The Crisis of Meaning

[Parodite]

"Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true."
Thomas Paine

I would add to religion: any philosophy, morality, ethics.

[Doc]

"Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true."
Thomas Paine

I would add to religion: any philosophy, morality, ethics.

Define "shocks"

[Parodite]

"Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true."
Thomas Paine

I would add to religion: any philosophy, morality, ethics.

Define "shocks"

I take it to mean: hard for a kid to believe, accept or too complicated to process.

In the mean time:

4Modzh94MVw

I see the above as a detour that will inevitably have to return, at one point, to what not shocks the mind of a child.

[Doc]

"Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true."
Thomas Paine

I would add to religion: any philosophy, morality, ethics.

Define "shocks"

I take it to mean: hard for a kid to believe, accept or too complicated to process.

In the mean time:

4Modzh94MVw

I see the above as a detour that will inevitably have to return, at one point, to what not shocks the mind of a child.

How about this. Only parents are allowed to vote in School Board elections. If that were the case I suspect all the sickness in the school systems will disappear on its own.

[Parodite]

The chase of the senses

My nose wants to see
and eyes try to smell
While ears are but hearing
what mind has to tell.

The hunt that is on
to find what is true
The question that boggles
is who chases who!?

The crisis of meaning
or so I am told
A narrative missing
for young and for old.

The mind has no senses
and flies on its own
With no limitations
from dusk until dawn.

Inventing a story
put words into rhyme
Is freedom forever
and costs zero dime.

Counting those blessings
is all that remains
When senses keep talking
is nothing in vain.

[Parodite]

How about this. Only parents are allowed to vote in School Board elections. If that were the case I suspect all the sickness in the school systems will disappear on its own.

Schools run by parents.. all for it.

[Parodite]

When God loses his Beard

I consulted Dr. Phil on the issue of this thread and asked about David Goldman alias Spengler.

Goldman once wrote about a deep personal crisis he experienced in his early 50-ies. Life made no sense, he felt completely homeless. He was a secular Jew experiencing deep existential angst and found himself collapsing, crying his heart out on his desk. Then he rediscovered Orthodox Judaism which restored his well-being. That’s the long story short.

No doubt we all create narratives and in that sense cannot live without them. We breath them. It’s the language machine in our frontal lobes.

A narrative is meaningful by default. A meaningless narrative doesn’t exist. A good novel about the experienced meaninglessness of life, the overwhelming indifference of the Universe with nature red in tooth and claw, can still be a very meaningful and revealing story; depending how well the narrative is structured and how it is communicated. In a good story, meaninglessness transcends itself without the need for a cure. Death is your enemy but also your redemption with the poetic notion that people and things continue to exist after you evaporated.

Kids need unconditional love; in return they unconditionally believe narratives fed into them. Spoon-feeding is a very efficient and mostly automated activity.

If children feel loved and protected, also grand meta-physical narratives will stay with them for the rest of their lives. As a source of joy and comfort continuing a tradition, perhaps just an inspiration in the background. Or more painfully as a source of systemic confusion when the narrative is too conflictive with adult experience, the brute facts of life and educated thought.

When the schism between narrative and reality is too wide and associated with serious emotional pain… “losing your religion”, living without childhood narratives can cause an existential crisis on its own. Even with all other pieces on your chess board looking fine. But when you not only lose your early narrative and also your parents, grandparents with 6 million of your tribe members in a Holocaust, the most brutal crime in history… it is hard to imagine how not to end up in an existential crisis of sorts later on.

The elasticity of narratives is a great thing, but also a tragedy. Stories can go from one extreme to their polar opposite. From a totally nihilistic, meaningless Hell full of suffering without any purpose.. to some fantastic future Utopia with your personal life having unique purpose and meaning. You become a soldier of what is good, a medium for what is sacred with special access to divine information even. Spengli made a similar transition; now he sees the world through a lens and colors that can IMO best be described as.. “Rather rich and fantastic, salted Jewish narcissism overestimating their own importance”:

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2022/09/08 ... d-n1627962

Sending your doubting intellect on a holiday and instead surrender to ritual and doing magic with others is great relief, but when the intellect is back and you walk again in the world with the facts of daily life... what changed?

While David Goldman seems to have arrived at his ultimate Global narrative of choice, Air Jordan Peterson is still figuring out his own but seems to be closing in on it too. A meta-meta-META narrative that condenses and summarizes all narratives, with the best of the very best values distilled from them. That is: the crown at the top of the hierarchy, of ultimate meaning that is both completely fictional and also fundamentally true: God! (I peeked and saw that indeed God nods and smiles, as if he finally felt understood)

Personally I think Moses came down from the mountain with 10 pragmatic instructions for a reason. To just stay there high up… under divine and cloudy conditions, would render his project completely useless.

