Right now I’d classify it as both “a fairly good read” and “an earnest attempt at good old fashioned philosophy”.
It’s clearly trying to recapture a more positive philosophical mood as a bit of an antidote to the current trend of deconstruction. But whether it is a true and useful return to the pursuit of the “good life” or a naive attempt to cast aside the perils of grand narratives to return uselessly to a simpler time is, of course, a subjective opinion.
I’m rather sentimental myself and I believe a lot has been lost with today’s cynical postmodern-inspired philosophical trends, but I imagine those who think the work of deconstructing colonializing narratives that only soothe the already mostly comfortable is not yet complete are experiencing profound eye rolling whenever this stuff shows up on HN.
You could also put folks like Jordan Peterson in this bucket, but IMO he seems more interested in resurrecting (pun intended) Christianity in modern form rather than exploring entirely new frames.
I'm not sure Jordan Peterson is trying resurrect Christianity, but maybe he's trying to resurrect Jung. He uses myths to understand collective unconscious (which is the really interesting part of his work) and then uses those metaphors on an ad-hoc basis to infer biological truisms with the goal of making people psychologically well-adjusted (which is where he swims in the crazy pool)
Meaningness draws out the essence from Dzog Chen and Ati Yoga to point to the attributes which an enlightened tantric society would create in individuals.
Enlightenment brings aesthetic changes, "mountains and rivers without end", not only moral ones, and these new aesthetics answer many of the critical questions left by post-structuralism about the implosion of meaning in relativism: while reality may be relative, the beauty which emerges from the open, curious, aware mind of the tantric practitioner rebuilds meaning-ness as an aesthetic value.
(David Chapman thinks this is an acceptable description)
(I should say - I was compressing into two tweets, so a little detail is needed)
1) the mind's model of reality is relative, but we can only ever model reality as a whole inside of our own minds - reality as a whole is unknowable, even in principle.
This doesn't mean we can't know, for sure, quite a lot about specific subsets of reality: "is there milk in the fridge?" has a good, precise answer, but "what's it all about then?" does not.
But our answers to "what's it all out then?" shape our ideas about our lives, which in turn shape our behavior. So our answers to these "questions without answers" actually heavily impact our lives over the long run.
2) Meaningness is an aesthetic value in that it is perceived in things and situations, and can be created intentionally at times. The sense of purpose and significance, of rightness and beauty, may be fleeting, but they are as objectively real as musical harmony but with this principle applied across the entire field of awareness. A similarly broad concept might be "well-proportioned", which can apply to almost anything in almost any area, and "you know it when you see it."
This is a good summary of what I understand about the work, though admittedly I haven't processed the whole thing. It's a fascinating read, though he spends more time talking about what meaningness is not rather than what it is.
Let me preface the following: I've really enjoyed my time with this work and it's highly recommended if you're interested in these questions. We're all building up ad-hoc models of the world in our heads so I doubt anyone who takes these questions seriously would agree 100%.
My problem with it is that it ignores the observer - we are pattern matchers and we're drawn to find patterns by biological processes. The pleasing aesthetic of meaningness is part of a neurological reward system to find patterns. We could think of meaningness in terms of information theory, but there are no true patterns that always repeat exactly, even patterns themselves are transient (the nebulous nature he refers to). That implies to me we're soft matching local patterns in an ultimately global noisey environment. I'm still struggling to see how meaningness is different than existentialism, and feel he straw-mans existentialism a bit to make it different than his own framework. I love the definition of meaningness, it's the most complete definition of that fuzzy feeling that we all get some times and I would expect it would have value in psychology or understanding brain structure, but I have doubts it "means" anything outside the context of our consciousness.
But maybe that's outside the scope of this work, and he's not interested in meaning in a cosmic sense, but rather in the personal.
I'm a fan of your work. I got this username because I registered here to find a chordal keyboard manufacturer [0] that I had seen on here but neglected to save.
I bounced a bunch of times too for similar reasons.
Is it worth checking out? emphatic yes
Summarize? I will try, and probably not do a great job; I'm still digesting it.
The world is both "nebulous" [1] and patterned; observed patterns aren't really out there so much as a combination of "there" and in our mind. Some of these patterns are incredibly useful. One pattern is "the rational / modern world view", which lets science work. It is very good, but not complete.
Post-modernism noticed that no pattern is a perfect fit on the partially-nebulous world, and went nowhere with that, and ended up in a nihilistic, bad place. That isn't good.
The goal is to see patterns as useful, conventional truths, not ultimate truths. Then you can pick the right pattern / conceptual framework with which to approach a given situation.
