Literary News

Kazuo Ishiguro Is Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature - The New York Times

Well-deserved. The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled, Never Let Me Go, to name but a few.

The Remains of the Day won the Booker Prize. It is an excellent novel, and it was made into a wonderful film starring Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, and James Fox. Christopher Reeve and a young, absolutely gorgeous Lena Headey are also in the movie.

Never Let Me Go was also made into a fine film, but it is rather hard to take. Ishiguro's friend, Alex Garland, wrote the script.
 
Druidic said:
You mean there's more to life, Arthur? Born, live, die, oblivion doesn't work for you? Please fill me in LOL.

We all need illusions to make life bearable and we get them. From Romantic love to the Drug Culture, it's all about finding meaning. Even materialists long to believe in the unreal. Lovecraft understood the link between religious belief and supernatural horror in literature. The need for meaning can only be satisfied by illusion.

Being a nihilist who only values Logic but has a (too) high degree of compassion for animals and human beings is a bitch.

My advice to others is simple: do the Right Thing in every circumstance. You'll know what it is if you have a drop of empathy; and even if your actions are arbitrary, DO IT. Meaning be damned.
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I can't speak for Arthur, but (I think I know what he's getting at and would say that) even the idea that there is a need for meaning and that there are illusions immediately means that there's more than "born, live, die, oblivion". Where do the need for meaning and illusions fit in with "born, live, die, oblivion"?

Another way of putting it: Is the 'need for meaning' material or immaterial? Is illusion material or immaterial?

There are many ways of expressing this.

Jordan Peterson talks a little around this whole subject here:

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRUj1toI_Jw[/ame]
 
@Arthur Staaz: Everything is not simply "born, live, die, oblivion". It's worse. There is consciousness, which creates dread, anxiety, suffering and ultimately, the need for meaning in most people. And to the question why bother loving and caring for anyone or anything if there is no meaning (another form of it is "Why not kill yourself if life is suffering?), one answer would be:
It is in my physical make-up and interest to love and care or at least appear so due to instinct, love chemicals, learning and societal conformity. When I see an old woman falls on the ground, my instinct is to see what's wrong. If I have empathy (some don't), I will feel bad. If I am slow in instinct or don't have empathy and end up just walking by, other passerby will think I'm scum. I also have to learn to love and care for family, classmates...to conform with society. These factors shape my caring behavior to the point where it is another appendage and I would feel powerless, alien, and crippled without it.
 
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In animals, self-defense is relegated to simple instinct: running from a threat, needing to attack, that kind of thing.

I tend to see man's need for Meaning as just another form of self-defense particular to humans. Defense against the knowledge of our inevitable death. Defense against giving up in the face of the slaughterhouse that is sometimes the world. Something that justifies the most outrageous arbitrary suffering. You need something to make it all worthwhile. A healthy human being should find enough 'meaning' in just satisfying the physical desires but it doesn't always work out that way. People who have it all--wealth, love, fame--often need more and find it in drugs or religion or 'causes,' whatever. I would agree that the 'meaning' we experience when we fill our bellies with a hot meal or after love making isn't an illusion but for many (in a society where you don't have to struggle just to stay alive) there seems to be a need for a greater Meaning, one that explains the countless sorrows and horrors that all living things are vulnerable to; and that kind of Meaning, I believe, is an illusion, pure and simple.

Wish it weren't.
 
A Jung quotation I like to trot out on these occasions (that he wrote towards the end of his life):

"I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once, and cannot add up the sum. I am incapable of determining ultimate worth or worthlessness; I have no judgment about myself and my life. There is nothing I am quite sure about. I have no definite convictions- not about anything, really. I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation of something I do not know. In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being.

The world into which we are born is brutal and cruel, and at the same time of divine beauty. Which element we think outweighs the other, whether meaninglessness or meaning, is a matter of temperament. If meaninglessness were absolutely preponderant, the meaningfulness of life would vanish to an increasing degree with each step in our development. But that is-or seems to me- not the case. Probably, as in all metaphysical questions, both are true: Life is-or has-meaning and meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate and win the battle."

