I wrote this in December, 2015. Given the catastrophic and suicidal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this might be a good time for you to read it. Here's a question you might ask yourself afterwards: how are humans going to explain away (rationalize) this monumental self-defeating fuck-up? You can be sure they will find a way.
— Dave
It is two days before Christmas and it's 60 degrees (F) outside. I guess it's time to talk about the meaning of life.
My starting point is an essay by Roy Scranton in the New York Times called We're Doomed, Now What? Roy starts off by noting the prevalence of "nihilism" in modern life, but I'm going to skip that part. Here's a simple definition of nihilism.
the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless
The key word is "meaningless". The way humans give life "meaning" is Roy's theme.
We get to the heart of the matter in this text.
Scientific materialism, taken to its extreme, threatens us with meaninglessness; if consciousness is reducible to the brain and our actions are determined not by will but by causes, then our values and beliefs are merely rationalizations for the things we were going to do anyway. Most people find this view of human life repugnant, if not incomprehensible.
This is a nice summary of Flatland, at least in part. Those few who do not find this lack of free will incomprehensible find it repugnant. Yes. I too find it repugnant, but my disgust is not sufficient reason for rejecting it.
But generally speaking humans must reject this desolate view. Roy goes on.
In her recent book of essays, “The Givenness of Things,” Marilynne Robinson rejects the materialist view of consciousness, arguing for the existence of the human soul by insisting that the soul’s metaphysical character makes it impervious to materialist arguments. The soul, writes Robinson, is an intuition that “cannot be dispelled by proving the soul’s physicality, from which it is aloof by definition. And on these same grounds, its nonphysicality is no proof of its nonexistence.”
The biologist E.O. Wilson spins the problem differently: “Does free will exist?” he asks in “The Meaning of Human Existence.” “Yes, if not in ultimate reality, then at least in the operational sense necessary for sanity and thereby for the perpetuation of the human species.” Robinson offers an appeal to ignorance, Wilson an appeal to consequences; both arguments are fallacious.
These are both forms of "spin" (bullshit). There is no "soul" as Marilynne Robinson would have it. Acting as if free will exists gets us nowhere (see the first Flatland essay). The perpetuation of the human species is now in question. So much for free will and "sanity."
What is Roy's answer? This is the key text, so read it carefully (emphasis added).
Yet as Wilson suggests, our dogged insistence on free agency makes a kind of evolutionary sense. Indeed, humanity’s keenest evolutionary advantage has been its drive to create collective meaning. That drive is as ingenious as it is relentless, and it can find a way to make sense of despair, depression, catastrophe, genocide, war, disaster, plagues and even the humiliations of science.
I am not going to hold back here. What I am going to say will strike you as bleak. This view of life offers no hope or redemption at all.
Roy asserts that "humanity’s keenest evolutionary advantage has been its drive to create collective meaning." This "drive" is itself an adaptive delusion, a rationalization which "finds a way to make sense of" war, depression, catastrophe, etc. according to Roy.
I have re-written the paragraph in question so it makes sense. The changed part is italicized.
Yet as Wilson suggests, our dogged insistence on free agency makes a kind of evolutionary sense. Indeed, humanity’s keenest evolutionary advantage has been its drive to rationalize much of what humans do or feel, no matter how repugnant or painful.
That drive is as ingenious as it is relentless, and it can find a way to rationalize despair, depression, catastrophe, genocide, war, disaster, plagues and even the humiliations of science.
There is no drive for "meaning"; there are only post-hoc rationalizations of everything repugnant or painful. I rationalize things. You do it. Everybody does it. It's the only way humans can get through the day. The "meaning" of a genocide lies in the genocide itself. How could we humans do such a thing? Here's the rule of thumb.
Humans are very highly defended (in the psychological sense) against many aspects of their own fundamental nature (disgraceful/unacceptable thoughts, behaviors, etc.) or the bad things which happen to them. Indeed, such defenses are part and parcel of human nature itself, and make human life possible.
("Defense mechanisms are one way of looking at how people distance themselves from a full awareness of unpleasant thoughts, feelings and behaviors" (source)).
I also ran into this "drive for meaning" rationalization in Maria Konnikova's excellent article Born To Be Conned (The New Yorker, December 5, 2015). Again, read this carefully (emphasis added).
This is one reason confidence games flourish, why anyone, no matter how honest, is a potential victim: Even as the evidence against them piles up, we hold on to our cherished beliefs.
“When people want to believe what they want to believe,” David Sullivan, a professional cult infiltrator, told the Commonwealth Club of California, a public affairs forum, in July 2010, “they are very hard to dissuade.”
Here we go.
And the reason it happens (and often happens to the most intelligent people) is that human nature is wired toward creating meaning out of meaninglessness.
“There’s a deep desire for faith, there’s a deep desire to feel there’s someone up there who really cares about what’s going on,” Mr. Sullivan said. “There’s a desire to have a coherent worldview: There’s a rhyme and reason for everything we do, and all the terrible things that happen to people — people die, children get leukemia — there’s some reason for it. And here’s this guru who says, ‘I know exactly the reason.’ ”
Wait a minute! By quoting David Sullivan, Konnikova has changed the subject. What about people getting conned by other people? And holding on to "cherished beliefs" in spite of it? Or all the other terrible things that happen to people which are perpetrated by other people? Like those who get killed in wars and genocides. I guess their search for "meaning" is over.
Meaninglessness is, well, meaningless. It’s dispiriting, depressing and discouraging. Nobody wants reality to resemble a Kafka novel.
But human reality does resemble a Kafka novel. Paraphrasing Konnikova, "rationalizations are, well, meaningless." Fortunately, rationalizations work most of the time because human life wouldn't be possible otherwise. Thus most humans do not find their lives "dispiriting, depressing and discouraging." No matter how crazy life actually gets, you can get through it. You can thank evolution for that.
Before humans learned how to make tools, how to farm or how to write, they were telling stories with a deeper purpose. The man who caught the beast wasn’t just strong. The spirit of the hunt was smiling. The rivers were plentiful because the river king was benevolent. In society after society, religious belief, in one form or another, has arisen spontaneously. Anything that cannot immediately be explained must be explained all the same, and the explanation often lies in something bigger than oneself.
And what about that genocide? That school gun shooting? The corruption? The rip-off? And what about the meaningless humiliations science has brought us? What about the meaningless, gratuitous suffering of the person stricken with cancer? What about humans destroying the biosphere?
Where is the deeper purpose in these cases and many others? There isn't one. All these things must be rationalized away, defended against. If you want to spin astonishing human rationalizations as a quest for meaning or deeper purpose—if you want to put lipstick on this pig as human nature dictates—be my guest. Ascribing meaning doesn't create meaning.
Otherwise, without the rationalizations, life would be impossible. There's your "meaning" of life.
Spot on, Dave. I can't help critiquing what I see as BS. Neither can you! I consider myself a 'mutant' of sorts, or at least far out on a tail of the Bell Curve. We have company, but it is unlikely to ever reach a critical mass or tipping point to reverse overshoot and crash.
If you're not familiar with Reg Morrison's work and his book _The Spirit in the Gene_ here are links to my review of it from 2000, and another to his excellent website.
http://www.peakoilandhumanity.com/kurtz_folder/steve_kurtz_page_main.htm
(second item)
and
http://regmorrison.edublogs.org/articles/
Free Will is 'vastly overrated' ;-)
Cheers on the downslope,
Steve
kurtzsATncfDOTca
Posted by: Kurtzs | 12/23/2015 at 11:58 AM