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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
| Still not quite sure what to make of this Quartz article. It's from 2018, but new to me, though I don't know if the book it's promoting is still available or not. I don't know; a while back, I arrived at a pretty simple meaning of life: it has no meaning except for what we impose upon it. Impose a complicated meaning, and of course your life is going to be complicated. Some people seem to spend their whole lives dissatisfied, in search of a purpose. Or at least in search of that One Perfect Product that will finally live up to its advertising and fix everything wrong with your life. But philosopher Iddo Landau suggests that all of us have everything we need for a meaningful existence. The first thing you need for a meaningful existence is an existence. Philosophers’ answers to this question are numerous and varied, and practical to different degrees. The 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, said the question itself was meaningless because in the midst of living, we’re in no position to discern whether our lives matter, and stepping outside of the process of existence to answer is impossible. I'm not sure Nietzsche is the best example to feature, but okay, whatever. Those who do think meaning can be discerned, however, fall into four groups, according to Thaddeus Metz, writing in the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy. Some are god-centered and believe only a deity can provide purpose. Others ascribe to a soul-centered view, thinking something of us must continue beyond our lives, an essence after physical existence, which gives life meaning. Then there are two camps of “naturalists” seeking meaning in a purely physical world as known by science, who fall into “subjectivist” and “objectivist” categories. I'm not well-read enough to pick sides there, but the only context in which I know the word "objectivist" has to do with philosophers like Ayn Rand, who can go fuck off. Landau argues that meaning is essentially a sense of worth which we may all derive in a different way—from relationships, creativity, accomplishment in a given field, or generosity, among other possibilities. It seems self-evident that we each value different things, so what's meaningful to one person won't do much for another. For instance, lots of people seem to get a sense of accomplishment from working. I, on the other hand, feel accomplished if I can avoid work. For those who feel purposeless, Landau suggests a reframing is in order. He writes, “A meaningful life is one in which there is a sufficient number of aspects of sufficient value, and a meaningless life is one in which there is not a sufficient number of aspects of sufficient value.” I don't claim to be an expert on logic or philosophy, but that statement strikes me as both circular and weaselly. Landau argues that anyone who believes life can be meaningless also assumes the importance of value. In other words, if you think life can be meaningless, then you believe that there is such a thing as value. I'm not sure I agree with that. If you believe life is meaningless and that's okay, I think you're acknowledging the existence of value, but not necessarily its importance. In Philosophy Now, Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London in the UK, provides an extremely simple answer: “The meaning of life is not being dead.” See? This sort of thing is why I picked engineering over philosophy. There are a few other examples of simple answers to the question of life's meaning, and I'm really quite proud of myself for making it this far without quoting "42" as the answer, which, honestly, I'm only doing to forestall the inevitable comment about it. I'm not sure I buy any of the arguments, though. Perhaps I find meaning in skepticism. |
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