#david landers

In my journey away from religion, I did a lot of reading, a lot of thinking, and I want to hash out in more detail what I read, what I learned from it, and how it resonated with me. My hope is that doing this will help me both better articulate what I have to say, what my position on the relevant stuff is, and how things changed as I read.

With that said, I want to start not with the first book I read, but with what’s probably been the most effective book I’ve read so far. David Landers’ work on how to deal with the idea that life is ultimately completely meaningless is a bizarre, frank and deeply melancholic look at getting in touch with your own mortality.

Landers believes that deep down we all know we’re going to die, and that this depressing fact is so painful to face for many of us, that the mere fact that society and civilization exists at all is as a convenient distraction from this brute fact. Landers shares very liberally from his life story, and shares insights from his professional experience as a Forensic Psychologist with people’s habits of rationalizations and psychological defense mechanisms to avoid despair in the face of a meaningless existence.

Landers’ main thesis is that the Nihilism that he sees as inherent in Atheism doesn’t have to be negative. Hence, Optimistic Nihilism. Another reviewer summed it up nicely in the sentence “Everything is meaningless, but that’s okay.”

David “don’t call me doctor” Landers was, for one, really willing to acknowledge that his Nihilistic view of life, for example, kind of renders Mark Twain’s famous quote about not fearing death because he had been dead for millions of years before he was born and it didn’t hurt one bit, moot. Death hurts, I don’t want to die, and having experienced the extraordinary, literally-once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that is life, returning to oblivion is going to be a sad event.

But therein lies the “Optimistic” part of Optimistic Nihilism: the realization that even the most simple experience of contentment, satisfaction, joy or pleasure becomes that much more meaningful when you expect it all to end one day. This doesn’t become hedonistic, when you realize that you are in that boat with everyone else. By diminishing someone else’s experience of life, you have permanently robbed them of a moment of their ultimately brief and fragile existence that they could have enjoyed, and in so doing, you wasted this one chance to help others also enjoy the brief experience of life we all know that we’re going to get. In this way, Landers doesn’t consider morality such a huge mystery after all.

David shares, at one moment in the book, a perspective on this awesome contemplation of life and its application:

“When Irvin Yalom (or anyone else) talks about living “fully” and immersing ourselves in “the natural rhythm of life”, we smile and nod but I’m not sure that we’re always aware to what we’re agreeing. Many people overestimate what needs to be done, as they assume that ‘immersion’ involves frenetic or sensational activity, like traveling the world or skydiving. Sure, these may have their merits, but we don’t have to set our sights so high. In fact, we might be missing the point when we do! If we truly appreciated the more fundamental aspects of living, we probably wouldn’t be so driven to travel or skydive and such. We wouldn’t be so desperate to do those things, that’s for sure

Instead, we are talking about appreciating the mere act of existing. Whenever we can do this, boredom becomes obsolete, as the most fundamental activities become worthy of our time and attention. Taking a walk. Marveling at nature: trees, birds, stars, your own consciousness. The simple fact that we are here at all, along with oceans, comets, Facebooks, government conspiracies, and gridlock”

@academicatheism made the valid point that the operative phrase in the slogan “You Only Live Once” could just as easily be “you” as “once”. You only live once, the unique experience of life that is you will only happen once, and one day it will be gone forever. That is tragic, but that is also precisely why it is incredibly precious while it lasts.

Perspectives like the one Landers provides gives support to one of my new fundamental beliefs about life. Why should you be good?

Hmm. Hmm.

When we began. I had never read a New Universe book in my life, not the reboot, not any of the modern books where Marvel reincorporated the characters. Nothing. I knew it only by the broadest outline of its reputation. It was a poor idea, implemented haphazardly, mostly rejected, that fizzled sharply and decisively. I expected something that...wasn't bad, per se. But I expected something that would be self evident in its failure from the word go. That is not at all what I got.

There's this...tangle in my chest that I've been sitting with for an hour trying to write this. The idea I keep coming back to is a sentiment I've seen repeated again and again. In relation to fanfiction specifically "God this would have been so good if it was good."

For the first dozen issues I was electrified by this series. An ensemble cast in a setting that was refreshing for its simplicity, getting back to the core element of a superhero team: make them bounce off each other and see what sparks fly. I got attached, my heart and my mind clutched this new corner of comicdom close. JUST in time for the fanbelt to fly off.

After the end of that first arc the series...didn't dip, it wasn't one solid downward spike. It just started a hard wobble, an unsteady grip on itself that left fascinating ideas tangled up in the weeds of everything coming unglued. It made me disappointed, it made me anxious, at least once it made me honestly furious.

And yet these characters were so well etched. Their personal drama so richly defined. Their relationships so fascinating in their construction that I never wavered in my conviction that I had to see it to the bitter end.

This was a comic on the positive side of mid. It was full of bad choices, lead off on dead end sidetracks and spent its limited time at best, unwisely. The ending was sudden, leaving an even deeper pang in my heart of potential unfulfilled.

I am simply not ready to accept that this series has evaporated in my hands. So? So what? Well, I'm going to fucking write an ending is so what.