This way by far the longest essay I've ever read here, but it was well worth it. So much to unpick, I'll need to read it again at some point.
Finding meaning, for me, has been a constant struggle. And this piece was helpful.
I like the way you've addressed various perspectives on how the meaning crisis can be addressed, from practical goal based personal development to metaphysical arguments and the problems with materialism taking the map as the territory.
In my experience, the problem and the solution are born from not only wanting a sense meaning, but a truthful meaning. It's easy to construct a false sense of meaning, most people do, but the highest goal is finding, understanding and embodying true existential meaning (if it exists) which my intuition tells me it does.
Hey Ben, thanks for reading and for the kind words! It means a lot, these can be difficult topics to disentangle so really glad you found value in the piece. I totally resonate with the desire for a "truthful meaning" and that true meaning comes from a connection to what is really real - which of course is difficult under our current materialist tyranny, but that seems to be slowly changing! Mahon
This is put together well. I've just spent like an hour tuning into the topic with my being. I would only be able to put together a personal text, which would be very charged as I perceive current times are very intense. Sensitive people have issues handling all that was mentioned on their own and I am sceptical that putting our lives together will work as an enduring antidote. It's a good starting point, but it's the systems and the dynamic interrelation between us and the arena that we perceive as failing and as bullshit. The more we optimize our personal lives, to be individually durable and to make our brains falsely frame the world around as OK while the brain is rightfully in terror, the longer we will postpone the systematic solutions, I am afraid. But then again, it is just my brain seeing the AI race and everything. I would wish for us to actually start solving problems without analyzing everything again and again. To stop and acknowledge that this is not OK. We know what needs to be done, but we entail more and more propositional tyranny to somehow avoid facing the issues. We hallucinate more and more. My X feed is like put together by an LLM. But this emergent world mirrors to some extent who we are and where our limits are. We will keep it running as long as we and the environment can cope. It's just balancing and opponent processing all the way down. Anyway...
This way by far the longest essay I've ever read here, but it was well worth it. So much to unpick, I'll need to read it again at some point.
Finding meaning, for me, has been a constant struggle. And this piece was helpful.
I like the way you've addressed various perspectives on how the meaning crisis can be addressed, from practical goal based personal development to metaphysical arguments and the problems with materialism taking the map as the territory.
In my experience, the problem and the solution are born from not only wanting a sense meaning, but a truthful meaning. It's easy to construct a false sense of meaning, most people do, but the highest goal is finding, understanding and embodying true existential meaning (if it exists) which my intuition tells me it does.
Thanks for your hard work on this.
Hey Ben, thanks for reading and for the kind words! It means a lot, these can be difficult topics to disentangle so really glad you found value in the piece. I totally resonate with the desire for a "truthful meaning" and that true meaning comes from a connection to what is really real - which of course is difficult under our current materialist tyranny, but that seems to be slowly changing! Mahon
This is put together well. I've just spent like an hour tuning into the topic with my being. I would only be able to put together a personal text, which would be very charged as I perceive current times are very intense. Sensitive people have issues handling all that was mentioned on their own and I am sceptical that putting our lives together will work as an enduring antidote. It's a good starting point, but it's the systems and the dynamic interrelation between us and the arena that we perceive as failing and as bullshit. The more we optimize our personal lives, to be individually durable and to make our brains falsely frame the world around as OK while the brain is rightfully in terror, the longer we will postpone the systematic solutions, I am afraid. But then again, it is just my brain seeing the AI race and everything. I would wish for us to actually start solving problems without analyzing everything again and again. To stop and acknowledge that this is not OK. We know what needs to be done, but we entail more and more propositional tyranny to somehow avoid facing the issues. We hallucinate more and more. My X feed is like put together by an LLM. But this emergent world mirrors to some extent who we are and where our limits are. We will keep it running as long as we and the environment can cope. It's just balancing and opponent processing all the way down. Anyway...