Principia Discordia

Because isn't it a little silly, this whole human condition? Our quest for meaning ultimately falls short when trying to explain this strange unpredictable universe. You think the world is a certain way, and then all of the sudden somebody flies a literal or metaphorical plane into a literal or metaphorical building, and all the sudden there's this new thing to make sense of, something which came from outside of our expectations and turns everything we knew on its head.

The Black Swan is humbling. You could meet somebody, or something could happen to you, or some opportunity could fall into your lap and next month you will be a different person. The checkerboard you had been playing on will be left unattended. And if you glance, momentarily, over your shoulder, you can see a long trail of unfinished checker games you've left behind.

So what can we do, knowing this? How can we respond to the fact that our world is always partially concealed from us, that our knowledge of the world is misleading, that any meaning we attach to it is passing, ephemeral...



We have a few options here
--We can turn to God, the alpha and omega who breathes meaning into the world ...but this is an illusion
--We can retreat into nihilism, insisting that there Is No Meaning ...but this is suicide
--OR we can embrace the absurdity of the universe and the human condition.



There is a lot of emotion in play as you walk to the ATM, withdrawing cash to satisfy some human need. You've spent your waking life transmuting calories into pennies, and then pennies into your desires. This is the alchemy of capitalism. But it is messy chemistry, it leaves waste product in your guts. As you picture the peaks and valleys of your bank account, I want you to visualize Sisyphus.

Sisyphus was a Titan, one of the friendly ones who loved humanity. He slayed Death, so that men would not have to die. But eventually death returned and came for him. His punishment was eternal toil - to push a boulder up a hill, and just before he gets a rest, the boulder bounces back down the hill. The Greeks thought this psychological torture was worse than suffering in the flames of Tartarus.

We have a lot in common with old Sisyphus. You work and you work and you work and you push your bank account up a slope. When you dip your card in the ATM, you can feel the momentum changing, you can feel the boulder shifting, and then it falls, it gets away from you, it rolls back down the hill at breakneck speeds, pulled by the demands of the mortal world.


Poor Sisyphus. He toils so hard, and for what? The boulder goes up, the boulder goes down. The world we live in is designed for this. Every step we take pushes the hamster wheel a little bit. Every penny we spend flows into the capillaries of the corporate tissue, it gets pulled into the fast moving arteries of the stock market, the rhythmic heart beat of billions of people grinding their stones into dust trip by trip. The world needs our suffering.

We must laugh! The absurdity is too much! We put our entire soul into this pointless fucking quest for money, for status, for comfort, for a moment of rest before the stone shifts and escapes us again.




Absurdism says: you might as well enjoy the trip. You might as well generate some meaning, even though that meaning will pass. If there is an objective truth to the universe, it is concealed from us anyway. So it might as well be about laughter and silliness and enjoying the feeling of the grass on your feet as you push the boulder.


Yesterday was payday. Today could be a nice cup of tea instead.

Well done sir, and the ending is Truth. The beauty of the journey is all too often obscured by thoughts of the destination.

Nicely stated, Cramulus!

:mittens:

the only philosophy that's ever really made sense to me.

I thought though that one of the three choices was literal suicide rather than nihilism, though I could see how nihilism could lead to suicide in the minds of certain people.

excellent toast sir.

nihilism's a philosophical suicide. You can reduce anything in this world to dust by chanting the mantra "that doesn't matter" over and over again. But if nothing matters, why even get up in the morning? Why bother with anything? What is there to talk about when nothing matters?

It's tempting though, I give it that. I just paid $160 in parking tickets and suddenly got smacked with a $200 fine for letting my car insurance lapse. This is at the same time I'm about to buy a big TV. And I'm looking at the peaks and valleys and whispering "it doesn't matter" to myself over and over and over again.

that was beautiful, Cramulus.
thanks.

i particularly liked the phrasing of the strange alchemy of capitalism.
also, i had a friend introduce me to needitkeepit.org and have had charity on my mind lately.  that mingled with the metaphor here in interesting ways...  pushing someone else's rock a little...

