Gods Will Be Gods

Season 1, Ep: 1 Transcript

Cosmic Meaning and Salvation

(unedited transcript; please forgive typos)

The Question

You didn’t choose to exist. Neither did I. We both just woke up one day to find ourselves in existence. Of course it isn’t just us. Everyone arrives the same way, none of us having chosen it. Existence happens to us. And it’s not as if, once we exist, we are ushered towards the information desk where they tell us what it’s all about, why we exist, why anything exists, the meaning of it all. Nope. That’s on us to figure out, and after thousands of years of hurling our best minds at the question, we still don’t know why we are here, or even if there is a reason we are here at all. 

I say we don’t know why we are. That is, of course, not to say that we don’t know how. We have learned not only how each individual comes about via a certain intimate act, but also how the entire species came to be through the long process of evolution via natural selection. Still, though, the biological story of humanity tells us nothing about whether the processes by which life came about were set in motion for some reason, or whether the whole damned thing was merely a cosmic accident, an occurrence for no reason at all. We don’t know, that is, whether life has some grand meaning, or whether it is, as it is put in Macbeth, 

A tale told by an idiot

Full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing. 

Man is a mystery to man. We are mysteries to ourselves. We know not our own purpose. We know not our own story. We know not what we are. 

But of course we can’t just stop there. We can’t just throw up our hands and declare the question beyond our capacity. At the very least, it seems that the only hunks of meat on earth capable of asking themselves about their own meaning should give it a serious go. Sure. Maybe, in the end, we can’t answer such questions. Perhaps they really are just too big for us, too nebulous, too far beyond our intellectual horizons. But if that’s the case, we should like to know why. If we cannot know, we at least want to know that we cannot know. We want to articulate the reasons we cannot know. If we cannot know, we should at least like to understand this strange fact about ourselves – that man is fundamentally mysterious to himself, and we should like to explore what that means. In other words, whatever we can know with respect to the meaning of life, we want to. 

Welcome to Gods Will Be Gods. I am Cameron Smith. This is the first in a series of episodes on the meaning of life. I know… I wanted to start with something easy. The topic of this episode is ‘Cosmic Meaning’, a term employed in recent philosophical literature to refer to an objective reason for which life was brought into existence, a reason in the mind of a diety, as the theists would have it, or perhaps a reason in the mind of some grand consciousness of which we are somehow a part. We want to ask: is there a cosmic meaning? Was life brought into existence as part of some grand plan? But we must first ask about the stakes. Why does it matter? What are the stakes of meaning? Today, that’s our question. Hope you enjoy.

Copernicus and Darwin

Think of the Copernican Revolution, the correction of our astronomical model from geocentric to heliocentric. What was the significance of the fact that, actually, the earth rotates around the sun, and not the other way around? Why was that a revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries and not just a correction of our astronomical model? The answer is that the heliocentric model forced on us the fact that we are not the center of the universe, and it forced the question of whether, if we’re not the center of the physical universe, then maybe – maybe! – we aren’t the center of the story either. 

Think of Darwin’s theory of evolution via natural selection.  In the 19th century, after nearly two thousand years of a narrative according to which we were the direct creations of God, the shephards of the earth, bound for heaven, Darwin placed man back among the animals, informed us that, actually, we are another chink in an evolutionary chain that trails all the way back to the muck. From the muck man came, says Darwin. And so we found ourselves a little self-conscious about the point of existence. There was a creeping worry that if we, the Shephards of the earth, actually developed by the same processes as the ants and the pigs, perhaps our destiny, too, is no grander than theirs. We began to worry, as we do now, whether our most serious concerns are not just as insignificant as those of the ants on their hill. More than ever, we are lost at sea, unmoored from purpose, from meaning.

What is it that we want from meaning? The answer isn’t obvious. Perhaps it seems like we want our actions to matter in some cosmic way. Perhaps we think that in order for our actions to really matter, they must ring throughout eternity. Is it that we want some grand cosmic legacy, to have our names written among the stars. Really? Have you ever had that thought? Have you ever, before starting some goal, had the thought that unless what I am about to do will be regarded as significant in three hundred thousand years, it doesn’t matter? I haven’t. That seems, frankly, a little mad. I just don’t know anyone who thinks like that. So what is it? Why do we even care if life is meaningful? What do we want from meaning?

