Sunday, April 18, 2021

The Existential Peril Of Ignoring Truth For Desire

The pursuit of random desires and pleasures for their own sake has no end but the setting aside of truth and the accompanying rejection of the only genuine source of stability.  It is true that a lack of rationalistic initiative can help some people avoid existential crises out of sheer stupidity, as a non-rationalist is not even self-equipped to understand the epistemological and metaphysical issues that could prompt a personal crisis, but even non-rationalists are immersed in philosophical matters on a constant basis whether or not they wish to realize it, and some of their thoughts or experiences might still trigger an existential crisis.  If this kind of turmoil consumes their life, they will have not prepared adequately.

Random pleasures and distractions might be able to push back existential dread for a time, and not everyone will necessarily have the same subjective attitude or response towards any aspect of reality, but pleasure and distraction might only hold off awareness of how deep the ramifications of nihilism truly are for so long.  Even someone truly able to find personal refuge in subjective happiness alone is no more than a potential moment away from having to painfully confront the fact that subjectivity can only have significance in light of objectivity and that unless there is objective meaning to human existence, subjective satisfaction is inherently empty, offering nothing more than temporary experiential contentment.

That contentment could be snatched away or shattered by a simple philosophical analysis of the nature of contentment and subjectivity is one potential reason why so many people do not dwell on, bring up, or outwardly engage with any sort of philosophical ideas about epistemology and values outside of the narrow scope of their community's norms.  A single moment of introspective and intellectual honesty could reduce an irrational person to sheer terror.  If that moment comes--and, as philosophically apathetic and inept as most people are, it probably will come--the non-rationalist has no consistent grasp of reason ready to turn to.  Ignoring logical truths and the difference between subjective joys and objective meaning is nothing but peril.

It is one thing to realize that personal longings, preferences, and joys can indeed be very deep, inspiring, and complex, even if it is utterly shallow to mistake them for anything more than the subjective layer of existence that they are.  It is another thing, and a completely asinine one at that, to mistake the subjectivity of fulfillment and desires for confirmation that nihilism must be true.  Moreover, sidelining a focus on reason in favor of unreflective pleasures is a choice of philosophical cowardice and a betrayal of reason.  This path not only drives one further from the only truths there are about the matter, even though some of them are unknowable, but it also undermines the very basis of the deepest satisfaction by divorcing it from rationality.

Without acknowledgment of the inflexible, omnipresent nature of logical truths, any attempt to live a meaningful or fulfilling life--and the concepts of meaning and fulfillment are entirely distinct--is a futile, unsound approach to living.  People are adrift in avoidable stupidity when they truly think or act as if their desires automatically have validity whether or not nihilism is true.  Some truths about meaning, including whether it is true if objective meaning exists, might ultimately be unprovable, but everyone is at least capable of realizing how shallow, pointless, and asinine the pursuit of personal satisfaction at all costs inherently is.

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