finding purpose in our insignificant existence

when Nietzsche said God is dead he was referencing the end of a religious dogmatic age and the beginning of secular scientism now I would like to formally apologize for this very cliche introduction but let's be honest we all knew I was gonna have to mention either God Is Dead one must imagine Sisyphus happy or there's but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide I mean is it really a mediocre philosophy YouTube video about meaning in life if I don't pick one of these overused quotes so God is dead instead of trusting a God to tell us why we are sick why we sometimes hurt other people we have medicine to explain how viruses travel and psychology to explore the inner workings of our minds and emotions yay free from the shackles of Dogma but secularism left us with a major problem science could tell us why we were sick and why we sometimes hurt other people but it couldn't really tell us why like what's the point of us getting sick what's the point of hurting other people maybe to advantage ourselves and push our own goals forward to endure hardship and be stronger as a result of it but all that would matter only if we mattered and why should we matter we're just a speck in the middle of an unimaginably vast Universe we're all gonna die one day and honestly Humanity has done lots of awful things to our environment do we even deserve to live there have been some responses to these concerns though so stick around for that but essentially there was this crisis in meaning because without a higher being rubbing our egos telling us you are the most important beings people fell into nihilism what if there is no meaning in life however and you can let me know if you disagree I think there's been a shift from meaninglessness to insignificance to explain this we'll need to dive deep into this paper by Massimo Leon although it's about the the meaning of signs and symbols rather than human value I think it has so many interesting ideas that can be translated into talking about meaning in human existence and what better way to start our discussion than riding a bus in Kyoto Japan but first I am going to drop you down a flight of stairs yes this video is sponsored by case defy and I'm about to do the drop test okay I'm gonna throw this case down these set of stairs my phone better not break or else I am going to be really mad three two one oh my God oh my God is it okay yeah oh my God okay yay I was able to pick four cases so I got these two right here for myself one for Vivian my roommate how do you like your new quesify case I love case so far and then one for my sister they have so many prints and custom cases I felt like I was scrolling forever but honestly what I love most is just how durable these cases are I am a clumsy person so I need that Ultra protection which is why I got the ultra impact case that offers drop protection up to 9.8 feet and it doesn't feel bulky at all the new impact and Ultra impact cases are also made of 65 percent recycled and plant-based materials so if you're in the mood for a new phone case you can use the link in my description box to get 15 off your order now according to this bus schedule Oh we gotta run so hopefully you got a safe and secure phone case by now let's go foreign to foreigners with no Japanese buses in Kyoto exude with mysterious prospects of significance each of them a decoding challenge let's say you're a non-japanese person like me riding a bus in Kyoto Japan and you see this sign if you don't know Japanese you won't understand what this says yet you do trust that it means something that these lines and dots are arranged in a meaningful way maybe you know this because it's in an area where ADS usually reside maybe you're like oh I've seen similar looking characters on Ariana Grande's hand whatever it is you trust that these are words or signs more generally and signs always signify something now as a person who is clueless about the Japanese language these signs can be meaningless to me in three ways one I may know who it's trying to communicate to which are the passengers but I just can't get the meaning two is when I know what a sign means but not who it's meant for the author Leon gives the example of a Foreigner's confusion with Japanese bus drivers who take on and off their hat and bow every time they enter a new bus most foreigners recognize that removing a hat and bowing is a sign of respect but what confuses them is why these drivers do it who is supposed to derive meaning from this gesture the writers never bow back or react at all for that matter so it's not really clear who's supposed to be receiving meaning from this action in this case tourists do not ignore what the sign stands for but that whom the sign stands to the last type of meaninglessness is what Leon calls uncanny meaninglessness when both what it stands for and to who it stands to is unknown quote riding on Japanese buses at night one sees often bits of hemp string nodded to the railings to most if not all foreigners such bits look meaningless both in the sense of undecipherable it is not clear what the strings stand for and in that of incomprehensible it is not clear whom the the string stand too however something in such bits of hamstring will still qualify and present them as signs a recurrent bus passenger indeed will soon realize that one only bits of hamstring appear not of other materials two they are always knotted around the same railings three they are always knotted in the same way thus although foreign passengers do not know either what these bits of hamstrings stand for or whom they stand to they will start realizing that their appearance in the world is patterned assuming we can't just Google the answer or ask a local citizen what the hemp signifies the only way to associate the potential meaning of the hamstrings with an actual meaning is to do research ourselves broaden our experience by repeatedly riding the same bus at different times perhaps we ride the bus a few times in the morning a few times in the afternoon and a few times at night through repeated empirical observation we will come to realize that the bits of hemp are actually remnants of leaflets tied to the bus railings in the early morning which is why by night only strings of it are left hence the hemp strings signify that