So, "all models are wrong, some models are useful" spun out into a whole philosophy?
In all seriousness, that is becoming one of my guiding principles (along with "divisions into categories are models"), so maybe I should pay more attention to this dude, except that he really is kind of hard to follow sometimes...
I think a better way to put it is that all models are right given a situation / context / set of assumptions. It is important to understand the latter to apply the model.
I would highly recommend reading Chapter 3-5 (Epistemology) of Objectivism by Leonard Piekoff. It's a much more logical and easy to understand take on these same ideas.
Thanks for a good summary. If you'd like an alternative take on these same ideas in a bit more systematic framework, consider read Objectivism by Leonard Piekoff.
If you find this interesting, I would recommend checking out the book Objectivism by Leonard Piekoff. It takes a more systematic approach to come to similar conclusions.
This is the first I've heard of this. The "Appetizer" on the website begins with:
Especially at turning points in life, people ask questions like:
Is there any purpose at all in living? Or is everything completely pointless?
What am I supposed to do?
How can I choose among the many ways I could spend the rest of my life?
Does everyone’s life have the same purpose, or does everyone have their own?
Where does purpose come from? Does it have some ultimate source, or is it just a personal invention?
These seem like questions without answers. Or, alternatively, the correct answer is whatever you decide it to be.
Imagine a dog or dolphin or octopus asking this question. We'd think: "Why are you asking such questions? You're a dog/dolphin/octopus. You do dog/dolphin/octopus things. That's all you're supposed to do."
Isn't it the same with humans? We do human things. Take care of ourselves and our loved ones. Help others who need help. Try to better ourselves.
>> These seem like questions without answers. Or, alternatively, the correct answer is whatever you decide it to be.
I beg to differ. The correct answer is whatever you decide it to be given the nature of reality. The whatever you decide it to be leads to subjectivism, which means you can do whatever you want. But clearly some activities are better for you as an individual compared to others.
eg. Working a job is better than robbing a bank. You know this intuitively based on years of internal reasoning, now think of why? Try to make that logic explicit.
>> Imagine a dog or dolphin or octopus asking this question. We'd think: "Why are you asking such questions? You're a dog/dolphin/octopus. You do dog/dolphin/octopus things. That's all you're supposed to do." Isn't it the same with humans? We do human things. Take care of ourselves and our loved ones. Help others who need help. Try to better ourselves.
We, as humans, are special in that we have a very high degree of choice compared to rest of animal kingdom. The most extreme form of it is that can choose to end our life (i.e. commit suicide), and no animal can do that.
So then, what are human things? Why is "taking care of ourselves and our loved ones, helping others in need, better ourselves" good choices?
I am not saying these are bad choices. They are very good indeed. Again, you know this intuitively based on years of internal reasoning, now think of why? Try to make that logic explicit.
There is a very simple framework to come to these conclusions. Unfortunately, a large population does not come to the same conclusions as you.
>eg. Working a job is better than robbing a bank. You know this intuitively based on years of internal reasoning, now think of why? Try to make that logic explicit.
It's better because robbing a bank means I have to expend more energy covering my tracks/on the run/etc. This strategy doesn't scale because if everyone is robbing banks then the incentive to collaborate on solving the world's problems is compromised. And if the world's problems aren't solved then everyone is worse off.
>The most extreme form of it is that can choose to end our life (i.e. commit suicide), and no animal can do that.
Some mammals, e.g. whales, beach themselves.
>So then, what are human things? Why is "taking care of ourselves and our loved ones, helping others in need, better ourselves" good choices?...Try to make that logic explicit.
Consider the counterfactual: What does a world where I don't take care of myself and my loved ones, trying to help others, etc, look like? Scale this behavior to the entire population. I don't think it requires a lot of imagination to imagine what an objectively worse world that would be.
But you're not scaling it to the entire population. You're just doing it yourself. I don't see why that step has to be a part of your logic.
Robbing a bank is bad because it hurts people. It's not a very sustainable way to make money, in that (if you want money to buy food, give to charity, buy a bike) you only have to get caught once and it'll be very bad. In contrast, you don't have that risk in a normal job.
It’s possible I never get caught and live like a king.
You have to scale it to the population because the thought experiment doesn’t apply to just one individual. Everyone has to answer the question “Why don’t I just rob a bank instead of getting a job?”
We had animal-like answers based on conceptions of the human telos. We had bee-like answers based on conceptions of societal progress. Pomo, globalization, and prosperity made them feel unworkable. Meaningness is trying to develop a conception that can work.
Is "meaningness" as a philosophy worth checking out? Can anybody summarize it for me?