful: something is meaningful if it is non-random, in
| the sense defined by Kolmogorov, i.e., it is compressible.
|
| Using this definition, there is meaning all around us, very
| little of it human-created. Statistical reasoning, which
| drives the scientific endeavor, is among our most powerful
| tools for discovering this meaning.
|
| The question really is: where does all this meaning point?
|
| Unfortunately, even our best statistical methods fail badly
| in answering such questions. A concrete and convincing
| example is presented here:
|
| Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor?
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5230747/)
| wpietri wrote:
| Yeah, I think one of the issues people have with lack of
| intrinsic meaning is that they experience it as a loss.
|
| My parents weren't religious, so I grew up an atheist. I never
| believed that there was intrinsic meaning, intrinsic purpose.
| That was intimidating in my youth, as I was learning about the
| vast scale of the universe. Now it seems great. The universe is
| a blank canvas: we can create meaning for ourselves.
|
| One related thing I especially love is the art documentary
| "Rivers and Tides", about the work of Andy Goldsworthy. It does
| a great job of conveying beauty and meaning even when it is
| transitory. Especially when it is transitory. It's only when
| give up the belief in vast, universal meaning, that meanings we
| create for ourselves and one another can be seen in their
| proper scale.
| rendall wrote:
| > _Yeah, I think one of the issues people have with lack of
| intrinsic meaning is that they experience it as a loss._
|
| This is kind of a clueless, dismissive response. If
| existential despair has not touched you, how marvelous for
| you. It passes _most people_ by. I would not read that
| article and then smugly congratulate myself on this. Your
| self-satisfaction at being raised correctly is no different
| from someone being just fine with the answers they received
| in their Orthodox upbringing.
|
| I grew up in a secular, non-religious household as well.
| There was no crisis of faith for me. There were simply _no
| good answers_ and a lot of bullshit answers. Even pure
| empirical explanations are useless as to the _why_.
|
| The article discusses why some people wrestle with
| existential questions like _why are we here_ , _what is the
| purpose of existence_ from a young age to the point of
| depression. There is nothing there about people being
| particularly religious, or having disappointed expectations.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this! I've wrestled with existential
| questions my whole life. This is one of the best explanations
| for our existence that I've seen. Simple, and meaningful. I
| also love that this explanation also gives you a framework to
| live by. Meaning and purpose are arbitrary, but that's really
| the value in them. You choose to make your life valuable. Would
| you really want it any other way?
| rendall wrote:
| So glad it helped!
|
| Before that course, existential despair was nearly constant,
| from 10 years old through my 20s, and for much the same
| reasons for me as for the article writer. _What is this
| world, where adults talk about high-minded principles but
| then act reprehensibly in the shadows? What are principles
| even for, then? Why are we here? Why am I here? Anyone?_
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Hwaet! The Universe might be meaningless, these nihilistic
| Viking ghosts whispered to me, across the centuries. Live
| bravely, do not allow yourself to wallow in despair while
| entropy gathers itself. Make meaning, fight, build, love, stay
| healthy right in the face of the Uncaring Void. It's the only
| thing you can do. Entropy will win. Until then, make it
| meaningful.
|
| Those vikings are more existentialist than nihilistic to me ^^.
| rendall wrote:
| Their answer to existential questions was to throw their
| lives away slaughtering each other and innocents in battle,
| so they could drink mead in Valhalla until the Final Battle.
| The question is Existential. Their answer was nihilist.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Agree to disagree ?
|
| > The fact that Vikings chose to create meaning by
| slaughtering their unfortunate neighbors is a bit beside
| the point.
|
| Nihilism is specifically about the idea that there is no
| meaning and no will to create some.
|
| Creating meaning, seeking it, is the inverse of a nihilist
| answer.
|
| If Vikings were nihilists they would have engaged in a
| multitude of different activities without justifications
| rather than creating meaning by all fighting anyway. This
| fighting they do, despite the fact it won't change anything
| is an existentialist trait and an existentialist answer.
| I'd concede it's close to a philosophical suicide.
|
| I am not fluent enough in English and I remember not much
| from philo 101 so allow me to quote wikipedia:
|
| A pervasive theme in existentialist philosophy, however, is
| to persist through encounters with the absurd, as seen in
| Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus ("One must imagine Sisyphus
| happy")
| NL807 wrote:
| I think I'm cool with that. There is no meaning to any of this
| chaos, but I make an effort to make my life feel meaningful,
| and that's all that matters. Like clay, on its own has no
| purpose, but you can fashion it into bricks and build something
| with it.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Though we know of the universe and it's vastness, now, the
| thing that keeps me grounded is that we exist in a framework.
