The hole has several facets. There is the philosophical topic you focus on. There are the emotions that the word hole is shorthand for. These need not be solved simultaneously, even if some frustration may remain around getting the answer to the philosophical issue.
Sure, the decision to take approach X to getting out of the emotional hole may be one of trial and error, or research into scientific journals or by following your own sense of what suites your personality better than the others. This last leading potentially to trial and error.
Well, then it does not sound like a hole. You have presented it as something unpleasant, something that other people avoid with great effort and are unable even to admit their own fears around falling into the hole.
Now you are presenting it as something you can distract yourself form via music and film.
To me that is hardly a hole, in the emotional sense, and likely something with a degree of suffereing many people are facing. Why do I conclude that? Because in the holes I have faced - and surely you as a veteran have faced, I would guess - those things I would call holes and think that people go into denial over and run from and lie about, are not remotely soothed by film and music, though I certainly tried. Fears of death or not existing through time or the immanent painful death of loved one, realizations that what I thought I was doing and valued I did not. Memories of traumatic events when they surface with a vengeance over time and not just in flashes. Fears of being damned or made wrong or fundamentally repulsive at a core level. Facing actions I truly regret while at the same time not being certain I will not repeat them. When hit with these kinds of holes - which are often intermingled - your list of distractions do not distract me, in fact they can almost feel worse. I have the same feelings, and their is irritating noise or images on top of it.
Now if you want to call that a hole, fine. It’s a vague metaphor. But when you are making it seem like that kind of existential crisis hole is something all objectivists run from, I truly doubt that.
But now I get a better handle on why you might not feel any urge to climb out. You ain’t that deep down, you have whatever obstacles you hint at above, and you have your own forms of self-medication.
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It’s still framed, above, with objective morals. I do not think there is a right thing to do. There may be more effective approaches given my goals, but it is not right in any moral sense.
I was in a training where there was a consultant. Another participant reacted with open anger when we had to redo a values analysis - ironically in this context. The online instructions were not clear, most of us came to the wrong way of numbering responses. I was curious and didn’t mind redoing it. He was more irritated, at first willing, then picked up the judgment of the consultant team about his emotional reaction and actually stomped out of the room.
During the discussion of this, I came to his defense - I should add I did this even though he was critical of my accepting the task. The consultants had values about emotional expression that collided with ours. I felt empathy for his reaction, and expressed it this way. I argued that ideas about the damaging effects of emotions are not convincing to me. They argued that his way of responding was counterproductive. I argued. Well, it doesn’t really matter but there was some back and forth. He felt supported by me. The situation could have had negative effects for us financially, that is they had some power.
I pushed for having that particular situation and perhaps vaguely also society move in a direction I prefer. I was moved to act by my empathy and understanding of his reaction and my rejection of their beliefs/preferences.
I don’t know if the world I would create - if I were unbelievably convincing - would be objectively good or better than the way things are. I reacted, I think, out of yes, ideas, but also near physical reactions to judgments about emotions and emotional expression. I see culture and not always being pitted against culture, but also against bodies. IOW I do not think all reactions and preferences are simple memes. It feels to me like human bodies have preferences.
But I do not know how universal these are. I do not know if it is better, in some objective way, for the human race to die out, and anything making us uncomfortable is just peachy.
I move towards what my empathy and desire say is supportive to that which I love. And move against things I think are damaging to what I care about. Generally my main tools are to undermine arguments for things I do not like and against things I do like. IOW they tend to be skeptical arguments.
I make my best guesses. As far as what moves things in the direction I prefer.
In the specific case I think it opened some space for us to not have to stifle ourselves in the presence of authority. A tiny local victory for my preferences.
Realized that you may see my description as me claiming to have solved conflicting goods. Nah, I do not have that kind of power. This is how one can live even if one does not have objective morals. And one has no reason not to. If there are no objective morals or one cannot know what they are, THERE IS NO REASON NOT to make things more like one likes and one thinks is supportive to the things one loves. There is no reason to withdraw and not act. One can, of course, if that is what one wants to do, but then one might as well be clear to oneself and others that this is what one wants, not some noble waiting for permission to participate - even if it is only online participation.
And notice that sure, people who believe in objective morals have conflicts. So do people who do not have objective morals.