Peh

Premises

What if my premises are wrong? Then my conclusion does not follow. Premises can consist of beliefs which can be fact-based or opinion-based. Facts are either right or wrong while opinions are neither right nor wrong. People can come to find that what they took to be true isn’t true, or they could change their opinions. Both of these could falsify their original premises and invalidate their conclusion. To be logically consistent, they would then have to change their conclusion. If their conclusion is a worldview, they would have to alter their worldview.

Existential Void

Good feelings about doing things or wanting to do things can fall away when one looks into the existential void, that is, when one questions the point of it all. It can help to consider how little we seem to know about life, the universe, and everything. We may know that the answer is 42, but we don’t know the question!

Perhaps “What is the point of any of this?” is an irrelevant question, though I can easily say that from my position of relative comfort. From a position of suffering, one may very well find this a relevant question as one wonders what the point of suffering is, as though wanting justification for suffering. Perhaps there is no justification, and for that, the existential void can truly suck one in. You stare deeply into it, and it into you. And you become one with the void, and you become the void itself.

Perhaps there is no point and perhaps there is. If there isn’t, then the option based on reality seems to be painful acceptance. But again, how can we ever truly know? And outside the context of suffering, is there a point of pondering the point?

Hedonic Adaptation

Feeling no longer content with my current situation was perhaps a result of hedonic adaptation. When people come to be in a better position than they were before, they can feel good about it for some time but eventually return to how they felt before. I’ve reflected on this in the past with the conclusion that it can be important to take a step back from endless striving and focus more on what one has already attained. I often go back and forth from contentment with my life as it is now to the dissatisfaction of hedonic adaptation, but hey, I’m just along for the ride I guess.