| The framework of the planet, of our evolution, of our exact
| position in space and time, etc. it all surrounds us. It is a
| great cosmic accident, or triumph if you want to be glass
| half full, that we exist. It seems a shame to not fully
| explore this framework of ours and understand as much as we
| can. I know I am just making up my own meaning, but I like to
| juxtapose the realness of discovery, knowledge, the human
| experience with the vastness of the cosmos. We are
| infinitesimal blips in the cosmos, yet for us it is
| everything. I think deep inside of me is an insatiable
| curiosity about everything and that drives me and keeps the
| existential crisis at bay because... there isn't really one.
| It's just us here on earth and we are enough. This isn't a
| rigorous philosophical statement or way of approaching the
| world, but it works for me. (I have read a lot of philosophy
| and even dabbled in formal philosophy to try and make sense
| of everything, but I keep pulling up to simpler concepts to
| rationalize it all)
| all2 wrote:
| Chaos is an interesting word to use. Underneath all the chaos
| is so much order. Dare I say the universe is mechanistic in
| its working. The earth orbits in an orderly fashion, set at a
| distance from the sun that is just right to sustain life. The
| moon makes its transit, and with us all the planets here move
| in their own ordered fashion.
|
| Or I suppose we could go smaller. Your body moves and goes,
| replicating one of the most complex forms of machine code
| known to man. That replication is paired with voltage
| gradients across groups of cells that determine macro
| organization of cellular structures.. The human body is self
| replicating, self correcting, and even keeps itself clean.
|
| You see chaos, I see order (and I admit the order is becoming
| more chaotic). But that you recognize the chaos gives light
| to the fact that you desire order. And there is order to be
| seen if you look for it.
| rendall wrote:
| I'm starting to see that _chaos_ and _entropy_ are
| metaphors that we who have experienced existential despair
| are using to describe _something else_ that may not be
| clear to those who have not. Not sure, but people keep
| getting distracted by those terms, but it seems to be
| missing the point.
|
| Upstream post may well have said _there is no meaning to
| all this order_. Paying attention to the underlying order
| doesn 't address the _lack of meaning_ which is the
| essential part of the statement. _There is no meaning to
| all this... *gestures vaguely around*_ might get at it
| better
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| What you've described is pretty close to Optimistic Nihilism,
| eg "The universe has no intrinsic meaning, so I'll make my
| own."
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=optimistic%20nihilism
| rendall wrote:
| Thanks. I'd love to know more about it
| bengarrr wrote:
| I was thinking about this the other day actually and I believe
| consciousness serves a higher purpose. If you think about it
| without any consciousness in the universe, nothing would ever
| be observed. Without consciousness the universe would just be
| an empty library, full of history and knowledge but with nobody
| there to read the books (assuming we are the only conscious
| life form in the universe). And that's fine I guess, the
| universe obviously could care less if we read its biography,
| but at the same time I think about how lucky it is that there
| is a biography to read at all. We could have been conscious
| beings in a universe that is truly chaotic and could never be
| made sense of but here we are in this nice one. That is able to
| be quantified and one that can be appreciated. One filled with
| unimaginable beauty and mystery to appreciate. Even if we have
| no tangible purpose, we still have the ability to observe and
| in a limited sense manipulate the universe around us and I
| think that is a highly overlooked facet of what makes being a
| human not completely unbearable. To me the meaning of life is
| to just simply to be. Butterfly affect applies here, just
| simply existing can have an unknowable cascade of effects that
| ultimately shape the story of the universe. My version is a
| little different: Entropy will always win. Until then, just
| exist and enjoy.
| rendall wrote:
| Perhaps. Personally, I don't find these notions comforting.
| It _could_ be that our consciousness serves a higher purpose
| of some sort, or it could be it is but sweet delicious nectar
| for hungry entities, and we are but fodder.
|
| My philosophy must allow for either and neither.
| ajb wrote:
| "One of the most potent elements in that fusion is the Northern
| courage: the theory of courage, which is the great contribution
| of early Northern literature. This is not a military judgement.
