Existence doesn't make sense...am I the only one who has experienced this?

[edwest2]

There is something called “the wisdom of the ages.” And it means that man has grappled with the world and sometimes, existence doesn’t make sense. But this type of nihilism is not what kept man going for thousands of years. What we are to do is written in our hearts. Believe it or not. Some are drawn to one thing, others to something else. It has always been that way. What has made men build great cathedrals? Nothing better to do, so why not? Or great works of art or great inventions? We are here for others. That’s why the University began. To teach others.

If existence didn’t make sense then we would have no philosophers, no scientists or doctors or teachers.

Peace,
Ed

 

[tonyrey]

An Absurdist would concede the point, but recognize the absurdity and, like Sisyphus pushing his boulder, be content with it.

If **everything **is absurd so is the notion that everything is absurd. In other words it is self-contradictory and self-destructive. It is absurd to be content and even express yourself…

Sartre and Camus inconsistently sought refuge in humanism.

 

[tonyrey]

There is something called “the wisdom of the ages.” And it means that man has grappled with the world and sometimes, existence doesn’t make sense. But this type of nihilism is not what kept man going for thousands of years. What we are to do is written in our hearts. Believe it or not. Some are drawn to one thing, others to something else. It has always been that way. What has made men build great cathedrals? Nothing better to do, so why not? Or great works of art or great inventions? We are here for others. That’s why the University began. To teach others.

If existence didn’t make sense then we would have no philosophers, no scientists or doctors or teachers.

Or contributors to this forum! There wouldn’t even be a forum…

 

[Sochi]

~ edwest2 If existence didn’t make sense then we would have no philosophers, no scientists or doctors or teachers.

Or contributors to this forum! There wouldn’t even be a forum…

Fascinating. You say this after agreeing with edwest2, and, before that, posting eight lines from St. John of the Cross, who is a hero to panentheists. What exactly are you saying, please? And just looking at figures in history, it seems that many did what they did because the world *didn’t *make sense, or sense enough. If everything made sense, where is curiosity? Innovation? Invention? So I’m not clear what you mean. And even if you claim that inventions, etc happened because the world makes sense, how is it then that each answer raises more questions than it answered? And a quick survey of threads in other categories and this one, tells me that to people on the fora, little makes sense at all. Well, except for the few pedants who seem to unquestioningly pull a clinical answer from a hat for everything. Just asking. Perhaps I’m completely misunderstanding you.

 

[jimmy]

I have had similar thoughts. For me it is basically the fact that I exist that doesn’t make sense. It is easy to make sense of everything else if I ignore the contradiction of my own existence. It is strange to me that I didn’t exist for 15 billion years , and soon I will no longer exist (in this life anyway). I think of the cosmological principle when I think of this. The cosmological principle says that the universe is homogenous and that no point in the universe is unique. To me, it would be most logical if I either never existed, or if I always existed. Either way it makes things far more homogenous. There shouldn’t be any point in time that is unique. Either consciousness exists always or it never exists. It can’t arise out of unconsciousness. It is something coming from nothing.

For me it is the one real proof of the existence of God. It is the one thing that can’t be explained away. No one can just write their own existence off.

 

[ynotzap]

Every once in awhile I’ll start having these thoughts and realize that…well…life makes absolutely no sense. It is so abstract. Even the concept of logic and reason is abstract and the concept of God/Heaven/Hell is abstract…even atheism is abstract…pretty much to sum it up…LIFE IS STRANGE AND MAKES NO SENSE

Am I the only one who has had these type of thoughts before? Are they common? To be honest they kind of give me panic attacks because I feel a sense of nothingness…I don’t like it

