Or, maybe the afterlife is worse than the mortal world. Maybe we all go to some kind of hell, or our spirits float forever in sensory deprivation because they have no sense organs, or the afterlife is just some boring empty grey limbo.
Personally, I always turn for comfort to books - Terry Pratchett, for instance, is the greatest living existentialist philosopher. Very comforting in times of trouble.
Failing that, there’s nothing like a nice cartoon. Adventure Time, currently.
This is a serious answer.
Luxury.
I don’t identify as an existentialist, though I’ve always found Nieztsche’s views compelling.
I imagine that for a die-hard existentialist, there is comfort in pain itself. Without pain, you can’t grow. You can’t learn anything. There is nothing to reflect back on. You have no motivation to improve yourself. You can’t experience the wonder of love if you never know its absence. So if you feel bad, that must mean you doing something right.
IMHO, I believe this thinking, taken to an extreme, can be just as delusional as Christian schlock. Which is why I would make a horrible Buddhist. But I do find it helpful when I can’t come up with any other comforting thought.
Where do you get this idea? It sounds like you think that atheists turn to Mother Gaia when they get dumped by their SO.
I am a theist, so I’m not exactly those whom you’re asking, but at the same time I do have some existentialist ideas in my philosophy. One of the key things for me is where many others who are theists might pray for comfort in dark times, I don’t.
On the one hand, even if there is a greater purpose to our existence, and that’s not a given in my philosophy even as a theist, it’s not something that I think I’m able to understand. So, if there is, then these things that are happening are happening to further that cause, and who am I to question an end that I’d have to trust is for the greater good and I can’t even comprehend. It’s like a child questioning his parent when he’s told not to do something, and while the parent may have a good reason, he may not have the intellect yet to understand. So it seems to me that, even if there is purpose, at our level of our ability to consider, it is functionally the same as not having any purpose at all.
As such, I find my comfort in a few ideas, primarily the idea of emergent purpose. That is, even out of the randomness, patterns emerge, and one of those is purpose. In short, as one of my favorite artists put it, “we’re here because we’re here”. I don’t find solace in the concept that life is a means to an end, our existence is an end in and of itself, and we get to decide what meaning we assign to that. It’s like looking at a work of art, listening to a piece of music, watching a film, or whatever. Maybe I know why that artist created it and what he intends to communicate with it, but chances are I don’t. Either way, the art may only exist because of that artist and his purpose, that that doesn’t make him the sole arbiter of it’s meaning, and anyone who views it gets to imbue it with his own meaning. So, the greater purpose only really matters in the initial spark to create it, but after it exists, that becomes its purpose and it takes on a life of it’s own.
And so, when I awaken at 3AM by the troubles of the world or my own demons, I find my solace in assigning my own purpose to these events. As I like to say, “A regret is a lesson unlearned.” That is, when I encounter these rough spots, there’s almost always something that I can pull out of it and learn from it, maybe it’s as simple as a way to prevent these unfortunate circumstances from happening again in the future, maybe it’s a call to action, maybe it’s something I can change in my own life. Often, just a little bit of meditation on that idea, and it helps me sleep.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth
Thank you for those thoughtful replies, especially yours, Blaster Master.
non-theist =/= athiest
You think that’s what my question sounded like? Interesting.
As the article says, “sometimes used synonymously with the term atheism…”
I really am curious why you think that it is common for the irreligious take solace in an all-encompassing, indefinable Oneness.
There have been several cases of prominent atheists who have been confronted on their death bed with “What do you think now?” and answered sanely, That they’d soon be gone. Mark Twain comes to mind"There are Angels waiting on the other side " it is said he was told and he said "Let 'em wait, damn them let 'em wait. Carl Sagan lists several others in his book. Probably Ayn Rand went soft in her final hours because medicaid which she’d railed against for so many years she accepted in her last years,. so probably the fantasy of Heaven also.
Those who should have fear in their last moments will be the believers. My father was trembling with the fear of whether all his sins had been forgiven and he was going to go to Hell to be burned for ever and ever. If he could have let go of his fantasy induced fear he could have died peacefully realizing that hat was the end.
But not necessarily. And not the way I meant it.
Did I say it was common? No.
Quite batty actually.
Well, this perfectly describes me. I was pretty confused by the OP – I don’t think I (metaphorically) go anywhere for comfort. I have friends and family that may be able to help, and I imagine existentialists have those too, but barring that, I would endure. Or not, I suppose.
The OPs worldview seems so alien to my own life.
Your denying the premise of the hypothetical. I said I’d be happy “if I believed that lost loved ones were still existing in some happy afterlife.”
Obviously I would not be happy if this afterlife was a miserable place and I was there with people I didn’t like. I addressed that point in my first post.
That’s exactly what I’m getting at by questioning the premise of the OP, and I can’t figure out why existentialists are being called out as perhaps responding differently than other irreligious people.
It’s so puzzling to me that there’s an expectation that the irreligious would go to anything else other than their friends, family, and understanding of themselves in times of adversity; which is what makes this idea of the irreligious going to some kind of unknown Oneness so odd.
And to the extent that life seems scary or cruel, I think most irreligious would simply acknowledge reality on reality’s terms: yes, we die. Yes, there is pain. The question of why may simply obscure the ability to acknowledge reality and life within it.
Victor Frankly sums up Nietzsche in Man’s Search For Meaning - “a man can live with any how if he has a why” (I’m paraphrasing)
Yalom has his fictional Nietzsche give a thought experiment in When Nietzsche Wept - imagine time isn’t linear and you must live the same life over and over again, like an hourglass of sand being repeatedly turned. Every decision, you must make now and make it again for eternity. What are your decisions? That’s fairly comforting, I think.
Yalom’s book on death anxiety, Staring At The Sun, reminds us that we did not exist for millennia before our births, and that wasn’t so bad… being dead is the same.
I’ve always thought “Why?” was the most overrated question. I think “Now what?” is the one to ask. “Given X, what do you do next?”
When things are shit and scary? “This too shall pass.”
All I need.
The following is the only reason why–because of what I’ve been reading. Nothing more to it than that. Didn’t mean to sound like I was “calling anyone out.” :dubious:
I’ve just gotten his book The Schopenhauer Cure for my kindle. Have you read it? How do you rate Yalom as a novelist?