Let’s do a small thought experiment. Let’s teleport in the future and
encounter the reality of what is known there as an experience machine.
Imagine that technology has reached a point where this machine could stimulate your brain in such a
way that you could experience anything you desire. All you need to do is enter a floating tank and
attach a bunch of electrodes to your head. However, the technology of the machine is
developed in such a way that, once you plug yourself in the machine, you can’t unplug.
Of course, while in the tank, you won’t know that you’re there; you’ll think that it’s
all actually happening. Would you go for it?
Would you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life experiences,
knowing that there is no way back? This interesting thought experiment
was suggested by philosopher Robert Nozick in his book “Anarchy, State and Utopia” in 1974.
Nozick was notorious for his ability to challenge conventional wisdom and come up with contrarian
ideas that could tantalize one’s reality. The point raised via “the experience machine”
is whether or not hedonism should be regarded as the most valuable human pursuit. Our proclivity to
avoid pain, embrace paths of least resistance and easily accept pleasure, wherever it comes from,
presupposes that, for most, the experience machine would sound like a good deal.
Nozick, however, believed that pleasure is not the only intrinsic value and that,
although one could go about experiencing life via a pleasure-seeking philosophy,
pleasure shouldn’t be treated as an end, but rather as a means to an end.
Regardless of whether or not you would go for the experience machine, our relationship with pleasure
is rather weird. Sometimes even quite absurd. We all have experienced at some point in our lives
the aftermath of our pleasure-seeking tendencies. It could be that the brain cannot keep up with the
production of serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins that seek to glorify the sensation of a certain
experience. It could be that we grow tired of the lack of novelty entailed in a certain activity,
habit, or relationship. It could be that ideas, notions, and theories,
that were previously regarded as pleasurable, now seem more like a hindrance to our current state.
But isn’t this kind of absurd? The very drive that you have to seek pleasure
can morph into a self-destructive force. Reality is inundated with such contradictions, and
this absurd landscape leads to questioning the very meaning of existence and
it also creates bizarre living conditions for everyone partaking in it.
This is more or less how the idea of absurdism came about.
Existentialist philosophers like Soren Kierkegaard or Albert Camus kept bumping into predicaments
that illustrated the conflict between the human desire to seek inherent value and meaning in life,
and the human inability to actually discover these with any certainty.
The absurd is an omnipresent condition throughout the human experience.
Absurdism encompasses everything related to the fundamental disharmony between
the individual's search for meaning and the seeming meaninglessness of the cosmos.
In such a landscape, one has usually two options. Either allow absurdism to devour them and lose
touch with meaning, or confront the absurd by developing their own existentialist philosophy.
And today I will reveal some aspects of my existentialist philosophy. Indulge.
Familiarizing ourselves with the way our brain operates
can lead to marvelous ways to manage it, but also improve the way we evolve our thinking motifs.
Although more information grants us access to more knowledge, our ability to analyze
this information is predicated upon our ability to understand our cerebral makeup.
Think of your brain as an uber-sensitive tool that shapes its form and capacity in
accordance with the information it gathers. Nowadays, the information torrent we have to
face has increased dramatically and our brain struggles to keep up with this new reality.
Instances of people who feel confused and don’t know what to do with all this information
keep cropping up. You can see that most are lost in their thoughts and find it quite challenging to
structure a well-articulated stream of reasoning. The verdict is that we weren’t ready to deal
with this predicament. Ergo, the adoption of methodologies relative to the taming of our brain
becomes imperative. Instead of going adrift
and allowing technology to hijack our mind, leading to a future attention war dystopia,
each one of us has the option to obstruct it. We obstruct it through meditation,
reading, writing, expressing ourselves creatively. We obstruct it by transitioning
from consumers to creators. That’s one of the main
reasons I started this channel. I realized that this was the only
sure way I could tame my mind; this was the only sure way to stay sane.
Discussing the ramifications of a rat race-driven reality is one of my favorite
topics. I do that very consciously, for I feel that the more I reduce its significance,
the more I allow myself to disengage from it. The rat race, despite how we end up portraying it,
has a noteworthy use we tend to ignore. Adaptation and blending in is an integral component of our
constitution. The fact that we need to keep up with a certain race or pursuit is felt in the
bodily sensation we experience whenever we think that we are left behind. That has both a bad and
a good use. A race is just a race. Choosing our race will determine the quality of our life.
Keeping up with the Joneses and keeping up with great contemporary thinkers, can’t be seen in
the same light. The selection of our “opponent” so to speak, molds the fabric of our reality.