:mittens:

Well put.
I ask myself things like that a lot, especially during the weeks on the far side of pay day.  "How do I get the slack without spending $$$".  My whole idea is not to make the money I've just burned 40 hours of life to get a force multiplier, not a force provider.  I look around and I take stock of what I have previously turned money into.  Books, tools, games, it's all like instrstructure, scorfolding and butresses around maslowe's pyramid.  Most of it is proping up the lower layers, I just have to figure out working it so I can diddle the capstone without bouncing off my wallet to do so.  

Beyond that, like you were saying I stop and wonder why IS the almighty dollar such a focus anyways.  Then I start paring it down swinging around a metaphorical cleaver in Occam's name.  At the end, the bits of paper are just me buying in to the current popular group survival scheme.  Not much else.  Ideas I can act on, or people to have itneresting interactions with are what's REALLY going to do something.

good image, Richter

(http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb163/wompcabal/sisyphushierarchyofneeds.jpg)



Iptuous, very interesting website. I love the energy in it, this idea of passing warmth and good will along until it gets where it needs to go. I'm interested in perhaps creating a parallel project, but instead of money, humor or absurdity...

In class, comments brief.

Good read.

That's righty embrace me might'lly :P


-FNORD

and your welcom eris.

And it's nice to see all you people.

Nice read Cram - your rants never fail to make me think!

I'm awfully intrigued by the mythic implications.

Like are we all Sisyphus?  Look at the way we keep fighting death.  Death would be to just stop doing this pointless shit with The Boulder.  Our Boulder isn't money, it's life.  We keep fighting the gravity of the boulder because, even though it's brain-smashingly repetitive, it is still less boring than being dead.

The absurdity is that we keep thinking, yeah, this time will be different.  This time the boulder will balance on top of it all.

Quote from: Sigmatic on October 14, 2010, 07:38:19 PM
I'm awfully intrigued by the mythic implications.

Like are we all Sisyphus?  Look at the way we keep fighting death.  Death would be to just stop doing this pointless shit with The Boulder.  Our Boulder isn't money, it's life.  We keep fighting the gravity of the boulder because, even though it's brain-smashingly repetitive, it is still less boring than being dead.

The absurdity is that we keep thinking, yeah, this time will be different.  This time the boulder will balance on top of it all.

And then what would be the point of going on?

Absurdism has always resonated with me. I have a hard time drawing the same lines between absurdism and nihilism everyone else seems to. Their belief structures are very similar. They both say, "Nothing matters." The absurdest only adds, "If I find meaning or enjoyment out of the absurdity that is nothingness can't that be enough." Personally I like that addendum however I think it is simply a blurring of existential and nihilistic theory. Nothing matters so focus on yourself and your enjoyment.

I think Camus himself often got annoyed by the functional problems of existentialism and absurdism. Believing absurdism can save someone from nihilistic suicide; however he seemed to suggest that enacting pure absurdism would bring upon yourself another type of downfall.  

Quote from: Charley Brown on October 14, 2010, 07:41:38 PM

Quote from: Sigmatic on October 14, 2010, 07:38:19 PM
I'm awfully intrigued by the mythic implications.

Like are we all Sisyphus?  Look at the way we keep fighting death.  Death would be to just stop doing this pointless shit with The Boulder.  Our Boulder isn't money, it's life.  We keep fighting the gravity of the boulder because, even though it's brain-smashingly repetitive, it is still less boring than being dead.

The absurdity is that we keep thinking, yeah, this time will be different.  This time the boulder will balance on top of it all.

And then what would be the point of going on?

That's not the point.  It's a meaningless goal, because the top of the mountain is the same as the bottom, if you're sitting still.

If you're not changing, you're dead one way or the other.

