What is the secret to being happy in a foxhole? — baker

Accept the way things are. Know what difference one can make. Be content with what one does and/or has done.

Accept the way things are. Know what difference one can make. Be content with what one does and/or has done. — creativesoul

This sounds awfully abstract.

As it must be, it is a set of universally applicable principles...

Sure, but whence this desire to build an empire, whence the motivation for it, whence the justification for the killing, raping, and pillaging? — baker

As far as I can tell, as soon as people started gathering in large groups, their leaders started wanting the groups and the area controlled to get larger. There have been hundreds of empires throughout history. I'm reading a neat book right now - "The Mongoliad" by Neal Stephenson and others. It's about the Mongol invasion of the west in the 1200s. This relatively small band of people took over everything from India to Poland. It lasted for two Khans and then dissolved when one of them died. It kept popping up in different locations in different incarnations for a couple of hundred years. There have been a bunch of empires - Roman, Hunic, Holy Roman, British, French, Spanish, Uyghur, many Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Moghul, Russian, and on an on. Let's not forget Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. I don't understand it, but it's just the way people are.

It seems to me that by nature, people wouldn't just take from others and they would show a measure of consideration for others. It takes some kind of ideology that makes them override those natural impulses. You can observe the genesis of such an ideology with Nazism: It seems that merely saying "We Germans have more right to existence than other nations" wasn't enough to move people into action, so they invented a whole ideology of Aryan supremacy that made it seem justified to invade other countries and take their resources.

Given people do precisely this, it must be true. I think for all the lofty talk about meaning requiring some transcendent foundation, I believe people obtain meaning from being in the world, interacting and doing things. Possessions, nature, music, food, friends, family, home, whatever you are into is where your meaning comes from. I believe this is true for theists and atheists alike. — Tom Storm

Of course, but this thread is about the proverbial foxholes. Ie. those times and places when health and wealth are gone, when friends, family, home are gone.

I was raised by wolves

Empirically proving what a particular war was (actually) about is virtually impossible. So as much as one might dislike religion, there are things one cannot say about it without thereby losing one's self-respect as a lover of wisdom. — baker

:100: :up: :heart:

"the church starts all the wars" in particular. — T Clark

Where did I say this? I said:

I'd say that religious beliefs and similar irrational ideals were the core of most wars and conflicts. — Christoffer

See the difference?

Empirically proving what a particular war was (actually) about is virtually impossible. So as much as one might dislike religion, there are things one cannot say about it without thereby losing one's self-respect as a lover of wisdom. — baker

Since this connects to what I said, it's important to note that I said more things than what wars were actually about. Most notes in historical records and research on reasons for wars throughout history do exist, while the rest of the idea I had, had to do with the psychology behind religion compared to atheism. If you combine such psychology and review history, it's absolutely in high probability to conclude that most conflicts had religious reasons over other reasons.

This also applies to political reasons because many of those societies had power that was a mix between religion and politics and not separated. So religious reasons were political and political reasons were religious. But conflict also means outside war; peace times when other atrocities happened within society or from institutes of power using religion as tools for that power. So in the end, most conflicts had religious reasons. But in here, when I say "most" in an argument, that seems to be interpreted as "all".

My point is more that, if meaning is an illusion, it must be shown to be so with something more thorough than "Neither God nor evolution gave it to us," which misses out a lot, for instance most of culture. — Kenosha Kid

When I said 'meaning was an illusion', I referred to the Dennett and Dawkins style of evangelical atheism. That style does explicitly say that what humans interpret as meaning is always essentially shaped by evolution, and that humans are basicaly programmed 'survival machines' whose sole purpose is the propogation of the genome. It’s not an exaggeration to characterise them that way although they do present it in the most stark form. Obviously in the context of the 'culture wars', the perceived conflict between evolutionary naturalism and bilbical creationism is one of the major faultlines, but I think it's quite possible to maintain a Christian outlook regardless of that. Both sides of that particular conflict are very literal-minded in their intepretation, but for those Christians who never interpreted the creation myth as a literal account, the fact that it's *not* a literal account is not especially significant. Besides are many dissidents from Dennett and Dawkins 'ultradarwinism' within science itself (see The Third Way).

