One: Maybe you’re depressed
Two: Maybe you’re tricked by capitalism and religion into believing everything is special and needs a grand purpose
Three: We desperately need things on earth right now, dog shelters are overrun, solar panels need to be built and sold, bus lanes needs to be put in roads
Four: Just because it all ultimately means nothing, empires rise and fall, some remembered some forgotten, doesn’t mean nothing matters to someone else, I still remember 4th grade friendships and the things they taught me. Even if I never see them again. They still matter.
Having a grounded big-picture perspective and being depressed can be really hard to tell apart
I thought the former just creates the latter
Other way around.
I do love my anime and videogames.
Just saw this video personally last night.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIHRmoOBZBg
But a good point to make, if we all keep escaping, do we really ever affect any change to make things better? Are not media and entertainment, even if critical of the systems they exist within, forms of emotional relief such that we don’t stand up, go outside, and affect change?
A personal question I struggle with all the time.
Oh yeah? I’ll start my own life. With Blackjack. And hookers. In fact, forget about the life.
Just blackjack and hookers it is.
You’re not only allowed to make your own meaning, there is no other choice.
It definitely has some campy/quacky parts, but I think the underlying idea of The Power of Now is worth contemplating: the emptiness is peace, and it is rather the ego that derives despair from an inability to assert over or distract from it.
You dropped this, fam.
Nah, never forget, Sisyphus had meaning in his life, he helped a kidnapped daughter, he secured an ever lasting spring of water for a village… the gods punished him because he kept tricking them, skirted their rules and their punishments, helping himself and other people, masses of normal people.
He chose to do those things, so… you could say he created his own meaning in the midst of an inherently absurd and meaningless universe? 😉
Yep, that’s the crime, he rejected their bullshit systems, and they can’t have their own illusion destroyed - that they’re inbred irrational, jealous, bottomless pits of power hungry idiots that serve no purpose and shouldn’t be worshipped, but removed from power. he threatened to reveal their illusion and to show people they could make big differences and change the system without the powers of the Gods, so they imprisoned him with meaningless slave labor.
Almost like it’s a metaphor for the endless human condition we find ourselves in with our own “gods”, the men who try to control the world with power, riches, irrational rules and meaningless slave labor.
“Imagine Sisyphus happy” reeks of corporate middle management extolling the virtues of grind culture to their underlings. I’ve never thought it was a good argument. Just a cheap cop-out for people who can’t face the never-ending barrage of existential despair that comes from truly, deeply questioning the meaning and purpose of life.
Like “Here, find meaning in this menial labor that you’re compelled to do by society!” No, you mindless automaton, the whole point of my existential despair is that I’ve seen through the superficial layers of appearances to grasp the utter meaninglessness at the core of everything. I’m not gonna pretend that I haven’t seen through it and stop questioning things just because it’s uncomfortable.
Camu has addressed that in his essay on suicide -
it’s not that you distract yourself, that’s denial, and it’s not a full embrace of nothing, that’s depression (and suicide). it’s an acceptance that things are meaningless - but you as a person can never stop looking for that meaning, in fact just the search itself is what keeps you going. that’s the absurd in absurdism, searching for meaning despite knowing it doesn’t exist, finding happiness in the journey, making peace with the fact that even if you do reach some goal you’ll never feel fulfilled. and even if you become the king of the world and have everything you could ever desire - the rock is still going to roll down, you’ll feel like there’s still something missing, and you’ll need to push the rock again
at least that’s my interpretation
From the Wikipedia summary:
However, the absurd can never be permanently accepted: it requires constant confrontation, constant revolt.
I think there’s more to existentialism than that, but if it’s not for you there are other philosophies available–there’s always Schopenhauer.
There’s definitely more to existentialism than that. I don’t think any two existentialist philosophers are alike. Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus, Heidegger, Watsuji, Nishida, Nishitani, et cetera. None of them are remotely similar other than in being existentialists. It makes sense though, for a school of philosophy that rejects essentialism to be so disparate in ideas.
I do like Schopenhauer, though. So much better than Nietzsche who kinda stole his thunder.
Dropped it… not againn.
Isn’t that just the meaning of life?
That’s what living superficially running from new thing to new thing does to a person
The all acts because it acts.
Turns out getting your life together doesn’t really ease the constantly simmering existential dread.
At least I know that now.
On the plus side, you only have to keep busy until the wonderful day it all finally ends. sob
I finally found my kin!
The emptiness underneath? Like the subway tunnels?
That tracks
This looks so familiar…
Is this the subway station in PowerWasher Simulator (aka the game that made me get diagnosed with ADHD)?
It might be the tunnel from Exit 8
