Hey lol Are you reblogging these posts out of spite or because you agree with them?
I hope you’ll take the time to read this, as it’s taken a while to write. I appreciate discourse. Some of my favourite talks to listen to are between people who both have intriguing ideas about philosophy, culture, history … but disagree and get all into a tizzy based on some minor side point on the nature of being, existence or whatever else which I as a listener know has created an impass between the two which cannot be breached. It’s these moments when people who at least say they believe that ‘we’re are all the same deep down at heart’ must realise that there are some fundamental disagreements between ideas - and in turn worldviews - for which reconciliation is, or at least appears, impossible. I usually wait to join any dialogue until I think I have a fair idea of what position another person is trying to take, simply because I might think at first that we disagree, but realise later it was simply due to my preconceived notions of the other person’s standpoint.
As for the current dialogue, I can understand that one’s own language and culture are, for many people, hell, nearly all let’s say, an integral part of not just their personality, but every thought that makes up their conscious experience of the world. However, this is not the case for all. Here we have the impass. Say, for instance, that you are sharing this idea of how integral these things are to your existence to a person who has experienced a worldview collapse and who is gripped by nihilism of the Morty Smith kind: “Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die”. This person, this nihilist, experiences - crushingly, devastatingly, earth-shatteringly so - that everything they once believed was an integral part of their personality, from language to culture to religious beliefs to psychological ups and downs to relationships to their own biology and to the grand plan - the personal epic that was their everything and the internal monologue of their life - has no significance, no meaning, no purpose, and is, in essence, an old, dead myth. This person is cut off from their previous self who thought such things were important. They are severed from their previous understanding and realisation of who they were in the world. They must completely rebuild their frame of reference, review all moral and philosophical ideas they are ever presented with in a haze of scrutiny because each of them appears as meaningless as all the others.
Some of us, I include myself here, obviously, seek to learn about other cultures and languages, travel the world and simply learn because we, apart from simply having an inexplainable, life-long interest in the topic, in our present state of mind, feel a harsh unfeeling cut, a chasm between all of those things that made us who we were in the past and the person we are now. Even a nihilist thinks at times that perhaps, a new bond can be made to some far off place, some distantly spoken language. But only maybe, it’s a small hope we hide. Because we, us nihilists, no longer have this with our native languages, cultures, religion, all of it. After this realisation, we often become completely different people, and you can ask some people who were there in our lives and could corroborate the fact: such a thought changes you entirely. The former ‘us’, ‘me’, ‘self’ no longer exists; everything once integral, lost forever. So we’d might as well be chameleons and see if we can simply blend in wherever we go.
This again is the impass. Something that another claims as significantly personal and important carries no weight, not the slightest ounce of meaning, to us or to someone who lacks the capacity to feel this attachment that we biologically, socially and psychologically should in our own lives, but can’t. So when a person presents the idea: this is integral to me, my soul, it is merely an idea to us, interesting or otherwise, that we might consider. Even with a good imagination, it’s hard to imagine what we feel isn’t there when it comes to the nature of our perceived reality. Someone else’s truth is, for us, just an idea, which could be dismissed as easily as all of the truths we previously assumed shaped our being for a purpose. Still, I’m interested in other people’s ideas as I realise the one I’ve got can be quite, quite shitty and hard, as I’ve mentioned, to unthink. Which is why I’m mainly interested in seeing 1: what does this person believe, so I’ll read/listen/take it in for a while without commenting; 2: does their thought process have any obvious contradictions which make it difficult to understand; and 3: does this person assume that they understand my position or opinion on a topic without having the proper understanding of my perspective, and if so, what elements that shape my opinion must I clarify to remedy the situation. I might question my thoughts as I hear more of the other person’s argument, but again, it would only hold weight if I consider it enough to let it hold weight in my mind. So no, I’m not reblogging out of spite or because I agree. I only reblog if the idea stands out to me as something to consider for some unknown reason. A mere interesting idea.
I’m don’t mean to push nihilism on anyone, but once you fall into this line of thinking it is extremely difficult to re-see the world as you previously did. Again, you effectively become another person who must reevaluate everything you come across in the world. Appeals to experience do little to convince many of us because our experience is that none of those experiences have any worth whatsoever.
