Q&A: Four Escape Routes from the Meaning of Life
Four Escape Routes from the Meaning of Life
Question
Hello. Tolstoy looked for answers in everything human knowledge could give him about life. When he found no explanation, he began looking for one among the people around him. He found that there are four “escape routes” from the question of the meaning of life: one way is to go on living in ignorance, out of not knowing; a second way is to chase the temporary pleasures of life; the third way is to put an end to one’s life; and the fourth way is simply to go on living life despite knowing that it is, in his words, “a great evil and vanity.” Tolstoy rejected the first three paths, and the fourth was unbearable for him. Little by little, he discovered through an irrational feeling that faith is the meaning of life. Do you agree with his diagnosis? And for someone who has no faith, what refuge would you suggest?
Answer
The refuge I’d suggest is that he shouldn’t write his nonsense and should focus on literary works. He’s much more successful at that than at dime-store existential philosophy.
Discussion on Answer
With God's help, eve of the holy Sabbath, “This is the statute,” 5780
To No' — greetings,
The very fact that a person desperately longs to find the meaning of life indicates that he assumes in advance that life was intentionally created by some intelligent being, and therefore it must have meaning.
If I’m an ape who, as a result of some mishaps, underwent a mutation that caused loss of fur, loss of climbing ability, and loss of peace of mind — I have no need at all to search for meaning. It’s enough for me to look for and find a tasty, enjoyable banana.
If meaning in my life matters to me, that is a sign that I assume there is someone who created it, only for some reason he did not reveal to me what that meaning is. Maybe the anonymous creator is waiting for me to define for myself what gives meaning to my life.
In any case, to Tolstoy’s escape routes I would add a fifth route: to do things that benefit others as well. For example, to write beautiful stories that Rabbi Michael Abraham would enjoy, or to formulate philosophical soul-searching for A.’s enjoyment 🙂
Best regards, Semyon Grisha Levingaev
Who are we kidding, that this needs to be said? Only an idiot wouldn’t want to commit suicide, because everything is vanity and a striving after wind. “So I hated life, because the work done under the sun was grievous to me.” And maybe I’m just in a bad mood and tomorrow all this will pass.
With God's help, eve of the holy Sabbath, “And see him and live,” 5780
To No' — greetings,
A famous joke about a Breslover, a Chabadnik, and a Mercaznik who were sent to hell. The Breslover shouted: “Rebbe, get me out of here.” Rabbi Nachman came, grabbed him by the sidelocks, and pulled him out. The Chabadnik shouted: “Rebbe, get me out of here.” The Rebbe came and told him: “You are here on a mission — open a Chabad house here.” The Mercaznik shouted: “Rabbi, get me out of here.” Rabbi Kook came, looked around, and said: “Wow, this is the beginning of paradise.”
The three friends are really one person. They are three stages in coping with the evil and ugliness in the world. The natural, healthy feeling is revolt and revulsion: “In a world like this it is impossible and pointless to live.” That is a very healthy feeling; indeed, one must not make peace with evil.
But then comes the next stage: wait, maybe it’s possible to improve the situation a little, to make the world a bit more pleasant and nice, and less bad and threatening? Little by little, to invest one’s strength in action that pours into the doer and his surroundings “a little light” that pushes away “much of the darkness.” Like the parable of the Chafetz Chaim about the apple seller whose stand collapsed and everyone comes and snatches apples while she stands there stunned and helpless. The clever man says to her: “Everyone is grabbing — you grab too, so at least something will remain for you…”
And the third stage, when one sees that little by little there really is some improvement, is the thought: “Maybe this is how the world is built — to advance and improve gradually.” Maybe the feeling of evil comes in order to spur us to improve the world, to turn hell into the beginning of paradise?
Not for nothing is Coca-Cola called “the taste of life.” After all, what is Coca-Cola? You take something bitter and black and turn it into something sweet and sparkling 🙂
That is the cycle: six pressured weekdays of action, and one day that is “a semblance of the World to Come,” in which you look back and say: “Wow, we moved the world forward a tiny bit; next week we’ll move a little further.”
With wishes for a good Sabbath, Shatz
“What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.”