| I am not asserting that, if the Trojans could have employed a
| Northern king and his companions, they would have driven
| Agamemnon and Achilles into the sea, more decisively than the
| Greek hexameter routs the alliterative line--though it is not
| improbable. I refer rather to the central position the creed of
| unyielding will holds in the North. With due reserve we may
| turn to the tradition of pagan imagination as it survived in
| Icelandic. Of English pre-Christian mythology we know
| practically nothing. But the fundamentally similar heroic
| temper of ancient England and Scandinavia cannot have been
| founded on (or perhaps rather, cannot have generated)
| mythologies divergent on this essential point. 'The Northern
| Gods', Ker said, 'have an exultant extravagance in their
| warfare which makes them more like Titans than Olympians; only
| they are on the right side, though it is not the side that
| wins. The winning side is Chaos and Unreason'--mythologically,
| the monsters--'but the gods, who are defeated, think that
| defeat no refutation.' And in their war men are their chosen
| allies, able when heroic to share in this 'absolute resistance,
| perfect because without hope'. "
|
| -- Tolkien, "The Monsters and the Critics"
| acituan wrote:
| > Any philosophy that just asserted that the Universe has
| meaning was a non-starter, for me.
|
| > Humans create meaning in the face of an uncaring, indifferent
| Void.
|
| I hope you realize that your assertion, which asserts a
| _complete lack_ of meaning, is just as strong as the
| philosophies that assert meaning. To me, both are non-starters.
|
| To make progress one has to question the framing of the
| problem, which is actually what most of the continental
| philosophy enlightenment onwards was about.
|
| Maybe meaning already requires _consciousness_ that looks out
| at the world, so it would be a contradiction to claim the
| _things in themselves_ has meaning. (subjective)
|
| Or maybe there is meaning in things themselves, but there is an
| _intelligibility_ problem and we can 't have a sufficiently
| comprehensive representation of it internally. (objective).
| Think it as the model file not fitting a single machine.
|
| Or maybe meaning is a _process_ that requires both the
| conscious looker _and_ a meaning in things themselves, and is
| dynamically loaded. (neither subjective nor objective). It can
| still be constrained by cognitive capacity or intelligibility,
| but maybe we 're doing a pretty good job at it nonetheless
| because we are able to conform to _reality_ in an adaptive
| manner, and survive better than any other species with our
| modeling. Also we have been coming up with technologies to beef
| us up on the intelligibility and capacity fronts; like
| invention of literacy!
|
| So maybe existential depression is a mere stuckness in a local
| minima of this _meaning making_ process between the conscious
| looker and objective reality, in no small part thanks to our
| current philosophical and other institutions really sucking at
| training us on the dynamic loading process. Nor we have the
| supporting education to leverage the collective intelligence of
| the _best of the humanity_ (remember, we 've invented literacy,
| but what is the use if we don't read the most important stuff
| on this matter?). Without these constraints addressed, "there
| is definitely no meaning" sounds to me like giving up on
| looking for one's keys because they are tired and don't feel
| like they have made any progress. I am not saying there are
| definitely keys either, but it is a worthy endeavor to try
| getting better at looking for it at least.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > So maybe existential depression is a mere stuckness in a
| local minima of this meaning making process between the
| conscious looker and objective reality, in no small part
| thanks to our current philosophical and other institutions
| really sucking at training us on the dynamic loading process.
|
| There are multiple philosophical schools in operation, and
| they each want to unload what the others have dynamically
| loaded.
| alfor wrote:
| There might not be meaning to the universe, but there is
| meaning in the human enterprise.
|
| We went from animals, to highly effective and conscious of
| ourselves and the universe. The human developpement keep
| pushing forward.
|
| I think that the main cause of meaninglessness is our rejection
| of our own culture ( mostly Christian). There is good reason to
| reject them as the bearded magician in the sky seem stupid to a
| modern science minded person, however if you look at those
| stories at a second degree there is a lot of parts that make
| sense.
|
| Theses stories were the bedrock of our civilisation and the
| spine of our consciousness. We need to update theses stories
| with what we now know instead of throwing them out because
| science make them look outdated.
|
| Take a look at Jordan Peterson biblical series, it explain in
| evolutionary terms how we invented theses stories, what they
| mean, what we can learn from them.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-wWBGo6a2w
| rendall wrote:
| Not sure why you're getting downvoted, but I do appreciate
| your response.
|
| Sure, as metaphors and origin stories and cultural
| touchstones, they're worth knowing more about. But thinking
| these tales as literal truth is... not helpful to address
| existential angst. Not to someone like me, anyway. Not one
| among those stories explicitly says "Yes, the Universe might
| indeed have no meaning. That observation is valid, rational
| and sane. Given that, here's how to handle it..." They are
| all, to the last, _have faith, my child, accept this {patent
| absurdity}, and that will save you from {other patent
| absurdity}_
|
| I'm not really convinced of the Jungian framework, but I do
| get a kick out of it. It's a hell of a lot of fun.
| alfor wrote:
| I think that everything Christian or from Peterson get
| downvoted in this left leaning place, they are seen as
| backward or even evil.