leaflets were tied here many hours ago although hemp strings seem to have zero connection to whether our lives matter I actually think this example reminds us of how we recognize patterns in our lives in our search for meaning Pleasure and Pain seem to always follow certain acts we live on an earth that somehow has all the resources for our basic necessities and it feels like there should be meaning to that that it can't be all complete Randomness but in order to associate this potential yet unknown meaning with actual meaning we have to broaden our experience of the world just as how to grasp the potential meaning of the hemp strings we had to broaden our experience of the Japanese bus the more perspectives we learn about and take time to understand and the more opportunities we seek to learn about ourselves the closer we can get to the actual meaning of existence what underlies all three types of meaninglessness is that meaninglessness is subjective the Japanese signs and the hemp strings are meaningless to foreigners either because they don't know the language or they aren't familiar with the cultural environment or both but objectively there's still meaningful signs it's not like the Japanese characters and the hamstrings stop signifying meaning just because I don't get it if I just learned how to read the Japanese characters or if I gained more cultural knowledge then the signs would become subjectively meaningful to me similarly maybe our lives can be subjectively meaningless we feel it's meaningless but it's objectively meaningful if this is the case then having a meaningless existence is not the worst thing in the world I may be lost right now but I at least sense that there is some potential meaning to be uncovered but what if we are unable to understand how to make existence meaningful or what if there are external barriers preventing us from achieving meaningful existence this is no longer meaninglessness this is insignificance [Music] while meaningless signs have meaningful potential that can be dug out insignificant things signify nothing to no one in no respect or capacity quote it is a transparency that nobody looks through a letter that nobody will ever read not only because it is written in a language spoken by none and not only because it is enclosed in a bottle that will never be opened but also and above all because nobody ever will recognize it as a letter because of this we can only recognize insignificance in contrast with significance let's return to our bus in Kyoto many foreign visitors will be surprised at how many locals sleep on the public transport some might wonder if it's because Japanese people work very hard wake up very early or just spend lots of time on the bus and nap to pass time however a few others May realize from this experience of Japanese culture something about their own culture quote seeing how easily and how commonly Japanese people fall asleep in public transport indeed will lead some foreigners to think I would never feel comfortable doing that in the Metro of Paris or on a bus in Rome or on Madrid's Suburban trains Japanese people fall asleep in public transport not only because they must but also because they can they can for they trust their public space they trust their society they trust their fellow Japanese notice that the Foreigner doesn't just learn why Japanese people fall asleep on the bus because that's a transition from meaninglessness to meaningfulness in this situation it goes beyond the meaning of the sign in Japan The Foreigner actually learns the meaning of a specific aspect of public space in their own non-japanese culture and how their own cultural distrust of public space connects to larger social and historical systems passengers staying awake on public transport will stop appearing like natural behavior instead it'll be recognized as a significant Choice a consequence of a whole social system that has a long history of violence and Injustice of centuries of hunger poverty exploitation crime all Weighing on the shoulders of each passenger of the Metro of Paris Rome London Madrid all whispering to their ears don't fall asleep it's dangerous people staying awake on public transport was something they once never paid attention to it just seemed natural but now suddenly it's meaningful it signals to a public distrust among citizens because of crime which signals to the larger social systems of poverty and oppression it's a passage from insignificance to significance but it would have been impossible to have this transition happen without actually experiencing another culture to turn insignificance things we never even recognize as signs of meaning into significance we have to travel and experience different cultures and ways of life or at least learn about it unfortunately this presents us with a problem billions of people in the world do not have the means to travel to get a good education and learn to explore different cultures and ways of life or if they do learn they can be presented with biased perspectives or face discriminatory barriers I love this next passage in the paper it's so beautifully written quote to most human beings pain hunger poverty dirtiness oppression and violence are insignificant they hurt but naturally thus for the child who has starved all his life or the woman who has been beaten since she was a teenager or the worker oppressed and exploited since she or he was an infant pain is not a semiotic habit it is an insignificant mute condition of existence with no alternative Horizon if hunger poverty oppression were meaningless people would know that it has potential meaning to uncover it would mean that under the right circumstances we could try to find the cause of this suffering and eliminate it but when it's insignificant when it's something you experience your whole life just as how the Foreigner experienced people staying awake on buses their whole life it becomes naturalized there is no awareness of meaning it becomes impossible to think that anything else but this suffering is available think of the foreign tourist on the Japanese bus again the space and the public transport of certain European cities is unsafe which is why passengers can't sleep on the bus yet Europeans do not miss sleeping in public they do not know it they do not think about it so long as they're not exposed to