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MikeL
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Aug 11, 2005 - 03:55am PT
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Sorry, Jay. You'd better break out that textbook.
The "no such thing as truth" argument is widely held by many post-modernists today. Grossly generalized, they are relativists who feel they must sit idly with multiple (albeit valid) interpretations of everything. Life in today's multicultural and pluralist world seems to demand empathy and understanding of anything and everything, and it has driven people to conclude that there can be no real truth (only perspectives). Relativists cannot seem to be able (or willing) to judge right from wrong, appropriate from inappropriate, or truth from falsehood. They are ]unwilling to make hard decisions: real decisions that have significant consequences which entail regret, suffering, guilt, etc.
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Lois, I think you put your own meaning between the words and did not get the image of being alone coming into the world and leaving it alone. Brenner, I think, was saying that life was meaningless *to him*. It was not a statement about what you think life could mean. Many people who are not religious have come to Brenner's conclusion. If everything--but everything--ends at death, then what a person does in life scarcely matters.
Shopenhauer: "people either fail to achieve the ends they strive for or they find them grossly disappointing;" "life is absurd and should be mourned, not rejoiced" [Mark Twain used the idea satirically in his monologues, and the Greek legend of Silenius and King Midas told the same story]; "the world ought not to exist;" "if life is a gift, it should have been tested out before acceptance;" "we do not become aware of life's greatest blessings until we have lost them [e.g., health, youth, freedom, etc.]."
Clarence Darrow: "Life is like a ship on the sea, tossed by every wave and by every wind: a ship headed for no port and no harbour, with no rudder, no compass, no pilot; simply floating for a time then lost in the waves." "I love my friends, but they all must come to a tragic end."
Tolstoy: "Today or tomorrow, sickness and death will come to those I love, or to me;" "nothing will remain except stench and worms;" "life is a stupid fraud that no reasonable meaning could be given to a single action or to a whole life;" "nothing is worth doing."
In Julius Caesar--Cassius: "Why he that cuts off twenty years of life cuts off so many years of fearing death."
Brutus: "Grant that, and then is death a benefit: so are we Caesar's friends that have abridged his time of fearing death."
CHD Clark: "all striving is pointless if it is without final consequence;" "it scarcely matters how we live if all will end in the dust of death."
Macbeth: "Life is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, /Signifying nothing."
Of course there are people who are optimistic about life and its meaning (see Viktor Frankel's remarkable book), the greatest of which tend to be religious people, I think.
Here is a generalization based upon personal, casual observations without careful study--and I apologize beforehand if I offend anyone's sensibilities: It seems to me that people who do not believe in religion have to work doubly hard to create and find worthwhile meaning in life. Indeed, a person without some religious beliefs seems to me to be somewhat cynical and resentful about life's unfairness, its vicissitudes, its suffering. It seems to me that the more a person is "a realist" (e.g., scientific, rational, logical, progressive, hard-nosed, fact-oriented, analytical, practical, pragmatic, etc.), the less wonder, magic, and mystery he or she has in their life.
ml
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Sally OConnor
Social climber
Canada
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Aug 11, 2005 - 11:15am PT
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"Sally
That’s awesome you’ve been through something similar to me. I’m thankful for you about that. Thank you for your comments too. Keep up the race and when you fall may you always recover quickly."
Thanks for your well wishes, Jay. I have recently gone through extreme pain at the hands of a terrible person. I ask myself why it had to be that way but I know something good has to come out of it. Some evil people walk among us, sometimes right under our climber noses but even they are there for a reason. With climbing it is not always a certainty but from this fall, I will recover.
(would be nice if really, really evil people had to wear special badges or be barred from certain places though)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 11, 2005 - 04:29pm PT
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Largo wrote: "I also would like to debunk the theory that material is the basis and cause and source of everything real and imagined and so forth. I believe that the seen and measureable and the unseen and unmeasurable source each other, taht causation runs both ways."
which is the yin to my yang: "I would like to debunk the theory that reality needs to be explained by anything more than what is material. I believe that what is seen and measurable provides an explanation of everything."
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Aug 11, 2005 - 05:01pm PT
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Ed wrote: "which is the yin to my yang: "I would like to debunk the theory that reality needs to be explained by anything more than what is material. I believe that what is seen and measurable provides an explanation of everything."
I would totally agree with you Ed that material provides an explanation of everything. But I would add that "things" do not constiture all that is real in life and human experience. Things are measurable; infinate qualities are measureless and not quantifiable in the normal ways. I add this not to just blow smoke into the conversation, but because my direct experience has shown me as much, and most of all, there's nothing "supernatural" about any of this. Quite the opposite.
Some time ago I promised to send you something that you could start to get an experiential grasp of what I was driving at. I got busy with work and never got round to it. My bad. Kindly PM me and I'll send the stuff on. But be forewarned that it has no content in the regular sense of the word.
JL
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 11, 2005 - 05:18pm PT
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The NewScientist magazine did a recent article on "intelligent design". Now they are running letters about it. (They also frequently cover intelectual property issues.)
They had this little cartoon:
Two lab people are looking at a butterfly that is on the table and one says: "If you want to know if anyone designed it, just reproduce it and wait for the copyright lawyer's letter."
One of the letter writers asked the obvious question "Who designed the cosmic designer?" And if the answer is that nobody designed the designer, then the next question is "If a designer is not needed to design the designer, why is a designer needed to design a butterfly?"
I'm with Ed and that letter writer. It is not necessary to throw in supernatural extras to explain the universe, and if you do throw in these extras, then you have more, not less, that is unexplained.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 11, 2005 - 07:46pm PT
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I didn't say "supernatural", I think I know what John means (though I would like to see the offered material, no bad there, I've been busy too!) that there is more there than can be understood by the process of science.
So I think that the difference between our (JL & EH) points-of-view is not focused on the supernatural (though some other posters may want to invoke it) but on the nature or the universe. It is an interesting question which is not resolvable in our lifetimes... thus the very long threads.
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Ouch!
climber
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Aug 11, 2005 - 08:31pm PT
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I think before settling the issue of the nature of the universe, it might be necessary to settle the issue of the planet, given the moves to inject religion into science in school curriculums. In my opinion, more political than religious or scientific.
Faith is a fragile thing. Like the Elusive Butterfly of Love. Hard to catch and harder to hold onto. Those who build their existence on things unseen and unseeable, that they hope will be there when the chips are down, are afraid of anything that might shake this nebulous foundation.
If politics were removed from the equation, I think the conflict might calm down. People will believe what they have grown up believing and to hell with what anyone thinks. Even though they depend on science for their daily existence, they can just ignore that part of the argument. After all, too much larnin' can fill a body's head with foreign notions.
A person of scientific persuasion, driven along a journey to prove that which may be unprovable, along the way, just might impact the whole world. Hopefully for good things.
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Watusi
Social climber
Joshua Tree, CA
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Aug 14, 2005 - 11:04pm PT
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Got to get in to get out...
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Sally OConnor
Social climber
Canada
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Aug 15, 2005 - 07:21am PT
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One of the letter writers asked the obvious question "Who designed the cosmic designer?" And if the answer is that nobody designed the designer, then the next question is "If a designer is not needed to design the designer, why is a designer needed to design a butterfly?"
It's not that a designer is "needed" just that "He" is there. To use His words "I am"....no explanation for why. Why He designed anything, who knows?
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