Camus, Suicide and the Myth of the Sisyphus

Made some edits since you posted fyi.

I do not claim that meaning can't be discovered.

The concept of truth also somewhat reveals itself to be a paper tiger - in this context and others. Much as there is no objective ledger of meaning, there is no objective ledger of truth. Snippets of it, impressions of it, degrees of certainty, apparently conflicting truths, truths we could never know, truths that aren't actually truths but feel right and we can never find out otherwise, mathematical truths that are provably improvable. The concepts of objective truth and objective meaning at least run parallel in their impossibility and possibly in some way collapse into one another. The absolute inability of consciousness to ever be capable of eliciting absolute truths (other than in the world of formal logic or maths) is, conceptually, the obstacle preventing consciousness and any supposed objective ledger of meaning from interacting.

My understanding of your last sentence in this quote and its relation to the other things you or I have said is hovering around the 5% mark, I'm afraid.

In my experience, the deeper desire for meaning I’ve been referencing is for a meaning which is timeless and enduring. You don’t believe this type of meaning exists. As a consequence of your disbelief, it would be impossible for you to intentionally engage this deeper desire since that would be an unnecessary form of self sabotage as I mentioned before. This is why we are talking past each other.

I’ve been where you are and eventually had to surrender to reality which kept undermining my created meanings. This put me on the search for meaning. Your search for meaning brought you to books and knowledge acquisition. Mine did too.

Is knowledge actually the rock solid foundation needed or is the subsequent created meaning(s) built on sand as well? It seems you would agree that these are built on sand as well. I guess the difference between us is in our differing response to the frustration of the situation. Persist in the cycle of create -> see it destroyed -> create again, or try something else.

Trying something else led me to the self. The self is the bridge to the soul, so affirming + identifying with the self affirms the soul, and affirming the soul leads to all the implications I described earlier in the thread.

Based on my experience, these are the two options: (1) deny the self and deal with the frustrating cycle of creating short lived meanings or (2) affirm the self and its story, engage the deeper desire for timeless meaning, fall into nihilism, and face the guilt for failed stewardship of your soul.

Camus chose option 1. Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill is creating your own meaning(s). Camus proposed we should pretend to be happy doing this despite the frustration. I found that to be unacceptable.

The timeless meaning isn’t separate from consciousness. It’s simply hidden at a deeper ontological level as I mentioned.

Think of me like a scout. I went out ahead to investigate if continuing this path of meaning is fruitful. I’m back now to report in the affirmative. It’s a personal choice to believe me or not, but at the very least, you have more information than you did before.

What path of meaning?

I'm really sorry, I'm trying my best, but I fundamentally have no idea what you're trying to say. What do you mean by 'deeper ontological level'? There is no 'personal choice to believe you'. I don't believe based on choice, I believe based on good arguments and evidence, and it's hard for me to imagine what the evidence could be to prove arguments I can't even see that you're making. Best I can make out is you're presenting a fictional solution to a fictional problem, but I can't make out what your solution is other than that you're just claiming it exists.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showp...

which should be valued highest?

on what basis?

on what scale?

on what evidence?

why?

Quality of life across time is the basis I use which I understand to be universal. Do you disagree?

The understanding of higher meaning is something that has to be intuited by the individual, and the search for it has to be prompted before the journey begins. Philosophical reasoning offers some insights into the idea, but in order to really grasp it, it has to be felt. Craig's not arguing in bad faith, but the two of you are working on different levels. It's not a matter of intelligence but of experience. If that light bulb were to go on, Craig's comments would suddenly become clear.

This isn't fiction or religion or a mindfulness class, this is science, maths and philosophy. You can't just go 'oh you have to feel it'. No, if this idea is accessible, it must be accessible via words and ideas, you can't just go 'well I feel it, if you don't feel it, that's you being deficient'. You're describing this as if it were a religious conversion. If this is only something that can be felt, you're describing a feeling, and that feeling does not necessarily correspond to a real 'absence of meaning' or whatever it is you're trying to say. This is no longer philosophy.

'Higher meaning'. Not enough weed I can smoke to get me to your level, by the sounds of it

I cannot agree nor disagree with something I don't understand.

Existentialist philosophy reaches an endpoint where the most important questions are left unanswered; solutions are inadequate. Kierkegaard dealt with this, but the map he laid out is also a maze.

And that's why these discussions hit a wall.

Presumably because you are more identified with rationality than you are with life. Life relates to you through feelings in the body.

