Everything is Pointless (My Favourite Blog)

[Malone]

Here's a link to my favourite blog on the net, with a choice extract below. Only for hardcore pessimists. Please let no one reply with the old saw about life having meaning if you choose to invest it with one. That dog just don't hunt:-)

http://www.everythingispointless.com/

"And so here is where the hedonists fall flat (in my opinion). Agree that everything is pointless; that without god, everything is permitted. There is no morality, only the rules of a minority, which attempt to control and restrict the behaviour of other human beings. And so I ask, striving for what? What standards and goals did we all sign up for? Who decides? The world today is a battleground of stupid ape descendants, who have carved up the land, and the people and riches in it. Every day people die. Every day people are born. War, disease, pain and misery. On one hand you have rich people, flying around in jets, with their obese children, and obese pets, working, spending, energy, energy, energy. And then they wonder why the world might be ####ed up. If human beings really do ruin the one place in the universe they know can keep them alive, isn't that an absurd joke? And the piece argues that it's okay striving for today, even if there isn't a tomorrow. #### it if the oil runs out tomorrow, today we get our buck and ####! All well and good for the people who prosper, but look around humanitarians and show me the world where everybody has enough to eat. We are all related, cousins from thousands of years back. And like a dysfunctional family, we're not ever going to get along. Live for today and be happy, is fine advice (seeing as everything is pointless). But I understand why some people choke trying to swallow it..."

[Ascrobius]

"Our planet is the mental institution for the universe." - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

[Odalisque]

Quote Originally Posted by Ascrobius

"Our planet is the mental institution for the universe." - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

That seems to betray grandiose ambitions. I preferred the assessment of our planet in Lexx: "just a stupid type 13 planet".

[Dr. Bantham]

Replying to this thread is pointless, but I just can't help myself. Thanks for that.

[Ascrobius]

Replying to your pointless post is a pointless, so why bother. I'm done with this...

[Steve Dekorte]

"that without god, everything is permitted."

I've heard this often stated but never understood what it meant.

Does it mean no actions are punished (obviously false)?

Does it mean one has no motivation to do one thing over another without a command from a deity? Also obviously false as people without notions of deities make decisions all the time.

As for ethics and deities in general, how does the commandment of a deity make something ethical without a circular definition of what is ethical (it's right because deity X says so) or which deity is the correct one to listen to (deity X is the right deity because deity X says so)?

[matt cardin]

The statement comes from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, from the character of Ivan. In general, yes, it refers to the idea that without God, or without belief in God, there are no moral norms.

But the wider application is that without God -- a word we can take either literally or metaphorically, as referring either to the deity of Western monotheism or to any sort of absolute transcendent authority -- the universe, and therefore human life, has no reference point. Nothing means anything, ultimately. All beliefs, ideologies, motivations, actions, and words, and also all demotivations, all decisions or compulsions to refrain from any word or action or belief, are groundless.

So to say that without God everything is permitted is to say that without some sort of absolute and transcendent reference point -- it has to be transcendent, because otherwise it's subject to the provisional and relative flux of the Taoist's "ten thousand things" -- all bets are off, and one thing is as good or bad as another.

The mindset behind the maxim would hold that all of those people you refer to, those who keep on acting in the world even without a belief in God (however understood), are doing it aimlessly. They're probably having to engage in one or more of those mental filtering mechanisms a la Tom's The Conspiracy against the Human Race and Zapffe's pessimistic philosophy, the kind that block true knowledge of the cosmic reality, because otherwise, at least from the Dostoyevskian point of view, they would increasingly come to realize the arbitrariness and meaninglessness of their actions and lives, until they were overwhelmed with cosmic horror and/or ennui.

[Steve Dekorte]

Quote Originally Posted by matt cardin

The statement comes from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, from the character of Ivan. In general, yes, it refers to the idea that without God, or without belief in God, there are no moral norms. But the wider application is that without God -- a word we can take either literally or metaphorically, as referring either to the deity of Western monotheism or to any sort of absolute transcendent authority -- the universe, and therefore human life, has no reference point. Nothing means anything, ultimately. All beliefs, ideologies, motivations, actions, and words, and also all demotivations, all decisions or compulsions to refrain from any word or action or belief, are groundless.

Interesting,. If this is true, why did you choose to write your response? Either it is (and presumably all your actions are) random, or there was some motivation - some value served. It may be a subjective value, but a value just the same.

