Why exist in the face of oblivion?

This response was written in reply to a wonderfully put question asking why we should continue existing in the absence of a benevolent creator.

The reason, I think, why we might exist in the face of oblivion is because we are, in addition to whatever soul or mind you may posit, a living organism. Why does moss grow on the windowsill? Its life seems futile to us, it continues to grow. Nothing inside of the moss will prevent it from growing and sustaining itself. We must be removed from the brute life-force inherent in all creatures of biology if we are suggesting that lack of cosmic relevance should indicate an early exit! This 'will to live against any odds' must surely be our axiom - the starting point, or truthism, upon which we build all else. This is the first and most obvious point. You exist because some part of you is 'programmed' to continue existing.

You breathe so that you may continue breathing. It is as simple as that really. You do not need a justification for this brute existence. Having said that, life requires sustaining. It is not a given, and we must endlessly nourish ourselves to cling on to existence. I suppose in that sense we must actively choose what is best, or sufficient, to maintain ourselves. Fortunately we have the apparatus to do so - a body!

Now you have life, but there is still a great expanse of time before you. What you live for is up to you; it cannot be generalized, handed down, or forced upon. Hopefully it is something artistic, self-caused and heals the wounds of Man. Hopefully it is not celebrity, fame and wealth. Again, another simplistic answer, but it is hard to say much else. If you respect philosophy, you respect your readers ability to work it out for themselves. In this sense, there is not a universal answer to be prescribed to all, only enrichment and refinement by posing clever questions. Maybe somewhere down the line we will coalesce into a beautiful whole.

Short and sweet, a succinct story -

The fact is seventy years, in the context of our species, seems long enough to do some decent stuff. Those seventy years are not nothing. Perhaps it is just about the right amount of time for us. A succinct story is better than a long and convoluted one.

Those who believe in an omnipotent creator often see this world as a sideshow for 'better things to come'. It is all about the sequel! Nothing they can do in the 'finite world' can compare to the 'infinite' and the transcendent. Yet to claim that our immediate experience of the world is completely and utterly nothing seems bizarre to me. I have no such pretensions. This is all there is. Responsibility lies with Man. Deliverance of justice lies with Man. Ideology and belief lies with Man. Creativity and the world-narrative lies with Man. Everything that is found, is found upon Earth. There is no philosophical position as life-affirming as this. Oblivion gives us ultimate freedom and responsibility: a weight heavier than the cross, a sphere greater than that which Atlas had to haul around upon his shoulders. For the former was a miracle worker who had the promise of eternal paradise, and the latter was a gargantuan Titan! We are just ordinary human beings facing down the abyss, alone.

I don't see why we need benevolent creators above our comprehension. I can't understand how we can practice absolute moralities which were beyond our ability to create. Is Man not enough? What about benevolent order and flexible morality which can adapt with the times? These things can be ours in this life, if only we were not such lazy, abysmal thinkers and mass-underachievers.

Oblivion -

Oblivion may or may not be nothing; the total annihilation of personality. We do not know, and may never do so. But oblivion comes after the fact. Oblivion needn't concern one for the present, and worrying about it will not alter its inevitability. To bring the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus into the fold: "Death means nothing to us...when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist."

Do we truly live in the shadow of oblivion? I do not think so. You have governments and corporations whose plans see no further than the next election or boom-bust cycle. You have next door neighbours whose concerns lie no further than organizing a birthday party and paying the bills. And guarantee yourself that any so-called deep-thinker does not confront their mortality every single day. Even the word death carries no weight until it is truly comprehended, and that is very rare indeed; occuring in spells which catch you unawares (oblivion is just like any other fascinating thing we humans do without realizing it, such as devouring organic matter and turning it into us, absorbing vitamins from sunlight, processing waste and making it come out, and so forth).

Oblivion, properly thought through, is like a sleep from which there is no waking. This is not easy to come to terms with, and may never be fully accepted. But why? If I may end on a wild speculation, our species inherited the ability to comprehend death rather late in day, and we are not designed to fully come to terms with it. For once we fully understood nothingness in our minds, how would we return to something?

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Life Instinct, Death Instinct - By St.Zagarus

Life Instinct, Death Instinct

            For myself, the life-instinct itself has died. It amazes me, from this cold vantage point, how readily people are able to accept 'life' as a given. Nourishment of the body, its pleasuring, the generic love of husband and wife -- how do they maintain it? I would always find myself asking this question. Then it became quite, quite obvious. They do not answer the question, 'Why this life-instinct', because they never got round to asking it.

