Captain.Heroin
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2008
- Messages
- 94,868
Who is to say that the life of a saint, an artist, or a philosopher is superior to a life spent sniffing glue? While liberalism tends to be reductionistic on a social level, its mediocrity is revealed in its resistance to applying the same scientific reductionism to the level of a human individual. More specifically, liberals tend to resist the implications of the contemporary scientific view that human beings are material or physical things.
Liberals are not at all fully nihilistic. In part, there is the practical belief in values vaguely corresponding to human rights. But more fundamentally, “secularists” implicitly believe in a religion of the common emotions. They generally believe that meaning is to be found in the material, biochemical processes that humans experience as emotions. They generally believe that it actually means something when these old biological mechanisms produce the familiar emotional routines.
While one may feel compassion, does this mean that one lacks the capacity to discipline one’s self from being mastered by that impulse. That people are mastered by such impulses is only another confirmation of Darwin’s insight that humans are animals. Most humans are driven overwhelmingly by instinct and emotion. The “secular” belief in emotions is the last degenerate remains of romanticism and religion.
The modernistic project did not destroy romanticism, it only reduced to a common level. Modernity and postmodernity retain romanticism by reducing the belief in emotion to the most common experiences, i.e. hunger, fear of death, and lust. The emotional joy of cynical laughter could be considered characteristic of the new romanticism.
Emotions are at the root of myths. To engage in human relationships is to dwell within a mythological world. Outside that is, as far as I can see, a material, physical world indifferent to the existence or non-existence of humans and not discernable partial to the senseless will to live.
To aestheticize or romanticize this experiment in death or this work is to misunderstand it. Most people are slaves to the aestheticization or romanticization of death. Yet if this mode of interpretation is valid at all, try viewing death, not as a tragedy, but as a comedy. If the progress of reason leads to nihilism, then Enlightenment levity might as well culminate in a punchline!
If reason cannot determine fundamental values, then reason can be used to justify literally anything. A truly “rational regime”, consequently, would culminate not in a net increase in order, but anarchy, entropy, and finally, death. If life is not fundamentally more rational than death, then death is the endpoint uncovered by the quest to overcome prejudice in the name of Enlightenment.
Were Nietzsche and the Athenians right about Socrates? Reason appears unable to determine values and, therefore, the entire Western pretension to rationalism is a kind of joke. And even worse, it’s not even a good joke. Yet I have to laugh. And as I laugh, I observe myself laughing. And as I observe myself laughing, I reflect that humans are material animals and that my own laughter must in some way be attributable to a genetic mechanism that evolved through natural selection.
From a Darwinistic view, every capacity for emotion evolved as a product of genetic adaptation. Emotions, then, are biochemical-based illusions that evolved to propagate genes. Pleasure, happiness, emotions, and desire: these are the evolutionary tricks that promoted the survival of our ancestors. The “happiness” and “sadness” of present-day humans are the genetically adaptations of generations of ancestors.
This is “happiness”, the great goal of humanity has been striving for: a particular configuration of biochemical reactions. Why, not, then, drug one’s self into a state of “happiness”? If evolution had taken a different turn at some early point, a completely different configuration of stimuli would produce biochemical reactions of “happiness”. It just so happens, however, that evolutionary path taken by innumerable ancestors yields these particular, incidental, prejudices of human nature.
Wild, untamed sexual passion can clearly be adaptive for propagating the selfish genes. The genetic program for these “romantic” behaviors, like clockwork, are passed on, generation after generation. Ancestor after ancestor executed the same genetic program for romantic sexual passion, and contemporary humans are only repeating the script. The entire catalog of romantic behaviors from love to selective altruism has its basics encoded in the code of the selfish genes. Even as condoms and birth control subvert the genes themselves, people are still content to obey their genes towards genetically maladaptive ends. Such people “outsmart” their genes, only to be duped into belief that their instincts and emotions were something more manipulations by their genes in the first place.
For some, the meaninglessness gleaned from a scientific view of life leads to nausea, angst, and nihilistic despair. I reject this attitude on the grounds that nausea, angst, and nihilistic despair also originate in material reactions in the brain. What does despair mean to someone who interprets that emotion as a chemical reaction in the brain? The process of disillusionment can also be disillusioned and de-aestheticized.
