Re:How to Be a Stoic
by FabHK on Saturday February 25, 2017 @09:28AM
(#13731708)
Well, I take away just the opposite though.
Suppose there really was a loving creator that put this all in place just for us. Then, yeah, we've made quite a mess of it, and it really all rather sucks.
However, if it's just a bleak, uncaring universe, then the fact that we're around is amazing in the first place, and the fact that we've managed to carve out a niche where we can, by and large, thrive in ever larger numbers [1] is outright awesome and amazing.
It also then enjoins us to "keep on fighting the good fight". For example, I don't think there is "automatic karma" imposed somehow - it is incumbent on us humans to impose justice as well as we can.
[1] The notion that things are terrible and getting worse is wrong, I think. See for example
- Julian Simon, "The State of Humanity"
- Steven Pinker, "The Better Angels of our Nature"
Suppose there really was a loving creator that put this all in place just for us. Then, yeah, we've made quite a mess of it, and it really all rather sucks.
However, if it's just a bleak, uncaring universe, then the fact that we're around is amazing in the first place, and the fact that we've managed to carve out a niche where we can, by and large, thrive in ever larger numbers [1] is outright awesome and amazing.
It also then enjoins us to "keep on fighting the good fight". For example, I don't think there is "automatic karma" imposed somehow - it is incumbent on us humans to impose justice as well as we can.
[1] The notion that things are terrible and getting worse is wrong, I think. See for example
- Julian Simon, "The State of Humanity"
- Steven Pinker, "The Better Angels of our Nature"
- Max Roser, "Our World in Data", https://ourworldindata.org
etc.