Suffering and the Primacy of Salvation

Schopenhauer got it right. The 19th century German philosopher saw clearly the link between our hope for objective meaning and our need for the redemption of tragic suffering. Tragic suffering, and the terrible extent of it in this world, is what gives rise to the question of whether there is a point to it all. We survey existence and find it wanting. We find it problematic. As Leonard Cohen put it, there is a crack in things. We see death, decay, disease, the horrors of war, famine, cruelty, and betrayal, and our gut tells us – right or wrong – that such suffering cannot be for nothing, that such suffering would not exist if it were not for some grand purpose that justifies it, that redeems its victims. We think that if all of this suffering is for nothing, if the subjects of such suffering see no redemption, not even a chance at redemption, then existence is, in short, something that ought not be. Schopenhauer puts it this way: Without salvation, “life is a business that fails to cover its costs.”

What we want to know when we ask whether there is a meaning of life is whether life plays a role in some grand plan, some plan the goal of which redeems existence from tragedy. Whether or not we can get it, what we really want is that salvation. Our hope is that there is not only some point to all of this, but a point that makes sense of all the suffering, that explains it, that assures us that, after all, life is not as tragic as it seems. That is why the question of whether life has a meaning seems to us so significant. That is why our apparent inability to answer the question is so disheartening. Suffering reigns supreme on earth, and we would like to know if there is a point.

This is the main takeaway from this episode: the primary motivation behind our search for cosmic meaning is a desire for salvation, a desire for the redemption of tragedy. How else would we make sense of the fact that so many modern thinkers and artists, confronted with the prospect of a meaningless existence, respond with despair? How else do we make sense of all the angst of the twentieth century? All the fist pumping at the sky, the prostrations before the prospect of absurdity? Yes, of course there were the wars, but was it not the grand display of suffering in those wars that made them so awful? Was it it not the thought that the world be damned if all of this suffering is… for nothing?

Here is Nietzsche, from the third essay of the Genealogy of Morality:

“Man, the bravest of animals, and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far” [GM III:28].

It’s an important point, lest we be confused with those who would condemn suffering totally. What lofty goal has been achieved with no suffering at all? Do we not value hard work? Do we not even often, as Nietzsche points out, engage in voluntary suffering? I used to run up mountains. It wasn’t easy. I wanted desperately to have the fastest time on one of the highest peaks in the Great Smoky Mountains. It was difficult. I fell hard and I fell fast and I fell often. We do invite suffering, provided, as Nietzsche says, that there is a point. But meaningless suffering. Unredeemed suffering. That is what prompts gloom, what prompts despair, what invites the damning pessimism about existence. That is the “curse that lay over mankind.” 

Consider the following passage from Jack Kerouac in his Desolation Angels:

Who are men that they can insult men? Who are these people who wear pants and dresses and sneer? What am I talking about? I'm talking about human helplessness and unbelievable loneliness in the darkness of birth and death and asking "What is there to laugh about in that?" "How can you be clever in a meatgrinder?" "Who makes fun of misery?" There's my mother a hunk of flesh that didnt ask to be born, sleeping restlessly, dreaming hopefully, beside her son who didnt ask to be born, thinking desperately, praying hopelessly, in a bouncing earthly vehicle going from nowhere to nowhere [...] Where is the rock that will sustain us? Why are we here?”

Perhaps Schopenhauer does it best:

If  you try to imagine, as nearly as you can, what an amount of misery, pain and suffering of every kind the sun shines upon in its course, you will admit that it would be much better if, on the earth as little as on the moon, the sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and if, here as there, the surface were still in a crystalline state

Elsewhere:

If we were to conduct the most hardened and callous optimist through hospitals, infirmaries, operating theatres, through prisons, torture-chambers, and slave-hotels, over battlefields and to places of execution; if we were to open to him all the dark abodes of misery, where it shuns the gaze of cold curiosity, and finally were to allow him to glance into the dungeon of Ugolino where prisoners starved to death, he too would certainly see in the end what kind a world is this meilleur des mondes possibles [best of all possible worlds]. (WWR I: 325)

The despair in these lines makes no sense at all if we presume that our concern with the meaning of life is just about being a part of some grand cosmic scheme, is just about hoping that life matters in some absurdly cosmic way, as if we cared whether the most minute of our actions echo through eternity on a cosmic scale. It’s not about “mattering to the universe.” It’s not about scrolling our name across the sky. What we care about is the redemption of tragedy. What we care about is whether our suffering has a point.

What I have described is, though I hate to use the word, a crisis of meaning. Nietzsche knew that all of this was coming. He was able to see over his own century, to see the consequences of the copernican revolution, of the darwinian revolution, of the enlightenment generally. He saw belief in God, hitherto our source and foundation of normativity, collapse under the weight of new scientific discoveries. He worried that this, the death of God, as he calls it, would usher in a culture of nihilism, 

This, the death of God, as he calls it, would usher in one of the most dangerous times in human history, one in which we are, as I have said, unsure of ourselves, unsure of our role in the universe, and a little self conscious that that role might not amount to much. He worried that all of this would usher in a culture nihilism, a culture that believes in nothing, has no aspirations, thinks of nothing but its own comfort and entertainment, a culture with which humanity could die out with no more fight than a whimper and indifferent blink. He warned us.