If you're referring to Lacanian ideas, we can indeed go a little further in marking out that which exists and we experience but we cannot put into words. But this is just a facet of our own experience of thought, language and meaning, rather than some feature of the external world. Philosophy - done right, at least - recognises its own limits, like maths, can prove that some things are unprovable. Free will, the existence of 'god', these problems are by definition unknowable. In trying to carry on doing philosophy, it spills over into speculation and religion. That's why these discussions hit a wall.

I don't even know what you mean by that. The body is the medium through which we experience the world and ourselves. But that's not the only way that life relates to us. I guess you are sorta pointing at Lacan if you're saying stuff like that. But your line of argument here is redolent of 'bro if you just try to feel it a bit harder, you can, I feel it, you just gotta let yourself'. You can't just keep on positing this imaginary element, this property-less thing on which your point rests. If you can't put what you mean into words, it's not an idea, it's just a feeling, and while feelings are valid, they're better discussed in the psychology subforum or perhaps the religion, god and theology one. Which is where I suspect most of Kierkegaards work should be.

I haven't read Lacan but mostly agree with this. However, the bolded part is what existentialist philosophers are trying to solve for. If existentialism were to recognize its own limits, it would see its futility in that endeavor. In the same way you maintain that problems like free will and the existence of 'god' are by definition unknowable, I maintain that existentialism by definition caves in on itself.

He belongs in both. And Camus' philosophy of the absurd is (at least in part) a response to Johannes de silentio.

Okay. I'm not really at all interested in any of the bits of philosophy that intersect with theology. I say that with value judgments. They represent peak philosophical masturbation. They are unknown and even if the answer were known, it would be irrelevant. Philosophy as a love of knowledge is great but at a certain point you have to produce something of value. The something of value you appear to be striving for by delving into this pit is easily achievable elsewhere. This is only materially relevant to those who have created the problem for themselves. It is the same problem a depressive faces when they want to exercise and feel like they have to negotiate with it, a length process before they actually get their running shoes and go. You don't have to think about doing it, you can just do it. I.E. you don't have to think about all this distraction, you can go 'oh, the problem goes away just by realising it's not a problem.' This enables you to face the very real and present and clear threats to our survival, long term or short term, or happiness, or whatever you think the goal is. But the goal of philosophy is not to empty out your belly button fluff and marvel at it. It's to do work towards a good life. And this ain't it.

Of course someone wants to produce something of value. I'm not sure why you think we're on different pages there. The second sentence is conjecture.

“What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.” ― Soren Kierkegaard

"With regard to every actuality outside myself, it holds true that I can grasp it only in thinking. If I were actually to grasp it, I would have to be able to make myself into the other person, the one acting, to make the actuality alien to me into my own personal actuality, which is an impossibility."― Johannes Climacus

The idea that the thing I (and others) value is easily achievable elsewhere is a faith-based claim and a bold one at that. You don't know what it is that I value, where I have looked for answers, how this or that has resonated with me or what was required to set me in motion. Of course action must be taken...and I found inspiration and a foundation on which to act upon. Nietzsche, the Stoics and psychologists were dead ends. You seem to think there's a one-size-fits-all solution to whatever problem someone is facing, and if there are multiple solutions—well, it's certainly not that.

And I'm not knocking philosophy. It definitely has its place; but as you already mentioned, it has its limits.

FYP

The second sentence is not conjecture. I am telling you that what appears to be a problem for you, craig and Camus is not a problem for me.

The Kierkegaard quote is rendered irrelevant and worthless once he invokes god.

The Climacus quote is not quite word salad - such a salad presumably at least has some texture to it. This is more like word lasagna. Gloopy.

I am making no faith-based claims, other than the faith you have that I am telling you genuiney how I deal with this issue.

The pit is of your own making. If you think that you are making progress by crawling out of it, it doesn't look like progress to me, because I watched you dig and get into the pit in the first place. You, Craig and Camus have created a problem out of nothing. All you need to solve this problem is acknowledge that it's not actually a problem. Same as your death. You will die. You cannot evade this. So instead of stewing in your own mortality, you just.... stop thinking about it, and that frees you to live your life.

You might not be knocking philosophy, I certainly am. At least the bits of philosophy that are actually theology in disguise, but also those masturbatory wastes of time that do not in any material way help anyone that actually needs help. This is like giving yourself OCD and then celebrating ridding yourself of it. There are more difficult, more important problems we must face. There are ways we can use philosophy to improve our own world and that of those around us. This is not one of them.

Again, how are you allowing yourself to make this claim? You are standing at the edge of the known, peering out into the darkness of the chaotic unknown, and declaring there are no solutions out there, even though you’ve never ventured out there.

I’m the scout who has mapped out the chaotic unknown, and I’m telling you the solutions out there are the ONLY way to solve our problems.

