Hard News: Another entry in the Public Address Medical Journal
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I find our very existence's utter meaninglessness to be really rather liberating and I'm sorry, Danielle, that it depresses you.
Prescisely! If there is no ultimate point to our existence (or at least not one that we are ever going to be able to discern), then we are entirely free to create a meaning to our individual existences that suits ourselves.
C'mon Danielle, life is yours for the taking! Jump up and grab it with both hands! Or, if you prefer, stay on the couch and watch TV! the choice is yours, and only yours! Forge your own destiny!
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law! Be the best you can be!
God, the freedom! I'm getting high on the possibilities! I think I need a lie-down.
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Well, recent estimates suggest that the planet's CO2 levels will decrease to the point where photosynthesis is no longer possible within 600 million years, so there might be the chance for another Green Party to emerge. So I guess we should appreciate the one we've already got.
Will Kedgley still be there in 600 million years?
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I wouldn't put it past her.
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I find
our very existence's utter meaninglessness
to be really rather liberating and I'm sorry, Danielle, that it depresses you.
I tend to agree. Nothing would depress me more than the possibility that it was all part of a cosmic plan and that some god was behind it all. Which one? If I back the wrong horse is my soul confined to eternal damnation?
I read The God Delusion recently and found it quite liberating.
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Jack, I like your refinement to our seeming meaninglessness, hippy drivel or not.
We are our own gods...
[Beware, slippery slope ahead...]
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We are our own gods...
In a discussion involving the Greens and evolutionary psychologists, this couldn't have been put any better really.
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But why did the big bang happen?
Once nothing realised it was there...
quote>music is just some weird evolutionary button-pressing, like we're all 'hardwired' to like it,</quote>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q49Bs0Gp7OU
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annoying hippy drivel
God, the freedom! I'm getting high on the possibilities!
Russell, I need to report a nest of hippies in PAS. They've infiltrated, and they're taking over. (Also, I've had a moment of clarity: I think I might have to include myself in their number. Christ.)
Nothing would depress me more than the possibility that it was all part of a cosmic plan and that some god was behind it all.
Oh no no no, that *would* really suck, I agree.
Look. My brain wants there to be meaning; yet there is obviously no external source of meaning. These two things are incompatible, and it's just like that Star Trek episode where Kirk talks the floating robot into a paradox and it blows up.
Argh. I think I'm going to do some ironing and listen to Public Enemy.
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We are our own gods...
When do I get the power to smite mine enemies with plagues of boils?
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I'll try that again.
But why did the big bang happen?
Once nothing realised it was there...
music is just some weird evolutionary button-pressing, like we're all 'hardwired' to like it,
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Russell, I need to report a nest of hippies in PAS. They've infiltrated, and they're taking over.
Tee Hee.
Shall I post more Grateful Dead clips? -
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Look. My brain wants there to be meaning; yet there is obviously no external source of meaning. These two things are incompatible
Oh no they're not. It's what Jameson calls the meaningless materiality of the body and nature versus the meaning-endowment of history and of the social. We produce the meaning, it doesn't need to be validated by immanent and absolute laws of the universe for it to be, well, valid.
For a dung beetle its little ball of shit is the most meaningful thing in the world, and the beetle isn't wrong.
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So go on, make your life meaningful.
(I know this sounds like annoying hippy drivel, but I do actually believe this.)Well, then....
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Man, I am so having a Lost marathon this weekend ...
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Existence isn't meaningless. It's just that there's no external source of meaning. Things only have meaning and force insofar as we give it to them. So go on, make your life meaningful.
Quite. The idea of meaninglessness is itself meaningless.
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Old hippie alert: there's a for-a-short-time-only clip of Neil Young tearing up Glastonbury last weekend with an epic version of 'Keep On Rockin' in the Free World' in today's Hard News.
The bloody BBC keeps removing all its coverage from YouTube so I had to put it up myself. Be quick.
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The idea of meaninglessness is itself meaningless.
Oh, a pox on all of you mature self-actualised beings, and your calm acceptance of everything. A pox, I say! :)
(However, in my new incarnation as a postmodern hippy dungbeetle, I have this little ball of shit over here I'll be working on, with Giovanni's blessing.)
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Old hippie alert: there's a for-a-short-time-only clip of Neil Young tearing up Glastonbury last weekend with an epic version of 'Keep On Rockin' in the Free World' in today's Hard News.
Link whore.
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in my new incarnation as a postmodern hippy dungbeetle,
Fantastic band name, The Postmodern Hippy Dungbeetles.
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I had to put it up myself
as a demonstration of the importance of context.
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The Postmodern Hippy Dungbeetle.
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Heard interesting talk last week on meaning of meaning by philosophy professor from Beijing.
Later made pilgrimage to dugongs in Sydney aquarium Philosophically problematic - should these endangered wild animals be in zoo for fish? -
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Oops link doesn't seem to work. Here's another
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Where'd my capacity to engage on these matters go I wonder? I did the basic theological training via Catholic schooling and the metaphysics at uni and yet... I've so little to add.
Existence isn't meaningless. It's just that there's no external source of meaning.
I'm not all that opposed to this conceptulisation although the "no external" validation might be too narrowly defined for me (though I'm guessing you mean no deity?) I'd not disagree with this, I simply don't know, but does that mean none, or rather just no supernatural? What about the meaning of our lives validated by others? My kids validate me, I think. I know that's very local and personal, so how about global recognition of the humanity of Nelson Mandela? I rewatched Gandhi recently, I understand the meaning of his life as being both his commitment to his principles but also the political change he achieved. Is that external validation?
Or is that what you mean in the next sentence when you say:
Things only have meaning and force insofar as we give it to them
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I rewatched Gandhi recently, I understand the meaning of his life as being both his commitment to his principles but also the political change he achieved. Is that external validation?
It's internal to the human race, but rarely if ever a property of the individual in absolute isolation. 'The meaning endowment of history and the social' works for me.
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