From: Joseph Maurer (jhmau@sbcglobal.net)
Date: Thu Feb 24 2005 - 17:58:45 GMT
On Thursday 24 February 2005 5:47 AM Marsha writes to All:
[Marsha] If I say there is no absolute God to guide or save me, no absolute morality, and no absolute truth, am I a nihilist? I think the answer would be yes. If life is a process, a series of events, how could it be otherwise?
[Marsha] Or to explore it differently, what would the opposite of nihilism require? Purpose?
[Marsha] What of the emotions, fear and depression, attached to this word, this concept? Are they justified? Does it follow that without absolutes, there is chaos? Are fear and depression inherent in the definition of nihilism? Or are they secondarily associated? How do they arrive? From what SD system to they come?
[Marsha] I have read more than once that there are know absolutes in the Buddhist philosophy. Could the idea of nihilism flourish in the Zen philosophy. It's meaning and/or its emotions? Isn't this an important aspect of Eastern philosophies to be explored?
[Marsha] Or should the word "nihilism" be erased, banished from all Western vocabularies?
[Marsha] Deep in my bones I know there is no answer, there never was a answer and there never will be an answer.
Hi Marsha and all,
I am impressed by an author who titles his book All and Everything. The different behavior between a cat and a dog is important. Pirsig wrote his all encompassing encyclopedia with 4 levels: inorganic, organic, social, and intellectual levels. Do I distinguish between them by 'no'? Is the inorganic meaningful and it is not the organic? In myself, yes. For myself, nothing.
If existence is the only real, then logic says to distinguish this I have to know nothing. IMO I can distinguish the difference between a mother, father, child deep in my bones. To hell with logic! That puts me in a bind. Alright there is logic, analogy, and metaphor. IMO nihilism is in logic. If I speak in analogy and metaphor also, I can have it all. I sing, I write, I am alive. Logic does not express all contradictions.
Joe
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