It’s worth noticing that part of the terrible sense of evil is somewhat exaggerated. The problem is the media, which brings us online 24/7, in highlighted and emphasized form, all the crimes and horrors and disasters and troubles from the whole world in a concentrated and amplified way.
About the good that exists in far, far greater measure — nobody talks about it, because it is taken for granted. Think about the fact that millions of Jews live here in this land, in an independent and democratic state where one can live a full Jewish life without fear or persecution. A state flourishing economically and culturally, diplomatically and militarily. True, there are endless problems. And that is a sign that we are alive. The dead have no problems…
One must not ignore the problems, and we need to deal with them, but we need proportion in life. We must not let the small problematic part spoil our joy in the abundant good that already exists in the present, and, with God's help, will increase in the future.
Best regards, Shatz
Until they all disappear.
A., for someone who has no faith to save him from meaninglessness in existence, I would suggest taking a pill or drugs, and maybe that anxiety about the existential void will pass …
I didn’t understand exactly what you want from Rabbi Michi. Is this a psychotherapeutic question?
To Shai — greetings,
After all, that’s the “philosopher’s” job: to improve feelings in order to intensify the will to live. Isn’t that what his name means: feel-o-sopher? 🙂
Best regards, Endless Elephant
And as for a pill — the best kind is a basketball…
I didn’t ask, and maybe I didn’t even pose a question. I speak because we are speaking, and I write because we are writing.
“The meaning of life” — as if that even means anything at all. If you really want to give it meaning, then the meaning of life is a subject studied in biology.
When you want to know the “meaning of life,” you are basically lying to yourself (like all of us). What you really want to know is what will make you feel good.
That is, you feel bad, and you want to know what will make you feel good.
You don’t know why you feel bad, so you imagine that it stems from the very fact that you are alive, and from there you think what bothers you is that you do not know the meaning of life. But that is nonsense.
In short, and without going on too long, the solution is that you find a goal and pursue it.
Period.
The last decisor,
It seems to me that the question of the meaning of life can be interpreted in an ethical and religious sense, and in an aesthetic sense. I have a feeling that many people use these words but not in the same sense. In the religious and ethical sense, it is a question of what the “good” is in light of which it is proper to live, and in that sense this question has real and critical meaning. It is a question every educated person must ask himself. There are people who ask this question out of a feeling of inner emptiness that is a moral feeling, and I would not dismiss it so quickly.
You’re both babbling chatterboxes.
Shai.
I don’t accept that.
Those who asked what the meaning of life is asked it out of inner emptiness, even if they were great religious figures.
I am not belittling inner emptiness at all.
A., for example, is contradictory. On the one hand he is full of himself, but on the other hand inside he has a black hole of inner emptiness.
With God's help, 7 Tammuz 5780
Another effective way to intensify a person’s will to live is: to provoke him. When a person gets annoyed and feels people are belittling him, renewed strengths awaken in him to prove himself.
Best regards, Adrena Lynn
But the method is not so recommended, because sometimes the person being belittled sinks into depression, so expertise and good personal acquaintance are needed in order to decide whether it is worth using “treatment by provocation.”
The last decisor,
The feeling of “inner emptiness” stems from a spiritual lack. It is a feeling that something spiritual demands filling. It seems, at least on the face of it, that religiosity is a psychic inclination no less important than the other higher human inclinations (in Maslow’s hierarchy), such as the inclination toward aesthetics or unity.
“With the pure You show Yourself pure, and with the crooked You show Yourself twisted.”
A spiritual lack? Who told you that? What does that even mean? If I turn on a fan so that it makes a lot of wind, will the lack be filled?
If I read lots of spiritual hallucinations, will the lack be filled?
Reality shows that it won’t. So it’s not a “spiritual” lack.
Last of the babblers, if you think I’m “full of myself,” does that mean I really am “full of myself”? And if you think I have a “black hole of inner emptiness,” does that mean I really have that?
No. You have something else. But it’s not far from that.
Interesting. Surely it’s some hidden secret known only to you, since of course you examine hearts and kidneys.
It’s known to you too, and to anyone who knows you.
Whoever knows me — doesn’t know me. My “I” is an idea, just as my name is an idea, and there are countless “I”s, as Gurdjieff brilliantly put it. And each person draws something different out of you.
Then by all means give some more escape routes if you think what he said is nonsense.