pompadoured
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meaninglessness essay:
May 30, 2007
i like feeling hopeless and seeing everyone as hopeless as they should be. my best-feeling moments are the moments when i feel like i could easily die and it would be okay. i like seeing men and women with sadness in their faces, and like seeing that sadness shift to some sort of amusement that is pointless and nice. like someone farting loudly at a funeral.
i like socially inept people.
when i fall asleep it is like i am going to die, since i rarely remember my dreams, and i like that. it is practice.
people who do not over-analyze death and meaninglessness are cheating themselves out of the most honest knowledge they can own. by avoiding meaninglessness, people don't really internalize how dumb life is, and how unimportant their life is, and what it means to actually be living.
likewise, people who do not spend their time on things that honestly explore meaninglessness in themselves and with other people, in general, have no clue what kind of freedom meaningless really represents. and to be clear, meaninglessness isn't something that has no worth or value, it just has no tangible weight for most people.
i am going to talk now about the perceived value of that meaningless, and how and why we avoid this feeling of meaninglessness.
usually, when people come in contact with meaninglessness, it is through working jobs that supposedly move a society, for a paycheck, or through making art that supposedly influences society, for personal importance. people see true meaninglessness daily and deny its reality for personal comfort and a feeling of purpose. because people do not, usually, admit to themselves that they are accomplishing meaningless tasks for personal gain, and that what they're doing has little or no meaningful reality, they ignore part of them that is empty-- the meaninglessness hole or whatever you want to call it-- which is, i consider, the most valuable part of human existence.
religion does this too. it helps you ignore the feeling that what you're doing has no point and is empty, and, as a result, allows you, a person, to ignore introspection and question generally accepted practices.
by lying and placing importance on meaningless things, people take away from themselves the stupidness of life, and with it, a greater discussion of how meaningless affects life in general. this is, usually, how people cope with the realization that what they are doing has little or no importance beyond their own lives and their own chemical awareness, and by ignoring all of these things (meaninglessness, stupidness of life, discussions of human motive), it can logically be assumed that introspection is lost as well under the weight of unquestioned societal norms and tradition.
when i die, it will mean nothing to anyone who is not close to me, and nothing to people who are already dead or not yet living. all of the material things i have collected, everything i consider 'knowledge' is part of my own meaninglessness, helps me, like religion or work or art, forget that everything i do is meaningless beyond my own chemical awareness. it is only in my own personal acknowledgment of meaninglessness that i find myself able to feel unburdened by physicality and daily routine. in my own meaninglessness, there is no pressure for anything, there is only the time i have left, and what i want to do with that time, and maybe a little sadness that comes with not being so important.
comments
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The French have a word for all this,
et le mot est absurde
- Scott / May 31, 2007 11:35 AM
absurdism is nice. i've read some camus, and probably internalized even more of him second-hand through the writers i like and the people i talk to.
i can't pretend i am somehow full of original thoughts, but i can, at least naively, build on the thoughts of other, more dead, people, and roll them into a ball, eat them, and dump them out.
i also can't simply explain existence away as 'absurd' because, like you, i believe in science, and that chemical reactions trump free will, in every way imaginable. and while the chemical process of man may seem 'absurd' in a cosmic sense, it is feasibly possible to explain, at least partially, in terms of science, because science is fucking cool and smart and shit.
- gene / May 31, 2007 2:20 PM
"All we are is dust in the wind, dude."
-William "Bill" S. Preston Esq.
- Scott / May 31, 2007 3:40 PM
If everything is meaningless, then nothing is.
Meaninglessness is an evaluation of behavior. If all behavior leads to a state of meaninglessness, or simply is meaningless, then measuring meaning by degrees is likewise meaningless.
You see where this is going?
You can't ascribe meaninglessness to things that are a priori meaningless. If you say, "the outcome of this baseball game has no meaning," you are essentially just farting out of your mouth.
In any event, you are a young moron with a lot of energy.
Good luck with that.
- anonymous / June 8, 2007 10:24 AM
you should read my essay again, but as an attempt to rationalize my own objectivity, which is all it is.
- gene / June 8, 2007 5:57 PM
post
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