Throughout this process, the best way to determine whether or not you are in the
right race is to listen to your body. Professor Jordan Peterson proposed an
interesting exercise in that respect. While you go about experiencing life,
try and pay attention to how your body reacts to the things you say and hear. Listen to the
words you utter and try to estimate whether or not what you say feels right and if it
makes you feel solid. Ask yourself, are you subordinating to something? Are you
hiding from something? If the answer is yes, you need to recalibrate and reevaluate your stance.
Living our life that way is how we cement its authentic nature.
As British poet Anthony Anaxagorou put it, “The sadness of non-authenticity is lamenting and
sitting in the back of your spirit and every now and then it taps on the back of your
shoulder and says do something about it.” The escape from such a state is crucial and
can only materialize via the process of listening and recalibration.
Psychology, despite its vastness and the different schools of thought comprising it,
is an extraordinary discipline. Since the beginning of the last century,
and the establishment of psychology as a science,
many pioneers in the field have proposed their theories and practices.
One can get lost in the endless approaches, but, at the end of the day,
some fundamental principles can allow one to form a canonical interpretation of the topic.
I like to keep things simple, so, for me, three important tenets of psychology,
that everyone should understand, are Freud, emotions, and biases.
Freud was one of the first to see a connection between childhood experiences and
behaviors in adults. The way you interacted with various figures in your family environment has
shaped a lot of your likes, habits, principles, and neuroses. A basic understanding of that
concept can lead to a more healthy and balanced life. People who refuse to see this connection,
end up experiencing an endless circle of emotional suffering that leads to a toxic life for both them
and their surroundings. Making connections to certain events leads to more awareness and
awareness is key when attempting to escape absurdism.
Emotions are the most critical drivers of our actions. Our emotional world allows us
to add more plurality to our experiences and connect with others in a special way. However,
this is both a blessing and a curse. The increase in intensity of a certain experience can lead to
uncontrolled emotional ups and downs that shape our reality. This can have detrimental
effects on our well-being since we become fixated on certain affairs,
but also become prone to emotional manipulation. Biases blur our attempt to form a more objective
interpretation of reality. They lead to consistent deviations from sound judgment and
can bolster the degree of unorthodox choices we end up making. Biases are the toughest
cognitive processes to handle. Even when one identifies the existence of a certain bias,
the ability to overcome it requires tremendous awareness and psychological strength.
These three tenets need to act as a ubiquitous error-correcting
mechanism that recalibrate problematic behavioral patterns that feed absurdism.
Understanding that you might be wrong, despite your intelligence and seemingly sound beliefs,
is a significant constituent of a well-rounded personality.
Erroneous thinking is all around us, and instances of people who prefer to exploit it instead of
rectifying it tend to increase significantly. In this perilous landscape, one needs to be
careful with how assumptions are formed and many points need to be taken into consideration.
Ray Dalio, in his podcast with Tim Ferriss, suggests that a technique he uses for capturing
the whole picture of an idea, proposition, or argument, is to consider the opinion of at least
three people relevant to the topic. By doing that, and by capitalizing
on his experience, knowledge, and intellectual humility, he ends up adequately informed on a
variety of topics and increases the possibility of forming a sagacious judgment on a topic.
This intellectual exercise eventually gives rise to the idea of diversification and the realization
that one can escape absurdism by attaining a wide array of knowledge across various disciplines.
Regardless of how hard you try and regardless of how much self-awareness you accrue over the years,
dark moments are inevitable. Especially if you are a creative and
sensitive person, your proclivity towards darkness is going to affect your world in an intense way.
Once you recognize that, the moment of truth begins. When you stare at the darkness,
the darkness stares back at you. It is a momentous instance in your life.
You either allow it to own you or you fight back. There is no middle ground there.
The darkness has many forms. It can have the form of a shadow, as Jung put it,
it can have the form of mental and physical pain, it can have the form of depression
and a general disconnection from reality. All these forms signify that one has let
oneself go and surrendered to a dark reality that was imposed on him or her one way or the other.
The escape is not easy. A dark reality, usually,
signals a lack of purpose and an astute lack of discipline throughout the daily grind.
Whether we like it or not, we are purpose-driven beings. Purpose is what allows us to add more
structure to our lives and eventually have control over it. Purpose can manifest itself in many ways.
It can be an obsession with arts in an attempt to satisfy the need for self-expression.
It can be the ambition to change the world for the better.
It can be whatever the individual decides it to be.
Once you identify your purpose, live it wholeheartedly. Create systems, processes,
goals, and protocols around it. Find other actors who have similar purposes and engage with them.
Escape the banality of abstract living that is defined by others and assemble your life around
your purpose. Do that in a disciplined and, if the circumstance demands it, obsessed way.
That’s how you overcome darkness. That’s how you escape absurdism.