Consider the following passage from The Joyful Science:

GS 125

The madman. – Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!” – As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? Asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? Asked another.[...] Thus they yelled and laughed. 

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him – you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as though an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine composition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. 

“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us – for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”

Nietzsche is not celebrating the collapse of Christianity. Sure, he does that elsewhere. But here he worries about it. The madman runs into the town square, “I seek God, I seek God!” he says, and he is met with mockery, with scorn. “What it matter, anyway?” they say. And so, too, would many of our contemporary atheists react this way. But the Christian God was for nearly two thousand years the theoretical foundation of western morality, our morality, also the foundation of our conception of a meaningful life. There was a time, let’s say, in the 14th century, when a Christian peasant looked out into the night sky and he knew, or felt he knew, exactly his own destiny. It was, after all, up to him. Follow Christ, and he would have heaven. The Christian story provided us with exactly the sort of grand narrative I mentioned earlier: every individual has a role to play in God’s grand plan. The reward: salvation? The redemption of suffering on earth. So if God is dead – well, thenf, says Nietzsche, has not the rug been pulled from beneath our feet?

Ours is a spiritual problem, a crisis of meaning, as I have said, and if we don’t get it right, if we blithely accept an absurd existence, if we shrug our shoulders at the prospect that nothing on earth is any more significant than the movement of dust, we are likely to wind up a vacuous, spiritually indifferent, lethargic society lacking entirely in aspirations, incapable of greatness, incapable of affirming life.

There is a bit of fatalism in Nietzsche. In the end, whether an individual collapses into despair at the prospect of an absurd existence or affirms it is a matter of physiological strength. Some – the weak, the sickly, to use Nietzsche’s language – some will despair existence because they must. Incapable of digesting their own suffering, some, like Schopenhauer, will scrawl their misery on the world, and declare a universal pessimism. 

 “None of this should be,” says Schopenhauer

“You are unable to let it be,” replies Nietzsche “You are too weak to let it be. You cannot digest it. Thus you condemn it.”

If the life-deniers, as Nietzsche calls them, if they were capable of digesting suffering and moving on, they could face the world as it is and still maintain vigor enough for lofty aspirations in art, in culture, in politics and in war. He hopes that such people exist, for it is only they, he thinks, that can spare humanity from nihilism. 

Closing

We’ll delve  deeper into Nietzsche in another episode. I mention him here because I know that all of this talk of our need for salvation, of our need for the redemption of existence, all this black bilious despair of life may well leave you feeling a little green around the gills. To be honest, it makes even me a bit nauseous. Perhaps we ought to take Nietzsche’s advice and treat pessimism like an ice bath: quickly in, quickly out.

In fact I find myself stretched thin between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, between life-denial and affirmation. However my final evaluation of life winds up, I want it to be based on a real confrontation with reality. If the question is, is life a good thing? Well, then, I want to know what life is. And Schopenhauer is correct that life is overrun with things dying and things dead, with suffering. In fact life is so often bad for so many living things that it does raise the question of its own value: is life on the whole worthy of its costs? Is there a point to it all? I don’t know the answer, but, to be candid, I do often doubt that anything but divine salvation could possibly render the story of life a net good. Nietzsche speaks of greatness, of the prospect of human achievements so great that all of what came before them could properly be seen as a means to their end, as worth it. Again, to be candid, I find it difficult to conceive of humanity doing anything so great as to cover the misery of millenia, but, then again – perhaps I am sick.

But I do I relish life. I always have – the rich mystery of the unknown narrative, the terrible puzzle of man, the high stakes of courage, cowardice, of love and hate, the adventures of the spirit in thought, in creativity, the sublimity of nature. I love it all. Despite the world’s suffering, in fact, I wake up in the early morning and sing praises to a new dawn. I love it all so much, in fact, that even as I find myself drawn to pessimism as a realistic assessment, disparaging such a sublime existence really does leave me green. 

Do you hear that?  – it’s me, blowing in the wind. So these things go. I didn’t answer the question of whether there is a cosmic meaning. We’ll get to that. But I hope I have outlined the stakes. We ask, is life meaningful? And we take the question seriously. We want to know if life is a good thing, worthy of our awe and praise and admiration and the whole hullabaloo of the human race. We want to know if there is redemption for tragedy, salvation for all who suffer at the hands of time, or whether reality is, in fact, simply tragic.