an alternative they have little means to conceptualize the underlying meaning of their situation think about many nine to five workers who are stuck in a constant cycle of sleep eat work and social media it perpetuates an endless banality that stops us from wondering what does this mean who is it meaningful to and how is it meaningful here's why Leon disagrees with many academics who claim that most of the world is meaningless he says no no no most of us are surrounded by insignificance and most of our lives are insignificant we Act without being aware of what those actions mean who's supposed to get meaning from them and in what capacity but that's not really our fault because certain ways that Society is structured prevents a lot of us from achieving significant existence only the privileged few can say that generally accepted socio-semiotic habits are automatically rational but just because many people don't think of staying awake in public transport as significant doesn't mean we should automatically accept it as the correct way to interpret the world just because owning slaves was once a semiotic habit a widely accepted way of signifying social status doesn't mean it's right not everything that is significant is right and so we can't ignore the insignificant people are starving from significance they yearn for it when they sink in the irrationality of strong thoughts embracing fundamentalism Superstition and obscuritism they strive for it through falling for the lure of consumption they hanker after that golden existential moment in which they will finally believe that their efforts mean something means something to someone and means something to someone in some capacity semiotics cannot and must not teach the meaning of life however it can and it must warn about the death of meaning then what the is stopping us from just throwing ourselves off a bridge and giving up and saying yeah the planet is dying post-modernism is cool and all but there are legitimate concerns about its contributions to the death of meaning or at least confusion about meaning I don't want to explain what it is because I'll probably get it wrong so I'll just let plastic pills sum it up here Berg said hussaro and so as you can imagine post-modernism is like WTF is this modernism modernism is when science and or rationality and or religion were seen as the path to ultimate truth the main point I want to stress in this video is that modernism believed in Grand narratives everything that goes up must come down the history of all societies is the history of class struggle or all men are rude because they secretly want to stick it in their mom but post-modernism was like hmm how about this perspective you're forgetting or this bias you have how do they interact is there really one privileged truth position at all one characterization of this shift from modernism to post-modernism is a shift from sincerity to irony from this is the way things are to yeah this totally is the way things are irony becomes the popular deconstructionist tool to poke holes in our ways of thinking but irony is an entirely negative action it keeps poking holes but leaves nothing new to fill them back up it critiques but doesn't rebuild some think we need to bring sincerity back so that we have an overarching structure of our thoughts Behold metamodernism a theory that doesn't see why we have to choose between modernism or post-modernism instead we can constantly move between the two we can bring back sincerity by being ironically sincere because frankly pure sincerity is now considered cringe I think I touched on this in my video on gen Z humor already so I won't go too much into that but essentially some of the most effective ways of being sincere now are to be ironic for example BoJack Horseman explores some really dark themes but with cartoon talking animals living among humans in a colorful cartoon world world the Creator Raphael Bob waxberg explained the brighter and the sillier and the cartoonier we went the more the audience was willing to go with us to these very melancholy places that may be on a live action show would have come off as indulgent or a sakuran I do not know how to pronounce that I think this comment under my gen Z humor video also captures the sentiment behind why ironic sincerity is now effective but pure sincerity isn't I don't think there is room for some things deserve seriousness because every single event that gen Z faces is an existential crisis we don't get the privilege of sincerity as the comment suggests being truly sincere can feel at odds with the absurdity of everything else we live just to work and spend to hear about Misery around the world and for climate change to ruin the Earth until life is unlivable we worry about our appearance whether we'll find the right partner all to suddenly lose Consciousness one day and decompose away this sounds pretty depressing but what's a better cure than listening to some old men try to cheer us up when I consider the short duration of my life swallowed up in an eternity before and after the little space I feel engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing and which know nothing of me I am terrified the Eternal Silence of these infinite spaces frightens me one common reason why people feel that their existence is insignificant is just how enormous the universe is and how tiny we are within it I'm already an insignificant number in my University so why would I be any more significant in the universe when I am literally like this ah yes the age-old question does size matter spoiler alert it doesn't if it were proven that God existed and he said you humans are special snowflakes science wouldn't suddenly be like this just in the universe is actually small the objective value of our existence isn't affected by size if we are intrinsically significant or insignificant How could an external Factor like size affect that the author of this article quoted someone who was like well Sir Isaac Newton was pretty darn significant but he was smaller than a hippo so it's true that sometimes we use size to represent value for instance it's hard to think of a religion that worships a super tiny deity usually they're infinite in size or beyond the Realms of space and civilizations tend to Aspire to build humongous monuments but this is because big things are