Without taking the life-instinct for granted, there is the possibility of becoming absolutely still, of starvation, and thoughts of void. Nothingness. A wise man once told me, “Philosophy is something you do. Then you go home and have your dinner.”

Well if only it was that simple! Dinner itself is the life-instinct, something which should be so obvious, but humankind is not so simple. There are some people who starve themselves for emotional guilt, or to reach a certain artificial ideal. Yet not all such starvers are bound by emotion, for we need only look at religious fasters, or the scientist,who is too engaged in her discovery for anything other than caffeine (caffeine, caffeine!). This is philosophising beyond the basic needs. They have done their philosophy, but they are not having their dinner. Still, these people, with their grumbling bellies, are saying yes to life in other ways. The death-instinct is something different altogether. It is emptiness for its own sake.

When one struggles even to exist for a day, let alone longing for eternity, it becomes obvious that there is nothing substantial after this life; for dreams of after worlds and reincarnation are themselves just the continuation of the life-instinct. It is so obvious a child might see through it. So, why are we so carried along by the stream of life if it is fundamentally futile? Challenging the life-instinct can be quite a frightening prospect; like putting a violent political ideology in a newspaper. It will not convince everyone, but it will convince someone. To even ask the question might lead to the possibility of danger. It is better for people to remain ignorant of such decisions and let the basic drives of the human body answer the biggest philosophical questions for them.

A man once asked me, “Isn't the point of it all to bring new children into the world?” As if it were so obvious, like two and two making four. If we took him for his word, then the mere reproduction of humankind would itself complete us, and answer all of our questions. Yet it is ridiculous logic, for it never reaches any end point, nor does it provide us with any conclusions. The goal is to recreate, and the offspring’s goal to recreate, and so forth, and so forth, forever. No. Besides, human kind is never just satisfied with the physical creation of its offspring. There is always more to do, more to get, and more to be. This is, naturally, entirely self-deception, yet still it demonstrates how ludicrous it is to suggest that procreation alone is enough to provide anyone with purpose. The life-instinct does not take us anywhere except to the life-instinct.

The death-instinct can only be self-destructive. A murderer is not taken by the death-instinct in my definition. Murder is often premeditated, it encourages the body to be filled with emotion and energy, it has a purpose very much of this world. The murderer often intends to live after the act, and tries to conceal what they have done. In contrast, the death-instinct has no such purpose but death itself. Nothingness and slow decay is the death-instinct, and it is solitary, indifferent to the people around it, never causing harm to anything.

The conclusion of the death-instinct is always eternal nothingness. In this, it has more of a solid argument than life. Yet do not think that just because something has a more logical argument that this means anything at all. The argument is more valid because it reaches a conclusion, but whether or not it is acceptable or desirable is up to you to decide.

There is fundamentally nothing out there, we all know it, deep down inside. However, we cannot accept it. You might say, “There is no meaning except that which you create,” but this is greatly problematic. For it is advocating self-deception. Every idea needs a starting point. A humanist will want to end suffering, for instance. Yet in order to validate themselves, they must prove beyond doubt that there is a reason to sustain human life, and that it is of universal value. Human rights are the result. This document objectively declares the value of all human beings.

Yet if this document were objective (that is, true outside of the ideas of an individual’s perception) then all who looked upon it must be convinced of its validity. I am not convinced. It is a great idea, and better that it exists than it does not. This does not mean it is true. Something that feels good does not give it weight. To go back to our example, humanism is grounded in nothing. It begins with an assumption. This assumption cannot ever be challenged for there is nothing to weigh it against, except the bleakness of a meaningless cosmos. In this light, it can only be maintained by self-deception. It is a guess like any other.

To conclude, what would you be without other people around you? Strip the layers away from yourself, one after the other. The names of people and places, of gods and masters, of possessions and creations, dreams and purposes, and then of your own titles. You are left with nothing but raw experience, without a hole in which to bury your head and without the possibility of continued self-deceit. We need other people to actualise ourselves in this world of philosophical shadow (that is, philosophy which is useful, but ultimately meaningless).

Without the fleeting goals of our fleeting cultures, we are faced with the yes or no of pure human freedom - life, or death. This is what separates us from all of the other creatures. For whilst creatures may lie to one another (just think of the cuckoo, or the camouflaged snake, or the orchid mimicking a fly's mate), no creature has yet been able to lie to itself. And no creature doubts that it ought to continue existing, to strive and try as it might to maintain itself. Yet we humans -- at the pinnacle of reason and intellectual power, inheritors of such incredible bodies and capable of so much -- are prone to one fundamental weakness. Questioning whether we should even continue to exist at all; I wonder, is this the source of all our freedom, and all of our creative power?

