Saturday 3 October 2015

Escaping from the modern hellhole (of alienation, nihilism and despair)

I am assuming, here, that modernity is indeed a hellhole - although mostly a tepid and padded hellhole. The extent to which moderns strive-continually, desperately, to lose themselves in distraction and intoxication and/or stimulate themselves - up to and including cultivated degradation and deliberate self-mutilation - makes this obvious to me (although I accept that the typically successful, exemplary and admired, modern life may strike other people as just 'fun').


Alienation - Needs to be changed to relationship; but not only nor primarily human relationships; but an experienced relationship with the world. Relationship being in both directions - our attitude to the world, the world's attitude to us.

And this relationship needing to be (or become) one of love. Because everything is alive, and in relationship - love (not gravity nor electromagnetism nor any unified field!) is the primary force of reality.


Nihilism - Needs to be changed to meaning, which depends on purpose - and this purpose must be personal, for ourselves and ourselves uniquely.

In the end, this entails a personal God with whom we have a personal relationship; everything is alive - and personal. God (a person/s) has a role or task or destiny for us individually; and we can choose (and it must be a choice - it is not compelled) to accept this, and participate with and modify it - or not.


Despair - Must, of course, be reversed to hope.

And Hope entails that this mortal earthly life be framed by (at least) an eternal after-life; such that mortal life is significant (the vital aspects must be remembered forever, not merely blown-away by the winds of time) yet mortality be known as not-everything in-and-of-itself.


Thus the experience of mortality is eternally significant because it is (in part) part of a progression achievable in no other way.

Significance comes from un-repeatability and permanence combined.

2 comments:

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

That last sentence was very helpful. Thanks.

knifecatcher said...

Akira Kurosawa's "Ikiru"

The film is about redemption, living (Ikiru is "To Live" in english) and dying, and what matters most to really make a difference in your life, and the lives of others. The film is quiet yet utterly powerful, a basic study of a man trying to find meaning in his last days