Pessimism and Epicurianism
I feel guilty for not joining any of these live course or coaching sessions so far though it is most likely that no one notices and that I probably wouldn’t have anything personally to contribute but maybe that’s because I’m not getting into it. I am well aware that not even venturing into the online community and meeting anyone else in the class does feel like a form of self-isolation and it makes me sad. Maybe I am scared because I don’t know what to write about but maybe these are fears I can face and address by finally getting into this course and committing to putting it into action. I am terrified of something and I don’t know what but it’s connected to my avoidance of certain things and this is definitely one of the things I have been avoiding even though I paid for it.
It is procrastination day by day but today I think I’m going to get started on something. Today I think I am going to try to get the course videos on the TV because that might encourage me to watch them and even watch the first one again. Lately I am like, what is the point of doing anything we’re interested in, what is the point of having goals, what is the point of consciousness and how can I make it stop feeling like one big trick like we all die and won’t be anything anymore? What if when you discover what you want to do and how you want to live you ask yourself more than ever, is this all there is? Maybe this *is* all there is. And I know I am sooo acting like an INFP who doesn’t have any friends but asking deep questions is a part of me and I can’t stop doing it even if I am not sure I’ll like the answers.
I have been thinking about the universe and what it might be about my whole life and this is the first time I have seriously considered that the fact of our consciousness might be a strange accident and that is sad to me because the universe got my hopes up. The thing is, for me this possibility is highly traumatising somehow, though I think most people aren’t as emotionally invested in what it all means as long as they have a system for living with purpose in some kind of context like that which the world religions provide.
Maybe most people do not have an ego identity as strongly resistant to annihilation as mine. Most people are content to live without racking their brains about if any of it ultimately means anything but not me and I always thought if people really thought about the fact of their existence it would fill them with awe and purpose in living. Now I am not sure really thinking about it is a good idea which probably makes me a hypocrite and a bad philosophy student. The truth might hurt and I don’t want to make anyone sad. I always thought the truth will set you free. Now I am not really sure. I want to protect other people from the pain of it but how can you protect people from the truth, if it is the truth, and I hope it’s not?
As unlikely as this structure of reality is, with the strange fact of our having a consciousness to observe it, reality could spew out infinite universes and in that case one of them is likely to produce something as unlikely as us. Well, then the possibility of our existence must be one in a million, or one in a trillion or quintillion or… actually numbers soooo much bigger than that, and maybe it is true that we won some kind of lottery in being here at all but if we didn’t we wouldn’t be here to observe it anyway so the point feels kind of moot! So I already am aware that our being here is a miracle in that sense but the miraculous nature of it does not assure me right now that there is something more to it. I want to put on my philosopher hat and see if I can figure that out.
Will we ever get closer to understanding the mystery of why and what this universe actually is or are we bound to be part of the universe, spectators within it, while everything that makes us up is subject to entropy, even down to the level of atoms and subatomic particles? The sun will swallow earth in five billion years and then the sun itself will burn out and it is burning several hundred million tons of hydrogen every second and in light of entropy I don’t know how to think about the idea of there being an ultimate purpose to it all. We are born with the capacity to imagine heaven or perfection or true forms and we find meaning in our lives but my struggle right now sadly is, is it even rational to find meaning in our lives, to think that anything we do actually matters? And yet I love the story of a boy picking up starfish at the beach and putting them back into the water. An adult says, “There are so many starfish along the beach, throwing them back into the water like that is futile.” The child replies, as he throws another into the water, “It mattered to that one.”
Five billion years is a whole lot shorter than the time the universe has existed (13.7 billion years) but still strange to think when that happens the universe will be aaaalmost twice as old as it is now. Still that is not a very long time! The first star didn’t form until 155 million years after the Big Bang. Imagine, for 155 million years, a universe with no stars at all, but the conditions were just right, with just the right density of matter for it to coalesce into stars that burn themselves up and everything is in entropy and the universe starts shrinking. We live in a universe where conditions have to be just right to ensure our safety and well-being or else it is a cruel world that could tear us apart and even with safety there is no saying whether our existence means anything. That we have to find out within ourselves and right now I find myself full of doubt and waiting for an infusion of meaning. Beyond self-actualization Maslow later posited a higher need on his hierarchy of needs: self-transcendence. As we start experiencing ourselves as actualized we ask ourselves, is there more to it? I have always asked and always had faith and now I am more skeptical than I have ever been before; and is it just our human tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain that makes us believe that self can be transcended? Can we transcend a universe subject to entropy and self-destruction, that’s what I want to know.