I don't buy either one (absurdism or nihilism).

My life has purpose.  In fact, it has lots of purposes.  Today my purpose is to make Filthy Assistant miserable.  Tomorrow, my purpose is to roll rocks off of Mt Lemmon, in the hopes of making a trail full of hikers go screaming all the way to the bottom.  Fuckers.

Anyway, life means whatever you decide it means, whatever gets you through the night.  You're here to enjoy yourself, and if you were lucky enough to be born in a nation in which this is possible, then it's a damn sin to pack your head full of nihilist garbage.  People in central Africa would trade the rest of their lives for your worst day.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on October 14, 2010, 07:46:19 PM
Anyway, life means whatever you decide it means, whatever gets you through the night.  You're here to enjoy yourself, and if you were lucky enough to be born in a nation in which this is possible, then it's a damn sin to pack your head full of nihilist garbage.  People in central Africa would trade the rest of their lives for your worst day.

that sums up the rant, yeah

Your life may have meaning today, a different meaning tomorrow. We can't just accept that there is no meaning, we have to go on making meaning as we go, content that meaning is like a "straw dog (http://www.newequations.com/soultypes/soultype5/tao5/tao5.html)" - a sacrificial artifact that is well maintained until it is useful, then ti's cast aside without a second thought.

QuoteAnyway, life means whatever you decide it means, whatever gets you through the night.

As I understand it, that's basically Camus' absurdism... or maybe the modern existential viewpoint?

Dok as an Existentialist?! That may be the most Absurd of all!  :eek:

Surprised?  What did you expect?  Essentialism? 

And you know how he feels about logical positivists.

Quote from: Ratatosk on October 14, 2010, 09:41:44 PM

QuoteAnyway, life means whatever you decide it means, whatever gets you through the night.

As I understand it, that's basically Camus' absurdism... or maybe the modern existential viewpoint?

Dok as an Existentialist?! That may be the most Absurd of all!  :eek:

Balls.  I'm a fucking Discordian.  I don't need any other philosophy.

I've always identified with Absurdism, from before I knew the word. It's just the only thing that has ever made sense to me. So, naturally, I like this rant. It helps that you have some great imagery. I agree that the "alchemy of capitalism" is brilliant, and I really liked the Sisyphus metaphor.

I swear I am not stalking you.

Thanks Cram. I've identified with Sisyphus for a while now.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on October 15, 2010, 02:27:22 AM

Quote from: Ratatosk on October 14, 2010, 09:41:44 PM

QuoteAnyway, life means whatever you decide it means, whatever gets you through the night.

As I understand it, that's basically Camus' absurdism... or maybe the modern existential viewpoint?

Dok as an Existentialist?! That may be the most Absurd of all!  :eek:

Balls.  I'm a fucking Discordian.  I don't need any other philosophy.

:lulz:

Quote from: Sigmatic on October 14, 2010, 07:38:19 PM
I'm awfully intrigued by the mythic implications.

Like are we all Sisyphus?  Look at the way we keep fighting death.  Death would be to just stop doing this pointless shit with The Boulder.  Our Boulder isn't money, it's life.  We keep fighting the gravity of the boulder because, even though it's brain-smashingly repetitive, it is still less boring than being dead.

The absurdity is that we keep thinking, yeah, this time will be different.  This time the boulder will balance on top of it all.

Semantic line blurring but still...isn't death just primal chaos?!

Balancing that boulder.

I agree that we should create subjective meaning, because living by someone else's ("important people" or institutions") meaning just leads to frustration or pleasing someone else at the cost of yourself.

Part of making the work as least absurd as possible is to work on something productive you enjoy doing (i know this isnt a choice for everyone), so that theres a real sense of social cooperation and not just of being a slave-drone.

Now, correlating this to my horror-mirth observation: i do think that life should be about happiness, but i try to not fall for the trappings that i perceive as merely defense mechanisms or passing novelty on which capitalism thrives.