Landing back on earth, being able to explain children what you found and in a way that makes easy and acceptable sense to them. With answers that satisfy their questions too. If only adults are listening something went wrong IMHO. Narratives really embraced by children, without coercion or sneaky brainwashing, have a long-term future.

Complicated overhead may be useful in individual cases as with Spengli and Air Jordan… but Occam’s razor has no mercy. When history shaves off most overhead God probably lost his beard looking much younger suddenly too. He might even be a boy, or girl, in fact. To me that would feel like progress.

[Doc]

When God loses his Beard

I consulted Dr. Phil on the issue of this thread and asked about David Goldman alias Spengler.

Goldman once wrote about a deep personal crisis he experienced in his early 50-ies. Life made no sense, he felt completely homeless. He was a secular Jew experiencing deep existential angst and found himself collapsing, crying his heart out on his desk. Then he rediscovered Orthodox Judaism which restored his well-being. That’s the long story short.

No doubt we all create narratives and in that sense cannot live without them. We breath them. It’s the language machine in our frontal lobes.

A narrative is meaningful by default. A meaningless narrative doesn’t exist. A good novel about the experienced meaninglessness of life, the overwhelming indifference of the Universe with nature red in tooth and claw, can still be a very meaningful and revealing story; depending how well the narrative is structured and how it is communicated. In a good story, meaninglessness transcends itself without the need for a cure. Death is your enemy but also your redemption with the poetic notion that people and things continue to exist after you evaporated.

Kids need unconditional love; in return they unconditionally believe narratives fed into them. Spoon-feeding is a very efficient and mostly automated activity.

If children feel loved and protected, also grand meta-physical narratives will stay with them for the rest of their lives. As a source of joy and comfort continuing a tradition, perhaps just an inspiration in the background. Or more painfully as a source of systemic confusion when the narrative is too conflictive with adult experience, the brute facts of life and educated thought.

When the schism between narrative and reality is too wide and associated with serious emotional pain… “losing your religion”, living without childhood narratives can cause an existential crisis on its own. Even with all other pieces on your chess board looking fine. But when you not only lose your early narrative and also your parents, grandparents with 6 million of your tribe members in a Holocaust, the most brutal crime in history… it is hard to imagine how not to end up in an existential crisis of sorts later on.

The elasticity of narratives is a great thing, but also a tragedy. Stories can go from one extreme to their polar opposite. From a totally nihilistic, meaningless Hell full of suffering without any purpose.. to some fantastic future Utopia with your personal life having unique purpose and meaning. You become a soldier of what is good, a medium for what is sacred with special access to divine information even. Spengli made a similar transition; now he sees the world through a lens and colors that can IMO best be described as.. “Rather rich and fantastic, salted Jewish narcissism overestimating their own importance”:

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2022/09/08 ... d-n1627962

Sending your doubting intellect on a holiday and instead surrender to ritual and doing magic with others is great relief, but when the intellect is back and you walk again in the world with the facts of daily life... what changed?

While David Goldman seems to have arrived at his ultimate Global narrative of choice, Air Jordan Peterson is still figuring out his own but seems to be closing in on it too. A meta-meta-META narrative that condenses and summarizes all narratives, with the best of the very best values distilled from them. That is: the crown at the top of the hierarchy, of ultimate meaning that is both completely fictional and also fundamentally true: God! (I peeked and saw that indeed God nods and smiles, as if he finally felt understood)

Personally I think Moses came down from the mountain with 10 pragmatic instructions for a reason. To just stay there high up… under divine and cloudy conditions, would render his project completely useless.

Landing back on earth, being able to explain children what you found and in a way that makes easy and acceptable sense to them. With answers that satisfy their questions too. If only adults are listening something went wrong IMHO. Narratives really embraced by children, without coercion or sneaky brainwashing, have a long-term future.

Complicated overhead may be useful in individual cases as with Spengli and Air Jordan… but Occam’s razor has no mercy. When history shaves off most overhead God probably lost his beard looking much younger suddenly too. He might even be a boy, or girl, in fact. To me that would feel like progress.

"Life made no sense"

That is due to a lack of rationalization. If you don't "understand" something you don't belong to it.

Humans understand the world by rationalizing it. If they can't rationalize what they are seeing around them they are bound to feel lost.

[Nonc Hilaire]

I don’t think rationalization is the keystone. I think pattern recognition is more likely.

