19 Comments

“On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve encountered anyone who genuinely has the cheerful pessimism that Nietzsche describes.”

🙋‍♂️

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Lol! Well, I only said that because I hadn't yet met you, Nick Richards! Nice to stand corrected.

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I have tried so hard to follow the atheist path and find myself drifting that way but I've found that something will always fill the God void (money, sex, etc) So I prefer to choose something that corporations have less control over like "God"

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Interesting Mo. There's a line I think about a lot, which is that 'the first thing you do in the morning is what you pray to.' And, since I almost always reach for my phone and scroll through e-mail or the news, that's a very depressing comment on the state of my religiosity. God may have his drawbacks but at least is a step ahead of gmail!

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Get ready to feel better. I grudgingly read 12 step literature first then dive headfirst into Instagram and, many mornings, I reverse the order, sometime bypassing the literature altogether.

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Lol. I have many habits to feel bad about. Thank God Instagram isn't one of them.

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I've gone from strident atheism in my 20s and 30s to something I suppose I'd call spiritual, but it's been tempered by the usual amount of loss and grief one experiences in middle age and beyond. And I don't necessarily feel there's an intelligence behind everything as much as a lack of separateness. This is paired with still feeling most of the time like an individual self, one that's subject to loss. So I find there's some cheerful pessimism required, and also a sense of awe and wonder when encountering brief glimpses of what will likely always feel ungraspable.

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Thank you Rob! Nice to connect. Yeah, 'intelligence' may be putting things a little too simplistically. I know what you mean about the sense of unity creating all the wonder that's required. Cheers,

Sam

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Very thought-provoking piece. I do want to challenge the following dichotomy: “Either you believe in a guiding intelligence and try to align yourself with it; or you accept the underlying absurdity of existence and find your strength through that recognition.”

Even if we recognise that existence is without preordained plan and therefore, in some cosmic sense, absurd, I don’t think it follows that our only source of strength is through that recognition. We can follow Thomas Nagel and approach our absurd lives with irony, which in my view does not preclude an ironic form of spirituality. (And why should we view such a thing as any more absurd than the rest of our endeavours? Romantic love is by all accounts often quite absurd and yet we still relish it. Why not the same for spirituality?)

What if we are not so much directed by an intelligence as expressing an intelligence which is emerging? (Not to sound like some vulgar techno-optimist). As Rilke put it: “Why not think of God as the one who is coming, who is moving toward us from all eternity, the Future One, culminating fruit of the tree whose leaves we are? What stops you from projecting his birth on times to come and living your life as a painful and beautiful day in the history of an immense pregnancy? Do you not see how all that is happening is ever again a new beginning? And could it not be His Beginning, for to commence is ever in itself a beautiful thing. If he is to be fulfillment, then all that is lesser must precede him, so that he can fashion himself from out of the greatest abundance. Must he not be last, in order to include everything within himself? And what meaning would be ours, if he, for whom we yearn, had already existed?”

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That's very deep stuff Mary Jane, I really appreciate it. And, as a recovering hipster, "an ironic form of spirituality" is very close to my heart lol!

That is a very interesting way of thinking, of expressing an intelligence that is "emerging." I have this kind of mantra in my head that "everybody should create their own religion." I don't totally know what that means but it may align in some way with the notion of an "emerging intelligence."

I haven't read Thomas Nagel. He sounds really interesting!

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A non confrontational topic Sam! Nice. Buddhism has already answered a lot of these questions as a practice. Stolen straight from google is this;

Buddhism does not teach the existence of a permanent, immutable soul. The birth of one form from another is part of a process of continuous change. Impermanence, called anicca (Pāli) or anitya (Sanskrit), appears extensively in the Pali Canon as one of the essential doctrines of Buddhism.

The practice of self awareness in the moment and the recognition of impermanence as immutably true goes a long way to alleviate much of our suffering especially in terms of dwelling in the past or suffering the anxiety of the future. Much harder said than done and why it’s always called a “practice”. We constantly fail at the highest forms of this practice which in itself is the key lesson. To let go of all judgements including your own is foundational in learning the art of letting go altogether. I fail at it everyday but the recognition builds wisdom and sure wish more people in the west practiced this philosophy. It’s less a religion than most people think and really a three thousand year old science experiment of the mind. I was told this more or less by an ordained Buddhist monk after many months of learning his teachings. Peace.

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Lol! Well, we all need a break from world politics every so often.

I agree with that. I find Buddhism to basically be true, and all the more impressive as a 'belief system' for not being in any conventional sense a 'religion' - there's no need to accept anything on 'faith,' everything is totally empirical, but it gives you access to whole domains that secular, 'scientific' people for some reason ignore.

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Love this, as always!

I’m a very fortunate person in that I had a direct spiritual experience that saved my life. Even so, my relationship with a higher power has varied throughout my life. I’ve passed through many understandings, from atheism to various types of belief.

I liken each of them to my son’s shoes as he grew up. When one pair stopped fitting it was time for a new pair. There was nothing wrong with the old pairs of shoes, they each did their job, but they no longer fit his feet. So it has gone with my views on spirituality.

I also smile when I hear faith compared to weakness. Before I had my experience, I was in a very, very bad situation. Thanks to that experience, and others like it, I’ve been able to have a wonderful life and to be genuinely helpful to others.

I’ve never argued that I was not weak, I am. But paradoxically I’ve been given strength through my spiritual practice that I would never have on my own.

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Very interesting Sean. Always a pleasure to continue the conversation with you. I had a fairly brief experience of faith and was struck at how much power there was in it. Even if I don't rely on faith at the moment, I've learned to have an immense amount of respect for it.

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In a conversation on the Ten Percent Happier podcast, author Sebastian Junger offers a view of atheism that is a nice and maybe more optimistic or at least joyful counterpart to the one you described. Nice essay.

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Cool. Thank you! I'll check it out. Junger's an impressive guy.

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Oh wow I love that Osho quote. So true!

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Thank you Anne! Osho is a smart one.

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Cheerful pessimism is what any writer must have.

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