But overall, the erosion of the sense of meaning, the loss of the sense of mankind having a meaningful place in the Cosmos, has been a major theme in modern culture, expressed in countless works of philosophy, drama, art and literature. Existentialism was one of the responses to that, but there have been many others. I don't think it's necessary to be religious to live a meaningful life, but as a consequence of my own search, I interpret religious ideas as expressions of mankind's search for meaning or of the relationship of the human and the Cosmos. Ultimately the major religious figures achieve a kind of cosmic identity, in more than simply a symbolic sense. By orientating our understanding in the light of theirs, we are able to realise something similar.

Where did I say this? I said: — Christoffer

Yes. I was overstating the case for rhetorical effect.

Of course, but this thread is about the proverbial foxholes. Ie. those times and places when health and wealth are gone, when friends, family, home are gone. — baker

I understand - my first response was:

.... people often jettison belief systems when things get very hard. - whatever those beliefs may be. An ontological crisis can generate significant disruption wherein the old ideas no longer seem to work.

That said, it goes both ways. A significant crisis is also an opportunity to seek a new belief system, perhaps for consolation.

The secret to being happy in the foxholes is probably to expect chaos and suffering in the first place. Some people are fortunate and do not get to know the foxholes.

I was raised by wolves — Kenosha Kid

Lucky you! I was raised by humans. :smile:

the religious — baker

Whereas an atheist may say "meaning comes from playing the game using the human spirit of imagination and understanding", a theist may say "meaning comes from playing the game using a spiritual imagination and understanding".

But overall, the erosion of the sense of meaning, the loss of the sense of mankind having a meaningful place in the Cosmos, has been a major theme in modern culture, expressed in countless works of philosophy, drama, art and literature. Existentialism was one of the responses to that, but there have been many others. I don't think it's necessary to be religious to live a meaningful life, but as a consequence of my own search, I interpret religious ideas as expressions of mankind's search for meaning or of the relationship of the human and the Cosmos. — Wayfarer

I understand, and figured this is what you meant. 'Meaning' in the sense you... uh... meant is not 'meaning' but a specific meaning or kind of meaning: a meaning that places us as the most important things in the universe, the point of the universe perhaps... according to us.

But again I question whether even this kind of meaning is meaningful. Does it change the way a person behaves, for instance? I'm pretty sure every individual who believes that mankind is the point of it all would say yes, yet statistically it doesn't seem to hold up. My Catholic housemate defended the Church against accusations of being effectively a paedophile ring by pointing out that the church had exactly the same percentage of paedophiles as the secular UK. (She apparently didn't see how damning this was in terms of the church being any kind of moral authority.) If this kind of meaning, even when backed up with some awful threats, neither deters nor attracts the most wicked behaviours, can it be said to be worth a damn? I'm sure some would point to the interior life of these people but, of course, you can't (the problem with hypothesising a completely invisible part of people is that you can't say anything about it).

Either way, it doesn't seem like much of a loss. If there is a teleological meaning to us, we don't know it. It could be to worship a vain, jealous god, or to figure out that we're in a simulation, or to make the greatest possible cheese. It doesn't seem beneficial to pick one and run with it or, worse, have one picked for us, and be almost certainly wrong than to evaluate our own biases and admit that maybe we can exist without being the reason for everything's existence. (If any other species develops religion, or even just metaphysics, you can be quite sure that they will conclude that they're the point of everything.) Delusions aren't the gold standard of meaning. We can do much better. In fact, no meaning at all is a huge improvement over your definition of meaning imo.

:( Sorry bro :(

If there is a teleological meaning to us, we don't know it. — Kenosha Kid

I’d be careful about that collective pronoun.

Sorry bro — Kenosha Kid

Don't be sorry! Being human has its charms if chain smoking is one!

I’d be careful about that collective pronoun. — Wayfarer

No, I'm confident about that one.

And when the mothership comes to save us, you're not invited! Mwhaha!

And when the mothership comes to save us, you're not invited! Mwhaha! — baker

Good. I'll think of y'all getting your anal probes while I sit safe in my tin hat.

Speaking of things that smell bad...

Being human has its charms if chain smoking is one! — TheMadFool

Only if you say "Mish me, Moneypenny?" Sean (actual name Sorn) is the only person who makes me wish I still smoked.

Either way, it doesn't seem like much of a loss. If there is a teleological meaning to us, we don't know it. It could be to worship a vain, jealous god, or to figure out that we're in a simulation, or to make the greatest possible cheese. It doesn't seem beneficial to pick one and run with it or, worse, have one picked for us, and be almost certainly wrong than to evaluate our own biases and admit that maybe we can exist without being the reason for everything's existence — Kenosha Kid

That depends on what is at stake. If we're simply material aggregates and death is the end, then nothing is at stake. But if there is a higher purpose, and we don't see it, then we've missed the point. And it's a very important point to miss.

