RE: My Almighty VS your argument against it
May 4, 2022 at 2:30 pm
(This post was last modified: May 4, 2022 at 2:31 pm by vulcanlogician.)
(May 4, 2022 at 1:36 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: All of the other meanings on the shelf got pulled out of asses at some point, and whatever new or novel (unlikely, on both counts, imo) meaning a person arrives at..if any, will be equally pulled. We might broadly say that out of an infinite pool of manufactured meaning, some do better in human populations than others - better as in they persist. The things in this category tend not to be arbitrary, but absolutely tied to the hip of life conditions.
Wons alright, lol. Drops in time to time to give us glimpses into his own search for meaning better suited than the off the shelfs. I read the op as pure messianism.
Kierkegaard did okay with pure messianism. Of course, most of us have issues with that approach, but, at the end of the day, it can be done well. I'm not opposed to Christians becoming Kierkegaards. In fact, the more Kierkegaard-like that a Christian becomes, the less annoying and cruel he is likely to be. So I'm all for it.
Hell, one of the reasons religion ticked Kierkegaard off so much was how shallow and controlling it was. His list of grievances overlaps quite a bit with secularists' lists.
One thing that complicates our search for meaning is that we're often handed ready-made purposes for our lives... "make a 6 figure salary... have 1.5 kids, etc." and we have to go through and reject these things before we begin the process of creating our own meaning. The religious world is often pretty bad at passing shallow, empty meanings onto its adherents. But those shallow, empty meanings are chosen precisely because they cast a wide net over common life conditions. Making 6 figures does the trick for a ton of folks. The problem is when you realize that (for you personally) 6 figures won't make life meaningful. Then you have to get creative, OR you have to say "fuck it" Camus-style. But rejection of the pre-packaged meaning is an important part of all that. And by no means is it easy or obvious how to proceed when you decide to undertake that task.
