free will via a different context...
Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2024 4:53 pm
long ago, in my misspent youth, I was very engaged in
Albert Camus.. I read most of his stuff..
Today I return to it as another opportunity to engage with free will...
One of the most famous aspects of Camus was his declaration of
the only real question we have in life, is that of suicide... but it
is important, for us as well, to understand why Camus would make such
a statement...that our life, such as it is, is an absurd life... no matter
what the ism's of our society keeps telling us, we exist in an absurdist
world...a world that cannot be redeemed by the various ism's like
Capitalism or communism or Catholicism...In Camus world,
there is no god... and his this, he was following Nietzsche...
(much of what Camus wrote, he wrote in response to Nietzsche)
Camus's point came with an understanding that we cannot find meaning or
purpose in our world...and if we cannot find meaning, purpose, what then?
In an absurdist universe, without meaning, what is the point of existence?
thus, we return to the original point, is our only free response to this
absurd universe, the act of suicide?
In all the possible and actual myths of the universe, the one
that I think covers the totality of human experience is the myth
of Sisyphus.. and given the nature of this myth, what do questions
like morality, meaning, values, and free will, actually mean?
we spend our lives pushing rocks up the hill, to only end in death,
with the rock now rolling back to the ground and picked up by
a new generation... and for all existence, for all people, we spend
our human existence simply pushing rocks uphill, only to have
them roll back downhill at our death...and so on and so forth,
till the end of time...
now one of the ''targets'' of Camus was hope... that all those ism's and
ideologies are attempts to creating hope in our lives, that we can be
''saved'' ''redeemed'' from our endless drudgery of rolling those rocks uphill,
by a value like justice or some principle like god...
but the real question is something else... can we be strong enough to
accept life without sugar coating it by having pleasant fantasies like
there being a god that somehow redeems us even if, even if we are spending
our days, pushing rocks uphill, only to have them roll downhill again...
perhaps the real reason we have such a hard time finding meaning and
purpose in life is the fact that there is no meaning or purpose in life.....
we just spend our days rolling rocks uphill.. and they roll down..
the end.... and where do we find meaning and purpose in this relentless,
ongoing futile activity?
we can, sort of, modernize this thought with this...
we can see in our lives, the role/place that randomness
and chaos is involved in our lives... that we really can't plan
out our path, our future, our own ending because at every stage
we have randomness and chance upending our lives...
I got to where I am today, not by my own devices, but
by the random nature of the universe...I hurt my back
and to surgery and didn't work for two years.. the only job
that would even look at me, was at my current place of work,
a big box retail/grocery store...hurting my back was a random
event that changed the course of my life... and we, all of us,
have had our lives changed by random and chance events, people,
places that we never even thought about, profoundly changed
our lives, sometime for the better and sometimes, not...
that there has been some wondering about how much, a percentage
of our lives is planned/organized and what percentage isn't due
to chance/randomness? I have heard some scientists say that our lives
are 80% planned, 20% randomness.. and others have said it is almost
50% to 50% organized vs randomness... how much specifically,
may not matter much, but the idea that our lives are profoundly
changed by random acts is why our lives are really just lives
of rolling rocks uphill only to be upended by random/chance events...
we could actually push those rocks all the way up the hill, but
randomness prevents us from making it....perhaps....
and we return to our original point, how much of this is actually
an engagement with free will? do we even have a choice in
our perpetual pushing rocks uphill? do we have a choice? have free will?
and in our isms and ideologies, we have hope that our pushing those
rocks uphill have some meaning, some value that we just can't see because
we are downhill and behind that rock?
I suspect that our modern world, of factories and factory lite, that I work in,
are really just us pushing rocks uphill until the day we can escape, retire...
and the next generation begins pushing those rocks uphill till the day they
can escape....and where is free will in all this pushing rocks uphill?
what free will do I have in a system that thinks that pushing rocks
uphill forever is perfectly excellent system.....
what escape do I have in our modern world of capitalism and Catholicism?
and escape being our use of free will? Is that even possible?