I think a naturalistic explanation for religion would be along the lines that the states of higher awareness that sages exemplify are the true fulfilment of a natural process, but that it goes far beyond what can be defined naturalistically (in the sense that Western culture defines it). There is a theme that surfaces in various schools of philosophy, that we are nature become aware of herself, that the purpose of human existence is that the Universe can realise itself in ways that wouldn't be possible were the processes of evolution not to occur.

That depends on what is at stake. If we're simply material aggregates and death is the end, then nothing is at stake. But if there is a higher purpose, and we don't see it, then we've missed the point. And it's a very important point to miss. — Wayfarer

Yeah, like Pascal's wager... Believe in this arbitrary and utterly daft collection of iron age fictions because, according to those fictions, we're screwed if we don't. This is only compelling to people who already believe: it doesn't change a Buddhist into a Christian.

This is the communication problem in a nutshell: theists struggle to understand that what seems compelling to them is a product of a religious upbringing and of holding the religious beliefs they're trying to argue for. Stepping outside of the Jesus-riddled brain, the 'higher meaning' of Christianity is no more compelling or less arbitrary-seeming than any other, or none, or some as hoc theory one could construct right now.

Any religion or ethical ideology has firm opinions. Most, if not all, have to be wrong

I think a naturalistic explanation for religion would be along the lines that the states of higher awareness that sages exemplify are the true fulfilment of a natural process, but that it goes far beyond what can be defined naturalistically (in the sense that Western culture defines it) — Wayfarer

I expect it's much like stock traders today. Once we moved far from the equator, our historic ways of living didn't work. There was an expertise gap, and human nature abhors a vacuum, religion being the best example of this. Experts were those who said, 'If we do X, Y will happen'. If they happened to be right, they were elevated. These became the people others came to for advice, and the people that had to make decisions for the group. Problem was, no one knew why things worked. Like all such expertise without comprehension, a certain amount of bias is required to maintain it.

I maintain that the creationist hypothesis was a perfectly good scientific hypothesis thousands of years ago, but another advantage of it was that, for experts in petitioning a creator, it's no mark of failure on the part of the expert if X doesn't yield Y. It is simply not God's will that Y be done, and no amount of X-ing is going to change that. The appending of "if the god's will it" or similar is a memetic adaptation that makes perfect sense since, without it, the memes risk being made extinct by turns of events.

This is the communication problem in a nutshell: theists struggle to understand that what seems compelling to them is a product of a religious upbringing and of holding the religious beliefs they're trying to argue for — Kenosha Kid

What do you call a Greek skydiver?

You're doing exactly what you're accusing religious people of doing, i.e. interpreting the question through your preconceptions. You immediately transpose what I'm saying into creationism, Christianity, and so on, even though I've said nothing about them, because they're the only categories against which you can interpret what I'm saying.

This is a philosophy forum, and I'm putting the question in philosophical terms, but I don't detect any familiarity with that discipline in your responses, only tired stereotypes.

This is a philosophy forum, and I'm putting the question in philosophical terms — Wayfarer

Your not, that's my point. It oughtn't be profound that what's at stake in terms of meaning is only considerable if you already are biased about what that meaning is. From within a particular ideology that makes claims about meaning, those meanings are important. But outside, other meanings are important, or none are important. What's at stake is relative to what you believe. You cannot compare the meaning of life as understood by a creationist to that of a Buddhist, or an atheist, or a simulationist, since the values of each kind of meaning differ from reference frame to reference frame.

One wonders how it is the not the height of infantialism to demand that 'meaning' be handed to one on a silver platter from on high, with the alternative being that one is consigned to some kind of drooling existential incapacity. One imagines that the theist - for all his inventions of sky daddies and karmic mysteries - has a lack of imagination so severe that he has to invent a whole 'mythos' to cover over their total inability to recognize 'meaning' seeping through every pore of the universe without all that trash. Theism is and will always be simply a hatred of the world, motivated by a deep existential impotence, projected outward as a defense mechanism, and then demanded of everyone else on pain of suffering that same complete failure of imagination as they have.

A quote I've posted a couple of times in the last week or so, which I think is relvant.

