Beauty, suffering, and the nature of genius

[ManWithNoName]

Interesting thoughts on the proverbial existentialist crisis:

 

[timf]

An interesting video. However, I cannot help but think that the view that most people are too stupid or repressed to see the pointlessness of life to be somewhat arrogant.

The tortured soul is not necessarily proof of genius. It may be that the person who lives for self only may reach a point where nothing seems to satisfy anymore. It might be only that it is the limits of consumption are recognized.

Most people in history have made the bridge to considering the eternal either through religion or their children and grandchildren or both. What can seem the purposelessness of life is often filled with the pouring out of self for others. This can be seen as love.

The bible has two interesting things to say about love being selflessness.

Joh 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

1Co 13:4 Love has long patience, is kind; love is not emulous of others ; love is not insolent and rash, is not puffed up,
1Co 13:5 does not behave in an unseemly manner, does not seek what is its own, is not quickly provoked, does not impute evil,
1Co 13:6 does not rejoice at iniquity but rejoices with the truth,
1Co 13:7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

There may be other religious traditions that also have things to say about the pouring out of self for others (I think Islam has charity as one of its five pillars).

For the "higher person" to achieve sublimation (intoxication) in art seems not too different than a "lower person" finding enjoyment in a monster truck rally. I do not see that seeing oneself as elite offers anything helpful.

People who have a higher (or lower) IQ will always find it difficult to fit in just as people who have musical ability or other distinctive skills may also find social integration difficult.

The pain one bears in seeing the futility of life is not so much the burden of genius as it may be the warning sign that one has missed something important. If one is unable to consider the possibility that there might be meaning and purpose, is he not as dogmatic as the most obstinate religionist?

 

[TheAmazingCriswell]

The pain one bears in seeing the futility of life is not so much the burden of genius as it may be the warning sign that one has missed something important.

I do not understand what you are trying to convey with this sentence.

If one is unable to consider the possibility that there might be meaning and purpose, is he not as dogmatic as the most obstinate religionist?

Are you talking about objective higher meaning/purpose, or self-created subjective meaning/purpose?
No one disputes the existence of the latter. Provided that the former exists, it is practically worthless, since no one knows what it consists of.
How is one to fulfill an objective purpose if one does not know what that purpose is?
Is the existence of an unknown abstract objective meaning not indistinguishable from the absence of objective meaning?

Now you might counter that it is our task to search this meaning. Well, how does one approach this task?

A physicist can cherish the belief that there is a grand unifying formula that unites all branches of physics. He doesn't know what it looks like or even whether it exists at all, but he can search for it.
What sets this quest apart from the search for an objective meaning is that the physicists have the scientific method at their disposal and they are working in a (mostly) well-defined framework.
These tools are not available to those who search the meaning of life. Attempting to use them would amount to a category error, much like the atheistic argument that God does not exist because his existence cannot be scientifically proven.

Is then not all we are left with blind faith?
Given the choice of blindly believing or not believing at all, why should one choose the former?
Would it not be more rational to believe that there is no objective meaning instead of blindly believing in it?

 

[motel rooms]

Is then not all we are left with blind faith?
Given the choice of blindly believing or not believing at all, why should one choose the former?
Would it not be more rational to believe that there is no objective meaning instead of blindly believing in it?

I want a God who stays dead, not plays dead. Even I can play dead.

 

[TheAmazingCriswell]

I want a God who stays dead, not plays dead.

For that, you would have had to know that he had been alive in the first place.

 

[motel rooms]

For that, you would have had to know that he had been alive in the first place.

I was just paying homage to Neechee, you insatiable nitpicker!
Did my misspelling of the great madman's last name give you a little stroke? Aux souccoeur!

 

[BeansOfRequirement]

I was just paying homage to Neechee,

NEETzsche*

 

[TheAmazingCriswell]

I was just paying homage to Neechee, you insatiable nitpicker!

Did my misspelling of the great madman's last name give you a little stroke?

Aux souccoeur!

 

[Makko]

Would it not be more rational to believe that there is no objective meaning instead of blindly believing in it?

That's a rather reductionist view of rationality.

 

[TheAmazingCriswell]

That's a rather reductionist view of rationality.

That's exactly the line I would have deleted if I could have still edited my post, but alas, 'twas not to be.

 

[ManWithNoName]

For the "higher person" to achieve sublimation (intoxication) in art seems not too different than a "lower person" finding enjoyment in a monster truck rally. I do not see that seeing oneself as elite offers anything helpful.

Agreed. And elitism can work both ways. It depends on who's being the elitist. One can be an educated world travelled person and look down on those who are not, and inversely one can be a farmer from the Midwest with no formal education or worldly experience and look down on those who have attended university and have lived in other countries.