Then I was startled into the realization that
I had resurrected from philosophical suicide
When I turned 60, three years ago, I realized I had resurrected from a life of philosophical suicide, in Camus' words. It was quite a jolting awakening, along with exuberation. I never knew that people could resurrect from suicide or even that I had committed philosophical suicide when I was a kid and for 50 years via fundamentalism or evangelicalism.
One of the huge realizations was that I had been living everyone else's life, their
"I asked myself, 'What is the myth you are living?' and found that I did not know. So... I took it upon myself to get to know my myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks... I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me." (Carl Jung)
That was part of my response to a post in reddit which asked this: ”Whenever I get into a discussion of life and tell people that our life is meaningless and pointless, all they have is --- then why don't you end your life ?? I mean how do they not get that even though i said life is meaningless, i never said that it wasn't worth living ...i don't know how to deal with this kinda questions..anyone please help😅”
Here is my initial response: Alan Watts has one of my favorite answers. Paraphrasing, he says that life has no meaning, no purpose in and of itself. When we demand of life or the universe to tell us what the meaning of life is, all we get is silence.
Just like the dance, the purpose of the dance is to dance. The purpose and meaning of life is to live! We don't begin a dance so we can get to the end or somewhere else. We don’t ask the dance why it is there and what its meaning is. If we simply immerse ourselves in the dance or in life, that synchronicity between life and you will reveal to you who you are (identity), why you are here (meaning). and what to do about it (purpose).
Then I continued with this: I do love Camus' philosophy too. Since life has no inherent meaning and is therefore absurd, and if we are not going to commit physical suicide in response and we are not going to commit philosophical suicide, then all we can do is revolt in the face of the absurdity of a universe with no inherent meaning by standing up and doing the opposite of suicide... we live!!!
I really like Camus' definition of absurdity. Mankind has this primal cry for meaning that never goes away that is inherent, deeply embedded, and never ending. But the response of the universe is silence, no answer at all. Then it is not the universe in and of itself that is absurd. It is our cry with absolutely no response that is absurd. It is the juxtaposition of the cry of mankind in this silent universe that is insanely absurd. And when we add god into the idea of the universe, then not only is the universe silent and without answer, but god has chosen a response of silence and invisibility. At least we can see the universe! But with god, there's nobody home.
Camus says that besides physical suicide, many choose philosophical suicide.
We can choose death through suicide or we can choose to live while dead by giving in to the tyranny of an external authority or belief, hence choosing philosophical suicide.
We keep trying to fill the imaginary void through religion, politics like evangelicalism, social systems like Naziism and a master race like white supremacy, or karma. Controlling things or people. Buying things or people, cars or houses. Accumulation of commodities or money, education or knowledge. A spouse, family, and kids can be used to distract us from the inevitability of death and The Absurd. The most common way of committing philosophical suicide is through elusion. Elusion via Illusion. Career and advancement; climbing the corporate ladder. Collector of beautiful or unique things. Sports and all kinds of entertainment. And on and on...
And yet, at death, what matters? For me, it is living without appeal in fearlessness, gentleness, compassion, and empathy, as I make a difference in the lives of those I encounter. I live without appeal or distractions or excuses or death-denying artificial systems of comfort, security, and certainty.
"There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide,” so claims Camus in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus. By starting with the question of whether life is worth living, Camus places the problem of how we are to live our lives squarely in the center of this thought and squarely in the shoulders of each and every person. https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/the-meaning-of-life-albert-camus-on-faith-suicide-and-absurdity
“The meaning of life is to be alive.
It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.
And yet everybody rushes around in a great panic as if
it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
(Alan Watts)
Life is NOT a Journey - Alan Watts
When we look at life as a journey or a trip to somewhere, then we become like children asking constantly, "are we there yet?" Because the point of the journey is the destination. That's what we are excited about, not the actual process of getting there. When we dance, we do not dance in order to get to the end. An orchestra does not play in order to get to the last note. People don't come and listen so that they can only hear the last note. It is the process, the whole thing that matters. Life is like a dance or an orchestra. We live to live, not to die. The point of life is not the afterlife, it is living each and every moment to the fullest extent, in revolt against the Absurd.
Victor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning
“Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what
No matter how much adversity and pain we are going through, there is always someone that has experienced much much worse. These people can bring us new ways of seeing; new perspectives on life, meaning, pain, and joy. From them we can learn to celebrate the life we have been given.
Victor Frankl is a WW2 Nazi concentration camp survivor. His book, Man’s Search for Meaning (not for the faint of heart), describes in gruesome detail the incredible internal struggle of finding a reason for simply opening one’s eyes for another day. A very humbling read from the comfort of our American easy chairs. It makes our daily complaints seem quite trivial.
“This story is not about the suffering and death of great heroes and martyrs, ….Thus it is not so much concerned with the sufferings of the mighty, but with sacrifices, the crucifixion and the deaths of the great army of unknown and unrecorded victims.” Viktor E. Frankl
From the depths of a concentration camp he brings us what give life meaning.
1. All things can be taken from us except for one thing, our freedom to choose how we respond to life.
2. All people are here with a purpose greater than ourselves. Life requires each of us to find and follow this mission, which can only be found within.
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms
—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances…”
Victor Frankl, Auschwitz survivor
“What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.” p.171
“We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value; and (3) by suffering.” p.176
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
Further Thoughts
When I read Man's Search for Meaning 15 years ago, I kept looking for some sort of divine answer to meaning in life. But I read through the whole book and there was no mention of god anywhere. At that time, I was still in the midst of Christianity or as Camus would have called it, a form of philosophical suicide. At first I was startled and shocked that such a meaningful book could be written, especially from the depths of such despair, possibly the worst despair on the face of this earth. I kept looking and hoping for that glint of Light from above. It took me quite a while to see the power of that powerful Light that came from within this man, from within the human spirit. He overcame through the sheer force of the human spirit!!!
All we need to do is BE who we are and live life AS IT IS. That is what Camus meant by "LIVING WITHOUT APPEAL." We live in the face of The Absurd without deferring to any external authority but simply living. What is the meaning of life? TO LIVE!
For more on my discovery of Camus' philosophy: https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2020/11/bedrock-of-being.html https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2020/11/philosophical-suicide.html
No comments:
Post a Comment