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Biological Superintelligent Undying Transcendecism: Turn Earth into a Planet-Brain and the Neurosynthetic Terra-Mind demigod could straticate itself up into the tiers of reality to become a Type 7+ Civilization on the Kardashev Scale
Biological Superintelligent Undying Transcendecism: Turn Earth into a Planet-Brain and the Neurosynthetic Terra-Mind demigod could straticate itself up into the tiers of reality to become a Type 7+ Civilization on the Kardashev Scale
Biological Superintelligent Undying Transcendecism: Turn Earth into a Planet-Brain and the Neurosynthetic Terra-Mind demigod could straticate itself up into the tiers of reality to become a Type 7+ Civilization on the Kardashev Scale
The only philosopher, to my knowledge, that didn’t end up proposing some sort of coping mechanism for the absurdity of existence was Cioran. Well, he actually did, he said that knowing that he could commit suicide at any given moment is what kept him going.
Actually, the idea that "I can create my own meaning" was quite the revelation for me a few years ago when I was undergoing an existential crisis. When we are raised Catholic we are used to see life as duty and minimize immorality, and be selfless; and for me for a while there it was hard to keep it all together and serve all these "gods". Ironically, I was a firm atheist (strictly agnostic), and so I was drowning in nihilism and purposelessness. And I had many quests in life but none were quite serving me. I forgot myself. Interestingly enough I was a strange atheist because I acted quite much like a good Christian and even though there was some indulgence in me with masturbation and weed, I was still neglecting myself and self-respect in other areas of life. It was only when I read Herman Hesse's 'Siddartha' that I realized that being happy - taking care of myself - was of primary importance in my particular case. My psyche was screaming for help and didn't know I had to help my body. I stopped doing weed, indulging in alcohol, parties, or bad influences, and I started building myself up. But it wasn't until I realized that 'life having no meaning' was actually a good thing that I started building myself up incrementally. Life does have meaning, but in truth none was a meaning that filled me in. Once I realized that 'life having no meaning' meant that I could fill it from my own choice and taste that I finally did something for myself. In fact, at that moment, I regained my agency (free will) against the hardcore determinist I used to be. That was a life changing moment. I stopped doing things out of some stratified logic of priorities and values that would in my considerations be responsible and lead to better outcomes for my life - which it was explicit that none of it was coming to fruition - and I started taking chances on life by going down an unorthodox road of self-development and self-actualization even if I wasn't even sure of the result. So, absolutely, it was essential for me to recognize that life had no meaning and that I could fill it in with my own choices - which I did. I bought my own library and started digging in all that I ever wanted to learn. I ended up replacing my 'gods' with the actual God. Once I found God within me (not 'I'm God' but 'I'm part of God) - which I neglected to look inside of me - then a whole new world of meaning and belonging welcomed me.
@@MrClockw3rk I never wanted to escape religion itself. It wasn't religion that bugged me; it was lack of critical thinking. You can find lack of critical thinking both within religious groups and within scientific groups. Academia is filled with groupthink, bias in favor of who finances them, and circular peer-reviewed articles in echo chambers. You can't just swipe religiosity as a sign of lack of critical thinking; nor science spaces as the olympus of critical thinking. In fact, I've found the most sharp minds were loned out of any space. That said, if you read anthropologists you will learn that you can't escape religion (latin 'religare' = to reconnect). It's in-built in our society and human relations. We're even called 'homo religiosus' and 'homo symbolicus'. I think my estrangement, from various reasons, had me try to reinforce it and rationalize it to the point of becoming my identity. I was on a path of self-destruction. We need each other and we need to connect. Religion offers a mythos and value structure to adhere to as a platform of social economy. It's essential and fundamental to our nature and our ability to live. So, in a sense I came back to it, but in practice I was never consciently in it - as I never understood it before. I don't feel guilty nor fear. In fact, the only fear I have is the fear of people. So you can imagine how it pains me to connect with people. I see it, in the back of my mind, always as uncharted territory - a potential minefield to assault my central nervous system. I think think and live like this to this day. But I now, consciently enter states of bliss and 'letting go'-ness so as to take chances on people. It doesn't come natural to me to this day. I'll always be an alien anywhere and I've accepted that. Which is part of the proccess of reconnecting isn't it? I have to force myself to find common ground or to make concessions in order to participate in social commerce. If you are afraid of changing or giving different ideas a chance, it might be because you are attatched to your identity and your idea of who you are. But I invite you to try and see what you thought you new from different perspectives and open your mind to what you may have not