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Shadows of God - Magical Realist - Mar 25, 2026
"Let us beware.— Let us beware of thinking that the world is a living being. Where should it expand? On what should it feed? How could it grow and multiply? We have some notion of the nature of the organic; and we should not reinterpret the exceedingly derivative, late, rare, accidental, that we perceive only on the crust of the earth and make of it something essential, universal, and eternal, which is what those people do who call the universe an organism. This nauseates me.
Let us even beware of believing that the universe is a machine: it is certainly not constructed for one purpose, and calling it a “machine” does it far too much honor. Let us beware of positing generally and everywhere anything as elegant as the cyclical movements of our neighboring stars; even a glance into the Milky Way raises doubts whether there are not far coarser and more contradictory movements there, as well as stars with eternally linear paths, etc. The astral order in which we live is an exception; this order and the relative duration that depends on it have again made possible an exception of exceptions: the formation of the organic. The total character of the world, however, is in all eternity chaos—in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms. Judged from the point of view of our reason, unsuccessful attempts are by all odds the rule, the exceptions are not the secret aim, and the whole musical box repeats eternally its tune which may never be called a melody—and ultimately even the phrase “unsuccessful attempt” is too anthropomorphic and reproachful.
But how could we reproach or praise the universe? Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful, nor noble, nor does it wish to become any of these things; it does not by any means strive to imitate man. None of our aesthetic and moral judgments apply to it. Nor does it have any instinct for self-preservation or any other instinct; and it does not observe any laws either.
Let us beware of saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is nobody who commands, nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses. Once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident; for it is only beside a world of purposes that the word “accident” has meaning. Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type.
Let us beware of thinking that the world eternally creates new things. There are no eternally enduring substances; matter is as much of an error as the God of the Eleatics. But when shall we ever be done with our caution and care? When will all these shadows of God cease to darken our minds? When will we complete our de-deification of nature? When may we begin to “naturalize” humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature?"--- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
RE: Does life have a meaning? - C C - Mar 25, 2026
(Mar 25, 2026 07:21 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: It's basically a spiritual question. Does your life have a meaning or any meaning at all? Just asking that question assumes that the events that happen in your life have some sort of intelligible pattern or structure to them that make them more than just random happenings in a physical universe. It implies an intelligence beyond physicality that guides your life to happen in certain ways in order to achieve a certain outcome. Not necessarily a God per se, but any sort of implicate ordering principle or even chaotic attractor that draws all your experiences together into one meaningful whole.
I have always assumed life DOES have such an underlying unifying aim, much as say my dreams seem to have meanings that can be deciphered from examining the metaphors and themes inside them. Or how a movie may have an overarching message or truth beyond the literal plotline of the story. Unfortunately you can only ever know the meaning of life once it is all over and complete, just like a movie and a dream. The assumption here is of a extra-temporal standpoint or perspective that is beyond your life from which it all can be understood as a meaningful or truth-revealing process. Which basically posits an afterlife state for consciousness that can grasp the complete and finely nuanced tale of your seeming chance sojourn here on planet earth. But then why only learn the meaning of it all when it is too late and it is all over? Unless that afterlife state is one in which the meaning and wisdom learned from life can be applied to continued existing, whatever that may entail.
In Existentialism fashion, it's whatever meaning that an individual creates and determines for themselves.[1]
In contrast, fatalism is accepting that something outside one's body -- the gods, overarching Newtonian physics, the social establishment, the laws of the cosmos, unguided chance, a mystical stratum, etc -- will determine the destiny and significance of one's life.
The former is being engaged with one's own agency on a regular or semi-regular basis. The latter is a policy of placing it in the hands of "others" with very little or any decision-making involved.
Of course, even free will boils down to eventually being regulated and constrained by personally chosen routines, biases, loyalties, concepts, ideologies, moral orientations, etc. But the difference is that _X_ was chosen by internal or native "this one" rather than outer or invasive "that one".[2]
And ironically, even fatalism can be a consciously chosen path to adhere to if an individual becomes explicitly aware of the rival stances or alternative, rather than implicitly being and remaining fatalistic in an unknowing and inherent way from birth.
- - - footnotes - - -
[1] Free will is autonomy, which entails determination (making choices according to one's own preferences). But tradition implosively conflates FW with unpredictability and randomness. A severely insane person is someone that is behaving and deciding chaotically, but who wants that?
So the issue is not whether free will is compatible with determinism, but is FW compatible with indeterminism? Hard compatibilism (compatibilism as defined and labeled in the old context) might say that it is not. But soft compatibilism allows it to be so as long the randomness is minor and does not derail the stable organization and functioning of the system (as happens with insanity).
Note also that autonomy includes having the capacity to change one's preferences and tendencies. For instance, the ability to reprogram to new habits and aims if the current ones are damaging, causing discomfort, or outputting ill results. The belief itself in free will enables such an incremental transition to new programming to be possible. Whereas a person who is resigned to fatalism cannot make those changes.
[2] Heaven: the critical issues (excerpt): A second account carries no implication that having the relevant freedom in the present always requires an ability to do otherwise in the present, though it does require an ability to do otherwise at various times in one’s life history. [...] James F. Sennett defends the free will of the saints in heaven by in effect arguing that they have [already] freely chosen their own moral character. [The saints in heaven do not NEED the freedom or option to rebel that Lucifer had, since they have freely chosen to be faithful in their prior, earthly existence.]
RE: Does life have a meaning? - Syne - Mar 25, 2026
(Mar 25, 2026 08:38 PM)C C Wrote: But tradition implosively conflates FW with unpredictability and randomness. A severely insane person is someone that is behaving and deciding chaotically, but who wants that?
What tradition?
RE: Shadows of God - Magical Realist - Mar 25, 2026
I'm glad you caught my original post before I replaced it with Nietzsche's considerably less hopeful warning against deifying the universe, which I myself am guilty of. I was a bit self-conscious that it came off as cliche and glib somewhat like the standard recycled New Age fare. But as you point out it does raise some profound issues on what we mean by freewill and fate and determinism.
RE: Shadows of God - Magical Realist - Mar 25, 2026
Quote:But tradition implosively conflates FW with unpredictability and randomness. A severely insane person is someone that is behaving and deciding chaotically, but who wants that?
But the seeming chaotic behavior of the insane is still an overpowering determinism of their own illness, an inner determinism disabling their otherwise free minds with overpowering impulses and delusions and mood changes and bodily spasms and loss of insight and autonomous verbalizations that robs them of the freedom of having multiple possibilities of action and non-action always before them. Freewill IS a level of indeterminacy in this sense, unfettered by the tyranny of a mind run amok and opened up to choices and ideas otherwise impossible. Not the "bad" indeterminacy of noisy randomness and chaos but rather the "good" indeterminacy of fluent creativity and quiet deliberation and dispassionate decision-making.