Biggy,
I think I’m going to make this my last response to you in this thread.
To sum up the point I’m trying to make to you (one of the points), it’s this: that you seem most certain in the moments when you ask your questions–when you grill people for answers to your dilemma, the one you feel they too must be ensnared by–you remain “stuck” here because this continues to seem to be the most reasonable position from which to argue and think. True, you aren’t making any claims–you’re just asking questions–but any proposal other than the dilemma you see yourself caught in is held suspect in your mind until it can be demonstrated to you that there is a way out of your dilemma (and presumably into the alternate proposal you hold suspect).
This is your default position. ^ Dasein. Your caught in a dilemma. How can you resolve the conundrum of being in a universe in which things could not have turned out differently?
It’s good to have a healthy dose of skepticism over one’s own views, but this is not unique to you. It’s not a license to say you don’t have a default position–as though your nihilism permits you to say you don’t believe in anything.
Just like the objectivist, we are all prone to this–to having a default position that seems the “most reasonable” to us. My point is that we will only ever see the “reasoning” in our position simply in virtue of having those positions, that they are the ones we fall back on to deliver answers to questions, justifications to charges. It’s the “going into” that makes the reasoning seem evident, the being in the midst of the experience (even if the experience is an abstract thought).
If you really wanted out of your dilemma, if you really wanted to see whether an alternate position holds any merit or not, you wouldn’t be challenging such alternate positions nearly as much as you do. When an alternate view is proposed to you, if you really want to grip the merits of that view, you would dive into it, believe in it (if only temporarily), for that is the only way to see the logic of such views.
My point has always ever been that you have to allow your mind to “go there”–to temporarily suspend its usual tricks, its usual defenses–to be open to that which, at present, may not all together be a reality to you, just an existential contraption. But this is what existential contraptions do: they give us realities to believe in. Your nihilism, your “dasein”, is no exception.
If you did this, if you “went there”, you would find (eventually) that you have become just as convinced of your new outlook as you currently feel you are of your nihilistic/dasein-based outlook. It would gradually seem obvious to you. You would look back at yourself now and say: what was I thinking?
But I don’t think you want that. I think you find some kind of comfort in being stuck in your dilemma. It’s working for you on some level, for some purpose. And it’s true that you may not be entirely happy, unfulfilled, you may still feel some angst over being caught in a world in which prong #2 situations abound everywhere, but this is the dead end in the maze I spoke of earlier (the analogy to human thought). You feel the passage way you have followed has gotten you closer to your goal, but you didn’t expect a wall to stand between you and it. Now you’re repeatedly butting your head against that wall, still trying to get to the exit from the maze. It may be right behind that wall–so close yet so far–but sooner or later, you have to come to grips with the fact that the right way to get to the exit, the only way, is to backtrack. That’s why I’m trying to tell you: go back! Yes, backtracking does hurt, it means repeating mistakes you thought you’d never have to commit again, it means delving back into things you don’t feel comfortable with, that you thought you could leave behind, things you don’t really believe in anymore. But like I said: if you really want it, you could easily believe in it again. Objectivism is the default mode of viewing the world, the way the brain naturally works. It takes effort to see the world in any other way, to stretch the brain far from its natural mode of thinking. Relinquish that effort, and your brain will fall back on whatever “truth” seems most objective to you. I doubt you’ll ever forget that, at the end of the day, it’s still an existential contraption, but you’ll find that it’s so much easier to just slip into that objectivist mode of thinking than to be fixated on the fact that it could be construed as an existential contraption. The latter will become just a fleeting thought that passes through your mind and won’t seriously disrupt the stability of your brain’s default “objectivist” outlook.
But I don’t think you’ll do that. I get the impression so far that the effort you put in to resisting your brain’s natural objectivist mode of thinking is worth it somehow, worth some goal you feel is still within reach, or perhaps worth it because it brings you some kind of comfort that you feel would be lost if you slipped back into an objectivist frame of mind. I think you feel comfortable in your dead end. Not fully satisfied, of course–it’s not the exit you long for–but to backtrack… that entails surrendering what little comfort you have left.