Schopenhauer argues that philosophy and religion have the same fundamental aim: to satisfy “man’s need for metaphysics,” which is a “strong and ineradicable” instinct to seek explanations for existence that arises from “the knowledge of death, and therewith the consideration of the suffering and misery of life” (WWR I 161). Every system of metaphysics is a response to this realization of one’s finitude, and the function of those systems is to respond to that realization by letting individuals know their place in the universe, the purpose of their existence, and how they ought to act. All other philosophical principles (most importantly, ethics) follow from one’s metaphysical system. — Schopenhauer, Religion and Metaphysical Need

Nobody can accuse Schopenhauer of being a religious apologist, and yet he too recognises the basic demand of the search for meaning. But he says that philosophy seeks that meaning through understanding, not through mere belief, although that is a distinction I guess won't get any traction here.

From within a particular ideology that makes claims about meaning, those meanings are important. But outside, other meanings are important, or none are important. What's at stake is relative to what you believe. — Kenosha Kid

That's a clear statement of relativism.

You cannot compare the meaning of life as understood by a creationist to that of a Buddhist, or an atheist, or a simulationist, since the values of each kind of meaning differ from reference frame to reference frame. — Kenosha Kid

The point about any kind of philosophical hermenuetic is to try and discern what factor, if anything, they are pointing at, so as to disclose a larger truth.

As far as Buddhists are concerned, of course they don't believe in God, but they do say:

The word "atheism"... carries the innuendo of an attitude countenancing moral laxity, or a belief that man-made ethics, having no divine sanction, rest on shaky foundations. For Buddhism, however, the basic moral law is inherent in life itself. It is a special case of the law of cause and effect, needing neither a divine law-giver nor depending upon the fluctuating human conceptions of socially conditioned minor moralities and conventions. For an increasing section of humanity, the belief in God is breaking down rapidly, as well as the accustomed motivations for moral conduct. This shows the risk of basing moral postulates on divine commandments, when their alleged source rapidly loses credence and authority. There is a need for an autonomous foundation for ethics, one that has deeper roots than a social contract and is capable of protecting the security of the individual and of human institutions. Buddhism offers such a foundation for ethics.

Hence the incomparable superiority of Spinoza over even a single page of Schopenhauer: "The free person thinks least of all of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life". Schopenhauer being exactly the kind of miserable person who made his personality a philosophy.

One wonders how it is the not the height of infantialism to demand that 'meaning' be handed to one on a silver platter from on high, with the alternative being that one is consigned to some kind of drooling existential incapacity. One imagines that the theist - for all his inventions of sky daddies and karmic mysteries - has a lack of imagination so severe that he has to invent a whole industry to cover over their total inability to recognize 'meaning' seeping through every pore of the universe without all that trash. — StreetlightX

Because of fear. It takes existential courage to live without all that trash. Most people who stare into the concepts of reality are overpowered by the enormity of it; the extreme facts that put them into a context of such insignificance that they feel like they will implode; they cannot comprehend it, so they invent a lullaby to sing for themselves in order to feel calm.

Society teaches us to have small minds. Upbringing and education, work, and social life all have in common that they focus on making insignificant things feel important. More complex knowledge, more complex ideas about existence have usually been devoted to the church of that society, whatever religion was present in that time. So if and when someone asks a hard question, the "church" was quick to answer.

But then came the enlightenment era and more and more people had the ability to gain knowledge by themselves. When someone then dared to peak into complex knowledge and discover how much more complex the world and universe are and how contradictory the "church's" answers were, it was a pure horror of awakening.

Such horrors are portrayed by writers such as Lovecraft for example. Where the ones who dares to open their eyes to the actual truth of the cosmos rarely had their minds intact. The horror of turning your back against the fluffy answers by the "church" and instead embrace the extreme nature of the truth.

I think the reasons why most theists can't accept "meaning" as something coming from us, invented by us or figured out by us, individually or as a group, is because they must first peak into pure reality without fear. Only when the fear is gone, like accepting death without fear, even though you know it is as cosmically pointless as your life, can meaning be built. It's only when the cosmic fear has past away and you are ok and friends with the idea that everything is pointless, only then can meaning be built.

We externalize building things, like houses and art. We demolish something to rebuild something new. To build meaning internally, we must demolish something first. But theists think that's about demolishing religious belief and God. It does however have more to do with demolishing the fear in order to build meaning. Demolishing the fear demolishes the reasons to have belief and a God. Because belief and God aren't something built, it's a consequence of something already built. The fear has been built long before birth and taught down to all children. Reject the fear, then God and belief will start to erode and disappear. Without fear, there's no need for fluffy fairy tales to comfort life and instead, life and the universe is open to be interpreted honestly.