Hacker News Reader

Young children don't need 'meaning' to enough life, which IMO is a philosophy as valid as any other.

I used to have quite a bit of existential angst and personally I found the most useful thing to do was finding something interesting and do/learn it. It's easy to get into a rut where month after month you follow the same patterns. Especially when living in doors most of the time removes most seasonal variations.

Children live a life of pure fiction. My two year old in the last day has believed himself to be a Jaguar hunting our chihuahua, a pirate sailing our living room couch, a bear eating ravioli, and countless other tiny dreams.

All of them are fundamentally narratives about power. Children incessantly dream of having more strength than they currently do. Why that is the case should be profoundly obvious.

It may not seem like meaning to us because of its naive purview, but to children their own narratives about their power are all-encompassing epics detailing a hoped-for relation to the world.

And why should the season matter? Outside of its aesthetic attributes, attributes we project upon it, it is merely a small change in temperature as the angle of the sun's rays move in relation to the crust of the Earth, followed by some shifts in the flora and fauna populations -- beings which are themselves merely carbon-based machines arising from the repetition of simple chemical processes over very large time scales.

Those things that we find interesting are so because of what we project upon them, not as a result of what they fundamentally, physically, objectively are. The very idea that something should be "interesting" implies a subjective witness to project their own feelings onto the meaningless physical trivia of the universe.

If your goal is to live a life without lies, you'll be living a life without meaning. There is no meaning outside of the beautiful, nay, holy fictions we tell ourselves.

The beauty in childhood isn't that it's all truth, it's that its all lies. They don't yet have a concept of truth and lies, and so are free to live entirely within their dreams. We, on the other hand, are in some ways shackled to reality by our experiences of materiality.

> There is no meaning outside of the beautiful, nay, holy fictions we tell ourselves.

The presumption-to-word ratio of that sentence is pretty off the charts.

"They don't yet have a concept of truth and lies, and so are free to live entirely within their dreams."

The best description of working in Silicon Valley that I've ever heard!

And why should the season matter?

It's not that they provide meaning, however if you spend a lot of time out doors in most areas there are dramatic changes. There is something visceral about the feeling that you need to smell the wildflowers right now as they will soon be gone.

There is a multi-billion dollar industry selling people all kinds of fashionable, pharmaceutical and surgical means of "preserving their youth". If only people realised that what they are trying to relive is the state of not knowing or caring about that crap, and that "Living the dream" is not about acquiring material accessories, but preserving a sense of wonder, excitement and imagination. Whenever an old person is described as "youthful", its not because they've had plastic surgery, it's because they haven't grown out of dreaming.

Extremely well said!

This is probably the best part about having kids: seeing things through their eyes.

I'm hoping if I spend enough time with them some of it will rub off (or back onto) me.

It's the adults who are mad!

I see meaning (and really consciousness itself) existing in a similar way that software exists in relationship to hardware. There is little meaning in the physical hardware itself, none really that we can experience directly as humans. Nevertheless, the running software contains a lot of meaning, even if it's fleeting and that information is stored in different places by different physical parts. I think this is akin to the miracle of the emergence of meaning you describe. In that way, I think meaning is about as much fiction as software, which is to say it's both real and imagined (or abstracted if you will).

That's a very interesting analogy. Thanks

The Taoist position is more nuanced than to have "a lack of attachment". The lack of attachment is so you wouldn't feel compelled to force the existence of mental constructs like family, culture, love, hate, beauty, honor, good, evil, progress. Imagine if the law prescribed the words you can say to your parents/brothers/sisters/friends/shopkeepers. You may be saying "Thank you so much" to the shopkeeper, but by being forced to do it, the meaning behind "Thank you so much" is completely lost.

The Taoist position is not to have no narrative. It is to apply relentless non-interference to things, people, and ideas that are in our lives. It is only by standing back, feeling unattached, doing nothing coercive, that family, culture, love, hate, beauty, honor, good, evil, and progress arise naturally, so you can experience life to the fullest.

e.g. By trying to force a relationship/family/reunion/ideas into happening, it breaks it, and what was going to be, no longer will be.

You're confusing the Dao of heaven with the Dao of sages, to borrow from Dao Chapter 81. That is to say, you're confusing Daoism as a practicable and political philosophy (à la Chapter 19, Chapter 80) with Daoism as a metaphysical position (à la Chapter 1).

Their actionable practice is to teach the common man and governors some amount of detachment.

Their metaphysical position, the one the Dao mentions less, is one of a foundational non-being --

"The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth",

"What does 'the greatest misfortune is the self' mean? The reason I have great misfortune is that I have the self. If I have no self, what misfortune do I have?",

and particularly nihilist: "Heaven and Earth are impartial, they regard myriad things as straw dogs. The sages are impartial, they regard people as straw dogs." (Straw dogs meaning straw effigies of dogs burnt during holidays.)

I'm arguing that their metaphysical position (not their actionable practice) if followed to the end, with the addition of a modern knowledge of physics and biology and so on, ultimately leads one to a metaphysical nihilism.

That quote with the straw dogs is particularly relevant. Straw dogs are important during the festival. Hours and days are spent procuring and preparing them. - while you have family, your family is important. The straw dogs are then burnt and forgotten. When your family goes don't be attached to force it to stay. Everything is like clothes. While you're wearing them they will keep you warm, and you treat them with some respect. When the clothes are worn out, you throw them away and find new clothes. Are your clothes part of your self even as they keep you warm? Just because you have family does not mean you have to make them your identity, you can still tell a narrative about them, just as there is a narrative with the straw dogs on the day of the festival. If they wanted to use a metaphor to represent something completely unimportant I don't think they'd choose straw dogs. Maybe leaves on the ground or ashes after cooking dinner. Straw dogs are important for a short period of time, like everything.

>>I prefer the ancient Hindu philosophical counterpart.

Actually there is no one counterpart, It is a spectrum. At one end we have the likes of Advait folks who reduce everything to an Absolute devoid of any quality, while at the other end we have the Bhakti folks who are happy chanting praises at the feet of their beloved Supreme with all qualities.

You have no clue about Advaita or Bhakti.

Advaita is translated as nondual, ie. not-two, that is, the manifested is not separate from that which is the cause of the manifested (ie. that which gives rise to all is all, and everything is a modification of it).

Bhakti is a method towards the experiential realization of what I just stated, one wherein the subject-object (which in your case is the 'Bhakti folks' and their 'beloved Supreme') dichotomy collapses (or to put it in Buddhist terms, extinguishes, which is the proper translation of nirvana/nibbana) from the intensification (one can even say exaltation) of the human yearning for union.

So, let's say it is an interactive story.