This is the death-instinct itself, the temporary absence of any life-instinct.

By St.Zagarus

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 43

Spinoza on emotions, self-preservation and our being

Emotions: pesky little things aren’t they? Some bring joy; others anguish, with a whole host of different feelings betwixt the two. Think of the first time you fell in love, or got a present you really wanted, or passed an exam or driving test. Now, think of a saddening event. Thence, think of how you felt before and after. A whole host of emotions plague us, day in day out: to be torn in all directions is the natural human condition.

For a certain Mr Baruch de Spinoza, who believed that we are all defined through a non-religious God who ultimately controls all things in the universe, emotions are beautiful, logical things. This is because God is defined by logic: he is self-causing and his essence is this self-causation – he must thus continue to produce things to continue to exist. Logical, no? If we are thus created by a logical God, and so is everything else – every imaginable thing: plants, cars, muscles, thoughts, pens and paper, musings and eyebrow raises – emotions, too, are logical. ‘Emotions can be treated and explained through logic, as if they were geometry’, to paraphrase the good man. 

Power of acting; definition of emotions

How though, do we get to this idea? What, first of all, is an emotion? Spinoza tells us in the following statement to define it as the modes of a body by which the body’s ability to act is increased or decreased, the perceptions of these and the resultant reaction. 

Let us take the following example to understand Spinoza’s idea better: I am punched in the face. I see it coming, I feel it – my face feels it and my mind registers it simultaneously. I now stumble back: I cannot act, or be, as well as I could before the punch. I feel anger – my power of acting, of moving, of doing anything, may be better than before, but still not as good as before I was punched. Emotions cannot be controlled by us, says Spinoza – they are logically defined.

Spinoza gives us two base emotions, upon which all others are constructed: joy and sadness. It is through emotions that we can see how the environment is working for us. Emotions are the link between our inner state and the outer world. We can only find our ‘power of acting’ indirectly through the emotions – it can never be grasped directly.

We constantly desire to maintain a joyous, happy state – as everyone, of course, likes to be happy. We thus attempt to repel things that will have the ability to make our power of acting decrease – be it a sad event in our lives, an argument with somebody or a punch in the face; we always strive for the happier ones, as these give us a bit more ‘oomph’ and confidence.

Conatus

The notion of the ‘power of acting’, Spinoza takes yet a step further. Spinoza notes that we all have a certain drive within us: a desire and striving to stay alive. As we are all ultimately created by God, and he, as noted above, must necessarily create to keep existing, he leaves a little imprint of his power in all things, including humans: the desire to survive, the power of self-preservation at whatever cost. This power, he coins as the term ‘Conatus’.

The Conatus is in all things: it can be as obvious as someone running at us with a knife and us fleeing, or as abstract as an electron figuratively turning away from a proton or neutron. Self-preservation is what makes us, us. We do not want to be destroyed, hence we run – this is at our very being.

As the mind and body are simultaneously aware of each other through perceptions of the outside world (as one hits the body, the mind registers it and vice versa) and as the body cannot come into contact with something that would destroy it, neither then, can the mind. This means that the mind cannot think of anything that would destroy it: it cannot comprehend or even have a vague notion of death. To have a vague notion of death, would equate to its feeling of death through the body and it cannot do this, for if it had felt that, it would, by definition, be dead and thus unthinking. As a result, for Spinoza – the mind can only feel incredible highs and the depths of sadness, but nothing beyond that: death is not an option.

A few questions...

This also means that suicide is not an option – how is this explained? Spinoza would say that we can be killed, but only through an external cause, from an outside object. The mind would have no idea that we would die if someone stabs us: it would only sense threat. Can suicide ever exist in a Spinozian world?

Spinoza goes on to elaborate on every conceivable emotion in over 40 pages, all based upon the base emotions of happiness and sadness. Is it right to say that these are the basic emotions that we all feel?

Spinoza says that our basic desire for self-preservation makes us who we are. Is there not more to us than this?

Joe Sturdy

The happiest person who ever lived...Epicurus

The word epicurean I imagine to be rarely used. It seems to be colonized by an impossibly pretentious gaggle of gourmet food enthusiasts, who have perverted the name of a great historical figure. Somehow, they have decided to take the least materially hedonistic philosopher in two and a half thousand years of western philosophy, and apply his name-label to the act of being materially hedonistic! It is akin to starting a philanthropic movement and calling it napoleonic.