understood before. I used to have the problem of not accounting for my own interpretation in other's words. We read only what we know. The content others may be communicating with those words may be so strange that when we read their words it doesn't show up in our minds. We need to find ways to have new experiences so we can understand other people's words. I can tell you this much: if had not found God I would have never taken care of my deeply religious Catholic grandmother. It would have never occurred to me to make such a sacrifice (not be selfish) and help her after she broke her hip during covid lockdowns. It changed me as a person to find God. I found God, but although I made peace with Christianity and share many of the value structure (since I was raised Catholic) I still don't consider myself Christian - as I don't believe in the miracles, for example. I just believe in God. If you are interested in trying to understand what scores of scholars and sages knew accross millenia I suggest you read a bit of Thomas Acquinas (Summa Theologica), René Guenon ('The Crisis of the Modern World'), you can also start by reading muslim sages like Avicenna, Averoes, Al-Ghazzali. But you can also complement it with furthur reading of Buddhism, Hinduism (Maya, Brahman, Atman, etc) and then you're going to being seeing the parallelisms that most ancient people understood what God to be: God is the 'whole'. If you are interested in putting all this in line with modern science you have to investigate into quantum physics and the theories of consciousness (Donald Hoffman, Metzinger). All these will help you see reality and existence differently so you stop living in a positivist materialistic newtonian/cartesian sandbox world and move on to a cosmovision that accounts for how our brain and conscience shape our perceived reality down its multiple source emanations. Good luck!
what is wrong with saying “create your own meaning”. I don’t know much, if anything, about philosophy so excuse me if this comment is ignorant; am commenting out of curiosity cuz I wanna learn. if there is indeed no meaning and we have no greater purpose, then what is wrong with saying, “well I do exist, and the feelings i experience are real, why not try to maximize that experience to the best of my abilities while I do exist”. For me, that means striving to achieve sustained satisfaction, and that’s where I find my meaning.
its complicated. what a lot of this kind of philosophy gets at (at least to me) is the question of 'what matters' if nothing matters than you deciding what matters doesn't matter. it comes from a place of assumed importance, they are 'coping' with the fact that there is no meaning to life by making one up or assuming one is there and trying to find it. but honestly theres nothing actually wrong with it, and the way you think is absolutely valid and probably the best way of going about things. "no purpose or objective meaning? so? i like not suffering and i exist despite not knowing exactly how or why, so i'll just do my best to have pleasure and maybe fight for this cause regardless of whether it objectively matters or not. it matters to me because i am and i experience.
I think the idea of "creating" your own meaning works at a metaphorical and pragmatical level, bur at the end it ends up being a leap of faith just like religion. "I'm going to assume God exists' and "I'm going to assume I can create meaning" are metaphysical affirmations, but both can work if you transform them into metaphorical devises for pracrical life. Jordan Peterson, for example, uses the first one: he assumes there is a God and tries to act as if he existed: so he strives to sin less, to treat others as divine brothers, to pick up his cross. The same way you can assume meaning is created by you: then you can set for yourself goals, do things meaningful to you, and so on. But both are metaphorical assumptions. If we philosohise existentialism, the we would have to discuss if values can be created, if meaning can be created and if you are truly free to set your own goals. Also, saying "there is no meaning or purpose" is also an assumption. Personally, Im not sure if we can prove whether or not we create meaning or we find it, wheter we are truly free or determined, and whether the universe or life has purpose or not. I'm a skeptic, so I think life must be understood phenomenologically and existentially, not metaphysicaly. Because metaphysics has been invalidated: saying meaning exists or not absolutely has become obsolete.
@@EwingAmaterasumeaning is really not a leap of faith here. Meaning is, at least to my understanding, is a feeling or value placed upon an idea, thing, or being. When someone says “they bring meaning into me life”, the person is saying “they” have value to the person and their relationship is enjoyable on some level. That’s not faith, that’s just a fact of what the individual experiences.
@@_Sloppyham I agree, the problem I find is in the word "create". If your language is "I find certain activities valuable", that's acceptable. But if you say "I create my own meaning through these activities" then we will have to see if you mean it metaphorically or metaphysicaly. If it is in the metaphysical sense, then it is (in my opinion) nonsense, because we can't know if meaning is something that we find or that we create. In this last sense, it is a leap of faith.
Brilliant conversation. Thanks! IMO the key the strong belief in God is experience, particularly certain types of peak experiences. Most so-called belief in God is superficial, just social bonding and norming as you see in the political sphere.
