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Edited on Tue Nov-11-03 06:32 AM by 0rganism
> you have the cuthlu (?) as an avatar - that must mean something, right?
I've found H.P. Lovecraft's stories to be entertaining. Each of his books scores 20 points. (j/k)
> What do you really think about this fleeting amusement?
It's fleeting, so you better make sure it's amusing. Think of it as a roller coaster ride at an amusement park. It's short. It's crazy. There's no "good reason" for it, in any deep ethical or metaphysical sense. But you got your ticket, you stood in line, you got in the cart, so what do you do? Well the way I see it, you can either spend the whole ride thinking about how short and meaningless the ride itself is, or you can imagine that the twists and turns are really thrilling and dangerous. And that second idea is already fairly compelling, everything about the ride is designed to encourage that fantasy.
> I'm getting from you that as long as somebody counts you, > you'll be valid or eternal or meaningful or something.
Not really, but it's more fun to imagine that you matter, don't you think? IMHO, it's only one's own count that matters to oneself, but if you count other people counting you as important, then that adds to your overall score. You set the rules. You can change the rules any time. It doesn't matter.
> what "score" are you talking about?
Whatever score you want to talk about.
> what real meaning does any of it have?
Whatever meaning you assign to it.
> Isn't it all fear-induced self-illusion? Isn't it all a fleeting mirage?
Perhaps, but would that be an excuse not to try to enjoy some part of it?
We are, for whatever it's worth, gifted with a human form at a time when humanity covers and nominally dominates our habitat. We shape our surroundings to suit our comforts. We are permitted a wide range of exercise for our conscious volitions, i.e. freewill. Take the time that is yours and do what you like, keeping in mind the social parameters within which you operate have (inconsequential) consequences. For the most part, those consequences operate on materials with an assigned value; the less you value those things, the free-er you are from consequences.
Think of the movie "Fight Club", if you like. The narrator progresses from a state of being wholly governed by his material surroundings to one of being free from those surroundings to one of controlling and destroying those surroundings. These are all matters of assigning (or rejecting) values. What changed? Only the balance of outlook. The materials themselves were always the same.
Consider also Hamlet. He lives in a fundamentally moral world, one of great tragedy, which he perpetuates upon the rest of the cast. Conversely, his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (whom he later has executed) exist in a meaningless world bereft of consequence -- they are so inconsequential that their deaths are mere afterthought to the play. Whose outlook more resembles your own?
HAMLET: Denmark's a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ: Then is the world one.
HAMLET: A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.
ROSENCRANTZ: We think not so, my lord.
HAMLET: Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ: Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your mind.
HAMLET: O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
GUILDENSTERN: Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
HAMLET: A dream itself is but a shadow.
ROSENCRANTZ: Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.
(Hamlet, Act II scene ii) edit - Note the common thread that runs through the play, that the "sane" characters interpret the ramblings of the "insane" according to their own inclinations. Rozencrantz and Guildenstern call Hamlet ambitious because they, themselves, are ambitious.
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