Tom Howell
at the CBC website
Over and again: by meaning a distinction must be made between existential meaning and essential -- cosmic -- meaning. There is no getting around the absolute necessity that mere mortals in a No God world must create and then sustain meaning in their day to day interactions with others. And that includes the far more problematic meaning in the "is/ought world".Despite her passion for defending nihilism, Llanera considers the central point about life's meaninglessness to be neutral, rather than good news or bad news for humankind. She hopes that more people will simply outgrow their sense that the cosmic meaninglessness of their lives poses a threat. In her view, life does not need a larger context of meaning to add weight to a private or social sense of morality or joie de vivre.
Really, try to even imagine a world of social, political and economic interactions where that is not the case. Only if you choose to utterly isolate yourself from all others does meaning revolve solely around you in the either/or world. Or, for some, around "I and Thou".
And while "philosophically" it can be argued that human interactions sans a "cosmic meaning" need not pose a threat, just take a gander at human history to date. That threat is everywhere. Both in terms of those nihilists who own and operate the global economy, those sociopaths who rationalize anything and everything, and those objectivists hell bent on insisting that not only is there a "larger context" in which to subsume the "human condition" but others damn well better accept that it is their own.
See! Simple enough!!"Those things could be understood in a familiar, ordinary sense, like you need to take responsibility for your dog, you need to not cheat on your partner or you need to protest horrendous acts of genocide or ethnic cleansing. All of those things are part of the human condition," said Llanera.
Okay, let's take that argument to the Supremes in Washington. Allow them to grasp its relevance in regard to abortion. Or to Moscow. Note it for the benefit of Vladimir Putin. See if that ends his invasion of Ukraine."They matter and they mean something to our individual lives and to human society. But this kind of meaning doesn't extend beyond our human context. And we think that those who defend the meaning of life, they're just very uncomfortable with that idea."
Those "human-all-too-human contexts".
https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=195600