|
| Theses stories made me realize that we are part of
| millennia of human understanding evolution. To me there is
| sometime a deeper meaning at a second level but I have to
| get past a first reaction of disdain that i got from all
| things Christian. We are more open to other culture
| religions as we don't know their flaws as well.
|
| Jung is still opaque to me.
| rendall wrote:
| Peterson is a Jungian, which is why I brought it up.
| Check out _Memories, Dreams, Reflections_ by Carl Gustav
| Jung himself, for a fun accessible entree. Basically, the
| theory is that humans are deeply wired to use stories to
| understand the world, and some stories are even embedded
| in our subconscious.
| brundolf wrote:
| To add to this: I grew up with religion and eventually broke
| away from it. I went on this hyper-realist streak, looking to
| break down life and reality into its most fundamental parts. I
| assumed this would include true meaning. It didn't.
|
| What I found is that meaning is like a delicate ecosystem, and
| I was strip-mining. I thought I was breaking reality down into
| its most fundamental pieces, harvesting them and learning the
| truest truth, but it turned out there were important things
| that couldn't survive the process, and I was destroying them.
|
| It was only by allowing myself suspension of disbelief and
| embracing the meaning I already knew inside of me that I was
| able to pull myself out of nihilism and find happiness again.
| Meaning was there; I simply had to stop getting in its way. It
| may not have any physical or metaphysical reality, but it has a
| reality in the human spirit, and that's really all it needs to
| be. The proper response to "But meaning is just a fragile idea
| that lives only in our minds!" is "Yes! And that's why it is so
| precious and so important to guard carefully!"
|
| We must tend to our gardens, not grind them down for their
| components
|
| Epilogue: I didn't return to religion, though I did come to
| appreciate how many things religion got right via millennia of
| accumulated human experience. And a nice thing about knowing
| that meaning doesn't come from metaphysics is you don't have to
| subscribe to any one doctrine; you can internalize the pieces
| that seem true and set aside the pieces that you believe are
| wrong, morally or logically.
| physicles wrote:
| I had a very similar journey. Even after 10 years I sometimes
| still slip into existential despair, and the remedy is, as
| you said, a bit subtle: don't outright ignore it, but also
| don't attack it directly. No matter how hard you stare into
| the void, you will never see anything but darkness.
|
| It's a bit like happiness: if you pursue happiness directly,
| you will surely fail. Instead, pursue worthy goals and care
| for others, and happiness will take care of itself.
|
| I also learned that, as you wrote, we can lean on human
| biology. If one asks, "Why should I wish to strive to make
| progress in life and keep living?" the a suitable answer is
| simply "Because I'm human and that's how I'm wired."
| brundolf wrote:
| I look at it a bit more like Tinker Bell: meaning may only
| exist while you believe in it, but that doesn't make it not
| real. When you believe in it without picking it apart, it's
| as real as can be. So let yourself.
|
| As a musician I like once put it, careless realism costs
| souls
| SMAAART wrote:
| > Meaning was there; I simply had to stop getting in its way.
|
| You just described the Hero's Journey (Monomyth). The end of
| the journey is nothing more than the return to the starting
| point, the world has not changed, the Hero is the one that
| has changed.
|
| Many people do know this, understand this, and see (their)
| life as a Journey; what people miss is that not everyone is a
| Hero.
|
| Welcome home.
| nathias wrote:
| This type of depressive nihilism is just a reaction to the
| destruction of values, after that you can progress towards an
| optimistic nihilism, building your values on truth instead of
| lies.
| throwawaynumber wrote:
| trying to build my values on truth makes it impossible for me
| to reconcile any such built values with things like liberalism,
| equality, egalitarianism, religious beliefs of any kind, etc.
| Basically pick all the dearly adhered to values of the "left"
| and "right" in the English speaking west and tear them up and
| toss them into furnace.
|
| It not a pleasant experience, especially in the culture war
| riven excessively online world of today, where it makes, to me,
| everyone who is left wing, right wing, Nazi, anarchist,
| liberal, egalitarian, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, [religious not
| ethnic] Jew, leftist, centrists, libertarian, classical
| liberal, conservative, BLM activists et al, proud boys et al,
| etc all existential foes on the grounds of fundamental moral
| truths.
|
| Not a troll post.
| nathias wrote:
| I can reconcile parts of universalist rationalist values but
| not their type of spiritualist justifications, but of course
| trying to avoid ideology will make you opposed to ideologies
| ...
| loopz wrote:
| Makes me ponder what corporate values are.
| coldtea wrote:
| Money and hypocrisy.
| texaslonghorn2 wrote:
| perhaps the corporate religion worships and values wealth.
| similar to the Ferengi in Star Trek.
| pizza wrote:
| optimistic nihilism
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