Rationalization is a high level psychological defense mechanism. Rationalization fails and another less sophisticated defense mechanism is used.

Pattern recognition is more physiological. Humans can recognize cognitive patterns, which is similar to rationalization.

Rationalization also has more than one meaning, which is problematic in this discussion. It can mean making decisions on an incomplete logical syllogism (99+% of all decisions) or it can mean ‘filling in or imagining the missing data points’ to fill out a pattern or narrative.

[Parodite]

Common sense

Common sense derives from a shared causal map. To sense what is reasonable, to reason what is sensible. A tandem of art and engineering, a common project where the individual is both builder and building block.

The common part also means being able to imagine and feel what it would be like walking in somebody else’s shoes. The sense that as human beings we (can) experience similar things. Understanding and feeling what is just, fair, reasonable. Kids are perfectly able to embrace values and digest narratives on this playing field.

Superimposing voodoo on common sense is harmful IMHO. As is slapping a kid in the face because it slapped another kid in the face. “Be nice, or get punished!”. “Promise to do it voluntarily, or I will force you to do it!”, “Do Gods will or go to Hell!”.

It is not difficult to corrupt and damage the innate intelligence and sensitivity of children, and with it impair their future ability for adult common sense thinking and behavior.

First principles are secular and represent common denominators that arise in society. A constitution is an example. Common sense however also recognizes that the “don’t kill” or “don’t steal” doesn’t tell how to deal with people who do kill and steal. Should the state be allowed to kill people who are murderers? Steal more money raising taxes? Differences in culture, i.e. different habituations also kick in to color “common sense,” even paint very different pictures eventually. Common sense can also mean common madness as when “mass formation” occurs.

Law and law enforcement are common-sensical when dealing with the realities and complexities of life, evolving accordingly.

None of this needs meta-physical grounding, but that is perhaps because my common sense is different from the common sense of somebody who is convinced, maybe even by some empirical evidence, that when e.g. God dies.. all Hell will break loose: the Nietzsche thing.

A conjecture: that without a grounding meta-physical narrative that states the ought from an is, society will fall apart. That without a hierarchy of values with God at the top, “anything goes” in relativism and ultimately dissolves in nihilism. To me this more sounds like a self-defensive rationalization than much else. First of all, history suggests that people with different meta-physical narratives all too easily are at each other’s throat. People without meta-narratives can also be at each other’s throat for mundane reasons, so the jury is still out and the body count not yet in.

It seems safe to say however, that ideological fanaticism, no matter its content being religious or secular, can kill millions. Ideological fever with mass formation also means the death of common sense because in the latter the individual is the agent and building block whereas in the former it is the herd, the hive mind that takes over individual brains completely.

Ought-from-Is, from what I understand it to be, it seems a rather silly and far-fetched conundrum. The cause and underlying reason for this problem is IMO an old acquaintance: how do you get from the objective to the subjective without jumping the explanatory gap. In other words, the same ol’ mind-matter conundrum of how you squeeze subjective consciousness out of objective physical reality. This problem is now called “the hard problem of consciousness”, but it is a quasi-problem caused by an optical delusion of sorts, causing deep hypnosis among various day dreamers that should know better, like Sam Harris and Yuval Noah Hariri. (sorry for rehashing this point over and over)

Ought-from-is can also be seen as the schism between present and future. There is no way to know and control the present enough to force a desired future into existence exactly as planned. Reversely, a future utopia cannot be superimposed on the present either. Ought from is will therefor always be a mismatch to some degree.

Common sense suggests that it is more useful to think in terms of direction and less so in fixed destinations. "From here, aim going there and see what you find. Expect unpredictable weather on the way though..." You might also wanna change direction and even destination for good reasons.

[Nonc Hilaire]

[Ought-from-is] is a useful concept. So much of what is interpreted as social decline has always been present but now it is obvious and no longer occulted.

The [ought] is changing more than the [is].

[Parodite]

Ought-from-is may be useful, but lot of shiit comes from an overload of ought too.

The woke elites lack problems in the is-area of their lives, so they invent loads of oughts to compensate for boredom. If you don't have a problem to solve, you can also appropriate other people's problems and have your fun there.

I wonder if it is possible to brainwash our brains into believing that what-is basically has no problems and therefor doesn't need any ought. As far as I can tell, nature did quite well for billions of years without our oughts.

[Parodite]

Making sense of miracles

Obviously, it doesn’t suffice being an average mortal, a dime a dozen type when you aim very high in life. People in desperate need will similarly look for a winner, an Ubermensch to solve their problems for them preferably. But proof is required. Results! Losers better be quiet and not be scolded, ridiculed, shamed, devoured. Kicked out.

