Existential Philosophy - Tumblr Posts
god why do I have to be a curious intellectual burdened with thoughts of the inevitable end of the world, the neverending growth of the universe and the rapid increase of damage to nature????I just need to be a blissfully arrogant and unaware little boy
Some people become stuck with this Cartesian view of reality, of animals and of the philosophy of mind. I choose to see reality as being meaning-laden,or perhaps moreso as being capable of building meaning and relationships at differing levels. Every individual bit of matter or energy has it's own little "life", and when you get large groups of these things together they get even more lively, they become atoms, then proteins, then cells, then organisms. And these things can form relationships of all levels of complexity and that's beautiful. They evolve and feel, maybe the feel pain or hunger or maybe they just exhibit attraction or charge, but when they get "lively " enough they also take comfort in becoming and in existing. I'd even like to believe that all things find aesthetic "love" in that, not just animals.
I think the view that humans and animals or even reality is just some automaton running on cosmic gears clunking along is outdated at best, and harmful at worst. Maybe being a dualist who ascribes clockwork to the cosmos and automaton minds to animals made sense in the past, but I'm not even sure if it did then either... Life is more complicated than that. We have literature and philosophy, we have relationships of all kinds. Maybe in the mere fact of existing in itself everything automatically builds it's own meaning, maybe by becoming and living we are that meaning, and maybe the minds of even the smallest creatures are capable of becoming in their own ways too? Who are we to draw the line at mammal or vertebrae? Why must humans be the only ones capable of making meaning and experiencing some kind of love? I'd like to think that's what everything is doing at some level.
Sure you can scoff at my soft panpsychist cosmology if you want, but to me it is the most valid and elegant solution to not only the problem of mind, but also the problem of nihilism, and so is personally fulfilling to see love as a process of building and creating meaning by existing and making things exist. And I think all creatures and things, from spiders to jellyfish to people are able to create and make meaning.
In short- yeah, I think my weird pet jellyfish can love me back in its own way. And if you disagree I'll chock that up to a lack of creativity, or perhaps meaning, in your own life.
