With dozens and dozens that have already come down the pike over the years, why would I suppose I’ll actually bump into the one most likely to work on me?
Besides, I can always slump down into one of my own distractions in order to feel “comfortably numb”.
Though, sure, if I come upon a regimen that actually appears to address the hole I have come to think myself into, my interest would be considerably more piqued.
My hole is a numbingly complex intertwining of circumstances, psychology and philosophy. But what are the odds that I could successfully convey that to others who have no substantive understanding whatsoever of how the existential variables in my own life came to predispose me to this “sense of reality”.
Better [for me] if they aim to persuade me to try something that has actually worked for them. But only in the sense that, when they are confronted with conflicting goods [re their interactions with other], they are not consumed themselves by the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here.
I actually feel better immersed in one of my distractions as well. But, if others are down in the hole that I am in, that will only last until the next newscast. Or until the next spasm in their aging body reminds them that oblivion really may well be just right around the fucking corner.
What I do is to note that when I was an objectivist myself, I was able to embody the comfort and the consolation of imagining that the real me was in touch with a self-righteous truth on this side of the grave and with immortality and salvation on the other side of it.
That [here and now] is beyond my reach.
But would appear [here and now] to still be within their reach. Depending of course on the particular objectivist frame of mind that they subscribe to.
Indeed, here we are again: at the fucking epicenter of dasein.
How on earth would I go about making you understand my frame of mind? Hell, even if you knew me for years, there would still be any number of crucial gaps between my “I” and yours. The vast, vast number of possible permutations built into the evolution of our own particular sequence of existential variables is for all practical purposes incalcuable.
And then we would still have to confront what I construe to be the reality of conflicting goods out in a world where the bottom line always revolves around who has the political power to enforce one or another actual set of rules.
Why on earth would I back off? Only in reminding others how they may well be susceptible to my own frame of mind someday am I likely to provoke them into making an attempt to demonstrate why they are not now.
But only to the extent that they are willing to broach their own sense of self [in the is/ought world] by noting their own equivalent of this:
1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman’s right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary’s choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett’s Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding “rival goods”.
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.
In other words, taking us through the existential intertwining of a sequence of actual experiences and a sequence of actual ideas they came across in the course of actually living their life.