Kropotkin
Albert Camus.. I read most of his stuff..
Today I return to it as another opportunity to engage with free will...
One of the most famous aspects of Camus was his declaration of
the only real question we have in life, is that of suicide... but it
is important, for us as well, to understand why Camus would make such
a statement...that our life, such as it is, is an absurd life... no matter
what the ism's of our society keeps telling us, we exist in an absurdist
world...a world that cannot be redeemed by the various ism's like
Capitalism or communism or Catholicism...In Camus world,
there is no god... and his this, he was following Nietzsche...
(much of what Camus wrote, he wrote in response to Nietzsche)
Camus's point came with an understanding that we cannot find meaning or
purpose in our world...and if we cannot find meaning, purpose, what then?
In an absurdist universe, without meaning, what is the point of existence?
thus, we return to the original point, is our only free response to this
absurd universe, the act of suicide?
In all the possible and actual myths of the universe, the one
that I think covers the totality of human experience is the myth
of Sisyphus.. and given the nature of this myth, what do questions
like morality, meaning, values, and free will, actually mean?
we spend our lives pushing rocks up the hill, to only end in death,
with the rock now rolling back to the ground and picked up by
a new generation... and for all existence, for all people, we spend
our human existence simply pushing rocks uphill, only to have
them roll back downhill at our death...and so on and so forth,
till the end of time...
now one of the ''targets'' of Camus was hope... that all those ism's and
ideologies are attempts to creating hope in our lives, that we can be
''saved'' ''redeemed'' from our endless drudgery of rolling those rocks uphill,
by a value like justice or some principle like god...
but the real question is something else... can we be strong enough to
accept life without sugar coating it by having pleasant fantasies like
there being a god that somehow redeems us even if, even if we are spending
our days, pushing rocks uphill, only to have them roll downhill again...
perhaps the real reason we have such a hard time finding meaning and
purpose in life is the fact that there is no meaning or purpose in life.....
we just spend our days rolling rocks uphill.. and they roll down..
the end.... and where do we find meaning and purpose in this relentless,
ongoing futile activity?
we can, sort of, modernize this thought with this...
we can see in our lives, the role/place that randomness
and chaos is involved in our lives... that we really can't plan
out our path, our future, our own ending because at every stage
we have randomness and chance upending our lives...
I got to where I am today, not by my own devices, but
by the random nature of the universe...I hurt my back
and to surgery and didn't work for two years.. the only job
that would even look at me, was at my current place of work,
a big box retail/grocery store...hurting my back was a random
event that changed the course of my life... and we, all of us,
have had our lives changed by random and chance events, people,
places that we never even thought about, profoundly changed
our lives, sometime for the better and sometimes, not...
that there has been some wondering about how much, a percentage
of our lives is planned/organized and what percentage isn't due
to chance/randomness? I have heard some scientists say that our lives
are 80% planned, 20% randomness.. and others have said it is almost
50% to 50% organized vs randomness... how much specifically,
may not matter much, but the idea that our lives are profoundly
changed by random acts is why our lives are really just lives
of rolling rocks uphill only to be upended by random/chance events...
we could actually push those rocks all the way up the hill, but
randomness prevents us from making it....perhaps....
and we return to our original point, how much of this is actually
an engagement with free will? do we even have a choice in
our perpetual pushing rocks uphill? do we have a choice? have free will?
and in our isms and ideologies, we have hope that our pushing those
rocks uphill have some meaning, some value that we just can't see because
we are downhill and behind that rock?
I suspect that our modern world, of factories and factory lite, that I work in,
are really just us pushing rocks uphill until the day we can escape, retire...
and the next generation begins pushing those rocks uphill till the day they
can escape....and where is free will in all this pushing rocks uphill?
what free will do I have in a system that thinks that pushing rocks
uphill forever is perfectly excellent system.....
what escape do I have in our modern world of capitalism and Catholicism?
and escape being our use of free will? Is that even possible?
Kropotkin