-C.G. Jung, "Memories, Dreams, Reflections"
 
Frater_Tsalal said:
"I know only that I was born and exist"
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I'm not even sure about these things. I find reason to doubt everything, which is why I don't understand much of this age of certainty we live in, whether we're talking materialism or Trumpism.
 
I primarily like the quotation for the line "I exist on the foundation of something I do not know," which I can certainly apply to my own feelings toward life.
 
With all respect to Jung, I don't think temperament has much to do with evaluating Life. It's a matter of honesty. A woman journalist takes a ride in a homemade submarine and ends up dismembered and cast into the sea. Another woman, a young model, is scalped and tortured for 8 hours before she dies by her graphic novelist boyfriend. An old man steps into an elevator in a parking garage and becomes trapped between floors. The garage is closed for renovation and his body is found a month later. Just some stories taken from the BBC or The Post. Not even a fraction of the most atrocious suffering that continues day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute.
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Unless you can find a Meaning for such things you have to assume all talk of Meaning is pointless...and meaningless.

That doesn't mean life can't be a pretty good deal for some. It's all luck of the draw. As I tried to make plain in an old poem.


Your Ticket

You’ve had good days, bad days,
Everything in between;
And even your bad days
Were never that bad,
Never the absolute worst,
Never the horrors reserved
By Chance or Fate
For the Luckless
Or the Damned.
That’s an evil lottery
You don’t want to win.
Still the drawings will continue
And you were born with a ticket.
 
I exist in order to refute existence. Every time I wake up without putting a gun beneath my chin it's as though I'm placing the heel of my foot on the neck of the universe. To lower one's expectations regarding life is also a sign of victory, which is why cynicism is the summit of wisdom.
 
Yeah, but if one really wanted to one could easily seek out stories that could be classified as upbeat/life-affirming to balance out the equation. As far as I'm concerned it pretty much adds up to a stalemate (hence Jung's comments about the world being brutal and cruel on one hand and full of divine beauty in the other).

For all we know there might even be a point to what we consider pointless tragedies, just our limited human faculties of reasoning are unable to determine what that point is.
 
Frater_Tsalal said:
Yeah, but if one really wanted to one could easily seek out stories that could be classified as upbeat/life-affirming to balance out the equation. As far as I'm concerned it pretty much adds up to a stalemate (hence Jung's comments about the world being brutal and cruel on one hand and full of divine beauty in the other).

For all we know there might even be a point to what we consider pointless tragedies, just our limited human faculties of reasoning are unable to determine what that point is.
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Reminds me of Wykstra's CORNEA argument against the evidential problem of evil.

Philosophical Disquisitions: The End of Skeptical Theism? (Part 5) - Wykstra and Alston

EDIT: The above link proves that not every Christian is an uneducated moron, though I disagree with skeptical theists. I find the very notion of theodicy, not only futile, but offensive to those who have suffered greatly. Job would agree.
 
I applaud those who follow a selfless path and show compassion to all living things.

One can feel the weight of a meaningless Universe and still do "the right thing," the compassionate thing, while spitting in the face of the mad gods that run the show.

And here, I guess, we do touch upon a matter of temperament.
 
Druidic said:
With all respect to Jung, I don't think temperament has much to do with evaluating Life. It's a matter of honesty. A woman journalist takes a ride in a homemade submarine and ends up dismembered and cast into the sea. Another woman, a young model, is scalped and tortured for 8 hours before she dies by her graphic novelist boyfriend. An old man steps into an elevator in a parking garage and becomes trapped between floors. The garage is closed for renovation and his body is found a month later. Just some stories taken from the BBC or The Post. Not even a fraction of the most atrocious suffering that continues day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute.
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Unless you can find a Meaning for such things you have to assume all talk of Meaning is pointless...and meaningless.
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I suppose I'm in a peculiar position. The kind of suffering you mention persuades me absolutely that it's best not to have children, but it persuades me more that there is meaning than that there isn't, as I don't see how to judge it as suffering without meaning.
 