A mere “I will help you, save you!” without action and no desired outcome, is considered a serious form of betrayal. Trust is one of the most valuable currencies of all time, also today. Losing trust means you end up in a worse place. Maybe wiser, but probably also more miserable.

The placebo of hope swings to its opposite; the nocebo of despair. Mood swings abound. A dizzy drunk falling to the ground, eaten by coyotes.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. That is very old school common sense. People applied it in ancient times too, as when Rabbi Yeshua walked around preaching his Rabbi Hillel off-shoot of Judaism 2000 years ago. Usually making his spiritual and moral points with stories, parables. Others wrote about him as a miracle man, healing sick people. Even resurrecting people who were allegedly dead.

When he healed a woman, he explained to her what actually happened: her faith did it. Which means that extreme forms of the placebo effect may have surprising results; obviously not in all cases of mental and/or physical damage, but huge trust and faith in a good outcome does help a lot. Our immune systems also get boosted. Sometimes blockades in our muscle-motor systems are psycho-somatic and self-imposed. A placebo boost and hypnotic perceptual shifts can do miracles.

Unfortunately Jesus didn’t keep a diary, all we have is hearsay of which the first written accounts date from decades after he died. Common sense suggests that it is unlikely that those accounts were 100% accurate and tell the complete story. It would be a near miracle if that were the case.

If the gospels are about gardening in 1st century Israel, it would not be important how much is true. More-or-less is fine. And even if a complete fabrication, not the end of the world either. But if the claims are huge it starts to matter, especially when it means a lot to people who believe those stories to be very meaningful and truthful.

Healing sick people with his hands, resurrecting a dead man called Lazarus, Jesus himself the result of a virgin birth where no male sperm was involved and instead the holy spirit did magic voodoo tricks in his mother’s uterus. Last but not least, be murdered by the Romans and then get resurrected from the dead - who are as dead as can be and so was he! That indeed must be a Superman with Divine connections and probably some nice privileges.

As an 8-year-old kid my secular parents sent me to “Sunday school” for bible studies. Just to understand some of the culture I grew up in. A very liberal type of protestant church that is close to humanism, the extreme opposite of bible thumper versions. I sort of liked the Jesus stories, but when those miracles and weird claims showed up, I concluded they were nuts! The damage was done and irreversible. A sense of disgust and disappointment. The only good part was that walking to and from that Church, me and my two friends always passed a sex shop; sneak-peeking hairy p*ssies, boobs and toys was way more exciting and a reason to go there.

[Nonc Hilaire]

Little Parodite: “This is her body!”

[Parodite]

Little Parodite: “This is her body!”

I know...

[Parodite]

Annaka

In the eye of the storm, searching for ultimate meaning: F5 hurricane Annaka.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6zEzZCtkXw

The destruction of meaning is so big here, it’s hard to know where to begin assessing the damage, let alone clearing up the mess. She might need a 1-on-1 with Mother Nature. A talk with Father God may also be necessary after that, depending on how well she take’s mom’s feedback on how things work; if she can live with the answers. Dad is there to tell why things are the way they are, but he usually resorts to a meager and authoritarian “Because I say so!”, or any version thereof.

[Nonc Hilaire]

The first comment on Annika’s 2.5 hr interview.

[Parodite]

Camille Paglia: Erich Neumann: Theorist of the Great Mother (online pdf)

Erich Neumann: The Origins and History of Consciousness (online pdf)

I give it a try... the world of high-brow word salad phantasms. Probably I'm prejudiced. But it seems to have value for story telling.

[Parodite]

The first comment on Annika’s 2.5 hr interview.

Annaka is a fundamentalist in that she really believes that the experience independent objective reality is identical to how she experiences it to be. Fatal flaw, objectivist psychosis.

[Nonc Hilaire]

The first comment on Annika’s 2.5 hr interview.

Annaka is a fundamentalist in that she really believes that the experience independent objective reality is identical to how she experiences it to be. Fatal flaw, objectivist psychosis.

Thank you. I really could not make any sense out of her, and now I know it’s not all my fault.

[crashtech66]

The first comment on Annika’s 2.5 hr interview.

Annaka is a fundamentalist in that she really believes that the experience independent objective reality is identical to how she experiences it to be. Fatal flaw, objectivist psychosis.

Sorry, I did not watch the video, since I think Sam is unhinged, and therefore it seems likely that his wife is as well. So pardon me for trailing along behind, but are you saying that Objectivism is psychotic, or that her own personal philosophy is psychotic?

