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A Date - Part 3 (The Emptiness)

“I don’t feel like going for this trip”
“Oh dear! Why?”
“I don’t know”
“hmmm… never mind. It will all end well”
“All will end well? Is that another of your delusions? Do you want me to deceive myself like that?”
“Nope. Seriously, things that have bothered me in the past have all ended well. It’s all for good. Even if it bothers now, in the long run, it will end well”

[The above dialog was between a friend and me this morning]

Now, remember the quintessential question – Is there an inherent meaning or purpose behind life? What you saw above is one of the conclusions – Everything is for good. For the good of ‘YOU!’

For ages, people went crazy about that question. They pondered and because they can think, they concluded that, at the least, they are real. (Cogito ergo sum). But they were confused beyond that. Some suspected that they are part of some big plan but they just couldn’t deduce what this game is all about.

I tried to distill the thinking into a simple framework. The red below line is a broad spectrum. In the left are the people that believe there IS meaning. In the right are those that believe there isn’t any. And you can take any position for yourself in this spectrum. But I am going to talk about 4 noteworthy schools-of-thoughts as plotted below. (Caution – this is my own interpretation and you are sincerely encouraged to seek the real sources yourself.)

The left most category doesn’t have a formal name. I call that ‘Confirmism’.
The second left is ‘Existentialism’ (Soren Kierkagaard, Jean Paul Satre etc).
The 3rd left is 'Absurdism' (Albert Camus).
And the right most is 'Nihilism' (Nietche).

"The Absurd", refers to the clash between the human tendency to seek inherent meaning and the human inability to find any. Filling the void with some invented belief or meaning is a mere "act of eluding". Such elusion is a fundamental flaw. And if the individual eludes the Absurd, then he or she can never confront it and explore beyond.

I am convinced that no theory ever invented today can explain EVERYTHING. So I naturally loved the Absurdism idea. (I became an absurdist itself after reading Camus’s The Outsider). The side effect of embracing Absurdism is that, all my beliefs are scrutinised now. All my knowledge is reviewed with a conviction that it probably doesn’t lead to anything. Every action and every step I take is followed with a doubt that it probably doesn’t matter. If Absurdism does make sense, then by its own definition, it probably does not make sense too. Logical?

It is vacuum and emptiness! What shall I hold on to? Thus I lose my sanity most mornings! How to date myself ?

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  1. SSeptember 3, 2010 at 11:15 AM

    On different days, I subscribe to different schools :) Today, I am a nihilist! There is no meaning - we are all random acts of a nature gone crazy..random beings, with a random existence...we would like to believe that there is a grand plan - but I have yet to meet someone who knows what that grand plan is...therefore, no plan until proven wrong!

    Vacuum and emptiness....shoonya....the emptiness is so large, it fills up every space of the being some days :)

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  2. Raja SPSeptember 6, 2010 at 8:13 AM

    "we are all random acts of a nature gone crazy.. random beings, with a random existence" Hi-Five! (and cheers to our victory over baghdad - http://some-blog-somewhere.blogspot.com/2010/06/reboot-universe-final.html).

    No plan until proven wrong! (Btw, you are actually an Absurdist. Will tell you why later) The challenge is how to deal with that emptiness. Its in our DNA to reason out things, organise them and muscle them over. But the realisation that this emptiness is invincible, makes us uneasy, daunts us & scares us. Is there a way of life ever invented to live in harmony with this emptiness without any dissonance? And without any half baked theories like religion?

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  3. queenlaoSeptember 6, 2010 at 9:54 PM

    life is so different than projects
    sometimes when one discovers that the track taken is too far off than the path to the goal that was targetted in the first place and one questions if the decisions taken was a mistake one gets into the tendency of nihilism
    one example: didnt we at one point in time in our childhood wanted to be rich in the firt place??? one cant have that sports car in the garage without being rich hehe

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