If science is to continue its purposeless advance, then curiosity, wonder, and happiness must be disenchanted and vivisected. Science and philosophy might be motivated by a sense of poetic wonder, but what happens when wonder, curiosity, and the joy of understanding have been reduced and explained in terms of chemical reactions of the brain. Is it possible to synthesize this knowledge with the experience of it? How far is one willing to lie to one’s self in the belief of the goodness of the truth when science has conquered the non-scientific behaviors that motivate science?
If we have a technical understanding of the biochemical basis of the experience of curiosity, wonder, amazement, awe, and mystery themselves, does this diminish our experience of them? Do these experiences fall into the same category as myths, lies, and illusions? What rational basis is there to treat them any differently? What then, does it mean to lead a “rational life”? If science and knowledge are supposedly pursued for its own sake, then how about the knowledge that life has no discernable purpose, knowledge that happiness, wonder, and curiosity are based in material organizations that were likely selected for their evolutionary survival value, and knowledge that there is no fundamentally rational basis for choosing life over death.
Nihilism, noted Friedrich Nietzsche, “represents the ultimate logical conclusion of our great values and ideals”. This is the bankrupt, philosophical disaster area the West dwells in. I see no “bottom”, no limits to stop the freefall into value nothingness. Implicit in nihilism is the collapse of the entire human cause. The ultimate logical conclusion of Western values is the rational self-destruction of the West.
Is this absurd? If this is absurd then it must also be absurd that I rage at the entire cosmos for having no ultimate meaning.
But there is no reason to be pessimistic. There is no justification whatsoever for a negative attitude! There is no justification whatsoever for a positive attitude! There is no justification whatsoever for a neutral attitude!
Who knows what will happen with certainty? I could be strolling down the street, being beautiful, on my way to kill myself, when suddenly I am run over by a bus. But wait a minute. Why am I doing this? Ah, yes, now I remember the punchline:
I will try anything once!
There is nothing to take seriously!
Liberals are not at all fully nihilistic. In part, there is the practical belief in values vaguely corresponding to human rights. But more fundamentally, “secularists” implicitly believe in a religion of the common emotions. They generally believe that meaning is to be found in the material, biochemical processes that humans experience as emotions. They generally believe that it actually means something when these old biological mechanisms produce the familiar emotional routines.
While one may feel compassion, does this mean that one lacks the capacity to discipline one’s self from being mastered by that impulse. That people are mastered by such impulses is only another confirmation of Darwin’s insight that humans are animals. Most humans are driven overwhelmingly by instinct and emotion. The “secular” belief in emotions is the last degenerate remains of romanticism and religion.
The modernistic project did not destroy romanticism, it only reduced to a common level. Modernity and postmodernity retain romanticism by reducing the belief in emotion to the most common experiences, i.e. hunger, fear of death, and lust. The emotional joy of cynical laughter could be considered characteristic of the new romanticism.
Emotions are at the root of myths. To engage in human relationships is to dwell within a mythological world. Outside that is, as far as I can see, a material, physical world indifferent to the existence or non-existence of humans and not discernable partial to the senseless will to live.
To aestheticize or romanticize this experiment in death or this work is to misunderstand it. Most people are slaves to the aestheticization or romanticization of death. Yet if this mode of interpretation is valid at all, try viewing death, not as a tragedy, but as a comedy. If the progress of reason leads to nihilism, then Enlightenment levity might as well culminate in a punchline!
If reason cannot determine fundamental values, then reason can be used to justify literally anything. A truly “rational regime”, consequently, would culminate not in a net increase in order, but anarchy, entropy, and finally, death. If life is not fundamentally more rational than death, then death is the endpoint uncovered by the quest to overcome prejudice in the name of Enlightenment.
Were Nietzsche and the Athenians right about Socrates? Reason appears unable to determine values and, therefore, the entire Western pretension to rationalism is a kind of joke. And even worse, it’s not even a good joke. Yet I have to laugh. And as I laugh, I observe myself laughing. And as I observe myself laughing, I reflect that humans are material animals and that my own laughter must in some way be attributable to a genetic mechanism that evolved through natural selection.