How something like consciousness emerges out of the world of subatomic particles that themselves didn’t even exist at the moment of the Big Bang, I’m pretty sure, fascinates and intrigues me but I have no answers. We barely understand subatomic particles and yet we know sooooo much about them and I don’t even get how simply changing the protons in a particle can give it such different properties like helium, iron, and mercury, and then combining molecules to make things like, one of the simplest molecules on earth, water, and every other molecule on earth on up to organic carbon-based molecules and somehow at a certain level of complexity I experience myself as an I looking out at a universe I am part of and… yeah maybe we were all one like infinitsimal oneness before the Big Bang and yes I totally believe in interconnection and am not a skeptic about things that point to interconnection like telepathy and telekinesis. There must be something magical, in a way, about subatomic particles for everything including beings with consciousness and cognition and sensory experience to be built directly out of them. Somehow all an atom needs is an atomic number of six and somehow it is capable of organizing other molecules around it that allow for life and consciousness. How is that possible? Could we ever really understand how life is formed from the level
of quarks and other subatomic particles on up through molecules and everything we are? What does it mean to think about our bodies as containing mostly empty space and being made up of particles that can have no definite velocity and position at the same time? I think I read a quote a long time ago that went: quantum mechanics, the dreams stuff is made of! And in a way that is kind of true… but what is stuff, what are we, and how can I be eased in my fears that all of existence is an incredibly elegant and wondeously fascinating and complex system that ultimately does not mean anything at all.
What is the point of living well other than, well, we are here, we might as well make the most of it? Of course on a human level I want harmony but at the level of the greater universe where there is such entropy does harmony matter? The Japanese sages invite us to live from our true nature and from our naturalness but what is the point of not rebelling against our true nature except to suffer a bit or a lot less in the short time we are actually here? Does not suffering require duping ourselves about the nature of reality?
What if despite all you have learned you surface the fear your true nature may be to nothing more than a blip on the radar of the universe? I am cursed with the understanding that it is possible that nature is harmonious and elegant but random and ultimately has no built in meaning other than the meaning we create ourselves. I am all for finding our own meaning but what do you say to the fact that we are so small compared to the larger universe and nature can be so cruel and what could the meaning we create possibly matter if this universe that is so much bigger than us and contains us does not inherently contain purpose and meaning in its own right? I am aware of how incredible it is for us to be here but that alone doesn’t satisfy me anymore as a rationale for faith. I need something else…
Right now my ethics is one of caring about easing the suffering of others, of everyone, and yet at the same time just not being sure if there is a point to any of it so that maybe I feel like an automaton programmed to want to alleviate the suffering of others while all the while secretly doubting whether existence has worth. I love my mother and that is what gives existence worth to me, nobody can tell me doing everything I can possibly do to make her happy is not important and does not mean something, and I want to love my friends as much as I can too, yet… maybe even my impulse to caring is just some evolutionary thing that doesn’t ultimately mean anything if evolution doesn’t mean anything. That, to me, is terrifying. That idea that that love *means* something is something this ever so limited human is unwilling to give up. I want to feel like I am not duping myself, though, in believing it matters beyond being an evolutionary mechanism. It is all I am, this love, and I cannot let go of it, yet my rational brain fills me with doubts.
I always felt there was a greater purpose behind evolution, there had to be, but now I am not so sure, and I am not so sure what I even am. Part of my identity or what I long for to be my identity when I am in a relationship is that of an optimist. I feel like if I am not an optimist I can’t love them how I want to love them. An interesting question is, could someone love me or be super interested in dating me if I loved them and did all I could for them to feel safe and well but I am also kind of a pessimist about the meaning of it all? Trick question and the answer is no because I am an INFP and INFPs don’t have friends, LOL.
Pessimism has always been my shadow. I sort of feel like being an optimist or converting others to optimism by example is how I am going to be loved so now I wonder, can someone love me even with the sadness and and the fear I have about the nature of things, even if I don’t ‘save them’ and make them good with the world? I felt like my purpose, in a relationship, was to help my parter be optimistic about the world, but then when I got sad or depressed or doubted I felt the furthest thing from capable of a relationship and my sense of fsilure compounded exponentially. In relationships I probably went through identity crises because I didn’t know how to not
to be the optimist and when I couldn’t be I just couldn’t face it…
I think I am becoming kind of an Epicurean. I don’t know
what ultimate meaning anything has so it makes sense to me to follow the wisdom of what gives me pleasure. It true that at times I remember experiencing a lot of pleasure I was also a lot less depressed at least in my moments of experiencing it. Pleasure is good for the health. Pleasure is a general term for all the ‘positive’ emotions and feelings and sensations we might have and it is so general that Buddha taught us to see our experience in terms of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral sensations, called vedana. Becoming more aware of pleasure when there is pleasure and unpleasantness when there is unpleasantness is really helpful and transformative, I find, and though the Buddha does not recommend chasing after and craving for pleasure, I don’t think he was really that philosophically different than Epicurus in some ways despite Epicurus’ belief that pleasure is the highest good in life. Epicurus was not about blindly seeking pleasure or seeking pleasure at great expense or following those things we often think will get us pleasure but don’t but about being mindful of where and how we experience pleasure so we can cultivate it, and what ultimately can make life feel more meaningful than sharing experiences of pleasure with friends. Epicurus and Buddha were both about being mindful of where we experience pleasure and cultivating more of the positive qualities without getting attached to them.