Those of us who respect the word epicurean beyond the consumption of some tortured animals flesh, or a quaff of pretentiously overpriced, fancy wine, should fight to have the theft of our beloved word revoked. And of course, we are not only fighting for a mere word, but the legacy it represents!

Yet before this article resumes, let us take pause and consider Epicurus of Samos, a philosopher who lived in Athens for most of his (incalculably happy) life. Epicurus lived in an academy of his own creation, The Garden, surrounded by his disciples and friends. He opened the doors of this academy to women and slaves, who at the time were not given the same opportunities as manly, beard-stroking men.

In summary, Epicurus taught that fear of death and general anxiety were the ultimate driving forces of misery, and that to live a happy life we must be free from them. As he did not believe in gods (at best considereding them distant and unconcerned with our affairs) or an afterlife, this meant that Epicurus' goal was the seeking of happiness in this life, with happiness as an end in itself - thus making him a hedonist. 

However the epicurean is not a hedonist in the vein that the word has acquired, a pleasure seeker whose sole purpose is to obtain physical treats (the cyrenaics are an example of a greek philosophical school matching this description; a consumer is a modern example). Epicurus was a hedonist who considered friendship, independence, freedom from fear of death and an analysed life as the height of all pleasures. 

He taught that the small joys in life will lead to a state of content happiness, a freedom from anxiety the Greek's named ataraxia. The hedonist who wants it all will find herself plunged into a world of anxiety and uncertainty in order to obtain her every whim - she will have to work extra hard to sustain her material treats; if she steals, she will always have to look over her shoulder. By asking for little we can stay out of danger, we can appreciate what we have, we can be happy right here, right now.  We can gain control of our lives only when we have overcome desire.

This is the basis of Epicurean Virtues.

In contrast to ascetics:

We cannot truly call an epicurean ascetic. It is the contemplative monk we would call ascetic, for his self-denial is an extreme act of rejecting earthly experience in the name of some higher realm. The monk seems to thrive on a holier-than-thou attitude. He inadvertantly makes himself a novelty to be observed by people; his extremism is fascinating, but not inspirational. People will see the monk and think, 'Let us admire his holiness! Look at how he lives, what a moral character!' but they will not see the monk as a realistic example - the monk is too far removed from the onlookers goals of earthly physical pleasure to seriously affect those people. 

The epicurean lifestyle may appear similar to the monk's. The epicurean shuns the so-called material pleasures drifting around her. Her refusal to participate may appear to have the same motives as the monk; a rejection of earthy pleasure for the sake of some higher spiritual ideal. 

Yet how different the epicurean is from the monk! In fact, the epicurean has less in common with the monk than the holy man's supposed opposite; the pleasure seeker. The monk and the seeker have both acknowledged certain physical things as being desirable. The monk then refuses those desires, whilst the seeker indulges in them as often as possible. The epicurean says, 'Desire is not pleasurable'.  The epicurean is not refusing (so-called) life, but is refusing the facade of happiness offered her. She has come to realize that self-denial ultimately lies in the endless desire for physical pleasures, and that by passing over these transient treats she can reach a state of constant happiness which is far more rewarding. 

Unlike the monk, the epicurean is not chasing an afterworld, she is not relying on anything outside that which she can experience to give her life meaning - she is not denying this life for the next. The epicurean does not consider herself a sacrificial novelty for some higher goal - the epicurean rejects most physical pleasure and is happier for it! Whats more, the epicurean is not a novelty, but is someone who can argue her philosophy and actually live it. Epicureanism offers people the opportunity to be happy, not to deny themselves happiness like an ascetic.

To be fair, the word ascetic can also apply to one who 'abstains from the normal pleasures of life', yet even this definition, and its use of the word abstain, implies that the epicurean is somehow withdrawing from something; they are abstaining from normal pleasure. In my eyes, the epicurean has long since passed over those supposed pleasures, and is not so much abstaining as she is indifferent to them.

To conclude, please do not poison the concept and the word epicurean by associating it with the hedonistic morons who have so captured the beloved word, and next time you are at the table with a real epicurean, do not be surprised when she refuses your eloquently prepared veal steak, but rather understand that she is refusing your hard work in the name of her own state of happiness. She most certainly will not feel like she is missing out on anything, nor punishing herself for the love of some divine higher-realm.

Selim 'Selim' Talat