I think I understand, Q. I certainly don't intend to dismiss such suffering by saying it's meaningless. I'm not saying that. I think such atrocious suffering, however, pretty much rules out any external Grand Design or Cosmic Meaning. That's different. If you can help ease or prevent any living creature's pain you must in my view. Pain certainly has meaning to those who suffer from it. But I think we are talking about two different types of 'meaning,' one grandiose and fanciful and one (to the sufferer) very real. Basically, I think I agree with you if my understanding of your position is correct.

Sorry if I can't express it better. I'm slightly(!) stoned.
 
qcrisp said:
Druidic said:
With all respect to Jung, I don't think temperament has much to do with evaluating Life. It's a matter of honesty. A woman journalist takes a ride in a homemade submarine and ends up dismembered and cast into the sea. Another woman, a young model, is scalped and tortured for 8 hours before she dies by her graphic novelist boyfriend. An old man steps into an elevator in a parking garage and becomes trapped between floors. The garage is closed for renovation and his body is found a month later. Just some stories taken from the BBC or The Post. Not even a fraction of the most atrocious suffering that continues day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute.
,
Unless you can find a Meaning for such things you have to assume all talk of Meaning is pointless...and meaningless.
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I suppose I'm in a peculiar position. The kind of suffering you mention persuades me absolutely that it's best not to have children, but it persuades me more that there is meaning than that there isn't, as I don't see how to judge it as suffering without meaning.
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Do you mean to say that because one finds such occurrences normatively appalling that there must be some underlying meaning to said events? I just find them appalling. They certainly don't prove that there's some existing metanarrative - quite the contrary.

One would have to show that there's an intrinsic link between our conventional sense of morality and the hermeneutical question regarding man's "destiny." One can give a causal explanation concerning the "why" of suffering. But the notion that there's a more substantial (or hermeneutical) answer to suffering is dubious in my opinion.
 
Mr. Veech said:
qcrisp said:
Druidic said:
With all respect to Jung, I don't think temperament has much to do with evaluating Life. It's a matter of honesty. A woman journalist takes a ride in a homemade submarine and ends up dismembered and cast into the sea. Another woman, a young model, is scalped and tortured for 8 hours before she dies by her graphic novelist boyfriend. An old man steps into an elevator in a parking garage and becomes trapped between floors. The garage is closed for renovation and his body is found a month later. Just some stories taken from the BBC or The Post. Not even a fraction of the most atrocious suffering that continues day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute.
,
Unless you can find a Meaning for such things you have to assume all talk of Meaning is pointless...and meaningless.
Click to expand...

I suppose I'm in a peculiar position. The kind of suffering you mention persuades me absolutely that it's best not to have children, but it persuades me more that there is meaning than that there isn't, as I don't see how to judge it as suffering without meaning.
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Do you mean to say that because one finds such occurrences normatively appalling that there must be some underlying meaning to said events? I just find them appalling.
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My experience, as I analyse it, is that the capacity to experience meaning is fundamental to the capacity to find something appalling.
 
For instance, in the clip I posted, JP says that although most people who abuse children were themselves abused, it's nonetheless true that most people who were abused don't go on to abuse, presumably because they have judged the situation in a meaningful way - it was bad and not to be repeated. I am not sure how to judge in this way without a sense of meaning, and I don't see what would prevent the other reaction except a sense of meaning, although I concede that some might argue from meaning as to why they would commit such abuse. This latter kind of argument doesn't make sense to me, however.
 
Sorry, I think you added some thoughts after I'd answered, but it's bedtime for me here. I might attempt more later.
 
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