I should write a post at some point about how we should learn to be content with happiness instead of “true happiness”, truth instead of “ultimate truth”, purpose instead of “transcendental purpose”, and morality instead of “objective morality”.
When you put those together like that it occurs to me that they all share the feature of being provably final. I.e., when you have true happiness you can stop working on happiness; when you have ultimate truth you can stop looking for truth; when you know an objective morality you can stop thinking about morality. So humans are always striving to end striving.
(Of course whether they’d be happy if they actually ended striving is a different question, and one you’ve written eloquently about in the “fun theory” series.)
When you put those together like that it occurs to me that they all share the feature of being provably final. I.e., when you have true happiness you can stop working on happiness; when you have ultimate truth you can stop looking for truth; when you know an objective morality you can stop thinking about morality. So humans are always striving to end striving.
(Of course whether they’d be happy if they actually ended striving is a different question, and one you’ve written eloquently about in the “fun theory” series.)
That’s actually an excellent way of thinking about it—perhaps the terms are not as meaningless as I thought.