I feel like "creating your own meaning" is less something you actively do, and more something that just happens because of what we are. I fully believe that absolutely nothing matters in any way at all, period. But like, humans (and probably other creatures) are built to "care", so it's expected to develop opinions and place values on things based on our individual points of view, and maybe other factors out of our control like brain chemicals. I care about video games, and would have to effectively LARP as an pre-programmed robot to even pretend that I don't, for example, and even then, that would be only to other humans, my mind itself won't really change. This opens up a bunch of questions, like what does it mean for something to matter, what is "meaning", what is "objective" and "subjective", what is something that can perceive things, what is "care", what is "value". But I don't think any of these questions or their many answers can even begin to address the problem of "objective" meaning, other than dancing around it and trying to reduce it to something like statistics or universal subjective experiences. Because actual proper "objective" anything isn't something that can exist to begin with, so it isn't something that can be defined and discussed. It'd be kinda like discussing pure nothingness, something that we can't even begin to imagine. What do you see when you try to imagine "nothing"? Well, probably something, I imagine a black void personally.
No, not unless there is an authority who gives it that meaning. Whether that authority is god, or that authority is you. I don’t mean to be rude but I think a very fair question is if something has intrinsic meaning prove it.
And if we’re being technical, the literal meaning of life is whatever you’re doing that’s keeping you from committing suicide. It really is that simple.
We do need to create a new god. We need to build a system and structure for collective ideation, reasoning, and truth determination that maps out and connects the actions of the individual to the collective (to the greater)
@nobodynobody4389 you're right. Everybody is good just wingin it. No need to try to sort it out. It's better to just keep screaming at each other and getting distracted following chemical signals and desires. Accept the post truth society while the government or tech companies quietly build their own preferred global structure controlled by a small group of people. Technological development will continue to make this easier to accomplish. Theres too much incentive for those who seek power to do this. We must ensure all the humans have a say in how it works, and the ability to record what they think is true, important, and what they think we should do about it. And we need to keep an immutable record of what happens through time. Anyone must be able to contribute to it both publicly and anonymously.
Ad hasn’t even finished playing yet and I’ll just say- no. Firstly, existentialism is a very neutral concept. It depends on the condition of your state of mental health/stability and your ability to differ from “reality” and “delusion”; it has to be approached with a lot of objectivity and acceptance. Reality is touchy. Reality is in essence subjective. However, that’s what existentialism is all about, trying to find the authentic root. There is unhealthy existentialism that can lead to nihilism, victim mentality, Machiavellianism, etc. In my opinion, existentialism is the definition of what it means to not “cope” in this reality. You’re yearning to perceive life in its most raw and objective manifestation- which is what it is, this world and life has always been a mystery and always will be; we will never have the capacity to understand/conceptualize it. Not in this life, not in the physical. We aren’t meant to. If you’re not conscious of this life, reality, world, or whatever you’d prefer to call it; -then YOU are coping. It’s human nature, at its very core, the foundation of man to question this life and its suffering.
Athetists talking about religion more than most religious people, while also criticizing people for having religion as a crutch in their life is crazy. Like other people being religious has caused YOU to waste your life lol
If there's meaning, does it mean there's beyond existentialism? You know what it is? Existentialism is passive seeking, paralysis seeking. To cure that, its simple, "gratitude" it at all starts there. You know in neurology, a narrow, tunnel vision sight says a lot of details of a person, they have the ability to target essentials truth with such details that they miss what's around them. There's meaning, as there's absolute truth. You are not there yet due to nuances of man's life.
Existentialism is absolutely a cope, But who cares? It somehow manages to be endlessly pragmatic, despite relying on irrational and emotional experiences as a guide to peace and fulfilment. In my mind, existentialism is the only answer. It's an idea of absolute ethical utility in the face of absolute meaninglessness.
Existentialism is really for young people who think they have found all the answers. It offers a simple answer, yet at the same time, one at that age thinks that it is a really sophisticated philosophy. The void will answer you, give it time.
defining your own essence, creating your own meaning doesn't seem to answer big existential questions like what does human activity matter in the grand sceme of things, or simply why does my life matter? i think existentialism doesn't really satisfy all the existenial questions we want to ask but it is an interesting field nonetheless.
Something that annoys me about this guy is he seems to continuously diverge into tangents and never course-corrects back to the original topic. Alex will ask a really interesting question and he is about to say an interesting answer but then oh he just thought about this cool related topic so off we go and we never get to hear the interesting answer. It's actually almost infuriating to listen to, I did listen to the full interview a while back.
If the dude is "trying out" philosophies he is not deconstructing himself with utmost seriousness. If philosophy is your calling you should be obsessed about how you work and terrified about any new revelation that you have. Anything else is logic gymnastics.
