Glad that we can agree on mythologies (which I may bring up again). I’m having a bit of trouble digesting the meat of your message (my fault, not yours) so if you find that I’m cherrypicking words instead of diagraming sentences, well, yes, I am.

Yes, a generic pattern of reality that we tailor to fit our perceptions, though the tailoring is probably 80% accomplished by our unique genetic configuration. No, I believe that shared experiences (whether shared or shared) contribute to our understanding of real-life.

And, yes, I’m an anthropocentricist in my observations, though no radical proponent of the man über Earthly concerns (environmentalism, etc.). Dogs are decidedly kinder than man, elephants larger, but humans (it seems to me) stand atop the food chain by way of Darwinian evolutionary functions. I’ll not argue that we’re #1 in the Universe (heavens!) but I believe that we’ve fairly established ourselves, for better and worse, as the prime fulcrum on this planet.

[SIDEBAR] There are words and concepts that I overuse, I know. Only, though, because I believe that they’re so damned important. But I want to make clear that when I write of the unique individual that I am not an advocate of any — any at all! — Randian philosophies. Pew! Puke! No! [END SIDEBAR]

Yes! I agree! Nihilism completely negates the unseen, the unobservable, the spiritual, etc.! Any philosophies/theologies that posit any higher power than man. Not certain that ‘ephemeral’ is what you mean to imply? And the beauty of ineffable is that it is so very ineffably ineffable (those things of which we dare not speak).

I hope that I’ll not have to eat unseen and unobservable… let me say, maybe, that nihilism negates, sometimes temporarily, those things that lack a logical hypothesis. Reasonably theoretical. Culture and science and knowledge evolves, too, and we cannot predict what we will know one-hundred years from now. Just as the speeds of microprocessors were predicted to increase exponentially (until the brick wall) humankind’s knowledge seems to have increased exponentially during the past 120-years. Old men (like me) are in awe of touchscreen-telephones because we were so very pleased with ourselves when we mastered the rotary dial. My new iPhone is so laughably thin because my iPhone 3 is so comically thick in comparison.

We’re in a remarkable time.



We need — we physically and emotionally need — to say yes.

I’m ever thinking of Molly Bloom with her ecstasy punctuated with yes and yes and yes and it is likely that I’ve re-read her soliloquy twentyfold these past six months.

I don’t agree that nihilism negates life. It only says ‘no’ to moral or religious or humanistic principles that attempt to narrowly define ‘meaning.’ In that sense (or even broader senses) there is only one plausible reaction and that’s to reject meaning while holding living dear, if only for pleasure’s sake. Sensual/intellectual pleasure. Pleasure doesn’t figure into any equation of meaning — assuredly not for the puritanical! — but I suppose that it might be said to be an evolutionary technique for survival.

Finally.

I’ve been as Roman Catholic as the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (and as rabid as any Rottweiler) but nihilism has always been nipping at my heels and I have vacillated from absolute meaning to none-at-all until settling on the latter.

Let me suggest that imparting meaning for human life may be the ultimate anthropocentric farce unless meaning is also ascribed to the smallest asexually reproduced microbe that scientists describe as ‘doing nothing.’ Eking meaning from nothing for the smallest form of life is exactly the same as prescribing meaning to the most complex. A great comedy.

We enjoy a good laugh. We don’t enjoy being the butt of laughter. As perplexed as I can be by some of the more naïve life-principles, I really have to laugh at the failed comedies and comics. No, I don’t mean to be mean; I simply see no need for overarching meanings.

“Life is sad, life is a bust; all we can do is do what we must — we do what we must do, and we do it well. I’d do it for you, honey-baby, can’t you tell?” — (Mr. Bob Dylan, Buckets of Rain, from the critically acclaimed vinyl album Blood On The Tracks, 1974)