psychologically more impressed aggressive and they take more effort to make this size doesn't say anything about the intrinsic value though as the author points out few would prefer to have a huge pile of over a diamond another common reason for feeling like our existence is insignificant is because we're all going to die heck there's a countdown for how long the human species has left on Earth we study to work we work to pay for our home and food we pay for our home and food so that we can take care of ourselves and perhaps a family but to what final end it's a chain of actions that seems to never resolve in a final end point me working explains why I study and me paying for my food explains why I work but what's the Big Goal at the end of all this if there isn't some ultimate end we're striving for we must be insignificant but Thomas Nagel says that we forget there are tons of chains of actions that end within our lifetime and are directed towards different goals not everything has to lead to one ultimate purpose in order to be justified there can be smaller endpoints within a larger picture for example we take an Advil to stop our headache and that's it that's all there is to it we don't bug our friend being like so why did you take the Advil for self-actualization for the good of humankind no we probably don't think they need to justify that action Beyond just wanting their head to stop hurting I think these two reasons as to why people feel insignificant presents a view on the Absurd that differs from Albert Camus conception Camus says that the absurdity of existence comes from a gap between our search for meaning and the world's lack of a response benagel says the Absurd comes not from a conflict between our expectations and the external World rather it comes from a collision within ourselves he says that for starters humans can't help but take things in life seriously we worry about what our family and friends and Strangers think of us how attractive our appearance is what our career is whether we understand the world whether that burger was really worth 22 dollars this is a special ability to reflect on ourselves as humans we can step back and evaluate our life from a more detached perspective as if we're a spectator making judgments about ourselves yet simultaneously we also understand that we can never actually escape this highly specific position we're in namely ourself however when we view ourselves from this outside perspective we realize how arbitrary our choices and considerations are sometimes I catch myself judging how even my eyeliner is for the fifth time and I realize that literally doesn't matter even eyeliner being an attractive feature is so arbitrary sometimes I stress a lot about the grade that I get on a paper and that outside spectator voice of mine tells me Olivia this paper grade does not matter in the grand scheme of things in fact you're going to die one day so most things that happen to you will lose value once you stop existing yet realizing how absurd our considerations and thoughts are doesn't use usually cause us to just sign off of life and that's the absurdity of it all we can recognize how odd we act and think from this third person perspective yet still be invested in taking those actions and thoughts seriously first person this is why Nagel says human existence is absurd but not say the existence of a mouse quote he lacks the capacities for self-consciousness and self-transcendence that would enable him to see that he is only a mouse if that did happen his life would become absurd since self-awareness would not make him cease to be a mouse and would not enable him to rise above his mousely strivings self-conscious self-transcendent Mouse would be like damn I'm a mouse and I can never be more than that even if I want to so if you want to avoid a life plagued by absurdity Nagel says just shut your brain off act solely based on impulse so that you tap into your head empty animalistic side how have fun dissociating now this would not be a meaningful life it's just no longer absurd but it doesn't seem quite great but hey you avoided the Absurd this probably unpopular way of life is Nagel's way of suggesting that absurdity ain't even that bad he thinks that Camus proposition that we must Shake our fists at the world and live in spite of the Absurd is a romanticized and slightly self-pitying picture of absurdity absurdity to Nagel is one of the most human things about us it is a product of our most interesting and advanced characteristics it's because we are self-conscious and self-transcendent that we can ever be aware of the Absurd and that's unique yeah we're kind of intelligent no big deal quote if a sense of the Absurd is a way of perceiving our true situation then what reason can we have to resent or Escape it it need not be a matter for Agony unless we make it so like a lot of my videos I have no clue what my conclusion is I just hope something made you think and maybe you can dig out a conclusion for me if you enjoyed this video feel free to leave a like a comment a subscribe so I forgot to record the patreon shout out on the day I was actually filming because I'm stupid so um you can just listen to this voiceover and stare at pictures of me and pretend that it's a video okay so I want to give a big shout out to these people who support my channel Aiden Bozeman Alan Cisneros Alex M Benjamin Walsh Benson lie bleach Bonzo c-dub Daniel dangond deep toe Chatterjee Drew single Diego embarrassed us fickle foreign man in a foreign land GW Grammy Reeves Harry socks Henry Adams Jacob McMillan Jeannie Lee Jessie JL Arbor 21 John Nguyen Jonathan Von Schroeder Josh hunt Kaden fur Kian nahad Kyle anulishian Lee Laura Clark loraz Levy Lorenzo Villegas Michelle Gia murky morals name Nova ohb Robert Castro Sabrina Fiore solidosi Tania Spaceman no helmet Stephen Bollinger Vincent Julian Valdez and zesty sauce thank you so much for watching let's keep talking and I hope to hear from you soon bye actually no not a good joke don't put that in the video no okay

Channel: oliSUNvia

Views: 1,243,546

Keywords: mental illness, sad art, aesthetic, sad aesthetic, tumblr sad gif, tumblr girl, mina le, tumblr aesthetic, absurdity, everything everywhere all at once

Id: qjvARuTSjqE

Length: 27min 42sec (1662 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 18 2022