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. That is very old school common sense. People applied it in ancient times too, as when Rabbi Yeshua walked around preaching his Rabbi Hillel off-shoot of Judaism 2000 years ago. Usually making his spiritual and moral points with stories, parables. Others wrote about him as a miracle man, healing sick people. Even resurrecting people who were allegedly dead.

When he healed a woman, he explained to her what actually happened: her faith did it. Which means that extreme forms of the placebo effect may have surprising results; obviously not in all cases of mental and/or physical damage, but huge trust and faith in a good outcome does help a lot. Our immune systems also get boosted. Sometimes blockades in our muscle-motor systems are psycho-somatic and self-imposed. A placebo boost and hypnotic perceptual shifts can do miracles.

Unfortunately Jesus didn’t keep a diary, all we have is hearsay of which the first written accounts date from decades after he died. Common sense suggests that it is unlikely that those accounts were 100% accurate and tell the complete story. It would be a near miracle if that were the case.

Read this and noted how that put a serious nick into Occam's Razor....'>......

[Parodite]

Amazing results though

OEuYaxGi_gs

[Parodite]

The first comment on Annika’s 2.5 hr interview.

Annaka is a fundamentalist in that she really believes that the experience independent objective reality is identical to how she experiences it to be. Fatal flaw, objectivist psychosis.

Sorry, I did not watch the video, since I think Sam is unhinged, and therefore it seems likely that his wife is as well. So pardon me for trailing along behind, but are you saying that Objectivism is psychotic, or that her own personal philosophy is psychotic?

Annaka Harris’ Objectivist Psychosis (OP) versus Ayn Rand’s Philosophy of Objectivism (PO)

Will try to explain what I meant.

I’m a fan of Ayn Rand and her PO, which states that the individual is primary and all information obtained via our senses needs to be used and translated into rational knowledge. Which I don’t think is a philosophical view at all; it just describes how our “tool making and planning mind” works in relation to sensory information, i.e. why the scientific method needs empirical evidence to move us forward. It is a biological reality more than anything else. Most mamals do this, albeit in different ways. Feelings, opinions, beliefs/assumptions are important and real, but not enough when you want to survive as an individual and as a society.

I think she just liked the scientific method very much and wished it to be used more in psychology, sociology, economics and politics where a lot is opinion, assumption, conjecture, political theory or mere dream-like utopian ideology. Propaganda amidst real battles for power and resources. Throwing around self-referential “truths” alias word-salads in the dark however, won’t put food on the table.

In complex systems cause and effect become exponentially more difficult to trace. Knowledge derived from a map of correlations where causation is barely visible; suggested at best, when correlations are strong. Which is why propaganda (alias sneaky marketing) is always a reality in complex social systems.

Not all propaganda is bad. Informed guesswork, accepting trial and error as the way forward. Life is not like a controlled and repeatable experimemt in a lab, so the outcome will always be unpredictable in a fundamental sense. New, unexpected creation and destruction never stop.

Perhaps Ayn Rand was not aware of the specific and limited scope of empirical science, which would be her only sin. But she was a victim of the Soviet Union, the nemesis that inspired her to embrace Objectivism and made her write novels.

In the OP of Annaka Harris, the psychosis part refers to (NHS definition):

Hallucinations – where a person hears, sees and, in some cases, feels, smells or tastes things that do not exist outside their mind but can feel very real to the person affected by them; a common hallucination is hearing voices.

Delusions – where a person has strong beliefs that are not shared by others; a common delusion is someone believing there's a conspiracy to harm them.

Objectivist psychosis (™) refers to the belief, assumption that objective reality is identical to how you experience it to be, whereas in fact it arises in the brain as a conscious representation of “the world out there”. Both the subjective and objective as-we-know-it belong to the same experiental map that arises in the brain. I should unpack this psychosis more, because it is rampant especially among scientists.

A more user-friendly term for this psychosis is naïve realism; the belief that via your eyes you look into the world like you look through a window seeing the world “as it is”. The conviction that it remains like that once you close your eyes.

[crashtech66]

Thanks for the reply. Most of us perceive the world well enough and similarly enough to survive and thrive. Too large an excursion from our mostly shared picture of reality can get you committed, or worse. But it's hard to believe anyone who has been alive as long as Annaka could assert to be a perfect arbiter of the real. In the old days, just go to a good magic show to witness how perfectly you perceive things, or these days, simply watch a few YouTube videos. Some of the latter I found particularly disturbing, perhaps because I was a bit like Annaka, believing that I had a pretty good grip on reality. It's pretty tough for some of us to let go of that.