OK, my take on this is:
There was no font of meaning, no pool from which you could draw. Of course, Life in itself (Taken in the abstract) devoid of anyone to experience it, phenomenologically, wether by the senses, or the experience, or which ever way one chooses to experience life, is devoid of meaning.
Note: (I mean life without anyone to really experience it is devoid of meaning **life in the most abstract way you can conceave it**.
But just as we made the social reality, and proclaimed the reality and supremacy of the state, of governments, or of any power or symbol Humanity bows down to, from the early days of Hunter Gatherer Groups to our internet age; so we invented mechanisms—ingenious mechanisms to give ourselves meaning, to make it. We added thousands of layers to the natural world, the world in which all animals plants and everything else leaves, besides ourselves. And now, let us call this world we made, the world for us. Not the world as it is, but the world for us, and the world made by us. I for one, find solace in the fact that this world can't but naturally crumble. We weren't made for this world. Note again: not in the sense that we weren't made by some silly creator or some Eden bullshit, but that it were better if we would have lived without the constant fear of past, present and future. We dread the future, can't bear the past, and the present, well, as for the present, if it were so good, we'd bear it aesthetically, with dignity, and love every fleeting moment of it. Is this idea new? Hell no! It's damn old. The adage, the worn out tired adage “Live in the present.” Sadly, the present feels like poison to me, and the air is fetid already.
@bashue: The Golden Age was a dream, AND A VERY POINTLESS ONE, but in order to help you understand better its impossibility, I'd point you to my companion, Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel, "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man". I hope that you guys REMEMMBER that he was into the theories OF Charles Fourier, WHICH WERE POPULAR AT THAT TIME, HE WAS a very well known utopist. But Utopia literally means "The place of Nowhere", no place. And that's significant.
To return to these mechanisms. We reduce our thinking to DISTRACTIONS or whatever else have you, not thinking about how we may actually live. We do this as much as possible, think of life/death. Or complex issues or questions about the universe. In this regard, science has spoiled us. Again, so that I won't be misunderstood, I don't claim it isn't great, I don't claim people should not engage in scientific discovery, I suppose that sense of elation is worth the trouble, untill the next mystery comes around, defiling more and more mysteries, untill the universe is left, empty, meaningless, and rather dull! With all that said, I love science! But I'm interestedin other areas. Science discovers the unknown, or claims to, but we aren't closer to knowing more about how to eliminate suffering than our ancestors were. But that's the thing. First, suffering may not need to be eliminated, only reduced in a certain capacity. Science should work to reduce suffering. And for that, well, I suppose we should be greatful.
Animals and plants enjoy a sort of unconscious stupour. They know nothing about our systemization, and our conceptual paradimes, thoughThe chimpanzee's and the Bonobos have some interesting group dynamics, if you ask Wing here:D
The life of an animal is lived according to instinct, (the best way to live) in a way Survival only. However, nature, as I like to point out is cruel. Of course, no one knows if by design, since what could have designed this cycle of survive/reproduce, go on, and on, and on?
But that is why sometimes, paradoxically, we would want not to be human, and in that culmination of disgust, we fall back into ourselves, becoming more humane than we were previously. The idea of external meaning is ludicrous and obsolete. I shall provide a quote.
The fact that life has no meaning is the only reason to live, in fact, the only one.
— (Emil Cioran, Anathemas and Admirations. 1984 Trans. Richard Howard)
I also recommend reading this article, it may help. It's actually very good.
Cioran wouldn't have agreed with Camus and Sartre that much, though he met Sartre and Camus a few times while living in Paris.
He did like to live ascetically, and taking his distance from the intellectual seens of Paris at that time. But his lifestyle is not suitable for many. Even though he lived in an enormous city. Anyway, I will leave you guys an article. You might get something out of it.
https://psyche.co/guides/how-kierkegaar … ial-crisis
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"A good ruler gives the goblet to his servants. He never drinks from it himself. The servants need his glory. He does not cary the flame alone.
For a spark does not lit the flame, but the spirit holds it in place. Forgeting that leads one to destruction.
(Enhemodius before the Altar of the Broken)"