Somebody from the “Summer of Antwerp” (ZvA – the acronym in dutch works a bit better than the english version) called me last night to help out at one of their locations: “Tour de force”. Since we are going to watch it on sunday, I tried to avoid watching the performance itself (by Geert Hautekiet), but appearantly it was very funny (judging by the audience’s response).
While I was tending bar, a man asked me for a bowl of sugar lumps (dutch language site). As a joke, I asked him if it was for his horse. “No”, he said, “it’s for my wife”. 
“That’s not a horse, you’re just banging two coconuts together.”
Doing the dishes, I got to talking with this philosophy student about the Hindu caste system in India (which she was working on). Appearantly, even when one belongs to the lowest caste, it’s possible to become president in India (they had a woman like that once). However, at the same time it’s still almost impossible to be a town’s head. I love functional paradoxes like that.
Which brings me to the point (about time). I’ve been dabbling in a lot of ideas lately, including a lot of home grown filosophy. There’s this thesis (central idea, not a stack of paper) I’ve been thinking on for quite a while now which revolves around the paradox in trying to live life without meaning (as in “god is dead” big kind of meaningless). Somewhere along the line, I’ve tossed off a part of my catholic upbringing and come to believe that our existence here is fundamentally arbitrary. It could very well be that evolution is almost inevitable under “earthly” conditions, but that doesn’t mean those conditions are any less arbitrary (could have been any planet) or that the outcome (homo sapiens) was destined to be. One big giant coin toss, with a bit of class 4 complexity. Of course, this line of thought leads very quickly to nihilism: “why not jump off a bridge?”. Indeed, why not? Like many others before me, I’ve come to believe that religion is a kind of allergic (mental) reaction to this idea. At it’s core, religion seems to be there mainly to prevent ourselves from collectively jumping of bridges by promises/warnings of afterlife, eternal damnation, reïncarnation or what have you not. Or more precisely, religion is pretty popular because these are the people who didn’t jump and were able to procreate. Yeah, that’s right, survival of the believer.
So is there a way out of this? Is it possible to survive nihilism?
Sartre and Nietzsche seemed to think so. As far as I understand any of their ideas, it seems they place very high hopes in the notion of “free will”. Releasing ourselves from this god-idea frees us to basically do and act however we wish. Neither of them thought this should result in a hack ‘n slash lifestyle, living dangerously and randomly. (remember, that lifestyle doesn’t hold much chance of survival either) So one can and should construct a new system of values and morals and live by them. There’s also the notion (Sartre) that one should at least acknowledge free will and hold oneself responsible, lest one be untrue to one’s own human nature. (damn, it’s weird to write in this “one” form)
But isn’t there something missing here? Suppose you stop believing in god, vigorously construct a new value system and live by it. Does this mean life suddenly holds meaning? It seems to me this is akin to building a house in the middle of the desert and trying to deny the emptyness out there. I personally think that it’s important to acknowledge this newly constructed paradox. By paradox I mean ideas that co-exist but are fundamentally opposed. For example, suppose you accept the rule “I shall not kill”, the question always remains: why? This search for meaning will almost inevitably lead to the earlier stated (and accepted) meaninglessness. We’ve made our bed, now we have to sleep in it. Stand on the deck of your newly constructed house, look out over the emptyness and smile.