I know that everyone goes through this, so I shouldn't expect to elicit
the kind of sympathy that is a commonplace, say, at a depression forum
(not that I've been to one). But it really does make you question the
meaning of it all. From a sociological standpoint maybe there is none -
no questions that haven't been answered. People behave in ways that are
influenced by how other people behave. A lot of what is taken for
granted in our daily interactions with people are more a product of our
culture than something innate. (Maybe taking Sociology 100 this semester
was a good idea in more ways than one.) So it's perhaps natural to feel
a little disillusioned when someone points to a people in some remote
corner of the world, and says, for instance, that romantic love does not
exist - that it's a product of culture. Then the next step naturally is
to attempt to emancipate yourself from this illusion by rejecting any
and all notions about romantic love. After all, it's just an illusion -
just as heteronormativity is an illusion.
Perhaps romantic love isn't a product of culture in the same way as marriage, but perhaps it is. (I am only vaguely aware of what is meant by it.) If behaviorism proves correct, and people really are blank slates at birth, then there really doesn't seem to be any point in doing anything at all, since "you" essentially are nothing. But it very likely isn't (B. F. Skinner's vast forehead notwithstanding), which leaves just the glimmer of meaning necessary in life, for instance, to justify doing nothing besides coursework with no palpable reward in sight other than the honor of having to do more work at some future time, when your credentials have been evaluated by ambitious people desirous of finding new ways of making money.
Yes, you get paid, too, and no, money isn't a bad thing. But maybe there is more to life than amassing a fortune, and then disappearing altogether without leaving so much as a stain on the pages of history. Or maybe there isn't. Who am I to say that the person who has lived and died in anonymity, but has done all he could for his family, has not lived a meaningful life? The subjectivity of the notion is apt to make it meaningful only to the one who experiences it - so that the solipsistic idea that no one's life but one's own has any meaning might just be true ipso facto.
None of this figures in my next fanfic, I assure you (to be written and posted sometime in the unforeseeable future), which probably means for that reason that it's worth very little. But I do look forward to going home this winter, after yet another dull semester.
Perhaps romantic love isn't a product of culture in the same way as marriage, but perhaps it is. (I am only vaguely aware of what is meant by it.) If behaviorism proves correct, and people really are blank slates at birth, then there really doesn't seem to be any point in doing anything at all, since "you" essentially are nothing. But it very likely isn't (B. F. Skinner's vast forehead notwithstanding), which leaves just the glimmer of meaning necessary in life, for instance, to justify doing nothing besides coursework with no palpable reward in sight other than the honor of having to do more work at some future time, when your credentials have been evaluated by ambitious people desirous of finding new ways of making money.
Yes, you get paid, too, and no, money isn't a bad thing. But maybe there is more to life than amassing a fortune, and then disappearing altogether without leaving so much as a stain on the pages of history. Or maybe there isn't. Who am I to say that the person who has lived and died in anonymity, but has done all he could for his family, has not lived a meaningful life? The subjectivity of the notion is apt to make it meaningful only to the one who experiences it - so that the solipsistic idea that no one's life but one's own has any meaning might just be true ipso facto.
None of this figures in my next fanfic, I assure you (to be written and posted sometime in the unforeseeable future), which probably means for that reason that it's worth very little. But I do look forward to going home this winter, after yet another dull semester.
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