Now that we have established that existence is objectively meaningless, we must determine whether life must be so as well. To clarify this distinction, let us consider existence as the experiential condition of all other living organisms, and life as our own, subjective condition… in solipsistic terms, existence is what happens to everyone and life is what happens to me.
How, then, can we ascribe any meaning to life when it is built upon the foundation of a ?
We cling to life because we are afraid of death. It is our inherent survival instinct amplified by our intellectual knowledge of mortality and fear of the unknown. Despite the ever-rising numbers of secularists and non-theists, the vast majority of our species remains indoctrinated by religion to shroud this innate fear with the belief that life is sacred, procreation is godly, and suicide is punishable by ; they have reason enough to live, even if some may suffer the occasional crisis of faith. For many others, procreation itself is purpose enough and fulfills the higher stages of Mazlow’s hierarchy.
For the rest of us, we must ultimately find something to give us purpose before or else we succumb to despair and end our lives. Without this purpose, the value proposition of life– particularly life in any post-agrarian society– is quite unappealing; we toil in endless labor, expereince varying degrees of physical and emotional stress and trauma, and inevitably perish no matter what we do… why, then, should we not decrease our suffering by decreasing our lifespan? We must find a reason.
The human condition is conflict. Without conflict, we are unfulfilled. This is not some profound philosophy of spiritual purpose, it is a statement of physiological truth. Our developed– or over-developed, one might argue– brains simply require frequent stimulation, stimulation that was once provided by evading predators, finding food and shelter, and shepherding our comically-fragile children through a cruel and merciless existence.
However, once we achieved mastery over nature and secured a stable food supply, we were left with brains that had evolved to function under a much higher level of stress and challenges than we encountered on a day-to-day basis. So we turned inward for this stimulation and developed arts and lore and culture and tradition and a myriad other leisurely pursuits.
But as life grew increasingly comfortable and our population grew, we developed increasingly complex and ultimately mundane constructs to introduce conflict and struggle: religion and its strict dogmatism, tribalism and its flimsy premises for violent conflict, romantic love and the sorrows and ecstasy associated therewith, fanatical sports rivalries, Twitter feuds, homeowners’ associations… capitalism and its endless supply of misery in a million different forms. Stitch by stitch we’ve woven the tapestry of society out of artificial constructs that create discomfort, suffering, and intra- and interpersonal struggle, but which also imbue our lives with some sense of meaning. This culminates in what we call white people problems; even though our fortunate first-world lives are capable of being free of almost any struggle, we seek sources of stress and conflict.
Fundamentally, that meaning is inextricable from the struggle. This is near-universal across cultures; we condemn the lazy and the faithless, those who reject the of modern society out of either enlightenment or defect and seek out simple lives with as little drama as possible.
It is particularly true in America, where our puritanical inception and our “rugged cowboy” mythos continue to indoctrinate us to celebrate the savagery of capitalism and of a culture where death by random mass shooting is a daily possibility (and seemingly more possible every week). These struggles are inescapable, we think; there is no other way. Moreover, they are noble struggles, because cooperation and happiness are weakness. It is a cynical nihilism that overshadows any other belief that we proclaim to hold.
But as a response to this constant stress, we must find ways to release the pressure: we indulge in unhealthy foods that short-circuit our physiological stress markers; we binge streams of mindless content to turn off our higher brains as much as possible; we celebrate hedonism and promiscuity as bastions of liberation, when really they are often coping mechanisms for our subjugation. Or, some of us lean into the stress and fuel it with hate and fear until we become a vile husk around a blackened heart which, of course, only leads to greater stress.
And so these are our lives. Grinding away our weeks and years and decades in meaningless labor, unhappy and struggling from unnecessary conflict and hardship, unfulfilled with our ever-increasing consumption, but still desperate to maximize our lifespans (or somehow achieve immortality) because we are afraid of death or because we believe that the rare moments of happiness somehow outweigh the endless misery. The details may differ but the truth is the same for almost all of us.
What reason is there to continue this way? For all the widespread discontent, we all feel powerless to affect meaningful change within our own lives. We either follow power-hungry charlatans that extol some form of fascism as the solution to our ills (conservatism) or we resign ourselves to the struggle and hope that the gradual, historic “improvement” of the current system will somehow yield better results for our future generations (progressive liberalism).
The Savior Self rejects both fascism and liberalism. The Church believes that modern life is simply not worth living in its current form, and institutional changes are impossible or insufficient. We do not support revolution; we encourage abandonment. We hope to liberate all people, but we do not intend to directly affect the lives of millions (or billions); rather, we wish to develop a framework that provides evidence that a better way of living is possible. We will explore these ideas in great detail in the coming months… and years.