The fact that life is so abstract, is the reason it does make sense. Abstraction is a spiritual process called thinking by a spiritual faculty called intelligence. Thinking is an intangible reality because of its nature. It doesn’t depend for its’ existence on the material world, but is dependent on the physical world to supply contact with it through the animal senses. From these sensations the mind draws or abstracts ideas, the mental representation of the physical world. From these ideas we go onto deeper abstractions, ontology eg. It is obvious that if thinking doesn’t make sense, either we lost contact with reality, or we are thinking wrong, or are ignorant of the truth. Even the most primitive cultures show signs of understanding reality. Awareness, of a superior power is one of them, it is a common one This unknown power, or a supreme being is who St.Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles desired to make known to the Romans. Until that time the world was in ignorance as to the answer, and the purpose of its existence. The same holds true for everyone of us who don’t receive the light, or truth that makes complete sense for our existence, up to that point it remains speculation no matter how logical, or scientific we are. This superior force has a name-God manifested in Jesus Christ, the true light of the world. Some of the world prefers darkness, ignorance, to them existence or life will never make sense It is Jesus Christ who gives purpose to life, and takes us off our mental merry-go-round and puts us on the path that is called “straight” and “true”

 

[Counterpoint]

Every once in awhile I’ll start having these thoughts and realize that…well…life makes absolutely no sense. It is so abstract. Even the concept of logic and reason is abstract and the concept of God/Heaven/Hell is abstract…even atheism is abstract…pretty much to sum it up…LIFE IS STRANGE AND MAKES NO SENSE

Am I the only one who has had these type of thoughts before? Are they common? To be honest they kind of give me panic attacks because I feel a sense of nothingness…I don’t like it

You’re having what’s called an “existential crisis.”

 

[Ridgerunner]

To me, it would be most logical if I either never existed, or if I always existed.

Interesting. Of course there is the possibility (the certitude if one has the faith of Christians) that I always existed in the Mind of God, and always will.

This whole thread is interesting, even though much of it is really just digging into words. But toying with words can be fun, for sure. I am put to mind of a related meaning of the word “abstract”. Long ago, every property owner had an “abstract of title”. It was a book like thing that had these partially symbolic entries representing prior transfers; deeds, mortgages, liens, even wills and divorces. It was, indeed, an “abstract” of more complex instruments recorded in the county courthouses.

But those more complex instruments were “abstract” as well, inasmuch as they stood for something other than themselves. The represented those things that affected houses, grass, trees, crops, rivers, and so on. Long ago, in early Medieval times, the transfers were more “literal” and less “abstract”. The lord would take his vassal out on the land and hand him a clod of earth before witnesses. More “literal”, less “abstract”, but both still stood for another reality.

One of the marks of a good literary work is the way it “abstracts” meanings from more tangible realities. Why all the references to flowers, for instance, in D.H. Lawrence’s work? Well, it stands for a more tangible reality. We come from the earth. We bloom, then we return to the earth. We seed before we die, in ways tangible (children) and intangible (effects of what we have done). Or at least we should do so, and that is a good portion of Lawrence’s point about what “life means”. And so, while all the flower growing and cutting and arranging are going on in his novels, people’s lives are being played out in parallel ways.

We actually all do that to one degree or another. We “abstract” (verb) meanings from things that have reality or from things that abstract from other things that have reality. All of it has existence.

But does it have meaning? Well, Jesus told parables and used symbols “look at the lilies of the field” “regard the ravens” and so on. All abstractions, and all having meaning, sometimes disturbingly so. The question is whether other things do as well. Why all the birds in James Joyce? Why the “red rocks” in Eliot’s “The Waste Land”? Why witches in “MacBeth”?

Faulkner said “…the South is haunted”. Did he mean there were ghosts flitting about In Mississippi, or did he mean there is very significant meaning in what is all around us but we think mundane? Are there powerful meanings all around us if we would just see them?

Philosophers, artists and saints try mightily to get us to see the richness of meaning in what, to us, may seem without it. Jesus Himself said “He who has eyes, let him see. He who has ears, let him hear”. Oftentimes we don’t like doing it. Sometimes seeing the world flat and gray is less troubling than looking for the messages and meanings.