Or to to put it another way, a part of me definitely resonates with...
I think it’s worth being a good part of a bad story, rather than there being no story at all.
Indeed, most of the personal meaning in my life is grounded in my choice of the role that I play in this this small part of the whole story of civilization. I don’t decide my circumstances, but I do decide what sort of person I chose to be in meeting those circumstances. I am proud to choose the Good, and that is most of what is personally valuable to me.[1]
But I’m suspicious that the reason why “I think it’s worth being a good part of a bad story” feels appealing as a justification for existence is scope insensitivity.
I just literally cannot comprehend the horror of the terror and the suffering of billions of years of life killing and eating life on planet earth. If I could comprehend it, if I experienced it all myself, I think it would be extremely and straightforwardly obvious that the tiny fraction of total experience in which I could contextualize the whole thing as part of an epic story doesn’t come even remotely close to justifying the horror, and any claims to the contrary are cope.
As a side note, this is related I have a strong dislike of John Wentworth’s recent categorization of human values vs Goodness.
I do not resonate with his formulation of what Goodness is. Goodness, as I mean it definitively not “conformity to local norms”. In fact, goodness depends on non-conformity, insofar as local norms are often and regularly evil. Goodness is something like the reflective unfolding of a small number of innate principles, like fairness and kindness, which are tied to strong, innate, moral emotional reactions.
And this matters a lot to me because my relationship to Goodness is probably the largest component of what I find yummy.
Or to to put it another way, a part of me definitely resonates with...
Indeed, most of the personal meaning in my life is grounded in my choice of the role that I play in this this small part of the whole story of civilization. I don’t decide my circumstances, but I do decide what sort of person I chose to be in meeting those circumstances. I am proud to choose the Good, and that is most of what is personally valuable to me.[1]
But I’m suspicious that the reason why “I think it’s worth being a good part of a bad story” feels appealing as a justification for existence is scope insensitivity.
I just literally cannot comprehend the horror of the terror and the suffering of billions of years of life killing and eating life on planet earth. If I could comprehend it, if I experienced it all myself, I think it would be extremely and straightforwardly obvious that the tiny fraction of total experience in which I could contextualize the whole thing as part of an epic story doesn’t come even remotely close to justifying the horror, and any claims to the contrary are cope.
As a side note, this is related I have a strong dislike of John Wentworth’s recent categorization of human values vs Goodness.
I do not resonate with his formulation of what Goodness is. Goodness, as I mean it definitively not “conformity to local norms”. In fact, goodness depends on non-conformity, insofar as local norms are often and regularly evil. Goodness is something like the reflective unfolding of a small number of innate principles, like fairness and kindness, which are tied to strong, innate, moral emotional reactions.
And this matters a lot to me because my relationship to Goodness is probably the largest component of what I find yummy.