From a Darwinistic view, every capacity for emotion evolved as a product of genetic adaptation. Emotions, then, are biochemical-based illusions that evolved to propagate genes. Pleasure, happiness, emotions, and desire: these are the evolutionary tricks that promoted the survival of our ancestors. The “happiness” and “sadness” of present-day humans are the genetically adaptations of generations of ancestors.
This is “happiness”, the great goal of humanity has been striving for: a particular configuration of biochemical reactions. Why, not, then, drug one’s self into a state of “happiness”? If evolution had taken a different turn at some early point, a completely different configuration of stimuli would produce biochemical reactions of “happiness”. It just so happens, however, that evolutionary path taken by innumerable ancestors yields these particular, incidental, prejudices of human nature.
Wild, untamed sexual passion can clearly be adaptive for propagating the selfish genes. The genetic program for these “romantic” behaviors, like clockwork, are passed on, generation after generation. Ancestor after ancestor executed the same genetic program for romantic sexual passion, and contemporary humans are only repeating the script. The entire catalog of romantic behaviors from love to selective altruism has its basics encoded in the code of the selfish genes. Even as condoms and birth control subvert the genes themselves, people are still content to obey their genes towards genetically maladaptive ends. Such people “outsmart” their genes, only to be duped into belief that their instincts and emotions were something more manipulations by their genes in the first place.
For some, the meaninglessness gleaned from a scientific view of life leads to nausea, angst, and nihilistic despair. I reject this attitude on the grounds that nausea, angst, and nihilistic despair also originate in material reactions in the brain. What does despair mean to someone who interprets that emotion as a chemical reaction in the brain? The process of disillusionment can also be disillusioned and de-aestheticized.
If science is to continue its purposeless advance, then curiosity, wonder, and happiness must be disenchanted and vivisected. Science and philosophy might be motivated by a sense of poetic wonder, but what happens when wonder, curiosity, and the joy of understanding have been reduced and explained in terms of chemical reactions of the brain. Is it possible to synthesize this knowledge with the experience of it? How far is one willing to lie to one’s self in the belief of the goodness of the truth when science has conquered the non-scientific behaviors that motivate science?
If we have a technical understanding of the biochemical basis of the experience of curiosity, wonder, amazement, awe, and mystery themselves, does this diminish our experience of them? Do these experiences fall into the same category as myths, lies, and illusions? What rational basis is there to treat them any differently? What then, does it mean to lead a “rational life”? If science and knowledge are supposedly pursued for its own sake, then how about the knowledge that life has no discernable purpose, knowledge that happiness, wonder, and curiosity are based in material organizations that were likely selected for their evolutionary survival value, and knowledge that there is no fundamentally rational basis for choosing life over death.
Nihilism, noted Friedrich Nietzsche, “represents the ultimate logical conclusion of our great values and ideals”. This is the bankrupt, philosophical disaster area the West dwells in. I see no “bottom”, no limits to stop the freefall into value nothingness. Implicit in nihilism is the collapse of the entire human cause. The ultimate logical conclusion of Western values is the rational self-destruction of the West.
Is this absurd? If this is absurd then it must also be absurd that I rage at the entire cosmos for having no ultimate meaning.
But there is no reason to be pessimistic. There is no justification whatsoever for a negative attitude! There is no justification whatsoever for a positive attitude! There is no justification whatsoever for a neutral attitude!
Who knows what will happen with certainty? I could be strolling down the street, being beautiful, on my way to kill myself, when suddenly I am run over by a bus. But wait a minute. Why am I doing this? Ah, yes, now I remember the punchline:
I will try anything once!
There is nothing to take seriously!
![Isn't it strange... - Calvin and Hobbes [600x413] : QuotesPorn](/community/proxy.php?image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FyyHw8YY.gif&hash=d5b1660489d05b7aab3b95ae170b5a0b "Isn't it strange... - Calvin and Hobbes [600x413] : QuotesPorn")
