I listened to a Matt Dillahunty post about spirituality being nonsense, where he referenced this woman, who then made an excellent response video. She is ex-Mormon and has some skills when it comes to dealing with deconversion, but more than that, with the complex psychology of finding paths to meaning without reverting back to a belief system. So, moving on to more of her stuff, she covers strategies for living in this modern world without religion.
I’ll let you listen to the analogy. Before doing that, I’ll warn she gets to a point where she discusses a solution of humans deciding not to procreate. THAT’S VERY DIFFERENT FROM DECIDING TO END OUR LIVES. Listen to the end, she even says it’s more of a thought experiment, since our will to live would prevent this anyway.
The type of nihilism discussed comes up often in this forum, and these are some of the best responses I’ve heard. She relies on a guy named Zapffe, who died in 1991, and refers to Camus and Nietzsche.
The strategies are Isolation, anchoring, distraction, and sublimation. All sound sort of bad. Sublimation is the least bad, facing the void and choosing to live. Some people need more, they need personal counseling, not just a video with some philosophy.
The point is, this is real. We have evolved to see the absurdity of existing, not just eat grass and be eaten, and not worrying about it. This might be maladaptive to living in harmony with the planet.
Drilling down into who you are gives meaning to living the present moment.
At times what she’s saying sounds cool, but then it drifts off again. For me the answer has been rather than trying to manifest this idealistic vision of an Elk, it’s about realizing all that is inside of me.
Which, frankly, is impossible without that deep time, organic vision of: Yo, I started out as worm, quite literally, genetically, I had to survive, then time, and change, and more time, so many meaningful chapters explaining how various aspects of who you are right now, came into existence way back then, only to carried on down the line, used and improved, and so on and so forth.
How else can we hope to understand ourselves without the ability to climb inside of our biological selves, and recognize the difference between that - and your intellectual, introspective mind.
And what else but sober Earth and biological sciences can provide the building blocks of knowledge, that a lot of self-driven homework can turn into understand to guide a lifetime and live a sweet old age.
It’s not an idealistic vision, it’s a metaphor. The idea put forward by Zapffe is that life evolved for survival. As Sapolsky points out, a Zebra doesn’t get an ulcer worrying about the lions that it knows are all around and maybe even recently saw one eat one of their friends. Their behaviors don’t require reflection, they just happen. The analogy is to humans who start thinking about existence, and ask, why, what’s the point? The Elk is used for the analogy because it has this huge rack on its head that isn’t terribly practical. ((The thought experiment is, what if it started asking why it has that?)) Correction - the analogy is the evolved traits, their horns and our awareness, that weigh us down. Britta added this error in her intro.
Some people consider this “looking into the void” a higher step in evolution, an insight into what it is to be a part of this amazing universe. Some people have trouble dealing with it and find it debilitating. You ask,
The Existential Elk question is, for what? Why try to understand something about what we are, when we are meat sacks that have only been able to ask that question for a tiny fraction of the time since any life existed? The Elk’s rack may have evolved to increase survival chances, but evolution doesn’t optimize for the whole being and doesn’t care about happiness. For humans, our intelligence was a survival adaptation but ask someone who is depressed because they learned that there is no god and they’ll tell you that knowing that is maladaptive. And depression is only one reaction, she discusses the others and how self-awareness is not a path to homeostasis for everyone. As you like to point out, distraction is a lot more common of a coping mechanism.
Yeah, we are all victims or victors because of our upbringing.
I grew up within a household where learning was an adventure, I got inoculated with that age old wonder before science handed us all the answers (the mystery and wonder of science, finding facts and answers to age old questions was palpable.
I was fortunate enough to have been an engaged spectator to the past half century of amazing revolutionary scientific answers to age-old questions. It’s been a thrill and joy, and now watching that reality dissolve into this Hollywood/Disney world of infantile self-destructive fantasy thinking is depressing beyond words.
But you are correct, guess that in the end we are all trapped by our upbringing. What I know is that my interior Mindscape is rich and internally consistent, and a salvation for surveying the current implosion that only promises to get much worse as we get more disconnected from fundamental reality. No matter what our excuses.
I’m past hoping to save anyone, I do still hope to find some likeminded, a little community would be cool, so beyond reaching out, the writing is also simply therapy.
Not surprisingly, Matt defends his position. Basically that he is talking about definining the word “spirituality” while Britta is talking about psychology and other matters of mind. The agree on many things, but both are framing differently. So, I stopped after a bit, not sure I’ll bother with more.
I would go much broader than that, that we are the result of millions of years of evolution. But, anyway.
It can be hard to track and know how to respond to you because sometimes you say this, about how you are mostly interested in comprehension for yourself, BUT, other times, it seems like you want the rest of the world on board with your thesis.
Could have fooled me.
Besides, proximal and distal - so nuance might go further than cute smack down.
Got any quotes or threads to share?
Lordie knows the world would be in a healthy condition if the half of it sunk in - about realizing Mother Earth isn’t just a cute phrase - its the actual factual truth and being blind to that has led to this headlong rush into our societal self-destruction, as we also destroy Earth’s life sustaining biosphere.
Sure, I would love to have a genuine substantive discussion, but it’s secondary to having a solid internally consistent understanding that fully respects serious physical sciences as we know them. That has always been job one.Does that make sense to you?
Mine is an interpretation that is born and bred by serious science, it is willing to stand up to critique and serious discussion.
But those days seem to be over, everyone wants to produce and broadcast and protect their turf. Few are left interested in actually digging into the weeds, in a serious constructive manner. Guess they think there’s nothing else left to learn.