Quote Originally Posted by matt cardin

So to say that without God everything is permitted is to say that without some sort of absolute and transcendent reference point -- it has to be transcendent, because otherwise it's subject to the provisional and relative flux of the Taoist's "ten thousand things" -- all bets are off, and one thing is as good or bad as another. The mindset behind the maxim would hold that all of those people you refer to, those who keep on acting in the world even without a belief in God (however understood), are doing it aimlessly. They're probably having to engage in one or more of those mental filtering mechanisms a la Tom's The Conspiracy against the Human Race and Zapffe's pessimistic philosophy, the kind that blocks true knowledge of the cosmic reality, because otherwise, at least from the Dostoyevskian point of view, they would increasingly come to realize the arbitrariness and meaninglessness of their actions and lives, until they were overwhelmed with cosmic horror and/or ennui.

It seems to me that Dostoyevsky's and TL are employing (albeit for artistic reasons) the fallacy of false dichotomy/dilemma. They suggest our only choices are between (the easily demonstrated) absence of an objective set of values and no values at all. But there is a third way - subjective value.

As far as I can see, subjective value is the only meaningful value whether or not there are such things as deities as it's the only solution to the value chicken and egg problem - without a pre-existing value system you have no way of deciding to follow the mandates of deities, etc.

[Eternal Returner]

Quote Originally Posted by mattcardin

It seems to me that Dostoyevsky's and TL are employing (albeit for artistic reasons) the fallacy of false dichotomy/dilemma. They suggest our only choices are between (the easily demonstrated) absence of an objective set of values and no values at all. But there is a third way - subjective value. As far as I can see, subjective value is the only meaningful value whether or not there are such things as deities as it's the only solution to the value chicken and egg problem - without a pre-existing value system you have no way of deciding to follow the mandates of deities, etc.

The difference though, is that PURELY subjective value means that each individual subject determines the value without a reference that MATTERS outside of that person.

Subjective values are effectively mutable by any other individual's subjective value, and the majority side usually wins through some Foucaultian class warfare. In this case, where subjectivity is the only king, and not objectivity, then the only way things can be decided is through one side's oppression of the other into submission.

Of course, biologically, there is a tendency for overlap in some imperatives, but this just effectively means only the freaks among freaks are left out in the cold, but again this is unless they can keep their activity or views out of the spotlight that would be considered the "Danger Zone." Obedience to a subjective society is maddening because we get no illusion of objective meaning, except perhaps inane biology, which which continually paints us as more primitive than we think we are.

[Russell Nash]

Well, certainly, not "everything" is pointless. Counterexample: "a toaster", a kitchen appliance for toasting bread. Therefore, a toaster is not pointless. But, are human values pointless? Well, human values are conventions, and therefore not at all pointless. If they are not of our taste, we simply change them. But, is the Universe pointless? To answer this question we should know more. It doesn't look like there is someone out there, aka God, ruling the Universe, but we just see a small fraction of the entire Universe, and most of it, it will be forever unknown. Who knows if everywhere there are the same laws of physics. By the way, the apparently non-existence of God, does not imply that everything is permitted. Counterexample: "gravity". Although, God doesn't exist (let's suppose so), I want to fly with my bare arms, but I can't. The non-existence of God has no influence in my wish to fly with my bare arms. Nihilism is a fashion. Like chewing bubblegum when we are kids. If someone is truly a nihilist no one would be living till old age, like Cioran, and by living life giving it a meaning. As I always say, show me the living nihilist, and I show you an imposter. People are nihilists because it is "cool" to be a nihilist. It's a fashion. If you are a true nihilist, show me that everything is pointless, you don't need it, transfer your bank account to mine, I do need money. Stop working. F#ck life, and die. Then, you have proved, certainly beyond a doubt that your life was pointless. But by living it, by sharing ideas that other may or may not use, you are just contributing to a whole, that's not nihilism. Nobody can say whether the Universe is pointless, and whether God exists, most probably not the Christian God, or Apollo, or Zeus, but God...? Has anybody out there refuted the existence of God, 100 %...? I don't think so. A person that I always considered to be a nihilist, but maybe I'm wrong on this, was Sid Vicious, he died very young. The opposite of Camus, who kept writing books of how to deplore life by "living it" (and making a few bucks to boot). Is everything was pointless, why Camus didn't commit suicide? Why not any of you, so called "nihilists"? Why do you keep breathing, living, writing, sharing ideas...? ...posting on TLO? Why? Wasn't everything pointless?

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