Taking this back another step -

Why should we need meaning?  Who decided that meaning was an essential part of a balanced life, and that if you were missing meaning, you aren't really living?

Sisyphus is a little confused by all this philosophy going around about him and his boulder.  Okay, so it always rolls back down.  That doesn't bother him - if it ever stayed up on top of the mountain, he'd have to come up with something better to do.

I'll try to answer.

Okay, so we could write entire books just setting the groundwork for actually deciding what "meaning" means.  I am not going to do that.  I'm just going to assert that "meaning" in this sense is a feeling of significance, in the sense of being important in some way.  Like having kids increases your significance because you and your kid are really important to each other.  That sort of thing.

My stance is that human life does not have any intrinsic significance in the larger scheme of things, but we are egocentric enough to want to believe that we do.  Human life has significance (meaning) only to other humans, or other morally sympathetic intelligences (such as your dog).

SEMIOTICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, I have to be sad I missed this.  It's great stuff, Cram!  And that pyramid...ugh, I noticed that I have more of an "hourglass" shape--that yellow band...meh.  I have some issues there.  All else I think I'm ok, workin' hard or hardly workin'...but that YELLOW band...sheesh.  It's all fucked up to pieces most ways.

Gives me some food for thought.

Quote from: Golden Applesauce on December 14, 2010, 12:56:51 AM
Taking this back another step -

Why should we need meaning?  Who decided that meaning was an essential part of a balanced life, and that if you were missing meaning, you aren't really living?

Sisyphus is a little confused by all this philosophy going around about him and his boulder.  Okay, so it always rolls back down.  That doesn't bother him - if it ever stayed up on top of the mountain, he'd have to come up with something better to do.

I tend to think we need meaning because otherwise, we're just paddling around in circles. You don't do anything, you have nothing to aim for, and so on. Been there, done that, not healthy, very boring, and I'm a couple years behind because of it. Meaning = goal. The meaning in my life is to do what I enjoy. That gives me day to day meaning. Today, that's study for finals, because what I want to do with the rest of my life requires a degree. Friday, it's watch as much Freakazoid as possible and then go party.

This doesn't mean that everyone with a meaning is happy or whatever - meaning, if it comes from outside yourself and you have nothing invested in it, sucks. "My goal is to make my parents happy, even though I don't want to do it."

Quote from: Hover Cat on December 14, 2010, 02:11:27 AM

Quote from: Golden Applesauce on December 14, 2010, 12:56:51 AM
Taking this back another step -

Why should we need meaning?  Who decided that meaning was an essential part of a balanced life, and that if you were missing meaning, you aren't really living?

Sisyphus is a little confused by all this philosophy going around about him and his boulder.  Okay, so it always rolls back down.  That doesn't bother him - if it ever stayed up on top of the mountain, he'd have to come up with something better to do.

I tend to think we need meaning because otherwise, we're just paddling around in circles. You don't do anything, you have nothing to aim for, and so on. Been there, done that, not healthy, very boring, and I'm a couple years behind because of it. Meaning = goal. The meaning in my life is to do what I enjoy. That gives me day to day meaning. Today, that's study for finals, because what I want to do with the rest of my life requires a degree. Friday, it's watch as much Freakazoid as possible and then go party.

This doesn't mean that everyone with a meaning is happy or whatever - meaning, if it comes from outside yourself and you have nothing invested in it, sucks. "My goal is to make my parents happy, even though I don't want to do it."

Maybe "meaning" sounds too abstract to you, but, in other words, its what you want to do with your life.

It can be as basic as surviving, or it could be pleasing someone, or it could be the seeking of pleasure, etc...

If you dont have "meaning" i dont see a point in living because youd be pretty much just a sponge.

That's pretty much what I said, Nyx.

Sorry, i quoted you not to disagree with you, but to go along with what you said towards GA.

All right then. :)