Footnotes

Footnotes are just notes at the bottom of academic work where the author says all of what he couldn’t find a convenient way to say in the work itself. It’s really a way of keeping us on the same page. I don’t want anyone getting hung up with objections based on a misunderstanding. Another way of saying it is: I don’t want you to think I’m an idiot, so I’m going to address a few things that I am not saying.

Okay, here they are:

1. Nothing I have said is at odds with the fact that many people have very good lives. My own life is well worth living, and I know many, many others that are, too. Right, of course I do. Of course you do, probably. You, listening, most likely in 2024 in a so-called first world country, you probably also have a very good chance at living a great life, and that’s well worth striving for. This isn’t to say that there isn’t plenty of suffering in the west in 2024. There is. Tragedies happen every day. Some of them are played out over decades in the lives of very unfortunate people. But a high percentage of people living right now have a higher chance than ever at living a good life. 

Schopenhauer’s pessimism, or at least the main thrust of it, is a claim about the phenomenon of life in general, as a whole, from its beginning. The idea is that that phenomenon has constains a level of suffering such that it would have been better if it had never come into existence. Or that’s Schopenhauer’s claim, anyway. It’s obviously a controversial one. But it should be noted that many others have said the same thing (David Benatar, being a contemporary example of this brand of pessimism). Maybe it’s true and maybe it’s not, but it can be true even if some of the phenomenon of life is good, that is, if many concrete individual lives are good. 

2.A second note on Schopenhauer. I will link to a long form overview of Schopenhauer’s general philosophy in which I talk a lot about his pessimism in the show notes. I worte this a long time ago, I think 10 years at this point. It has been downloaded over 10k times on  a rather obscure website, so it seems both that a lot of people are interested in Schopenhauer and searching for it.  I will also talk about Schopenhauer quite a lot throughout the rest of this podcast, but I do want to go ahead and say that Schopenhauer, though an atheist with a very bleak worldview, does believe in a form of salvation. Like much of the eastern traditions to which he often compared his own philosophy — Buddhism, for example — he thinks that desire, or willing, as he calls it, is the source of suffering, and that one can attain a kind of salvation by extinguishing the fire of desire completely. He wrote extensively about his admiration for the saints who were able to defeat desire totally, even when they die as a result. 

There are a couple of things to say about this. The first is that this form of salvation does not include an afterlife, and so it really does not offer any comfort regarding death or any redemption for the suffering of the dead. So, a lot of people, including myself, don’t find it very satisfying. At least that’s how I feel right now. The second thing to say is that I agree with Nietzsche that, as admirable as the feat of overcoming desire completely to the point of death is — just in the sense that it requires incredible willpower — it also seems, well, sickly. There is something repulsive about it to me, turning against life to that extreme, not seeking to create something or accomplish something in life, and instead turning against it totally. In a sense, it literally is a sickness in that it harms the body, leads to death, and I think there is virtue in striving for excellence both in one’s body and health but also in life. I’ll talk more about these things I am sure at some point. 

3.Okay, this notes is on Nietzsche.  He’s a controversial thinker, obviously. I feel dumb even saying this because it’s so obvious, and I know most of you feel this way and saying it is unnecessary, but for anyone else. You know sure, As a 21st century American, you’re likely not going to agree with much of what he has to say. But that’s okay. There is value in learning the views of those who disagree with us and formulating for ourselves why we are correct and they are wrong. More importantly, whether his stuff is controversial, not controversial, who cares. That questions fades quickly behind the richness of his thought as a whole. Is this controversial isn’t as interesting of a question to ask as “is this true” or “what does he mean by this” or “why does he think this.” Those are interesting questions. Ask those questions. Who cares whether it’s controversial. That’s boring. Also, all of that stuff fades beyond the richness of the man who sought with vigor and intensity to explore the boundaries of the human experience, and who shared them with us through what, in addition to being a philosophical achievement, is also a remarkable artistic achievement. Okay. That’s all I’ll say for now. We’ll see much more of him next time. 

4. One final note on Nietzsche. When you heard that Nietzsche said that God is Dead in the ninetheenth century, you might reasonably respond by asking if you missed the knock down, compelling argument against God’s existence. It’s important to note that Nietzsche’s remark that God is Dead is not meant to report that some such argument had been discovered. He meant that, generally speaking, religious belief will decline in the wake of enlightenment science and the secularization of politics, and he was right about that. As for what I think, there are persuasive arguments on both sides of the question of whether the god of the theists exists, but no compelling argument for either side. The question of whether some such God as the Christian God exists is an open one, and we’ll talk a lot more about the topic in coming episodes. I don’t want anyone assuming that I take atheism for granted. That would be foolish, when, quite obviously, we just don’t know. More on that later. 

Alright, guys. The entire transcript of this, if you prefer reading it or revisiting something, is on my website . Everything is free. Thanks for listening. Until next time.