Monday, May 04, 2009

A Purposeless Universe

Sometimes other people say things just perfectly. Here's something from Incertus:

I don't think there is a grand, over-arching meaning to the universe. I think it just is, and that we're damned lucky to have developed at all, that this life is all we've got and that we'd better make the most of it.

And I think this is the ultimate disconnect between religious people who rail against atheism and atheists who refuse to be quiet about it--people like Fish and Eagleton just can't seem to grasp the concept that there are humans who are willing to accept a purposeless universe. I am. The universe is transcendent, it's awe-inspiring, and it seems, to me at least, to be completely unconscious of me and the rest of humanity. It doesn't have plans for me; things don't necessarily happen for a reason. We just are--we struggle through each and every day, trying to make the best lives we can for ourselves and those close to us, and in some cases, for the rest of the human family, and for those animals we have chosen to take into our care. Some of us dedicate our lives to nothing more than that; some take on the creation of beauty through art; some seek after scientific knowledge; some seek a purpose for a universe which baffles or even terrifies them; some try to make the world a better place for everyone; some try to make the world better for only themselves.

As I said in my comment on that post, it reminds me of an old Bloom County, in which Opus said that we should all be in a state of non-stop astonishment at our very existence.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I remember that very strip!
It was posted for a long time on
(at least) one bathroom mirror.
Eventually it withered away ...

-- dhsh

Donald Brown said...

Perhaps, but how productive or useful, or even meaningful is non-stop astonishment?

Andrew Shields said...

In Arendt's essay on Heidegger (which I translated in the correspondence), she spends quite a bit of time talking about "Staunen" as the basis of philosophy.

Donald Brown said...

ok, maybe so, but at some point philosophy must be the positing of some rational sequence of thought to offset the astonishment, otherwise one simply goes about open-mouthed saying, 'damn' or 'awesome' or 'holy shit.'

but your comment makes me thing of those years, now long past, spent mostly 'under the influence' (besides reading and listening a lot, of course, and even talking) and how hard it is to say what, if anything, was 'accomplished.' Maybe it was the basis of 'a philosophy' more than I might readily admit, at this point.

Andrew Shields said...

There's a wonderful moment in Anne Carson's "Autobiography of Red" about the stoned moment of saying "wow"!

Since that book makes me say "wow" a lot, it felt like a parody of my own "stoned" reaction to it.

Donald Brown said...

I would not feel so all alone...