Thoughts on meaning, nihilism.
Poll - Total Votes: 8
Existence has meaning
Existence is meaningless
We can't know either way
You can only vote on one answer.
On the level of human psyche there is definitely meaning at least to us, in Jung's studies into archetypal symbology he found that throughout human history and through studies of dreams he'd found the same recurring themes and images, the same patterns of characters also found in alchemy recur in all great human stories (Alchemy being a form of early psychology mixed with spirituality, the Egyptian word alchamet meaning "out of darkness", it was the origin of the theory of shadow work, exploring the unconscious etc).
Nihilism of course is the belief that there is no objective meaning to anything. I can partly agree with it for the same reason that I can't, that it falls into a matter of subjective definitions. If meaning exists to us as people (which I've argued definitely does, whether you want to put that down to biology or having a soul) then it objectively exists. To say existence itself is meaningless to myself seems to disregard what we already know to be true in ourselves. Now one could say "But by what measure, and outside of human existence what is the meaning?" as eventually we reach a point where you ask the nature of existence itself and that's not empirically answerable by any measurable degree.
Perhaps the point of existence is merely to be able to experience existence, that in itself would have the deepest meaning of all tbh. Perhaps we're what we call souls inhabiting bodies in one dimension to then learn and experience existence to become more. Perhaps we are god or source itself experiencing itself subjectively in order to become more of all that is by experiencing itself in more complex ways, even questioning its own existence. Maybe we are god questioning itself, like the collective unconscious of source itself.
To me, the conclusion that everybody just becomes mulch for the soil doesn't seem to be an end all conclusion that I accept. Considering the richness of existence, the experiences of dreams meeting dead relatives, the strange unexplainable connections some of us have EG. people I know seeing things that eventually happen, personal experiences I've had of spirituality, it seems far too early to conclude everything like that. It's like the god argument, I'll never say source or god doesn't exist or does because I can't know, so I feel the same towards the approach of nihilism. It just feels so soulless and lazy, cynical almost.
Be interested to see what others think overall.
Nihilism of course is the belief that there is no objective meaning to anything. I can partly agree with it for the same reason that I can't, that it falls into a matter of subjective definitions. If meaning exists to us as people (which I've argued definitely does, whether you want to put that down to biology or having a soul) then it objectively exists. To say existence itself is meaningless to myself seems to disregard what we already know to be true in ourselves. Now one could say "But by what measure, and outside of human existence what is the meaning?" as eventually we reach a point where you ask the nature of existence itself and that's not empirically answerable by any measurable degree.
Perhaps the point of existence is merely to be able to experience existence, that in itself would have the deepest meaning of all tbh. Perhaps we're what we call souls inhabiting bodies in one dimension to then learn and experience existence to become more. Perhaps we are god or source itself experiencing itself subjectively in order to become more of all that is by experiencing itself in more complex ways, even questioning its own existence. Maybe we are god questioning itself, like the collective unconscious of source itself.
To me, the conclusion that everybody just becomes mulch for the soil doesn't seem to be an end all conclusion that I accept. Considering the richness of existence, the experiences of dreams meeting dead relatives, the strange unexplainable connections some of us have EG. people I know seeing things that eventually happen, personal experiences I've had of spirituality, it seems far too early to conclude everything like that. It's like the god argument, I'll never say source or god doesn't exist or does because I can't know, so I feel the same towards the approach of nihilism. It just feels so soulless and lazy, cynical almost.
Be interested to see what others think overall.