For people who are struggling to solve the problem of the absurd which Camus described, telling these people that the absurd is not actually a problem — this is not a solution.

That it is not a problem for you is different than saying it is not a problem for us and that we can just think our way out of it.

You render it worthless because you don't believe in God. That is a topic for another time, but for the sake of this discussion, let's remove "God" from the context of that quote. Earlier, I think you stated that we create our own meaning. I know you said that our brains/the universe create it. The question is: did you create that meaning or discover it? If you discover what is meaningful and choose to live your life according that meaning, that is not creating meaning, but rather living a meaningful life. Whether it's God willing it or something else, either way, the meaning isn't for you to decide. To rephrase the Kierkegaard quote:

“What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see where meaning can be found and what it is that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.” ― Soren Kierkegaard

You made an objective truth claim about us based on your own subjectivity" It was akin to telling an alcoholic that they don't need AA or rehab. "Just don't drink! It wasn't that hard for me!"

Sure wish I thought of that. "And those underlying reasons for your alcoholism? Pay no heed."

Of course it does. This is factually incorrect even from a scientific perspective. Religious belief is associated with an increment in mental health more often than not ... I already had OCD.

There's a lot of other stuff in there to respond to, but I'll leave it there and give you the last word; don't want to take this thread too far off track.

Btw, hopefully none of that seems contentious; just trying to make a point.

Who says I haven't been there? Who says I haven't struggled with my own mortality and the futility of my life? Who says I haven't worked hard at my philosophical, social, spiritual, political life to arrive at my current set of commitments? Who says I haven't considered already Camus, Sartre, Zizek, Chomsky, Lacan, Freud, Russell, sought to find out which questions and answers are in line with my version of the good life? Who says I haven't spent years in academia trying to sort out the fiction in theology from the meat on the bone of dialectical materialism?

It is not a solution unless you allow it to be. You ever notice how those struggling with big problems in their lives don't concern themselves with these ones? It's because their cashout value is close to 0, whereas the cashout value of the problems they face is very high. They have a solution to this problem: not invent it in the first place. This sort of problem is the preserve of the privileged. One of the consequences of fully accounting for that privilege is that problems like this tend to go away.

Now, again, I never said I didn't believe in god. To clarify my position, I am a radical agnostic, in that I believe the (radical) atheists are making the same (type but not magnitude of) mistake as theists. That there isn't even a rational thought experiment that could be done to prove or disprove 'god' or however you envisage that concept. What is clear to me is that theology and philosophy must be separated, and kept separate. Perhaps have 3 or 4 hours for undergrads to go through the history and dumbassery behind arguments that claim to prove god, and then say 'right, now let's move onto the real stuff'. It is a testament to the lasting power of the church that any respect is given to theologians within philosophy, not to any justification for our wasting our collective brain power on ideas that we ought to have left behind in the 19th century.

I can consume my own meaning; I can consume that of others. Others can consume my meaning or their own. 'My meaning' could be the thoughts in my head or the product of my interactions with others or the environment. The distinctions are fuzzy and irrelevant. We know that there's a great mass of meaning, a gigantic world economy of ideas flying around, with everyone contributing and consuming some of it. Any distinction between creating or consuming meaning or living a meaningful life are false dichotomies.

I would accept that the powers of the mind are such that you can work unreal problems into reality, and if you're asking for help with that, well, that's a little beyond the scope of the philosophy subforum and probably ought to be in the psychology forum. All I can tell you is that when your survival is on the line, and the real state of the world is revealed to you, this sorta stuff fades into insignificance. I don't mean to say it's as easy as choosing to forget that this used to be an issue for you. You have to decide, to decide to decide, and to accept that it will be a while, but after a year or two, you'll think 'oh, I used to worry about the absurdity of life and not comprehend my place in the world, but I haven't worried about that in ages. Probably because the actual world is actually on fire and we all seem to be turning a blind eye to genocides happening in front of our very eyes, funded by our very own tax $.'

Funny that you say that religious belief is correlated to increases in mental health. That fits in with my understanding of it. Good reality testing is associated with decreases in mental health. I'd rather live in depressed reality than happy delusion.

It's ok. I'm quite a spiky fella and have been a little provocative itt and you've made me look a bit foolish by being relatively calm as I've been more derisive than I ought to have been. I don't care for any last word battles. I've enjoyed this exchange thus far, it's been interesting, and I can always learn stuff from people like you. I'm very capable of disagreeing very pleasantly as long as you can tolerate my haughtiness.

It’s a critical error to undervalue meaning the way you do. It’s even worse to actively encourage other people to do the same.