SERIOUS POST.
Material is running low so here is my philosophy thing that I wrote last week which is kind of interesting and totally ties in with the reading this week (cough cough).
The old ‘what is the meaning of life?’ chestnut.
This question is one that baffles almost everyone you come across, including myself- to find meaning in a world like ours, one so absurd and void of any kind of definite answer as to how we came to be here or why, is near impossible. However to live a life full of happiness it is arguably best that we come to some kind of conclusion, or reach some kind of ontology we are content with.
THE ROCK AND THE MAN WHO ROLLS THE ROCK UP THE HILL.
As explained in yesterdays lecture, the absurdist view of the meaning of life can be likened to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was condemned by Hades to an eternity of rolling a realllllly heavy rock up a realllllly big hill and this rock tumbling right back down when he reached the top. (PHIL1003 Fit10).
The unfortunate lot thrust upon Sisyphus is seemingly a metaphor for the monotonous way many lead their own lives, especially in capitalist societies such as our own, where we wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep and then repeat- this idea being so depressing because of how true it is.
In yesterdays lecture it was stated that “we find ourselves thrown here and we create empty pockets of meaning for ourselves that seem important at the time but utterly significant in light of the mind-bogglingly big scale of a vast indifferent universe”. (PHIL1003 Fit 10) This idea ties in with that of deferred values, which see many place importance in the pursuit of instrumental values, seeking things only for their existence as a means to attain something else, rather than the thing in itself. This is illustrated by the Alan Watts piece titled “music and life”. Many of you have probably seen it before- the speech is widely available on Youtube with a sweet animation to accompany it and it essentially says that life is best lived, or most happily lived rather, if we journey through life like we do when enjoying music.
When listening to music, we don’t seek its end but rather we enjoy the whole piece. Skipping straight to the end would be to miss the the whole purpose of the piece and we would yield nothing from the experience. In life however, it seems that we are in constant pursuit of further gain and of the illusion of success which we can never absolutely obtain.
Rather than jumping from primary school to high school to uni to the real world, obliviously missing out on the beauty along the way, we are to pay closer attention to the beauty of the here and the now as opposed to honing our focus on that end, success, that comes when life is near over. This view is connected to the Zen buddhist view which we touched on last week and I think seems the worldview which holds the most peace.
Further, your view is decided by you. the way you perceive the world- “it is not things in themselves that upset us but the view we take of them” -epi boy. why see the glass half empty when you can just as easily see it as half full.
So it would seem that the Zen buddhist view of living life free of attachment and without a massive investment in anything other than the ontology itself, provides us the greatest refuge from the glumness that is the question of the meaning of life.
XOXOX BUDDAH G
It is also worth noting that I am not a philosopher.
