Hi Atla,
Atla wrote:I exercise a sort of denial, but in a rather unusual way. I view the world from two different perspectives all the time. I arrived at this method to get rid of most of the existential dread / emotional horrors. It doesn't fully work for meaning yet, but I think it will. Works well enough for everything else. It is a cognitive split so this kind of denial requires no intensity, effort.
What I see is in complete agreement with my current paradigm of existence and it embraces GR,SR,QM, etc. much more comfortably than when I was a 'materialist'. My discomfort doesn't come so much from what I see as from what I 'see' as a result of the new paradigm. This distress is no doubt caused by the dissonance raised by my wetware being wired completely backwards with regard to my new view. For me no denial is possible.
Atla wrote:One perspective is the normal everyday experience, with all its illusions taken for granted. I spend most of my life here. I try to view and feel and experience things as "normally" as possible here. Here I make myself believe that things matter, things are meaningful, we exist, values exist, morals exist, things are separate etc.
The other perspective is my abstract "objective" understanding of reality where I see things as I think they actually "are". Of course I am aware that everything in the everyday experience is illusory, not quite the way it seems, and many things don't exist at all, are made up. But it no longer causes me much existential dread because most of these horrors are processed on a pury abstract level and I deliberately no longer try to "feel" any of that.
I make no attempt to separate the two. It is that my meaning of the word meaning has changed. Moral choices have become so much more challenging because the consequences have become so much more 'real'. There is so much more comfort in rules and now a much bigger motive for risk aversion and the consequential avoidance.
Atla wrote:I had to make this "split" in cognition, because trying to incorporate the underlying horrible truths into my everyday life sent me towards the 1. option too. That just didn't work. Now however I feel fairly good. It's impossible to unsee that hair but maybe you can try such a workaround too?
I greatly feel what you are saying, however I am not trying to cope by building blinkers; I have been asleep too long already. Having said that I am not suggesting you do the same at all. Yes, I am probably making a very big rod for my own back; it is just that the model fits far too neatly in my mind to have any chance of shifting it now.
Atla wrote:What I mean in this topic is that, of course in my "objective" abstract worldview, I fully realize that everything is meaningless. But in my everyday view, the one through which I live most of my life, I can just forget about that and try to "make up my own meaning". What I don't understand is, if I can make myself experience any other bullshit in my everyday mode, why can't I do it with a sense of meaning.
I can only repeat what I said earlier. It looks to me that you see the value through assigning meaning. That is, if something has no meaning it has no value.
Acceptance is about finding your own core values and living by them. That was the reason I raised the subject of 'ACT'.
Maybe if I ask: why do you value meaning such that you wish to be able to make it up? What, specifically, does or would it add to your life?
If you say "meaning" I will be very disappointed
If there is no access to objective meaning, surely creating it is option 2.
All the years I have lurked here I have not seen any demonstration of how to prove or gain access to an objective anything.
Not that there is anything wrong with option 2, and yet I do get the feeling it leads to groups of people doing very unpleasant things to other groups of people to a greater degree than option 3. (Notwithstanding my position as a hard determinist and seeing no way to change anything one iota.)
Atla wrote:Western philosophers ususally don't see materialism and idealism as dualistic, which imho is a final symptom of 2500 years of Western insanity.
I see materialism as dualistic and idealism not so. I guess this makes me half mad.
I don't really have a problem with western philosophy, it is just that the more I read the more I feel that it is like someone with a mad relative in the attic and they try to hide this by weaving word games out of fog and putting untold effort into not getting to the point.
But then, as I said, I am not a philosopher and do not have anything invested in there being a point. Trouble is, I walk around here and can't help noticing the subtle lack of clothes. Not that I claim to be any different, just uncomfortable.
M.