existentialism, nihilism, absurdism

[iambiguous]

The Difference Between Existentialism, Nihilism, and Absurdism
Three different ways of approaching the lack of intrinsic meaning.
By Daniel Miessler in Philosophy

First of all, after you read the points being made by him, by me try to reconfigure them into the world that we live in today. The world of the coronavirus…

Adopting a religion or some sort of nebulous “spirituality”—as someone who has accepted the truth of intrinsic meaninglessness—amounts to either intellectual laziness, emotional weakness, or some combination thereof. It is to say that the truth is too difficult to consume and accept, and that you’ve chosen to believe something untrue because it is easier.

Of course assessments of this sort merely presume it must be the case because one cannot imagine a truly rational and intelligent person adopting a spiritual path other than as the embodiment of an inauthentic life.

As though your own assessment of the truth here is correct axiomatically. Why? Because your conclusion follows “by definition” from your premises. And there is often no attempt to actually demonstrate that this is the case other than by shifting the burden to the religionists to produce their God or spiritual font.

On the other hand, who is kidding whom. There are almost certainly any number of people who either have faith in a spiritual path because they have been indoctrinated by others all their lives to believe what they do, or because when push comes to shove they believe only what they want to be true because, psychologically, the belief in and of itself allows them to sustain at least some peace of mind.

Only, once again, how can anyone really know for sure what it is that another thinks about in regard to these things…or why and how they came to. There is only extrapolating from your own experiences or measuring the distance between what they claim to believe and what they can demonstrate is true.

Absurdism is about working within our human limitations, but without abandoning our respect for ourselves or the truth. Absurdists often either adopt or construct a belief structure that provides a day-to-day reprieve from the crushing impossibility of true meaning. Such constructs allow us to trick our evolution-soaked brains into extracting meaning from the universe, while never forgetting that the system itself is a trick.

No, absurdism revolves around making certain assumptions about human limitations based on the initial assumption that this revolves around having taken an intellectual leap of faith to an essentially meaningless world. A world in which the “search for meaning” is passed on to those who don’t think about meaning in the same the way that the absurdist does.

And what’s crucial is that the absurdists are still liable to go down any number of paths rooted in dasein. They might become hedonists or libertines or epicures or narcissists or sociopaths. There isn’t a behavior around that can’t be rationalized given the assumption there is nothing that meaning itself can be traced back to but that which you have come to ascribe it to.

Thus the “meaning” that is extracted from the universe is based entirely on whatever it is that you have “tricked” yourself into thinking that the universe is.

[iambiguous]

The Difference Between Existentialism, Nihilism, and Absurdism
Three different ways of approaching the lack of intrinsic meaning.
By Daniel Miessler in Philosophy

Examples of surrender vs. rebellion

True believers in mainstream religions either never believed that the world lacks inherent meaning or they chose to stop believing it because it was too empty and sad. You can’t really know which a person is without deep conversation, and significant honesty on their part.

Many religious people become atheists later in life, but after much introspection decide to stay loosely tied to the beliefs and the community because of the social and meaning-based benefits. Many in this situation are not entirely sure day-to-day how much they really believe vs. how much they’re pretending for practical reasons.

Conversely, many people brought up without religion see later in life that all their happy friends have a family and a strong faith, and decide to adopt religion to acquire its benefits. Similarly, they might not know at any given moment how much of their participation is genuine vs. secular.

My point of course is that whichever/whatever camp you happen to be in here and now, it is likely to revolve far more around the manner in which I have come to understand “I” as the embodiment of dasein, than in any attempt to think it through scientifically, philosophically, theologically, rationally etc.

And, in turn, calling yourself an existentialist, nihilist or absurdist doesn’t really make that go away.

You can “surrender” to one or another frame of mind or “rebel” instead. But what doesn’t change from my point of view is the fact that in regard to an issue like the coronavirus pandemic there does not appear to be a way to pin down which frame of mind all reasonable and virtuous men and women are obligated to embrace…and then embody in the behaviors they choose.

And what “many people” do is to reconfigure their own frame of mind from one to the other position based largely on the fact that circumstances in their lives predispose them to change their mind. As the pandemic crisis may well do for any number of people in the upcoming days, weeks and months. It’s not likely instead that after thinking it all through thoroughly they suddenly came to the conclusion [the eureka moment] that now – scientifically, philosophically, theologically, rationally – they have pinned down that which all rational and viruous men and women are obligated to adhere to.